I have just spent another weekend making King of the Pippins Sauce (they have finally appeared on my market) and preserving green tomatoes, which will soon be over. Contrary to the Green Tomato Salad, this recipe is, I can proudly say, my own invention. Of course it is not very original since I based it on Hot Pepper Jelly, modifying the proportions, but aiming at a similar blend of sweet and hot, my favourite flavours’ combination. I first made it as an experiment with a couple of leftover green tomatoes, but the result was so good, I have been preparing this jelly for three years now. In spite of being hot, this jelly has a very subtle, slightly refreshing taste. It is not as versatile as the Pepper Jelly. It goes well also on toast, with grilled or stir-fried meat, fish, vegetables, but I avoid pairing it with curry, red tomato sauce, spicy dishes or simply with very powerful flavours.

The process is very easy. You simply mix the tomatoes and the chillies in a food processor, then cook it with the remaining ingredients, add the pectin and put into jars.

Preparation: 45 minutes + hot water bath or another processing method

Ingredients:

1 kg green tomatoes

red or green chili peppers (here everything depends on how hot you want it to be; I usually add 10 bird’s-eye-chili peppers)

1 tablespoon salt

300 g white sugar

100 ml vinegar 4,5% acidity (or less if using stronger vinegar)

60 g pectin in powder

Wash the tomatoes and the peppers.

Cut off the stems.

Put both in a food processor and mix well.

Put into a pan, add the vinegar, the sugar and the salt and boil on medium heat for about 20 minutes.

Add the pectin, stir well and let the jelly simmer for 15 more minutes.

/At this point you can (after the chutney has cooled down) either freeze it or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the chutney, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the chutney and don’t forget to mark the date.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

I think I have always enjoyed the mixture of sweet and hot. Hot fruit chutneys, jellies and sauces often accompany my meals and constitute a big part of my seasonal preserves. Since apricot is often paired with savoury dishes and since my favourite pork roast is stuffed with apricots (see the recipe here), combining apricot and chili wasn’t a big risk to take when I first made it last Summer. Apricot resists even the hottest chili addition and doesn’t lose its recognisable tanginess, so this year I labelled one batch as “medium hot “and another as “very hot”. Apart from the pork dishes, the jelly is very good with roast chicken and I often use it as a toast or sandwich spread.

Since every pepper variety is different and everyone has different preferences (or chili resistance level), it is difficult to say exactly how many chilies should be used. Adjusting is not easy since the jelly tastes stronger when it’s still hot (and it should be put still hot into the jars). The best idea is to stick to the same chili variety, make a small first batch, put aside a couple of tablespoons and taste the mixture when it has cooled down. It will be too late for this batch, but it will give and idea of how the following ones should be modified. Needless to say, the below amounts should be treated rather as approximate.

Preparation: 40 minutes

Ingredients:

1 kg apricots

300 – 400 g caster sugar

200 ml cider vinegar (4,5%)

2 flat tablespoons salt

6 medium hot long Turkish “aci sivri” peppers (about 10 cm long, mine were green this time)

1 1/2 package pectin in powder (about 65-70 g)

Wash the apricots and remove the kernels.

Core the peppers, discard the stems and wash thoroughly removing the seeds (or not, if you want a very hot jelly).

Mix the peppers in a food processor. Add the apricots and mix thoroughly.

Combine the mixed fruit with the remaining ingredients in a big pan.

Bring to boil on high heat and, stirring, keep boiling for about 20 minutes.

Taste it and adjust the taste adding the vinegar, the sugar or the chili if needed (bearing in mind the chili and the vinegar taste is stronger when the jelly is hot). The most important is that the mixture doesn’t have a very sour taste (the apricot is a tangy fruit).

Add the pectin and, still stirring, keep on the heat for 10 more minutes.

/At this point you can (after the jelly has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year./

Spoon the jelly, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the jelly and don’t forget to mark the date.

In a dry place, with a moderate temperature, the jars should keep for at least a year.

Posting the same recipe year after year looks probably weird, but I simply cannot resist presenting once more this extraordinary and surprising strawberry sauce. Last year I invented it for the first time, inspired by the strawberry BBQ sauce recipes I kept on seeing on internet and stripping them down to vinegar, sugar, peppers and strawberries.  I was amazed – and still am – at how hot peppers bring out the strawberry flavours. I thought I had preserved enough of the sauce to survive a year, but I was wrong. The tiny jars and bottles were disappearing so quickly, I had to limit myself to a certain amount opened every month. Now that the strawberry season has started I plan to make as many batches as I can manage and make sure I will not be forced to limit my consumption.

