It’s great to see the field margins and roadsides crowded with flowers at this time of year, isn’t it? I couldn’t resist, and picked a small posy from our paddock – red clover, buttercups and grasses. It looks a treat on my window sill.
Go and pick one of your own – it’s a little bit of summer, for you to enjoy indoors! Beautiful, and best of all, completely free!
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Regular readers of the blog will know that I love to advocate using great quality bargain cuts of meat, even if that means a little bit of extra preparation. Using the less fashionable cuts means getting to enjoy great, outdoor reared, higher welfare meat without having to shell out the premium price tag – and these cuts also reward the creative cook by being, very often, some of the most interesting to eat!
I often have a couple of bags of pork ribs in the freezer, as offcuts from the pork belly I make my streaky bacon from. From that point of view, these ribs are basically free. Last time we had some friends over and I wanted a few extra, my butcher sold me a 6 -7 inch chunk for 50p. If you’re buying them as ‘ribs’ in packs from the supermarket, rather than as offcuts, you’ll pay more, of course. Yet another reason to cultivate your friendly local butcher, and develop a few basic butchery skills yourself.
This is how I expect your ribs will arrive – as a roughly square or rectangular piece with more or less loose tissue (from the diaphrgagm) attached to the inner (concave) side. There should not be very much meat on the outer (convex) side, as the belly meat should have been cut away.
If the belly is still there, you can either remove it and prepare it seperately – as bacon, or as a roast pork belly – or you can leave it attached and make really thick juicy ‘streaky ribs’. Beware, though, as these will be very fatty and consequently encourage your BBQ to flare up when cooked over coals. Pork belly is so wonderful, there are better ways to prepare it, in my opinion!
You need to divide up your rib portion into separate ribs, and this couldn’t be simpler. Looking at this inner side, feel where the ribs are with your finger tips, and identify the gap between them. Using a nice, sharp, long knife, place the blade midway between the ribs and cut parallel to them. 
There’s some cartilage attachment up at the ‘knuckle’ end of the ribs, but any plausibly sharp blade should slide straight through this (bonus hint – keep your kitchen knives *really* sharp – a sharp knife is a safe knife!).
Carry on until all your ribs are divided up. Now find a nice big dish large enough to contain them all reasonably snugly. Squeeze over the juice of half a lime, and a big glug of olive oil. Then sprinkle generously with your home-made dry jerk seasoning mix and rub in all over. Turn the ribs over and apply some more mix to the other side.
Once you’ve finished applying your rub, wash your hands carefully or they’ll end up stained an attractive nicotine-yellow from the turmeric. Cover the ribs and set aside in the fridge for at least an hour – if you’re able – before cooking.
Once your BBQ charcoal is smouldering gently, without any flame, put your ribs on the grill and cook until done. If I’m cooking for a large party, I like to start these ribs in the oven and then just finish them on the BBQ for that lovely open fire flavour without the extended cooking time. You’ll still get a great result. Then, sit back, and enjoy your tasty, juicy, spicy, bargain ribs with a nice cold drink!
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Summer is finally here – what could be nicer on a sunny afternoon than a lovely long drink over ice, with a slice or two of lemon or lime? And how often does half a citrus fruit end up mouldering in the door of the fridge until it’s completely useless and inedible? Even worse perhaps, how frustrating is it when there’s no edible lime in the fruit bowl just when you really really fancy that G&T?
Here’s my top tip to save waste and avoid citrus fruit frustration this summer – freeze them!
When you’ve sliced what you want, keep going, and finish slicing the whole fruit. Pack them in a bag (I like using ziplock sandwich bags, if I have them, because I can re-use them time and time again). I lay them in the bag in twos, if I can, since that’s how I tend to use them in drinks. Put them in the top of the freezer with the ice-cube trays, job done! Couldn’t be much simpler, could it, really?
