Skip to main content

Raisins

A quick update as nothing has been put up for about ten days:

We started using some raisins I made from grapes in the summer, which were grown in Finsbury Park.

Its a real treat and they have been used in Rob's ever-improving delicious bread. The secret seems to be to have a very gooey sticky dough. I thought it was meant to be quite dry but my loaves come out rather rock-like.

Its easy to dry grapes if you have an Aga! I was ill and staying with parents who have one so as I got better I would lay out loads of grapes on a baking tray and put them on top of the aga. Then when they looked like raisins I put them in a bag and that was about six months ago and they are in perfect condition.

They do have pips in - in my weakened condition i really couldnt face trying to remove them. But they dont really caus e aproblem either for taste or texture. They are very small and make the raisins crunchy. Actually they are very delicious added to foods. We dont get much acid flavours - so its very welcome.

Also this week we discovered a great local grocer near Richmond bridge, and a real ale shop near there too. And had a very quick look at Petersham nurseries which appparently grow food and sell it in the cafe, which is totally magically gorgeous.

x

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Squirrel Nut Stew

Spent a weekend in the woods and collected a few mushies plus some fresh squirrel! I've also had a bumper crop of sweet chestnuts and walnuts from trees down the road. So i had a superb stew made largely from wild local food, apart from the flour (Waitrose farm in Hampshire), thyme (Dennis' allottment), salt (Maldon's, Essex), oil (olive but local rapeseed would be perfectly good substitute. I just happen to have a five gallon bottle of olive oil that was given so am making good use of it!) and carrots (Abel & Cole). Here is my recipe for squirrel stew, incorporating Tristram's suggestions about the first stage for the meat: Preparation stage: 1 squirrel, skiined and prepared ( see Flickr for details of how to do this) A few ounces of flour with salt and thyme mixed in Oil For the stew 1 or more penny buns (cep mushroom) A few spiny puffballs Handful of Amethyst Deceivers Handful of sweet chestnuts , peeled Handful of walnuts Water 6 medium size Chopped carrots Sp

Amethyst Deceiver!

The little purple one was the edible and rather delicious Amethyst Deceiver . The River Cottage handbook claims that they are generic, "filler" mushrooms. I don't agree. They are a bit tough and chewy but that was a good thing. I spent ages poring over these little lilac beauties thinking they might be Lilac Fibrecaps, in which case a very nasty dose of pretty much everything was in store. They are called Deceivers because they have a near relative that is edible but takes on a thousand forms, making it very tricky to recognise. Happily the story ends well with me having a nice purple treat and a full tummy. The one in the background was Charcoal buirner ( Russula cyanoxantha ) or simliar, but it turned out to be full of little mushroom grubs. All the other mushies we brought home were poisonous - or couldn't be identified but were similar to known poisonous ones.

Spot the Bugs

Sometimes bugs are spotted: I liked these ones.