Monthly Archive for September, 2010

Beekeeping and the Steampunk Gardener!

Published by Undergardener on September 30, 2010 in Gardening and the Out-of-Doors, History and The Queen.
beekeeping-and-the-steampunk-gardener

Head Gardeners have often kept hives to provide honey for the ‘Big House’ and bees to ensure pollination in their garden. Without pollination flowers don’t turn into fruit.  In many ways bees are the real Undergardeners in any productive garden. Coming into Spring it’s time for this Undergardener to tend her bees.

A smart bee sting or two in hot, sultry weather benefits gardeners by causing them to perspire more freely, and feel much lighter afterwards. Journal of Horticulture 1871

I have always been fascinated by bees and I have a hive of my own. I’m still a beginner and very much the apprentice to a few more experienced Beekeepers who live locally. Beekeeping is my first authentic experience of the apprentice – Master relationship which was the foundation of how men learnt their trade in gardens during the Victorian era. I’ve always been very comfortable learning from books. With bees it’s different. No matter how much I read my hands and my eyes need ‘to do’ and ‘watch’ to learn this skill. Like the ancient trades this has to be passed from Master to apprentice with time, care and many stings.

After a long winter hiatus it is time for this apprentice to begin actively managing the hive towards the reward of robbing honey.

I’m reading a lot about the history of beekeeping at the moment. I have learnt that how we tend bees today has changed very little since the Victorian Era. In fact the Victorian Era saw the innovations that created the modern box bee hives.

Straw Skep

Before the Victorian Era bees were kept in straw skeps. Skeps are essentially upturned straw baskets under which bees form their naturally curvy honey comb. In this system when the beekeeper collects honey the swarm of bees are killed or made homeless in the process. This means that each year the beekeeper needs to start again by collecting a new wild swarm.

The Victorian Era saw the rise of the amateur naturalist. Bees were cultivated by middle class gentlemen not for honey but science. The most famous of these amateur beekeepers was Charles Darwin who kept at hive in the garden at Down House. Darwin marshalled his children into an army of laboratory assistants in order to track the flight paths of Bumble Bees. It is postulated that keeping bees helped Darwin formulate his theories on evolution.

Nor ought we to marvel if all the contrivances in nature be not, as far as we can judge, absolutely perfect, as in the case even of the human eye; or if some of them be abhorrent to our ideas of fitness. We need not marvel at the sting of the bee, when used against an enemy, causing the bee’s own death; at drones being produced in such great numbers for one single act, and being then slaughtered by their sterile sisters; at the astonishing waste of pollen by our fir-trees; at the instinctive hatred of the queen-bee for her own fertile daughters. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species 1859.

In 1860 another amateur naturalist the American Rev. Lorenzo Langstroth patented his design for a box hive. With only slight regional adjustments the Langstroth hive is the standard box hive still used by 75% of the world’s beekeepers. The Rev Langstroth designed a hive that provides bees with frames in which to build their comb and store their honey.  The advantage of this design is that beekeepers can remove the frames to check for disease, control swarming by removing cells that will lead to the birth of Queen Bees and rob honey with out destroying the hive. This potentially allows beekeepers to increase the yield of honey they can rob each year as the hive builds its numbers.

An open hive box showing the frames.

The clever thing that the Rev had realised is that bees build their natural burr comb in sheets separated by a standard distance, the width of a bee, now called the ‘bee space’.  By designing frames a ‘bee space’ apart the bees don’t glue the frames together or to the hive box with comb. This is what makes the frames ‘removable’.

The second clever thing about the Langstroth hive is that by placing a grille (the Queen Excluder) between the box containing the Queen Bee and the boxes from which you wish to collect honey (called the Supers) you can stop the Queen from laying brood in the honey. The grille is also based on the ‘bee space’ – worker bees can fit through to stock honey, Queeny can’t get into to lay eggs – genius.

Hive frame with comb and bees.

Here in Australia there are more than 1500 species of native bees.  Most of these are solitary bees that don’t form large combs or colonies this makes them mostly unsuitable for hiving.  There is a native sting-less bee that can potentially be hived but not in the cool south were I live.  In order to ensure the pollination of the crops that European settlers brought to Australia eight hives of the European Honeybee (Apis mellifera) were first brought to Australia in 1822. Unfortunately they don’t record how they managed to bring hives of bees safely to Australia across rolling, boiling seas for six-months. I imagine that they feed the bees on honey or sugar-water and lashed the hives down tightly in the hold. Possibly the boxes were marked with a big ‘Don’t unpack mid-voyage’ sign.

