Garden Update – Day 8 NaBloPoMo 2017

08 Nov 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Chickens, Produce, Urban Farming, Vegetable Gardening Tags: , , , , ,

Yesterday, I wrote about teaching Food Gardening so I thought it was only right and proper to give you all a little update on my own urban farm.

While it’s undoubtedly spring and the soil is starting to warm, I suspect my patch is about two or three weeks behind where we were last year. Raspberries were setting fruit this time last year and I was getting ready to lift the main garlic crop for curing. At the moment, all the berries are only just flowering and the early garlic (my main crop) is nowhere near ready yet. Nevertheless, there’s bright spots – it looks like I’ll get my first Tayberries this summer ❤

Tayberry flower

Also, we’ve had a rough entry into spring, with very warm weather followed by snow and a few very cold nights in the past month. This didn’t seem to hurt my young apricot tree, which has quite a few fruit on this year. The plum an nectarine are loaded and I’m thrilled that my pollination plan with my 2nd year dwarf apple trees worked a treat. All four trees are looking incredibly healthy and all carrying fruit. I’ll be thinning it pretty drastically to encourage stronger trees and discourage biennial fruiting but I’m very, very happy to be finally looking at a few home grown apples at the end of summer.

Baby Royal Gala apples

Because of the up and down weather, I haven’t planted out this summer’s tomatoes yet, but I decided to grow them on a bit longer in folded paper pots. It’s a really good way to use up newspaper and come planting time (this weekend I hope), I can put the whole thing in the ground and avoid transplant shock.

Mama Mia tomatoes, waiting for the sunshine

As you can see above, I mark the plant name and the date they were potted up as I tend to lose plant tags. If anyone’s interested, I’ll write up some instructions on this great little paper recycling tip.

In the meantime, the zucchini’s are in the ground (most of them survived the cold) carrots are starting to size up, the late garlic that I’ll be lifting in the new year looks fabulous but a good deal of the early garlic that I normally dig up in November looks like it’s rotted in the ground. Incredibly distressing! Also, the Snow Peas were decimated by slugs this year but the potatoes are looking great.

Through it all, the chickens just keep on laying eggs! Considering most of my ladies are quite elderly (4 years and older) they really are quite remarkable and I’m struggling to keep up with them!

Madame Mephisto

So that’s all for today – I’m off to bed early tonight as I have to do my six monthly blood test tomorrow morning and I’m helping out with a fencing job afterwards. Sometime tomorrow I have to make bread, write a story draft for uni, do my prep for teaching work on Friday and maybe do some catch up with weekly work for uni. (I’m tired just thinking about it!)

Take care friends and see you soon ❤

Sunset from my backdoor

Saturday Dreams of Sunday – Day 4 NaBloPoMo 2017

04 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Cooking, Urban Farming Tags: , , , , , ,

Self care takes many forms and Sundays in spring are pretty wonderful things. The one I’m writing about turned out to be pretty exceptional.

A few weeks ago, when Daylight Saving had just started and I’d had some fairly intense bouts of hay fever, I still felt quite discombobulated by the whole affair and my sleep cycle was utterly out of sync. With the added pressure of work and study, I felt I’d been neglecting two important things that matter to me – being fully engaged in getting the yard prepared for summer crops and making interesting food with top quality local ingredients (those I’ve grown myself or can clearly identify where they’ve come from).

So, after wandering around the yard trying to focus on pulling weeds and preparing beds, I decided to make that night’s Sunday roast a memorable one. It wasn’t a particularly special occasion, no birthday or anniversary of anything but in my household I like to think every day is a day to celebrate good food.

Around the corner from my workplace is Ziggy’s, the smallgoods manufacturer, which I’ve written about before. I was lucky enough to pick up a couple of small local free range chickens a few weeks ago when I was buying sausage and liverwurst. They disappeared into the freezer for a day just like today. Also in there were chestnuts from my yard, cooked, shelled and frozen in small batches back in late autumn. And finally, there was part of a gloriously unctuous, earthy truffle I bought from Perigord Truffles in winter. The last piece was lovingly wrapped, sealed and frozen for a day like this.

