On my mind.....Jumping Johnny's

Many thanks to Rhonda at Down to Earth for this concept.
This is a Friday photo feature that anyone with a blog can join. To take part, post a photo on your own blog, write a short caption explaining it, and link it back to here from your blog by saying you're part of "On my mind". Please write a new post, don't link to an older one. When you've done that, come back here and add a comment below, with  a link to your blog. 

Bendigo gold fields

In my family we have a traditional dessert recipe that has been passed down through the generations...and it is called Jumping Johnnies.

I've often wondered where the recipe originated.........

My Nan told my mum that she got it off her mother and hers before her.... It was a great recipe to have on a farm, as, if company arrived unannounced...there were always the staple food items to make a supper of Jumping Johnnies....after all, many a farm had chooks and a lemon tree too. (see the recipe below)......

After turning to Google on and off since its invention with no luck.....I have finally found a few leads.....vague, but leads none the less.

I first found the recipe mentioned here...Source: First Catch a Kangaroo....

So with that lead, I discovered that First Catch your Kangaroo is actually the name given to a letter written by William Howitt to cookery author Eliza Acton in 1853, thanking her for her lovely wisdom within her cookbook. 

William goes on to explain the horrors of working and living in the fields in Bendigo while looking for Gold. William also writes that if it was not for her cookbook, he would be eating very meagre meals like the thousands of people around him. 

But alas, as shown above in a sample only....I have a full transcript copy of the letter from the library, and I regret to say that the recipe is not mentioned in it at all. 

full copy from the Canberra Library

So, I now need to find the cookery book written by Eliza Acton to search for a recipe for which I'm not sure is even included.......I've also looked up the books held at the larger libraries in Canberra, but haven't looked at the NSW State Library here in Sydney.......

How lovely it would be to be able to share the story behind the recipe with the family members who make these Jumping Johnnies.   If only a photocopy of the page......

The recipe 

Jumping Johnnies (Australian) *(Hmmm I wonder if it is in fact an Australian Recipe)

Source: First Catch a Kangaroo 
3 eggs
4 tablespoons of sugar 
Grated rind of 1 lemon
1/2 cup milk
2 1/2 cups Self Raising Flour 

Whisk well together eggs and sugar, add grated lemon rind, milk, and flour. Mix well. Fry by teaspoonsful in boiling fat, roll in confectioners sugar, and eat hot or cold. The Johnnies will "jump" (turn themselves) when cooked on one side if there is enough fat.

(They do sometimes need a little help though...lol)

You can also see another version of the recipe in more detail here....

Imagine...only two references to the recipe on the entire World Wide Web. How hard can it be to track down a recipe....? 

Did you know that Eliza was the first to refer to a well known Christmas dessert in her book as the Christmas Pudding?  

Eliza Acton and William Howitt

 

I found her book ...."Modern Cookery, for private families" online...by Eliza Acton.....and have not found the recipe in this book......

I also found her other book..... "Modern cookery in all its branches: reduced to a system of easy practice" ... By Eliza Acton..........this was also online....and no luck :(

Having one last search before writing this post...I found her bread book online as well; 

The English bread-book: for domestic use, adapted to families of every grade 

going by the index in the front of this book....she knew an awful lot about bread and all its forms....I'm going to have a good read of this...It reminds me of when I got stuck reading it at the library in Canberra....Couldn't get my eyes out of the book. 

I absolutely adore the way she writes.....and could spend
many hours reading her many receipts....(recipes)

Jumping Johnny's are the yummiest, light deep fried donut you will ever taste...with just a hint of lemon. Traditionally they are rolled in icing sugar...but when my boys were little I rolled them in cinnamon sugar and called them Mummy's special donut's.

If I don't find the recipe in any of her books..I'm really not sure where to go from here, but I'm learning a lot of interesting history along the way............In the meantime...come back after Christmas, and I will publish a photo of them after I make them.

*I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe....it could be an Australian recipe.....

Have you heard of Jumping Johnny's?

5 roasts in 1 day & other Prep for Xmas

Dearest readers, please excuse my absence...I am having technical difficulties with my Internet, email and computer as a whole...sure they are fantastic when they are working, but have one break down on you repeatedly...and your in for a whole lot of trouble......like me at the moment. I won't be changing anything on my blog just yet....as time with an internet connection is valuable I would much rather write a post for my wonderful readers.


5 roasts in 1 day
I bet your thinking I'm mad,.....no, just organised.....lol.....For those who are planning ahead these festive holidays....you will understand my need for cooking ahead. I have great news, my husband is going to be home for the Christmas period, and I don't plan to be stuck in the kitchen half the time, preparing meals. I like to serve up cold meats, and salads.
Today's events in the kitchen went something like this.......

I planned on cooking roasts of Lamb, Pork and Silverside.....It's easy really....


