When I hear the word homebrew, it’s impossible to forget my dad’s numerous failed attempts when I was a toddler to put our family name on the real ale map (I haven’t checked although there probably is one). One of his worst efforts turned our house into a battle zone with my mum chasing me out the front door after I knocked over a vat of his ‘finest’ gunk. The kitchen smelt like a John West tuna factory for a week.

So this was a chance for me to have a crack at it myself and I felt pretty damn cocky as I printed off the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe. But the first problem I had was locating some elderflowers. How hard could this be? Unfortunately, all the fields near me were completely elder-less so I was reduced to the less than dignified act of trying to sniff some out.

“Pssst. You got any elderflowers? Hey, hey, keep it quiet man…”
In the end I lucked out as my girlfriend’s mum came up trumps with a big bag of the beauties. I was on my way…

The trip to the hardware shop for equipment was a real experience. I’ve just hit the ripe old age of 31 and I wondered why I’d not spent a Sunday in this haven of delights before now. (Screw you Alton Towers, this is my retreat now.) I marvelled at the array of buckets, gasped at the selection of funnels and glass bottles, and fantasised about brewing up enough to give as gifts to all my friends. I relayed this to my girlfriend and she looked at me like I’d just slapped an orphan. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.

My only hope for the champers was that it would be drinkable. Not tasty. Not even memorable. Just bog standard drinkable. There’s a certain rustic charm to making any food or drink from scratch and the frustrated caveman within me certainly came to the fore as I lashed hot water into the bucket and aggressively mixed it up with the sugar. That animal feeling pretty much evaporated as I scraped the zest of lemon into the mix and tossed the flower-heads around like a culinary version of Morrissey.

I had forgotten to buy any muslin so an old tea towel was used to cover the mix. This brought on a wave of anxiety as my sensible side told me I was already flirting with failure by not following the rulebook. But I was caring enough to check on my baby and add some yeast when it looked exactly the same two days later. When the time came to sieve and decant into the bottles there was a strong but not unpleasant fruity-chemical odour emanating from the bucket, like a packet of Starbursts doused in Lynx Java.

To prevent any explosive ‘incidents’ as experienced by some users of this site, I carefully carried the bottles to my garage, handling them as if they were grenades. Whilst doing this I loudly whistled a happy tune to diffuse any of my on-looking neighbours’ fears that I may actually be a terrorist. Then came the waiting game…

A week is a long time to wait for a drink, especially one you’ve brewed yourself. Despite still having a suspiciously murky green colour to it, the brew smelt and tasted OK – very tangy, sweet and quite thick for a Champagne, but definitely drinkable. Hurrah! Job done! I’ve given a couple of bottles to friends who’ve seemed less than grateful so far, but for a first effort it’s not half bad.

So, I’m off to neck a bottle in the car park – who’s with me?

Try Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s elderflower champagne recipe for yourself.

View Sam’s step by step guide to making elderflower Champagne.

a) The toilets and
b) The food.

Part A is really not a suitable topic for this site, or indeed any website (or any conversation) but Part B is one of the great parts of Glastonbury for me.

Whereas most festivals years ago were content to wheel a few battered old burger vans in for the weekend, with the more cosmopolitan amongst us queuing for hours at the oh-so- extravagant noodle truck, these days they’re much better equipped for the gourmet festival goer.

Glastonbury is better than most, with tastes from around the world on offer and all to a pretty high standard. I was pleasantly surprised at the wooden (and biodegradable, Earth-fans) cutlery which makes eating any meal a whole lot easier that using your fingers, caveman-style.

But that’s not to say there isn’t an incident or two along the way. One of my most desperate moments as an adult was in 2005 when an overnight deluge of rain had transformed the whole site into a mud bath not seen since The Battle of The Somme. As we trudged past the floating Portaloos, and the girl paddling away in a canoe (what kind of determined pessimist brings a canoe to a festival?!?), the skies opened again so we took shelter in the nearest bar. Half the punters in the South West also had the same idea so it was a little cramped to say the least as I ordered my breakfast baguette.

As the roof leaked rainwater down the back of my neck I found my usual chirpy demeanour being compromised by the foolhardy decision from the staff to include not only sausage and bacon in my open bread roll, but also a runny egg, sloppy mushrooms, and baked beans. Baked beans! In a sandwich!

I was hungry, wet, and half-cut from the night before so my anger subsided as I tried to eat this puzzling creation, moving the pieces around like some savoury Rubik’s Cube. First my friends, and then the wider public began to take an unnatural interest in my plight, as schadenfreude kicked in and everyone found a victim worse off than themselves.

As the wet sausage plopped out of the baguette and into my crotch, log-flume style, I wished I’d brought my own butties.

