I bookmarked Jacqueline’s bookmarked recipe challenge, originally started by Ruth, a couple of weeks ago. I have tons of bookmarked recipes: a long list in my browser bookmarks, a few more stashed in Evernote, a box full of magazine and newspaper clippings, cookbooks bristling with Post-Its and bookdarts. Where to start?

Well, my recent browse through Margaret Costa’s Four Seasons Cookbook provided inspiration in the form of tomato and pepper chutney, now maturing nicely in the larder. There’s something very satisfying about starting out with a pan full of chopped vegetables, reeking of vinegar, and finishing with these glowing jars of glossy red chutney, and it kickstarted me into more preserving. After a quick detour into Delia’s famous mincemeat, which I’ve had a printout of for ages and never made, I was prompted by the Cottage Smallholder site, fount of all knowledge about preserving, to make some sweet chilli jam using a recipe from the BBC Good Food site, a frequent source of bookmarked recipes. I love chilli jam and jelly — they make a lovely relish for cheesy and eggy things, and I’m also partial to them with scallops. I bet both jam and chutney will go very nicely with turkey too.

This is my version of the chilli jam recipe. I found the original rather imprecise in some ways. For example, it gives weights for some ingredients but then just specifies “8 red peppers”. Mine were huge, at least double the normal size, so I used four. Then it says “10 red chillies”, without any qualification — a little dangerous in my view. Throw in 10 Scotch Bonnet chillies with their seeds and the jam will blow your head off. I did like one comment on the BBC site which queried the “finger-sized piece of ginger” because “I have big hands”! As always, nothing beats tasting and adjusting as you go.

8 medium or 4 large red peppers
4-8 chillis, depending on taste
about 1 inch of root ginger
6-8 garlic cloves, peeled
400 g fresh tomatoes, or the equivalent of canned tomatoes
750 g golden caster sugar
250 ml red wine vinegar or cider vinegar

Deseed and roughly chop the peppers. Cut off a tiny bit of one of the chillies and taste it, then use your skill and judgement to decide how many to use and whether to include the seeds. Mine were large but not that hot; I used four, two with seeds and two without, and the end result was certainly hot enough for me. Roughly chop the chillies and throw them into a food processor with the red peppers and garlic. You’ll need to do this in a couple of batches. Whiz to chop everything finely, but don’t reduce to a puree. Tip into a large heavy pan. Wash your hands thoroughly to avoid any chilli-related accidents later.

If using fresh tomatoes, roughly chop them. You might also peel them; I didn’t bother, but later realised it might have been a good idea with the novelty black ones — I ended up fishing the black skin out of the jam with tongs because it didn’t look very nice! Grate the ginger into the pan and add the tomatoes, sugar, and vinegar. Bring up to the boil and simmer for about 50 minutes.

Put some clean, rinsed and dried jars and lids in a low oven (about 100 C) to sterilise them. At this point you might want to extract a spoonful of the jam, let it cool a little, and taste it. Then if you think it needs more chilli or ginger, you can add some. If you think it needs less, you’re a bit stuffed Turn up the heat a bit and boil until the jam gets thick and sticky and, well, jam-like. The original recipe says 10-15 minutes, but don’t rely on this. Mine took much longer, about 40 minutes. Just keep cooking, stirring very frequently to stop it catching. When it’s ready the bubbles will be big and gloopy, the jam will look glossy and translucent, and drawing the spoon across the bottom of the pan will leave a clear patch for a second.

Remove from the heat and pot in the hot jars, sealing well. It will apparently keep for 3 months, but the jars should be refrigerated once opened.

Pitting cherries must be one of the messiest jobs in the kitchen, but it is oh so worth it. I’m not very conscientious about wearing an apron, but this is one occasion when I swathe myself in my most voluminous apron, cover the table with newspaper, and settle down to a curiously relaxing session of pitting. We’ve eaten a lot of cherries this season – mainly because back in May I was irresistibly tempted by a 2-kg crate of cherries in a Spanish venta for only 5.60 euros. I got home wondering how on earth two of us were going to eat them all before they rotted. My new cookbook, The Real Taste of Spain, provided an answer: cherry compote. A monster, messy pitting session followed, especially as I had no cherry pitter to hand.

