Yeasterday!

No, despite my record the spelling is correct.

Beer kit ready to go

Yesterday I spent an afternoon dealing with the two great uses for yeast.
After my midday swim I began my latest beer kit and also made some bread.
At present I am making beer using kits which can be purchased for between £15 and £24. It is a remarkably simple way to produce 30 to 40 pints of perfectly drinkable beer at a fraction of the cost to buy.

"Pitching" the yeast

Many specialist, micro and craft breweries have grown out of the home brew sector and some, like St Peter's produce kits for people to make their beer at home.
This is the simple, entry level to home brewing and during October I plan to make my first "all grain" brew! I buy my ingredients and kits at Hops and Vines in Witney and the team there have never been anything except encouraging and helpful.
The other part of Yeasterday was the Focaccia which took me several goes to spell correctly (even now I have doubts) This is a great loaf for a lazy lunch with some cheese and dried and cured meats - We're back to trying to work out salami again!

Foca...focca...focac...Italian Bread

Bringing home the bacon!

Firstly I must thank Tony, Sally and all the good folks of What's Cooking in Thame who allowed me to use their equipment earlier to slice the pork that has been sitting in my fridge for a week, slowly becoming bacon. Also it was lovely of them to make the right "nyom nyom" noises when we fried off some to taste.
As mentioned earlier in this blog, I made two batches, one standard and one slightly sweeter. To be honest, if you didn't know the sweetcure was, in fact, swetcure then you probably wouldn't have spotted it, but both batches were both edible and clearly bacon.

During a discussion about what I should try next, the single word "SALAMI!" rang out from an office; I am at present trying to work out a way to fully dry and mature a salami, without a cold room, in the UK, without killing anyone who eats it!
I was recently involved in a typically "blokey" debate and I would be interested in anyone's opinion on this: What is the most important component of a Full English Breakfast? Some fell on the side of Bacon others on the side of the Sausage, Egg was considered. One person even suggested Baked Beans (we don't talk to him anymore).

Sausages and more.

It was once said that the two things you should never see being made were Sausages and Laws. I'm sure that this dates back to the days when anything that it was impossible for a butcher to sell went into the sausage meat. Though, with the present cynicism about politics I'm equally sure that the second half of the joke rings true today. I am reliably told , by Jim MacKeller of Orchard View Farm that, as a nation we are eating fewer sausages but we are demanding higher quality sausages too. This is indeed heartening news as quality over quantity is without doubt the way forward if we are to make farming in the UK, and the rest of the world sustainable.

Feeding the meat into the casings.

I did a course on Sausage making at Orchard View earlier this year and, with the time made available by a Teacher's Summer Holidays, I decided to make some at home.
I purchased 3 Kg of Pork shoulder (From Orchard View) and minced this. I split this into three equal batches. I had also bought some natural casings and some rusk.
Keeping everything, including the equipment, as cold as I could, I set about making three very different styles of sausage.
First up was a Toulouse inspired sausage. Much garlic (and I mean MUCH) was crushed and mixed into the meat with some cooked smoked pork loin which was finely cubed. This was seasoned, water and rusk added, and then sent through the gadget!

Linked in threes (like knitting with meat!)

Next was an Italian inspired sausage with a little garlic, crushed fennel seeds and some chopped rosemary.
Finally I went to an almost Lincolnshire with sage from the garden of Corner Cottage. I had meant to add some nutmeg or mace but simply forgot!
All three types were cooked and tasted. The Beautiful Wife declared them a success, especially the Toulouse. (Then again, we are both "garlic heads").


I also picked up some Pork Belly and used a commercially available cure (Laycock's) to turn this into bacon. This is being turned and drained daily at the moment so should be ready by the middle of next week. One piece has been simply cured and another has had a little bit of sugar added to the cure.