Rhubarb and Rose Geranium Jam

 

I was all ready to write about how we skipped spring and went straight into summer this year.   Usually the bleakest of months, October's weather is usually gusty, often raining, suffers from constant blasts of wild winds and is notoriously fickle.  But this year, October has been full of hot and sunny summer days.

Yesterday, as we worked outside in the garden, mowed the lawn for the third time this week, and rested under the shade of the mulberry tree, I thought what happened to spring? This is summer weather already.

Thankfully, today spring is back, a rainy wet chilly start to the day followed by gusty blasts that has me indoors working at my desk.  The wood stove is getting what might be its last daytime hurrah for a while, and its wetback gurgles comfortingly in the background as it heats our hot water.  There are beans in the oven simmering away with tomato, garlic, and smokey spices, and the kettle sits on the side of the stove, ready for a cup of tea at a moments notice.

Spring is my third favourite month, after winter and autumn, so I do feel a little robbed of those balmy spring days.  So far this October has been hotter than any December on record. Scary stuff.

From a local eaters point of view, skipping spring straight into summer means that we're enduring the heat, without all the good things that summer brings, like juicy cherries, sweet nectarines, fragrant tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers from the garden.  There's no standing over the sink eating a ripe juicy peach, and letting its juices dribble down your chin, to take the sting out of a stifling day. These are the delicious things that for me, makes summer bearable.  But now, it's still the hungry patch, and all we've got is rhubarb and meyer lemons and the rose geranium has started to flower.

So here is a spring jam, the first one of the season, a light spring, lemony jam, made fragrant with rose geranium leaves. It's low on sugar and doesn't keep for long.  A bit like spring really.

Spring Rhubarb Jam with Rose Geranium

750g rhubarb stalks
300g sugar
100mls meyer lemon juice
3 sprigs of rose geranium

Wash rhubarb and remove the leaves, the tough pale end of the stalk and any snails.

Cut into the rhubarb into pieces about the size of a cork, if anyone can remember what a cork looks like (about 5cm).

Throw the rhubarb into a non reactive bowl, with the sugar and the lemon juice.  Toss then cover and allow to sit for a few hours or overnight in the fridge.

Pour the rhubarb mixture and the rose geranium sprigs into a preserving pan, scrape all the juice and sugar clinging to the bowl.  Cook over low to medium heat, stirring often until the sugar has dissolved and the juices are running freely.   Increase heat to a medium high and bring the rhubarb to a gentle boil. Cook for about ten minutes, stirring often or until the rhubarb is tender. Remove the rose geranium.

Pour into jars, allow to cool and store in the fridge. Best eaten within two weeks or so.

This fresh spring jam is delicious on toast, with yoghurt and granola for breakfast, on ice-cream, or simply eaten out of the jar with spoon, in lieu of a juicy peach eaten over the sink.

Read more

6 comments recipes, seasons

Share:

Chocolate Plum Cake

Abundance is the word that sums up this time of year.  Even though the days are starting to get noticeably shorter, in the garden and in the kitchen it's bursting with delicious things to eat.  There are tomatoes of all shapes and colours, a glut of zucchinis and the stone fruits keep on coming.

Read more

Read More

4 comments real food, recipes

Share:

Rose Geranium Meringues with blackcurrants and cream

The cherries are finished, must be four of the saddest words in the English language.  The end of the all too brief cherry season always leaves me feeling a little downhearted that there will be no more scoffing bags of roadside stall purchases and spitting the pips out the car window.

Which is why we stuff ourselves silly on the juicy purple fruit for the few weeks in summer we get to enjoy them.  We make them into jam, dehydrate them, pickle them and plonk them into jars of brandy, to quietly do their thing for a few months before opening on a chilly midwinter night.

Read more

Read More

7 comments real food, recipes, tasmania

Share:

Minty Broad bean and pea soup

Finally summer has arrived in the valley.  Hello summer! 

And with it, the garden is starting to provide enough produce to scratch together a few meals.   Although to be honest, mostly we’re in the garden stuffing our faces with deep red raspberries that have taken over the vege patch.  Far too soft and squishy to travel far, these never make it into the kitchen.