Here are a couple of bags of frozen lemon and orange segments I pulled out of my freezer just now. I freeze all sorts of pieces – half lemons can be defrosted in the microwave (a few 10s blasts should do the trick) and used in cooking and baking (microwaving fresh citrus fruits briefly before juicing is also a useful tip and greatly increases the juice extraction!). The slices go in drinks, of course (or into the cavity of whole fish before baking!) and the segments are multi purpose – great in a long drink or squeezed over whatever you like.
No need to defrost before using, if it’s a long cold one you’re after. Just toss the slice or segment into your glass with the ice, and pour over your drink of choice. The citrus flavour will take a little longer to diffuse into your drink than a fresh slice, but it will all happen as the lemon thaws – which is almost instantaneous for a slice, slightly longer for a segment perhaps but patience is a virtue! Sit back, and enjoy – and never waste a lime, or go without your wedge of lemon again!
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The quick and simple Christmas Bunting was only ever a dry-run for the big task – I’d promised my sister bunting to decorate the village hall for her wedding reception. Time is ticking on, so I’ve been getting on over the last few weeks.
My plan was eventually to make 6 strings of 10m length each, in pursuit of which I’ve begged, borrowed and not *exactly* stolen all manner of fabric scraps, old clothes and bits and pieces. I also bought a 72 yard bolt of yellow double-fold bias tape from the US via the marvel that is ebay. This time I’ve chosen a bigger pennant, 8″ long by 6″ across. I’ve also tightened the spacing so there is 6″ between flags.
It’s a great selection of colours and patterns, garnered from friends, family, work colleagues, the back of my wardrobe, and freecycle. The fabrics come from three sets of curtains, three blouses, a pair of jeans and a pair of cords, one pair of jim-jams, two offcuts of woollen suit fabric, some polyester scarf material, and one tea towel.
A bit of back-of-envelope calculation and I worked out I needed 29 flags per string. I drew a new template on cardboard from a packing box. Words cannot express what a slow boring job cutting out 180 triangles is, but with perseverance, and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the telly evening after evening, we got there in the end.
After ironing and sorting into piles, time to assemble the bunting. Bias tape has quite a lot of ‘give’ in it, so peel a load off the roll and give it all a good stretch, this will also help it lie flat. I measured 10m lengths and then found the middle of each. Then starting in the middle, pin the pennants one at a time into the fold of the bias tape, measuring the gap between them approximately. After that, it’s just a matter of running the whole length through your sewing machine using appropriate complimentary – or if you like, contrasting – thread. Try to avoid skewering your fingers on the pins too often.
There it is – I hope she likes it! Only four more strings to assemble before it’s all done!
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Everyone loves a candle, they cast a lovely warm flickery light, and, chosen carefully, can fill a room with beautiful scent (sure, sometimes they can fill a room with the scent of cheap pot-pourri, but this is a matter of taste!). After Christmas, we had several left over candle ends around the house, and rather than throw them out, I wanted to do something creative and recycle them. But while there are lots of great candle-making kits out there, I didn’t really want to spend any money on the process. So this is a candle-making project that, with the exception of some wick and a wick sustainer, you can do entirely with things that you already have around your home and kitchen.
For this project, you will need –
Gather up your equipment, starting with the knife and the pringles tin. Cut the Pringles tin down to about 4″ high using your knife, and make a couple of ‘notches’ in the top on opposite sides of the top.
You’ll need to get an estimate of the capacity of your candle mould, so put a sandwich bag inside the Pringles tin, put it on the scales to zero, and then fill the bag with water to about a 1/2″ below the top. The weight in grams of water is a good estimate of the volume in mls, as wax is slightly less dense than water (it floats on water, after all), you can reduce this estimate by about 10% to get the weight in wax required to fill the mould to this level. I came up with 300g and used around 270g as a target weight of wax.
