goodrichard.com

As family and friends will tell you, I’m not that keen on plums, but, as the hedgerows and trees around the house have a more than plentiful supply, we thought we’d have a go at making plum wine. Different to the wine we’ve made in kits, we’re hoping this will be a little fruitier, with maybe even more of a kick than than the self-distilling products.

Picking 5.5kg (12lbs) of fruit, we placed the foraged plums in the fermenter and covered with two gallons of hot water to split the skins and let the pulp inside seep out and turn the liquid into a thick mush. We left it in this state for two weeks. The sight of mould peppering the top of the now thick syrup-like liquid, signalled that the first stage of natural fermentation was complete. Onto stage two.

First, the whole lot was syphoned off into a second fermenter, when 4kg of a boiling water and sugar mixture and some brewers’ yeast was added. The sugar syrup has to be added slowly, though, until the plum juice is clear. The yeast has to be measured, too; one teaspoon for every gallon of brew meant that we needed three teaspoons. Accompanied by another good stir, we capped the mixture with an air lock to release any further fermenting pressure and left it for another fortnight, quietly bubbling away.

Before bottling, the brew has to have stopped fermenting, to stop the stuff exploding. Campden tablets usually do the trick; they both kill off any remaining bacteria and stop the wine picking up contamination when it comes to syphoning into bottles. And although they’re explosive in concentrated form, too, diluting them negates this. Adding one tablet for every gallon of wine saw us add two and a half tablets, balancing our 10 litres of brew.

We syphoned the wine off into bottles last week, and just had enough to fill 12 bottles. A very pretty blush-pink liquid, they look perfect for the summer. Which is just as well – before we can drink them, we have to leave them in the outhouse for six to nine months to clear. It’s going to be a boozy 2010; the cider will ready then, too…

A month. It’s the longest I’ve not blogged since I started this site in January 2007. But don’t think I’ve been doing nothing. Life has gotten very busy the last four weeks, and I’ll admit, it’s been hard to log on and update happenings, as life has been, well, happening.

Since the middle of August, I’ve been busier than ever working, and trying to get a new online project off the ground. That’s taken more time than I’d envisaged, but thankfully, while it will be an ongoing project, the first stage is almost complete.

Nik has been just as busy, tidying up the garden and emptying the vegetable plot. He’s been harvesting sunflowers, making crab apple jelly, taking out the onions, making fig jam, planting cauliflowers and cabbage, and trimming the tomatoes, to try and spook them into actually ripening.

We’ve both been picking apples for our first foray into cider-making, taking plums off the trees near the nature reserve to make plum wine and collecting both blackberries and sloes, the latter to make this year’s stash of sloe gin or vodka.

Fun has been on the agenda, too, though. We’ve been watching the contenders sing their hearts out in the 1985 Eurovision Song Contest, catching up with ‘Allo ‘Allo, Fawlty Towers, Howard’s Way and Stephen Fry in America, visiting family and friends, and enjoying the odd meal in the garden, although I suspect that’s soon to stop.

So, busy, busy, busy. It’s better than bored, bored, bored, and I’ve certainly not been doing nothing. Hopefully the merry-go-round to Busyville should start to slow a little now, which is good. If it doesn’t, there’ll be no time to get off…

We’ve had another very enjoyable Christmas, with a mixture of entertaining, and being entertained. After spending time with Nik’s family in Galleywood on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we hosted mum, Bart, and Geoff at the house, which meant planning a menu and cooking the dishes on it.

A soup was of course always going to make the menu final cut, and after the two dishes we’ve recently made, we needed a new variety to try. So, inspiration struck us while watching Nigella’s Christmas Kitchen, and we found the recipe for her roast squash and sweet potato soup.

Squash is such an autumnal/winter vegetable, and it looks tasty even when it hasn’t been cooked, the bright orange colour contrasting with whatever you choose to mix it with. Nigella couples her soup with a blue cheese and buttermilk sauce, but we chose to leave this out, as it’s not to everyone’s taste.

In Nigella’s recipe, the squash is roasted and blended with sweet potato

While the vegetables have to be roasted and then blended (amazingly with all the skins on), the recipe is simplicity itself, and makes a thick, hearty, and warming soup, full of spicy richness. If you’d like to make Nigella’s roast squash and sweet potato soup, you can find the recipe here.