One of the delights of having a polytunnel for me personally is the treat of year round herbs. Rosemary, sage, mint and flat and curly parsley pretty much keep going all year. By March I can expect to add in chives, garlic chives, oregano, lemon balm and thyme. In mid April I can start using coriander, dill, fennel, horehound, feverfew, camomile, clary sage, lovage, chervil, sorrel and mallow. There's hardly a meal I don't sprinkle a selection of chopped fresh herbs onto these days. Herbs are also lovely for adding to homemade cream cheese which I make by straining my kefir (a post on this to come).
Besides tasting absolutely delicious each herb offers a unique array of beneficial qualities for our health and wellbeing. I have written previously about borage which now happily self seeds in the polytunnel.
Yes indeed all herbs are a blessing and a great addition to our diet. Nature provides all we need to heal and stay well. Even if you are not a gardener herbs are so easy to grow. From your local garden centre you can buy a pot for the cost of two packets of lanky lifeless 'fresh' herb leaves from the supermarket. Transfer your herb into a large pot and keep it watered on a windowsill (outside in summer, indoors in winter) and you'll be using it for the year. Both parsley and sage are easy to grow and quite hardy so would suit a beginner. That's a massive saving and a great addition to your healthy diet.
Since my last post I've been munching my way through two batches of fermented sauerkraut. It's safe to say that I'm addicted to it. It goes on toast, in soup, on salads, in stews ... and then if there's no sign of a meal anytime soon I just grab a forkful and chomp away. From now on I'll be making sure there's always some on the go.
I can't stress how easy the whole thing is and I'd definitely encourage you to try it out. The costs are minimal and the probiotic health benefits are wonderful. All you need is a kilo of finely chopped white and/or red cabbage and a tablespoon of salt. Mix the chopped cabbage and salt in a bowl, rub the salt in, massage and knead the cabbage just as if you're making some dough. After a little while it becomes limp and a little translucent, perhaps some of the cabbages own juices will begin to collect in the bottom of the bowl. Transfer the cabbage and juices into a very clean jar and use something like a wooden spoon or pestle to thud down the cabbage so there are no air gaps. You'll find there should now be enough juices to cover the cabbage, if not, add just enough water to cover it and a little more salt (more salt only if you've had to add water). Now put a clean cloth over the top and leave it to sit on the counter for roughly four days. When four days has passed pop it in the fridge where it will keep for quite a while. Each time you take some out to eat tap it down again so all the cabbage is below the juice.
After four days in my kitchen the sauerkraut smelled pretty strong to say the least and I almost abandoned the project and came very close to throwing it in the compost. I put it in the fridge and the next day I ventured to eat a mouthful, strangely it tasted very nice but I waited until the next day before eating a little more because I wanted to be sure I'd have no ill effects! Since then I've been munching happily on it and have made a second batch. Even my kids like it so all in all its been a very successful dabble of my big toe in the world of fermentation and I fully intend to go knee deep.
My next post will be all about my kombucha tea, another healthy elixir in the form of a culture full of healthy bacteria and yeast.
Fermenting vegetables is a process that produces delicious food such as sauerkraut and kimchi. I'm so excited about fermenting vegetables for quite a few reasons. As a grower of vegetables it's a wonderful way to keep my greens edible during winter and hungry gaps of the year. Unlike some other methods of preserving foods such as jams and chutneys it does not involve cooking the food so the nutrient availability is not only preserved by fermenting, it is actually enhanced. We don't need to add pounds of sugar either to keep the contents of the jar fresh, nature does that job for us instead.
So how does the fermenting work? We have been brainwashed to think that all bacteria are bad, this is not true, we need a symbiotic relationship with bacteria to survive healthily! During fermentation naturally occuring bacteria and yeasts that live on plants begin to break down the components of the vegetables. This means several things for us humans. First of all the plant material is transformed into a much easier to digest form and that means our digestive systems need to work less in order to obtain more benefit from what we eat. The bacteria and yeasts that are thriving on the fermenting vegetables are also themselves extremely beneficial to our bodies. If we buy bioyogurt or sauerkraut in shops these products have been pasteurised to kill bad but unfortunately the good bacteria too. These good bacteria occur naturally within healthy guts where they work as a carefully balanced ecosystem with a high biodiversity containing many strains of bacteria and yeasts that we require in order to digest food properly. These are what many of us familiarly know as 'probiotics'. So by eating the fermented vegetables we are ensuring that we have these probiotics within us doing their work that we rely upon for digestion. It is extremely important that our guts (small intestines) are working properly as many health practitioners believe that our entire immune system relies on a healthy gut as its foundation block.