This recipe is so simple to do, and words cannot describe how delicious it is. For a week, our breakfast was a spoonful or two of this with dollops of Greek yoghurt, and we mourned when we scraped out the last few drops of syrup from the bowl. From then on we constantly looked out for affordable cherries, and whenever we found some, we bought at least a kilo to make some compote. The last batch is now in the freezer in several plastic boxes so that we can spin out the pleasure over the summer. So my advice is, if you make this, make plenty, it freezes really well. It goes with all sorts of things: with ice cream for an extra-special Cherries Jubilee, with yoghurt or cream, or spooned over an almond cake, for example.

Note: if you double the quantities, don’t double the amount of sugar and water, just leave it the same. The cherries will produce lots of lovely juice anyway.

500-600 g ripe cherries, pitted
100 ml water
150 g sugar
100 ml guignolet or cherry brandy (optional)

Put the cherries in a pan with the sugar and water. If you have some guignolet (a cherry-flavoured aperitif wine) or cherry brandy, you can add some, but it doesn’t really need it. Simmer very gently, uncovered, for 30-40 minutes, stirring occasionally. The cherries should be tender and glossy but still whole, and the juice syrupy. If the juice is still quite liquid when the cherries are done, remove the cherries with a slotted spoon and boil the liquid vigorously for 5 minutes or so, till it is thick and glossy. Then pour over the cherries. Store the compote in the fridge, where it will keep a couple of weeks (probably – it never lasts that long in our house) and serve either chilled or at room temperature.

I’ve enjoyed a few things from other people’s blogs recently, and these two recipes are definite keepers.

First, Fiona’s Belgian pears. I made a mental note to try these ages ago, prompted by the rave reviews on her blog. When I looked more closely, the ingredients and method looked really strange — cook pears in vinegar and sugar for six hours??? Wouldn’t they be reduced to mush? But I have absolute faith in Fiona’s tried and tested recipes, so small pears from the market at 90 centimes a kilo seemed a good opportunity to try it. They sat at a bare whisper of a simmer on top of the woodburner, and the small amount of vinegary liquid slowly transmuted into a quantity of mahogany coloured syrup. After five hours, we tentatively tried a couple of the very soft pears with a little of the liquid and a blob of crème fraîche. Wow, they were good! As Fiona says, they taste alcoholic even though they are not. And they look most impressive bottled — they would make lovely Christmas gifts.

Although I hesitate to vary from Fiona’s tried and tested recipes, to be honest (having done two batches now) I think you could cook them for less time. You have to handle them very, very carefully when bottling because they are so soft after six hours, even at an almost invisible simmer. The necessary juice is produced during the first three hours’ cooking. So I think the uncovered simmering could easily be reduced to two hours without detracting from the final result.

Next up, the weekly conundrum of the pumpkin in the veggie box. The Open University group of foodies came up with loads of ideas, and one of them caused me to google “pumpkin and carrot cake”, which brought me here. Yes! My somewhat amended recipe follows — no photo because the light wasn’t good and the icing was a bit of a disaster. But you can always look at the photos on Meeta’s post. The cake is dense, with a lovely spicy flavour, and a dark brown colour from the sugar. Good with or without the frosting. Oh, and if you don’t have any pumpkin I am sure it would be just as good with carrots alone.

I made a half-sized cake in a 22cm x 18cm tin, so quantities are adjusted accordingly.

Note: for a dairy-free version, you could probably replace the butter with vegetable oil. Or, I recently discovered almond puree (sold in jars in wholefood shops), which has the consistency of peanut butter and is a good butter substitute for cakes — with the plus of added almond flavour. For this recipe, I would use half and half almond puree and oil, because the puree would be too solid on its own I think.

150 g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
pinch of salt
150 g soft brown sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons mixed ground spices of your choice — I used equal quantities of ginger, cinnamon, and 4-épices
90 g dried or candied fruit (I used finely diced candied orange and lemon peel and a few dried cranberries)
100 g butter, melted
2 eggs, lightly beaten
zest of 1/2 an orange
juice of 1/4 of an orange (you’ll use the rest in the frosting)
160 g butternut squash or any other pumpkin, grated
90 g carrots, grated

The cake is easy to make. Pre-heat the oven to 180 C. Brush the tin with a little vegetable oil, then line it with baking parchment.

