Last of the summer wine - Part 2

If you've read my last blog post you will know that I had started off a 'hedgerow' wine and had departed for a week away at work.  Well, I returned from working in Leeds full of excitement and apprehension as to how my 'must' would be. I know, this is really sad, but this is how I am and I make no apologies for that!  I said my obligatory hellos to the family and went straight into the garage to peel the lid off of the brewing bin.  Arrrggg, mould!  This is was what I was worried about, cunningly however, I was prepared for this blow as I had done some research on the Internet in advance and found that this was common, love you Internet!  So I removed this from the top and crossed my fingers and hoped it wouldn't affect the taste.  Speaking of taste, Gayle and I tried the 'juice' and it was very nice indeed and would have made a really nice soft drink.  But stuff that!  I want wine ;-)

After sterilising a couple of demijohns, the next thing I had to do was to remove the fruit pulp (along with the mould) from the must using a regular sieve.  I then used a sterilised tube to syphon the must into the sterilised demijohns.  As there were a lot of small pieces of fruit pulp left in the must I tried to use some muslin cloth to remove it.  This was a pain in the backside as the pulp clogged up the muslin to the point where it stopped the flow altogether!  This meant I had to keep washing the muslin in a sterilised solution to remove the pulp, hence the bucket next to the demijohn in the picture, and the mess, and the annoyed wife just out of shot!  This led me to the conclusion that the next time I would put the fruit into a straining bag at the start of the must which would let all of the flavour develop but keep the pulp out.  Everyday's a school day!

Once I had been thorough this rigmarole I checked the specific gravity (SG) of the must.  If you don't know what this is then basically, in brewing terms, it shows you how much sugar you have in your must and therefore the potential alcohol content.  I discovered that although there was enough sugar to make the must taste pleasant there was not nearly enough to make the alcohol content fun!  No problem, I added some more sugar to each of the demijohns and shook to dissolve (please note I have updated the recipe to include twice the amount of sugar so you would not need to add extra).  I then added one teaspoon of yeast (which I had activated in some luke warm water) to each of the demijohns with a teaspoon of yeast nutrient and have them another good shake.  Next the airlocks go in and the demijohns went into a warm place so the yeast can come to life and get to work on the sugar.

I love the next bit as this is where nature takes over.  After a couple of days the airlocks were bubbling like mad and you could see the bubbles of CO2 rising up the side of the bottles and making the bits of fruit pulp dance around.  You can see the fruit pulp has formed a crust on top of the must in the picture opposite.  After about a week this crust will have settled on the bottom and this is the time to rack the wine off (fnarr!) into some clean demijohns to remove this excess sediment.

Now all you have to do is wait for the bubbles to stop appearing in the airlocks which means either all of the sugar has been turned to alcohol or the  yeast has run out of steam and died.  This took about two weeks and now it was time for a first taste of the the wine!!  It was incredibly dry which ment all of the sugar had been turned to alcohol, which is a good thing, but country wines do not have the 'vinosity' of commercially produced wines and if they are too dry they are not very palatable.  And wine has be to pleasant to drink or what's the point, so it needed sweetening up.  As the yeast was probably still active, just adding more sugar would have started the fermentation process again so I added one crushed Camden Tablet to each demijohn which should kill the yeast.  After a couple of days the fermentation had stopped so I added 200g of sugar to each of the demijohns and shook until dissolved, and another taste showed that the wine was now much more palatable.  I then added 100ml of brandy (for a chest warming sensation!) and some fining's which are an aid to clear the wine as it is still very cloudy.

That was a couple of days ago and the wine has still not cleared so I'll added another 'dose' of fining's to try and clear the wine, also, it looked like to fermentation has started again so I've added another Camden Tablet to wine.  I suspect that the wine it not clearing because of the fermentation and this has not stopped because I rushed in adding the extra sugar, another lesson learned!

I hope that all of this tinkering will not affect the final quality of the wine, but only time will tell.  Hopefully by next week the wine will have cleared and I can bottle it in the champagne bottles we kept from our wedding!  I need to do this ASAP we have 5 gallons of apple juice that we got from the pressing the apples from Tony & Jane's trees at weekend to make cider, watch this space for that recipe.

