Met a nettle expert

Was fascinating - and fun.

One quick thing!

Tomorrow (Sunday 2 Aug) I'm giving a low key, informal presentation at the Museum of City and Sea on 'Harvesting Without a Garden.' I'll be at a table from 2.30 to 5pm to chat about foraging and fermentation, and blending the two. I think it'll be fun!

Before that, Donna Lee will be presenting on home-made cosmetics (from 11am-12.30) and on natural household cleaners (from 1.30-2.30). I'm really looking forward to seeing her.

Wood Sorrel on National Radio

Today on This Way Up I'm wandering down our street talking to Simon Morton about wood sorrel. It should be on at 1.30pm.

There is nothing so excellent as a plant that's great in savoury AND sweet dishes!

Sugar beet and old women's magazines

My Mum sent me this lovely and fascinating email the other day, and I asked her if I could repost it here.

By way of background, my mother has a popular (among spinners) NZ spinning wheel site, and a book in the pipeline.

Here's her email:


I spent much of yesterday going through World War 2 issues of the New Zealand Countrywoman, the newsletter of the Women’s Division of the NZ Farmers’ Union (now Women’s Divn Federated Farmers). Didn’t find much on spinning wheels, but it was interesting and would make a great research topic for someone (not me).

There was a Mrs Cocks-Johnston, for example, who seems to have spent most of the war travelling from place to place giving demonstrations to branches on home gardening and preserving.

There were lots and lots of little branches, as villages were very isolated. The organisation couldn’t afford to provide her with a car, and there wouldn’t have been enough petrol anyway, so they bought her a bicycle and she mostly cycled from the nearest train station or from one little village to another, over what must often have been bad roads, with a big pack of samples for her demo.

I’d love to find out more about her if I didn’t have other interests. One could go through the reports from the various branches and note where they said they’d had her and track her across the map!

There were lots of articles about coping with shortages. Here is one, from April 1944, by M.E. Annan, Dunstan Orchard, Clyde:

SUGAR BEET
I wonder how many of our members know what a helpful substitute Sugar Beet is for sugar in cooking fruit for immediate use. Unfortunately it cannot be used for preserving fruit as fermentation sets up within a very short time.

It is very easily grown, requiring little attention, and every household garden would do well to have a small plot to help out the sugar ration. Planted in the early spring, the beet should be ready for use from January on, and in the autumn can be stored in pits like mangles for winter use.

The method of using is to peel and cut the beet up into small pieces, put on in cold water, and boil for 30 minutes, strain off the liquid and put back in pot. When boiling, add the fruit to be cooked and simmer until tender... I find it more convenient to make enough syrup to last three days, but in very warm weather it is not wise to keep it longer...

(presumably it’s the liquid you put back in the pot)
..............................

I also had occasion a few days ago to skim through a few issues of the wartime NZ Women’s Weekly. There are lots of things in there that could stand re-publishing now.

Made me realise just how unthinkingly dependent we now are on gadgets and having things pre-processed.

101 ways with sugar beets (well, okay, six)

I only planted a tiny patch of sugar beets this year, as an experiment. (Most of my gardening has been experimenting really - it's all pretty new to me - although I'm lucky enough to have a Dad who is something of an expert, although he's too much of a perfectionist to see himself that way ... He was the one who suggested I try growing sugar beets one time when I was off on a wishful thinking tangent about growing maple trees ...!)

I was thrilled to bits by how well the sugar beets grew. That's our harvest above - not alot - but enough to try a few different things with:

1. Leafy greens
The sugarbeet greens were enough to meet all our green vege needs for a week. They are a bit thicker and more leathery than other beet greens I've tried - so I treated them more like kale.

2. Raw beets
I thought they might be nice grated raw in salad, like beetroot is. One taste of a few gratings was enough to put paid to that idea. Raw, the sugar beet was very bitter and, worse, burned my throat as it went down.

