SIO Tips no. 55: Gardening jobs for January

It may be cold outside but there are still jobs to do in the garden to prepare for Spring. 
Now is the time to plan your planting and prune those fruit trees.
Don't forget to keep feeding the little birds; they need the extra food now.

SIO Tips no. 51: Easy Garlic

Peeling Garlic cloves can be a pain but no need for fancy gadgets; simply cut off the end where the clove attached to the rest of the bulb then roll the clove between your palms a couple of times applying enough pressure for the skin to come away from the flesh - Easy Peasy!

SEEKITOUT: Changing the world a stitch at a time.

Olives; at home

My South African family's tradition:

Preserving Olives at home is an enjoyable and therapeutic process; provided that you have access to fresh olives from a fruiting tree. We've been bottling olives from my sister-in-law's tree for three years now and we've enjoyed varying our recipe and now have a winning combination.

I wanted to show you how we do it - so you know what goes into the bottles you find on the shelves of the supermarket, albeit on a much larger scale.

Start with fresh olives; find yourself a nice spot in the sunshine, with a glass of wine in one hand, make a slit in each olive using a sharp knife. Relax, this takes a while so it's nice to have a friend to keep you company and make the time fly.  

Drop them into a reseal-able container as you go and cover with cold water; drain, rinse and re-cover with clean water every day, or two, for two weeks.   

Once you've done the rinse and repeat cycle for two weeks your olives should have released all the bitter oils they store and will now feel a little less hard. Don't squish them too much; it's nicer to have firm fleshy olives when you're eating them than bruised ones.

Prepare to bottle by peeling and chopping a clove of Garlic or two per bottle and ripping Lemon/Lime leaves into quarters. You will want half a leaf per jar.

Set yourself up in a nice work area with olive oil (sunflower or seed oils work fine too), White vinegar (not spirit vinegar, it's too harsh on the final flavour), 1 tsp Mixed Herbs per jar, Sea salt, Garlic, Lemon/Lime leaves, hot water in a jug and your clean recycled jars.

Make yourself a brine using the hot water and sea salt - a fresh egg should float in the solution. I make a big batch of brine which I store in a large jar ready for the next batch.

Now you can start bottling. I tend to half fill each jar then add the garlic, lemon leaves and 1 tsp herbs in each jar then top up with more olives. When the jar is full add 1/4 cup of vinegar and 1/4 cup of oil to each jar (for a roughly 300ml jar) then fill to cover the olives with your brine.

The olives are ready to eat after about 3 months. I try to give the olives a gentle shake every now and then to make sure the flavours are all mixed nicely.

They make a great gift to take along to dinner parties. But be warned, they disappear quickly when opened.

Spice them up with fresh or dried chillies or get creative with other flavours.

ENJOY!

From wintery Cape Town

SIO Tips No. 20

Honey has a high fructose content which means you can use less honey than sugar to achieve the desired sweetness in recipes. This means less calories and more goodness.

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SIO Tips No. 19

Prepping Leeks for a recipe? Make sure you get all the grit out of the leaves - slice vertically down the green stem to the white flesh & rinse under the tap. This is less fiddly than peeling back each layer and yields more for the pot.


SEEK IT OUT: Changing the world a stitch at a time

Feast on Autumn

The wonders of Autumn have arrived, the stunning burnt oranges, the deep reds and the golden tones of the trees are finally here.  When the sunshine shows through the world looks wonderful.  Many fruit and vegetable crops are well down this year all due to the weather hampering everything from the pollenating bees to rotting the potatoes in the fields. In the SIO HQ garden we have a lovely old apple tree but only 5 apples this year, which is a huge shame as normally it is laden.  

However, there is fruit out there and recently we went in search Wimberries (Bilberries), only found a handful or two, not enough for a pie but enough to flavour one.  Add any of the tart fruit to apples, the greatest bulker of pies or crumbles, and you can enjoy the flavour of your red fruit however little you have.  Often, berries and fruiting currants are expensive, so eking out with apple is a really cost effective way to make lovely food go further.  These days you can even buy tinned apple slices in supermarkets if you have no time to peel, these tinned apples are not the gooey pie filling, that is something totally different.

Crumbles can be made more exciting with some of the flour being replaced with oats, adding a little sweet spice such as nutmeg, a touch of honey or even some crushed nuts.  When replacing flour with oats it is normally double flour to oats - so for 8 oz. of flour it would be 4 oz. of oats.

Serve with lashings of hot custard for a real winter warmer.

We found some good examples at http://www.recipes4us.co.uk/Crumble%20Toppings.htm including some excellent savoury ones.  Crumble is so easy to make and you can even store uncooked crumble topping in a air tight box in the freezer to save time later.  Naturally you can also freeze, if well covered/sealed, a fully made crumble too.  Why not stock up when autumn fruits are at their best.  We decided to try out some packet toppings, they vary greatly and only one we really tried we felt we would recommend to stand in for home made and that was Greens. Of course this was not a scientific test and we only tried a few. http://www.greenscakes.co.uk/recipes/desserts/rhubarb,-strawberry-and-coconut-crumble.aspx

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