Pumpkin Challenge Day 6 - Pumpkin & Orange Tray bake

I first made Pumpkin & Orange Tray bake when my eldest daughter was seven. At the time she declared it the "best cake ever". As lovely as that was, seven year olds tend to declare "best thing ever" at the drop of a hat. However, she is now 16 years old and still puts in a request for this cake whenever I am tackling the pumpkin harvest. A teenager coolly saying, "So good" is definitely a fine complement.

This is a very moist cake and best eaten with a spoon or a napkin to wipe your fingers on. Try to eat it within 3-4 days and, if you have space, keep it in the fridge as it can go mouldy in a warm kitchen within 4 days. We like it cold, at room temperature or even heated with custard. Whatever, it is delicious!

Pumpkin & Orange Tray Bake

200g butter, melted
4 eggs, beaten
zest & juice of 1 orange
300g self-raising flour
300g light muscovado sugar
3 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
175g sultanas
500g (peeled weight) pumpkin, grated
100g icing sugar, sifted mixed with zest & juice of 1 orange

Heat oven to 180°C, gas 4. Butter and line a 25 x 25cm square tin. Beat the eggs into the melted butter, stir in the orange zest and juice, then mix with the dry ingredients till combined.  Stir in the pumpkin. Pour into the tin and bake for 50-60 minutes, or until golden and springy to the touch.  Whilst still warm, prick it all over with a skewer and drizzle with the orange juice/icing sugar mix.
Leave to cool completely.  Store the cake in the fridge but return to room temperature to serve.

Day 5 Pumpkin Challenge - Pumpkin Salsa

I created my first batch of Pumpkin Salsa this time last year whilst once again tackling my Halloween lanterns and we really enjoyed it. It can be eaten in any circumstance where you would enjoy any kind of salsa. I think we had it first as one of the things on the table to add to tacos, with pulled pork and halloumi options, plenty of salad and couscous.  In addition, I found it went beautifully as a layer under the cheese when making cheese on toast to enliven a simple lunch, and as a substitute for the tomato sauce on our Friday night homemade pizzas.

Pumpkin Salsa

225g cubed pumpkin
1/2 pint sieved tomatoes (passata)
1 small onion, peeled and chopped
1 large clove garlic, peeled and chopped
1/4 red pepper, chopped
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
Dash of lemon juice
Pinch mixed spice
1 tsp sweet chilli sauce
Pinch of salt

Put the cubed pumpkin in a small saucepan with the sieved tomato and bring to the boil. Simmer for 20 minutes or so until the pumpkin is soft then blend to make a smooth puree. In a medium saucepan, fry the onions until just beginning to colour then add the garlic, pepper and tomatoes. Pour the puree into the pan with these vegetables and add the other ingredients. Simmer with the lid off for about 10 minutes to thicken then taste and season if necessary. Allow to cool and refrigerate until ready to eat. Will keep for 4-5 days in the refrigerator.

Pumpkin Challenge Day 3 - Pumpkin & Butternut Squash Soup

It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to come up with Pumpkin Soup as a way to use up leftover pumpkin lanterns and it is one that most recipe magazines suggest after Halloween. But there is a good reason for this - pumpkins make an excellent soup, particularly when paired with butternut squash.

Some pumpkins that you can buy for making into lanterns are grown principally with lantern carving in mind. That is to say, they are varieties that grow to a good size and have skin and flesh that is suitable for easy carving. You can't argue with that. Some of the pumpkins I grow have skin so tough that I literally have to take a hacksaw to them and then kind of prise the flesh off the skin. It is such an unpleasant job that it puts me off tacking them - although their bulletproof skin does mean they keep really well, fortunately. However, sometimes lantern pumpkins can be a bit naff for eating, with spongy, watery fresh that smells a lot like melon or cucumber. If you have one of these then pairing it with the denser and more flavoursome flesh of a butternut squash in the soup can really help rescue it.

Having been brought up on Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup, it took a long time for me to imagine ever eating any other kind of soup but this one is an all round winner in our house and even my fussy eating daughter requests that I make this every year. If you can find Japanese curry powder in the shops then a pinch of that is lovely, otherwise a little medium Indian curry powder works well too.

This is another occasion when I would use my Instant Pot but it is easy to make on the hob too.

