Making Our Daily Brew.

Whilst pregnant I had steered clear of coffee and post pregnancy I had a couple of cups but combined with the sleep deprivation and actually not being used to coffee, it seemed to turn me into an emotional wreck. Yeah blame the coffee...
Consequently I thought that me and coffee were going to part ways, I was especially gutted since 'they' had just decided that coffee was actually good for us.

However my neighbour is cultivating a small rainforest for a garden ' Daintree Gardening' is how he describes his style. He has lots of coffee plants in his rainforest and they grow the most lovely red fruit. 

He asked us if we would like some, so we went over and picked a bucket full.

We covered them with cold water and let them sit for a few days. They softened up and started to ferment.

Then we removed the seeds from the pulp. It was quite easy, you just needed to squeeze one end of the berry and the seeds squirted out.

We placed them on dehydrator trays and put them out in the sun to dry. We brought them in at night. We dried them for approximately three days, until they felt nice and dry when we ran our fingers through them.

We had read that you only want to roast them for twenty minutes, the variable for the darkness of the roast is the temperature. We put our oven up to about 220 centigrade, we were aiming for a dark roast. We placed the beans on oven trays in the middle of the oven.

The aim with roasting coffee beans is to get an even roast, often that involved lots aeration in a professional machine. We decided that the best we could do regards aeration would be to remove the trays every five minutes and move the beans about in the hope they would roast evenly.

We achieved a rather dark roast.

Coffee beans continue to cook unless they are rapidly cooled down.

We moved the beans back and forwards between a sieve and a pan to help cool them. Done vigorously this should help remove some of the chaff. Though chaff doesn't affect the final flavour, so we didn't try too hard to remove it.

We let the beans cool then ground them. The flavour matured as the hours passed by. Supposedly 24 hours after the roast the coffee will be at its best, after which the aroma will start to fade.

For a first attempt we were really pleased with the result. Using a stove top espresso maker we brewed our coffee and mixed the Espresso with a little water, brown sugar and milk. Mmmmm it was delicious. I had the remnants of a bag of shop bought coffee in the fridge so I decided to make a comparison brew... oh what vile flavourless muck it was.

We have both become coffee fiends ever since and are looking at our jar of ground coffee as its contents dwindle, fearing the day that it runs out. We have even planted six coffee trees in our garden, fortunately as a rainforest tree they grow well in shaded areas which had otherwise been going to waste. I must admit that I do feel a little wired and think it may be a good thing when the coffee runs out. I have heard that in cider producing regions the locals binge for a few weeks at end of brew time then stop for the year, which gives their bodies time to recover from the abuse. I think that is probably how we ought best manage our coffee habits; binge for a month then be calm for the rest of the year, until harvest time rolls around again.

Making Mayonaise

Although obviously I am super wholesome and healthy in most ways, I do have the odd vice and one of them is a love of mayonnaise. Now for some odd reason I had it fixed as one of those things that is really hard to make and so subsequently you always have to buy it. How wrong I was, its actually rather easy.
 I recently had to replace my blender and so bought a hand held one with a mini blender bowl attachment at the bottom. When looking for things to blend I stumbled upon a few recipes for mayonnaise and so decided to give it a go. The basic recipe went something like this:

1 egg at room temperature. (lots of recipes just use egg yolk abut I found that its simpler and less wasteful just to use the whole egg and it still works well)
1 tsp Dijon mustard ( you can increase this as you start to find the taste you like)
1tsp pink salt/ sea salt
1 tsp brown sugar
300ml oil, (olive oil gives a very rich slightly bitter flavour, sunflower allows the other flavours to come through but is very high in omega 6. I have never tried coconut oil but I suspect that would work. There is probably lost of room for experimentation with different oils)
2 tbsp. white wine vinegar/ lemon juice or mixture of the two.

Lemon & garlic Aioli

Just blend the egg, mustard, salt and sugar together about 20 seconds. Then slowly add the oil, bit by bit, blending for approx. fifteen seconds between additions. The mayonnaise will start to form and make a white creamy stiff mixture. Then add the vinegar/lemon juice and mix until thoroughly combined. There you have it lovely mayonnaise simple and easy.

You can of course add additional flavours. For Lemon Garlic Aioli just add a few garlic cloves and some preserved lemons (omit the salt) in the first stage and use lemon juice instead of vinegar or add chives and whichever herbs you fancy at the end stage for a herb infused mayonnaise. Refrigerate, it should keep for a few days.

Please remember to  mention to any guests who are pregnant that the mayonnaise is homemade and contains raw egg.

You can make mayonnaise with a hand whisk, same order it just takes a little longer.