Anyone who knows me knows I love cookbooks. I’ve got shelves full of them. I am trying very hard to curb my spending habit but recently I’ve been acquiring books on preserving, pickles and fermentation. Our garden is producing such vast amounts of vegetables that we need to find ways of preserving their goodness beyond just slinging them in the freezer.
I started looking at the preserving chapters of various books and discovered plenty of ways to turn our harvests into something really delicious. This has led to books solely focused on preserving from Pam the Jam, Kylee Newton and Rachel de Thample. I’ve made bread and butter pickles using our cucumbers, and turned our cauliflower and green beans into gluten free piccalilli. I’ve made spicy chutney using courgettes that give mango chutney a run for its money. We have jars of Italian style pickled fennel and extra fruity jam. I’ve turned our rose hips, rowan berries, crab apples and damsons into hedgerow jelly and we are experimenting with fermentation – sauerkraut, and probiotic vegetable bouillon paste.
Last summer we had such a glut of courgettes that we were beginning to despair of ever finding a use for even half of them. Doing some research on the internet I found a recipe for Courgette caviar by Olia Hercules in the Guardian and decided to give it a go. Gamechanger!
How to turn a glut of courgettes plus onions, tomatoes and garlic into a smooth silky paste that can be used as a dip, as a pasta sauce, or as a base for soups and stews. Olia comes from Ukraine and her book “Summer Kitchens” is full of recipes to preserve summer harvests. I bought the book earlier this year to show support and to learn a bit about a cuisine and a way of life that I was previously unfamiliar with. It is a great read, and a great resource; and I do hope that the many displaced Ukrainians find a way back to their summer kitchens.
I’ve changed the recipe a bit to reflect the vegetables I need to use up, and also because I find cooking the sauce in the oven caramelises the paste without burning the bottom of the pan.
I’m full of admiration for those Ukrainian women who stirred their spitting sauce for hours – once was enough for me!
Ukrainian Courgette “Caviar”
Olive oil (or sunflower oil)
4kg courgette (sliced into half moons or quartered into chunks (depending on size)
2 large onions
3 – 4 leeks
1 small head celery
3 carrots
1 head of garlic
2 x 400g tin of tomatoes or 450g ripe tomatoes
salt and pepper
1. Preheat the oven to 220 degrees Celsius.
2. Toss the courgettes in a good glug of olive oil and add to 2 roasting trays. Roast in the hot oven for 40 minutes, changing the trays over half way and turning the courgettes.
They want to be roasted enough to lose excess moisture and have acquired some brown spots of caramelisation.
3. Meanwhile chop the onion and garlic finely in a food processor and add to a large wide pan (that can go in the oven) with a good glug of olive oil. Saute over gentle heat for at lest 10 minutes.
4. Chop the celery, leeks and carrot in the food processor and add to the pan with the
onions and garlic. Continue to saute, stirring regularly until the courgettes are done and everything in the pan is softened.
5. Add the courgettes to the pan with the tin of tomatoes and a couple of pinches of salt and some freshly ground black pepper.
6. Reduce the oven to 170 degrees Celsius and cook for 2 to 3 hours, stirring every half an hour, until the mixture is brown, thick and no moisture is left (length of time depends on the amount of moisture in your vegetables)
You can preserve the paste in a sterilised jar in the fridge with a little olive oil covering over the courgettes for a couple of weeks. Or you can portion up the paste and freeze it until needed. You can also blend it to make it extra smooth.
Serve it the way the Ukrainians do – on bread. Use it as a dip or fold it through some freshly cooked pasta. Our favourite midwinter soup is to defrost a portion and add it to a pot with some chickpeas, cannellini beans or butter beans and enough vegetable stock to make a thick warming soup.
I suspect it would also benefit from a couple of chillies added to the vegetable mix – but in this household our homegrown cayenne chillies are precious and we use them to make a fermented chilli sauce with garlic and ginger.
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