I enjoy the fact that in keeping bees and learning from other more experienced keepers I am participating in an authentically Victorian gardening activity – this is the most steampunk gardening gets!

Mr. White, the naturalist, says, that both horse-beans and peas sprang up in his field-walks in the autumn; and he attributes the sowing of them to birds. Bees, he also observes, are much the best setters of cucumbers. If they do not happen to take kindly to the frames, the best way is to tempt them by a little honey put on the male and female bloom. When they are once induced to haunt the frames, they set all the fruit, and will hover with impatience round the lights in a morning till the glasses are opened.  Mrs Beeton HM

1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Aspects of Aspic*

Published by SJ on September 20, 2010 in Uncategorized.
aspects-of-aspic

I. Aspic, or Ornamental Savory Jelly

Have you ever had aspic? At one time it was a handy way to coat and preserve foods. Also, it is just fancy as heck. If you’ve never had one or read about them, a quick image search will give you the idea of what it is–savory gelatin with just about anything you can imagine suspended in it–veggies, hard-boiled eggs, meat bits. A creamy aspic is a chaud-froid. Modern recipes often call for packet gelatin, rather than boiling down cow bits for hours, I can’t imagine why. Mine turned out rather ridiculously, you’ll see.

Aspic starts with feet and flavoring. Beeton’s calls for calf heel, but this was labeled as cow foot, which should do, I suppose.

Cow Foot

As an aside, I love ripping open packages of feet, marrowbones, and soup bones–there is this lovely buttery cow-y perfume that comes rising up that completely makes my mouth water.

After making the stock and clarifying it using egg whites, I decided to add celery, hard boiled eggs, olives, chicken cubes, and rinsed cubes of the beets I had pickled a couple of weeks ago. This is where things went from a lovely light tea color to, well. Pink.

Getting ready to unmold

What was I thinking? I will tell you: Pickled beets, yum yum.

Aspic Turned out of the Brain Mold

At first I was dismayed to lose the pale color, and then I realized I liked it a lot! The beet juice did not seem to affect the flavor at all, which was subtle and savory. We had some spread on crackers.

II. Three Things to Do with Pork

I decided to try something simple for the weekend–How to Boil a Ham to Give it an Excellent Flavor. You sort of create a stock around it as you simmer it, by filling the pot with vegetables and spices. Beeton says that if your ham is dried out, you must soak it in vinegar and split it open to see if it’s bad-stinky and whatnot. Modern hams, at least ones I have access to, are pretty much ready to go and injected with various flavor enhancers already, but I thought I would give it a try.

Pre-simmer

Still, it was nice in the end and kind of falling apart. I thought I would be game and give it the 3 hours it called for, but next time, less.

Of course there was leftover ham, since this one was massive. I minced it up and POTTED it, which results in a creamy pink paste very much like modern deviled ham, but with more of a mace overtone, of course, and it about a fifth lard. It’s incredible on sandwiches or with cream cheese and a little berry jam or fig paste on crackers.

The Way We Live Now

If you would have told me a year ago that I was going to be going through buckets of lard like water and hoarding every scrap of grease I could, I would have laughed my head off at you. I thought maybe I could fudge things and use butter, or, GASP, olive oil. I was a vegetarian in college and I was gifted a copy of White Trash Cooking, (a thoughtful present that was a nod to the trailer park parts of my upbringing) to which I made hundreds of lame edits so I could have a spinach onion pie without lard in the crust. I SUBMIT TO YOU, LARD.

You know what the really crazy part is? I eat like this all the time now, weird meaty thingies and pickled eggs with a glass of whiskey and so forth and I am losing weight. Probably unrelated, but I was quite certain I was going to transition to muumuus doing this this year. Is this a diet? NO. I assume I will have a coronary and drop dead in January. But by Trollope will I be an attractive corpse with shiny hair and nails.

Jarring the ham, pre-lard seal

There’s just something so sexy about how luridly real grease glistens at you. Do I want to eat this food or rub it on myself? I can’t decide. I think my children are the only ones on the block who eat nutmeg and mace almost every night of the week and go “MMMM” when that smell fills the kitchen.

