reactive winemaking!

I’m getting the hang of this winemaking lark now, and I’m much more confident than I used to be.  We did our monthly trip to Makro on Saturday (first time the car had been out for a fortnight!), and they had a 5kg bag of carrots reduced to £2.30.   “Wine!”, I thought, and bore the bag home in triumph, along with 96 cans of cat fud and other essentials.

5kgs is a *lot* of carrots, I may tell you, but Pete and I topped and tailed them and chopped them up, and then I boiled them up in my preserving pan (bought from eBay a couple of years ago, and so useful).  We had to do it them in two batches.  You want the liquor for wine, and the carrots can be repurposed for eating.

I had a little ham hock in the freezer, and I put it in the slow cooker yesterday before I went out.  So, in a serendipitous style, I had a load of nice ham stock for soup.  One half of the Jordan carrot mountain went through the Magimix and into a big pan with the stock, and that’ll be this week’s soup, or the start thereof.  And I have some coriander to go with it, which will be nice.

The other batch of carrot will be liquidised and, somehow, shoehorned into th freezer for another soup.  I really can’t get used to living with just one freezer, and it’s always full to bursting, with me wanting to cook still more.

I have a big batch of Gujuerati beef curry in the slow cooker right now, and space will have to be found for that too … I’ll write the recipe up tomorrow.

And there are cheese scones and some cocktail sossidges in the oven for supper …

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Sunday dinner from leftovers

As my loyal reader will recall, we had roast belly pork for New Year’s Eve dinner; it must have a hulking great porker, because not even our well known for trenchering friends could finish it off, and I put the remainder in the freezer.

I pulled it out of the freezer this morning, together with a tub of red cabbage.  I warmed it slowly in a shallow Le Creuset casserole with a lid, and we ate it and the cabbage accompanied by roast potatoes, and a gravy made from chopped shallots and sage, apple juice and veg stock.

I made three gallons of rhubarb wine before Christmas, from a *huge* tin of rhubarb from Makro.  The last of the rhubarb went in the freezer, so I dragged that out too this morning to make a crumble.

And as I looked in the fridge for the butter for the crumble topping, I spotted the last of the brandy butter I’d made for the festive season, of which, as usual, we’d used very little.  Liberated, possibly, by tasting the rhubarb wine before I racked it today, and indeed the apricot wine before I bottled it, I decided to use it up in the crumble topping; “how hard can it be?” I asked myself.

I  couldn’t tell you how much of other ingredients I used – I bunged it in the Magimix with brown sugar and flour and some porridge oats until it looked about right.  Put the rhubarb in a pyrex dish, sprinkled it with ground ginger and bunged the topping on top.  The brandy was barely discernable, but you could tell *something* was there.  I’m not saying I’d do it again, but at least the brandy butter is gone!

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lunch today

Was the last of the chickpeas, that had already been enhanced with peppers.  There were two elderly chorizo sausages in the fridge, so I chopped them up and fried them with a little olive oil – as always, they gave forth some lovely paprika-y, garlicy oil of their own, and once they’d crisped up, I added the chickpea mix, and warmed it all through for 15 minutes.

We had it with some toasted pitta bread – Pete managed to burn the first lot (!), but we had more in the freezer, thankfully.  Was all very nice, apart from the smell of charred pitta through the house … :)

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chickpeas and peppers

I had a red and a yellow pepper starting to go a bit wrinkly, and some gingery chickpeas in the freezer, so I thought I’d combine them.

I cut a red onion in half, and sliced it thinly, then deseeded the peppers, and cut them into thin strips.  Started them off on the hob in olive oil, with a dash of sesame, till they were hot, then bunged them in the oven while the bread was cooking.

After 30 minutes they were nice and soft, so I added the chickpeas, and put the casserole dish back in the oven for another 20 minutes.  We ate with rice.  Very nice indeed.

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more on the 5 minute bread

Well, we’re hooked.  The white was gorgeous – too salty, but that’s my fault for not following the recipe properly; it said “coarse” salt, and I used bog standard cooking salt.  The second loaf was, if anything, even nicer than the first.

I tried making some brown last night, to this recipe. I mixed the flour half and half with some six seed wholemeal that we had in the flour bin, and sprinkled some pumpkin seeds on the top before baking.  I should have done that at rising stage this morning, I think, as they all fell off!

We’ve just had some of it for lunch with a bijou fry up – local eggs, bacon and black pudding – and it was a gorgeous texture, although a little sweet for us.

I’ve ordered both the books from Amazon (the third one isn’t out here yet), and I fear for our waistlines … And I see that the completely unused food waste bin* kindly provided by Hull City Council will do very nicely as a dough store.

* We have a proper compost bin for veg waste, and we don’t waste anything else – there’s just the odd bare bone left.

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bread in 5 minutes a day

Artisan Bread in 5 minutes a day

I read about this book on a friend’s Facebook at the weekend, and a trundle round Google brought forth a recipe, which is here.

It seemed too good to be true, and as I was in possession of bread flour and yeast, and a set of American cup measures, I thought I’d give it a go this morning.

