Scuff's Kitchen

Cider

2013-10-23T22:27:00.001+01:00

Well, obviously - we've got 2 apple trees in the back garden.

The trees have been left to grow pretty wild and will need a good cutting back and pruning once they've lost their leaves. However, in the mean time the branches are sagging with fruit.

I enlisted the help of a couple of friends to help harvest some of the apples. You know who your mates are when they'll stand on a metal ladder holding a metal pole in a thunderstorm.

It rained on and off all day but we called it a day at 4 sacks of apples.

It seems that apples are fairly unwilling to give up their juice in comparison to some other fruits. As I'm working at relatively low batch amounts I employed the following method.

Wash the apples in a sink to remove bugs, bacteria and dirt.

Roughly chop into sort of half inch pieces.

Blitz in a food processor with a plastic chopping blade.

Pack into a press and strain through a muslin into a clean brewing bin.

It's pretty laborious to be honest. You get into a rhythm after a bit but its long hard work. Each press from my little setup gives me about half a litre of must. I decide to call it a day at about 12 litres.

I did return 2 weeks later with a special select batch of apples. The ideal mix I wanted for my cider was 70% apples off my eating tree, backed with 30% sour apples off my larger tree. I don't know the varieties of the apples in my garden, nor care as long as they taste good.

I pressed another gallon of this mix into a demijohn and a litre into a bottle that I pasteurised by leaving in my mash tun at 70something degC for 40 minutes. That juice came out tasting amazing.

Back to my bin though, I pitched in a sachet of wine yeast and popped a lid fitted with an airlock on top. After about a week it had done the bulk of its fermenting, a hydrometer reading confirmed that, but I left it another week to settle further.

I moved right on at this stage to bottling. Strictly speaking I should have racked off into a new bin to let it settle further and de-haze a bit but a bit of cloudiness never scared me. I prepped up my bottling area by sterilising caps, bottles, a bucket and a syphoning tube.

The bottles I used were collected over some time leading up to the day and involved hours of torturous beer and cider drinking. I gave all of them a thorough wash and sterilise and kept them sweet by placing a small patch of cling film over the top.

I syphoned off the cider from my big bin into the bucket through more muslin. Each bottle I primed with a teaspoon of caster sugar dissolved into a small quantity of water. Next I syphoned my cider into the bottles and immediately capped.

I'll leave this until Christmas before drinking most of it, but I couldn't resist trying a sneaky preview of one.

It was dry, quite sharp, with just the right amount of fizz. Which is pretty much exactly how I like my cider so I'm quite pleased all in all. It does however have a slightly woody note in the finish which I take to be an indication that I harvested too early. My lessons learned for next year are to harvest in October, and I think stick to this single variety of apple. My sweeter apples are perfect for eating and when mixed in with the sharper ones make a delicious apple juice, but when it comes to cider this single variety can't be beat.

Tomato soup and sauce

2013-07-16T21:58:00.000+01:00

One day I intend to become an expert tomato farmer, because the processing of tomatoes into sauces and soups is probably one of the most satisfying things I do in the kitchen. I have written about this method for making sauce for pizza, however I now share with you my favourite tomato sauce recipe, suitable for soups, pizza, pasta, or just a great base for whatever else you can think of. This will make 2 X 750ml containers of soup (enough for 2 people in each container) and 2 X 275g of sauce (enough for a large pizza or pasta dish for 2).

Ingredients
300g cherry tomatoes
700g baby plum tomatoes
2 large beef tomatoes
2kg salad tomatoes
2 sweet red peppers
Olive oil
Garlic salt
Black pepper
Mixed herbs

I buy tomatoes a week before I use them and let them ripen and develop flavour on my windowsill. It really does make a hell of a difference. A fresh supermarket bought tomato can last a couple of weeks on a sunny windowsill before its time to worry about rotting.

To start with I put all my cherry and baby plum tomatoes on to simmer in a good glug of olive oil.

The beef tomatoes I chop into chunky slices and the salad tomatoes I cut into quarters. These are spread on a baking tray and seasoned with olive oil, garlic salt, black pepper and some mixed herbs.

The sweet red peppers don't just add an amazing flavour to this, they also colour it. Tomato sauce is orange, by adding the peppers it becomes a richer bright red colour. They're absolutely essential to this sauce. I slice them open down one side and scoop out all the seeds before stuffing them with some of the cherry and plum tomatoes from the hob.

The tomatoes and peppers all go in the oven at 170degC for 40mins, just until they begin to char slightly. Meanwhile the cherry and plum tomatoes should be well softened and will pop and break up easily when stirred. Take them off the heat and blend them, before straining them through a sieve, pushing it all through with the back of a spoon until all you have left is seeds and skins in the sieve. Keep this sauce aside for now.

When your roasting tomatoes and peppers are singed and ready, take them out the oven and drain off all the juice into tall glasses, reserve this oily juice.

As the juice cools the oil will rise to the top, skim this off and keep it. This oil will have loads of tomato flavour, I like to add it to fresh pop corn.

Again blend your tomatoes and peppers before pushing the mixture through a sieve and straight into a large pot.

That's all the hard work done! Now simply add to the pot the juice in the glasses and the sauce from the cherry and plum tomatoes. Stir it all together and bring it up to a simmer. At this point you have a big batch of tomato soup.

About half the mixture I remove into pour and store bags, cool and freeze as soup.

The rest I leave to gently simmer and reduce. As it simmers a scum will collect on the surface. Swoop in with a clean spoon every now and then and remove this before giving it all a bit of a stir. As the sauce gets lower it will spit violently so a loose covering with a spit guard or a towel might be a good idea. The sauce is at the right consistency when you can draw a line to the bottom of the pot in it. At this point half fill 2 jars with sauce. Whilst you do this the sauce is still reducing and will caramelise on the base slightly, which is perfect. Make sure you don't let it burn too much and keep stirring it in. Fill up the jars with the remaining sauce and you're done.

If you're a canning pro then this is the perfect time to use those skills. Personally I just freeze them.

Sun Dried Tomatoes

2013-07-02T09:34:00.000+01:00

It's a nice sunny day for a change so I've decided to construct a solar dehydrator.

I'm awful at DIY so I'll be drawing on a childhood of Blue Peter and Art Attack. My materials are a cardboard box, some muslin, cling film, a large bowl and plenty of Sellotape.

I start by cutting off the wings of the box, then half way down one of the sides and cutting a slope to face into the sun.

I need ventilation to remove the moisture but I hate insects, so I've use the off cut wings, cut 2 squares, cut holes in the squares and stuck some muslin to them and sealed all round with Sellotape.

Then I cut 2 holes in the sides of the box to stick my vent covers over.

Next, I stretched muslin tightly over the bowl and secured with string.

I stuck the vent covers go on the sides and the bowl goes inside.

Now for the food bit. I used 5 tomatoes that had been ripening on my windowsill for a couple of weeks. I find that shop bought tomatoes are generally not worth eating until they've had a week at least of sun ripening. I cut them into quarters, skewered them, arranged them on top of the bowl and seasoned with a couple of pinches of light brown sugar, 2 or 3 generous pinches of garlic salt, a little pepper and fresh chopped basil.

I stuck a sheet of foil to the back of the dehydrator to reflect as much sun in as possible and dehydrator Mk.I was complete!

Finally, I stretched cling film over the top, sealed carefully all round with Sellotape and placed it outside in the middle of the garden, turning a couple of times to directly face the sun.

After about 6 hours the sun was getting low, the temperatures beginning to drop and the effectiveness of the sun was wearing off so I brought them in. But they certainly looked the business!

I tried a basil bud I had placed at the front. It was completely crispy, perfectly dried and hot with flavour. The tomatoes were still a little juicy though so I gave them another 2 and a half hours in the oven on a dehydrate setting. They didn't look massively different after that to be honest.

They did taste amazing though. I jarred them in olive oil with a little rapeseed oil.

A few things to improve on for Mk.II:
More foil
Get them outside earlier
Make a tray rather than use the bowl (I was in a rush)

Basil Oil and Bread

2013-06-18T14:25:00.001+01:00

I love having my mighty basil plant in the kitchen. I'm so proud of it growing up all big and strong from seed.

