The Ramblings and Rantings - A Life Unreal, Well, Mostly...

Saturday's tour was a splendid day out for all concerned. We started with Squire Farkham's secret recipe mulled cider, before heading off on the charabanc for the short journey to Brent Knoll.

We were treated there to most excellent hospitality and lots of cider sampling, which was delicious. Best of all though was John Harris sharing his time and expertise with the Society, to the extent of taking us into the orchard, where we picked apples that were then brought back and crushed, then pressed while we watched.

Huge thanks to John and Dan for organising the day and I am sure that there will be lots of online orders of cider to follow.

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Ingredients
Janet's Jungle Juice
Half a bottle of good dark rum

A pound of raisins
Large chunk of fresh ginger root
1/2 lb clear honey
3-4 pieces of your favourite citrus fruit

4 inches of cinnamon bark broken into short lengths
4 dried star anise flowers
2 dozen dried cloves
1 nutmeg seed, coarsely crushed
2 vanilla pods

Method
Put the raisins in a bowl and coarsely grate the ginger root over them. I find this easier if the ginger root is frozen first. Steep the raisin and ginger mix in the rum for 2-3 days before mulling. Keep an airtight jar or two handy for this once the cider has been consumed. This will be strained off and put to one side for Yule treats.

Put the spices apart from the cloves in a muslin bag and weight it with a small handful of ceramic baking beads. The cloves are then pushed into the skin of citrus fruits of your choice. My personal taste is to have a mixture of small oranges and limes, a couple of each, the limes just imparting a little sharpness.

Tip the mixture of rum, raisins and ginger into a large stock pot. Add the cider, honey and clove-spiked citrus fruit, not forgetting to keep a little cider back to sluice out the bowl used for steeping the raisins. Waste not, want not and all that... Finally drop in your bag of spices.

Heat as gently as your cooker will allow for as long as you can bear to leave that smell wafting around the place. Slow cookers are pretty good for this, but may not have sufficient capacity if you have a large number of guests. If this is the case, you can decant enough to fill the slow cooker, keeping warm for serving, then top up your stock pot with more cider to be mulling while the first slow-cooker full is being consumed.

If you can't be bothered or don't have time, you will soon be able to buy ready made mulled cider from West Croft Farm, made with their own secret mix of spices and not a little gin. Visit their online shop

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Here's the Squire's own recipe for mincemeat, using the fruit residue from the mulled cider. This isn't just thrown together you know…

Ingredients
All the leftover fruit from mulled cider
1 Large cooking apple
1/2 lb raisins
1/2 lb sultanas
1/2 lb shredded suet
1/2 lb muscovado sugar
Large cup of dark rum
1 nutmeg seed, finely grated

Method
Finely chop a large cooking apple and soak it in the rum along with the raisins and sultanas for an hour or so. Strain off the rum and mix it with the muscovado sugar and grated nutmeg.

Crack out the fruit drained from the mulled cider pan, which you carefully put to one side, put it into a large mixing bowl with the strained apple, currants and raisins. Remove the cloves from the citrus fruits left over from the mulled cider, extract their juice, peel them and chop the peel very finely.

Mix the peel and suet with the other ingredients. Finally add the rum and sugar, mix all very thoroughly and spoon into sterilised jars with airtight lids. Store for at least a month before use.

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The next Friends of Rose & Crown Cider Appreciation Society (FRACCAS) Cider Appreciation Day is on October 27th. With a more leisurely approach this year, the event will start later in the day, leaving the Rose & Crown at about 11:30. We will be visiting just one cider farm, but what a good one. John Harris will be welcoming us to the West Croft Cider Farm where his family has been making cider the traditional way for over 100 years.

This will be at the busy time of their apple harvest, so we will see plenty of cider making action, guided around the farm and through the process by John himself, in his own inimitable, relaxed style.

An informal lunch of local cheeses, bread, sausages and pickles will follow the tour, washed down with plenty of John's most excellent products. These include a dry farmhouse cider, Janet's Jungle Juice, which is a delicious medium cider that is very easy to drink, their Sweedium, which is funnily enough between sweet and medium, and their sweet cider, which will stand its own against any dessert wine to accompany sweet courses.

There will be opportunities to purchase the products to take away and the day will end up with us being returned to the Rose & Crown for a friendly farewell cider or two before wending our weary ways home.

Costs will vary depending on numbers, but will be no more than £40 for the day as long as we can gather together a dozen souls. Call or click in the header of any page to send an email for more information and to reserve your space on the minibus.

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