Roast Chicken with Chestnut & Truffle Stuffing (Serves 2-4)

A small whole roasting chicken

200g chestnuts, cooked, shelled and chopped fine

1 small onion, chopped fine

1 clove garlic, chopped fine

2 tabs fresh herbs, chopped fine (chose from Italian parsley, thyme, sage, French tarragon, rosemary or any combination that takes your fancy)

1 tab shaved black truffle (fresh if you can get it)

2 teas butter

A grate of nutmeg

Salt & pepper as required

1 egg, beaten

Method:

Wash and clean the chicken out thoroughly, pat dry and put to one side. Put the finely chopped chestnuts into a large bowl with the onion, garlic and fresh herbs. Season with salt and pepper, grate in a little nutmeg and mix thoroughly. Add the beaten egg and mix to combine. Finely shave the truffle and reserve two pieces. Fold the rest of the truffle gently into the mixture and carefully stuff the chicken.

Take a teaspoon of butter and place a reserved truffle shaving on top. Carefully place this under the skin on one side the breast. Do the same for the other side.

Butter and truffle slices inserted under the skin

Cook in a roasting pan as per usual, serve with roast or steamed vegetables. If like me, you have a slow cooker, make a trivet of a carrot cut length ways and halved, some celery leaves, a bay leaf, an onion halved and some more of the fresh herbs used in the stuffing. Place the chicken gently on top, pour over a half cup of dry white wine. Cook for about three hours on low and finish off for about 20 minutes in a hot oven.

The finished bird, complete with truffle “eyes”

It’s a little more work, but the results are stunning, and the stock that remains at the bottom of the slow cooker makes a wonderful base for a truffle-infused sauce. I served this as an intimate dinner for two, with roast potatoes, carrots and parsnip, all covered in that amazing sauce. With steamed vegetables, this could easily stretch to feed four – we were being piggies! The chestnut stuffing is surprisingly light but intensely flavoursome and a wonderful texture with the succulent meat.

 

You’re all very welcome and please let me know if any of you make this one!

As I write on Saturday night here in Tasmania, I’m also really looking forward to a special Sunday lunch I’m attending tomorrow at MONA – but more about that tomorrow 🙂

Take care lovelies ❤

Spring Chicken – Day 3 NaBloPoMo 2017

03 Nov 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Chickens, Cooking, Produce, Urban Farming Tags: , , , , , ,

The weeks are flying by now and the year is almost done. We’ve moved over to Daylight Saving Time last month, and the days are noticeably longer. Nevertheless, there was snow on Mt Wellington/kunanyi this morning. It made me very happy I held off planting the tomatoes last week!

In so many ways I feel I wasted the long evenings of winter with study, books and too much YouTube! It’s depressing. I had so many plans for sewing and handwork projects, seed sorting and trying some different recipes but so little seems to have come to fruition apart from the seed saving. Looking on the bright side though, I do have very good uni marks and jars of saved vegetable seeds!

A couple of months ago I got lucky, splurged a little and finally bought a food processor. As someone who’s serious about food, I’m almost ashamed to say I’ve never owned one but I could never justify the expense of something decent, so I stuck with my old blender and a good set of knives and whisks. But a friend had a Kitchen Aid her son bought and never used, complete with a case overflowing with attachments and at a very reasonable price. It was a very VERY good idea!

The first thing I made with it was a main course that looks harder to make than it is. The food processor makes easy and quick work of mincing the meat but as with all these kinds of stir fries, the trick is to have everything else chopped and ready to go before you start cooking! I used a lot of fresh vegetables from the garden for the rice (broccoli, silverbeet, spring onion, mustard greens, kale, orach, over-winter carrots and celery) but I suggest you play around with it and use what you have on hand. I also used one of the first lemons from my little tree, eggs from my hens (who insisted on laying through winter, bless them), some of last summer’s garlic crop and home-grown dried chillies.