Read more

Read More

6 comments recipes

Share:

Mulberry Tea Cake

If there's one thing I've always coveted since moving Tasmania it's a glut from my very own garden.  You know, so much fruit that you don't know what to do with it all. You make jam, you preserve some, you eat some and you give away some, and yet there's still loads of fruit left over.

This week I can finally cross that wish off my list. Our mulberry tree, which is six years old now, is positively groaning with dark purple fruit.

Read more

Read More

25 comments recipes

Share:

How to bake a chocolate victoria sponge

School holiday are here, just as I have a looming deadline and need to focus on finishing a big project.   Try as I might to get through the work load, the children chase each other around the kitchen table where I work, or play handball in the hallway, while the dog barks and wrestles the cat, who tries to steal the ball. 

It’s pure bedlam.  

Best to retreat to the kitchen and bake this cake.  A chocolate sponge cake that uses up the surplus eggs our hens are laying.  And homemade butter that my friend Sadie gave me, made with cream from her dairy cows.

Read more

Read More

23 comments recipes

Share:

Geeveston Fanny Skillet Cake

Come autumn in the valley, the light softens as the leaves turn golden, the smell of bonfires fill the air and best of all, roadside stalls sell new season apples.   Ramshackle sheds, with charming handwritten signs spruiking their wares, signal to passing drivers to pull over.    Bags of apples are piled high, usually fujis, galas, goldies and grannies.  Just leave your money in the honesty box before heading on your merry way, not before tearing open the bag and passing around the apples to munch as you drive on to your destination.    

Read more

Read More

18 comments recipes

Share:

Bright red drinks

"I love bright red drinks, don't you? They taste twice as good as any other colour."

So said Anne Shirley in one of my favourite childhood books, Anne of Green Gables, in the raspberry cordial scene.   I was reminded of raspberry cordial yesterday when I took a look around the garden to see it had been overrun with raspberry canes.  Nothing else for it but to brave the jungle and pick as many as we can to make raspberry cordial to sip on Christmas Day.  A day which certainly calls for a bright red drink.

Here's how I did it.

About 300g raspberries
1 cup of castor sugar
1 litre of boiling water.

In a large bowl, add raspberries and sugar, then pour over boiling water, give it a quick stir and allow to steep overnight.   In the morning pour it all through a strainer into a large jug but don't push the fruit through or the cordial will become cloudy. The fruit left in the strainer will be pale but you can eat it on pancakes or stir it through yoghurt.

Pour the syrup into a glass jar or bottle and store in the fridge for two days.

To serve, dilute the cordial with water to taste, still or sparkling, and marvel at how good bright red drinks really do taste.

Read more

7 comments recipes

Share:

How to make strawberry shortcakes and a book too

Hello!  Here are some strawberry shortcakes.   And I am writing a book.  Yes me!  I am!

I can't believe I just wrote that but it's true.

Let me tell you how it happened....


Back in March this year I signed up for Holly Becker's from Decor8 Blogging Your Way e-course.  It was wonderful and I learnt a lot.  If you want some direction with your blog then I highly recommend you sign up right now. 

One of the things Holly said that has stuck with me is "you never know who is reading your blog" and boy is that true.


Anyhoo, one of the final homework assignments was to write what you wanted to get out of your blog.   So thinking big I wrote, that one day, in my wildest dreams, I would like to write a book.   To be honest, that is a quiet dream I've had for many years, but one I chalked up with other crazy dreams such as living in Provence for a year or buying an island.  You know, I never seriously thought it would ever happen.  Crazy or not, I shared that dream about wanting to write a book in my homework and it felt good to get that dream out there, if only to my fellow e-class mates.


I swear, it only took two weeks before I received an email from the publisher at Random House asking me to call for a chat.  Whoah Nelly that was fast!


Over the next months, after quite a bit of work writing sample chapters, nutting out concepts and ideas, along with lots of championing from many people at Random House, that book dream became a reality.  


And now I am writing a book.  And I feel truly astonished and incredibly humbled by this opportunity.  


The book will be part memoir, part recipes, with lots of photos, telling the story of our life in Tasmania.  An expanded version of my blog really, with more details and more trials and tribulations on what it was like to pack up your city life and move to the countryside of a small southern island.
 Plus plenty of good things to eat.

It will be due for release early 2015, which seems miles away but it's not really in the book publishing world. 