Put all the dry ingredients, including the dried fruit, in a large bowl and blend with a whisk.

Whisk the beaten eggs into the melted butter, then stir in the orange zest and juice (keep the rest of the zest and juice for the frosting). Beat the egg mixture into the flour mixture to make a thick batter. Fold the grated carrots and pumpkin into the batter.

Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 30 to 45 minutes (times depend on your oven and how wet the pumpkin is — mine took a good 45 minutes even though my tin was smaller than Meeta’s). The top of the cake should be dark gold and springy to the touch — test with a skewer or toothpick if you are not sure.

Cool the cake in the tin for about 5 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack, remove paper, and allow to cool completely before icing.

Cream cheese frosting
I used Meeta’s recipe, but it was a bit of a disaster. Even after a night in the fridge, it was really runny and certainly wouldn’t stand in peaks. I think my cream cheese must be different from hers (I used St-Moret). So here’s an adapted version of my usual cream cheese frosting.

60 g unsalted butter at room temperature
1 tbs orange juice
zest of 1/2 an orange, finely grated
75 g icing sugar
120 g mascarpone or cream cheese

Just beat all the ingredients together and chill in the fridge for half an hour before using.

Once done, store the cake in the fridge, but remove about 10 minutes before serving.

Well, no-one is ever likely to want to make a film about my attempt to cook my way through Delicious Days, so perhaps I needn’t feel too bad about falling off the wagon. I suddenly realised that Nicky had a way of using up some of the glut of tomatoes in our weekly organic vegetable box, so I quickly did a batch of these dried tomatoes. Barely a recipe: just halve or quarter your tomatoes, season with salt, pepper, garlic, and herbs to taste, and leave in a 90-degree oven for several hours till they are dried to your liking (I also used the residual heat after I’d used the oven for something else).

Mine are soft and semi-dried — I’m not sure how long they will keep, but I have covered them in olive oil (which can be used in salad dressings) and put them in the fridge. You can use them in salads, soups, as garnish for pizza, frittata, or quiche …

Even if I haven’t kept up with the challenge too well, I have still cooked more from this book than I might have done otherwise, and found some brilliant keepers — especially the ginger and lemon cordial, which is destined to become a summer standby, and the coffee panna cotta.

I managed to buy a jar of chilli jelly on a recent trip to the UK, but I’ve long fancied trying Fiona’s recipe and making my own; this stuff is too tasty and versatile to be reserved for special occasions. So I bought a couple of kilos of apples and eventually tracked down a selection of chillis in Carrefour (they can be difficult to find, since the French don’t do hot as in chilli).

The first lot didn’t look much like chillis I’ve seen before; they were relatively large and bell-shaped. “Do you think I should use one or two?” I asked Steve. He looked at them and scoffed. “Pah! They’re so big they can’t be hot, and they are French after all. Those small pointy ones will be hotter.” Boldly, he cut a bit off one of the bell-shaped ones and chewed it. A moment’s silence, then: “AAAAARGH!” Quickly, I handed him the antidote, a spoonful of yoghurt, and he swallowed it gratefully. “OK,” he croaked after a minute, “I’ll try the small ones.” Bravely he nibbled one: “Humph! Not hot at all!” Armed with this information I added one cut-up bell-shaped pepper, seeds and all, to my simmering apples.

The next day, I tried the disappointingly scanty juice that had dripped through the cloth. ‘Phwoarhhhh!” Luckily there was some yoghurt left. Well, maybe the sugar will tone it down. Hmm, only 400 ml of juice from 1.5 kg of apples? I did the maths in my head with difficulty, added the requisite sugar, and boiled it up — result, half a jar of jelly, admittedly a beautiful colour. This didn’t seem like good value, so I tipped the pulp back into the pan with more water and managed to get two more jars of pale, translucent jelly from it. Their innocent looks belie their ferocity though; I think I’ll have to put health warnings on them.

