#4 Cooking offal: Gizzards, hearts and livers

Part four and time to get into what some people might think of as the ‘less desirable’ internal bits of the duck.

As defined in Larousse Gastronomique, offal is “The edible internal parts and some extremities of an animal… it therefore includes the head, feet, and tail, and all of the main internal organs. The offal from poultry is called giblets.” While most people in the Western world wouldn’t have any qualms about throwing duck giblets into boiling water to make a stock or gravy, many would balk at the thought of eating a heart, liver or gizzard on their own. In reality, these parts of a duck are very enjoyable to eat and have a wonderful, pronounced flavor. Think of them like meaty bacon – good as a garnish, good by themselves, and good as ingredients incorporated into recipes.

All of these organs can be cooked and eaten any way you want. I decided to confit the heart and gizzards and make a pate de foie gras out of the liver… both dishes were so incredible that I can’t wait to do it again and, furthermore, can’t wait to try new recipes with them. What surprised me when beginning my giblet journey is there’s a whole subculture of chefs out there who are absolutely crazy about eating innards! Not too long ago, I agreed with the masses that these parts of a bird had no other purpose than to flavor a stock. I have now been converted to the other side and am eager to rush out and buy a bag of duck livers and gizzards as soon as possible. The recipes I’m about to share with you are decidedly inspirational. Besides knowing how good giblets can taste, this kind of cooking is truly a new frontier in eating both for me and many others out there because not a lot of people have discovered these ingredients yet. Cooking something new and wonderful gets me excited about cooking in general. I hope these offal recipes and ideas have the same effect on you and yours!

The duck innards most commonly eaten are the gizzards, heart and liver. The heart of a duck is very tiny – so petite, in fact, that my duck heart almost got lost in the shuffle when I was cooking it with the gizzards. Oh the gizzards, the divine morsels of meat that are much larger than the heart, come in pairs, and look like red lumps. Gizzards, before they hit your kitchen, are actually a digestive pouch in ducks acting as their second stomach. One of my ducks came with two gizzards, a heart, and a liver while my other duck came with none of the above. Make sure you buy a duck that includes the innards or you will be sorely disappointed. Gizzards and hearts can be cooked with the bird, deep fried, roasted, poached, boiled, ground, grilled, sautéed… you can really treat them both like any other meat… however, I gather that slow cooking and not over cooking produces the most desirable textures overall.

Confit hearts and gizzards

The recipe I tried for my first experience eating the heart and gizzards of a duck (or of any animal, really) was Geisers de Canard Confits. Simply put, these are the gizzards marinated and then slowly cooked in duck fat. I decided to toss in the heart as well. It is said that the heart and gizzards tend to be chewy, but if you decide to poach them confit they can be as supple as any meat prepared in a confit. To start, thoroughly rinse off the meats and then the recipe prescribed marinating them for 24 hours in your favorite seasonings. I marinated mine in a little bowl with garlic powder, salt, and thyme but didn’t give it the prerequisite 24 hours. They ended up marinating only 2 or 3 hours, however it seemed sufficient. Heat your oven to 110°C (or 225°F). Before dunking them into the fat, rub away excess marinade with a paper towel and make sure they are as dry as you can get them. A dry marinade with salt added in works well for confit because the salt continues to remove moisture from the meat as it’s marinating. The point of confit is to eventually remove all moisture from the duck so it can be properly preserved and stored.

After situating your meat in the pot, fill it up with duck fat or olive oil until it just covers the top of the meat. Put it in the oven for 2-3 hours depending on how much meat you have cooking. A good way to test if the meat is cooked is to see if a knife can easily cut through it. Be careful, though! I suggest removing the gizzard or heart from the fat before poking it. I didn’t do this and hot grease spewed out everywhere on the counter and on me. Another thing to remember is if you want to cook hearts and gizzards, consider doing them in separate dishes because it won’t take the hearts nearly as long to be ready and you don’t want to overcook them. When they’re done cooking, like any confit, you can either eat them on the spot hot from the oven or go ahead and store them in air-tight containers surrounded by the fat they were cooked in. To prepare them from storage just take them out, slice them up if you want, and sauté them in a hot pan for a few moments. While I ate mine immediately on their own- and by the way they are heavenly that way- I hear they’re great sautéed and used as a topper for salads too. Jaques Pepin suggests putting sautéed duck giblets onto an escarole salad dressed with a lovely vinaigrette of shallots, Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar, salt, pepper, duck fat and olive oil.

and over rice

Another recipe I found that I’m eager to try is gizzards, hearts and mushrooms sautéed over rice. Put about 120ml (or ½ cup) of olive oil in a pan and get it hot. Pick out your favorite smaller mushrooms, halve, and throw them into a skillet along with about 900 grams (2 lbs) of gizzards and hearts. Cook over high heat until the mushrooms are browned, then add a cup of your favorite wine, port or sherry and reduce to medium heat. Add some minced garlic, parsley, thyme or tarragon, and pepper and salt to taste. Continue to cook the mixture for 20-25 minutes, adding more of the wine, port or sherry as needed. If you don’t like rice, you could even put this dish over pasta too. If you like cream sauces, why not add a touch of cream towards the end? Soy sauce, lemon juice and onions would be another great combination to sauté giblets in. This way of cooking gizzards and hearts is very versatile, cost effective, and extremely easy to put together.

Sous vide

The very next recipe I’m going to make with gizzards when I can get my hands on about 10 of them is cooking them sous vide and confit at the same time! All you do is pack them in a single layer in a heavy duty freezer bag, surround them with liquid duck fat or olive oil, and after getting as much air out of the bag as possible you seal and submerge the bag into 60°C (or 135-140°F) water. If you’re having a hard time submerging the gizzards, it means you have too much air still trapped in the bag. Try sealing most of the bag and sticking a straw in a little opening in one of the corners and suck out as much air as you can… I have done this and it works! Cook the gizzards for at least 4 hours. It isn’t hard to maintain this temperature over low heat and it’s perfectly safe with the freezer bag as they are made to sustain extreme temperatures. If you feel nervous at all, put a silicon mat in the bottom of your pot so your bag isn’t directly touching it. If you are patient and have the time, leave your gizzards in for up to 8 hours to get them even softer; after you’re done, you can eat them right away or add them to another dish.

Another interesting recipe I saw for sous vide gizzards has a marinade of salt and thyme and a dressing to drizzle on them after they’re done cooking made of mushrooms sautéed in duck fat or olive oil, shallots, and garlic with some thyme and verjus.