3. Roasted beets
Again, treating them like beetroot, I tried roasting some chunks in oil along with some other root veges. Success! The texture was like roast beetroot. The taste - very similar but even sweeter than beetroot. Because of the strong sweetness, I wouldn't eat them roasted on their own. But mixed in with other veges - yum.

4. Fermented beets
I have some grated sugarbeet lacto-fermenting in brine on a shelf. I put a bit of carrot in there for colour, too. It's fermenting very slowly - because of the cold weather I suppose - and I'm not sure how nice it's going to be.

I tried a taste yesterday and it reminded me of old dishcloth smell. (I haven't had much luck, taste-wise, with fermenting beetroot either.) Still, I think it could be improved with a bit of onion and spice. I might try adding some.

5. Beet syrup for lemon cordial and water kefir
After I'd tried all those other things, I peeled and finely sliced all the rest of the sugar beets and boiled them to make an enormous batch of sugary syrup.

I started out using the method here. At first I didn't boil the mixture down as much as the recipe says. I left it fairly watery (it was still very sweet)and tried using that for a couple of things:

I fermented some water kefir grains in 50/50 water and sugar beet syrup. The kefir grains seemed to like it! And the result was nice. A slightly more interesting taste than kefir made from just cane sugar and water.

I also used it in some lemon cordial instead of sugar - and both children gave it their stamp of approval.

6. Beet sugar crystals
I really hoped to be able to boil the syrup down and crystalise it, as the recipes said. But for whatever reasons, I didn't seem to be able to get the crystalisation to happen. Maybe I just didn't boil it down enough.

What I ended up with was just a thick syrup - super sweet - and quite bitter. I noticed though, that it loses obvious bitterness when diluted, so this doesn't seem to be a problem.

I froze this very reduced syrup in ice cube trays to chuck into the blender for smoothies instead of honey - and use for whatever else.

I'm really happy with the sugar beets, and hoping to grow more of them this year, and try a lot more things with them.

Maybe I can even power our car with them. Or maybe not.

Our suburban honey adventure

This is the closest to from-scratch honey I will ever get I think! (I just don't have it in me to keep bees.)

At the end of last year we bought an entire frame of honeycomb from Windy Bottom Farm (through Naturefoods).

I think these frames are now selling for around $30, but I'm not completely sure. Hopefully Deb or Ian from Naturefoods will read this and correct me if I'm wrong.

Sadly I seem to have lost all my pics of my son and daughter having a glorious, sticky time processing the honey! Well, you'll just have to use your imagination ... :)

Lost picture 1: Shows the children carefully using knives to cut bits of honeycomb from the frame - to eat as is.

Lost picture 2: Shows the children cutting MORE bits of honey comb from the frame, to eat as is. (It really was particularly delicious honey.)

Lost picture 3: Shows me trying to get organised to extract the honey from the comb, while the children ditch knives and dig out blobs of honey comb with their fingers - to eat as is.

Lost picture 4: Shows the children squeezing cut-out bits of honeycomb in their fists, and collecting the drips in containers, to extract the honey from the wax. (This is how it's done in some places sometimes apparently.)

Lost picture 5: Shows us scoring one rather ravaged frame of honey all over with a knife.

Lost picture 6: Shows the scored frame left to drip over a bucket, to extract more honey from the comb. This method was suggested by Pip in Kerikeri.

Lost picture ... Oh! Actually somehow this picture managed to survive! This is how much honey we got. The honey collected in the bucket using the score-and-drip method is on the bottom. The honey collected by squeezing is on the top. It amounted to over 1 kg. Note that the honey collected by score-and-drip is clearer and purer looking!


I think we could have collected more in the bucket if we'd scored it a bit differently. Next time I would use a finer blade (probably a craft knife) - and make more scores, closer together.

Anyway, after the comb had stopped dripping into the bucket (the next day) there was still quite a bit of honey left in the comb, so ...

Lost picture 7: Shows my children at it again with the squeezing ... I tried to keep track of how much extra honey we got doing this but lost my scribbles. It might have been another 150g?