Spicy Chicken Patties with Enriched Fried Rice (Serves 4-6)

 

Spicy Chicken Patties

2 skinless chicken breasts

1 onion

Thumb of ginger *

1-3 cloves garlic (to taste)

1 fresh lime or lemon

¼-1 teas dried chilli (to taste)

1 tab sesame oil

1 tab Chinese cooking sherry

1 tab plain flour

Flour for dusting and a little oil for cooking

*Don’t laugh – I use my thumb to measure fresh ginger and find it’s surprisingly accurate! From the tip of my thumb to the first joint is half a thumb, to the second joint is a full thumb.

Method:

Peel and quarter the onion, peel the garlic clove(s), peel the ginger and put in the food processor bowl. Pulse until chopped. Cut the chicken into chunks and add to the processor with the chili, sesame oil and cooking sherry. Carefully pulse so the chicken is a fine mince. Turn the whole mixture into a mixing bowl, grate in the lime or lemon zest and squeeze in the juice. Add the tablespoon of plain flour (All Purpose flour to my US friends) and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour for the flavours to develop.

Heat a heavy based pan with a little oil. Put a little plain flour in a shallow bowl. With damp hands, form the chicken patties into small balls. Coat them in the flour and fry them over medium heat for a few minutes each side until cooked. Keep warm while you assemble the Fried Rice.

 

Enriched Fried Rice

1 cup long grain rice

Water to cook

A little oil for frying

1 onion, sliced

2 cloves garlic, crushed

½ thumb ginger, finely chopped

1 tab soy sauce

1 tab sesame oil

1 teas dried chilli

2 eggs beaten in a bowl with a few drops of soy or fish sauce

2 cups hard vegetables chopped (carrot, broccoli florets, celery, mushrooms, snow peas, etc)

2 cups soft greens shredded (spinach, silverbeet, mustard greens, orach, parsley, coriander, kale, etc)

Method:

Cook the rice by your favourite method while you get the flavour base started and the Spicy Chicken Patties cooked. (My favourite way of cooking rice is the absorption method in the microwave.)

In a large heavy pot, heat a little oil, add the garlic, ginger, onion, chilli, soy and sherry. Keep stirring over a medium heat – don’t let this burn! Once the onion is translucent, add the hard vegetables and cook a further minute. Add the cooked rice – it should be about 3 cups now – and the sesame oil. Stir it thoroughly. Add the beaten eggs and keep stirring, making sure the egg mixture coats every piece of rice and vegetable. (If it starts to stick, take it off the heat, keep stirring and add a teaspoon or two of water.) Add the soft vegetables, take off the heat and stir them through.

Serve immediately, garnished with some fresh chopped coriander, flat-leaf parsley or spring onion greens – or all three!

The verdict was pretty clear – the Kitchen Aid is a winner! I think it will really come into it’s own once this summer’s crops come in. Processing cooked tomatoes for Passata, basil, garlic and olive oil for pesto base, juicing lots of citrus fruit for bottling syrup and beating egg whites for fresh berry pavlova will be much, much easier 😀

Here We Go Again – Day 1 NaBloPoMo 2017

01 Nov 2017 11 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Writing Tags: , , , ,

Hey everyone,

After so much frantic writing recently for uni and work, I’ve decided that I obviously don’t do enough *facepalm* so I’ve signed up for NaBloPoMo 2017.

For those of you who are new to the concept, NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) is a US organised event that encourages us to post every day for the month of November. Living in the southern hemisphere, November is one of the busiest months of the year for me, especially from a gardening point of view, so it might seem a little ambitious to do this challenge but I’ve managed to complete it successfully every year I’ve been involved.  I think this is my fourth time and while it looks daunting (and every year immediately makes me feel tired), I always get so much out of it, and trust me, it’s a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

For instance, it’s helped me focus my blog writing and be disciplined about what I do. Some of you might dispute that – I haven’t posted anything for weeks and feel quite bad about that – but life really does get in the way sometimes! Perhaps the most rewarding thing about doing this challenge is how it puts me in contact with other bloggers and the sense of global community that follows. I think this aspect alone is a great reason to try the challenge.