Pumpkin & Butternut Squash Soup (makes 6 portions)

1 lb cubed pumpkin flesh
1 lb cubed butternut squash flesh
2 garlic cloves, chopped
10 fl oz vegetable stock
5 fl oz sieved tomatoes (or passata) or 2 tbsp tomato puree
1 tsp curry powder
Salt & pepper to taste

Hob Method

Put some oil in the bottom of a large saucepan and gently saute the cubed vegetables for about 5 minutes then add  the garlic and fry for another minute. Pour in the stock and tomatoes and add the curry powder. Put a lid on the pan and simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft. Blend until smooth, taste and season as necessary. Eat hot or cool and freeze in portions.

Instant Pot Method

Put some oil into the Instant Pot inner pan and select Saute. Fry the vegetables for a few minutes then pour over the stock. Switch off then stir to deglaze the pan. Put on the lid, close the valve and set for soup for 15 minutes. Allow Natural Pressure Release. Add the tomato puree and curry powder and stir. Season to taste then blend with a stick blender.

Pumpkin Challenge Day 2 - Golden Pumpkin Bread

This year we carved one large pumpkin and 4 little ones. My youngest daughter was in charge so they all ended up cute, not scary. In the process we generated 8oz (225g) of usable pumpkin from the bits cut out of the faces. Once the lanterns had gone outside, I chopped up the pumpkin pieces and steamed them for 20 minutes until soft then bagged it up and put it in the fridge.

The next morning, I squidged the pieces of pumpkin in the bag between my fingers to mush them up then I loaded the ingredients for the bread into my bread machine and set it to "dough". It is entirely possible to do this bit by hand but the bread machine just gets on with it and I can do other stuff. An hour and half later, the dough setting finished and I knocked back and shaped the dough and left it to prove in the tin for a bit before cooking it in my oven. Although bread making take time, there isn't very much of it that involves me actually doing something.

The bread was ready in time for lunch and my daughter ate some slices with some homemade leek and potato soup that I had made a few days before in my Instant Pot - another time-saving device that allows me to get on with stuff whilst it works its magic. My all time favourite thing to do with fresh-from-the-oven bread is to eat it with butter and slices of mature Cheddar, so this is what I did. This is known in our house as "A Fairytale Lunch" - not only because it is so magically but because people in fairytales seem to mainly eat bread and cheese (and occasionally a bowl of porridge or turnip soup!).

So here is my recipe for Golden Pumpkin Bread. The pumpkin gives it a slight yellow hue but I pepped this up a bit with the addition of a teaspoon of turmeric. I think it makes it look better and turmeric is amazingly good for you (although possibly not in this small a quantity) and it doesn't change the flavour. Feel free to leave it out if you prefer.  I also used up some of the left-over whey that I generate when making yoghurt. Yoghurt making is another Instant Pot thing, which it does overnight whilst I'm sleeping so it is absolutely no effort at all! The next day I strain the yoghurt through muslim to remove some of the whey, leaving behind a thick Greek-style yoghurt. As this is a weekly task, I have found lots of interesting ways to make use of the whey and using it in bread is just one of them. If you haven't got whey, you can use 110ml of buttermilk and 45ml water.

I've included the recipe for leek and potato soup too, should you fancy that.

Golden Pumpkin Bread

200g cooled cooked pumpkin
155ml whey (or 110ml buttermilk mixed with 45ml water)
2 tbsp olive oil
1½ tbsp golden syrup
1 tsp ground turmeric
425g strong white flour
75g malted or wholemeal bread flour
1½ tsp salt
1 tsp easy-blend dried yeast

Gently combine all the ingredients to form a dough then knead for 10 minutes. Leave, covered, in a warm place for an hour to an hour and a half to prove. Knock back and shape ready to go into a 2lb loaf tin. Place dough in a greased/lined loaf tin then cover and leave to rise for 30-45 minutes. Preheat oven to 190°C. Uncover, slash the top of the loaf then put in the oven and throw a quarter of a cup of water into the bottom of the oven to create steam. Cook for 40-45 minutes then remove from the tin to cool.

Leek & Potato Soup

150g sliced leeks
300g potatoes, peeled and diced
100g onion, peeled and chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and chopped
300ml stock

Instant Pot Method:

Set to Saute and put a little olive oil in the bottom of the pan. Fry the potato for a minute or two then add the onion, followed by the leek and eventually the garlic. Stir constantly to prevent sticking, particularly from the potato. Switch off. Add the stock and stir well to deglaze the pan. Put on the lid and close the valve then set to Soup for 15 minutes and leave for Natural Pressure Release. Remove lid and blend until smooth with a stick blender.

