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I’ve been cooking again. This time a baked cheesecake and some pistachio ice cream. I think I already mentioned my unhealthy interest in pistachios. I made too much again though.

The cheesecake is made of a biscuit base, a layer of cream cheese, egg and sugar and another layer of sour cream and sugar, all flavoured vanilla. The toping is raspberries and sugar and smells like jam.

I made the ice cream using double cream and yoghurt and a load of pistachio nuts. No ice cream machine required. I just had to fork it through when it set at the edges and then leave it to freeze. Pretty easy.

Still no chilli seedlings to show. We poked around and dug some up to check. They’re starting to germinate. 7-10 days the packet said… but it’s been 2 weeks!

Nooo not like that. I’ve been baking lately. I just wanted to use that title.

My obsession with pistachios is evident in the Chocolate “Fudge” and Coffee Cake. The fudge tastes more like a ganache or truffle and is so packed full of calories that one little square will make you feel nauseous. They’re good if you’re in the midst of a chocolate binge but I don’t think I’ll make them again.

I subjected Tony’s workmates to a slice of the coffee cake and apparently it went down well. It’s quite a heavy sponge and with white chocolate icing. I like coffee and walnut cake so I added the nuts just to liven it up a bit. There’s so much coffee in it that it has you bouncing off the walls for half an hour afterwards. What could be better – cake with caffeine in it?! Everyone wins.

Also, Tony made some Turkish Pizza from a new cookbook we got. Note to self – veggie mince is no substitute for lamb. I’ve never eaten lamb so I wouldn’t know how the flavours should work but needless to say cinamon is not a spice that works well with soya protein. However, the bases were excellent and worked really well with a dressed salad.

On another food related note, the chilli challenge (that is – to grow some chilli peppers that are edible) is up and running for this year. The seeds were planted last Sunday and so far nothing has sprouted. The race is between some Poblanos, Cayenne, Jalepenos and Numex Twilight. I think the latter will be more for decorative purposes since those tiny chillis are almost too hot to eat.
This year I won’t stunt the growth by craming a 10″ pot with 4 plants.

Today must be a day for updates. I realised I had forgotten to post back about the chillis.

Well, the results aren’t as good as previous years’ crops. I now have 3 chillis and they’re all on the same plant. The chilli that was just a bud during my last post hasn’t grown as big as I had expected and is only about 1cm in length and less than 1 cm in girth. The two new chillis are almost the same size.

Despite being on a sunny windowsill they are still looking a bit anemic although there is slight purple colouring coming through. They just don’t look rip yet so they’ll stay on the plants for a few weeks longer.

The other 3 plants I have crammed in that pot (clearly this is the reason for the lack of juicy chillis) have yet to produce fruit. One hasn’t flowered yet and I’m hoping to overwinter that one. The other two have produced plenty of flowers but having left them alone for a weekend all the flowers and flower buds fell off despite keeping the plant out of the sun and well watered. New flowers are coming through so there’s still hope.

I think next year I will stick to some of the better known chilli varieties.

2 weeks have passed since the Vodka Challenge and the results have been tasty. I had been expecting something slightly stronger in flavour than the blackcurrant flavoured Absolut but nowhere near as delicious as Sloe Gin (the inspiration for the project). I was pleasantly surprised.

I was due to report a week back on the results but I got distracted sampling the goods. After one week of agitating the berry vodka mixture it had darkened to a deep cherry red. Tony and I had a shot each and were able to drink it with just ice where we would normally have a mixer. Considering this is cheapo vodka that was unpalatable pre-berries this was pretty good going. There was barely a hint of alcohol to the flavour and it tasted more of jam than booze. Yum!

We left it another week before draining it. Due to a lack of sieve we poured it through a fork into a jug, removed the fruit from the bottle and then put the vodka back into the bottle. Had I had more foresight I would have used the berries in a meringue or a trifle but instead the vast majority of them found their way down the sink.

We still have half a bottle of vodka ready for the next infusion. So far the plan is cranberry and orange but that will have to wait for cranberry season in a few weeks. I’ll show how that goes if/when we make it.

Challenge 1. – Can Jude distinguish between standard Grant’s/Glen’s vodka, Smirnoff (the standard triple distilled variety) and Glens DIY triple filtered?

I will need:

• A water filter, e.g. Brita (I used a cheapo Tesco brand filter)
• 1 70cl bottle of Glen’s Vodka
• A jug
• 1 measure of Smirnoff Red

Start by washing out the filter as per the instructions. I kept aside a measure of standard Glen’s and then put the rest through the water filter. When it’s been through once decant into the jug and pour back through the filter. Repeat. All in all this takes about half an hour.

Now, I just so happened to have the end of a bottle of Smirnoff lying around so we’re staging a blind taste test. Does the water filter make the cheaper Glens vodka taste as smooth as Smirnoff? I also kept some unfiltered Glens as the control.

Time for the taste test!
Sample 1. – Mild smell, smooth flavour, thin consistency, afterburn
Sample 2. – Stronger smell, harsh flavour
Sample 3. – Strongest smell, stingy on the lips, similar flavour to 2.

I guess Sample 1 is Smirnoff, 2 filtered Glen’s, 3 standard Glen’s. Tony reveals I guessed correctly. Back through the filter for you number 2!

Triple filtered ≠ Triple distilled

So why am I filtering vodka when I could spend £5 more and get Stolichnaya? Further experiments are to take place and there’s no way I want to waste a perfectly good bottle of Stoli on them.

Challenge 2: Fruit Infusion

Being a fan of Absolut in all it’s flavours (except for the pepper one, that’s just bad), I decided it was high time I tried a vodka infusion. Never one for half measures (ugh, sorry) I opted for a summer fruits selection as opposed to one type of fruit. I’m doing this on the cheap so I bought frozen berries. The fresh ones are twice the price for half the amount. The selection I bought contains raspberries, black currants, blackberries and red currants. When I see blackberries I think of horrible white worms. No doubt they’ll float to the top if there are any, it’ll give it a mezcal look. Nice.

So first I washed the berries, partly to finish defrosting them. I figured that as well as being cheap, the frozen type are much mushier so hopefully it will infuse faster. After jamming 500g of berries into a 70cl bottle I poured in my now 5 times filtered vodka. I used a little under half the bottle, I’d say 30cl of vodka this time around leaving a bit of room in the neck of the bottle for agitating the mixture. The rest of the vodka went into the old Smirnoff bottle which I can either use for top ups or to make a new infusion.
It should be ready to sample in about a week. One plan is to let the infusion get really strong, strain off the vodka and add it to the plain vodka to get a full bottle of the infused vodka. It depends how nice it tastes. I’ll report back in a week.

Chillis mmmm… here’s the current state of my 4 “Bolivian Rainbow” plants. Sounds illegal but I can assure you they’re just chillis.

They were planted back in April and took quite a while to germinate, probably 3 or 4 weeks. At the time time I planted some seeds that I got out of a standard Tesco chilli. Wonder if they’re engineered to crap out on home growers. Well needless to say they haven’t done so well. Perhaps it’s my bacteria and fungus infested environment.

I had 4 of the Bolivian Rainbow variety germinate and being too lazy they’re still all in the same pot. You can see from the picture that they’re not that big, probably because they have cramped conditions. You can also see that they’re probably getting too much sunlight since the leaves are burning at the edges. More sun=hotter chillis woo!
Can’t wait to stuff my face with spicy burritos!