In the meantime, I’m planning to write about my urban farm as it’s spring here in Tasmania, the hens have produced yet another egg glut and everything is booming – especially the weeds! I’ll also be including some posts about what I’m currently doing at university, the music and food gardening programs I’m teaching, the food I’ve been cooking and mix in a movie/book/music review or two, which helps with my degree course.

So hold on, the ride’s about to start!

We’ll Keep On Going – Remembering Tony Cohen

03 Aug 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Inspiration, Music, Recording, Writing Tags: , , , , ,

Back in the dim, dark reaches of the last millennium, I was making music with a great bunch of folks here in Hobart. Together with Michael Turner, Dan Tuffy and Mel Fazackerley we made up Wild Pumpkins at Midnight.

Through Michael and Jo Volta (Stevens back then), we managed to get in Tony Cohen’s ear and he agreed to work with us on our first recording. It was a frantic, funny, at times frustrating but overall, an incredibly rewarding experience. Tony was insane, shambolic, intense – but literally amazing to work with. And for a new band, we knew how lucky we were to have him for the project. Working with him also led to meeting Chris Thompson, his great friend and the other very prominent engineer/producer in my time with WPAM.

These first sessions with Tony though, became the self-titled, bright yellow EP, with the little dancing figures in the bottom corner. People still talk to me about that first recording and even after 30 or so years, I’m proud of it. Looking (and listening) back, I can see how good Tony made us sound, and for that fact alone I will always be grateful.

We worked with Tony again over the years, hung out, made some questionable choices but always ended up falling about laughing courtesy of that razor-sharp Cohen wit. But, like so many people from those days, I lost touch with Tone over the years as other relationships, kids, physical distance and different lives got in the way. Occasionally Jo Volta would let me know what he was up to and I was always thinking I must catch up next time I’m in Melbourne.

And of course, now it’s too late and that makes me very sad.

It was only a brief moment in Tony’s stellar career, but I’ll leave you with my favourite track from that first EP.

 

Vale Tony, and thank you ❤

Love – Things That Grow

21 Jul 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Inspiration, Music, Performance, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I’ve had a really rewarding and busy week. There’s been lots of weeding, planning out what seeds I need for spring, making loads of chicken stock for a sick friend and a dizzying amount of research into a paper I have to write about fan cultures. Above all, I’ve really been noticing how much lighter it is when I get up, and this morning (after some very cold and wet days) it was wonderful just to see kunanyi (Mt Wellington) again.

In my last post, among other things, I wrote about a project I’ve started with the Food Gardening crew at Oak Tasmania, growing Snow Peas in eggshells. Well I’m thrilled to update you all that we now have baby pea plants 😀

Everyone seems to have got involved, making sure they were carefully watered every day and it’s been a great success so far.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I hope to get them outside to harden off once they’re all up and showing a couple of leaves. Then we need to find somewhere to plant them – space is tight at the moment!

And speaking of OAK, an advance notice for Hobart/southern Tasmanian readers. I’ll be performing with The Superstars on Friday 11th August (about 3 weeks time) at a fundraiser quiz night. We’re all looking forward to it and had a fabulous rehearsal this morning 🙂 Finally, I got away from the garden and uni on Wednesday and attended the launch of Smoke One, a collection of highly commended and winning microfiction, published by Transportation Press and sponsored by Fullers Bookshop. It was a lovely, intimate event, and a selection of stories were read to a very appreciative audience. I was particularly taken with Andrew Harper’s story “Antlers” and Madeleine Habib’s harrowing but beautiful piece, “Hope Floats”.

Creating a cohesive story in such a short format is a very difficult thing to do – if you don’t believe me, try it sometime! – and I’m thrilled there’s such an international competition based in Hobart. If you’re interested in different forms of short fiction, I highly recommend this! I’m planning a quiet weekend of gardening, reading and a trip to the movies – either Spiderman – Homecoming or Baby Driver, I’m not sure yet. But wherever you are and whatever you’re doing, take care friends ❤

 

 

 

Kind Words

05 Apr 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Articles, Biography, Music, Performance, Writing Tags: , , , ,

Last year, I was approached by a young Hobart-based writer I know, Jenna Cesar. She was planning an article for her blog concerning different approaches to community work and wanted to interview me about what I’ve been doing at Oak Tasmania.