Any good basil gardener will tell you that to make a strong basil plant you must pinch off the tips of the stems before they flower. This results in two branches shooting off from where you pinched out, giving you a sturdy basil bush. It also leaves you with lots of little basil buds and sweet tender baby leaves.

I can't bear to throw away something so perfect so I've stuffed them into a bottle and covered them with a good olive oil to infuse in the sun on the windowsill.

It makes an intense basil flavoured oil and I had the perfect use for it when I came up with this recipe (if you want to try this but don't have any basil oil use the best olive oil you can get your hands on):

Soft brown basil bread

Ingredients
350g strong white flour
100g brown bread flour
200ml water
100ml milk
2 tsp salt
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp dried yeast
Basil oil
Basil leaves

So, as you might expect, put all the flour in a mixing bowl, put the salt and sugar at separate sides of the bowl and sprinkle the yeast in. Add the milk and water and mix together until you have a good, stodgy, but moist dough mix.

Now, take your basil oil and pour some on your work surface. Kneed and work the dough in the oil. It will become rich and coated in basil infused oil and even squidgier.

To get that silky smooth perfect dough sprinkle a handful of white flour on a clean part of the surface and work the dough a bit more in there.

Use a little more oil to grease a mixing bowl and leave your dough in the bowl to double in bulk. About an hour and a half I would guess.

Knock back the dough, tip it out and work it for a couple of minutes. Now spread it out to a roughly inch thick rectangle and lay on top some tender, fresh basil leaves. Space them evenly but be as generous as you like. I'm a massive basil fan so I go for it.

Roll up your dough and fold round the edges to make a baton. Use more oil to oil a loaf tin and drop the dough in to second prove. In about 45 mins to an hour it's ready for the oven. More oil on the top and some salt sprinkled over, then into an oven at 190degC for about 40 minutes.

The bread is rich and moist and its a favourite in our house.

Delicious on its own with butter, my 18 month old daughter loves it on its own, and if you want a real treat use some of my pizza sauce recipe on it with some mozzarella and pop it under the grill for a bit.

"Southern" Style Chicken

2013-03-08T12:40:00.001+00:00

This is a great recipe as not only is it better quality and tastier than KFC but its healthier and a fraction of the cost. KFC is an amazing rip off. I've bread crumbed stuff before on the blog but I haven't really presented it in such a practical way before and I thought it would be fun to show the whole process I do for this recipe.

When I buy a chicken I do it with the intention of getting 3 meals out of it. Considering I pay up to £4.50 for a chicken that makes it £1.50 per 2 person meal, which I consider reasonable.

So I take a good sharp knife a butcher off the legs and wings, then separate the legs into thighs and drumsticks. The crown I roast, we'll eat half on Sunday and then Monday the other half and any left over veg goes in a pie. The limbs go in the freezer until I need them.

I've got some bread that has staled nicely, i.e. it's dry and crumbles in my fingers and hasn't grown any mould. Best way to get it to do this is hang it in an airy bag. Home made rolls and burger buns generally stale very well and it's good to mix up the ones you use.

Using a hand blender I've made this into crumbs. If you have a food processor it's easier, if you have neither use your hands to crumble but it'll take longer. These also go in the freezer until I need them.

When the day comes to make my chicken I take the meat out of the freezer in the morning and give it plenty of time to fully defrost. Then I lay my breadcrumbs out on a plate and season them. The breadcrumbs will be ready to use straight from the freezer.

They need quite heavily seasoning as there's only a thin coating goes on each bit of chicken. You can be quite imaginative with your seasonings and for this batch I've added a generous amount of garlic salt and freshly ground black pepper, then generous half teaspoon amounts of ground nutmeg, ground cumin, galangal, paprika (which is excellent for adding a bit of colour too), garam masala and powdered lemongrass.

The chicken pieces need to be evenly coated in plain flour...

... then dipped in beaten egg before getting thoroughly coated in the breadcrumbs.

Place them on an oiled baking tray and have your oven pre-heated. My fan assisted oven is at 200degC.

I cooked these for 15 minutes, then turned them, brushed with a little more oil and cooked for another 15 minutes, turning once more for a final 10 minutes.

6 pieces of chicken, twice as tasty as fast food and a fraction of the cost.

Beer festival in Brighton

2013-03-06T11:58:00.001+00:00

On Saturday I indulged in another rare treat that life sometimes presents us with - the beer festival. If you've read my blog before you'll know that I'm no stranger to ale. This time the venue was Hove Town Hall near my hometown of Brighton. The festival has been hosted here for a good many years now and they've gotten rather good at it. Beer fests can be disasters if managed poorly and without some expert experience but this is not the case with Brighton.

At 11:00 two friends and I queued along with hundreds of other real ale fanatics to enter into the hall where we receive a free glass, brochure and then join another queue to purchase tokens in sheets of 10p squares to exchange for beer. I opted for a half pint glass to begin with as a) I wanted to sample a variety of beers and b) we're short on half pint glasses at home.

I'm naturally a fan of darker heavy beers anyway, but these are especially better suited to the winter drinker than the crisper light styles which I find make fine session pints on a summers day, I did my best to mix it up a bit though.

I kicked off with a Turner's Ruby Mild - dark mild beer at only about 4%. Next I moved onto a light one, Concrete Cow Pail Ale. This is brewed with lager malts, it was weak and I think most of its charm was in the nose which showcased its excellent balance of hops.

My friend recommended the next one - Hip Hop by Langham. It was... fine, if I had to describe it further I would say that it tasted like, well, beer. OK, hoppy light beer, but that's the best I can manage. I followed it up with a local favourite which given that it is the nearest brewery (worthy of mention) to the festival seemed fitting to have - Kemptown Brewery's Red Ale, brewed in the pub I've been going to with my parents since I was a nipper.

Most of the beers I would have loved to try were gone, it was day 3 of the festival and the keen palates of the serious drinkers had drained the really interesting barrels the night before. There were a couple of beers brewed with New Zealand and Australian hops which are favourites of mine, these were gone. But I did manage to find a real treat in my next beer - Rum Porter by Boggart Hole Clough. To me you can't call a beer a rum porter unless you can really taste the rum, and this delicious dark drink delivered delightfully.

Finally, as we approached 3:00 and the morning session was drawing to a close I purchased a pint glass and decided to finish with another speciality beer. I picked out Umbel Magna by Nethergate Brewery. The description in our festival guide read that it was brewed with coriander and I quite enjoy beers with coriander. I think the herb must have been added a little later in the boil as it came through strong in the nose but not so much on the palate, which to be honest suited me just fine as the rest of the beer was nicely balanced and could have been spoilt otherwise.

Time to leave and make room for the afternoon session. Another great festival very much enjoyed, and two more glasses to fill out our cupboard.

Pizza

2013-01-28T22:38:00.001+00:00

Pizza

There are loads of ways to make pizza, thousands of combinations of base, sauce and toppings and then the ingredients and techniques vary country to country, region to region with different family recipes being handed down through generations. So it's unlikely that my recipe will suit everyone, but this is how I do it anyway. Lets just be safe and say this is how I make what I call a pizza, and if you don't like it then don't call it a pizza. It's still a tasty meal whatever it's called.

When I make pizza I like to take time over it, time most nights that I don't really have, so I tend go do quite a bit in advance such as making the sauce and the dough. To make it really worth while I usually decide I will eat 2 pizzas in the space of a fortnight, so i make 2 pizzas worth of dough and sauce at once. It's not particularly labour intensive, just time consuming and so I tend to do it on a weekend whilst I'm doing a bunch of other weekly meal prep. If I were to freeze the sauce I could make even more of course.

Pretty much essential to a good pizza is a good base sauce and I used to cut corners and just use a jar of salsa until a colleague told me about this method, pointing out that I was wasting fine ingredients on the topping when the flavours were being overpowered by the salsa. I'm glad he did as my pizzas have improved considerably since.

For this I take a dozen or so plum tomatoes, cut them in half and lay then face up in a baking tray. I drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle generously with sea salt and grind over fresh pepper, then cook in the oven at 180degC for about 40 mins.

