St Georges Day - Spears and such.

Today is the Day of the Patron Saint of England. In Wales, on St David's day they hold eisteddfods (a Welsh cultural festival involving music drams and especially Poetry) in schools and give the kids a half day, everyone wears a daffodil or a leek showing their Welshness, In Scotland on St Andrew's day you can't move for tartan and the Saltire painted on faces. I'm sure I don't need to explain the joyous chaos of St Patrick's day. However, in England the Day of St George passes almost without comment. It might be that much of the imagery has be hijacked by racist thugs, or it might be that there is a sense of English reserve but whatever the cause, we English don't really shout about it.
Nature does not keep a diary, after millenniums of adaptation, crops appear when their genes tell them there is the greatest chance of success and not on a certain date. Part of being human is feeling the need to codify, explain, organise and hold fast to structure which is why we like to "have dates in the diary".
The English Asparagus season runs from St Georges Day (23rd April) to Midsummer's day (21st June) which has a certain poetry about it, but in our hearts we know that the new years spears might arrive a little bit early or late and, indeed the crop may be finished before the longest day.
I make no secret of my love for asparagus. For me it is the final curtain being drawn on the, so called Hungry Gap where, historically, fresh food was scarce and we all survived on preserved foods and cabbage. Asparagus is clearly a vegetable of early Summer whereas the joy that is purple sprouting broccoli clearly belongs to late winter or, at best, early spring.
My fascination with seasonal foods and, if necessary, the preserving of them, grows from my parents' allotment in the 1980s. Picking vegetables at the right time was something my late father took great pride in. He would joke that it would be better to bring the boiling water to the runner beans rather than let them deteriorate on the 10 minute cycle home.
To this day I struggle with the idea of strawberries at Christmas, or parsnips in June. This is not born from sense of pious duty to the seasons its just that I have always been a person who looks forward to things and last week when I saw the first Herefordshire asparagus on sale my heart jumped.
There has been a enormous amount written about how to cook asparagus and I'm sure there is a degree of Michelin Stared perfection to be gained in some of those methods, but really, we are just making supper. Having snapped them to ensure the tender stems are eaten drop them in boiling water for a few minutes and serve, it is the exemplar of fast food. Serve it piping hot with butter (no substitutes will do) and a fried egg on top (Duck eggs are especially good in this regard). Above all keep it simple.
Incidentally, I keep the woody hard stems in the tiny ice box at the top of my fridge and build up the quantity as the season progresses. When I have a bagful, I boil then in a little light vegetable stock, whizz then in a liquidizer add some cream, season and serve with freshly baked bread and enjoy.
Please do not be very English about the amount of Asparagus you eat, you have about eight or nine weeks so go a little bit mad (in a very English way, of course) and feast.
Finally, I wish you a very happy Asparagus season, the cold glory of brussels sprouts and parsnip is dead, long live the spears of summer!


 

A Year in Preserving - Saucisson Sec

I have mentioned many times on this blog that I have a great love for all things porcine. My love is never more true than when dealing with the craft and art of the sausage. When trying out a new butcher I always try their basic traditional sausage first, if this is up to scratch then the rest of their meat is likely to be good too. This simple system has stood me in good stead for many years.
I have also expressed my love of books in the past and in my quest to preserve more meats, the Beautiful Wife bought me and American book called simply Charcuterie. This book is written by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn and mine is signed by Mr Ruhlman. It has a forward by the great Thomas Keller (if its good enough for him....). I have dipped into this book often and last month decided to take the plunge and make one of the recipes. I choose the Saucisson Sec recipe as I have some experience of making sausages and it is one of my favourite preserved meats. The results were very pleasing indeed and we have slowly worked our way through the batch I made. Interestingly when I started to see if anyone one else online had used this recipe, I found Charcuterie all over the place, from blogs to twitter posts, this book appears to be everyone in the States' "go to" preserved meat bible.
Saucisson Sec is one of the memories I brought back from France as a teenager, as I was too scared to bring back the product itself. The chewy, garlicy, pokiness is one of the great treats of the sausage world and that tastes was one of the ways I new I was on holiday.
As ever, I bought my pork from Orchard View Farm in Buckinghamshire (www.orchardviewfarm.co.uk) and my Prague powder #2 from The Coldsmoking Cookery School, just north of Milton Keynes (coldsmoking.co.uk). The recipe below is based on the version in Charcuterie and I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

Saucisson Sec
5lbs Pork (about 15% Fat)
50 gms Sea salt
1 tblsp Ground black pepper
15 gms sugar
7 gms #2 Prague powder
25 gms minced
1 hog cassing

The pork was ground through a 5 mm plate in a hand mixer (going up to 8 mm wouldn't be a problem). This was mixed with all the other ingredients (except the casing) until it was all fully amalgamated.

