Nearly time to make peach butter

[Jovial Monk]

Will pop in to Adelaide Central Market on way to my shop (nice that homebrew shops generally open at 10.00 am to get some fresh fresh fresh ginger. Thursday grate some of that finely then go out and pick a heap of nice ripe apricots. Wash & pit them, bung into slowcooker with the grated ginger. Put lid on slowcooker leaving gap for steam to escape, switch on low and leave for 12 or 24 hours. If apricots are a bit dry will add a bottle or two of apricot nectar (Mountain Fresh brand.)

When fruit has cooked down to half original volume will press through a mouli and return to slowcooker. Taste and add sugar if need be--these fruit butters need bugger all sugar when compared to jam--then cook until the butter mounds on a spoon and when put on a ceramic saucer don't form a ring of moisture.

Fill into hot clean jars, seal and waterbath process for 20 minutes. Will keep for a year due to the fruit acid, and for a month in the fridge once opened. delicious on toast, with roast chicken, in layer cakes etc etc. Much better than jam, the fruit butters are concentrated fruit with stuff-all sugar!

Next week should be able to pick my peaches! Eat 10-12 for breakfast straight off the tree, but also make some peach butter exactly as described above except instead of ginger will spice the peach butter very lightly with a cinnamon stick and say 6 cloves.

In the fall will buy apples, say 5Kg granny smith or Jonathons (the "Fresh Food People" don't stock Jonathons--they don't store well!--wash, core and segment the apples, into slow cooker with a litre of applejuice. This applebutter I spice to within an inch of its life with cloves (10-12) cinnamon (2-3 sticks) cardamom (say 6 pods) bit of a cracked nutmeg and 3-4 star anise stars. DON'T peel the apples, much lovely pectin is just under the skin: the spices and skins will be separated when passing the pulp through a mouli or sieve (sieve only for the masochistic!)

Hey! Lots of lovely fruit available cheap cheap cheap so go to a Farmers Market or directly to an orchardist (only need second grade fruit for these lovely lovely butters! Spots on skin won't be seen! Apricots, plums, nectarines & soon peaches. got a source of cheap strawberries? Grab a few kilos and get to work!

Believe me these butters are very very yummy with their high concentrated fruit and minimum sugar and not all that much work!

[cynik]

So that clears up what you do for work. You sell home brew kits to Aussies. No wonder you don't pay income tax. Fair enough, too, given the taxes you pay on everything else.

Interesting about the fruit butter. I have to say, your comments show how poor Switzerland is in food. I mean, you don't just "pick a few kilos" of anything here. Not unless you are an aristocrat, or you freak everyone out at the market.

In that respect, the food wealth, I miss Australia. Switzerland is food poor. The chocolate and coffee are good, but there it ends. Except for the wog salami that gets across the border. That is ok. Good, even, if you like your wurst. Which I don't. I do not admire the teutons for their wurst.

Beef is a lost art here. You just can't get a decent cut of meat anywhere. And the beef you do see is the same colour as Aussie pork. It's nasty.

But really, the idea of popping into your yard and "picking a few kilos" of fresh fruit, to turn into fruit butter. That means you are very wealthy indeed.

Beer, however, is something else. If you like beer, Switzerland is your place, nearly as good as Germany. I used to brew my own in Australia, cause my uncle did so and the stuff in the shop is so fucking bad by comparison. But just now the shop has maybe 8 different kinds of specialty beers made in churches around the local area, and hundreds more from around the German speaking world. I'd never brew beer here, simply because there is no need.

We live in different worlds, that's for sure.

[Jovial Monk]

Yeah, I spent a few days in Zurig.

Beer OK, chocolate good, cheese fondue fantastic!

RE the beer, wasn't there long enough and knew fuckall about beer back then. Went on a train from Rotterdam non-stop to Paris! Now I would stop in Belgium and not leave till I had to!

The Opera is great over there: in Sun-Tue went to the Vienna Staatsoper, saw three operas incl Fidelio which I had never heard even from a record and noticed the Magic Flute was on on Thursday. Couldn't miss a Mozart opera in Mozart's city so stayed and went to that one--cost me 300DM to get from Munich to Delft, Holland, as my Eurailpass expired but worth it!

