Curing some horse bresaola for a few weeks before air drying.

Horse meat is pretty difficult to come by in Australia - it seems to have so many emotional attachments for people, and public opposition to its sale is pretty strong. Personally, I don’t see much difference to eating pork or beef, but then I don’t really see an issue with eating cat or dog either. Which is maybe controversial, but my feeling is that if you’re going to eat meat, don’t make choices based on emotional attachments. Otherwise turn vegetarian.

So some friends went out of their way to buy me horse meat for my birthday, and I can’t think of a better way to treat it than cure it and intensify the flavours by air drying it to make bresaola. This one has salt, pepper, brown sugar, juniper berries, rosemary and garlic.

Mt Hood hops, fresh off the bine. Destined to be made into something delicious by  Mitch at beersine. These made my hands smell amazing!

Our persimmons are finally ripening! These amazing fruit started appearing around November or December, and since then… nothing. Just green unripe fruit. So just when I thought they might never ripen, here they come right at the end of summer. 

And they are delicious.

This is maybe my most exciting gardening happening in the last year. A single asparagus spear coming up. I knew there was asparagus there, I had seen the wispy fronds of the rest of the plant, and I’d even accidentally dug up the second asparagus plant close by. But suddenly there an edible asparagus. Just one, so it won’t feed the family, but it’s a teaser for things to come!

Napa cabbage is out of season and stupidly expensive at the moment, so I experimented today with some bok choy pogi-style kimchi. 

Making dill pickles from lebanese cucumbers. Cucmbers, dill, pickling spices and brine in a wide-mothed jar, and now into my cupboard to ferment into sour pickles.

Making Vietnamese fish sauce (Nam Pla). 2kg of fresh sardines, 600g salt, weight it down and allow to ferment for a year or so. I’m fermenting it in the laundry, so let’s see how many complaints I get.

Homemade products for lunch.

Sundried tomatoes, blue mould and white mould cheeses. 

And… delicious.

About to cut into my next round of camembert. This one worked really well, lots of lovely fluffy white mould which took over early, ensuring no black mould got a foothold. Aged for two and a half weeks at 12C, so we’ll see how this goes.

Making kimchi. Rubbing the spicy chilli paste into two heads of napa cabbage. 

Chilli harvest!

Our jalapeño chilli plants are firing this summer, producing loads of fruit. Some of these were chopped and bottled with vinegar and fish sauce, to make an asian style condiment served with rice. The bulk were chopped and are currently fermenting to make a sriracha style fermented chilli sauce.

I brewed! While for some, brewing isn’t a revelation, this is the first time I’ve brewed in nearly six months due to other projects on the go. I was buying commercial beer, which tends to remind me how expensive beer is in Australia, and how cheap it is to make.

So this was an easy return to brewing - an American Amber Ale which is perfect for my Perth water profile. Ale malt, munich, caramel, dark crystal, brown malt and a little pale chocolate for colour. Strike temp was a little lower than expected at 64C, but there’s a fair whack of crystal in there which should add a bit of body and sweetness. Hopped with Magnum for bittering and Citra for flavour and aroma.

Pitched a new yeast to me - Danstar BRY-97 West Coast Ale - and it exploded into action nearly blowing the top off my fermenter (literally!).

Making English Pork Cumberland sausages.

Cumberland sausages are generally coarse textured sausages, but my wife likes them ground fine, so that’s how we have them (the more she likes my sausages, the more I get to make!). Seasoned with salt, black pepper, white pepper, cayenne pepper, coriander, nutmeg, mace, sage, thyme and parsley, stuffed into hog casings.

If anything, they could do with a little less white pepper, but I’m pretty happy with them.

Three camembert-esque style cheeses, lightly covered in mould, ready to be wrapped and aged in the cheese cave. Now to wait the required two weeks…