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This illustration is of people in the Middle Ages making verjuice out of unripened grapes:
They had it tough in those days. I spent a couple of hours with the assistance of a food processor and a juicing machine trying to produce verjuice last night and ended up with a kitchen spattered with flaked crabapples. Not recommended!
First I gathered the windfalls from beneath the apple tree in the garden - they are about the size of cherries and I got a couple of pounds of them. Feeding them directly into the juicer didn't work as they are extremely hard, so then I tried manually cutting them into quarters. That way I got about half a cupful of vivid green liquid but it was extremely laborious. My next try was chopping them in the food processor first, and then they seemed to produce no juice at all, just gummed up the works of my admittedly quite small and puny juicer (I got it on eBay for about £5.99 so I can't expect miracles). Rather horrified by the mess by now, I decided to try cooking the apple mush. After an hour or so I strained it through muslin and got something that might or might not be useable in salad dressing. I have much more important things to do but the bit's between my teeth now.
I also have an ornamental japonica which has produced tiny quinces. I am wondering what to do with those. I probably should get out more, although gardening is in fact very sociable. My neighours have learnt to avoid eye contact if they don't want a spare lettuce or a few asparagus spears shoved in their direction.
They had it tough in those days. I spent a couple of hours with the assistance of a food processor and a juicing machine trying to produce verjuice last night and ended up with a kitchen spattered with flaked crabapples. Not recommended!
First I gathered the windfalls from beneath the apple tree in the garden - they are about the size of cherries and I got a couple of pounds of them. Feeding them directly into the juicer didn't work as they are extremely hard, so then I tried manually cutting them into quarters. That way I got about half a cupful of vivid green liquid but it was extremely laborious. My next try was chopping them in the food processor first, and then they seemed to produce no juice at all, just gummed up the works of my admittedly quite small and puny juicer (I got it on eBay for about £5.99 so I can't expect miracles). Rather horrified by the mess by now, I decided to try cooking the apple mush. After an hour or so I strained it through muslin and got something that might or might not be useable in salad dressing. I have much more important things to do but the bit's between my teeth now.
I also have an ornamental japonica which has produced tiny quinces. I am wondering what to do with those. I probably should get out more, although gardening is in fact very sociable. My neighours have learnt to avoid eye contact if they don't want a spare lettuce or a few asparagus spears shoved in their direction.
