Rose Petal Champagne

We're making rose petal champagne for Christmas Day.

It's sitting fermenting in the coolest spot in the house in the main chimney space - what was the original kitchen fireplace. It maintains a nice 19C here year round just about. It's in sterilised plastic drink bottles so they don't explode and I periodically release some of the excess gas when the bottles feel really tight.

I'm sure Heather won't mind me sharing the recipe and I understand that it can be adapted for other ingredients like rhubarb or elderflower or what about pine needle and gorse flower....

Here is Heather's recipe and instructions....

Rose Petal Champagne

You will need: 

5-6 plastic fizzy cordial bottles and lids that are sterilised 

A funnel and a colander  

A very clean plastic bucket 1/3 full of rose flowers and 1 spare bucket 

3 ½ cups of white sugar 

1 whole lemon finely chopped 

125 ml of apple cider vinegar 

Put all the previous ingredients into the bucket and fill it with unchlorinated water and stir well. 

Cover with a finely woven cloth and put into a warm place (above 20C) for 48 hours. 

Scoop out the most of the flowers then place the colander over the spare bucket, line it with the cover cloth and strain the champagne through the cloth. 

Decant into the cordial bottles using the spout.  

Leave about a 3 cm gap at the top of the bottle. 

Store in a cool dark place for 7 days before drinking. 

Chill well before opening!! It has a tendency to shoot out of the bottle! (we keep a jug handy lol). 

The champagne will be very mildly alcoholic at 1 week but will gradually become more so as the sugar converts.

An Autumn Country Luncheon

I enjoyed a very special luncheon with "the girls" today. A belated house warming with my mum and a couple of her friends. They have been special amigos for many decades now since their nursing days and I feel very privileged to be included in their social calendar several times a year. 

It was lovely to be finally sufficiently unpacked enough to set a fine table.

They arrived with a bottle of Moet champagne and we toured the house and celebrated hard work and good country living.

Again, I failed you with photos!

For mains we had chicken pot pies and leafy salad.

The recipe is here

Mum is vegetarian, so instead, hers was caramelised mushroom and leek with a vermouth (Noilly Prat) and yellow mustard seed reduction. This was then enfolded into a white sauce and "pot pied"

I wanted the dessert to incorporate some of the last ruby rhubarb from the garden and I also fancied using sago; something nostalgic and oft overlooked. A quick google and I found this stunning recipe idea from Katrina Kanetani,

Instead of rosemary, I infused the panna cotta  with bay leaf. I took a short cut with the jelly and chose a packet of "strawberry and cream" from the cupboard. Several components that came together for a visual delight and interesting flavour combinations. The tart rhubarb, soft woody bay tones in the creamy panna cotta and the elderflower cordial infusing the sago, divine! I learnt a lot and it has given me some inspiration for trying some different combos with citrus and quince.

The Edible Perennial Beds

In just two short months we are already harvesting from the edible perennial beds. You could be too, it really doesn't take that much space and you could be eating fresh salad greens most of the year round.

Attractive landscaping can also be achieved using edible perennials and I have roughly mapped out a plan for the planting. I plan for the green beds to contain lots of lime coloured herbs and lettuces. Over towards the back I have transplanted my Tahitian lime tree to take advantage of the protected corner and the heat bank of brick paving. The red beds will contain, well, red themed plantings.

Red Beds

Bloody dock with it's spectacular veined leaves and a real favourite in our salads. Red rhubarb and red chard, strawberries, lettuce variety "trout back"and "red oak" and purple flowering oregano rosenkuppel.

Green Beds

Lettuce varieties "lollo bionde" and green oak, green stemmed rhubarb, chervil, salad burnett with it's fresh cucumber flavour, lovage for a celery flavour and parsley. My lime tree will be the piece de resistance but it will have to have a lot of seaweed foliar sprays over the summer to harden it for winters here in town. 

As the season progresses other herbs and leaf will probably come and go and the hollyhocks will provide height for the birdhouse that is situated in the middle. You could add an asparagus crown or two to your perennials. The advantage of growing the loose leaf lettuce varieties is that they can be picked and picked rather than the hearted varieties that reach maturity and then are gone.

