Any ideas for preserves please? Especially tomatoes

[Alice Abbott]

As I mentioned on the "new members" section we are a family of four who, for complex reasons are now 3 months into year long programme of living off what we can grow, forage or exchange. We are living in the Charente Maritime region of France while we renovate a farmhouse.

We bought an initial "stash" of food to act as a base. These were

5kg cooking salt
20kg flour
20kg rice
5kg couscous
10 litres olive oil
1kg red beans
1kg dried peas
1kg chickpeas
20kg sugar
10 packs dried yeast
10 packs wine yeast
5kg soya mince
5kg dried milk
4 large jars of coffee
5kg rolled oats
2kg dried spaghetti

Supplementing this we had what was left over in our store cupboard at the begining of June

Lots of spices
4 cans tuna
4 cans tomato puree
large tin of cocoa
Jar of honey
large bag of mixed nuts

So far we have grown

onions, shallots, garlic, peas, green beans, beetroot, tomatoes, carrots, parsnips, cucumbers, lettuce, peppers, chillies, potatoes, gherkins, herbs, red cabbage, melons and sweetcorn

In the garden or local hedgerows we have (or will have when they are ripe)

mushrooms (which I have dried and bottled), apples, walnuts, hazels, figs, blackberries, apples, plums, grapes. damsons and nectarines

We have been given four hens who are laying, on average, three eggs a day between them and I am being given goat's milk by a neighbour as and when we want any. The same neighbour says he will supply us with rabbits once the season starts.

It all looks good on paper but I still panic about being able to eke out the supplies AND preserve enough of what we are growing to last through to the end of next May. We do have the option of going to the local shops if things go wrong but now we've set ourselves this challenge I would love to see it through. I must admit we've demolished the tuna, honey and mixed nuts so they are now off the list!

I plan on making jam and chutney, bottling beans and storing the root veg and apples in the cellar. I will also salt the nuts. We have 5 gallons of wine on the way and I intend making lots more, also cider when the apples are riper. I'm thinking of drying some of the fruits too and wonder about making some sort of sultanas from the grapes once they are coming to an end? We have a small fridge but no separate freezer so all the preserving has to be in bottles, jars or pots. Cooking is on a wood-burning range so I have various ovens good for drying etc.

To be honest any preserving recipes would be useful but at the moment I'm looking at what to do with the tomatoes so we can use them for sauces and so on in the winter months. Does anyone have any ideas for making some sort of concentrate please?

[Green Aura]

The easiest way of preserving tomatoes is to bottle them. There are loads of different suggestions as to how to do this but I think ours is the simplest.

We simply fill clean le parfait jars with tomatoes - whole, halved or chopped, your choice. Add one tsp of salt and 1/2tsp sugar per kilo of fruit.

Cover the jar with tin foil and bung in a 150oC oven for about an hour. You have to work quite quickly now to get them sealed while they're still hot.

The contents drop so sometimes we share the contents of one jar round the others to top them up. Then put the rubber ring on the lid, wipe round the rim of the jar and seal.

We've never had any problems with mold or any other dire warnings that lots of sites give.

The good thing is you can then use them however you want. Of course you can also make passata or add garlic and herbs etc, but these limit what you can do with them.

[Millymollymandy]

Maggie that sounds brilliant - is it exactly the same as doing them in boiling water in a canner/bottler (whatever you call those things?) My French neighbours keep telling me I ought to be doing that but even though you can apparently just use a large saucepan with a tea towel on the bottom just so the jars don't actually touch the bottom, my jars with the orange seal and clips are just a fraction too tall for my largest, giant saucepan. Plus it seems like so much hard work when I can just bung things in the freezer - but I'd get a lot more in the oven than in a saucepan.

[ina]

You can use screw top jars, too - they may be smaller... (And I usually have far too many anyway!)

[Graye]

Those are great ideas - I'm going to have more tomatoes than we know what to do with very shortly so I'll give this a try.

You could try sun drying some or bottling them in oil?

I've just been through my recipe scrapbook (it's a great folder of all recipes I've ever been given or cut from magazines etc, a sort of disorganised goldmine of good things) and found this recipe for tomato paste -very strong and rich but ideal for sauces and soups. I made some years ago and loved it and I'll try more later this year now I've remembered I have it. You need A LOT of tomatoes to make any quantity of this paste but it will go a very long way!

Chop ripe tomatoes and put them into a large pan. Add salt and cook over a low heat stirring quite often so they don't stick. Cook until the tomatoes fall apart and become pulpy - between 20 and 40 minutes. Let the tomatoes cool slightly then force them through a fine sieve pressing with the back of a spoon until all that is left is the skin and seeds. Return the sieved tomatoes to a pan and cook over a low heat until the mixture is reduced to a thick dark red paste. When the paste is the right consistency spoon it into sterilised jars and add a layer of olive oil to completely cover. Seal immediately. Store in a cool dark place.

