Hot Stuff

Gadgets

For the last year, I have been using a blowtorch to char wood, meringues, marshmallows, and anything else that could benefit from an extremely quick blast of intense heat (theoretically up to about 1970°C (3578°F) , assuming no heat loss). While this can be extremely useful, it means effectively spraying propellant onto food, and hoping that it combusts efficiently. Butane, although less evil smelling than horrible farty propane, still has a chemical whiff about it, and I hereby renounce it as a way to blast food.

The alternative ? A heat gun, which plugs into the wall and produces a thin jet of super-hot air. Happening to walk by Maplins during their clearance sale, I picked this 2000W model for 15 pounds. It’s for stripping paint, bending plastics and defrosting frozen water pipes. It has two heat settings, 300°C and 600°C - both respectable cooking temperatures. As is often the case, buying tools marketed for construction is way cheaper than buying products designed for chefs (my laser pointed temperature probe cost £15 bought from a DIY supplier and would have cost me at least double from a kitchen equipment store).

Although I have no specific plans for it, I’m sure it won’t be long before I find something that would usefully take a hefty punch of combustion-less dry heat.

Berry Juices

The english fruit season has become bountiful after a fortnight of sun and strawberries and cherries have benefited hugely - deeply coloured and with intense sweetness. They smell and taste exactly as they should.

This fruit came from Perry Court Farm, who have a stall at Herne Hill Market. Since my interests are directed towards drinks at the moment, I wanted to take all the juice out of the fruit, without using a juicer. I set water bath set to 41°C, one degree below the temperature at which vegetables are considered ‘cooked’ as opposed to raw. The temperature (more or less equal to a hot bath) is sufficient to soften the cell walls and draw the juice out of the fruit. The fruit stays relatively intact, so the juice that results is not as cloudy as it would be if it were cooked any hotter. Cooking in a vacuum-sealed bag means keeping hold of aromas that would be lost in an open pan.

The gooseberries are a little bit more tired looking, perhaps I am a week late for their sweet spot. I added powdered sugar (caster sugar would be slow to melt at low temperature), honey infused with pine shoots, and a branch of dried douglas fir and its needles.

After two hours I squeezed the fruit inside the bags and then heated them for another two hours. The cherry juice is destined for kombucha, with some birch sap scoby and mother, demerara sugar and gunpowder green tea. I will also add the crushed cherry stones - the benzaldehyde in the kernels will add an almond taste. The strawberry will probably also be turned into kombucha, and the gooseberries will become a fizzy pop, given life by adding some of my turmeric root and ginger ‘bug’.

Juniper wood, brought back from Denmark, but foraged in Sweden. I have been bewitched by it’s aroma and have been experimenting with various methods to manifest it’s nuances in an infusion. Being a member of the Cupressoideae  subfamily of the Cyprus, and thus related to cedar, it is reminiscent of both cigar boxes and saunas, but sweet, and nothing like the berries. I have no love for juniper berries, though I love gin. I’m not sure why this should be, but I spent many hours peeling them with the tip of a tiny curved knife when stageing in Denmark last year, and can’t help but think it has something to do with it.

On the left, an infusion in some pretty intense Polish grain vinegar (10% acidity). It has been infusing for around two months, and has captured a lot of the subtleties I was hoping for. It is incredibly strong vinegar, and I am hoping that ageing will soften it somewhat.

On the right, an infusion of wood in (Polish, again) rectified spirit (79% ABV). It is two weeks old, and the alcohol has drawn a lot of pigment from the wood (it is more pink when not being photographed under strip lights) Although this suggests promise, it is very vodka-y and to lean over the open jar to smell it is still something of a trial. Again, some ageing seems necessary.

Growing Ginger

Ginger Naturalisation

I bought a half kilo of organic ginger from Franklins Farm Shop in Dulwich, which had been imported on a boat from the Côte d’Ivoire. All but a small knob went into my ginger bug and subsequent ginger beer, but that one little knob is doing well in my new greenhouse, planted with some really nice compost mixed with vermiculite. It has grown an inch this week. With luck, it will provide me with a lot of ginger, to satisfy my new love of homemade ginger beer.

A batch of ginger beer, made from my ginger bug, raw and pasteurised honeys, and a little live yoghurt whey. It seems to have formed a kind of SCOBY (yeast and various bacteria manifest as a layer of rubbery cellulose) and is pleasantly effervescent.

Really good with whisky :)

Barley  (Hordeum vulgare L)

A field of barley at my brother’s farm in Gloucestershire. Every now and then it’s good to see food growing up close, especially grains, which, most of the time I encounter after they’ve been dried, milled into flour and packaged. Barley grass has such a beautiful structure and colour, and to stand in a huge field of it, it’s long spikelets swaying in the breeze, brushing each other and making a sound not unlike a strong wind, is a serene and special experience. 

I picked a few strands, squeezing the unripe germs from the husks, and discovered not only that they are delicious and intriguingly textured, creamy and sweet, but that they taste uncannily like the bee larvae which we investigated and cooked with at Nordic Food Lab in April. Weird, huh ?

