brown is the new black

This week's theme is brown, which doesn't sound all that appetising I admit.

Over the May bank holiday weekend we went out for the morning to Kingham, where the Kingham Plough was holding a lovely mini-farmers' market. Homemade ice cream was one of the delights on offer, and as its the 2nd time I've seen it recently I had to try a scoop of brown bread ice cream.


(The first time I'd ever seen it was on a day trip to Lower Slaughter in the Cotswolds a few weeks back. Awful name, lovely place.)





Anyway, back to the icecream. It tasted as if the brown bread crumbs had been mixed with demerera sugar and toasted. They still tasted a bit crunchy and crumble-like in the icecream which gave it a nice texture. Tasty.

Also procurred at the farmers market was some fresh brown trout. A very pretty fish with a speckled skin and tender sweet meat.



I've not eaten brown trout before, so since I've had little or no opportunity for cooking this madly busy week I'm counting brown trout as my recipe of the week. I'm sort of cheating and sort of not! I haven't ever cooked brown trout before, and I served it with toasted hazlenuts as suggested in a recipe book, so I think I can bend the rules a little and count this as a recipe: At least its something new! We ate it with aspargus since we're making the most of the super-short period that its in-season.
Our trout was from here.

Also, I couldn't sign off without mentioning the slices of cheesecake we bought at the same event. It was from a stall by the Windrush Valley Goat Dairy, and was light, creamy and not over-sweet. I've bought milk from the same farm before but never the cheesecake. It had a lovely hint of ginger biscuits in the base and was great with some berries on the side.

I have to acknowledge that this was a rather glutinous bank holiday weekend, but I did run over 9 miles on sunday so I think I can justify the food!

Taste of your Life

A couple of years ago Nigel Slater presented a programme on the BBC called A Taste of My Life. I didn't watch many of the episodes, but the basic premise interests me: What are the foods that are significant in your life, and why do they matter to you?

My list:

Honey sandwiches
I was a terribly fussy eater as a child. At one point honey sandwiches were about the only thing I'd eat for lunch. One holiday in Wales it got so extreme that the chant was coined "Ham, ham, honey and ham, tuna fish rolls". At least it was just a phase.

Super-fresh Bread
The crust. With nothing but butter.
We used to fight over it every saturday lunchtime after music school. Dad would make bread every saturday morning and it would ready when we got home. We'd have to share, but the crunchy crust, soft centre, and bread just warm enough for the butter to soften but not completely disappear...oh surely that must be one the most satisfying things to eat. Simple pleasures.

Blackberries from the hedgerow
We used to catch the bus to secondary school from the bottom of our road. As I grew up in the country that road was lined with a hedge on one side. The hedge was perfect blackberrying territory. For several weeks at the beginning of the autumn term we would meander back home from the bus stop eating our fill of blackberries all the way. Of course, that would often get us into trouble for spoiling our appetite for dinner, and it was impossible to hide those tell-tale purple stained fingertips and lips!


Chocolate birthday cake
We have a family tradition of chocolate cake for birthdays. Not fancy chocolate cake with 70% cocoa solids chocolate, but a basic chocolate sponge made with cadbury's drinking chocolate and topped with chocolate glace icing. Its not a fudgy heavy version, but its synonymous with birthdays for me. The recipe book's falling apart now, but is still hauled out for every birthday, without fail.

Porridge with demerera sugar
On cold school day mornings my Dad would make this for us to have before we walked to the bus. The demerera sugar would slightly dissolve and end up pooling round the edges of the bowl with just a few crunchy grains left on top. Porridge is my comfort food.

Chocolate Duff with Birds Custard
The ultimate childhood treat. Puddings were rare. This was the most exciting.
Funnily enough I'm not that excited by chocolate puddings these days, but I still love it when this one's on the menu. Has to be Birds Custard though, none of your fancy vanilla seed, homemade stuff. And we used to fight over the skin that formed on the top of the custard. Wierd.


So how about actual meals?

