Redcurrant Jelly

OK so the summer hols went on a little bit longer than expected! I have tons and tons of stuff to stick on here about the wedding, the stag, the honeymoon as well as the usual stuff at home.

Here is my recipe of the classic accompaniment to venison, terrine, pate and the like

It couldn't be easier to make. Just get equal quantities of both redcurrants and sugar. Boil up the fruit until it realises it's juice (about ten minutes) and then add in the sugar. Boil for eight minutes before straining through muslin and into sterilised jars. Simple as that!

Tom Doorley digs the Bounty!

Been meaning to put this up. I recieved this message from food writer Tom Doorley about barrowsbounty.com.
"Hiya Liam. This looks really good. Keep up the good work. You have inspired me to start blogging again".
I must be doing something right!!! Good man Tom!

RIP Betty

RIP Betty. The postman flattened poor Betty yesterday morning:(

Not easy being a hen in Bounty land

Plans for the year

Firstly sorry for the break in posting. I was in hibernation with Christmas and the snow!

I really just wanted to let you all know what the plans for the coming year are going to be.

I will be continuing to try and grow as much of our vegetables and fruit as possible. The pigs and laying hens will also feature along with trying to find as much wild food as possible.. A new departure will be chickens for the table. Me and a buddy of mine are going to raise some chickens for eating so I will keep you posted as to how we get on!

The big project for the year however is going to be our wedding which is happening in June. I think I may have bitten off more than I can chew here as I want to try and have all the food for the wedding either home grown produce or wild food! At 150 people it is by far the biggest challenge I have attempted in the garden and kitchen.

We are having a marquee and the idea is to have a relaxed homemade wedding with all our friends and family. The food (hopefully!!) will be some canapes of wild food followed by a whole spit roast pig with salads and vegetables from the garden and then some kind of seasonal dessert which will feature our eggs and fruit. God its a bit overwhelming when you actually write it all down!

I will post on here as to how I am getting on with the preperations, whether it be catching a wild salmon to growing the vegetables or trying to encourage the pig to grow so it is ready for June!!

The picture above is of me and George spending some man time on our local shoot which we have been doing quite a lot of while we have been away.

Success

I have to admit that I felt pretty smug this morning tucking into my bank holiday fry up. It consisted of eggs from the girls, a potato cake made with spuds from the garden and taking pride of place was out own dry cured bacon and our own sausages. Doesn't get much better than this. Makes all the hard work worthwhile!

Garden Soup

I just thought this recipe might be of interest to some of you. We like a roast chicken every now and again like everyone else. As of yet I have not gone down the road of rearing chickens for the table. This is partly due to just not having gotten round to it and partly because George sometimes retrieves the laying hens (Puts them off laying something terrible but otherwise doesn’t seem to trouble them too much). God knows what he would do to little chicks.
As we don’t rear our own we try to buy organic or at least free range birds. However as everyone knows they are bloody expensive full stop and especially so when compared with the 4.99 bird we see in the supermarkets. I refuse to buy this kind of meat so we find ways to make the organic bird go further. This is typically what we do. Roast chicken dinner is first on the list. I then strip the rest of the meat from the bird and we will have chicken pasta, risotto or chicken and broccoli bake. Finally I make a stock with the carcass and make this soup.
The stock is easy, just break up the carcass and add some carrots and onions along with some bay and any other herbs you have. Barely cover it with water and simmer for 2 or 3 hours. Top up the water if needed and that’s it.All you do then is strain the stock. I add whatever vegetables happen to be in season at the time. This can include spuds, carrots, peas, beans, kale, and anything else that takes your fancy. The only trick is to make sure to cut everything into pieces the same size. So if using peas for example, make sure that you chop the spuds and carrots into pea size chunks so everything cooks at the same time. The other thing to note is that I didn’t season with salt during the stock making process. It can easily turn out too salty, so you are much better off seasoning when the soup is ready

River Cottage Part 2

Following on from the last post Hugh arrived around midday to take the afternoon part of the course. I suppose Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall is River Cottage to most people so it was great that I managed to get on a course that he was attending. He rocked in driving his battered old Landy and did a cookery demo for us. He cooked our starter for lunch which was chicken livers on toast. Essentially it was chicken livers fried off with some sherry mustard and other bits and pieces. Anyone that would like the recipe just leave a comment on this post and I will pass it on to you.