Once the wine is ready to bottle I'll let you know how it drinks! :-)

Last of the summer wine...

Dear Blog,

The last couple of blog posts I have started with an apology and this is no different.  Sorry for making you wait for so long between posts; it's not that you have not been on my mind but I haven't had the time to devote to you.  I'm sorry!  I've got loads of things 'in the bag' to write about and I promise to do better!  Promise!

Ah, September!  This has be to be my favourite month of the year. Mother Nature flicks a switch and the vistas change from the vibrant greens of summer to the yellows and russets of autumn.  Trees are laden with fruit and fields are golden, mushrooms are starting to appear in fields and woods.  Sunrises and sunsets are more spectacular and nights are drawing in.   Christmas is accelerating towards us and thoughts of nights snuggled up on the sofa have a romantic soft focus in our minds.  It is no coincidence this is the month Gayle and I chose to get married (in 11 days at the time of writing!).


September is a productive time to go foraging and this is what we did this weekend.  The kids have thoughts of blackberry and apple crumble in mind, I however am thinking wine!  Gayles Mum and Dad (Tony and Jane) have quite a few fruit trees and these furnish us with masses of fruit this time of year and we had a cardboard box full of plums that were on the verge of going rotten.  Now, I hate to waste anything and I saw these plums as an excellent base for a wine, but I needed something extra to give it a little bit more interest.  The magic ingredient I decided upon was - any edible fruit I could find in the hedgerows of Cleobury Mortimer!  So off we went on a pre-lunch foraging-fest with the kids.  There was heavy  competition for blackberries from the kids and Gayle, but I was more interested in finding elderberries.  I've made elderberry wine before (and elderberry champagne, but that's another belated blog entry) and it was pretty good, but I've always wanted to make a 'hedgerow' wine with what ever I could find, I can't say why, like many of my culinary obsessions, it's just always intrigued me.  We found a lot of blackberries, which the kids chomped on as we went, but we were almost too late for the elderberries as the birds had been having a field day.  But, thanks to a great spot by Finley on our way home we ended up with 1/2 a carrier bag full.  Result!

Back home, while Gayle was cooking lunch, I sat down with a pint of homebrew, a bucket and our spoils.  Before I go on and give you the detail of how I've gone about this I should tell you that this an experiment and I've kind of invented this recipe, but it is loosely based on other wine recipes I have read.  There appears to be a decline in homebrew shops and I have not been able to get hold of any Camden Tablets or peptic enzyme which will help cleanse and stabilise the wine.  If I had the chance I would have included these but I guess I will find out how important these are when I taste the results!  As I had such a good forage the quantities shown are for 2 gallons of wine, adjust your recipe accordingly:

Here's what I used:

(Roughly)
1.5Kg Plums - very ripe but not rotten
1Kg Elderberries
3 Good handfuls of blackberries
2Kg Sugar
3tsp Citric acid
14 pints Boiling water


Equipment for now:
Brewing bin
Milton tablets
Large wooded spoon


Stuff needed later (in the next blog!):
Wine yeast
Yeast nutrient
2 Demijohns with bungs and airlocks
Funnel
Sieve
Syphoning tube
Hydrometer
Muslin cloth or straining bag


First of all you will need to sterilise your brewing bin using the Milton tablets, follow the instructions on the packet for this and do not skip this step.  Cleanliness is VERY important when it comes to homebrew.  Once sterilised, put the blackberries in the brewing bin, then remove all of the berries on the elderberries using a fork (or fingers) and place these in the bin too.  This can be a laborious task but take your time over it ensuring that you avoid getting twigs and the unripe green berries in there.  Next, halve your plums (fnarr!), remove the stone and put the flesh in the brewing bin with everything else.  Pour in the sugar and sprinkle on the citric acid.  Now pour over the boiling water and stir with the wooden spoon until all of the sugar has dissolved.  Place the lid on the brewing bin, but stir from time to time squashing the fruity pulp (the 'must') against the sides until the mixture has cooled.

