Daring Cooks do Food Preservation!

It's that time of the month again.......time for Daring Cooks to work their magic and come up with innovative recipes! This month's challenge was especially challenging for me....as the theme was food preservation, something I guess I do but never think consciously about! I learnt a lot about canning and preservation from this challenge, and made myself some finger-licking-good pear butter. If it wasn't for this challenge, I doubt I would have made it. So thank you Daring Cooks! 

The September 2010 Daring Cooks’ challenge was hosted by John of Eat4Fun. John chose to challenge The Daring Cooks to learn about food preservation, mainly in the form of canning and freezing. He challenged everyone to make a recipe and preserve it. John’s source for food preservation information was from The National Center for Home Food Preservation. 

The recipes provided were for apple butter, bruschetta-in-a-jar,  and oven-roasted romatoes, but we were free to try whatever suited our fancy, as long as it was preserving food. I was keen to try the apple butter, but when I saw all the gorgeous pears around, I chose to make pear butter instead. Apple butter is surely on the list when the apple season peaks. Also made a batch of oven-roasted tomatoes. Both turned out awesome!

I was not quite sure of how the pear butter would taste, so I made a small quantity. As you can see, my jar didn't quite fill up. What a mistake! I absolutely loved it....and I'm definitely going to be making a lot of it again! 

I minimally adapted a pear butter recipe from Simply Recipes that uses ginger and star anise to spice it up, and made a small addition almost as an afterthought. I added some red wine to the mixture shortly after it started cooking. Totally made up for my mistake! The result was yummy....it's like having wine-poached pears in a jar! The flavours of ginger, lemon, star anise, orange, and wine came together beautifully. Spread some on a buttered toast....and it's sheer bliss! 

I used 6 pears and that yielded a small jar of pear butter, so here's the recipe for that. But please, double this when you make it.

1. Peel, core and chop the pears. (The original recipe doesn't call for this as it uses a food mill/chinoise to strain the mixture through. I didn't have either, so I removed all the unwanted elements in the beginning).
2. Place in a large pot, along with 1 spoon chopped ginger, 1 tablespoon orange zest, and 1 star anise. 
3. Add 3/4 cup water, 1/2 cup red wine, and 1 tablespoon lemon juice.
4. Bring to a boil, then simmer and cook for 30 minutes or until the pears are soft.
5. Remove from heat and fish out the star anise. Let cool. 
6. Add 3/4 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon lemon zest to the mixture and blend in a mixer until smooth.
7. Return mixture to pot and cook on low heat (stirring in between) until it's thick and dark. It should take about an hour. 
8. Test the pear butter by dropping a bit on a cold plate. It should not be runny.
9. Pour into a sterlized jar.

I couldn't get canning jars here, so I just stored mine in the fridge. But I know it's going to get over very soon....so canning is not a worry! 

Sun-dried tomatoes are an all-time favorite of mine. I constantly buy expensive packets of them to satisfy my craving. If I knew that oven-roasted tomatoes tasted just as good, maybe even better, I would have stopped buying them long ago! Well....better late than never, I say! Another reason I loved this challenge.

What happens inside the oven is pure magic.....transforming this humble fruit into bites of deliciousness! It was so easy to make these, and they were so good.....it's been hard to stop myself from nibbling on them all day long. I hardly have any left to freeze! Lesson well-learnt....I will make larger quantities next time! 

Making the oven-roasted tomatoes is a breeze. 

1. Just chop lots (yes....lots....you'll be glad) of tomatoes into halves or quarters. 
2. Deseed them a little bit, removing the excess juice. 
3. Place into a big bowl; throw in some crushed black pepper, some basil (or other herb), little bit of salt.....and drizzle a heap of extra-virgin olive oil on top. 
4. Toss it well so that all the tomatoes are well-coated. 
5. Arrange them skin-down on a baking tray lined with silver foil or parchment paper. 
6. Put 3-4 cloves of garlic (with skins on) in between the tomatoes.
7. Switch on oven to 140 C and roast for 1.5-2 hours. 
8. Cool and store in an air-tight jar, or freeze in zip-lock bags.

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