Jam & Jerusalem

A New Way of Preserving

For the past week I seem to have a new daily ritual. Picking soft fruit. Everyday there is another crop to pick. As we have not yet completed the fruit cage, it’s a race between me and the birds. 

A more predictable spring and summer with periods of sun and rain has been the perfect conditions for soft fruit this year. The raspberries and strawberries in particular. The strawberries have almost gone, but weather permitting the raspberry season should last until October.

In the past I have made small batches of jams and preserves like my mum used to. Take some sterilised jam jars, fill with the cooked jam, cover the surface of the jam with a waxed paper disk and seal the jar with a clear plastic jam cover.  This process is apparently called “Putting up”. A phrase I had not heard before this year. I believe it’s an American phrase from the 1800’s, correct me if I’m wrong, I’m curious to know more about its origins.

I’ve also tried using Kilner style jars with rubber seals and cooking the jars in water in the oven. Invariably a jar would always crack and I’d never know for sure if the seal was good. The pressure cooker method didn’t appeal to me either for the same reasons.

As I plan on preserving more this year, and concerned with the the safety of long term storage, we decided to invest in a Home Canning System from Germany. 

I wonder what the Women’s Institute (WI) would make of my jam recipes!

There’s no need to mess with a classic strawberry jam recipe so I kept that one simple and then also made a raspberry and mint jam.

Classic Strawberry

453g Strawberries washed, hulled, roughly chopped. Small fruit can be left whole
453g Granulated Sugar
3 Tbsp Organic Sicilian Lemon Juice (or Juice of 1 Lemon)
Place all ingredients into a large pan and bring to a rapid boil for about 10 mins.
Use the plate test * to determine when the jam is set.
Remove from heat
Fill sterilised jars and follow your Home Canner’s instructions for preserving jam

Raspberry & Mint Jam

453g Raspberries
3/4 Cup Mint Leaves
2 1/4 Cup Sugar
3 Tbsp Organic Sicilian Lemon Juice ( or Juice of 1 Lemon)
Infuse the sugar overnight with the mint leaves
Follow the same steps as for the Strawberry Jam.

* Plate Test – to determine the setting point for the jam. Place a teaspoon of the jam mixture on a chilled plate. If when cooled the jam wrinkles when pushed with your finger, the jam has reached its setting point.

 

 

A Quintessential British Summer

Tennis, Strawberries & Cream and Lemon Barley Water

Wimbledon started this week. 

Founded in 1877 it is the oldest tennis tournament around and inevitably some traditions have grown up around the event, such as the spectators eating British strawberries and cream. A perhaps lesser known one is that of lemon barley water.  After all ‘anything else just isn’t tennis’ *

Eric Smedley Hodgson apparently invented the drink in 1934 and it was served to the tennis players in the changing rooms to refresh them. This was the start of an 81 year old relationship between Robinson’s Barley Water and Wimbledon, and since 1935 bottles of the soft drink have been placed under the umpire’s chair.

Wimbledon reminds me of the warm, heady, pollen scented days of summer. It’s late afternoon.  Outside the stillness echoes the hush of the crowd on centre court, followed by the rich “thwak”of the opening serve.

Summer also means ice cream.

The strawberry patch was full of ripe fruit. The aromatic scent of Basil Genovese filled the hydro-tunnel and I had a bottle of organic Sicilian lemon juice in the fridge. So I made a batch of Strawberry & Basil Ice Cream. I first came across this recipe last year when I had a glut of basil leaves. The original recipe used ricotta cheese, but I couldn’t remember using that last time. I just wanted to keep it simple. So I searched for a few other recipes and merged a couple of them together. I also reduced the amount of sugar used by half.

Strawberry & Basil Ice Cream

455 grams Strawberries (washed and roughly cut up)
6 cups of Basil Leaves
1/2 cup Sugar
450ml Double Cream
250ml Gold Top Jersey Milk (full cream milk)
1/2 teaspoon Sicilian Lemon Juice.

