Chive flower vinegar

At this time of year the garden is bountiful, full of promise and flowering its heart out. I have always had a passion for herbs considering them some of the most useful plants in the garden, as they combine culinary and medicinal uses with great texture and form and in the case of chives stunning flowers too.

Chives, spikey pinky purple flowers erupt from the top of the plant, they are attractive to insects and attractive to me. The flowerheads are a great addition to a salad, but to capture their lovely sweet spicy oniony essence for a little longer you need to make chive flower vinegar. This lovely light vinegar is ideal in salad dressings, with fish or just to ring the changes and its such a gorgeous colour.

All you need to do is collect enough chive flowers to lightly pack your chosen jar and then select your vinegar, white wine or champagne vinegar works well as it allows the lovely flower colour to be extracted to create a pinky hue to the condiment. You leave the flowers steeping until the vinegar is your desired hue and has the required level of chive flavour. You could also make this with wild garlic or garlic chives but the resultant vinegar wouldn't be such a beautiful colour.

I am also adding this to the lovely Lavender and Lovage's Cooking with Herbs challenge 

                                       

Chocolate vinegar cake

National Chocolate week, how come I managed to nearly miss this ? obviously as someone who loves chocolate I would have thought that it would have been on my radar for weeks but some how it almost passed me by. (Hence the lateness of this post)
In celebration I have reworked a vinegar cake using a stunning Ellseys fruit vinegar and cocoa powder. Vinegar cakes are fairly allergy friendly as they don't feature eggs and use alternative measures to raise and set the cake.

After a busy day at blog camp on Saturday, where I learned loads, my baking needed to be the fairly fast and dirty kind, as the cake only takes about 40 minutes to cook it fitted the bill perfectly.Apologies to anyone who doesn't like recipes in cups but I love them and my original vinegar recipe is an american one, so cups it is.

Ingredients

• 3 cups of plain flour
• 2 cups of granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cup warm water
• 1tbsp vanilla
• 2 tbsp vinegar ( any type but malt, I used a fruit vinegar)

Method

• Prepare a baking tin of approx 13 by 9 inches - grease and line
• Pre heat oven to 180c / 350F
• Mix all ingredients together tin a bowl, sieve all the dry ingredients in first, then add the wet ingredients last
• Ensure mixed throughly and then pour into your prepared tin
• Bake for approx 40 minutes until tested cooked with a skewer
• Allow to cool in tin

If you fancy ringing the changes why not add spices too ! this is a lovely easy bake , nicely squidgy after only 24 hours and well flavoured and no hint of vinegar at all. You could ice it if you so wished.

Ellseys 80th Birthday !

As you all know I love all things Lancashire, especially if it involves food, so Lancashire Food was delighted to receive an invitation  to a born and bred  Lancashire company's 80th birthday celebration. Now I know you are all thinking whats glamorous about vinegar ? well vinegar is a very versatile thing and is a very ancient product. The other great thing about Ellsey's vinegar is that this particular vinegar is used in loads of amazing local products too, so that they are true Lancashire produce.

A True Lancashire Lunch 

Ellseys is based in Wigan and is still a family owned company, started by a Mr Walter Ellsey initially to brew malt vinegar in 1932 , the company now focuses on supplying a wide variety of vinegars to wholesalers and producers around the world.

I have only recently discovered that my late maternal Grand-dads favourite pickles aand picalilli are produced by Ellsey's oldest customer, what's funny is that the company is Bartons pickles from St Helens (where my Grand-dad was from) yet the vinegar that goes into all their products is from Wigan, the rivalry between Wigan and St Helens is legendary ! mainly due to the local rugby teams I think but may be just a little from the pickles too.

In celebration of their birthday, Ellsey's had contacted a local artisan brewery to brew up a celebration beer, Prospect brewery ( as featured in several tv shows with Oz Clark, et al ) based  the beer on their already famous "big john" dark stout , the addition of vinegar has lightened the brew and provides a fruity end to the glass.

The party at the brewery also featured nibbles from some great local producers, many who use Ellseys vinegar in their products, and vinegar shrub cocktails (alcoholic and non alcoholic)  were also served. Lancashire Food enjoyed having some very interesting food and also vinegar chats with some of the staff from Ellseys and was excited to hear their ideas for the future and their passion for all things vinegar.

We also met Luke Marsden ( ex big brother housemate and radio presenter) and proud Wiganer at the time I didn't know who he was, just that he was on Rock Fm (local radio station) , we had some great discussions about food, vinegar and cake. We also managed to get him addicted to Lancashire cheese and Lancashire crisps in the process whilst sampling the cocktails.

