Making Compost Heap Jelly ... and Using the Pastry

 

Yesterday I decided to use all the little bags of fruit scraps from the freezer, a punnet of raspberries that had been in the freezer for over two years, some dried up mandarin oranges that I had frozen and a few of the apples from our tree to make some Compost Heap Jelly.

My first stage was to get everything into a pan pour over a kettle full of recently boiled water so that it would be possible to cut everything up a bit, and then bring it to the boil.

I left it simmering away for about an hour with the lid on and then mashed it all up a bit with my masher.  After another 20 minutes of simmering I turned off the heat and left it to cool in the pan for an hour still with the lid on.  I wanted every bit of flavour and goodness out of all the mush.

Then after a mad look around the kitchen to find my straining bag, before remembering that my old one had broken and I had bought a new one and put it in a completely different place, I finally found it and got my fruity mush straining.

There was so much juice that i had to go old school and lift the straining bag higher over the jug.  Tying it with string to my kitchen cupboard.  I let it drip, drip, drip slowly at first and then I decided i didn't need crystal clear jelly I needed volume so I gave it a good squeeze.

I ended up with over 2 pints of lovely fruity juice.

And a little pile of mush that I put outside for the wasps for a while, before tipping it into the compost bin.

As well as this and as soon as I had a clear worktop I was making good use of my roll of puff pastry, that I took as part of this weeks rations.  Four meals worth of pastry products.

https://youtu.be/-jwQnlKSxQI?si=dYbieaSvYUxarB23

Today it's  time to boil up my juice with my sugar ration and make myself lots of lovely Compost Heap Jelly.  The beauty of jelly over jam is that the tasks can be split over two days.   Here's Pam who can describe how to do it all so much better than I can.

Sue xx

 

Lovely Pies, and the Easiest Recipe Ever

I took the drained vegetables from my stew made the other day and chopped them a bit finer.  

Then I made up some pastry with the last of last weeks fat ration ... there was a smidge over 2oz, so a bigger smidge over 4oz of flour and a pinch of salt ...  rolled it out and cut out six circles, three for the bottoms and three for the tops, left them all to rest in the fridge, the bottoms in the  greased tin to get the right shape and the tops on a plate wrapped in clingfilm.  

After a few minutes I filled the bottoms with the vegetable mixture and added the tops, brushing them all with milk and cooked them in a hot oven for 20 minutes.

One eaten straight from the oven with gently boiled cabbage and Bisto gravy and two left to cool and stashed in the fridge.

Delicious.

The easiest recipe ever:

Take leftovers

 Make pastry 

Put leftovers into pastry

Cook

Eat and enjoy.

Anything edible wrapped in pastry is elevated to whole other level in my humble opinion.

Sue xx

Making Proper Use of the Rations

 

 I really do need to make proper use of my rations.

Ration amounts were carefully worked out to give people the best nourishment possible during the times of shortage and as such they were designed to be used up in the time periods they were given for.  For example the weekly 4oz margarine and 2oz of butter, along with the 2oz of lard were deemed the right amount of fats to go alongside the weekly cheese, milk, egg, sugar and meat rations to provide the building blocks of a healthy diet, and all these were designed to go with the bread and vegetable rations that were recommended in the all Ministry of Food pamphlets.

So me having food from the rations left over at the end of each week is not necessarily a good thing.  This is what I am going to try and do something about over the next couple of weeks.  This week is my fourth week on rations and although I am not too bothered about having sugar store building up ... it will be used to make jam ... I have been noticing that I have had my fats and oil leftover every single week.

So to get on a level playing field again I decided that I would use up the fat left over from last week and make some scones and some pastry ... and also a little of my dried fruit bought with points and up until now not touched at all.

Scones are a brilliant use of ingredients for a wartime diet and my go to recipe is really simple.

8oz SR Flour

2oz Butter or Spread

Pinch of salt

1oz Sugar

1oz Dried Fruit

Milk

Rub the butter into the flour, add the salt and then add the sugar and dried fruit.

Bring together with just enough milk to make it into a ball and tip out onto a lightly floured surface.  Either roll out and cut with a cookie cutter or just shape into one large round and then cut into four quarters.

