July saw the first Herbal Ferments Circle at Brouwerij t’Ij. A hearty group of us gathered on a sunny evening to swap stories, taste Meade, exchange Kombucha SCOBYs, herb plants, talk tempeh technique and generally have a good time.
Those summer evenings are gone but there is fruit on the local trees and the weather is getting witchy! This is a great time to brew interesting concoctions so I feel that another fermentation meeting is due. I’m thinking of a gathering on the evening of Thursday 31st October. But where should we meet?
Today, I finally emailed the distillery in Flevopark, to see if they could welcome us this autumn. But I fear we may have to wait until spring for that venue. So can you suggest another easy to reach Amsterdam venue? And would you like to join us? Restaurant Merkelbach is a favourite haunt of mine. It is on the edge of the Frankendael woods, so weather permitting we could also take a stroll in there and have a drink and chat in Merkelbach.
Please let me know what you think and your venue suggestions through the comments box here, via the Facebook group or by emailing me (lynn.shore@gmail.com). Please do the same if you would like to join the herbal ferments circle.
This morning was an Oak Apprenticeship meeting and this afternoon, a walking-cooking magazine interview. Mugwort(Artemisia vulgaris) was a welcome participant at both gatherings. This common urban herb offers a plethora of uses and is currently flowering here in Amsterdam.
Mugwort has a strong aromatic taste and is not the easiest herb to eat raw. The leaves are full of a strong fibre which is almost impossible to chew through when eaten raw. These fibres are used to prepare the Moxa of Chinese Traditional Medicine. In summary Mugwort is a warming herb, a women’s ally, encouraging menstruation, may ease period pains and is a warm soother or muscle tension and pain. It makes a simple and useful infused muscle rub oil and even simpler, a foot soak, when infused in water. The tea is unusual to some but is tasty and not unpalatable. It can be used to deter insects. A protective herb. This is the abundant urban herb of dreams, scrying and prophecy. Seek it out in flower, to enjoy the peak of it’s spiritual powers. In bud and in flower, it is also easier to prepare for cooking (although this is not the best time to harvest for cooking). You can simply push the little flowers from the stems and sprinkle them into cooking.
Mugwort is in the Asteraceae family. It is sister to Wormwood (Artemisia absinthum), Southernwood (Artemisia abrotanum) and Tarragon (Artemisia dracunculus) to name but a few. Mugwort is thought to unsafe during pregnancy and should only be used in small culinary quantities, watching for sensitivities, by others. Here’s a link regarding some known side effects and drug interactions.
Today I harvested plenty flowering tops of Mugwort and used them to make tea and a simple savoury dish. I then hung some on my willow rack to dry for out of season use and made the rest into this delicious elixir…
Mugwort and Rose petal Elixir
1. Harvest a few flowering tops of Mugwort, gather about the same amount of clean, unsprayed Rose petals (I used dried purple petals today, from Jacob Hooy). Lay out any fresh herbs for a while to allow resident bugs to crawl safely away.
2. Chop the Mugwort and if necessary, separate the rose petals from their flowers (if using fresh roses).
3. Place the prepared herbs in a suitable clean glass jar, where they will take up approximately half the space.
4. Cover the herbs with runny honey.
5. Use a chopstick to distribute the honey more evenly over the herbs.
6. Now fill the remainder of the jar with Brandy (or another strong spirit of your choice).
7. Cover the jar with a well-fitting lid, label and leave the contents to infuse for four to six weeks or more.
8. Strain, bottle and label the resulting Elixir.
9. Use in very small quantities, as an occasional alcoholic, heart and spirit warming elixir.
Photo credit: Van Gogh Museum
You will have a chance to taste this Elixir at the second of my Friday Nights at the Van Gogh Museum, on 30th August. The honey for making the preparations at these events, was generously donated by deTraay and the dried herbs by Jacob Hooy. If you have Facebook or not, check out this link to see Van Gogh Museum photos from the event on Friday 2nd August – it was a lot of fun! More information about the plants and where they will go here.