Potted Ham, That Will Keep Good for Some Time [814.]

INGREDIENTS.
To 2 lbs. of lean ham allow
1/2 lb. of fat (bacon grease, duck fat, or other drippings)
1 teaspoonful of pounded mace
1/2 teaspoonful of pounded allspice
1/2 teaspoonful of nutmeg
1/2 teaspoonful of cayenne
pepper to taste
clarified butter or lard

Mode.—Mince the ham and stir together the softened or melted fat in the above proportion, seasoning it with cayenne pepper, allspice, pepper, pounded mace, and nutmeg. Grind to a smooth paste in a food processor. Press the mixture firmly into potting-pots or a jar to prevent air pockets, pour over clarified butter, and keep it refrigerated. This receipt produces about 3 pints. If well seasoned, it will keep a long time in winter, and will be found very convenient for sandwiches, &c.

Time.—1/2 hour.
Seasonable at any time.

III. Fowl and Rice Coquettes

I like fried food a lot, and I like how Beeton’s offers recipes that are both elegant and at the same time, fried grease wads. I made Croquettes of Fowl last Christmas, but I was curious to see what the rice option was like. It was pretty simple–stuff minced fowl mixture into rice balls, coat with crumb, and fry. Kind of like onigiri but much worse for you. I am working on browning them uniformly, but I like them. I did not make any sauce to go with them this time, but served them with “Carrots in the German Way” and pickled eggs.

One ball asplode due to being mishandled.

The innards

The rice is cooked in stock, which produces extra yum. I made a note to add more salt next time, but it is easy to sprinkle it on.

Speaking of pickled eggs:

Note brown outside

They are WONDERFUL, absolutely my most favorite pickled thing so far. I am loving them with an icy glass of whiskey or scotch and the promised intestinal distress has not come to pass, so I guess they are not weapons for me. Next time I will eat two and report back.

Next on the docket: steak frites a la Beeton, and homemade Devonshire cream, made with unpasteurized milk. GASP AGAIN!

* Hey, I almost called this post Apsic: Bold As Love. Maybe I should write terrible greeting cards for a living or something.

9 Comments

Fall a la Mode

Published by SJ on September 9, 2010 in Cooking with Mrs. Beeton.
fall-a-la-mode

I. Beef a la Mode with a Brief Digression Into Salad

It is rapidly becoming springier in Australia, but here we are entering fall, and my life and my calendar is getting meatier again as I shove the last of the harvestables into pickle jars or smush them into jellies and chutneys. Tomorrow is Aspic Day, a whole day of encasing whatever turns up in the fridge in hoofy goo like bugs in amber. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I decided to tackle the crème de la crème of beef dishes, Beef a la Mode. I have always heard of it, and wondered what made people talk about it in the context of old-fashioned, swanky restaurants our grandparents might have patronized. Beef a la mode can be fairly compared to pot roast, which it greatly resembles, due to the fact that both are giant chunk-o-meat, braised slowly in some kind of liquid. The difference I can see is that beef a la mode is browned or cooked with some kind of bacon or ham product for flavoring as well.

As usual, I tweaked Beeton’s a bit to be more logical and suitable for modern techniques without losing the spirit of the original. There are probably not too many extant recipes for beef a la mode that call for mace and port. Mace! How I missed you.

Beeton calls for slitting up the roast a bit to let the flavors permeate, giving it a spice rub, and then wrapping it up in bacon with meat tape. My kitchen is like a day spa for cow parts.

I am not going to lie to you; I have no idea what meat tape is. It sounds awesome, though. I decided to ensure the bacon would stay on with a couple of pieces of kitchen string.

Five! Hours! Later! Bam, there was a fork-tender roast. Really, I should have sliced it thinner but I was feeling impatient. Then I strained the cooking broth and reduced it by half in a skillet while the meat rested in a just-warm oven. I hate letting meat sit out all naked in the cold air to rest.

See the crust? That is herbs and spices and YUM.

I made a dressing to go with the salad that my sister, Morgan, helped me whisk together. I did not realize I was making a type of mayonnaise until it got rich and creamy and turned a lovely shade of green from the olive oil. No eggs, though. My reference book to keep me on track is The Joy of Cooking–I see it as a baseline sanity check for modern techniques, and when I looked later I did not see a dressing recipe quite like it.

