Last year's foraging introduction started to open my eyes. I'm not, by nature, a big vegetable/salad muncher. However, it's that time of spring- just before people get around to weeding and just after plants start to grow.
One particular plant grabbed my attention a while ago. Garlic Mustard- it's supposed to taste of both. It's taken me a while to spot it but now I have it's all over the place. Which is very good news for me- In a few months I'll be harvesting seeds from that and making something that tastes like a slightly garlicky English mustard. Until then, I can use a few leaves in salads (and yes, they do taste mostly of mustard an slightly of garlic).
Other interesting things that seem to be around are deadnettles, dock leaves and lungwort, as well as the obligatory stinging nettles. There is also an abundance of goosegrass- supposed to taste a bit like peas.
Anyway. Spring has certainly sprung, now is the time to start recognising plants and tracking them over the year. Flowers certainly make things easier.
A final note: I'm still not trying chervil or sweet cicely- their habitat and appearance are too similar to poisonous plants like hemlock and mildly poisonous fool's parsley.
Thursday, 8 April 2010
Sunday, 7 March 2010
Beer
I could spend years talking about beer. I mean proper beer- not this fizzy piss that fuels loutish nights out and is drunk by people who think McDonalds is the height of culinary excellence.
It is hard to know where to start, especially when talking to those who are unaccustomed to the varieties of beer. First of all, I suppose I should say something about the different ways they are stored. Keg beer is common to every pub, it's basically an aerosol can. The beer is sterile (which is different to clean and, imho is a bad thing). Cask beer is still growing and developing in flavour as it is being stored.
This will not cover keg anything- that stuff should only be touched if you don't trust the pub or you have no other choice.
Cask beer is temperamental, you need to treat it with respect and care for it to become drinkable. This is something that is not understood by the average lagerboy- Their stella will be factory fresh regardless of where you get it from. Casks need care, so they will only be as good as the landlord.
That said- there are a few types of beer around; Lager, Mild, Porter, Bitter, Stout and Barley Wine.
I cannot emphasis the difference between real Lager and keg lager enough, most real lagers are mildly carbonated at best (due to the brewing process). They also have flavour- since this is not my preferred brew, I can't really say much about them.
Mild, Porter and Stout are all of the same family. The keg version of stout is Guinness. So you can imagine a slightly burnt set of flavours with these drinks. Traditionally they brewed Stout from the first batch, then it was recycled for Porter, then again for Mild. This produced a milder flavour with each batch. Milds tend to come in quite weak, usually 3-4%, they're great little session beers. Porters tend to be in the 4-5% range, not advisable for a proper session and their flavour is strong enough to blot out the subtleties of other beers- if you're at a beer festival, you should save these till last. Stouts are 5+% And very intense in flavour.
Bitters mainly differ from lagers because of their use of hops. They range in colour from straw (usually quite hoppy) to ruby (usually sweeter) Alcohol tends to be in the 4-6% region but can be much higher, where they turn into barley wines.
I think this will do for the moment, since this is supposed to be a beginners guide and will cover terms that I'll be using a lot in the future.
It is hard to know where to start, especially when talking to those who are unaccustomed to the varieties of beer. First of all, I suppose I should say something about the different ways they are stored. Keg beer is common to every pub, it's basically an aerosol can. The beer is sterile (which is different to clean and, imho is a bad thing). Cask beer is still growing and developing in flavour as it is being stored.
This will not cover keg anything- that stuff should only be touched if you don't trust the pub or you have no other choice.
Cask beer is temperamental, you need to treat it with respect and care for it to become drinkable. This is something that is not understood by the average lagerboy- Their stella will be factory fresh regardless of where you get it from. Casks need care, so they will only be as good as the landlord.
That said- there are a few types of beer around; Lager, Mild, Porter, Bitter, Stout and Barley Wine.
I cannot emphasis the difference between real Lager and keg lager enough, most real lagers are mildly carbonated at best (due to the brewing process). They also have flavour- since this is not my preferred brew, I can't really say much about them.
Mild, Porter and Stout are all of the same family. The keg version of stout is Guinness. So you can imagine a slightly burnt set of flavours with these drinks. Traditionally they brewed Stout from the first batch, then it was recycled for Porter, then again for Mild. This produced a milder flavour with each batch. Milds tend to come in quite weak, usually 3-4%, they're great little session beers. Porters tend to be in the 4-5% range, not advisable for a proper session and their flavour is strong enough to blot out the subtleties of other beers- if you're at a beer festival, you should save these till last. Stouts are 5+% And very intense in flavour.
