Caerphilly cheese and preserving fruit juice in the microwave. Friday September 1 2013

Last weekend I got busy on restocking the cheese cave. For the first time I am attempting Caerphilly cheese, harking back to my Welsh heritage perhaps, or just because it wasn't too complicated. I wanted to make some Camembert at the same time so I needed a recipe that wasn't to complicated prior to pressing. Caerphilly fitted the bill as after cutting the curds it just needed some slow heating up to 104 degrees F.( Most recipes come out of American books so handy to have a thermometer which shows both Celcius and Fahrenheit). After that some stirring for 20 minutes or so then into the press it went. It has been drying on a board in the kitchen since then and should be ready to wax by the weekend. Too soon and whey continues to seep out and you end up with liquid sloshing around inside the wax. This cheese should only take a few weeks to mature.

Another thing I experimented with last weekend was using the microwave to bottle some apple juice. I recently borrowed a book from the library about bottling fruit in the microwave using recycled jars with metal lids. I was always under the impression that metal and microwaves don't mix and I was feeling a bit precious about my microwave which is only a few months old. So it was with some trepidation that I put a jar in and hit the start button but thankfully there were no sparks or alarming noises. Apparently it all depends on the ratio of metal to what is in the jar. It took a bit of experimenting to get the right temperature without the liquid starting to boil and to get a lid that sealed properly.In the end I got 3 jars of fresh apple juice to seal with the lids making that lovely sound of a vacuum sucking in the lid .

And finally for Fathers Day, we decided to cut open the Wensleydale with cranberries....and the verdict? Not bad at all. No fermenting of the cranberries. So after cutting a wedge to eat this week, the rest was re-waxed to mature a bit longer.

Roasted Garlic Oil and Kiwifruit Cider August 16th, 2013

As the winter draws to an end, the garlic which I so carefully braided last summer is starting to sprout little shoots inside each clove. Looking for ways to preserve it, I found a recipe for roasted garlic oil in a recipe book a couple of weeks ago. If you try to store fresh garlic in oil, you run the risk of botulism so I am hoping that this roasted version is a safe way of using it. It was quite simple to make. First roast whole heads of garlic in foil in the oven until the garlic is soft and purée like. Squeeze each clove and collect the purée in a bowl.

Wizz the purée up with olive oil....I think I used a ratio of 3 heads of garlic to 200 ml of oil which makes it more oil than paste.

Then store in a jar in the fridge. I think it might be a good way of making garlic bread rather than using a butter crushed garlic mix so now I had better make some bread to try it with!

Also in my never ending quest to find kiwi fruit recipes, I tried a new idea. Instead of making my quick version of cider which I have written about in a previous post, I tried an apple kiwi version. Make some juice, add some brewing yeast, put in a PET bottle with an Oztop and leave in a warm spot for a few days to ferment.

This is the result....a sparkling, possibly slightly alcoholic kiwi cider. Quite delicious!

Life is too short to glacé kiwi fruit. August 10th 2013

Yet another wet weekend. Too wet to get outside in the garden again! So what can I get up to in the Preserving Patch kitchen? Last week I borrowed a book from the library called Five Minute Microwave Bottling which was not only about the obvious microwave bottling but also included a "quick" way of glazing fruit. Having looked at another book's recipe for making glacé fruit and comparing it with this method, I decided that yes it did look quicker......but everything is relative of course.

It still took me several steps over several hours with one mix of syrup ending up in the chook bucket before I had made a tasty but quite small batch of glacé kiwi fruit.

Not sure it was a particularly efficient use of my time but I guess I can add that to the list of things tried once. So if anyone ever gives you a homemade piece of glacé fruit - treasure every morsel!

Sausage making on a Sunday August 4th 2013

A friend of mine has been promising for ages to organise a sausage making session with someone she knows who has the right equipment and last weekend came good with the idea. Several helpers gathered to be shown how to make plain pork sausages and a fresh chorizo sausage. After a bit (well quite a bit really) of practice and fiddling around with casings that were a little small for the nozzle of the sausage attachment, we finally got the hang of producing reasonable sausages.

Needs more practice  to get the right amount in each sausage I think as when we tried to twist them off to make several small sausages rather than one long one, they had a tendency to split their skins.

Still, they tasted delicious when grilled on the barbeque and then when I tried a pasta dish with sliced sausage, sour cream, paprika, parsley, eggs and home made parmesan for dinner the next night.

Vancouver and the Granville Island Public Market. July 2013

Sorting through my photos from my travels to Canada, I have found a few food related photos that I took with the intention of writing blog posts about but never got a chance to do while on the road. WiFi in campgrounds I discovered is not always the most reliable so that is my excuse.

We only spent a couple of separate days in Vancouver but on our first day there, after walking over a very very long bridge in a downpour, we discovered the Granville Island Public Market......foodie heaven.

There it is, down there on the left....... This photo was taken on our second trip to the market in much better weather,on our return to Vancouver a week later.

All sorts of food was on offer from fresh seafoods, to handmade ravioli, from olive oil to cheeses from all over the world, from artisan breads to fresh fruits of all descriptions piled carefully into arty displays and the most exquisite looking hand made and decorated chocolates which unfortunately at about $4 per tiny piece were beyond my budget of my last remaining Canadian dollars.

Naturally it was the place to have a late lunch/ early dinner (twice) as it closed up at 7 pm. There was of course the long hike back over the bridge to our hostel to work off all those extra calories.....not for us those cute little boats that ferried people back and forth across False Creek, so named because itwasn't  really a creek at all but an inlet. We didn't really care if we didn't see any of the other sights of Vancouver after that!!!

Wensleydale with a twist 26th July 2013

Last weekend I made the first hard cheeses I have made for months. I make feta regularly but to make a hard cheese involves quite a process which needs a whole day free. Even though the process itself is not that difficult, there are lots of little steps which leaves little time to do much else in between.

Since I was going to make one cheese I though, why not make two?  I should have answered that by saying, because you don't have the equipment to do two at once. Once I realised that I would need 2 cheese moulds and a press that pressed twice the weight I have needed before, it was too late, the milk was heating up in the 2 pots!

So in between all the little steps, I was busy making a new mould out of pipe and getting Max to invent a way of adding additional weight to the press which involved safety ropes and bars suspended from the laundry ceiling.

Meanwhile back in the kitchen the cheeses were progressing to curd stage.

One curd had mustard seed mixed into it before pressing and the other dried cranberries.

 I had tasted some Wensleydale with cranberry in Carstairs near Calgary when I was recently in Canada, sitting around the dinner table with my daughter Jennie's Workaway host who kindly hosted me as well on my first night in the country. It was so delicious, I had to have a go a producing it myself.

By the next morning, both rounds were pressed nicely and just needed a couple of days drying before being waxed. The cranberry version needs to be eaten in a month or so as I read on someone else's blog that they might ferment if left longer. The mustard one I will age for much longer. We have recently been eating one I made in March 2012 and it has a fantastic bite to it, like a vintage Cheddar.

Add some nice new red wax and voila, there you have it.

Wild Salmon in the wilds of Canada

At the moment I am on a road trip with my vegetarian daughter through British Columbia. Mostly I have been eating vegetarian dishes with her, cooked on the camping stove but yesterday when we went to a farmers market in Vernon in the Okanagan valley, I couldn't resist the opportunity to buy some wild salmon to have for dinner. We also bought some fresh asparagus and spinach so with a sweet potato mash, it made for a delicious meal. We stayed in a motel last night due to an unseasonal deluge so made the most of the opportunity of having a kitchen. This area is also the fruit bowl of British Columbia so dessert was made up of fresh cherries and strawberries!