Hob method: 

Heat the oil in a large sauce pan and fry the leeks and onion, stirring constantly to avoid sticking until the leeks are soft but not brown. Add the potatoes and continue to fry for another 2 to 3 minutes then add the garlic and fry for one more minute. Add the stock and bring to the boil. Cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes until the vegetables are soft and the potatoes are breaking down. Blend in a food processor until smooth and season to taste.

A pumpkin is food not just decoration

It is estimated that each year 18000 tonnes of pumpkin gets thrown away in the UK in the wake of Halloween. In the days before Halloween, huge boxes of pumpkins in all shapes and sizes are available in the shops, ranging in price from about £1 to £3. Even pop-up pick your own pumpkin farms have become a thing in recent years. And this is all fantastic - pumpkins are bright and fun and it is great to see a vegetable being bought with such enthusiasm! However, after Halloween, the shops reduce the price to 5p or even try to give them away for free and most of those already turned into lanterns are thrown away. In a time when we are so aware of food waste, this is a massive spike on the food waste graph.

I totally get that a lot of people think that they don't like pumpkin. There are lots of ways to eat pumpkin that are frankly disgusting. Personally I have never been a fan of pumpkin pie and a pile of watery boiled pumpkin on the side of your plate at dinner isn't going to float your boat either. I am also quite surprised by the lack of imagination in recipes offered by foodie businesses and magazines when trying to persuade you to eat your lantern rather than throwing them away. However, pumpkin is an amazing versatile vegetable, taking to casseroles and stir-fries as readily as a mushroom, and to cakes as enthusiastically as a carrot.

So I have set myself a challenge to post a pumpkin recipe every day for the whole of November in the hope of creating a useful resource to help you find ways to enjoy eating your pumpkin - yes, enjoy - not just endure to avoid the guilt of food waste.

Mindful Pumpkin Carving

Let's start at the pumpkin carving stage as there are a few tips here that help to make the most out of your pumpkin. If it is too late for this year, these will be useful to remember next year.

The process of carving a pumpkin should create three separate waste products - the seeds, the goo and some useful pumpkin flesh.

The seeds

Pull these out first and put them in a separate bowl as you go, removing as much goo from them as possible. You will see a lot of tweets and social media tips telling you not to throw them away but to try roasting them or frying them in spices. By all means give this a go and see if you like them.

Personally, I prefer my pumpkin seeds as you buy them in shops - without the outer white shell. There are particular varieties of pumpkin that grow seeds "nude" or without this white shell. Varieties such as Triple Treat, for example, grow seeds like this, but the ones grown for lanterns generally aren't like that and trying these roasted could put you off pumpkin seeds for life. So, I prefer to give them a quick rinse and put them out for the birds and squirrels. The squirrels will likely bury a few and you could end up with some pumpkin plants growing in your garden next year!

The goo

I cannot imagine doing anything with this other than throwing it away. It is best thrown into a home compost bin if you have one or a food waste bin.

The Useful Flesh

As you cut the pumpkin up to make a lantern, there are some useful bits of pumpkin flesh that can be kept to use in recipes. These include about 1cm depth cut off the inside of the lid and all the pieces cut out of the carved face area. Set these aside for later use. I find that I usually get about 8oz (225g) to 1lb (454g) of usable pumpkin during the creation of a couple of Halloween lanterns.

How to Use the Pumpkin Flesh

There are two ways that pumpkin can be used - cooked or raw. Many recipes call for pumpkin puree and this can be created very easily by removing the skin, cutting the flesh into chunks and steaming for about 20 minutes. Leave it to cool and bag it up. You can squish the chunks inside the bag between your fingers to make a puree. Most recipes call for 4oz, 8oz or 1lb of pumpkin puree so it can be useful to bag it up in these kind of quantities, label it up and freeze it for later use. So, if you don't have time to do anything immediately with your pumpkin then at least create some puree to freeze.

Other recipes use fresh pumpkin which is grated, such as in cakes, or chopped, as in casseroles and stir-fries. If you are going to do this then keep your chunks of pumpkin in a bag in the fridge for up to 4 days. Any whole pumpkins that you haven't cut into to turn into lanterns will happily sit until about Christmas.

