Older chests

Not too bad second attempt. 

My grandmother knows how to make things last. I have heard them retell countless times how once a year everyone came to the farm to aid in slaughtering a cow and then using all of its parts, even cooking the fat with something to make soap. Somehow the Afrikaner legacy of preserving food gets passed on through the generations and when I see an abundance of fruit for a cheap price, knowing full and well that I can't eat it, I'll purchase it.

This Watermelon-Strawberry Jam is a result of one such impulse. During the summer strawberries were abundant at the farmers' market and I still has some frozen watermelon in the freezer from my birthday party. Not one to throw anything away needlessly, I figured why not make strawberry watermelon jam?! The problem was that both do not contain enough pectin (I think) on their own to ensure that the jam thickens.

So I dialed my grandmother, some 14 000 km away, and asked what I should do. Sadly, she misunderstood what I wanted to do and proceeded to explain how to make Waatlemoen konfyt (Watermelon jam made from the white rind). Then I tried Google, but to no avail.

In the end this is more error than trial, but it worked out quite well:

6 cups  watermelon juice
5 cups strawberries (650g), washed and hulled
1kg Gelierzucker (jam sugar with added citric acid and pectin available in Germany)
500g Stevia Gelierzucker
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup lemon juice

- Place a plate in the freezer to later test if the jam is ready.
- I first cooked the frozen watermelon slowly just to thaw it and then sieved it to just get the juice.
- Then wash and cut the strawberries, and add them to the watermelon juice. It is best to use the biggest pot you have to prevent the whole thing from boiling over.
- Add all the sugars and the lemon juice, the slowly bring to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar.
- Turn down the heat and let it boil on a medium heat (about 15min in my case). To test whether the jam is ready put a tiny bit on the plate that was in the freezer. If it jellifies after a few minutes it is ready.

Hah, now for all the fails in this recipe:
- the jam jellified, but then did not when all of it was in jars and ready to be given as presents.
- the strawberry chunks also looked weird.
- I went back to the store and bought a 500g packet of Stevia Gelierzucker because it has less calories and I thought well, there is already a boatload of sugar in it.
- For next time I'll just immediately use 2 kg of normal Gelierzucker (no Stevia, no normal sugar) and that should do the trick.

Botched first attempt.

Strawbear

I never got what one does with rhubarb. They were strange celery-like stalks and I imaged them to taste horrible. Like celery, only with a red hue. Then as I got older maybe I was more inclined to test other ingredients in the kitchen, and thus I once bought a bunch of rhubarb in Fruit & Veg for R15. I think I made a strawberry-rhubarb pie, not quite trusting the stalks to taste like anything edible on their own.

Rhubarb syrup?

Rhubarb season has started here and I embraced it completely. I made rhubarb and grapefruit syrup, then rhubarb-strawberry jam, then a jar of rhubarb compote and lastly a wonderful rhubarb panna cotta tart that looked and tasted incredible. I had rhubarb coming out of my ears by the end of it, but it was worth it. Everyone complemented the panna cotta tart and I ended up using the left-over champagne from my birthday with the last bit of rhubarb syrup as a cocktail, which worked really well. And now when my mom and sister come in three weeks I am totally super prepared for breakfast :)

Step 1 for the panna cotta

Rhubarb in the oven with WINE? Hells yes. 

This was super easy. And delicioussss. 

The tart bottom chilling in my window sill. 

Badaboom Badabang. 

Rhubarber

I have never cooked with rhubarb.
It is strange to me that these green-pink stalks can become anything delicious.
However, the other day a bunch of rhubarb only cost R 9.99 at Fruit 'n Veg so I grabbed a bunch and headed home to find out what one could do with them.

I found a whole selection of recipes on smittenkitchen and through foodgawker, but they all appeared to take a lot of time and I prefer mixing something, throwing it in the oven and taking it out hours later to marvel at how tasty and beautiful it looks.

So ultimately, I adapted smittenkitchen's original recipe:

Strawberry-Rhubarb Crumble

Yields 6 to 8 servings.

For the topping:
1 1/3 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
3 tablespoons sugar
3 tablespoons Demerara sugar (or turbinado sugar aka Sugar in the Raw)
Zest of one lemon
1/4 pound (1 stick or 4 ounces) unsalted butter, melted

For the filling:
1 1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 quart strawberries plus a few extras, hulled, quartered
Juice of one lemon
1/2 cup sugar
3 to 4 tablespoons cornstarch (some commenters found the flour option a little too, well, floury so this has been updated)
Pinch of salt

1. Heat oven to 375°F. Prepare topping: In a mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, sugars and lemon zest and add the melted butter. Mix until small and large clumps form. Refrigerate until needed.

2. Prepare filling: Toss rhubarb, strawberries, lemon juice, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of salt in a 9-inch deep-dish pie plate. (I used an oval dish this time, because they fit better in the bottom of a shopping bag.)

3. Remove topping from refrigerator and cover fruit thickly and evenly with topping. Place pie plate on a (foil-lined, if you really want to think ahead) baking sheet, and bake until crumble topping is golden brown in places and fruit is bubbling beneath, about 40 to 50 minutes.

So, instead, for the topping, I did this: 

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup light brown sugar

150ml oats ( slightly more than half a cup)

1ts cinnamin

1ts nutmeg

 ( I wing these until it looks to be the right amount)

100g cold butter

100g chopped walnuts ( I usually just use whichever nuts I have, and am not too specific about the amount)

Place everything except the nuts together in a bowl ( it would be wise to cut the butter into small squares) and rub it all until it is crumbly. You could also do this with a food processor but I like the way your fingers have to rub everything together. 

Add the nuts and mix it well. It should be like slightly wet sand. 

For the Filling: 

I used about 6 stalks of rhubarb

one large Woolies punnet of strawberries ( think that should be round 600g)

Added 3 TB of lemon juice

3 TB of cornflour

1/4 cup sugar

Cut the rhubarb into small pieces ( about 1cm thick) and also cut the strawberries. Place the fruit in a bowl and add the remaining ingredients. Mix everything carefully and make sure everything is well coated. I would adjust the sugar depending on how sweet the strawberries are and how sweet you want your crumble to be. 

Then I placed the fruit in the bottom of an oven-proof dish and crumbled the sandy dough evenly over it. 

Bake for about 40-50 minutes, and whambam: delicious. 

Instead of rhubarb, you could also use frozen berries or apples or pears or nectarines or peaches or plums. Hmmmmm you could basically take any fruit. Imagine a cherry crumble. 

To finish the crumble of I added a scoop of frozen mixed berry yoghurt ( available at Woolworths, where else).

My sister did appreciate it.

nom nom nom