Beer festival in Brighton

On Saturday I indulged in another rare treat that life sometimes presents us with - the beer festival. If you've read my blog before you'll know that I'm no stranger to ale. This time the venue was Hove Town Hall near my hometown of Brighton. The festival has been hosted here for a good many years now and they've gotten rather good at it. Beer fests can be disasters if managed poorly and without some expert experience but this is not the case with Brighton.

At 11:00 two friends and I queued along with hundreds of other real ale fanatics to enter into the hall where we receive a free glass, brochure and then join another queue to purchase tokens in sheets of 10p squares to exchange for beer. I opted for a half pint glass to begin with as a) I wanted to sample a variety of beers and b) we're short on half pint glasses at home.

I'm naturally a fan of darker heavy beers anyway, but these are especially better suited to the winter drinker than the crisper light styles which I find make fine session pints on a summers day, I did my best to mix it up a bit though.

I kicked off with a Turner's Ruby Mild - dark mild beer at only about 4%. Next I moved onto a light one, Concrete Cow Pail Ale. This is brewed with lager malts, it was weak and I think most of its charm was in the nose which showcased its excellent balance of hops.

My friend recommended the next one - Hip Hop by Langham. It was... fine, if I had to describe it further I would say that it tasted like, well, beer. OK, hoppy light beer, but that's the best I can manage. I followed it up with a local favourite which given that it is the nearest brewery (worthy of mention) to the festival seemed fitting to have - Kemptown Brewery's Red Ale, brewed in the pub I've been going to with my parents since I was a nipper.

Most of the beers I would have loved to try were gone, it was day 3 of the festival and the keen palates of the serious drinkers had drained the really interesting barrels the night before. There were a couple of beers brewed with New Zealand and Australian hops which are favourites of mine, these were gone. But I did manage to find a real treat in my next beer - Rum Porter by Boggart Hole Clough. To me you can't call a beer a rum porter unless you can really taste the rum, and this delicious dark drink delivered delightfully.

Finally, as we approached 3:00 and the morning session was drawing to a close I purchased a pint glass and decided to finish with another speciality beer. I picked out Umbel Magna by Nethergate Brewery. The description in our festival guide read that it was brewed with coriander and I quite enjoy beers with coriander. I think the herb must have been added a little later in the boil as it came through strong in the nose but not so much on the palate, which to be honest suited me just fine as the rest of the beer was nicely balanced and could have been spoilt otherwise.

Time to leave and make room for the afternoon session. Another great festival very much enjoyed, and two more glasses to fill out our cupboard.

Pizza

Pizza

There are loads of ways to make pizza, thousands of combinations of base, sauce and toppings and then the ingredients and techniques vary country to country, region to region with different family recipes being handed down through generations. So it's unlikely that my recipe will suit everyone, but this is how I do it anyway. Lets just be safe and say this is how I make what I call a pizza, and if you don't like it then don't call it a pizza. It's still a tasty meal whatever it's called.

When I make pizza I like to take time over it, time most nights that I don't really have, so I tend go do quite a bit in advance such as making the sauce and the dough. To make it really worth while I usually decide I will eat 2 pizzas in the space of a fortnight, so i make 2 pizzas worth of dough and sauce at once. It's not particularly labour intensive, just time consuming and so I tend to do it on a weekend whilst I'm doing a bunch of other weekly meal prep. If I were to freeze the sauce I could make even more of course.

Pretty much essential to a good pizza is a good base sauce and I used to cut corners and just use a jar of salsa until a colleague told me about this method, pointing out that I was wasting fine ingredients on the topping when the flavours were being overpowered by the salsa. I'm glad he did as my pizzas have improved considerably since.

For this I take a dozen or so plum tomatoes, cut them in half and lay then face up in a baking tray. I drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle generously with sea salt and grind over fresh pepper, then cook in the oven at 180degC for about 40 mins.

After they've cooked and softened I push them through a sieve with the back of a spoon.

The sauce is very liquid, too much so for pizza, so I reduce it on the hob over a low heat until it is the required viscosity. While doing this I skim off any impurities that come to the surface.

All done I have a jar of tomato base sauce that should keep in the fridge for a couple of weeks, or the freezer for about 6 months.

Then the dough


I use a straightforward white bread recipe with half the bread flour substituted for plain flour.

