Gooseberry jam with vanilla

I have a rowing friend, which lives in my neighbourhood and she has kindly enough let me pick gooseberries in her garden. The Danish name for gooseberry is stikkelsbær, which is very close to sticking berries, a very fitting name for these berries, as the bush is full of thorns !!!

It is very difficult to bye gooseberries in the Danish supermarkets, so I am very pleased, that I good access to the garden of my rowing friend for free berry picking.


Gooseberry Jam:

• 900 g (Danish) gooseberries 
• 50 g water
• 1 vanilla pod - empty of vanilla corn - in small pieces
• 450 g sugar - of which 50 g is used for dry-mixing with pectin and citric acid
• 13 g gelling powder (pectin)
• 3 g citric acid
• 1 teaspoon of white wine vinegar
• preservative - optional

1. Heat up the gooseberries in a cooking pot together with a small amount of water and vanilla pod pieces.
2. When the gooseberries have reach a temperature of 80°C, add the gelling powder and agitate very well.
3. It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
4. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes.
5. Mash the gooseberries like you would mash potates. This is optional, you can also decide to keep the berries in full shape.
6. Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
7. Bring the fruit the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
8. Addition of white wine vinegar, add it by ½ teaspoon by the time, so you can adjust the taste to your own preference.
9. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards to increase the shelf-life.
10. As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
11. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.
12. Store cold.

CLEARING OUT

In connections with vacation time it can be good to clear out your stock of vegetable and fruit in the kitchen. An easy way of doing this is to make juice 2-3 days, before you go away for some time.

Another time I will adding two more apples to get some more sweetness in such a juice.

CLEARING OUT: 3-4 servings

• 1 cauliflower
• 1 spring cabbage
• 4 apples
• 1 squash
• 4 cm og ginger

1. Clean all the ingredients.
2. Juice everything together.
3. Enjoy and store the rest of the juice cold in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

Classic raspberry jam

As a way of "saving" my my home-grown raspberries for later use, I decided to make a small portion of classic raspberry jam having picked a large amount of matured raspberries from my own and only raspberry bush.

So now I have later in Autumn still enjoy some Summertime in form of this classic raspberry jam.

Classic raspberry jam:

• 160 g (Danish) raspberries 
• 2 tablespoons of water
• 80 g sugar - of which 20 g is used for dry-mixing with pectin and citric acid
• 3 g gelling powder (pectin)
• preservative - optional

1. Heat up the raspberries in a cooking pot together with a small amount of water.
2. When the raspberries have reach a temperature of 80°C, add the gelling powder and agitate very well.
3. It is important NOT to add the sugar at this stage, as the gelling powder need the water from the fruit to hydrate sufficiently.
4. Bring the fruit to the boiling point and let it boil for 2 minutes
5. Add the sugar to the fruit. It is very important, that you add the sugar little by little, while you agitate, in order to pre-gelling/gel lumps in the jam.
6. Bring the fruit the boiling point again and boil for another 2 minutes.
7. Prepare the jam glasses by filling them with boiling water. Another thing you can do is to store the jam cold afterwards to increase the shelf-life.
8. As the jam is made from 2 parts of fruit and 1 part of sugar, the sugar content is not high enough to preserve the jam.
9. Fill the glass with jam and close the glass.
10. Store cold.

Gazpacho

Gazpacho is an excellent dish to serve on hot Summer day, where you do not want to spend time cooking in a warm kitchen. At the same time you can use vegetables being in season, so all in all a win-win situation.

I have found this recipe in the cooking book called "Tapas". I have one modification to the recipe, as I found the taste of tomato to be too low, so I added in some tomato concentrate.

The colour is brownish, and not red, which is due to the fact, that green vegetable in form of green pepper fruit and cucumber is added in as well.

Gazpacho: 3-4 servings

• 1 cucumber - roughly chopped
• 1 green pepper fruit - diseeded and roughly chopped
• 400 g of canned chopped tomatoes
• 1 medium onion - roughly chopped
• 1 cloves of garlic - roughly chopped
• 15 ml lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon of tomato concentrate
• salt and pepper for seasoning

1. Clean all the vegetables and chopped them roughly.
2. Place all the ingredients in a blender.
3. Blend everything together.
4. Season with salt and pepper.
5. Store cold in a bowl in the refrigerator for minimum 2 hours.
6. Serve cold, while you enjoy a warm Summer day.

Stuffed courgettes

I located this recipe on stuffed courgettes in the tapas cooking book "Tapas Delicious Snacks from Spain".

I replaced the lamb meat with minced chicken, as it is more difficult to get hold of minced lamb meat in the Danish supermarkets. And instead of yogurt I used thick milk.

Stuffed courgettes:

• 6 small courgettes
• 1 small onion - chopped
• 1 cloves of garlic
• 15 ml olive oil
• 400 g minced chicken meat
• 3 slices of bacon - finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of tomato concentrate
• ½ tablespoon of sugar
• 15 ml water
• 1 tomato - chopped
• 150 g thick milk
• 12 mint leaves
• 50 Parmesan cheese - grated
• 1 tablespoon parsley - chopped

1. Cut the ends of the courgettes. Boil them in boiling water for 5 minutes.
2. Cut the courgettes in halves and removed the seeds from the courgettes with a teaspoon.
3. Cook the onion and garlic in hot oil.
4. Add in the minced chicken meat, bacon, salt and pepper.
5. When the meat has changed colour  add in the tomato concentrate, sugar and water.
6. Let everything cook for 15 minutes, while stirring regular.
7. Remove the cooking pot from the heat. Stir in the chopped tomato, thick milk and chopped mint leaves.
8. Fill this meat part into the courgettes. Sprinkle with Parmesan cheese.
9. Bake the stuffed courgettes in the middle of the oven at 200'C, until the cheese is melted.

WORK OUT WONDER

I always gets very happy, when I see, that the JuiceSelvKasse from Årstiderne contains red beets for juice making. The red beet gives a very nice strong red colour, which later on can give red colour to your personal outlet.

WORK OUT WONDER: 4 servings

• 2 apples
• 2 limes with peel
• 500 g carrots without peel
• 1000 g red beets
• 40 g mint - only the leaves, as the stems are giving bitterness
• ½ broccoli 

1. Clean all the ingredients.
2. Juice the mint in between the apples.
3. Juice everything together.
4. Enjoy and store the rest of the juice cold in the refrigerator.

Orange sauce

The sweet finishing touch for my birthday Summer tapas was this almond cake served together with orange sauce. The original recipe can be found in the cooking book "Politikens bog om tapas" by Anne Hjernøe.

I made no changes to the originale recipe. Another time I think I will be twist the taste by addition of some orange zest in this sauce.

I served the remaning orange sauce together with yogurt.

Orange sauce:

• 2 oranges - peeled and diced roughly
• 100 g sugar

1. Bring the orange pieces and sugar to the boiling point in a small cooking pot.
2. Let the orange sauce gently boil, until most of the water content has been reduced. It took around 20 minutes.
3. Serve this orange sauce to the almond cake.