Jelly

I seem to have been cooking with fruit a lot recently.

This time I added wine too.

Red wine and rhubarb jellies:



Very alcoholic tasting, a little bit fruity and a little bit citrusy. Grown up jellies for jelly and icecream. Or rhubarb and custard. Or just on their own...perhaps add just a little drizzle of cream? These turn out with a very strong and rich flavour - a love it or hate it dish I expect. I loved them, but they weren't Dan's thing AT ALL (all the more for me!).

If you have a bottle of red wine, some rhubarb, sugar, ginger, some gelatine (or agar-agar flakes) an orange and a lemon then do give it a try. Its elderflower season now, and a few elderflower heads added to the mix gives a nice floral fragrance to the jelly. You may love it, you may hate it, but its definitely worth a go!

Go on.

Please.

They're easy - I made mine while simulateously chatting to my boyfriend's mother, making her a coffee, and cooking pasta for our dinner.

See? Must be easy.

Rhubarb and Red Wine Jelly

250g rhubarb - chopped into chunks
450ml Red Wine
50g sugar (you could risk a little more if you like your desserts sweet)
2.5cm chunk root ginger - peeled & sliced
3 elderflower heads (optional)
40ml lemon juice
Juice of 1 orange (or about 100ml)
4-5 sheets of gelatine

Put all the ingredients except the gelatine in a pan and bring to a simmer over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly then strain the liquid, pressing as much of the fruit as possible through the sieve. Discard any remaining fruity puree.
Cut the gelatine sheets into small pieces and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Then scoop the softened gelatine out of the water and mix it into the (still warm) red wine liquid. Stir until the gelatine dissolves then pour the liquid into jelly moulds.
Allow to cool to room temperature then refridgerate overnight to set.

Three ways with Potato Salad - Daring Cooks

The June Daring Cooks Challenge was to make a delicious, healthy potato salad.

This is a challenge which really suits me as I like to make myself varied lunches to take to the office rather than always having a soggy sandwich. Potato salad falls into this system rather well, and expanding my lunchtime menu is always a good thing.

I decided to take this challenge seriously and do some decent experimentation rather than just making one version of the dish.

First up; Lemony potato salad with asparagus

A lunchtime outing took me to a farm which was selling fresh asparagus. It seemed a crime to walk away without some while its in-season and fresh from the field. This was the starting point for my potato salad. What goes with asparagus and potatoes? Lemon seemed like a good, tangy choice.

Also in the fridge that morning; spring onions, half a red chilli, some yellow pepper, parsley, and a packet of ham, so I chopped them all up and added them to my tupperware tub. Some mint from the garden too.


The dressing was a dessertspoon of olive oil, a couple of dessertspoons of lemon juice, a squeeze of lime and 1/2 teaspoon of sumac whisked together.



The resulting salad was colourful, flavourful and tangy. I suppose it might be pushing it to describe it as potato salad since it had lots of other things in it too!

At the weekend I was back home for my sister's wedding. I needed a decent lunch on saturday before the ceremony - filling but not bloating. Potatoes were perfect for this.
On this occasion I decided to go with a more Oriental flavour combination, so I ended up with:
Potato, plum sauce and sesame seed Salad
This is how I made it:
Steam the potatoes, add a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a splash of light soy sauce. Make a dressing from a dash of plum sauce, about a dessertspoon of rice wine vinegar, a squeeze of lime, some chopped coriander leaves and a sprinkle of chilli flakes.
I served the potato salad with a sliced smoked chicken breast, some lettuce leaves, and a handful of fresh mint leaves. The weather was appropriately warm and sunny to eat in the garden, close the eyes, and pretend I was really in Asia.

And finally....a bit of a wild card. I came across a recipe on the BBC website which intrigued me, Potato, green bean and rhubarb salad with almond pesto. Find the recipe here.

Raw rhubarb? I'd never thought to have rhubarb any way but stewed. I like it when my preconceptions are challenged so I resolved to make this one. I kept it for a day at home though, just in case it was nasty and I had to make a different lunch!
I should have had more faith. The salad was beautiful. Colourful and a fantastic balance of flavours. The raw rhubarb was tart and crunchy but not sour, the warmth from the chilli flakes enlivened the potatoes, and the almond and parsley pesto tied the whole dish together. I highly recommend this!



