Eat Only Irish for a Week: Pasta Bolognese and honey flapjacks

So have been doing the #eatonlyirishforaweek challenge. It has been a real eye opener regarding what is and isn't Irish and what say's its Irish and isn't. What you're left with is basically raw unprocessed veg and other produce. It's great for the evening dinners but breakfast and lunch is a bit more difficult.

Anyways for dinner tonight we had home-made pasta and bolognese tonight.

Pasta was actually pretty straight forward. Normal flour and a whole egg and an egg yolk. Blitz the flour and then add the egg, blitz some more till it looks like breadcrumbs. Then wrap it in cling-film and leave it in the fridge. I left it for 24 hours but 30 mins is enough I think.

Then you have to roll it out.

And cut it and leave it to hang for a few minutes. I used my trusty beer stirring spoon.

And then cook it. Takes just a few minutes.

The bolognese was pretty standard, shallots instead of onions (finding it hard to get onions) fry the mince, then add the tomatoes (peeled, actually surprisingly easy) and a bit of rocket and oregano (from our garden).

It was amazing!

The flap-jacks were honey, (no sugar cos Ireland does not make sugar, nada, zip, nothing) oats and butter. Melt the butter and honey together then add to the oats and cooks for about 20 minutes.

Tasty Good: Why going home is so good

My Dad makes this brown bread it has about 6 million types of flour rice, potato, maize, sunflower seeds (which go green when cooked, who knew?) and a few other things. Last year I was in Portugal and had this amazing bread with Chorizo in it so I thought it might be good with the bread. It was ridiculous. Especially with some Red Leicester cheese :)







The next treat we had was beer BBQ'd roast chicken. The idea here is that you take a beer can with some beer in it, sit the chicken on the beer can and roast it. Do your usual with the chick seasoning wise. The beer flavours the chicken so keep that in mind when you pick your beer. You end up with the best chicken you will ever have ever.

The last thing we had was a spit roast leg of lamb plugged with Rosemary and garlic. This we had with Purple Sprouting Broccoli from the garden and some roasty potato wedges.

Eat Only Irish for a Week: Practice runs

This is the second of our #eatonlyirishforaweek practice dinners so they are mostly Irish as opposed to all Irish.

The first dinner was lamb chops with spinach, fried mushrooms and home-made potato wedges. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures of it so you will just have to trust me when I say it was fab. The non-Irish part of this dinner was the paprika and sundry other spices that went into making the wedges but other that than every thing was Irish grown.

Tonight's dinner is butterflied chicken breast stuffed with spinach, mushrooms and cheddar cheese, rosemary roast diced potatoes and roasted cherry tomatoes in balsamic vinegar. The non-Irish part was this dinner was the balsamic vinegar. Irish tomatoes are not as hard to come by as you would expect.

More about Eat Only Irish for a Week can be found at http://www.eatonlyirish.com/

Brewing Up a Storm: The Unbottling

One week was all I could wait...but here is it is. Have to say I am pleasantly surprised with the flavour which is quiet caramelly. It has a great colour. Another couple of weeks  (just in time for my birthday) and it will be amazing!

Brewing Up a Storm: Bottling

So what's been happening. Well the beer has been fermenting away now for about a week. Had a bit of a scare when I took my my first specific gravity (SG) test as the wort was very cloudy so there was a touch of panic that all my sanitisation did not have the desired affect and somehow my beer got infected. Not so and subsequent SG tests the beer had cleared up a lot. Apparently infected yeast is not all that common anyways. The wort had been bubbling away but does not always happen so do worry if it doesn't. What is really important is your SG measurements, as long as this is progressing nicely your beer is fermenting. Beer usually starts at a SG of around 1040 and ends up around 1003. No change over 24 hours tells you that you beer is ready for bottling.

First thing to do is the mind numbing task of sanitising your bottles, this just takes time and bleach or Milton. Use a bottle brush to get rid of any dirt in the bottles (cleaning them out immediately after use makes this much easier) then let them soak in bleach if about 20 minutes. Rinse them out with hot (some say cold) water to get rid of the smell. Make sure you do the caps as well.


Once you have them all nice and clean you need to add your priming sugars. The intention here is the let the remaining yeast in your beer consume the the sugar producing (a small bit of) alcohol and most importantly CO2. As your bottles are now airtight as the CO2 is produced it will be under pressure and will be forced back into the liquid giving you a nicely carbonated beer. The amount of sugar is largely dependant of the size of the bottle. You can get sugar drops from any of the brewing sites to help getting the amount right. Another option is to prime all your beer at once but adding the sugar to the fermenter or siphoning the beer into a bottling bucket and adding the primer to that. The ensures that all your beer is primed evenly and if you do not have the sugar drops is it much easier to weigh out the total amount as opposed to the amount per bottle.


My beer kit has a handy valve type thingy to help with bottling but a siphon or something like that will do the job. Try to make sure you do not move the fermenter (keep the bottling in mind with finding a place for the fermenter to live) as you will stir up the sediment will has graciously fallen to the bottom of the fermenter and out of your beer. The bottling bucket mentioned above can be useful here as well.

