Super easy and healthier than boiling style! (As nutrients are more preserved.) Just freeze or eat fresh. Making this sauce is just like you bake or oven roast veggies - then use a blender stick. I used feijoias and guavas from bach we were staying on. So amazing to use resources picked from the land. I had brought chillies I had grown - an ice cream bucket full, and bought bell peppers, garlic, onions. (Photo below shows all the beautiful ingredients that went into this oven roasted habanero chilli sauce.)
Homemade sauces taste so much better as they are fresh and didn't need preservatives to guarantee their safety long-term. This sauce tasted amazing and as roasting was easier/healthier - won't be boiling sauces anytime soon!
METHOD I just cut up and baked 3 glass trays of ingredients one after the other in the oven until you could smell their nice smell and were soft. First just chillies as had so many. Sprinkled sea salt and pepper. Then the onions and garlic. Sprinkled sea salt and pepper. Then fruit both kinds with a sprinkle of sugar over top to aid in caramellisation. If less ingredients onions garlic could go together. Wouldn't do fruit together with chillies actually. Didn't overcook especially chillies so nutrients intact. Allowed to cool then blended. I also added the juice of two lemons. We added about 1 cup of vinegar.
THE ONLY PROBLEM was the bloody guava pips, when your teeth find them! Would remove these next time even after cooked - or not use guavas.
PS - these are guavas - hadn't used them before - wouldn't need to remove skins as they are soft, I did, but this is optional.
INGREDIENTS
TRAY 1 (chillies) All chillies cored, deseeded, cut into roughly equal pieces (photo above - before cooking):
18 Thai chilli peppers mostly green a few red. 2 jalapeño chillies. 6 habanero chillies insides of flesh scraped (tamed). 5.5 bell peppers.
Coat with just enough oil and and sea salt and pepper and bake in glass oven tray on oven at 200 until well roasted.
Coat with just enough oil and sea salt and pepper and bake in glass oven transfer oven at 200 until soft. After cooked, I poured in to the bowl with chillies (photo below, both chillies and onions, garlic cooked).
TRAY 3 (fruit) Scoop out flesh 10-12 feijoas Cut up 25 guavas.
Chop roughly, put in an oven tray with a sprinkle of sugar, bake until caramelised.
Photo above - the glass tray I cooked everything in (with both guava and feijoa after baking)- sequentially! When all cooked put in same large bowl, whizz together with blend stick. Add juice of two lemons.
600g cut up chilllies or capsicums (peppers), any kind.
1 cup vinegar
5 cups sugar (helps preserve as bugs don't like all the sugar) 1/2 pouch Hansells Jam Setting Mix (from supermarket (pectin for thickening, made from apples). Method:
Cut up and core 600g of chillies (if I have picked a bit more I just add a bit more vinegar and sugar and setting stuff proportionally) no worries. Wear gloves or will have painful fingers.
The heat of your jam will be from this choice here. Mild - 4 med sized capsicum, 4-5 capsicum. Med - mostly Thai chillies. Moderate and divine - add a Habanero with inside white interior scraped away (tamed that is where heat us stored). etc!
Blend with 1 cup vinegar - add half chillies and all vinegar, blend, than add the other half.
Pour into large pot with 5 cups sugar in it. Stir. DON'T ADD PECTIN YET.
Boil 10 min, turn up to max then turn down to gentle boil. Put clean jars into oven at 160 degrees C to kill bugs. I wipe sides with wet scraper to avoid possible crystallisation with unmixed sugar falling in at wrong time.
Then add pectin made into paste just before adding (or gets thick) stir well and count to 60. Take off heat.
At this point you pour into hot sterile bottles, to 1 cm from top. Pour slowly as hot bottles will fizz the stuff up. USE A GLASS MEASURING CUP or something small to pour into jar. I still have a scar where sticky jam danged onto my arm. You can't get sticky boiling stuff off in time.
Pour then cap using a tea towel or something, stick on windowsill or wherever. You will hear a POP which is the oxygen leaving the bottle as it vacuum seals. When it cools label with pride.
