Waiter, there's something in my... savoury preserve! - the round-up

*** Two late entries added below *** (update 3 Oct 07)

Another great round of "Waiter, there's something in my...!", co-hosted by Cook sister!, SpittoonExtra and myself, has come and gone and we've had some wonderful contributions surrounding the theme of "savoury preserves". Participation was a bit lower than I would have hoped, but I have a feeling this may be attributed to a certain pickling fatigue brought about by the fact that there was another event with a very similar theme - check out the International Pickle Day round-up for more great ideas on pickling! With all those recipes under your belt, you certainly won't get bored this autumn and should give the Women's Institute a run for their money!

Preserving in oil

Cook sister!, one of the co-founders of this event, has rather a lot of time on her hands one fine Saturday and decides to slow-roast tomatoes until they're all shrivelled and full of concentrated sugar. If only all things grew better with age, I would just jump for joy at every new wrinkle appearing in my face, but alas...

As for myself, thepassionatecook, I decided to re-create a holiday treat I encountered in Tuscany: Pecorino sott'olio thin slices of matured Pecorino di Pienza cheese drowsed in a mild olive oil flavoured with pepeoncini, garlic and peppercorns - a big new favourite as an aperitif nibble or as part of a cheese platter!

Preserving in vinegar

*** "Pampaganang Espesyal", as they call it, is being cooked up in 80 Breakfasts's kitchen, call it a very special, moreish creation of pickles you can't get enough of. This one consists of radishes and its sweet, acidic tang and crunchy texture is apparently scarily addictive - you have been warned!

Cook (almost) anything... at least once travels to Italy, but not before sharing her recipe for a staple on any antipasti platter. Giardinera is ready to consume the minute you finish making it... which makes it perfect if patience is not your thing - you might want to let it cool down, though!

From the beautiful shores of Croatia, with its rich harvest of sea fennel, hails fresh adriatic fish who gets her sister to do the picking, while she takes charge of the pickling. Preserved in vinegar and water, this age-old accompaniment for meat and fish has been a firm favourite since Roman times, apparently!

Küchenlatein used to hate the pickles she grew up with... until one day she discovered just how fantastic they taste when preserved in a sweet-and-sour liquid. So she gets out an old recipe book inherited from her gran and sets out to conserve Asia gherkins  with lots of exotic condiments sure to win you over, too!

After taming kumquat into a light syrup earlier in the month, La vida en Buenos Aires braves sweet red peppers for this month's challenge. Use warm or cold to accompany lamb or pork dishes or just consume as is - and brush up your Spanish and Portuguese as you peruse of the recipe!

Meet resident gherkin expert vegan visitor who swears that size is important - just this once. She loves hers garlicky, dilly, crisp, small... and definitely crunchy! Getting out some beautiful jars from the basement, she also proves that she was right to keep them all those years - waste of space? No way!

Zlamushka's Spicy Kitchen stuffs raisins into spicy chillies of varying shapes and colours... and finds talking pickles to be a better much better pick-up line than bringing up the weather - it seems to work in Slovakia, at least, but I guess fiery chillies speak a universal language!

Chutneys, relishes, et al...

Blog from our kitchen leaves no kitchen utensil unturned as she goes on the hunt for all the equipment needed to make some delectable peach chutney. The girl has stamina, believe me, and even the courage to go about preserving without a "lid wand"... by raise of hands: who actually owns one of those?

If you never thought you could grow lemongrass in your garden, think again! Cafe Lynnylu has so much of the stuff she turns it into a lemongrass & ginger jelly... which she is planning to use for this year's Thanksgiving dinner - if she can keep herself from "trying" the stuff twice a day, that is!

Tempting as it is, it's unlikely that you will be trying this at home: Canela y Comino's cocona chutney is made from the exotic fruit of the same name and the spices that give her blog its name. Unless, that is, you find yourself in Peru at the time and 'tis their season, but nothing's keeping you from craving it, of course!

Cookery Corner spent 19 days preparing for this month's challenge, so it's only fair that you pay her a visit to check out those fabulous pickled limes. I applaud anybody who can wait that long to see the fruits of their labour... I find it tough enough a job  having to bake that darn cookie dough for 19 minutes before I eat it!

If you're concerned about your heart, you might consider delving into En Samayal Arai's amla pickle - amlas are gooseberries and with their high vitamin C content, they're also an excellent way of fending off a cold as well... just what we need on those chilly winter days, right?

Food Good to Eat makes a real Estonian summer treat with pickled cucumber salad. Preserved in their own juices, this way of serving cucumbers is a light summer treat that works well with fish or pretty much anything, really.

Get out your dried fruit and follow Fun and Food's footsteps to make date, raisin & tamarind chutney. Fennel seeds, green chillies and mustard greens all combine to a wonderful spread with a unique aroma.

Ginger has always been something that works both on the savoury and the sweet front - hey, that tastes good! packs all the roots she can find into jars full to the brim with ginger jam, to be enjoyed with cheese, roast chicken or just spooned out of the jar!

Half a kilo of the stuff is roughly the daily amount of spicy or mild ajvar that Maninas: Food Matters will consume in a day - no wonder this red pepper & aubergine relish is produced in such large quantities in the South-East of Europe, if one students gets through almost 200 kg a year!

Married... with dinner can tell you a story or two about processing 100 kg of tomatoes... but shares the tastiest spoonfuls with you in the form of her tomato & bourbon jam. You might call this a ketchup - but don't! or you'll have the kids dancing on the table over supper!

