On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 13:35:17 +0000, K wrote:

lloyd writes
On Fri, 1 Jan 2010 12:13:08 +0000, K wrote:

. I caught on soon enough that this land is
not ours and we should share whatever we have. Now I reap the blessing
of the wildlife feeding to live on what I considered a nuisance. How
blind was I!

Once you become interested in the invertebrate and fungal life of the
garden as well as the plants and birds, you start looking at plant
debris with different eyes (and have more time to do more enjoyable
things in the garden)

Presumably you know that you can make a very nice fruit jelly from crab
apples, to serve with fatty meats,

No meats for me.

Cheese? Good with that too.

or just to eat like jam?

A sweet tooth I have.

Use it in puddings, cakes, tarts, mix it with yoghurt, spoon it on to
rice pudding.

Made in the
usual fashion - boil the crabs

How many would you suggest for say, one jar?

In theory, a 1lb jam jar would need half a pound of sugar and half a
pint of juice, from perhaps 1lb of crabs. But it's easier to make
jam/jellies with larger quantities. Suggest you collect a couple of
pounds of crabs at the least, and just accept you are making more jelly
than you need. You can always give a pot or two away.

till very soft, then strain through a
fine cloth or use a fruit press to extract juice,

Would a juicer do this?

I don't know. We did try a juicer to get the juice from medlars, but it
was hopeless - medlars just don't have that much juice. So I went back
to the traditional 'cover with boiling water and boil till soft method',
but that made it easy to use the fruit press, so I didn't bother with
the juicer.

Traditional method is to up-end a tall stool, take a square of muslin or
similar fine cloth and tie it to the 4 legs, and place a pan underneath
to catch the drips. Dump in the cooked fruit pulp and leave it to drip
overnight. You can help it along a bit by putting a large plate on top
and stacking some weights on the plate.


Thank you for that lovely recipe.

It's the basic recipe for all fruits and jams. Step 1 - extract the
juice and the flavour using as little added water as you can get away
with (much easier with, say, raspberries or mulberries). Step 2) - if
you want a jelly - strain the juice. If you want a jam, don't bother
Step 3) add sugar 1lb to 1 pt and boil.

When boiling, first there's a long period with the juice at 100deg C as
you boil off all that added water, then the sugar solution can start
moving to a higher temperature until it gets to the jam stage - leave it
boiling too long and it will turn into toffee. You might feel more
confident to begin with with a jam thermometer, though I find the
wrinkle test a lot easier, and you will also get a feel for the
temperature from the consistency and colour. And use as big a pan as you
can - it's best to boil it quite fast, and if you do, it will have about
4inches of froth on top at one stage. If your pan is not large enough,
then you'll have to boil more gently and keep a much closer eye on it.

As well as crabs, you can make a jelly from rowan berries or japanese
quince, or elderberries. Or rosehips if you strain well enough to get
rid of the hairs.

Thank you very much, that's opened up a whole new world in my garden.

This year I shall dedicate one of my
trees to this task and will call it K Jelly.

Don't mix it up with the very similarly named product ;-)

Especially on the cheese!!