EatingBritain.com » Fruit

Mango Jam with your Christmas turkey?

Sarah Cabral — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:30:54 +0000

Mira and I spent days playing phone message tennis but finally we got a chance to chat about this scrumptious mango jam and how a little side-line to her catering business has become an all consuming passion.

Mira has worked in the food industry for 8 years and through this, developed an extraordinary passion for food. Her background is a well rounded mix of manufacturing, process development, new product development and food consulting including a sizeable project with Jamie Oliver, which gave her a really good footing to start up her own food company.

It was a combination of her background, her pronounced passion for food and her creativity in the kitchen that made her decide to run her own food business. Luckily, she already had a name for it “The Mango Jam Company” which she came across 5 years earlier during her travels and bought the web domain!

She gave up a consulting career with a prestigious city firm to pursue her passion, and started the Mango Jam Company late 2007 as a catering firm, cooking up quirky homemade meals and canapés for private parties. She was quickly inundated with questions about the “mango jam”, as clients would naturally expect a company called the Mango Jam Company to make and sell Mango Jam! So after a quick dabble in the kitchen, she developed the recipe and Mango Jam was born!

Making the jam in your mum’s kitchen must be a messy affair – how much do you make in one go?

Being from the food industry, and armed with a MSc in Food Science and lots of experience in ‘scaling up’, it was a relatively easy feat to scale up from a tiny pan to 30kg pots….the key is to be organised with everything batched up beforehand….the rest is a doddle!

What’s the twist?

There’s a cheeky ginger kick which complements the mangoes wonderfully and adds a warmth and depth to all the fruitiness.

Your mango jam is really packed full of flavour, what’s your secret?

The jam has 135g of fresh mangoes per 100g of jam, which equates to 75% cooked fruit once we’ve peeled and stoned the mangoes… this is almost twice as much as leading high street jams (40%). Our jam also has half the total sugar as standard jams at 32g / 100g vs. 65g / 100g… so not only does it taste fantastic, it’s also a healthier alternative to other sugar-packed, fruit-deprived jams.

Where can we get some?

There are about 15 stockists around the country at the moment…and growing…you can find your local stockist details on www.mango-jam.com where you can also buy it on line for just £5.00 including postage and packaging…a bargain!

Here are Mira’s tried and tested uses for this wonderful Mango Jam…

Toast / Cheese on toast / Panini / crostini with some soft blue cheese
Porridge
Yogurt with granola
Cheese board
With foie gras
Desserts – either a cheesecake topping (use coconut biscuits as the base – yum!), or at the bottom of a creme brulee
As a marinade for chicken or salmon – mix with a tiny bit of oil and soy sauce
As a dressing – mix with a tiny bit of sesame oil & lemon / lime juice or olive oil & balsamic vinegar
A jam tart topping (I’m not convinced, but my friend tried it for her kid’s party and loved it!)
Mango champagne Bellini

“I think it’s definitely worth trying with turkey as the new Cranberry for 2008!”

I’ve recently become addicted to eating crackers with Philadelphia, topped with Mira’s Mango Jam – it’s delicious and I can’t wait to try the Bellini, what a fabulous idea! Let me know if you think of any other ways of using Mango jam.

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Discovery Apples

Sarah Cabral — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 07:30:19 +0000

The revelation that they were Discovery apples didn’t actually mean a hell of a lot to me, until I did a little surfing. Apparently the pink tinged flesh only occurs under certain weather conditions and it’s fairly unusual.

The Discovery apple is one of the most popular English early apples and according to the info I found, is widely available in the UK in late August and early September, although I guess it all depends on the weather, as it’s now late October and the market still had lots of fresh apples.

These apples are best eaten as fresh as possible, as they’re at their best for a only a few days. They are slightly acidic and reminded me of Russets. When the flesh is pink, they look so beautiful and make great pink apple juice! I wanted to see if the colour would remain through cooking, so I made this lovely apple tart from Epicurious.

Pink Discovery Apple Tart

Ingredients

1 sheet frozen puff pastry,thawed
4 medium sized Discovery apples, peeled, halved, cored, each half very thinly sliced
2 tablespoons sugar – use more or less depending on the sweetness of your apples.
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
4 teaspoons honey

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Roll out pastry sheet on lightly floured surface to very thin 18×14-inch rectangle. Cut equally into four rectangles. Transfer each rectangle to the prepared sheet; cover and refrigerate at least 30 minutes and up to 1 day.

