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igenlodeI spent half a pound of sugar (and an hour of my time -- the recipe claims that the curd will thicken in 9-10 minutes, but it lies... as noted by other comments!) in experimenting with an old newspaper clipping about preserves which includes 'Bramley lemon curd'. It's basically exactly the same as lemon curd, only with half the lemon replaced by cooking apple... so I adapted my pressure-cooker lemon curd recipe to help give me half-quantities in Imperial measurements, instead of gigantic metric ones. (I really do not want five jars of lemon curd at a time, given its short shelf life; I gather the idea is that you give them away as quaint home-made presents.)
I didn't use the pressure cooker, though, since the last time I tried to make lemon curd under pressure it was nowhere near cooked after the long wait for the valve finally to release... I'm afraid the sealing ring has gone with age. I simply stirred the curd over simmering water for about an hour, being reminded of my attempts to make Floating Islands (which also took forever) -- this sort of thing is much more easily done on a solid-fuel range, where you can simply put the pan directly on the cool part of the top.
I may have slightly overdone the setting/thickening process, as it seemed to go very solid indeed when it finally hit the jam funnel! It definitely did reduce during cooking, and I ended up with two jars.
In my various attempts at preserving tomatoes for the winter I did eventually manage three or four jars of cooked-down pulp according to a wartime recipe, though I'm not too confident of their keeping properties and need to use those first before resorting to tins, plus a tiny jar of tomato paste stored under olive oil (which doesn't work too well in practice, as the oil solidifies in the fridge), reduced down from a large pan of watery fruit :-p
But by far the most successful has been Olia Hercules' Ukrainian 'finger-licking tomatoes'; the two small jars I made didn't seal successfully, for some reason, and I ended up with a large air bubble under the wax and pickling fluid somehow forcing its way up on top, but that gave me an excuse to try them at once as soon as the ten days 'in a warm place' was complete. They were supposed to be fermenting, so I didn't think an improper seal at that stage would do that much harm other than damaging their long-term storageability. (You certainly don't seal sauerkraut at all; I've made that successfully in an open bucket!)
And the result really is delicious. I didn't have white wine vinegar (I used ordinary brown malted) or cold-pressed sunflower oil (I decided to use olive rather than vegetable oil, on the grounds that it was supposed to be inherently flavoured) or beefsteak tomatoes, or allspice berries (I used ground allspice, which settles as a sediment at the bottom), or a two-quart jar (I used two of my big ex-coffee jars that hold two pints of marmalade/chutney each, plus a couple of ordinary small jam-jars), but it was very successful anyway. The contents don't really taste like 'pickles' at all; more like a sort of rich savoury salad. I used some of the bits of chopped celery and garlic from the jar as a topping to liven up a rather flavourless turmeric pilaff which was supposed to have toasted pine-nuts and all kinds of other garnishes on it that I didn't possess, and it turned the boring dish into a packed lunch which drew appreciative comments.
I have another 'open' jar left, plus the two big sealed ones in the fridge, where I obediently put them once their ten days were up -- though they can't really stay in there too many months, because I'm going to need the space! Presumably refrigeration is a substitute for the earthen cellar underneath your izba, since I'm certain the peasants didn't use fridges to keep their stores over the winter...
I didn't use the pressure cooker, though, since the last time I tried to make lemon curd under pressure it was nowhere near cooked after the long wait for the valve finally to release... I'm afraid the sealing ring has gone with age. I simply stirred the curd over simmering water for about an hour, being reminded of my attempts to make Floating Islands (which also took forever) -- this sort of thing is much more easily done on a solid-fuel range, where you can simply put the pan directly on the cool part of the top.
I may have slightly overdone the setting/thickening process, as it seemed to go very solid indeed when it finally hit the jam funnel! It definitely did reduce during cooking, and I ended up with two jars.
In my various attempts at preserving tomatoes for the winter I did eventually manage three or four jars of cooked-down pulp according to a wartime recipe, though I'm not too confident of their keeping properties and need to use those first before resorting to tins, plus a tiny jar of tomato paste stored under olive oil (which doesn't work too well in practice, as the oil solidifies in the fridge), reduced down from a large pan of watery fruit :-p
But by far the most successful has been Olia Hercules' Ukrainian 'finger-licking tomatoes'; the two small jars I made didn't seal successfully, for some reason, and I ended up with a large air bubble under the wax and pickling fluid somehow forcing its way up on top, but that gave me an excuse to try them at once as soon as the ten days 'in a warm place' was complete. They were supposed to be fermenting, so I didn't think an improper seal at that stage would do that much harm other than damaging their long-term storageability. (You certainly don't seal sauerkraut at all; I've made that successfully in an open bucket!)
And the result really is delicious. I didn't have white wine vinegar (I used ordinary brown malted) or cold-pressed sunflower oil (I decided to use olive rather than vegetable oil, on the grounds that it was supposed to be inherently flavoured) or beefsteak tomatoes, or allspice berries (I used ground allspice, which settles as a sediment at the bottom), or a two-quart jar (I used two of my big ex-coffee jars that hold two pints of marmalade/chutney each, plus a couple of ordinary small jam-jars), but it was very successful anyway. The contents don't really taste like 'pickles' at all; more like a sort of rich savoury salad. I used some of the bits of chopped celery and garlic from the jar as a topping to liven up a rather flavourless turmeric pilaff which was supposed to have toasted pine-nuts and all kinds of other garnishes on it that I didn't possess, and it turned the boring dish into a packed lunch which drew appreciative comments.
I have another 'open' jar left, plus the two big sealed ones in the fridge, where I obediently put them once their ten days were up -- though they can't really stay in there too many months, because I'm going to need the space! Presumably refrigeration is a substitute for the earthen cellar underneath your izba, since I'm certain the peasants didn't use fridges to keep their stores over the winter...