Bitters mainly differ from lagers because of their use of hops. They range in colour from straw (usually quite hoppy) to ruby (usually sweeter) Alcohol tends to be in the 4-6% region but can be much higher, where they turn into barley wines.
I think this will do for the moment, since this is supposed to be a beginners guide and will cover terms that I'll be using a lot in the future.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Rooting around for nuts and berries.
It's that time of the year. It started last month when elderberries were plentiful and hedges were laden with blackberries, now chestnuts are falling from the trees and sloes are being picked by old sots with a taste for gin. So I decided to go for a mix of known and unknown. I love chestnuts there's something comforting and warming about them, especially when roasted and eaten with a little salt. There are two edible trees related to the sweet chestnut (it is a different tree to the horse chestnut- conkers are poisonous). The oak and the beech. I'm having difficulty finding beech trees around here and I suspect the squirrels will get to the nuts before I do, however I'm in a very oaky part of England, so it was easy enough to find acorns.
I roasted them, in much the same way as you would roast chestnuts. I probably didn't give them long enough- they were still very bitter and slightly waxy in texture. However, they had some nice burnt caramel tones to it. I think that with a little more roasting and some dicing they would make a very nice addition to a cake.
Being an old sot with a taste for gin, I thought I'd go the traditional route with sloe and use them to flavour gin. I've pricked the sloe, added a little sugar and placed them in a jar of gin. I need to get some almond essence and more gin. I picked about a 1/4 carrier bag of sloe. This should make about 2 litres or so. Making the stuff is easy but requires patience. You store it in the dark for a few months, mine should be ready for Christmas, but if I make enough, I should be able to leave some seeping until next year.
My other experiments were extracting hawthorne juice (don't bother eating the berries, no flesh and a big pip) and making an elderberry cordial. Hawthorne has little flavour, but it's full of good things- so I dumped that into the cordial. I should proabably add some more sugar, but it's drinkable.
I'd recommend reading up on foraging, There's a lot of interesting flavours out there. But I don't see mention of one thing I've found useful, a pair of thick leather gloves- I use welding gloves. A good rule of thumb seems to be if the plant makes you bleed, you're probably going to like the fruit/seed pod. Just from the top of my head- Sweet Chestnuts are a bugger to harvest and shell without gloves, blackberry plants are loaded with thorns, gooseberries, blackthorns and hawthorns have sparse but quite evil spikes. Gloves will aid in the harvesting- allowing you to grab a branch and pull fruit into reach without bleeding everywhere.
I roasted them, in much the same way as you would roast chestnuts. I probably didn't give them long enough- they were still very bitter and slightly waxy in texture. However, they had some nice burnt caramel tones to it. I think that with a little more roasting and some dicing they would make a very nice addition to a cake.
Being an old sot with a taste for gin, I thought I'd go the traditional route with sloe and use them to flavour gin. I've pricked the sloe, added a little sugar and placed them in a jar of gin. I need to get some almond essence and more gin. I picked about a 1/4 carrier bag of sloe. This should make about 2 litres or so. Making the stuff is easy but requires patience. You store it in the dark for a few months, mine should be ready for Christmas, but if I make enough, I should be able to leave some seeping until next year.
My other experiments were extracting hawthorne juice (don't bother eating the berries, no flesh and a big pip) and making an elderberry cordial. Hawthorne has little flavour, but it's full of good things- so I dumped that into the cordial. I should proabably add some more sugar, but it's drinkable.
I'd recommend reading up on foraging, There's a lot of interesting flavours out there. But I don't see mention of one thing I've found useful, a pair of thick leather gloves- I use welding gloves. A good rule of thumb seems to be if the plant makes you bleed, you're probably going to like the fruit/seed pod. Just from the top of my head- Sweet Chestnuts are a bugger to harvest and shell without gloves, blackberry plants are loaded with thorns, gooseberries, blackthorns and hawthorns have sparse but quite evil spikes. Gloves will aid in the harvesting- allowing you to grab a branch and pull fruit into reach without bleeding everywhere.
Blue in Blue.
I apologise for the delay. For some reason I've been unable to post during my working day, where I get most of my writing done during downtime.
The spice is the life. Well, that's obviously what some people think when dealing with chili peppers. I was down in Brighton for the Fire Festival, a gathering of people who love the feel of burning tastebuds.
It is worth remembering that Capsaicin, the molecule that creates the fire in peppers is a poison, triggering similar pain systems as Tarantula venom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin) It is also used in pepper spray, a non-lethal aerosol used to incapacitate people with minimal lasting effects once the eye watering pain has passed.
