Wassail Wassail 2014

Even when the year is at it's quietest there is yet much to be done. The first thing is to wish happy new year to the nieghbour's bees, sleeping in their hives in the hedgerow of the lower field, and to remind them that when the spring comes we will need them up in the orchard. The English bee keeping tradition of telling the bees says that the bees must be told all family news, and to this end I wandered down to pass a quiet minute chatting with them about plans for the coming year. Bees attended we then turned to the trees and the winter pruning of apples and damsons.

  

After consulting John's ancient copy of The Pomarium Brittanicum on orchard care which recommends a gentle winter pruning to remove, crossing branches, dead wood and suckers, we set out amongst the trees. 

A careful cut here and there to strengthen the tree and hopefully encourage heavy fruiting.

All that is left to now get the year off to a good start is to wassail the orchard to wake up the trees.

"Wassaile the trees, that they may beare

You many a Plum and many a Peare:

For more or lesse fruits they will bring,

As you do give them Wassailing.”

Crook Morris will be wassailing the damson orchards of the Lyth Valley this weekend. If you want to hear a joyful racket, watch a neat footed dance and toast the trees with some potent damson beer, (- and who wouldn't want such fun?) be in the Lyth Valley Hotel car park at 11.30 on Saturday 11th Jan. And for wassailing  E17 style catch the Walthamstow Wassail which will toast and sing to the bee hives of Bee17 and fruit trees as it makes its' way from the Nags Head 2pm, via Chesnuts Farm allotments and on to the Rose and Crown for 8pm.

A Hot Wassail Punch

Ingredients; 4 pints of cider, 1 pint of cranberry juice, 1/2 tablespoon of bitters, 2 cinnamon stcks, some allspice berries, an orange studded with some cloves and a cup of fine dark rum

Combine all and heat gently, serve hot from a Wassail cup, and hold in cold hands whilst stamping your feet and singing loudly. (Image by Pauline Baynes )

The mid-winter feast approaches

Winter comes to Walthamstow marshes, pearly and frozen. The days shrink down, and those anxious that the warmth may have disappeared for good bring the green indoors and plan grand winter feasts to comfort the soul and entice the sun to make its' return. 

The Lord of Misrule is appointed and for a few giddy days the world stands on its' head in an ancient festival of foolish delights. Mummers take to the streets in a rowdy straggle. The powerful are to be mocked, the profane is sacred. Drunkeness is sobriety. Mother takes her duties most seriously at this special time of year and the Gin Palace has extended it's opening hours to include Sundays. Come by for magical winter potions to illuminate the long nights.

Local vegan bakers and soup goddesses Norman Loves are preparing for the feast by putting together hampers including bottles of Mother's Ruin. In a storm of publicity they have hit the front page of the Jellied Eel  organ of London's ethical food scene. If you look very closely a bottle of Mother's best sloe gin is quietly trying to steal the show.

Courtesy of Grey Goose a Solstice cocktail

Ingredients:

1 1/2 parts Grey Goose L'Orange

1/2 part Disaronno Originale

1/2 part simple syrup

3/4 part fresh lime juice

1 pinch powdered ginger

to garnish: sesame oil, sugar, star anise powder, star anise whole

Using your finger, rub the outside edge of a martini cocktail glass with sesame oil and then roll in sugar to coat rim.

In a cocktail shaker filled with ice add Grey Goose L’Orange, Disaronnno, simple syrup, lime juice and ginger. Shake vigorously, and strain into the prepared glass. Grate a pinch of star anise over the top, and drop in glass for garnish. Let the festivities commence.

Mother's Italian Job

Just before the Christmas rush starts to bite, I squeezed in a quick trip to Italy just in time for the olive harvest. We spent three days up, under and amongst the trees and gathered 164kg. Evenings, we took hours to carefully remove leaves, twigs and beetles. Then we took our bounty to the Oleificio Rosini  olive press, where they have a special vibro-thingy machine which shook out all the dross for us after all, (ah industialisation how I love you...) and a slow grinding press that made us some oil that was vivid, grassy, delicious.

In between low key labouring (chatting) in the olive grove I sampled a fantastic liqueur, purely as part of Mother's ongoing commitment to her international alcohol cataloging project. It's research. Visciola, ruby jewel in the crown of Le Marche  made from small sour wild cherries, wine and sugar. Bloomin' luverly.

If you are lucky enough to be able to get hold of these cherries and have about 2 months of sunshine on your hands, here you go...

Take equal weights of visciolo cherries and white sugar, place in a jar in the sunshine and leave for a couple of  months. This will ferment, so allow for the escape of gas, otherwise the lid is likely to blow off.  You could try one of those winemaking bungs. After a couple of months drain off the liquid and filter it through some fine muslin to clear it of sediment. Add equal parts white wine and bottle. Leave it another few weeks to a month in a cool dark spot just to settle in nicely and Bob's. 

  

Continuing in the Italian vein, back in London I have been bottling and labelling the Christmas pudding spiced rum in readiness for the Eat or Heat benefit from an original recipe courtesy of Nat di Maggio's Italian dad.

The rum will be available by donation only at the piano recital at St Mary's Church in Walthamstow. The dried fruit that had been flavouring the rum has been now been used by the Aura Rosa bakers to make some drunken Christmas cakes. The cakes will be attending the recital to hear a little classical music and then be sold for charity.




Finally in celebration of the mighty olive;

The classic Martini

(courtesy of Kindred Cocktails)

Ingredients

2 1/2oz gin

1/2oz dery vermouth

1drop orange bitters

olive to garish

Stir, strain, up, cocktail glass, garnish with a twist or olive

Ratios of Gin to vermouth vary widely. Many enthusiasts prefer much more than the capful or whisper sometimes used. The inclusion of orange bitters is a relatively recent revival of an original ingredient. Use only good, fresh vermouth.

