As Strong As Soup

For some reason hybrid berries such as tayberries, loganberries and boysenberries don't seem to be too popular amongst gardeners in this country. I bought a single boysenberry plant about 7 years ago and I get a heavy crop of berries every year in return for very little effort. And when I see a decent crop of berries then I usually think liqueur.  Every autumn I make a bottle or so of foraged blackberry liqueur (crème de mûre) and I've used that same process to make a crème de mûre de boysen. I know that you can simply steep fruit in vodka and sugar and that can be very pleasing but when liqueurs made that way are added to kirs and cocktails they just don't taste right to me. I suppose that's what happens after many years of drinking French crème de mûre and crème de cassis. So I stick to this traditional French method. You don't have to use boysenberries, it will work with other similar berries such as cultivated blackberries or tayberries. This liqueur is very we...

The mention of goat meat will cause many people of my acquaintance to run screaming from the room. I'm not really sure why this is. Goat is a very tasty, lean meat that's well suited to long, gentle cooking, especially in a slow cooker. The first goat dish I bumped into many, many years ago was a Jamaican goat curry and I'm still tempted to make a version of that dish whenever I find good goat meat. But this time I decided to do something a little different after I read that “traditional” rogan josh is often made with goat. This isn't an authentic or traditional rogan josh. My recipe is really a mishmash of the nicest rogan josh dishes that I've eaten in England combined with elements of other slow-cooked curries. The origins of the true, traditional rogan josh seem to be disputed but I favour the idea that the name derives from ratan jot (alkanet root) which was originally used to give the dish a distinct red colour.  Goat meat tends to be very lean but for...