Buffalo

Tonight I ate a buffalo.



Or at least, a buffalo burger.
And just because the sense of completeness pleased me, I had it with a tomato, basil and buffalo mozzarella salad.

I went to a new farmers market at the weekend. New to me that is. There was a buffalo farmer there: They make a buffalo milk hard cheese and buffalo milk icecream, although I didn't buy either of these, as well as selling burgers, steaks etc. Oddly they don't make buffalo mozzarella; apparently its really fiddly!

The burgers were really good. Its a very low fat red meat and extremely nutritious. Slightly smokey flavoured. Hardly any fat came out as I grilled the burgers, so clearly they really are very lean.

I'll have to give the icecream a try next time and see if it agrees with me better than cow icecream.

Check it out!

PSB

Purple Sprouting Broccoli.

It appeared in our veg box this week. I am finding my veg box educational!

This year I have had jerusalem artichokes, celeriac, purple kale, and now PSB only because they appeared in the box. I don't think I would have picked any of them up otherwise. Also, red cabbage with apple and sultanas has become a favourite, and I only tried making it because of a glut of red cabbage when it started appearing every week.

Successes? I find purple kale and purple sprouting very useful and yummy.

I'm less keen on celeriac and jerusalem artichokes. In fact, I'd go as far as to say that I am heartily sick of them.

To celebrate the arrival of PSB, and my lovely egg selection from the farm shop, and the spring sunshine, we had a salad dinner on monday night; a tasty collection of semi-hard-boiled egg (just the yolk a little bit runny in the centre), chorizo, new potatoes, and purple sprouting.

The suggestion came from lovely Hugh's River Cottage Every Day cook book, and was a tasty, lively-flavoured little number, with just enough spice from the chorizo to keep it interesting.

The recipe is on the River Cottage website here. Enjoy!

Next season I am looking forward to? Asparagus!

cooking up a storm

My Dad likes to say that if there's an easy way of doing something and a difficult way of doing it I'll always find the hard way. This sprung to mind today as I spent all afternoon in the kitchen.

On the May Day bank holiday monday Dan and I are having a little house warming party/birthday party for Dan. It will be lovely to have our friends, new and old, round to visit. Its going to be a busy few days though: I'm off to the ballet on the friday evening, then my parents are coming to visit for saturday and sunday. Its going to be a lovely social weekend, but there will be no time to cook anything for our party guests that weekend.

I really didn't want to buy frozen pizzas or other crappy processed food that would be easy but not particularly nice. So, today I've been getting organised, and cooking up a storm with freezeable food.

First up, a trip to the farmers market and farm shop for ingredients.
Look how lovely the eggs I bought are:



I suppose its a little odd to feel pleased by pretty eggs, but I did enjoy a childhood-nostalgia lunch of dippy-egg.



Then I knuckled down to the catering.

First up; bread.
I was a bit stupid and forgot to to dust the baking paper with flour to stop the bread sticking. Consequently, the 1st batch will not be going to the party. Dan and I will have to eat it ourselves and pick off the paper as we go!

Then cheesecake.
Its somewhat horrifying the amount of cream and cheese in a cheesecake, but it always seems to go down well. Yummy. I have tried making cheesecake before but it didn't set. This time I had more success, so we have one Rhubarb and Ginger cheesecake, and one Mixed Berry cheesecase.



On to the quiches. A couple of roasted vegetable ones and one quiche-lorraine style onion, bacon and tomato quiche.

Ooof. The freezer's pretty full now.

I'll make a couple of tomato and mozzarella pizzas tomorrow, then that's enough for now.

It wasn't all hard work though. I had time for an icecream in the sunshine at the farmshop. Apple pie flavour no less.

Jamie O Italy

My little nephew has a border-line obssessive love of Jamie Oliver. Unusual for an 8 year-old, but there are many worse role-models he could have!

For Christmas I bought him the Jamie Oliver Italy cookbook. I know that the chances are he will only look at the pictures for now, but he'll enjoy doing that, and ocassionally we'll cook something from it together.

Because I am weak where recipe books are concerned, after flicking through it on the train home I decided that I really wanted a copy of my own, so went back to the shops and treated myself.

It is my first (and currently only) Jamie Oliver recipe book.

And since December I have had a guilty conscience about it as it has sat on the side unused.

I decided that THIS was the week to put an end to that. The vegetable box delivered us a cauliflower this week which I wasn't sure what to do with, so when I came across cauliflower risotto I thought it would be worth a go.