I mixed the dough in the food mixer, using a dough hook, and set it to rise in a small fermenting bucket that I usually use for winemaking.  It took about ten minutes to do that phase, and when I went back to look at it in a couple of hours, it had risen beautifully.

I followed the rest of the instructions, except for the bit about pizza paddles and stones – I just bunged it on a baking tray dusted with flour, but it did stick a bit, so I’ll line it with parchment or some such next time.

But bugger me – it worked.  It made a lovely loaf, although it was a little too salty for our tastes.  Still, that can be adjusted, and I’m about to buy the book. The idea of having dough available all the time (it can be frozen too) is just too good to pass up!

Recommended.

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goose stir fry

We got three tubs full of goose meat into the freezer leftover from this year’s festive bird, and decided to stir fry the contents of one tonight.  We had no ginger or chillis in the house, astonishingly, so trudged out in the snow to obtain some, and had a lovely walk around Pearson Park in Hull to boot. The joys of working from home!

We set the goose to marinade in some sesame oil, arrowroot, a splash of lime juice, some rice wine, and a slosh of some really nice Japanese plum vinegar – I have no idea where I got it, except that it was before we moved, so we’ll probably never see its like again here in the East Riding, but never mind.

Whizzed up garlic, ginger and lemon grass, chopped a red chilli, a big flat mushroom, three spring onions and a Romano red pepper, and wokked them until done.  Added goose and its marinade, and then some coconut milk.

Handy tip: get coconut powder; a whole tin of coconut milk can be way too much for a stir fry, and then it’s hard to know what to do with the rest (although it works amazingly well in risotto).  You can get the powder in an Indian/Asian grocer, and just mix up what you need.

Chopped up some of the rather tired coriander and bunged that in at the end.  Worked really well.

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tadpole in the hole

Well, we couldn’t call it “toad”, as we used some of those teeny tiny cocktail sausages that needed eating up after the holiday.

Put the sausages in the oven at gas 6, in my ancient and beloved white enamel gratin pan which cooks Yorkshire Pudding like a dream, although it is a horror to wash up, especially now we have no dishwasher … I added a dollop of beef dripping, but you could use olive oil.

Made a batter by putting 3oz of plain flour and a pinch of salt – oh, and some ground black pepper –  in a bowl, making a well in the centre, and beating in a whole egg. Then should have added 3oz of milk and 2oz of water, but the scales ran amok, so I’ve no idea what exactly I added – I just did the consistency by eyeball.

Once the sossies looked reasonably on the way to being cooked, about 20 minutes, probably, I ramped up the oven to the dizzy heights of gas 7, then poured the batter into the dish and bunged it back in for another 20 minutes or so.

We had this with the very last of the brussels sprouts I bought on Christmas Eve and HP sauce (in my case) and the last of the red cabbage (in Pete’s).  Fab on a cold snowy night.

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balsamic potatoes with red onions

I referred to these in my last post, about our New Year’s Eve dinner.  Here’s the recipe – highly recommended!  It comes from one of the Jamie Oliver books.

serves 6

1.5kg medium-size waxy potatoes, quartered lengthways (I don’t generally bother with peeling potatoes, but feel free)
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
olive oil
200g butter, cubed
fresh rosemary, leaves picked and chopped
1 whole bulb of garlic, quartered or smashed
5 medium red onions, peeled and quartered
350ml cheap balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Parboil the potatoes for about eight minutes, then drain, return to the pan, and rough them up a bit by shaking (this works really well for roasting potatoes too, by the way).

Pour a glug of olive oil into a roasting tray, add the butter, rosemary and garlic, and heat it on the hob – you want to be able to fit the potatoes in one layer. Add the potatoes and toss them in all the flavours. Add the onions and all the balsamic vinegar and season with salt and pepper. Cook for five minutes on the hob to reduce the balsamic vinegar a little. Place the tray on the top shelf and cook for about 50 minutes, until the potatoes and onions are dark, sticky and crispy – removing the tray to toss the onions and potatoes halfway through.

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New Year’s Eve 2009

As always, we entertained on New Year’s Eve, very happily seeing the same three friends we have spent the evening with for many years – they all travelled to our new house here in Hull.

We have a wonderful butcher at the top of the road – they don’t have a lot out on display, but there is plenty of stock out the back.  I asked for a piece of belly pork to feed eight (I like to over cater :), and he produced a wonderful piece from the stock room, which he said had just come in that morning.  I asked if it was still snorting, and he responded that it was probably squeaking :)  Their shop window claims that all their meat is locally sourced,

I turned it into slow roast belly pork with fennel seeds, one of our favourites, and it was absolutely gorgeous. We had it with potatoes and red onions in balsamic vinegar, which I shall write up later – I found the recipe in a Jamie Oliver book.  And broccoli.

And to follow, I did my first ever meringue … hazelnut meringue roulade with chocolate cream.  It is a tradition for NYE that I do a pudding that requires an ambulance – I think I excelled myself this time!

In the morning, I cooked a full English, with mushrooms, black pudding, sausages, and bacon and eggs from the aforementioned butcher.  This is the first bacon we’d had from there, and it was lovely – no water came out of it at all,  I’m going to cultivate a relationship with this shop – their meat really is outstanding.

I wish my readers a happy and prosperous 2010!

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