Lost picture 8: Shows the empty frame (good for kindling) and the crumbly looking remnants of wax after all the scoring and dripping and squeezing was done.

And then this was interesting to me ... I saved those remnants of wax for ages. They sat in a bowl on the kitchen bench for a good three weeks, frequently eliciting from visitors an, 'Ew, what's that?!'

Well, I told them - it's wax. And when I get around to it, I'm going to melt it down to separate the last bits of honey out from it, and then I'll use it to make balms or lotions.

Finally I did get round to melting it down, and lo and behold - it produced only the thinnest crust of wax on the top. The rest was actually still honey! I'd say around 300g of it!

So the lesson I learned from that is that there's a lot MORE honey and lot LESS wax in a honeycomb than I thought! (The wax was fun for the kids to play with, pouring it over ice-cubes, dipping things in it, and making a couple of wax stamps for envelopes, but there wasn't enough for more than that.)

I'd estimate that overall we got about 1.5kg of honey from the frame, plus all the comb my children ate! But the money we spent on the frame was worth it for the children's experience alone.

If I did this again, I'd probably be more methodical:

First cut out some tidy blocks of comb for the children, and also to give as gifts to people who like honeycomb.

Then do the score-and-drip thing, with a finer knife so as to get as much raw, unheated honey from the comb as possible

Then melt all the rest down at the gentlest heat I could manage.

I'd probably dispense with the squeezing altogether (although it was fun!)

And now for some fluff

My children say they have outgrown fluffies. Meanwhile I seem to have grown into them. Lately, in an effort to reduce my caffeine intake, I've been drinking frothed-up milk flavoured with rose or lavender.

To make the lavender fluffies, I heat up milk in a lidded pot, along with with a sprig of lavender from my daughter's flower garden. When it reaches scalding temperature I add a bit of honey and stir it in. Then I take out the lavender, pour the milk into the coffee plunge-pot, and plunge the plunger up and down till the milk has frothed up.

I LOVE lavender as a drink. (A spoonful of lavender vinegar in chilled water is strangely nice too.) Lavender is supposed to help with focus and metal alertness, so I've convinced myself it makes a good substitute for coffee.

I like fluffy milk with a dash of rose-petal tincture as well. My parents have some beautiful dog rose bushes, and a few weeks ago I collected a bagful and tinctured them in vodka.

I collected a second batch of petals a couple of weeks later, strained out the old petals, and put the new ones in for a couple more weeks, to make a double tincture - so it's strongly fragrant.

And speaking of white fluffy things flavoured with rose - I was really pleased with the rose and chocolate chip meringues I made a wee while ago. I just added a couple of spoonfuls of rose petal tincture instead of vanilla to the meringue mix and folded the chocolate chips in.

I think it would also work well to put the rose flavour into the whipped cream instead of the meringues.

I guess to come full circle I need to make lavender meringues now ...

Wild mustard (and happy new year!)

Mustard can be made from the seeds of various members of the Brassicaceae family. A few months back I tried drying seeds from what I thought was wild turnip. (It wasn't though. It was a close relative, although I'm still not sure which one!)

It was all a bit of a disaster. I got over-paranoid about whether the seeds were toxic, and the seedpods were too small and few to make more than a pinch of mustard from anyway. Then to top it off, someone knocked the drying seedpods off the windowsill and the tiny seeds spilled and vanished.

Anyway, now that I know what wild turnip REALLY is, I'm trying again.

I was inspired to make wild mustard after reading Euell Gibbons' 1962 foragers' classic - Stalking the Wild Asparagus.

Gibbons lived in the United States and wrote about making mustard from the seeds of Brassica nigra:

-----------------------
[The seedpods] ripen unevenly, and as soon as they are ripe, split open and the seeds drop out.

The best way I have found to collect these seeds is to gather the whole seedstalk ... just when the lower pods are beginning to shatter, and spread them on one of the large plastic sheets, which I have found such a handy help in foraging.