Later, a bit of googling suggests that Steve might have inadvertently scored a further point in the Omnivore’s Hundred: raw Scotch Bonnet pepper … if you try this recipe, I recommend you use less virulent chillis than I did, or at least remove the seeds!

The trouble with grapes is they don’t keep long, and you’d better believe you can’t give them away around here at harvest time. So we often end up throwing many of them away. This year I was determined not to, and grape jelly was about the only way I could think of for preserving them. A bit of googling turned up a site which looked interesting and had not one but two recipes for preserving grapes. And unlike many sites it was clear that they really had tried the recipes, repeatedly.

So these two recipes come from The Cottage Smallholder; I’m only copying them here because it would be unfortunate if next time around their site had disappeared! It looks well worth bookmarking if you are interested in home-grown food.

Grapes in grape liqueur

This one is a doddle to do. Verdict in a couple of months!
Ingredients:

• 850 g grapes, any sort
• 1 litre vodka
• 1 tsp sugar

Use a 2-litre wide-mouthed preserving jar. Sterilise it by washing and draining it, then put it in an oven at 110C for 10 minutes. Wash the grapes, remove from the stems and dry with a clean tea towel or kitchen paper. Drop into the jar, filling close to the top. Sprinkle over the sugar, pour in the vodka to cover, and seal.

That’s it! Leave in a cool dark place for six weeks, turning the jar occasionally. Serve after dinner in small glasses (a few grapes with a little liqueur spooned over). Keeps for up to a year

Grape jelly

• Grapes (see note below)
• 1 apple (optional).
• water
• sugar

Note: Our grapes have pips, which apparently contain enough pectin to set the jelly. I wasn’t too sure, so I added an apple, not cored or peeled, just chopped up, as recommended in the original recipe. If you are short of grapes, apple will also bulk it out a bit.

Wash the grapes and remove from stems, discarding any bad ones. Put in a deep heavy bottomed saucepan or preserving pan. Barely cover with water, bring to the boil, and simmer gently until the grapes are soft, squashing them occasionally with a large spoon or potato masher. This took about 15 minutes for me.

You need to rig up a jelly bag; for this you need a clean square of muslin (ironed to sterilise it), a pole or broom handle, a stool, and a piece of string. You’ll turn the stool upside down, put a bowl inside it, and suspend the bag full of fruit from the pole lodged on the bars of the stool, so that it drips into the bowl.

When the grapes are soft, place the muslin over the bowl, pour the grapes into it, bring the corners together and secure firmly with string before tying it to the broom handle. It needs to be high enough so that the bottom doesn’t touch the liquid in the bowl. Leave the jelly bag to drip overnight (or about 12 hours). Do not be tempted to squeeze it, or your jelly will be cloudy — just let it drip naturally.

At this point my juice was a nasty sludgy pink colour and I was not optimistic for the final result. But I needn’t have worried; after cooking it turned a beautiful gold colour. So don’t despair if it looks unappetising.

Measure the juice the next day, and sterilise some jam jars as above. Pour the juice into the preserving pan and add 1lb/454g of white granulated sugar for each 1pt/570ml of juice. Heat the juice and sugar gently, stirring from time to time, so as to make sure that that all the sugar has dissolved before bringing the liquid slowly to the boil. It will expand enormously so don’t overfill the pan! I had about 700 ml of juice and this made 3 small jars.

Continue to boil for about 10 minutes before testing for a set. Test every 3 to 5 minutes until setting point is reached. (mine was very firmly set after 10 minutes, but it obviously depends on the wateriness of your grapes. I would test earlier next time). Remove from heat while testing so it doesn’t continue to cook. Tossing in a nugget of butter towards the end will reduce the frothing that can occur.

When jelly has reached setting point pour into warm sterilised jars using a funnel and ladle. Cover immediately with plastic-lined screw top lids or waxed disks and cellophane tops secured with a rubber band. Label when cold and store in a cool, dark place.

