Steel Kitten

Making pear cider - part 1

 

 The pear juice just after having the yeast added. Oops...forgot the bungs for the airlocks so had to use balloons as a temporary measure.

With so many pears and apples coming off the trees and with my recent sudden craving for Bulmers and Thatchers cider I've decided to have a go at brewing my own this year. It started last weekend.

For obvious reasons I wasn't going to buy a scratter or press of any kind until I knew for sure I would like to do this again - they're not cheap bits of kit by any means. This left me with a couple of options - buy a whole fruit juicer or use my food processor to chop the fruit, let it hang in a bag over a bowl to drip and then giving it a thorough squeezing. I opted for the first idea being short of time at the moment and having a prodigeous number of pears to get through. 

 

The first lot of pears - about half my tiny tree. This is actually three quarters of what I had to juice - the rest were in a small box out of the picture.

I wasn't the only one it seems. I went to five stores and rang numerous others to find a reasonably priced juicer, but they were all sold out unless I wanted one that was three times my budget for three times less motor power. Er no. So that left me with plan B - the food processor and hand squishing. 

I didn't have a suitable bag so I improvised and used some stockings. Each litre of juice used four stockings-worth, each stocking used three food processor bowlfuls of minced pears, and each bowl took nine average sized pears. So a small demijohn of 4 litres took 108 pears. I have 14 litres so far or 378 pears-worth. 

 

Then I squeezed the squeezed stocking s a bit more using a baking tray, plate and some free weights left over from my weight training days.

 

To say I'm knackered is an understatement. I squeezed and pressed for around 15 hours across Saturday and Sunday. AND I have an equivalent amount of pears to press this weekend so probably another 15 litres worth to come.

Enough damgummit!

I'm never doing hand pressing again. Monday morning I managed to reserve one of only four whole fruit juicers delivered today to an Argos that is close to my work. Thank goodness for that...

Couldn't resist having a little go.

Anyway, I used this recipe here, mainly because it was easy, I understood it and it didn't blind me with jargon as many other sites to. However, I accidently added too much yeast - one packet is supposed to do about 23 litres as opposed to the 4 in each demijohn I was doing, so I added 20g/litre of extra sugar to each demijohn to give the yeast some more food. 

I had read that different yeasts produce different flavours so I thought I'd try a couple of options. In one demijohn I used champagne yeast, in another I used baking yeast and the third (not seen in the pictures) I used a 50/50 mix of the two. By the way, everything - and I mean EVERYTHING - was washed in hot soapy water, sterilsed in Milton fluid for 15 minutes and then rinsed. I wasn't going through all of that pressing only to have it ruined by bacteria or wild yeasts.

Disaster nearly struck when I realised after I poured in the yeast starter that I had airlocks but not a bung to put them in!!! I raided the birthday cake decoration drawer and found some balloons which would do the job until I could get some proper bungs.

However, I had *no* idea that the smell of fermentation was so unpleasant. I'm sure, like I did, you have in your mind that fermentation smells a bit yeasty, a bit like uncooked bread, yes? 

No. Fermentation gives off sulphur fumes so the whole bottom of the house has smelled of rotten eggs for two days. Absolutely rank. Apparently some yeasts produce more sulphur than others. I thought about moving the demijohns out to the garage, but I wanted to see what was happening in the jar every day so we've braved the nostril stinging fumes and left them in the kitchen.

Tomorrow - after four days fermentation and a distinct lessening of The Whiff - I have to rack the cider, which involves siphoning it off from the sediment at the bottom of the demijohn, topping it up with fresh juice and then leaving it to ferment further for a few weeks.

I shall report back when that is done.

Decidedly pear-shaped

Well finally we had sample success with Georgie and he's been given a clean bill of health so far. One more test to go and if we don't hear from the vet we assume that one is fine. So cat-wise we're ok at Steel Towers now and I can turn my attention to something else.

As is always the way, just when I was confident that something was ok in the garden and take my eye off it, it proves to me that I was wrong. 

The pear tree. 