After they've cooked and softened I push them through a sieve with the back of a spoon.

The sauce is very liquid, too much so for pizza, so I reduce it on the hob over a low heat until it is the required viscosity. While doing this I skim off any impurities that come to the surface.

All done I have a jar of tomato base sauce that should keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or the freezer for about 6 months.

Then the dough

I use a straightforward white bread recipe with half the bread flour substituted for plain flour.

I mix it, knead it, then separate it into 2 or 3 freezer bags and leave it to prove for a couple of hours.

Once it's bulked up I take it out the bag, knock it back and knead for another couple of minutes before putting it back in the bag and tying it up.

These then go straight in the freezer. The night or morning before I want to use it I take it out of the freezer. The dough will defrost and second prove in the bag so that when I get home from work it will be perfect and ready to use for my pizza base.

Pizza day

It's now the morning of my pizza making and I take a jar of sauce and a bag of dough from the freezer.

When I get back from work I preheat the oven to 200degC and lightly dust my pizza stone with semolina.

I empty the dough out the bag onto a well floured surface and work it, stretch it and roll it with a floured rolling pin until it is the same size as my pizza stone and even thickness all over. It's about a quarter of an inch, maybe 3mm thick when I'm done.

I transfer it to the pizza stone and punch a few holes in it with a fork to let trapped air from underneath out whilst it's cooking. This is where you can get fancy if you feel like it and do a stuffed crust. Simply roll the base out larger than the stone, put some cheese or salsa round the edge, leaving a half an inch gap from the very edge, brush some water on the gap and fold over the filling and in towards the centre. Make sure it's stuck down firmly. I then put it in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes.

Once that's done it's time for the fun part! I take my part baked base out of the oven and empty my jar of sauce over the top using the back of a table spoon to spread it all over. Leave none of the surface uncovered, no one like wasted crust space at the edges.

Now the topping. I slice up a ball of mozzarella and sprinkle half of it on the pizza, then layer some chestnut mushrooms and serano ham before finishing with the rest of the cheese.

I've kept this one simple but I've included a list of my favourite toppings at the end of this post. They all work in any combination. Be generous with the toppings, the whole point in making your own sauce was to get the most out of these toppings.

I put the pizza back in the oven for about 10 mins until the mozzarella has melted and started to bubble and brown. I took mine out and sprinkled fresh basil over before popping it back in for another 2 or 3 mins.

All done! Take it out, portion it up and enjoy.

Here are some of my favourite toppings:

Parma Ham

Greek style black olives (dry and salty, really cut through like mild anchovies)

Pepper

Red onion

Talleggio cheese (melts superbly, use half and half with mozzarella)

Sun blushed tomatoes (for a little sweetness)

Pesto

Artichokes

And if you're really wanting to push the boat out, some crispy duck and hoisin sauce with spring onions sprinkled on right at the end is amazing

Parsnip Mash

2013-01-13T22:21:00.001+00:00

In an effort to be a) more healthy, b) more organised and c) make my sausages and mash more interesting I've been making my own parsnip mash in advance and freezing it. The day I fancy sausage and mash for dinner I drag the sausages and ready made mash out in the morning and simply reheat the mash while the sausages are baking later. Parsnip is great with pork, it makes perfect sense really!

Quite simply you could boil parsnips, mash them and throw in some butter and garlic, but I find that alone can be a little dull and disappointing. Besides, I'd rather not add butter if I can avoid it.

Use nice big monster parsnips for this job, less peeling and bigger evenly sized chunks for mashing. I do peel, chop and boil half the parsnips...

... but the others I like to bake. I stab them several times all the way round, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with smoked sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and then wrap them up in foil and place them in the middle of an oven at 180degC for about 40 mins to an hour.

The parsnips when they come out need to be tender enough to mash obviously. They should be a golden colour rather than white like your boiled ones and will have sweet caramelised brown juices in the foil tray that need to be added to your mash.

Chop down the middle lengthways and leave to cool. The skins peel easily off and the parsnips can be mashed in with the boiled ones.

Perfect with a good pork sausage, some peas and a spot of gravy. A great winter warmer meal.

January update

2013-01-13T21:14:00.001+00:00

January update

Ok so a little about what's been going on lately. I started a new job in London at the beginning of November, I don't live in London which has meant getting up earlier, going to bed earlier and spending 3 hours a day commuting. I'm pleased to say that the job is worth it, but I have all of about 2 hours left every night to cook and eat dinner and try and spend some time with the family. Obviously the weekends are busy with family time and household chores and so keeping 2 blogs going has been virtually impossible. I've been working on a new text only project whilst on the trains but its unrelated to either gardening or cooking.

So there are my excuses, I do still have plenty of foodie ideas and recipes to blog about though. Recently I've been back to basics and have been cooking up solid healthy meals for during the week and freezing them. I've been experimenting with reducing fat and carbs without substituting flavour, I've been reducing food bills by buying large amounts of ingredients and making them go further, and reducing waste by using left overs to create completely different meals. It's all a bit different from the usual fare of breads, cheese, oils, sauces and cakes but I'm very happy with the work I've done in the kitchen over the last couple of months and so I will be blogging a few of my experiences. Tomorrow I'll blog a simple but excellent dish to have handy in the freezer as an example of the sort of stuff I've been churning out - parsnip mash.

I would recommend spending an afternoon once a week preparing ready meals. I feel much happier eating my own prepared dinners than I do buying the supermarket ones. Not only do I enjoy the rush of cooking 5 dinners for 2 people at once but it's also great to know that when I come home I can simply re-heat my own cooking and have great home cooked meal without spending hours in the kitchen.

More recipes soon, and keep an eye out for Scuff's Garden updates because I have some genuinely interesting things planned this year for that.

Have a great 2013 everyone!

Roasted garlic purée

2012-12-30T23:18:00.001+00:00

While I had the oven going one day I decided to make some of this. Now I always keep a jar in the fridge. It's great for quick cooking, for those times when you can't be bothered to mince a garlic clove or mess about with the crusher.

Simply shove a whole head of garlic in its skin in the oven. I've used an elephant garlic here, less hassle peeling small garlic cloves later.

Once done peel the garlic, which will now be soft and sticky, and press it through a sieve with the back of a table spoon.

The jar will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge.

I use half a teaspoon occasionally in sauces, or to add to rubs for meat, or in mashed potato. It's extremely handy to have ready to use.

Treats from Amsterdam

2012-10-23T07:21:00.000+01:00

The title of this post will no doubt lead to numerous disappointments.

Look past the reputation Amsterdam has earned for drugs, brothels and stag parties from the UK and you'll find there is a food and drink scene that is unique not just to Holland but to the city itself. Rather boringly that is the main reason I keep going back there. A while ago I did a guest post on Beers I've Known with some very amateur beer and cheese pairings. One of the pairings I spoke of was Old Amsterdam and Brewerij ‘t IJ Natte. Sadly I was limited to what was available in the local off license and the supermarket for the beers that day and I settled for a glass or Pauwel Kwak. Last week my parents made a trip to Amsterdam and asked if there was anything I would like brought back, so I put in a request for 3 simple ingredients which they kindly delivered.

Brewerij ‘t IJ Natte - the fantastic sweet dark beer brewed in a converted windmill. May I suggest you check out to this place if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, it's a keen walk from the town centre or a short tram ride. Last time I went for a couple there I ended up losing an afternoon. As I've mentioned before my Dad is a keen IPA fan and he brought me back one of the Brewerij ‘t IJ ones to try for the first time. I enjoy IPA, but not usually on the level that I enjoyed this one. It had a much smoother characteristic to it than the bitter hop bombs you occasionally encounter in your search for a good one here in England.

Old Amsterdam - The aged cheese that is delicious either as a table cheese or grated over food. Even aged and hard it still has a melt in the mouth quality to it. I adore gouda, I think it is a superbly textured and flavoured cheese that is suited perfectly for continental beer pairings and Old Amsterdam just takes a good thing a little further.

