drowning democratic sorrows in dandelions

Turns out that making decent tasting wines is quite easy (although it does take a fair while).  Last May I made some dandelion wine and, after 6 months of steady bubbling in the south wood store, a very decent drink was produced.  It was rather like a vermouth and, with lemon juice and a dash of gin produced a very potent and sophisticated cocktail.  This autumn I had a go at beetroot and giner which was a fabulous colour and tasted not bad but showed up the first significant problem: all four of the bottles left in the wine rack popped their corks showering sticky flourescent pink stuff over C's Chardonnay stash.

This year I've got a bit more professional and I invested in 24 beer bottles for the nettle beer (which shattered a couple of ikea bottles last year).  I'm also leaving the winter's parsnip wine until it absolutely, completely, definitely stops bubbling.

I'll wait 'til this year's dandelion wine is ready to drink to publish the recipe (limited ingredients mean that I've taken some liberties and I won't know if they've worked for 6 months).  However the nettle beer is damn quick (4 days to bottling) and damn fine.  I've had the first pint served over ice and it's as good as last year's but without the smashed bottles.  The following recipe is adapted from Roger Phillips Wild Food.

nettle beer

* full carrier bag of nettles
* 1.5kg sugar
* 50g cream of tartar
* sachet of ale or wine yeast

Boil the nettles for 15 minutes with up to 12 litres of water.  Strain the liquid into a fermentation bucket, add the sugar and cream of tartar and sufficient boiled water to make the quantity up to 2 gallons.  Wait until the mixture is tepid then scatter on the yeast, cover and leave for 4 days.  Siphon off into beer bottles.  It does get very fizzy so take care when opening but it really is delicious served with ice as the summer sun goes down.

Probably just as well that I've got a stack of decent cheap booze given the election results in Scotland which, for a card-carrying member of the labour party, were really rubbish.  Hey ho.

The good bit about the election was that C and I combined the voting with a lunch visit to the White House in Lochaline (mallard-cross with black mushrooms, wild garlic and walnuts followed by carrot cake with cream cheese and orange ice-cream ... really, really good).  This inspired me to grasp the bracken and finally have a go at eating the stuff (or fiddleheads as they're sometimes known).  My korean cookbook is down in Glasgow so I went for the simplest option I could find - bearing in mind that bracken is properly poisonous with variable amounts of carcinogenic ptaquiloside.

bracken
* pick bracken fronds before they've uncurled
* add to boiling water and boil for 15 minutes
* rinse in cold water
* dot with butter and grill 'til just browned

 Whilst I lived through the experience I failed to experience the delicious asparagus-like taste that is promised and I doubt I'll try it again,

In other news I've been offered a scholarship for a PhD studentship at Heriot Watt University.  It's four years looking in depth at the implications of current building performance models for low-carbon refurbishment schemes.  I'm very excited about it.  Here's hoping it'll allow me to keep the city/croft combination going.