On the evenings of Friday 2nd and Friday 30th August, I’ll be inviting visitors of the Van Gogh Museum to learn about and taste some edible and mind altering plants, which Vincent van Gogh used. Myself and a few able assistants will be installed with a selection of his most inspiring plants, some snacks and drinks, in the Atelier (Workshop studio), just inside the main museum entrance. Join us to sample some urban foraged delights, to learn how to make your own Absinthe, herbal honeys and other interesting things. I’ll give a couple of 15 minute presentations about the Edible Flowers of Van Gogh (7:15 pm) and the Mind Altering Plants of Van Gogh (8:15 pm). The rest of the time will be devoted to teaching individual visitors how to find and use local plants. Entrance is free to Museumjaarkaart holders and for everyone else it’s the usual museum entrance price. I’m giving away a couple of tickets: Read on to find out how to enter the ticket competition…
Mind Altering Plants of Van Gogh
The use and abuse of Absinthe, by Van Gogh and his freinds, is well known. Wormwood, an endangered but easy to grow plant, is the key ingredient in the drink. We’ll let you sample an easy to make alternative with great taste and far more uses than Absinthe. There are other common plants which had a huge impact on the creativity (and possibly the early grave) of Van Gogh. I’ll talk about them in the second presentation and we will have some of the featured plants for you to see close up.
Edible Flowers of Van Gogh
Most of Van Gogh’s paintings feature plants and flowers of one kind or another. Although many were painted in a warmer climate, most grow here in the Netherlands and many can be foraged from our local parks and streets. The presentation about Van Gogh’s edible flowers will highlight some beautiful, tasty and useful plants which feature in his work. The plants chosen are easy to find in Amsterdam and are easy to use. You will also learn the foraging rules for harvesting safely, ethically and legally and how to get involved with other foragers.
Eat, Drink and be Merry!
My home is currently full of foraged-flower honeys, strange urban brews and drying bunches of edible plants, just waiting for you to taste them at these August events. You can find out how to make your own foraged treats, ask us questions about urban harvesting, watch the presentations or just hang around with the beautiful plants. As well as this part of the evenings, there will be music, video and other events going on throughout the museum. So please put the dates in your calander and come visit us at the Van Gogh museum, on the 2nd and 30th of August. And if you come along, remember to say hello!
Photo credit: Grainne Quinn
Free Ticket Competition
To enter the competition for free tickets, please email me (lynn.shore@gmail.com) with the answer to one or both of these questions:
For Friday 2nd August: Which plant is the main mind altering ingredient in Absinthe?
For Friday 30th August: How old was Vincent van Gogh when he died?
Winners from those replying correctly, will be chosen at random on Wednesday 31st July and Wednesday 28th August. So if you enter, keep an eye on your email. I’ll post the winners names here also. They will need to turn up to the event with valid ID at a specific entrance, to claim the ticket.
I had a great time last night, meeting a large bunch of Urban Herbies at Brouwerij t’Ij (the windmill brewery in Oost). We talked about making Mead from herbs, honey and water and also about brewing a strange microbial tea loving symbiosis called Kombucha. We also tasted my Rosehip and Lavender Mead, which I set up last November and virtually forgot about since then. It can’t have been too bad as the bottle is now empty! Looking back at my notes, I see that it also contained Peppermint.. Umm!
Several of the group went home with strange slimey icecube shaped SCOBYs. Here is the link to my post about how to brew Kombucha and what some people feel it is good for.
Now to the Mead! Inspired by fermenting comradeship, I took to the woods this morning and harvested some Meadowsweet (Filpendula ulminaria). You will see it looking pale cream and frothy in the photo above. It’s rather overexposed (sorry Grainne!) but I hope you get the idea. Now is the optimal time to harvest the flowering tops of this plant. If you are lucky and find it (canalsides, damp areas, lake edges etc), then as ever be thoughtful, and harvest only a tiny fraction of the plant. You don’t need much anyway for this recipe – in fact you don’t need any! I chose to add Meadowsweet today because the common English name of the plant is said to be linked to the delightful flavour it gives to Mead. I suspect that those frothy cream flowers are also home to many micrscopic yeasts, to get the mead fermentation off to a great start.
