Jams are made by boiling equal parts of fruit and sugar (if the fruit is very sweet e.g grapes, we reduce sugar by a quarter of its quantity).

Quince jam

1 part of quinces / 1 part of sugar / a wine glass of water.

We peel and grate (or blend) the quinces. We boil them for half an hour with water only. We add the sugar and continue boiling for about an hour until it thickens, melts and is left almost dry. We put the jam into sterilised* jars and wait until it's completely cool before tighten the lids.

* we can easily sterilise jars by putting then into boiling water.

Note: we can ommit the sugar if we want our jam less fattening. It'll still be quite sweet, though!

Have a look at the procedure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2t8Hhj_waY

Pickles

1 part of salt, 1.5 parts of white vinegar*, 3 parts of vegetables, water (enough to cover the vegetables), some garlic to give our pickles flavour (you can ommit it if you don't like garlic flavour)

We rinse and chop or slice vegetables (carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, peppers, celery, e.t.c). We add salt and spread it all over the vegetables, we add the vinegar, the water and garlic (optional). We store the mixture in containers trying to squeeze the vegetables so that they don't float. We let them in a cool place for about 20 days before we consume the pickles.

* the vinegar should be white so as not to colour white vegs e.g cauliflower

Have a look at the procedure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZ5FVuaJk5w

Tomato sauce

Tomatoes, some salt, oil (as a preservative).

We blend tomatoes* and boil them in a saucepan with some salt until the sauce thickens. We store the sauce in jars covering with a little oil which will not allow air on the sauce and thus it can be preserved for a long time even if not in the fridge. After boiling,the sauce we usually get is one third of the tomatoes used.

We can give our sauce various flavours by adding herbs like basil, spearmint, thyme, onion e.t.c

*we can peel the tomatoes before blending them.

Have a look at the procedure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgnASNLPj6A

Artichokes

Artichokes, pepper (black, red, green), dill, garlic (optional), pieces of lemon, olive oil (as a preservative)

We pluck the artichoke leaves until we reach the soft ones. We cut them in halves, rub them with lemon so that they don't lose their colour and put them in a saucepan filled with water in which we'll add 3-4 pieces of lemon. We boil the artichokes for just a few seconds, remove from cooker and before they cool we put them in a jar with the dill (cut in tiny pieces), the pieces of lemon, the pepper and garlic. We fill the jar with olive oil and store it in a cupboard. We can consume the artichokes as they are, raw, or we can cook them in any way we like. We can also use the olive oil of the jar for cooking, it'll give a nice flavour to the meal.

Have a look at the procedure here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1-l6aBWwR4