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Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.

71 replies

DiggertyDamn · 04/11/2018 12:35

Mumsnet has always been helpful and the collective knowledge great, so there's some field near is which used to be allotments. Loads of fruit trees grow there. We have an abundance of blackberries and figs, sadly now out of season, so we have made loads of jams and pies.

DH went over earlier to see of there were any figs left but they're all gone now, but he did see these.

We don't know what they are. They look a bit like blueberries, but are on trees not bushes. My dad thinks they look like sloe berries. Obviously we don't want to pick and cook with any until we know they are safe.

I thought the MN collective would probably know.

Also while I'm here asking questions. Does anyone know a good alternative to butter in pastry? We did our last cook off almost vegan cheaptastyandeasy.wordpress.com/cook-off-almost-vegan/ but the problem we had was the pastry in the pastry pie. We use butter and an egg in it, obviously if we're doing it vegan then those are out, so does anyone have a good pastry recipe without butter and egg?
We're doing our next cook off next Friday and it was lovely so we're going to do it veggie again but would like the pastry vegan.

Thanks in advance for any ideas.

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DiggertyDamn · 04/11/2018 19:11

Asked my neighbour, she's lived her 25+ years, since when it was allotments, she said olives.

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HunkyDory69 · 04/11/2018 21:34

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Ta1kinpeece · 04/11/2018 21:46

Hunky
Your idea would work for the ones that Diggerty has ....
they are what the french would call "olivettes"
rather than big fat queen olives that you get across Greece
salted and cured I suspect they will make an amazing tapenade / pate / pizza topping

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DiggertyDamn · 04/11/2018 23:16

Brilliant, thanks HunkyDory69. There's a few different types over there. How do we know when they're ready to be picked?

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AlpacaLypse · 05/11/2018 11:16

Just popped back - yy new photos, definitely olives! As to what to do with them... haven't the foggiest!

DiggertyDamn · 05/11/2018 16:57

Reading this www.gardeningknowhow.com/edible/fruits/olive/harvesting-olive-trees.htm
It sounds like they are ready to be picked. I'm going to get enough for a jam jar full and try HunkyDory69's way.
I'm excited to try!

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HunkyDory69 · 05/11/2018 21:02

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DiggertyDamn · 06/11/2018 11:56

Good tip thanks. We're going over to collect some at the weekend :)

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DiggertyDamn · 18/11/2018 13:54

Gatekeeper

We did cook off yesterday and used the pastry recipe you linked to. It was lovely. Thank you :)

We've found somewhere we can get coconut oil from, so we're going to get some tomorrow and try the other, making mince pies. We went to a huge Carrefour last week and in the world foods aisle they had icing sugar, so we got some and with the coconut oil we have everything we need to try the one SergeantPfeffer linked to.

HunkyDory69 We've had a crazy couple of weeks, but are going over the field later to get olives. I have a jar and salt ready Grin

Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.
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DiggertyDamn · 18/11/2018 16:26

Just got a bag of olives.

Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.
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DiggertyDamn · 23/11/2018 09:18

@SergeantPfeffer

I could do with you help if you don't mind.

We made the mince pie pastry (vodka/icing sugar/coconut oil) that you linked to last night.

It was crazy crumbly. We put it in the fridge to chill, in a wrapped disc. It went rock hard. We had to leave it a room temp for 10 mins just o be able to mold it with our hands. It couldn't be rolled because it just broke apart.
We were making a big mince pie with lattice top, so we just pressed the pastry into the pie dish with our hands and kind of fashioned flat sausage shapes with our hands for the lattice strips.

It did taste very nice, but I'm sure we went wrong somewhere. We followed the recipe exactly.

You said you had had success with this recipe, so have you got any tips please?

We couldn't roll it at all.

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DiggertyDamn · 23/11/2018 09:28

To show you what I mean.

This is the coconut oil we got. It's pretty much solid, not like oil consistency.

And this is the mince pie we made. Half gone because we all thought it was really tasty! Grin

Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.
Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.
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SergeantPfeffer · 23/11/2018 17:27

If it was tasty then I’m tempted to say it worked Grin
I can’t remember, if I’m honest. It was pretty delicate, but I’m used to making tart paste which is similarly crumbly so I think I just treated it like that. As in I sort of squash and roll and expect there to be cracks to patch. Probably helps that I have reconstituted stone worktops that stay cool- they are brill for rolling pastry. I don’t like how they look (previous house owner put them in) but they are good for pastry!

DiggertyDamn · 24/11/2018 10:37

Thanks. Our worktops are marble (rented place) so pretty cool. The way we did it was fine for a big one, but to make small ones like the recipe said would be impossible.
I think next time we'll just skip the putting it in the fridge part and roll straight away, that could possibly work. It really was tasty and the coconut oil jar is 400g and the recipe uses 200g so I have enough in the house to try again. I think it's going to be a work in progress Grin

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ChardonnaysPrettySister · 24/11/2018 10:39

Bit late now, but you can make pastry with olive oil.

SergeantPfeffer · 24/11/2018 14:52

I used my leftover coconut oil to make a veggie Lardy cake Blush

DiggertyDamn · 24/11/2018 18:07

That's what we did @ChardonnaysPrettySister we used the recipe @Gatekeeper linked to. It worked very well and was very nice.

Drools. Any change of you sharing the recipe please @SergeantPfeffer
Grin

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ChardonnaysPrettySister · 24/11/2018 18:50

Oh sorry, I saw that coconut oil and I thought you used that.

DiggertyDamn · 24/11/2018 19:56

We tried both Grin I'm not brave enough to try the vodka/coconut/icing sugar version for savory though.

The mince pie pastry was very coconutty, so I don't think it would work for the cook off pies we make, but it was lovely for the mince pie.

Have you ever made pastry with oil, what's your go-to recipe?

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SergeantPfeffer · 24/11/2018 23:06

I think it was this one
www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.com/food/recipes/lardy_cake_80839/amp
I subsitituted all the lard for coconut oil and I think all the butter too (can’t remember- I’m veggie, not vegan so do eat butter). It was good, if messy. Did work though.

Haven’t made it again as I’m the only person in my household that loves Lardy cake and it’s not good for me to regularly eat a whole one Grin

DiggertyDamn · 25/11/2018 15:56

Thanks, I'll try that.

We made another mince pie today. Did some things differently, and it was definitely better.

  1. Rolled out straight away, no chilling in the fridge.
  2. Used a big pyrex dish lined with baking paper so the pastry was thinner.
  3. Put about a teaspoon of olive oil in it. It made the pastry much easier to work with.
Does anyone know what these berries are? Also need a butter alternative for pastry.
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