Mulled wine and Spiced apple warmer!

I cannot lay claim to inventing the mulled wine recipe.  This one is based on a Jamie Oliver recipe and is made by infusing a syrup with the spices first before mixing with the red wine.  This means that you aren't boiling all the alcohol out of the wine before serving it.  So....

Ingredients:  200g sugar, 2 oranges, ( plus the juice of one of the oranges), 1 lemon, 6 whole cloves, 2 cinnamon sticks, a good grating of nutmeg, 2 bay leaves, 2 star anise, 1 vanilla pod split lengthways (use only half keeping the other half for the spiced apple warmer).  2 bottles cheap red wine (Jamie calls for Italian wine of course but I live in Spain so a box of Mercadona's cheapest was the order of the day!)

Method:  Put the sugar and spices (except for the star anise) in a pan.  Cut one orange and the lemon in half and put into the pan.  Juice the other orange and add the juice to the pan.  Add just enough red wine to cover the sugar and pop the pan on the heat.  Warm until the sugar melts into the wine and then whack the heat up and boil the mixture until it reduces by about half and becomes syrupy.

Add the rest of the wine to the syrup mixture as well as the star anise and then warm it through on a very low heat.  Try not to boil it again or you will burn off the alcohol but if you do, don't worry, it still tastes very good.

Spiced Apple Warmer - This is perfect for the non drinkers, for children or the designated driver.
Ingredients: A box of apple juice and exactly the same ingredients as for the mulled wine above (except for the sugar, you don't need the sugar).

Method:  Place all the ingredients in a pan and heat to boiling.  Turn off the heat and leave it to steep overnight or for at least a couple of hours.  Serve warm.

Coriander Gin

Our coriander went to seed very quickly this year.  No matter how fast I kept cutting off the flowers more would appear within a matter of hours.  I found out later that its because we planted it in full sun... its goes to seed much faster without any shade apparently.  Anyway, finally, I let it do what it wanted to and decided to harvest the seed.

Most of it will be left to go brown on the plant but I took some green coriander seed heads to put into gin.  I heard that it makes really nice coriander vodka but I didn't have any vodka so I tried it in gin.

Not sure how long it has to stay there but it smells divine.  We'll give it a few weeks before trying and if we like it then it will remain on the menu permanently.  How did we do it?  Very easy.

Pick the green coriander seed and wash really well (you would be surprised at how many little black bugs came off it even after two washes there was still a few left).  Once perfectly clean simply drop into gin.  How much?  I haven't a clue... we had about three inches of gin left in this bottle so we added a couple of sprigs of coriander seed to it.  I'll let you know later if its too strong or too weak.  Cheers.