Now, cut up your coloured candle. Try to cut it into even cubes a bit bigger than half an inch cubed, but it’s likely you’ll struggle, and if the pieces are a bit rough, don’t worry. From what you’ve chopped up, sort to one side and weigh all the sensible chunks, leaving the dust and small fragments aside (wrap these up for another project). Weigh your coloured chunks (mine weighed about 140g) and put them in the mould to check how high up they come. Ideally this will be about the target ‘fill’ level. Now roughly chunk up your white wax candle. It doesn’t matter what size and shape these pieces end up, but the smaller they are the faster they’ll melt. When working with old candles, try to avoid including the ‘melt pool’ from the candle as this will be dirty wax and may well include bits of old burnt wick and suchlike, which you don’t want in your shiny new candle.
A word about wicks, before we go on – the size and construction of wick you need depends on the chemistry of the candle-wax and the width of the melt pool you want in your candle (which is closely related to the diameter of your candle, usually). When working with recycled waxes, the chemistry involves a fair bit of guesswork. I assumed the waxes were a basic paraffin pillar blend, since this is the most usual situation for commercial candles manufactured to a price point. There’s a useful wick size guide here. (See my suppliers list and library for more reading.) I used an LX16 wick which should have been a good match for the ~70mm diameter Pringles mould. Secure the end of the wick into the wick sustainer using pliers.
Now, start melting your wax. Put the white wax into the large tin, and put the tin inside your saucepan on the trivet. Fill the saucepan with water so that it comes up the side of the tin about an inch and a half. Use the thermometer, if you have one, in the water. You don’t want this to boil, but ideally it should stay around 75 degrees centigrade, which should be enough to melt the wax without risk of overheating. The flash-point of wax is quite close to the melting point, and at the flash point the wax is at risk of catching fire, particularly if you have a naked flame in the vicinity (for instance, if you’re using a gas hob), so be careful and heat the wax very gently.
Once the wax is melted, you need to prime the wick, which just means dipping the wick into the wax so that it can be absorbed onto the surface of the cotton. Also dip the sustainer in the wax, and use this to secure the sustainer to the centre of the bottom of the Pringles tin. Stretch the wick up vertically and wrap it around the wick pin to keep it centred in the mould.
Now, arrange the chunks of coloured wax in the mould around the wick, trying to make sure you don’t close off any pockets which would prevent the melted wax filling all the gaps. When you’re happy, pour about 90% of the melted wax into the mould, pouring through the tea strainer if you see any ‘bits’ in it. Keep the remaining 10% over a low heat to keep it liquid, and continue to keep a close eye on it.
The wax will shrink as it cools and this will form a dip or a ‘well’ near the wick, which will affect the candle as it burns. Encourage the candle to cool by putting the mould inside a plastic bag and immersing it into a bowl of water. You will need to weigh it down to keep it immersed, I used a marble pestle, but anything heavy will do. This is of course quite faffy, and if it’s a nice cold day, you’d probably do as well to put the mould outside for half an hour or so.
As the wax sets and you start to see a well forming near the wick, make a couple of holes in this area with a skewer. Once the surface of the wax is springy but not hard to the touch, pour over the rest of the wax tapping the mould to make sure it goes into the holes you’ve made near the wick. Now set the mould somewhere nice and cold to set – in the fridge if it’s a warm day, or outside if it’s January in the UK.
After a couple of hours the wax will have set hard. I was expecting to have to sacrifice the Pringles can at the end of the moulding, but the wax had shrunk back nicely from the sides, and I was able to ease the candle out without having to destroy the mould – however your results may vary and I wouldn’t lose to much sleep about it if you have to break the mould away from the candle. Trim the wick so that about 1cm is proud from the surface of the wax.
I’m thrilled with the results, which I think are very pretty for a first effort. The white wax is a little bit ‘dirty’ which I probably could have concealed by using a little bit of ivory or honey-coloured candle dye. I poured the bulk of the white wax in two ‘goes’ and you can see the line between them, which is something I’d avoid in future.
