Post by chrisg on Apr 25, 2014 17:28:58 GMT 10
Yeah, I've bought that at IGA before, not bad at all.
I was just talking to my mother, she's starting to scare me, 82 years old, never been near a computer in her life until a couple of years ago when the family gave her an iPad.
She was extremely dismissive of the old recipe I recall and said try this one but use the hardest apples you can find.
www.bestrecipes.com.au/recipe/spicy-apple-chutney-L3566.html
I'll wring the original out of her at some stage, I'd be pretty certain half the ingredients in this recipe were not exactly readily available in Somerset 50 odd years ago, but it does look interesting and if she likes it I'll have to try it
She does have a point with hard apples, the classic West Country Cider Apple I have never seen in Australia. They are if I recall correctly a variant of crab apples, smallish when ripe, do redden but not a deep red, and remain very hard until they start to rot.
It's when they reach that stage that the old timers start making the West Country bootleg, scrumpy. That probably belongs more in the drinks section and we've already taken one thread off-topic, but I'm not sure there really is a recipe for real scrumpy
My grandfather, who was half Romany used to make it, my father bought an old orchard one time in Somerton and dad being the environmentalist he was went to great pains to build a rather beautiful housing estate of two story homes using a method called Trusteel, a coated steel frame brick veneered. I think he took out a grand total of two trees that were on their way out anyway, and dried and used the wood for smoking, guess smoking food is in my genes
The remaining trees wound up in a mix of people's gardens and on the public areas. My grandfather would wander around with a big bucket and collect up the fallers.
The old style method of scrumpy is NOT sanitary so not recommending it The filled bucket went out in his ancient garage, it had been a blacksmiths forge, centuries ago, somewhere cool and dark, covered with some water and a piece of stray plank. Once it was totally mush it received a decent stir with a near on white hot poker was left another couple of days then strained through muslin and bottled.
I have no idea what it's final alcohol content would have been but even grandad, who thought every driving trip was an excuse for a pub crawl to visit his publican mates treated it with respect
If I'm talking to much about stuff not relevant let me know
That estate is still there btw, some of my family were there a couple of years ago, the houses are just in their infancy really.
Dad never did come to grips with modern Australian building practices and trends of a house being built to just be torn down after a few decades because the land is the value.
Cheers