Many of us need to repopulate our guts with probiotics as we continually destroy and undermine this ecosystem by taking antibiotics, thrush treatments and drinking chlorinated tap water. These chemicals save lives by killing harmful bacteria but they also cause us harm by killing off our necessary friendly bacteria and yeasts, leaving an open playing field for imbalances to arise and cause a cycle of health problems. I've recently read a book that even links these imbalances which can lead to leaky gut syndrome as a cause of ADHD, ADD, IBS, depression, mental illness and autism.
I'm not a health practitioner or nutrionist, I'm just somebody who is interested in living naturally and healthily, so I'm experimenting with making sauerkraut and I can tell you that it tastes delicious. I've bought the ingrediants for kimchi and I can't wait to start that later today.
If you'd like to try too watch this inspirational clip by Sandor Ellix Katz aka Sandorkraut, author of Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods. He'll tell you everything you need to know.
Quickly go and grab the last of the elderberries (sambucus nigra), grab roughly a kilo if you can. Bring an ID book or a friend you trust in the know. Now you've almost got everything you need to make elderberry syrup and it's really easy to do. Don't be put off if you've tried eating a raw elderberry and the tart flavour almost turned your face inside out because trust me, the syrup is quite delicious. And if delicous isn't enough to persuade you then maybe you'll be swayed by the fact that this fruit is bursting with vitamins and antioxidants. Google elderberry nutrition and you'll also find mention of research into it being an immune system booster, cancer preventative and other such claims. Did I also mention it tastes delicious?
Snip the berries from the green stalks into a large pan (do you like the way I've just bullied you into making it?). Don't worry too much about the tiny stalks, well I don't worry about them anyway. I then use a potato masher to push the berries down and pour in just enough water to cover the fruit. Simmer for 20 minutes. Strain the resulting dark purple mixture through a sieve into a measuring jug. For each pint add 450grams (1lb) of white sugar and the juice of one lemon. Simmer again for another 20 minutes and leave covered to cool for 15 minutes or so. Pour the syrup into sterilised bottles. It's too late to mention it now but whatever wooden spoon you've used will now remain a lovely deep crimson colour. I hope you didn't spill any on your clothes.
That's the basic recipe. You can also add to the initial simmering an inch of ginger root, a dash of mixed spice, a cardamom pod, whatever you fancy.
Enjoy your syrup like a fruit cordial diluted with water, on ice cream, in hot water like a non alcoholic mulled wine or in a hot port like a very alchoholic mulled port.
The apples are falling from the trees and it's a shame to let them go to waste. There's a few things I like to try and do when there are apples on the ground. Pure apple juice is delicious, whether you use a centrifugal juicer or a mechanical one. It's worth doing a litre at a time and sipping at it through the day. It's almost instant and a real treat for everyone in the house.
Another option is to collect a basketful and make a simple apple crumble. Just cut the apples into slices, perhaps pour a tablespoon of fruit juice, lemon, or water over the apples, you could throw in three cloves and a pinch of mixed spice or cinnamon. In a bowl mix some porridge oats, raisins, a tablespoon of sugar and some seeds such as pumpkin and sunflower, some nuts if you like them too. Stir in 50g of melted butter to moisten the crumble mix. Pour this over the apples and sprinkle a spoon of dark sugar over the top and pop it in the oven for roughly 40 minutes at 180C.
Last but not least is the long term option to juice the apples and instead of drinking it instantly pour it into a sterilised demijohn with a spoon of cider yeast. I tried making my cider without adding yeast, relying on wild yeasts to flourish but alas it all went wrong and blue mould took hold. Next time I'll definitely use a commercial yeast to ensure it takes hold before anything else gets a chance. I have an e-booklet about brewing country wines if you'd like to give it a try, it's really quite simple and not expensive to get started (see store top right hand corner).
If you keep pigs they will devour any windfall apples with great glee. Or you could keep your apples for eating over winter by storing them in a cool room. They need checking every week because as they so rightly say, 'one bad apple spoils the bunch'! If you can pilfer some of those paper trays from your local vegetable shop they are ideal for stacking and storing apples.