You can read the full article here, where Jenna also talked to Jay Stevens and Eri Konishi. It’s a lovely piece and (hopefully) might encourage others to bring their unique skills to help others in their community.

Also, The Superstars are playing at MONA (Hobart’s iconic Museum of Old and New Art) this Saturday afternoon as part of an event for National Youth Week. The equally amazing Callum “Rock Star Man” is opening for us and (as you can see from the photo below) we Superstars are seriously excited!

If you’re in Hobart, please come and say hi – we’d all love to meet you 😀

The Superstars L-R: Tim, Mel, Megan, me (trying to hide), Sally, Kathryn, Kellie and Ben (Photo courtesy of Chris Rule)

Meanwhile, I’ve got a ton of uni work to do so I can have the weekend off! Take care ❤

A Fool for April – Muesli Recipe

01 Apr 2017 12 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Creative Writing, Preserving, Produce, Rabbits, Urban Farming, Writing Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Chestnuts!

Happy April Fool’s Day! Well, there’s been a notable shift in the weather here, summer is clearly over and autumn is finally properly with us. I think this is my favourite time of the year, with generally lower overnight temperatures, crisp mornings and calm, often sunny days – perfect for gardening!

Soil temperatures are still quite warm – there’s a lot of growing still happening! – and I’ll be picking zucchini and especially tomatoes for bottling for a little while yet.

Salad from yesterday – kale, mustard, endive, rocket, silverbeet, red orach and tomatoes.

In the meantime, I’m madly preparing beds for kale, broccoli and garlic, which I’m planting in the coming weeks (later than usual for me), so it’s still very busy. Boudica Bunny is making a nest and should birth her kits (the first with Bernard Black) in the next week, the chestnut crop is still to come as you can see from the photo above, and the chickens are beginning to moult too so the egg supply is gradually slowing down. Having a mixed flock means that there’s usually someone laying and I rarely have to buy eggs except in the very middle of winter when day length is shortest.

Also, I’m pleased to say the jam melons are starting to get bigger – I haven’t grown these since I was a kid in South Australia and it’s exciting! I’ll keep you all up to date with what I end up doing with them, but I’m thinking Melon & Lemon Jam 🙂

Jam Melon sizing up at last

Recently, I made my version of toasted muesli, something I love this time of year, after the summer and autumn fruit drying is mostly over. Many recipes call for added oil, honey, corn or golden syrup and even peanut butter, but this is completely unadulterated. For me, the dried fruit provides enough sweetness and means the muesli keeps well in an airtight jar. If you need it you can always add a little honey, syrup or even a spoon of jam when serving. Personally, I love this with just a dollop of home made yogurt. Here’s the recipe:

Deb’s Sugar-free Muesli 

4 cups rolled oats (ordinary oats, not the “instant type”)

1/2 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup sunflower kernels

1/4 cup wheatgerm (optional)

1/2 cup coconut (I prefer flakes for this)

* 1/2 cup chopped nuts (use what you have on hand, for me it was almonds this time and see the note below)

1 tab fresh lemon zest or 1/2 tab dried lemon zest (optional)

1-1/2 cups of chopped dried fruit (again, use what you prefer or have on hand!)

Method:

Pre-heat an oven to 160 C/325 F. In a large bowl, mix the oats, seeds, wheatgerm (if using) and coconut. Chop the nuts fairly roughly and add to the oat mix.

I love lemon zest and the sherbet-like flavour it brings to my breakfast muesli (I keep a jar of dried zest in my pantry cupboard just for recipes like this) but it’s not to everyone’s taste. Try just a little if you’re uncertain.

If you use dried lemon zest, you can mix the chopped fruit thoroughly with the oats/seeds/nuts now, bypassing the toasting step and put the muesli in an airtight jar but I really think the toasting is so worth it for bringing out the flavours of the the seeds and nuts.