After returning to my life, where I actually had a life - I planted my garden to the best of my ability, even planting companion plants like basil between tomatoes - trying to establish herb areas, etc. We also added pine needles as mulch to the tomato plants - which did wonders! The clay heavy soil of our garden was balanced with acidic material. The chilli plants also did really well (also it was a very hot and dry, long summer).
Anyways, I then had to preserve the abundance, like tomatoes, and chillies.
A walk through my garden in February:
Preserving tomatoes - the easy way
Preserving is a huge amount of work!
I tried a fancy recipe by Wellness Mama, with fresh herbs, and boiling for hours, carrots, and putting a carrot in and removing it later to remove acidity. Although it was delicious, I just didn't have the energy to do that every time I had a bowl of tomatoes!
Wellness Mama pasta sauce!
Later on, a few friends had said they oven roast cut up tomatoes with garlic, onions etc. Then just freezing it. So I started doing that! Sometimes with fresh herbs from the garden, whole sprigs.
180 C for about 45 min (until done).
It was so much easier! I did freeze it usually before blending due to not having time - but when I needed to use it I could blend it. It was so delicious, and made it possible to preserve with far less energy.
Some of my tomatoes were the yellow type!
Fresh herbs from the garden - that I added, and also shared at work. I learned how to grow and harvest oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary...all things I actually wanted to use. No more growing things I don't actually use. I even was able to harvest some funny but useful carrots for some roasted sauces!
Preserving chillies
Shane and I went to a Mexican restaurant, and loved the green chilli sauce!
By far the most fun and exciting - addition to our lives, chilli sauces! Not hard to make either, just panfrying up cut up chillies, garlic and onions, and spices. USE GLOVES TO CUT UP THE CHILLIES by the way. I went without twice and not right away - became in extreme pain.)
I kept trying recipes for chilli sauces, starting with Green Gavin chutney sauce involving lots of spices like cumin and turmeric (and not blending it up after). They were all really good - but in the end although the heavily spiced sauces were amazing, realised that the green chilli sauce was probably not very spiced (I'm talking cumin, turmeric, ginger, coriander). I would still use the garlic and onion though! Going to try this later today, and will post up the results.
Here are a few versions I created, with a photo of how the cut up ingredients looked. One well liked one at the end was SPICE TRUCK that I did not photograph. (We named them so we could remember what worked better, what we liked, etc.) Basically I followed a basic recipe, amounts of chillies and garlic and oil roughly the same, and experimented with the spices.
Hot chilli chutney - from the Greening of Gavin blog.
But it involved frying for 15 min, and these ingredients: 450g chillies , 1 onion, 6 cloves garlic, 2 T ground cumin (was 4 but I reduced it), 2 T turmeric, 25g grated root ginger, 1 T salt, 3/4 cup olive oil, 3 T sugar, 1 1/4 cups white vinegar.
How it looked before frying.
How it looked after bottling! This sauce was VERY spicy and hot. Was amazing added to mayo - but extremely intense straight.
After this I realised I could blender it, and it would be more pleasant to use as a sauce - on cheese and crackers, or in cooking.
Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, first one - Beauty
I carefully recorded what I did with this one, put alot of energy into it. We named it Beauty as it was delicious. This is what it looked like before we cooked it. After it was cooked, we blendered and bottled it and used it right away (in a sterilised tall bottle).
It is easy to share with you now as I recorded each version directly onto a new Google Slide, duplicating and changing the relevant details each time (well actually after scribbling on scrap paper with a vivid the changes and adding later).
Fry - 15 min
450g green chillies
1 onion
6 cloves garlic
1 t ground cumin
1 t coriander
1 T salt
3/4 cup olive oil
Boil - 10 min
½ cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
Boil hard - 1 min
¼ packet pectin
Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C
Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil.
Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min
Cool down for 20 min, then blend
Pack into jars, then seal.
Nonnie's experimentations with chilli sauces, second good one - Spirited!
Lots of spices and kick!!! Looked much like Green Gavin. The turmeric is for health, also the garlic, onion, ginger, and cumin and coriander for taste. And apparently black pepper helps activate the health benefits of turmeric! Which needs to be cooked to be activated as well...