*Prep two legs of Lamb and pop in the oven first.....I basted the legs of Lamb with my soup starter...It really is an all rounder...and you will see me use it quite often in my kitchen.

 *Then prep and put the two silverside's in the crock-pot........

*Then brown the Leg of Pork on the stove to kick-start the cooking of the crackling.......

rub a small amount of salt into the cut skin...
in a really hot pan, place the pork
turn until brown all over.

Almost ready to place in the oven.......

When the juice runs almost clear in the Legs of Lamb.....bring them out of the oven and let them finish cooking in their own heat...............I bake mine in oven bags. I find the meat stays lovely and moist.

Rub some of the herby soup starter all over the crackling of the pork you browned earlier......

*Now turn the heat up on the oven to about 210 degrees Celsius for about 45 minutes to set the crackling nice and crispy...but don't forget to turn it back down.......
*Remove from the oven when the juice runs almost clear, like the Lamb....cut away the crackling and allow it to cool. When cool, store the crackling in an airtight container. If you are partial to the odd bit of crackling it wont keep until Christmas...but it would if you didn't eat it. Crackling stores pretty well. Now wrap the leg of pork in foil to finish cooking and cooling....
Ok, I confess, we had ours with tea tonight..but I will buy extra skin and make more crackling for the big day....I'm sure to have the oven on again before then.


We enjoyed half of one leg of lamb tonight for tea...and I put one in the freezer along with the Leg of Pork....Marked clearly of-course........

*At tea time I turned the crock-pot off and left the silverside's to cool overnight in the cooking liquor.....This makes the silverside lovely and moist for eating as a cold meat. In the morning, I will remove them from the pot, then wrap them separately and pop them into the freezer too.

And now I have 5 roasts cooked in one day! Told you it was easy....... 

*I also made herbed butter..using my "soup starter"......

One for the fridge to use now,
and one for the freezer to use later

Butter and my Soup Starter
blended well.

*I had to make a new batch of soup starter today too, so I made a huge batch which you can see in the very first photo. I picked bunches and bunches of herbs from the garden today for it too along with 3 bunches of spring onions. The soup starter gets used for almost everything these days....

*The herbed butter makes a deliciously yummy spread for salad sandwiches too....or use the starter straight to top savoury biscuits with homegrown tomatoes....A big Thanks for the red ones Rose.......Yummmmmm

I also popped some soup starter on the top.
A lovely flavour and another great way to use my soup starter.

*I pureed a huge Papaya I got from the markets over the weekend....2 for $5 was a good price, even though they had a bad spot on them. This will be lovely added to any fruit beverages I prepare.

Here are some other foods I have been preparing ahead of time and popping in the freezer:

*Mini quiches...in the same rectangular mini muffin/bread trays (above).....I plan on using these as a side dish or sliced in sandwiches. Sorry no photos, but I will take one if anyone wants to see them.

*I also have a batch of Beetroot and Chocolate Cupcakes which I had to hide in the freezer quickly before they all got eaten..........

*I've roasted 3 trays of sweet capsicums and de-seeded them before storing in Olive Oil in the fridge....these are delicious on a piece of toasted bread, or mashed into a dressing.....I wouldn't be bothered with a recipe if it called for them, but when I have them already roasted and bottled...Yep! you betcha I'll use them.

I learnt a valuable lesson here....prepare the sweet chillies before roasting them, it will be so much quicker and cleaner....after roasting, all I would need to do, is slice them possible in half and remove the skin. But nope...I did it the long way around.....but I learnt for next time which is what is important.

Roasted sweet chillies ready to add to Olive Oil
and pop in the fridge.

*I've also got biscuits ready to pop in the oven...Make a double batch...roll them all out into balls until you have no batter left....then pop them in the freezer. Once frozen, remove them from the tray and place in a plastic bag. Back into the freezer until you want a really quick batch of biscuits....They bake up just fine, but you haven't had the trouble of making the batter up.

There's plenty more where they came from....

Other things I would like to prepare...so my holiday is a holiday and I only have minimal salad prep to do in the kitchen include:

*I would also like to get another lot of Steamed Xmas Puddings into the freezer for those last minute gifts....there's only a few left in the freezer for now.

* Some more mini quiche...I think they will be very popular...so add eggs to the next shopping trip.

* I want to have a go at rising bread dough then freezing it....so again, most of the prep is done...Lovely fresh ly baked bread rolls in the oven on Christmas Day with half the effort....It can't get much better than that.

* I also need to prep my Ham, I'm doing Nigella's Christmas Coke Ham...It's delicious....but I plan on looking for a recipe for coke on the internet....so I don't buy the horribly sweet fizzy soda.