Lay the oats/seeds/nuts/fresh lemon zest evenly on a baking sheet or roasting pan and toast, turning every 10-15 minutes with a broad spatula. It’s fiddly but really worth it as you can determine exactly how toasted you want your muesli to be. I use coconut flakes that brown quite significantly and are my best indicator. Now for the dried fruit – the real star of this recipe – and where you can make it truly your own, with seemingly endless combinations of sweet, luscious, fruity goodness! Chop the larger pieces of dried fruit to a size that you prefer (I like mine fairly small, about sultana size). For this batch, I had a lonely piece of apricot fruit leather that needed using, plus this year’s prunes and dried nectarines. Kitchen scissors worked really well and I find them much easier than a knife for this job.

When the oat mix looks the right shade of toastiness, allow it to cool completely, mix in the chopped dried fruit very thoroughly and put into an airtight jar. It should keep well for ages but mine usually gets eaten in a couple of months.

Finished toasted muesli

*A note on the nuts. If you don’t like/can’t eat particular things or want a nut-free muesli, be bold and take them out of the recipe! Substitute nuts with more seeds and fruit – it’s entirely up to you and I encourage you to try different things. For instance, my muesli usually has linseeds but I didn’t have any in the house when I made this (sad face). Next time, I should have dried apples and some walnuts to add as well as my beloved linseeds and I might add a touch of ground cinnamon for a slightly different combo 😀

Apricot Fruit Leather, Prunes and Dried Nectarines for the muesli

In other news, The Superstars and Callum are playing at MONA next Saturday (8th April), which is huge news and I’ll do a separate post about that soon. Uni study is relentless but rewarding, and I’m loving my current unit CWR211 Writing Crime & Contemporary Romance, though romance literature isn’t my strength or preference. Nevertheless, I managed a very high mark for my first assessment and I was frankly, surprised and thrilled.

Finally, I’m sorry to say that Felicity lost her battle with cancer earlier this last week. While her death was entirely expected, it was still utterly heartbreaking and my thoughts go out to all her fabulous friends, family and especially her husband Dave. I plan to buy a shrub or small tree in the coming weeks to plant in her honour – a “Felicitree” ❤

Meanwhile, take care good people, be gentle to each other, this beautiful planet and never be afraid to tell the people that matter to you that you love them ❤

Felicity’s List – Paying it Forward

21 Mar 2017 2 Comments

by Debra Manskey in Biography, Inspiration, Writing Tags: , , ,

Some years ago, one of my music students, Ruby Grant (who’s also one of the most amazing women I’ve ever known) introduced me to her friends Felicity and Dave at a party. I was really taken with this young couple, who (like Ruby) were smart, interesting and really good fun. Originally from the UK, they’d ended up in Tasmania. Occasionally, I’d see them at gigs and we’d bump into one another from time to time on Facebook. (In a town as small as Hobart that sounds ludicrous – but it happens!)

Then, in 2015 Felicity started a blog “About That Cancer Thing” and announced that at 33, she’d been diagnosed with bowel cancer. She was young, fit and otherwise healthy so I think we all thought that she’d get through this with her usual quiet determination. In her blog, she documented her treatment and what it’s done to her life, the joy of being able to go for a walk with Dave, their disappointment at not being able to have a family, and the financial impact her treatment and ongoing care has had on their lives.

To that end, Dave and Felicity set up a Go Fund Me page to try and see if they could raise money to keep their dream of a family alive and to help with the incredible costs of being so ill.

A couple of weeks ago, Felicity posted that the meds were no longer holding the cancer back and as she so eloquently put it,

“You can’t protect people. You can try. But it’s not really protecting them. I thought I was protecting people. Then I wondered if I thought I was protecting myself. But actually I was just delaying peoples opportunity to process the truth. Learning this didn’t really change my behavior though”.

Then a couple of days ago, Felicity posted “Wrapping Up” and at the end, a list she wrote some months ago when she was better than she is at present.