Ossenworst - I've never heard or seen this outside of Amsterdam. It's a speciality sausage particular to the city and as with most of these things if you want the good stuff you have to go back to its home to get it. Essentially it is a seasoned raw beef sausage. The seasonings, saltiness and texture again make it a superb bar snack. I notice now that there is finally a Wikipedia article for it, previously I've wondered whether I dreamt eating it!

To complete my snack I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a few cocktail gherkins and some Dijon mustard. Full sized pickles and Bavarian sweet mustard would have been preferable but you have to work with what is available sometimes.

A delicious snack bringing back some very fond memories indeed. However, I feel another trip will be in order again soon if I am to complete the experience and try out a few more of the delicacies Amsterdam has to offer. Including pickled herring, trappist cheese pie, hemp seed chocolate and some extremely good coffee (an advantage of being a sea port). Also there is no substitute for a beer lover to sitting in a traditional "brown bar" with a trappist beer and a plate of cheese and mustard and nothing much better to be doing for the afternoon.

Sourdough Bread

2012-10-18T06:50:00.002+01:00

I don't have any sourdough on the go at the moment which is pretty shameful for a homemade bread fanatic and a foodie. So I've decided to start my own wild yeast sourdough. The beauty of sourdough is that it tastes slightly different wherever you make it as it's flavoured by the wild yeasts from that area. That, and it's like doing a science experiment! Probably the most important thing before you begin something like this is to plan your schedule. For example, if you plan to leave something for 12 hours you don’t want to be tending to it at 1:00pm. I worked my timings around my working week.

I've mixed 25g Plain Flour with a little lukewarm boiled water into a wet dough, covered it with a damp tea towel and left it to gather some yeasts. I've actually left it on the windowsill in our bedroom as this doesn't get direct sun so won't dry out the dough and we have the window open most of the day and night. It also overlooks our back garden and fields behind that so it's the best place I can think of for gathering wild yeasts.

After 3 days I check to see how we'd done. The outside of the dough has hardened into a crusty shell, but inside the mixture is gooey and sticky. The best way to describe it is like a ripe, runny cheese texture. Most importantly it smells like sourdough!

It's time to give it its first refresher. I scoop out the "shell" and transfer the starter to a clean bowl. I mix it up in 1 tbsp milk and 2 tbsp warm water before gradually incorporating about 60g plain flour. After giving my container a thorough clean out I place the very wet dough back in.

I leave it back on the windowsill for 1 day this time, again covered with a damp tea towel, after which it hasn't had time to crust over but has developed a skin which I peel off and discard.

Time for the second refresher and to bulk it out a bit. I add 6tbsp warm water mixed with 2 tbsp milk and stir the starter up into a batter, then I add 200g plain flour. I re-cover it with the damp towel and this time leave it high up in the kitchen, where it’s a bit warmer, for 12 hours.

And there we have a sourdough starter. I must admit it’s not looking quite as active as I'd hoped but I've made a schedule and I'll stick to it now. From here on I'm practicing the process for making bread using my starter. This will be important for me to note because I'm only going to achieve regular breads by getting into a routine of doing this once a week or so.

So, I remove 200g of the starter to a separate bowl, add 100ml warm water and weigh out 200g white bread flour.

I stir the starter into the water, make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the starter. I flick some of the surrounding flour over the starter and leave in a warm place to sponge.

While that’s doing it's thing I need to replenish the starter I've just removed, so I add another 6 tbsp warm water and 2 tbsp milk, mix it into the starter and feed it with 175g plain flour again. This time I cover it with cling film and place it back in it's high up spot. I don’t want it to dry out, but I want to give the yeast a chance to multiply in the mixture.

I come back to my sponged mixture and mix it up into a wet dough. This I cover with the tea towel and place high up next to the starter for 8 hours. After that I'll decide whether or not it needs a little longer for the yeasts to really get going.

It doesn't look too bad, I think we can work with this. From here on I'm handling this with kid gloves and I'm gonna make sure I get this right. I'm on my 5th day of making this bread and I'd quite like it to work.

I add 100ml of warm water and mix it up into the dough to make a paste, then add 25g of Rye Flour and 1 tsp of sugar.

Then I sieved in 75g White Bread Flour and mixed that in. Finally I sieved another 50g White Bread Flour and 1 1/2 tsp of salt together and mixed it up into a moist dough. I dumped probably about another 50g of White Bread Flour onto the worktop and worked my dough on this until it was all incorporated and gave me a smooth, elastic and handleable dough.

I washed up my bowl and thoroughly dried it before oiling it and putting the dough back in to prove covered with cling film. I checked on it after an hour. Judging by the way it had re-shaped in the bowl I decided it probably needed firming a little so again I floured the work surface and worked a bit more flour in. This time I plumped the dough up into a cushion and left it on a floured baking tray covered with the oiled bowl to second prove for 1 1/2 hours.

After that it was looking good! I pre-heated my oven to 220 degC, dusted flour over the top of the bread, slashed it and put it in for 20-25 minutes. I splashed water around the inside of the oven 3 times in the first 5 minutes of baking. After just over 20 minutes I turned down to 190 degC and baked for a further 10-12 minutes. When it came out... success!

My very own unique sourdough bread. Big shout out to my back garden for supplying the yeast to make it!

The last thing I did at the end of the day was take my tub of starter, that by now had been feasting on it's refresher for about 14 hours and was looking text book happy, and moved it into the fridge. That'll slow it down and it'll be ready for use in my next bread when I want it.

Chilli, Coriander and Lemon Oil

2012-10-11T07:38:00.002+01:00

I've had this chilli plant on the windowsill bringing a bit of colour to the living room for a few weeks now. For the chilli geeks it's a Tabasco.

Unfortunately it appears that we're not the only ones that like chilli plants.

I'll figure out what to do with the aphids another day, but for now I'll harvest the chillis rather than risk losing them.

I'll be honest, we don't do a great deal of cooking with fresh chillis. These would be put to better use preserved for later on.

I've also been growing some coriander on another windowsill in the kitchen so whilst I'm at it I may as well use some of this.

I decided last minute to chuck in some lemon rind too. My girlfriend came up with the name "traffic light oil"

I sterilised a bottle and washed and chopped all the ingredients. I crammed them into the bottle and topped up with some half decent olive oil.

I sat the bottle in some boiling water for 5 minutes in a half hearted attempt to pasteurise and more to kick start the infusion. All done and I have a nice homemade bottle of Traffic Light Chilli Oil ready for some bread dipping in about a month or so.

Just need to remember to give it a shake every now and then to move the ingredients around the oil and help the infusion.

Hopfest - a celebration of beer and hops

2012-10-05T07:19:00.001+01:00

The following is a diary of the three days my Dad and I spent engaging in Hopfest celebrations organised by the Dark Star brewery. To read up a bit more on their pubs and beers check out their website - darkstarbrewing.co.uk

Friday

My beery weekend began in one of the most unlikely of places, the old nightclub where I misspent much of my late teens and early twenties. The Gloucester as it was known then is located at the entrance to the North Laines and was little more than a purveyor of cheap booze and mostly lousy music. One would never recognise it now that it has undergone this amazing transformation into the North Laine Brewery. The boards off the windows flood the former dance area with light, the soundproofing ripped off the wall to reveal an attractive brick finish and the sticky carpet replaced with a clean wooden floor. Behind the bar is the brewery and a line of gleaming fermenting vessels stand over the staff as they serve pints of quality product to an already quite busy bar for a Friday afternoon. It's bloody sickening I tell you. I moved out of Brighton just over a year ago and in that time 3 new craft beer pubs have sprung up. Three! And one of those has had time to complete a move to bigger premises in that time! My Dad is waiting for me with a pint of Harvest Ale by W.J.King. So new is this place that they haven't got any of their own brew on yet. We finish our pints fairly quickly, uneventful and unremarkable as they were, and move on. This weekend is all about one brewery for me and I'm so particular about their beers that there's only one place to drink them in Brighton.