So get cracking, you may not have room for a corn crop but you could be selecting gourmet salad in just a month or two and living like kings.

Footnote: The paths are made from convict bricks and the edges from salvaged stone, both come from the ruined cottage from the bottom of the paddock.

Hand Made Gifts for 2015

This year my gift bags contain Rhubarb and Vanilla infused Vodka that I made some months ago. Assorted cordials include, Wild Nettle, Rhubarb and Blackcurrant.

These are lovely with chilled sparkling water but can also be used as syrups for desserts. The blackcurrant is particularly good with hot water for a bedtime soother.

As for last year, I have used the chalkboard look labels and very sorry to say that I have sourced the last of these bottles. I love being able to keep everything uniform in the goodie bag.

I made some "Tranquillity" room sprays for a soft calming fragrance (sometimes Christmas gets a little tense don't you find). These atomisers are about 50ml. I filled 3/4 of the way with witch hazel and added 9 drops of my blend (lavender, bergamot, ylang ylang, geranium and chamomile) and then topped with distilled water.

Last month I made a series of soy wax candles and named their different fragrances for local areas that they inspired. 

I can make jam but I bow down before Miss Kate, a true artisan of preserves, and I am so excited to share some of these creations with loved ones and colleagues. As you can tell from the labels, she sources local produce and blends the most incredible flavours. But even beyond the flavours, she works with the textures of the fruit and the moisture contents that vary from season to season and even the weather on the day plays a part in her delicious science. 

Her label name is...

JustAddMoonshine

My all time favourite is Blue Raja and to be honest I even just eat it off the spoon!

Kate's creations were also in keeping with a natural and black colour theme so I kept carrying that through with stamped tags and plain brown bags and silky black cord.

A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

They are not created overnight and are the product of seasonal selection and preserving. 

Made with thought and love.

I have done several posts on cordial making and you can find them all by simply typing "cordial" into the search box on the right somewhere over there.

All Kate's contact info can be read easily from the labels in the pictures above. 

You can re-read last years' gift bag post here

So what have you made for gifts this year? I'm looking already for new ideas for next year... 

Dinner Party For Under $15

By late winter the garden has really slowed and most of the food out there is really what you would call "in cold storage". We are still eating like kings though and last night we had a long overdue dinner party with good friends pulling most of the ingredients from the garden.

Setting a glamorous table need not set you back a small fortune either. My silver cutlery is a crazy set of mis-matched patterns but is shines prettily on a second hand lace cloth. Piece by piece it can be bought for just a couple of dollars from second hand shops. Good white napery always looks elegant and these too I picked up at a second hand shop and a good soak in Napi-san works wonders.

So for starters, how about a good old crowd pleaser, Potato and Leek soup. Anybody can make this and it is cheap as chips and leeks are in the garden now. To serve drop small dots of single cream from a teaspoon and then run the spoon through it lightly to create swirls. This soup used two medium potatoes and a couple of leeks from the garden and home made vegetable stock so the cost was probably something ridiculous like .70 cents. Even if you bought your veg it would still only cost a couple of dollars.

For main course I made Chicken Pot Pies.

I gently simmered two chicken breasts in a pan of water with some celery tops, one small onion and the carrot ends from three carrots. I removed the chicken and discarded the celery tops and carrot ends and added the sliced carrot and cooked till they were softened but still bright and not falling apart. I strained the stock and kept aside in a jug and added the veg to the shredded chicken breast in the fridge.

Next I caramelised some thickly sliced mushrooms in butter then added about a quarter of a cup of vermouth and a heaped tablespoon of the seeded mustard that I had made at the fermentation class last month and simmered till all the liquid was gone.