Fry - 15 min
3/4 cup olive oil
480g green chillies
1 large brown onion
8 cloves garlic
a few chunks ginger
1 T cumin seeds
1 T coriander (ground)
2 T turmeric (ground)
Black pepper, sprinkle over
3/4 T salt
Boil - 10 min
½ cup brown sugar
1 1/2 cups white vinegar
Boil hard - 1 min
¼ packet pectin More detailed method - as above (Beauty recipe).
Last entry to come - hopefully regular Mexican green chilli sauce....the quest could be closer to its ending (the quest never truly ends as you never stop learning...)
green mexican chilli sauce (my version)
The traditional version had pork stock, and flour to thicken. Still searching for that amazing recipe I had at a restaurant - but this one I made was really good! Used pectin instead of flour to thicken.
--Fry - 15 min-- olive oil - cover pan 1 cm 370g green chillies (hot) 1 green capsicum 2 small brown onions 8 cloves garlic Ground cumin, sprinkle over Black pepper, himalayan rock salt, sprinkle over
--Boil - 10 min-- 3/4 cup sugar 3/4 cup white vinegar
--Boil hard - 1 min-- 1/2 packet pectin
Sterilise the jars and lids in an oven 120C.
Finely chop chillies, remove seeds as much as possible.
Mix together the first lot ingredients (chillies etc).
Transfer to a heavy based pan and fry for 15 minutes, stirring often to prevent sticking.
Add sugar and vinegar and bring to the boil. Cover pan and boil for 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Then add ¼ packet pectin and boil max heat for 1 min.
The best jam I've made so far I used 1.3 kilos pieces of plums from our tree, 1 kilo blueberries I bought, and the pulp of 16 feijoas I was given by a friend. And about 2 kilos sugar (yes my friends that's how much sugar there is in jam). And some lemon juice. The feijoias give it a spike of flavour which is really neat.
Recipe: Put all ingredients together (1.3 kilo cut up plums, no stones, 1 kilo blueberries, the pulp of 16 feijoas, 1 kilo sugar, and jam setting pectin). Also I believe I put in a cup of water.
Stir it up, and let it boil until it is really broken down and thick. Pour into sterilized jars (the dishwasher works, and I do keep pouring boiling water into them, and soak lids in boiling water).
Reusing jam jars from the shops is ok for jam! I save all good jars to use for jam.
This is the best thing I ever made from my garden produce.
So simple to make, but the finest. You simply blender hot chillis, capsicums (peppers in North American) and vinegar. I found the recipe here at this great publication about chilli peppers and capsicums, "Peppers: Safe Methods to Store, Preserve, and Enjoy" (Content reviewed and revised by LINDA J. HARRIS, Food Safety and Applied Microbiology, Specialist, Department of Food Science and Technology, University of California, Davis.) Their recipes were adapted from “So Easy to Preserve,” 2nd Edition, Cooperative Extension Service, University of Georgia.
This is because I couldn't just try a recipe blindly. I was learning to live off the land, and preserve my garden produce - possibly for a long time, so I had to learn how to do it safely (and yummily!).
My favourite recipes in this publication was the "Pepper Jelly" (p.11), followed by "Hot Chilli Salsa" (p.8). But one of the reasons it tasted so amazing was the produce - fresh from my own garden, and using a variety of amazing heirloom and interesting tomatoes ranging from jam tomatoes, various coloured tomatoes, to different shapes of varieties.
Here is the recipe for Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly (sometimes called Red Pepper Jelly) but omitting a few drops of food colouring as I like completely natural foods. For the info I needed on preserving in general, go to the full scientific paper on preserving peppers, here. It is so easy! Just blender, and bottle. An amazing food with cheese, or on meats.
Hot Chilli Pepper Jelly
Makes 5 half-pint (250-ml) jars.
4 or 5 jalapeño or other hot peppers cored and chopped
4 medium green or red bell peppers cored and chopped
1 cup white vinegar (5%) or 250 ml
5 cups sugar or 1.25 L
1 pouch liquid pectin
1. Put half the peppers and half the vinegar into a blender; cover and process until
peppers are liquefied. Repeat with remaining peppers and vinegar.