It’s been customary to celebrate the bounty of the season and the end of filming with a mini festival at Park Farm. Our theme this year was the Strawberry Fair, which allowed us to think creatively about concocting food, drink, growing and fun activities, which would signify the arrival of summer.

The planning for the event is fraught with endless possibilities of things going wrong. Needless to say we haven’t really had a summer to speak of, the last few years and getting the site looking right, with enough shelter, was one of the main considerations. However, Cat Streatfeild, our outside events organiser, seems to have a direct line to Him upstairs when it comes to choosing dates for events because it’s nearly always sunny. This year was no exception and the site looked splendid with red and white marquees dotted around like an expanse of strawberry and cream teas.

There was a lot of ground work, which started way back in March with the garden team setting about growing enough strawberries to feed over 500 guests. We have over 65 acres at Park Farm but are limited to where we can grow things. This meant we were looking for all the available spaces possible and came up with some ingenious methods such as hanging them in upturned plastic bottles. The only problem with this method is you just can’t help but pick them as you walk past – or maybe that was just me? Anyway there was a ‘picking embargo’ set by Dave the director a week before the event. That was a very long week.

To get the party off with a bang there was a fruity strawberry and gorse wine cocktail handed out to everyone on arrival. We had a terrible time getting the taste just right – in fact Tim, John, Hugh and I were insistent we had several tasters before anyone arrived. It was purely a quality control issue. Of course, there were cream teas – which are still probably the best thing you can make involving strawberries – as well as lovely snacks from the local producers’ tent and lunch supplied by Gill and the River Cottage Kitchen Team.

The event turned out to be a lovely family affair with lots of familiar faces turning up throughout the day. The real highlight was the children’s parade. There was so much effort put into the costumes that it was a real dilemma having to choose a winner. Hugh and I decided to give all the participants an ice cream each and extended special praise to three outstanding entrants just so they all felt like winners (and took the pressure off having to single one out!)

The day was rounded off with a three-legged race across an assault course which had to be seen to be believed. I will take this opportunity to say, partnering John Wright on a forage challenge is a pleasure whilst having him as my race partner was just an unfair handicap. I’m not bitter but I thought, at one stage, he had fallen asleep.

Enjoy the rest of summer and see you in the autumn.

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With people trying to save money on shopping, the prospect of ‘food for free’ is more tempting than ever. I have enjoyed meals of lobsters and oysters, ceps and chanterelle, sea beet and samphire; all of which I have collected myself. But foraging can seldom be more than an occasional excursion into the wild – it is just too time consuming.

Conservation considerations can also present problems with some species and there is always the thought of ‘what if everyone did it?’ Well, I never worry about the last one – the simple fact is that everyone won’t; it is too much like hard work!

All of the ingredients in our stir-fry were extremely common, although the invasive greater reedmace is too attractive to pick more than occasionally. They were also all well suited to a Chinese meal, because of their low carbohydrate content.

I did worry a little about the taste, as everything is very mild in flavour – texture being their primary attribute. But I need not have worried. The dish was subtle in flavour but quite delicious, with the bonus of feeling that it was actually good for you – not something you often get with a Chinese take-away.

Hugh loved it – especially the pepper dulse which is something of a favourite of his. I was a little disappointed at losing at my own game. I was tired from the day’s foraging and just lost focus. Next time…

Try John’s Chinese takeaway yourself

All the latest from River Cottage 2009

There have been several occasions when John Wright our foraging expert and I have been set a challenge by Hugh to find ingredients for a meal, where we have to think about what is in season and then see if we can find them. This time, though, our challenge was to make something palatable without initially knowing what our ingredients were.

We were asked to go and collect our mystery ingredients from the Canteen kitchen in Axminster and when we got there were presented with a bucket of carrot peelings. I thought we had been given the wrong bucket, but John quickly got into gear with a couple of suggestions and, as ever, his thoughts moved swiftly to alcohol.

We were allowed to supplement our ‘leftover brew’ with a few foraged additions – plus anything that can be used in the normal brewing process. Hops weren’t in season but John had heard that spruce tips were often used in brewing beer, particularly in Canada. We managed to track down someone locally who farms spruce trees for the Christmas market and we set about adding to our haul of rather tired and still dirty carrot peelings. We chose to pick the young spruce tips from the bottom of the trees so as not to hinder any growth and eventually had enough to add a bit of freshness to ingredients thus far.

I think that, on reflection, John could make alcohol out of a pair of Hugh’s old slippers, so my initial concern was soon forgotten. When eventually it came to tasting the beer my heart sank a little because it looked like muddy water but it did have quite a nice ‘heady’ bouquet. The first sips brought a pleasant surprise and, although I wouldn’t drink pints of it in my local, it was certainly drinkable.

