Cranberry Wine and Frozen Fruit Wine

This is the easiest wine in the world, really tasty too so it’s a good one to have in your repertoire. Usually I like to forage for ingredients for wine as that makes it more free, and therefore better, however at this time of the year ingredients are a bit thin on the ground and frankly it’s too muddy and cold for me to be bothered to get them, so I cheat. This wine uses just bog standard cranberry juice from concentrate from the supermarket, 4 litres of the stuff.



You will need…
Steriliser
1.3kg sugar
3-4 l juice
1 sachet or a heaped teaspoon of dried wine yeast.
1 sterile glass
Cling film
1 campden tablet
A demijohn
A funnel
An airlock and bung
A large spoon for stirring
A large sterilised saucepan
A solid bung


Sterilise everything before you start. Weigh out the sugar in the saucepan. I know what you're thinking, that's an absolute bum load of sugar. It is, but hopefully most of it's going to become alcohol soon.



Add 1 litre of cranberry juice and stir over the hob until all the sugar is dissolved into the juice. It'll be a translucent syrup when done. Don't let it get too hot, cool it a bit before using too.



Pour 1 litre of cranberry juice into the demijohn, then add the syrup, then another litre of juice. You won't fit another whole 4th litre in, just fill up to the shoulders of the demijohn.



Crush and add the campden tablet. Now fit the solid bung and give the demijohn a really good shake. Pour out a little of the juice into a thoroughly sterilised glass and add the yeast. Cover the glass with cling film and leave it for the yeast to re-hydrate and activate. After a while the cling film should start bulging and there will be bubbles on the surface of the liquid in the glass.



When the yeast is ready pour the contents of the glass into the demijohn and fit the airlock. Move the demijohn to a nice dark warm place and let the yeast do its thing. Done! I’ll fill you in on the next part in a few weeks.



As I mentioned, it’s too cold to go out foraging, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use ingredients I foraged last year and have been keeping frozen! These sloes and damsons I picked in about October/November time and they’re good for making a 2 plum wine. I picked and froze nearly 2KGs of them.



Firstly defrost them in a sterile food grade bucket (or big saucepan if you don’t have one) and when they are defrosted put the lid on and rattle them around to severely bruise them. Now pour in 1 gallon of boiling water, either from the kettle, or as I like to do it on the stove so I can add it all in one batch.



Leave this for 4 days, stirring or moving around twice a day. When you are done you will have a “must” that is the extracted concentrate of the fruit. Strain this through muslin to get out all the little bits of fruit and dead insects etc, then pour about a litre of it into a saucepan. Add the sugar as you did with the cranberry wine.



Pour it back in the demijohn, make sure it’s not warm to the touch and add the yeast and campden tablet as described in the cranberry wine.



Swirl it around, fit an airlock, and yer done. There’s another couple of gallons of wine that’ll be ready to enjoy at the beginning of next year (I’ve got last year’s to keep me going until then).

Ditchling to Brighton Walk

Walking is something that's always been part of my life, and even though my blog is predominantly a foodie one it's nice to write about some of the places too. I think the very best way to appreciate the country for all its beauty is to walk it. This walk is fairly ambitious, but the are ways to make it easier. Firstly you could do it in Summer and not In the Winter after heavy rain (the fields at the foot of Ditchling Beacon were like rice paddies), and second you could just catch a bus to the top of the Beacon and start from there, cutting out the worst of the climbing. I'm not particularly good at measuring walks in distance but you should leave at least 4 hours for this one, I'd say it's about 12 miles.



This walk starts in the old village of Ditchling, north of the South Downs. Getting there might be easier by bus but you could do the 25 minute walk from Hassocks station.




It's a pretty place, that like many villages in England has been sat at the foot of the downs since Saxon times.



Walk south from Ditchling high street, here's the clue, that's the direction that all the big hills are in. You need to find a small path that's takes you to Ditchling Beacon. It's hard to find, but my recommendation is look for the road sign to the beacon and its behind that.




The path takes you behind lots of houses and gardens, at one point you'll come out into a residential area and need to pick it u again yo your right (literally follow the sign here). At the end of the path you climb over a style and you're in a field.




Here you just follow the brown patch, it's an obviously well trodden track and you just head along it. Don't be tempted to stray off to the left, keep aiming for the big hills and after about 4 fields you reach a small road. Head left along the road and you'll find yourself at a small car park at the foot of Ditchling Beacon. This sign is opposite.