2. Combine the pepper and vinegar mixture with the sugar in a large saucepan and
boil slowly for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.
3. Add liquid pectin and boil hard for 1 minute.
4. Skim foam off the top of the jelly and pour jelly immediately into canning jars, leaving 1⁄4 inch (0.5 cm) of headspace.
5. Wipe jar rims with a clean, damp cloth and secure lids and ring bands.
6. Process the jars of jelly in a boiling water bath as prescribed in Table 7.
Table 7. Recommended Processing Time for Pepper Jelly in a Water Bath Canner
I started experimenting with making caramel and hard toffee candy after my son Luke asked me how candy is made. Of course the kids all loved it, but I felt bad about how much sugar they were eating.
I had read a great article on how much better for you honey is than sugar - it is a far more complex food. I did a search. Did you know you can make candy using only honey and butter? (Usually it's made with sugar.) A French recipe makes honey butter candy by boiling equal parts of both to 150 degrees C / 300 F (upper limit of hard crack stage). Then nuts and dried fruits are added. So you can make pure honey candy, which is the healthiest. For the candies above, I used some sugar. Mix and boil 230 g butter 500 g honey 1 cup sugar Boil candy to 135 C / 275 F. (You need to use a candy thermometer.) It turned out great, but a little too much sugar - a few pieces and my blood was racing. I actually wished I had just used honey alone as the French recipe said.
I have been on a pie rampage these last few weeks - I am a novice, but it's a fun new treat (which can be fairly healthy if you use honey instead of lots of sugar).
Blueberry pie-lets:
BLUEBERRY PIE FILLING
3/4 cup honey (that's a guess, 1 tablespoon per pie-let) ¼ cup flour 4 cups blueberries lemon juice (one drizzle per pie-let)
Using a muffin tray, cut out circles about 2cm larger than a mug. Set into each muffin shape on the tray. Fill with blueberries which have been rolled in some flour (I had to dump out the ones in the photo to do this step, do it first). Add a tablespoon of honey, and a squirt of lemon juice. Top with another circle of the same size as before. Squish the top roof of crust to bottom crust decoratively. (I use first two fingers of left hand and right thumb inbetween, the left fingers push crust edge down, thumb opposite, up - and go all around making this pattern.)
*Obviously you can just make a blueberry pie - the filling is enough for 1 PIE.
I just discovered that my mom's crust recipe kicks butt on the other dumb one I was using. It is amazing! Even if you are half dead it makes great pastry.
AMERICAN PIE CRUST
Combine: 454 g / 1 lb. margarine or butter -- both is the best 1 tsp salt 1 tbsp baking powder 5 cups flour 1 egg 2 tbsp vinegar ¾ cup cold water Mix together and roll out.
I put the dry ingredients together, then added the egg, then squished in butter and marg (454g total) with my hands until uniforms. Then I added the wet.
"Bulgar" is something I grew up with an awareness of as my parents made it. I knew of it as hard clusters of cooked, dried wheat along a baking tray, but I didn't know its purpose. I did know my Dad sometimes ate it on camping trips (when he hiked in the mountains, and slept in a tent).
My dad explained it to me on my visit home. It's something they do in the Middle East, and you can buy it in shops, but my parents prepare it themselves at home. The point of it is that after the wheat is cooked, it requires far less cooking time - instead of a cooking time of 10 minutes for uncooked ground wheat, it's pretty much instant - just add boiling water.
In the Middle East they use it as cous-cous in pilafs. It can be used as rice is used; you can also add it to baking, add it to mince in burger patties, add it to soups. But my dad usually just eats it as a healthy, simple porridge - and instant easy breakfast when camping (he even takes it in a plastic bag and just adds hot water in the bag and voila great survival skill).
Preparation:
There are a few steps - very easy steps, but with a lot of time elapsing inbetween.
COOK THE RAW WHEAT
First you boil the wheat until it is soft and all the water is absorbed. If you have a pressure cooker, it's easier as you pressure cook for 5 minutes, then just turn off the heat and leave it in the sealed pot for a few hours, or overnight (it will continue cooking in the pot). If you don't have a pressure cooker you can also cook the wheat on low heat for a couple of hours (after the water gets up to boiling first, then turn it down to lower heat). When both methods are done all the water should be absorbed into the wheat.
