Wednesday 7 July 2010

Chrzan

I love the word chrzan - it's Polish for horseradish. I leave you, dear reader, to take a guess at pronunciation!

We have loads of horseradish growing wild in our garden so while cleaning up today I dug up a small fraction of the mature roots to make some horesradish sauce/paste. Here's some photos from the process!


freshly dug-up roots in the middle of the lawn.

Discarded leaves



1.1kg of roots after they'd been cleaned of soil and given a scrub


Looking better: washed, peeled and roughly diced


First blitzing in small doses. Only additions: 1 glass boiling water, half glass white malt vinegar and half glass white wine vinegar, one tablespoon salt, one tablespoon sugar

The effect of the fumes on my poor eyes!




1.4kg of finished paste after second blitzing (Yes, I DID recalibrate the scales!)

Shops sell horseradish in little 50g jars like the one in front. How long will my 2 x 600g gherkin jars last, I wonder? (the two smaller ones are going to my sisters) Honest proposition: would anyone within travelling distance like some for free? Otherwise it's likely to go to waste, and I'm guaranteed at least a similar harvest in November, and again in the spring!

3 comments:

  1. Wow - horseradish growing in your garden? How good that must be... just need to find some. Tried horseradish infused vodka?

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  2. Of course I've tried vodka with horseradish. I'm Polish, there's probably not a flavour, spice or herb in kitchen use with which I've NOT tried infusing it! ;-)

    The horseradish in our garden came from your neck of the country, actually.

    When I was about 9 or 10 we were visiting an old army buddy of my dad's on the outskirts of Worcester and on the walk back to the train station my dad dug up a couple of pieces of root from the path verge which he then just left to grow wild in our garden.

    After more than 30 years it's become a bit of a pest in 3 different areas of our garden and just can't be stopped!

    (Honest proposition: if you give me an address to send it to, I can pull up a few young roots and post them to you for you to propagate if you want - they're quite hardy)

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  3. Interesting - that's how great gardens are made.

    Wow - thanks for the offer, will DM address.

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