I mix it, knead it, then separate it into 2 or 3 freezer bags and leave it to prove for a couple of hours.

Once it's bulked up I take it out the bag, knock it back and knead for another couple of minutes before putting it back in the bag and tying it up.

These then go straight in the freezer. The night or morning before I want to use it I take it out of the freezer. The dough will defrost and second prove in the bag so that when I get home from work it will be perfect and ready to use for my pizza base.

Pizza day


It's now the morning of my pizza making and I take a jar of sauce and a bag of dough from the freezer.

When I get back from work I preheat the oven to 200degC and lightly dust my pizza stone with semolina.

I empty the dough out the bag onto a well floured surface and work it, stretch it and roll it with a floured rolling pin until it is the same size as my pizza stone and even thickness all over. It's about a quarter of an inch, maybe 3mm thick when I'm done.

I transfer it to the pizza stone and punch a few holes in it with a fork to let trapped air from underneath out whilst it's cooking. This is where you can get fancy if you feel like it and do a stuffed crust. Simply roll the base out larger than the stone, put some cheese or salsa round the edge, leaving a half an inch gap from the very edge, brush some water on the gap and fold over the filling and in towards the centre. Make sure it's stuck down firmly. I then put it in the middle of the oven for about 15 minutes.

Once that's done it's time for the fun part! I take my part baked base out of the oven and empty my jar of sauce over the top using the back of a table spoon to spread it all over. Leave none of the surface uncovered, no one like wasted crust space at the edges.

Now the topping. I slice up a ball of mozzarella and sprinkle half of it on the pizza, then layer some chestnut mushrooms and serano ham before finishing with the rest of the cheese.

I've kept this one simple but I've included a list of my favourite toppings at the end of this post. They all work in any combination. Be generous with the toppings, the whole point in making your own sauce was to get the most out of these toppings.

I put the pizza back in the oven for about 10 mins until the mozzarella has melted and started to bubble and brown. I took mine out and sprinkled fresh basil over before popping it back in for another 2 or 3 mins.

All done! Take it out, portion it up and enjoy.

Here are some of my favourite toppings:


Parma Ham


Greek style black olives (dry and salty, really cut through like mild anchovies)


Pepper


Red onion


Talleggio cheese (melts superbly, use half and half with mozzarella)


Sun blushed tomatoes (for a little sweetness)


Pesto


Artichokes


And if you're really wanting to push the boat out, some crispy duck and hoisin sauce with spring onions sprinkled on right at the end is amazing

Parsnip Mash

In an effort to be a) more healthy, b) more organised and c) make my sausages and mash more interesting I've been making my own parsnip mash in advance and freezing it. The day I fancy sausage and mash for dinner I drag the sausages and ready made mash out in the morning and simply reheat the mash while the sausages are baking later. Parsnip is great with pork, it makes perfect sense really!

Quite simply you could boil parsnips, mash them and throw in some butter and garlic, but I find that alone can be a little dull and disappointing. Besides, I'd rather not add butter if I can avoid it.

Use nice big monster parsnips for this job, less peeling and bigger evenly sized chunks for mashing. I do peel, chop and boil half the parsnips...

... but the others I like to bake. I stab them several times all the way round, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle with smoked sea salt and fresh ground black pepper and then wrap them up in foil and place them in the middle of an oven at 180degC for about 40 mins to an hour.

The parsnips when they come out need to be tender enough to mash obviously. They should be a golden colour rather than white like your boiled ones and will have sweet caramelised brown juices in the foil tray that need to be added to your mash.

Chop down the middle lengthways and leave to cool. The skins peel easily off and the parsnips can be mashed in with the boiled ones.

Perfect with a good pork sausage, some peas and a spot of gravy. A great winter warmer meal.

January update

January update

Ok so a little about what's been going on lately. I started a new job in London at the beginning of November, I don't live in London which has meant getting up earlier, going to bed earlier and spending 3 hours a day commuting. I'm pleased to say that the job is worth it, but I have all of about 2 hours left every night to cook and eat dinner and try and spend some time with the family. Obviously the weekends are busy with family time and household chores and so keeping 2 blogs going has been virtually impossible. I've been working on a new text only project whilst on the trains but its unrelated to either gardening or cooking.