I also added one flowering top of Hyssop (Hyssopus officinalis) a beautiful tall waterside purple flowering Lamiaceae family member. This herb is catching my eye all over town at the moment and I fancied seeing how the flavour develops in my Mead. As I reached home from this forage, I just couldn’t resist snipping off a sprig of outrageously aromatic Rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) from my geveltuin (pavement garden). It is on top form at the moment, due to the long awaited summer heat.
So the three herbs chopped up and added to the Mead pot (it’s a simply a 2 Litre Fido pickling jar from Blokker with a tea towel and elastic band over the top). I only had a quarter jar of honey in the house today so I added that and about 2 jars of water to the mix. So now I have a handfull of fresh chopped herbs steeping in honey water. That is how mead begins. As things get going I’ll add more honey and more water but I look forward to seeing how this batch turns out.
Now we talked last night about getting wild yeast fermented Mead “going” by adding a tiny sprinkling of a culinary or winemaking yeast. I have a big packet of Champagne yeast somewhere at home, purchased from BrouwMarkt.nl (a great company in Almere which sells everything for home brewers). Unfortunately I can’t find the Champagne yeast at the moment so I have decided to stick with Sandor Ellix Katz truely wild fermented Mead method of stirring vigorously every time I pass by the Mead jar. This should aerate the mixture and where there is air, there is yeast, so things should get going of their own accord. I shall continue to do this until I notice a sort of froth at the top or some other change in the contents of the jar. Then I’ll move onto the next phase.
For phase two I’ll place the young mead in a 2 litre green glass demijohn with a water airlock and rubber bung to keep out other bugs. My demijohn and airlock are from Brouwmarkt. They are very well priced and extremely convenient for brewing in small spaces which may not be dark. That’s as far as my last experiment went. I then simply syphoned off a bottle full of the result yesterday evening to take along to the meeting. I should apparently have paid closer attention to it all and bottled the Mead when the bubbling ceased early this year and either drank it soon after or left it in the bottles to mature. No matter, the result was drinkable and I am keen to continue my experiments.
I’m mentally planning our next Herbal Ferments Circle for the Jenever Distillery at the top of Flevopark (near the end of tram 14). If you have been exprimenting with ferments, even if only mentally, then get in touch and perhaps join us next time. I’d love to hear what you have been making or planning, if you did come along last night or not! I’m now calling it a Fermentation Circle because we seem to make more than just one brew. Yesterday there was talk of Idly, Tempeh, Sourdough, Gingerbeer plants, Kefir and far more. It’s amazing what people get up to when they get the chance! For me the focus will mainly be on Mead because that is very exciting to me – so many herbal possibilities, so simple to make, so historic, so tasty and it relies on my favourite potion ingredient – honey.
Please join me on the evenings of Fridays 2nd and 30th August at the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Learn about the herbs of Van Gogh, which can be found, foraged and used today.
I am delighted to have been asked to teach visitors to the Museum’s Friday Nights programme, about edible urban herbs, on these two dates in August. Throughout each evening, I’ll be giving a couple of talks about plants which were important to Van Gogh and helped change the world of art. Many of his favourite plants may be found and eaten in Amsterdam today. You’ll learn where to find them and how to use them and grow them.
There will also be some urban herbal treats to sample, plants to examine close up, recipes to take home, a plant photo exhibition and opportunities to chat and learn more about urban herbology. In other parts of the museum there will be a jazz band and other interesting events.
My scheduled presentations will be about: Edible Flowers of Van Gogh Mind Altering Plants of Van Gogh
(Both presentations on each night).
So why not come along, have a chat and find out more!
Friday 2nd August and Friday 30th August
6.00 – 10.00pm
Van Gogh Museum,
Museumplein
Amsterdam
Entrance is free to Museumjaarkaart holders.
Usual entrance fee to others.
Elderflower infused honey: A great ingredient for home made Mead.
I love to drink a little Mead (fermented honey based drink) now and then but find that most available options in Amsterdam are quite expensive and are not as exciting as I know they could be. I bought a 75cl bottle of De TraayHeather Honey Mead, from Ecoplaza this week. It tasted good but it set me back a cool 15 Euro!
I would like to start a free Mead Circle as a way to encourage myself and others to brew their own, here in Amsterdam (and elsewhere, if they fancy joining by VoIP). Some other people must already be doing this close by and it would be great to hear from them.