… or super simple

If all of this sounds too adventurous to you just yet, consider pan-frying the gizzards and hearts in a little butter or fat, mincing them up, and adding them to your traditional bread-stuffing recipe. There’s no shame in easing in!

A purportedly natural cough remedy that is by some more prized than the duck breasts even, gizzards and hearts thankfully can be very cheap to purchase. Take a look at your local grocery and butcher and see what they offer you. Fortunately it has not caught on yet how delicious these organs are, so since there are less people seeking them out there are deals to be had. If you have a hard time finding them in an average grocery, check out an Asian market and see if they happen to carry them. Anywhere you get them they likely will come frozen, but this is perfectly fine since it is said that freezing the giblets does not hurt the flavor or texture.

The liver

The duck’s, of all the assorted edible livers, is considered to be one of the best you can eat, whether it’s been specially fattened or not. As with gizzards, there are many things one can do with them. They can even be cooked and eaten whole, but I decided to do something a little less boring this time around; I decided to make a pate de foie gras out of mine. There are 3 terms you really should know to be able to intelligently discuss duck liver that are all related to one another and are sometimes confused: Foie Gras de Canard, Pate de Foie Gras de Canard, and Mousse Foie Gras de Canard.

One of the most culturally French foods in the world, Foie Gras literally translates in English to “fatty liver.” While some are stringent in their opinions that the term foie gras can only apply to a properly fattened goose liver, Larousse Gastronomique lists duck along with goose and makes no special addendum when terming both fatty livers as foie gras. What is special about French foie gras is that it is legally mandated by French law that 80% of the content of pate de foie gras has to be made of goose or duck liver that has been specially fattened; the fattening process is said to create a more sweetly decadent, fattier liver. Foie gras made outside of France can be made from goose or duck livers that are naturally fed, but technically the resulting dish cannot be considered a true foie gras. Some states in the United States even have laws against products derived from force-feeding animals and therefore have no true French-style foie gras at all. In America, it is said that 80% of the foie gras sold here is made from duck. Unless you travel to France, expect to get a less traditional type of foie gras made from a duck or just a mock foie gras made from a naturally fed duck or goose liver… or both.

Foie gras de canard, sometimes confused elsewhere as pate de foie gras, is just the fatty liver of a duck. What you do with your foie gras is up to you! Besides just modestly cooking and eating it whole, you can grind the liver up with flavors and spices and create pate de foie gras to serve either by itself sliced up like a bread loaf or serve it on pastry, bread or crackers of some sort.

Pate de foie gras

While you can confit the livers to make pate de foie gras, I chose to simmer them in spices. Get a large pot, fill it with water and add some salt, spices and herbs. I chose a few bay leaves, some whole peppercorns, and salt. You can really add whatever you want, but I chose to keep it simple. Bring the water to a quick boil and then bring it down to a simmer for 10 minutes to bring out the flavors in your spices. Add your duck livers and simmer for another 5 minutes or so for a total of about 15 minutes. The livers should still be a bit pink inside, so to judge adequately, think about 5 minutes of simmering for each 450g (or 1lb) of liver. I only had livers from one duck so I simmered the livers for about 2 minutes. When they’re done, drain the livers, remove the spices and put the livers in a big bowl along with butter, diced onion, mashed garlic, dry mustard, chili powder, apple vinegar and bourbon. If you don’t like one of those items, feel free to omit it and/or add in something else, like nutmeg, juniper berries or even cinnamon. Use about 120g (or 1 stick) of butter, 1/3 of an onion and 4 cloves of garlic per 450g (or 1lb) of liver, and employ the rest of the spices to taste. A splash of each liquid should be enough. When you’re done, mash everything together with a fork. Taste it, and add salt or more of a particular spice if you think the mixture needs it. Find a pretty, shapely dish to put your pate de foie gras in and let it chill. When it’s done you can either unmold the pate and slice it or you can simply spoon it and spread onto toast or crackers. I loved this recipe- I actually used it to make a quesadilla with some of the leftovers (I’ll get into that recipe in a subsequent article!).

Getting lost in translations

Loosely translated as bread of fatty liver of duck, pate de foie gras de canard confused me at first. Pate, in French, means some sort of pastry, dough, batter or pie. So, it made perfect sense that when talking about a pate, it was not about some French meatloaf sans pastry. Julia Child and Martha Stewart seemed to agree that a meatloaf lined with bacon and cooked in a terrine constituted a pate that was sometimes called a terrine. I thought to myself, how does that make sense when the French word directly means some sort of pastry? Anyways, to bridge the culinary gap between terms, I believed at first that pate de foie gras had evolved into something much more practical than pie-like pastry with foie gras. I began to think we’ve merely substituted fancy baked pastry for toasted bread and crackers. It made perfect sense and it was immediately understandable why the essential piecrust associated with the name of the dish fell by the way. I still wondered, why are so many pate de foie gras dishes served without a cracker or other breaded accoutrement? It wasn’t until much later that I realized something else: pate is another word for bread. Perhaps pate de foie gras got its name because it was literally a loaf of meat! Finally. My troubled thoughts had been satisfied. It turns out, the proper name for pate baked in a pastry or pie is called “pate en croute” and when pate is baked in a terrine, it is properly called “pate en terrine.” It all seems so straightforward now. Perhaps with this thorough explanation, some of you won’t have to experience the frustration I went through trying to sort through the terminology!

I’ve seen a few great recipes for foie gras recently. Jaques Pepin published a recipe for “Duck Liver Pate”: a recipe for foie gras served with bread. With ever-delicious duck fat in the hot pan, you brown some shallots, add in one foie gras, some herbes de Provence (a compilation of herbs typical of Provence such as savory, fennel, basil, thyme and rosemary) and some fresh garlic. Cook over medium high heat for a minute or so before adding salt and pepper. Put everything into a blender with a splash of Cognac and puree. For extra smoothness, put the mixture through a fine strainer. Chill in the refrigerator for a couple of hours and serve with toasted baguettes or crackers. Just so you’re aware, if for some weird reason you don’t finish your pate that day, it will keep covered in the refrigerator for about 4 days. While pate is, some say, the best way to enjoy duck liver as it is such a pure concoction, another way to enjoy duck liver and elongate the experience is to make mousse foie gras de canard.

et la mousse

Mousse foie gras de canard, or fatty liver of duck mousse, is about 55% duck liver whipped together with cream, eggs, and spices baked in a terrine and served hot or cold. Sometimes called a parfait (though parfaits are officially known to be chilled sweet desserts, not savory mousses), this type of dish is as complicated and gorgeous as it sounds. I have not had the privilege of trying this dish yet, but I’ve collected a small arsenal of recipes standing at the ready to serve me when I get the opportunity.