Once all you bottles are full and capped you need to invert the bottles to make sure the sugar is well mixed up. The bottles need now to be stored upright back in the hot press for at least another week. The beer at that point is ready to drink but its recommended to wait up to 3 months (if you can).

Brewing Up a Storm: Primary Fermentation

So the preparation is complete. Time to mix it up. 

I am using Cooper's Indian Pale Ale, 500g of  Light Spray Malt and 450g of Honey. The honey is to replace 300g of Brewer's Sugar (dextrose).

First thing to do is to fill up your sink with hot water and put the can in upside-down. I put the honey in as well. This is the get them all nice and runny to make it easier to pour. That takes about ten minutes. I watched the end of the rugby which was fantastic. 

Pour all of the ingredients into the fermenter. Then add 2 litres of boiling water. Mix it all up with big spoon. The smell at this point is fantastic, you get all that beery goodness.

Fill up the fermenter to 20 litres with cold water.

At this point we need to check the temperature as we want it to be between 21C and 27C. Do this by adding hot or cold water up to 23 litres.

Finally add the yeast by sprinkling it evenly over the top of your wort. Putting the lid on immediately. 

That's it, beer made starting to ferment. You can really smell the yeast getting going.

You need to put your fermenter somewhere that it will stay between 21C and 27C. If the temperature gets outside of this range fermentation can stop all together. Some yeasts can tolerate a wider range of temperatures.

I put mine in my hot-press. This is not easy, get help :) 23 litres of anything is heavy.

Final thing to do is to measure the specific gravity or SG of your wort. This first measurement is know as the original gravity or OG. Beer normally starts around the 1040 mark. I was a bit worried that my honey/sugar switch but I was not too far off the mark.

The amount of hot water at the beginning is not arbitrary. Basically 2 litres of boiling water plus 20 litres of cold water gives you just about the right temperature for the yeast which you add at the end. In colder areas the ratio changes. I had to add a lot of hot water at the end to get my temperatures up.

A week to wait now, then it will be time to check if it's ready for bottling.

Growing Pains: Spuds

Planted our spuds today. They have been chitting nicely in the shed for the past number of weeks. I now its a bit early but the weathers been pretty good so hopefully the ground temperature is not too bad. Planting Kerr's Pinks this year as we prefer the floury types.

Dug two trenches, not giving to much space to spuds this year as they are quiet space intensive. Went for one of the shadier parts of the garden, it still gets a good bit of sun but is partially shaded.

I dug down another 5 inches or so and put in some manure. Make sure you leave the tubers pointing up. I probably didn't leave enough space between each spud but hey.

I've left a good bit of soil for use "planting up" which is covering the leaves of the potatoes as they grow. This increases yield and ensures that the potatoes are not exposed to sunlight.

Exposure to sunlight causes potatoes to become green. The green is actually chlorophyll which indicates an increase in glycoalkaloids which are toxic. More information can be found here.

I never got a chance to water them in because it started bucketing down. Which was great because our water-butt was empty. It is now full!

Brewing Up a Storm: Preparation

Getting ready now to make that actual beer. One of the most important things before you go and mix your wort is to make sure that all you equipment is clean. One of main reasons for home brew not working out is that your yeast gets infected. Make sure you give everything a good clean with hot water and a cloth. Don't use any detergents or clean agents just leave em soak and the wipe them down with a cloth.


Once everything is good a clean then you need to sanitise/sterilise the equipment. So just pile everything into the fermenter fill it hot water and some unscented bleach. Leave this for a good bit maybe a half hour. Then rinse everything with hot water to get rid of the chlorine smell as much as possible. As you can see I did it in the bath. This is the closest my beer will come to a bath I promise.

Brewing Up a Storm: The Unboxing

Made beer last year for the first time and it went down very nicely indeed. So...as its my 30th b-day this year and I am planning a bit of shindig at my place I decided it might be a good idea to make some more. Thankfully a like-minded friend was making his first foray into the art of Home Brewing so we were able to cut down on the cost of delivery. (I'm still own him in fact but I think it's been written off as a birthday pressie :))

Doing some research I came across this review site and since I like Pale Ales (especially Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) I went with the Coopers IPA. I'm planning to brew it with 500g Extralight (or Light) Spraymalt and the equivalent of  300g of Brewing Sugar in Honey. (According to Homebrewtalk honey is only yields at 75% so you have to adjust your amounts accordingly)

Unfortunately, I forgot to get brewer's yeast so all we'll be doing tonight is the unboxing...


So here it is. I'm looking forward to it already!

PS I subsequently realised that it comes with the yeast!

Making Raised Beds

I have been thinking of making some raised beds for our garden. Taking this...





 And turning it into something like..

In fairness our garden looks nothing like those pictures as they were taken about a year ago before we planted loads of stuff in it and the winter made it look a bit crazy but you get the idea. So I got onto a timber supplier and they were great delivering the wood the same day as I ordered it.

I set out the bamboo and string to give myself an idea of the size of the beds. Then using my trusty workbench I got cracking. 5 hours later...

One slightly blurry photograph and a load cut wood. Then I drilled all of the wood so that screwing it all together would be easier.

This is far as far as I got on my own. Needed some help at this point so had to finish up there.

Got some help putting up the sides and with a delivery of three tonnes (which wasn't nearly enough) or hopefully decent topsoil they were done.