Sallygardens Smallholding

How to Make Pickled Eggs

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.

Elderflower and Strawberry Wine

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).

Onion Ropes

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.

Bubble Bubble Without Too Much Toil Or Trouble

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.

Slainte (cheers).