Ok, now we wait!

As I am working away and have no choice I am going to leave this for 5 days to let the flavours develop and the natural yeasts get to work.  This is called fermenting on the pulp.  I am a little bit apprehensive as I haven't used any Camden tablets or peptic enzyme, but as a I say, this is an experiment!  Based on experience I think it will be OK and hopefully I won't get back to a mouldy mess.  The next steps will be to check the specific gravity using the hydrometer which will tell me the amount of sugar in the 'must' and therefore the potential alcohol content.  I will then add more sugar, if necessary, add yeast and yeast nutrient and then put into the demijohns to ferment.  Watch this space!

"...and here's one I prepared earlier"

First I would like to apologies to my loyal (4) followers as I have been pretty slack on the postings recently. In truth, I have been pretty busy travelling the length and breadth of the country sorting out IT shit during the week and trying to be a attentive father and fiancee at weekends, so this has impacted on my ability, or indeed desire, to sit down and write.

This is not to say that the blog has ever been far from my mind. I have still been busy in the kitchen, not to mention eating out, and have a few things to tell you about. Just to whet your appetite here are some of the things I have to write about in the near future:

• Braised Oxtail with Tomato
• Ravioli
• Our Wedding Menu
• Confit of Duck with Gratin Dauphinoise
• Beef Wellington

Anyway, onto todays entry. It's a bit of cop out really as this is a recipe I posted online about 3 years ago, but I'm not one to duplicate effort so I thought this would ease me back into the blogosphere nicely, it's pork chops with cider and apple gravy.

Pork for a long time was my favourite meat. I used to love it when I'd go to my Nans for Sunday lunch as she did the BEST crackling! I don't eat pork very often now, but if I do find myself with pork chops to cook, then this is one of the ways I like to cook them. Another is to simply grill them and serve with a coleslaw made with only grated raw celeriac, lemon juice any mayonnaise, yum!

This recipe calls for cider to make the gravy with which gives with it the chefs' privilege of a glass of cider whilst cooking ;-) I recommend Westons Vintage Special Reserve which is medium dry and has a hell of kick to it! But it is a very nice cider.

When it comes to cooking pork chops, most people tend to treat pork with the same fear as chicken, and cook it to death. Pork chops have a layer of fat on the outside, but the meat itself is very lean, and if you over cook it it will be dry. You can't eat pork chops rare, but it wants to be 'just cooked' in the middle to be enjoyed at their best.

Here's the recipe which serves 2 generously. I serve this with celeriac & potato whole grain mustard mash and whatever steamed veg you fancy.

• 2 pork loin chops, about 1.5cm thick
• 1 large red onion roughly chopped
• 1 large eating apple (russet are very good with this) cored, peeled and sliced
• A knob of butter
• 3-4 sage leaves chopped
• 150ml good apple cider
• 200ml chicken or veg stock

Heat a large pan over a moderate to high heat. Rub the chops with olive oil and season with salt and pepper and add to the pan. After one minute turn the chops over then throw in the apples and onion. Turn down the heat and add a knob of butter. Keep turning the chops every minute or so until done, about 8-10 minutes. Keep the apples and onions moving so they don't stick, but don't mess with them too much as you want to get some caramelisation. Remove the chops from the pan and keep warm. Turn the heat right up and pour in the cider which should boil immediately. Reduce the cider by half stirring occasionally to scrape the goodness from the bottom of the pan. Add the chopped sage and the chicken stock and reduce this by half too.

Plate up the chops and using tongs or a slotted spoon share the oinions and apple between two plates, placing this on top of the chops. Add the mash and veg to the plate and pour the gravy over the chops and mash.

In hindsight, since making this again recently and taking the photos I think that the presentation would have been better with the chops on top of the apples and onions. But it still tastes the same eh?!

Enjoy ;-)

Best Western St Pierre

I feel smug.  

You know when you stumble across something that it a gem and you feel really smug that you discovered it?  Well I feel smug!