My only real criticism of the finished candle would be that I chose too small a wick – the melt pool the candle produces is quite a bit narrower than the body of the candle, and stops short of the sides by about half an inch all the way around. I suspect this is to do with the chemistry of the original white candle, which we stopped burning for a very similar reason – lesson learned! If I re-make this candle with the remains of the white wax from this batch I’ll use an LX20 wick which may give a better result. The melt pool is very pretty though, a lovely dark pink colour from the mixed waxes and gives a gentle berry aroma. For the cost of a new piece of wick, and a little bit of kitchen chemistry, it’s a beautiful, and extremely thrifty, scented candle.
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A whole roast chicken is a wonderful treat – more on that later – but it’s not the sort of meal most people want to wait for on a week night after work.
We eat a huge amount of chicken in the UK, and a lot of that is bought pre-portionned and packed from the supermarket, it’s certainly convenient and the portion sizes are more practical. We’re in love with breast meat in this country, to the extent that the UK is a net importer of white chicken meat – mostly from Thailand and other East-Asian countries – and an exporter of leg meat. When you think about it, that’s pretty bizzare, not great for the environment (think of the fuel involved in sending the ‘wrong’ chicken backwards and forwards half way around the world!), and leaves us eating lower health and welfare-standard poultry meat than would have been produced in the UK.
It’s really easy to portion up a whole chicken, and learning this basic butchery skill will save you money. Even if you just buy a ‘bog-standard’ roasting bird from the supermarket, you get more for your money buying a whole bird and cutting it up yourself, and the savings are even better if you’re buying free range or organic chicken. And with a bit of kitchen creativity, one whole chicken can provide three or four meals for two people, as well as a lovely batch of chicken stock – bargain!
First, un-wrap your whole chicken and remove any trussing string / elastic holding the legs together. Pat it dry with kitchen towel as this will help with handling it while you’re cutting it up. You will need a very sharp knife with a long but reasonably slender blade. Feel down the centre of the bird, and you should feel a bone running the full length – this is the ‘keel bone’. Starting on this line, cut downwards parallel to the bone along the full length until your knife stops.
You can now pull the top of the breast away from the keel bone to get a better look at what’s going on. The bone beneath the knife is the ribcage, so continue carefully cutting the breast meat away from this. If you work carefully you’ll leave surprisingly little meat behind on the carcass. After you’ve done this a few times, you’ll get a lot quicker, but speed is not of the essence the first few times.
Once the breast meat is mostly free from the bone, cut the skin between the breast and the thigh and finish removing the breast from the bird.
Now we need to detach the legs. Grasp the thigh and extend the leg away from the body. You should be able to feel the hip joint (indicated with the knife point in this photo). Insert the knife firmly into the joint to separate the leg from the body, then cut the leg meat away from the torso leaving as little as possible behind.
Grasping the wing in the same way, identify the joint and push the knife firmly through it, separating the wing from the body of the bird.
Congratulations, you’re half way there! Repeat the process on the other side of the bird.
You will now have two breasts, two legs, two wings, and the remains of the body. Put the body in a saucepan ready to make stock. You may be happy with the portions you have now, but more commonly we’d divide the legs into thigh and drumstick portions
Grasp the leg, and feel where the joint moves between the thigh and the drumstick. Simply cut down firmly along this line. If you’re accurate your knife will pass through the joint space, but the bone here is actually quite soft so if you’re not quite on target, you should be able to cut through anyway, it will just take a little bit more force. Cut off the ‘knuckle’ part at the bottom of the drumstick in the same way, and discard these (the only bit of waste in the process, as it happens!).
You’re there – one whole chicken transformed into two breast portions, two thighs, two drumsticks and two wings, to do with as you please. With practice it’s less than a five minute job. Better still, think of the costings. With standard supermarket chicken (I costed this in my local co-op the other day), starting with a £4 bird, and bearing in mind two breast fillets retail for £3 (smaller fillets than you’ll get from a roasting bird, with the skin off and frequently robbed of their ‘mini fillets’, too!), you’ve just got two thighs, two drumsticks, two wings, and a pint of excellent fresh chicken stock for £1. Use what you want today, and bag and freeze the rest. How’s that for thrifty!