On the way however whilst walking down Gloucester Street, where my Nan lived as a child, curiosity gets the better of me and we nip into The Brewery Tap. This has always been a trendy something bar in my memory; either coffee, wine and now it would appear beer. A stainless steel wall behind the bar is adorned with a row of about 15 or so taps with an admittedly impressive selection of beers. It's boring in here though, and cold and dead. I could sit here and read the paper and enjoy a great drink, or bring someone out to talk business over an IPA perhaps, but socially this place lacks vibe. I ask for something local. The best they can muster is a wheat beer from Dover or somewhere. It's a lovely drink, I enjoy it, but I'm not hanging round for another. My Dad has an American IPA which he later complains tasted all kinds of wrong. Very particular about his IPAs is my Dad.

We meander our way up through the North Laine area and cross Queens Road to my old stomping ground of Surrey Street and our destination: The Evening Star. The Dark Star Brewery started life in the cellar here and it is indeed this pub, run by Matt and Karen, that is responsible for my love affair with Dark Star beers. I am yet to discover a brewery that brews such a variety of beers so well, yet manages to make each one as individual as they do. We're here because this weekend is Hopfest, a celebration of the hop harvest and the tapping of Dark Star's Green Hop IPA.

My Dad sticks to his guns and has a Hoxted IPA by Brodies which he sips at whilst I devour a pint of Hophead, their incredibly quaffable flagship beer. It's also one of their weakest which is handy. Next I level up to a pint of Original. The Green Hop is waiting in the cellar below, ready to make its debut at 7:00pm. My Dad decides he's going to head off home, not really feeling it today. I know the feeling, sometimes beer gets a bit heavy on the stomach but I'm sticking it out for the night. The Green Hop awaits its debut in the cellar.

Tapping the Green Hop IPA was entirely uneventful. The barman Chris writes it up on the board, the pump clip goes on and the pints begin to flow. It's strong at 6.5 but has a gorgeous aroma and encompasses everything you could love about the flavour of hops in a pint. That said I find it very heavy going and I have to nurse mine somewhat and even take a break afterwards. I hang about awkwardly outside and light a crafty cigarette, my guilty pleasure reserved for drinking nights out in Brighton. The pub has filled up as it always does on a Friday and some familiar faces begin to turn up. I content myself with some people watching for half an hour or so, I'm fairly sure the guy next to me is talking about dungeons and dragons to his mate which provides me with some amusement. Finally my friend Drew arrives and orders a pint of Green Hop and I get back on it with a pint of Camden Ales Hells Lager. My stomach is full of enough ale for one day so I needed something lighter. One more pint of Camden for the road and I head off to grab a taxi to my parents where I shall be staying for the evening.

Saturday

Well, I've had better mornings. However, I've survived the night and it's on with the show, although it would be wise to lessen consumption somewhat today I feel. We have a very slow and phased getting up and walk down to the Steine to catch a bus to Partridge Green. All the busses are delayed and the times are all messed up. This is due to a parade that happened earlier in the day in which recovered addicts celebrated their freedom from drugs by walking along some of the city's major transport routes. Classic Brighton! The stagecoach bus rattles its way up into West Sussex, through Henfield, and eventually to Partridge Green. It stops right outside The Partridge Pub, the most recently acquired Dark Star pub, being so close to the brewery now it has become the official brewery tap. I'm delighted to see an entirely different line up of Dark Star beers to those on at the Star, however I'm not yet ready to jump straight into another rich dark ale yet. My Dad goes for a pint of Winter Meltdown and we wander out the back past the turning hog roast (yep! Hog roast!) to a sunny beer garden. Once he's finished that we head off to the brewery which is no more than a 15 minute walk down the road.

I've visited the brewery a few times before but never made it past the shop to buy a few pints of cheap beer in takeout bottles. Today however the doors at the back of the shop are wide open and we saunter straight into a busy room already in the full swing of Hopfest. To our left huge tuns and fermenting tanks tower over us, to our right bags of malt are stacked on pallets and the whole place is filled with that lovely brewery aroma. A small bar is in operation and a rack of 10 barrels is being manned with a barman dosing out free tasters of about a 3rd of a pint each of some of the various Dark Star beers. I go up for some Festival to carry around as we explore whilst my Dad tries his first taste of Green Hop IPA, despite the advice from the bar man who clearly feels he should be starting at the bottom and working up to the stronger beers. The atmosphere is lively and friendly and everyone is wandering around chatting to each other. Dark Star have this odd relationship with cycling and occasionally organise "Spin up in a brewery" events here, where cyclists are invited to ride out to the brewery to drink beer, watch a couple of bands and attempt to make their way home afterwards. Today the cyclists are again out in force and much of the crowd are sporting the Dark Star cycling merchandise. There’s something about a brewery logo stretched over a toned physique that seems odd to me. Fortunately, we appear to have just missed a display of morris dancing as the morris dancers are still at the brewery and appear to be sober, their job done they can get down to business. It's great to see a brewery opened up like this, usually they are presented as secretive places, entirely out of bounds to anyone without a full outfit of safety gear on or unaccompanied on an exclusive tour of some kind. But this is completely different, completely open, with brewers rubbing shoulders with cyclists, cyclists mingling with CAMRA bellied drinkers and morris dancers strutting loudly and jangly amongst everyone.

At the far end of the room is a table with 5 different hop varieties to sample (as in pick up and smell and rub between your fingers) including some New Zealand and Australian ones that I haven’t come across before. They are definitely some of my favourite hops I've come across, really interesting, liquoricey, sweet smelling and sticky. I must get hold of some when I get round to doing some brewing of my own. Also there’s a handy fact sheet on choosing the right variety of British hops for a beer which I nab a copy of. We don't hang around too long, keen as we are to make it back to the pub and get a taxi booked for later in the evening (travel between country villages is never easy), so we have one last quick nerdy gander at the brewing gear itself before heading out via the shop. I stop to buy 2 bottles of Southern Conspiracy, disappointed that they've run out of Kiwi.

Somehow the morris dancers have beaten us back to the pub and I call out loudly for 2 pints of Partridge so as to be heard over their leg bells. We find ourselves a couple of comfy seats and settle in to our pints that we nurse for a good long time. Partridge is such a great session ale and is delicious down to the last drop in the glass. We're sat in a room called The Hop Barn, a large function room sized area of the pub with hops draped from the ceiling and the names of a few hop varieties painted in gold up on the walls. The blackboard advertises a few of the upcoming pub events (quizzes and such) and boasts of an impressive list of local food suppliers, this is a great pub. We're lucky to have found these seats as Dark Star's very own double decker bus pulls up outside and the pub quickly fills up. Our smugness quickly fades however when the table next to us fills up with morris dancers. It's not long before the inevitable. An accordion appears and so begins a drunken impromptu set of reels and hornpipes. I have no objection to a couple of folk tunes played well, and these are played very well indeed, but I know exactly where this will lead. Sure enough once the accordion player stops for a rest they begin bellowing out the full unabridged version of What Shall we do With the Drunken Sailor at full volume so the whole pub can hear. Finally, the hog roast is ready and everyone goes up for some, we tuck into a bap with some fries and coleslaw washed down with a fresh pint of Partridge. The morris dancers appear to be taking it in shifts so they can eat theirs whilst still pumping out classic drunken hits such as Let Me Go Home which seems to last for about half an hour. Eventually we can take no more and are forced out of the Hop Barn and into the main bar area where a magician is wandering round doing some close up magic. We hang out here until our taxi arrives and we head back to my house for a relatively early night.

Sunday

We make our way back down to Brighton and start the day back off by heading to The Hand in Hand pub in Kemptown. The Hand is the perfect local pub, a true traditional Brightonian’s establishment and the brewery tap for the Kemptown Brewery, the oldest in Brighton which is situated next door. We're here to meet my Nan as my parents do every Sunday, tuck into a pint of Kemptown Brewery's Red Ale and engage in rich foodie discussion with some of the other regulars.

