Egg Poachers

No not people stealing our eggs!! A way of cooking eggs!!
I just wanted to share how great I find these. It is so much easier for hard boiled eggs (eg for curry) than boiling and then having to peel and they are easier to tell when done than soft boiled eggs in the shell.
You just oil them slightly and crack an egg in. The curved shape always seems to ensure the yolk is in the middle. Then float them on a big pan with the lid on and boil until done. You can tell by gently poking the top (as long as the water isn't too deep in which case they just sink...) whether they are done to the hardness you want.
I got mine from Lakeland but I have seen them other places too (eg John Lewis)

Cottage Cheese

My lovely family gave me a cheese making kit for my birthday (way back in February). I have finally got round to using it.
The first and simplest thing to make is cottage cheese. The plan is to progress to more complicated things step at a time.

We made cottage cheese before just using acide (lemon juice) in the milk and heating it, but this method with rennet is more efficient and gets more of the milk solids out in to the cheese. It also results in bigger 'lumps' in the cheese.

Ingredients
1 liter of milk (not homogonised, full fat or skimmed is good)
1/4 tsp rennet (mine came from http://www.homesteadfarmsupplies.co.uk/)
6ml cheese starter (mine came from http://www.homesteadfarmsupplies.co.uk/ and had to be prepared 24 hours ahead of starting to make the cheese - what wasn't used was frozen in an ice cube tray)
A little bit of double cream (makes the final product creamier - not required)

Make the curd
Heat the milk to 21C. A thermometer that clips to the edge of the pan is useful.

Add the starter and rennet and stir thoroughly
Leave for several hours until the curd has formed. There are various ways to test this. I did it by sticking a knife in and if it comes out clean rather than milky then it is ready and also stick the knife down the side of the pan, if you can pull the whole contents away from the side then it is ready.

Cut the curd
With a long knife slice the contents of the pan from side to side in to slices about 1cm across. Then turn the pan through 90 degrees and repeat. You not have long columns of curd. Recut each line with the knife at a 45 degree angle to slice the columns in to chunks.
You can see the greenish whey coming out of the curds.

Cook the curd in the whey
Turn the heat back on and heat slowly to 45C stirring gently all the time. More whey comes out of the curds

Separate curds and whey
Use a sieve or put a cheese cloth in a colander
Save the whey for later use (use in making bread or soup instead of water - or drink it)
Dump the curds in to a bowl of cold water and then strain through the seive/cloth again

The whey

Finally
Add approx 1 tsp of salt (or less to taste), stir well and add the cream if using.
Eat! We have had in salad and with honey. Both yummy.

Autumn Colours

We have had fabulous autumn colour here. They are very hard to capture on film as it often ends up looking dull and boring. These photos don't do the amazing colour justice. We have watched, day by day, a band of colour move down the mountins opposiste.

There have been some amazing sunsets too

Don Anniversaire Beer

We have been commissioned to make a beer for someones 60th birthday. A British guy who lives not far away and has a great interest in brewing and pigs. Doug has named it 'The Don Anniversaire Beer' what a clever plan on words :)
Doug made it while I was in the UK. It uses malt extract and a mini mash (which is a small amount of speciality grain - crystal malt in this case - boiled with the extract and water) and is similar to a recipe we have made before. Hopefully it will go better than the all grain one we made recently.
The party is on the 27th Dec so it will be put in the 'barrel' (plastic container) a couple of weeks before that to condition (get it's fizz)

Cracking the crystal malt

Malt and hops ready to go

Boiling on the stove top

Poppy helping as always

Knitting

It might not be clear from the blog that I am a keen knitter as I have not done any so far this year. There doesn't seem to have been time for it, or perhaps I have not been in the mood. I took it up about 3 years ago on a whim and enjoy making hats and scarfs. I have also made a pair of gloves and a pair of mittens but they were quite an undertaking.