Overlap slices from 1 apple on to each pastry rectangle, leaving 1/4-inch plain border – you can create a pattern with the apple slices or just pile them into the middle. Sprinkle the apple on each tart with half a tablespoon of sugar, then drizzle with half a tablespoon of melted butter.

Bake tarts until pastry is golden and apples are tender, about 15-20 minutes. Drizzle each tart with 1 teaspoon honey. Transfer tarts to racks; cool 10 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature.

As you can see, the apples retained their cheerful pink colour and the tart tasted scrumptious with a dollop of Greek yogurt mixed with a little honey. Hooray for English apples!

Sources

Discovery Apple – Orange Pippin

Red-fleshed apples

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Good Natured Fruit launches recyclable fruit punnet

Sarah Cabral — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:30:34 +0000

The new recyclable GNF packaging is an attractive alternative to conventional plastic punnets, when you consider that most local authorities send plastic punnets to landfill, and that conventional plastics can take hundreds of years to degrade.

The Angus Soft Fruits Research & Development team developed and perfected the GNF method of growing soft fruits by gaining a detailed understanding of exactly how plants grow and interact with their natural environment.

Instead of spraying whole fields with blanket pesticide applications which are harmful to the environment, GNF carefully monitors pest and disease levels in the crop. Natural predators such as ladybirds are used to control pests like greenfly, and plants are kept healthy with a balanced nutritional diet – thereby eliminating the need to use artificial pesticides on the crop.

After developing and perfecting Good Natured Fruit, the natural progression for Angus Soft Fruits was to take up the challenge of developing an environmental alternative form of packaging for their GNF brand. They approached leading provider of marketing and customer communications solutions, Adare, with a brief to apply their expertise in technical innovation to create soft fruit packaging that was both innovative and pioneering, and in the same consumer and environmentally conscious vein as the GNF fruit itself.

The resultant recyclable GNF punnet is made from wholly sustainable components. The punnet itself is made from UK sourced cardboard mill off-cuts. To enable customers to view the fruit a printed recycled board sleeve featuring a clear film window was developed. Although the window looks like clear plastic film it is manufactured from woodpulp from ethically sourced forests. As well as being recoverable through the cardboard recycling waste stream this film is also biodegradable and compostable.
Even the inks and varnish are vegetable based, helping reduce the environmental impact of the total pack. The entire pack can be recycled through the cardboard recycling waste stream, which the majority of consumers have access to.

Lochy Porter, Managing Director of Angus Soft Fruits comments: “We initially set ourselves the task of finding a way to grow strawberries and raspberries that would eliminate the use of pesticides in 2004. Successful trials in 2006 led to the GNF method of growing that we use today. Once we had achieved these goals we looked towards the packaging of our Good Natured Fruit. We strived to develop this aspect of our brand to mirror the values of environmentalism and consumer confidence in our packaging as well that of the actual Good Natured Fruit it contains. We are very proud of the results we have achieved.”

Recyclable punnets filled with delicious and pesticide free Good Natured Fruit strawberries and raspberries are now available in all major Sainsbury’s and ASDA stores and selected Co-Op stores nationwide.

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How to dry orange peel

Sarah Cabral — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 09:44:40 +0000

You can use dried peels in sauces and stews; it is a very Provencal seasoning, adding flavour to ratatouille, tomato sauce and fish soup.
In it’s ground-up form, the dried peel can be added to marinades, cakes, custards, poaching liquors, or to coarse salt as a seasoning on meats.

How to dry orange peel (or other citrus peels).

Peel 2 fresh oranges with a vegetable peeler, taking care not to include the bitter white pith beneath the orange rind. I only used 2 oranges because I was experimenting, but you can peel as many fruits as you want.

Scatter the peelings in a single layer, on to a baking sheet lined with grease-proof paper. Then bake at 110C for about an hour and a half.

The timings and temperature depend very much on your oven and how large your peelings are. For my first batch I followed a method for 120C for 2 hours and ended up with cremated lemon peel! So, my best advice is to check every 10-15 minutes and see how they’re going, adjust the temperature and time accordingly.

When ready, the peel will be dry and brittle. Let it cool completely and store it an air-tight container, in a cool, dark place. It will keep indefinitely stored like this.

