Roadside Rose Hip Cordial

If you keep your eyes peeled, you may find wild roses covered with rose hips, especially along country roads in Tasmania. After we left Wychwood Garden on the weekend we gathered rose hips for syrup.

Rose hips are rich in Vitamin C (do you remember Delrosa?)

The bushes are extremely thorny so beware.

We chose some that had been close to a good water source and had developed beautiful cheery bright plump fruit.

We also found some roadside apples too for the picking. They made a juicy snack for the journey home and we duly deposited our cores with hopes of another tree just like it in the future.

It's important to not totally denude the trees and bushes though because they also provide food for the birds too.

After washing the hips, I wizzed them in the food processor (about a kilo) and added them to three litres of water and brought it to the boil and then removed them from the pot and allowed them to steep for a time. As for the rhubarb cordial, I strained through muslin and tied the bag and suspended it from a broom handle across an upturned dining room chair allowing it to fully drip through to the collection bowl beneath.

The resulting liquid looks a lot like the strange vermilion of canned tomato soup. I brought this to a gentle simmer and allowed it to reduce till there was about only a litre of liquid left. To this I added a kilo of sugar and stirred till it was dissolved then brought the temperature back up to 170C and bottled into warm bottles sterilised in the oven at 100C for 15mins.

(Similar process to Rhubarb Cordial)

The resulting syrup is a darker fiery red and delicious mixed with soda water.

Now imagine a splash in hot water for a comforting hot Vitamin C drink.

Bottle into smallish bottles because once opened it should be consumed within the week and kept in the fridge after opening.

These little bottles would make a really thoughtful gift for a sick friend laid low with a cold.

If you are traipsing the by-ways you might like to check out some Hedgerow Recipes here.

Heritage Apples

Tasmania is also known as the "Apple Isle" because at one time it was one of the biggest apple producers of the world. Apples love our climate and there are many trees dotting the highways and country roads. Craig reckons he is responsible for a good proportion of these wild sown trees from the many cores he has tossed road side travelling in the bush. When he took gangs of workers out planting trees, it was a real highlight for the back-packers to be able to stop on the way home from work, pile out of the troopy and pick new seasons apples from road side trees. The varieties were always different and it was a boon to their meagre living.

Wychwood Gardens played host to Woodbridge Fruit Trees for a day of heritage apple tasting and the opportunity to pre-order varieties for winter bare root stock. 

Here are some of my picks....

St Edmunds Pippin ripening February to March 

Huonville Crab ripens April to May. Smallish but prolific fruit. Good for cooking too I suspect.

Cornish Aromatic ripens May-June. An intriguing flavour of vague "spice". A good eating apple.

Geeveston Fanny ripens March-April. Not too sweet not too sharp. They tell a good story about it here

Gaol Farm 6 was very similar to the Geeveston Fanny I thought and also a good eating apple.

The Burwood! What a massive apple! Commonly grows up to 700g and you would think with that size there would be compromise on flavour and texture. Not so! Fabulously crisp and refreshing with a lovely flavour. Suitable for espalier too. That's Craig's big hand there in the picture to give you an idea of size.

What about this massive one!

The colour of these Ribston Pippin which ripens Feb-March. Rich autumnal orange, gold and umbre. A very good eating apple.

The apple press was also a great attraction not just for people but also for the European Wasps looking for sweet pickings. In fact in many of the photos above it is a bit like "Where's Wally" because there is a wasp hidden in nearly every photo!

I certainly learnt a lot and came away really keen for some more apple trees round the place.

Don't you think this man looks the quintessential Tasmanian Apple Man? Certainly knew his stuff.

I certainly urge you to consider the benefits of heritage apples on dwarf root stock as these are easily espaliered (easier than it looks) around the average suburban home garden. 

I also urge you to keep your eyes peeled for apples on the by-ways and take a moment to pick some free produce ready in season now, but leave some for the birds too!

