Last week has been dedicated to finding a way to make vinegar without a 'vinegar mother' (a culture of acetobacter, bacteria which feed on alcohol and generate acetic acid). Vinegar mother is not available on the market in New Zealand, but what is is apple cider vinegar. Apple cider vinegar sold at specialty stores like commonsense organics, is unfiltered and contains the living mother.

So how can we use this to make red wine vinegar? I have read just about every blog on home made red wine vinegar making and so devised a plan.

The red wine I chose was a merlot cabernet sauvignon from Hawkes bay. The wine is 13% Alcohol by volume but if I am to create an enviroment suitable for the acetobacter to grow, I will need to dilute the wine to about 10%. So really if you add the cider vinegar with the living mother, the alcohol will be diluted and the living mother contained in the cider vinegar will be the starter culture to transform the remaining alcohol in the wine to acetic acid.

To do this I placed 3 bottles of red wine in a carboy with 1 bottle of Apple cider vinegar. Ideally a container with an open lid would be better. The bacteria culture sits as a skin on the surface of the wine so that it can breath the oxygen as it feeds on the alcohol. The carboy somewhat prevents the airflow so that may slow the reaction of the bacteria.

The cloth bag you see over the carboy is to prevent any insects or flies entering through the top. This exercise is more or less just to produce a red wine mother. And from there, we can make a real red wine vinegar. But first we have to wait. This could take up to 6 months, but I really hope its a lot less time.

With winter approaching fast it is time to get a new lot of crops in the ground. With this year having the longest summer since ever I can remember, I have taken full advantage and planted some crops early. Rainbow Swiss chard already ready to harvest!

Over the summer we managed to grow a bountiful crop of tomatoes, green beans and cucumbers. Some of which we have made tasty chutneys and sauces. But with green beans grown fresh from the garden there is nothing better than just picking them straight from the plant and eating them crisp and fresh. Why would you cook them?

So this winter we have planted seedlings for broccoli and cauliflower which should be ready about late June to August. I have also put in several rows of Carrots, parsnip, radish and beetroot which have germinated about a week ago and are beginning to take hold of there turf.

I have grown my own beetroot and carrots before and with the organic methods I use the flavour is that of 6 supermarket carrots. You will never know it, until you try it. Now we just have to wait and see how these take shape over the next few months. I cannot wait!

Well now I have a blog

It is always has been something that has played on my mind, starting a blog. But what has also played on my mind are the things I associate with blogs. Generally speaking that is amateur food critics and travel. Knowing comfortably that this blog will be neither of these, I felt it was time to address the next stage in my thinking. Incidentally that is 'time'. When does one start there own blog?

I am a chef, which should be abundantly obvious, given the title of this blog and I am currently working at Duke Carvell's Swan Lane Emporium in Wellington, New Zealand. I have been working here for nearly a year. In the last year I have been very lucky. Starting with a pop-up restaurant that some friends and I hosted at the Embassy theatre, the cinema most famous for world premiers of the 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' and following on to now...

So...let me talk about now. In the months leading up to now, I have a) being offered the head chef position at Duke Carvell's b) won the 'outstanding emerging chef' award at the capital awards c) become engaged to a lovely lady who somehow came along at the most perfect time, d) bought a car allowing me to drive to places around Wellington and further north to explore places to buy and find food, e) bought a house, a quarter ache property littered with fruit trees and everything in between from grapes to pomegranate, and finally f) created a new Autumn menu for Duke Carvell's which goes live today.

As I cannot really go back and detail what I have cooked with any great accuracy in the past and because Milestone times like these are times to look forward to see what the future holds, it is the perfect time in which to start this blog.

The goal of this blog is to document the trials and tribulations of my menu planning, dish creation or perhaps anything else I deem pertinent to food and cooking. I would like to take a look at some of the processes I undergo in order to make my menus and perhaps just some fun in the kitchen, but also explore some of the projects I have going at home as well as in the garden.