The next step is to make a basic white sauce using the reduced stock from before for added flavour and then mixing in all the chicken, veg, mushrooms. You could use asparagus, corn, whatever, so many combinations. Spoon the mixture into individual pie dishes or like I do, use these versatile 1 cup ramekins. Leave about 1-2cm headspace. Find a bowl or saucer to trace around on a sheet of puff pastry so that it gives you a circle a couple of cm larger than your pie pot. Brush the top rim and and edge of your ramekin and place the puff pastry on top securing the overhang down the sides, the egg will "stick" it. Snip six small slits in the top.

These are baked for about 25-30mins in a mod-hot oven and when cooked they will be golden and you'll see a bit of the sauce bubbling at the slitted vents. I can't give you an exact costing but definitely under $12.

Simply serve your pot pie on a dinner plate with a salad accompaniment. 

Our salad was purely foraged from the backyard and I have Lee from Killiecrankie Farm Nursery to thank for it. She has taught me so much about perennial edibles. The salad comprises of leaf from Perpetual Spinach, the gorgeously veined Bloody Dock, young Asian green leaf, celery flavoured  lovage leaf , tiny cucumbery tasting Salad Burnett, tiny micro leaves from the mint just starting to make a comeback because of a lovely sunny week here. I've sliced half a pear thinly and added tangy sweet Cape Gooseberries and then strewn it with Calendula petals.

Cost - next to nothing. It's amazing what you can find in a garden in the hungry gap. The Cape Gooseberries are frost tender but they have been cleverly planted in a sheltered corner near the house brickwork and the close boughs of the lemon tree also afford some protection. They make a welcome addition at this time of year when other fruits seem so far away in next season.

And now for dessert!

Junket infused with Bay Leaf and topped with Baked Rhubarb.

Our rhubarb is on the return again and I was able to pick about five lovely stalks. Wash and trim into 2cm pieces and place in a small baking dish with about 1/4 cup of sugar. Cover with foil and bake at 160C for about 20 mins. Cool and set aside for serving. 

To make the junket, I placed two fresh bay leaves (everyone should have one in a pot) into a saucepan with 1 1/2 cups of milk and a tabs of sugar and gently heated it, stirring to dissolve the sugar and removing it from the heat just before boiling. Discard the bay leaves and allow to cool. Add 1/2 cup of cream and re-heat to lukewarm and add your crushed junket tablet or junket powder mixed in a tabs of cold milk. Stir through and pour into bowls and leave to set for about 20 mins before putting them into the fridge to chill.

Junket takes me right back to childhood though the bay leaf infusion lends a sophistication to this simple dessert, and stewed rhubarb is also an old fashioned memory so for a bit of whimsy I set the junket into Bunnykins porringers. The bottom of the plate patterns are all different and as in childhood, everyone had to eat to the bottom of the plate to see what pattern they got.

These were the spoons we had in childhood too and I thought they were just right for a bunny bowl dessert!

Total cost about $1.50

So a three course dinner for four people cost us under $15 leaving plenty in the budget for a nice bottle of wine. The recipes were easy and made use of seasonal produce and could be done ahead of time allowing me to simply serve and garnish. Oh I also forgot, I made dinner rolls too from a basic bread dough and they simply went into the oven 20 mins before we sat down to soup so they were nice and hot and crusty.

Dining out sometimes is lovely but you can save yourself squillions and you can play whatever music you like when you entertain at home. Go on, revive the dinner party.

Rhubarb and Vanilla Vodka

I've started my Christmas gifts already.

Seems a little early I know but I had a last harvest of ruby red rhubarb a couple of months ago and took the opportunity to create something for the store cupboard.

We talk a lot about preserving on this blog; bottling, pickling, dehydrating...

well another method is to use alcohol. 

In this instance I've extracted the rhubarb and vanilla into vodka.

After washing 600g of rhubarb cut it into 2cm lengths and place into a stainless steel pan with 250g sugar and a split and scraped vanilla pod. Stir over a low heat to dissolve the sugar and then cook to soften which only takes a few minutes. Remove from the heat and cool.

Place the cooled mixture into a 2 litre sterilised jar and pour over a bottle of vodka (700-750ml) and stir and seal. Shake occasionally.