I said I’d come back to roasting chicken. That’s for the next post!
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Breast of lamb is a rather unfashionable cut these days. In my household it’s usually known as ‘lamb belly’ by analogy with the matching cut of pork. It’s made up of the abdominal body wall, starting with some ribs just in front of the diaphragm and extending backwards. Folded in three and wrapped in cling-film, it’s a rather uninspiring looking cut. You won’t get it at the supermarket, and it won’t be on display at the butchers, but if you ask it’s likely you’ll get a whole one for not much more than £1. With a very little bit of effort, you have one of the most cost effective (and tasty!) roast dinners you can buy.
We first discovered breast of lamb when we started buying half-lambs from local smallholders. I wish I’d discovered it when I was a student, I could have had some fantastic roast Sunday dinners on a budget!
This is a great meal made almost entirely from the store cupboard. You will need:
Deboned breast of lamb
First of all you have a little bit of butchery to do. It’s unlikely the ribs will have been trimmed out, so you’ll have to do this yourself. Be careful, and patiently cut around and along each rib with a paring knife and lift it out from the ‘inside’ of the breast. With practice this is no more than a five minute job, though it might take a bit longer to start with. It’s likely your breast has been in the fridge, so the meat will be cold. Stop if you notice your fingertips getting numb, and rinse them under warm water to warm them up again – you’ll have less sensory feedback from cold fingertips and you’re much more likely to make a mistake and cut yourself – which is not the aim of the exercise!
Try to preserve as much meat as you can attached to the breast – but if you accidentally cut a piece off (and there are some annoying bits of diaphragm which are quite tricky to keep attached) just put it back as you’ll be rolling and tying the ‘joint’ later.
Now make the stuffing. Mix the finely chopped onion, crushed / minced garlic, breadcrumbs, herbs and egg together. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. Then spread this across the inside of the breast and roll it up, starting at the narrow end (where the ribs weren’t).
Tie the rolled joint up with string using a butchers knot. This involves making a series of linked loops and tying off at both ends, and is a useful knack to learn. It’s also not dissimilar to the knotting technique used for casting a cow! Put the rolled join in a roasting dish, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with pepper and dried rosemary, and put into a low oven (about 160C) for two and a half hours.
Prepare whatever roast veggies you prefer (I did spuds and sweet potato) and start these at the appropriate time. You could even have yorkshire puddings (we did!).
Then in due course get the joint out to rest, prepare your green veg and gravy, and dish up. Add some nice fruit jelly, if you have some. Crab apple and chilli jelly was a perfect accompaniment.
This is a fabulous roast dinner, and will serve three or four for nearly nothing – we’re greedy so it fed two hungry adults! Serve with a nice beer or a glass of red wine, and enjoy!
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I have to confess to having a bit of a ‘problem’ when it comes to Christmas tree decorations – I love them. Every year I try to add one or two (ok, sometimes a few more than one or two!) new pieces, to go on my tree year after year. In recent years I’ve tried to make some of these rather than buying them, and this year I’ve bought nothing, which is a first!
What I added to my tree this year were four lovely clear glass baubles which I already had, but which I have filled with wool fibres, giving what I hope you’ll agree is rather a lovely effect.
Making these is very simple – you will require:
First, gently remove the top from the bauble. With the normal design of blown glass bauble, you do this by squeezing together the sides of the metal hanging loop, which moves the ends together allowing you to (very carefully, broken bauble glass is sharp!) lift the metal crown from the bauble.
Now take your length of wool – about a foot (30cm or 12″) is probably quite enough depending on how thick and fluffy it is. Cut this into approximately 5cm / 2″ lengths.
Then tease the wool apart gently into it’s component fibres. Depending on the thickness and spinning type of the wool this might be more or less difficult, the wool I had was quite a loose structure and came apart very simply. At this stage you need to assess whether you have enough fibres, since you want enough to loosely fill your bauble.
Finally, use something like a chopstick or a pencil to gently push the fibres inside your bauble, and re-attach the cap.