Making Use of Your Lantern After Halloween

In addition to the obvious health and safety implications of naked flames and flammable Halloween costumes, it is better for your pumpkins to light your lanterns up using LED candles. When you use a real candle the inside of your pumpkin gets a bit sooty and a day or two later it will start to grow an impressive crop of fluffy mould. Using LED candles keeps the inside of your lantern clean and cool and gives you a little longer to get round to using up the pumpkin before it goes mouldy.

When Halloween is over, bring your lanterns inside to stop the animals eating them (this is most likely to be rats so not something to encourage), and keep them somewhere cool. If you can, start cutting them up straight away whilst it is still nice and fresh. Cut any dried out edges off and either cut it into cubes to make puree or process for your recipe - e.g. grate or chop. Any pieces you are not using straight away can be bagged up and put in the fridge for a few day.

So now for Day 1 and the first recipe. I thought it apt to start with the first pumpkin recipe that I made, all those years ago when I carved my first Halloween lantern. It is a great way to use up the flesh from making the lanterns.

Pumpkin Muffins (makes 12)

450g pumpkin

90g wholemeal flour (or plain if preferred)

180g self-raising flour

½ teaspoon mixed spice

¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg

95g dark brown sugar
55g sultanas

2 eggs

115 ml sunflower oil

115 ml whole milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Peel, chop and steam the pumpkin for 20 until very soft.  Allow to cool and squash to puree. Refrigerate overnight if desired or freeze for later use.  Preheat oven to 210°C, gas 7.  Mix the flours and spices in a bowl.  Whisk the eggs, oil, milk and vanilla together and add to the dry mix then add the pumpkin puree.  Combine until just mixed.  Spoon into paper cases in a tin.  Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.  Cool on a wire rack.

Geoff's Real Artisan Bread Making Course

I have known Geoff for a while now, attending as we do a number of the same food events. He sells his handmade artisan bread, which always makes for a good photograph. As I usually have some home bread on the go I don't often buy much from him but I do find it hard to resist his cinnamon rolls. Cameron from The Chocolate Mill MK goes completely crazy for his brie and basil rolls and buys up half his stock at any opportunity so I guess they are pretty tasty too!

There is a great deal of satisfaction to be had from making bread and I find that every time I make some I feel I want to photograph it and show it off to the world because it makes me feel accomplished. Usually I make my bread with the aid of a bread machine. I did once mention this to Geoff and then feared I may have offended him as he does everything by hand - even when his orders stretch into the thousands. I tried to explain... I only use the dough setting and then do the shaping by hand and cooking in the oven... it means the dough can be preparing whilst I am picking my kids up from school or otherwise out of the house/busy. He was still unconvinced and told me it probably resulted in an overworked dough that would affect the texture and moisture of the bread. I suspect he knows what he is talking about but without a bread machine I certainly wouldn't have got into making bread in the first place and I probably wouldn't do it as much. It did start me wondering though about my bread and my methods.

When I heard that Geoff was running a bread making course I got excited and soon convinced my husband that a place on it would make the perfect birthday present for me. He obliged but then spent the next few weeks tucking into my homemade breads saying, "Are you sure you need to go on a bread making course?" It is true, I do make a lot of successful bread that we all enjoy but, firstly, you don't have to be bad at something to want to improve, and secondly, when a recipe fails I really have no clue how to trouble-shoot.

On 11th March I joined two others on a course at the bakery in Westbury, a little beyond Buckingham. Geoff explained that three people on the course was about the right number and certainly by the end of the day we had completely run out of flat surfaces and bowls so any more would have been tricky.

At the start of the day we had four bowls of flour blends at our work station, each with a coloured sticker on them that related to the recipe sheet Geoff had prepared. During the course of the morning we added ingredients to these bowls and stirred, turned, kneaded, rested and proved them as required. Because bread making requires time, this multi-tasking approach meant that we were kept busy whilst the yeast did its thing and there was always something to be doing. It did make for a bit of head-whirling though, as I couldn't always remember what we had previously done with that bowl of stuff. Not that it mattered as the simple colour coding of the bowls meant we always knew which one we should be working with and Geoff knew what we should be doing with it. It is only now, back at home with my colour-coded recipe, that I am wondering if I will be able to do the same again unsupervised!