Last year I made the best apricot jam I’ve ever made with these apricots, but I made so much we still have some jars left, so this time I “only” used 2kg of apricots for that. Another excellent and very easy way of keeping apricots is to preserve them raw in a mixture of syrup and alcohol. The resulting apricots are delicious in any cooked apricot dessert, or just as they are with cream or ice cream. And of course the preserving liquid makes a very nice digestif.

Apricot jam

1 kg ripe apricots
1 vanilla pod
750 g sugar
juice of 1 lemon

Start this the day before you want to cook it. Halve and stone the apricots and drop them into the preserving pan., layering them with the sugar, add the lemon juice and the vanilla pod, and if you want crack a few of the kernels, blanch the nuts in boiling water, slip the skins off and add the nuts too (you don’t have to eat them but they give a nice almond flavour to the jam). Cover and leave in a cool place for several hours or overnight.

The next day, put the pan on a moderate heat and cook until all the sugar has completely melted, about 15 minutes, skimming a few times at first. The boil fast for another 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally to stop it sticking. Check the setting point in the normal way, by putting a little on a cold saucer, and remove from the heat as soon as it is ready.

Meanwhile, sterilise the clean jars in the oven on a low heat. Extract the nuts if you can find them, pour the jam into the warm jars, and seal as normal.

Preserved apricots

Make a sugar syrup using twice the volume of sugar to water, i.e. if you use 2 mugs of sugar, add 1 mug of water. Put over a low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved, then simmer for 5 minutes.

Halve and stone the apricots and pack them into preserving jars, adding a vanilla pod to each jar. Again if you want you can add some blanched kernels or a couple of strips of orange peel. Pour in syrup to come a third of the way up the fruit, then top up with vodka or clear marc.

If you have difficulty getting the fruit to stay below the surface of the liquid (it goes unattractively brown if exposed, but is still edible), cover with a circle of waxed paper. Seal the jars and keep for at least a month before opening. Once open, either top up with more alcohol to keep the fruit covered, or store in the fridge and use the fruit quickly, straining off the liqueur into a bottle to enjoy more slowly.

This method can be used for all kinds of fruit. With soft, juicy fruit like raspberries you don’t need to make a syrup: just pour sugar into the jar, top up with spirit, and turn the jar occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Cherries, sloes etc. should be pricked with a darning needle before putting in the jar.

It can be done in the microwave, but I make it in a double boiler; it’s just as quick and you can see exactly when it’s ready.

4 large untreated lemons
4 eggs
225 g caster sugar
100g butter

Have ready some clean, warm jars (I wash and dry them, then put them in the oven at 100C while I’m making the curd).

Finely grate the lemon rind into a heatproof bowl. Squeeze the lemons. Beat the eggs, add the lemon juice to them, and strain them into the bowl with the zest. Add the sugar and the butter cut into small pieces.

Place over a pan of simmering water and stir more or less constantly until it thickens and looks glossy. This will only take a few minutes. Do not overheat or the eggs will curdle.

Remove from the heat and pour into jars.

Small to medium ripe tomatoes
salt
sugar
thyme (optional)
olive oil

Quarter the tomatoes and use a small knife to remove the seeds and central core so that you are left with little “petals”. As you do them, lay them on a lightly oiled baking sheet, skin-side down. Sprinkle with a little salt and sugar; you can also add some fresh thyme if you like.

Heat the oven to 110C, i.e. very low. Put the tomatoes on and cook for about 3 hours, until they are dryish but not browned.

Pack the tomatoes tightly into a small jar or jars (I popped mine in the oven with the tomatoes for 10 minutes to sterilise them, but I don’t know if this is really necessary). Top up with oil to cover the tomatoes, screw the lids on, and store. This reduces a lot of tomatoes to very little space. Use in sauces, as tart or pizza toppings etc. etc.

2 lb tomatoes
1 vanilla pod
2 lb sugar
1/2 pint water

In a wide preserving pan, boil the sugar and water to a syrup. Add the peeled and sliced tomatoes. Boil steadily, stirring fairly often, for 35 minutes. Put in the vanilla pod and boil more vigorously for 10-15 minutes, until setting point is reached. Remove the vanilla pod, skim off any scum, and leave to settle for a few minutes before pouring into small jars.