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Simple Cherry Jam Recipe

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A break from the cheap easy meals for now and a short-term return to preserving.  Here’s a recipe for cherry jam I cooked up last night. Cherry Jam Recipe Cherry Jam Ingredients 2kg ripe cherries 1kg sugar juice of one lemon Make sure the cherries are not overly ripe or you may have trouble getting the jam to set properly.  I used sweet black cherries but sour ones could be used for a more tart preserve. Cherry Jam Method First of all stone and de-stem the cherries.  For the first year I now possess a Cherry Stoner/Pitter and cannot begin […]

Spare Cabbage? Make Sauerkraut

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I have long had a love affair with Sauerkraut but always thought you needed to live in Eastern Europe and have a tonne of cabbage to make it yourself.   I was wrong.  It is simple to make sauerkraut at home with very basic implements.  Best of all homemade sauerkraut is full of goodness most bought products have lost.  And, if the spare cabbage you have is not the white hearting cabbage usually recommended for krauting worry ye not! What is Sauerkraut? First of all, sauerkraut is not pickled cabbage.  Sauerkraut is a fermented food.  The vegetables are tightly packed into […]

Canning Fruit – Homemade Tinned Tomatoes

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One of the easiest methods of preserving fruit is ‘canning’ or ‘bottling’ at home.   The following technique can be used for any fruit, though you may wish to add some week sugar syrup, rather than brine to other fruits.  We home preserve cherries each year in exactly this way. Canning Tomatoes at Home Whenever canning fruit at home make sure you have blemish free, ripe (but not over-ripe specimens).  Small bruises and so on may be cut out but diseased fruits should not be included in the home canning process. First remove any stalks from the tomatoes and score […]

Olive Oil Pickled Lemons Recipe

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This is the second recipe for pickles,  we use here at Casa Dirty Boots to preserve lemons. It takes a little longer than the first recipe for preserving lemons.  None of the work is difficult though.  The lemons are finely sliced and can be used whole in dishes so you do save a little time and effort in the future!  No need to remove the flesh before eating.  And, as the end product is preserved in olive oil you get a virtually ready-made salad-dressing thrown in too. Olive Oil Pickled Lemons Recipe Wash the lemons well (ideally these should be […]

Middle Eastern Preserved Lemons Recipe

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Yep, I’m still working my way through the supply of free citrus fruits. Each year I make two different batches of preserved or pickled lemons.  There are many preserved lemons recipes but I’ve whittled it down to two Casa Dirty Boots favorites! This one is pretty traditional and great for using in tagines or other Middle Eastern dishes.  Preserved lemons with chicken or lamb is always a firm favorite here. If you find yourself with a surplus this is very quick recipe to preserve lemons: Middle Eastern Preserved Lemons Recipe Wash the lemons (this should really be made with unwaxed […]

Simple Lemon Cordial Recipe

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I started the batch of homemade limoncello yesterday.  It left me with 17 de-zested lemons and 20 de-zested oranges to use quickly.  They won’t store very well without their tough zest to protect them and as you may know I’m not a fan of food-waste.  Any move towards a self sufficient life means using every part of everything you can.  There should really be no waste in a self sufficient household.  So what do you do with 17 lemons? The oranges were easy – I juiced and refrigerated them for this week’s breakfast orange juice. The lemons caused more thought […]

Limoncello Recipe

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We’re still trying to preserve, juice and munch our way through the windfall of free citrus fruit. After much deliberation, day dreaming, book-reading and internet browsing,  I decided to designate 17 lemons and 20 oranges to the ‘limoncello‘ treatment.  We have started the process of making limoncello liqueur and arancello liqueur.  We still have 89 days to wait till we find out whether both were successful.  At that time I’ll let you know. But for now, if you have lots of citrus fruit to use here is the recipe for homemade limoncello liqueur: Homemade Limoncello Recipe Notes: This recipe is […]