Lots and lots of cabbage

On Wellington Anniversary Day I entered my first ever A and P show with some homegrown produce. And wouldn't you know it I got first place! (Please note that even though the competition level wasn't as high as one might have expected my cabbage was still the bomb regardless).

Mega cabbage

But alas what to do with all the cabbage afterwards. After 3 meals of coleslaw there was still  ¾ of a cabbage left. My only other experience of having this much cabbage was in Form 1 when we learnt to make coleslaw in cooking class. The teacher (Mrs Watson) gathered all the leftover cabbage and made sauerkraut with it. Then for the rest of the term we used sauerkraut in other recipes. In particular I remember putting sauerkraut on pizza.

Mrs Watson had some interesting ideas about cooking (she pretty much put lemon pepper on everything) but I like that she didn't want to waste the cabbage and came up with another way to use it. Kiwi ingenuity for you (with a german twist)!

So anyway I don't have a copy of her version of sauerkraut and all the recipes I read involve quite a process of fermentation. I wasn't sure if I wanted to go to such lengths considering I can't even remember what the stuff tastes like!

I wasn't kidding about the amount of cabbage

So I found this straight forward option for pickling cabbage here. It pretty much involves packing shredded cabbage into sterilized jars then putting some honey and salt and then hot water, sealing them and then leaving them in the hot water cupboard for a week.

I added some grated apple and caraway seeds to my mix. Next time I may be a little bit more adventurous.

With a bit of honey and salt on the top awaiting hot water

So apparently I can open and eat the cabbage in a weeks time or wait another 6 but if I open it between weeks 1-6 it will be quite sour. This is all a bit scientific but it has to go through 3 stages of fermentation. Interesting stuff!

Sealed and ready to be banished to the darkness

Will follow up with some notes once it has fermented!

Lots and lots of cabbage

Moving to the country going to eat a lot of Peaches.

We have an amazing peach tree in our backyard. And it's not your usual peach tree either - it's a black boys (terribly un-PC I know!!) Black boys peaches are dark purple on the outside and have this amazing purple/fuchsia like flesh on the inside and they are juicy and sweet.

This was our 3rd season of them and this was the bumper crop! On average we had 5-6 drop per day for 3 weeks. The thing about peaches is that they go off really fast. You pretty much have to eat them straight away or do something with them.

For lack of jars and absolutely no experience at bottling fruit I decided to freeze them instead. This was actually extremely easy yet quite time confusing. To get the skins off I dipped the peaches in boiling water for 30 seconds then plunged them into ice water for a few minutes. The skins then simply slip off. I roughly chopped them and put them into a freezer zip-lock bag and covered them in a sugar syrup. I used a 1:3 ratio of sugar to water which I had gently simmered on the stove top and slightly cooled before pouring over the fruit.

I found that putting the freezer bag into a dish of some kind helped the bag keep its form and also helped me get all the air out. They have frozen and kept their wonderful fuchsia colour for making desserts, pies or just for eating in winter.

Alas the tree is empty signalling that Autumn has arrived.

Moving to the country going to eat a lot of Peaches.

Holy Gherkin Batman!

At the end of last year I grew pickling cucumbers from seed so I could make gherkins. I have 4 plants and they have grown rather large but have taken awhile to fruit. Finally today I had enough to pickle!

It is a rather simple process. Basically you soak the gherkins in salt and water for a day, rinse, pour boiling water over, drain,  put in a jar and then cover with a vinegar/spice concotion that you boil for 5 mins. Thank-you very much Edmonds Cookbook. 

I didn't have any pickling spice so I made that from scratch too. Now I wait. In 3 weeks time they will be ready to eat and will taste extra good in my ham sandwiches. 

Holy Gherkin Batman!