A talented chef from the Culinary Institute of America suggested a somewhat simple mousse foie gras recipe in one of his video blogs. You start by marinating the liver in brandy for a day, then pour it all into a blender with eggs and cream. While it is mixing away, drizzle in some duck fat. Mix until it is well blended and smooth. Put the whole thing into a terrine (again a sort of meat-loaf style mold) that is sitting in a water bath (properly termed a Bain-marie). Bake for about a ½ an hour in the oven at 175°C (or 350°F). The mixture will set up into a rich mousse- a seemingly impressive sight to behold! I look forward to trying this recipe soon when I gather enough duck livers to fill a terrine. It continues to amaze me how limited our food supply is in such a populous area of this country.

While the previous recipe is admittedly a bit vague as far as exact measurements, another interesting recipe that is more specific includes 570g (or 1¼lb) of duck livers, 450g (or 1lb) of hard pork fat, 180ml (or 6oz) of cream, 6 egg yolks, 55g (or 2oz) of salt, 1 teaspoon of mixed spices and 60ml (or 2oz) of brandy. Just puree the livers and pork fat together with the seasonings in the blender, then add the brandy, cream and egg yolks. When it’s finished, pour everything into a terrine sitting in a Bain-marie and cook in a 160°C (or 325°F) oven for about 25 minutes or until firm. When it cools a bit, pop it in the refrigerator and serve cold the next day. When you feel confident, change around a few of the ingredients while maintaining the same sort of ratios. To have fun in the kitchen and be a true chef you need to develop a sense of what foods are going to do with each other, and there is no better teacher than experience. This mousse dish excites me because I feel how very adaptable it really is. Some ingredients you may want to play with in this recipe are shallots, garlic, different liqueurs, nutmeg, thyme, rosemary, Balsamic vinaigrette and dry mustard. Another idea is to layer the pate with asparagus in the terrine so when you carve into it there is a very appealing design.

A great type of mousse to make from repurposed, already cooked pate de foie gras is Mousseline de Volaille by Julia Child. Basically, you cook a handful of shallots with butter and 475ml (or 2 cups) of stock to start. She suggests mixing in gelatin, however I don’t like to cook with gelatin. If you want to use it, she says add a couple of envelopes- or 2 tablespoons. Put the mix into a blender along with two cups of cooked duck and a ½ cup of cooked foie gras. Feel free to take out some more of the duck meat and replace it with more liver. Puree all of the ingredients together in the blender. Add a few tablespoons of brandy or wine and some pinches of salt and nutmeg. In a chilled bowl with a chilled whisk, beat 175ml (or ¾ cup) of whipping cream until it has doubled in volume. Fold the puree into the whipped cream and put it into a mold. For this sized dish, a 1.5-1.75l (or 6-8-cup) mold works best. Julia suggests refining the dish by lining the mold at the bottom with congealed stock jelly, but I find this somewhat repulsive so I would just say use a nonstick mold, cover the entire thing with wax paper and let it chill for many hours before serving.

Over to you

I hope I have made you think twice about just tossing duck gizzards, heart and liver meats into a stock or -gasp!- just throwing them away altogether. If you have problems locating big bags of frozen duck innards, please don’t lose hope and be resourceful. Call up any market, specialty store, farmer’s market and butcher you can think of. If you can’t have them for the moment, I found that everyplace I called had chicken gizzards and chicken livers at least. You can substitute chicken for duck if you can’t wait. What’s comical is most food purveyors sell chicken gizzards but act like it’s so odd when someone requests duck gizzards! Is it truly that far of a leap? If you encounter this attitude from someone, ignore them, continue on your search, and enjoy the chicken innards for the meantime. After trying the duck gizzards, heart, and liver just once, I feel as if a whole new world of cooking has opened its doors to me. It’s like discovering chicken for the first time. While these 3 innards are certainly an adventure to be had, there is an even more mysterious world of innards awaiting you in duck cooking! In the next article, I will delve into cooking and utilizing the head, neck and feet of a duck. You may be surprised at what you can do beyond the stockpot with these items as well!

Spring has sprung, and with it come a wealth of yummy things including new potatoes, the first cherries and strawberries of the year, and tender spring lamb.

Birds and beasts

We are now way past the end of the game season, so there are no yummy partridges or pheasants, in fact there aren’t too many meats in season this month at all.

There is however, from the middle of the month onwards, the absolute joy of spring lamb. They are busy frolicking and gambolling around the fields, and if we are lucky onto our plates.

Creatures from the deep

While meat is a bit trickier, there is always a decent amount of aquatic life in season.

The highlight of May is probably crab, which are at their best right about now, and are super versatile things to cook with.

The fruits of the earth

Depending on where you are, it may not be too warm just yet, but don’t let that put you off whipping up a salad or ten, because this is the moment that a lot of salad ingredients are at their very best.

Asparagus has a very short season and it’s here right now, as is the peppery loveliness of watercress, and the peas….

…. mmmm, the peas!

So, salads are the order of the day month, as are lamb dishes with plenty of fresh mint. It’s also worth remembering to take advantage of new potatoes while they are in season, boil them whole and serve them with lashings of butter and some flakes of sea salt – simple, but delicious!

The crocus.

Yes, that’s right, a flower most people probably associate with a common garden decoration. But not every species of crocus produces saffron; only the saffron crocus Crocus sativus yields this precious commodity. The flower has stigmas, which are a bright crimson colour, and serve as pollen collecting stalks. One flower will typically have three stigmas, which are collected and dried, and this is saffron. You can imagine how many flowers are needed for any significant quantity of saffron, given that each will only yield three small sticks. Saffron is therefore a tremendously rare spice, which requires immense care to cultivate and great delicacy and patience to harvest.

There is a great deal of variation within saffron. There is an international grading scheme, based on laboratory testing of samples, which ranks the quality of the spice from different farms. However, many saffron purists disregard this methodology, and believe only in sampling the saffron flavours themselves. The taste varies by region and also by individual producers, and many pride themselves on their very own, special saffron subtleties. It really is a lot like the world of fine wine – to a layman there may appear to be little variation, and the mind boggles at the prices some are willing to pay for it. But to a connoisseur, saffron is a precious and multi-faceted experience.

But saffron has more to offer than a striking flavor and unique colour. It has also been used medicinally, most commonly as an antidepressant. Ancient Persians used saffron baths to cure bouts of sadness and melancholy, or scattered the spice across the sufferer’s bed. It has also been used as an aphrodisiac, and Queen Cleopatra herself swore by it to spice up her sex life.