We jump in the car and head to the final destination on our Dark Star tour, The Duke of Wellington in Shoreham. This outpost of Dark Star always seems somehow the most out of reach to me and this is the first time I've visited it. I mean, technically the Partridge is far less accessible but with a great food menu and a car park they rock the country pub angle, and of course with being so close to the brewery it becomes more of an outing than a mere "pop to the pub". The Duke is a charming pub, clearly rescued and transformed into the warm and friendly place it has become. Stained glass windows surround the bar area and the bar itself dominates the centre of the room. The Duke has an excellent selection of ales including a fruit stout and a vanilla and chocolate stout that I am sorely tempted by, also neatly listed are a very good selection of ciders and the best list of lagers I've come across in a long time. I feel immediately at home and recognise a few of the faces from the brewery yesterday. I could do some very serious drinking in this pub. However, I need to be wrapping up my weekend sadly and stay only for the one pint of American Pale Ale. My Dad today has been taking one for the team and drinking bitter shandy so he can drive us, so after we've finished our pints he drives me back home via a favourite farm shop.

My weekend finishes in the comfort of my own living room enjoying a bottle of Southern Conspiracy. It's a 7% collaboration beer between Dark Star and The Bristol Beer Factory, aged in wine barrels and brewed with New Zealand hops, presumably some of the same I sampled at the brewery yesterday. It's utterly delicious.

It was a fantastic weekend and I feel lucky to have been able to take part in so much of it. I feel I’ve done my favourite brewery credit by enjoying their beers in five different surroundings – their brewery, The Evening Star, The Partridge, The Duke of Wellington and finally my own home. Although I'll have to spend a couple of weeks recovering from the amount of beer and stodgy meals I’ve had I'll make certain to use some of what I've learnt about good beer, brewed with good hops and washing down good food when I plan my own brews. Yep, that’s how I'm going justify three days of sheer gluttony - "research".

Beetroot Nuggets with Orange Dipping Sauce

2012-09-25T08:10:00.000+01:00

On Sunday I made carrot and beetroot cake again and it reminded me how much I love beetroot, so I decided to get creative last night with some of the leftover beets.

I also made this sesame loaf, basically it's a standard white bread made with sesame oil and topped with sesame seeds.

I took a slice of the bread and used a blender to make it into crumbs which I toasted in the oven at 150degC with a few more sesame seeds for good measure. Then I dug out the rest of the ingredients for making the nuggets.

I peeled and chopped the beetroot into quarters and put it on to boil whilst I set about designing a dipping sauce.

I had in mind a sort of sweet and sour type thing, but a bit fruitier than the usual Chinese takeaway style ones. I figured orange would be the way forward, with a bit of ginger thrown in for some kick.

After much faffing about the final list of ingredients to make my sauce was:
The juice (including bits) of 2 Oranges
1tsp Orange Zest
1 tsp grated Ginger
3 tsp Mirin (optional)
1 tbsp Black Rice Vinegar
2 tsp Caster Sugar
and I did add a dash of lemon juice but in hindsight I think it made the sauce a little too sharp and could probably be cut out.

I put it on to reduce next to the beetroot which by now was about ready to go, as in I could easily stab through it with a fork.

I drained the beets and let them rest until cool enough to handle. Then I rolled them in plain flour seasoned with salt and pepper, dipped them in beaten egg and rolled them around in the toasted breadcrumbs so they were evenly coated. I baked them at 190degC until the breadcrumbs had turned crisp and golden brown.

My sauce reduced down to a syrupy consistency and turned out great! I was actually pretty impressed. The beetroot nuggets came out well too - tender and full of beetroot flavour but with a good savoury note from the sesame and a nice crunch from the breadcrumbs.

Together they both came through in equal amounts and complimented each other well.

It was a fun experiment for me, I haven't gotten creative like that for a while. I'm glad I did though as that could turn out to be a great veggie starter one day if I ever need one.

Tapenade

2012-09-06T08:20:00.003+01:00

I've been quite slack lately. It's not that I haven't been cooking, it's just that I've been a little pre-occupied with job interviews and much needed family time. I use the blog as a sort of on-line scrap book I guess and there’s been a couple of things that I really should have put up.

Anyway enough rambling, tapenade! Quick, simple and very tasty.

Ingredients
100g of good quality Black Olives
50g of Capers
6 Anchovy fillets (I bought ones preserved in olive oil and used the oil)
100ml Olive Oil
3 cloves of Garlic
Black Pepper

Even though I'm a massive kitchen geardo I don't possess a food processor so I made do with a hand blender. If I didn't have that I'd have chopped the olives painstakingly by hand separately and then used a pestle and mortar for everything else. My result was a very smooth tapenade, which wasn't a bad thing, but I'd like to make it again a bit coarser next time I think.

So I roughly chopped the olives and added them, the capers, anchovies and crushed the garlic into a beaker and hand blended until smooth and blended. Then I added the olive oil bit by bit, blending between and seasoned to taste with the pepper.

Supermarket stuff really doesn't touch this, there’s simply not enough garlic or pepper. This was just right, surprisingly it didn't overpower the olives at all and the capers really shone through as well.

I now have a pot in the fridge for toast or crackers as a snack. Although this would be amazing served up on some fish.

Maître d’Hôtel Butter

2012-07-26T07:29:00.002+01:00

Maître d’Hôtel Butter

Well, I blogged about how to make cheddar a couple of days ago. I realise not everyone may be up for that so I've decided to do something that's also relatively impressive but easy and not as time consuming. I'll explain how to make the butter yourself from cream, but if you're feeling lazy and just want some awesome compound butter then buy some unsalted butter, leave it out to get to room temperature and soften, and pick this up from where I added the seasonings.

So, making the butter. I didn't want loads of the stuff so I just started off with half a pint of double cream at room temperature.

Pour this into a nice large mason jar. It needs to have plenty of room to slosh about in there.

Now screw the lid on tight and shake up and down for all your worth. The cream will coat the inside of the jar as you'd expect and quite quickly you'll notice the consistency change. The cream will stop sloshing about, at this point you have made whipped cream. Keep going (it's a great workout) until you feel it change again and something is thudding about in the jar in a thin liquid. It took me 15 minutes solid shaking to get to this point. The solid mass is butter and the liquid is buttermilk. Another good indication is the cream that was coating the inside of the jar will be washed off by the butter and buttermilk.

Pour the buttermilk out and fill the jar with cold water. Wash this around a bit and pour it out again.

You need to do this over and over until the water runs clear.

It's important you get all the buttermilk out of the butter. If there's any left in there it'll go sour, so get the butter out and using a spoon or your hands press the butter and squeeze out all the buttermilk.

Join in here if you've just gone out and bought butter! We're going to add the other ingredients and transform this plain old ordinary butter into Maître d’Hôtel butter. The yield I got from my 1/2 pint of cream was 55g of butter.

Ingredients 1 generous pinch of salt
1 pinch of fresh ground pepper
1 tsp of flat leaf parsley
1/2 tsp paprika
1 tsp lemon juice

Stir in the lemon juice first, then add all the rest of your ingredients.

Roll your butter up in greaseproof paper and twist the ends into a sort of bon bon shape.

Now just put it in the fridge to harden and in an hour or so you'll have a nice solid finished butter.

I warn you, this stuff is addictive. It's delicious melted over vegetables or fish, but I'm more than happy just spreading it on toast as a snack. 55 grams won't last long enough to go off in my fridge, but I recon it would keep for a week or so if I wasn't eating it.

Cheddar

2012-07-24T07:38:00.001+01:00

I'm not going to lie, making cheddar is pretty hard work. I personally get a sense of self satisfaction at the end of it that makes it worth it but you should be pre-warned that you probably want to wait until you have a couple of days where you can afford to bum around the house and start it in the morning. I decided to make life a bit easier for myself and used some of my brewing kit this time, it certainly took a fair bit of effort out of the whole process.

I used 6 litres of whole fat cows milk at room temperature. Last time I made cheddar I used Jersey cow's milk, which was lovely, but not so convenient to source. After sterilising everything stir in 2 ounces of mesophyllic starter and leave it for about 45 minutes to an hour to sour. Then bring the milk up to 30degC in a water bath. This was where my mash tun came into play, the other way to do this is to hog the kitchen sink for the whole day and have to continually drain out the cold water and top up with hot to maintain the temperature.

Stir in about 1/4 teaspoon of mesophillic starter diluted in 2 teaspoons of water into the milk using a ladle. Rennet sinks so to evenly distribute it you need to stir in an up and down kinda motion.

