In Good Taste #11: Dill Pickle Potato Salad/Elderflower "Champagne" Cocktail
A simple BBQ side dish and a refreshing summer drink; July supper club menu reveal; highs and lows of Bournemouth
Well, hello there! How are you?
Good I hope. Thank you so much for being here.
I’m sorry for the lack of newsletter last week. What with the heat, a cold-hayfever combo, busy teaching schedule and supper club prep everything got a bit much and something had to give. But I’m going to make up for it with two recipes this week, one for a potato salad that uses up some dill pickle brine and the other for the welcome cocktail from the June supper clubs that involved homemade elderflower Champagne and proved very popular.
If you managed to forage yourself some elderflowers and make some “Champagne” this is a nice way to drink it. If you didn’t, I’ll give you a cheat’s version too.
Thanks so much to everyone who came to the June supper clubs at Lizzy’s on the Green. They were great fun and I especially enjoyed talking to people about the different fermented elements in the various courses. The lacto tomatoes seemed to be a particular stand out for lots of people so I hope some of you will try making them yourselves as we head into peak tomato season. They’ll crop up again on July’s menu (more of which in a moment) but in a very different form.
The pasta filled with ricotta and preserved lemons also sparked a lot of comment so I’ll add that to the (already long!) list of recipes I want to share with you.
But with the June dates over, it’s time to start thinking about July and the whole new menu I have planned. There are two dates, the 8th and the 22nd. The 22nd is already sold out but there are still tickets available for the 8th. They’re £45 per person which includes a welcome cocktail (there’ll also be a bar selling beer, wine, cocktails and soft drinks).
The full menu is as follows:
Tepache cocktail cooler
Pan con (lacto) tomate
Mini spanakopita
Herb linguine, fermented pesto, pistachio
Pulled lamb/griddled veg, yellow split pea pureé
Charred cabbage, cashew cream, red kraut, caramelised seeds
Greek orange juice carrots with thyme, preserved lemon and olives
Basque "burnt" cheesecake, roast apricots, noyaux syrup
Everything is veggie except for the lamb in the main course for which there is a lovely, smoky grilled vegetable alternative. Vegan/GF options possible, just let me know when you book.
Tickets are also available for the dates on 5th and 19th August although the menu is yet to be finalised. Goes without saying that it will be super seasonal and feature some subtle fermented flavours. Newsletter subscribers will be first to hear about it so if you’re not already signed up click the button below so you don’t miss out.
I had a swell time on Sunday, letting my hair down post-supperclub, at the Dusty Knuckle’s rooftop fundraiser. Drinks, food, an auction compered by Suggs and music from Jessie Ware. A great vibe.
Obviously TDK make great bread (and host great cookery classes - including some by yours truly, bookable here!) but a large part of their raison d’etre is their youth training programme, a scheme providing job opportunities, training and support for young people who otherwise might not be able to find employment, for example recently incarcerated people or those with mental health problems. The most inspiring part of the evening was hearing past and present trainees speak about what the scheme has meant to them.
I know myself from teaching there how warm and welcoming the team at TDK are and how hard they work to make everyone feel appreciated and part of the family. It was genuinely very moving to hear how young people most in need of that welcome are treated and great news that the bakery was so successful in fundraising they can afford to expand the scheme. If you’re interested, you can find more info about it here.
A few notes on fermenting in warm weather
I’m sure you’ve noticed but it’s been quite warm lately. Whether this is good news depends on your own personal heat tolerance (mine is low - I have started putting an ice pack under my pillow) but it’s definitely something to bear in mind when you’re fermenting.
Our lactic acid bacteria friends move quickly in the heat and things can get fizzy fast. I made some krauts last week that were ready in a matter of days, my kimchi is super active and pickles made with softer fruit and veg (berries, cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers etc.) need watching very closely incase they get too sour, too quick. Faster ferments tend to result in a more noticeably acidic and less complex flavour profile so it’s definitely something to keep an eye on.