And so we were surrounded by sauces with obscene scolville ratings- People were eating peppers with a scholville range between 855,000 to 1,050,000. For an idea of scale- riot quality pepper spray is around 5,000,000 scolville.
My enjoyment stops around Scotch Bonnet level, which is around 350,000 and even that I would use sparingly. They have a nice flavour underneath all the heat.
I do not subscribe to the hotter=better attitude to that kind of spice. Fire provides a lovely bite to certain things but you have to be careful with your selections of peppers to ensure that you don't overpower the rest of the food. The primary flavour of any food should not be burning. For example, my bog standard pasta sauce has a hint of fire, just enough to wake up the tastebuds and give you a little rush but barely noticable. This rule does not exclude hot food either. A good curry has a complex flavour and a burn that hits while you are contemplating the subtle spices and the interplay with the meat. One green salsa (unfortunately I forget the name of the company) was a great example of heat as enhancement.
The products from the Chili jam company were great. I don't like things being that sweet, I usually find jam a touch cloying and sickly but their samples have encouraged me to start experimenting with savoury and meat jams. I can see their sweet chili jam working really well with roast pork sandwiches.
There were a range of good products all over the fair and I cannot list them all.
I am confused by people who choose to eat weapons grade sauces. I tried a few hot sauces, Dave's Insanity, Dragon's Blood and mongoose. Mongoose is around 3,000,000- I don't see the point in it, you have to use a pipette to put the sauce in a drop at a time. Something that concentrated is a nightmare, any cook will tell you that it's much easier to add more than it is to remove too much.
Quite a few places were selling plants as well. I figure it's a great idea to start growing your own food, and I've been growing my own herbs for a while. This has three main advantages, you can pick them when you're ready so they never go off, you get more varieties than you would find usually and you're using a sustainable source which theoretically gives you an infinite supply of herbs for little money. I have some Elephant garlic from the Isle of Wight garlic company, to grow rather than eat. I don't know when I'll see it again so I thought I'd use my family's green fingers to ensure a sensible supply and I'll experiment with the potato wedge sized cloves at some point in June.
I will get myself a strawberry planter soon and turn it into a small kitchen herb garden that I can keep in the kitchen and so I will be growing most things in pots and containers, it requires being clever, paying attention to fertilising and watering more often than you would if the plants were in a garden. This is city living in the 21st century- few people have the luxury of space. I've got room for a window box or two, so there's another place to put things. My early experiments with a few cheap pepper plants went well and so I thought I'd indulge myself and get two more plants. Twilight peppers do not glitter in the sunlight, but they look pretty and would be fine as a houseplant. Marble peppers look interestingly like cherry tomatoes and will fit nicely in my windowbox alongside my earlier experiments.
Anyway, the principle is to get as much interesting and useful food grown in as small a space as possible. You can (although I don't recommend it) raise a chicken in an A4 footprint. You could get a good herb garden in the space of two battery chickens. You use plants to brighten up the house, so why not use plants you can eat instead- brightens your house and your plate. How about that for efficiency?
The spice is the life. Well, that's obviously what some people think when dealing with chili peppers. I was down in Brighton for the Fire Festival, a gathering of people who love the feel of burning tastebuds.
It is worth remembering that Capsaicin, the molecule that creates the fire in peppers is a poison, triggering similar pain systems as Tarantula venom. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capsaicin) It is also used in pepper spray, a non-lethal aerosol used to incapacitate people with minimal lasting effects once the eye watering pain has passed.
And so we were surrounded by sauces with obscene scolville ratings- People were eating peppers with a scholville range between 855,000 to 1,050,000. For an idea of scale- riot quality pepper spray is around 5,000,000 scolville.
My enjoyment stops around Scotch Bonnet level, which is around 350,000 and even that I would use sparingly. They have a nice flavour underneath all the heat.
I do not subscribe to the hotter=better attitude to that kind of spice. Fire provides a lovely bite to certain things but you have to be careful with your selections of peppers to ensure that you don't overpower the rest of the food. The primary flavour of any food should not be burning. For example, my bog standard pasta sauce has a hint of fire, just enough to wake up the tastebuds and give you a little rush but barely noticable. This rule does not exclude hot food either. A good curry has a complex flavour and a burn that hits while you are contemplating the subtle spices and the interplay with the meat. One green salsa (unfortunately I forget the name of the company) was a great example of heat as enhancement.