Wurst is good stuff! Cultivate a taste for it! Hmmm tonguewurst, blutwurst, salami, sopresso, braesola. . .

[cynik]

So this is the thread where we are civil to each other. What a pair of freaks, is going to be the general consensus of the quality.

Anyhoo, you are very badly wrong about fondue. Let me tell you a story about what fondue really is, and where it comes from. It speaks to the food poverty of this place.

Long ago, back before the Swiss stole the gold from the soon to be gassed jews, Switzerland was a poor nation of farmers. And the winters were longer, and the growing season in the narrow valleys was shorter. Each winter, after the cheese had been set and the bread baked from the summer wheat, the families would retire into their chalets, to practice yodeling and double entry book keeping. Over the winter, they would feast on fine cheese, dried meat, wursts, wheat bread, and the occasional wandering jew. And they would keep the stiff crust from the end of their loaves, and the hard outer crust from the ends of their cheeses, in large earthenware pots.

Now towards the end of the winter, the wheat for bread would run out. So would the cheese, and the dried meat would be long gone. Wursts would be a thing of distant memory, and only the very fortunate would have any jew still hanging in the larder.

And so the custom of the alpine tribes, at the end of winters' long sleep on the land, was to gather together in the chieftains hut, and bring with them the pots of bread crust and cheese scabs, collected diligently over the winter, and kept privy from mice, rats and divers mountain rodents whose nomenclature does not fall neatly into the English tongue.

The remnants of the cheese would be joined together in a large cauldron, and the stiff and stale hunks of bread would be set out on a communal platter. The Swiss would take their sharpest jew pokers, and stab the bread rocks until sufficient purchase had been obtained, according to the judgement of the Kaser-meister (cheese master), to withstand the ordeal by melted cheese that would follow.

The dipping of the stale bread into the melted cheese would ensue, and the point for the student of Swiss customs to take away with them, aside from the survival of the clan until the snowmelt, is that this "national dish" tasted fucking disgusting.

Let us be real. We are talking about stale bread crusts and old scabs of cheese, edible only through melting.

IT TASTES FUCKING AWFUL.

If you've had fondue and it was good, it wasn't authentic. Authentic fondue is fucking dreadful. That is the point. It is what you eat just before grandma goes "for a walk over the mountain", as the jews say.

Anyway, europe is real expensive just now, due to the Euro. Nasty expensive. So is Switzerland, if you don't earn Swiss francs. Last year the Swiss franc was worth nearly exactly an Aussie peso, but recently the aussie peso has shit itself in fright at the collapse of the chinese industrial sector.

As the economic refugees of the current crisis (rich jews, mostly) flee to Switzerland and buy the swiss franc, we all get a powerful currency and rising interest rates. Which is a total cuntpain if you're main contracts pay English pounds, but your debts are in swiss francs. But such is life.

[Jovial Monk]

hehehehe nice story.

I imagine the pizza had a similar start, a way to use up stale bread using cheese & tomato.

I make my own pizzas, hate the Pizza Hut etc CRAP. Secret is fresh herbs and buffalo mozzarella.

I did like--seriously--the use of the word 'divers' That is very old usage, 17th century up to Dickens' time.

[cynik]

Yeah, I like divers too. I even got a "privy" in there, as well.

And kaser meister really does mean cheese master, auf deutsche. It is those little details that get the quality ladies swooning over my Swiss folk tales.

I am with you on the buff moz and the fresh erbs. Lately I have been going the Calzone, as it seems to, you know, do a better job.

[Jovial Monk]

stuffed pizza trousers. Yup

Gonna make a bunch, bring to work (got chest freezer for hops) and whenever I want one, nuke one in microwave.

[Jovial Monk]

Just for Sinik, future food wealth for me:



Corn and beans both!

A Cynic is what you wash the dishes in and a Stoic is what brings the babies--Groucho Marx

[TomB]

Don't mind Cynik, he's a very intelligent and clever chap but sometimes his wit descends into fuckwit.

[Jovial Monk]

Planted some Vietnamese mint this morning. Anyone know if this is invasive like other mints? Will it die in winter? (Won't actually suffer frost, herb patch right up against back verandah, but will get c c c old in winter.)