Journal
Making healthy herbal vinegars
We are used to the idea of herbal and floral vinegars in cooking but their use as preventative medicine has largely been forgotten. In fact they are one of the earliest medicines – the vinegar itself is full of amino acids, vitamins and minerals and it also extracts these from any herbs and flowers you use. All through my 20s I suffered recurrent bouts of tonsillitis. Since beginning to take a shot of apple cider vinegar every time I felt my throat begin to tingle I haven’t had a single episode.
Here there are recipes for two kinds of herbal vinegar…
The first is a floral one which can be taken every day, the elderflower helps build immunity to colds and the rose is anti-inflammatory and also makes the vinegar a beautiful colour.
The second is a cold fighting one, full of warming and bug fighting things – possibly not as nice to taste, but much better than a cold!
You need:
- Wide necked sterilised jar with a non-metallic lid. I find it is better to make small amounts of things before you work out whether you are going to use them up, rather than going into full production and ending up with things that don’t get used.
- These instructions are for large jam jars/small Kilner jars. You can scale up or down the ingredients, as there is no need to be precise.
- Weight of some kind (small saucer, washed stone) to keep everything under the liquid.
- Apple cider vinegar – preferably unpasteurised.
- Fresh or dried ingredients.
- Sterilised bottle to decant into; label.
Elderflower and rose vinegar
Ingredients
- 10 elderflower heads – all stem removed
- Petals from 3 full red unsprayed roses
- 500 ml apple cider vinegar (or as much fits in your jar)
Method
Put the flowers in layers into your jar.
Pour in enough vinegar to cover.
Put a weight on top to keep the flowers under the liquid.
Put the lid on top – if your jar has a metal lid, use waxed paper/beeswax wrap and an elastic band instead.
Put in kitchen cupboard for 4-6 weeks (put note on calendar) check every no wand again that the flowers are under the vinegar.
Strain out the flowers with muslin.
Decant into bottle and label.
Cold busting hot vinegar
Ingredients
- 2 red chillis split vertically
- 2 cloves garlic sliced
- 2 inches ginger grated
- Rind from unwaxed lemon
- 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
- I sliced onion (optional, as I find that adding in the
- onions reduces the number of people who will drink this, as it then smells of onion)
- 500 ml apple cider vinegar (or as much as will fit in your jar)
Method
Layer up all the ingredients in your jar.
Pour in enough vinegar to cover.
Put a weight on top to make sure everything stays under the liquid.
Put lid on top – if your jar has a metal lid use waxed paper/beeswax wrap and an elastic band instead.
Put in kitchen cupboard or fridge for 4-6 weeks.
Strain through muslin and decant into bottle.
This can be mixed with honey as a cough medicine or drunk neat. A shot glass amount should be taken three times a day at first signs of a cold/sore throat.
Everyone has a right to learn how to cook: Kaleyard Community Kitchen
"Everyone has a right to learn how to cook” says Sumayya Usmani, the founder of Kaleyard Cook School and Kitchen, Glasgow’s first non-profit social enterprise cook school. Sumayya is a cook and writer who made Glasgow her home in 2015, having changed career from the law and moved up from London. She writes about the food of Pakistan, she grew up in Karachi, and has published two books (full of her memories of sitting under the tamarind tree in her Grandmother’s garden, and of the flavours and recipes she remembered from her childhood.
She wanted to open a cook school to help people cook from instinct – the andaza of Pakistani cookery, where all the senses are involved in creating a dish – with flavour being sensed and felt rather than exact measurements being followed.
But she wanted it to be more than just teaching people recipes, she wanted it to be about community and gathering around food. She wanted it to be about the power of food to heal, unite and inspire. As someone who had felt the pull of Pakistani food more once she had left Pakistan she understood the importance of food as a centre to culture, identity and a feeling of belonging. Cooking, eating, sharing.
So the Kaleyard Cook School and Kitchen was set up in 2018 as a community interest company – first as a pop up, and then when it became clear that the idea needed a physical space, in the Toryglen
Community Base in Prospecthill Circus, two miles south of Glasgow’s City Centre. There Sumayya and others host a range of masterclasses – teaching a wide range of cuisines, from Indonesian to Middle Eastern alongside Pakistani – which in turn fund community classes, cookery teaching in schools and special events.
It is a positive circle – the way food brings people together, combats social isolation, can help combat food poverty and health inequalities by giving people the skills to cook cost effective, seasonal, nutritious food.
When I spoke to Sumayya for this piece we were in the middle of the first lockdown – she was trying to raise money for the rent, to keep some income coming in, by cooking takeaway meals in her home kitchen and delivering them locally.
You can find out about all Kaleyard’s future cookery classes, meals and events by following the link here. If you'd like to try Sumayya's recipe for Attock Chana Rijai, click here.
Xanthe Gladstone's radish and carrot kimchi
Xanthe Gladstone has kindly given us her recipe for radish and carrot kimchi. She has a wonderfully evocative Instagram feed, full of vegetarian recipes with vegan versions.
