a blast from the past

I went to a jumble sale in the village on Saturday and, as usual, made a beeline for the book stall.  I picked up three paperbacks, and then … then … I saw it.

A cookery book that was my absolute bible when I was first married, and which has been out of print for mamy years.  My copy vanished when I moved down to Bristol many years ago.

I looked it up on Amazon this morning - it’s the Dairy Book of Home Cookery, published by the Milk Marketing Board in 1979.  Starting price for second hand copies: £15.95.

I paid two quid for all four books!  I’m so pleased to have it again :)

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cauliflower and potato, indian style

using up: cauliflower.

This didn’t go quite to plan, but turned out utterly delicious.  I don’t suppose we’ll ever be able to recreate it, though.

I set a pan of potatoes to parboil, intending to deep fry them later, and put a cut up cauli in the steamer on top.  Pete did Indian spices - coriander, cumin, tumeric, fenugreek, cardamon seeds and allspice - and whizzed up ginger and garlic and a green chilli.  The timer went, and I put the steamer on the draining board while I finished emptying the dishwasher.  And forgot all about it!

When I remembered, the potatoes were pretty mushy.  I turfed them into a wok with some groundnut oil, but they were very soft, and wouldn’t take a crispy edge.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.  Pete fried off the ginger and garlic, while I added the spices to the potato mush, and then the cauliflower.

We then put a small tin of tomato purée in with the ginger garlic, cooked it down a little, then tipped that into the vegetable mess.  Served it with rice, and it really was lovely - just the sort of texture I like from comfort food!

It made a second tub for the freezer too!

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this week’s soup w/c 24 nov 08

I forgot to tell you about last week’s soup, but it wasn’t very exciting, and involved grated cabbage, so we’ll move on.

I cooked a gammon in coke at the back end of last week (well, half a gammon, to be precise; the other half is in the freezer).  In fact, it was a gammon in half coke, half water, as I didnt have enough coke, but it was none the worse for that.  I kept the stock for … soup.  It went in the fridge for a few days, so we could easily get the fat off the top.

So … soup this week is one parsnip, two carrots, one leek, half a swede, a broccoli stalk (waste not, want not :), and about 1/3 of a cauli that needed eating.  Chopped small in the Magimix, and cooked a bit in some oil.  Then added the stock, about half a pint of last week’s soup, a mug full of barley, and some pepper.  And some chopped dried sage as an afterthought.  No salt, as the gammon stock should be salty already.

It smells nice …

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last week’s meals w/c 17 nov 08

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mushroom stroganoff

[sorry - took photo with iPhone and it didn't come out well]

Using up: half a carton of double cream, some elderly mushrooms

I was going to do a mushroom sauce for tagliatelle, and then inspiration struck!  I sent Pete out to see if there was any parsley left in the herb tubs while it was still daylight, and there was, which was good.  There’s a little bit more left, which I shall use up tonight - watch this space!

Slice an onion in half lengthways, peel, and slice into rings as thin as you can.  We did 1.5 onions which turned out to be slightly too much, so just use one big one for two of you.

Put this in a big frying pan with lots of butter and a fair amount of paprika; I didn’t measure it, but it was probably a couple of dessertspoons’ worth, at least.  Let these cook down in the butter until soft, then add in a heap of thinly sliced mushrooms, and keep stirring until they’re cooked as you like.  I added a bit of olive oil, as mushrooms as buggers for pulling the liquid out of a dish.  When done, I added the juice of half a lemon, and the cream, and a good sprinkling of black pepper.

I’m slightly ashamed to say that we always have stroganoff with chips;  oven chips, at that.  I know it’s bad and wrong, but I don’t care.  It’s fab.

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breakfast today

We were bored with porridge, we had four black bananas, and some milk that needed using up, and so …

I whipped up a double batch of my tried and trusty banana muffin recipe - I was a bit lazy, and put everything in the Magimix rather than do it separately.  Also I left out the sugar, and put in a couple of dessert spoons of honey, because the bananas were very ripe and I thought they’d be quite sweet enough.

They were.  They were gorgeous.  I’m ashamed to say that we ate four each for breakfast [oink].  There are four left, and I put the remaining batter in two tubs in the freezer, so we can have fresh muffins for breakfast again, *providing* I remember to take the batter out the night before.

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this week’s meals w/c 10 nov 08

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mixed game casserole

We went down to Nailsea yesterday, and the farmers’ market was on.  We came home with four beautiful faggots, and a pack of venison sausages, which have gone in the freezer.  And a loaf of stilton and walnut bread, which we had with some smoked buffalo cheese we also got there, and the remainder toasted for breakfast this morning - it went surprisingly well with marmalade!

And a pack of mixed game - venison and pheasant, mostly.  It was £5.90 for 500g; not quite enough to do four meals, but too much for two, so I immediately put 100g of lima beans into soak, and made the casserole yesterday evening, to cook slowly today for dinner.  We shall have it with dumplings, and purple sprouting broccoli.

I’ve put the recipe on Nibblous, as it’s a more “grown up” one than I normally do, and I thought it deserved it.

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corned beef hash

Having tackled some of the sprout overload on Wednesday night, we looked at the 1.5 cabbages in the fridge yesterday and thought “we really should eat some of that”.

So - cut up a couple of biggish spuds into smallish chunks, and put them in the bottom half of the steamer to boil.  Shredded not very much of a cabbage - it goes a long way, does cabbage, and put it on to steam for the last six minutes of the potato boiling.

Chopped an onion, and set it to fry in some oil - unaccountably, we have run out of dripping, both in the dripping bowl, and in a packet.  Shockingly poor housekeeping there.

Diced the contents of a small can of corned beef, and added it to the cooking onion.  Stirred these around until both onion and corned beef were soft.

Drained the veg, and added the potato - mashed it gently down into the pan with a masher so everything started to meld together, then added the cabbage and stirred everything round.  Started patting the mixture down so it would brown, which it did quite helpfully.

I ate mine with lashings of HP Sauce.  Pete had Lea and Perrins, but he’s peculiar.

Haven’t had this for ages, and had forgotten what nice comfort food it is.

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this week’s soup 10 nov 08

I am remiss in telling you about this, and indeed I’m sure you don’t care.  I record them for myself, really :)

I used the stock from the very last of the roast chicken.  Food processed one parsnip, one leek, four carrots, half a swede into mulch, hurled it in the soup pan, cooked down for 10 minutes.

Added stock, a mugful or so of lentils, seasoning.  Cooked.  Done.

Not very exciting, really .. but tasty.  And very warming in this cold weather.

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