The mix, nicely amalgamated.

This mix was then stuffed into the casings and made into 15 cm links.

Linked up and ready to dry.

The links were stabbed all over with a sterile pin in order that any air might escape and the product might mature evenly. (Please do not do this if you are making traditional English Bangers or you will be left with a sad, dry digit for your breakfast as all the fat will have drained away).

Drying in my "cellar"

The sausages were then weighed and hung in my cellar (a re-purposed 6 bottle wine cooler)at 15 degrees c for three weeks.
When they had lost 30% of their weight they were tried for quality. They should be stable at room temperature now but I've kept them at 15 degrees with no apparent lowering of quality.

Skinned and ready to eat

The only problem which occurred was a slight stickiness of the skins. This may well have been caused by being a little too clean and my cellar not allowing the "good", white, powdery bacteria to grow on the outside of the sausage. No bacteria grew there!
There are any number of uses for this; from a simple snack to a tasty addition to any kind of braise or rice dish (thin Paella or Risotto, though neither of these are French). Myself and the Beautiful Wife tend to sit down with a glass of beer (sometimes English, sometimes Belgium, sometimes American), some Cheese (often a proper Cheddar, perhaps a piece of Brie, migrating across the board) and some of last year's Pickled Onions (So English that its almost too much!). Bon Appetit! and Happy St George's day tomorrow!

A Year in Preserving - Confit of Duck

Confit of duck is probably the most stereotypical French brasserie dish. It is difficult to imagine settling down to lunch in an establishment, in Paris, on a corner, with tables outside and waiters in waistcoats and not seeing it on the menu. This has led to the assumption that it is a very complex and "chefy" dish requiring skills learnt over many years and a massive batterie de cuisine. This could not be further from the truth, it is a simple dish with it origins in the frugality of rural France.

Fat is the  key. Glorious, rich, delicious fat. The people of Gascony in France enjoy some of the lowest levels of heart disease in Europe yet their diet is very high in both goose and duck, two very fatty meats. We in the UK tend to only get excited about the fat of these two birds at Christmas when we are looking for the perfect roast potato. However, in France they have been using duck fat to preserve the duck flesh for centuries. Again the necessity of preservation has led to the invention of gastronomic genius. This dish comes from an era when the closest thing to a fridge was a larder, probably a North facing room with slate shelves to keep food as cool as possible.

A great deal of meats can be confit but by far the most common is the duck leg and this preservation is a really simple two part process: Salting to cure followed by cooking and sealing in fat. The recipe below is for the simplest form of confit, adding spices to the cure is perfectly acceptable but I tend to keep the dish as pure as possible.

2,4 or 6 Duck legs

Salt

Duck fat (I have used pork lard with no drop in quality)

Place the duck legs in a large bowl and sprinkle over salt, just enough to give a light covering. Pop them in the fridge for about six hours. They will loose a bit of water and firm up a bit.

Take the legs out of the fridge and wash off the salt making sure that you then dry the legs thoroughly.

Melt the fat in a large casserole and carefully place the legs into this fat until the are all in the fat and covered.

Duck legs in the melted fat

Pop the lid on the casserole and put it in the oven at about 150 degrees centigrade. Leave them alone in the oven for a little over an hour, when you take the lid off there should be a lovely and light brown and smelling wonderful. 

Take the duck out of the oven and allow it to cool in the "larder" until set, its worth checking that all the duck is under the surface of the liquid before it sets. With the duck cured and cooked and also all the air now excluded, this food has a considerable shelf life.

When you want to finish the duck, you simply pull it out of the fat, wipe as much as you can of the skin and put it in a hot oven on a tray for about 15 minutes to crisp up the skin.

Out of the fat and ready for finishing.

 The only question you have left is what to serve with your confit. For me, the summer calls for a simple frisee salad with some lardons of un-smoked bacon all dressed with a sharp vinaigrette . In the winter a pile of puy lentils mixed with sliced onions and lardons (again).

A Year in Preserving - Dry-Cured Tenderloin.

Those of us who serve at the chalk face love a good text book. This does not mean we love every text book, only that we love a good text book.
A short while ago, when I was starting to show some interest in curing and preserving meat, the Beautiful wife bought me a few books online and they have all been instructive, some of them outstanding. One of these books was the fantastic Dry-Curing Pork by Hector Kent.

Hector Kent's brilliant book.