In celebration of Ellsey's birthday I will be re-working my vinegar cake posting and having a go at vinegar pie too ! So watch out for these forthcoming posts.

Our goodie bag featured samples of

Ellseys birthday brew from Prospect Brewery

Ellseys fruit vinegars in various flavours

Bartons pickles in various varieties

Mrs Darlingtons chutney

Dewlay Lancashire Cheese

Lancashire crisps -salt and Ellseys vinegar flavour

Elleseys also supply

Wormersley

Fatjax

Wing Yip

and Del Monte too.

The amazing food photography on this post is by the very talented Mr Lancashire Food aka as Synergy Monochrome , he has also posted on his blog of what he has been upto with regard to post

Fruity Mocha vegan cake

Our household is the proud new owner of 3 new chickens to add to the existing flock of hens we already have. The old girls are still laying but their production is dropping off that why we have added to our flock.So this case is ideal if you don't have any eggs in or your hens are on a go slow. This recipe like my earlier vinegar cake recipe uses flavoured vinegar to give lift to the cake and to replace the eggs. Its also low fat as well as the recipe has a very small quantity of oil in it.

Like all vinegar cakes I have the feeling that the cake will improve with a couple of days wrapped in foil. The cake smelt delicious whilst baking pleasantly scenting the house, the original recipe used raspberry preserve and vinegar, however I substituted homemade strawberry jam and homemade strawberry vinegar as thats what I had, I also used instant coffee to enhance the the cocoa in the cake.

Ingredients

• 3 cups plain flour
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 1/2 cup cocoa
• 1/4 cup sunflower oil
• 1 tsp vanilla paste
• 2tsp strawberry vinegar mixed with 1/4 cup water
• 3/4 cup strong instant coffee 
• 3/4 cup strawberry jam 

Method

• Sieve the flour, cocoa, sugar and bicarb into a large bowl
• Preheat your oven to about 180c, if fan about 160c
• Grease and base line a loose bottom cake tin
• Mix all the wet ingredients with the dry , work quickly and ensure everything is well mixed 
• Your batter will be fairly stiff, dollop into your prepared tin and level
• Bake for approx 45 minutes until tested cooked with a skewer
• Allow to cool in tin
• Wrap and store for a couple of days before eating
• Delicious served alone or if you are not vegan yoghurt or creme fraiche.

I am sumbmitting this recipe for June 2012 - We should Cocoa -coffee challenge

Vinegar Cake

This month Country Living has a campaign for you to try a new cake recipe - Vinegar Cake, the recipe can be downloaded from the Country Living website , and ideally they would like you to tweet your photo to them for them to retweet their favourites.

I haven't made Vinegar Cake before , so I thought I would give it a try , as I like to put my own slant on  a recipe, I used Raspberry Vinegar and Amaretto. Initially the cake is a little crusty, so it benefits from storing for a couple of days in an airtight tin but it develops into a delicious moist fruity cake with no hint of the vinegar at all.

Vinegar cakes were apparently popular in the days when eggs weren't easily available as the hens had gone off lay , fortunately this isn't something my hens suffer from and they lay pretty consistently all year round. 

NW Fine Food awards Hamper

Whey hey, Mr B won a hamper of foodie goodies , from NW Fine Foods. All he had to do was like a facebook page to enter ! "Lancashire Food" is a great supporter of everything food in the North West so the prize couldn't have come to a better place. It was delivered by the lovely Clare ( who has a blog as well ) - who is an ardent foodie like myself and hubby,she also wants chickens too !

The hamper contained goodies from many of this years prize winners of the "NW fine Food awards"

Agnes Rose - Damson Vinegar, Blackberry and Mint Vinegar

Hawkshead Relish - Damson Extra Jam

Bowland Brewery - Headless Peg, Cromwell Stout and Admiral of the Blues

Reedys - Blackberry Vinegar

Masons Gourmet Foods - Rich Genoa Fruit Cake

Vouchers for

Dales Butchers - Pork & Mr Vikkis Chill jam pies, Pork and Mr Vikkis Chilli jam sausages

Capra Products - Voucher for meat or cheese.

Fantasy Cupcakes - Voucher for 12 cupcakes

The Original Cheshire Cake Co - Voucher for Cheshire Cake

H Clewlows Butcher - voucher

Backford Belles - Jersey Ice cream voucher

Cheshire Farm Ice cream - voucher

Fabulous prize, couple of the vouchers present slight logistical problems however,so we will have to see what we can sort out.