cooking – Ruby&Ruch

The controversial Vin de Noix

28th Sep 2018

We bottled our Vin de Noix today. Vin de Noix is literally ‘Walnut Wine’.

It’s controversial because we haven’t made it in the locally approved way – which is to use the young leaves of the walnut tree and Eau de Vie along with various other ‘take it with you to your grave Grand-mère’s recipe’ ingredients. When I happily announced to some locals earlier in the summer that I had started my Vin de Noix off, I was briefly interrogated as to my ‘recette’ and summarily dismissed. So anyway this is how I made it – out of a book not from my Grand-mère.

I got the recipe from Wild Food by Roger Phillips which is a source of endless intriguing things to make although to be frank last year’s Red Clover Wine was filthy stuff. Anyway I have high hopes of the Vin de Noix.

Basically you get 30 young walnuts (still green) and quarter them, put them in a big kilner jar with 5 bottles of red wine, 1 bottle of vodka, 675g of sugar, the zest of an orange, a vanilla pod and 5 cloves. Stir it all round and leave it in a cool dark place. You will get the young walnuts late June to early July so that is when you make it, so leave it until the end of September.

At the end of September, bottle it and leave it again until Christmas when it makes a lovely aperitif. If you taste it in September which we just did you might decide it needs a bit more sugar.

We got 10 small bottles. We will probably victimise our friends and relatives.and give some away.

Crab Apple Jelly

17th Sep 2018

First pick your crab apples. We have three trees all quite new – a Golden Hornet which was covered in small hard yellow apples, a Jelly King which had quite a few fruit – looking like extra small yellow and pink apples, and a Red Sentinel which has in between sized orange-y fruit.

Then spend the next three years of your life destalking them – I got a blister but in hindsight I think a pair of scissors might have been the thing.

Put ’em all in a pan and add enough water to make them float and simmer them until they turn into a mush. I found the Jelly King mush-ed up quite quickly but the Golden Hornets took a couple of hours. Keep adding water so it doesn’t stick. You want the final thing to be mush-y not water-y. Kind of a wet porridge.

Now then, necessity is the mother of invention and all that. So rig yourself up something to strain the mush through overnight. We used a bag that is supposed to be for pressing apples rigged up on a washing dryer.

In the past I have used a pillowcase, an old t-shirt and on one notable occasion actually some muslin (which is what you are supposed to do it with). The finer the cloth, the clearer the liquid that will come out of it and therefore the more sparkly and clear the final jelly. But you get a lot less liquid through with a finer cloth. So it’s a trade off between aesthetics and volume in which generally in my life volume always wins.

Leave it for about 24 hours to drip drip drip into your receptacle.

Rescue the liquid, and add some sugar. The amount of sugar depends on the amount of liquid but more or less the same weight. I used jam sugar but there’s a lot of pectin in crab apples so you probably don’t need it and ordinary sugar perhaps with the juice of a lemon would be fine. I had a litre of liquid and used about 750g of sugar.

Boil it up until it reaches a good ‘rolling boil’ and test it will set by dabbing a bit on a saucer and waiting to see if it stays liquid or not.

Sterilised jars – I got three and a bit over.

Lovely stuff with cold meats, pork, in sauces or just on toast or crumpets.

Peach and Raspberry Jam

28th Aug 2018

Quick recipe. Made a second batch of this today. Reminds me of

I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.

I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

TS Eliot.

Get about a kilo of very ripe peaches. Plunge them into boiling water for about a couple of minutes and then into cold. The skin should just rub off. Try not to think about eyeballs.

Chop into pieces and put in a pan. Add the best part of a kilo of jam sugar. And as many raspberries as you can pick but somewhere between 500g and 700g if poss.

Boil it up and let it boil furiously but not so furiously that it boils over and you spend the next week cleaning burnt sugar off your aga.

Put into sterilised jam jars.

Absolutely yummy.

Harvest

21st Aug 2018

We need to never forget that as ye sow, so shall ye reap. Growing the stuff is easy-ish Processing and preserving it is frankly a pain

John’s birthday dinner

16th Mar 2017

John’s birthday today, 54 (toy boy) so made him one of his favourites.

Here’s the recipe method;

Catalan (ish) chicken

Chop 3 onions and mince/crush 3 cloves of garlic, then gently fry it all together with a bit of olive oil

Then add some nice spicy chorizo, and fry it all together on a medium heat for a few minutes before adding chunks of uncooked chicken breast or thigh and nice big chunks of green pepper

Then once the chicken is browned add a cup full of rice and some chopped tomatoes – tinned or fresh, but the equivalent of two tins as the juice gets absorbed by the rice, and a (drained) jar of destoned olives, black or green
Put the lid on and leave to cook for 15 minutes, add a pinch of chilli and a level teaspoon of black pepper. Taste for salt – it probably won’t need any more.
In the meantime peel and segment some oranges and put the bits in the fridge. My least favourite job but gotta be done

Do you like the blue nail varnish.?

Finished product;

The cool sweet oranges offset the spicy rice mix. Yummy

Making chicken soup

10th Dec 2016

Thought I would share some recipes on here and as I am making chicken soup for our lunch here is the first one.

Ingredients

Home made chicken stock (just a chicken carcass simmered with onions carrots celery and a split chili for 2/3 hours) let it cool and scrape the fat off the top. This is also the biz for using in a risotto recipe for which I will do another time. Never throw a chicken carcasses away – if I can’t make immediate use of mine I just bung it in the freezer til I am ready.

Bits of chicken (stripped from the aforementioned carcass)

Vegetables (at least onions carrots and celery, the holy trinity of stocks, but anything else you have to hand, I used a green pepper and some tomatoes in this one.

I like a chili and ginger hit in my soup so those too. I use a jar of ready grated ginger but if you are virtuous you can peel and grate some fresh.

A handful of rice if you want to. Or pearl barley which is what I am using today.

Here we are

Method

Chop very finely the carrot onion celery and any other veg that need ‘frying’ – I have put a green pepper and garlic in this for example but I am saving the tomatoes for later.

Gently fry the mix until it goes soft but try not to let it go brown.

When it is getting soft add a couple of spoon of ginger and a chili. Depending on how hot your chili is you can either chop it up seeds and all ( say a jalapeño) but these little blighters we’ve grown are HOT so one of these split will do.

Kiss someone you love – ok not cooking but still a good idea

Remove your puppy from the vicinity of the chicken. Likewise.

Ok so now add tomatoes if you are using them – let them soften and give up their juices. If I was doing this for posh I’d peel them first but hey life’s too short. Put the lid on the pot as the steam will help. Leave them for about 15 minutes then mush them up a bit.

Now add your lovely gloopy gelatinous chicken stock (fat scraped off the top) bring to a slow simmer.

Add your rice and 5 minutes before the rice is cooked season the whole thing with about a half a teaspoon each of salt and freshly ground black pepper. Taste it to check. Add the chicken bits. Wait 5 mins.

Serve to your adoring loved ones or scoff the lot yourself.

It freezes well.