Om nom nom

Morgan thought it needed more sugar, but I said, “Just wait until you taste it on the salad.” She agreed it complemented the greens, tomatoes, and croutons I made that morning really well. I had a feeling it might. Overall, I’d say the recipes like sauces and dressings call for less sugar than modern ones catering to current tastes. I like the interplay and enhancing properties of sugar, salt, and spice that you see in in Thai and Vietnamese cuisine, for instance, so sometimes I throw a little extra sugar into dishes that call for salt and cayenne.

Beef a la mode is awesome cold as sandwiches the next day as well–something else it has in common with pot roast.

Beef a la Mode [602.]

Ingredients.
2.5-3 lbs of chuck, round, or top blade roast
a few slices of fat bacon
1/2 cup red wine, cider, or sherry vinegar
black pepper
bunch of savory herbs, chopped
Crush together: 1 tsp allspice, 3 cloves, and 1 tsp peppercorns
2 bay leaves
1 onion, sliced
1 turnip, roughly chopped
2 carrots, roughly chopped
1 cup port

Mode.— Prepare the beef for stewing in the following manner:—Choose a fine piece of beef and with a sharp knife make a few slits deep enough to let in the bacon and other flavorings. Rub beef over with seasonings and minced herbs. Lay 2-3 slices of bacon in your stewpot, which should be heavy and not too much larger than the roast, and turn on the burner to let the bacon warm and begin to brown. Lay the remaining bacon in strips over the herbed roast and tie down with string if necessary.

Set the roast into the pan on the browned bacon, pour the vinegar and 1/2 cup water around the roast, and add the bay leaves to the liquid.  Let it simmer covered very gently for 4 hours, or rather longer, should the meat not be extremely tender. Slice and fry the onions of a pale brown, and in the last hour add the onions and other vegetables, which should add flavor but not disintegrate into the liquid. When ready to serve, take out the beef, remove the string and bacon, and hold in a warm oven to rest. Strain the vegetables and other pieces out, skim off every particle of fat from the gravy, add the port wine, and reduce sauce by about half, using a skillet to speed the process if desired. When the sauce is ready, salt to taste and send it to the table in a tureen; it should be of a lovely garnet color. Send the beef to table on a hot plate, thinly sliced and attractively arranged.

Great care must be taken that this does not boil fast, or the meat will be tough and tasteless; it should only just bubble.

Additionally: A discussion of beef a la mode from Lincoln to Pepys to Beeton.

II. Bunny Gravy Goodness

Preparing to make stock. I need more practice with the saddle.

Originally, this recipe called for some leftover roast hare that was just laying around the hunting lodge or whatever, but most people don’t have rabbit just taking up space in the icebox, so I modified this to use a whole uncooked one. It also called for mushroom catsup, something else we modern pantries don’t feature often. It a delicious jointed rabbit stewed in gravy that is made from stock using the carcass. Amazing. As with most cold-weather Beeton, scratch stock makes all the difference. The red current jelly you serve it with acts a bit like cranberry sauce with turkey.

I did not know until this year that a rabbit’s front legs are not attached to their skeleton. You just slice straight through the muscles.

Hashed Hare [1030.]

Ingredients.
A whole rabbit, skinned and prepared for cooking
1 blade of pounded mace
2 or 3 allspice
pepper and salt to taste
1 onion, sliced
a bunch of savoury herbs (thyme, oregano, bay, parsley &c)
3 tablespoonfuls of port wine
2 tablespoons drippings or butter
2 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoonfuls of mushroom ketchup or Worcestershire sauce

Mode.—Joint the rabbit, slicing the saddle into bite-sized pieces. Put the bones, trimmings, and organs, if any, into a stewpan, with a cup and a half of water; add the mace, allspice, seasoning, onion, and herbs, and stew for an hour, covered. Strain the resultant stock allowing any herb leaves to remain if liked. Whisk together the drippings and flour at the bottom of the stewpan, and add the strained stock gradually, whisking to keep the gravy smooth. Add the wine and Worcestershire, season with salt and pepper, and bring the gravy to a gentle boil to thicken it. It should not be terrifically thick. Lay in the pieces of rabbit so they are mostly covered by the gravy. Allow the rabbit to simmer for 20 minutes, turning once and serve on the bones, or allow to simmer for an hour and shred the meat into the gravy. Excellent over mashed potatoes. Garnish the dish with sippets of toasted bread. Send red-currant jelly to table with it.