Lamb Stew
This I can't bear, but I also can't deny its place in my life! A regular dinner-time feature throughout my childhood, I suppose because its cheap, easy and filling (and us 3 did cost rather a lot in music bills). My heart sinks when I think of it, but I'm also rather fond of it in a peverse and contradictory way.

Lasagne with peas
My Mum's version is far from an authentic Italian lasagne. It is slightly sloppy, with a hint of nutmeg in the bechemal sauce. There's no cheese (hurrah!). I can eat it by the bucket full. I do recall being deeply suspicious and unwilling to try it the first time it was dished up (I must have been 8 or 9), so quite a turn-around!

Scampi and chips
Weymouth means scampi and chips in the Marlborough fish and chip shop. We'd go down every now and then to visit Aunty Glad (not really an Aunty but my Grandpa's favourite cousin), walk along Chesil Bank, visit Aunty Glad, check out the Sand Sculptor, then go for our fish and chips. Always the same. Always made us perfectly happy.


Writing this I realise that its not an illustrious list of culinary wonders is it?! But can anyone truthfully say that of their childhood favourites? I wouldn't make a very good subject for the series. Maybe everyone lies and makes stuff up for it to make themselves seem sophisticated.

Risotto (its getting obsessional)

I made Jamie Oliver's asparagus, mint and lemon risotto. Perfect summery food.

Serving it with pan-fried scallops gave it an indulgent edge, although to be honest I think that big, meaty, garlicky prawns would be a better match.

My childish side was satisfied by serving the risotto in the scallop shells. It amused me.



Find the recipe here.

Yum yum; a few of my favourite things. Seafood, asparagus, risotto.

Spring Lamb in pub loos

Last year Dan's Dad very generously gave us half a lamb. An unusual gift, I grant you, but a useful one nonetheless.


(Sorry if the photo's in poor taste, but y'know we have to acknowledge where meat comes from.)

The one cut I had been rather dreading was the Lamb belly. I had no idea what to do with it, and I feared inedibility due to the fattiness of it.

I put it off, and put it off, and then delayed some more. But it has now been sitting in our freezer for a year, so this weekend I decided it was time to stop being a scaredy-cat and tackle the belly.

I took the recipe from a pub toilet wall.

Yes you read that right.

We ate at the Kingham Plough a few months back (very good - I recommend it, but not too often or you'll be bankrupt). They had papered their loo walls with pages from old farmhouse recipe books. While washing my hands I noticed one for how to cook lamb belly and figured it was one to remember since I knew I'd have to tackle the lamb belly in the freezer sooner or later.

So, here's the loo method:

Lamb Belly (or breast of lamb, which somehow sounds more appetising) with Butterbeans
serves 3

approx 500g lamb belly - trim off as much fat as possible, then roll it up with some sprigs of rosemary and thyme and a crushed garlic clove in the middle. Tie with string or cotton. I did 3 separate rolls, but I imagine one large one would also work.

Place this into a pan of boiling water and simmer for 5 minutes, then fish out the meat and put it into a bowl of cold water. I left this in the fridge for a few hours until I was ready to cook dinner, but I would think you could move straight onto the next step.

Place 2 or 3 rashers of bacon in the bottom of a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Slice a lemon and lay the lemon slices on top. Put the lamb pieces on top of the lemon.
Cover with 2 or 3 more slices of bacon.

Finely chop an onion and scatter over the top. Sprinkle on some rosemary and thyme.
Season with salt and pepper (go easy on the salt though as the bacon is salty).

Slosh about a glass of white wine into the pan, add 300ml of stock (or a stock cube), then top up the pan with cold water until the water just covers all the meat.

Bring slowly to the boil, skim off any scum that rises to the top with a slotted spoon, then allow to simmer for about an hour and a half. Keep the water topped up during this time.

About 10 minutes from the end of the cooking time cook any other vegetables you fancy (we had purple sprouting broccoli). Drain a 400g can of butterbeans, add a ladle of the liquid from the lamb pan and gently heat through.
Serve.

