Mince pies from absolute scratch

Ask Alister what he associates with Christmas and he'll tell you mince pies and Christmas pudding. Last year, by the time I got around to asking him this it was much to late to try to make them (they both need months of time to mature). So this year I got on it early in order to make mince pies. I spent October sloughing through the internet for recipes. Not only did I have to make a recipe that I had never made before - but I had to make it from ingredients I found here in Ukraine without really knowing how some of those ingrediants might effect the recipe.
I finally settled on a combination of Delia Smith's and Jill Dupleix's mince pies and followed the comments to improve the BBC pastry recipe. The result was 72 + super yummy mince pies.

The recipe below are my rough estimates of my variations

Mincemeat

• 200g butter
• 400g brown sugar
• 3 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 tsp ginger
• 1 tsp All Spice
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 500g Apples, shredded
• 200g fresh, frozen, or dried cranberries (I used fresh)
• 400g mixed candied peel, finely chopped (In Ukraine - I bought candied mandarines and lemons from the Uzbeki kiosks and threw them in the food processor - I think I added some extra manadrines)
• 100g dried, candied cherries - chopped
  
• 50g almonds - coarsely chopped
• 100 g dried apricots - chopped
  
• 600 - 800g raisens, currents, and sultanas, dried. To me, they are all raisens. At the Uzbeki Kiosk I bought a variety of all the differnt ones they had - a bout 4 types. The bigger ones I had to cut the seeds out of. Also very important to wash and sort the the raisens before adding to the mix.
• grated zest and juice from 2 Oranges
• grated zest and juice from 1 lemon
  
• 300ml brandy, cognac, rum, or whisky. I used cognac (of course)

Mix the butter, sugar, juices, and spices in a big pot and gently cook until the butter is all melted. Throw in all the other ingrediants and mix well so that everything is covered by the butter mixture. Apparently - it is the butter that helps to keep everything from spoiling - so it is very important that it covers everything. Stir in the cognac (extra may be added for a boozy mincemeat). Pack firmly in sterilized jars. Screw on the lid to seal and put in a cold dark place, like a cellar or the back of your fridge at least 1 month before you plan to use it. The mixture will keep about 6 months.

Pastry for mince pies
225 g cold/frozen butter (Margarine doesn't work as well)
350g flour
100 g sugar
1 egg beaten
powdered sugar

Mix flour and sugar together in a bowl. Grate the butter into the flour mixture. You may want to dip the butter in flour and dust your grater periodically with flour. Alternatively - you may use room temperature butter and cut it in with a pastry blender. Mix gently. Add 1/2 your beaten egg and mix the dough enough to get it to stick together. Dump out on a pastry mat - roll out and cut into rounds slightly bigger than your muffin tin. Place the round in the GREASED tin and pat to shape and even out. Fill with your mince and top with another round - slightly smaller than the first. Press the edges together to seal, brush with the remainder of the beaten egg. Bake at 400F for 20 minutes. Allow to cool 5 - 10 minutes before removing from the pan.
Dust with powdered sugar and serve. Alister says they are best served with cream - but we didn't manage to eat any with cream.

The mincemeat filled 3 batches of the pastry dough.

Done

So in early October I posted my to do list.

Here is how that went:

Apple Sauce - 15 liters made and canned solely because a friend came and helped and pushed through with the boiling and mashing while I ran after and fed kids.

Beet chips: after 3 batches in the dehydrator and two in the oven failing to produce a lovely terra chip crisp snack - I decided to stop messing around with beets until I REALLY have time to mess around with beets.  And am ready to eat multiple kilos of them since Alister and Saphira both declined my experiments.

Carrot chips - didn't happen - but I did make a lovely ginger carrot soup.

Apple chips - lots.  Thanks mom for buying me the apple slicer for my birthday! It was a hit with Saphira too.

I also did about 4 kilos of peppers that I chopped up and froze.  I never got to the tomatoes before the prices went up (out of season) so they can wait for another year or two before I attempt it.