After drying out in the sun for a few days, they will be ready to thresh out by beating them with a flail. From one 9 by 12 sheet piled full of ripening seed stalks, I have winnowed out 1/2 gallon of clean mustard seed, and that is as many as I can possibly use in a year.

The clean dry seeds can be ground ... this will give you the same kind of dry mustard you can see on the spice shelves at your grocers, and it can be used in any recipe that calls for dry mustard.

To make the yellow pasty condiment that is called Prepared Mustard, put some flour in a pan and toast it in the oven, stirring occasionally until it is evenly browned ...

Mix this browned flour, half and half with ground mustard and moisten with a mixture of half vinegar and half water until it is the right consistency, and your condiment is ready to use.
-----------------------

In a New Zealand context, wild turnip might be one of the best plants to make mustard from.

The wild turnip round our house is covered in seed pods at the moment ...

My son and I picked some bunches:

And they've been drying for a few days now. They've almost all dried and split and released their seeds. (I've tried a nibble of the seeds, and they're nice.)

Hopefully we'll be making mustard in a day or two - although not in such bulk quantities as Euell Gibbons!

Small honey update

I just got this comment from Pip in Kerikeri, about separating honey from its wax comb. It's so useful that I'll cut and paste it in here, since I know things in the comment section often get missed:

Hi Johanna, we have just removed the frames from our hive. To start with we score the surface of the honeycomb, to open up the comb, with a normal fork. Then we leave it to drip into a bucket overnight. Most of the honey flows out this way and if there is any left we still want then we squeeze it. Enjoy, its so much fun!

Also, I put a basic honey junket recipe up on Wild Concoctions, and will put up some variations soon.

Lastly - a quick plug for Peanutbutterland peanut butter - available through Nature Foods. This is lovingly and labour-intensively made by a guy in Kapiti. (At least I think it's Kapiti. Hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong.) And it truly is the best peanut butter ever. It's not just ordinary home-made peanut butter. It's gone through a whole soaking and drying process, and been mixed with coconut oil, so it's way more nutritious and digestible than 'regular' peanut butter.

The reason I mention it in a post about honey is that my son and I have become addicted to having it with honey!

Honey!

We don't have the room to keep bees, but even if we did, and I was prepared to put the time and effort in, I don't think I would. I LOVE the idea of it, but whenever I've read those 'Is Beekeeping For You' articles - there is one sticking point. Beekeepers get stung. (I know, I know, it makes no sense - I've given birth to two children, but I'm scared of the pain of a bee sting.)

Having resigned myself to never producing my own honey, this might be the next best thing - buying complete frames of raw comb honey, and doing my own processing.

You see, Deb and Ian at Nature Foods have just started supplying some delicious locally grown honey from 'Windy Bottom Farm'. If you haven't seen the Nature Foods website, take a look. There are all sorts of interesting, healthy, and yummy foods there. (They may not have put the honey up yet, but just enquire if you're interested.)

Some of the Windy Bottom Farm honey that they stock will be raw, some finely filtered, and some coarsely filtered - depending on what's available at the time.

I've got us some finely filtered manuka honey, some coarsely filtered kamahi honey, and of course that raw frame, which the grower says was 'collected in the Battle Hill area and so will be a mixture of pasture (clover) and bush honey, with probably also a high manuka content.'
It is absolutely oozing with honey, and our entire household has been tasting the drips, and exclaiming over their heavenliness. I have no idea why, but it is so much yummier than 'ordinary' honey.

My son may have nailed it when he said, 'Actually THIS is ordinary honey, and the stuff you buy in containers in a shop isn't. That's why this is yummier.'

Well, wish me luck with my processing. These are the grower's instructions:

The raw honey can be separated from the comb by squeezing the honeycomb in your hands over a collecting vessel (bowl) and the honey will run through your fingers to the bowl and you will be left with a lump of wax in your hand. This is how it's still done in some countries in South America.

