Harvest Monday - sort of quince cheese

I haven't been to the plot since Thursday, as I had to work over the whole weekend. So looking back at these pics was quite a surprise at how much has been happening!

 

Thursday I brought home two more butternuts, they need to ripen a bit more though, one in particular is still a bit green. So I've got them on a shelf in the lean-to where they'll hopefully get a bit of sun. The orange squash was growing in my new hugelkulture bed, and grew up into the buddliea behind - a bit shady so didn't get very big. It's a really weird shape!

At home in the lean-to, some of the sweet peppers are actually quite red! They're on the top shelf so I guess this helped. I have to stand on a stool to reach them /see them properly, hence the nice surprise. I also snipped off my aubergines that only started setting fruit recently, despite the plants growing for the same time as the toms. I think maybe it gets too hot for them earlier in the year )

And I have some toms ripening slowly in there too. The squash is a tiny one from the back garden, I think it was too shady as well.

Yummy peppers. I'm not a huge fan of green peppers so these red ones are a real treat.

Now, this may look like just a splob of veggies but it was soooo tasty - onion, garlic, aub, pepper and toms. It was so good but there was only enough for two portions - the aubs were all picked and used in one day in one meal - better than nothing though. Mmmmm.

In the back garden I picked all the borlotti beans - more that I thought! I then separated them into flat pods ( for eating like runner beans) and swollen ones for podding.

Some went into a stewey thing

Not my own kale though, I must admit

We had a long walk on Sunday up on the coast and fancied a hearty meal in the evening. Jan took charge to make a hotpot, with squash

All my own veggies, yum

With cheesey wedges she made too (Alas, not my kale again, I got a huge bag from the organic veg stall on the market). Jan took the pics too, you can tell cos she's much more arty than me.

Tonight I picked another pepper

Which we had with scrambled eggs and some leftover hotpot filling mixed in (we'd had most of the leftovers for lunch - very filling, and weighed a lot too, my work bag was very heavy!)

On my day off last week I decided to make quince cheese. It started off okay but didn't end that well! I used a recipe from The River Cottage preserves book

The lovely quinces (from my friend's mum's garden)

Give them a wash, chop 'em all up and just cover with water

Cook them up until nice and soft, then leave for a few hours. I then also mashed them against the side of a the pan with a spoon

Then push through a sieve to get out the juice and small particles (if this was for a jelly you'd strain only the liquid off)

Next, weigh the liquid, place back in a clean pan and add an equal weight of sugar (for me this was about 1.5kg). Bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour until thickened, then pot-up.

 

So, all was going okay until the very end, when instead of scooping off the scum (aerated liquid) I decided to splop it all in the jars and then scoop it out (which had worked when I recently made elderberry and apple jelly). But because the mixture was much thicker than for a jelly, some of the scum didn't float to the top and settled itself at the bottom. Sigh! And it started setting quite quickly so I couldn't scoop it all out. This means all but one of the jars have bubbly bits in.

 

You can see a bit in the pic below. The rest of the jars were too embarrassing so I turned them round for the photo! The bowl has the scum inthat I did manage to scoop off, which I added as a sweetener to a huge pan of stewed fruit, rather than waste it.

So I was a bit disappointed in the end with those. I don't think they're good enough to give away as proper presents. Ho hum. I also feel a bit like I wasted them - the pure quince juice actually had a really nice flavour on its own, so didn't need loads of sugar to make something tasty. Next time (probably next year) I think I'll just use quince for mixed fruit (it's quite a hard fruit so would need cooking first before adding softer fruit like apples).

Oh also, if you're making a proper quince cheese you might do it in smaller portions or in a tray, to slice and have with real cheese or meat (if you eat meat). But I just put mine in jars.

That's been my fruit and veggie week!

Linking in with Harvest Monday with Dave at Our Happy Acres

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