Making kumquat marmalade

Many years ago..(in fact the amount of years qualifies for a 'Once upon a time.." beginning), my mother gave me a kumquat tree in a pot (for my 21st birthday). This little tree was lovingly tended and repotted as needed for a few years but never bore fruit. When we moved to another state I couldn't take the tree with me so I left it at my in-laws house. My father-in-law (Henceforth known as Dad) planted it out in his yard and the little tree grew like a weed. It began to bear fruit in the second year in the ground and Dad dutifully picked the fruit and either gave it away or gave it to us when we were visiting as he didn't like the taste of them.

So for years I have been collecting about 15kg of Kumquats once a year and making marmalade. We are not huge jam eaters in my house, so the little pots of distilled sunlight mostly became gifts and sale items on my market stalls.

I thought I would share my simple recipe with you;

Beautiful little orbs

My first step is to wash and chop the fruit; I take as many seeds as I see out as I go, but alway miss a few.

Chopped and deseeded

 Next I weigh the fruit and add two litres of water to every two kilos of fruit. I use a stainless steel boiler to make my jam as it has high sides and a heavy bottom.

Weighing the chopped fruit.

 The fruit and water mixture is boiled for about 20 minutes, or until the fruit is soft. At this stage I scoop any seeds out as they rise to the top of the water.

Fruit in the boiler with water.

The fruit all cooked and smelling lovely.

 When the fruit is cooked I gradually stir in one kilo of sugar to every kilo of fruit (weighed before cooking). You have to be careful to dissolve the sugar fully at this stage, so lots of stirring is required.

Jam boiling away, 

The jam needs to simmer away for a while to get it to set. The time required varies, but you can check for set by periodically dripping some jam onto a cold saucer and looking for gelling. When the jam is ready to set the drip will not run when the plate is tilted and it gets crinkles on the top when poked at.

The jam should be bottled into sterilised jars (I wash the jars then 'cook' them in the oven for 15 minutes) while it is still hot. Use jars with metal lids and put the lids on straight away to encourage a good seal.

Lots of little jars of sunlight, ready to be stored, sold or given away.

This year I also made some Kumquat liqueur by popping the chopped fruit into bottles of vodka. These bottles will be squirreled away until 2016 when they will be shared with reverence at a Yule party (or similar).

Some Kumquat liqueur aging slowly. 

This marmalade is a little runny (which would improve if I added a lemon to the mix) but has a wonderful sweet/tart taste that goes well with toast, on roasting pork or chicken and can be used as a topping for cakes and slices.

Making pasta sauce

The tomatoes in the Hugelkultur bed have been supplying us with yummy Roma tomatoes for some time now and we have added them to most lunches and dinners (and the occasional breakfast), we are all at the 'I don't like tomatoes any more' stage, reached at some point in every harvest season when there is a glut. Therefore, I decided (this morning) to make some pasta sauce and bottle it using my trusty but under utilized Fowlers Vacola (FV) unit. That way we can have our tomatoes to eat in the winter when we are all craving them. I decided to use glass jars with metal lids (the ones you buy pasta sauce in in the supermarket) instead of the traditional FV jars because the FV jars I own are all huge (1 litre is the smallest) and we use our pasta sauce in small lots so the smaller jars are more practical for us.

A bucket of Roma tomatoes from the garden

Stage one of the Hugelkultur beds cleared and waiting for a compost top up and mulch before replanting.

I found a fairly easy recipe for tomato pasta sauce that can be preserved using the water bath method. The recipe below has been copied from the Brisbane Local Food site and changed only slightly. The link in the title will take you to the original post.


Home made pasta sauce
Makes 1.5 cups

You need a large non stick frying pan or a wok and a stick blender

1/3 cup of extra virgin olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 fresh bay leaf
500g ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
8 sprigs of basil, oregano or mint
sea salt, ground black pepper. About 2/3 tsp of salt per 1 1/2 cups of sauce is recommended.

Heat oil to medium heat, add onion and bay leaf, cover and cook for 5 minutes or until onion is softened but hardly coloured. Add tomatoes, garlic and herbs. Cover, cook on medium heat, stirring frequently until tomatoes have collapsed. Add seasonings and blend until the sauce is a pleasing consistency and you are ready to bottle.

Preserving
Put sauce into clean, sterilised jars with good lids that will vacuum seal. If the pulp is still really hot, put a sterilised spoon in the jar before filling to prevent cracking. Place jars in a water bath up to their necks and bring the temperature up to 93.3 degrees Celsius (or 200 degrees Fahrenheit).
Hold at this temperature for two hours. Remove from the preserving pan and press down the lids to encourage vacuum sealing.

N.B. The Fowlers Vacola manual states that unless you use all their gear they won't be held responsible for these instructions being no good.

The chopping begins

But not before they get a good wash

Pasta bottles; found, de-labeled and washed by my eldest daughter (thanks hon)

The sauce; boiled, seasoned and blended, ready to bottle.

My good old FV stove top unit. Isn't she a beauty?

The bottles in their bath, all carefully positioned so they don't touch each other or the sides. Fowlers Vacola frowns on touching in the bath.

The final result; six yummy bottles of pasta sauce. I had better label them before I forget what they are though.

I want to do more preserving, it's so much fun.