Bread and butter pickles

 

I got a cucumber in my Lidl box so decided to make bread and butter pickles.  No idea why they're called that.  If you know, leave me a comment!

Slice one cucumber finely and cover with 25g of salt in a glass dish.  Leave for 24 hours to draw out all the moisture.

Drain, rinse and pat dry, taking time to make sure they're dry.  Time consuming but worth it.

Bring 200ml of vinegar, 1 tsp of pickling spice, 1/2 tsp turmeric and 100g of sugar to the boil in a pan.  Simmer for 10 mins then add the cucumbers.  Bring back up to the boil for 1 min then pour into a hot sterilised jar.  They're ready to eat in a few weeks.

This is the only photo I could find of past pickles!  I've been making these for years.  They're one of my favourite and easiest preserves!

Caramelised onion chutney

 

Today's Foodie Friday vlog is up.  I had a surplus of onions that I wanted to use up so I decided to make some chutney with them.  I found an amazing recipe that had a slowcooker method so I decided to have a go.  I started by slicing up the onions the night before.  It took me half an hour!!!  And the whole house stank of raw onions until the next morning!🧅

I added butter, oil and bay leaves and set the slowcooker to low.  They simmered gently for 3 and a half hours.

Then I added the sugar, vinegar, salt and chilli flakes and set it to High (with the lid wedged open a little) for 7 hours in the end!

It was nice and sticky after simmering all day!  And the house smelled a bit nicer 😋

This is what 2kg of onions looks like after all that!!  The labels are leftovers from my Etsy shop days.

Ingredients:

• 2kg of red or brown onions (before peeling)
• 50ml oil
• 50g butter
• 2 bay leaves
• 300g dark soft brown sugar
• 200ml apple cider vinegar
• 200ml Balsamic vinegar
• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp chilli flakes

Method:

See HERE for the original recipe.  It has fab detailed instructions for both methods.

Using up bits and bobs to make mincemeat

 

After recently making dumplings/doughballs and a steamed pudding, I still had about 25g of Atora suet (beef) left and I didn't want it to go to waste.  So I made a small batch of mincemeat based on this recipe HERE.  I just scaled it down by a tenth and added a bit of more of what I had.

I used up some of the frozen apples I got free from my mum's garden.  Plus some of the slightly candied lemon peel from making the lemon syrup.  And some orange juice I had frozen in ice cubes made with oranges I got in a Lidl box ages ago.  I didn't bother doing the whole sterilising jars etc as I'll be using it soon. It smells absolutely like Christmas!! 🎄

I quite often do small batches of preserves if I only have a small amount of something.  You don't always need to make 20 jars of it!!

And for some reason this week's sourdough loaf was rather holey!!  The next few slices had even bigger holes! But that's part of the fun adventure with sourdough 🍞