Walk up the path from the car park that takes you up the beacon. It's a hard slog, but mercifully it's through forest and the tree roots act as steps as you climb. At the top of this path you'll reach a gate. Take the left hand path here.

As you continue to climb you'll start appreciating how high you actually are.



Finally at the top you'll get to enjoy the view from the highest point in Sussex. Welcome to Ditchling Beacon. You've done the hardest part of the walk, now you can enjoy a bit of the Sussex countryside and see a few of the farms that produce the food we cook with.



If you keep bearing left and climbing you'll eventually hit the car park at the top of the Beacon, if you're lucky the ice cream van will be there! At the entrance to the car park you'll pick up the South Downs Way, and that's where you're headed for a bit now.




The South Downs Way stretches from Eastbourne to Winchester, and that walk itself is immense and highly recommended. It's 100 miles though, when I do it I tend to stay in a few of the many B&Bs on the way. I love it, it's an ancient path trodden by generations of Romans, Saxons and Normans before you. It's also very useful as a walkers superhighway on top of the downs.



After a while walking on the SDW you have passed Plumpton College down on you left and you'll be level with Plumpton.




Here's where you're going to take a shortcut. The fence on you right stops at a corner and there's another track leads off from the SDW heading south, take that path. A little way along it starts to go down hill, but before you get to there there's a gate where you can get onto the other side of the fence to your right. As you walk along you'll see the Amex stadium in Falmer in the distance and a V shaped patch of forest which is what you are aiming for.



Keep walking down the hill, it gets steeper and steeper until at the bottom the path starts to head right and you find yourself walking up the other side of the valley. At the top of the path on the other side there is a gate with a sign post next to it.



You are heading in the opposite direction to the signs, right as you've come through the gate. You're on your way to getting off the downs and onto road again. After a bit of walking along this track you'll hit road, head left down the road to take you all the way into Falmer. Look for the Swan pub on Middle Street.




Opposite the pub is a bridge taking you over the A27 to the other side of Falmer. Falmer is one beautiful village but sadly the A27, which was built over an ancient road that historically linked Brighton to Lewes, cuts it in half.



On the other side you'll find the duck pond from which Falmer draws its same ("fallow" is old English for a pale coloured pond).



If you head round past the church and the graveyard you'll find the Falmer to Woodingdean link path. This track takes you neatly up to the top of Woodingdean and you'll now be leaving the AmEx behind you.




At the top of the path I would advise not going down the hill into Woodingdean, you'll only have to walk back up the other side of the high street. Instead cross straight over the road (being careful!) and take the tarmac path that leads you behind Woodingdean. At the end of that path you are on Warren Road.

Now I've gotten you this far, the last part is up to you...



Option A: If you go left, back in the direction of Woodingdean you'll see a car park on the other side of the road. If you take the track through the car park it will take you down the hill to Ovingdean, past a 13th Century church, past the 1930s Ian Frasier House of Blind Veterans UK and under a tunnel to Ovingdean beach where you'll find a cafe. From here you can walk West to Brighton Marina and to shops restaurants and pubs.

Option B: You go right on Warren Road, away from Woodingdean and eventually that will turn into Elm Grove which will take you steeply down to the level in central Brighton.

For me, it's usually option B as that leads to the nearest decent pub and a well deserved rest.



All satellite images courtesy of Google Maps

Socca

We did a holiday to Nice one, which was nice, the food was mind blowingly good. There was a market every day in the old town where we were staying so we'd nip down for breakfast. Anyway, along with a discovering a few other wonderful provencial foods we came across socca, which is basically a chickpea flour pancake. It sounds basic, and it is, but by god it's addictive. So here's the recipe...

This is one of those very rare occasions where I'll admit the American method of using cups is the best way to measure something out. Because every other time it isn't. For Socca you use equal amounts of chickpea flour and water, 1 cup each. Then you give it a good glug of olive oil as well, about a tablespoon I suppose. Chuck in a pinch of salt some black pepper. Whisk it all up to a pancake batter sort of consistency and leave it to rest for about an hour or so.



In some parts socca is traditionally cooked in a wood fired oven, but I'm guessing not everyone has one of those so this is the baked and fried version.

If you're frying, which is how I first tried it as a street food in Nice, you just need a bit of oil in a frying pan and cook it as you would a normal pancake. I add half a tsp of mace to my mix because thats what makes it taste like I remember it in Nice.



Cut it into strips and turn it in the frying pan.