If anyone reading this has done it before and has any tips - I'd love to hear them!

The frame weighs about 3kgs. I can't wait to see how much honey and how much wax I get from it. I'm looking forward to the wax almost as much as the honey, and yes, every one will be getting home-made balms for birthday presents during 2009!

For sourdough fans

I've been rummaging through cookbooks that used to be my grandmother's, and among the treasures is Any one Can Bake - a 1929 promotional publication from 'the Educational Department of the ROYAL BAKING POWDER CO.'

You might get a laugh from their version of the origin of leavened bread - from a longer article entitled, 'The Evolution of Baking Powder'.

The Royal Baking Powder Co tells us ...

Yeast came first
Very early in written history we come upon mention of both 'leavened' and 'unleavened' bread, so the actual origin of raised bread is obscure. Some prehistoric matron, perhaps, was not too careful about washing out the vessel in which she mixed the grain and water for her baking. A stray yeast cell lodged in the scrapings and developed in the next moist mixing so that the loaf grew astonishingly. It was porous and softer than her ordinary loaves.

She tasted this unusual mass - and found it good. She added a bit of the magic dough to her fresh mixture in the hope that it would impart its characteristics to the new loaves - and of course it did.

Thus began the leavening of grain mixtures, and for generations yeast in some form or another was the only leavening agent known.


What can I say? Let's all pay homage to that prehistoric slattern whose naughty lapse in hygiene turned out to be a blessing for us all. And thank heavens that a single yeast cell just happened to come along at the right time! :P

Elderflower and water kefir - a yummy duo!

Just had to share ...

On a whim, I mixed a bit of our elderflower syrup into some very tart already-brewed water kefir - and I tell you, it is DELICIOUS!

A quick google revealed that the combination of elderflower and kefir is not stunningly original, but it was new to me anyhow!

(And in passing I noticed some sites talking about the cosmetic applications of kefir . Anyone know anything much about that?)

Elderflowers galore

There only seem to be a couple of Elders in our immediate neighbourhood, but the other day my mother took my children and me to a spot where they grow prolifically. After my Mum asked permission from a property owner, we harvested two bagfuls of flowers.
There were many other Elder trees frustratingly out of reach - they were on someone else's property, probably not used by the owner, but we had no way of asking the owner at the time.

Home again, I made a few things, including syrup for elderflower cordial and even elderflower junket. (No one in the family liked that except me, but I am a junket addict, and I will eat it any way at all.)

The internet presents a bewildering array of recipes for elderflower cordial - as well as wine and champagne. Everyone likes to make it differently. Here are some thoughts on navigating through the confusion ...

Elderflower/sugar ratio
A big part of the trick with the cordial is to get the proportion of sugar to elderflower flavour right, but that's going to depend on your own personal tastes. If in doubt, err on the side of adding less sugar than you think you need. It's easy to add more sugar syrup at the end if you find you need it, but less easy to up the ratio of elderflower.

Lemons
It seems important not to skimp on the lemons. They add something really important to the flavour. In my first batch I didn't use enough lemon (to my taste anyway), so I've been adding an extra squeeze to each cup as I have it.

What I did
I used the method at Gastronomy Domine - but changed the proportions, and didn't use citric acid. I will freeze some to preserve it instead.

My proportions ...
Around 20 elderflower heads
1.5 litres of water
3 cups sugar
3 lemons

I also heeded advice from other websites to remove as much stem from the flowers as possible. Some little stems are okay, but not the big ones.


Bugs!
There are these tiny little black bugs that like to live in flowers round here. They mostly crawl very fast, and I can't quite tell if they have wings or not. If anyone knows what they are, please tell me! Anyway, we found heaps in our elderflowers. I've also found big communities of them in gorse flowers, apple blossoms and roses.

