weekend shopping

One of the really nice things about living here is the wealth of independent shops within walking distance. We usually shop in Chanterlands (Chants) Avenue, which has two butchers, two greengrocers, small Co-Op and Sainsburys, and so forth.

Today, we went over to Newland Ave for a change – it’s a bit further, but it was a lovely morning, and we broke out the shiny red shopping trolley.

£17.58 in the greengrocers bought:

• 1 cauliflower
• pak choi
• 8 Braeburn apples
• 4 Navel oranges
• 1 head of broccoli
• a lump of fresh ginger
• 1 leek
• 5 big onions
• 1 bunch of spring onions
• about a dozen shallots
• 4 courgettes
• a pack of part baked ciabbata

£9.50 in the butcher bought 2lbs of diced chicken, 4 pork and leek sausages, and 4 Lincolnshire sausages. Two flaky pasties from the baker for 80p each (nice lunch!).

Also picked up 4 cartons of chopped tomatoes and a pack of wheat wraps in Sainsburys, and that’s us sorted for the week, at least!

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weekend cooking

We were due at a Transition Town film meeting on Saturday afternoon, with tea and cake afterwards, so I baked muffins in the morning: I had some brown bananas, and a couple of rather tired clementines, so did a dozen each of clementine and poppyseed, and banana and bran flake. We were greedy, and kept 4 of each back for ourselves, and in the end, not many people turned up for the film, so I brought several muffins back home with me, which are safely stowed in the freezer for when I have a “must have CAKE!” moment.

It’s worth mentioning that the banana muffin mix freezes really well, and I’ve no reason to suppose that the clementine won’t do the same; certainly takes a lot less space than baked muffins, and they’re so much nicer freshly made.

Vegetable Tagine
Sunday, I took an aubergine, a courgette, a red and a yellow pepper, chopped them up and put them in the slow cooker. Chopped up a sweet potato, a butternut squash and a huge carrot, and parboiled them for about 7 minutes. Drained them, added to slow cooker. Chopped an onion and some garlic, fried them off in some olive oil, then added some home made Ras El Hanout and stirred it round for a couple of moments, then added a tin of tomatoes and some water, brought to the boil, added to slow cooker with some salt and pepper. Stirred, regarded, added a tin of chick peas (should have been organised to soak some overnight, but ho hum). Voila, vegetable tagine – after about 6 hours in the cooker. Made 8 portions.

Also knocked out a couple of gallons of fruit juice wine – one prune, one red grape. I’ve not tried this before, but Tesco were doing 3 for 2 on fruit juice last week, and so for about a fiver including sugar it had to be tried. That makes [counts] ten gallons on the go, and about 20 bottles in the rack, so we should be able to continue our alcoholic lifestyle for a while yet.

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chicken and red pepper risotto

We haven’t had a risotto for ages, for some reason.  The carcass of the last chicken we had, about three weeks ago, was stuffed in the freezer; I pulled it out and stuck it in the slow cooker to make stock, and there was a surprising amount of meat on it, which we put in a little brown bowl in the fridge, and Pete declared it suitable for a risotto.

Cardinal rule of risotto for two: 5oz risotto rice, 1 pint liquid.  As I had the chicken stock, I used half a pint of that, and topped it up with cider.  Chopped one red onion and one red pepper, sautéd them with some olive oil, added rice, then stock bit by bit, and some seasoning.  Chicken went in about 5 minutes before the end. Delicious!

[makes note to self that we need more risotto rice]

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a sossidge baguette

For some reason, I’ve hardly used the Remoska since we’ve been here.  This kitchen has less countertop, and less cupboard space than my old one, and the little chap has been pushed into a cupboard, but even so …

We had two fat venison sausages left from the weekend, and thought they’d be nice in a fresh baked baguette (I like to keep those part-baked ones in for a change).  Inspiration struck!

I peeled a big onion, cut it in half, then sliced it thinly, and put it in the bottom of the Remoska, drizzled with olive oil, added the sossidges and switched it on.  After 20 minutes, I went back downstairs and turned the sausages.

Fifteen minutes later, I removed them, sliced them into four lengthways, we scooped out the onion and piled it into buttered baguettes and added the sausages.  I slathered mine with French’s deli mustard too, but that’s because I is a gourmet.

Fab, and hardly any washing up!

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beef in beer

I knew there were two rump steaks in the freezer that we brought with us from Somerset – the very last of the Dexter beef.  There’s no way we’d ever eat a whole steak nowadays – it’s just not the sort of meal we have – so I decided, that in light of the chilly weather, we might have a steak pudding tomorrow.  (Pete is not offally fond (sorry) of kidney, so we never have that in a pud).

I want to make the pudding in the slow cooker; it’s much easier, never boils dry, and can be left while we go out, but in my experience they work better if the filling is pre-cooked, so that’s what I did this morning.

I normally make a base of carrot and celery for a beef casserole, but there was a head of fennel in the fridge (and, indeed, no celery), so I used that, and three carrots.  Chopped into small cubes, and sauteed down in olive oil till softened. Then chopped a large onion and a few cloves of garlic, and some fresh sage leaves, and they got the same treatment.

