Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Eating and Drinking => Cooking, Storing and Preserving => Topic started by: Subversive_plot on July 26, 2023, 03:57
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This is my mother's recipe. No doubt that it was likely passed down from her mother or another member of her family. Indiana people that lived through the Great Depression were very waste not, want not people.
I will write exactly as stated on the recipe card (but add in parentheses my interpretation, based on what I think she meant by certain instructions, or what I remember from making it long ago)
1. Cut outer skin and pink portion (red flesh) off of rind, and cut into small chunks (as I recall, the chunks were usually cut perpendicular to the rind, maybe length of the chunks was 3/4 inch, and roughly 3/8 inch square across that. We usually didn't worry too much if a sliver of pink watermelon flesh was still attached, that gave a little color. My mother's instructions at this step did not say how much melon rind, but from a later step, this is for 4 pounds of melon rind, cut up).
2. Soak chunks in a salt solution, 1/2 cup per gallon; soak overnight.
3. Later, remove rind from brine, cook in clear fresh water for 1/2 hour or until tender (cook = boil).
4. Syrup: for 4 pounds of melon rind, use 9 cups sugar to 8 cups water. Slice thinly 4 lemons. Tie up 4 tsps. cloves and 4 tsps. stick cinnamon in a cheesecloth bag, boil spices in syrup 5 minutes before adding melon rind. (Where my mother indicates 4 tsps. stick cinnamon, I interpret as 4 cinnamon sticks, adjust to more or less stick cinnamon according to taste).
5. Add melon rind to syrup, cook until transparent and clear. (I recall it as translucent, similar to cooked sliced apple). Remove spice bag, pour (ladle) in sterilized jars and seal). (Here I would treat the finished product as you would any fruit preserve; I seem to recall my mother's pressure cooker and lids with rings being used in the canning process).
(I also seem to recall as a child that if there was any of the syrup left that was not canned with the preserves, we often used it on pancakes!)
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That sounds very similar to a Greek recipe for spoon sweets I have somewhere. Spoon sweets are preserved fruits you eat off a spoon.
I have never tried it, but I was given a jar of small green figs that had been made this way. It is amazing how the soaking, gentle cooking and syrup transform even unpromising ingredients into a treat :)
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I imagine the spoon sweets were originally made for a similar reason. Use something from the garden now and preserve it so that you are not wishing you had it in February and March.
With all the lemon, cloves, and cinnamon, the watermelon rind was mostly a carrier for the other flavors. It was delicious on buttered toast. Also on an American-style "biscuit" (different from a biscuit in the UK of course, ours are more savory, not sweet at all unless you put jam or preserves etc. on it).
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That sounds very similar to a Greek recipe for spoon sweets I have somewhere. Spoon sweets are preserved fruits you eat off a spoon.
I have never tried it, but I was given a jar of small green figs that had been made this way. It is amazing how the soaking, gentle cooking and syrup transform even unpromising ingredients into a treat :)
I made green fig jam one year, it was a lot of messing about as I recall & wasn’t really jam as we know it, more like mum described as ‘spoon’ sweets. Still got a jar so not very popular :lol:
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The whole bottled green figs we got were nice and didn’t last long :lol:
I found this guy on YouTube. He has a video for a dried candied watermelon rind on his channel and pickles. Intriguing but I am still debating whether it is worth it. If the rain carries on I might end up going for it :lol:
https://youtu.be/3kF-6KxVYaE (https://youtu.be/3kF-6KxVYaE)