Two possible solutions are either to make sure your ferments are somewhere cool (18°C or less). Ideally a cellar or somewhere between room temp and fridge temp. If you have no cool spots then moving them to the fridge means they will take longer but move at a more controllable pace.
Your other option is to add a little more salt. Although out lactic acid bacteria friends are salt tolerant, it still slows them down. I usually recommend a ratio of 2.5% for krauts and brine pickles (ie. 2.5% in salt of the weight of either the shredded veg itself or the water used to make the brine) but you might want to think about upping this to 3% or even 4%. When making a decision, bear in mind how you want to eat the finished pickle - if you plan on just having a spoonful as a condiment/relish or a pickle on the side then it can definitely stand to be a bit saltier. If you’re planning on eating heaps of it as a side dish then maybe go a bit easier on the salt and try and cool things down instead.
Hope that helps, as ever, any questions let me know in the comments or by replying to this email.
Recipe: Dill Pickle Potato Salad
Serves 4 as a side
I love a potato salad and am a big believer in the benefits of double dressing them. First with an acidic, vinaigrette style to be absorbed whilst the potatoes are warm, and then again with something creamy just before serving.
Here we’re using pickle brine from dill pickled cucumbers instead of vinegar in the first dressing and adding some finely chopped pickle itself into the second. A good use for the last pickle in the jar?
This is a useful, make ahead, BBQ side dish. You need to make it far enough in advance for the potatoes to cool down completely. I’d probably do it the day before, leaving the potatoes in the first dressing overnight and mixing in the mayo dressing just before serving.
Ingredients
3 tbsp pickle brine from a jar of dill pickled cucumbers, ideally very sour
1 tsp mustard (I used wholegrain but Dijon would be nice too - whatever you fancy)
2 spring onions
1 tbsp olive/rapeseed/sunflower oil
500g waxy salad potatoes
1 cucumber pickle
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp plain yoghurt
a few sprigs each of fresh mint and dill
salt and pepper
Method
Chop the potatoes into bite size pieces and place in a pan. Add just enough cold water to cover and a generous pinch of salt. Bring to the boil and cook until soft - you should be able to poke the potatoes easily with a knife but they shouldn’t be anywhere near falling apart.
Meanwhile, in a bowl large enough to hold the potatoes, combine the pickle brine and mustard.
Thinly slice the spring onions, separating whites and greens. Add the whites to the pickle brine and let sit until the potatoes are done.
When the potatoes are done, drain and leave to steam dry for a couple of minutes.
Whisk the oil into the brine before adding the potatoes to the bowl and tossing to coat in the dressing. Leave to cool completely.
Finely chop the cucumber pickle and put it in a smaller bowl with the spring onion greens.
Add the mayonnaise and yoghurt.
Finely chop the herbs and add to the bowl. Mix everything well. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Chill until needed.
Just before serving add the mayo dressing to the potatoes and toss until all potatoes are evenly coated.
Notes
If you haven’t made your own pickled cucumbers sub in some good quality bought ones.
I used pink fir potatoes because I happened to see some and can never resist them, They were delicious but I’d say they were more fudgy than waxy textured. If you’re after a more traditional salad potato look for Charlotte of Vivaldi.
Potato salad is obviously endlessly customisable so add whatever you like. I don’t normally get to indulge my personal preference for chopped boiled egg as an addition as my husband James won’t hear of it. Weirdly, he insists that a salad is not a “full salad” unless it includes boiled egg but won’t countenance its presence elsewhere.
Recipe: Elderflower “Champagne” Cocktail
These quantities make one drink. But obviously scale up for a crowd. A well-iced jugful would be a lovely thing to bring to the garden table.
Ingredients
25ml gin
20ml lemon syrup (see notes for recipe)
100ml elderflower “Champagne”
soda water to taste
mint leaves/cucumber ribbons to garnish
Method
Put the gin and lemon syrup in a glass with ice.