That’s it, all done in only a minute or two, and the colours and effects you can achieve are only limited by your imagination (and wool collection!). It’s so simple to create a colourful, textured, unique bauble for the price of a plain clear glass one, and these would make lovely gifts, too! I’ve also seen pretty things done with ribbons, fabric scraps, or glitter inside clear baubles, so why not get creative!
Updated for 2012 – why limit yourself to wool, there are other things you can fill baubles with, too!
See more crafty ideas for a Handmade Christmas >>
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Lovely, fragrant bulb flowers are one of the first signs of spring. I especially love hyacinths, with their intoxicating perfume, and particularly growing indoors just a little bit out of season. They’re like a floral promise that the end of winter *will* be along, just around the corner.
Many of the gifts for my friends and family have been homemade this year – of course I couldn’t write about them before the big day, because that might have ruined the surprise! One of my favourites is a ‘prepared’ hyacinth bulb (heat/cold treated for indoor forcing – this is important, as unprepared ‘garden’ bulbs won’t flower if grown in this way) in a jam jar with hydrogel beads (sometimes called ‘water crystals’). Hydrogel beads are one of the coolest, weirdest things I’ve come across in a long while. They start out as a tiny little packet of small clear-plastic looking ballbearing things, but when soaked in water overnight, the contents of the tiny little packet will swell up to fill a whole jam jar. Better still, the ‘reconstituted’ hydrogel has a refractive index so close to water that they’re essentially invisible if they’re below a fluid level, which, you have to concede, is very cool, in a geeky sort of way.
Once you’ve got over the excitement of the whole thing (I know, right?), how do you make them either into a gift or into a lovely spring treat for your own window ledge?
For gifting, simply pack up the pouch of dry hydrogel beads and the prepared hyacinth bulb into a washed and dried recycled jam jar (I took the opportunity to use up some of the pickle jars with too much residual ‘taint’ to use as jam or jelly jars), with an instruction sheet (we’ll get to that). Do up the lid (but don’t worry if you don’t have one) and top it with a pretty bonnet of fabric or Christmas wrapping paper tied on with ribbon. What could be sweeter?
No, you can’t have my instruction sheet, write one yourself! But the process is very straightforward.
Of course, you don’t need to restrict yourself to jam jars, all sorts of receptacles will do the trick!
These make a very original, eye catching and fun little gift – I used mine as stocking fillers and as part of hampers. They cost very little, I sourced the bulbs for just under a pound each (in packs of twelve) and they hydrogel packs come in about £3 for ten. I have three of the bulbs growing together on hydrogel in a small vase, which I started a couple of weeks ago, and they seem to be going well, with great root growth and a nice bit of green emerging!
If you’ve bought a bird for roasting today, there’s a good chance it’s come with a little plastic packet of ‘bits’. Whatever you do, don’t throw them away!
These bits are the giblets – the offal – usually the neck (in one or two pieces), the heart, the liver, and the gizzard. The gizzard is thick, muscular structure with two hard abrasive grinding plates that the bird uses to crush up corn and other food items to make them digestible. Giblet stock is quick, simple, and makes the most wonderful Christmas gravy.
I have a goose this year, but the following applies just as well if you have a chicken or turkey. Personally, I use the goose heart and liver in one of my stuffings, so only the neck and gizzard are available for the stock.
In addition to the giblets, you need the following:
Prepare your gizzard by cutting away and discarding the hard plates (use a small sharp knife inserted below and parallel to the plates) and chopping the rest of the meat roughly
Put the splash of olive oil into a nice big saucepan, and brown the neck and gizzard meat, and then add the roughly chopped onion and carrots and sautee for a couple of minutes. Now add about a litre of water (and the splash of white wine if you want) and the bouquet garni, bring to the boil and simmer for about an hour. Strain, discard the solids, and return the stock to the pot and boil again until reduced in volume by half. That’s it. Set aside in the refrigerator until you make your gravy later. You won’t regret it!
Country Skills for Modern Life 