Autumn at Wychwood (Tasmania)

It's autumn in Tasmania and arguably the most beautiful time of the year here, 

and it doesn't get any more beautiful than Wychwood Gardens.

Or more autumnal.

We revisited the gardens at the weekend for a special heritage apple day.

A bonus was some luscious special interest cars also having a day out...

I found more to love and inspire at every turn.

Amazing apples tomorrow!

The Secret of Boiling Eggs

Many years ago I had a girlfriend give me some simple advice. 

"Do you know what the real secret of good poached eggs is? They have got to be fresh."

So true.

So here is the secret of good boiled eggs....

They have to be not so fresh!

It's true (and many of you already know this but it is worth telling) if you try to do a soft boiled egg (yolk medium rare) with a fresh egg from the hen house, they will be nearly impossible to peel without sacrificing precious white and pitting the egg into a lunar landscape.

If however you boil the heck out of an egg and make it so hard it could bounce then you will probably have no trouble removing the shell old or fresh.

This discussion today is for the purposes of achieving that beautiful 3 min egg with the soft creamy centre.

If you have chooks of your own then boiled eggs take some planning ahead.

You have two choices; one, you go to the supermarket and buy eggs or two, put some eggs into a bowl and leave them on the bench for a few days (not in direct sun or extreme high temps).

This ages them a little faster than being in the fridge and the egg white will not be so adhered to the shell membrane when you are trying to peel them.

Place the eggs in cold water from the tap covering them by a few centimetres or an inch and place on a med heat to bring them gently to a simmer. This avoids cracked eggs. 

Take note of the photo above as this is an important and yet misleading part of "boiling" an egg. You want the water to be a gentle simmer not a hard walloping boil which over cooks the egg.

Once at a simmer time for 3mins. I then remove from the heat and leave the pot in the sink covered once again with water from the cold tap. This starts to cease the cooking inside the shell and cools the egg down to prevent over-cooking which results in the greenish ring around the egg yolk. Not harmful, just a reaction between the sulphur of the white and the iron in the yolk, but it would have the CWA ladies tutting about the signs of unaccomplished cook.

After tapping the shell all around on the sink it comes away easily especially if you get it started at the air sack end (the big end of the egg). 

It is from experience and trial and error that you adjust up or down from your timing to achieve the amount of firmness you desire and account for the egg size too. Common sense will indicate that you don't boil a bantam egg for as long as your big girls' eggs.

Once they are cooled you can simply keep the unpeeled eggs in a bowl in the fridge for up to a week and they are very handy for sandwiches or on toast or dressing up a salad. I find the older they get they will start to develop that green ring around the yolk anyway as the chemicals react over time. 

There is so much egg lore that used to be taught in Home Ec at school but a lot of it has gone by the way-side and I promise to broach the subject again sometime.

So fresh eggs for poaching,

older eggs for boiling.

Eating Raw

I have been quite ill for a number of weeks now but have finally turned a corner. I have had lovely friends concerned that I have not been able to feed myself properly being alone and all. Listening to my body though I didn't need to be loading it up on fuel that it had to divert extra energy towards digesting and eliminating. A lot of my body's energy was going into eliminating on a different front.

I felt like very simple food. One night a steamed zucchini, another night boiled egg on toast, another night just a piece of meat. Very simple single digestive enzyme action.

My physical energy output was very low having some couch days so my caloric intake desire was low too.

There are some advantages to being on your own; you can listen and be still with your body and go with it's needs. 

My forage in the garden last night for dinner told me I was feeling better as I got excited about my food, and who wouldn't when you have coloured chard? It excites any salad and gives me a mental feel good just seeing it all cut up. If you cook it you loose that wonderful colour.

Raw is something I found has become quite alien to a lot of people whom I ran into at the growers' market. I could see the slight hesitation from people whenever I said "try a piece". I'm talking about beans, peas, chard, mixed greens. Edible flowers were a real confrontation for many. That's not how I remember it when I was a kid, there was a lot of raw food eating as dinner was prepared. Do you think it is because people buy so much of their fresh produce frozen now? Is it because beans now go from the freezer to a pot? Once upon a time they were topped and tailed fresh and admittedly then cooked, but there was still some raw sampling going on at the sink.

