Pickles and Sauces

Russische Gurken

If you have a glut of small cucumbers, below is a recepie from a Dr August Oetker Schulkochbuch given to my mum by her mum to make Pickled Gurkens in a Russian style. Experiment with the amount of sugar you add - less if you dont want sweet and sour gurkens. The amount of time that you soak the cucumbers will control how salty they are. Guten Appetit

10 lb Small Cucumbers
1 lb Shallots (very small)
100 gr Fresh Horseradish
15 gr Peppercorns
Some Cloves, Bayleaves, Fresh Dill and Tarragon
2 lt White Wine Vinegar
2 lt Water
Sugar to taste
20 gr Yellow Mustard Seeds
1-2 Garlic Cloves - roughly chopped
5 Black Currant leaves
1 vine leaf

Stone Pot or Glass Jam Jar



 

Wash small cucumbers and cover with salt water (1lb salt to 5 litres of water) for 12-24 hours - probably 12 hours is enough (NB - This is not the water mentioned in the ingrediants)

Then rinse the cucumbers well, dry with a cloth and pack carefully into a stone jar or jam jar

Add herbs and spices and sprinkle mustard seeds over them

Boil together the vinegar, water and sugar

Pour the hot mixture over the cucumbers, herbs and spices

Place currant and vine leaves on the very top and seal the pot with greaseproof paper or lid and leave for about 4 weeks in your fridge.

1. Modify ingredients depending on how many cucumbers you have
2. If your cucumbers have got little too big, slice them using a wavy slicer to look nice
3. Black currant leaves contain large amounts of Vitamin C (ascorbic acid)
   and cherry leaves or vine leaves add crispness
4. Stone pot is best as it keeps out light





Omi's Spicy Tomato Sauce


Using the amounts below, this will be a fairly sweet sauce..
so modify the amount of sugar depending on how sweet
you would like it to be... or start with a bit less and you can
always add more

Experiment with adding some basil or thyme leaves

and in my mums words you can also double or treble the
ingrediants to make larger quantities, in one fell swoop

The longer the sauce boils, the more concentrated and
more like rocket fuel it will become :)


For 2.5 pints

8 oz Onions
2-3 Cloves of Garlic
4 lbs Ripe Tomatoes
3/4 oz of Dry Mustard
1/2 pint Malt Vinegar
1 lb Granulated Sugar
1 level teaspoon Mixed Spice
1/4 level teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
1 level teaspoon of Paprika
Salt and Pepper

Prepare glass bottles to hold the sauce - wash well
and then heat at about 150 degrees C standing on 
a baking tray in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Lids can be boiled in a saucepan of water for about 10 minutes

1. Peel and chop onions and garlic roughly

2. Put tomatoes with skins on and onions and garlic
    in a pan, cover and simmer slowly until tender
    stirring now and again

3. Rub the mixture through a fine sieve leaving pips
    and skin - only, behind. NB. If any pulp is left behind
    in the sieve, the sauce will not thicken properly.
    Think this is the part, if you spend time on, you
    will get a good sauce

4. Mix dry mustard with a little of the vinegar and then
    mix with all other ingrediants (except the tomato
    pulp) in a big pan. You can use normal mustard
    but you will need to whisk well to blend in.

5. Heat, until sugar has dissolved, then add the
    tomato pulp

6. Taste and season

7. Boil in a pan without a lid until the consistency of
    a pouring sauce and a lot of the liquid has evaporated

8. Pour into your hot clean bottles and seal at once

    We usually have bottles on a wooden board to fill,
    this seems to help prevent problems with glass bottles
    cracking when you pour in hot sauce. Just pour in
    a little at first, to let the bottle get used to heat.


NB. You could remove the tomato skins before making the
sauce by boiling in water for a few minutes, but maybe
something in the skins contributes to the flavour