This is the mixture when it is first put up. Unfortunately I accidentally deleted the progress photos that showed the vodka developing a deeper colour and the rhubarb swelling and jammy.

After a couple of months it should have developed a lovely pink colour and it can be strained and decanted into sterilised bottles for sealing.

The vodka has now taken on the flavours and sweetness and can be drunk neat as a type of liquor or mixed with lemonade or soda over ice or even a dash in champagne and I bet there are other cocktail recipes to be imagined too.

Mine made four small bottles of which I will label and put aside for giving at Christmas. 

The same can be done with many different fruits, you've probably already heard of sloe gin which is gin infused with sloe berries. Lee uses damson plums also in a similar way. 

Shake the pinky gorgeousness to distribute the settled vanilla seeds before enjoying.

One final tip, because of the high oxalic acid in the rhubarb, strain through stainless steel strainers or cloth as it will react with plain metal like wire mesh strainers. Naturally also the pink varieties of rhubarb are what is needed for the beautiful colour.

This takes very little effort and creates a stunning gift. 

Apple and Raspberry with Salty Cashew & Macadamia Caramel Crumble - Trad and Thermomix Versions

This was a bit of a hit last night both with the recipients and some on facebook asked for a recipe.

It is not a real recipe as such but more of a twist on a traditional apple crumble.

I am still picking Granny Smiths from the tree in the back yard and I think they are the best cooked texture for a crumble. I used raspberries from the freezer but I could just as easily used blueberries. If you are still using rhubarb from the garden, great, that will go well too.

pre-heat oven to 180C

For the crumble

5 Tabs butter

2 Tabs plain flour

5 Tabs brown sugar

1 Tabs oats optional

1 cup of salted cashew and macadamias (or use walnuts, almonds etc they all work great)

Rub the butter into the flour with fingertips till it is combined. It will be a bit more buttery that a traditional crumble mix. Add the sugar and oats chopped nuts. You should have a coarse crumby mix.

OR

Process in your food processor being careful not to over-combine.

Thermomix method - place 100g butter chopped and 50g flour and 100g brown sugar 20g oats (optional) and 150g nuts

Process on speed 4 for 4secs. Check mix and process another 2 secs if needed for coarse crumbly topping. Set aside.

For the base

6 large Granny Smith apples peeled and cored and cut into chunks

juice of one lemon

1 cup of raspberries (or blueberries or rhubarb cut into chunks)

Place the apples in a saucepan with about 80ml of water and lemon juice and cook gently till slightly softened but not collapsing or mushy. (Cook the rhubarb too if you are using it and you may want to add some sugar to taste but don't get too carried away - you want to be able to taste the rhubarb)

Thermomix method - Place apple in the thermomix with 80g of water and lemon juice

7-10min, Reverse, speed 1

In a buttered casserole/baking/pie dish

place the apple and berries

top with the crumble

Bake for about 20mins or till bubbling and slightly golden brown on top.

The butter and brown sugar cook and combine to create a caramel like flavour so you really cannot substitute and still get the same flavour. The fruit will have softened further, if you really like to bite into pieces do not pre-soften your fruit, simply place the chunks with a drizzle of juice and water straight into the baking dish. 

This should serve about 6 people or 4 if your helpings are large.

I serve with the Thermomix egg custard in the everyday cookbook but I use less flour so it's not so thick.

Ice-cream and cream are also winners.

As with any of these things and Murphy's Law, if you notice a mistake let me know so I can edit it. 

Coughs and Colds - Elderberry Tincture

The second subject we talked about at the Better Living meet-up was how to alleviate some of the common ills of winter, the primary one being the common cold.

There is much growing in our own backyards that we can harvest for simple remedies and unlike the commercial preparations in stores, natural remedies will work with your body to remedy the illness rather than keep masking the symptoms leaving the body to battle on trying to eliminate the germs.

Naturally there is a caution and warning.....

Just because something is natural doesn't mean that you can be careless with an ingredient or heedless of it's effects. The following is meant as general information and you should always research thoroughly and consult a medical practitioner such as a naturopath or herbal pharmacist. 

