Saints preserve us!

It’s been a fabulous year for plums, like the apples (Discovery was ripe by mid-August) everything has been remarkably early. A fluke combination of perfect weather at blossom time to help the pollinators, wet weather when required and sun during the ripening season has meant that there is plenty of everything. Some years we get to complain that come preserving time there is too little fruit to work with and sometimes we get to complain that there is too much. This state of perennial dis-satisfaction  must be what makes farmers seem so grumpy. But the problem remains, the hedges are dripping with sloes; the paths are stained purple by the fallen damsons; and the weight of apples are in danger of breaking the boughs.

It’s time to get out the preserving pan, and to look into the dark secrets of the deep freeze. Every year in a fervour of enhusiasm we pick more fruit and berries than we can cope with. In the freezer there are a couple of gallons of sloes and a couple of boxes of Seville oranges that are testament to our early spring enthusiasms (when you’ve made three or four batches of marmalade there is a terrible temptation to pop the rest of the fruit into the freezer and postpone the next session). So yes, we are making marmalade in August!

One thing about merging the Seville Orange season with the sloe time is that it stirs the recipe inventor in you. This year we’ve made a “Sloe & Seville Jelly Marmalade”. The sloes mean that this preserve is an amazing ruby red and the sharpness of the sloes blends well with the bitterness of the Sevilles. What’s more as it is a jelly marmalade you spare yourself the chore of cutting all those hot orange peels into slivers! Here’s the recipe,

3kg Seville oranges

1kg sloes

2 litres water

125 ml bottle of lemon juice

1 bottle “Certo” pectin

White granulated sugar

Boil to mush then leave to drip through a jelly bag overnight Add the lemon juice and “Certo” to the juice and measure it into a preserving pan. Add a kilo of sugar for every litre of juice. Bring to the boil and skim.  Wait until the thermometer hits “jam” point (106°C) and pot in jars pre-heated in the oven

Or you could try “Sloe & Crabapple Jelly”

2kg Crabapples

1kg Sloes

2 litres water

125 ml bottle of lemon juice

1 bottle “Certo” pectin

White granulated sugar

Then follow the method for jelly marmalade set out above.

There is something very comforting about the growing ranks of jars, and come Christmas they will form the core of many a Christmas present. Unfortunately the enthuiasm tends to wane as the task unfolds, and I would bet that next year will see the freezer packed with a whole new crop of fruit that has been harvested but not dealt with.