After about an hour check on the milk. You're looking for what’s called the clean break - the point where the thermometer cuts through the milk rather than just submerging into it. It becomes a bit like a thin set jelly. At this point cut the curds into 1/4 inch cubes. This means cutting cross ways, lengthways, and then the same again but with the knife at a diagonal to cut across. For smaller cubes that you would cut for harder cheeses such as parmesan you can get away with using a balloon whisk, twisting the whisk as you lift it up and down in the milk.

Very soon, after about 5 minutes, the whey will drain from the curds and you'll see the curds floating in the whey. These need gentle stirring occasionally to prevent the curds from re-matting.

Over the next 30 minutes the temperature needs to be slowly brought up to 40degC, then maintained at this temperature for another 30 minutes. Remember to tend to your curds and stir them during this time. After this hour you can leave them at 40degC for 20 minutes before gently ladling into a colander lined with cheese cloth. I retain the whey at this point and make ricotta. The colander is then placed back in the pot and left to set for about 20 minutes.

When you turn it out onto a cutting board you'll have this sort of cake.

Then, using a sharp knife as the cake is very delicate, cut the cake in half and then across in about 2 inch slices. These then go back into the pot which is still being kept at a constant temperature of 40degF, the process is called cooking the curds. Every 15 minutes they need turning and the excess whey pouring out. Do this for 2 hours.

At the end of this the curds will feel a bit like cooked chicken breast. Break them up into about 1/2 inch cubes and cook for a further half an hour, stirring every 10 minutes with your fingers.

Now add 1 tablespoon of kosher salt and stir it in with your fingers. I just use good quality sea salt. Cram as many curds as you can into moulds lined with cheese cloths and it’s time to take them to be pressed. This is quite a milestone in the whole process, most of the hard work is done now and you can clean your equipment up.

Again my brewing kit made this so much easier. If you've read my post on making halloumi you'll have seen my Dutch style cheese press in action. It's a clumsy piece of kit and so I decided I needed to develop a safer method using my brewing bins. The cheese is in the bottom bin, the top bin sits inside the bottom bin and on top of the cheese. Then I just need to fill it with the volume of water required to press down with the desired force. Much safer!

The cheese is pressed at 4.5 kg (10lbs) of pressure for 15 minutes, then remove from the mould, re-bandage and press at 18kg (40lbs) for 12 hours. Finally remove it again, re-bandage and press one last time at 22.5kg (50lbs) for 24 hours. Finally, you have what resembles a cheese.

This now needs to be air dried, which is probably the most tense time in the whole process for me. The cheese needs turning regularly and drying evenly and thoroughly. I turn it whenever I walk past it or remember to, and keep them on a board, up high somewhere, covered loosely with some cloth. This can take a few days, but given that you've gone to so much effort to keep everything sterile up to now it's worrying to think that your hours of work are sitting exposed on a shelf in your kitchen. Once dried (as in dry to the touch on the outside) you can move onto waxing the cheese. Melt the wax in a bowl over some boiling water, brush the cheese all over in vinegar to kill off anything it may have picked up whilst drying and dip it in the wax to coat it.

I like to give it a good thick coat of wax and make sure it's well protected. It's now ready to be aged.

I like mature cheddar so I'll be leaving these 2 for about a year before coming back to them. For the first couple of weeks I'll monitor them closely and turn them daily, just to check that the waxing went OK and no nasty infection might have crept in there. It'll be well worth it in a year when I get to try them!

Moroccan Lamb Tagine

2012-07-20T07:08:00.003+01:00

Right, if I'm going to mess about with something like tagine I'm going all out and I'm going to make this as rich, whilst remaining as authentic, as possible. So I've researched a few recipes, a bit of history, checked up on a few individual ingredients and come up with my own recipe. I noticed that some of the recipes I found had ingredients that had obviously been thrown in for a Northern palate, and some omitted ingredients that really really should be in there. I've gone for a Moroccan lamb tagine recipe and tried to reflect Morocco's access to a wealth of spices and seasonings. Strictly speaking, preserved lemons are probably more often combined in chicken cuisines with olives. I've been looking for an excuse to make some for a while now though and lemon and honey or lemon and coriander seemed to kinda fit, also it would be a shame to waste the opportunity to work with such a classic Moroccan ingredient. I would have preferred to use neck of lamb because it's an awesome and often overlooked cut, but I couldn’t find any and shoulder did the job just as well. I'm not using shank in tagine though, as to me shank = a pot + red wine, onions, garlic, rosemary, cinnamon...

Ingredients
500g Lamb shoulder fillet
350g Tomato
1 large Onion
10 Dried apricots
small hand full of Sultanas (30g)
30 Blanched almonds
1/2 Preserved lemon
2 cloves Garlic
2 Chillis
1 tbsp Honey
2 tbsp Olive oil
1 pint Stock
1/2 tsp Saffron
2 tsp Cumin
1 1/2 Turmeric
1 tsp Ground cinnamon
2 tsp Paprika
a handful of Coriander leaves
a small handful of Mint leaves

Quite an impressive list, but I love this process of collecting and measuring out all the ingredients before I get started.

I put the oven on to 160degC to preheat and began by roughly chopping up my lamb into cubes about an inch or so thick and coating them in the cumin, turmeric, cinnamon and paprika.

I let this sit whilst I prepared the rest of my ingredients. This involved blanching, peeling and coring the tomato; I did this in a bowl so as not to lose any juice as I'll need that in a bit. The weight that will go in the actual pot will be 250g, I put 350g in the ingredients list to make sure I'd have enough after this. I diced the onion, thinly sliced the preserved lemon, minced the garlic and de-seeded and chopped the chillis.

I heated the oil in a pan and fried off the lamb making sure it was evenly coated in oil and browned all round before emptying it into my tagine pot.

Then I fried off my onions in the same pan until they had just begun to sweat and soften and poured in my tomato, juice and all, to cleanse the pan. I poured the onions and tomato over the lamb and then added all the other ingredients, minus the coriander and mint, finishing by pouring the stock all over and sprinkling on the saffron. I gave the whole thing a good stir, put the lid on and popped it in the oven for 3 hours. I think I stirred once in that time, more to satisfy my lust and curiosity for the aromas that were filling the kitchen than anything else.

I brought my pot to the table, tore up the coriander and mint leaves, threw them in the tagine and stirred them in before serving.

It was meltingly tender and incredibly juicy, it needs serving up with a bread to soak up all those juices. I suggest khoubz, which I'll post up the recipe for some other time.

Even healthier breakfast muffins

2012-07-18T07:04:00.001+01:00

Since making my first batch of muffins I have decided to adapt my recipe slightly. Not that there was anything wrong with the first one, I just thought making a totally fat free version might be a laugh. I sit at a desk all day, my body has no use for fat. So I subtituted the whole milk for skimmed, used fat free yoghurt and instead of oil I made some apple sauce and added 2 tablespoons of that. My top tip for making any baking recipe fat free is to directly sub the fat for apple sauce, but dont make the same mistake I did. Adding the apple made the mixture go browner whilst baking and the muffins appeared to be burning, leave them in for the full amount of time or they'll be stodgy.

The new muffins did taste just as good as the last ones, although they were a little more chewey, like brown bread. So I probably prefer the whole milk with oil version (I'm not one of those annoying people that refuses to admit that healthy food is not as tasty as fatty food).

Then I thought it might be interesting to break down what you actually get per muffin. Every morning now my breakfast basically consists of:

Half a slice of toast and 1/6 of a boiled egg

16.5g porridge in 20ml of milk, sprinkled with 6.25g sugar and a pinch of cinnamon

and 22g fresh fruit with a teaspoon of yoghurt

Which is actually a fairly well balanced healthy breakfast! Enjoy your guilt free morning cake.

Ricotta Infornata

2012-07-16T11:26:00.001+01:00

I always make Ricotta when I make a hard cheese now, there's not really a lot of point in throwing away perfectly good whey, so I thought I'd have a go at making ricotta infornata. There's various things can be done with ricotta, this seemed like a nice simple one to experiment with.

So firstly I needed to make some ricotta, here's a quick re-cap on that...