After the cooking demo he spent some time going round having a chat to everyone, signing books and getting pictures taken. While this was going on the rest of the staff were transforming the barn where we had the morning's classes into a dining room. We were promptly called for dinner which was their own roast chicken with all the trimmings and very nice it was too. A nice touch was that they had placed eggs at various seats around the table which we were not allowed to sit at. The hosts for the day plus Hugh then sat in these seats and moved around the table throughout the meal. It was really nice to be able to have a chat with them all and was probably the highlight of the day for me.

After lunch there was a Q and A session followed by a class on how to kill, pluck and clean a chicken. River Cottage's head chef Gillon Meller or Gill as everyone called him took us through the process and gave everyone great confidence, especially those that had not attempted anything like this before. We all got our own bird to have a go at which we were given to bring home at the end of the day.

It was about 5pm by then and the day was over. Everyone was given a signed copy of the River Cottage cookbook. For those that already had it they were allowed choose something else from the on site shop. I took home a signed copy of the Beyond River Cottage DVD. This was only a small thing but it showed the effort everyone made to make the visit to River Cottage as enjoyable as possible. Nothing was too much trouble.

With that we all jumped up onto the back of the tractor and returned to the real world after our River Cottage treatment! A very worthwhile day out and a must for anyone who finds themselves down Dorset way!

River Cottage Part 1

Before I got the chickens I went over to Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's River Cottage for a course called "All About Chickens". I was pretty excited needless to say about the whole thing.

Anyway we headed off to Dorset the day before and spent some time at Lyme Regis which was deadly. It is a real old fashioned seaside resort which has plenty of cool cafes and arty farty shops. We ate sourdough pizza at a fantastic local bakery for lunch.

The following day we got a taxi to the River Cottage HQ car park and then made the final leg of the journey down an old lane on the back of a tractor! All very rustic.

We had some elderflower cordial and homemade biscuits on arrival and then straight into the course. The morning session was hosted by Richard Hicks and Pammy Riggs from the TV series. They went through all the basics for someone wanting to keep some laying hens and showed us around River cottage's"chickenopolis". We also got the see all the other bits and pieces including the pigs and their various vegetable gardens.

It was a very hands on kind of day and both Richard and Pammy really knew their stuff and answered any questions we had. It was also obvious that both of them were mad about chickens and their enthusiasm rubbed off on many of the people at the event.

Hugh was due to join us then at noon to cook for us and take the afternoon session. I will let you know how that went in the next post.

Hen Problems

I went out to the hens one day last week to collect the eggs as per normal and found a few ticks in their run. On closer inspection I found a fair few more. Disaster! They were mainly brown little fellas with a few of the dreaded red mite thrown in.

Only one thing for it, I had to completely gut the house including nest boxes and perches and give it a good dose of good old fashioned jeyes fluid and hot water. I left that for two days and then went at it with a blow torch to make sure I didn't miss any. I also dosed the hens in case any lice were on them.

Happily the hens have moved back in and all is well. I will have to keep a close eye on them for the next week or so to make sure I got rid of all of them.

The Girls

Over the next few days I will try and introduce you to the various characters here at Barrows Bounty.

First off here are the hens, Agnes and Betty. Betty is the one closest to the camera and Agnes is in the backround. To be honest I dont really trust Agnes there is something sneaky about her and I suspect she isnt pulling her weight in the egg production stakes! On the whole though these two little troupers are the least hassle of all and day in day out they go about their business of scratching away and making us plenty of eggs