More adventures with Juniper Wood - lo-fi steam distillation

As per a suggestion from Ben Reade at Nordic Food Lab, I filled the coffee basket of my stovetop coffee pot with Juniper wood and the bottom chamber with water and a piece of unsalted butter. I filtered the peach coloured liquid that came out, and have a decent glass full of juniper stock. I had no end result in mind, save for a wish to capture the amazing aroma of juniper wood, and am considering making it into a fizzy soda or perhaps a new kombucha.

Kentish Romano Peppers 

From the Isle of Thanet and bought at Fruit Garden in Herne Hill.
I smoked them in a drum barbecue for five hours, over a smoldering mixture of elder and juniper woods, green tea and hay. I had planned to try and dry them in the sun during the micro heatwave we had, but this was too micro, and it’s gone, and so I have started to dry them at 70C in the oven. They have been in for around twelve hours so far. The kitchen smells amazing.

Halfway through the smoking, I collected the juice that had been drawn out of the pepper flesh and which had collected in the keel of the peppers. It was insanely good, and I drank it all. 

Elderflower Kombucha

I just fed the jar with sweetened organic gunpowder green tea, which is trying to push it’s way past the SCOBY and into it’s new home (elderflower/birch sap/yoghurt whey) . 2 weeks old

Elderflower Mead

The surface of my elderflower mead, three weeks old, and made with three different honies, fermented bee pollen and elderflower concentrate

Juniper wood

Gathered by Tage Rønne, a Danish woodsman. I have a small amount left, of which this batch I am going to roast (30 mins, 120C) and leave to infuse in 79% alcohol to make a tincture.

Pencil-thin asparagus from Suffolk, right as the season is about to finish

My bacterial drinks section

From left to right - Birch sap/Pu’er Tea Kombucha, Ginger Bug, another Birch sap kombucha, Ginger and turmeric root bug, Elderflower Kombucha and, finally Kvass made from Sourdough bread from St. John Bread and Wine

A little roll of sourdough bread, from my Kernel IPA starter, triple proven, and with milk powder and butter in the recipe. Sliced horizontally and toasted, buttered and stuffed with Nutella, and finally sprinkled with sea salt, it makes an awesome variation on a pain au chocolat

Many seeded white and rye sourdough bread, from a Kernel IPA yeast starter.

Every time I make bread, the top gets stuck to whatever I prove in. It’s just a curse I guess. What I do get instead is a lattice of crunchiness, where the chambers filled by carbon dioxide in the rising bread get ripped open and baked. I also get the bits that pushed together forming curvy little ridges, which float free when the bread is baked. It doesn’t look like your pretty sourdough with nice clean slashes, but it makes up for it in the range of crunchy textures

Elderflower mead

In the big tub, 3.5 litres of unsweetened elderflower infusion (three large handfuls trimmed flowers, steeped in boiling water for 12 hours). Next to it, and about to be whisked into it, are my two week old ginger bug, some raw ‘forest’ honey and a few grams of ground fermented bee pollen. 

Elderflowers
Sambucus nigra

I picked a bin bag full today from the tree out the back of our house. I will pick more in around two weeks, leaving some to turn into green berries (for capers) and some to ripen further into black elderberries. Today I started work on four preparations with the flowers. I infused 5L water with a third of my forage, which I will use in two ways. The first will be a carbonated tonic with sour yoghurt whey as a starter. Next, another tonic with my two week old ginger/turmeric bug. I stuffed a load of flowers into a bottle of Polish spirit vinegar (at a hefty 10% acidity) which I will leave for a few months. Finally, I added a layer of my birch sap SCOBY to a mixture of Pu’er tea, sweetened with honey and sucrose and the final load of flowers. 

Aged butter

From a batch of raw (unpasteurised) double cream from Helsett Farm in Cornwall. I allowed the cream to ferment for 6 days in the fridge at around 3℃, and then at room temperature (20℃) for another 6 days. I whipped it, strained the buttermilk, and served the first serving. Then I used the butter at various intervals over the next four days, before wrapping it and storing it the fridge for some long ageing. Two weeks have passed, and the butter has a deep savoury smell and taste.

The milk was given by Ayreshire cows to an automatic ‘self-milking’ machine on May 16th, 29 days ago. Eighty litres of milk were skimmed to produce six litres of double cream. I don’t know the fat content, but it was definitely not low. I have stopped serving the butter to the public, and will continue to monitor and eat it until it tells me not to.

I recently bought the bowl in the picture from a local potter and gardener called Jan Pateman, who has a stall in Herne Hill Farmer’s Market.

Good King Henry or Lincolnshire Spinach
Chenopodium bonus-henricus

Blanch and shock and dry spinach stems. Cook in a wok over a strong flame with goat’s butter so it caramelises a bit. Add a splash of pickled walnut vinegar and a couple of grinds of pepper. Eat the green crunchy spaghetti with butter running down your chin.

Half cooked scallop, turnips left in yoghurt whey for three months, lingonberry/scallop sauce and chickweed which grew where I planted basil seeds last year