These processes showed us the gentle working methods that Geoff employs and how he uses time more than anything else to help develop flavours and do the work. In our previous conversations I had imagined him spending hours kneading and working the dough and figured he must have pretty strong shoulder and arm muscles. I guess he does, but his methods certainly involved a lot less kneading than I had anticipated and made me realise that I could make bread this way, using time rather than physical exertion. Maybe I didn't need a machine to do the work - a machine that is not capable of assessing the look and feel of the dough, knowing when to step in with an adjustment and knowing when to stop. This feedback from the dough sits very much at the heart of what Geoff does and really appeals to me as this is how I like to work when baking cakes or making jam... or pretty much any other type of cooking. This is the stuff that is so often missing from recipes. Where all recipes say things such as "beat the mix for about five minutes", a good recipe will say something along the lines of "until it looks pale and fluffy". But even this is no substitute from someone showing you and saying, "this is what it looks like when it is ready for the next stage," and "we do this because..." and "if it does this it is wrong but we can do this to sort it out."

During the course we made a selection of Geoff's bread recipes, familiar to me from seeing them on his market stalls. By lunchtime we had made a pizza, which we then sat down to eat.

Then the various breads went into the ovens and by the middle of the afternoon we were icing our very own batch of his wonderful cinnamon rolls. On the cooling racks our country blonde, malted tin loaf and focaccia were gently letting off steam.

Somewhere along the line we had learnt about ratios, flour types, starters, wet dough, kneading techniques, gluten structures, equipment, shaping, yeast, oven temperatures, steam, scoring and storage. I realised the course hadn't been about following recipes but instead about properly understanding the dough and the methods.

It was deeply satisfying to leave the bakery at the end of the day with armfuls of freshly baked bread and a head full of inspiration and information.

At home, with a piece of pork roasting in the oven, we had to re-think our Sunday dinner and soon we were sat down to something along the lines of a country-fayre hog roast. OK, so the pork hadn't been slow cooked all day but when served up on slices of fresh bread with stuffing and gravy it was a tasty treat. Despite tucking in heartily, everyone still managed to find room for a sticky cinnamon roll for afters!

Geoff only runs this course a couple of times a year so if you fancy giving it a go, get booked up onto his next one in November. 

Learning the Art of Food Fermenting

For a few years now we have been happily using the term "friendly bacteria" and at least have a vague idea that we should be eating more live yoghurt. However, the health of our gut bacteria and its impact on our physical and mental health is becoming a big topic. As scientists gradually begin to unpick the complex relationship between our health and the trillions of microbes that live on and in us, more and more is coming to light about the importance of treating our microbiome with the respect it deserves.

Personally I feel blessed with a relatively happy gut, although I don't take this for granted and do try to treat it well. My husband, in contrast, has struggled with IBS all his life and in the last year has been prescribed antibiotics on a number of occasions, only compounding his issues. Having read the excellent book "The Clever Guts Diet" by Trust Me I'm A Doctor presenter Dr Michael Mosley, he now buys in a cocktail of pre- and pro-biotics in an attempt to help restore his system and improve his condition. Dr Mosley also includes in his book a number of recipes and suggested foods that should be eaten. It is perhaps unsurprising that these include fermented foods.

Historically fermenting food has been done as a way to preserve food, increase the flavour and in some cases to produce alcohol for its recreational benefits. However, these days there is an increasing interest in fermented foods for their benefits to our gut health. It is very much an international past-time and each culture seems to have developed its own range of fermented foods and drinks which these days we embrace with renewed interest as we enjoy foods from different regional cuisines. Where once my first thought of fermented food may have been sauerkraut, these days kimchi would probably be top of my list.

I have dabbled with fermented foods in the past. Sourdough is one example. These days I make yoghurt weekly and a glut in Chinese cabbage led me to a brief foray into kimchi making in the summer. I was, however, of the opinion that I would rather have pickled cabbage on my plate than sauerkraut and, quite frankly, the likes of fermented vegetables and the weird sounding fermented tea kombucha sounded both unappetising and slightly scary.

However, when Turan from Coldsmoking Cookery School offered me the opportunity to sit in on a practice run through of a new fermented food course I was both excited and a little nervous to find out more.

Upon my arrival, Kevan, the course tutor, was unpacking a selection of fermented foods onto the table. It was, as I had feared, a collection of mostly unidentifiable substances in an array of Kilner jars and swing top bottles. I had seen the course outline and I knew we would be expected to taste these as well as make some of them to take home. Still, my mind was open and you never know until you try...