So there are my excuses, I do still have plenty of foodie ideas and recipes to blog about though. Recently I've been back to basics and have been cooking up solid healthy meals for during the week and freezing them. I've been experimenting with reducing fat and carbs without substituting flavour, I've been reducing food bills by buying large amounts of ingredients and making them go further, and reducing waste by using left overs to create completely different meals. It's all a bit different from the usual fare of breads, cheese, oils, sauces and cakes but I'm very happy with the work I've done in the kitchen over the last couple of months and so I will be blogging a few of my experiences. Tomorrow I'll blog a simple but excellent dish to have handy in the freezer as an example of the sort of stuff I've been churning out - parsnip mash.

I would recommend spending an afternoon once a week preparing ready meals. I feel much happier eating my own prepared dinners than I do buying the supermarket ones. Not only do I enjoy the rush of cooking 5 dinners for 2 people at once but it's also great to know that when I come home I can simply re-heat my own cooking and have great home cooked meal without spending hours in the kitchen.

More recipes soon, and keep an eye out for Scuff's Garden updates because I have some genuinely interesting things planned this year for that.

Have a great 2013 everyone!

Roasted garlic purée

While I had the oven going one day I decided to make some of this. Now I always keep a jar in the fridge. It's great for quick cooking, for those times when you can't be bothered to mince a garlic clove or mess about with the crusher.

Simply shove a whole head of garlic in its skin in the oven. I've used an elephant garlic here, less hassle peeling small garlic cloves later.

Once done peel the garlic, which will now be soft and sticky, and press it through a sieve with the back of a table spoon.

The jar will keep for a couple of weeks in the fridge.

I use half a teaspoon occasionally in sauces, or to add to rubs for meat, or in mashed potato. It's extremely handy to have ready to use.

Treats from Amsterdam

The title of this post will no doubt lead to numerous disappointments.

Look past the reputation Amsterdam has earned for drugs, brothels and stag parties from the UK and you'll find there is a food and drink scene that is unique not just to Holland but to the city itself. Rather boringly that is the main reason I keep going back there. A while ago I did a guest post on Beers I've Known with some very amateur beer and cheese pairings. One of the pairings I spoke of was Old Amsterdam and Brewerij ‘t IJ Natte. Sadly I was limited to what was available in the local off license and the supermarket for the beers that day and I settled for a glass or Pauwel Kwak. Last week my parents made a trip to Amsterdam and asked if there was anything I would like brought back, so I put in a request for 3 simple ingredients which they kindly delivered.

Brewerij ‘t IJ Natte - the fantastic sweet dark beer brewed in a converted windmill. May I suggest you check out to this place if you ever find yourself in Amsterdam, it's a keen walk from the town centre or a short tram ride. Last time I went for a couple there I ended up losing an afternoon. As I've mentioned before my Dad is a keen IPA fan and he brought me back one of the Brewerij ‘t IJ ones to try for the first time. I enjoy IPA, but not usually on the level that I enjoyed this one. It had a much smoother characteristic to it than the bitter hop bombs you occasionally encounter in your search for a good one here in England.

Old Amsterdam - The aged cheese that is delicious either as a table cheese or grated over food. Even aged and hard it still has a melt in the mouth quality to it. I adore gouda, I think it is a superbly textured and flavoured cheese that is suited perfectly for continental beer pairings and Old Amsterdam just takes a good thing a little further.

Ossenworst - I've never heard or seen this outside of Amsterdam. It's a speciality sausage particular to the city and as with most of these things if you want the good stuff you have to go back to its home to get it. Essentially it is a seasoned raw beef sausage. The seasonings, saltiness and texture again make it a superb bar snack. I notice now that there is finally a Wikipedia article for it, previously I've wondered whether I dreamt eating it!

To complete my snack I reached into the cupboard and pulled out a few cocktail gherkins and some Dijon mustard. Full sized pickles and Bavarian sweet mustard would have been preferable but you have to work with what is available sometimes.

A delicious snack bringing back some very fond memories indeed. However, I feel another trip will be in order again soon if I am to complete the experience and try out a few more of the delicacies Amsterdam has to offer. Including pickled herring, trappist cheese pie, hemp seed chocolate and some extremely good coffee (an advantage of being a sea port). Also there is no substitute for a beer lover to sitting in a traditional "brown bar" with a trappist beer and a plate of cheese and mustard and nothing much better to be doing for the afternoon.