A couple of months ago it was doing fine and I was more concerned about the weight of the apples on their parent trees. What I didn't realise that was because apples are held so close to the branch on a short stem, they don't seem to put as much strain on their branches as pears do, which are long fruits which hang heavy on a long stem. Two months later three sizeable branches on the little pear tree have snapped under the weight of swollen fruit, one of them a main branch, so I spent half an hour putting right the damage. 

But what to do with over 150 pears from those three branches? None of them are quite ready yet, and some are incredibly small. The ones that are a good size are now in the shed on mesh sheets to let the air circulate as they ripen, which as they are Conference pears they will do so slowly. The smaller ones I'm making into Pear and Lemon Jam courtesy of a recipe by Fiona at Cottage Smallholder. 

Tonight was the first time I've ever made pear jam and I have to say I didn't think it would come together. It's nothing like plum jam - pears retain their shape almost right the way through cooking and only really soften towards the end, but even then they still don't puree like apples or plums. It makes for a jam with little jelly and tons of fruit that retains it structure.

However half way through making the jam the microwave threw a hissy fit and conked out, leaving me attempting to make jam in a large saucepan for the first times in years. Luckily because I had put in too much liquid (forgot to adapt Fiona's recipe with less water for the microwave) the resulting steam had triggered the machine's automatic cut out, but for a second I did think that yet another item in the house had broken. I replaced the kettle last week and the boiler is on the blink yet again, so it wouldn't have surprised me if the microwave was knackered.

Anyway, there's two pots of pear and lemon jam cooling down on the kitchen counter and tomorrow morning another two will join them. 

And then I have to begin stripping the plum tree. 

More microwave lemon curd

 

I love the fact this takes so little time and uses up surplus eggs. We could eat lemon curd until the cows come home. 

All go with the preserving this afternoon

 

 

I have about a million plums on my trees at the moment and I'm down to my last three jars of plum jam, so this afternoon was dedicated to jam making.

 

This time I wanted to add a little twist to the plum jam and thought I'd have a go adding some leftover mulled wine, which I found while clearing out a cupboard. My recipe for plum jam is very simple and I usually make it in the microwave rather than cook it on the stove top. You can find my method for microwave jam here. This time instead of adding a 1/3 pint of water though I added 1/3 pint of mulled wine. In addition I popped a tablespoon of lemon juice in as I was unsure how the alcohol and spices would affect the set and I didn't want to spoil a batch finding out. All was well and I made several batches of heavenly smelling and tasting jam. It had a sparkly depth of flavour that my usual plum jam lacks. In fact, if I'm honest I find my jam a little too sweet and this seems to make it a little less so.

You'll notice in the above picture there is also a bottle of cheapo rum. It's been in the back of the cupboard for about three years now and we haven't had much off it so I decided to put it to better use. To a 1lb of plums I added about 10oz of sugar and 1 pint of gin, sealed it and gave it a shake, then put it back into the cupboard. 

 

 

With any luck, in about three months I'll strain off the plum liquor into a fresh bottle, then take the leftover plums and dip them in chocolate. A far more interesting use of rum I reckon.

During all this I was also making microwave lemon curd with some unwaxed lemons I found in the bargain section in the supermarket. I found lots of recipes for doing it on the stove top, all of which looked like a lot of faff and I'm working on being a faff-free zone at the moment. However, I found the following great easy recipe (and I just cannot remember where because I closed that window down before I remembered to copy the address bar).

Microwave lemon curd

50g butter

150g sugar

Zest and juice of two unwaxed lemons

Three whole eggs

One egg yolk

 

Put the butter, sugar, and zest and juice of the two unwaxed lemons into a microwaveable bowl and heat for 1-2 minutes until the butter has melted. Stir. Beat the whole eggs and egg yolk together very well and strain the mixture into the bowl with the rest of the ingredients. Stir and then heat for 3-4 minutes, stirring very well every 30 seconds to 60 seconds. Transfer to a warm 1lb jar and seal as you would jam. 

It's fabulous! And bags easier than most of the other recipes I've seen. 

