The Wild Drink Blog

The reason that we had to leave the Bristol UKBC heat early yesterday was that I had another two Market Kitchen episodes to film in London. I tried to arrange it for another day but in a way it did save doing a long drive twice.

Dandelion and Burdock

The first feature simply involved making Dandelion & Burdock in a similar way to the Cola which I did last time. IT all went smoothly and I felt more relaxed than usual, told the (probably not true) story of the Italian Catholic priest praying to God for inspiration then making a drink out of the first two ingredient he found. I think the drink went down well and it was probably the most enjoyable feature that i’ve done so far on the show.

Eden Coffee

That’s right it’s not quite over yet. Despite being shunned by one local reporter (with absolutely no experience of coffee cupping) at the recent media event, MK were keen to have a feature about it, and I was keen to do it.

I talked briefly about the processes involved in picking, pulping and drying the coffee, then made an espresso using the coffee for us to try.

Now, there were a few factors involved with making the espresso which I wasn’t completely comfortable with, let me explain. Firstly, the machine - a 2G La Marzocco, was in a bit of a state so I spent quite a while cleaning it before hand, I also spent a while calibrating the grind until I got something acceptable, the most disappointing thing however was the lack of tamper (I really should have thought to bring one with me), and so I had to tamp using the silly built in thing on the grinder…

I will apologise now for the tamping but I did my best to make up for it by explaining extraction times, balance, crema etc. The espresso was fortunately within the 20-30sec region and the correct size, it had a decent crema but a little pale. I hope people can appreciate that it is hard to do everything technically perfect on a TV show where, of course, their main prerogative is to get the right shots and fit it all in the right amount of time.

The espresso tasted perfectly acceptable to me, Matt commented that it was a little bitter and I explained how some bitterness is required to balance the drink.

Thanks once again to all the guys at Optomen, I had a great time as always. I’m not sure on the screening dates for these shows but it wont be for a week or two, when I find out i’ll update this post and post something in the ‘What’s Happening…’ section.

UPDATE: The Dandelion & Burdock episode is on Thursday 31st January at 12.30pm & 7pm. The Eden coffee episode is on Monday 4th February at 12.30pm & 7pm. Both are on UKTV Food 259 on sky and they are repeated an hour later on UKTV Food+1.