Soak the cut strawberries in the sugar and lemon juice for about an hour
Blend the cream, milk, basil and strawberries together until mixed to your liking
Chill overnight
Churn the ingredients in an ice cream maker following the manufacturer’s instructions.

*Source 1988 Robinson’s Barley Water Advertising Campaign

A Break from Routine

The Royal Welsh & A Twist on a Salad Nicoise

The growing season is in full swing and there is always something to be done, but we managed a little R&R towards the end of May. We visited the Royal Welsh Spring Show in Builth Wells.

The Royal Welsh Agricultural Society’s main event is in July and attracts the proper farmers. The spring show is aimed at the smallholder. It’s the first time we’ve visited and it was fun, if a little wet on the first day, so we left early feeling wet and miserable.  However on Sunday, the weather improved and we explored the entire show.

People were exhibiting their livestock and there were many rosettes to be won. 

Traditional skills were on show, such as rope making, blacksmith and farrier skills.

Many stalls were selling new equipment and small holder essentials and there were talks by experts on relevant smallholder topics, such as beekeeping and how to be self sufficient on one acre or less.

Most of the wet Saturday was spent walking round the food hall and sampling the local products on offer. From small independent producers of cheese, ice-cream, local honey to chilli relishes, homemade pies and cakes and the odd independent brewer producing Welsh pale ales. 

Arriving home at the end of a busy weekend it was time to throw something quick and tasty together. Something light, crisp and colourful to mark the true arrival of spring and incorporate  local or home grown ingredients.

The result was a variation on a Tuna Nicoise salad using Pembrokeshire potatoes, the first small eggs from the new chickens, oriental salad leaves and herbs from the hydro-tunnel.

Fragrant Tuna Nicoise
Grilled Tuna Steak
Hard Boiled Eggs
Sliced Cherry Tomatoes
Sauted Potato Cubes in Toasted Sesame Seeds
Endame
Sliced Welsh Onion (a type of salad / spring onion)
Served on a bed of Oriental Salad Leaves (a mix of Mizuna, Mibuna, Green Mustard Pizzo, Red Mustard, Pak choi Canton White, and Tatsoi).

For The Salad Dressing
Chopped Chives, Cilantro, Garlic, Soy Sauce, Hemp Oil & Red Wine Vinegar.

Liver, Fava Beans, But No Chianti

Things Your Mother Would Make You Eat As A Child!

I remember disliking some foods so much as a child, that I would refuse to eat them, the humble broad bean (aka fava bean, faba bean, field bean, English bean to name just  a few of its aliases) was one of them.

They looked so green and tasty inside their fur lined pod when picked fresh. I didn’t like them because they were cooked the old fashioned way, popped un-peeled into a pan of salted boiling water, which meant they would end up pale and wrinkly.  The outer shell separating slightly from the bean inside. They always tasted dry and leathery. Sometimes the outer skin would fall off the bean completely and would stick to the roof of your mouth! Yuk!

Depending upon where you live in the world, broad / fava beans are either eaten whole or peeled. If picked young enough, they do not need to be peeled, as the tough skin has yet to form. 

If only my mother had peeled the beans or perhaps not let them grow too long on the pod….

I now like broad beans. The first batch have been planted out into raised beds this week.. 

Here’s the  building blocks to a nice fresh broad / fava bean recipe, that you can enjoy with a ‘fine chianti!’ 

I used frozen beans on this recipe and parsley from the hydro tunnel.

Broad Bean & Parsley Houmous with Crispy Pancetta

Peeled Broad Beans
Bunch of Parsley
1 Clove of Garlic
Lemon Juice
Salt & Pepper
Crispy Pancetta Strips
Hemp Oil / Olive Oil

Blanch fresh beans first to make the skins easy to remove.
Steam beans until tender
Blitz all the ingredients together, apart from the crispy pancetta.
Add oil until you reach your preferred consistency
Top with crispy pancetta and serve with wholemeal toast or grilled poultry.

Busy Busy Busy!

Easter Came Early… And Spring Is Just Now Catching Its Breath

Springtime in Wales means lambs!  Back in March we had the opportunity to watch lambs being born on a friend’s farm. Now that’s a busy & hectic time of year!