But for most, the prices of saffron will be prohibitive of too much experimentation. At wholesale costs, you can expect to pay $1,100–$11,000 per kilo of saffron. Of course, a kilo is a huge amount of spice. Let’s say you wanted to buy 100g of it, well you would still have to fork out about $110 at the absolute minimum. But of course you wouldn’t be buying at a wholesale price, and you wouldn’t necessarily find the absolute cheapest saffron, so it would actually be much more than that. It takes a very dedicated foodie indeed to make that kind of investment.

Now, you might be thinking “But I’ve had saffron!” if you’ve had paella, for example, which is a dish that typically calls for the use of the spice. The sad truth of the matter is that you are very, very unlikely to have had the real thing unless you had your paella in an expensive restaurant, for a high price. Most dishes which traditionally use saffron will be made with substitutes, to keep the costs down.

Some saffron substitutes include:

Turmeric. Often called ‘Indian Saffron’, thanks to its popularity in India and its colour resemblance to saffron. Turmeric is a wonderful spice, and will give a rich flavor to your foods, but it does not truly resemble saffron much.

Safflower. Or ‘Mexican Saffron’, only really gives the colour of saffron, not the flavor.

Calendula. Also known as ‘Pot Marigold’ or ‘Poor man’s Saffron’, was used by the Ancient Greeks as a replacement for the pricey spice. It has the colour, and something of the spicy flavor.

None of these, however, compares to the real thing. And that is ultimately what makes saffron so alluring and valuable.

While the global economy falters, it is interesting to note that the price of both gold and
saffron has remained stable. As far as investments go, these commodities share the preciousness and desirability to guarantee their value across centuries.

I’m not thinking of murder as I write this. Nor am I thinking of the cases that have featured in the news where someone has consented to being killed and eaten. I think in those instances the moral sense is pretty clear. Instead, I imagine the eating of an already dead body (by natural causes) – why would that be an immoral, and illegal, act? The underlying assumption must be that this practice is harmful, either to individuals, or to society as a whole.

But we utilize dead human bodies in other ways. I am on the organ donor’s list, and this is something I feel strongly about. Once I am dead, my corpse is of no use to me. I don’t believe in any special or mystical properties surrounding bodies. I believe it would be wasteful, and outright wrong, to just dump the corpse in a grave if someone somewhere could have potentially benefitted from some parts of it. Whatever components of my corpse are not good for transplant, might be good for scientific examination, or teaching purposes. As far as I am concerned, it is just material like any other. Does the idea of someone eating my corpse bother me? Actually, no.

There are societies in which allowing the human corpse to be consumed is in fact the traditional form of funeral ceremony; though not generally by other humans. Some Buddhists leave human bodies out to feed wild animals, and thus continue a circle of life. Zoroastrians leave corpses on towers to be eaten by vultures, which is a ritual thought to stem from the need for a sanitary way of disposing of bodies. This makes me wonder why allowing other animals to consume corpses should be any different from allowing humans to do so.

In survival cases, cannibalism also becomes understandable, and condonable. As a whole, survivors of catastrophes who have resorted to eating the flesh of dead human bodies to make it are viewed with pity and sympathy (if also some measure of disgust), but not as evil, or immoral.

All this said, I cannot imagine eating human flesh. Firstly I am a vegetarian, and I have been for most of my life, and so meat in general is repugnant to me. But if I had the choice, I would eat the meat of another animal to survive, not of a human. I don’t believe that a taste of human flesh would make me thirst for it, and that I would run any risk at all of becoming a homicidal cannibal. I don’t believe that eating the flesh would be any breach of morality. But I do find it disgusting to imagine. It is a basic, simple, reaction of disgust. And since cannibalism is almost unheard of in modern society, I assume this is what most people feel at the thought.

There may in fact be a sound evolutionary reason for not eating members of one’s own species. Remember ‘Mad Cow Disease’ or BSE? This was a disease that spread among cows because of cannibalism – cattle were being fed other dead cattle, and this included the brains. Prions – a type of infectious agent in the form of a misfolded protein – in the brain were therefore consumed, and these caused the disease to spread. Similarly, there are many prion diseases which can and do spread between humans due to cannibalism. Kuru, for example, is one such disorder that spread through the Fore tribe of Papua New Guinea due to their cannibalistic practices. Consuming the flesh of a dead human therefore puts one at risk of consuming prions, which lead to deadly neurological diseases. Probably not worth the risk.

Other diseases may also spread from corpse to consumer. As inter-species disease spread is less likely, consuming a dead animal of another species is not too risky. Consuming a dead human, however, could allow some pathogens to enter one’s body along with the flesh.

It is possible then, that this risk put evolutionary pressure on not eating the dead of one’s own species. Those feelings of disgust we experience, much like those when we think about consuming rotten foods, may be a natural adaptive response keeping us away from the risks. We have evolved to have a disgust response to many things which could actually be eaten, and in some cases we overcome this response (moldy cheeses, for example) by learning that they are actually safe. In other cases the instinctive ick-factor remains – usually for good reason.

I am a lover of food, and of trying new tastes and flavours. Normally, I am absolutely 100% behind trying new things. In the case of cannibalism, however, I would pass. Not because I believe it to be wrong, or immoral, or because it could turn society in a bloodthirsty pack of killers (which I think is nonsense). I would not advocate cannibalism for simple, practical reasons – it carries serious health risks. When you look at something and feel disgust and revulsion, that is your body (fine-tuned through natural selection) telling you not to eat it.

The last mornings of Nikolairurm – 14/05/12

Finally the moment is about to arrive, the big move, the abandonment of the conveniences of town life and the real beginning of life on the farm.

The week ahead is set to be the last split between worlds – the old world of the town with its nearby shops and bakery at the end of the street; the school bus five minutes walk from the door; the loud clanging of the old Nikolaiturm¹, our time keeper and alarm clock; the horizon of quirky rooftops and steeple towers of the majestic Görlitzer Peterskirche; the cobbled streets that hinder cycling and high heels yet carry a charm that ensures you take your time to observe the life of the street and the old buildings painted like dolls house relics, interspersed with derelict others, dusty and crumbling…

…and the brave new world of our farm in the middle of a village on the edge of a hill in the borderlands where three countries meet. The middle of nowhere, the middle of everywhere, the middle of Europe.

The flat in the main farm house is brushing up well. The end room is now a beaming yellow with white borders typical of the east (looks like Berlin I’m told!) and only awaits sanded and oiled floorboards and skirting. Plastering the kids rooms is on course, following the tedious job of wire brushing the old paintwork to allow the plaster to grip.