I used once more the Peruvian aji panca dried peppers, with their typical, but subtle smoky flavour. I buy them in a small shop selling the US, Mexican and Peruvian food products. Of course, if you cannot get aji panca, use any dried, moderately hot, but preferably whole peppers, without seeds. The taste will be very good too.

The sauce can be used straight away, kept in the fridge for at least a month, frozen practically forever or processed in sealed jars/bottles and kept in the pantry for one-two years. It’s excellent on grilled poultry and pork, on toast, on open sandwiches, with fried/grilled tofu, as a dip for dumplings, spring rolls, vegetables or savoury biscuits…

This time my strawberries were a bit acid, but the sauce was still fabulous. The colour depends on the fruit variety and the vinegar. This time it was particularly dark and I preferred it this way.

Preparation: 45 minutes+jars processing

Ingredients:

300g strawberries

100 – 150g white sugar

200 ml (white) wine or cider vinegar (mine was 4,5%)

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 whole dried aji panca peppers without stems and seeds (you can use any kind of  dried moderately hot peppers)

Wash the strawberries, remove the caps and stems.

Put all the vinegar and 100g sugar in a pan, add the whole peppers and let them simmer for 10 minutes on a very low heat. Put aside.

Mix the warm liquid in a blender, add the strawberries and salt, mix again. Pour back to the pan and let it simmer for 20 minutes. Check if the sauce is sweet enough and, if necessary, add more sugar (or vinegar if you think it’s too sweet). Let it simmer for 10 more minutes.

/At this point you can (after the sauce has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the sauce, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, the bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the sauce and don’t forget to mark the date.

This autumn I sowed the grains too late, but somehow managed to grow red hot peppers on my balcony at hardly 10°C. I assumed there are certain countries where pepper season is almost all year round and stopped worrying if the Thai or Moroccan chilies I buy were grown in a greenhouse or outside. I shall never know anyway. Having made several hot dishes, I was still left with a lot of red peppers and started looking for new preserving recipes. This way I discovered the Canadian  Bernardin Home Canning website, full of inspiring ideas, found there the Habanero Gold Jelly and … have completely ignored it, only stealing the excellent idea to combine dried apricots and chilies.

The result was sweet and hot, with a slight acid hint, due to the apricots’ presence. In fact, my jelly looked much merrier than the one featured on the Bernardin website. It was very thick, with a lovely golden-orange colour reminding of hot, Summer days, and had a definitely warming effect on the palate, perfect for these cold gloomy days! It is wonderful served with stir-fried vegetables, chicken, rice, in sandwiches… and in my opinion ideal with grilled or fried scallops.

Preparation: 30 minutes+ 30 min (apricot soaking time)

Ingredients (approx. 4 x 200ml jars):

350g dried apricots finely cut or mixed in a food processor

300 +100 ml cider vinegar (4,5%)

200g red moderately hot peppers (mine were red, came from Thailand and were more or less of the middle finger’s length)

400 g caster sugar

100 ml water

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 package pectin in powder (45g)

Bring the 300 ml vinegar to boil. Put aside.

Add the apricots and let them soak for 30 minutes. Take them out and chop finely.

Chop the hot peppers finely (discard the stalks and seeds) or mix them in a food processor.

Combine all the remaining ingredients (including 100 ml vinegar) with the vinegar and let them boil 20 minutes, constantly stirring.

Add the pectin and cook 10 more minutes.

Spoon the hot jelly into sterilised jars, cover with lids.

Leave the jars to cool.

/At this point you can (after the jelly has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year./

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the jelly and don’t forget to mark the date.

Filling up my pantry with jars has become inevitable in the summer, unless I stop shopping at my market. Even when I don’t plan buying anything for storage, there is always something so irresistible and beautiful, that when I finally come back home I see bags filled with fruit in quantities I’ll never manage to eat before they start rotting. The plums I saw were supposed to finish their existence in a pie, but I finally didn’t feel like baking for several days.

