Jars and bottles... A plea for sense!

I wish to share with you the frustration felt by those who re-use bottles and jars for wine, jam, chutney, etc. And point out, at the same time, that the way we make and use glass materials is stupid.

Jars and bottles really need to do 2 things - they have to store materials for which they're constructed safely and reliably, and they have to provide a space to identify the contents and brand. And they should be reusable and recyclable.

What I don't want, either for myself or across the whole of the marketplace, is bottles and jars that can't be reused or which are so variable as to be nearly useless. I want jars which basically have the same lid sizes as each other, and bottles that are more or less re-useable. What I don't want is what I actually have - a crate each of bottles and jars of varying sizes all waiting for re-use, with a multitude of different lids for each.

Now its bad enough for those of us who make things to re-bottle, but think about the supply chain. We buy a jar of something, we send the jar back for recycling, its melted down to make another jar... Why? I mean, what's the advantage to us in spending all the energy melting glass to make more nearly identical items? 

I'd like to suggest the following. Lets have, say, 5 standard jars, and 5 standard bottles in the EU. So suppliers have got plenty of designs to choose from such that when combined with a label its very clear what the product is. And after use, rather than smashing them up and melting them down lets put an old-school deposit on them, so you can take them back to claim a deposit (or save them to use). Wouldn't that be a more sensible solution?

Oi, folk in the Green party or any other politicians wanting to do something simple and sensible... Are you listening to the pleas of a home-jam and wine maker?

Parasol Mushrooms

Lots of mushrooms around in Cambridge right now, and when we get a bit more rain there will be lots more. I haven't done a foraging video before, so let me know if this is of interest.

Among the fungi that do best in this city are the parasols - Macrolepiota rhacodes, M. procera and M. hortensis being the most common edible species. By 'edible' I mean easy to identify, delicious, versatile and useful, but a word of warning - some people do seem to 'not get on' with them, so as with any new foodstuff, try a little out first time to see if you're okay with them. I know, it seems frightening - but think how many people you know who can't eat some normal foodstuff you're fine with, and you'll start to understand that this is just how it is - a forager is exposed to hundreds of different foodstuffs that most people don't eat, and sooner or later you'll find something you don't get on with.

Anyway, here are some lovely parasols...

I won't bore you all with identification - there are better sites for this than mine. But I will say that you do need to take care you know what you're doing. Not that these look anything like death caps or destroying angels, but I'm sure you take my point...

When you've identified them, pick only what you need of course. They're fine just used as substitutes for other mushrooms, but I think you can make the most of them with dishes that rely on their light texture. Dip them in garlic flavoured batter and fry them fast and hot until golden, they're delicious. They make a lovely omelette. Or just fried with bacon. One of the finest wild mushrooms you'll find.

The Cherry Plum

We're rather lucky with fruit trees in Cambridge - so much of the city used to be orchards that even in a bad year its possible to fill a basket with wildling fruit throughout Summer and Autumn. Excluding, for the moment, the soft fruit (wild strawberries, patches of raspberries and hybrids thereof, etc.) the first really abundant fruit thats ripe each year is the cherry plum - usually some time around the start of July.

The name is a little off - its not a cherry, its really rather more like a plum. Known to the botanist as Prunus cerasifera, its like a small, usually sweet plum that you might find planted in parks and hedgerows. The trees tend to be small, rarely more than 15-25 feet high, and they're much favoured in planting schemes due to their early flowering - there's a dark red leaved cultivar that is really common here. The fruit are small, any colour from yellow to red (or even a very dark red) and in most respects are small (2-3cm) plums - and you can use them for everything you use plums for.

Cherry plums in some of their colour forms - and a batch of cherry plum vodka

Flavour wise they're also pretty variable - mostly when they ripen they're sweet, with a well balanced acidity that most are looking for in a plum. This has meant that they've long been cultivated for the fruit, and while imports mean that the demand for early varieties of native grown fruit isn't what it was you'll still sometimes see them for sale on Cambridge market. The domestic varieties are sometimes referred to as myrobalan, a rather quaint old name I think.

As an aside, some distinguish between mirabelle and myrobalan, usually defining the former based on the colour or where they're from - and if you're one of those folk then good luck to you. I've found enough trees with characteristics between plum, damson, cherry plum and bullace to believe that the trees themselves are rather less fussy with such definitions than we are.

Anyway, now you know what you're looking for, the big question becomes what to do with them. They're a little bit less convenient than most cultivated plums in that he flesh clings to the stone. If you want to eat them just as they are and just spit the stone out like that of a cherry, no problem, but it makes other uses rather more difficult. But you can stone them and cook them like plums in crumble, pie, tart, whatever you like - but its more work.

I find that they make one of the best jams of the year (the internet is full of advice for making jam so I won't bore you with more of the same) - weigh the fruit out, add enough water to stop them sticking to the bottom of the pan, and cook to a pulp. Rub the pulp through a colander, and if you need boil the stones again in some more water to get the rest of the pulp off. Now add the same weight of jam sugar to that of the fruit, and a squeeze of lemon juice, and cook until you reach setting point. The colour of the jam depends on the cherry plums they use, but the red ones perhaps make the prettiest.