I wouldn’t say Hugh was a fan but both he and Tim (head chef at the Canteen) were interested in it enough to allow it to be served to our guests. However, you may notice that we chose to serve it in green recycled glasses which helped hide the rather dull colour of the beer.

The brew went down well on the night, but I don’t think the breweries will lose any sleep – although I would encourage anyone to have a go at home brewing and if that means using up ingredients that would normally be thrown away, then all the better.

Try the carrot beer recipe for yourself.

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Gorseflower wine is a country classic which can be made almost all year round. Nothing grows better than gorse at Park Farm so Hugh and I thought it was time we made use of this ‘bounty’.

There is no doubt that I was better than Hugh at picking gorse – he just kept making a fuss about how sharp the prickles were. Apart from the pain the most memorable thing about the day was the smell – an overpowering hit of coconut that arrived in warm waves.

The finished wine was sharp and very dry and retained a hint of that coconut aroma. And it was very strong, which brings me to the common problem of trying out a drink on camera. Few things are ever done in one take and I haven’t perfected Hugh’s ability to take small sips. By the end I am usually slightly tired – sometimes emotional as well – and have to rest for a bit.

Everyone at the sheep shearing party enjoyed, or at least said they enjoyed, the wine – except the sound-engineer who didn’t like it at all. Sound-engineers are all charming people but something of a race apart.

Next time I want us to try a wine based on wormwood – the plant that absinthe is made from. Wormwood is toxic but, frankly, so is much of the booze Hugh and I make.

Try the gorseflower brew for yourself

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At first glance, things don’t seem to have changed much. There’s plenty for the traditionally minded – roast pork with apple sauce, chicken pie, fish and chips, chocolate sponge with chocolate sauce. All familiar enough. But look closely and there are lots of exotic sounding delights – jerk chicken fajita, creamy vegetable plait or Devon split with milkshake anyone? The picture of the beanie hotpot’s causing particular excitement although we’re not sure why!

In our area nearly half the kids (46% to be exact) eat school dinners each day – either choosing a ‘traditional’ main meal, vegetarian option or a packed lunch. According to the menu, each meal provides at least two of their ‘five a day’ fruit or veg plus each week choices are designed to give kids more than 100% of their RDA for calcium, vitamin A, folic acid and vitamin C. Not bad for just £1.75 a pop.

Plus they state they’ve attempted to source the food locally where they can – all the beef, for example, comes from a local farmers’ consortium with suppliers actively participating in a food miles reduction scheme. The apple juice is made from locally grown apples, the chicken breasts are British and the pork patties made from British pork.

All good stuff. But why isn’t the pork in the roast pork dinner British? Or the ham, the sausages, the gammon? Why’s the chicken in the chicken pie not British? And why does the milk for the cheese come from Somerset, more than 200 miles away, when there are plenty of dairies nearby?

It’s a tall order – we want these meals to be healthy, tasty and cheap. Plus we want them to protect the environment and help our farmers and food producers – particularly those local to us – to survive the recession. Is it too much to ask?

Enjoy 4Food’s school dinners-made-delicious recipes

The obsession we’ve had here at 4Food with pork has obviously started to spill over into my home life. Not surprisingly I suppose – after a particularly long day grappling with our new Pork Cuts application and reading all sorts of horror stories about pig welfare I came home the other night and asked the little chap what he’d had for tea.

“Fish and chips,” he yelled. “With broccoli”, piped up his dad obviously trying to win brownie points. “And a great big red sausage,” the little chap added.

Now my other half has a penchant for saveloys and he’s obviously trying to spread the word. I’ve never seen the attraction and I’m not about to start as I’m fairly sure they’re not made with top quality British pork. I don’t know if it’s just me but testicles, sphincters and snotty snouts spring to mind when I think about saveloys. A rant was obviously in order and I don’t know if I was a bit heavy-handed – there were some fairly vivid descriptions of pig crates plus I went on a bit about chemicals and processed meat – but by the end I’d beaten them into submission and we agreed on a saveloy boycott. End of story.

Two weeks later though and the little chap is still obsessed with trying to find out who to lobby to get them back on the menu. Now it’s not easy explaining the ins and outs of British constitutional law and EU policy to anyone let alone a five-year old but I’ve done my best. It’s obviously going in one ear and out the other though as he’s still convinced that HRH is personally doing her best to get British pig farmers to produce a freedom food version of the king of sausages for her royal feasts.

This week it’s Fairtrade Fortnight and his school has a whole raft of activities planned to raise awareness. He’s all set to take part in the Fairtrade banana-eating world record attempt on Friday. He’s got to wear yellow apparently – he’s got no idea why at the moment and just wants to ensure that whatever he wears will include his new Scooby Doo trousers. I can feel a convoluted debate on Fairtrade policy coming on. It’s going to be a long week…