Recipes

Over the years we have made many fantastic dishes from the fruit we harvest.  Here is a list of some of our favourites – we’ll try to provide a link to each one when we next make them:

Brittonie’s Apple Samosas

Pastry:

1.5 cups flour

mixed spice (to taste) – ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg

teaspoon sugar

pinch salt

Cut in half cup of butter or butter substitute, add 3-4 teaspoons cold water and mix until doughy. Form dough into ball and refrigerate.

Filling:

Cut 4-6 small apples into small pea sized pieces.

Add 0.5 – 0.75 cup sugar (individual preference);

half teaspoon of: cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, cardamon;

2-4 tablespoons of sunflower and pumpkin seeds (or walnuts or sultanas etc);

juice of one lemon;

tablespoon of corn starch (corn flour) as thickening agent.

Mix together.

Assembly and cooking:

Preheat oven to 180 C. Line baking sheet with non stick tinfoil, or flour.

Remove dough from fridge and cut into 2 halves. Coat roller and surface with some flour, and roll out dough 5mm thick give or take.

Cut dough into triangles (you will need 2 triangles for each pastry).

Place bottom triangle on baking sheet.

(Optional: beat 1 egg with tablespoon of milk – to help seal pastry and add shine to exterior top. Here you can paint the edge of the triangle with the egg mixture.)

Add 1-3 teaspoons of the filling in the centre of the triangle leaving room for top triangle to connect.

Place top piece  and crimp edges down with a fork on all sides (this will seal the filling in).

Paint egg mixture on top. Add sliced almonds, sprinkle any spice or sugar preferred.

Bake 20 min or until golden brown (check after 10 min).

Fergus’s Plum Jam

Fergus’s photo account of how he makes plum jam.

Paola’s Apple Strudel

Rob’s Apple Leather

Apple leather is a bit like an old-fashioned wham bar.  It’s a great way to get rid of all those cosmetically challenged apples you have at the end of the harvest season.  The bars are surprisingly popular with children.

Alice’s Apple Sorbet

This was made for the Winter Feast at Old St Paul’s on the 1st of December 2011, and it was delicious!

24 smallish apples
juice of 5 lemons
500ml apple juice
500g sugar
cinnamon, other spices/flavourings to taste (you can add almond essence)

Peel and core apples and stew with other ingredients for about 20 minutes until forming a sauce. Mix with a blender until super-smooth. Place in an ice cream churner, pack with ice and churn for about an hour till sorbet is formed. Store in freezer until needed.

(The Winter Feast sorbet was made using an old-fashioned churner as shown here. You could use a modern ice cream maker and do it with less time and effort.)

Pessi’s Abundance Cider

In 2010 our apple cider was made following a day of juicing organised by Jona and others. The brew was watched over by Pessi, and left outdoors through the winter to ensure for a slow fermentation. The month of snow we had in January certainly kept it cool, and we had fantastic results. The mix our apples we had – a large proportion were ‘dual-purpose’ apples from the Royal Edinburgh hospital orchard – ensured that our cider had a complex je-ne-sais-quoi flavour.  It’s really good stuff compared to most homebrewed ciders, and better than what passes for cider in most shops. There is still some in the Abundance cellar, which we are keeping for a comparative tasting when the 2011 cider is ready in 2012.

2009 Abundance Perry

OK, so our pear cider wasn’t so successful in 2009. We did however find a wonderful source of Doyenne du Comice pears in South Edinburgh, so this is something we hope to improve on in future…