Add the elderflower “Champagne”.
Top up to taste with soda water, garnish with a mint leaf or cucumber ribbon and serve immediately!
Notes
If you haven’t got a batch of your own, homemade elderflower “Champagne” then you can create a similar drink combining Prosecco, elderflower cordial and a squeeze of fresh lemon juice. Then top up to taste with soda water.
To make the lemon syrup peel the zest of a 1 lemon with a vegetable peeler and put in a small pan. Squeeze that lemon plus three more and weigh the juice. Add a similar weight of sugar to the pan, along with the lemon juice and gently bring to a simmer, swirling the pan until the sugar is dissolved. Leave to cool then strain out the zest and keep the syrup in the fridge for adding to cocktails or using in baking and desserts.
Cultural Fun
We went to Bournemouth for the weekend a couple of weeks back. It was a fairly random choice of destination and (uncharacteristically) I didn’t do that much research: we were given some vouchers for Christmas to spend on a hotel stay and, “B” being near the front of the alphabet, Bournemouth was near the beginning of the list of possibilities so we just booked and turned up expecting the usual British seaside ambience of faded Victorian grandeur and crazy golf.
We got the crazy golf so I’m not complaining there but most of the rest of the central seafront gave off the air of a municipal leisure centre cosplaying as Tenerife. There are lovely bits though: the Lost World vibes of the gardens that wind up through the town along the banks of the Bourne and the wide sandy beach.
We had an excellent meal at the Larderhouse (technically in the suburb of Southbourne which, from the people we were chatting to in a pub afterwards seems to be one of the big destinations for the post-pandemic exodus from London).
And we did find our Victorian grandeur in the end, in the form of the Russel-Cotes, an art gallery and museum that was once the home of self-made hotelier couple Merton and Annie Russel-Cotes who built the house and filled it with art and objects from their extensive travels. I love, love, love a house museum. It’s always nice to see art in a context other than a gallery, but I particularly like seeing it in the wild as it were, in the homes of the people who bought and loved it.
Personally I didn’t love a lot of the collection which mainly dated from the slightly sentimental, pre-Impressionist period that I find a bit boring. But I am the first to admit that this is likely just a result of ignorance on my part. Plenty I did like though including the light on the water in this picture called Duck Shooting (not so keen on the subject matter) by Charles Walter Simpson.
The Russel-Cotes seems also yet to go through the rethink that many properties from the period are having to face, putting themselves in a colonial context. I overheard a guide talking to some other visitors about how it wasn’t such a big problem for them as the couple made their money in hospitality rather than anything involved with the slave trade and the things they bought on their travels were arts and crafts made for purchase by visitors (essentially high end Victorian era tourist tat) and not looted from temples or taken as spoils of war. Also the collection already featured a high percentage of women artists - possibly, the guide said, because their work was cheap at the time and Merton knew a bargain when he saw one!
We saw Spider-Man: Across the Spiderverse at the cinema the other day and was completely dazzled. It was so visually inventive, including multiple artistic styles and genres. Often in the same frame or sequence.
It was creative in other ways too. Most super hero franchises seem to be suffering from increasingly diminishing returns at the moment - I am so bored at the the very thought of sitting through another CGI mega-battle. Many seem to have introduced the idea of multiverses as a transparent way of shoehourning in more reboots, more IP. But this film used the concept to investigate the idea of storytelling itself. We met many different spider-men, women, dinosaurs, robots etc across infinite parallel universes, yet all were restricted by the idea of “canon events”: the radio active spider, the death of someone close to them. It dealt with the idea of self-determination, the hero’s journey and so on. All with wit and visual flair.
I also found time to see my friend Dexy support Lucero at the Highbury Garage. I know everyone thinks the talent of their friends should be more widely recognised but Dexy really is special. You can hear more of his music here.
Bye! See you next week!
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In Good Taste is a Sycamore Smyth newsletter by me, Clare Heal.
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