The verdict:
I won't be buying lamb belly; its too greasy for me to really enjoy it. But if I get given some again I won't be horrified. It was tender and had a nice flavour, but I think roasting it might be more successful as it would give all that fat a bit more opportunity to run off into the pan rather than ending up in the finished meal. I liked the flavours though so I would roll it with herbs and place some lemon on top, and butterbeans made a nice change from potatoes.

Sicilian pasta

No great excitments on these week's recipe of the week. It was a quick and easy recipe from my Quick and Easy recipe book. It did exactly what it said on the tin and provided a speedy and tasty dinner.

I noticed a very similar recipe in the Jamie Oliver Jamie's Italy book, Pasta con acciughe e pomodoro (anchovies in tomato sauce with pasta).
Its a poor man's pasta sauce recipe with very minimal ingredients. Basically just a handful of toasted pinenuts, and handful of sultanas (soaked in warm water for a few minutes to soften them), 2 or 3 skinned chopped tomatoes, a couple of cloves of garlic, 4 anchovy fillets and a tablespoon of tomato puree.

Put your pasta on to cook.
Fry the garlic in olive oil to soften it. Add the anchovies and stir until 'melted', then add all the other ingredients and heat through. Season.
Drain thge pasta, toss the sauce and pasta together.
Serve.

Can't be exciting every week!

I love.....Risotto

A few weeks ago I made Jamie O's cauliflower risotto (twice in a week).
This week I made Silvana Franco's red onion and cannellini bean risotto. Find the recipe here.

Both were very satisfying dinners.
Creamy, vegetarian (I like to eat vegetarian once a week if I can), flavoursome, filling, and non-fattening. Also, they were both recipes that I didn't have particularly high expectations of but which turned out to be surprisingly lovely.

So now I'm having a love affair with risotto and am on the hunt for more flavour combinations to try.

I know its basically just a vehicle for using up odds and sods in the vegetable drawer and the fridge. But its a wonderful one!

In other weekend news...

Lemon curd



I spotted the recipe in Nigel Slater's Observer column and thought it looked worth a go. Very versatile, tangy and buttery. It was yummy with meringues, mixed berries and a small scoop of icecream as a pudding, and I'm looking forward to it on toast for breakfasts. Here it is.

Wild garlic pesto

My dad pointed out that we had wild garlic on the river bank at the bottom of our garden, so I picked some leaves to make a wild garlic, parsley and walnut pesto. It went really well on baked cod with some fresh vegetables and mashed potato. The walnuts gave it a earthyness that was appealing set against the lightness of cod and fresh vegetables.
A word of warning; please don't try this at home unless you're pretty confident on plant identification! I was lucky to have my Dad's expert eye to help out.

Walnut and Wild Garlic Pesto

25g wild garlic leaves
25g parsley
50g walnuts
1 tablespoon olive oil
A small squeeze of lemon juice
1 small garlic clove
Scrunch of salt.

Whizz everything together in a food processor. Spoon onto fish or chicken, or stir into a bowl of pasta. Easy peasy.

cherries two ways

On friday I had a strange craving for cherries. Who knows why, but something reminded me of some amazing cherries I bought last summer, and that was it. I HAD to have some.

Sainsbury's didn't have any. Nor did Tesco or the Co-op. I was getting desperate....Some people crave chocolate, some alcohol or crack. Apparently my drug of choice is fruit.

I finally found some in the garden centre (not as odd as it sounds - they have freezers of frozen fruit too). Hurrah! Not the ripe and ready to eat cherries I had originally wanted, but frankly by this stage I would take anything, so frozen cherries were an acceptable substitute.

I drove home dreaming of yummy desserts and consequently clafoutis found itself leap-frogged to the top of my 'to do' list.

I don't think I'd ever eaten clafoutis before, let alone made it, but it's the classic cherry recipe is it not?
Now, I realise that the picture below looks like a disaster, but they were just very dark cherries - not burnt. I promise.



