I tipped a glass of red wine into my MacBook.  Not deliberately, I’m not that daft.  If any future posts are reposts, my apologies, but they’re all well worth a listen, so … no apologies.

Guitars In Space

What sounds are produced if you play an electric guitar in space?

Imagine you’re space walking around the International Space Station, quite a trip in itself, and you’re carrying and strumming an electric guitar with a wireless connection to an amp inside ISS.  What would it sound like?  All (analog) music is vibration, so ….

Just asking.

Update 4/04/13

Here’s what happens.

Shaggy Ink Cap soup – recipe

I think the best way to deal with fungi, generally, is quick and simple. This particularly applies to shaggy ink caps. There are two reasons why – correct me if I’m wrong – you’ll never find fresh shaggys on a restaurant/bistro menu. They deliquesce (dissolve to inky black liquid) very quickly after picking and there is a widely held belief that alcohol should be avoided for several days each side of eating. I haven’t checked the alcohol theory myself, but I’ll let you know if I spew after my wine tomorrow evening [I didn’t]. The soup’s already eaten, and delicious it was, too. A delicate, silvery grey liquid with equally delicate flavour.

Shaggys can be found in woodland, on path and roadside verges and are commonly seen, despite their apparent fragility, forcing their way up through roads and pavements The most fruitful patch I ever found was on a bank on the edge of a Tesco car park.

Recipe
Shaggy Ink Caps
Milk
Salt & pepper
Garlic
Parsley

First, age and condition. If you come across a growth of shaggys with firm, closed caps as above, pick and get them to the kitchen as quick as you can. Don’t make the mistake I once did and think, “Ooh, I’ll come back for those tomorrow,” as tomorrow they’ll look like the three rear bodies below, which are past their best.

Remove and discard the stems, check for creatures and flick off any earth then chop to desired size. They’ll shrink a little on cooking. Put in a small pan and pour in milk to about ½ or ¾ way up the fungi pieces. Add crushed garlic and salt and pepper to taste with half your chopped parsley. Carefully bring to the boil then barely simmer for 5 minutes. Now you have a choice. Some recommend removing the poached fungi and discarding the poaching liquid. I favour serving and eating the lot as soup. Sprinkle with the rest of your parsley.

If you’re lucky, the spot where you picked this crop will yield another in a week or ten days.

Piccalilli – recipe

I adapted this from the recipe on the BBC’s Hairy Bikers site. There’s a milder alternative on the nipitinthebud blog, from the River Cottage Preserves Handbook

Traditionally, piccalilli contains a mixture of vegetables – cauliflower, courgette, small onions, maybe turnip or sweet pepper. I’ve made it with only carrots and sliced cooking onions, which are often on the supermarket cheap shelf, and am happy with the result.

500grm vegetables
2 or 3 onions
1 heaped dessertspoon English mustard powder
1 heaped dessertspoon ground turmeric
1 heaped dessertspoon chilli flakes or powder
150grm sugar
1 heaped teaspoon cornflour or plain flour
Cider vinegar
Salt

Chop the vegetables into your required size chunks. Put in a bowl in layers, sprinkling salt over each layer as you go. Cover and leave for 24 hours.

Run the bowl under the tap, swishing the salted veg around, drain then run the tap through them again. Set aside.

Slice onions thinly, put in a large pan, barely cover with cider vinegar and simmer for 15 minutes.

Mix mustard powder, chilli, turmeric and flour to a thin paste with vinegar, set aside for flavours to develop as the onions simmer.

Add drained veg to onions, add vinegar to barely cover again and return to simmer for 10 minutes.

Add spice mix, stir well and leave to simmer for final 10 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking (one tiny burnt bit will taint the whole batch).

Put in jars and leave for a month for flavours to develop and to take the edge off the vinegar. The above made a litre.

I made a batch 2 weeks ago, sampled it as this was cooking and it’s still a bit harsh, but I can tell it’s going to be scalp-tinglingly delicious. If you prefer less heat and bite, try the version on nipitinthebud

Podcast 6

Click for Podcast 6

Featuring the autumn harvest, funny smells and the irritating clicking of scorzonera’s Zippo.

HEDGEROW FRUITS

HEDGEROW JELLY

AGARICUS XANTHODERMA – AVOID!

 

Homegrown Chillies

Hedgerow Jelly – recipe

Rowanberries 319 grms
Sloes 106 grms
Elderberries 529 grms
Blackberries 903 grms
Crab apples x 4

Above is the needlessly precise list of fruits I picked on Monday morning to make my hedgerow jelly. There are plenty of elderberries and blackberries around, the rowans are just beginning to ripen in places but it looks like a poor year for sloes.

After destalking – the above are all prepared weights – I tipped rowanberries, sloes and chopped whole crab apples into a pan, barely covered with water and simmered for about 15 minutes, crushing the fruit against the side of the pan occasionally with a wooden spoon. Then I poured in the blackberries and elderberries, returned to the boil and reduced to simmer for another 15 to 20 mins, stirring to prevent catching on the bottom, but that’s unlikely.

I poured the lot into a boiled pillowcase suspended over a saucepan, left it to drip overnight then measured the juice. The traditional ratio is one pound of sugar to one of juice, so as the above yielded 1¼ pints I added 20 ounces of sugar as it heated in the pan. Once the sugar had dissolved I boiled the mixture, watching to ensure it didn’t boil over, then checked for set after about 10 minutes. It was ready. The final quantity nicely filled a 1 litre Kilner jar.

I do like blackberry jam, but don’t have much of a sweet tooth, so the tartness of this hedgerow jelly is a welcome change. I’ll definitely be making more.

Taste The Wild on Blue Peter – autumn foraging for sweets

Click Here To Play.

Chris Bax, creator of the Taste The Wild site, takes a Blue Peter presenter foraging and produces dandelion and burdock cordial (or beer if you prefer), hawthorn fruit leather and rosehip ‘mice’.

Chris Bax’s Recipes

Green Walnuts in Syrup – recipe

Kyrgyzstan recipe for green walnuts in syrup from “Wildwood – A Journey Through Trees” by Roger Deakin
Essential reading for anyone with an interest in trees, wood, food and the environment as a whole.

Podcast 5

In a decidedly unbusinesslike move, scorzonera gives away his idea for world domination of the food market.

LINKS

Blackberry recipes

The Prince’s Initiative for Mature Enterprise

A delightful short film on the Rhubarb Triangle

The Glasgow ice cream wars