Is this how our kids have lost touch with their food in pure form? Not enough preparing and exposing them to food from scratch? I notice that my friends who grow vegetables have children who embrace food really well and don't tend to have "fussy eaters". That's why I think it is so important to grow something. You don't have to have the whole self sustaining thing going on, just one or two things. At the very least every garden should try for tomatoes, beans and a lemon tree.

(Rat Tail Radish Flowers)

Flora Jean's Green Tomato Pickles

Boy oh boy when the weather drops to 0C and the snow is on the mountains it signal an end to your tomato season. By now you will have harvested lots of beautiful ripe orbs and the plants themselves will be looking a bit tired and wan, leaves withering, yet still some smaller glossy green fruit remaining.

My mother came to town and I convinced her to have a day with me making green tomato pickles. It is her mother's recipe we used, where it came from before that I know not for it is a hand written recipe.

We picked yet more tomatoes, this time green. Such a gorgeous colour and vibrancy, as I chopped them I thought of the term "apple green" yet more luminous. 

As we worked she admitted to me how sorry she was she had not asked more questions when her mother was alive, prompted because of the various musings and suppositions we made as we read and re-read through the recipe.

I know Nan used to soak the vegetable over night in salted water but we debated about the validity of the step as opposed to just cooking it all up. Mum thinks that sometimes there were funny theories about such things, like cucumbers and gas for instance. Well we opted to cook without soaking which is the only deviation from the recipe. 

It follows....

Green Tomato Pickles

4lb green tomatoes chopped

2lb onion chopped

1/2 small cauliflower cut into flowerets

1 small cucumber peeled and chopped

1 tabs salt

1/2 cup flour

2 1/2 cups brown sugar

1 1/2 tabs mustard

2 tabs turmeric

1/4 tabs cayenne pepper

1 tabs curry powder

2 1/2 cups of malt vinegar

Place all the ingredients into a large pot except for flour and boil for about 20mins till the vegetables are tender. 

Mix the flour with a little water and add to the pot and boil for up to another 10 mins until the mixture thickens.

Remove from the heat and bottle and seal.

We may have gone overboard quadrupling the recipe! It seemed like a good idea at the time but in hind sight I won't be needing to make pickles again for a long time.

Above is the last lot of tomato relish I made and these #14 Fowlers jars are a great size for relish and pickles. The last of them were used to bottle up the pickles as well.

I love this on warm buttered toast in the morning or with cheese in a sandwich for lunch. It also goes great with cold meats or alongside a salad.

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I would also like to tell you ladies who commented on the last post what a great bunch of girlfriends you are. You helped to give me that push and the impetus to pull that knitting out and wind it back up.

As much as I love the colour, the yarn is just not me. It certainly would not have done the pattern justice.

I have decided to give it to one of the patients who comes into work. She does lots of knitting for charity and I'm sure she can put it to much better uses.

Thank you so much ladies for your kind, caring and considered responses.

xxx 

Your Bouclé Thoughts

I have been a little quiet of late owing to some slight indisposition which has forced me to the couch and some quiet time with a rug over the knees. An ideal situation for taking up the knitting.

I have acquired this bouclé and admire the dusty pink and muted lilac shades but ....

before I knit on and on,

I can't help thinking.....

Is it yarn appropriate for this?

Any thoughts?

Even though the ply is correct, I can't help thinking it looks bulky.

I have in mind that it will go well with fuscia, mauve and grey.

It's not the yarn that I fear to waste but the time is certainly more valuable.

Perhaps it is just suck it and see,

and perhaps bouclé will by it's nature be flexible and forgiving.

Have you worked anything in bouclé?

What did you make and have you loved it?