Butter

I’m totally spoilt, our tv has been playing up for a couple of months, we have a tradition of treating each other to major appliances for Christmas and Birthday’s, yesterday the tv didn’t want to switch-on so I was treated to an early Birthday pressie of a new flat screen HD tv.

As I was up early this morning, I had the choice of the channels and caught the end of “Julie and Julia” a fantastic foodie film, but the one drawback of watching is my taste buds start tingling and I can imagine the smell of butter.

Dinner – what to cook, in the fridge a piece of brisket, half-a-shoulder of lamb and a chicken. It’s no good, French cooking wins and I decided on coq au vin.

Out came the butter, garlic, lardons, baby onions. I jointed the chicken (I save the breasts for another meal), the carcass is in the fridge for stock/soup later in the week. The aromas in the kitchen are wonderful, fresh thyme from the garden, then the red wine, sheer bliss. It’s now in the oven cooking away and I just as I sit down and check the programme listings, there’s “Julie and Julia” about to start from the beginning. So I am able to watch this fantastic film with aromavision built in.

Our daughter is equally inspired by the film, she is a fabulous cook, but I’ve realised that I don’t have any proper french cook books for us to work from. Off to amazon and I’ve just pre-ordered the Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” double boxed edition, Elizabeth David’s “Provincial French Cookery” has also jumped into my basket.

Time for us to add new recipes to our repertoire, to start using my new mincer attachment that I was given for Christmas, I dream of making pates, sausages and our own mince to use in recipes, having complete control over the food we eat. It is easy to get into a rut with food, at least we don’t have the routine that my relations used to have, you could tell which day of the week it was by what you had for your meal. Beans, bangers and chips were always lunch on a Saturday, whichever of my aunt’s I was with!

Now to decide what to serve with the coq au vin, think spinach and rice may be an idea.

Ready, steady, barbecue

I’m very fortunate to have a husband who loves shopping for food, he has an excellent eye for bargains and knows his way around a store by the reduced bins.

Last night his bargain bag contained, a fresh ray wing and some smoked bass, now normally I’d cook these in the oven, but due to the heat today, out comes the gas barbecue and I’m in a dilemma, what to do with the fish, time to experiment methinks.

Ray wing in barbecue sauce

I made a barbecue sauce (thank you to my old school file).

1 small onion (finely chopped)
2 tablespoons tomato sauce
25g butter
1/2 tablespoon of vinegar
1/2 tablespoon of worcestershire sauce
4 tablespoons of water
salt & pepper

Put all the ingredients in a small pan and simmer for 10 minutes.

On a sheet of foil, put 1/2 the barbecue sauce, then place the ray wing on top, finish with the rest of the sauce and the seal the fish in the foil parcel. Pop on the barbecue for 10 minutes.

Smoked buttered bass

Debone the bass, then place a knob of butter on a piece of foil, then the bass fillet then another knob of butter, seal the foil parcel. Pop on the barbecue for 10 minutes.

The results were brilliant, will definitely cook this way again.

May Day

I grabbed the hoe today and chopped the weeds between the rows. The radishes are amazing, probably the best I’ve ever grown. It was brilliant using the cloche, it’s brought them on much earlier than normal. The peas are now 8 inches high and have started climbing up the pea sticks I put in last week.  I’ve planted out some Webbs lettuce plants, I had put in some carrot seeds, but there aren’t that many showing, so have decided to put the lettuce amongst them, if the carrots still want to grow they can. Years ago we had some cloches, they don’t have any plastic left, just the wire, they are placed over the lettuces, ready to lay the fleece over tomorrow.

The forecast for the rest of the week is wet and cold, with ground frosts overnight and day temperatures being only very cold, so I need to make sure that all my plants are snuggled up to stop them getting damaged.

The farmshop near Bashley has a brilliant collection of plants at very reasonable prices, I bought a pack of calabrese and another of cauliflower, 2 tomatoes for hanging baskets and a pepper plant. Mine have germinated, but they aren’t advanced as far, so will be producing later in the season.

Pricked out some Little Gem lettuces, also potted up the tomatoes and pepper from today. The Ipomoea also needed pricking out, loads more needs doing, but I need more space first.

Seeds sown today (again in the greenhouse) were celeriac, romanesco cauliflower, purple calabrese, leeks, hispi cabbage and some sweet peas designed for hanging baskets.

So much still to plant. Hubby has brought me back some garden lime and some pelleted chicken manure. I now need to look up about cabbages, I know they need a high lime content to encourage them to grow properly, so definitely need to do some serious research.

Picked the first rhubarb from the garden for Mum and Dad. Still need to sort out the rest of the flower garden, I’m inspired by Geoff Hamilton’s Ornamental Kitchen Garden and Alys Fowler’s Edible Garden, the idea of producing a pretty garden that also produces food is my idea of heaven, I’m going to start to plant the veg amongst the flowers, but need to ensure I label everything properly so that others know what everything is, I know the herbs and veg, but Mum and Dad may not be so sure, so I need to keep it simple to identify everything.

Roast chicken is in the oven with the roast potatoes and parsnips, serving with lashings of spring cabbage and gravy.

If the weather is grotty tomorrow, I will be in the greenhouse or filling the kitchen with the smell of baking. Now what shall I bake this time……………………

A day of variety

They say that variety is the spice of life, well today is one of those days.

I started in the greenhouse, re-jigging the pots around to try and give some of the plants more light. Then I pricked out the Okra into 3 inch pots, not sure how these are going to work as they need lots of sun (keep your fingers crossed we get a better summer this year).

Spent 2 hours logging up the rotten trees we felled over the Easter holidays and stacking them in the wood store, the poor electric chainsaw is struggling, it can’t cope with the large diameter trees, so hoping Dad can work his magic this week and get the petrol chainsaw working again before the bank holiday weekend, then we can clear all the remaining trunks.

A trip to Castlepoint (local shopping centre), new carry all for hubby who has a business trip to London this week, jeggings for daughter and some food bits and bobs from supermarket, can now make Dundee cake, carrot cake and coffee and walnut cake.  The weather is changing, some sunny spells then threatening rain, it can’t make up it’s mind.

I decided to make the carrot cake today, it’s now baked and cooling, I can then ice it tomorrow.  Also popped some dough on in the breadmaker, turned it into some luscious foccacia, I used the pestle and mortar to pound some fresh rosemary with garlic and olive oil, it produced some fantastic herby oil which I squeezed over the dough (I used a swiss roll tin and flattened the finished dough into it), then sprinkled over the rosemary and garlic, plus some chopped black olives and finally some maldon salt crystals. It was so scrummy, over 2/3rds gone with dinner, a definite success and added to the yummy list.

A quiet evening recharging the batteries before a busy week at work.