Apricot and cardamom jam

I can't believe I've got to the age I have (don't ask!) without ever having made a pot of jam. Marmalade, yes, as regulars may recall from this post but jam and chutney, never. Which makes no sense considering the cost of good preserves these days - about £3.50-4 a small jar in farmers' markets and posh delis.

I decided this year was going to be the year to break my duck and lugged down a large bag of jars and an armful of preserving books to our house in the south of France. After all fruit and veg is cheap down here so it sounded like a good holiday project.

It's actually been so hot for the last few days I couldn't face it but yesterday I made my first batch of apricot jam (my favourite) based on a recipe in my friend, cookery writer Thane Prince's Jams and Chutneys. Needless to say I couldn't resist going off-piste a little - I like my jam slightly less sweet than most and had this hunch that cardamom would be a great addition (it is!) but Thane's recipe gave me an excellent basis to work on.

Apricot and cardamom jam
Makes about 4 x 400g jars

I kg of apricots (not over-ripe which shouldn't be a problem in the UK as they never are)
Juice of 1-1 1/2 lemons (about 4-5 tbsp)
8 green cardamom pods, lightly crushed
900g jam sugar (with added pectin. If you like your jam tart you might even be able to do with a little less)

You will also need 4-5 350g-400g sterilised jam jars and a cold saucer to test the set

Wash the apricots and quarter or halve them depending on how large they are. Put in a large saucepan or preserving pan with the lemon juice, crushed cardamoms and 400ml water and bring slowly to the boil. Turn down the heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes until the apricots are soft but still retaining their shape, skimming off any scum (that sounds horrible doesn't it? Let's call it froth) that appears on the surface.

Turn off the heat and tip in the sugar and gently stir then leave the pan for a couple of minutes off the heat for the sugar to dissolve. Gradually back to the boil and boil hard for 5 minutes or so until the jam looks like setting, skimming off the scum (sorry, froth) as you go. Take the pan off the heat and spoon a little onto your chilled saucer. Leave it a minute then run your finger through it. If it's set it should crinkle slightly. If not boil (the jam, not your finger) for 3-4 minutes more.

Once the jam is set take off the heat. Warm the jars in a moderate oven. Stir the jam then ladle or pour into the hot jars. Seal with the lids or a cellophane jam jar cover, wiping the outside of the jar with a damp cloth. Label once cool. Slather over baguette and French butter. Drool.

Just a wee taster to make sure it's OK ...

Cost? Apricots around €2.60 a kilo, sugar 1.28€ a kilo bag (I used slightly less), lemon about .30€ and cardamoms I already had so roughly 1€ (86p) a jar for the most heavenly scented apricot jam you can imagine. Can't wait to make more.

Are you also a novice or a regular jam maker and what are your favourite jams?

Pears in mulled cider

Given how much leftover wine we have in the house (I'm also a wine writer for those of you who don't know) I normally poach pears in red wine but I tried them again the other day in cider and I'm not sure I don't prefer them that way. It seems to preserve the pear flavour better. (You could also use an off-dry perry, of course)

This is a great way to use those greenish brown conference pears which never look very appealing but have a superb flavour. You want them not quite ripe enough for eating but not rock-hard either. I'd pick them out by hand rather than buy a bag of them even though they tend to be cheaper that way. You can tell the stage they're at by pressing the top of each pear gently by the stem. There should be a tiny bit of give.

A great dessert for when you’ve had an indulgent carb-laden main course like a pie!

Serves 4

4 evenly sized, not quite ripe conference pears
330ml medium dry cider
4-5 heaped tbsp unrefined caster sugar
A fine strip of lemon peel + a little lemon juice to taste if needed
1 small cinnamon stick
Pouring cream or vanilla ice cream to serve

Keeping the pears whole remove the peel carefully with a small sharp knife, leaving the stalk on. Fit them side by side in a medium-sized saucepan and pour over the cider. Add enough water to cover the pears. Remove the pears from the liquid and set them aside.

Add 4 heaped tbsp of unrefined caster sugar and place the pan over a low heat until the sugar has dissolved. Taste the liquid and add a little extra sugar if you don’t think it’s quite sweet enough (ciders vary).

Return the pears to the pan along with the lemon peel and cinnamon stick and bring the liquid to the boil. Turn down the heat, cover the pan and simmer for about 45 minutes until the pears are soft. Remove them carefully from the pan with a slotted spoon and transfer to a shallow glass dish.

Remove the lemon peel and cinnamon then turn the heat up and boil the remaining liquid by about two thirds until thick and syrupy. Check for sweetness adding a little lemon juice if needed. Pour the syrup over the pears and leave to cool.