I urge you all to read it, as it is a wonderful, practical, uplifting and utterly inspirational thing.

To the best of my knowledge, Felicity is still at home with Dave and I hope they are enjoying the gentle drizzle of this warm autumn morning. If you can afford to, please donate to help offset some of their crippling medical costs.

And act on Felicity’s list ❤

Venison Jerky

19 Mar 2017 Leave a comment

by Debra Manskey in Preserving, Tasmania, Urban Farming Tags: , , , ,

It’s autumn here in Hobart, though you could be forgiven for thinking it’s still summer at the moment! The sun is shining and the tomato harvest seems to be stretching on and on this year. The deer season opened in Tasmania a few weeks ago and, while I object to shooting a living creature just because you can, I have no problem with hunting if the animal is killed humanely and all the carcass is used.

I was gifted a shoulder of venison last week by family members who hunt. One deer provides a lot of meat shared throughout the clan, including mince and home-made sausages as well as the usual roasts and stewing pieces. I took my my shoulder home and wondered how I was going to use it.

As I walked in the kitchen, I spotted the dehydrator (it’s hard to miss!) still out on the bench after drying all the prunes this year, and made up my mind to try some jerky. I haven’t made jerky in a dehydrator before (only on a Weber barbecue) so this was quite an experiment for me!

Here’s the recipe:

Venison Jerky

1.2 kg (2 ½ lb) venison, sliced into thin strips

1/3 cup apple cider vinegar

1/3 cup Worcestershire Sauce and Mushroom Soy mixed together

1 ½ teaspoons salt

4 cloves garlic, minced finely

1 teaspoon dried chili flakes (optional)

2 tablespoons brown sugar

Boning out the shoulder took some time, but with a good knife, some fine music and podcasts to listen to, I was pretty happy. The trick is to cut with the grain of the meat and remove as much of the sinew as possible along the way, but the end result is worth it. Also, instead of wasting all those bits of sinew, I got a stockpot out with a head of garlic, a roughly chopped onion, a few bay leaves, my homemade Tuscan seasoning and some dried celery leaves. Once I finished boning out the shoulder, I added the bones, covered it all with cold water and wine and let it simmer for hours. The next day I skimmed off the fat and let it simmer again for a few more hours. Once it had cooled, I strained the remaining liquid and it was absolutely wonderful. I’ve potted it up and frozen it for rainy day soups, casserole and risotto bases.

In the meantime, back to the jerky. I peeled the garlic and started chopping it. Once it was reasonably small, I sprinkled the salt over it and, using the flat of the blade, really started the mash the garlic. I got out my biggest plastic lunchbox with a tight sealing lid and put the salty garlic mash in the bottom with the sugar and chili flakes. Then I added the wet ingredients and carefully mixed the whole thing. Adding the venison strips was a messy business, you really need to use your hands to massage the mix into the meat. Finally, I covered the container and put it in the fridge overnight. I did squish it around some more before I went to bed, but it isn’t really necessary.

The next day, I put thin strips of marinated venison on the dehydrator trays and lovingly placed them in the machine. The smell was gorgeous and I think this marinade would make a wonderful stir fry or slow casserole too. Using vinegar and the high salt content of both the soy and Worcestershire sauce did a great job and really drew out a lot of the moisture content from the meat as well as flavouring the strips.

To start, I put the temperature up high on the dehydrator (74 C/165 F) for the first half hour. This is recommended because I don’t use a nitrite “cure” for the jerky and it is necessary to kill off potentially nasty bacteria before drying proper. Botulism is dangerous and I take food safety seriously. Then I brought the temperature back to 63 C/145 F and processed it for just over 6 hours. This will vary with different dehydrators.

The results were excellent – chewy, delicious, dark and spicy! I’ve bagged it into little packs and for extra safety, will keep it in the freezer and pull out some as needed.  I’m going to try this with other meats (especially cheaper cuts of beef and rabbit) but the cider vinegar and salty soy combo is certainly worth repeating.

I hope you’re all well and happy wherever you are on this beautiful planet ❤

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