Pears: two batches - also extra tasty and hope to do more of them next year

Watermelons (2)- figured while I was at it - Picture something the consistency and sweetness of a starburst - but totally natural.  I actually prefer the dehydrated version to the real melon and Saphira eats them like candy (esp since we don't give her candy . . . . ).  The only depressing thing about watermelons is that you spend 18 - 20 hours cutting and drying the thing and to show for it you have 1 pint - that's right - a 1 pint jar of watermelon pieces.

I also managed to do the apple chutney and the mince pie filling.  Both were a bit more time consuming than in the past since I didn't have a food processor.  The food processor was one of the furnishing with the other apartment and while we have money set aside for one, I just haven't gotten around to doin ghte research and buying one.  So this year, the mince piece might not be so evenly minced - but I still reckon they'll be tasty.

Cranberries - you can't find the dried ones here and so I am experimenting with a tray of them now - burst and sweetened they taste almost like  craisens - though I think in the future the easiest thing to do would be to pureee it and then chop finely for fruit bites rather than try to preserve the integrity of individual berries.

I did stock up on lots of meat - but have done no grinding.  After various inquiries we learned that we would need to buy an electric meat grinder as the manual ones aren't good quality here anymore and its hit or miss to get one to grind.  We decided the cost of a new appliance didn't balance out the cost of saving on meat by grinding it ourselves (and then having all the clean up too).

Broccoli and cauliflower - This finally did happen, but only because a friend came and helped twice- getting the veggies cleaned and blanched and the kids looked after.  Until she came I kept buying huge amount of of cauliflower at the market only to eat it frantically throughout the week.  There were two weeks where the only vegetable we ate was cauliflower.

Zuchini - Did several batches of these because Saphira can actually help with it and I figured it would be good for quickbreads and muffins

Pumpkin - Froze one but didn't quite get to it before it started to spoil on me, so lost about half of it.

Besides my friend coming and helping out several days, the only reason I was able to do much of what I did was because Alister took a 10 day teaching trip to Siberia.  Now, Alister is a great help with the kids, and I really don't know how single moms manage - but still, I didn't really have to cook or clean much while he was gone, which leaves you a surprising amount of time for big projects.

A lazy post after a long delay

It seems like I haven't gotten back into the once a week routine yet of posting since getting back from the states. But - this time I have an excuse :-) We had some good friends of mine from Linfield come for a 10 day visit and I was busy showing them about the contry and the city. If you want a fresh perspective on Ukraine, and also a view of what we did - check out their posts for the begining of September.
Aside from that - it is the same old same old. Group, People, Groceries, House cleaning, Church and the like. Alister did have a brief change of pace as he went to Wales to start his ThM Hooray - things in that department are finally started and underway. One bump in the road is that they changed the due date for the course work (moved it up) and he'll also be teaching a course here in Ukraine mid October and then grading papers - so it'll make it a bit hectic for Alister this fall, but we need a little bit of a challenge.
The weather is starting to turn nippy here and I'll soon need to stock up on apples to make apple sauce and Mince. I promised Alister I would do a Christmas pudding this year so I'll need to make enough for pies and a small pudding.

To Do

It's Fall and time to get the food preservation on to save money (but not time) for the year

Here's (my hope I get it done) list of how I'm preparing for winter:

Canning apple sauce
freeze peppers
Dehydrate beet chips
Dehydrate apple chips
Dehydrate carrot chips (guess who got a dehydrator!)
Make apple chutney
Make mince pie filling
Buy Beef at the Harvest market and make ground beef
Buy potatoes
Buy, blanch, and freeze broccoli and cauliflower
buy tomatoes and make and freeze/can pasta sauce

Finding that my time with the two kids  - even with  lower expectations - is seriously inhibited and that what I can accomplish on my lists is frustratingly meager.

Still - here's hoping.