The middle room is our all-in-one camp site with a dining table, a few mismatched chairs and our bed, tubs of paint and a box of tools and heaps of blankets and clothes in the corners.

It is not easy living in a building site, but by the end of this week we aim to have the sleeping quarters finished. Cooking and eating outside whenever possible makes the whole experience into more of a holiday reminiscent of our time last summer, on the road with our caravan, parking up in beautiful places, following our noses and intuition until the final destination revealed itself.

Whilst I and our dear friend Patrick (who has now decided to stay for good, finding this life of work that he enjoys with a roof over his head and food cooked for him far more attractive than the prospects of a job in the crowded west with a boss he dislikes and no particular aim to save for) focus our attention on the house, my husband disappears outdoors to commune with the plants, returning when hunger calls and to evaluate the next stages of work.

The area beside the greenhouse is now mown and spread with compost ready for pumpkins, courgettes and squashes. When they have established themselves the grass and weeds can freely grow back around them as gourds love growing wild, sheltered from winds by other plants whilst basking in the full sun.

In a shack at the corner of the barn is the remnants of a dry compost toilet. After cleaning up the space and finding a suitable bucket it works brilliantly, with an inbuilt urine separator to ensure an odourless experience! We will allow the solids to decompose in a heap away from the house before using the resulting compost to assist our hedge plants later in the year. The pure urine fertiliser can be used as it is.

Encouraged by the progress of the main farm house, we have now decided to focus all of our attention on it (in tandem with the gardens), leaving the small house for when time and money permits. The downstairs structure with its arches and raw, thick walls can be renovated from scratch with natural materials and will house our commercial kitchen. It only makes sense that our family gets to benefit from the ultimate cooking and dining space, allowing for a clear distinction between our daily life and the lives of others, who would then be enabled to find solace in the small house as a holiday refuge on the land.

Mosquitos are attracted to animals (including humans) based on different factors, but mainly smell. Coating yourself in repellant, whether chemical or natural, helps to block the attractive scents you are giving off and replaces them with those that mosquitos don’t enjoy so much. But the smells your body releases are also dependent on your diet, so to a certain degree it is possible to influence your own attractive, or repellant, aroma.

Mosquitos like a couple of things:

1. Carbon Dioxide: which you breathe out. You give out more of this when your body temperature is higher, and after exercise.

2. Lactic Acid: which you give off more after exercise, and after consuming certain foods – those with a high salt content, and high potassium.

Obviously you cannot prevent yourself from releasing carbon dioxide and lactic acid. But taking measures to give off less of these may help. For carbon dioxide, food won’t be a factor (sleeping in a cool room, without exercising a lot before hand, will be best). But lactic acid can be influenced by what you eat.

Cutting down on salty foods is fairly simple. Just avoid ready-made meals, and other processed foods, which will be packed with salts to increase their shelf life. Resist the urge to douse your meals in salt, and stay away from salty snacks. Hopefully this is will help reduce your lactic acid levels (and your chances of cardio-vascular disease).

Potassium is a little trickier. You certainly don’t want to avoid it altogether, as it is a nutrient your body needs. It is also found in most fruit and veg, and cutting those out of your diet will lead to much worse consequences than a few bug bites! But you can stay away from the really high potassium level foods, such as bananas, spinach, and potatoes.

These dietary changes are aimed at reducing chemicals which may draw mosquitos to you, but what about actively eating foods that could help repel them? Here the answers are not so clear.

Garlic is commonly associated with repelling insects. The pungent aroma puts many creatures off, so it seems reasonable enough that mosquitos might not like it either. Rubbing yourself with garlic cream, or going around with a chain of garlic around your neck, might actually keep bloodsuckers away even outside of bad vampire movies! Of course, it will keep everyone else away too. It is not clear if eating garlic helps or not. Perhaps if you breathe on approaching mosquitos you can chase them off…

Marmite, the British yeast-based spread (and its relatives such as Vegemite) are sometimes claimed to be mosquito repellents too. However, there isn’t much evidence for this, and given the saltiness of the spread I would assume it might even do the opposite.

Then there is a whole litany of things such as tomatoes, chilies, onions etc. which are thought by some to act as mossie repellents. The evidence for these is scant or non-existent though, and as someone who eats lots of all of those, I can’t say I’ve ever noticed any such benefits.

You best bet in the war on this horrid insects is probably a multi-pronged attack. Limit your diet to reduce your lactic acid levels, rub yourself in garlic and other repellents, and arm yourself with swatters and wooden stakes, for whichever blood drinker comes your way.

Many saints also come with the bonus of having associated celebratory days, and I like celebrations even more than I like good people.

La Feria de Sant Ponç, on the 11th of May, is one of the oldest fairs celebrated in Catalunya, dating back in its present form to at least the sixteenth century.

Unless you happen to live in this little corner of the Mediterranean, you could be easily forgiven for having never heard of Sant Pontius of Cimiez, the patron saint of herbalists and beekeepers, but in Barcelona every 11th of May he is a big deal.

A bit of history…


Born in Rome into a pagan family, he converted to Christianity, gave away all of his possessions and started travelling and preaching.¹

At a certain point he arrived to the bustling Mediterranean port of Barcelona, where as the local legend has it, seeing such poverty and disease among the population, he began to prepare potions with healing herbs and distribute them to the local poor.

He gained immediate respect and admiration from the locals who began to hold a fair of herbs in his honour

Of course, the reality is that the herbal fair was already in existence, but for pagan reasons, the 11th of May being in the middle of the best growing season for herbs, and that like many Christian festivals, the date was appropriated from the earlier celebration.

… and fast forward to today

Today the tradition continues throughout Catalunya, but the biggest fair takes place in the centre of Barcelona.

Artisanal producers of honey, cheeses and sweets, together with herb growers flock into the city from surrounding areas and bring their wonderful wares with them.

Carrer Hospital, between Las Ramblas and Rambla de Raval is closed and taken over by stalls selling herbs, the most amazing honey, candied and dried fruits, herbal remedies for just about every malady you can think of, sweets, cheeses and assorted other goodies.

You can spend hours wandering around in the sun, amongst the crowds, buying the most amazing products, and then spend the evening eating toast with fantastic local goat and sheep cheeses, and maybe some pate, and then following it with a vast array of preserved fruits. If we were being traditional then we would also include some apples blessed during the mornings mass (I won’t be being traditional).

The yummy stuff (for me at least) is undeniably the main event, but there are also religious processions carrying an effigy of the saint, kids activities and human towers.