Meatballs in spicy peri-peri sauce

I had some fun making these for Martin tonight. I found the recipe over at Pioneer Woman and it's a cracking good one. The meatballs have just the right amount of moistness, hold together really well while cooking and also are incredibly filling. Don't be alarmed about the peri-peri sauce if you don't like spicy, you can always switch it for tomato sauce as the original recipe called for.                                                                                               

You'll have to forgive me if I write the recipe to reflect my in instinctive cooking style - I'm a glug and a pinch kind of person. 

Ingredients

 

Meatballs

1lb of mince

2oz oats

Half a chopped onion

Good glug of milk (enough to moisten not drench the mixture)

1 tsp salt

Sauce

A third of a bottle of Nando's medium peri-peri sauce

A hefty big glug of brown sauce

2 tbsp of sugar

Half a chopped onion

Method

Throw all the meatball ingredients in a bowl and stir well. Take tsp size amounts of the mixture and roll it (with floured hands) into small balls. Lay them all out on a tray and pop them in the freezer for five minutes to make them easier to handle. Take them out and roll them around in a bowl of flour until coated.

Preheat the oven at this point to Gas Mark 5, unless you have a really slow oven and then you might need to turn it on earlier (oops, sorry). Brown the meatballs briefly and place in a baking dish.

Mix all the sauce ingredients into a bowl and cover the meatballs evenly with it.

Put the meatballs in the oven and cook them up for around 30-45 minutes until the edges are sizzling. Serve with big, big dollops of fluffy mashed potatoes and a very deep red wine.

Scoff enthusiastically, then lie on the floor groaning and clutching your over full tummy. 

And make them again the following night. 

Adventures in cottage cheese

I always believed making cheese to be very difficult, but the more I look into it the more I realise there are many different levels of complexity depending on the type of cheese; simple soft cheeses like brie and feta take no more than a few hours to make with simple ingredients in the cupboard while hard cheeses require different bacterial cultures and months or years of maturation in a cool place.

So on Monday I decided to make the simplest of soft cheeses - cottage cheese - using a recipe I found on Allotment.org.uk

It looked fairly straightforward. All cheese is made from coagulated or curdled lumps of milk, so all you need to do is add something that produces that curdling reaction. Some people use a starter - which is essentially a quantity of lactic acid bacteria you can culture yourself or buy in from a producer - but another way is to use something acidic like lemon juice or vinegar. So that's where I decided to start.

Semi-skimmed milk and lemon juice

I'm not going to go into the finer details, as allotment.org.uk details it very clearly, but basically I added  lemon juice to hot semi-skimmed milk with a pinch of salt, let the curds separate and then drained it. I didn't use 2 pints of milk, only one, as I didn't want to waste milk if it didn't work and after seeing no curds at all I added a second tablespoon of lemon juice.

 

The result were - well - not fantastic I have to say. It certainly separated the curds and whey, but on a very small scale. There wasn't a great deal of 'cheese', perhaps enough for one sandwich, and it was quite lemony and of a yoghurt consistency. I added a few Herbs de Provence and had it for breakfast on homemade bread this morning. It was certainly nice and refreshing, but simply not enough from a whole pint of milk. After weighing there was only 1.5oz. 

Whole milk and cider vinegar

I was surprised that the original recipe called for semi-skimmed milk and not whole milk, as people who have their own cows and goats and more likely to have whole milk lying around that needs processing,  so I tried with whole milk to see if that made a difference. I also used cider vinegar this time (2 tbsp to match with the first experiment) instead of lemon to see if the taste was less intrusive.

Wow! That's more like it! Definitely cottage cheese!

After tasting and adjusting with a little more salt and some herbs, I had 3.5oz to eat. This is much better, but still not as much as I would like. So the question is, can I make something more from the left over whey that justifies making cottage cheese?

What to do with the whey?

Monday's experiment left me with over 3/4 pint of yellowy-green whey, which I left to sit in the fridge overnight while I thought about what I was going to do with it. A scan of the internet revealed an interesting recipe for ricotta. Ricotta is the made by boiling left over whey from the cheese-making process until the remaining milk proteins denature, clump together and come out of solution to form curds. Although it recommends leaving the whey at room temperature overnight, I had already refrigerated it so I decided to use it anyway.