Finding out about Kevan's backgrounds in both microbiology and food foraging is a reassuring way to start a course about fermenting. He is clearly the right man to handhold newbies through the process and avoid accidentally culturing something deadly. Actually, he is very reassuring on this matter and soon convinced me that this was a) highly unlikely to happen and b) likely to create something so "bad" that you wouldn't eat it anyway. In a culture where we reach for the antibacterial spray and bleach in a bid to keep ourselves safe, it can take a little bit of adjusting to get your head around the concept of deliberately growing microbes.

After a brief introduction to the history and purpose of food fermenting we were invited to taste the samples of sauerkraut and kimchi on the table. Probably not my usual go-to option for elevenses but I was here to learn - as much about the flavours as the process. And, I was pleasantly surprised. The red cabbage sauerkraut was a particular stroke of genius and I made a mental note to give that one a try in the autumn when my red cabbages are ready.

It was time to get properly hands on and for the next part of the course we busied ourselves with the simple process of making a batch of sauerkraut and then a batch of kimchi. Soon the room was filled with the delicious smells of fresh vegetables, garlic and ginger and I felt very much back in my comfort zone, shoving stuff into jars.

We continued in well known territory after that by looking at yoghurt making. This traditional fermented food is so familiar and ubiquitous that it is almost a comfort food. Indeed, as I make it every week, I was very much at home with the processes and concepts but nonetheless Kevan managed to give me a tip or too that I'm looking forward to trying. Familiar, as I am, I know full well that in order to create the satisfying Greek-style yoghurt, it needs to be strained and this creates the waste product, whey. Sometimes I just throw my whey down the plughole but I am fully aware that it is a useful product in itself, high in protein and full of all the cultures found in yoghurt. I have used mine in the past to make a high protein chocolate mousse (a favourite with my kids) and I have used it successfully in homemade bread. I was interested to know what Kevan did with his so I asked and then he completely blew my mind by explaining that if you mix it into homemade mayonnaise or salsa you actually increase its shelf life. The cultures in the whey help to keep away potentially harmful microbes. Goodness me! Imagine that adding a waste milk product to a something can actually increase its shelf-life! He also invited me to try some fermented radishes that he had made using whey. Fermented radishes. I don't even like radishes, let alone fermented ones... only it turned out that I did. They had a lovely, completely un-radishy flavour; a mild pickle with a satisfying crunch. Having previously dismissed the idea of growing radishes this year (because no one actually likes them) they are now back on my must-grow list.

By this point I was fully into the whole fermented foods thing and keen to find out more. But then we moved on to that weird sounding fermented tea - kombucha. The unappealing blobby jelly thing (SCOBY) required to kick start the fermenting process did nothing to whet my appetite. A sample awaited for tasting...

Again, mind blown!

How can something made from tea taste so beautifully of apples? Actually, the answer is quite straightforward and Kevan explained the biochemistry, but all the same, it was unexpected and (science aside) magical!

Finally, we moved on to learning about and tasting milk and water kefirs. I was completely unaware of these previously so I had no preconceived ideas. Besides, by this point I had learnt it was best to park my preconceptions as they had been proved wrong over and over again. Whilst milk kefirs are best compared to the likes of Yakult, water kefirs are similar to Fentiman's Botanically Brewed drinks. So delightful to find delicious drinks that are neither overly sweet or alcoholic, with the added benefit of an impressive array of friendly bacteria and yeasts. Yep, I was sold.

I have done a number of food courses now and I am used to going home with the delicious makings from the day ready to please and impress my family. But this was different. Nothing more than a couple of jars of chopped vegetables, yet to be transformed into the wonders of sauerkraut and kimchi and three jars in which lurked starter cultures in the form of alien blobs. Yet, my enthusiasm and excitement was overflowing. Stopping off to buy whole milk and some mineral water (chlorinated tap water is a no no), I came home ready to get fermenting and by the end of the day I had a row of jars bubbling away on my work top and a book on fermented foods on order.

However, the family were less impressed and wholly unconvinced.

By the next morning the bubbly liquid in the jar of water kefir was causing my daughter to question: "What even is that?!" But by the evening the milk kefir was ready and with the addition of some homemade raspberry syrup I was handing out glasses along the lines of yoghurt drink. "That," said my other daughter, "is actually quite nice." The next day the water kefir was ready for tasting and I'm pleased to say that my husband very much enjoyed that. In the meantime, we patiently await more fermented marvels to finish their magic and I look forward to enjoying a whole new part of my kitchen repertoire.

I would highly recommend this course and think it will be an excellent addition to the courses offered at Coldsmoking Cookery. Should you wish to book yourself a place, the next one takes place on 29th June 2018