Garlic + egg yolks + olive oil = Aoili

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 23, 2012

The garlic is dug dried and plaited.

What better way to use up the egg of which I accidentally broke a little bit of the shell than turning into Aoili for a special Christmas extra.   First the cloves of garlic are pounded in a mortar and pestle. The egg yolks are separated.

Then bit by bit the olive oil is added into the mix, a dash of lemon juice until it all magically thickens up and becomes Aoili.

What to do with the leftover eggwhites? Whip them up into a meringue, smash that up and mix with cream and all those excess strawberries and raspberries we have at the moment. And what do you have? Eton Mess for dessert.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!

Herbs for all seasons, December 11, 2012

Tarragon

Dill

My new herb garden is growing like crazy.  This afternoon I harvested a few pieces of tarragon, coriander and dill and chopped them up finely. They keep really well in small ziplock bags in the freezer to have on hand whenever there isn't enough of the fresh variety in the garden. Now I am looking for some recipes to use the tarragon in as it is the first time I have ever grown it.
Updated Dec 12. Oh no - I was just reading Stephanie Alexander's Kitchen Garden Companion and she recommends growing French Tarragon as it is much more flavoured than Russian. I just checked my seed packet and......yes, mine is Russian.  :(   Better luck next time.

My 100th post.......simple salads for summer Monday December 3rd 2012

Everything is planted in the garden and now we just have to wait for it to grow. There are tiny zucchinis and squash forming. The climbing beans have commenced their climb. The lettuces are flourishing. Even the snow peas are podding up. Those pesky birds can't get to the strawberries and blueberries any more.
With warmer days and even sometimes warm evenings, it is time for barbecues. There is nothing simpler than putting a salad together to accompany whatever is on the barbecue so it's nice to have some snazzy dressing on hand to go on the salad of freshly picked lettuce and mustard greens. Add a few dried tomatoes and marinated artichokes from last season's stock and it is ready.

Supplies were running a bit low the other day so it was time to whip up a new batch. This dressing is really simple but super tasty. Olive oil, white wine vinegar, mustard, garlic, thyme, oregano, basil and curry powder. Toss everything in the blender, mix it together on smoothie setting and voila.....a dressing to have on hand for any occasion. Tastes great!
And as for that Stilton.....it is wrapped in foil in the fridge but I dare not look at it. 

Sunday November 25th 2012 Birdproof cover for the Blueberries and the first strawberries of the season

This weekend my project was to make a bird proof cage for the blueberries to replace the wire tubes that they had outgrown. The problem with my old tubes was that when you tried to pick the blueberries which required pulling the cage off to reach them, you ended up pulling off the blueberries, ripe and unripe. I thought I would just make something a bit bigger but when Max decided to help me, it became a lot LOT BIGGER . By sliding old polypipe over the top of star droppers, the framework went up really quickly. We used some fine wire bird mesh and  white plastic bird netting which we already had in the shed, but it was quite slow and tedious sewing them together with baling twine.  This should last for years now, and also provides room for strawberries tubs to be kept out of the way of greedy birds. It is almost finished now - I just have to sew some shade cloth onto a mesh door and then it will be bird proof.

When I went to move one of the strawberry tubs, I discovered that the strawberries had already started to ripen so that was dessert sorted for last night.

Delicious Elderflower drinks and a Wensleydale Monday November 19th 2012

At this time of the year, elderflowers are out. A friend of mine gave me some  homemade syrup for Christmas last year and I always thought that  you needed a lot of elder flowers to make it. As  I haven’t got a tree in my garden I have never tried to make my own. On Saturday, on the radio, I heard a recipe for the syrup and also a recipe for a sparkling elderflower drink neither of which used many flowers. See the link to Sally Wise's website for the recipes. I also discovered that there was an elder tree in the garden of one of the other houses on the farm. So this afternoon, I went and picked a few heads and then quickly made up a batch of syrup.

 It consists of sugar and boiling water, tartaric acid and about 14 elderflowers. The elderflowers just steep  in the hot water to impart their flavour....that’s all. Now it is all bottled, one in the fridge and 2 in the freezer for a later date.

The sparkling elder is also brewing – half a dozen flower heads, water, sugar, a chopped lemon and  a little vinegar. They sit for 48 hours and then I will bottle and wait another couple of weeks until they are ready. Looking forward to them already.

