It’s that time of year when the elderflower is looking, and smelling, fantastic but did you know it also tastes just as good? I’m not suggesting you simply go and pick the flowers and scoff them as they come obviously, but you can make a really simple elderflower pressé with no special ingredients at all.
Traditional elderflower cordial recipes require citric acid but this is becoming increasingly difficult to buy on the High Street thanks to bad people using it to make bad things. You may be lucky enough to have an independent chemist that stocks it but even they will probably have it hidden away under the counter, so you’ll have to ask for it. You might want to put your most innocuous face on though as they’ll refuse to sell it to you if they think you’re up to no good. Of course, as with everything now, it’s available online but you know what? You really don’t need it, the recipe below will give you a fantastically refreshing summer’s drink without it.
A quick note on picking your elderflowers, you’ll need about 10 heads to make a couple of litres of your elderflower infusion by the way:
– Don’t just attack your neighbour’s tree without permission;
– Avoid trees by the roadside: Essence of petroleum isn’t what we’re looking for;
– You only want white flowers, no brown bits;
– Be careful: Please don’t fall off anything, pull anything, or cut anything, apart from the tree!
Flowers picked? Great, than gather yourself 1 lemon, 250g of sugar and 2 litres of boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water then juice half the lemon and slice the rest. Add the lemon into what is now very sweet hot water, including the bit that you squeezed for good measure. Add the elderflowers (you don’t want a load of stalks in there so trim the heads!). Cover with a clean teatowel and leave it for 24 hours.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is pretty much that. The next day, strain through muslin and bottle it. It’s best left a few days to settle but it you won’t do you any harm (I don’t think, insert disclaimer here) if you just can’t wait.
For a delicious pressé fill a glass with ice (oh, did I mention you can make awesome ice cubes with the infused water, perfect in a G & T) treat the infusion as you would cordial, and top up with sparkling or soda water.
Then head out into the garden, and relax. If you fancy a tipple instead, add a dash into your gin before topping up with tonic. Works best with a proper dry gin I think. Try it with Portobello Road, with or without tonic it’s pretty fab, even if I do say so myself!
So it seems as if Summer has now arrived in earnest. I keep being told that we’re being promised a season for barbecuing which sounds perfect to me. If you’re tired of cremated burgers and sausages that are still pink in the middle why not be a bit more adventurous with your grilling this summer and go all out with some super easy but truly amazing techniques that are going to wow your friends to such an extent that they won’t notice that the weatherman lied and it’s actually pouring with rain. You’ll cook food that is so awesome that you won’t even mind standing in the rain to cook it although the best bit of this slow-cooked roast pork is that you don’t have to be anywhere near your grill for most of the time it’s cooking!
Being a bit of a barbecue purist I’ve never succumbed to the allure of a shiny gas grill here on the Hill so the technique I’ll describe is for a charcoal grill. It needs to be lidded so you can create an oven. If you have a gas monstrosity though no doubt you can achieve the same effects by twiddling some knobs or something 😉
First up, your pork. You want a joint that will cook slowly. Shoulder is perfect for this. You can achieve fantastic crackling on the barbie, just as you can with a traditional roast: Simply do exactly what you normally do. If you’re a pour boiling water over the skin type, then do that. Personally, I prefer simply to let the meat sit in the fridge unwrapped for a day before cooking which allows the skin to air-dry. Make sure, if it’s not already been done for you, that you score the skin first, otherwise you’ll undo all of your hard crackling prepartion work.
To slow cook the pork we’re using the indirect cooking method. There’s no magic to this, it’s dead easy, you simply put your charcoal only on one side of the barbecue, like so:
Then onto the meat. You’re going to be cooking your joint for a long, long time (yes, on the barbecue, honestly) and you want as much flavour to penetrate the meat during the cooking time as possible so make a rub. The most important ingredient for crackling purposes is salt. Preferably sea salt, but seriously as long as it’s salt it will do the job. I grabbed some fancy peppercorns from the shelf and some fennel seeds and ground them together in the spice grinder (my lack of ability with the pestle and mortar having been established in the pages of this blog previously of course).
Long Pepper, Cubeb Pepper, Fennel Seeds and Maldon Salt
Make a bit of a paste with some olive oil and then rub it all over your joint. It’s that simple. I promise. If you don’t have strange looking peppercorns on the shelf then feel free to use normal black peppercorns. Or, why not check out Little Spice, a fab business based in Redhill. The Awesome Pepper would be, quite literally, awesome with this.
Once that’s done get those coals alight. You’ll need a to put tray of water next to the coals. This serves three purposes. Firstly, it keeps some moisture in the air will keeps your joint super moist. It also catches any fatty drips from the pork, of which of course there will be many and prevents any risk of flames. You are not being a line cook at Burger King today. You are not flame-grilling. Flames do not cook. Flames are not your friend. Thirdly, it’s your gravy base.
Once your coals are glowing, put the lid on your grill. Make sure both vents, the one underneath and the one on the lid, are wholly open. Then watch the temperature gauge. Assuming your coals are hot enough it should take no more than 10 minutes for it to get to here:
Once it does, grab your joint and put it above the tray of water, not, I repeat, NOT, above the hot coals. We’re using the indirect cooking method, so we want an indirect heat source, not a direct one. Put a joint like this directly on top of the coals and terrible things will happen. No, don’t try it just to see. Trust us at SHCQC and do this:
Now half-close the vent at the base. The way you control the temperature on a kettle grill is with the vents. Fire needs oxygen to breathe. Give it oxygen and it will burn, hence having both vents wide open at the start to get the temperature up and up and up. This is how you get fantastic crackling, but slow-cooking requires a much more gentle heat. So half-close that vent to slow down the fire and walk away for 15 minutes. Check the gauge, it should have stabilised but now you want the temperature to drop. You’re going to cook the joint for at least 4 hours, preferably 6 if you have time so you need to be in charge of your grill. You want meat that melts in your mouth at the end of the process. Close down both vents and the temperature will drop. I’d say you want it to sit at about 125 – 150 degrees. Check every 15 minutes or so to make sure you have a constant temperature. It musn’t be too hot, and it mustn’t be too cold. Just think Goldilocks’ porridge.
Then you’re work is pretty much done. Trust in the power of the grill. DO not lift the lid, even though it will be ever so tempting. If your temperature’s right, then it’s working and all will be well. I’ll let you have a sneak after 3 hours. I’ll also let you turn the joint around (insert health and safety advice here) so that the other side is facing the coal side. But then leave it again. Get thinking about your accompaniments (yes you can do roasties on the barbie, honest) start prepping them. Crack open a beer, preferably from one of our fantastic local breweries of course, or make yourself a perfect G & T (Silent Pool gin from Albury definitely recommended for this purpose). And wait until this happens…
There you go. Succulent, pull-apart, roast pork. Perfect crackling. Super tasty gravy made from the now pork flavoured water that’s in the tray you put next to the coals (stick in a pork stock cube if you think you need it; strain off the fat; bubble away to reduce and thicken; add some apple jelly or apple sauce; use cornflour if it needs some help, and check the seasoning).
What could be better on a summer’s evening than that?
Surrey Hills Chills 