Madras Pickled Eggplant

I had half an eggplant left over from dinner, and in my quest to 1) waste less food 2) make more preserves 3) eat more pickles, I decided to go for this.  I tweaked the spices a little (1/2 a teaspoon chili powder instead of 2 tablespoons, and I didn’t have fenugreek or tumeric so I used some others that sounded like they’d go) and left out the chile peppers.

It’s actually really good.  There’s such a variety of spices, and an awful lot of sugar, that there’s a whole lot of layered flavors that slowly come out.  The silky texture of the eggplant makes it taste very rich, too.  I have an entire pickle jar of this stuff now, and I have no idea what I’m going to do with it, but it is actually really, really good.  I wonder if the kids will touch it.

Madras Pickled Eggplant, from The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving, by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard.  pg 153.

Chunky Orange and Pomegranate Marmalade

I had leftover pomegranate seeds from the fancy Christmas breakfast fruit salad that I never quite got around to making, and some oranges left over from not making the orange glazed ham, so this seemed like the perfect solution.

I’ve never made marmalade before, but it was remarkably easy.  And the recipe was delicious.  The pomegranate adds an extra tang to the sweetness of the marmalade.  It made about three jars, so I have two in the fridge and one in the freezer.

I think I’ll start making more small batch preserves: it’s really so much cheaper!  And it’s not like it’s any real effort: this recipe basically just has you throw everything in a pot and boil it for an hour and a half, stirring occasionally.  I reused some other jelly jars (the freezer one is in a freezer jam plastic jar I found in the back of a cabinet), and one still had the price tag on it: basically, I made 3 jars of a fancy preserve for less than 1/3 the price of a single jar of plain strawberry jelly.  Not bad.

Chunky Orange and Pomegranate Marmalade, from epicurious.