Month: November 2009

Quince Cheese

The fruit lady at Moseley Farmers’ Market still had some quince left. They had a little fuzz of mould growing on them and the bletting had given them a strong, sickly sweet aroma. The excellent River Cottage preserves handbook has a guide to making quince cheese, what the Spanish call membrillo, so I thought I’d give it a go in time for Xmas.

The recipe couldn’t be simpler – take your quince (I had about 1kg), wash and chop them roughly, no need to peel or deseed. Add just enough water to cover, bring to boil and simmer until they start to fall apart. Then leave them to cool for a couple of hours. Strain them and rub them through a sieve – this bit is fairly hard work, a mouli would probably be easier. Then weigh the sieved pulp and add the same amount of granulated white sugar. Bring to the boil, stir to melt all the sugar and then simmer for an hour until the cheese goes dark brown and becomes thick. Then add to jars (or shallow trays) – I used Kilner jars. Leave for at least a month for the flavour to mature. Serve with lots of cheese!

Grant permissions on all tables and sequences in Postgresql

Postgresql doesn’t make it very easy to grant permissions on all tables and sequences to a particular user, so here’s a little script I’ve hacked up to help.
#!/bin/bash
DBNAME=$1
SCHEMA=$2
USER=$3
for table in `echo "SELECT relname FROM pg_stat_all_tables WHERE schemaname='$SCHEMA';" | psql $DBNAME | grep -v "pg_" | grep "^ "`;
do
echo "GRANT SELECT,UPDATE,DELETE,INSERT ON TABLE $SCHEMA.$table to $USER;"
done
for grant in `echo "select n.nspname||'.'||c.relname from pg_class c, pg_namespace n where n.oid = c.relnamespace and c.relkind in ('S') and n.nspname in ('$SCHEMA');" | psql $DBNAME | grep "^ $SCHEMA"`;
do
echo "GRANT ALL ON $grant TO $USER";
done

Run, e.g. grant.sh – if you don’t use schemas then it will be ‘public’.

Can I shock you… I like wine!

A placeholder post for some wines we have recently enjoyed. I am determined to drink decent wine at Xmas and not get flustered, run out of time and end up with the usual suspects from the poor selection at our local Waitrose.

And rather than keeping this offline I thought I’d put it on the blog in case it is of interest to others. I’ll periodically update (probably).

  • Vacqueyras, La Pavane, Guy Daniel 2006 – we had this lovely Cote du Rhone at Hix
  • Marcillac, Dne du Cros, Philippe Teulier 2008 – 2 bottles of this lovely red from near Aveyron were quaffed last weekend at the excellent Terroirs
  • Bodegas Vall Llach Priorat Embruix 2003 – we had a half-bottle of this at the Walnut Tree Inn, and quite delicious it was too. It’s a Spanish Grenache apparently.
  • Chateau la Verrerie Rouge 2004 – another Cote du Rhone. I have no idea where we drank this, I just have a note on my iPhone with no more detail.
  • Richmond Grove, Wintervale Vineyards Riesling 2008 – one of the more enjoyable white wines from my recent trip to Australia. Sweet enough to be served with dessert, but refreshing enough to be enjoyed as an aperitif.
  • Maverick 2007 Trial Hill Riesling – drunk at a recent trip to The Ledbury

I’ve got a cellar too. There’s no wine in it.

Celler Vall Llach Priorat Embruix