Tag: Drinks

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Drinks Recipes

Fresh Elderflower Cordial

Summer weather has arrived! One of the pleasures of this time of year is sitting in the garden on a sunny afternoon with a cold, refreshing drink of elderflower and sparkling water with ice.

Even better when the elderflower cordial is fresh and home made from the blossoms on local trees. I can’t claim any credit for this as it is my wife Lesley who makes it for us. Over to Lesley for a guest post, on how to forage for and make fresh elderflower cordial:

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I enjoy watching what is in season in the hedgerow at different times of the year. This was particularly true during lockdown, when the only thing to do was cycle or walk around local footpaths.

In May, Elderflower trees burst into blossom, looking very pretty and with quite a distinctive smell. The scent is the sure-fire way of telling that you have got the correct creamy white umbilifers.  It’s a little bit musty and lemony and definitely light and summery.

Collect the ones that are just bursting out into flower. A tree or hedgerow on a quiet lane, with no passing vehicle traffic, is ideal. I snip the heads with scissors and put them into a canvas bag inside my backpack. The scent when you open it up is incredible!

Take about 20 flower heads, inspect them first and reject any with little beasties. Heat about a litre of water with 400g of any type of sugar in a pan till it dissolves. Grate the rind of 3 or so lemons or limes, and add to the pan with the squeezed juice. Dunk the elderflower heads into the water and leave to infuse overnight.

It’s a really sticky mixture, so take care when pouring it. Strain the liquid into a suitable container (I use a tea towel lining a funnel) and store in the fridge. You should have just over a litre of clear, honey coloured cordial.

To make up a drink, dilute with water approx 1:2 or to your taste, and add a few ice cubes (see main photo above). I love to use carbonated water.

You can also pour some of the cordial into ice cube trays to store and freeze for later. 

As a guest contributor to A Different Kitchen, I get to add a favourite track to Kevin’s Playlist. We go to gigs these days with teams of producers co-ordinating amazing light shows and technical rigs for sound and effects. I have been looking back at 1960’s bands performing live, when things were very different. An amazing example is the Rolling Stones performing Sympathy for the Devil, live for over 8 minutes with John Lennon  amongst others watching on – raw and so obviously talented.

Cheers!

Categories
Blog Drinks

Prickly Moses

As a foodblogger travelling around Australia, I have made it my mission to seek out and sample a range of local craft beers along the way. I know – an onerous responsibility, but you’re welcome. Don’t mention it.

In recent years, craft beer has really taken off in the UK, and one of the pleasures of travelling around the British regions is tasting the different brews being produced by local independents. It appears that the craft beer market is, at the very least, equally as buoyant in Australia.

On my first (post-jet lag) day in Melbourne, I stumbled upon Dan Murphy’s bottleshop (as they call it here) in Prahan, and went in to ask if they stocked any local craft beers. I was escorted to one entire wall of the store, lined with refrigerators all stocking local craft brews – see my photo below.

From then on it has been a similar story everywhere. Each town and region has its own incredible range.

A good example is the Great Ocean Road Brewhouse – a vast warehouse devoted to regional craft beer. It is in Apollo Bay, a golden-beached seaside resort on the Victoria state coast. Here’s a photo below.

Some friends had invited us for drinks and pasta at their beach house, and I wanted to find some good local beers to take along. The choice was bewildering, but with the aid of some recommendations from the staff, I settled on the Prickly Moses beers shown in my main photo, at the top of this post.

Prickly Moses is a generic name that covers a number of hardy, cactus-like shrubs that grow in Australia’s hot climate. The name has been adopted by a craft brewery in Barongarook , Victoria. In keeping with the prickly theme, their logo is an Echidna, a mammal native to Australia akin to a kind of cute hedgehog (and which, incidentally, we have already seen at least a couple of times in the wild).

As the photo shows, my selection included a good variety, from golden summer ale, red ale, IPA, organic pilsner and low alcohol. Every one tasted crisp and fresh, and went down well with the punters on the sun deck, overlooking the bay. These are probably my favourites tasted so far, based on consistency of quality across a variety of beer types.

A close second is this IPA from Port Phillip on Melbourne’s Mornington Peninsula, which had just the right combo of colour, depth, strength and hoppy taste (see below).

This one probably tasted special as it became a regular accompaniment to barbecuing in the garden, in the evening sun!

It would be impossible to review every beer from the 740-odd craft breweries in Australia, but I hope this will at least give you, um, a taste.

The next track for the ADK Playlist, from an Australian band, was suggested to me at the drinks and pasta party. These are The Veronicas, originally from Brisbane, with Untouched.

Categories
Drinks

Happy New Year!

Cheers! Wishing everyone a happy and prosperous new year, from my travels down under in Australia.

I spent a rather nice day between Christmas and New Year with a group of family and frends, wine tasting in the Yarra Valley. This is a major wine production region in the hills north-east of Melbourne. I mentioned this in my previous post and thought I would add a little more.

Our choice of vineyard (there are many) was Yering Farm Wines, who offer what they call guided wine tasting. Some readers may be familiar with this concept, but it was a new experience for me. The idea is that you sample 6 or 7 of their different wines, while a knowledgable member of the vineyard staff talks you through the particular qualities of each.

There is a tasting fee of 10 AUD. However, if you then buy a bottle (or two) of your favourite wine, the tasting fee is deducted from the price.

My favorite was their 2019 Chardonnay (see my main photo). The tasting notes read: Aromas of warm, toasty oak with hints of banana and peach, on the palate peach, citrus and subtle toasty oak with hints of vanilla. Silky, mid-palate balanced with gentle acidity.

To be honest, I’m not sure that I detected all of those particular nuances in the taste, but it was certainly a very pleasant glass of wine! I paired it with a meal of Tasmanian salmon (smoked, infused with chilli and ginger) with roasted veg and savoury rice, eaten al fresco (see below).

First track to be added to the ADK Playlist in 2023 is from an Australian artist I discovered for the first time recently, when he played live on local TV here. This is Morgan Evans with Over For You.