More adventures with Juniper Wood - lo-fi steam distillation

As per a suggestion from Ben Reade at Nordic Food Lab, I filled the coffee basket of my stovetop coffee pot with Juniper wood and the bottom chamber with water and a piece of unsalted butter. I filtered the peach coloured liquid that came out, and have a decent glass full of juniper stock. I had no end result in mind, save for a wish to capture the amazing aroma of juniper wood, and am considering making it into a fizzy soda or perhaps a new kombucha.

Kentish Romano Peppers 

From the Isle of Thanet and bought at Fruit Garden in Herne Hill.
I smoked them in a drum barbecue for five hours, over a smoldering mixture of elder and juniper woods, green tea and hay. I had planned to try and dry them in the sun during the micro heatwave we had, but this was too micro, and it’s gone, and so I have started to dry them at 70C in the oven. They have been in for around twelve hours so far. The kitchen smells amazing.

Halfway through the smoking, I collected the juice that had been drawn out of the pepper flesh and which had collected in the keel of the peppers. It was insanely good, and I drank it all. 

Elderflower Kombucha

I just fed the jar with sweetened organic gunpowder green tea, which is trying to push it’s way past the SCOBY and into it’s new home (elderflower/birch sap/yoghurt whey) . 2 weeks old

Elderflower Mead

The surface of my elderflower mead, three weeks old, and made with three different honies, fermented bee pollen and elderflower concentrate

Juniper wood

Gathered by Tage Rønne, a Danish woodsman. I have a small amount left, of which this batch I am going to roast (30 mins, 120C) and leave to infuse in 79% alcohol to make a tincture.

Pencil-thin asparagus from Suffolk, right as the season is about to finish

My bacterial drinks section

From left to right - Birch sap/Pu’er Tea Kombucha, Ginger Bug, another Birch sap kombucha, Ginger and turmeric root bug, Elderflower Kombucha and, finally Kvass made from Sourdough bread from St. John Bread and Wine

A little roll of sourdough bread, from my Kernel IPA starter, triple proven, and with milk powder and butter in the recipe. Sliced horizontally and toasted, buttered and stuffed with Nutella, and finally sprinkled with sea salt, it makes an awesome variation on a pain au chocolat

Many seeded white and rye sourdough bread, from a Kernel IPA yeast starter.

Every time I make bread, the top gets stuck to whatever I prove in. It’s just a curse I guess. What I do get instead is a lattice of crunchiness, where the chambers filled by carbon dioxide in the rising bread get ripped open and baked. I also get the bits that pushed together forming curvy little ridges, which float free when the bread is baked. It doesn’t look like your pretty sourdough with nice clean slashes, but it makes up for it in the range of crunchy textures

Elderflower mead

In the big tub, 3.5 litres of unsweetened elderflower infusion (three large handfuls trimmed flowers, steeped in boiling water for 12 hours). Next to it, and about to be whisked into it, are my two week old ginger bug, some raw ‘forest’ honey and a few grams of ground fermented bee pollen. 

Elderflowers
Sambucus nigra

I picked a bin bag full today from the tree out the back of our house. I will pick more in around two weeks, leaving some to turn into green berries (for capers) and some to ripen further into black elderberries. Today I started work on four preparations with the flowers. I infused 5L water with a third of my forage, which I will use in two ways. The first will be a carbonated tonic with sour yoghurt whey as a starter. Next, another tonic with my two week old ginger/turmeric bug. I stuffed a load of flowers into a bottle of Polish spirit vinegar (at a hefty 10% acidity) which I will leave for a few months. Finally, I added a layer of my birch sap SCOBY to a mixture of Pu’er tea, sweetened with honey and sucrose and the final load of flowers. 

Aged butter

From a batch of raw (unpasteurised) double cream from Helsett Farm in Cornwall. I allowed the cream to ferment for 6 days in the fridge at around 3℃, and then at room temperature (20℃) for another 6 days. I whipped it, strained the buttermilk, and served the first serving. Then I used the butter at various intervals over the next four days, before wrapping it and storing it the fridge for some long ageing. Two weeks have passed, and the butter has a deep savoury smell and taste.

The milk was given by Ayreshire cows to an automatic ‘self-milking’ machine on May 16th, 29 days ago. Eighty litres of milk were skimmed to produce six litres of double cream. I don’t know the fat content, but it was definitely not low. I have stopped serving the butter to the public, and will continue to monitor and eat it until it tells me not to.

I recently bought the bowl in the picture from a local potter and gardener called Jan Pateman, who has a stall in Herne Hill Farmer’s Market.

Good King Henry or Lincolnshire Spinach
Chenopodium bonus-henricus

Blanch and shock and dry spinach stems. Cook in a wok over a strong flame with goat’s butter so it caramelises a bit. Add a splash of pickled walnut vinegar and a couple of grinds of pepper. Eat the green crunchy spaghetti with butter running down your chin.

Half cooked scallop, turnips left in yoghurt whey for three months, lingonberry/scallop sauce and chickweed which grew where I planted basil seeds last year

Two cultured creams from two ends of the food production spectrum.
On the right, pasteurised double cream from a large scale dairy supplier, cultured with 10% french crème fraîche and left for six days at room temperature (approx 22C).

On the left, unpasteurised double cream from Helsett Farm in Cornwall, from a herd of Ayrshire cows, ripened at 4C for four days, and at room temperature for two days. They await whipping to become cultured butter, which I will age in incremental amounts - blurring the line between butter and cheese.

The underside of a birch sap and pu’er tea kombucha. The birch sap kombucha was given to me as a liquid at Nordic Food Lab, having been made with reduced sap and and honey/verbena kombucha starter. I recently fed it 200g Pu’er tea, sweetened with a tablespoon of raw forest honey, and the scoby started to form three days later.

Rhubarb, to which i have added ten grams of salt, ten grams of honey, five grams of fermented bee pollen and a toasted Indonesian long peppercorn. Not sure what I’m making. The bee pollen hopefully has a ton of lactic acid bacteria which may ferment the mixture

Last year I planted 10 kinds of mint in this planter (Garden, Moroccan, Tashkent, Ginger, Chocolate, Basil, Lime, Apple, Spearmint, and Pennyroyal). Since then, they have gone through attacks of mint rust and a horrible cold winter, but the survivors have dispersed their seeds and fraternised with their neighbours, creating a messy new growth of varieties that must be smelled to be identified. Some have disappeared entirely, others have flourished. I have identified small amounts of the chocolate, large amounts of the lime and spearmint, but have yet to locate the others.

Pesto sauce made with basil and jack-by-the-hedge (Alliaria petiolata - aka hedge garlic, garlic mustard) crème fraîche and umeboshi plum seasoning. The garlic mustard was picked by forager and author Rachel de Thample who was selling it at the inaugural Crystal Palace Food Market last weekend.

Wood ants from north of Copenhagen. A good snack on a saturday afternoon