Murmerings

There are great photographs taken very skilfully by people to show the impressive show of starlings coming in to roost but not from me. I spent ten minutes tonight at the end of the lane next to home when a small flock of starlings caught my eye, circling over the tall lelandii hedge where they spend the night.

It sook some for the birds to took like they might be abotu to dive into the trees and from different directions more small flocks joined them, merging after overlapping darkly. As more joined the flock seemed to move more quickly, and nearly roosted on the church spire nearby. The impression of the flock changes as the birds fly towards and away, and they are darkest when overhead, making them seem closer than they are.

When the flock was complete the mood of the birds changed and they moved more quickly and then suddenly poured themselves into the hedge, some were too late, the last ten percent, and felt it safer to do another circuit or two of the area, and then they too plunged into the leaves. This left the sky empty, but walking past the hedge the creaky, liquid squabbling was in full swing, and occasionally a bird would be ousted and have to fly out of the saftey of the trees to find another branch. Dusk was full at this point.

Castiga - Chipotle Chilli Vodka

Part of the joy of the love affair with chillies is that the development of the relationship is fed by discovering more delicous features of the way chillis change and give up their flavour and scent.

One of the most alluring is the way that alcohol so readily dissolves not only the heat but other precious aromatics from the pods - chilli vodka, much overdone I think with random chilllis becomes a fine and complex drink if chipotles are the flavouring. I used about 5 chillis per litre and after a couple of months there is a fiery, smokey and deeply fruity and slightly sweet spirit.

Things to do with chipotle vodka (apart from drinking it at -30 deg C from the deep freeze)

1 measure Chipotle Vodka
1 measure of rough tequila
1/2 measure of sugar syrup
1/2 measure of lime juice.

May I call it the Castiga? (I punish/penalise/seduce ish)

Shake with ice and let the heat seduce your lips and palate, the smoke and lime will lead your mind to hazy milongas which you have yet to visit.

Roe Deer

The woods here are thick with them; it is hardly possible to walk along the river bank or through a bit of covert without disturbing them, so I was pretty pleased when I made contact (via "The Legend") with a local marksman. He has permission to cull the deer on the local estate and does so, with determination and startling accuracy. I am now on my third deer and am delighted by the quality of the meat - even on the big old bucks it is as soft as pâté in the fillet. And what happens to the non-meat parts? Bob's teeth are benefitting from the bones and I have found myself another way to use up the free seconds I have to start trying to cure them. 

Cured roe skin



I followed a suggestion from the internet, and because the curing method required only salt it seemed a pure and simple way to go ahead. No point trying methods that rely on industrial chemicals and protective clothing. 

Skin side of roe pelt

The cure took only a couple of days with the 1/2 cm thick coating and rubbing with sea salt - I found an old slatted frame which was about the right size and nailed the skin in place, lots of flies came to inspect it but soon went away because of the salt. The only place they stayed and left little babies was where I had not salted the skin properly, a handy pointer.  Once the skin was dry and stiff it was simply a matter of taking it off the board, brushing off the salt and then rubbing the skin to soften it and get off the last of the sat. A very satisfying result I think. It still smells very wild but I like that. I am hoping with more rubbing it will get even softer to the point I might wear it.



The skin side is white and floury, almost and as I rub it the floury-ness goes and leaves a parchmenty skin behind. So far there has not been any loss of hairs, apart from around the edges where I have been grabbing and rubbing, which is what I'd expect. There was still a bit of very dried poo left around the stern but a quick few strokes with the Furminator spruced that up.

When I have removed the skin from the carcasses (they arrive head and hooves off, also gralloched) I can then butcher them. While dealing with the whole carcass, one slightly sinister thought keeps coming back; (maybe it's not sinister, maybe it is just that they are perfect prey and predator) how very much the alike are the build and size a roe buck and those of large greyhound dog... So if the coat fits, I thought...

Now, to be frank, Bob's hunting days are over, if they were ever here; racing greyhounds are too fragile for rough country and anyway, it's illegal. But just a thought, if I could combine this idea with some small antlers, created from a plastic reindeer set from Christmas, that clips on like and Alice band (Bob tolerates this for a few hours each year)  I might have a cunning disguise for him to wear whilst stalking roe deer. As you can see from the one of the few parts of him showing, he's not happy about this new coat, and during the 2 hour photo-shoot (ahem) he followed me about folornly.

Powkie's Footsteps

The spring has finally made itself felt along the river here and the greenery is spurting out of the ground almost pathologically fast - I cannot see how these spindly tendrils will last long enough to bear flowers and fruit and reproduce.