When it's done it will be moist and savoury. It's the perfect street food, or a good snack to accompany a beer.



For the oven version heat your oven to 220degC, line a flan dish with grease proof paper and grease it with olive oil. Pour some batter into the middle, try not to fill it too deep.



Bake it until it starts to brown on the top, then take it out, lift the paper out the flan dish (no washing up with this version) and use a pizza cutter to cut into strips. Obviously this is a bit dryer than fried so add some sauce, sweet chilli or even plain old ketchup.



If you don't line it with paper you can put it under the grill to finish and char the top a bit.

Welcome to your new favourite fast food. You're welcome.

Mead

As you may remember I visited Paynes Bee Farm a couple of weeks ago and picked up some of their brilliant honey. Well as if I wasn’t going to make mead with it!



I won’t bore you too long with the history, I hate those blogs that spend half a page on it before you get to the recipe. If you want to know more that’s what Wikipedia is for. But anyway, mead is probably the oldest alcoholic drink in Sussex, perhaps the world. It’s basically just honey dissolved in water and fermented, with perhaps a few herbs added for taste. Saxons were big fans of it apparently.

Right, on with the mead. I will be doing a few of these how to make booze posts on the blog and it is assumed that there are a few basics that you’ll need to have down before we begin. There are countless books and forums on the subject, but most important is sterilisation. With any homemade booze you need to be anal about keeping things clean and sterile. I suggest you buy some good homebrew steriliser like VWP and have a good read of the label before you use it.

The ingredients for this mead are:

3lbs honey
A couple of sprigs of rosemary
A lemon
Some fresh ginger
A slice of bread
Fresh yeast



And the kit you’re going to need today is:

Steriliser
A demijohn
A funnel
An airlock and bung
A solid bung without the hole for the airlock
A kettle
1 camden tablet
A knife

You can get fresh yeast if you go up to the bakers in a supermarket and hang around annoyingly until someone comes to see what you want. Usually it’s free! But if you can’t get any or the supermarket are being tight you can substitute the bread and yeast for a packet of dried gervin yeast that you’ll be able to pick up anywhere there’s brewing gear. I get mine from the garden centre or Wilkinsons.



Sterilise all your equipment. Sterilise the airlock and bung in a bowl and keep the water in the bowl to fill the airlock when you get round to fitting it.

Pour the honey down the funnel into your sterilised demijohn. The viscous nature of honey makes watching it goo into a funnel and down into the demijohn hypnotic.



Pour in a kettle of boiling water and dissolve all the honey. Put the solid bung in the top and shake it all about until there is nothing sticking to the side of the demijohn.

Get the rest of your ingredients together and add them to the demijohn. Cut the lemon into 8ths and slice up the ginger. Remember to cut everything up small enough, if you have to force it into the demijohn think how you’re going to get it out again. My rosemary is sat in my greenhouse flowering at the moment. You may have to buy some if yours isn’t looking too clever in the winter.



Now top up with cold water to the gallon mark (about where the demijohn starts curving to the mouth usually). Put the solid bung back in and swirl it all around again.

Make sure it isn’t too hot, it should feel just about room temperature to the touch on the sides of the glass, not warm.

Pop in a campden tablet, these take the risk out of homemade wine making, available from all the usual homebrew sales places alongside yeast and steriliser. They remove the oxidants from the mead and help prevent it spoiling. My wines improved over night after I started using these. Crush it under a glass and pour it in.



Spread the yeast on a slice of bread, cut it into strips and poke it down into the demijohn. If the yeast is rubbery and dry then it’ll only need a drop of water to make it spreadable on the bread.



Half fill the airlock with sterilised water and put it on the demijohn.



Now the waiting. Leave it in a dark place, as light will hinder the yeasts work. I’m using a brown demijohn so I don’t need to worry about this, but if you’re using a clear one put it in the cupboard, and if you don’t have cupboard space just stick a black bag over it. Very soon, if not immediately, it’ll start bubbling through the airlock.



Note the tray underneath. I’ve got a feeling this could go a bit mental and bubble up through the airlock. If that happens take out the airlock, clean it and replace. Otherwise it’s going to smell something rotten.

Part 2 of the mead will come next month and you’ll need another demijohn and a syphoning tube. In the meantime keep an eye on this one every now and then, it should be slowly bubbling through and it’ll slow down and maybe even stop after a while. As long as you get a good 2 or 3 weeks fermenting out of it though that’s all good.