Bottling food to preserve it.

With Pietro Parisi, Campanian chef at the restaurant Era Ora, and Marlena Buscemi, coordinator of the “Cooking Without Waste” Master of Food course.

Ok not Michelin Star cooking stuff but it was a very interesting demonstration, we bottled 3 different sort of dishes, 1 starter, 1 main and 1 desert.

Interesting concept we tend to only bottle excess or seasonal fruits at The Retreat for using later in the year. Here in Italy they have so much seasonal food that they make entire meals so they are ready in the pantry for the winter when most fruits, veggies, cheeses and some meats are just not available.

The starter or sauce for pasta was a ricotta and herb so you could use any pasta sauce that you make. The main was a rice with a rich tomato and meat sauce. The desert was of whole wheat grains cooked in buttermilk and honey with cinnamon and it formed a cream sauce.

All bottled and sealed then put in a steam oven to kill any bacteria or a normal oven with water in a tray on the shelf below the bottles will also work. You bring them to 100 deg in the oven for 15 to 20 mins. Everything we created to day was a great meal in a jar, or you can use the same technique for preserving veggies or fruits.