Ingredients
4 big carrots (preferably organic)
15 radishes
12g sea salt
For paste
A big spoonful of miso paste
2 teaspoons of chilli flakes
A thumb of ginger grated
4 cloves of garlic finely chopped
1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar
Wash and finely chop or mandolin your carrots and radishes. Put them into a colander with the salt. Massage in the salt for about 5 minutes until some water comes out of the vegetables. Put the colander over a bowl and cover with a tea towel. Let the vegetables soak in the salt for about 3 hours, save the brine that drips into the bowl.
Make your kimchi paste in a blender or a magimix. Blend all the paste ingredients together until it becomes smooth.
Once your vegetables have been soaking for about 3 hours, put aside the bowl of salt water that you collected from beneath them, and then rinse the vegetables a couple of times, until most of the saltiness has disappeared.
In a separate bowl, mix the kimchi paste thoroughly through the vegetables.
Put the mix into your jar, pushing the vegetables down as you go, so that there is no air left and they are properly compressed down.
Pour over a little of the brine from the bowl so that all of the vegetables are beneath the liquid. It’s important that none of them are above the water or they’ll go mouldy. You can use a rock or a fermentation weight for this.
Leave the lid slightly off, so that the kimchi has a bit of air in it, and leave on the kitchen worktop for about 3 days checking that the vegetables remain below the liquid during that time. After this, taste it, and if it tastes a bit sour and like kimchi, it’s ready to go! Put it into your fridge and eat over the next few weeks/months.
Picture: Kinvara Gladstone
Warm rose petal and roast tomato harissa
I love the warm heat of harissa paste and find it endlessly useful – in marinades and salad dressings, as a sauce for oily fish or halloumi cheese. It is one of my store cupboard essentials.
In the summer, alongside general spicy harissas, I often make a rose harissa – a paste where a floral subtlety underlies the heat.
This recipe uses garden roses – the more fragrant the better – and roast tomatoes alongside the chillies and spices. It has a beautiful mellow heat rather than a ‘blow your head off’ spice. You can, of course, add in more chillies if you wish. Some people add garlic in, but I find it can be a little overpowering with the roses. You can also add in coriander seeds and paprika.
It is a great way of using roses that have been hit by a rain shower, alongside a glut of tomatoes.
Please only use roses that you absolutely know have not been sprayed with anything – this isn’t the time to use up shop bought flowers. You might also want to wash them carefully in case of greenfly or other bugs.
Ingredients
- 300g tomatoes (this is about 8-10 decent sized tomatoes)
- 150g red chillies – again, this is relative. I used six of the large fairly mild red chillies. It is all a matter of taste.
- 1tbsp rape seed oil.
- ½ tsp of cinnamon
- 1 tsp cumin
- ½ tsp smoked paprika
- 2 large handfuls of rose petals (when tumbled loosely into a measuring jug, this is about up to the litre mark. I used five full flowers)
- 1tbsp rose flower water.
- 1 ½ tbsp caster sugar
- 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
- Olive oil
Equipment
- Oven
- Food processor
- Baking tray
- Sterilised jar (the easy way to sterilise a jar is to put it through the dishwasher then use while still warm)
Method
Preheat oven to Gas Mark 4/350F/180C.
Half tomatoes and put them and the chillies on baking tray, drizzle over the oil and swish it about a bit.
Cook in oven until the tomatoes are slightly charred around the edges. This will probably take around 40 minutes to an hour. Leave to cool.
Chop the stalks off the chillies and scrape out the seeds. Put tomatoes and chillies in food processor and pulse to combine. You can also do this with lots of chopping if you prefer.
Add in the sugar, spices, rosewater and the rose petals and pulse again. You want a chunky paste.
Finally, transfer to a bowl. Add in the red wine vinegar a tiny bit at a time, interspersed with a splash of olive oil. Mix and taste as you go.
You are looking for a warm spicy flavour, not too hot, not too acidic.
When you are happy with the balance of flavours, spoon into a sterilised jar and store in the fridge for up to a month.
You can also freeze the paste for up to a year – put it into ice cube trays, freeze and then decant into freezer bags for ease. You can then just defrost a cube or two you need them.
Mint, Ginger and Lemon Refresher
This is a summer version of my catch-all recipe for colds – and aren’t summer colds the worst? But this actually makes a lovely refreshing summer drink too.
It is particularly good as an adult non-alcoholic drink for parties. The ginger gives it a good sharpness, so it isn’t cloying.
You can make it with any kind of mint – I always have a glut of applemint as I foolishly planted it in a bed rather than a pot, and it has taken over.
Ingredients
- Good handful of mint, chopped (any variety will do)
- Chunky lump of ginger grated finely (about 10cm)
- 2 lemons zested, 1 of them juiced
- 1tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp honey
- 1 litre of boiling water
- (if you have a cold – 1tbsp unpasteurised cider vinegar)
Method
Mix the mint, ginger, lemon zest and sugar with the water in a heat proof jug.
Stir until the sugar dissolves then add honey and lemon juice.
Stir to combine and leave to cool completely.
Taste and adjust the sweetness – you might need more lemon, you might need more sugar. If you are a fighting a cold, this is the point to add in the vinegar.
Refrigerate and serve over ice or gently heat as a warm drink. If you have added vinegar, you don’t want to let it boil.
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