[Graye]

Alice, did you know you can dry your peppers and chillies too? Just pick perfect ones, attach the stems to a long string so the peppers or chillies aren't touching each other and hang them in the sun. Or hang them over your woodburner for a nice smoky flavour. Once they are dry you can either put them in jars or just pick them to use straight from the strings. In Andalucia they cut big red peppers in half and peg them to the line to dry. Quite a sight too, I thought it was some delicate sort of erotic lingerie when I first saw them until I noticed the ladies who were doing the pegging out!

And you can plait your onions (and garlic & shallots) for storage too. When I did some last year I let the onions and leaves dry right out before plaiting them, then I soaked just the leaves, plaited them as tight as I could, trimmed the top and tied them off with a loop to hang. Stored from the garage beams they lasted for months and look lovely too. Someone pointed out you could use old tights with a knot after each onion but a) I don't have any tights and b) they would look a bit strange!

[Annpan]

I plaited my onions last year too... but I did them while they were still green and hung them up in the shed (which has no door) the lasted us till february. No need to dry and soak IME. I'd do the same with garlic (but I'm allergic to it )

[red]

i plaited garlic this afternoon, well and truly dried out garlics (well they were lifted in june - been in the sunroom since.... ) I didn't soak em first.... just trimmed off debris and long roots and went for it.

[Alice Abbott]

Thank you for those ideas. I will have pounds and pounds of tomatoes and I have lots of donated bottles and jars so can probably try all options.

I also have a potentially enormous pile of chillies, shallots, garlic (I put in 5 heads broken into cloves) and onions so hopefully if I can preserve them properly I will have enough for the whole winter and into spring.

We've been picking sloes today and have a gallon of wine started. They are fiddly to pick put I imagine they will make some delicious wine. I have some ripe grapes and will be making grape jelly tomorrow. I'm about to research making some form of sultanas right now. Unfortunately I don't have the luxury of hours of surfing, I spend about 30 minutes when I come to charge the laptop and a similar time when I pick it up later. Our neighbours say we can use the wifi whenever we like (it reaches to the barn where we plug in so we don't actually have to intrude upon them) but I don't want to be seen to take advantage. Also, I might need to beg some space in their spare freezer before the summer is out so I'm saving any favours for later!

[Green Aura]

I was just looking at your list of initial provisions, Alice, and they look well-planned, although I have no idea how long they'll feed a family of four.

But I had one or two suggestions for next year, if money's still a little tight.

1) If you make a sourdough starter before the end of the year you can cut out buying the dried baking yeast.

2) If you cut out the dried pasta and make your own you'll be able to buy more flour and maybe make your eggs go further - 3 eggs between four won't go but put a couple into making a batch of pasta everyone will get a good share, maybe with some over for later.

I think the main thing is to maximise what you can do with your ingredients. It's something I've been learning to do over the last couple of years, since moving up here. It seems to me we eat much better, waste much less and get far greater satisfaction out of what we both buy and grow.

I know that wasn't exactly the point of your thread but I hope it's helpful.

[frozenthunderbolt]

Consider planting many beans and much maise/sweetcorn and drying them - keeps the mexicans going.

PM me and i can probably send you some info about solar food dryers etc - i just need reminding

Edit: found i can add files here so here goes: (note i havent looked at these in a while so more may be more relavent than others!)

Edit edit: or not. apparently pdf and doc files are "not allowed" mod help?

[Odsox]

There are loads of different suggestions as to how to do this but I think ours is the simplest

I think our way is probably even simpler Maggie.
We use old jam jars, especially the ones with the 'popper' lids.
Peel and halve tomatoes, put in a saucepan and simmer for a few minutes.
Put into hot jars and put the lids on ... job done.
After 20 minutes or so you will hear the lids pop down and you can be sure that all is well.

This is the way we've done them for many years and have never had one go bad, and some have been "lost" in the back of the cupboard for 3 years and still been OK.
I don't salt or sugar them as I sometimes reduce a jarful to purée for pizza and it could end up too salty, and it's just as easy to season when you use them.

[Peggy Sue]

My plan for tomatoes (if they survive blight ) was to cook them of a bit like odsox & freeze.

I get cold feet about bottling, with chutney & jam they are acidic so nothing evil can really live there undetected (bit of mould doesn't kill you), but tomatoes have a higher pH and some food poisoning bugs can live there without you knowing.

I guess if you plan to cook with it after it's safe enough, but I've a feeling there may be a minimum temperature you need to achieve in cooking and the jars need a minimum space at the top so its filled by steam with no air for the bugs to live.

I don't mean to put anyone off bottling, to be fair I really want to know a safe way and do it myself (bit like mushroom picking )

I shall have to learn some bottling soon or get a bigger freezer to be sure!

[Odsox]

I shall have to learn some bottling soon or get a bigger freezer to be sure!

Yes that's our problem too ... we now have 3 freezers consuming expensive electricity, but our bottled tomatoes, blackcurrants, gooseberries & plums only need a dark shelf.

[Odsox]

Oh, and I forgot to mention my dried tomatoes, mushrooms, peas, haricot beans & onions also snoozing on that dark shelf.