The plants and trees seem to grow overnight and it reminds me of the tales my mother told me about visiting the rhubarb cathedrals in the triangle - lit only by candles, she describes how the growth was audible, in sinister vegetable creaks. The monks rhubarb must surely do the same thing; from alien, granular pod one day to a full umbrella the next..

Bob the greyhound and I set off up the river to find a dooking pool for swims when the sea is too rough - last Autumn I spotted, round a corner of a rocky outcropping, the distinctive smooth and dark water of a decent pool, but couldn't stop to have a dunk because I was with my neices who were on a mission to explore the rest of the river and its banks, on our way home.

Bob is tolerant of posing amongst the Monk's Rhubarb, he is a speedy force of nature too, so he is at home.

We started our walk about a mile from the possible pond and using mixed terrain - sometimes on the bank, sometimes in the pebbly shallows and sandy "beaches" of the river we waded and trudged through the bright green light of the canopy over the water - the heron was disturbed and flew off, rather like a teradacytil in shape, and in the tidal part of the river it is permitted to fish, I believe, although the heron does not pay attention to these boundaries.

We found the pool, fed by its own short but thick waterfall, the water must be over six feet deep and I wish I had come prepared for a dip.

Foam, sweet foam

Air temperature 22 deg C, water temperature 10 deg C, which is now comfortingly into 2 digits, very arbitrary of course, because in Farenheit it has been in 2 digits since minus 20 C, but it is just a little lift and it feels like summer is arriving, at long last.

I wish my camera was working - there would be some sumptuous shots of the clear skies of Berwickshire this morning, and the duvet of haar mist covering the sea to the horizon and nestling up to the edges of the cliffs, fluffing and filling the bays and warming the toes of Torness power station. The mist gradually cleared and left one of those silky days where the sea blends into the sky and invites a dip.

I could hear the waves crashing on the rocks before I saw them - the "Ladies" was surrounded by breakers  and Green End Gully at 5pm was infested with snorkellers, 2 no., whom I forgave when they chatted helpfully. They had been in "The Ladies" with just fins, masks, and snorkels, to me it looked like Scyllla and Charybdis. They said it was full of bubbles, but I decided to go in the Gully, ouching because I had forgotten my sea shoes which protect my poor feet and their lumpy ganglions from sharp pebbles on the way in and out. The water felt a tiny bit warmer that last week, so I didn't follow my full improvised hakka/bushido routine to get my blood up and scare myself into the water. Other Half says this ritual is not intimidating, but rather funny.

The water was seething in eddies around the rocks and was covered in foam, I found myself inside a Heston Blumenthal dish, this is the fish course I had on my birthday; "Sound of the Sea", acompanied by a shell which contained an MP3 player and had earphones to listen to the sounds of waves on a beach.  You would have to try the dish to get the full effect, or try a dip in Green End Gully after a Northerly blow, snacking on floating bits of sea-lettuce as they come close.

While I was swimming, Bob the greyhound was trying hard to keep an eye on me - but he was on the grass in the sunshine so he was nodding off, as he was sitting there, lurching awake when his head lolled.  I swam to and fro for about 15 minutes, thinking that lengths in a swimming pool never felt as good as this, gasping with the waves smacking my face and floating on the tow of the sea moving towards the shore and then out towards the open sea. The swimming mask is a great thing, I have almost 180 degree vision which is good when I am worried about Porbeagles. I saw one last summer off Heugh Ness, quite a distinctive shape and motion, just not mistakeable for anything else. As I walked back up the rocks to the way home I saw a small boat out in the bay and thought how lovely it looked, it was then that OH rang to say that it was him in that little boat and was going to catch something for supper. He is out with the retired smoke-house owner; I think they set off with Mustad feathers so I will be interested to see what they catch.

On the way home I told Bob the Greyhound that I thought that days were not much better than this- a happy but poignant thing to consider, so to add to my joy, I had a whisky and ginger when I got home and put on some cool and groovy tunes. Other Half brought home the bacon, or fish, rather, in the form of a bucket of coal-fish, or coley so I heated up some new potatoes in a bit of butter. Coley is what posh southern ladies feed their cats. I enjoyed "woman with cats" translated as "spinster", I think it was the writers on Have I Got News For You, words delivered by Kathy Burke.  Anyway, coley when cooked, does not go bright white so is a bit of a hurdle for conservative eaters - it's more like mackerel in appearance, but more like cod in taste, but oh, so mild. I'm going to leave the other half bucketful in the fridge to see if it matures like a flat fish.

