In this year’s vegie patch, we did that deliberately, to make a year's supply of mock pineapple.
My other half first travelled through Australia as a backpacker in the ’90s.
Somewhere on the back roads of Queensland, he was fed a pineapple upside-down cake.
As a foreigner, he had never tasted pineapple upside-down cake before. It wasn't until years later, when I entered his life and started baking, that he rediscovered this delightful treat.
If the other half had his way, we’d be putting pineapple in everything, not just upside down on a cake.
Every time he wants pineapple in something, it has to come from a shop.
So, using my preserving skills, I’ve come up with a different pineapple option — mock pineapple, or, as he calls it, zucchini pineapple.
I made mock pineapple for the first time last summer, using the recipe from foodpreserving.org
To make it last and develop the in-depth pineapple flavour, it was preserved using the Fowlers Vacola method, maybe making a dozen No. 20 jars or so, only to be told ‘you can make that again’ after it made its way into everything: stir-fries, sweet and sour, upside-down cakes, sandwiches, pizza and even smoothies.
The dozen jars didn’t last long, so this summer there’s enough zucchini in the vegie patch to feed the neighbourhood, with one of the four varieties, a marrow, grown just to make mock pineapple.
Our family prefers pineapple in juice over syrup, as we found the original recipe a tad too sweet for our liking.
This year, I’ve amended the recipe, which also made it easier to follow and meant less wastage, with no not-totally used bottles of pineapple juice leftover.
Here’s my recipe for mock pineapple (or as we call it, zucchini pineapple)
The zucchini is cut into the shape of pineapple pieces that you would find in a tin in the supermarket.
The best pineapple juice to use is the 99% juice in a Tetra pack.
Mock pineapple (zucchini pineapple)
Ingredients
- 12 cups of zucchini, peeled and cut into the shape of pineapple
- 1L pineapple juice
- 500ml bottled lemon juice
- 500g sugar
Method
- Place the pineapple juice, lemon and sugar in a large saucepan and heat to dissolve the sugar.
- Once the sugar has dissolved, add zucchini and boil.
- As soon as the zucchini has boiled, turn off the heat. Cool and leave overnight in the fridge.
- Bottle as per Vacola.
- Leave the jars in a cool dark place for a week, then use how you would pineapple.
So far this season, I’ve bottled 43 No. 20s and four No. 27s of mock pineapple.
At one jar a week, hopefully that’s enough pineapple to get us through the year.
Have a unique recipe or garden-inspired dish you'd like Jaci to try? We'd love to hear your culinary ideas! Send them to jaci.hicken@mmg.com.au