Now, I know what you're thinking because I thought it too: cauliflower risotto just doesn't sound very nice. But Jamie Oliver raved about it, so I decided to put my trust in his judgement and give it a try.

This had a secondary risk of being a vegetarian meal, which normally means that I'm onto a loser from the start as far as Dan's concerned.

However, the dinner was a revelation. We both really liked it. It was quick, easy, tasty and filling. Dan's even taken the leftovers for lunch.

Cauliflower risotto; who'd have thought it would be such a yummy dinner?!

Off topic

Its the little things in life that make a big difference.

These are a few of the small things that have been lifting my mood and making me smile recently (as inspired by The Blog of Small Things which I have been dropping in on regularly of late; you can find it here):

Lovely pink and white clouds of blossom on the trees - its like candy floss has been liberally draped around town.



Going out at lunchtime without a coat.

Finding an old savings account book. OK, so it only had £16.62 in it, but it still made me happy.

Light evenings.

Pretty champagne flutes for half price.



Planting some bulbs last autumn and them actually growing; A major break through in my gardening "skills"!



Self-indulgent days out.

A cup of Earl Grey tea from leaves not a bag.

Finding a wonderful perfume, giving myself permission to treat myself to it if I ran the half marathon in under 2 hours, and achieving it.




Long weekends when the weather co-operates.

Dragging people along to exhibitions I want to see that they then love (my Mum adored the Madame Vionnet exhibition I took her to in Paris, Dan was fascinated by the Van Gogh exhibition at the Royal Academy of Art - quite a surprise given his monster hangover!).

The narrow boats on the canal all dolled up in fresh coats of paint in gaudy colours, as if they've put on their finest costume jewellery to greet the spring

Running cross-country in the sunshine, particularly now that the lambs are gambolling (there's no other word for it!) in the fields. Just adorable.



Making friends in our new neighbourhood.

Feeling that I'm starting to know my way around our area - finding favourite pubs, good shortcuts, the best places to buy fresh eggs, how the footpaths fit together, picturesque picnic spots, the outdoor swimming pool (still a little chilly for that yet!), the cinema where you can take a glass of wine in with you, the independent bookshop with a sideline in freshly baked cakes

coming over all biblical

This weekend I have been mainly baking loaves and fishes. Ironic for a dyed-in-the-wool athiest!

Friday night we ate Greek Roast Cod. I came across the recipe on the BBC website. Its here.



This is the 2nd recipe I've made from Silvana Franco - the 1st was lemony meatballs with pasta. Both recipes are from her Hi-Low Cookbook, and after this one I figured that two really tasty dinners was enough evidence for me... The recipe book is on the way via ebay.

Saturday was a French trout recipe - whole roast trout with sorrel sauce. I had to adapt a little; there was no sorrel to be found anywhere in the shops near me so I substituted spinach, and I used yoghurt instead of creme fraiche. I got the trout at the Banbury farmer's market, and it was a lovely subtle flavour and superbly fresh.

Trout with Sorrel sauce

2 whole trout - cleaned, gutted, heads removed (always sounds gruesome to type that!)

200g baby spinach or sorrel leaves
1/4 onion or 3 shallots - finely chopped
10g butter
100g plain yoghurt
75ml dry white wine
A shake of nutmeg
salt, pepper

Put oven on to heat to 180C.
Melt the butter over a low heat and gently fry the shallots or onions until soft.
Add the spinach or sorrel leaves and a small splash of water. Cover and allow to cook gently for 3 or 4 minutes, until the leaves have wilted.
Add 1/2 the yoghurt, salt and pepper, and a shake of nutmeg, and allow to cook for a minute or so more before taking off the heat and allowing to cool slightly.
Stuff the trout with the sorrel mixture (don't worry if you don't use it all - keep it for making the sauce later), then place the fish in a roasting tin, pour over the wine and cover with foil.
Bake in the oven for 20 - 25 minutes depending on the size of your fish.
5 minutes before the end of the cooking time pour the juices from the roasting tin into a small saucepan. Return the fish to the oven.
Add the remaining yoghurt to the saucepan, and any of the sorrel mix that you may have left. Place over a fairly high heat and allow to reduce to about 1/2 the volume.
Serve the trout with the sauce from the saucepan poured round it.
It goes well with boiled potatoes or mash, and leafy green veg or salad.

