What to do with excess ...

[boy wrangler]

Along the same lines as the recipe challenge thread, a place to share recipes, tips and ideas to preserve or use up excess produce from the garden (or fruit shop;) ).

At the moment we've got masses of chillies, nectarines and mangoes. Mangoes I'm freezing in chunks for smoothies or sorbets but aside from bottling the nectarines (all my vacola stuff is in storage still) I've got no idea what to do with them.

And I'd like to make some sweet chilli sauce but the recipe doesn't actually contain that much chilli!

Any ideas?

[Rinelle]

You can always bottle the nectarines in old jam jars and water bath them in a saucepan. Or cook them up and freeze them. No idea about chilli though, lol.

[Astra]

We made chilli jam a while back, we get masses of chillies but unfortunately they are really capsicumy in flavour so they dominate what ever you cook with them, they are also super hot.

[boy wrangler]

We're running low on jam jars though T. We just gave two away to the kindy teachers, leaving us with only 4 empty jars in the whole house! I gave them all away before we moved down. Soooo regretting that now! I'm contemplating putting the jams/marmalades/chutneys/mustards we have open in the fridge into Tupperware to use those jars!

Chilli jam sounds good, what do you do with it? An ingredient in cooking or as a condiment?

[lizlea]

chilli jam is great in stir fries, also as a condiment on meats or cheese

[michelle_j_r]

i made chilli jam last year as xmas gifts but you're right in that you don't use many really. if i happen to find the recipe i'll post it cos it was a nice one.

I'd be slicing all the fruit and freezing it for smoothies!

actually, if you have a few apples you can do half apple/ half nectarine in an apple crumble and i think it makes it super yum (can do the same with apricot and anything else too)

and taking a run to the op shop for more jars!

[boy wrangler]

mmm, I love crumble!

I kinda have my heart set on bottling them, so have put the call out for jars or will go the the oppie.

[lucylu]

Mmmm crumble!! *drooling*

I have loads of jars n bottles here! postage might be a bit pricey though :2lol

Nectarine jam is nice. Mango chutney?