How to preserve an abundance of Achocha

If you grow achocha (or cucumbers), you'll know how many small fruits you get in the autumn. Here's two quick and easy preserves to deal with the glut, with a printable pdf for your recipe file.

So what do you do when nature has decided to dump your entire achocha harvest in your lap (metaphorically speaking) all at once?  You can either eat small green porcupine peppers for the next two weeks at every meal - a task fit to stretch anyone's culinary creativity - or you can turn to the preserving books on your (or the local library's) shelves.  I opted to preserve most and cook a few.

As a keen forager (when I have time) and grower, I have several excellent preserving books. Although there's a wealth of advice on the internet, I prefer the tried and tested methods that have made it into print. This time I looked through Piers Warren's How to Store your Garden Produce (reviewed here)  and, newly gifted to my collection, The National Trust book of Jams and Preserves. This is an extremely handsome book that has inspired a wealth of ideas for next year's garden produce.

I had to really think about which recipes I could use; after all, achocha is not your usual allotment fare. Botanically speaking, achocha (Cyclanthera) are classified as a subtribe of curcubits, the same family as pumpkins, squash, courgettes, gourds, melons, cucumbers and, yes, even loofahs. Having said that, they're not fleshy like pumpkins and the mature fruits don't have the watery flesh of melons and cucumbers. For cooking purposes, achocha can be used like a diminutive cousin of the sweet green pepper. However, the pepper preserving recipes I found seemed to be aimed at chilli peppers so in the end I decided I'd be safe treating the fruits as cucumbers.  Whew, decision reached.

You might at this stage wonder why I didn't consider freezing them. Well, apparently extreme cold breaks down the cell membranes so they turn to unpleasant mush on defrosting.  My chosen recipes of cucumber achocha jam and sweet cucumber achocha pickle sounded much nicer. I don't usually eat pickle but I dislike wasting food and had the pickle ingredients in the cupboard; also I was intrigued by the thought of cucumber jam. Hmm, savoury jam? A bit odd but I thought I'd give it a go and it turned out to be surprisingly delicious. The author, Piers Warren, suggests the option of adding a good pinch of ground ginger to the jam at simmering stage which I did - along with a pinch of cinnamon for good measure and the finely grated zest as well as the required juice of a lemon.

I've yet to try the pickle.  Apparently the original recipe will go nicely with fish and chips. Again, I got creative with the recipe by adding in yellow peppers, chillies and mustard seeds to my sliced up achocha and shallots - it should give quite a pop of flavour!

A printable pdf of my jam and pickle recipes can be found here; could be useful for those who've decided to give the seeds a go next year. I'm thinking now of growing achocha fruits specifically for making this jam next year - it's delicious on bread with cheese.

No more pretending

That's it then. The garden and I have been firmly tipped into autumn this past week. Ten days ago, I enjoyed a lovely warm sunny afternoon and then, the very next day, got soaked tying up some garden waste bags. The sky went from drizzle to deluge in minutes and, despite a showerproof coat, I was literally soaked to the skin (and feet) in minutes. Hence the filthy cold that has dogged me for the past few days. Cough, sniffle, sneeze - evenings spent heading off early to a cozy bed with a stack of books and a hot drink.  I love those clouds with silver linings.

Ferocious wind and rain last weekend flattened so many plants in the garden.  There was more torrential rain on Monday morning but I took advantage of a break in the clouds to get outdoors. The air in the garden smelled of crushed lovage (a bit like spicy celery and a lovely herb to add to soups and stocks) and several of the brassicas will need staking up but, on the plus side, everything sparkled with a dusting of raindrops.

The biggest of my courgette plants has been toppled by the storms.  I'd picked the monster courgette/marrow the night before (luckily) with a handful of tomatoes and some spring onions. I've been putting together a new Pinterest board of seasonal recipes which I call 'Autumn in the Kitchen' (See? over there on the right!) and rather liked the look of a stuffed courgette creation that I came across. I cooked this last night, sharing half the giant courgette with my gardening neighbour, and tweaked the recipe to use up a few pre-weekend-shopping fridge ends - a bit of chopped red pepper, a few mushrooms, a shallot, the spring onions from the garden, chopped garlic, some bacon, half a small pot of yogurt. The giant courgette was gutted and it's innards chopped and added to the mix which was then piled back into the shell. Popped in the oven for 20 minutes with cheese on top, it was delicious and made more so by the smug feeling of having eaten really healthily. I love adaptable recipes and will make this one again, maybe next time using breadcrumbs or rice in the stuffing. It was a bit dark to take a photo of the finished result - sorry.

Trawling through the internet for culinary inspiration using seasonal fruit and veg is a really fun way to anticipate the pleasures of autumn. Once the evenings get darker, I'm happy to be found in the kitchen cooking up sturdier, warming food - stews, casseroles, pies and cakes.  I've found some tempting recipes (butternut squash pancakes with sage butter, pear and damson breakfast muffins, plum pudding cake),  mm-mmm, sounds good! For now I'm still eating at least one salad each day with homemade coleslaw, (love that crunch!) but am adding bookmarks to two wonderful books that I've borrowed from my local library.  Serious slimmers should avert their eyes now.

Excitingly (for me), I have "first fingers" (as my son would say) on these books; childishly, it gives me huge pleasure to be the very first person to open the pages of a new addition to the library and these two are a couple of corkers for the autumn recipe hunter. I've already got my eye on blueberry bread and butter pudding from Rachel Allen and will definitely be making sweet beetroot pie (in the tradition of an American pumpkin pie) from Paul "Great British Bake-Off" Hollywood.  And there was me thinking that, with my son at uni, now would be a good time to try and lose a few pounds.  

I've spent a lot of catching up time in the kitchen this past week, bottling tomatoes and making plum jam and fruit roll-ups (recipes will be forthcoming) but there is a tiny glimpse of blue between grey clouds today so I think a bit more garden tidying is in order … especially as for tea I have a Plum and Cinnamon crumble cake whose recipe I've rediscovered having used it to bookmark a recipe for a spicy carrot and tomato relish.  I definitely need to get out more, if only for the sake of my waistline!

Ma-hoo-sive marrow (courgette); the last of my homegrown tomatoes on toast (Yellow Pear and Cherriettes of Fire);
Plum and Cinnamon Crumble cake with Elixir of Sage, recently bottled; Plum cake being assembled.