Not enthused. It looked nothing like the pictures I'd seen of rolling clumps of curds, but I still strained it through cotton over a jug. Being impatient for results, I decided not to hang it overnight but gathered up the ends of the cotton when it seemed the liquid had all but gone and twisted it round gently to get a few more drops out. Then I opened the cotton up and had a look.

Now that looks a little promising. So I tasted it. OH MY GOD! Tasty, tangy ricotta - better than anything I've bought in the shops. I was dancing round the kitchen. It was only 2oz, but it was my own homemade 2oz. Woohoo!

Next up was the whey from this morning. I boiled it up, left it to cool and strained it through cotton. There was much less ricotta - around 1.5oz - and it had a much blander taste I presume because I used vinegar. 

So, the skimmed milk and lemon juice yielded 1.5oz of cottage cheese and 2oz of ricotta, while the whole milk and vinegar yielded 3.5oz of cottage cheese and 1.5oz of ricotta. However, the experiment isn't over, because the method I used for making the ricotta changed. Leaving the whey overnight at room temperature could increase ricotta yields because the remaining milk sugars are converted to lactic acid, which decreases the pH and therefore protein solubility and increases yields. My lack of ricotta in the whole milk experiment could have been simply because it wasn't left overnight to convert all of its sugars. 

Whole milk and lemon juice

So as a final test, I did the experiment once more, this time using whole milk and lemon juice. I wanted to see if I could get the yield of cottage cheese I wanted and the tanginess of the ricotta as well. When you have something tangy a little can go a long way. 

So another pint of whole milk went on the stove, 2tbsp of lemon juice were added when it got hot and the results strained when cool.Straight away I could tell it wasn't giving me the same results that cider vinegar did. The lumps were small and diffuse, not large and clot-like, but the result was over 3oz of cottage cheese, which I mixed up with some plum jam to make a sweet sandwich topping. 

I covered and left out the whey overnight on the bench, and boiled it up this morning. Unfortunately, it did quite poorly giving me only 0.5oz of ricotta which lacked tang as was quite bland. I've no idea then what caused the tanginess the first time unless the fact the milk was semi-skimmed had something to do with it.

Overall, I would make this again using whole milk and probably vinegar, but possibly only if I had my own cows or goats and was drowning in an almost inexhaustable supply of milk. For the amount of milk it uses for the yield, I don't think it's worth it.

What's next?

I'm going to have a break from cheese experiements until next week, when I will be attempting to make a reasonable quantity of soft cheese using a lactic acid starter. This I'm hoping will convert a whole pint of milk into yoghurt first and then into a decent amount of soft cheese when strained under mild pressure. Stay tuned.

Meat and the self-sufficient lifestyle

As part of my journey into self-sufficiency, I've recently started playing with some cheese recipes. I believe cheese is going to contribute a greater role in the future I have planned for myself, so getting to grips with it early is a good idea. Before you burst out laughing at the "cheese in my future" reference, which admittedly sounds a bit kooky, listen up because there's a method in my apparent madness and it's all to do with meat.

What would it take to put meat on my plate?
It's easy enough when you shop in a supermarket to put whatever meat you like in your trolley, but when you start to consider meat from a self sufficiency point of view where supermarkets don't come into it, you realise how expensive and difficult it is to produce. I don't just mean in terms of money, but also in terms of resources.

Just to clarify, if you're self-sufficient, strictly speaking you have a closed system where you produce everything you need to live. Buying or bartering things from outside the system, such as feed, straw, hay, hybrid seeds etc can introduce undesirable problems like weeds, fruit and vegetables with little flavour or cannot be used for seed saving, and diseases, not to mention the fact you have to find the money from somwhere to pay for it all.

I believe that type of self-sufficiency is a long, long way off for me. However, if I want to be as self-reliant as possible until then, ideally I would either produce my own meat or perhaps barter some of my own goods to exchange for it. Producing my own is a bit beyond me right now - I'm not ready emotionally to take on buying or renting land, buying cows, sheep or pigs yet, although poultry, rabbits and small scale aquaponics for fish will be possible shortly in the future when I can get over the whole slaughtering aspect. Yet even then I would still be buying feed pellets, wood shavings, straw and hay unless I had the ability and space to produce my own.