I am so very excited about this project, actually thrilled beyond measure, that a dream so out there has actually come true.  Now I just have to write it.  

So I would like to thank you dear readers, for visiting my blog and for your kind comments and emails. Believe me when I say without you, this wouldn’t be happening.


My only regret is..... that I didn't include spend a year in Provence and buy an island on my blog homework back in March.  Who knows where I might have ended up.   


And Holly was right, you never do know who is reading your blog.

To celebrate the season, and the signing of the book deal, which I celebrate at any opportunity, yesterday the first of the strawberries appeared, so we made strawberry shortcakes.   Just like this.....

Strawberry Shortcakes 

makes 12 shortcakes 

for the shortcakes

325 grams plain flour

half a teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon baking powder

3 tablespoons caster sugar

125 grams unsalted butter

1 large egg (beaten)
1/2 cup of Greek style yoghurt

1/4 cup of milk

for the filling

250 grams strawberries, sliced

1 tablespoon caster sugar

250 ml double cream, whipped

Method

Preheat the oven to 220ºC

In a medium bowl, toss strawberries with sugar and let sit for 30 minutes to bring out their juices.

Whisk the flour, salt, baking powder the sugar together in a bowl.

Rub the butter into the dry ingredients using your fingertips to crumble the butter into the flour, until the butter is the texture of course breadcrumbs with some pea size bits too.

Whisk the egg, yogurt and milk together in a small jug or bowl, then pour into the flour mixture a little at a time, using a fork to mix until it comes together.  (go easy, you may not need all of the liquid)

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface, and roll gently to a thickness of about 2cm.

Dip a 5cm round cutter in flour and cut out as many rounds as you can, then work the scraps back into a dough and re-roll to finish cutting out 

Place the shortcakes about 2 cm apart on a lined baking tray

Bake for 10-15 minutes, until golden-brown, and let them cool slightly on a wire rack.

Slice biscuits in half horizontally. Spoon strawberries and their liquid over bottom halves. Spoon whipped cream onto strawberries, and replace top halves of biscuits.  (I actually didn't whip the cream, as you can see by the photos, so it's a bit messy, but I really think you should!) 

Read more

38 comments cooking, dreams, good things, magic, oh my giddy aunt, recipes

Share:

How to make Welsh Cakes

On a perfect day there will be some freshly baked treats to greet the children when they come home from school.  The reality is on most days I’ve been too busy to bake and, well, there is always a piece fruit to fill those hungry tummies. 

However on the days when an apple just won’t do, one of our favourite afternoon treats are these little Welsh cakes. A traditional snack in Wales, these warm buttery little cakes have the beauty of being cooked in a frypan. No waiting around for the oven to get hot.




Made with pantry staples, quick to mix and even quicker to cook, these little treats can be whipped up while the kettle boils.  And they are so easy you could even get the children to help while you have a cup of tea after your busy day.  Afternoon snack and activity all rolled into one? That sounds like a perfect day!

Welsh Cakes *

Makes about 18 cakes

225g self raising flour

110g butter, diced

75g caster sugar, plus extra for dusting

75g currants or sultanas, or a mixture of both

1 teaspoon cinnamon

a pinch of salt

1 egg, beaten

grated zest of half a lemon

a little milk, if needed

a little extra butter for greasing

Sift the flour, salt and cinnamon into a bowl and add the diced butter.

Rub with your finger tips until the mixture resembles bread crumbs. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Mix in the sugar, currants, lemon zest and beaten egg and stir to form a dough, add a splash of milk if too dry.  Try not to work it too much or your cakes will be tough.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough to a thickness of about 1.5cm.

Cut into rounds with a 6 or 7cm plain cutter.

Warm a heavy based frypan over a medium to low heat.

With a piece of kitchen paper, wipe some extra butter over the frypan until lightly coated.

Cook each cake for about 4 minutes each side or until golden brown – check them often to make sure do not burn.

Sprinkle with caster sugar and serve straight away, traditionally with a pot of tea. Or you can split them like a scone and top them with whipped cream to be fancy.  

Apparently they keep in an airtight container for up to four days, but honestly, they've never lasted long enough to test the theory. 

(* This post originally appeared on Just B, but it's such a great recipe, I thought I'd share it again.) 

Read more

15 comments recipes

Share: