Slow Cooked: 200 exciting, new recipes for your slow cooker (32 page)
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Authors: Miss South
PRESERVED LEMONS
You probably think these are very expensive and difficult to make due to the price of them in those tiny jars in the posh aisle of the supermarket, but in all honesty, they are easier to make than falling off a log. You need lemons, salt and about three weeks’ waiting time, but they are incredibly simple to prepare. Make a jarful and use them any time you want to perk up a roast chicken or a stew.
Don’t be freaked out by the amount of salt. You are creating a brine to essentially pickle the lemons and you aren’t eating it all. I use coarse sea salt, which you can buy in any supermarket cheaply. You don’t need a fancy version.
FILLS A 500ML KILNER JAR
12 lemons
4 tablespoons sea salt
1 dried chilli
1 tablespoon black peppercorns
bottled lemon juice, as needed
Prepare the lemons for preserving by splitting 4 of them from top to bottom, making sure you leave about 1cm of the base intact. Repeat so you have four splits, but the lemon is still held together at the base.
Holding the lemon over a plate, pour a tablespoon of sea salt crystals into the lemon. Don’t worry if some drops onto the plate. Squash the lemon tightly into a Kilner jar. Repeat with the other 3 lemons. You want them wedged tightly in the jar. Put the chilli and the peppercorns in as well.
Juice the remaining 8 lemons over the salt-filled ones. You need them to be covered with the lemon juice to allow them to be preserved. Top up the jar with bottled lemon juice if needs be.
Close the lid on the jar and leave to preserve for at least 3 weeks. The flesh and peel will soften and you can dip into the jar as needed. The flavour is intense so a little goes a long way. They will last up to 6 months non-refrigerated in the jar as long as the lemons are submerged in the lemon juice.
Traditionally from the Philippines, banana ketchup is sweet, sour, salty and savoury all at once. I cannot remember how I first discovered it, but I fell in love immediately. This is what I want on a bacon butty and luckily it’s really easy to make since you can’t get it very easily – unless you also happen to frequent the shop in Guy’s Hospital in South London with its extensive Filipino grocery section…
The secret is to cook half the bananas to get the texture right and then mash the other half in right at the end. I’ve seen people eat a whole jar of this in one sitting with a meal and then ask for the recipe.
MAKES 5 × 300ML JARS
6 very ripe bananas
1 onion, finely diced
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
1 Scotch bonnet pepper, finely chopped (or 2 red chillies)
4cm piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground allspice
½ teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon tamarind syrup (see
here
)
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon tomato purée
3 tablespoons brown sugar
150ml vinegar
200ml water
This ketchup is a great savoury way to use up the over ripe bananas in the fruit bowl as the fruit needs flavour. Peel half the bananas and chop them roughly into the slow-cooker crock. Add all the other ingredients, reserving 3 bananas for later.
Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook everything on low for 5 hours. It will all soften and collapse together at this stage. Mash it all together with a potato masher so it is smoother, but with enough texture to keep it interesting.
Mash the remaining 3 bananas together well and mix them into the hot ketchup. Spoon it all into sterilised jars and seal immediately. The ketchup will keep in a dark place unopened for 3–4 months and the flavours will intensify. It will keep for 4 weeks in the fridge when opened.
Note:
See
here
for an explanation of how to make the tamarind syrup. The concentrate versions are too sharp here with the delicate bananas.
One of my favourite books as a child was called
Mrs Pig’s Bulk Buy
. Mr and Mrs Pig had ten little piglets and those piglets were ketchup fiends. Mr Pig had to buy the stuff in catering jars and feed it to them in lieu of actual meals to keep up. It taught me a thing or two about good ketchup.
Good ketchup lifts a chip to something sublime and takes a bacon sandwich to brilliance. I’ve even been known to use a potato waffle as a vehicle for good ketchup after a night out when I was a student. Ketchup should be intensely tomato-rich with the mellowness of sugar and the tang of ketchup. It shouldn’t just be artificially red and gloopy.
This is a recipe for the home-made ketchup you’ve always wanted to make, but thought you needed tonnes of toms to do so. It uses ordinary tinned plum tomatoes and if your family are as ketchup crazed as the little pigs, then you can make it in bulk for much less than the branded versions. It’s so good, you’ll be pigging out in no time.
MAKES 5 × 300ML JARS
1 small onion, finely diced
2 stalks of celery, finely diced
2 × 400g tins plum tomatoes
1 tablespoon paprika
1 tablespoon celery salt
1 tablespoon mustard powder
4 tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon tamarind syrup (see
here
) (optional)
2 tablespoons tomato purée
100ml vinegar (any will work)
1 teaspoon chilli powder (if liked)
This is ridiculously simple to make.
Put the onion and celery in the slow-cooker crock along with the plum tomatoes and any juice from the tins. Using a spoon or spatula, break the tomatoes up into rough chunks. I use the best-quality plum tomatoes for this, which I buy when they are on offer.
Add in the spices and sugar. Dollop the tamarind syrup in along with the tomato purée and mix well. Pour the vinegar over it all. I use cider vinegar as that’s what I have, but even malt will work well. Balsamic will make the ketchup darker and works well if you aren’t using the tangy, savoury tamarind.
Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the ketchup on low for 7–8 hours. The ketchup will have reduced and darkened slightly.
Now blend the ketchup in the crock using a hand blender. Make sure there are no lumps of tomato at all. The ketchup will be velvety and should be halfway between thickened and liquid in texture. If you’d like it a little bit thicker, turn the heat up to high and give it another 2 hours to reduce it a little more.
When the texture is as desired, pour the ketchup into sterilised jars or bottles and allow to cool before storing. It will last for about 6 months unopened and up to 3 months in the fridge once you open it.
Who doesn’t love a bit of chutney on the side of their cheese plate? It adds some delicious tangy taste while using up those seasonal gluts of fruit and veg. They are a great British tradition, as is the pervasive smell of hot vinegar throughout the house when you make it. Luckily though, when you make chutney in a slow cooker, this aroma is minimised while the flavour is kept to a maximum. When chutney is this easy to make you, you’ll find yourself experimenting with all kinds of flavours and impressing people with your homemade varieties. Much better than buying small jars of it for large prices.
MAKES 6 × 300ML JARS
1kg tomatoes
2 red onions, finely chopped
2 apples
4 cloves of garlic, chopped
1 red chilli, chopped
4cm piece of fresh ginger, finely chopped
1 teaspoon smoked paprika
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
½ teaspoon black peppercorns
½ teaspoon mustard powder
5 whole cloves
3 allspice berries
150g brown sugar
500ml red wine or cider vinegar
salt
Start by skinning your tomatoes. Cut a cross into the top and bottom of each one, place in a bowl and pour some boiling water over them. Allow to sit for 1–2 minutes and then lift out with a slotted spoon. Once cool enough to handle, you can just peel the skins off.
Cut each tomato into quarters, removing the stem at the top. Cut each quarter in half and add them all to the slow-cooker crock along with any juice from the tomatoes. Add the chopped onion. Peel and core the apples and then cut them into 2cm cubes, mixing them in with the onion and tomatoes.
Toss in the garlic and the chilli, adding the seeds if you like a little warmth to your chutney. I scatter the ginger and spices into the chutney directly as I don’t mind finding the odd clove in my chutney. Stir in the sugar (brown sugar is less sickly sweet than white here).
Cover it all with the red wine vinegar. I like the rich but mellow taste of a wine or cider vinegar here. Chutneys made with white or malt vinegar are just too astringent for my tastes and something like balsamic is too overpowering.
Season it all well and put the lid on the slow cooker. It will seem like an enormous amount of chutney, especially if you are using a 3.5-litre slow cooker, which will be full almost to the brim. Don’t worry, the tomatoes will reduce in volume as they cook, but I give mine 2 hours longer than most recipes to allow for the crock being so full as this can reduce the heat of the slow cooker.
Cook the chutney on high for 10 hours. It will reduce by about half and become darker in colour without too much liquid. Spoon it into sterilised jars along with any remaining liquid and seal quickly. It can be eaten immediately, but is best left to mature in a cool, dark place for 1–3 months.
Don’t forget to label each batch with dates and the main ingredient as you’ll make so many kinds in the slow cooker you’ll get confused!
I find it very hard to hold back from the poppadoms and pickles when I go out for Indian food. There’s just something about the mixture of crunchiness and softness along with all those flavours that means I almost always spoil my appetite, scooping up every last scrap. Lime pickle goes down especially well with its mix of tanginess and spice and this recipe combines the two perfectly. It’s a little stickier and more marmalade-like than some versions of this as the spices slow-cook down beautifully. I guess it’s an Irish-Indian version of this famous pickle.
This is a serious slow-cooking recipe. You start by salting the limes for several days to pickle them and then slowly cook them together with the spices, so you can’t rush this one!
MAKES 5 × 300ML JARS
8 limes
2 tablespoons sea salt
3 cloves of garlic
5cm piece of fresh ginger
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon coriander seeds
1 teaspoon onion seeds
1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
1 teaspoon chilli flakes
100g sugar
250ml cold water
Begin by preparing your limes. Cut each one in half from top to bottom. Cut each half in half again. Then cut those halves in half so each lime becomes 8 pieces. Put them in a non-metallic dish (your slow-cooker crock is perfect if you don’t need it for a day or two) and cover with the sea salt.
Put the lid on the crock or cover it with a tea towel and leave the limes to pickle for 2 days. Try and put them somewhere that isn’t too warm or in direct sunlight. After 2 days, drain off the liquid the limes will have given off, but don’t rinse them.
I purée up the garlic and ginger or you can finely chop it. Put both in the crock with the pickled limes. Add the spices and sugar. Pour the water over it all. Put the lid on the slow cooker and cook the pickle on low for 10 hours. You want the flesh of the limes to collapse into the pickle to thicken it all and the rinds to become soft enough to squash with the side of a spoon.