Doug's gloves

While in the UK I did a bit and have bought some wool to make in to some things.
In some ways my attitude to it is a bit like my attitude to cooking. I rarely follow a pattern (recipe) exactly but take them as inspiration. Quite soon I am going to be bogged down in hats so was wondering about selling them. My impression is it is hard to make back even the cost of the wool as people don't believe how much nice wool costs, never mind the your time. I am not sure I can let them go anyway as I love each and every one. I have made hats for other people and in most cases I make it, then I have to make another to give away as I can't bear to part with the first one.

This scarf has been in progress for 2 years but it about doubled in length while I was in the UK. It is now pretty much half finished as I have 2 balls of wool and have nearly finished the first. It is not going to be particularly long.

I knitted this scarf from some wool Lorna had

 This is a hat I knitted for Lorna

It is very difficult to photograph knitting well it seems... or maybe I need a better model... not sure how much time I will find to knit in the near future, but will certainly find time at some point.

Car!

Doug has been training Poppy to leap in to her crate in the car when he says 'car'. She leaps in very enthusiastically and flies right in to the crate and sits there looking pleased with herself.

Back in France

I am now back at home after a spell in the UK.
When I got back my lovely husband had baked celebration madeleines. They were yummy!

While I have been away Doug has been trying to get the doggly used to her jacket that I bought because I am worried she will be cold left in the car while we ski as well as generally after walks in the winter when she gets wet. Maybe I am worried about nothing and just pampering her. But her fur is very short and at least I didn't get it in pink or with sparkly bits or something.

We decided that with the slaughter of the pigs we were going to declare phase 2 of Project Barranède complete, so since I got back we have been taking a bit of a rest... kind of... we have been doing lots of stuff but more stuff we fancy doing or needs doing now rather than aiming at a goal. We are planning on going to Chamonix next week to pick up our ski stuff and other stuff from the flat there. We need to find a reasonably priced van to hire.
We have engaged an architect as we found ourselves unable to finalise what the layout of the house should be without help. He can start in January so we won't do any work on the house until after that.
I have felt inspired to do a lot of cooking and have made curry (and naan bread), a practise batch of mince pies, some practise Christmas gingerbread shapes, a chicken and mushroom pie and started making some cheese (getting the culture ready).

We have been for a couple of walks at Payolle (in the mountains with a lake and activities like mountain boarding and in the winter skiing) which is where we picked the sloes in September. We took a look at the bushes just to see what was going on and they still had sloes. Sloes are very bitter, but they are much less bitter now than we have ever tasted them. In the UK they never get left until properly ripe because so many people pick them for sloe gin. We have picked some more to make sloe jelly - when we have made it before it comes out making you teeth a bit furry, this is because of the tannin in the unripe fruit I think, despite that the jelly has always been very tasty. Hopefully this lot will come out even better.

Ripe sloes

Picnic

Playing in the lake

Snow in the mountains

We have also done useful tasks such as sweeping up leaves (imagine how many we have - we are only trying to clear the driveway), chipping some of the massive pile resulting from the hedge massacre, putting gravel on the drive (again imagine how much gravel is needed for 600m of drive) and cleaning the chickens.

Madeleines Recipe

Ingredients
150g Plain flour
125g Softened butter
150g Cane sugar (or soft brown sugar)
2 Eggs
2 tblsp milk
1 tsp baking powder
100g fine grated carrots
2 tblsp creme de marron
Additional creme de marron for the filling (perhaps 50g)
1 tsp vanilla extract
All spice or ground cinnamon
Salt
A Madeleine tin (or perhaps a cup cake tin would work fine too - they just wouldn't be the authentic shape - but don't fill full)

Method
Beat the eggs and sugar together in a bowl until the mixture is fluffy and light in colour
Gently fold in the salt, baking powder and flour
Gently fold in all the other ingredients
Fill each shape in the Madeleine tin nearly to the top
Put a blob on Creme de Marron at the thickest point of each shape
Cover with a little bit more of the mixture (so you will end up with blobs of Creme de Marron embedded in the finished Madeleines)
Cook for 12 minutes at 180 C

Fill each shape and put blobs of Creme de Marron and cover with more mixture

Sprinkle with sugar and serve warm

Scoff them all while hot because they are SOOOO yummy

Feel a bit ashamed because you ate SOOO many...