At the same time I was experimenting with cheese. I couldn’t decide whether to make a Pyrenees Pepper or a Wensleydale so I decided to combine them and make a Wensleydale Pepper. The advantage that the Wensleydale has over the Pyrenees is that it will be ready in about a month or so as opposed to 3 months or more.  The disadvantage is that the recipe is somewhat more fiddly so I didn’t exactly follow it.....we’ll see in a few weeks. I have just taken it out of the press this morning – hope there are not too many peppercorns in it either.

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Pad Thai in the snow and a Stilton update October 21, 2012

A couple of weekends ago I went hiking in the Walls of Jerusalem National Park in the central highlands of Tasmania. I am always looking for new flavours for hiking food as I get rather sick of the same old combinations every time I go.  One of the friends I went hiking with recently did a 2 week hike in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia and has done a lot of other extended walks. She was a wealth of ideas for new flavours and one thing she suggested was Pad Thai. So when I last made a batch of Pad Thai, I saved half back to dry.

Pad Thai ready to dry...

 The weather we had on the hike was not exactly the hot sunny weather I had the last time I went to the Walls and meant I ended up cooking as it just started to snow. But with a down jacket on under my waterproof jacket, it actually wasn't as much of a challenge as it might look. My hands got a bit cold though.

 By the time we ate it, we were huddled in our sleeping bags in the tent though. And the result was excellent. Served on a bed of mashed parsnip, mixed with a bit of dried kale and topped with some peanuts.... a very tasty combination.

 So much so, I have a new batch in the dehydrator right now, ready for my next hike.

Meanwhile back in the Preserving Patch kitchen, I have not been idle....I just haven't posted anything as the things I have been making are one I have posted about before....Fetta and halloumi cheese, marmalade etc.

But in the cheese fridge, the Stilton is starting to look kind of blueish and the Camembert in the fridge is ready for eating.

Sampling Stilton - in a few months I hope October 2nd 2012

Last weekend I plucked up enough courage to try another blue cheese after the absolute disaster of the last one. It has only taken me 18 months to have another go.

This time I followed the Blue Stilton cheese recipe in Tim Smith’s book  Making Artisan Cheese and also followed a video of the same recipe on The Greening of Gavin blog.  I have followed some other recipes on Gavin’s blog in the past and been successful so I have my fingers crossed. I am a bit wary of following Tim’s recipes to the letter as have found that sometimes he omits ingredients such as salt in the Cotswold (cheese without salt tastes really really odd!)

Stilton follows quite a different technique in the making so I am hoping I end up with the right result in a few months time. Penicillium roqueforti is added with the starter at the beginning of the process. After 40 minutes, in goes the rennet. The milk then sits for 90 minutes which is probably the longest I have ever left milk to coagulate.

 Then instead of cutting the curd, the curds are gently ladled out into a cheesecloth lined colander over a bowl. The whey drains into the bowl but then the curd sits in the whey for another 90 minutes. I then drained the bundle of curds for another 30 minutes.

Draining the whey

Soft pressing overnight

 Stilton is not really pressed but after draining the cloth bag is placed between 2 cheese boards and a 3litre bottle of water sits on top over night to help more whey to drain. Next morning, I broke the curds into pieces and put them back into a hoop. Since then I flipped the hoop every 15 minutes for the first 2 hours and then 4 times a day for the next 4 days. So that means tomorrow is the day it comes out of the hoop and I pierce the cheese several times to create holes for the blue mould to grow into.  We’ll see what happens then.

Next morning, the semi pressed cheese

Flipping in the hoop

Meanwhile I also decided to have a go at Bra Cheese the same day. Bra is a small town in northern Italy where they have a big cheese festival each year. I have never heard of Bra cheese but there is a recipe in Tim Smith’s book. It is made from low fat milk so I skimmed the cream off the previous evening’s milk. (The cream went into the Stilton) All was going well with lots of pressing steps until I got to the last stage. After a 20 hour pressing, the curd had to be broken up for the final time before pressing another 24 hours. The curd by now was quite firm and dry and even after the final press, it didn’t really press back together. This has left me with a cheese that is just a bundle of curds bits only just sticking together.

 Even after 24 hours in a brine bath, it is still the same. Now what do I do? I can’t mature it like that as mould is going to grow in every little crack and I can’t wax it as the wax is going to fall into every little crack and be difficult to remove. I have stuck it into the cheese fridge while I think about it. I think I might have to just grate it unmatured and stick it on the top of pizza or something.  I was so annoyed with the result after all the time I spent making it on Friday!!! If only I had left it in one piece after the penultimate pressing.