Landshare

It really is past the end of summer now and there are a number of things you can be doing with the last of your gluts. Read full post for what has been going on in my kitchen and some of the recipes that I have been trying out.

At the moment we’re busy making Dutch Apple Cake, which uses up loads of cooking apples and is utterly delicious:
Dutch apple cake recipe
We think it will be OK to freeze one of these to get out for guests nearer Christmas, minus the almonds on top. We always add a bit more spice than they specify…

With an interest in keeping things in jars rather than freezers, as they take no electricity, we’re having a go at making Apple jelly:
Apple jelly recipe
with added root ginger, or Apple Sauce with added cinnamon and cloves, both of which will make beautiful Christmas presents tied up with a ribbon and some festively patterned material over the top. The Apple sauce should be double sterilised in a water bath, as you do with tomato sauce, but will be worth the trouble, as it will then keep for at least 6 months.

Incidentally, Hugh’s roasted tomato sauce is by far the best way of preserving the tomato glut – either frozen or put into jars – if you missed it this year, grow extra especially next year!
Hugh's roasted tomato sauce

If you have a glut of pears to use, we’ve just found this rather wonderful recipe on the internet:
Pears recipe

With butternut squashes and pumpkins, they have to be brought in before the frosts hit, so make sure they’re all in now just in case we get a repeat of the weather earlier on in the week. Make sure they are out somewhere nice and dry for the skins to mature, not somewhere in the slightest bit damp or they will go mouldy! Last year we had them all out on our windowsills and people thought they looked very ornamental – the only trouble was we couldn’t resist giving them away to appreciative people… They last well into the new year, by which time we’d eaten them all!

The last of any herbs you’ve grown can be brought in now – either freeze them or hang them in bunches, and when dry scrunch them (bashing in pestle and mortar is ideal), strip the smaller leaves off the stalks and experiment with your own mixtures for jars of home grown herbs to throw in everything you cook.