The reason that this is such a good book is that it is written by a teacher in the form of a text book. There are clear instructions on every recipe, the sections on such things as Nitrates and Nitrites are simply written and the overall tone is positive and helpful. Every recipe has a section entitled "What this recipe teaches" which explains the skills and the knowledge gained whilst producing the recipe. It is the perfect text book for grown ups! Further to this its paints a picture of the Kent's lifestyle which is very seductive indeed.
For my first attempt at a genuine air dried meat I chose the recipe for Dry-Cured Tenderloin. I have, in the past, made bacon with commercially made cures but this was the first time I went completely from scratch. I have a small, 6 bottle wine cellar, which is basically a fridge that will hold a temperature at 8 to 15 degrees centigrade. This is the perfect little aging cellar for my tenderloin.
To keep curing simple there are two basic types of cure, cunningly called Cure #1 and Cure#2. Cure#1 contains nitrites and Cure#2 contains nitrates. Cure #2 tends to be used for longer cures and drying times as it is safer.
The recipe below explains the process and some of the methods used. Owing to the fact that curing meat requires accuracy the quantities required for the cure are shown as a percentage of the weight of the meat. I must stress that this recipe is not my own but Mr Kent's. We are all students at some level.

Dry Cured Tenderloin
1 Pork tenderloin

Cure
3% Salt
0.25% Cure (I used #2 but #1 would work)
0.25% Black Pepper
0.5% Garlic Powder

The meat should be trimmed and made as smooth as possible. It should then be weighed and the quantities for the cure calculated. (In the book Kent even provides a quick tutorial on percentages!)
The meat and all the cure ingredients should then be thoroughly mixed in a freezer bag and as much air as possible removed. This should them be placed in an ordinary fridge for two weeks. I should be turned and mixed a little regularly.
After the curing, the meat should then be washed of all the cure and dried with a kitchen towel.
The meat must then be weighed and the weight recorded.
Kent's recipe suggests that the meat should be cased inside a hog casing (the natural casing for a British Banger, it is the lower digestive tract of a pig) and the trussed. As I couldn't get a casing wide enough I just trussed mine, as he also suggests.

Trussed and ready to dry

When fully trussed the meat should be hung in the "cellar" for about two weeks until it has lost 30% of its weight.

The Tenderloin in its Cave

It might produce a white mold on the outside, should this happen it is simply wiped of with a kitchen towel soaked in vinegar.

The finished article

I was truly delighted with the final product and I shall be curing two more of these at the weekend. The texture and mouth feel was not unlike a Bresaola but with a porky, garlicy taste. This is a strange thing to write but it tasted very much like French preserved meat and sausages. My next adventure in curing meat will be some Saucisson Sec in a French style, but my next Blog post will be article on Confit Duck Legs.

Rights of passage.

Towersey festival takes place in Thame every August Bank Holiday. It used to be held in Towersey itself but owing to size was moved a couple of miles down the road a few years ago. It is a folk music festival that grew out of a Morris dancing festival. I have both been a visitor and worked at the festival in the past and it is truly a family friendly four or five days. Many families make it the last few days of a camping and touring holiday. Many thousands of people descend on Thame and the atmosphere is, by and large friendly and kind.
I suppose the mixed demographic helps with this, as well as the fantastic level of organisation. The fact that Toweresy and Thame are within 40 minutes walk of Corner Cottage means that the Beautiful Wife and I can visit without worrying about having a drink or two if we fancy ( Folk music and Real Ale are seldom far apart).
During the festival last year I was in Waitrose choosing a couple of beers when I witnessed an encounter between a mother and her teenage daughter which moved me more than I thought it would.
They were  chatting about what beer the girls father would like and spotting ones they had seen him drink before. Having made their decision, the mother asked the girl, who was probably 15 or so, what she was going to have to drink. The girl headed off towards the soft drink section. Her mother then said " I thought you liked Cider?".
The girl looked surprised and with her head on one side asked quietly "I that alright?"
The reply came "Of course, we trust you, and you'll be with us anyway"
I'm still not sure why this generational encounter moved me but I'm sure it is to do with the fact that this honest and open communication is often what is missing in young people's lives. Legality aside, this young woman was learning to drink socially and not necessarily to excess with support and respect. It just seemed right.
On a different note, A year in Preserving carries on, this afternoon I have trussed a tenderloin of pork which has been curing in my fridge for 2 weeks. It is now in my mini wine cellar at 15 degrees drying. More of this later.

A Year in Preserving. To begin - Marmalade

I have blogged on many occasions about marmalade. I am not going to re-hash any of those posts, surface is to say, like most jams and preserves home made marmalade is always better than anything you can buy in a shop. Below I have written my simple marmalade recipe. Please feel free to play with this recipe, add booze (whisky and brandy work well though I've never tried rum), mix up the sugars maybe to add some richness.