Making mead is quite simple. It is simply the alcoholic fermentation of the sugars in honey water. The yeast can be captured from the air or can be inoculated from a known culture. It is likely to have been the first alcoholic beverage that humankind enjoyed as it is made quite naturally, when water and honey mix and sit for a while in a yeast rich atmosphere. It is less complex than the home brewing of wine but requires similar apparatus for reliable results. We have a great resource close to Amsterdam: Brouwmarkt.nl in Almere, which sells all the fermenting apparatus you could wish for and delivers for a reasonable price. Mead making is fun and allows you to experiment with all sorts of herbal flavours. I really want to start experimenting more with it and would love to occasionally meet for a chat and tasting session with some other like minded people. As ever, I am interested in experimenting in a very small kitchen. I don’t have space for massive vats of bubbling concoctions but I do have space for a 2 liter container for example and that is enough for making mead!
If you would like to join the Urban Herbology Mead Circle then please email me (lynn.shore@gmail.com) or post a comment here. Let me know when the best meeting times and areas are for you. When a small group has emerged, I will set a date and we can start meeting and sharing.
KOMBUCHA CIRCLE
The amazing world of SCOBY fermentation, in a 2 litre pickling jar from Blokker.
Years ago, I bought a 4cm x 4cm chunk of Kombucha SCOBY from a company in the UK (for 10 Pounds!). It arrived in a tiny package of Kombucha vinegar and I intrepidly set it up in a large jar of sweet green tea, nestled in a corner of a warm cupboard. Since then, that tiny SCOBY has provided me with gallons of tasty Kombucha drink and also useful Kombucha vinegar. The SCOBY is a symbiosis of a specific yeast and bacteria. They live in a sort of fermenting harmony, and their sole mission in life seems to be transforming the sugar in sweet tea into a mild effervescent very lightly alcoholic drink (resembling a green tea flavoured real Ginger beer). If you leave it to brew for longer it makes vinegar. A lot of people seem to like drinking real Kombucha. I receive a steady trickle of requests from people who want to exchange one of my SCOBYs for herbs, chocolate or other wonderful things! My original SCOBY quickly grew into what we call a Kombucha mother and she now doubles her size one a fortnight or so. When this happens she sheds another SCOBY and these can be shared with other people.
Many of the people who have received my baby SCOBYs, send me photos and questions about their development (or otherwise!). I would like to start a Kombucha Circle to help link up those people and so that we can meet once in a blue moon to share recipes, experiences and advice. Some of the people that I have met through Kombucha, live in other parts of the world. Anyone with an interest in Kombucha is welcome to join. we can try some VoIP time to help those in distant lands share with us here in Amsterdam.
If you would like to join the Urban Herbology Kombucha Circle then please email me (lynn.shore@gmail.com) or post a comment here. Let me know when the best meeting times and areas are for you. When a small group has emerged, I will set a date and we can start meeting and sharing.
Amazake is a traditional Japanese fermented rice drink or pudding, which is incredibly easy to make – provided you have access to some Koji (rice grains, inoculated with the fungus Aspergillus oryzae). We in Amsterdam are incredibly fortunate to have Deshima Freshop on Weeteringschaanscircuit, which sells biodynamic quality Koji.
I was teaching some of my apprentices how to make Amazake yesterday and consequently had lots in stock today. It keeps well in the fridge for a couple of days but I rarely manage to leave it that long – it just tastes so good!
You may know that I love the taste of chocolate and that I grow Valerian on my roof terrace. Valerian is currently in flower, I need a good night’s sleep and I wanted to use up some of the Amazake. Hence the outcome of that combination – Valerian Amazake Hot Chocolate. Umm.
How to make Amasake
1. Cook 2 cups of rinsed basmati rice (or similar) in 4 cups of water (lid on pan), until the rice is well cooked, fluffy and has absorbed all of the water (adjust water proportion if using different rice). Remove from heat.
2. Set the rice aside (lid on) until it cools to a temperature that is easily tolerated by your finger (60°C is optimal).