I amended the BBC dish slightly, so here's my final version:

Potato, Rhubarb and Green Bean Salad with Almond and Parsley Pesto (for 1 person)
150g new potatoes (I used Cornish Royals as they're in season here and delicious)
pinch of chilli flakes
salt and pepper
50g green beans (trimmed)
2 spring onions - white part only, sliced
1/2 stick of rhubarb (approx 35-40g) finely sliced
Squeeze lemon juice

For the pesto
20g blanched almonds
1 clove fresh garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
Handful of fresh parsley

Scrub the potatoes, sprinkle with a small amount of salt, then steam them over simmering water for 20 minutes, or until cooked.
Add the green beans for the last 5 minutes in the steamer so that they are lightly cooked but retain a slight crunch.
Meanwhile make the pesto by blending all the ingredients together. Add more olive oil if you aren't eating the salad that day.

Remove the potatoes and beans from the heat, sprinkle with a pinch of chilli flakes and some freshly ground black pepper. Put aside to cool.
Chop the spring onions and rhubarb and arrange potatoes, beans, rhubarb and spring onion on a plate. Dab the pesto round the plate and squeeze a little lemon juice over the top.
Serve and enjoy.

Thank you to the Daring Cooks for helping me to expand my lunchtime salad options!


Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.

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!

Rhubarb and custard

Well actually, that's not true. It was rhubarb and cheese, but somehow that doesn't have the same ring to it!

I spotted the 1st rhubarb of the season in the farm shop this weekend. It was a bright, deep pink and looked utterly gorgeous. I bought a handful on impulse without any idea what I was going to do with it.



When I got home I stewed it with a couple of tablespoons of sugar, and it came out an almost purple colour. I still wasn't sure what to do with it, until I realised I had a whole bottle of full-fat goats milk in the fridge and no plans for it (the slight tang of the goats curd rhubarb cheesecake that we had for pudding at The Plough in Kingham worked really nicely). I was then reminded that rhubarb and ginger is a sublime combination as I flicked past a rhubarb and ginger sponge recipe in one of my books.



So, a packet of ginger biscuits were procured from the village shop. 100g worth were bashed until they were crumbs (very theraputic - I recommend it!), mixed with melted butter (20g) and pressed into ramekins before being shoved into the fridge.

Then I made goats cheese (see here) and mixed it with 25g of icing sugar. That was piled on top of the biscuit base and smoothed out. I spooned a layer of stewed rhubarb over the top and shoved it all back in the fridge overnight. Et voila; an approximation of rhubarb cheesecake.

Well, mini rhubarb cheesecake pots at any rate.



And the taste test? Well, it wasn't lobster! But it was a pretty tasty pudd and very moreish. Yummy. A good alternative to crumble in rhubarb season.



To recap:
Mini Rhubarb and GoatsCheesecake pots
Serves 4

100g Ginger biscuits
20g butter

Approx 200g rhubarb
1 Dessertspoon caster sugar
175g Soft goats cheese or cream cheese
25g icing sugar

Slice rhubarb into chunks and put into a heavy pan with the caster sugar and a splash of water. Stew over a gentle heat until the rhubarb disintegrates (about 1/2 hour). Put aside to cool.
Put the biscuits inside a sandwich bag and bash with a rolling pin until they break up. You could process them in a food processor, but don't over whizz it as a bit of texture is good.
Melt the butter and mix with the biscuit crumbs. Divide between 4 smallish ramekins and press down. Refridgerate for at least an hour.
Mix the cheese and icing sugar. Spoon it on top of the biscuit base and spread it gently out.
Drain the rhubarb of any excess water then spoon the rhubarb mix on top of the cheese.
Refridgerate overnight.

Gobble.

Rhubarb and ginger

Apparently there has been a massive surge in sales of jam-making equipment this year. I feel a little grumpy about this, as if there's one thing I hate its to be part of a trend! Nonetheless, I have made jam this year.
I started my jam making with an unsuccessful attempt at blackberry jam last year. What can I say?...I was a trendsetter!


Problem was, the jam was too hard to spread easily (we ate it anyway, of course!), so this year I bought a jam thermometer before I made a second attempt.
After a yummy and spreadable strawberry jam I was feeling confident, so when I was sent the instructions for rhubarb and ginger jam I resolved to give it a try.
And it worked!
The result was tangy with lovely little surprises of stem ginger throughout. Definitely one to do again when rhubarb comes into season. And a great alternative to marmalade, which I just can't stand.
Find the recipe here.