I started with my 6 pints of fresh whey

Which I heated to 200degF and added a little cider vinegar

Which causes albumin proteins to coagulate on the surface.

These are ladled into some cheese cloth

And left to drain a while

That's that done. I salted the drained ricotta, placed it into a lined mould and applied some light pressure for 24 hours to shape it into a block.

The block I baked in a covered oven dish for 20 minutes, then flipped it and baked for a further 20 minutes.

Which gave me this final result:

Texture and taste wise it was very much like tofu, obviously a bit nuttier and creamier though. Usually this is served up with figs and honey but I found that a light salad and some sweet onion relish went well with it, which gives me the idea that in fact this would be great for pressing into a patty shape and serving in a bun as a vegie burger??

Still, I recon theres better things you can do with this stuff. The ricotta infornata I made was quite bland and I think a bit more seasoning before moulding it, or like tofu, marinating a bit before cooking might be a good idea next time.

Breakfast Muffins

2012-07-12T07:25:00.000+01:00

I'm not really one for rushing, or doing pretty much anything fast, and the idea of wolfing down breakfast at 6:00am before I leave for work doesn't appeal to me. I prefer to take breakfast at my desk whilst checking my emails just before my working day begins. At the moment this consists of a banana, which is hardly ideal, so I've decided to make up some breakfast muffins to have as my fast food on the go.

Ingredients
200g Plain flour
200g Porridge oats
75g Caster sugar
1 tsp Cinnamon
3 tsp Baking powder
1 tsp Salt
2 Eggs
250ml Milk
2 tbsp Natural yoghurt
3 tbsp Vegetable oil
150g Blueberries
100g Blackberries

I switched on the oven and pre-heated to 190degC (200 if you don't have fan assisted). To start with I sieved all the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt and cinnamon together into a mixing bowl and made a well in the centre. Then I separated the eggs, reserving the whites, and added the yolks along with the milk and yoghurt. This all mixed up into a batter, it doesn't matter if it's a little lumpy.

Next I poured in the oil and stirred fast until it was fully incorporated into the batter, then added the oats and mixed them in before add in the fruit which a carefully stirred in to avoid damaging the berries.

Finally I whisked the egg whites until they were light and fluffy and formed peaks and folded them in with a metal spoon.

I divided the mixture evenly over 12 muffin cases...

... and baked for about 30 minutes until they were nicely brown on the top and when I poked them with a skewer it came out clean.

I haven't made them terribly sweet because I don't have much of a sweet tooth, especially first think in the morning. If you'd like them sweeter then just up the sugar to suit your taste or sprinkle some over the top of each muffin just before baking.

Please consider your IT departments before eating and try not to get crumbs in your keyboards.

Pickle and halloumi round up

2012-07-10T08:43:00.000+01:00

So, before I get back into the swing of things I have one or two things to round off first. I'll begin with the pickles (beetroot and shallots) that I began back in March.

The beetroot I'm not so sure about. They're a bit tough, should have removed that peel and part boiled before roasting I think. I kind of expected that but it was an experiment anyway. I'm happy with the flavours though, just the process that needs the work here.

The shallots worked very much as planned though. The cider vinegar is, to my taste at least, far prefferable to malt vinegar pickled onions and they were hot with spice. Luckily I had a cheddar I made about 14 months ago that I deemed mature and ready to go at, so I baked some bread and treated myself to a mini homemade ploughman's lunch.

and finally the Halloumi...

This kept well in the tub I had stored them in and came with us to the new house. I opened it up, removed a piece and washed it under the tap to remove some of the excess brine. Then I trimmed it to a neat square and sampled the trimmings to see how it had gone.

Success! We have tasty mature halloumi. So now it was time to assemble some other ingredients and use it in some cooking.

I used:
2 slices of halloumi
1 aubergine
2 ripe tomatoes
1 clove of garlic
1 tbsp of olive oil
Salt and Pepper

I skinned the tomatoes and minced the garlic then cooked them down into a simple sauce in the oil with a pinch of seasoning.

The sliced 4 round cross sections of aubergine and grilled them with the halloumi until the aubergine was tender and the halloumi was slightly browned and crispy on the surface. The halloumi I prevented from drying out by dribbling a tiny amount of oil on top.

Then I stacked them up and they made for a nice little lunchtime snack.

Right, now onto some new projects!

Back in the Kitchen!

2012-07-04T13:10:00.001+01:00

I'm back!

It's been a fairly gruelling 10 months of moving to our new home but we're finally in! These past couple of months have been spent reluctantly putting down the knives and spatulas, picking up hammers and saws and getting the place ready to live in. A lot of work was needed, especially on the kitchen, but that did mean that we had the opportunity to build a kitchen for cooking and entertaining that we would really enjoy spending time in. All that time spent seems worth at least a brief blog post so here it is, a summary of our kitchen makeover.

On our first look around we were impressed with the space, but not a lot else. Lots of storage for gadgets, plenty of work tops, a utility room, natural light and all the basics we needed to build a great kitchen. What we didn't like was the horrible wallpaper, the cold tiled floor, the plastic work tops, the ugly brown wall tiles, the old appliances and the style of the doors and fittings.

So, off came the wall paper and on went the white kitchen paint...

up came the tiles and down went laminate slate effect flooring. It's warmer and softer underfoot and far more aesthetically pleasing.

Off came the plastic surfaces and on went solid black granite...

down came the ugly tiles and up went black brick effect ones to match the granite surfaces...

out with the old appliances and in with new shiny and better ones...

and off came the old doors and up went new solid oak ones.

Then we changed a couple of light fittings, put up some blinds rather than net curtains and probably most importantly swapped the stainless steel sink for a deep Belfast sink (once you've had one of these you'll never go back).

Now we're all set to start cooking again and I'm itching to get back to experimenting and blogging. I've been collecting a few gadgets and ideas and have various projects lined up ready to make a start at. Another thing we're fortunate enough to have is a nice big (and overgrown) garden. I'm sure in the coming months and years this is going to feature a fair bit on the blog as I try and hijack as much of it as possible for growing food.

It should be... interesting. As a city boy my experience of gardening doesn't extend much further than watering the basil plants on my window sill.

Charity

2012-05-16T14:37:00.002+01:00

I've just performed my good deed for the year. I usually like to get these out the way reasonably early on to allow me the rest of the year to focus on being selfish.

I'm one of those people that’s usually quite wary of giving to charities (I have my reasons), but I think I may have actually found a way I can help people with minimal effort, little risk and at no cost to myself. I was sent a link by a friend of mine, Mr Matt Holland, to join Kiva; a non-profit organisation that arranges loans to small businesses and individuals in developing countries. The full amount you lend is repaid over time and you can withdrawal that money or put it towards another loan.

It might all sound a bit too good to be true, it did to me at first, but it was when the first instalment of Matt's loan came back to him that I took interest and decided that this might actually be something I could get into. So I browsed my way through the list of borrowers, found one that I felt most comfortable with and made my $25 donation.

I've chosen to donate money to Jeanette in Bolivia who is requesting a loan for a rotisserie oven. I decided that I wanted to put money into the food sector (of course), but on searching through the list of borrowers I found that this mainly consisted of people who ran existing stalls and grocery stores that wanted a loan to purchase stock for their business. I found the idea of purchasing hardware to allow Jeanette to break away from a life of making sweaters to start her own food business more exciting, it appealed to me.

"Jeannette is married and has two children. They live in a rented home in the District of San Martín in the city of La Paz.

Jeannette only has a high school education, so now she sells sweaters and jackets at the street fairs. She has to leave her little ones behind so that she can work more than 10 hours selling her products. Jeannette also generates income by selling food from the doorstep of her house in the evenings. For this reason, she is requesting a loan to buy a chicken rotisserie (for preparing roasted chickens, in other words, a small oven that slowly rotates the chickens while they cook so that they develop a unique and delicious flavor). This will help to improve her earnings. Her husband does not earn much money working as an assistant at an auto repair shop."

So, now I hope to hear back from Kiva when Jeanette receives her oven, and as she profits from the loan they have provided the money should slowly start trickling back to me. I intend to re-loan it to another borrower in the future.