Apple Cider Vinegar

A few years ago a friend gave me a large box of cooking apples.  I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try to make apple cider vinegar. 

We washed the apples and put them in a large (unused) bin and chopped them up with a large knife.  Water was added, enough to cover the apples.

The bin was covered and left for two weeks apart from some occasional stirring.

After the 2 weeks we scooped the apples and water out of the bin and into a cheese cloth bag.  This was suspended above a bucket to allow all the liquid to drain out of the solids.

Sugar was added, about 3 - 6 cups and the liquid left in a warm dry place for 9 months mostly undisturbed.  

We bottled the resulting vinegar.

Sausage Casserole

This recipe makes a small amount of sausages go a long way!  

This meal fed 5 adults and 4 children.

12 sausages (not especially big ones either)
2 large carrots (not peeled)
5 potatoes (not peeled)
2 onions
(you could also add kumara and parsnip)

3 Tbsp cornflour
1 Tbsp tamari sauce
1/2 tsp mustard
1 tsp salt 
pepper to taste 

3 1/2 cups of rice

bunch of spinach
2 bok choy 
2 sticks of celery with the leaves on

1.  Put the sausages in a large electric frying pan with some water to cook.
2.  While the sausages begin to cook, wash the potatoes and carrots.  Cut them into bite sized chunks and add them to the sausages in the pan.
3.  When the vegetables are almost cooked through add the onion and turn down to a low heat.
4.  Wash the rice well and add 7 cups of water.  Cook for 10 minutes or until the water is gone.  Stir the rice to fluff it up and remove it from the heat.
5.  While the rice is cooking, cut up the spinach, bok choy and celery and put it in a frying pan with a little water.  Steam cook for a few minutes until the leaves turn bright green and remove from heat to serve.
6.  Mix the cornflour, tamari sauce, mustard, salt and pepper together with a small amount of cold water to make a paste.  Add 3 cups of cold water and pour this over the sausages. Cook on high until the gravy thickens.
7.  Serve.

Made by J14

What To Do With Tomatoes

Tomatoes, we use them in so many things!  When tomatoes are in season I look for boxes of cheap, soft tomatoes.  I got the 7kg box below for $7.

From a box of tomatoes I can make tomato stock for soups, tomato puree for pizzas, gravies and casseroles, and the left over seeds and skins I either use in pickles or chutney or I feed them to our chickens.

This is how I do it: 

1. Cut each tomato in half and put into a large pot.  Do not add water.  Tomatoes have a high water content and will soon be floating in their own juice.

2. Put the pot on the stove top and turn onto high.  As soon as the tomatoes are boiling turn it down low to simmer and give them a stir to make sure they are not sticking to the bottom of the pot.

3.  When the tomatoes on the top look soft and pulpy remove them from the heat and allow to cool a little.  The next step is to strain the juice from the pulp.  DO NOT stir or squash the tomatoes!  Just pour through a sieve or colander to separate.  You may need to do portions at a time depending on how big your sieve is.  Allow each portion of pulp to sit in the sieve/colander for about 10 minutes gently folding the pulp over to allow gravity to pull the juice through.  This makes a thicker puree in the next stage.

 

4.  Here is the juice.  I now tip this into ice cream containers to store in the freezer.  I sieve it from this bowl to the container to remove the light pulp.  You don't need to do this, but I like to.


















5.  Tomato juice ready to use or freeze.


















6.  Take the pulp and blend it with a stick blender.  

7.  This step is the hard part.  Put about 1 cup of blended pulp into a sieve and using a soup spoon, push the pulp through the mesh to separate the seeds and skin from the flesh of the tomato.  The end result is a lovely thick tomato flesh puree and a dry skin and seed mix.

8.  Bag up the seed/skin for future pickle/chutney.  Line a muffin tray with plastic wrap and spoon the puree into the molds.  Freeze and turn them out into a plastic bag when frozen.

Bone Broth (Soup Base)

Soup is so much nicer when made with a bone broth or a stock as opposed to just water.  This is how we make our bone broth.  I used to use a large stock pot on my stove top, but a crock pot is so much more efficient!  

Bones – chicken carcass, chop bones, any bones you cook that have meat on that you eat really!, or buy soup bones, even salmon bones but don’t ask me that one....

1. Put bones in crock pot, add a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar (this helps extract the minerals from the bones) and cover the bones with water.

2. Turn on overnight or for 8-12 hours or when bones crumble when pressed between your fingers. 

3. Let it cool. 

4. Skim fat from the top and store it in the freezer.  (It is delicious to use to fry eggs or roast veggies or oven fries.  We even cook our pizza dough tortillas in it!)

5. Drain liquid stock from bones using a sieve (bones done blend too well ... we've tired accidently!)

6. Freeze or use.

I also use, as a soup base, the water that I cook crock pot meat in such as corned silver side, roasts (I start my roasts in my c/p and put them in oven about 30 minutes before I serve it to crisp up the outside), any other meat that you cook in your crock pot that you would tip out the liquid from before serving.

* Note ...we waste almost nothing!  The bones, once cooked until I can get no more from them, are then tossed to our chickens!