Our first batch of pickled onions for the season. We don’t grow a specific variety of pickling onion, but instead pickle the thinnings from our rows of onions. Our pickle is a simple one - two teaspoons of all spice berries, two teaspoons of white peppercorns and half a teaspoon of salt to each two pints of vinegar. Top and tail the onions, peel them right back to the white flesh, and pack them in hot, sterilised jars. Pour the boiling pickle over the onions and seal the jars immediately with hot, sterilised lids.
Elderflower and gooseberry jam is a new recipe for us, but the first samplings were absolutely delicious and rank with the Very Berry Jam as our favourites. The recipe is based on a recipe on The Foody, but we use dessert gooseberries (the purple ones), use half the amounts and leave the butter out. One warning - the jam takes a long time to set so don’t be tempted to add more sugar or pectin to the recipe. I tested setting point by putting hot jam on a cold plate kept in the freezer and after the 10 minutes cooking time suggested in the recipe, I had what looked to be a soft set jam - which is fine. We bottled the jam and six hours later, it showed no sign of setting at all. But 18 hours later, we had a jam with quite a hard set.
As one who likes his pickeled onions I look forward to cracking a bottle with you in a couple of months. They look delicious and it is as if I can taste them from down under.
One of my subsidiary garden passions is preserving and pickling. I’m about to try pickling cucumbers in a dill vinegar. Awaits update..
you still have elder flowering up there? ours have long finished
The elderflower is late this year, but much of the soft fruit is early.
[...] we had to start a new jar of jam so the Wee ‘Un picked a jar of clearly labelled Gooseberry and Elderflower from the larder cupboard, then took it to the [...]