3. Now gently stir 1/2 cup of dried Koji (innoculated rice) into the warm cooked rice.
4. Put the lid on again and wrap the pan in a couple of clean tea towels or simply place it in your oven (cool and turned off). This is to maintain some of the warmth so that the Aspergillus can grow at a reasonable rate. Less heat = less fermentation. Too much heat = dead Aspergillus so no fermentation.
5. Leave it to ferment for 12-24 hours. Stir the rice and Koji mixture very occasionally. It will become progressively more runny and sweet to taste as the fermentation proceeds and the Aspergillus beaks down the rice starches into sugar.
6. When the sweetness of the Amazake is to your liking (max 24 hours) boil it to stop the Aspergillus from growing further. This is an important step to avoid fermentation turning the rice starch into alcohol (even in the fridge this fermentation will slowly occur).
7. I like to blend my Amazake at this point, or just before boiling. I use my little electric hand blender. You may prefer the natural consistency. Both taste as good. Allow to cool before refrigerating or eat warm as soon as prepared.
8. Use as a pudding, sprinkle in ground ginger, cardamon, cinnamon or drizzle with honey. Eat hot or cold. Thin with water to your preferred drink consistency or spoon it to eat. Use in place of yoghurt or buttermilk in muffin recipes and similar. Uses for Amazake as a natural sweetener are almost endless.
Valerian Amazake Hot Chocolate
1. Pour just less than a mug full of Amazake into a small saucepan.
2. Add a splash of water, a sprinkling of tiny fresh Valerian flowers (about 10) and 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoons of cacao powder.
3. Stir gently as you bring the mixture to the boil.
4. Simmer for a minute or two and then allow to cool to a comfortable temperature before pouring into the mug.
5. Enjoy!
The king of fermentation is Sandor Ellix Katz. He has done a great job in teaching people how different fermented foods can be made. Please visit his website and buy his wonderful books if you have even a passing interest in fermented foods.
I met with my Willow Apprenticeship Group this afternoon and as usual had a wonderful and enriching time with them.
I took a few photos whilst we were out and about…
Skullcap (Sculletaria sp.) in the woods. It is best to harness the powers of this bitter labiate, actually at the plant. So take your tincture materials to the woods, harvest just enough, sparsely from across all of the Skullcap plants, in areas where it is abundant and set up your small tincture there and then. Otherwise the active constituents tend to change or evaporate. Either way, Skullcap loses potency hugely if you harvest, take it home then tincture.
Above is Plantain (Plantago major). Absolutely the best time to forage this healing and nutritious plant. It is easier to eat them if the ribs have been removed first. The leaves make a wonderfully soothing skin ointment. It combines well with leaves of Elder and Comfrey in such an ointment.
Above is a Verbascum sp. plant. Probably Mullien but we’ll check on it again when the flowers appear. A very useful plant. One traditional use for Mullein is to gradually fill a small jar with individual flowers and olive oil. Harvest only a tiny amount of what is available, leave lots of flowers for the bees and other pollinators! The oil is used by some to soothe earache. Another widely used application is infusing the whole flowering plant to treat allergies and chronic asthma.
Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris). Not the most productive year for bushy Mugwort plants in Amsterdam. They are far more slender than usual but still taste great and are very potent at the moment.
Searching for Horehound (Marrubium vulgare) amongst Stinging Nettle (Urtica dioica) and Jerusalem artichoke (above).
Elderflower. A superb year and so many uses!
Hedge woundwort (Stachys sylvatica). We found it full of bees. This has also been planted next to the bee hives of de Hortus Botanicus. Strongly scented, bristly, slightly sticky leaves which seem to ooze potency. This Woundwort had many historical uses and remains very useful today.
White deadnettle (Lamium album) amongst Ground Elder (Aegopodiumpodograria). Both are edible, delicious and useful for several conditions. Lamium album being especially useful for helping normalise females flows.
Lots more wonderful plants were spotted today and the time went by so quickly!
Today was a beautiful day to harvest Elderflowers from local trees. Here is one of the simplest and tastiest ways to preserve this delight of the hedgerows and it keeps for as long as you like. This can be used instead of Elderflower syrup. To make a delicious drink, pour a small amount into a glass and top up with still or sparkling water.