They also make a good wine, if homebrew is your thing. Again, whole books have been written giving methods and you'll find no end of advice online, but generally speaking its simple. Start out with 3lb of cherry plums and 2 3/4lb of sugar, plus a squeeze of lemon juice and a cup of strong, black tea for tannin, and a little yeast nutrient to produce a medium wine that can be white from yellow plums or rose from red ones. If you want to get technical about it a spoonfull of pectozyme really helps get the most out of the fruit when you start the process too - its not essential but you'll get a rounder, more full bodied wine.

If that all sounds too much like hard work you can use them for making a liqueur. Fill a jar with the cherry plums, pour vodka in until the gaps are all full, seal it up and put it in a cupboard for a few weeks. When you're fed up with waiting, pour off the vodka into a bowl and make up a small amount of sugar syrup. Add a little syrup to the vodka, stir it in, and taste - if it needs more sweetening, add more syrup, and when you're done bottle it.

Lastly, if you've still got a fridge full of berries after eating your fill and making jam and wine, make chutney. I've usually got my first glut of courgettes at the same time as the cherry plums arrive, and by adding beans, onions, raisins and the like you can make a chutney as good as any other - again, start by stewing the fruit down and rubbing the flesh off the stones. I don't believe in chutney having recipes as such, but if you want a good one, this one is as good as any I've seen.

RIP - soon to die Lizzie, the hen

Writing this as a bit of self-therapy. 

Way back at Easter we got new hens. After a couple of days with our old boss hen Vicky yelling death threats at them, we gave up on integrating them with her. It might have happened in weeks, but the whole time that meant keeping the two lots separate - no one was happy, not the new birds, not the old ones, not us.

So we had to say bye to Vicky. And you can't easily find a new home for a tame but basically cantankerous bully of an old Sussex, so she went in the pot. 

And that phrase, 'went in the pot' is one that chicken keepers often use. It sounds so simple, doesn't it? What it really means, first time you do it, is that you take an animal you've known, handled, cared for, and with a heart beating faster than you'd think sensible, with huge reservations and sadness, you break its neck. You stretch and twist to end its life in a heartbeat - you want to destroy its hind brain in an instant. 

And then you cry as you pluck the bird, and clean it out... And eat it. And it tastes good but for the sour irrational guilt you feel.

But then it gets easier. Or at least I hope it does. You see, later on today I've got to go outside and neck Lizzie.

Of the four hens we bought at Easter, one never settled in to laying. Most likely she had an infection before we got her, its damaged her ovaries, and she'll never lay. The others have been great (until recently one, Jane, has been a little ill - we'll have to see if she comes back to laying). Lizzie was, on the other hand, a dud. And we can't keep feeding her forever - thats not the point of her. She's not laying, but she's climbed up the pecking order even to challenge our oldest hen Bess - which isn't on, Bess is a superb alpha chicken. Lizzie is a tyrant - hand tame to me but she'll not miss an opportunity to peck a rival. So she's got to go. 

It gets easier, they say. Well, we'll see. I hope so. 

Truth is that keeping livestock means animals die. If you grow vegetables, depriving other creatures of the land, then animals die. If you turn the ground over with a space, animals die. Its just an inevitable part of living - the difference between producing your own food and not doing so is that you don't pass the task of depriving other animals of life on to someone else. Its easy to see why - living the reality can be painful.

But there's light at the end of the tunnel. Two more lovely young hens should, if all goes to plan, be coming to live with us from Saturday. Losing Lizzie (and possibly Mary, depending on whether she's going to lay again) gives a good life to two more. Its just the way of things, I guess.

Muntjac - sink your teeth in while you can!

The muntjac deer is a lovely little creature... when a foal. When its an adult its an ugly git of a beast, about the size of a pit bull but without any of the charm or personality. Its an introduced, invasive species in the UK thats running wild and doing its best to nibble our countryside to the root.

It has, however, one redeeming feature. It is delicious. It is the best venison you can buy. I mean its succulent, sweet, tender and flavoursome. And just for the moment it actually has another selling point - its also cheap. That'll change eventually no doubt when some celebrity chef tells everyone that its either 'pucker' or 'ethical', then no doubt the price will soon be out of the reach of us mere mortals (this has been going on since long before Oliver and Whittingstall - the earliest example I can think of in the UK is Fanny Craddock putting monkfish on everyones plate as fake scampi). 

Here, look at this critter laid out on my kitchen bench. This is about £30 worth.

Before...

