FLOWER POT KITCHEN: KEFIR HOMEMADE

8 Feb 2019

KEFIR HOMEMADE

Incredibly Simple

Great for gut health and easily made at home not only for a fraction of the price but organic and no added ingredients. Very simple to make in 15 minutes and yields around two weeks worth of kefir. What’s more once you’ve made your first batch this will now be your starter for the next batch and so on meaning your culture of friendly bacteria will always come from your previous batch, some peoples cultures are over 50 years old, mine is 5 years old and when we go away on holiday it is like trusting your child or pet to someone!

Cooking time 15 minutes

Ingredients

1 ltr goats milk

1 sachet starter (amazon)

Equipment

2 wide mouth ball mason jars

1 box sauer fermenting kit self venting lids

Sterilising The Jars

Pre heat your oven to 180 C / 356 F place your clean jars in the oven and leave for 5 minutes, remove from the oven and leave to just cool before filling with your goats milk.

To Make Kefir

Warm the goats milk slowly to 22 C / 71.6 F the milk often peeks just above this temperature, remove from the heat and wait until a stable 22 C / 71.6 F then sprinkle over the starter culture, gently whisk in and pour in to your jars, pop on the sauer lids and leave for 12 hours in a warm kitchen. After 12hrs pop in the fridge and leave to finish fermenting for another 2 day’s before starting to eat.

Your kefir should taste slightly sour and creamy with the consistency of doublecream. Enjoy.

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LIFE MY PASSION

Welcome to my daily life of cooking, one winters day many years ago my family and I were all inspired by a back to back rainy day of River Cottage this got us to stop talking about and start actually doing, suddenly three weeks later eight vegetable beds were dug, greenhouse erected and our first vegetables were propagating, this was the start to raising and growing our own food, our fabulous son Oscar changed our path in life which lead us to sell our small thriving restaurant of 10 yrs and to start our new life (Terrifying!) a life of the self sufficient in touch with nature and seasons, taking a step back and looking forward to a slower change of pace and making the most of every moment.

My passion for cooking was stronger than ever and having time at home with Oscar I found I had a new direction and I was no longer striving for perfection, I was suddenly very passionate for the enjoyment of the other side of food, something I had not realised, being the Chef/Cook and every other duty of your own small restaurant made me see that I never actually took time to cook what I wanted!

So there I was muddy boots and hands digging deep in more than one sense and I found myself transported back in time to where everyone grew some of their own food, it is a wonderful world with a real sense of achievement and loss, Slugs Snails and Caterpillars! But thats another story! Childhood memories of summers when I lived with my grand parents reminded me of so much that I had learnt about the make do and mend generation that I had forgotten.

Now as a family we love our free wild food days where we gather what nature has provided, have gone from being mini mini garden urban small holders, who did raised pigs at home because we could not wait to find land and supporting ourselves from our garden to now owning a very small farm that allows us to grow more vegetables for the whole of our family and neighbours, raise our own gorgeous Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, (Sausages!) and pets! Dorset Down sheep, chickens for eggs and pet goats! Suddenly having large quantities of produce started to wake up the Cook in me!

The Cook was awake that part of me that wants to cook for the masses and I found myself setting up Flowerpot Kitchen, a Farmers Market Stall, I wanted to use our honest raised meats and make old fashioned pork pies, rabbit pies and game pies from the local game keeper along with old fashioned techniques and the best hot water crust pastry. This in turn grew to a small cottage industry from home weekly supplying three farm shops and a deli along with also attending three farmers markets A few years later there came a time when my son Oscar's health changed and it was an easy decision to stop.

I still hold the occasional pop up 40 seater restaurant or gourmet lunch which we do for local charities for the love of sharing food and to remind that Cook in me why I love our go slower self sufficient life!

So here I am sitting amoung the vegetables watching the chickens loving that every season nature teaches me something new and that nature is in charge! She has taught me to just go with it and grow. Give it a try from a tray of salad on your windowsill to a few tomato plants it all counts.