Contents

Red As Her Hair JellyPear and Walnut ChutneyDot’s Chow-chow PickleLike a Night Out in BlackRhubarb and Ginger JamOnlineCopyright

Dot Smith describes herself as ‘a woman’s dream and a man’s nightmare!’ The exuberant 60-something, with her bright pink hair flourishes, is the Grande Dame of the Riverstone complex, justnorth of Oamaru, with its giftware shops, award-winning restaurant and oceans of naturally grown

vegetable and flower gardens.Dot and her husband Neil moved to Riverstone over 30 years ago, when it was still ‘a gravel pit’.Now, after years of hard yakka, they own six dairy farms running over 4000 cows. And green-

fingered, clever and eccentric Dot is soon to become the queen of her own castle, set on an island andcomplete with dungeon, drawbridge and towers.

Dot Smith tells of growing up on a small dairy farm north of Auckland; the struggle she and Neil hadin their early days of farming; the effects of both Rogernomics and the dairy boom; and the travels thatinspire her gardening, cooking and retailing.

And of course, she writes about the biggest adventure in her life to date — building a castle.

— all handmade by Dot, thousands of jars at a time. What’s more she even picks and grows the fruitand veges herself!

Ahead of the launch of Dot’s fabulous new book, Dot: Queen of Riverstone Castle, Dot shares someof her favourite chutney and jam recipes for you to enjoy making at home.

One of my favourite pastimes is foraging for the wild apples, crab apples, plums, blackberries,elderberries and even rowanberries that grow on the side of farm tracks, back roads and highways. Ihave discovered certain trees that have grown from the cores and stones thrown out of car windows.The apples and plums often revert to their root stock, and I have even got a secret Golden Deliciousapple tree. I was so delighted to find it, because you can’t find those apples in the shops anymore andthe fruit on this tree are enormous! They would be as big as a good-sized mango, and they don’t havea mark on them. It is almost unbelievable. When I grow fruit in my garden they get covered in brownspots, and you have to be careful how you water so that you don’t blemish the fruit. But these wildones grow in gravel with no care or attention.

Wild apples have a lot of pectin and make your jelly set really well. I have my favourite trees insecret locations around the district, and I know when they are ready for harvesting. They havedifferent uses in the jam-making process; some are great for preserving as diced fruit because theydon’t break up, and others smash up and just melt into jellies so they make really good pectin to setthe jams.

Another of my favourite activities is to go to the orchards to pick my own fruit. I travel down toCentral to get apricots, cherries and boysenberries in Cromwell. In the season I spend a lot of time atBarry Little’s berry farm at Willowbridge, a few kilometres north of Riverstone. Barry grows themost amazing black raspberries, tons of red raspberries, and a boysenberry–blackberry cross called akarakaberry. People confuse the name with the poisonous berries of the native karaka tree, but theseare a large, luscious berry, nearly 4 cm long, and they just drip off the vines so they are easy to pick.

Barry lets me pick my own because I do it in commercial quantities for the restaurant. In theseason I pick them all day, and come home with the back of my ute full of buckets of berries. I freezethem straight away in 2 kg bags, so they are handy for making jam for the rest of the season.

Leanne Mattsinger looks like a little fashion model even when she is tearing around on a tractortending her strawberry farm at the end of Seven Mile Road here in North Otago. She wears gorgeousclothes, beautiful sun hats and sunglasses, and she is absolutely thriving on producing the mostwonderful berries, which she sells to the public from a stall in the garage at her house. This woman isyet another of the remarkable North Otago people who are doing extraordinary things. I get a lot of myprime berries from her and have never found better anywhere else, but I will also buy her seconds formaking jam.

As I write this, the gooseberries are about to ripen and the bushes in my garden are laden withthem. I leave the weeds to grow around the bushes to keep the birds off them. The berries grow on themost thorny bushes imaginable, and you need to wear thick gloves, long pants and gumboots when youare harvesting them. I make gooseberry and elderflower jam, gooseberry and strawberry jam,gooseberry pies, and gooseberry chutney. We top-and-tail the crop, and freeze the berries so they areready to use.

I like to mix different types of berries together to produce very rich vitamin C and antioxidantblends; for example, blackcurrant, Black Doris plums, black raspberries and boysenberries. You mixthe whole lot together, and it gives you this absolutely unbelievable jam. One of our most popularjams is rhubarb and ginger. As soon as the rhubarb comes into season, we pick most of it for makingjam, and it is incredibly popular with the customers. The last batch sold out in two weeks, becauseyou can’t buy these old-fashioned jams on the shelf in the supermarket.

Bevan got in first with the story about how he didn’t want to stock my jam in the restaurant and

then changed his mind … I’m not one to say ‘I told you so’, but I can’t help but be chuffed with thesuccess of the jam-making venture for the restaurant. For Christmas last year, the girls made gift boxes— three jars of different jams to a box — and customers were buying them as presents for staff,family and friends. One person bought 50-odd boxes of the preserves as staff presents.

Most people read novels; I read jam books. I have lost count of the number of these books I havegot on my shelves, because I always find new techniques, hints and tips, and I find the folklore thatrelates to jams and jellies fascinating. You learn intriguing pieces of information, like the fact thatpeople used to hang rowan berries in their houses to ward off witches and evil spells.