Elderflower Honey can be made by filling a clean glass jar with freshly picked fragrant Elderflowers (do check as you are about to pick, some smell distinctly unpleasant 🙂 and then filling the jar again with organic runny honey.
Prod with a chopstick for a while, to release any trapped air then top up to the brim with more honey. Securely lid, label and leave to infuse for as long as you like in a kitchen cuboard or similar place.
After just an hour or so, you’ll have a deliciously fragranced honey suitable for deserts or just eating from the spoon as I do. But if you can bear to wait three days or a week, you’ll have something close to nectar. So simple, so tasty and so useful.
When you pick Elderflowers, gather them into a paper bag if possible, being careful to take the precious pollen home with you. Nip them cleanly from the tree as whole sprays of flowers. I use my thumbnails to do this usually or a small pair of kitchen scissors. When you get them home, lay them face down (stalks up) on a white surface for a while to allow bugs to climb out from the flowers. Here you can see some of today’s harvest drying breifly on my Willow rack. I tend to harvest some Elderflowers to dry completely for winter cold and flu remedies but most of my harvest is eaten freshly or turned into sweet treats and drinks. Elderflower honey is the perfect base for many of these recipes and is far more simple than making a sugar syrup. If you are vegan or just don’t want to use honey, you could infuse a vegetable syrup such as oat syrup or agave syrup in the same way. Honey has the added benefits of being a medicine in itself and keeps indefinately is stored well, so preseving herbs in honey is my logical choice. Be aware that honey may contain Botulism spores which can be lethal to children under one year of age (their immature immune systems are not equipt to fight Botulism).
I’m currently working on a vegetarian Elderflower Jelly recipe, using my infused honey. I’ll post the recipe soon for you to try out. If you want to be ready for it then set up a pot of Elderflower honey tomorrow, as above and keep your eyes open for Agar agar powder in Chinese grocers or for the organic option, visit Deshima Freshop (on Weteringschaanscircuit). My Handbook of Urbanherbology methods is almost complete and the final herb jelly recipe will be in there.
I finally found time this morning to have a leisurely wander through the woods of Frankendael, seeking out the most pleasantly scented Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) trees.
I was not disappointed! The flowers and leaves of this heart toning tree always taste good to me. Munched on a late spring walk, not much else lifts my spirits and makes me stand tall as does Hawthorn “bread and cheese”. But the flowers (the cheese) do vary in their tastiness, so if you want to capture their essence, it’s worth taking time to seek out the ones which really appeal to you.
Some of the flowers smell rather unpleasant, like cat pee, others are unscented because their insect-attracting job is done. Just a couple smelled sweetly, really sweetly, like vanilla rice pudding. Those smelled and tasted jaw-droppingly good! So guess which ones ended up in my tincture jar?
Equipt with a small bottle of vodka and a little glass jar, I made my tincture at the tree. To do it yourself, simply fill a jar well with carefully picked Hawthorn flower clusters and a few Hawthorn leaves (the bread). Then fill the jar again with vodka, brandy or whatever strong spirit you choose. Check that you fill all the way to the brim. Flowers exposed to any air will quickly spoil, they need to be completely submerged in the spirit. Check for bubbles of air and top up if needed.
I’ll leave my tincture like this, labelled, in a cupboard until the autumn, when I’ll strain the flowers and pour the liquid over a fresh jar of Hawthorn berries. Then after a further six weeks of infusing, my double Hawthorn tincture will be ready for use. It will be infused with the properties of Hawthorn leaves, flowers and berries.
If a regular few drops of that doesn’t warm, tone and open my heart through the depths of winter, then not much will!
I could use the simple flower tincture after six weeks infusion time but I have enough Hawthorn elixir in stock, to see me through summer and autumn so I shall wait. And we all know that the best things come to those who wait 🙂
Hawthorn is an age old preventaive and remedy for many types of heart disease. It is a heart tonic, offering as it were, food specific to the heart. It is used by many, alongside allopathic (conventional drug based) medicine such as betablockers but of course you should always consult a qualified medical herbalist if considering using it as a remedy for heart disease.
If you’d like to join me for a walk in the park, to learn about tasty and useful plants of Amsterdam, and to set up you’re poem tincture, why not sign up for tomorrow’s lunchtime forage?
Urban Herbology 