Serve just warm or at room temperature with double cream or vanilla ice cream and some crisp home-baked biscuits or shortbread.

Oh, and a happy Thanksgiving to my American readers. I suppose this should have been a pumpkin pie really but I'm sure you've got zillions of recipes for that. This might make a nice change ;-).

Why it's worth buying organic bananas

It might seem strange on this blog to advocate spending more on an ingredient but frugal eating is not about buying the cheapest food you can find but eating as well as you can on a limited budget.

I spend over the odds for organic milk and eggs, real bread from a local bakery, Italian-manufactured pasta (as opposed to own brand) and some organic vegetables like carrots because there is such a marked difference in taste - and in the case of ingredients like bread they stretch further.

To that list I'm now going to add organic bananas.

I bought them by accident the other day thinking they were Fairtrade and couldn't believe how different they tasted. Even the green ones my husband insists on buying because he hates speckled bananas tasted sweet. Just really banana-y, as you'd expect.

I also recall that conventionally grown bananas are heavily sprayed then treated with more chemicals to ripen them - a practice reported on here in the New York Times and here in the Sunday Tribune, India

Organic bananas are not a ridiculous amount more expensive than standard ones: £1.85 a kilo in the Co-op compared to £1.15 which came to £1.35 for 5 bananas or 27p a banana. You couldn't buy a chocolate bar for that.

What foods do you think it's worth paying extra for? And - as a matter of interest - do you like your bananas green, yellow or speckled? ;-)

Why it's easy for the French to eat healthily

As you know I was going to give the blog a break but I've been overwhelmed at the quality of the produce in the south of France since we've been here. The apricots and grapes above come from a marvellous greengrocer in the small seaside resort of Le Grau d'Agde. It's open year round but is at its peak at this time of year. Our lunch yesterday consisted of tapenade and goats cheese, bought at the daily market, a bunch of hot peppery radishes (1 euro or 87p at current exchange rates) a couple of huge, misshapen but sweet, sweet tomatoes (€1.20/£1) and 5 fat figs (82 cents/71p). 4 out of our recommended 5 a day in one meal.

It's so easy to eat healthily - and the weather so hot you don't feel like doing anything else. Cooked food, especially meat, loses its appeal. All I want to eat is salads, fish, the occasional bit of cheese and fruit. Endless fruit.

Every stall in the market is laden with peaches - you can buy them for as little as 5 euros/£4.34 a tray (about 3 kilos I would guess) They're so ripe you can barely touch them without bruising them. You're lucky if they survive till next day - which is why, of course, we don't get fruit of this quality at home. They have to be picked earlier, refrigerated, transported the 600 miles or so across France and however many miles to a depot then distributed across the country. No wonder they don't taste of anything and cost three or four times as much.

What I can't understand is why we pay so much for fruit and vegetables we can grow perfectly well. Lettuces for example. In the greengrocer here they have five or six varieties - at around 90 cents (78p) and they're huge. Of course you have to wash them which people are no longer prepared to do back home but the flavour is wonderful - crisp, crunchy and sweet.

It is actually possible I might lose weight on this holiday (though I wouldn't bet on it given the amount of baguette I also manage to stuff down). I'll certainly end up a great deal healthier.

Gorgeous grape, honey and cardamom compote

I made the best recipe for a while the other day. By accident from virtually free ingredients and it was so ridiculously simple. My chef friend Stephen gave me a big bag of seedless black grapes to take home from a tray that were about to go over. We nibbled a few then I realised I would have to cook them to save them. I destalked them and put them in a saucepan with about a tablespoon of honey I'd rescued from the tail end of a pot and shaken up with boiling water to dislodge it and about 6 cardamom pods, brought the whole lot to the boil and simmered them for about 7 or 8 minutes.

Result: an exotically aromatic, sophisticated-tasting fruit compote that you could either serve as a light dessert or with yoghurt and granola as we enjoyed it the next day for breakfast. It was just fantastically satisfying to make something that tasted so good from produce that could easily have gone to waste. Who said frugal food was boring?

Lemon-apple compote

Some of the best recipes - if you can call this a recipe - happen by accident.

I was cooking up some Bramley apples yesterday for our morning fruit compote (sounds so much sexier than stewed fruit) and chucked in a quarter of a lemon that happened to be lying around. I left it in the pan while the apples cooled then, when I found that it had an interestingly lemony zing, left it in the bowl in which I refrigerated them. When we ate the compote this morning it had a lovely bitter lemon edge that went perfectly with the dollop of yoghurt and honey we drizzled on top.