The latter - bartering - sounds much more preferable, but think about how much I would have to produce to pay for it. Generally, farmers like to sell 1/2 animals, not the odd chop or rack of ribs, and to match it would take up much more than my garden or chickens could produce. I may have to look at an allotment and the drain on time that will take up. Yes, I could barter my writing services, but the prices I charge would be beyond the small scale local producer to match in goods. You see, one way it's too much in goods for me, the other way it's too much in goods for them.

So ideally, meat must play a much smaller role in my future as it is so labour intensive to have regularly, (although Charlotte if your Dad has no use for brace of pheasant there is always a place for them here :-)  )

Where will I get the main source of my protein from?
Without that source of protein in my diet, I have to get it from elsewhere and that's where cheese makes an appearance. I'm not a great meat-eater and before I met Martin cheese was my main source of protein every day. It wouldn't be too tough to go back to that again for me, and a gallon of milk is much easier to barter for than meat. The fact that Martin dislikes the taste of cheese is the only slight fly in the ointment, so he would have to continue eating some meat unless he was happy to go veggie and I would find other protein sources for him. He does eat quite a few veggie meals, but it has to be his choice and not something I can push on him.

How much is enough?
The Food Standards Agency recommend that men get 44-55g of protein a day while women need 36-45g and here's a list I've compiled of the protein values of some common foodstuffs Martin and I eat.

6oz steak  42g
Pork chop        (average)     22g
Grilled chicken breast (average) 42g
4oz cooked beef mince 24g
Egg     6g
4oz cottage cheese  15g
4.5oz  lentils  9g
7oz chickpeas  16g
8oz  baked beans  11g
2tbsp peanut butter  8g
0.5pt  Milk  9g
1 cup yoghurt  8-12g

When I look at this, I see how easy it would be to get enough protein every day without resorting to meat, especially considering the value of cottage cheese, which is supposed to be the easiest cheese to produce at home. Also, I made a curry the other night of chickpeas and kidney peas (Martin's favourite meal) and the protein content with just those two ingredients was 32g split between the two of us. Once you add in the rice and chopped tomatoes you're taking it to 18g a piece.  By having eggs in with breakfast or lunch, a glass of milk, some yoghurt and fresh fruit for dessert, some cheese here and there, perhaps peanut butter on bread for an afternoon snack, you're up to the recommended amounts every day.

So that's why yesterday saw me up to my eyes in curds and whey. And as this post has got 'whey' too long (snigger, snigger), I will blog about my cheese escapades tomorrow.

10 minutes ago this was still inside the chicken.....

Paxo laid this egg 5 minutes before this photo was taken. Less than 20 minutes later it is on my plate with some homemade mayonnaise and homemade crusty bread.

Now that's what I call fast fresh food!

A lot of hob nobbing

When I was single, baking wasn't often an activity in my life. To stay vaguely thin I couldn't risk nose-diving into homemade cake or biscuits so confined what little baking I did to people's birthdays. It was only when I met Martin did I finally have a concrete reason to let fly with my baking zeal. 

You see, despite being in his late 40s, Martin has a very fast metabolism and only just tops the scale at 9.5 stone, a leaness he inherited from his father and grandfather. Having to walk at a fast pace for three hours day also contributes to his wiry frame, and I tease him about what's going to happen if he ever gives up his job.

Anyway, to pack him out a bit and keep his metabolism satisfied I try and bake very dense things that will store well during the week in a tin in his locker. I've tried various different cakes over the years but they either didn't take well to being stored or were too insubstantial to satisfy his appetite and disappeared in two or three days. 

And then I found it. The perfect combination of density and longevity. 

Behold: the homemade hobnob. 

So moorish, so satisfying, you put on a 1lb just looking them. Only bake these if you need fattening up, because once you taste them you will not stop popping to the tin for 'just one more'. Every cup of tea becomes an excuse for another one. 

Ingredients

8oz self-raising flour

8oz sugar

8oz oats

8oz butter

1tbsp golden syrup

1tbsp hot water

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 5/6. Melt the butter gently in a saucepan with the golden syrup and water. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the wet to them. Stir well. 

Then take tablespoon-sized balls and place on a well greased or lined baking tray. Press them down lightly. 