King of the Orchard

There's a fine young tup in the orchard, bold and bright eyed. His flock is only small so he's casting about for new ladies and dreaming of all his young lambs to come in the spring time.

And yet, there is the winter to be got through first and the weather is drawing in.



 Between putting the orchard to bed and avoiding Zach's amorous advances we walked over Whitbarrow scar getting caught in a wild stinging hail storm.

Back indoors there is lots of bottling, labeling and preparation for the coming two weeks when there are two local events coming up.

The first is the E17 Designers' Christmas Fair on 29th Nov at 7-10pm. Mother will be hawking her fine liqueurs and dispensing gin related wisdom along side fellow designers and makers.

The E17Designers Christmas Market is in Time Out's top 10 fairs. So do come by and see what the hype is about, and get some of your present buying done and dusted before the pressure ratchets up to an unbearable levels. Have some cake, a beer or two from the boys at Wild Card. See, there, Christmas shopping isn't so bad after all.

The following day it's Eat or Heat's  Christmas Fair and in the evening a piano recital, with proceeds going to local food bank charity Eat or Heat. Mother will be there in the evening launching some specially commissioned Christmas pudding spiced rum, with her dear friends from Aura Rosa cake makers extraordinaire, and partners in crime for local Movember moustache growing competition.

Dream on Gio, mine is definitely bigger than yours!

And for Moustachioed gunslingers and lovers of spiced rum everywhere here is;

The Derringer (by Laura Cloer )

Ingredients:

1 1⁄2	oz	Kraken Spiced Rum
4	ds	orange bitters
1	bsp	Ginger juice
1	oz	lime juice
1	oz	agave syrup
1	spl	ginger ale

 

Shake & strain into a Collins glass over ice. Top with ginger ale. Garnish with lime wheel.

Stormy Weather

It's been a windswept week here at Mother's Ruin with gale force winds and driving rain. Mother's Ruin HQ has remained resolute and upright  throughout the tempest.

There was lots of local storm damage though, the worst being that the 200 year old mulberry tree that provided the fruit for this year's mulberry gin was hit by a falling bay tree and lost about half of her crown.

Tree surgeons have been summoned to the scene, and hopefully the old girl will make a recovery. Though Mulberry gin may be in limited supply next year.

Indoors the bottling of the Seville orange rum has begun. The colour of warm slightly cloudy honey with the dark and bitter sweet taste of marmalade. I'd made it as an attempt to create a Cointreau type liqueur, but it is it's own tawny miracle.

Seville oranges tart, deeply aromatic and in season at the darkest and coldest part of the year. Just when thoughts of Southern Spain and its golden heart might be the only thing to pull you through the dreich  grey British winter to spring time. And here packed with vitamin C to ward off seasonal ills, I bring you...

Mother's Cuban Hurricane

Ingredients: (per person)

• 2oz Seville orange rum                          
  
• 2 oz dark Cuban rum
• 2 oz passion fruit juice
• 1 oz orange juice
• Juice of a half a lime
• 1 Tbsp grenadine
• dash or two of orange bitters
• orange zest to garnish

Preparation

• Squeeze juice from half a lime into a cocktail shaker over some ice.
• Pour the remaining ingredients into the cocktail shaker.
• Shake well.
• Strain into a long glass
• Garnish with a curl of orange zest.

Music to pick sloes by

It has come to my attention via the acerbic comments of friends that I have become a sloe gang-master. I can spot laden branches at 100 yards, and nothing gladdens my blue stained heart more than the sight of industrious hedgerow gathering.

In the hopes of comforting my scratched and shredded troops, and spurring them on to epic picking feats I have created the 

Sloe Gin Play List

The Sloes of Penybanc  Tony Furtado

Prickle Eye Bush Bellowhead

Sloe Gin  Tim Curry

Sloe Eyed Devil Show Verlen

Happy now?

And as all troops march on a full stomach, an intoxicating recipe. Combining two of my favourite things, sloes and jelly - I give you...

Sloe Jelly

Take 8g or 4 leaves of the best grade gelatin you can afford and soften it in some cold water. Meanwhile heat 150mls of water and 100g of granulated white sugar. When all the sugar has dissolved add the softened gelatin and continue to heat until the gelatin too is dissolved. Remove from the heat and let cool for a few minutes. Not so cold that it starts to set, or too hot so the alcohol in the precious sloe gin you are about to add is at risk of evaporating, as that would never do. So about 4-5 mins should do it. Then add 350mls of sloe gin. Pour into your jelly moulds and leave to set. It will take at least 4 hours to set, better to leave overnight if you can.

Then, eat up! It's fortifying for the heart and good for nails and hair too!!  

Blooming lovely

Autumn has drawn in the days and the early morning sloe picking is cool and damp. Accompanied by some curious locals we have picked 150lbs of sloes from the nearby lanes.

It's an incredible spot with handful after handful of violet bloomed sloes. So the especially muddy condition of the path, and the extra pricklishness of these particular bushes is well worth it for the hoard gained.

We also have 250lbs of sweet and fragrant Lyth Valley  damsons picked from the young trees in the  orchard at Park End Farm, so the freezers are full to the lids and next year's sloe and damson gin supplies are assured.

In honour of the blue blush, the ferocious thorns, the tart and tenacious sloe - a recipe from fabulous British independent gin makers Sipsmith

The Sloe Gin Spritz
35ml Sloe Gin
25ml Lillet Blanc
20ml lemon juice
15ml sugar syrup
3 drops plum bitters
3 drops orange bitters
Sparkling wine
Pour all the ingredients except the wine into a large wine glass with plenty of ice and top up with sparkling wine. Garnish with a twist of lemon.