We’ve had our own busy couple of months at the small holding. 

Here’s a look at what’s been happening….

New Chicken Coop Built & We Got 5 More Chickens

Plenty of work has gone into preparing the garden for planting.

Digging Over The Kitchen Garden

New Raised Beds Built

Seed Sowing

More Seed Sowing

Hardening off Seedlings for Planting

More Seedlings Ready for Planting

Pea & Bean Supports Made

Tomato Supports Put Up

The hydro-tunnel has been reorganised and the first crops are coming along nicely! There is a new watercress cascading system which we hope will increase this years yield. And there are two new additions to the hydro-tunnel this year – Okra & Micro Greens.

Waiting for Germination

New Watercress System

Mixed Greens & First Basil Crop

Tomatillo, Tomato & Okra Ready for Transplanting

Salad Leaves Almost Ready to Harvest

Micro Greens Beginning to Sprout

 

Here’s hoping May will bring Spring to life. We’ve had heavy frosts up until the end of April, historically the second week of April usually signals the end of the frosty weather, fingers crossed.

Let the planting continue.

Pancotto Galles (Cawl Bara)

A Welsh take on an Italian classic bread soup

We had made a big batch of home-made sausages and I wanted to find new and interesting ways to liven up a humble sausage meal. This is when I came across a recipe called Pancotto Pugliese.  The main ingredients were pork sausages, potato, cannellini beans, spring greens, sprouting broccoli and rustic sturdy white bread such as a sourdough.

Intrigued by the name I wanted to find out more. I discovered that Pancotto was a traditional Italian frugal soup made from stale bread cooked in a broth or water. There are many regional variations. In Puglia the basics are potato, tomato, courgettes (aka zucchini) and turnip greens and of course stale bread.

So what did I have in my store cupboard? Obviously the sausages and definitely stale wholemeal sourdough bread from my sourdough experiment. I also had half a savoy cabbage and watercress in the hydro garden. But I had no cannellini beans. I did have some podded Czar runner beans though.

Runner beans are a familiar sight in summer vegetable gardens and allotments across the UK. It’s a climbing bean that tolerates cooler weather. The Czar is a native variety that can be eaten fresh in the pod or left to develop large white beans that can be dried and used like a butter bean. Last summer when I harvested the last of the crop, the green pods were tough and fibrous so I podded the large white beans and put them in the freezer. So now I had my beans for the soup.

Building Blocks for Pancotto Galles or Cawl Bara

Roughly chopped potato skin on
Pork Sausage
Garlic
Chicken Stock
Strips of shredded cabbage or any young green leafy vegetables
Canellini beans / butter beans or broad beans
Stale sourdough bread torn into large chunks
Chili flakes
White wine
Watercress tossed in the soup to serve

We ate this on a cold dry February night with some of the stale sourdough toasted and buttered.

I must admit this might become one of my go to recipes, it totally revitalised a brick like bread into something totally useable.

California Dreamin’

Sourdough & Pickup Trucks

There are two things I miss from my time in California, old Chevy pickup trucks and sourdough bread. I can’t do much about the truck here in the UK, but I can the sourdough.

At Hydro2Plate it’s not only important to us that we grow as much of our food as possible, be it hydroponically or conventionally, but that we make all our food from scratch. 

The humble loaf of bread is no exception.

It’s relatively simple to start your own sourdough starter with some flour, yeast and water. That being said I was looking for something with a bit more heritage and authenticity. Everyone has probably heard of the original San Francisco Sourdough culture and I would have been happy with that, until I stumbled upon a place that specialised in all sorts of cultures. I was spoilt for choice.

In the end I chose the following, they are all slightly different and have their own unique personalities.

Yukon Culture – the story goes that this was passed down from a Yukon prospector.
Red Sea Culture  – from one of the oldest ethnic bakeries in Egypt on the shores of the Red Sea.
French Culture – from a small 150 year old bakery on the edge of Paris.
South African Culture – a culture strong enough to leaven wholewheat flour and has a good sour taste.

