I think I’m going to risk saying that spring really is here now. Even today, which has been grey and a bit drizzly, was beautifully warm. It seems like a long time since we had a day that wasn’t above 25 degrees. You forget your suffering so quickly! In fact, as I watched those few drops falling, I found myself wishing for more rain. I still haven’t got my byzantine watering system up and running yet. I never seem to find the time to get to that. And after all that rain over winter, adding more water seems a strange idea. It’s beginning to be necessary though. It doesn’t take long. I’ve been up in the vegetable garden each evening for the past week, hose in hand.
We’ve added some new spring pursuits to our rural repertoire. With the elderflower so gloriously in bloom, L had a yen for elderflower wine. Which has now become elderflower champagne, though why the recipe was called that he didn’t know because there was no indication that it would go bubbly. There was an indication – in one version of the recipe he found – that if the brew were put in glass bottles, there was every chance that they would explode, sending murderous shards into anything or anyone around. So the bottles – lovely old-fashioned ones with flip-down stoppers and vertically stripey sides – are up in the chicken house, firmly covered by a tarp. Still, those cats who have adopted our shed as their home had better watch out.
With his left-over flower heads I decided to make jam. Elderflower jam research turned up lots of recipes for elderflower and gooseberry concoctions. I can’t think of anything worse, personally. Except perhaps gooseberry without elderflower, gooseberry being one of my least favourite fruits and mercifully not really grown much in Italy. So I opted for elderflower and orange marmalade. This caused no end of tension between L and me, mostly because he kept pointing out – terribly diplomatically – that this marmalade, much like a lot of my jam, didn’t really seem to be setting very well, and maybe it needed something else, like, er, pectin.
Now, I don’t use pectin, it being a cheat’s way to make jam. And I use hardly any sugar either, sugar tending to make jam far sweeter than I like it. I have to admit (though I didn’t, necessarily, at that moment) that my jam is often runny, so L had a point. His solutions were all wrong though (thankfully). The problem with my jam, as I know, is that I get bored with standing watching it, so I turn the heat down low enough for it not to burn and bubble over and I go away and do other things. Thus ensuring that the jam never sets because it isn’t hot enough. It’s lack of concentration that hampers my jam-making, not lack of sugar or pectin. I turned my orange and elderflower way down and went off to do something or other, then when I could wait no longer, I transferred it into jars. Where it swilled about, more like thick fruit juice than anything that could be spread on bread. So, the next morning I admitted defeat and put it back into the pot and boiled it to within an inch of its life. The result is, that I now have some very interesting chewy orange and elderflower toffee. I’ll find a use for it eventually. And I’ll find a middle way in my jam making too.
Why are these preserving tasks quite so tedious? The dull hours I spent last summer squishing my tomatoes into passata and pasteurising them! (Of course, if I had a slightly larger pot and could do more than four or five large jars at a time, it would be less time-consuming I guess. I must see to that.) Yet the results of that tedium kept us going until just last week, and each time I twisted the lid on one of the jars of sweet-smelling tomatoes, it was a moment of utter satisfaction. It’s not until you have your own that you realise how tasteless the ones you buy are. I put nothing at all in mine: no salt, no nothing, but half a jar gave anything such a strong tomato flavour.
The other dull chore of this particular season is artichoke preserving… yet another thing which will bring delight in months to come. Here I have the problem that there never seem to be enough ready all at the same time to make a really big batch. And my fingertips are stained black from the long slow cleaning off of the hard chewy bits. And the house reeks of the vinegar that I cooked them in. (Half water, one quarter vinegar, one quarter white wine, plus all the herbs I could think of.) Now they have to stand, head-down, over night to make sure there’s no water left in them when I wrestle them into a jar and douse them in oil. I just hope that the ants which have been plaguing me don’t get a whiff of my carciofi and climb into them overnight!
We’ve added some new spring pursuits to our rural repertoire. With the elderflower so gloriously in bloom, L had a yen for elderflower wine. Which has now become elderflower champagne, though why the recipe was called that he didn’t know because there was no indication that it would go bubbly. There was an indication – in one version of the recipe he found – that if the brew were put in glass bottles, there was every chance that they would explode, sending murderous shards into anything or anyone around. So the bottles – lovely old-fashioned ones with flip-down stoppers and vertically stripey sides – are up in the chicken house, firmly covered by a tarp. Still, those cats who have adopted our shed as their home had better watch out.
With his left-over flower heads I decided to make jam. Elderflower jam research turned up lots of recipes for elderflower and gooseberry concoctions. I can’t think of anything worse, personally. Except perhaps gooseberry without elderflower, gooseberry being one of my least favourite fruits and mercifully not really grown much in Italy. So I opted for elderflower and orange marmalade. This caused no end of tension between L and me, mostly because he kept pointing out – terribly diplomatically – that this marmalade, much like a lot of my jam, didn’t really seem to be setting very well, and maybe it needed something else, like, er, pectin.
Now, I don’t use pectin, it being a cheat’s way to make jam. And I use hardly any sugar either, sugar tending to make jam far sweeter than I like it. I have to admit (though I didn’t, necessarily, at that moment) that my jam is often runny, so L had a point. His solutions were all wrong though (thankfully). The problem with my jam, as I know, is that I get bored with standing watching it, so I turn the heat down low enough for it not to burn and bubble over and I go away and do other things. Thus ensuring that the jam never sets because it isn’t hot enough. It’s lack of concentration that hampers my jam-making, not lack of sugar or pectin. I turned my orange and elderflower way down and went off to do something or other, then when I could wait no longer, I transferred it into jars. Where it swilled about, more like thick fruit juice than anything that could be spread on bread. So, the next morning I admitted defeat and put it back into the pot and boiled it to within an inch of its life. The result is, that I now have some very interesting chewy orange and elderflower toffee. I’ll find a use for it eventually. And I’ll find a middle way in my jam making too.
Why are these preserving tasks quite so tedious? The dull hours I spent last summer squishing my tomatoes into passata and pasteurising them! (Of course, if I had a slightly larger pot and could do more than four or five large jars at a time, it would be less time-consuming I guess. I must see to that.) Yet the results of that tedium kept us going until just last week, and each time I twisted the lid on one of the jars of sweet-smelling tomatoes, it was a moment of utter satisfaction. It’s not until you have your own that you realise how tasteless the ones you buy are. I put nothing at all in mine: no salt, no nothing, but half a jar gave anything such a strong tomato flavour.
The other dull chore of this particular season is artichoke preserving… yet another thing which will bring delight in months to come. Here I have the problem that there never seem to be enough ready all at the same time to make a really big batch. And my fingertips are stained black from the long slow cleaning off of the hard chewy bits. And the house reeks of the vinegar that I cooked them in. (Half water, one quarter vinegar, one quarter white wine, plus all the herbs I could think of.) Now they have to stand, head-down, over night to make sure there’s no water left in them when I wrestle them into a jar and douse them in oil. I just hope that the ants which have been plaguing me don’t get a whiff of my carciofi and climb into them overnight!