Trust me, pickled eggs are delicious, no really they are. I think this is mainly an English tradition as I've never experienced them in Ireland. My first rendezvous with a pickled egg was after a long hike in the English countryside which ended at a rural pub, where my companion ordered me a pint of scrumpy cider and a packet of salt and vinegar crisps with a pickled egg thrown into it. I'll never forget that wonderful culinary discovery!
As the days begin to shorten and the weather cools chicken will slow down their laying and some will stop completely until spring. So while there is still a good stock of eggs in the fridge perhaps now is a good time to experiment with pickling.
Buy a good quality pale vinegar from your health shop, organic apple cider vinegar is great stuff and you can use up any remainder for your vegetable pickles and chutneys. As always, sterilise all equipment and utensils to be used and wash hands and surfaces in advance. Bring a pot of vinegar to the boil and simmer for 10 minutes to pasteurise it. Keep covered and allow to cool. Hard boil some clean undamaged chicken eggs and allow to cool completely. Remove the shells with clean hands and place the eggs into a sterilised storage jar. Pour in enough vinegar to cover all the eggs completely and keep refrigerated. Leave the eggs to pickle for two weeks before eating.
Cleaning and sterisiling is very important to avoid botulism.
Some of the wines that were brewed in spring are bottled already, and yes I know it's best to leave them for at least six months before drinking, but sometimes rules are worth breaking! My favourite wine of 2009 is currently our elderflower and strawberry wine, it's very fruity, has a wonderful summer perfume and is so cute with a hint of pink thanks to the strawberries. A chilled glass of this is my favourite way to cleanse the palate or enjoy a quiet half hour in the sun on the doorstep. That sort of weather is rapidly coming to a close though but I'm looking forward to some other wines I started in the summer and will make perfect winter wines. Honey and ginger mead will be warming on cosy winter nights in front of the fire and I can't wait to try the wild damson wine at Christmas.
Making wine at home is growing in popularity and you can read how to get started with lots of recipies I've tried for country wines in my little ebooklet, see the Paypal store on the top right column. Slainte (cheers).
After a few sunny days the onion skins were nice and dry (see previous post) so I began making onion ropes. First rub the loose dry soil from the onions with a soft dry cloth or teatowel, but don't peel them, the dry skins help to keep the onion bulbs fresh. Keep any damaged or bruised onions in a basket for immediate use in the kitchen, don't incorporate these in your ropes because as they begin to rot the mould will spread to the good onions too. Put on some good music and get roping, enjoy the task, even better get a friend to come along and 'learn the ropes', passing on these skills to others is important (and fun). Here's a great link on how to rope onions to get you started. It's really very easy and you'll soon get a rhythm going.
When you've finished there's nothing more beautiful than a few ropes hanging in your scullery and kitchen, it's such a welcoming sight and every time you reach for an onion over the winter you'll feel very happy with your achievement.
It's that time of year when various rooms in the household greet their occupants with a welcoming 'bloop, bloop, bloop' noise. A selection of homemade country wines are fermenting away. Good old glass gallon demijohns sit on available shelves or nestle in corners containing liquids of beautiful colours, ranging from gold to pink, just doing their thing. It's really very easy to make country wine, in fact so easy I have found in the past that the biggest pitfall is to make too much so that the racking and bottling becomes a chore. So these days I make one demijohn each of my favourite flavours and that way it's all enjoyable and the wines are savoured.
Some favourites include elderflower, strawberry, blackberry, nettle leaf, birch sap wine and mead. The whole affair is very cheap, the only real expense being roughly 1.5kilos of sugar per gallon of liquid plus a good quality yeast and yeast nutriment powder. Even with the cost of the demijohns and other minor bits of equipment in the first year the wine is easily less than half the price and in subsequent years probably under a euro per bottle. That's a significant saving on the weekly shop!
I've been meaning to write an ebooklet on this topic for some time and I finally found the inspiration I was looking for to get me going during the first racking of an elderflower and strawberry wine I'm making ... an unintended sampling was forced upon me during the syphoning process ... accidently on purpose, several times, eh, by me! When I first started out making the wine it took quite a bit of time gathering the information and sourcing the things I'd need, getting to grips with a bit of science, realising lots of information was not necessary and quite a few things tasted disgusting! So there is now a short ebooklet in the Paypal store (see top right column) with instructions on how to make our favourite country wines here at Sallygardens.