On holiday in South Africa we visited a little town called Knysna on the Garden Route, and whileeverybody was having lunch I went into a bookshop where I found a jam-making book published inEngland. Every recipe is a gem, and with the volume of product I have made from that book I wouldhave paid for it a hundred thousand times over. Literally! I found another book in England by a manwho as a young boy used to make jam with his grandmother and later developed a method using nosugar. Instead, he uses boiled-down grape juice to set and sweeten it, and now has a successfulbusiness using this method. It is a relatively complex and costly method, but I am very keen to try it ifI can get an affordable source of the raw grape juice.

8 large red peppers16 small dried chillies1 litre wine vinegar2 packets jam-setting mix1 cup water8 cups sugarred food colouring (optional)

Remove and discard the stems and seeds of the peppers, then chop them finely in a food processor and put into a large pot. Add thechillies, and rinse out the food-processor bowl with the vinegar.

Boil gently for 3–4 minutes.

Stir the jam-setting mix into the water, and add to the pot. Boil briskly, uncovered, for 5 minutes. Add the sugar and bring back to the boil,stirring frequently. Add the food colouring, if using, then boil the mixture for 4–5 minutes, until it reaches setting point. (To test that it hasreached setting point, put a saucer in the fridge to cool. After 10 minutes of hard boiling, take a teaspoon of the jelly and put it onto thecold saucer. Push the outer edge of the puddle into the centre with your index finger: if it wrinkles even a little, it will set.)

Lift out and discard the chillies. Pour the mixture into sterilised jars, and seal with sterilised lids immediately.

1.2 kg firm pears225 g tart cooking apples225 g onions450 ml cider vinegar175 g sultanasfinely grated zest and juice of 1 orange400 g granulated sugar115 g roughly chopped walnuts½ tsp ground cinnamon

Peel and core the fruit, peel and quarter the onions and then chop all into 2.5 cm pieces.

Place in a preserving pan with the vinegar. Slowly bring the mixture to the boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for 40 minutes, stirringoccasionally until pieces are tender.

Meanwhile soak sultanas in the orange juice.

Add the sugar, sultanas, orange zest and juice to the pan, and heat until the sugar has dissolved. Simmer for 30–40 minutes or until thechutney is thick and no excess liquid remains. Stir frequently towards the end of cooking, to prevent the ingredients from sticking to thebottom of the pan.

Gently toast the walnuts in a non-stick pan over low heat for five minutes, stirring frequently until lightly coloured. Stir the nuts into thechutney with the cinnamon,

Spoon the chutney into warm, sterilised jars and seal with sterilised lids immediately. Store in a cool, dark place, and leave to mature forat least one month. Use within one year.

Waiting for the windfalls.

3.2 kg vegetables: green tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, cauliflower and onionshalf a litre water200 g salt1 kg sugar2 tbsp mustard seeds2 tsp pepper1 litre vinegar8–9 tbsp cornflour — or just enough to thicken mixture2 tbsp dry mustard2 tbsp tumeric

Cut the veges up, cover with water and sprinkle with salt. Soak overnight and, the next day, strain off the liquid.

Cook the veges with the sugar, mustard seeds, pepper and vinegar, saving 1 cup of vinegar to mix with the cornflour. Stir occasionallyuntil the vegetables are soft but not mushy — about 1 hour.

Thicken with the cornflour and vinegar mixture, then add the dry mustard and turmeric.

Ladle into sterilised jars, and seal with sterilised lids immediately.

500 g each: blueberries, cherries, blackcurrants, black raspberries and strawberries2.5 kg sugarjuice of 1 lemon (strain the pips)small knob of butter

Slice the strawberries into small pieces.

Cook all of the fruit and berries together, stirring continually until the juices have been released.

Add the sugar, and stir until dissolved. Add the lemon juice.

Boil to setting point. (To see how to test for the setting point, see the Red As Her Hair Jelly recipe.) Add the butter to dissolve the scum.

Ladle into sterilised jars, and seal with sterilised lids immediately.

1 kg rhubarb stalks, cut into 2.5 cm pieces1 kg sugar50 g preserved ginger, finely slicedjuice of 1 lemon

Toss the rhubarb in the sugar, and leave overnight to release juices.

Next day, bring the rhubarb to the boil with the ginger and lemon. Boil to setting point. (To see how to test for the setting point, see theRed As Her Hair Jelly recipe.)

Ladle into sterilised jars and seal with sterilised lids, immediately.

Rhubarb forcers in Dot’s garden.

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Copyright

If you have any comments or feedback about this book, please emaileditor@randomhouse.co.nz

A RANDOM HOUSE BOOK published by Random House New Zealand18 Poland Road, Glenfield, Auckland, New Zealand

For more information about our titles go to www.randomhouse.co.nz A catalogue record for this book is available from the NationalLibrary of New Zealand

Random House New Zealand is part of the Random House GroupNew York London Sydney Auckland Delhi JohannesburgFirst published 2014

© 2014 text Dot Smith; photographs Fiona Andersen

The moral rights of the author have been asserted

Jams and Chutneys from Dot: Queen of Riverstone Castle ISBN 978 1 77553 551 5

Dot: Queen of Riverstone Castle (paperback) ISBN 978 1 77553 543 0Dot: Queen of Riverstone Castle (digital) ISBN 978 1 77553 544 7

This book is copyright. Except for the purposes of fair reviewing no part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any formor by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, withoutpermission in writing from the publisher.

Design: Megan van StadenCover photograph: Fiona Andersen