I've also found a good way of using up the apple peel which is to add it and any leftover lemon shells you've discarded after juicing. You simply cover them with cold water, bring them to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes or so then strain and cool the cooking liquid. Result: a very natural-tasting and delicious apple lemonade that tastes every bit as good as those expensive top-end soft drinks.

It's Frugal Friday . . .

Fruit 'martinis'

Back from the Emerald Isle which was indeed looking very green after all that rain.

I had a really great trip and a fabulous birthday - the best I can ever remember.

Believe it or not I'm off again in 36 hours, this time to France to try and establish whether my mother-in-law can manage to go back home after her fall a couple of months ago or whether she'll have to go into a home which she understandably doesn't want to do. Tricky.

No time for much in the way of creative cooking in the meantime but here's a great idea I picked up from a lovely hotel called The Old Convent we stayed in in Co. Tipperary. (Not remotely frugal but a surprise birthday treat from my husband before we headed home yesterday.)

It's simply martini glasses filled a third of the way up with home-made yoghurt and topped with assorted fresh fruit. A strikingly pretty and not-too-extravagant idea for a brunch (You can obviously use wineglasses or tumblers if you don't happen to have a dozen martini glasses, as few of us do)

Oh, the joy of a good apple pie!

Isn't this a thing of beauty?

I wish I could say I'd cooked it myself but these are the apple pies they make at the Farmgate café in Midleton, Co. Cork.

There's something very special about an Irish apple pie. The filling is a wonderful chunky mound of sweet fruit, the pastry wafer thin and crisp with a lavish dusting of caster sugar. It's much lighter and less stodgy than an English apple pie.

Judging by this recipe the crucial difference is that they use eating rather than cooking apples and a high proportion of fat to flour - plus some sour cream.

I'm off cooking duty this week but shall have to have a crack at it when I get home.

Raspberry and yoghurt pots

This is my favourite breakfast at the moment - well, most of the year, actually, but fresh raspberries happen to be in season and reduced at most of the supermarkets currently.

A handful of raspberries, a heaped tablespoon of plain yoghurt (we use soy as my husband is dairy-intolerant) and a sprinkling of granola. It looks especially pretty layered up in a tumbler like this, a form of presentation the French are particularly keen on and call a 'verrine'.

You can also of course make it with thawed frozen berries - cheaper for most of the year - or with a cooked fruit compote. We have it with apple and cinnamon, blackberry and apple, plums and rhubarb at different times of year. Not expensive and a great way to start the day.

Pineapple: the forgotten fruit

In terms of value for money it's hard to beat fresh pineapple. I bought this huge one for £1.55 in Tesco last week which would have easily served six, maybe eight. Given that it came from halfway round the world it's ironic that it was cheaper than buying in-season English strawberries. (A medium sized punnet had gone up to £2.50 in my local greengrocer.)

Why isn't pineapple more highly rated? You rarely find it in restaurants. Maybe it's the traditionally naff uses that people make of it. Cheese and pineapple sticks (though they are actually delicious made with decent cheddar and fresh pineapple). Ham and pineapple pizza (never been a fan . . . ). Pina colada? Pretty tacky made with pasteurised pineapple juice but, again, great with fresh pineapple.

What better finale can you think of for a spicy meal than some finely sliced fresh pineapple, served with a fresh lime and chilli-flavoured syrup or a drizzle of kirsch or white rum?

Maybe it's because it's fiddly to prepare but not THAT fiddly. All you have to do is cut it in thick slices, cut away the skin and the central core and cut it into chunks. No more difficult than a mango and everyone's crazy about mango.

I've been breakfasting on it all week and would have made this fabulous smoothie I found on an old Waitrose cookery card (from the days when I used to shop at Waitrose ;-) if I'd had more time. I love the way it's topped with just-melted vanilla ice cream.

Are you a pineapple fan?

Where to store fruit and veg?

I've just written a piece for my student website Beyond Baked Beans on how to rescue the foods that tend to get chucked out most often - 40% of which are accounted for by fresh fruit and veg according to WRAP, the government-backed organisation which tries to make us more waste-conscious.

Basically they reckon you should keep all your fruit in the fridge and obviously there's a lot to be said for that in terms of extending their useful life. But the fact is that I generally don't because I think it dumbs down the flavour and so much fruit (and veg such as tomatoes) is not fully ripe when you buy it.

I suppose it depends what kind of cook you are. If you're conscious of the ingredients around you on a daily basis you can probably afford to leave them out. If you're short of time or live the kind of life where you're constantly changing your plans it's probably safer to refrigerate them.