I stay in a lot of hotels, here and there, and they are all pretty much of a muchness.  The good ones are expensive and have no soul, and the bad ones are just BAD!  I have stopped in some right shit holes in my time, but I have also had the fortune to stay in some really swanky ones too.  Swings and roundabouts.

I am working in Wakefield at the moment (did I mention?) and I have tried couple of hotels.  The first was the Waterton Park Hotel which I can thoroughly recommend as it is a lovely hotel, but always fully booked!  However, the one I am smug about is the Best Western St Pierre which is located in a place called Newmillerdam in Wakefield which is about 3 miles from the city centre. 

The reason I feel so smug about it is not that it is the best hotel in the world, but for the fact that for the price, I cannot fault it.  The staff are really friendly and helpful, the rooms are clean and large and the food is excellent.  If you do get bored of the menu there are a few pubs and restaurants you can walk to in 5 minutes, some of which I have written about before, see Italian halloumi, Cuban tapas and broken glass & Welcome -to Wakefield?.

The only thing I can think that ‘some’ people might not like it for is that is hasn’t got a gym, but you are right near the country side and Newmillerdam Country Park so you can go for a run or walk in what is a beautiful place. 

So, if you are ever in West Yorkshire and need somewhere to stay, look them up. And don’t forget to tell them I sent you.  I might get a freebie!

 

Burger & Chips

Lucy, my 9 year old step daughter, had an inspired idea the other week;
Gayle asked; “What shall we have for dinner on Saturday?  Fajitas? Make your own pizzas?”.  Lucy answered; “Can we make our own burgers?”.  Brilliant!

This is brilliant on several levels:

1. There is something very under rated about a good, home-made burger.
2. There is nothing quite like ‘proper’ home-made, hand cut, twice fried chips.
3. I am allowed to get my deep fat fryer out!

The kids are allowed to make the burgers themselves after I have prepped all of the ingredients.  To serve 6 we used 1Kg minced beef, 1 1/2 small onions and 3 slices of bread, crust removed.  First I put the bread, bit by bit into the food processor and make it into breadcrumbs which get I set aside.  Then the roughly chopped onions get added to the food processor and get blitzed into a mush.  I then add the breadcrumbs and onion to the mince with some salt and pepper and pass this to the kids to make into heart shapes, footballs and whatever else takes their fancy.  These are all separated by pieces of cling film to be chilled in the fridge for later.  The quantities used here made almost 2x as much as we needed so the excess burgers were frozen for another day, which is fine as long as the mince was bought fresh.

I had a few tomatoes from the garden that I needed to use up so I decided to make a tomato burger relish.  I’d never made one of these before but I knew it broadly consisted of onions, tomato, vinegar and sugar.  I did a bit of research on the internet and came up with the following; 
Finely chop 1\2 a small onions and add to a pan with roughly 8 chopped tomatoes, skins removed if you are feeling fussy!  Add a few slugs of cider vinegar (1\2 wine glass maybe), 1 tablespoon sugar, 1\2 teaspoon cumin seeds & 1\4 teaspoon ground all spice (use mixed spice if you don’t have all spice).  Season very well and bring to the boil.   While it is cooking add more sugar to taste.  Now, the total amount of sugar I used in this I do not know as I kept checking the taste and adding more until I was happy with the flavour so I suggest you do this too.  Reduce this down by about 1\2, and after about 15 minutes it will be finished.  Take off the heat and cool thoroughly.

Onto the chips.  As much as I would like to involve the kids in the whole process of the meal, sharp knives, boiling oil and children don’t mix, so I’ll do this one.  The choice of potato is important.  You need a good floury potato so you get nice crispy edges, the same sort as you would choose for roasties, such as Maris Piper or King Edward.  I cut the chips about 1 1/2cm thick, you can do them thinner but I am not that brave. I have to rant now.  I hate this idea that a lot of restaurants have that the chips need to be about an inch thick and stacked in a neat pile that you could play potato Jenga with.  What a load of shite!  Proper chips are not like that, stop being so pretentious!………  And relax…….  Once the chips are cut put them in a big bowl of water for 30 minutes or so until your are ready for them. 

