Sloe Gin and Garlic!

Yesterday I managed to obtain a big bag full of sloes! A wonderful friend found a plentiful supply at a secret location 'somewhere in England' and went out to pick some for me. I put them in the deep freeze overnight to help bring out the sugar content. Armed with a plentiful supply of cheap, duty free gin I set to work this afternoon making 4 bottles of sloe gin. This will not be ready for tasting until about Christmas, and will be properly ready in about 6 months to a years' time. Well worth the wait! It has a wonderful but more grown up taste of cherry brandy.

Perfect timing down on the patch yesterday, I managed to dampen and break up enough of my dry, hard soil to plant my collection of Isle of Wight garlic. We have had no rain for weeks and the soil is difficult to work at the moment.

Today however, we had the first rain in ages! perfect timing.

I'll keep a close eye on them over Winter and look forward to a harvest next year. Fingers crossed for this time, I do not have a good track record with garlic!

Blighty Potatoes

It's not all bad news by any means! I have a lovely clump of garlic chives which is flowering and setting seed right now. Garlic chives are a flatter version of regular onion chives, they are lovely in a salad or a potato salad.

A few weeks ago I chopped the tops off all my Sarpo Axona potatoes as there were the first signs of blight. I have left the whole row in the ground and it has been completely dry here for the last few weeks, I thought I would lift them. Only a couple of potatoes had been blighted. Here you can see the inside of the potato has gone creamy yellow and very soft. The smell is horrible, a sort of rotting drains smell!

Happily, all the other potatoes appear fine. I dried them thoroughly in the sunshine for a couple of hours and put them in paper sacks in the dark garage. I will check them every couple of weeks but I'm sure they will be fine. These Sarpo Axona potatoes are 'blight resistant' so I can only imagine that another variety would have been blighted much more.

Finally, I dug up a bit of a horseradish root this week. We have had no rain here for quite a few weeks and it has been warm and sunny. The ground was like concrete and I was only able to dig down about a foot. Nevertheless, this will make lovely hot, hot sauce!

Thank heavens for blenders and food processors nowadays. Can you imagine using a hand grater to make horseradish sauce! Please don't even think about trying that!

Making Piccalilli

This has to be one of my regular Summer and Autumn pickle rituals! I had a bit of a brainwave as I was chopping the vegetables this week. I went for a walk in the garden and found these hot, mustard tasting nasturtium seeds! It seemed like a match made in heaven, they were just the right size too! Soak the chopped veggies in brine overnight, then rinse and dry them. Simmer them for 20 minutes in white vinegar which has been spiced with sugar, dry ginger and mustard powder. Lift the veggies out of the vinegar and pack them into jars.

Thicken the boiling vinegar with a paste made from flour and turmeric. Bring to the boil for about 2 minutes till it thickens. Pour the yellow vinegar paste over the veggies in the jar. Did you know that turmeric is extremely useful in the kitchen as an antiseptic powder which stops bleeding if you cut your finger? It is also rumoured to prevent brain deterioration in old age!

It is ready to eat straight away, well when it cools down anyway. It keeps for ages, but will be just the thing with cold meats. My favourite way to eat picalilli is with my Mum's home made Scotch Eggs! Mum makes the best Scotch Eggs in the world!