Note to self: must stop doing punny post titles. Not big or clever.

Auld Reekie

Just back from a dook at Green End Gully where the sea has been whipped into a froth, a fresh, sweet end to an exciting day. At lunchtime we drove away from a small private medical clinic in a bit of a lather - Long Suffering had just passed his medical certificate for sea-farers, always a bit of worry for anyone not a vegetarian fell-runner. Feeling our way back East through Edinburgh (after London) is a bit like a combination of a benign video game and orienteering, without a Satnav, that is, and what delightful places we found, so little of Edinburgh is iredeemable, unlike parts of Greater London.  Our behaviour was pretty irredeemable however- in a traffic queue we heard a taxi hooting, and in harmony, he a tenor-baritone, me a dodgy alto, we gave voice "TW*T!!" And found ourselves ashamed because the cabbie was just attracting a friend's attention in order to have a chat. Edinburgh drivers are incredibly laid back, while I was waiting I saw a woman change her mind about her chosen turning off a mini-roundabout, so she just reversed back through the roundabout to where she came from and the set off again; the driver in the car behind just reversed to give her room and then carried on without even banging his hands on the steering wheel, a paragon of patience and compassion.

Anway, lunch outside my favourite Turkish, "Truva", in Leith, LS relaxed in the sunshine for the first time this year and Bob the greyhound enjoyed lying on the pavement and being admired. I went indoors and was smiled at indulgently by obvious greyhound appreciators; lovely when I get beamed at merely for housing a retired athlete. I wonder if Mrs Lynford Christie enjoys the same approbation.  My brother used to own a leg of a racing greyhound bitch and it was during the time that the trainers stopped injecting testosterone, I wondered if that was because of concerns about excessive facial hair.

Something about having spent 30 years in London makes me shift into warp drive when I get into a city - I wish I could just dawdle like the other tourists. I made a lightening raid on a superb cheesemongers in Victoria Street, Mellis, that is and had a great chat with the lovely boys in there.  Corra Linn is a sheeps cheese http://www.cheesechap.com/2012/04/ij-mellis-scotlands-answer-to-neals.html made in Lanarkshire, the closest I can find in Scotland to pecorino. I am making it into a wild garlic pesto with rapeseed oil, I also bought some Isle of Mull Cheddar, but the year-old Corra Linn is lovely but almost gone now. The current new stock is still deeply complex but much "cheesier", strangely, without the fruitiness and the crystalline bite of the vintage stuff. I am hoping to persuade Mellis to "cellar" one for me, just like my brother's wine merchants care for his claret. Also has the effect of stopping me eating it.

Wild Food Self Delivers, Again

Part 1
Last year as I was typing away, a collared dove topped itself by flying into the french window next to me, it was a bit of a shock, especially for the bird. My first thought was that I'd have to finish it off; death to me was even newer then, so I steeled myself. However, by the time I got to the bird it was stone dead, floppy neck and everything. I stood a few minutes wondering what to do until the Warner Bros effect hit (seeing wild/living things in one's mind'e eye as a tasty treat, steaming on a grand platter with cheffy paper crowns on feet/ribs) so I put the little corpse in the utility room until it had cooled down and stiffened up and crossed the River Styx from wildlife to free meat. It went into the deep freeze plucked and drawn and finally into a pigeon rillettes dish which was pretty good, lots of pork fat (same source as my first ham) and some lovely warm spices, prob a River Cottage recipe.

As you probably know, pigeons mate for life so while the one was safely frozen, waiting for more to join it (my plumber is a crack shot so we trade red wine for pigeons, or "cushies" as they are called here) the widow/er would sit on the power line outside my kitchen window and gaze (accusingly, I thought) at me from above. I was tempted to have a go at it with the air-gun but it's too built up here.

Part 2
This whole story came to an end yesterday when the greyhound and I turned into our back lane to go home and there, almost immobile on the ground was the second dove. It would have been easy to walk past, despite the dog's interest but as the bird didn't move when we got close I decided to act rather than leave it to be tortured to death by a cat (we have particularly some cruel sadists here). The dog caught hold of it and I wrung its neck, but, as usual with things that have such non-central nervous systems, it didn't seem dead so I had to have another go, and typical Tweedy heavy-handed novice, I pulled its head off entirely this time, surely that means it's dead? But the message still didn't get through to the body for a minute or so. Just like chickens I suppose. Anyway, the greyhound got an early supper, in the lane there is just a scattering of feathers, nothing wasted apart from the crop. The dog loves the ends of the feathers too.