In preparation for our roast lamb

As we now have taken delivery of lamb joints, chops and offal, in exchange for some of our Tamworth pork, I decided some rosemary jelly would be useful. I've just finished making it. 4 and a half jars of jelly are now sitting in the kitchen cooling. Most of the rosemary that went into it was dried. I found a jar of our dried rosemary in our spice cupboard so I added the whole of it. I also took a few fresh twigs from the rosemary bush in our back garden and added that as well. This all may appear to be overdosing on rosemary but my experience is that you need a good amount in the pan with the apples to make sure the flavour comes through.

All we have to do now is roast one of our legs of lamb. That, alas, has to wait for another week. Tomorrow I head to London for a few days so home cooking is on hold until I'm back.

Roast belly pork

This was our dinner last night - belly pork from our Tamworth. Into the skin was rubbed ground fennel seeds and sea salt. It was superb!

How to render pork fat - wartime style

People who eat significant quantities of processed foods end up consuming high levels of fat. Ready-made meals tend to have higher levels of fat as well. Since these meals are no longer part of our diet in our household and we eat little processed foods, the issue for us in trying to become self-sufficient is where to get sufficient fat from. The purchase of our Tamworth pig last October helped to provide us with a partial solution. As a traditional breed, Tamworths have a higher fat level than the tasteless, colourless pork sold in supermarkets nowadays which comes from mass-produced, modern breeds of pigs.

To work out how to extract the fat from the meat, I had to go back to a wartime Ministry of Food advice leaflet which explained how best to use the meagre fat ration. I had some bacon rind and some fat cut from the joint we roasted at Christmas. The rind itself was more skin than anything else. We cut it off before grilling the bacon as it is quite thick.



Using the advice from the wartime leaflet, I chopped the bacon and fried it (no fat was added) until all that was let was the liquid fat and crispy bits of rind/skin (see photo above). The fat was poured through a sieve into a bowl in which it could solidify. The crispy rind can be added to soups (or used as a nibble).



The fat from the joint was chopped up and then added to a pan. Enough water to cover the bottom of the pan was added. Bring the pan to the boil and then let it simmer. Stir regularly. You need to let all the water evaporate. The fat lumps soon start to release the liquid fat (see photo above) and reduced down to a fraction of their size. Once they are little more than dry fibrous lumps (see below) strain the fat through a sieve and leave to cool and solidify in a bowl. The lumps can, like the rind, be added to soups.



The final product should look something like this:

The thaw

At last, the thaw is happening. We had rain through the night and temperatures are warmer so the snow is melting rapidly. The hens are happy as there are now patches of bare ground which they can use for foraging for bug, especially under the hedgerows. The ducks on the other hand have rediscovered the pond. The ice has not yet melted there but meltwater from elsewhere has gathered on top of the pond ice, giving them about 5cm of water in which to paddle. They have been making the most of it after nearly two weeks of having to make do with paddling in the bowls we use to provide them with drinking water.

The problem now will be the wet ground. We will soon be back to mud. Lots of it.

Hive check

We checked 11 bee hives today. Three belong to Bill Quay Community Farm where we do volunteer beekeeping. The other eight are our own. These were not full inspections. It is too cold for that. Instead, we simply took off the roof and cover board and checked the fondant that was added in the late autumn. All the hives still had fondant left in them and so did not need any extra adding. All the hives also had live bees in them so it seems they have all survived the winter so far.

Scotch eggs

When we got the meat back from our Tamworth pig in October, nearly all of it went into the freezer. Only in the past week have I got round to using any of the sausage meat and the photo above shows the results. I made 6 scotch eggs. All the eggs were from our own hens and the onions I added to the sausage meat were grown on a neighbouring allotment. We traded eggs for them. Alas, I did add apple to the sausage meat but they came from the supermarket. We had an apple crop failure last year so we had no choice in the matter. We knew a few people who had managed to get fruit from their trees and had previously traded with them for apples. Alas, the apple barrel is now empty.

So, this was a mainly but not entirely self-sufficient meal.

Sean's Allotment episode 3

This is the latest from Sean and his allotment at Crystal Palace. Like me, he's suffering from the snow. There's a few seconds of my allotment in the video as well.