Traditions

Apart from buying a lot of herbs and honey, there are a couple of other things that you should be doing on Sant Ponç day.

At some point this festival also became associated with spring cleaning, and legend has it that a house cleaned on Sant Ponç day will apparently remain free of parasites and bugs for the next year.

Also sticking a bunch of rosemary sprigs or four roses under your bed will allegedly keep evil spirits away.

and so

While St. Pontius doesn’t have the 11th May all to himself, sharing it with St. Anastasius and St. Eudald, neither of them have anywhere near such interesting celebrations, so this is the one that I’d recommend observing.

If you find yourself in Catalunya in the first half of May, then brave the crowds and the sun and go to a fair and buy some amazing food, and even if you don’t then go and get some fruit and honey, some Spanish cheeses, open a bottle of Catalan wine and take part wherever you are.

But this is a question of interpretation, and can vary from culture to culture. In Taiwan, for example, it is perfectly common to have shrimp served up with cake icing and colourful sprinkles. They really aren’t bad either. So if you want to get really creative in the kitchen, other cultures ingredient perceptions can be a good source of inspiration.

Sweet tomatoes and savoury fruits

Throughout my travels, I’ve been struck by the versatility of the tomato. As a European, to me tomatoes belong in salads, or pasta sauces. They’re lovely raw, with a pinch of salt. But I’d never looked at a tomato and been inspired to much experimentation. At least not until I got to Asia. My first culinary shock when I moved to Taipei city concerned tomatoes. I walked through a bustling night market selling all kinds of new and exciting things, trying as much as I could. Near the end, I spotted some sort of caramelised balls on sticks. They were red and shiny through the thick caramel glaze, and looked delicious. I assumed they were sweets of some sort. I certainly did not expect them to be cherry tomatoes! After the initial shock of tomato flesh in the middle of the caramel, I realised that this was actually a very good combination. The sweet caramel and tangy juicy tomatoes were delicious together. I’d never look at tomatoes in quite the same way after that, and certainly not after I saw my students eating tomatoes with chocolate.

You might not be too surprised by the dessert tomato, since they are a fruit after all, and they do have a natural sweetness to them. But what then really made no sense at all to me was the salting of various fruits. In many countries it is considered perfectly normal to sprinkle fruit such as mango, pineapple, and guava with salt. Sometimes chilli too. I’ve even encountered salty plum, and salty star fruit, juice; possibly the worst thing I’ve ever had in my mouth. But while to me the combination of fruity sweetness and salt was utterly appalling, all around me other people helped themselves to extra salt and ate their mixed-flavour fruit happily. I suppose I understand this a little when I think of the salted rims of some cocktails, but it really still seems completely alien to me. Salt is not an ingredient that belongs with fruits so far as I’m concerned.

Mouldy stuff

Another interesting cultural division in food lies in the perception of mould. Generally speaking, if something smells bad, and has fluff growing on it, it’s repugnant and not appetising. But not if it happens to be some well ripened stilton, or other blue cheese. Then suddenly the obvious fungal growth lacing it stops looking like a health hazard, and has me salivating at once. This is clearly just because I have learned to associate the right kinds of mouldy cheese with yumminess, not food poisoning. Just like Taiwanese people have learned to associate caramel with tomatoes, and sprinkles with shrimp, so green fuzz is linked to cheese in my brain. Yet when I hear about people eating other mouldy and rotten things, I just feel ill.

I’m sure if I had grown up in Asia then I might find Century Eggs appealing, but with my European paradigm of what an egg should be, these black and slimy things are just too repulsive to try. A Century Egg is an egg which has been dipped in a lime pool, thus raising its pH, and then left to mature for anything between 10 days to a month, and in some cases even longer. Whatever ways people may choose to eat eggs, whether raw, or pickled, or mixed into alcohol, nothing can be quite as bizarre a use of this basic ingredient as the blackening process of the Century Egg.

… and other oddities

Some of my favourite odd ingredient finds include:

• Banana Ketchup – found all over the Philippines, presumably because of an excess of bananas, this is a sweeter version of tomato ketchup and is really rather good.
• Coriander & peanut ice-cream – another Taiwanese treat is ice-cream with shaved peanut brittle and lots of fresh, green coriander. The herb gives the sweet ice-cream and peanut combination a wonderful flavour.
• Avocado Shake – something I came across in Vietnam, is a simple blend of avocado, honey, and water. It’s smooth, green, sweet, and very rich. Utterly delectable.

I’m willing to bet than in every country there will be some food the locals consider to be the most natural and ordinary thing to be eating, but which to you the foreigner will seem completely mad. All I can suggest is trying as many of these as possible – you never know what brilliant new twists and uses for a classic ingredient you might discover!

#3 Cooking the body, wings and legs

In the third part of the series, Laura tells you everything you might need to know about the different ways to cook the main bits of a duck.

The most sought-after parts of the entire duck by far are the body, wings and hinds (legs and thighs). There are thousands of recipes out there on how to cook these parts. While the variations are endless, there is a limited list of ways to execute these variations. Basically, you can roast, braise, confit, sous vide, grill or fry the main duck parts. While there are six main ways to cook duck, there are some methods that are understandably more popular than others. Since grilling and frying are somewhat generic meat preparations and are already pretty common among chefs, I will focus my discussion on roasting, followed by the sous vide method, then confit, and lastly braising.

Roast duck

If you decide to bypass the extensive butchering process and simply want to roast the whole bird, roasting is thankfully a simple and straightforward task. Unlike roasting a turkey or chicken, you don’t need to rub fat on the skin and you don’t need to constantly baste it to keep in the moisture. You can choose to brine a duck, but the brining process is mostly used to make a bird juicier… the duck really doesn’t need that kind of help. Do not make the mistake of thinking that a duck and chicken cook the same way.

To start preparing to roast a duck, pull out a v-shaped rack and sturdy roasting pan. The duck definitely needs a rack of some sort to help with rendering fat and to encourage even roasting (Editors note: If you don’t have one, you can put some big chunks of root vegetable in the bottom of the tray and sit the duck on top of them).. After making sure you removed the innards and rinsed the duck, pat it dry inside and out. Place it on the rack breast side up. Then, take a sharp knife and make a shallow crosshatch pattern on the breast skin (not the flesh!) of the duck. This step allows the fat to properly render while the bird is roasting. Season the skin with salt and pepper. If you want to, you can tie the legs back with twine to let it roast in a traditional shape. I prefer to cook my birds without the twine since I find they tend to cook more evenly. Set your oven to 150°C (or 300°F) and just let your duck sit out while it’s warming up (letting your duck get a little closer to room temperature and dry a bit more helps the cooking process). Ducks should be placed in an oven at a much lower temperature than a turkey or chicken to help it render fat and cook properly. Cook a bird of 2.5kg (or 5.5 pounds) for approximately 1 hour. Take it out, remove some of the fat if necessary, and flip it over before returning it to the oven. Cook the bird one more hour and flip it over again. After another hour, pierce the bird and check the juices. If they run a clear-yellow, the bird is done. If the juices are rosy, leave it in a bit longer. I found my bird was looking a tad dry at this point, so I drizzled some of the rendered fat over the body of the duck.

