I have had such a lovely day today. It started early. Out to my local supermarket to make a start on the Christmas food and drink shop. Ran in to my youngest, the incredibly hard working Hannah, who had been on the shop floor since 4am. People, think of all those folk who work crazy hours to make your holidays a big success. I know I do.
Then I cleaned house and racked wine. The birch sap and one of the elderflowers have turned out well. Swisser appeared for the wine tasting session and loved Elderflower 2 so much that I have reserved her a bottle. Elderflower 1 tastes slightly of cat pee but sure, you can't win them all.
Quite a few friends round tonight. Makes me feel all Christmassy. Even the dogs have had visitors, Ziggy and Rex. The house was quite mad for a while. Ziggy is staying the night as Hannah's current hours don't suit him. She is going to bed at 7pm, waking at 3am. Dogs don't understand that shit.
Now I know this post is a little bit woozy but when you rack 6 flagons of wine and sample a little bit of each of them (which you have to) it leads to wooziness, a dirty old job but somebody has to do it.
By the way, Swisser tried the kimchi and said she loved it.
Here is the recipe,
Quick Kimchi
Makes enough to fill a 1 litre jar. Preparation time 10 minutes. Fermenting time 24 hours to two weeks.
1 Chinese cabbage washed and dried
bunch of spring onions trimmed
3 cloves garlic, grated
5cm piece of ginger, peeled and chopped finely
8 anchovies in olive oil, finely chopped
85 g chilli paste
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp fish sauce
Remove outer leaves of cabbage, slice lengthways into 4 then crossways into 5 chunks.
Slice spring onions down the middle, then into 3 or 4 pieces. Throw the rest of the ingredients into a large mixing bowl with 1 tbsp of sugar and salt*. Ad the cabbage and spring onions and stir to coat everything.
Place in an airtight container, such as a Kilner jar and leave in the fridge.
You can use this after 24 hours, but the flavours really start to develop after about one week.
*I used much less salt and found the kimchi still quite salty.
