Pickled beets and quilts

I had just finished photographing the newly completed sun-bathed back of my quilt when Tooley mentioned his recent batch of pickled beets.

I was moonlighting as a quilter at Tooley's family home in the posh 10 Mile Point area of Victoria. It's one of the times I get to vicariously enjoy the perks of being a propertied dog owner who lives out by the seaside. But back to the beets.

Beets. How I adore their shades of red and pink, their delectable candied texture when roasted, and their iron-y twang on my tongue after eating the second beet. I promise, absolutely promise to share my roasted beet salad with chevre and candied pecans with you. And a killer Tamil recipe for shredded beet called poriyal.

Tooley's pickled beets are a marvel of unconventionally canned perfection. Sweet and sour with a perfectly toothsome bite, they were too pretty to pass up for a photo op.

After nibbling on pickled beets, I finished photographing the top bit of my quilt. The quilt is a two year labour of love; it's made up of bits of fabric I picked up on my travels. I refuse to accept that quilting is an acceptable activity for middle aged ladies and grandmas. Quilting is a meditative exercise in discerning the algorithm of colours between pieces of cotton; mustering the precision and focus required for sewing the perfect 1/4 inch seam and cutting fabric.

Easy Peasy Pickled Beets

2 bunches small beets – scrub and trim ends
4 small onions – slice and separate rings
1/2 cup liquid set aside from boiled beets
1/2 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup honey
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves

Add just enough water to cover the beets and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down to a moderate setting boil for about 40 minutes. Add the onion slices and boil for another 5 minutes.

Drain out the beets and onions, and save a 1/2 cup of the liquid that you boiled them in.

Set the beets and onions aside, add the liquid, vinegar, salt, cinnamon, cloves and honey to a sauce pan and bring it to a boil.

Peel your beets and slice according to preference. Place the beets in a sanitized jar and pour the liquid over top. Leave them in the fridge for at least two days. The beets will keep for several months.

Special credit to Megan for sharing this recipe.

Orange Peel Liqueur

One of the legacies of my time spent as a sous chef is the pleasure I derive from a perfectly peeled apple or potato. There's something smugly satisfactory about a long unbroken line of curling peel. Maybe this is the closest I'll ever get to the sort of superior triumph one experiences after buying a Prius.

I experienced this sense of accomplishment a month ago when I peeled five oranges for my orange peel liqueur experiment. As I coiled the long peels into the jar in preparation for their meeting with 750 ml of vodka, I realized this marriage should be cemented with cloves.

The humble clove no longer gets the respect it once did. They are indigenous to what was once called the Spice Islands (now called the Malukus - a post about my trip there earlier this year is forthcoming). For well over a millenia, cloves were highly prized in Africa, Asia and Europe for their medicinal and aesthetic properties. Entire sultanates crumbled on account of these little flower buds. I considered the clove-studded orange pomander. Ten cloves were dropped into the jar.

I posed my orange liqueur next to the Hungarian pear liqueur I'm trying out this weekend. The pear liqueur is ambrosial and rounded without being cloying. However, the ingredient list does not inspire confidence.

Feeling somewhat concerned about the time I might have to invest in filtering the orange peel liqueur (it took me 12 hours to filter the cherry liqueur), I started the process off by straining the liqueur using cheesecloth. My friend finished this step off by testing his death grip on the peel-filled cheesecloth.

On the subject of orange peels, when you peel your oranges, use a vegetable peeler. The object is to avoid including the white pith as much as possible because the pith will impart bitterness to the liqueur.

I briefly considered filtering with paper towel but that felt like cheating. I can't even change hairdressers; it feels so much like cheating to me. I resigned myself to the rigors of the coffee filter.

Miraculously, it only took two hours to filter the entire jar, make one cup of simple syrup and mix the syrup in with the final product (I heated 1 cup of white sugar and 1/2 cup of water until it just barely boiled. Cool it down before adding).

Now, the wait recommences. Generally, a month is required to introduce citrus to liquor, and after filtering, the liqueur should age at least two months. The longer you wait, the better it gets.