As wholemeal bread is healthier, I brought the South African culture to life first. Adapting a recipe from the Knead Bakery cookbook (a cafe/bakery located in Cape Town), I substituted the recipe’s ‘rustic poolish’ for my sourdough starter. The bread did rise, but not as much as I expected.
More practice is needed!

Slightly disheartened at my fist sourdough attempts I dug out my favourite french baguette recipe and using my steam oven for the first time, the bread came out quite well. 

I can’t wait to bring another culture (or as they are affectionately known ‘my bugs’) to life as the sourdough adventure continues.

French Baguette Recipe
I use dried active yeast (readily available in UK supermarkets) instead of instant yeast for all my bread making. So the recipe has been adapted to work with dried active yeast.

Dried Yeast Prep
1 tsp white sugar
150ml warm water
1 tbs dried active yeast
Dissolve the sugar in the water. Whisk in the yeast and leave in a warm place for 10 – 15 minutes

Bread Ingredients Starter Dough
2 cups Canadian strong white bread Flour (112)
350ml warm water
Prepared yeast mix
Add yeast mix and water to the flour and stir well
Cover and let rise for 3 hours.
If using an electric proofing box set temperature to 21 degrees centigrade

Bread Ingredients Step 2
2 cups Canadian strong white bread flour (112)
1 tsp salt
Mix the salt and flour together
Add the dry ingredients slowly to the starter dough and mix ingredients together on minimum to incorporate.
Once incorporated turn the mixer to 1 and mix until smooth and pliable
Rise for 1 hour and knock down.
Cut the dough into 3 and shape and let rise for another 20 minutes
Cook for 15 mins at 230 degrees centigrade.

“The VegiVows”

How Does My Garden Grow?

As an avid Margaret Atwood fan I devour her novels almost as soon as I can get my grubby gardener hands on them. But what with the move to, and all the renovations at the small holding I’ve not found the time to read. With all the major DIY projects finally behind us this year, the new garden season not yet in full swing and the dismal, Fifty Shades of Kodak Grey skies, I finally picked up Atwood’s The Year of The Flood. An aptly titled book , since it hasn’t stopped raining?  In the book we’re introduced to the “Gardeners” a vegetarian eco group who take Vegivows and cultivate secret roof top gardens to grow their own food in preparation for the coming of the waterless flood that will destroy civilisation.

Even though Atwood’s “Gardeners” were not great fans of technology, I feel hydroponic technology is a great way to produce your own food when space is limited or you do not have access to a soil garden or allotment.  You can even do it on a window sill!

So how does a hydroponic garden grow? Simply put, plants grow in oxygenated water containing dissolved nutrients. 

I’m experimenting with a few different hydroponic methods to see what works well and will be cost effective. Currently our winter herbs and salad leaves are growing in an enclosed aero-hydroponic system. 

The plants sit in small net pots filled with clay pebbles with their roots growing in the air.
A water pump then pumps nutrient rich water through a sprinkler system that sprays the roots. Surplus water drains back into the tank to recirculate. The water is currently heated to 20 degrees centigrade. We didn’t have to do that in the summer.

On the book tour for the The Year of The Flood, Atwood said they would follow what she called the “Vegivows” – a list of things to make the tour as green as possible. One element of these vows was to eat locally produced and if possible organic food. 

I guess the reason we moved to our small holding was to abide by our own set of  “VegiVows”

Grow as much of our food as possible.
Make everything from scratch.
And what we can’t – Know it’s provenance. Be it sourced locally or from small independent suppliers that grow or raise their products naturally.

Beetroot Bonanza

And other Winter Weeding Hidden Gems

It’s slightly melancholic putting a garden or polytunnel to bed for the winter and yet it’s strangely uplifting at the same time.

In the midst of all the nettles, weeds and radishes that had gone to seed there were a few hidden gems and some weird and wonderful things left behind to discover.

Despite the months of neglect I was able to harvest some final spoils of war.

There were a few tender baby Sutherland Kale leaves which I gently wilted to act as a bed for some sautéed scallops with a creamy gorgonzola and pancetta sauce.

