The Eclectic Table #3
More thoughts from my kitchen and garden
Cider season is upon us
Egremont Russet
What a year it has been for apples. Our trees have been groaning under the record burden of the crop; usually, I don’t bother thinning as the average season produces only a modicum of fruit but such was the fecundity this year that clusters of apples have ended up small, while individual fruit have got to maximum size.
The question is: how to preserve the abundance? Bramleys, the supreme cooking apples, will keep for a few months, wrapped in newspaper and not touching. Katy and Egremont Russet go mealy within just a few hours of picking, while Cox’s Orange Pippin, Worcester Pearmain and Newton Wonder (the latter good for cooking and eating) will keep for a month or so, perhaps a little longer.
This year, we have a new variety of our very own. Or rather, of our daughter’s. She grew an apple tree from a pip and it is now getting on for 20 years old. Apples grown from pips are unique, new varieties – but the problem is that few will actually produce fruit and most of those that manage it produce apples that nobody would like to eat.
A new apple, Georgia
Georgia’s one, however, is one of the great exceptions. It’s crisp, juicy, with very fresh acidity and a lovely sweetness. The fruit are small to medium, flushed with red and I reckon it’s a winner; indeed it’s my favourite out of all the apples we have. Now the task is to propagate and this is best done by grafting. I’ll use a semi-dwarfing rootstock such as M9 and hope that my first attempt at this ancient art goes well. My grandfather, who had a fruit farm in County Meath, was an expert in this aspect of horticulture. Thanks to a fondness for racing, a tendency to back losers and a passion for Power’s Whiskey and Sweet Afton cigarettes, he lost everything and he and his family ended up in a council house in Dublin in the 1930s, far from the rural idyll in which my mother spent the first decade of her life.
Late Winter seems to be the season for grafting, so I have plenty of time to pore over the books and the YouTube videos that I’ll need for advice. In any case, I have named the new apple Georgia, for obvious reasons. (Actually, Ron Dool of Orchardstown Garden Centre near Kilmeadan has volunteered to graft a few for me).
A few years ago, I bought a 12 litre Vigo apple press from quickcrop.ie and it has seen good service. I place a mesh strainer bag in the body of the press and fill this with apples that I have blitzed fairly thoroughly in a big food processor. One press-load yields about a gallon of juice, depending on the variety, and this goes into a demijohn along with some cider yeast dissolved in juice with two or three tablespoons of sugar. A fermentation lock goes into a rubber bung and this seals the vessel while fermentation takes place – it generally kicks off within a few hours. I keep the fermenting juice in the kitchen because it’s moderately warm; the weather has yet to cool enough to see the kindling of the Aga.
Curiously enough, a couple of years ago I bought a few sachets of cider yeast with an expiry date of 2020 – at a discount. They are working well in this Autumn of 2025.
Apart from the press, I bought all that’s necessary bits and bobs for my kind of basic cider-making from thehomebrewcompany.ie who are very helpful and located in Mounmellick, Co Laois (they do nationwide delivery. When equipping yourself, don’t forget to get a length of plastic tubing for siphoning your cider from the demijohns into bottles).
This year’s cider comprises a gallon of 100% Egremont Russet, two gallons of 50% Egremont Russet, 50% Newton Wonder and two gallons of Irish Russet, an old variety that is prone to scab but with a lovely balance of sweetness and acidity. I estimate the final strength will be 5% abv, hefty enough.
This year, for the first time, I might be very brave (or foolhardy) and try to make a sparkling version of my cider. This may lead to explosions, but I’ll report on how I get on, detonations or not.
The pleasures of an unattractively-named dish
Is it brown mince? Or savoury mince? I first encountered it when I was a very small boy attending the local national school where Christian Brothers, members of the most inappropriately-named religious order, spent their days scaring the living daylights out of us children. As a result of this trauma, and the fact that it always seemed to be cold and wet on the long walk home, my mother’s cooking was a source of great solace and comfort. And one of the dishes that I remember with particular fondness was what she called upside-down pie.