Shortcrust Pastry Recipes

Sometimes I use normal shortcrust pastry and sometimes a richer recipe with egg in it or an even richer one with more butter. The pastry without the egg is easier to handle as it falls apart less and I usually use that for bigger pies like chicken or whatever and the one with egg for mince pies or jam tarts. You can add some sugar if you want but I very rarely do.


Shortcrust Pastry
120g plain flour
60g butter
Cold water
Salt if your butter is unsalted

Rich Shortcrust Pastry
120g plain flour
60g salted butter
1 egg yolk
A little cold water
Salt if your butter is unsalted 

Extra Rich Shortcrust Pastry (I use for mince pies and quiche)
120g plain flour
80g butter
1 egg yolk
Maybe a little cold water
Salt if your butter is unsalted 

Crumb together the butter and flour - you can do by hand or in a blender - I use a pastry cutter.

Add sugar at this point if you want to.
Add the egg yolk (or just add water if not using egg) and mix lightly then add enough water to just hold the crumbs together (may not be needed). You want to work the pasty as little as possible so it comes out crumbly instead of hard and crispy. If you push the pasty and it all falls apart you haven't added enough water. It is better to add the water slowly as it isn't good for the pastry to have to add more flour at this stage.

The pastry can wait in the fridge until you are ready to use it - it is fine for a few days.

Roll out as thin as you can and cut out the right size pieces to fit in to your tin (or for pies place in the tin and cut round the edge. You can also grate the pastry after refrigerating it and then squidge the bits in to the tin - works well in quiche tins with the frills.


 

Naan Bread Recipe

I have never managed to make a naan bread that is very like those in the restaurants in the UK (and those aren't as good as many I had in India). I have tried a variety of recipes so perhaps it is partially the recipe and partially the method (particularly cooking) that is at fault.

This is the recipe I have found to give the best results
If anyone has any helpful advice feel free to share it...

Makes 6 naan
300g White Bread Flour (ie Strong White)
1 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp salt
20 ml milk
1/2 egg (or 1 small egg)
Approx 150ml warm water

Put the flour in a bowl
Add the yeast and salt and mix
Add the egg and milk and mix
Add enough water to get a bread like dough
Knead for 10 mins
Rise for 1 hour or until doubled in size

Break in to 6 pieces and form each in to a ball and put on a tray to rise again
Leave for about 30 mins during which time preheat the oven as hot as it goes
Shape each piece in to the classic teardrop shape and brush with butter
Put on  pizza tray (as many as will fit) and cook for a few minutes until done. Turn half way through.

Gingerbread Biscuit (Men?) Recipe

350g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder

3 tsp ground ginger

1 tsp mixed spice
125g chilled butter
175g brown (dark or light) sugar
1 egg
4 tbsp golden syrup

Mix together the flour, bicarbonate of soda, ginger and cinnamon.
Add the butter and rub in to the flour (like for pastry). You can use a food mixer or do by hand. I use a pastry cutter.
Stir in the sugar.
Add the egg and golden syrup and mix until lumps start to form (I use my hands which is easiest but messiest way)
Chill in the fridge for 15 mins (or longer if you want)

Preheat oven to 180C
On a floured surface roll out to about 0.5cm thick and cut with a cookie cutter in to shapes
Put shapes on to a baking tray with some gap between them as they expand a little when cooking
Bake for 12-15 mins until golden brown.
Let cool a bit on the tray (otherwise they fall apart as you lift them up) then put on to a cooling rack.
Store in a sealed container. You can decorate with icing, sprinkles etc if you wish

Little Chicken renamed

Little Chicken is now bigger than Big Chicken.
We have renamed her Friendly Chicken as she rushes up when you go in to feed them. She seems to like being picked up and will happily carry on eating while being held. Who is first for the pot then har har har har. Ssssssssh don't tell her.

Christmas Medlar Jelly Recipe

The final thing we did in the frenzy of activity before I came away was process two more batches of medlar jelly. We have left a number to 'blet' which is basically leaving them to rot. They are meant to be very tasty they, but it is hard to imagine. We made a batch of normall jelly and one of Christmas Jelly.

