Domestic Science

I don't care what the weatherman says...

…It might be raining a hailstorm out there, but I am too busy in the kitchen to notice.  After a quick trip into Crouch End for some essential ingredients, I’ve been hard at work.

First up was the ceremonial Starting of the Homebrew.  The Other Half has invested in a complete kit to make 40 pints of Woodford Wherry, and we got it going this morning.  Should be ready for Christmas. 

Next up: mincemeat.  Suddenly realised that it wasn’t that far off until Christmas and I had no mincemeat at all, as I used up all the old stuff in fruitcakes.  So there is a large tray of fruit and spices cooking slowly in the oven.  I follow the recipe from Delia Smith’s Complete Cookery Course, though I exercise a fair bit of latitude as to the actual fruit involved.  I like sultanas, raisins, figs, dates, and no candied peel whatsoever.  I also add any odds and ends lurking in the cupboard, which this year involved a few organic apricots and a packet of dried cranberries that came free with an Ocado delivery; I am sure the lady who introduced Cranberry mania to the British would approve.  That’s got another 2 hours to go before I add the rum and bottle it.  I put the fruit for the Christmas cake to soak at the same time and I’ll make that tomorrow. 

Then there was the tomato plants.  The last fruits are never going to ripen, so I gave in and made chutney.  Fortunately I had a punnet of ripe tomatoes from the veg box, and another punnet of ripe-ish ones that I picked last week and have been ripening indoors, so its going to be a nice red colour and definitely different to the dark sticky chutney we already have from the big bag of green tomatoes our friends gave us this time last year.  Not that I am knocking the traditional dark chutney, but the donors of last year’s green tomatoes also gave us a jar of  amazing red tomato relish and I am trying to replicate that.

I am running out of bacon, so I bought a slab of belly pork this morning and that is now dry-curing in the fridge.  Can’t wait till it’s ready and I can try out the new hand-cranked slicer (just like my Mum’s) that I bought on eBay a while back.  The nice butcher boned the pork for me, and the bones are now in the slowcooker with some lamb bones I had stashed in the freezer, making stock.  I roasted them first, and added some instant veg stock so it should be nice and tasty.

We also had a milk glut.  I haven’t been eating enough porridge, I think that’s the problem.  So I am making English muffins, and also broccoli, cauliflower and Stilton soup.  Both use up milk, and the soup not only deals with the chunk of Stilton lurking in the fridge, but also the problem that this week’s box had both broccoli and cauliflower AGAIN!  And the Other Half won’t eat either of them. 

I wanted to bottle my latest batch of ginger beer too, but I can’t as I have run out of large saucepans to mix it in.  So that will have to wait until tomorrow; I can do it while I am baking the Christmas cake.   I’ll also be slow-cooking a pheasant, as they had them on offer at 3 for £10 at my butchers.  Such good value. 

But that is tomorrow’s work; for now, I am frankly exhausted so I am just going to sit here and knit, while my chutney reduces, and look forward to the ribeye I bought as a treat for our dinner.

Slow cooker checken stock

I’ve been writing about my slow cooker a bit recently, but I haven’t covered the main reason I bought it - which is to make stock.  The topic is covered in The New English Kitchen by Rose Prince but she says that slow cookers aren’t really worth it for chicken stock, because you don’t need to cook chicken stock for so long.  I think she is wrong. The best stock I ever made from a roast chicken (pre slow cooker anyway) was using our friend Ian’s method: bung the stockpot in a very low oven overnight.  It worked brilliantly apart from the enormous expense and distressing waste of heating a fairly large oven to cook a moderate casserole of stock (not to mention the racket our oven makes when it’s on - it’s the door cooling fans, I could hear them roaring like a cyclone all night).  Hence my bright idea of using a slow cooker.

It has worked even better than I could have imagined - such a neat and easy way of turning a leftover carcass that you would normally throw out into 3 pints of useful stock that will genuinely make your risottos and soups taste so much better.  (And if you can’t even face chopping a carrot I have a very lazy version for the truly idle, at the bottom.)  To come clean, I have to admit that for the truly easy life you need not just a slow cooker, but a freezer, a microwave, and 6 tupperware tubs that take a ½ pint each.  But that isn’t asking too much of most kitchens, is it?  So here we go:

Take your leftover roast chicken, and pick it over, separating the meat into one pile and the rest into another.  I mean everything - bones, skin, everything you really don’t think you could face putting in a sandwich.  Steal the bones off your diners’ plates too.  Put the meat in the fridge (don’t forget to eat it up) and the rest of the stuff in the slow cooker.  To the bones etc add a couple of carrots, washed and chopped; an onion, skinned and chopped; two bay leaves; 6 or so peppercorns; a good teaspoon of celery seed or a chopped stick of celery (this is ideal but not critical); 3 pints (or 1.5 litres if you are that way inclined) of water.  Note: NO salt.  Close the cooker, and set to cook for about 6 hours.  Go to work, or leave over night, or do something else interesting while it brews.

When you come back to your cooked stock, take a big jug or bowl or saucepan, and sit a sieve in it.  On the work top, also have ready an empty carrier, sides rolled down to it sits up like a bowl and lined in the bottom with paper towel or a layer of newspaper (this stops your bin going soggy).  Ladle the stock out of the cooker and through the sieve into the jug, letting the sieve catch all the veg and bones.  Periodically empty out the sieve into the lined carrier. When you have tipped all the stock through the sieve and got all the bones and mess in the carrier, tie it up the bag and bin it. 

Divide the stock between your 6 tupperware tubs, label, cool, and freeze.  When you need stock, microwave a tub (on high, don’t waste time with the defrost setting) and bung in whatever you are cooking.  I find ½ pint portions are handiest, as it’s easier to defrost two tubs for soup than to only have a one pint tub in the freezer when I need a small amount for gravy.

This same approach works for other leftover bits of bird like pheasant or partridge, and makes fantastic game soup - especially if you shove a glass of wine in the stock pot.  Use proportionally less water - if you are using one pheasant carcass you only need a pint or so - plus the wine.  In this case also add other goodies like bacon and herbs - refer to the recipe for grouse soup in the River Cottage Meat book if you want (slightly more) exact instructions. 

Now, for the really lazy version.  Imagine you have a chicken carcass, but tragically you haven’t a carrot in the house.  Or an onion.  And it is late on Sunday night and not a shop open, and you know if you put off making your stock it just won’t happen, not until the carcass has had to be binned anyway.  Here’s the emergency stock plan:  follow the method above exactly - but instead of adding the carrot, onion and celery you add about 3 teaspoons of Marigold vegetable stock powder.  Continue exactly as above, and you will get a perfectly good chicken stock.  It won’t be as good as doing it with real veg, but it will be a hell of a lot nicer than even the poshest bottled chicken stock concentrate, and a lot more like chicken stock then plain Marigold powder.  Which, for plain risottos or even a leek and potato soup, can be the difference between a perfectly nice supper and a truly great supper.