Apples, Cider and Cheese- Very Rustic!

Like everyone else, we had a bumper crop of apples this year, and I have also discovered a couple of apple trees on the valley where the fruit is going begging. I only need some new ways to use them. I have enough jam (gooseberry, mixed fruit and blackberry and apple) to last at least two years, my diet doesn't allow crumble or pie too often and the freezer is full.

So yesterday, I was experimenting with drying apples in slices.

I don’t have a dehydrator so I was planning on peeling, coring and cutting the apples into slices and then laying them on cake cooling racks in the oven. The first part was easy, I did it in the living room whilst watching Ceebeebies with Oliver. He sat on the floor beside me and ate almost as fast as I sliced. I know fruit is good for children but surely it is possible to overdo it?

Then I arranged them on trays and put them in the oven.

 I was worried about the oven, the books say to dry them at 60-70°C but the lowest temperature on my oven is 110. The books were also vague about how long to leave them in for, the advice varied between 4 and 24 hours, but I suppose that is reasonable as it will vary on the apple and the thickness of the slices. I had the oven on for three bursts of two hours, each on the lowest heat with the door propped slightly open to reduce the temperature further. Then when it was time to pick up Oliver from nursery, I turned off the heat, shut the door and forgot about them until this morning. 

They look okay, some are a bit chewy, some are crisp. They fill a jar nicely

 and I suppose time will tell if I got it right or if there is too much moisture left and they go mouldy. The books say in order to use them, soak them in water for twelve hours first and then use them in baking. I reckon I could make three or four pies with this lot.

Whilst the apples were drying I was also experimenting with juicing the apples. I would dearly love an apple press but at £200 to £300 pounds that is clearly out of the question so I crushed the apples in the food processor 

and then strained them through muslin,

 picking up the muslin and squeezing out as much as I could. Later on the internet I saw that some people use electric spin dryers, which I think is a fantastic idea, putting the crushed apples first in a clean pillow case and letting the juice come out with centrifugal force. Spin dryers can be picked up second hand for £10 to £20 so I shall keep my eye open for one of them.

In my laborious way ,I made about a gallon of juice. I put a litre of it in a zip lock freezer bag and put it in the freezer but as I said earlier, the freezer is almost full at the moment so I need to find alternative ways of storage. The rest of the juice therefore, I have put into a demijohn to ferment naturally into cider.

 I did add a campden tablet yesterday to kill any natural bacteria but decided against adding sugar as I am not wanting the cider to be particularly strong. Hopefully the wild yeasts naturally present on the skin of the apples will start to ferment in the next 24 hours, if not I have some wine yeast I can add. Already after twelve hours the apple sediment has started dropping to the bottom of the demijohn.

Hopefully this should produce drinkable cider by Christmas. I also want to make perry from the excess of pears we have and to experiment with cyser which is made from apple juice and honey, a sort of cross between mead and cider. I do also have the honey available to try a few bottles of mead. On the non alcoholic front I would like to try preserving apple juices by pasteurizing it. Having my own store of apple juice to drink or use in cooking during the year would be very nice.

Also going on in the background yesterday, was a batch of home made cottage cheese. When I’d nipped into the supermarket for milk at lunchtime, I saw that the 6 pint bottles were reduced to clear at 30% off. I bought two and emptied them into the big stainless steel pan

 and heated to luke warm and then added rennet and left it to set. Incidentally that little bottle of rennet is lasting ages and still working after its use by date. After a few hours I noticed it had set,

 so I broke it up and turned up the heat to encourage the curds to separate from the whey. I poured off as much whey as I could and then left the curds to drain further in the colander.

 With a sprinkling of salt it was delicious and like Miss Muffet I ate a bowl on its own. After that there was 1 lb 6 ozs left so it must have made about 1 lb 12 ozs. I have decided to use it in a curd tart and to experiment by adding dried cherries instead of the usual sultanas and flavouring it with a splash of kirsch.