Seville Orange Marmalade
Ingredients
1kg Seville oranges
2kg Granulated sugar
2 ltr water

Cut all the oranges in half, scoop out the flesh and some of the pith of each half with a tea spoon.

Squeeze all the juice you can out of the flesh and pips, add this liquid to a large pan. Wrap the pulp and pips up in a square of muslin, tied at the top Dick Whittington style, attach this to the side of the pan with another length of string.

All of the skins and pith must now be shredded. I have been lent an antique to help with this - The Magic Marmalade shredder. This Victorian piece of kit was a joy to use and after over 100 years could still do the job!

All the shreds need to be added to the pan with the pith bag, squeezed juice and add the water. This is then boiled for about 90 minutes.

Now lift out the pith bag with a pair of tongs and place it in a sieve. Gently squeeze the bag gently with the tongs over the boil. Do not touch this with your hands it will be as hot as the sun! then discard all the pith.
Now the sugar should be added and stir until it is all dissolved. Bring the pan to the boil and continue to boil until the setting point is reached.
Setting point is the almost magical point where sugar, acid and pectin conspire to produce a solid jelly at room temperature; it is the basis of all jams! The simplest of tests for setting point is the wrinkle test. The wrinkle test is carried out by placing a small plate in the fridge at the start of your preserving session. When the marmalade has been boiling for a while and appears to be thickening, get the plate out and dribble a small droplet onto the cold plate, leave it for a few minutes and then push the droplet with a finger (be careful it may still be hot). If the droplet wrinkles, then you have reached setting point.
Take the pot off the heat and leave it alone for about 5 minutes, there is likely to be a scum on the top. Now is the time to pot up your marmalade. I do this by pushing the scum to one side and using a special funnel.

At the end you will be left with the scum, I pop this into a spare jar and keep it for use in recipes that require marmalade (a cheats sweet and sour sauce, marmalade cake, etc).
I like to hand write my labels, but whether you print them or write them it is vital that you clearly label what the product is and the date it was made. I have some mystery chutneys from a few years back and i'm a little scared to try them!

There are about three weeks more of the Seville orange season left this recipe will make you about 7 standard pots for the rest of the year so its probably worth doing two or three batches! Homemade marmalade is nearly always better than anything you could buy in a shop at any price, it is supposed to be bitter and sweet. It was once said that it should be, to the taste buds as a cold shower is to the rest of the body first thing in the morning. Happy preserving!

A Year in Preserving.

I do not own a freezer, there is a small freezing box at the top of the fridge but a pack of frozen peas and bag of oven chips fills that up so its not what you would call storage. I say this not because I feel I need a freezer it's just that the snug kitchen at Corner Cottage does not have the space for a freezer. For the same reason there is no dishwasher or tumble dryer. The reason for my mentioning my lack of white goods is to introduce the theme for a year of writing. This year I will be looking into how we can preserve food without freezing.
There is a certain irony here: The historical methods of preservation have created our luxury items. The methods used in the past to ensure that food would not spoil have created products that are now of greater value than the original product. This added value has come through the process of preservation, in this way necessity has created quality. The price of smoked salmon is, weight for weight, over twice that of fresh salmon.
My friends, who know I'm an avowed foodie, often give me their excess vegetables and fruits if they have a bumper harvest. This act of generosity means I often find myself with carrier bags full of courgettes or apples and, with no freezer, I am forced (without any real malice!) into finding ways of giving these products greater longevity. In food terms it is worth remembering that, historically,  this would have been the difference between thriving through times of fresh food paucity and really struggling for nutrition.
Today is New Year's Day and we are half way through the season of Christmas. As a nation we have indulged in Smoked Salmon, Mince pies, Chutney with Cheese, sausages wrapped in Bacon, Chritmas Cake, Cranberry Sauce, and so many other preserved products. We tend to lose track of the fact that these treats are all preserved from earlier when the seasons provided us with plenty. The idea of a 'feast' was just this: Food saved for a special occasion.
For me, it all started with a gift of Seville oranges that a friend had purchased in error. They became my first marmalade and thus started a decades long obsession with food preservation. I now salt, smoke, jam, pickle, dehydrate and dry foods for eating later.
Our food consumption has become one of the many offspring of globalisation. This is not all bad. The ability to buy bananas all year round is a triumph, as is the availability of many exciting ingredients. However, global food waste is a international disgrace. Our commodification of food and our lack of respect for the resources required to produce food should shake us all. The preserving of food does not have all the answers to these difficult international problems but it is, without doubt, part of the solution rather than part of the problem.
So with my lack of freezer and some fairly rudimentary equipment, this year I shall be reporting on all the preserved foods that are created during their season. Happy New Year!