Old preserving method simple and useful

Press, 10 February 1982, Page 16

Old preserving method simple and useful

Alison Hoist’s

Food Facts

If you are a gardener and you have worked diligently in the spring, and - have watered your plants during the dry, patches you are probably reaping the rewards of your labours, and enjoying looking at. smelling and perhaps eating your garden produce. If you have grown more than you bargained for, you may be passing produce to your friends, and preserving excess food.

. In these days of freezing and bottling, we tend to forget about some of the old preserving methods like drying. Every year I dry lavender for lavender bags to go under dur pillows, or into my linen drawers, herbs for winter use, and pot-pourri, a mixture of flower petals. I keep these in lidded ginger jars or small casserole dishes, around the house. When I need to be reminded of summer on a grey day in the winter or when I feel that a room needs a fresher smell, I take the lid from the container for a few hours and stir the contents.

Lavender is easy to dry — you simply pick a bunch of lavender (preferably the oldfashioned English lavender) on a dry day, tie the stems, and leave it hanging upside down until the flower heads can be crumbled from the stems. You are supposed to pick the lavender while it is in bud, before the flowers open, but I am greedy and leave it in the garden until at least half the flowers have opened, because it looks so pretty there.

You can dry herbs in exactly the same way. Hang the bunches upside down in a warm dry place, preferably

out of direct sun, and in a slight breeze. If you feel that this is too slow, you can spread the herbs on old teatowels or paper towels, and put them on oven trays in an oven which has been used for cooking, turned off. and has partly cooled. This can work reasonably well if you do not put the herbs in while the oven is very hot. If you have a microwave oven, dry your herbs in it. The results are excellent. Pick the herbs when quite dry and break them into small sprigs. Put these on two paper towels and cover them with two more. Turn the oven to its highest heat, and cook for 1 to 4 minutes, depending on the quantity of leaves you are drying. The leaves are dry as soon as they will crumble after standing for about half a minute. Their colour is scarcely changed from the fresh colour, and the flavour is excellent. Store all these dried herbs in screw-topped jars. Experts say the herbs have best flavour if dried just before they flower — but again, I usually enjoy the flowers before I dry my herbs. In early February a flowering herb garden can be the prettiest part of a garden. Pot-pourri, a scented mixture of dried flower petals and herbs, is fun to make if you have a number of scented flowers and leaves in your garden. Pick the petals and leaves while they are completely dr}’. I pick them straight on to a paper towel lined tray, breaking large or thick leaves into smaller pieces as I collect them. I use scented rose petals

and lavender flowers as the main flowers in my potpourri. To these I add whatever flowers and leaves I have from the following group — lavender and leaves, rosemary flowers and leaves, violets, carnation petals, orange and lemon blossoms, cat mint and catnip flowers and leaves, gorse flowers, lemon-scented verbena leaves, calendula petals, thyme flowers and leaves, marjoram and oregano flowers and leaves, lemon balm, scented geranium and pelargonium flowers and leaves. I add delphinium flowers, nasturtium flowers and everlasting daisy petals for colour, not scent.

To four cups of this mixture I add one or two teaspoons of orris root powder. This last ingredient is a fixative, and is very important. Without it your mixture will lose its scent quickly. Co-operative chemists will usually get it for’you if they do not stock it, but you may have to buy more than you need, or share it with friends, if they will not break up the bag from their supplier. Orris root keeps from year

to year, as long as you cover it tightly. Turn the mixture every time you think of it. for several days — leaving it somewhere where it will dry out gradually. After two or three days, add what spices you like. I add grated orange and lemon rind, freshly grated nutmeg, crushed coriander seeds, crushed cinnamon, cloves, ginger root, juniper berries and cardamom seeds. After three or four more days, put the mixture into jars. Check the jars frequently for a few weeks. If the mixture is still damp it may turn mouldy. Now. dare I say it! You can make one-day pot-pourri using a microwave oven. Sprinkle each variety of flower or leaf with the fixative and dry each type separately, for a few seconds or a few minutes in your microwave. Mix. add the spices and salt, and your pot-pourri is ready. Using this method you can take a friend around your garden, picking as you go. dry the petals as you make coffee, and send your friend home with a permanent reminder of your garden in her handbag!