Okay, whole carcass butchery might seem hard, but I assure you it isn't. And it saves you money if you're doing a bit of the work. Look at the carcass above - take the two back legs off at the hip joint, hack off the feet, and you've got two roasting joints nearly as big as legs of spring lamb but much leener. Cut through at the bottom of the ribcage, through between the backbones, and then cut off the back part above the hips and you've got a small saddle roasting joint - this is great for a slower cooked pot roast, leave it on the bone for more flavour. Working forward along the spine and above the ribs you've got two lovely fillet like cuts - and then the forelegs can either be stewed as they are or you can take it off the bone for stewing meat. Then you've got all the rest - trim off the flappy bits and the meaty bits and put them aside for stewing or mincing. I got two last Saturday, here's what they looked like after butchery:

And after...

So, from top left working around clockwise thats four rear leg joints, a pot of scrappy bits (that went into scrummy venison pasties alongside swede, spuds and carrots), stewing venison, then down to fillet cuts, left to the two saddle joints, and bottom left thats the four front leg joints. Eagle eyed among you will notice only three saddle fillets - thats because the stalker tho brought down that muntjac put the bullet right through the torso, an excellent shot that would have dropped the deer in a heartbeat, but which made a hell of a mess of the other cut. The other carcass was more intact - head shot I think.

The ribcages, after cutting the meat away, went into the stockpot alongside other scraps, making a huge pot of wonderfully intense, gamey stock. 

The best advice for cooking muntjac is treat it like lean beef or venison, but expect more out of it. Its more succulent without being fatty - the legs can be roasted hot and fast and served red, or it can be cooked long and slow with wine and still be moist and tasty. Its the most versatile game meat in the UK.

So get some, and get some now. Its only a matter of time before some poncy telly chef ruins this for us all...

Marmalade Time!

Seville oranges have a longer season than they used to - was a time when I was a kid when you didn't see them until February, and the older cookery books tell us they're in season in March. These days you see them from more or less the start of January - first ones I spotted were on the third of January.

All the marmalade you need for an entire week (foreground), and the best gadget in the world (background)

While the term 'marmalade' comes from the Portugese word for quince (I believe 'marmelo'), its Seville oranges you want for marmalade. Fantastic things, unbelievably sour, thick skinned, dried up balls of pips though they are, they're possessed of a fantastic flavour, high acidity and plenty of pectin to make them set. Either alone or combined with other citrus fruit, they're better than anything else for a good, orangey marmalade. 

And thats a point I can't stress too strongly - proper marmalade, made with Seville oranges, is one of the most outstanding preserves you can make. Its so good that unless you've eaten it, made at home, with whole oranges, then I'm willing to say you don't know what marmalade really is. And it comes just at the darkest, most miserable time of the year when what I'm really craving is something sweet and fruity. Its also a good keeper - its almost as good after eleven months in the jar as when you first bottled it. 

So for all of those reasons, making marmalade is an annual event in our house, I can't get enough of the stuff, and I can't imagine not having home made marmalade in the store cupboard. 

This year I picked up a job lot from these guys here - I split a box of them with a friend, who promptly had hers nicked by her mum and an entire village load of old dears who know the value of a good marmalade orange! 

My standard recipe is adapted from a Womens Institute book of preserves (yes, I know, that IS the best preserving book ever) and I once wrote up my method and put it on a website. There are a gazillion recipes for marmalade out there, so I won't bore you with posting mine again - you'll find many recipes elsewhere online anyway. Suffice to say that I use a recipe that uses the whole orange, I use a pressure cooker to process the oranges and then I slice them up, remove the pips (which are boiled again), add lemon juice, and cook with the sugar before bottling. If you can make jam you can make marmalade, all you need to remember is to let the preserve cool a little before putting it in the jars.

The only part of the process that sucks - chopping oranges after pressure cooking

One other thing to remember is that you can always vary your marmalade recipe to make a range of different things - but you use basically the same technique. A dark Oxford marmalade is made by substituting half of the sugar for dark muscovado sugar. Mrs. Beetons book gives us a honey marmalade recipe - simple enough to do, substitute some or all of the sugar for honey (and bottle a preserve thats guaranteed to attract almost any fictional bear). Swap out some of the oranges for the same weight of limes and lemons and make a mixed fruit preserve - basically play with the recipe to come up with your own distinctive preserve.

Another use for Seville oranges is to make orange wine - lots of recipes out there again, but I use the one from CJJ Berrys seminal wine making book - so I need as many sweet oranges as Sevilles in mine. A bit more fiddly than some - lots of juicing and zesting, but its worth it.

The tedious task of zesting enough oranges for a dozen bottles of wine...

What is this blog about

I'm always being pestered for recipes for preserves, how to identify mushrooms, how to grow food, what it takes to look after chickens, etc. And I don't currently have a repository for where to put that - I therefore present 'The Suburban Peasant' - a title that occurred to me years ago to best encompass how we (my better half and I) live our lives most of the time.

I want to post here about how we eat, what we eat, how we do things and, most importantly, why. Without being too preachy. And I hope that in so doing it'll act as a reference point for answering the questions I frequently get asked.

So nothing else to say right yet (other than I'll be waffling on incessantly about marmalade before long), I'll leave you with a funky beetroot.