Don’t get overwhelmed by different recipes- there are many recipes out there telling you the “correct” way to roast a duck and some have very different opinions on the issue. For example, Julia Child suggests a really hot oven and a complicated flipping method that gets the duck out in under two hours time. I decided to go for a much lower heat and more time with less flipping, loosely shadowing a Martha Stewart method. Really, you just need to flip the duck every once in a while, give it some help if it’s getting dry, and check the juices when it’s looking done to see if it’s ready. Not every bird is the same size, not every oven is the same, etc. I prefer the lower oven temperature because you as the cook have more control and it’s not as fussy or demanding. When I saw the bird was looking thirsty but still needed to cook more, I scooped up some pan juices on it and that was that. Try to develop your own feel for what constitutes dryness and doneness when roasting a bird. Isolated instructions, like any recipe, can only go so far in getting you to that beautiful roasted duck. I tend to use recipes as guidelines… mere suggestions in a world of culinary uncertainty.

To make your roasted duck even better and more interesting, try making a complementary tart sauce to go with it. Duck a l’orange, for example, is just a roast duck with an orange sauce. A simple and fresh way to make an orange sauce is mixing a ¼ cup each of honey and pomegranate molasses with a couple tablespoons of orange juice. Martha Stewart recommends bringing this mixture to a boil and then simmering until the sauce is a syrup consistency. Use this basic recipe as a guide to experiment and branch off with other base ingredients such as red wine vinegar, or even just lemon juice instead orange juice… canard au citron! Julia Child suggests a wonderful sauce recipe for roast duck in her cornerstone book Mastering the Art of French Cooking that includes 45 red cherries cooked with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice, 3 tablespoons of port or cognac and 3 tablespoons of sugar… I’m definitely trying this one next time!

Sous vide

My absolute favorite way to cook a duck, by far, is the sous vide method. A cooking technique very popular among top chefs of today, sous vide in French literally means “under vacuum.” A variation on traditional poaching, the meat is cooked in an airless bag floating in a pot of water with a constant temperature of 57°C (or 135°F). With this method, the meat retains almost all of its juices, as well as it’s original size and shape, all while being cooked evenly to an adequate 57°C (or 135°F) internal temperature. While complicated machinery exists for this method, it is entirely unnecessary. All you need, besides one or more duck breasts, is a heavy-duty freezer bag, a straw, a silicone mat, a large pot and an accurate cooking thermometer.

I prepared mine with two duck breasts, so the recipe I’m about to tell you is skewed for two breasts and not for one, just so you’re aware.

To begin, you need to cross-hatch, marinate and bag your breasts for at least an hour – preferably longer. I used fresh thyme, salt and pepper on both sides of the duck for a simple but flavorful seasoning. Make sure the breasts are both facing the same way when you put them in the bag, and use the straw like a vacuum to seal up the bag with as little air inside as possible. Bags with little or no air should sink when they’re in the water instead of floating. I am not aware of any health risks associated with breathing in raw duck air… I did it and I’m okay… but if you decide to use a straw for this purpose, you do so at your own risk. If you’re concerned at all please research this further before you do it. After you completely seal the bag, sink it into a large pot with a water temperature of 57-60°C (or 135-140°F). Make sure your silicon mat is sitting underneath the bag inside the pot. This is to make sure the temperature at the bottom of the pan doesn’t bother your bag at all. Now for the only tricky part of this process: you must stand by the burners most of the time to monitor and ensure the temperature of the water stays at this exact range for the entire cook time. I left mine in for about 1½ hours and the breasts can apparently stay in the water up to 3 hours (or even longer some say), but that sounded way too long to me. 1½ hours was quite enough.

After you take the duck breasts out of the bag, place them in a heated pan of olive oil to brown a bit, the fat side down. The fat will provide a protective barrier and prevent the meat from cooking too much more. Serve the duck breasts immediately and enjoy! As a side note, the extreme temperature plastic bags can handle the hot water- don’t worry. Mine did not melt or breakdown at all. Also, plastic chemicals are said to leech out only in very high, extreme temperatures. Again, check this out for yourself if you are overly concerned but I personally believe through my own research that this method with the freezer bags is nothing to worry about.

Confit

While you can essentially confit any part of the duck you wish, the wings, hinds and innards are the most usual confit fare we see from a duck these days. The reason this is so is because in modern society we don’t need to store meat this way anymore to keep it fresh and for that reason the breast meat is usually not made into confit because it is already considered a trophy just the way it is. It is wonderful to confit tougher or lesser parts of meat because the slow-cooking process makes tough meat soft and the fat makes any kind of meat taste delicious! The word “confit” originates from a French word meaning “to conserve”. This method of preparation happens to be one of the oldest ways to preserve meat that there is. The original idea was the fat the meat is stored in, after the water has evaporated away from cooking the meat while in the fat, creates a hermetic seal around the meat, enabling it to be stored (without refrigeration even!) for many months. Of course today, why would you risk your health when you have a perfectly good refrigerator to use for storage and preservation- but the luscious taste of confited meat still remains a huge draw for the more than obvious reasons of taste and texture.

To begin the process, salt and season your duck pieces and marinate them for at least 24 hours. I chose a marinade composed of salt, pepper, garlic, thyme, and shallots. Unlike some marinades, this recipes calls for you to wipe off any excess marinade before submerging the pieces into the fat. It needs a chance to sink in, and the salt helps remove moisture. While you’re waiting, make sure you have plenty of duck fat on hand. You will need enough to just cover the duck in whichever oven pan you are using. If you end up falling short, you can add some olive oil to the mix, but I believe it will turn out much better with all duck fat. A word to the wise, use a dish that is somewhat cramped to cook the meat in. You don’t want the meat to be hard-pressed against each other, but a snug fit will lessen your duck fat needs while still cooking well.