The right amount water varies for the pressure cooking vs the sauce pan way. Here are the two ratios:
Pressure Cooker Method:4 cups washed wheat to 6 cups water, pressure cook for 5 min then leave it in pot for a few hours or overnight. Saucepan Method: 1 cup washed wheat to 3.5 cups water, cook in saucepan for 4-6 hours.
DRY THE COOKED WHEAT
After the wheat is cooked, soft, and all the water is absorbed, spread it out on large baking trays at 200-250 degrees F (93 degrees C) for 4-6 hours until completely dried. You will need to stir it around once in awhile so it won't stick into clusters (how I often saw it growing up).
GRIND THE COOKED DRY WHEAT
After the cooked wheat has been dried, grind it coarsely. It can now be used as a very easy to cook, far less sticky porridge - easier cleanup and it tastes better as a porridge too (than cooking raw ground wheat). All the same nutrients are there, but it is now "fast food".
After eating this every morning at my parents house, taking part in this healthy, wholesome and happy lifestyle - I would like to prepare ground up bulgar each weekend to eat in the mornings at home during our busy lifestyle for our family, when both my husband and I are working. The simpler wheat porridge breakfast (healthy with lots and lots of fibre, no packaging, and really cheap) will then be achievable.
EATING BULGAR
It's actually just a light, fluffy, healthy, yummy breakfast.
For every 1 cup of ground bulgar, use 3 cups of water. First heat the water in a saucepan, and when the water boils, turn it down and add the ground wheat in a thin stream while stirring to prevent clumping. My dad likes to add dried raisins to his bulgar, and 1 tsp salt.
After a frenetic summer, although my use of my energy in gardening is not very efficient yet - I have managed to store away a few huge beautiful butternut pumpkins grown from seed in my garden for use in the winter. After feeding them with worm compost a few times, after they were grown I let their skins harden in the very strong New Zealand summer sun for a few weeks before storing them. Today, I went down to my food storage room in the basement and found the largest one, after returning home from work, and made butternut pumpkin soup. When cooked with some ginger, chicken stock I had made myself (was stored frozen), with spices added, a few vegetables from the fridge (a leek, a carrot), a bit of sauteed garlic and onion, a dash of curry spices, and a small chunk of cream cheese melted in it - salted with natural mineral sea salt - it was awesome. As I cut the pumpkin up - the colour was bright orange, showing alot of good vitamin/food content.
Nonnie's Gourmet Butternut Pumpkin Soup
Cut up 1 large butternut pumpkin into chunks, and add to a huge pot partway with water, and some chicken stock, after the water boils. (Try not to use too much water, so you don't have to pour too much nutrition away at the end.) Cut up most of 1 leek (or whatever good green veggies you have in your fridge) and add to pot. Cut up 1 carrot, add to pot. Peel a large chunk of ginger and throw it into the pot (to be retrieved later). Put the lid on, for it to boil until soft.
THEN cut up 1 onion, 1 large garlic clove, and a few slices of a hot pepper (I used a few slices from a large jalapeno pepper I had grown in my garden) and fry in oil until soft. When the pumpkin and veggies are soft as well, it's basically ready to go. Turn the elements off. Take a look at the boiled pumpkin and veggies - guess how much water you should pour off so the soup won't be too runny. (I would save the liquid you pour off in case you pour off too much. This water has vitamins from the veggies in it - so it's better to add it back rather than new water.) Then add the garlic/onion/chili mixture to the boiled veggies. Fish the ginger chunk out. Sprinkle curry spice across the top of the whole thing. Throw in a few pinches of sea salt. Now just blender it all up, one blenderful at a time - ladelling it in.
Pour the blendered soup into a different pot, adding a chunk of cream cheese to melt in the hot, new, vibrant and healthy orange spicy butternut pumpkin soup! I put some coriander leaves on the top of each bowl of soup, and served with buttered soft white bread.
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