Two books that I have found invaluable over many, many years are

"Health Through God's Pharmacy" by Maria Treben

and 

"The Natural Health Book" by Dorothy Hall

I have already posted previously here about the Common Cold recipe by Dorothy Hall here

and I urge you to read that post for a simple practical hot toddy that helps the body eliminate its ills. It has a base of lemon, so cleansing and astringent and readily available in winter, like nature knows what to provide each season.

The tincture in the first photo is from these elderberries I picked and made back in early autumn in anticipation of winter colds. Unlike the delicious rosehip syrup with it's big hit of vitamin C, the tincture is made with an alcohol base and no sugar, so it really is more like a "medicine" as my tasters found at the meet-up. 

Elderberries are quite a super berry. Loaded with Vitamin C &A they are also thought to be anti-viral,  anti-bacterial and anti-inflammatory. All very helpful qualities during the onslaught of a cold. Removing the berries from the stems requires patience and I like to do it with bowls on my lap in front of TV or listening to music. The stems, bark and leaves can have a purgative effect and if ingested brings on vomiting and diarrhoea. Likewise their seeds in large quantities so that is why they are heated and the pulp extracted.

Once you have the berries place them in a saucepan on low heat with a scant amount of water, cover and stir  and mash releasing the juices (much the same process as in the rhubarb cordial recipe) The recipe I use from Tina Sams also has ground ginger root and ground cloves. There are many recipes available on the net but I highly recommend this story here on 

The Essential Herbal Blog

and I have been very happy with my purchase of the e-book "An Elder Gathering" from the same site.

Once you have extracted the juice, allow to cool slightly and then place into a wide mouthed jar and cover the berries with alcohol (I see nothing wrong with gin) and tighten a lid on and shake gently to combine. Place it in a dark cupboard and strain into bottles after two weeks and label. 

The recommended dosage I use is 30ml adults every 3hrs and 15ml for children every 3 hours when needed.

We talked about thyme, nettles, rosehips and ginger....but that is another post. 

Rhubarb Cordial

Not what you were expecting probably but that is because my rhubarb is green, green, green.

Nothing wrong with that but the richly red varieties seem to be the rage and they do produce pretty pink hues.

Gather your rhubarb stalks and discard the leaves. These are toxic but all is not wasted, you can make a pest spray from them and it is at this time of year that the sap suckers and leaf hoppers and white fly are increasing their numbers.

Wash your stalks and chop them up and into a pot.

The smell is heady and fresh like summer grass with the dew evaporating in a hot morning sun.

This recipe is for about 3kg of rhubarb but you can adjust the quantities quite easily to suit your harvest.

Also into the pot with the rhubarb place 150ml of water. Tis a scant amount but you are wanting the juices from the rhubarb and you will extract these gently by placing on the lowest heat and allowing the mass to soften and collapse. I did cover my pot with a lid slightly ajar as I didn't want any of the liquids to evaporate.

Slowly it cooks and collapses and the lovely apple green colour has changed to a tinned asparagus colour!

Take your muslin square and dredge it in boiling water....

Oh dear! I use a cloth for draining cheese curds and such at least 3-4 times a year but I can never find it when I need it. Again I make a mental note that I need to find a more logical place to store it.

So from the fabric stash I take a scrap of the most divine fine cotton and sterilize.

I placed the divine fabric over a bowl and secured with a rubber band and some string, allowing a very slight hollow to take the pulp. Pour the pulp and juice in and cover it with the trailing ends to prevent any contaminants (flies) and allow to sit for several hours or overnight dripping it's way through to the bowl beneath.

For every 1litre of liquid add 700g of sugar and 75ml of lemon juice in a saucepan dissolving the sugar and bringing it up to about 70C. 

Sterilize you bottles (15min in the oven at 100C) and using a funnel, pour the hot liquid into the hot bottles.

So by the time you have run out of Elder Flower cordial, you will be able to continue the season with Rhubarb cordial. It is luscious and refreshing when mixed with a soda water. 

I found this recipe here.