I completely destroyed the pudding taking it out of the tin (time for a new non-stick pie dish - mine is antique), but it tasted lovely. So much so that Dan literally licked his plate clean.

Clearly I will be making this again.

Almost as successful was sunday's cherry recipe; a savoury one this time. Simon Rimmer's recipe for Duck with Cherry sauce. Find it here. I added a little thyme to the sauce, but that was the only change I made to the recipe.

I have to admit to feeling dubious about how likely this was to be edible, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, so I rolled up my sleeves and gave it a go.

I should have had faith. (Both in Mr Rimmer and also in the fact that duck and fruit go together wonderfully.) The dinner was good. Actually, very good.



So that's that. Cherry-craving satisfied.

Delegation is the name of the game

Last time I made chocolate cake it was a DISASTER.

More of it ended up on the bottom of the oven than in the cake tin, and it had to be turned into a trifle-style dessert instead of being proper cake. Having spent a morning scraping burnt choclate goo off the oven I haven't been too keen to try my hand at cake-baking again.

But for a birthday, chocolate cake is the law, so I delegated the task to my younger sister. And she really came up trumps with a chocolatey-jammy deliciously sinful concoction.

Apparently it was from the recipe book published by this bakery, which both makes me want to go to the bakery to over-indulge in cake, and makes me think that I might just have to buy the recipe book and try making cake again.

I'm tempted.

Party food

I love parties.

In the context of my cookery project they're a lovely excuse to try out all those recipes for nibbles that you would never make for just 2 people.

Also, its great to have a house and garden full of friends. Makes me feel all warm and fizzy.

Bank holiday monday was Dan's birthday, so we thought we'd throw a little garden/house birthday and (belated) housewarming party in the afternoon. Being horrifyingly grown-up these days, it didn't degenerate into a drunken mess, but stayed really very civilised right to the end. Lots of children and dogs running around begging for food, free flowing local beer (the Hook Norton Brewery is less than a mile from us), a lovely mixture of new and old friends, party nibbles. What's not to like?!

Also, the perfect excuse to make popcorn which I have never done before. Not just any old popcorn though...peanut caramel popcorn. Definitely the grown-up version. Yummy.



I noted the recipe down from another blog months ago, and have been on the look-out for an excuse to make it ever since. Its a perfect party popper.

Here it is (and here's the Seattle-based blog I found it on):

Peanut Caramel popcorn

100g unpopped popcorn
2 tablespoons vegetable/sunflower oil
225g soft light brown sugar
50g golden syrup
85g melted butter
pinch salt
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
100g lightly salted roasted peanuts
*You will also need a sugar/jam thermometer for this recipe*

Preheat the oven to 130C.
Lightly oil a roasting tin with vegetable oil.
In a large saucepan heat a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil until very hot. Add the popcorn, slam on the saucepan lid and shake the pan back and forth over the heat until all of the corn has popped.
Transfer the popcorn to the roasting tin.
In a medium sized, heavy based saucepan whisk together the sugar, syrup, melted butter, salt and 2 tablespoons of water. Bring to a simmer over a medium heat, and continue to allow it to simmer, whisking frequently until the heat reaches 130C.
Immediately remove the pan from the heat when it reaches this temperature, whisk in the bicarbonate of soda and vanilla, then quickly pour it over the popcorn and fold it in.
Stir in the peanuts.
Bake in the preheated oven for 1 hour, stirring every 20 minutes.
Remove from oven and allow to cool. This will keep in an airtight tub for about 5 days.

As a complete side note, I also had my parents up for a couple of days over the weekend and made a rhubarb and strawberry crumble for pudding on sunday night. Not a fruit combo I had eaten before, but one I would highly recommend; you don't need quite so much sugar on the rhubarb as the strawberries add an element of sweetness too.

OK, enough of my random ramblings! Hope you had a lovely long weekend.

PS The cheesecakes I made for the party a couple of weeks ago were a great success. Rhubarb and ginger cheesecake - its the future of cookery!