Often it's good not to wash any flowers before using them, because -
(a) it can damage the fragile petals
(b) flowers readily release their fragrant/flavoursome/active components into water, and you don't want to wash any of that valuable stuff away
and
(c) if you're making something like wine, where you want plenty of wild yeasts, you don't want to wash yeasts off.

SO - I stumbled on a way to get rid of these wee beings without washing the flowers. It's a little time-consuming, and there may be a better way, but anyhow, I'll post that on Wild Concoctions a bit later today.

oops - sorry!

In my last post I gave the wrong link for the article Cultural Uses of Native Plants by Sue Scheele. I gave the URL for the contents page of the journal it was in, instead of the article.

Here's the correct link:
www.rnzih.org.nz/RNZIH_Journal/Pages_10-16_from_2007_Vol10_No2.pdf

It's a great article.

Nikki - thanks for letting me know the link was wrong!

Apple blossom and raspberry leaf alcopop!

I'm pretty sure it's Sandor Ellix Katz who is responsible for popularising (among us westerners!) home-made t'ej - Ethiopian style honey wine. It's the first, and simplest recipe in his book 'Wild Fermentation'.

Basically - 1 part raw honey to 4 parts water. Stir to dissolve honey. Cover. Leave in a warm room for several days. Stir at least twice a day, and wait for the wild wine-making yeasts to take up residence. Once the liquid is bubbly and smells and tastes like wine - well, it is.

You can use the basic principle to experiment with any sweeteners and additional ingredients you like.

Recently I tried using sugar instead of honey, and using water infused with blackberry leaves (tannins for some dryness) plus the last blossoms on our apple tree. The idea was that the sugar would be less strong-tasting than the honey, and allow the subtle apple blossom taste to come through more.

I'm not sure if sugar water is as good a breeding ground for wild yeasts as raw honey though! The result (above) was a nice tasting drink that tasted somewhat fermented, but was only very slightly alcoholic. More a home-made alcopop really!

Oh well. Further apple blossom experiments will have to wait till next year (and this time, I'll get started before they've almost all fallen off!) Meanwhile I'll find some other things to try and make wild wine from ...

The social side of sourdough

So I have Rebecca's wonderful Kaitaia sourdough starter. Now I'm going to do a similar swap with Ruth in Westport. (Ruth's sourdough starter is twelve years old, and quite well travelled.)

Unfortunately all I can offer Rebecca and Ruth at the moment is an IOU, since I washed my last starter down the sink some time ago in a brain-dead moment. The pressure will be on for me to try and get a new one going this summer that will make a worthy exchange!

I love the ways that live cultures connect people. Sourdough, kefir, yoghurts, kombucha ... You can share them with friends so easily. If you keep them going, you always have some to give away.

And I love the way they can span time and space. Swaps by post link people across geographical space; and the many live ferments that are looked after within families and passed down through generations link people through time.

(Although what happened to our kombucha? I have a sneaking suspicion my mother-in-law threw it out while kindly but zealously cleaning out our fridge for us ...)

There's also another quite different way that fermented foods bring people together. A lot of fermentation processes are about preserving food (cheese, sauerkraut, miso, to name a few). Preserving is often done in bulk, and so it makes good sense to get a bit of a working bee going when you're doing it.

Apparently in some parts of the States they have 'sauerkraut parties' - where everyone comes along bearing cabbages and other veges, which are then pooled. Everyone works on the chopping and brining together, and then leaves with their share of the finished jars of sauerkraut.

It sounds fun. Anyone interested in doing this sometime this summer?

Introducing Uglybread

One of my favourite pieces of advice came from a cheese making course I did with Katherine Mowbray last year.

Katherine said: when you make cheese, don’t get too stressed out if things go wrong because (within reason) no matter what mistakes you make, you’ll still end up with cheese. It might not be the cheese you intended to make – but it WILL STILL BE CHEESE.

I remembered this advice today when I was making bread. This was not the bread I intended to make – but it IS STILL BREAD! (I’m sure the general principle behind this reassuring advice could be applied to many things, food and otherwise.)