The steaks were cut into chunks, and browned off – the cats got the trimmings, so they were happy. All of this was put into the slow cooker, and Pete was despatched to buy a bottle of beer; he returned with a bottle of Fursty Ferret from Badger Beers, which seemed appropriate.  I deglazed the meat frying pan with the beer, added a teaspoonful of grain mustard, and a tablespoon of flour, decanted that into the slow cooker, and added salt and black pepper.

I’ll leave it cooking for about six hours – it’s smelling good!

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Irish potato scones

This is a classic Irish recipe – we used to eat them a lot, but sort of forgot about them; I made some for breakfast this morning, and thought I’d share.  It’s an ideal way to use up leftover boiled potato, too!

In a food processor, blitz 6oz cold cooked potato, 4oz flour (I always use plain, but self raising would do), and 2oz of butter or marg.  Once you have a dough, remove it from the processor and knead a little on a floured work surface.

Now, you can be diligent, roll it out with a rolling pin, and cut the dough into rounds – or you can do what I do, which is to divide the dough into 8, and pat it into rough roundish shapes.

Also, the recipe recommends frying in a little butter on a griddle, but I’m afraid I stick them on a greased baking tray at gas 6 for 15 minutes.  And I don’t peel the spuds either :)

These are just utterly delicious straight out of the oven, spread with butter, and also work really well as part of a great British fry up.

If you don’t have a food process, mash the potatoes as is (no milk or butter), rub the fat into the flour and add the spud, then continue with the rolling (or not).

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food from Unearthed

A few months ago, I was approached by a PR company and asked if I’d like to be involved in a tasting panel, and blog about the results. “Why not?”, I thought – I shall just be honest about the stuff they send.

The first set of goodies arrived today, in a white box tied round with a red ribbon – the delivery driver was quite impressed! The food is from Unearthed, and there is a fair bit, pretty much all of which is stuff we use regularly.

In the box:

• 4 packs of olives, 2 with chilli and 2 with cheese. Now, I’ve always felt I don’t like olives, despite loving their oil, but I might well be wrong (as I was about aubergines, and courgettes; but not about avocado and beetroot). Still, Pete loves ‘em, so he can test those
• 2 packs of saucisson sec, one with herbs, one not, and some proscuitto – might try a pizza with some of these
• 2 packs of barrel aged feta – we love feta, and I’ve only ever eaten the standard stuff so I’m looking forward to that
• a pack of mini chorizo, which I fell upon with glee – I haven’t yet found anywhere local that sells whole chorizo sausages, only chunks, so I’m well chuffed with these

So watch out for some recipes featuring these products. I had a lentil and feta dish planned for Saturday, so that’s where I’ll start.

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pancake day

We don’t normally bother with pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, although Pete did actually make some last night. He is In Charge of pancakes, drop scones*, chilli con carne, dhal, to name but a few.

Pancakes are so easy – flour, egg, milk, salt. And yet, all over our local small supermarkets for the past few days has been Betty Crocker’s Shake
and Make pancake mix – ingredients (including, presumably, dried egg and milk) in a plastic bottle, with room to add the requisite amount of water, shake and pour into a pan. This strikes me as just extraordinary – pancake batter is so quick and easy to make, and fun for children to do too. And the *waste* involved – are people really too idle to decant the mix into a bowl and add water from a measuring jug, even if they won’t make them from scratch? I despair.

*but, curiously, not Yorkshire Pudding.

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baking and winemaking weekend

Sorted out some wine – filtered and bottled one gallon of parsnip, although the other one went cloudy again, racked the three gallons of rhubarb (which was really 2.5 gallons and racked down to 2 + a bottle), racked the two gallons of apricot and stopped the fermentation, made a gallon of Earl Grey just to see what it’s like.

Had a baking session on Sunday – made Norwegian cinnamon buns for tea – I followed Nigella’s recipe slavishly, but the dough was ridiculously sticky, and a quick Google finds I am not alone.  I’ve amended the recipe on Nibblous to reflect, but they really were rather delicious.  We had no powdered cinnamon, and had no desire to go out, so just whizzed up some cinnamon quills in the little blender, and that was fine.  Also made some bread dough for lunch today/tomorrow, which has just come out of the oven.

We had reactive sausage rolls for tea too – frozen puff pastry (because life really *is* too short to make your own; I did it once, just to prove it), and the stuffing left over from the Christmas goose, which had been shoved in the freezer.  It was sausagemeat, breadcrumbs, lemon sage, cranberries, shopped shallot, garlic, if I recall correctly.  Pete manfully did the rolling out, and they were fab.  We ate them all. Oink.  There was some filling left, so I shall fry it up for lunch, accompanied by egg, and freshly baked bread.

For Saturday supper we had spring greens in coconut milk – I recommend this to you, it’s utterly delicious, dead cheap and very quick.  Try it! It works with kale, or curly cabbage (but not white, I wouldn’t think), or purple sprouting broccoli.

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I’ve got to try this – teabag wine!

8 x fruit teabags of choice, 1kg sugar, 1 teaspoon yeast, 1 teaspoon nutrient, 2tsps lemon juice.

Pour boiling water onto teabags and sugar in a large jug and leave until lukewarm. Discard bags and pour liquid into a demijohn. Top up with water to the ’shoulder’ of the demijohn. Add yeast and nutrient. Fit a suitable airlock – and away you go!

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