What do you reckon?

Fresh peach yoghurt

The peaches are so luscious here in France, so ripe they literally fall apart in your hands. And so cheap! I'm using them every which way I can. My favourite start to the day is a peeled peach, roughly cut up and mixed with plain yoghurt.

You're lucky if you can get peaches that ripe at home of course but you do occasionally find them. And if you can't you can easily substitute less ripe fruit, cooked with a little sugar or honey until soft. Apricots, mangoes and plums are good this way or you can mash up some strawberries or bananas and fold them into the yoghurt.

I always buy plain yoghurt (cheapest in big tubs) rather than fruit flavoured ones in which the fruit content is generally negligible. I remember checking out childrens' yoghurts for a book I was writing (The Healthy Lunchbox) and finding that some contained as little as 1% real fruit. And loads of sugar.

You can also whizz up ripe peaches with milk to make a fabulous topping for cereal my friend and fellow blogger Signe of Scandilicious told me the other day. For two servings she says you should whizz up four ripe peaches (peeled and cut up) in a blender with about 350-400ml of milk and a pinch of cinnamon or ground cardamom. Use it straightaway or it will separate. If you whizz it with ice cubes it also makes a brilliantly refreshing drink.

A lovely fruit salad

This really simple idea came to me the other day when I was wondering what to do with a tin of apricots - a real bargain in Somerfield at 24p. Perhaps, I thought, they could be combined with strawberries which would make them taste fresher and more delicious but cut down the cost of the dish. And maybe you could add a bit of orange juice and mint.

It worked. Here it is!

Strawberry and apricot fruit salad with orange and mint

Serves 4

250g fresh strawberries with the stalks removed
1 tsp caster sugar
1 x 400g apricot halves in apple juice
1 orange
4-6 mint leaves (optional)

Slice the strawberries into a glass bowl and sprinkle over the sugar, stir and leave for 5 minutes. Drain the apricots, reserving the juice for another use (like a smoothie). Halve the apricot halves and add them to the bowl. Squeeze the orange juice and strain over the fruit and gently mix together. Chill for an hour if possible.Tear or shred the mint leaves and scatter them over the salad.

Should frugal cooks forget the idea of seasonal food?

A bit of a shock in Waitrose on Saturday. (I know, I know - it's not by any means the most frugal place to shop but it's my nearest supermarket and it was simply chucking down . . . )

It was cheaper to buy out of season strawberries than in-season rhubarb. By quite a margin. 400g of Spanish strawberries cost £1.59. 400g of rhubarb - admittedly Dutch so it had some way to travel - was £2.99. I thought rhubarb was supposed to be a UK crop at this time of year.

It seems part of a growing trend I've spotted for shops to charge more for in season foods rather than less. Like Purple Sprouting Broccoli which is £1.75 for half a kilo in my local greengrocer. It's like 'we're doing you foodies a favour by stocking this at all so we're going to charge you through the nose for it'.

The only remaining arguments against buying out of season strawberries are the not insignificant factor of the air miles they clock up and the fact that they don't taste of anything (although I've found if you cut away the un-ripe white flesh by the stalk, slice and sprinkle them with sugar and let them macerate for 10 minutes they taste a whole lot better).

Maybe we should all be buying frozen fruit instead . . .

The French Paradox

Most of you will, I guess, be familiar with the French Paradox: the strange situation where the French have a lower rate of heart disease than the rest of the western world while knocking back vast quantities of wine, cheese, charcuterie and other foods rich in saturated fats.

I must say it surprises me. The classic French diet is veggie lite as we're discovering to our cost. A typical day's eating is baguette for breakfast, some kind of meat for lunch, rarely served with veg other than as a superfluous garnish and a couple of oeufs a la plat (fried eggs with yet more baguette) or occasionally a bowl of vegetable soup for supper. All followed by cheese.

The only veg the French seem to really like is 'salade' as in the old dictum 'jamais un repas sans salade' (never a meal without a green salad).

It's not that the food shops don't have any veg or fruit just that they all seem a bit tired and out of season. As in the UK they're flown in from warmer climes, largely Spain and Morocco. And seldom, it seems, make their way into restaurants where there's clearly no call for them. My mother-in-law, who has lived in France almost all her life, actually pushes the veg to the side of her plate if she's unlucky enough to be served some.

How do the French stay so healthy? Beats me, particularly as ready prepared meals seem to be taking over a larger and larger proportion of the supermarket. For this particular frugal cook, keen to eat as much fresh, local produce as possible, it's quite a struggle.