As I make my own idiosyncratic chorizo and Picante Pimentón de la Vera each Autumn and grow most of my own vegetables, Spanish inspired stews bursting with spicy smoky flavours are a common dish around here. After frying chorizo, Pimentón, onions and garlic, plucked Cavello Nero and chard get slow cooked with dried beans from…
Category: Cider
Life : Wassail at Matariki
I stand on cold dewy grass, the last light of day escapes away. The stars of Matariki become clear, unimaginably high above me In a context in which height has no meaning . I look back to earth. The apple trees stand bare , skeleton hands reach out to the stars They point and beckon…
Food : Scrumper’s Apple Cake
To scrump is to liberate apples that are otherwise going to waste, or from some points of view to steal them. However let us not get weighed down in the vagaries of the law. I make it my business to know where the apple trees are in the village and collect the windfalls for cider…
Cider : Wassail
Every year on the first or second Saturday of July I celebrate wassail. What the hell is wassail? Well it is a couple of things. There are broadly two traditions of wassail both of which would occur on either the eve of the feast of epiphany or on the old pre Georgian calendar Twelvey Night….
Food : Königsberger Klopse
An old Prussian recipe for aromatic veal, pork, anchovy meatballs simmered in a tart caper broth which is then turned into a sauce with the addition of herbs and sour cream. The meatballs buck our contemporary obsession with frying everything and are deliciously succulent as a result. The broth self-thickens from the flour the meat…
Cider : Orchard Update Winter 2021
Three new trees in, and first samples of the last vintage.
Cider : Vintage 2021
This year I invested in a scratter and press so I could start making cider. My trees are still too young to really provide any sensible quantities of fruit so I supplemented them with scrumped windfall fruit from trees I located around the village , I also put out a call on the community facebook…
Cider : Peckham’s Skins ‘n Pips – on innovation , intolerance, and the circular nature of life
As I grow older I find myself having less and less tolerance for certain things. You know the sort of stuff , the music tastes of the kids nextdoor, shopping malls , the shamanic snakeoil of late capitalism. Added to that list is innovation in cider, well normally. Innovation in cider usually means adding fruit…
Cider : Orchard Update
As we head towards the longest day I thought it might be worth a wee update on the orchard. The majority of my trees that went in mid winter were cider varieties and were first growths that are spending the summer developing roots and growing. However I did put in one Sturmer Pippin an old…
Cider : Orchard
One of my loves is cider, and the brandy you can distil from it. Like many craft brewers I was a homebrewer before taking up brewing as a profession and I still love fermenting food at home. My cider project has been a long time coming and now finally my little home orchard has began….
Raise the Dawn 