What do you do with your herbs?

[valmarg]

Here you are Hans Mum.

ROSEMARY JELLY

5lb cooking apples
2 pints water
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary leaves
2 pints vinegar
granulated sugar
green food colouring (optional)
chopped rosemary

Wash and roughly chop the apples. Put in a large saucepan with the water and rosemary. Bring to the boil, then simmer for about 45 minutes until soft and pulpy. Stir from time to time to prevent sticking. Add the vinegar and boil for 5 minutes.

Strain through a jelly bag or cloth and allow the juice to drain for at least 12 hours. Do not squeeze the bag or the jelly will be cloudy. Discard the pulp.

Measure the extract and return to the pan with 1 lb sugar to each pint of extract. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, then boil rapidly, without stirring for about 10 minutes until setting point is reached. Skim the surface with a metal spoon. Add a few drops of colouring and chopped rosemary (to taste). Pot and cover in the usual way.


I use distilled malt vinegar, it doesn't discolour the jelly.

This is rosemary jelly, for mint jelly substitute mint for rosemary. Obvious I know, but it saved space.

You can add more rosemary/mint to the initial cooking with the apples to give a stronger flavour.

The more chopped herb you've got the better. I recommend rosemary be 'very' finely chopped.

Hope you find it useful, and I can thoroughly recommend it.

valmarg

[valmarg]

P.S. you can also substitute parsley, to make parsley jelly. This is very good with cold ham, and makes a cheats version on parsleyed ham.

valmarg

[sarraceniac]

P.S. you can also substitute parsley, to make parsley jelly. This is very good with cold ham, and makes a cheats version on parsleyed ham.

valmarg

If we are going into 'cheating' here's my 1950s cheat recipe for mint jelly, which everyone knows is correctly made with apple jelly.

1 lemon jelly.
Half pint of malt vinegar (aesthetically distilled white looks better but is not essential)
1 lb sugar
Mint as required (apple mint is delicious but 'ordinary' is fine).

Boil the vinegar with the sugar and jelly and when cool (but still liquid) stir in chopped mint to taste. Set in fridge. Not gourmet but very nice and so easy.