Bake for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown. Remove from the oven and allow to sit for 10 minutes to cool slightly before transferring to a wire tray. You'll find the cookies spread out in the oven quite a bit, so you might have to cut through them with knife to get them out. They will also be a little floppy so a flat slice will be needed to pick them up. They'll harden up as they cool. 

Makes 18-24 small/medium hobnobs.

Don't lose focus

Curry in the slow cooker (just about to serve hence the lid is off!)

I said in my last post I'd talk about how Rhonda's blog has made a difference since I've been reading it. I've felt for a while I've been ready to move onto a new level in my quest to be a bit more frugal and self sufficient, so the timing couldn't have been more perfect. 

The day after reading Rhonda's post about being frugal with utilities it crossed my mind I really hadn't been watching the meters since about November. Normally I'd pretty sure about what we spend gas and electric-wise and check the meters a few times during each billing period, but with the arrival of the hedgehogs and the need for constant warmth for them, I accepted our bill was going to be higher than normal. And with that, for some reason, I stopped monitoring it.

Without the vigilance I became careless and let old bad habits creep in. I stopped putting lids on the saucepans. I used the oven to bake one measly thing at a time. I stopped using the slow cooker and started cooking the same meals in the oven, three or four hours for a casserole or stew (I'm kicking myself as a I type this). That stinking thinking started to move across to turning things off at night. Little red standby lights started appearing all over the house again. The computer was left burning energy all day instead of being switched off when not in use. 

So what I wasn't prepared for two days after I read Rhonda's post was the huge gas bill that dropped onto our doorstep. Now at first glance it didn't look too bad - £186 for three months. Then I realised it was estimated, so as usual I took a reading to check and did a swift calculation of what it should be. Then I nearly fell on the floor.

It should have been £360. I have NEVER paid more than £200 for a winter gas bill in my life. Then the electric turned up - £180 for eight weeks. F*!!*%^$£$

After moping around the house for about two days, I stopped swearing and got proactive. I started reading the meters every day to see where all this energy was going. Now I reckon you've just said to yourself "it's obvious - gas central heating in the winter and price rises". You'd only be half right. But actually, I've discovered that two thirds of my daily gas goes on: cooking and baking. That hour's cooking in the evening plus a few baking sessions during the week has added up to a large amount of money going out the house. Yes there have been price rises, but I've certainly not been careful about usage and have wasted it.

To test this, I've only used the gas cooker twice in the last two weeks for unavoidable baking. I've planned all our meals around the slow cooker, steamer and microwave. Our daily readings have dropped from 10 units (around 110kw) a day to just over 3 units (about 33kw). That's a massive drop. At the same time I'm watching our electric meter like a hawk to see how much that increases, but bearing in mind a slow cooker uses the same amount of electricity as a lightbulb over the same period of time it's not going to be a massive increase. Any cooking in the microwave is for less than five minutes at a time and doesn't happen every day, while the steamer takes the same amount of time to cook rice and pasta as the stove. And I've even figured out how to boil eggs in it!

 

All the little red standby lights are off again. To make doubly sure we even unplug. The only things permanently on in this house are the fridge and Martin's clock radio. We've tested many other alarm clocks and have always come back to that. Battery powered ones sound great until the day the alarm doesn't go off because they are flat and Martin wakes up 4 hours later than he should do. Royal Mail aren't very understanding about things like that and once too often and you end up getting written warnings.

 

There's only one snag as far as I can work out. Having a slow cooker on for most of the day means by about 2pm you can start to smell the dinner, which has led to both of us to fantasising about food all the time. Instead of being hungry around 6:30-ish, he's peering round doorways enquiring about dinner by 4:30pm. Because I think I'm hungry all the time, I keep diving for the bread and lemon curd every time I pass it so trying to find a scrap of fresh bread in the house by dinner time is like the search for the Holy Grail.

 

It reminds me of that old Chinese proverb: It is not economical to go to bed early to avoid burning candles if the result is twins.

 

I sense I'm going to have to keep a very close eye on the shopping budget now as well. Not to mention expanding waistlines! Perhaps the slow cooker ought to go in the conservatory so we can't smell it...