Now then I realise I haven't addressed the loaves bit.

A few weeks back I watched a Raymond Blanc cookery programme in which he made bread. I also watched a programme on BBC4 about craft bakers, and it got me thinking about bread-making again.

I have made bread fairly regularly in the past, but I haven't hit upon a recipe/method that I think is really my ultimate process. All of my attempts have been quite nice, but not write-home about it delicious.

Until this weekend that is.
I tried out the Raymond Blanc method (find it here) and it was just GORGEOUS. Even Dan liked it, and he's never particularly liked the bread I've made in the past.



I made it by hand in 2 batches of 2 loaves - I mean, really; who has an oven large enough for 4 loaves in their home kitchen? Or a food mixer big enough for over a kilo of bread dough?! But lack of reality for us home cooks aside, the bread tasted really good.
I will have a try at baking the bread in tins in future so that its easier to use for sandwiches.

And then lastly; pizza from my little old Carluccio recipe book (I had a little yeast left over). I didn't eat any of it, but Dan tells me it was lovely. Praise indeed!

This seems to sum up our weekend eating (Dan's sunday lunch) rather well, even if it is a somewhat unorthodox mixture!:



The sushi is from the deli a couple of villages away - turns out moving to deepest-darkest rural Oxfordshire doesn't mean you have to abandon all interest in foods from round the world after all. Hurrah for that!

PS This was week 30. Wonder how long I'll keep feeling inclined to be an enquiring cook? I think its a habit now...I can't imagine going back to a routine of similar dinners all the time.

Cooking with yoghurt

Dairy products and me do not get along well.

Particularly cheese, cream, and yoghurt. Not a fan, and they always seem to make my stomach hurt. (Although occasionally its worth the risk for a nice bowl of icecream or a slice of cheesecake!)

However, I have been gradually trying to introduce small quantities of milk based products into my diet. With the amount of running I do each week I think my bones probably need a little extra help from the increased calcium.

I've found that goat and sheep products don't give me the same problems as cows' milk, so have been using small amounts of sheeps yoghurt, goats milk, and sheep and goat cheeses.

Although I still wouldn't eat a bowl of yoghurt, not being keen on the taste, I do find it a very good cooking ingredient, particularly with fish. I've been using this fairly regularly of late:



This week I came over all ambitious with a smoked fish lasagne from my 'Nearly Vegetarian' cook book (really old-fashioned but fantastic recipes) - using yoghurt, milk AND cheese in the sauce. Goodness me. Tempting fate.

But hurrah - no tummy ache!

I aquired the cheese at the Chipping Norton Farmers Market a couple of weeks ago - a lovely smooth and creamy cheese. Not too strong flavoured for a cheese novice like me, but nonetheless not mass-produced and flavourless.

I followed this minor miracle with an improvised fish pie along the same lines a few days later (we still had the pot of yoghurt & it needed using!). Again, no problem...

The yoghurt gave the pie a nice tang, and it was lighter than using a traditional white sauce or cream. The cauliflower is in there because we had a load in our vegetable box, but it was a good addition.

Prawn and Cauliflower Pie
enough for 2 fairly generous portions

250g raw king prawns
50g smoked salmon (Dan filched some fom his parents' fridge when he went home for a visit so I threw it in)
100g chopped leek
175g cauliflower
2 cloves garlic - crushed
150g yogurt
25g hard sheeps cheese - grated or finely sliced
Small handful chopped parsley
Sprinkle of chopped dill
Squeeze of lemon
Salt and pepper
300g potatoes

Peel the potatoes. Cook in salted water then mash. Use a little of the yoghurt sauce from the fish mix (see below) to moisten the mash so that it binds together rather than adding extra butter. (You can use butter & milk if you prefer, but this makes it slightly lighter on the calories.)
Chop the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces and cook in salted boiling water. Drain and put to one side to cool slightly.
Chop the leeks and poach for a few minutes in boiling water until softened. Drain and put to one side.
Chop the smoked salmon into strips.
Mix the yoghurt, garlic, herbs, raw prawns, smoked salmon together in a bowl. Add the leek, cauliflower and a squeeze of lemon. Mix again, then add the cheese, season and stir.
Put the fish mixture in the bottom of an oven proof dish. Top with an even coating of mashed potato.
Bake in a preheated oven 180C for half an hour.

I served it with green beans, but peas would be nice too.