The products from the Chili jam company were great. I don't like things being that sweet, I usually find jam a touch cloying and sickly but their samples have encouraged me to start experimenting with savoury and meat jams. I can see their sweet chili jam working really well with roast pork sandwiches.
There were a range of good products all over the fair and I cannot list them all.
I am confused by people who choose to eat weapons grade sauces. I tried a few hot sauces, Dave's Insanity, Dragon's Blood and mongoose. Mongoose is around 3,000,000- I don't see the point in it, you have to use a pipette to put the sauce in a drop at a time. Something that concentrated is a nightmare, any cook will tell you that it's much easier to add more than it is to remove too much.
Quite a few places were selling plants as well. I figure it's a great idea to start growing your own food, and I've been growing my own herbs for a while. This has three main advantages, you can pick them when you're ready so they never go off, you get more varieties than you would find usually and you're using a sustainable source which theoretically gives you an infinite supply of herbs for little money. I have some Elephant garlic from the Isle of Wight garlic company, to grow rather than eat. I don't know when I'll see it again so I thought I'd use my family's green fingers to ensure a sensible supply and I'll experiment with the potato wedge sized cloves at some point in June.
I will get myself a strawberry planter soon and turn it into a small kitchen herb garden that I can keep in the kitchen and so I will be growing most things in pots and containers, it requires being clever, paying attention to fertilising and watering more often than you would if the plants were in a garden. This is city living in the 21st century- few people have the luxury of space. I've got room for a window box or two, so there's another place to put things. My early experiments with a few cheap pepper plants went well and so I thought I'd indulge myself and get two more plants. Twilight peppers do not glitter in the sunlight, but they look pretty and would be fine as a houseplant. Marble peppers look interestingly like cherry tomatoes and will fit nicely in my windowbox alongside my earlier experiments.
Anyway, the principle is to get as much interesting and useful food grown in as small a space as possible. You can (although I don't recommend it) raise a chicken in an A4 footprint. You could get a good herb garden in the space of two battery chickens. You use plants to brighten up the house, so why not use plants you can eat instead- brightens your house and your plate. How about that for efficiency?
Sunday, 13 September 2009
Being a foodie.
The way I look at it, there are food snobs and there are foodies. Food snobs think that the price of food is a reflection of it's value and taste. Which is, to be frank, utter bollocks.
Foodies on the other hand have a deep love of food and know that the best food can be cheap or even free. A cow isn't just steak, there's a lot of meat on there that can taste wonderful if you just know how to treat it. In fact this knowledge is essential when making a range of dishes- a good meat for grilling is not always a good meat for slow cooking. A foodie knows that there is nothing quite like freshly foraged blackberries.
And it is this attitude that I wish to convey to you, dear reader. I have an appreciation of food even if I'm absent minded about what I've eaten. There are so many textures, tastes and smells out there that you are severely depriving yourself if you choose to eat a cardboard burger from a well known chain. Speed and cost are not excuses either. I owe it to myself to seek nicer food, and so do you.
Foodies on the other hand have a deep love of food and know that the best food can be cheap or even free. A cow isn't just steak, there's a lot of meat on there that can taste wonderful if you just know how to treat it. In fact this knowledge is essential when making a range of dishes- a good meat for grilling is not always a good meat for slow cooking. A foodie knows that there is nothing quite like freshly foraged blackberries.
And it is this attitude that I wish to convey to you, dear reader. I have an appreciation of food even if I'm absent minded about what I've eaten. There are so many textures, tastes and smells out there that you are severely depriving yourself if you choose to eat a cardboard burger from a well known chain. Speed and cost are not excuses either. I owe it to myself to seek nicer food, and so do you.
A start.
I've been taking an interest in my food for quite some time and I had an epiphany recently. I drink and eat without really noting down what was good and where I found it. It is, mostly, in my head but I won't remember it until I'm in the location I had it. For obvious reasons, this makes it difficult to enthuse or pass information on.
There is another aspect. I was given a rather eye-opening talk about foraging, mostly urban but also other environments. Don't take me for a fool- I knew it was there and in abundance. However, I was not going to risk poisoning myself without an expert showing me the ways to start. There's a very interesting array of flavours out there that we barely touch because of the stigma of wild food- especially in an urban environment.
So, a blog is born.
There is another aspect. I was given a rather eye-opening talk about foraging, mostly urban but also other environments. Don't take me for a fool- I knew it was there and in abundance. However, I was not going to risk poisoning myself without an expert showing me the ways to start. There's a very interesting array of flavours out there that we barely touch because of the stigma of wild food- especially in an urban environment.
So, a blog is born.
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