You also have the advantage that not only do they smell great and pack a fantastic flavour punch, they look great too! I’ll be experimenting with my dried orange peel, so keep your eyes…er…peeled!

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Strawberry and rosé jelly

Sarah Cabral — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:57:36 +0000

I remember going on PYO expeditions as a family, when we were kids and eating more strawberries and raspberries than ever reached the punnets. Such great memories of scorching summer days, the fragrance of walking through strawberry fields and playing hide & seek through the sweet corn. The thing with strawberries, even when they’re as fresh as that, they don’t last very long and we would pick kilos! My mum would spend the next day making jam and chutneys from our harvest.

All this came to mind last weekend because Dave’s mum came round laden with a glut of strawberries, heaven! I didn’t really fancy making jam, but I have been craving jelly (of all things!). So with some left over rosé wine from the BBQ, I made a very grown up version of something I adored as a kid – strawberry jelly.

Mum also used to freeze what she could in order to preserve as much as possible – mange-tout, spinach, broad beans, sweet corn cobs. Even after reserving some for the jelly, there were still strawberries left over, more than I could eat before they went bad. So I’ve tried freezing some; I put them in an ice-cube tray inside a sealed freezer bag. I’m going to leave them frozen for a couple of weeks as an experiment, to see how they de-frost – I’ll keep you posted!

But, back to the jelly!

Strawberry and rosé jelly

500g Strawberries
4-5 Tbs brown sugar (depends how sweet your wine is)
300ml rosé wine
100ml Cranberry juice
4 leaves of gelatine

Macerate the chopped strawberries with the sugar in a bowl and leave for 20 min.
Mix the strawberries with their sugary juices into the wine and juice in a saucepan.
Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 15-20 min – to reduce and cook off the alcohol.
Remove from the heat and leave to cool for 30 min.
Pour the mixture into a juicing/muslin bag hung over a bowl to catch the juices as they drain through. Or if you haven’t got one of those bags – line a sieve with a couple of sheets of kitchen roll and stand it over a large bowl.
Leave it to drain until all the liquid has collected in the bowl – do not be tempted to squeeze the bag/ push the pulp through the sieve, it will make the jelly cloudy.
Put 4 leaves of gelatine into a bowl of cold water, to soak for 10min.
Put the drained liquid back into the pan and warm gently. Add the soaked gelatine and mix until it has dissolved completely. Don’t let it boil.
Pour the liquid jelly into a greased jelly mould or what ever container you wish and leave to cool to room temperature.
Finally cover the jelly and put in the fridge until completely set (over night in my case).

That’s one of the things about making jelly, you have to be patient, you have to wait for your prize!

Light, wobbly, fruity and simply delicious, a dazzling jewel worth waiting for!

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Nesperas (Loquats)

Sarah Cabral — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:30:57 +0000

Back from a recent trip to Portugal, my parents brought me a great surprise – Nesperas! You may, or may not know what they are, so here’s the low down on this delicious fruit…

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Madirofolo Chocolate

Sarah Cabral — Sun, 04 May 2008 20:52:50 +0000

The Chocolate Alchemist has introduced a special limited edition single plantation dark chocolate from Madirofolo in Madagascar. This is a unique chocolate and I was lucky enough to pick up a bar at the Real Food Festival.

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Spring Rhubarb and Pear Pudding

Sarah Cabral — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 22:26:52 +0000

It’s been one of those manic weeks but I finally found the time to indulge myself in a little cooking. All week I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I was going to make for my Spring Fruit Sensation. I did some research into the seasonal fruits available now and I came up with rhubarb and pears but what to do with them was a tricky matter…I really needed inspiration!(...)
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Wild Food – Elderberries

Sarah Cabral — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 21:16:29 +0000

We are lucky enough to have two mature black elders at the bottom of our garden. The beautifully fragrant flowers came and went before I got around to doing anything with them but I was determined not to let the berries go to waste. So, i made use of the remaining berries on our shrubs by making an elderberry jelly.(...)
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Superfoods

Sarah Cabral — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 09:02:15 +0000

Sales of ’superfoods’ are soaring with the public desperate to include them in diets after headlines about their potential health benefits. A success story as far as the fresh produce industry is concerned, superfoods have added a new dimension to sales. One category that has really benefited has been berries, blueberries in particular, and the phenomenon has also created a new identity for niche lines like pomegranates.(...)
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