When you are ready dry the chips with a clean tea towel (very important!) and heat the oil in the deep fat fryer to its lowest temperature.  Basically, you want the chips to just bubble slowly and not ‘fry’ so you are cooking the potato without browning.   My deep fat fryer is actually too hot even on the lowest setting so I have to keep turning it off and on to keep the temperature right; its a labour of love.  Fry the chips for the first time in batches giving them about 5-6 minutes per batch.  Just long enough to ensure you get nice roughed up edges on your chips which go nice and crunchy in the final stage, but be careful not to over do it though!  Lay your par cooked chips out on a baking tray or something until you are ready to finish them off. 

With all of the chips par cooked, heat the oil to its highest temperature.  Again, fry the chips in batches, this time long enough for them to go golden brown, crispy and bloody lovely.  Shake the basket from time to time to stop them sticking together and to aid the ‘roughing up’ process.  Place each batch into a pre heated oven on some kitchen roll to keep warm and then cook your burgers to your liking using a griddle pad or barbecue.

Once you have given your burgers a few minutes to rest after cooking, serve your home-made ‘proper’ chips next to the burger on a bun with some cheese ( I can thoroughly recommend Port Salut with a burger!), gherkins and the tomato relish.  Superb!
Enjoy…

The Full English

There are so many options when it comes to a cooked breakfast in our green and pleasant land, and the myriad of options has been expanded for me since meeting my Fiancé, Gayle.  She makes the best Kedgeree and American style pancakes with scrambled eggs, bacon and maple syrup.  Something I turned my nose up at first; ‘Maple syrup on bacon?! Crazy Yanks!’.    She likes me to cook her Eggs Benedict which I had never tried before and now love, and I also love making it at I get to make my own Hollandaise sauce which makes me feel very clever! Some of my favourite breakfast choices, in no particular order:

• Eggs Benedict
• The aforementioned pancakes
• Smoked salmon and scrambled eggs
• Kippers (proper ones though, not that shit in a bag!)
• Smoked haddock with a poached egg
• Kedgeree

But there’s something special about The Full English breakfast; this and the Sunday Roast are probably our best known national dishes and identify England on the culinary atlas.  It’s supposed to be bad for you, but it makes you feel so good!  It has many variations, and it is a matter of personal taste as to what you have in it.  Maybe some mushrooms, grilled tomato, black/white pudding or beans; but at the heart there should be (in my opinion) the best quality bacon (smoked), pork sausage and eggs.  The eggs are another matter of personal taste; have them scrambled, poached, hard boiled, fried or as an omelette.  I tend to see how I feel at the time. 

Gayle is at present at the top of Mount  Toubkal on a charity trek (click here to sponsor her) and I am a bit disorganised, so I hadn’t really thought about food for the weekend, so I had to improvise a bit.  I found some smoked streaky bacon and cocktail sausages in the freezer which had been brought for pigs in blankets, they’ll do!  There were two eggs in the cupboard so that’s those sorted.  It needed something else though, ‘I know’ I thought, a potato rosti!  I’ve only made this once and it wasn’t too good as I think I made it too thick, and I also used a ring which meant that I didn’t get crispy edges.  I wanted another crack at it!  So this is what I did: 

First grate the potato into a bowl and season with salt and pepper.  Potatoes have a lot of water in them, so put the mush into a clean tea towel and squeeze out most of the water, don’t squeeze really hard as you want to leave a little moisture in there, but not too much.  Then add a drizzle of olive oil and mix through.  Heat some more olive oil in the pan medium hot. The heat of the pan is important as you want to brown the outside, but remember it will need to be in the pan long enough for the potato in the middle to cook so you don’t want to burn it!  Make a patty out of the potato with your hands, it should be a little rough around the edges and no more than a centimetre thick.  Add this to the pan and press it down a little, it should sizzle nicely.  Now wait, don’t touch it and this will help the browning process.  After about 4 minutes turn it over and add a knob of butter and leave for another 3-4 minutes.  And there you are.

This worked for me and the rosti was nice and crispy on the outside and soft in the middle, and went great with my bacon, sausage, scrambled eggs and fried tomato, yum! I’ll have to try this out on Gayle when she gets home.

