The Ancient Town of Rye

Visit Rye

Savoury Popcorn

I don't have a photo of the finished dish here as I scoffed the whole lot before I had a chance to take one! It's bloody good!

The recipe can be found in this book HERE.

Here's what you will need...

4 tablespoons of clarified butter or extra-virgin olive oil
140g popcorn kernels
70g unsalted butter
2 tablespoons Dijon-style mustard
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
1 bunch fresh chives, minced
1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

And here's what you will need to do...

Heat the clarified butter / olive oil in a large saucepan. Add the kernels, place the lid on the pan and leave until you're happy all or most of the kernels have popped. Remove from the heat and transfer the popped corn into a large bowl.

In the meantime, melt the unsalted butter over a medium heat until it has browned. Whisk in the mustard and salt.

Pour most of the mustard butter over the popped corn and toss well. Taste, if you want more butter then add some. Toss again.

Sprinkle with the chives and thyme and toss one last time.

Tuck in!

70's tastic pillow cases!

I love my new pillow cases that I got from my housemate for Christmas! Thanks Angela!

Bottling the Perry!

After 2 months of being in the demijohn, the Perry was ready for bottling! We managed to fill 5 bottles! We will now leave them to condition until Spring 2012 when we'll crack them open... Can't wait!!

The perry goes into the demijohn...

So after a week of the perry fermenting in the bin, it was time for it to be transferred into the demijohn where it will remain for the next month whilst it goes through it's second and final fermentation before bottling.

Perry Making

My parents have a Conference pear tree in their garden and this year was a very good year for the pears, so I took a trip up the ladder and collected all that I could reach and I've decided to make perry from them!

This is the first time I've made any kind of fruit cider so it's really exciting! Lacking a pulp an press (used for traditional cider making, where the fruit is crushed and then pressed through cloths to extract the juice) we decided to just go with what equipment we had and juiced the pears in a juicer, so we'll see how it goes! A pulper and press is now definitely on the wish list!

HERE is a useful guide on the process of perry making.

And here's how we prepared our perry:

First of all we washed the pears in water and cut out any hard or brown bits on the skins.


The next step was to put them through the juicer.


Then we poured the juice into a sterilised fermentation bin though a sieve to catch any lumps of pear.


Once all the pears were juiced we added wine yeast and a teaspoon of sugar to the juice to aid the fermentation. Just mix the yeast in some boiled-and-cooled-to-room-temperature water and leave for a few hours for it to activate before pouring and stirring into the juice. Put the lid on to the bin and leave it to do it's thing for about 5 days to a week.


There are two stages of fermentation when making perry; the first fermentation is carried out by the yeasts (in our case, the wine yeasts) and the second converts L(-)-malic acid to L(+)-lactic acid and carbon dioxide. (You can read the scientific part HERE).

The second stage of fermentation will be carried out in a demi john, which we will be transferring it into next week...

Time To Stand And Stare

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Further bean progress and garden

Hello again! Cor, I've been slacking on the blogging front for an age! Tsk tsk. I have, since my last post, started a new job, and by golly what little time a 5 day working week leaves you! However since then, the garden has sprung into bloom! In just over a month, the beans have really shot up and the garden is alive with bees, berries and herbs...

Seedy bread

My friend Chloe has been raving about the above book for a while and I am always excited to see what she has been rustling up from it. For my birthday back in April, she presented me not only with my very own copy, but also a delicious lemon drizzle cake that she had baked from the book!

Yesterday I tried my hand at baking this seedy (cumin / fennel) loaf...


Click for larger image of recipe...


I would definitely recommend this recipe to anyone! I'm now enjoying it for breakfast! Mmm!!!

Further bean progress...

Bean progress...