I made this bread with the lovely sourdough starter that Rebecca from Farmlet sent me the other week.

The trouble was, I made a very moist dough and then attempted to cook it on an oven sheet without putting it into a container. In the oven it began to spread, rather than rise.

I wasn't sure what to do. I wondered whether I should just leave it, and accept that it would be a very wide, low bread - but I didn’t really want to.

I wondered whether I should shore up the sides with a couple of ovenproof containers - but I could only find one that was the right shape and size.

Finally I decided to scoop it all off the oven sheet and put it into a loaf dish! I'll leave you to imagine how that went.

I ended up with a very rough, crumpled pile of dough in the loaf dish, and as it rose and cooked it didn’t smooth out.

So – above is the end result. I call it Uglybread.

I was going to say that it still tasted very good despite how it looked – but actually I think it its roughness added something ... I’d smothered it in olive oil as it cooked (because I like the way it makes a crunchy crust). And with all those bumps and folds there was plenty of extra surface area to go crunchy.

Anyway – thank you Rebecca! This is the first loaf I’ve made with your sourdough starter. It proved beautifully, and the flavour is divine – with a strong sour tang that I’ve been missing from the sourdoughs we’ve bought in stores lately.

Wild concoctions

I've never been one for precision with quantities and measurements - as anyone who has ever tried to teach me cooking, woodwork, metalwork, or craft would attest to. (And so would the World Sweet World editors, who had to try and take a photo of my solar box cooker that didn't show up all its rough edges and irregularities!)

BUT - I've set myself a task to try and keep track of recipes I experiment with, so that as well as ditching the ones that seem hopeless, I can replicate the ones that work, and refine the ones that almost work.

I've set up another blog as an online recipe journal where I'm going to record the recipes that I'm completely happy with, and want to be able to repeat. It's here - at Wild Conconctions.

(Only one recipe there so far, and I'm not sure how fast I'll be adding them, but at least I can now.)

Invalid cooking - and the joy of junket

Up until the early years of the 20th century, when medical care was removed from the home and firmly established within hospital walls, there was a branch of food preparation known as ‘invalid cooking’. Almost every household cookbook had a section devoted to dishes that were expressly for the sick, all accompanied by helpful hints on when to administer them …
- Pat Willard, A Soothing Broth (1998)

The above book is what I've been reading over the last few days.

Interested in the concept of 'Invalid Cooking', I looked up my edition of the iconic Victorian cookbook Mrs Beeton’s Family Cookery, and it does indeed have a chapter devoted to that – full of beef teas, jellies, eggnogs and junkets.

Junkets! I never got to try junket as a child, and I recall feeling quite deprived. I read about it in books and dreamed of its sweet milky puddingness - but could I persuade Mum to make it? (Sorry Mum, if you’re reading this – it’s nothing personal!)

So yesterday, after perusing Mrs Beeton's recipes, and bursting with pent-up childhood longing, I set out to make junket. I used Mrs Beeton’s version as a base:

JUNKETS
1/2 pint milk
1/2 - 1 teasp. rennet (see directions on bottle)
Sugar to taste

Heat milk to blood heat; stir in rennet and sugar. Pour into 2 small glasses. Leave in a warm place to "clot"
NOTE: With pasteurized milk it is advisable to use double quantities of rennet.
Never put junket into a refrigerator until firm.

The results were good! (Junket-making could become addictive.)

A few notes:

* I used vegetarian rennet from Curds & Whey cheesemaking supplies - and you only need a few drops, rather than the half teaspoon in Mrs Beeton's recipe.

* I took blood heat to mean 31 degrees, and I kept track of it with a thermometer (again following the existing instructions I had for this rennet).

* At my children's behest I added vanilla along with the sugar.

* I sprinkled cinnamon and nutmeg onto it.

* Mrs Beeton's book can be found online.

* I can't wait for the blackberry season! I think vanilla junket would be delicious with a blackberry topping!