Sourdough Bread

I don't have any sourdough on the go at the moment which is pretty shameful for a homemade bread fanatic and a foodie. So I've decided to start my own wild yeast sourdough. The beauty of sourdough is that it tastes slightly different wherever you make it as it's flavoured by the wild yeasts from that area. That, and it's like doing a science experiment! Probably the most important thing before you begin something like this is to plan your schedule. For example, if you plan to leave something for 12 hours you don’t want to be tending to it at 1:00pm. I worked my timings around my working week.

I've mixed 25g Plain Flour with a little lukewarm boiled water into a wet dough, covered it with a damp tea towel and left it to gather some yeasts. I've actually left it on the windowsill in our bedroom as this doesn't get direct sun so won't dry out the dough and we have the window open most of the day and night. It also overlooks our back garden and fields behind that so it's the best place I can think of for gathering wild yeasts.

After 3 days I check to see how we'd done. The outside of the dough has hardened into a crusty shell, but inside the mixture is gooey and sticky. The best way to describe it is like a ripe, runny cheese texture. Most importantly it smells like sourdough!

It's time to give it its first refresher. I scoop out the "shell" and transfer the starter to a clean bowl. I mix it up in 1 tbsp milk and 2 tbsp warm water before gradually incorporating about 60g plain flour. After giving my container a thorough clean out I place the very wet dough back in.

I leave it back on the windowsill for 1 day this time, again covered with a damp tea towel, after which it hasn't had time to crust over but has developed a skin which I peel off and discard.

Time for the second refresher and to bulk it out a bit. I add 6tbsp warm water mixed with 2 tbsp milk and stir the starter up into a batter, then I add 200g plain flour. I re-cover it with the damp towel and this time leave it high up in the kitchen, where it’s a bit warmer, for 12 hours.

And there we have a sourdough starter. I must admit it’s not looking quite as active as I'd hoped but I've made a schedule and I'll stick to it now. From here on I'm practicing the process for making bread using my starter. This will be important for me to note because I'm only going to achieve regular breads by getting into a routine of doing this once a week or so.

So, I remove 200g of the starter to a separate bowl, add 100ml warm water and weigh out 200g white bread flour.

I stir the starter into the water, make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the starter. I flick some of the surrounding flour over the starter and leave in a warm place to sponge.

While that’s doing it's thing I need to replenish the starter I've just removed, so I add another 6 tbsp warm water and 2 tbsp milk, mix it into the starter and feed it with 175g plain flour again. This time I cover it with cling film and place it back in it's high up spot. I don’t want it to dry out, but I want to give the yeast a chance to multiply in the mixture.

I come back to my sponged mixture and mix it up into a wet dough. This I cover with the tea towel and place high up next to the starter for 8 hours. After that I'll decide whether or not it needs a little longer for the yeasts to really get going.

It doesn't look too bad, I think we can work with this. From here on I'm handling this with kid gloves and I'm gonna make sure I get this right. I'm on my 5th day of making this bread and I'd quite like it to work.

I add 100ml of warm water and mix it up into the dough to make a paste, then add 25g of Rye Flour and 1 tsp of sugar.

Then I sieved in 75g White Bread Flour and mixed that in. Finally I sieved another 50g White Bread Flour and 1 1/2 tsp of salt together and mixed it up into a moist dough. I dumped probably about another 50g of White Bread Flour onto the worktop and worked my dough on this until it was all incorporated and gave me a smooth, elastic and handleable dough.

I washed up my bowl and thoroughly dried it before oiling it and putting the dough back in to prove covered with cling film. I checked on it after an hour. Judging by the way it had re-shaped in the bowl I decided it probably needed firming a little so again I floured the work surface and worked a bit more flour in. This time I plumped the dough up into a cushion and left it on a floured baking tray covered with the oiled bowl to second prove for 1 1/2 hours.

After that it was looking good! I pre-heated my oven to 220 degC, dusted flour over the top of the bread, slashed it and put it in for 20-25 minutes. I splashed water around the inside of the oven 3 times in the first 5 minutes of baking. After just over 20 minutes I turned down to 190 degC and baked for a further 10-12 minutes. When it came out... success!

My very own unique sourdough bread. Big shout out to my back garden for supplying the yeast to make it!

The last thing I did at the end of the day was take my tub of starter, that by now had been feasting on it's refresher for about 14 hours and was looking text book happy, and moved it into the fridge. That'll slow it down and it'll be ready for use in my next bread when I want it.