III. Picklesplosion

Last weekend was Pickle Weekend. Why not learn how to can, right?

I decided to make Indian Pickle (Very Superior), and it is superior, and gorgeous. You prep the veg for a couple of days in salt, and then you have carte blanche to throw anything seasonal in as it ripens. This made John Smythe, my canning consultant, very nervous. “You don’t want it to ferment, or worse,” he warned me.

Salting the pickle mix

A small child performs the traditional dance in the background to placate the pickle gods.

I promised I would get it all together and can it sooner, rather than later. I included napa cabbage (Beeton called for “lettuces’), green and wax beans, pickling onions, cauliflower, garlic, chile peppers, and probably something I am forgetting.

Pickle packing.

As a bonus, my sink is a lovely turmeric color for the time being.

I also made Bengal Mango Chetney, which charmingly contains NO MANGOS. It is fricking delicious and spicy as hell, in part because I found some fresh and evil ginger powder at a halal store, rather than relying on that milquetoast baloney you find at Large Gringo Chain Grocery. This stuff is going to be the bomb with mulligatawny.

Apples, raisins, and SPICE.

Finally, here is the fruit of my efforts (green pickles belong to John Smythe):

And this is not even including all the Very Superior Indian Pickle. This is going to be a spicy winter, and [SPOILER ALERT] I know what some people are getting for Christmas.

4 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Wattle Day – Welcoming the Aussie Spring

Published by Undergardener on September 1, 2010 in Customs and Manners, Gardening and the Out-of-Doors and History.
wattle-day-welcoming-the-aussie-spring

Welcome to spring from south-eastern Australia!  The bush around Melbourne is a blaze of golden-yellow Wattle blossoms signaling the end of winter and offering the promise of sunshine to come. Now on the one hand I’m loving all the drought-breaking rain we are currently experiencing, on the other hand I’m OVER IT, bring on the sun!

In 1838 the movement to recognise the 1st of September as Wattle Day in Australia seeded in the island state of Tasmania.  This movement, grew throughout the mainland colonies, fully flowering as a day of national celebration in the early 1900′s. Traditions associated with this day include the wearing of a Wattle sprig as a buttonhole and the festooning of public buildings in Wattle garlands.

Our interest in Wattle Day has waxed and waned since 1838. Modern Australians don’t seem as comfortable as the Victorians were with overt demonstrations of national pride (unless we are beating another nation at a sporting event). So there has been no festooning this year. There was a flotilla of politicians wearing Wattle buttonholes just now on the News but that is just of whole lot of ‘baby-kissing’ as we still haven’t managed to form a Government (enough fussing with buttonholes guys and more focus on the politics).

Wattle - The Sprig for Spring

Historians argue that by tracking the history of Wattle Day and the debate to select our national floral emblem (the glorious Golden Wattle – Acacia pycnantha ) it is possible to track the creation of a national identity. This is a link to a really interesting article by the fabulous historian Libby Robin that follows that discussion.

Wattle Day is certainly the closest that we have ever come to developing a spring ‘May Day‘ tradition. Wattle Day was always more about nationalism than the rites of spring. It lacks the sex, drugs and rock and roll of an old fashioned fertility festival.

To the Indigenous Kulin Nations that lived in the Melbourne region Wattle has different associations. The blooming of Wattles signals a time to consider our ancestors and to acknowledge the passing of Elders in the late winter. The Kulin described seven seasons in Melbourne rather than the European experience of four. This time of the year is really a pre-spring or the Kulin Guling Orchid Season. While as a nation we are still battling to reconcile with each other, this landscape and our climate I take it as a sign of hope that the Wattle is often worn, as a substitute for rosemary in remembrance, by people of both Indigenous and European decent.

The Victorians urged us to unite as a nation beneath the golden blossom of the Wattle there may have been some deep wisdom in their musings after all.

I think the final word needs to go to Monty Python’s ‘Bruces’ Sketch.

“This here’s the wattle, the emblem of our land, You can stick it in a bottle, you can hold it in your hand.”

1 Comment Tags: , , , .