When your marinade is done, set the oven for about 95°C (or 200°F) and proceed to melt the fat in the pan while you wipe off the excess marinade from the duck. Submerge the pieces into the fat and put it in the oven. Set a timer for 1 hour and when it goes off check on it. Flip the pieces around, add some more fat or olive oil if it looks like it needs it, and set the timer for another hour. Again check and flip when it goes off and set it again for one more hour. Depending on how many pieces you’re cooking, it could be done by now. I cooked mine for about this long and I had 4 pieces – 2 whole wings and 2 thighs. One trick to tell if it’s done is how tender the meat is. Grasp hold of one of the bones sticking out and give it a wiggle. If it feels like the meat could detach from the bone easily, it is done. This cooking method literally makes the meat fall-off-the-bone tender.

If you want to store the meat at this point, find a good container with a tight lid and stick the meat inside of it. Pour the confit fat on top until it completely covers the meat and let it cool a bit before you seal the lid on. Put in your refrigerator and store it there (in my opinion) for up to a month. Again, the idea is to not test your health. When you want to use the meat, simply heat it up in a hot pan with some olive oil or duck fat to brown, or pop it in the oven to crisp, or just add it to your particular dish. It’s already cooked through, so there’s no wrong answer. Whatever you do it’ll taste great!

For the fat-conscientious worry warts out there, cooking a fatty piece of duck in even more fat may sound too decadent to be digested by the human stomach… but interestingly enough this process draws out more fat from the skins on the duck instead of adding to it! To illustrate, imagine you’re cooking a piece of duck and you pour off the fat from the pan midway through. The duck fat still attached to the duck will sear much more quickly and thus trap in the remaining fat instead of staying porous and allowing more layers of fat to come off. If the fat were still in the pan, the sear would not have occurred and more liquid fat would have melted off from the subcutaneous layers of fat attached to the duck meat. Leave your reservations aside and give it a try- you have no reason to worry about the excess animal fat and even if you can’t help yourself from worrying you’ll stop it once you taste the ducky decadence of confit.

Braising

You can braise anything and everything on a duck. Braising, technically, is when the meat is cut into larger hunks and is only partially covered by liquid then cooked at a lower temperature, as opposed to stewing where the meat is in smaller pieces and is completely covered, or boiling where the item is covered with liquid and cooked at a very high heat. Braising is definitely a good and tasty method for dealing with duck. While you can braise the whole duck, I believe there are better things that can be done with the breasts. As far as the wings and hinds are concerned though, go ahead and braise them.

Start by getting a big pot out or your slow cooker. I have a Crockpot and love using it for tough cuts of meat and poultry dishes. The liquid you’re cooking with can never come to a boil, so keep the heat low at all times (like 95°C (or 200°F) for the oven and medium low or low heat for the stove). This cooking method is great because it’s not hands on after it starts cooking; at the same time, though, braising does take a few hours to finish. The liquid can be wine, stock, water – really anything you wish. You can even choose to add in different vegetables to go with the duck and make it a one-pot meal. I would put some chopped carrots in, some onions, maybe mushrooms, sliced potatoes… chopped Brussels sprouts would taste amazing too.

Before you put your duck meat in, be sure to brown the meat in a pan a bit first with some fat. After it’s done, add a little of your cooking liquid to the skillet and deglaze your pan, then add this to your braising pot for more flavor. Slow cook the meat, covered, for about 2 hours. Again, this depends on the amount of meat and the size of your pot and your cooking method (oven, stovetop or Crockpot), but the general idea is to not boil or rush the meat. This method in a way is similar to confit, however it does not remove the moisture to achieve preservation and it slow cooks the meat without the excess fat. I would say braising gives a dish more of a soup quality. If duck soup sounds good to you, then definitely give this a try.

… and the rest

In the next article, we will explore ways to use and cook the giblets, heart and liver of a duck.

Walpurgisnacht and Hexenfeuer – 07/05/12

Fertility celebrations and witches fires light up the peaceful Saxony countryside.

Beltane (May Day) is a celebration of growth and fertility and the abundance of the height of Spring. At this time, plants are in full growth and our pasture is growing quicker than the sheep can eat it!

Traditionally, animals are driven out to pasture at Beltane, only returning at the time of the great fires of Samhain (Halloween), when light is gradually diminishing, cold is increasing and all but a few prepare for hibernation.

The fires of Beltane however offer us the opportunity to rid ourselves of winter gripes and welcome in new ideas and fresh energy for the busy months ahead. Here in Saxony, “Walpurgisnacht” – the German equivalent of Beltane – is celebrated with a ‘Hexenfeuer’ (literally ‘witch-fire’) in every village. Some even have life-sized straw witches balanced precariously on huge mounds of sticks!

We are invited to a neighbouring family for a small ‘hexenfeuer’ and are very glad of the invitation, as we end up getting the best of both worlds without the hectic clamour of fires too hot to come close to and crowds too loud and inebriated to keep track of the kids…

After our feast of grilled meat, salads and a shot of schnapps to settle things down, we stroll up the hill to be met with the spectacular sight of a dozen or so fires dotting the valley ridge and horizon beyond. The neighbour’s boys and our big girl excitedly take turns with binoculars in between bursts of chasing each other and hiding in the long grass.

At one point we all simply stand there, soaking up the peace, breathing in the scent of fresh apple blossom and revelling in the drama of bright orange light bursting out of the lush green landscape. The kids sit in the grass nibbling sorrel and daisies, teaching each other the names in their own languages, happy to eat salad of their own choosing!

These are the last big fires allowed in this area before the end of October. If you want to have anything bigger than a discreet camp fire, the village authorities have to be consulted and a small fee must usually be paid.

Now it feels like we have really arrived here. Every day the workload multiplies as everything grows faster than we can possibly keep track, yet the abundance brings with it a sense of purpose and satisfaction, adding meaning to the farm in the middle of Europe that we bought because we could afford it.

Inside, the end room of the flat is looking much more presentable with two of the three window frames sanded and painted with outdoor gloss paint and the interior walls plastered smooth and ready for some colour. The windows are old-style double glazed (typical of the former German Democratic Republic) whose wooden frames have remained untreated for a very long time. The wood is soft and porous, rapidly soaking up the paint. They now look set to withstand a good few more years.

The friendly neighbour whose sheep happily graze our overgrown pasture also happens to be a trained electrician who, as a friend of the original owners, installed the entire electrics back in the 1980′s! They turn out not to be as dodgy as we thought, only appearing to be so after the recent internal rearranging of walls and extracting of sockets by the previous owners. After a brief look round, shaking his head in disbelief at the haphazard changes, he quickly volunteers to sort out the dangerous elements and advise us as and when we’re ready on how best to proceed with refurbishments.