For the Christmas Jelly we followed the same recipe as before but at the beginning added 2 sticks of cinamon, 5 cloves and 3 star anise to the medlars. This was strained out with the medlar pulp and the recipe continued as before.
I did do it slightly differently as I used our fruit press to extract more juice from the fruit. It worked very well and I can recommend it. However you don't need to do this.

 

New toy

This arrived just before I came to the UK

It is an All American (that is the name not a description) pressure canner. The seal between the lid and the bottom is 'metal to metal' and doesn't have a rubber washer or anything which seems very clever. It weights a tonne (approx).

I processed a batch of creme de marron (sweet chestunut puree) before I came away, but obviously managed to do something not quite right as some of the liquid got out of the jars in to the water. I am not sure if I managed to boil the contents of if the liquid was sucked out of the jars by the pressure dropping to fast. I need to study the internet and try again.

The reason for buying it, is to preserve the creme de marron and perhaps in the future can (or jar or whatever you want to call it - americans call it canning even when it is in to glass jars) meat and veg. You don't need to bother with jam and most chutneys because of the high acidity, but low acidity food needs to be processed at a higher temperature to avoid botulism

What happened to the beer?

Hundreds of my readers (ok one then) have asked what happened to the all grain beer. I am so excited that at least one person reads the blog in enough detail to remember that the story hadn't been finished, that I have decided to tell you about it even though it is a disappointment we are trying to forget.
We don't know exactly what went wrong. We have had beers that were brilliant and ones that have been less good, some have taken a while to become really nice, occasionally from a ropey start, but we have never had an undrinkable one... until now...
It has two things wrong with it. It is slightly vinegary and also has a nasty sulphery 'fart' smell and taste. We did feed some of it to the pigs so that we could feel we had got some benefit from it. The rest is still sitting around and we taste it occasionally to see if it has made any improvements. Perhaps it is less horrible than when we first tasted it but not much.
We will embark nervously on our 2nd all grain brew soon, but at the moment we have been making a few brews from kits and extract/hops/malt to get some drinkable stuff in stock. We are also making a brew for someone birthday party, so really hoping that one will work out well.

Update on the pig processing

Before I came back to the UK we make 4kg of sausages so Doug had plenty to eat while I was away. We used the recipe we perfected recently (although I minced the meat finer on the 6mm rather than 8mm plate). We have something like 15kg more in the freezer to do when this lot run out. It wasn't too bad with a hand driven mincer and stuffer although it would be better if we had something more solid to attache it too. A number of people have looked at us in astonishment when we say we are going to use a hand mincer. Making all the sausages at once would have been a bit much though.

Mincer with stuffer attachement

Ironically this picture shows synthetic skins despite the enormous effort we made to make skins from the pigs intestines because we forgot to wash the salt off ours. We are also a bit concerned whether they are a bit more pink than they are meant to be and we didn't want to poison ourselves. Pretty much everyone I have spoken to who has read the blog is ASTONISHED that we went to the effort and dicomfort of trying to make our own. Personally I am glad we gave it a go and we will know for next time...

This is the 4kg of meat with the rusk and seasoning all ready to start stuffing. I think we used slightly too much fat in the mixture so for the next lot we will try to make it just a tiny bit more meaty. Not sure though. Just a thought

And here are the finished sausages. When you see butchers linking them they do it at lightening speed. We were MUCH slower at it. It is not difficult to do but a bit fiddly, I expect after the 8,000th one you really get the hang of it though.

I was very excited that we had to make the effort to find the blender so we could make breadcrumbs for various of our pig recipes and for grinding some of the spices. Perhaps you know you need to get out more when finding a blender is SO exciting.

Before I left for the UK the pigs were safely processed and packed away in the freezer or salt. We have some more to do, such as getting the hams out of the salt and hanging them to dry (this will be in a few weeks). We have another back leg in the freezer awaiting inspiration, the heads need something doing with and we have a belly waiting in the freezer to be made in to streaky bacon plus a load of meat to make in to saussison/chorizo and many more sausages.