Enjoy!

Italian halloumi, Cuban tapas and broken glass

I’ve included reviews for two restaurant in this post as I’ve been a busy boy eating and working with not enough time to spend writing this!  I am working up in Wakefield at the moment and I was joined by a colleague yesterday, Chris, who is staying in the same hotel as me so we have been dining together.
Italian Halloumi
Wednesday night we we went to a delightful little Italian restaurant just over the road from the Fox & Hounds I blogged about on Tuesday (La Fortezza, 675 Barnsley Road, Newmillerdam, WAKEFIELD, WF2 6QQ).  I found this place by accident while I was walking along Tuesday night, not because it is hidden, it is not, but because it’s so small you would not think it could be a restaurant! It is right next to the lake at Newmillerdam and I guess it used to be a pump house or something.  When we arrived at 8:30 it was quite busy but there were one or two tables free.  The decor is quite in your face, red paint and a tree in the middle of the room; difficult to pull off but I think they managed it.  To start with Chris had the crab with salsa (£6.95) which he liked a lot and I had halloumi wrapped in Parma ham (£5.95).  Halloumi is not what I think of when I think of Italian cheese, but I love it, and this didn’t disappoint.  A substantial two pieces were served on top of crostini and I loved it.   So far so good.  The main for Chris was Pollo Fortezza (Chicken in a spicy sauce which wasn’t spicy enough for him but was apparently very tasty) at £13.50, and I had the Vitello Valdostana (Veal with Porcini) at £14.95.  Again this was delicious, and the veal thinly sliced and seared which gave it a nice smokey, chargrilled flavour.  If I had one criticism it would be that the porcini didn’t really stand out enough for me and there was definitely at least one slice of field mushroom in there which is cheating a bit!  The service was friendly but a little slow, it seemed to take a good while for our food to come, but it was worth the wait in the end. The whole meal came to £55 with drinks which is quite pricey for mid week, however, you do get what you pay for and it was worth the money for me.
Cuban Tapas

Thursday night we decided to eat in Wakefield city centre as I had been given a recommendation by my future sister-in-law, Helen who used to live in Wakefield.  The recommended place was called Qubana (25- 27 Northgate, Wakefield, WF1 3BJ) which is a Cuban restaurant and grill.  I was not sure exactly what Cuban cuisine was, but was guessing that it was probably like Creole cooking (don’t ask me why!).  Well Qubana is a Tapas restaurant really, and I guess as Cuba is a Spanish speaking country I shouldn’t have been surprised.  Although there were mains to order, I love tapas, so I convinced Chris we should order 8 dishes between us.  We had:

• Anchovies
• Vodka and beetroot cured salmon
• Meatballs
• Chorizo in wine
• Lamb (actually beef) stew
• Jambalaya
• Patatas with tomatoes
• Chips with Aioli

The standout dishes for me were the Chorizo (you would have to do something very wrong to a dish with that lovely sausage in it to make me not like it!), and the beef stew.  The menu said it was a lamb stew but when we ordered we were told that it was beef which was no problem for us.  It had butter beans and other pulses in it and the beef was incredibly tender.  The dish had an nice aniseed flavour to it, probably from fennel seeds, delicious!  I felt let down by the salmon though; it promised a lot but failed to deliver and the taste of the vodka was too harsh.  Also, these delicate slivers of salmon were served with a big blob of chunky (home made however) tartar sauce, and the two seemed at odds with each other.  All in all though, I was pleased with the food and the service.  The whole lot came to about £33 with beer so very good value for money, although I have to say I didn’t feel full at the end.  But that’s the thing with tapas; I’m never sure how much you are supposed to order!
Broken Glass
Upon returning to the car park I opened my car and noticed stuff all over the seat, I thought ‘I don’t remember leaving that there’, and then as looked about the car it looked more messy than usual, which is a feat in itself.  Then I saw the broken glass and it dawned on me – bastards!  They hadn’t taken anything of any value which was in some way more annoying because it cost me £75 excess to have a new window fitted! so not a great end to the night, but at least I’d eaten some good food!