Some weedy looking leeks, that I will use to make a Welsh Onion soup and a  then there was the bumper harvest of beetroot. 

My brother-in-law once told me that beetroot was notoriously hard to grow, so in the past I bought beetroot plants from the garden centre. Last year I grew them from seed for the first time. I did pick a variety that was supposedly “bolt hardy.” Bolting is where a plant has a tendency to go to seed prematurely, usually due to a sudden cold spell, and is not usable. I planted 2 crops this year and both did okay.

After pulling up the remaining plants, the larger beets were turned into beetroot mash served with sous vide lamb shanks with a beetroot sauce and served with fresh salad leaves harvested from the winter hydroponic garden. 

Beetroot Sauce

Saute chopped carrot, onion and celery.
Puree cooked beetroot in a jug blender with a little water
Add the cooking juices from the sous vide lamb shanks.
Thicken to desired consistency.
There’s no need to  strain the sauce at this point, unless you want a clear jus.

Handy Cooking Tip: Beetroots can be cooked relatively quickly in a microwave. 

The baby beets were left whole and pickled using my own pickling spice blend. I used a 500ml preserving jar and 155g of peeled baby beets. 

Beetroot Pickling Spice

1 tbs yellow mustard seed
1 tbs whole black peppercorns
1 tsp mace blades crushed
2 tsp dried juniper berries
1 tsp black onion seed
1 tsp chili flakes.
Dry roast the spices. Don’t let the chilli flakes burn.
Add the roasted spices to 500ml of white wine vinegar & 80g of soft brown sugar and bring to a simmer.
Put the cooled cooked beetroots in a sterilised jar.
Pour over the hot spiced vinegar.
Add 1 tsp of course sea salt to the jar and seal.
These should be ready to eat in about 2 weeks.

One beautiful little thing I found nestling in the soil of my neglected polytunnel, protected from the incessant welsh rain were these delicate little tomatillo husks. 

Fifty Shades of Kodak Grey

In other words, It’s been raining… Raining…  and yes…  Raining!

 

I use these handy little test targets in the other job (TOJ) to assess colour reproduction. However the last few months I can safely say I could have used the Grey Scale target to determine, from the colour of the sky, how much rain we were going to have that day. The rain just has not stopped. Everything has turned to mud! 

With the ground waterlogged, there’s not been a chance to burn the weeds in the kitchen garden so that I could dig over and fertilise the patch ready for the next growing season. This may mean that the kitchen garden is not quite so productive this year and the more reason the hydroponic & other polytunnel need to be in full production.  

On a slightly drizzly evening, where the daytime sky had been maybe a 1 or 2 on the grey scale target we decided to introduce a little warmth and colour to brighten up an otherwise wet and dull few months.

We fired up the Pizza Oven.

I have a favourite dough recipe that I got from the book American Pie by Peter Reinhart. I make a big batch at a time as it freezes well. I like the recipe  because even if you cook your pizza in a normal oven it makes a great base. 

I tend to omit or reduce the amount of salt and sugar used in recipes (just our preference), so for my pizza dough I changed the quantities used. I also adapted the recipe to work with dried active yeast (readily available in UK supermarkets), instead of instant yeast.

Neo – Neapolitan Pizza Dough

10 cups 00 flour
3 teaspoon salt
Yeast  *see below
4 tablespoons olive oil
500ml room temperature water

Dried Active Yeast Preparation

2/3rd tsp sugar
100ml water (taken from the 500ml)
2 tsp yeast
Dissolve the sugar in the water.
Mix in the yeast and leave in a warm place for 15 minutes.
This is now ready to use with the other ingredients.

Some of best garlic bread is the simplest to make when you’re using a wood fired oven.

Take a piece of pizza dough.
Roll it out.
Dot with garlic, butter (or olive oil) and maybe a sprinkling of parmesan and poppy seeds.

Today the sun shines and we had the first decent frost of the winter. It’s time to take stock, make a list of what needs to be done, as February is fast approaching and the first seeds will need to be put in the propagator. 

I have a few busy weeks ahead. Let’s hope the rain stays away.