* I also need to buy my Turkey legs...we don't bother with the whole huge bird coming to the table...I'd rather have the meat off the bone long before that...and have it all bagged up, in the freezer....and thawed in small amounts at my convenience.

That's all I can think of at the moment...Oh I still have a container of that delicious Apricot Delight I made....so add that to the goodies too.


Are you doing any prep for the big day? Or do you like to prep for a few days or even a week or more, like I do? 
If you like something you have seen, or can offer me some great advice along these lines...even recipe ideas....I'd love to hear from you.....
Please leave a comment..........................

Dear readers.....please bare with me, as I am working on the layout of my blog...I hope to make it a bit more user friendly soon.
Thanking you.

Rhubarb & Mint Jelly

Well, it seems that if you add enough sugar, anything can taste good....even Rhubarb. It makes me wonder if Nan or Mum ever put sugar in their Rhubarb and Apple....It was far too tart for my liking....and until the other day, I thought I would never like the taste of Rhubarb. I guess it just depends on the way you serve it!

For those who are wondering what book these recipes came from, the book is called ......
"Preserves" by Catherine Atkinson & Maggie Mayhew.
Published by "Hermes House, an imprint of Anness Publishing, Wigston, Leicestershire LE18 4SE"
ISBN: 13 :  978  *  1 *  84681  * 571  *  3
ISBN: 10 :  1  * 84681  *  571  *  3   (sorry for the funny asterix's, the pc was picking up that this was a code if I typed it correctly.)


Here is a photo of the front cover....I picked this book up at a newly opened book store in Warrawong, where all the books were $5.00 each. I think this is a reasonable price for a comprehensive book like this.

Rhubarb & Mint Jelly

Sorry for those who prefer to print the recipe by copying and pasting....this looks a lot nicer, but it is definitely not printer friendly.

After cooking the Rhubarb and beginning to strain overnight.

I was too tired to cook this when it was ready, so I put it in the fridge until the following day.
Then it was time to get cooking.

 

My Nan and my Mum have always added a blob of butter to settle the scum that forms on the top of a rolling boil jam. This was beginning to make a scum, so I added the blob of  butter.....

 

Going from memory, I thought the butter would dissolve the scum, but it didn't. It did however make it nice and thick and contained in one area, so it was easier to scoop off the top.

I'm sure I have used this method and had the scum disappear before my eyes.....Hmmmmm

Here is the scum that I scooped....but I only took the photo after I had removed the mint, which is at a later step.

Use a latex elastic band to bundle the mint together...
Quicker than tying a string, and re-usable time and time again.

After boiling for what I thought was enough time to be thickening and getting close to setting point..I decided to add about half a cup of lemon juice (from the freezer) to help reach setting point. Lemon juice is high in pectin, which is what is needed sometimes to make a jam or jelly set.

adding the lemon juice

The instructions say to add the chopped mint after removing from the heat...I was weary of this, as I felt that the mint should feel cooked on the palate. So I added the mint once it started to thicken. I'm glad I did, as the fresh mint floated on the top of the jelly in the saucepan. I figured, if it floated in the saucepan, it will float in the jar....Which is not what I wanted.

I'm pleased to say that the jelly soon thickened after adding the lemon juice, I think another 20 minutes did the trick too.
I also cooked the jelly longer to make sure the mint was cooked.....but it still floated....so I decided to wait until it cooled considerably until pouring it into the jars. Having the jelly thicker, I was able to stir the mint through the jelly, and it remained mixed through. (Genius thinking on my behalf..lol)

But now I had another problem.........
The jelly would be too cool to seal the lids....I remembered that Rhonda had posted about canning in the oven with small batches, so I had a read and decided on popping them in the oven for roughly 35 minutes on a medium heat.
This method sealed them nicely once they cooled. It popped those little buttons down as soon as I tried to move them.
Done!
I think I will have to try this jelly on a cold meat like lamb or silverside. It would also be good on toast or a crumpet too. I can taste the rhubarb flavour, then comes the light minty flavour at the end. It's very delicious and very light in flavour, but I'm not sure I will make it again, unless I add the lemon juice from the start of the cooking process to help set the jelly.

4 lovely jars with a delicate flavour of Rhubarb and Mint.

I love how the freckles of mint dance through the colour of the rhubarb.

even after all that fussing, some settlement of the mint on the top still remains....Oh well.

Rhubarb & Ginger Jam

Yesterday I mentioned that I was making for the first time a Rhubarb & Ginger Jam. Well I have to tell you I was as surprised as Mum when we tasted it. Mum's first reaction was, "Wow, we should have been making that years ago!" So there you go! It is really delicious. The only problem now is that it didn't make enough. Because of the surprisingly delicious flavour of this jam, I am going to be making more for the stockpile.

Rhubarb & Ginger Jam

More Rhubarb recipes to come....Next.....Rhubarb & Mint Jelly................................