Yes it sounds like an unpleasant illness which requires medical attention. But actually it’s the correct name for a Spiced Mead! We’re not brewing this for it’s supposed medical or mystical (Bunkum) attributes. We’re brewing it mainly for the fun of it, oh and we’ll clearly enjoy drinking it in a few months!
Ingredients:-
4 x 400ml Jars of runny Honey
1 Stick of Cinnamon
8 Cloves
1 Thumb sized bit of fresh Ginger roughly sliced
Yeast
Water
Method:-
(1) Heat about a litre of water in a large pan and dissolve the Honey.
(2) Allow to cool so you don’t crack your demijohn and kill your Yeast.
(3) Pop the Cinnamon, Ginger and Cloves in the demijohn.
(4) Add a sachet of Yeast to the cooled Honey mixture and allow it to activate.
(5) Once it starts to foam pour the mixture into the demijohn and top up with Water. Allowing a little space at the shoulder.
(6) Insert the bung and air trap.
(7) Pop it away for a few months until it brews out. Or in our case leave it on the dining table and listen to it bubble all night!
According to the various recipes I hacked together to create this one, the Honey should be hand harvesting on Anglesey. The water should be taken from a sacred well on the first full Moon of an even numbers year. The Yeast….. Yadda yadda yadda. The cheapest unbranded Honey and Bread Yeast will do just fine!
Giant Yorkshire Puddings are a favourite here. A great way to fill up with inexpensive ingredients. But they do offer a bit of a challenged as Sue cannot have any Wheat / Gluten in here diet for medical reasons. So her recipe is always evolving. Jake from York Secret Helpers provided us with some Arrowroot from a commercial ingredients donation which they had received. Always good to try new recipe variations Sue created this. At first we though it was going to be a total failure. But it's just a slow starter! The results as you can see were pretty impressive. What you can't see in the picture is that the texture was considerably better than our previous recipe without the “Suggy bottom” Yorkshires sometimes have. In fact this is probably better than the traditional Wheat based recipe....
Ingredients:-
100g Arrowroot
40g Potato Flour
3 Eggs
140Ml Milk
Salt & Pepper to season
Method:-
(1) Mix the Arrowroot, Potato Flour, Eggs, Salt and Pepper and combine well.
(2) Place a deep sided oven tray with Oil in the over on 220C to heat until smoking hot.
(3) Add the Milk and give your batter a really good whisk.
(4) Pour the batter into the oven tray and cook on the middle shelf for 30minutes, until golden brown.
We have ours with a roast Chicken dinner with lots of vegetables and gravy with the roasting juices from the Chicken.