Place on a baking tray, brush with milk and cook in a hot oven for around 20 minutes.

(220/200fan, 425f or Gas 7)

Enjoy with butter and jam ... and of course a lovely cup of coffee.

I didn't eat them all myself, Alan was thrilled with his surprise snack to go with his afternoon coffee break.

While these were baking I weighed out what was left out of last weeks spread ration and used that with the correct ratio of flour to make a ball of pastry ... I had pies that needed to be made.  Now I am up to date with the fat ration and just need to make sure that this week I actually try and use it all up.

Sue xx

Potato Recipes - Colcannon

 

The other day when I was talking about potatoes Jayne mentioned Colcannon, and funnily enough it was something that I had been thinking of making.  

Colcannon is a traditional Irish dish, along the lines of our English Bubble and Squeak and is brilliant for using up leftovers, especially of mashed potatoes ... something that I now nearly always have in my fridge.

I looked for recipes of it online and found this great variation from Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall, I may try it this way next time.  

Mine, however was much simpler and I just mixed about half a pound of leftover mash with three shredded and then steamed Savoy cabbage leaves and a couple of finely sliced Spring Onions from the Victory Garden.  A splash of milk was added and stirred through and then it was all tipped into a slightly oiled pan and left to heat up slowly while I washed the pots and brought the washing in off the line.

It didn't look that pretty when I turned it out, but by gosh it tasted nice with the Bisto gravy.  

It did need the gravy as I don't think I had seasoned it enough ... I'll know better next time, and yes there will be a next time, this is another keeper to the wartime rationing repertoire.  I need to make a list of favourite meals in my rationing notebook.

Sue xx

Wartime Chocolate Spread

 

I just had to do it after watching Utility Jude's YouTube video, see the last post if you're wondering what I'm going on about.  😀

I made it to her exact proportions:

2 tbsp. Mashed Potato

1tbsp. Sugar

1 tbsp. Cocoa Powder

a dash of Vanilla Essence - or extract in my case as that's what I had.

Simply mix all the ingredients really well together.

Making sure that you get rid of any lumps of mash or coco powder ... the cocoa powder highlights all the little lumps of mashed potato that you might not have realised were still there!

You get this amount from the mix.

Which is enough to cover two slices of a large loaf of bread.  

I wouldn't cut your bread too thick or this will be a very stodgy snack.  Of course I knew what it was as I pondered over the taste for a while, so then I decided in the interests of a fair test I would give a piece to Alan to get his un-informed opinion.  A proper blind taste test.

He said it tasted like Nutella with not enough nuts, he said it was very chocolatey, and very edible ... he DID NOT guess that it was made with mashed potatoes and was very intrigued when he found out.

We both thought that if you had no chocolate in the house and were craving a chocolatey fix, this really would hit the spot.  After Alan's comments I think I will try it with almond extract next time in place of the vanilla and see if it gets even closer in flavour to Nutella.

It is a very filling snack for sure.

Sue xx

The Ever So Famous Woolton Pie

 

I realised the other day that I hadn't show you my little individual Woolton Pie in all it's gravy covered glory.  

I showed you it the other day, naked in it's little enamelled dish, but not with it's pastry lid and ready for eating.

I rolled the lid out a little bit thinner to accommodate the piled up vegetables and once trimmed used those trimmings to make the letters for the top.

I've always found the best recipe for it is in this book, which is actually an amalgamation of three of Marguerite Pattern's wartime books - We'll Eat Again, The Victory Cookbook and Post-War Kitchen.  I'm guessing the Woolton Pie recipe will be in at least two of the three individual books.

It would be a HUGE pie if you used one pound each of your chosen vegetables so I always just use leftover vegetables when I making another dish.  It's a very basic and forgiving recipe, you just cook your vegetables and then assemble them in some sort of gravy or sauce under a pastry or mashed potato lid.  If you are a meat eater you could also add some leftover, chopped up cooked meat to the dish before covering it with pastry.

Simple and very tasty, and possibly one of the most famous of all wartime recipes.

Sue xx