Maybahay swaps her high heels for some fresh fruit and veg when she goes shopping these days... I wish the girl was in charge of the chutney station at my local Indian, as I cannot think of anything more delectable than her rhubarb & pineapple chutney! Forget shoes, get me some pappadums - NOW!

Spicy Italian ketchup features high on Mrs. W's kitchen shelves, especially since the recipe is diabetic-friendly, avoiding the usual loads of corn syrup that make any insulin-conscious eater gasp. Home-made's way better than store-bought anytime, though, diabetic or not!

She's picky when it comes to using raisins in her cooking, but this spicy gooseberry chutney is just the ticket. Tangy and sweet at the same time, it's an excellent accompaniment for pork and chicken and Nami-Nami reckons it's the whole spices as well as the beautiful colour that makes it stand out from the crowd.

Pertelote finally gets over her blogger's block when she turns a bucket of tomatoes into a wonderful chutney spiced with smoked paprika, coriander, mustard seeds and garlic for good measure. Certainly a good way to use up all those tomatoes that grew rampage in her garden, shame my yield was too small this year...

A zen-like state is conjured up by Tasty Palettes as she makes a sundried tomato and walnut chutney. Forget all that scrubbing, dusting and polishing, if you're after some real calm, read the book the recipe comes from and get a lesson in zen teachings while you're preserving!

The Domestic Goddess rises from her sickbed to whip up some cranberry chutney that works perfectly not only as an appetiser that is easily put together for guests to kill off the first hunger, but also as a grand finale to a perfect meal on a cheese platter - definitely one to try for this year's festive season!

Green fried tomatoes find their way into a chutney over at The Golden Shrimp. Does it seem like a waste to you to grow plants only to harvest the fruits when they're not yet ripe? But then again, it shortens the wait for this tasty preserve considerably... so who am I to argue!

She might be finding it hard to adapt to the harsh weather in her adopted country of England, but if more things like that delectable Nectarine & chilli relish hit the shelves of Vanielje Kitchen's pantry, I am sure her husband and daughter won't mind bracing the winds on their own...

*** For once, Wine & Food can travel lightly, simply through home-made pear chutney - no more smuggling across the border from the UK, simply cook some pear with spices and vinegar and it'll stand united with all those cornichons, tapenades and green nut jams they like so much...

Thanks to everybody for taking the time to participate, it's been a great round and I am looking forward to trying lots of new recipes very soon!

Comments

[Sanja]

what a great list! This one goes to my bookmark directly! Great job Johanna!

[UlrikeU]

So many great entries, thanks for hosting this event and put it all together.

[Zlamushka]

Hey Johanna,

thank you very much for letting me participate. This was a real nice event. I am hosting my own, which is very similar to this one. Now that you have so much inspiration, maybe you could give it a shot ? Try me here:
http://www.burntmouth.com/2007/10/spoonful-of-christmas.html

[andreea]

ahhh I just published my waiter :)(am actually in london and wireless connection is pretty much nonexistent ...)

[ejm]

What a great round up! This WTSIM... event really is brilliant. Thanks for the stretch!

-Elizabeth

P.S. I still don't have a lid wand but I do love the idea of it! Imagine how fun it would be to play with. (I wonder if it's strong enough to lift the pot lids off their hooks on the wall.)

[johanna]

all, i am glad you enjoyed the round-up and am sure you'll find loads of inspiration for some christmas presents as well ;-)

elizabeth, You know, I don’t have a lid wand, but am using something my mum bought me because I keep burning myself when taking things out of the oven: they’re tongs that allow you to catch a baking dish, casserole, pie dish, ramekin etc by the rim and take it out safely (especially useful when they’re sitting in a waterbath!). a godsend!

andreea, will try and add your entry as soon as i get a moment!

[Amanda]

Awesome roundup! Thanks for the opportunity to participate!

[african vanielje]

Hey Johanna. Great roundup, and I think there are more than enough fab recipes to try. Quality not quantity is obviously the way to go this time. We use to have a kumquat tree, but I have yet to find them here, and I am always willing to try a new green tomato chutney recipe. Sorry, it's taken me a while but my computer has been in rehab, leaving me plenty of time to polish off all that nectarine relish. So I need to restock. Thanks for the great roundup of otential candidates...

[Gretchen Noelle]

Thanks for "rounding up" all these recipes! I was just invited to teach a chutney workshop at the end of the month, so it will be my pleasure to try out a few more of these delicious ideas!

[Dayna]

What a wonderful round up.
As always, everything looks great!
Thank you!

[maninas: food matters]

hahahaa come on i didn't eat 500 g of ajvar _every_ day! :D

wonderful round-up, btw! I love the way you introduced every entry.

[maybahay]

fabulous recipes. great job on the round-up. thanks very much for hosting it johanna.

[Jeanne]

What a fab collection of recipes (and I see that we are once again the Borg, being the only two who preserved things in oil...!) I agree with African Vanielje above - quality rather than quantity is the way forward - and there's certainyl no shortage of that here :) Thanks for being a great host.

[Vida]

Amazing, you've blown me away, how on earth can I keep and try all these????!!!! I will give it my best shot, thank you!!!! Vida x

[Suganya]

What a wonderful round-up! I see unique recipes here that draw my attention. Thanks for letting us participate and learn more :)

[joey]

What a fantastic round up! Each entry seems so interesting and different...and absolutely delicious! :) Ok, time to start bookmarking!

Thanks again for squeezing me in! You are too kind! :)

[Sylvia]

I really enjoy in participate.You are a great host

[Susan from Food Blogga]

When I read "savory preserves," I don't know why I didn't think of chutneys. Duh. This round-up is quite inspirational; they're many dishes I wouldn't have thought of making but would love to try. Thanks!