Читать книгу Preserves: A beginner’s guide to making jams and jellies, chutneys and pickles, sauces and ketchups, syrups and alcoholic sips - Jill Nice - Страница 5

Preserving is an ancient method of extending the keeping qualities of a wide variety of ingredients. Traditionally used to make the most of a glut of seasonal produce, it is still very popular today and potting up and preserving delicious surplus foods has become a creative, worthwhile and sometimes even profitable hobby.

Preserving has a considerably different motivation nowadays than in the past, when the desire to put food by, whilst it was available in quantity, was a driving force and could literally mean the difference between life and death. Today, our desire to preserve food is to provide better choices for our families, to ensure the food we eat is pure, wholesome and unadulterated, to make the best possible use of local and freshly grown produce and to make the most of the best available ingredients. There is also, of course, the undoubted facts that your own preserves will taste superior and give you much more value for money than if you opt for the shop-bought variety.

I often hear people say how they think making jam is so time-consuming, so here I’ve made the quantities easily manageable and the methods as simple as possible. There is no longer the need to pot up tons of fruit and vegetables to see us through the bleak months of winter – the availability of produce throughout the year and the ability to store food in fridges and freezers has changed all that.

Making your own preserves has become more a desire to experiment and produce the unusual and different, to offer up exciting choices for the table and to make exotic presents for your friends and family – who could resist homemade Peaches in Brandy Wine or Cranberry and Kumquat Pickle? There is also the possibility of all the wonderful tarts, pies and puddings filled with your own creations, those mouthwatering mixtures of apples, pears and plums; rhubarb jam, preserves of gooseberry and apricot with names redolent of the countryside – September Jam, High Derry Down Conserve and Blackberry and Raspberry Jelly.

The cold table has never looked so appetising either – jars of pickled and spiced fruits and vegetables add sparkle to a platter of cold meats and salads. Rich and flavourful chutneys boost homemade crusty bread with a good cheese; spicy sauces and jellies complement tasty pâtés or pies, to say nothing of perking up a plate of bangers and mash.

Preserving all this natural bounty brings out the most ancient of our squirrelling instincts, to put by today what we may not have tomorrow. However, unlike the squirrel, we do not have to search for our hidden bounty beneath a tree, but can gaze upon shelves of glowing and colourful pots and feel eminently pleased with ourselves and the fruits of our labours.