Apple Compote

We had a few kilos of apples from our farm sitting around that we needed to do something with. The apples are Rewenas: a nicely acidic variety that somehow we don't quite enjoy eating raw. As an experiment to try and use up a good quantity of the apples before they go bad, today we made a batch of apple compote.

I made the "broth" from 5ooml apple juice and about 750ml apple cider, 4 star anises, a few pepper corns, the zest from a lemon, and a few peppercorns. I let this simmer for a while to extract the flavors, and then strained it. Andrea cleaned and cored the apples and then cut them into 12ths. These I packed into jars with some sultanas and then filled the jars with the liquid. After putting on the lids, I boiled the jars for 20 minutes then let them cool.

After they've had a few days to age we'll try cracking open one of the jars to see how things turned out.