Pickles

Southland Times, Issue 22487, 23 January 1935, Page 5

Pickles

The experienced housewife knows just how useful some jars of pickle are on her pantry shelves. She knows, too, how to vary and brighten her menus with the use of her pickles. Follow her example and see what a success your cold meat lunches and suppers will be. Here are some tried and tested recipes for old-time relishes. Sweet Fruit Pickle.

A very nice pickle is made of equal parts of apples, pears, and plums. If peaches can be used instead of the apples, so much the better. Skin, core and halve a pound and a half of each fruit. Place it in the preserving pan. Sprinkle two pounds ot crushed loaf sugar between the layers. Bring slowly to boiling point. Add halt a pint of vinegar, a blade of mace, three cloves, a pinch of cinnamon. Boil for eight minutes. As the fruit rises remove it carefully with a draining spoon, allowing the syrup to run off well. Set the fruit on a dish to cool. Boil the syrup till it is very thick. Remove scum if necessary. Fill some warm, dry jars with the fruit. Pour boiling syrup over and cork down securely. Green Tomato Chutney.

Required: 41b green tomatoes, 21b cooking apples, Jib onions, 21b Demerara sugar, Jib sultanas, Jib stoned and chopped raisins, 2 dessertspoonfuls salt, 1 teaspoonful pepper, 1 teaspoonful mustard, 1 teaspoonful cinnamon, 1 teaspoonful ground ginger, 1 teaspoonful ground cloves, 1 to 1J pint vinegar. Cut up tomatoes into small pieces, peel and core apples and chop these and the onions. Put chopped tomato, apple and onion int. preserving pan and heat over low gas, stirring well till contents are partly cooked and blended. Add sugar, sultanas, and raisins; cook mixture till tender, stirring all the time. The condiments should then be stirred in and the vinegar added gradually, to allow the mixture to boil without becoming too liquid. When the chutney is a rich brown, of an even consistency like that of clotted cream, and no flavour, particularly that of the vinegar, predominates, the cooking is finshed. Time of cooking is approximately two hours.

Bottle and fasten down when cold. It will keep through the winter and is very appetising with cold meats. The flavour improves if kept for a few weeks. Ripe tomatoes may be substituted for green. Skin before using, and as they make more liquid,, only a pint of vinegar will be needed. The cloves should be omitted. This chutney makes a delicious sauce; but does not keep so long, nor is it as firm, as the green tomato chutney.

A further variation may be made by adding to the green tomato recipe lib of gherkins. These should be cut into small rings and added with the sugar, so that the gherkins remain firm.

Unripe Fig Pickle. This is very good pickle which has unripe figs as its foundation, and which can be added to at any time during the year. Soak as many figs as yop can cover with a gallon of white wine vinegar, for three days, then pour it off and to the vinegar add 2oz. treacle, 4oz salt, 4oz. mustard, 2oz. allspice, and i teaspoonful of pepper. Boil for i hour. Then strain and pour the spiced vinegar over the figs, which should be placed in a large earthenware crock. Now add a little chopped cucumber, some small onions, peeled, a few beans, young carrots, and any other vegetable fancied. Keep the crock covered and stir occasionally, so that the spiced vinegar covers the vegetables. This will improve with keeping, as the flavours become well blended.

Uncooked Apple Chutney. This is an economical recipe, and if garlic is used and not onion, may be depended on to keep well. Peel and core 31b green cooking apples. Put them through a mincer with 21b. of raisins and IJoz. of garlic. Put into a bowl and sprinkle over it a tablespoonful of salt, a dessertspoonful of cayenne, and IJlb. of brown sugar. Then pour in 1 quart of vinegar and allow to stand for two days. If there is too much liquor, use it as sauce, but stir the chutney well before bottling.

Spiced Runner Beans. Runner beans are in season; here is a novel and tasty pickle. Prepare beans as if you intended to cook and serve them hot on the table in the usual way, but add considerably more salt to them when you put them over the heat in water to coyer. Cook till tender, then drain well.

Make a sweet spiced vinegar as follows: Into a saucepan put one quart of vinegar, three cupfuls of granulated sugar, two tablespoonfuls of ground cinnamon, and add a small bag containing one tablespoon of ground allspice and a pinch of ground mace or cloves.

Bring to boil, then skim and pour over one quart of the cooked and drained beans, discarding the spice bag. The pickle is now ready to serve on your table—either to give piquancy to a lettuce salad, or as a pickle to accompany cold sliced meats. If the pickle is for winter use, turn it while hot into hot sterilized glass jars and seal at once.