Trying to save the plums from the dustbin I started to look for something interesting to do and finally have chosen the plum sauce from “Jasmine Cuisine“, a lovely French Canadian food blog I have recently discovered. I modified the recipe aiming at a lazier version (e.g. I didn’t discard the skins as Jasmine did), so my sauce got very dark and wasn’t as beautiful as hers. I also added more spices, since my plums were a bit bland. In spite of that the result was surprisingly delicious and beautiful. The sauce goes perfectly with pork and is a yummy variation in sandwiches or on toast (must be also delicious with dim sum or other Chinese dumplings, as Jasmine suggests). ‘Somehow I feel this won’t be the last plum sauce I make this summer…

Preparation: around 1h 15 minutes+processing

Ingredients (my modified version, using 1 kg plums weighed before removing stones):

1 kg red round plums, weighed with stones

2 garlic cloves

1 big onion

180 ml cider vinegar (mine was 4,5%)

175 cane sugar

100 ml dry white wine

1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds

1 teaspoon ground cinammon

1/2 teaspoon fresh ginger root

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/3 ground cloves

7 tiny pili pili (bird’s eye) green peppers, with seeds (if you want to obtain a very hot sauce)

Dissolve sugar in vinegar and wine, warming it on a low heat.

Remove the plums’ stones, add the fruit to the above mixture, together with all the remaining ingredients. (click here to read my tips on preserving with hot peppers)

Let it simmer for around one hour. Mix it in a blender. Pour back to the pan, adjust the taste if necessary and cook 15 minutes or more if you want your sauce to be thicker.

/At this point you can (after the sauce has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the sauce, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the sauce and don’t forget to mark the date.

NOTE: For the readers who live in the USA, the USDA-approved canning method is different. You can find it described here: http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/uga/using_bw_canners.html.

One is always advised to preserve only seasonal produce. I have no idea if July is the mango season, especially since it does not grow here and since I see it all year round on my market. Sometimes I am lucky to stumble upon big, ripe and cheap mangoes and then I can’t stop myself from buying some and filling jars for my pantry. This time I decided to do some more hot and sweet mango sauce.

This quick and easy sauce has a beautiful intense and sunny colour. It is delicious on roast pork, chicken, on toasts, rice, green salad, as a dip…

Several tips for those who are not used to handle hot peppers:

1-Wear gloves while washing or cutting them !

2- Add your peppers gradually. They vary a lot in size, in hotness, and even the same variety can be completely different depending on the season and country of origin.  I always mix peppers and add them gradually until the sauce acquires the desired taste.

3-Do not throw away the seeds if you want the sauce to be even hotter! (they are the hottest part of the peppers).

4- Keep in mind that the warm sauce is always hotter in taste than the cold one…

5- Decide the colour you want to obtain. If you add green peppers the sauce doesn’t usually change colour. It stays beautifully yellow with some green spots. When using red peppers,  be prepared for a slight change of coulour: it becomes orange or even reddish (if cooked for a longer time). I made those two with the same mango, but different peppers:

6-Make notes of the exact proportions of your sauce together with the date you’ll put on your jar label. This way next time you’ll know how to modify it if it is not perfect.

Preparation: around 30 minutes + a couple of hours for cooling + 20 minutes for processing

Ingredients: (2 mangoes will yield around 3-4 200ml jars, but it depends on the fruits’ juiciness and ripeness)

2 mangoes

1 T salt

200 g (1 cup) sugar

200 ml (6 3/4 oz) white wine or cider vinegar (mine was 4,5% acid)

preferably fresh, red or green hot peppers (I put 3 flat tablespoons of tiny “bird’s eye” peppers and my sauce was quite hot)

Cut off the peppers’ stems. Cut in half lengthwise and throw away the seeds (or not! if you want your sauce extra hot).

Mix the peppers in a food processor. Put aside.

Peel the mangoes, cut up the flesh. Mix the mangoes in a food processor.

Place the mixed mangoes, the sugar, the salt and the vinegar in a heavy bottom pan (shouldn’t be aluminium or copper, otherwise the vinegar will react with the metal).
Add the chilies gradually (for example starting with half of the amount). Cook for around 30 minutes. Taste and, optionally, add sugar /vinegar/peppers to adjust the taste.

/At this point you can (after the sauce has cooled down) either freeze it, or keep it in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or process it in the jars, as described below, and store it in your pantry for at least a year!/

Pour the sauce, still hot, into sterilised jars. Cover with lids. Leave the jars to cool.

Place the cool jars into a big pan, bottom lined with an old kitchen towel folded in two (this will prevent the jars from breaking), cover up with hot – but not boiling- water to the level just below the lid. Bring to boil and keep on a very low heat, in simmering water, for around 20 minutes.
Stick on self-adhesive labels, write the name of the sauce and don’t forget to mark the date (do not forget to put down the exact amounts of every ingredient you used).

In a dry place, with a moderate temperature, the jars should keep for at least a year.