Christmas pudding making

I'm on my own in the house this weekend, just the animals to keep me company, but lots of tidying and cleaning to be done. One of the cupboards in the kitchen was fit to burst so I decided to clean it out; its the one where dried fruit and pudding-y things go. There was a load of dried fruit in there with expiry dates that are either passed, or very soon - so rather than waste it, or wait until 'stir-up Sunday' I've made some Xmas puddings.

Rather than write out a long boring list of ingredients, you can see what has been added to the bowl at each step of the recipe. After adding the ingredients I mixed them in before adding the next lot of ingredients. Explanations and instructions in the caption below the picture

Soak the dried mixed fruit in the alcohol overnight

Mix everything together....

and mix again....

And again!

Spoon the mixture into pudding bowls

Cover each bowl with 2-3 pieces of greaseproof paper/baking parchment, then cover with foil and place into a pan with water coming two-thirds of the way up the side of the bowl. Bring to the boil then simmer for 3-4 hours.. Once cooled put the bowls into a cool dry place until Christmas (the best pudding I ever had was one that had been made 2 years previously and forgotten about - fabulous flavour!) To eat at Christmas, we just re-heat briefly in the microwave (though you can just re-boil for a couple of hours) - and ALWAYS pour over some heated brandy and set light to it for the theatrics and added flavour!

Chocolate Torte for Liz

At a BBQ recently I made a couple of chocolate tortes for pudding. They didn't turn out as well as they have  in the past  - I couldn't find the recipe, and was using an unfamiliar kitchen - but I have in the past made some really brilliant chocolate torte and here is the recipe.
(This one's for you Liz!)

Chocolate torte - New Years Eve 2012

Start with 200g of good quality melted chocolate (the darker the better in theory but I always use milk chocolate). Add 200g of melted butter/margarine and mix till well combined. Then slowly beat in 4 medium sized eggs.

Mix in 200g of brown sugar  and then add 100g of a plain flour/ground almonds mix (I tend to up the almonds and decrease the flour for a richer torte)

I usually add about 25g of cocoa powder and some vanilla essence too at this point.

Pour into a greased lined cake tin and bake for about 35 mins at gas mark 4. It should be slightly squidgy inside with a nice crisp crust on top. Fab served with chantilly cream and fresh berries!

Summer meal from the garden

Having wandered down to the veg patch to do some much needed weeding and watering, I actually ended up picking things for my tea - I couldn't resist the rumbling tummy any further. (I did a little bit of half-hearted weeding, the rest will have to wait until tomorrow now)

There were a range of things ready for the picking - purple podded peas, french beans ( cosse violeto, north eastern and norwegian dry varieties), tomatoes (small cherry varieties inc sungold), baby courgettes ( yellow zucchini and patty pan) various leaves (wild carrot, lambs lettuce, purple and green orache, baby chard, mixed lettuce, nasturtium leaves, comfrey), a small whole garlic bulb and a lemon balm plant - pulled up by accident with poor weeding technique.

From left to right: fresh garlic, nasturtium flower, cherry tomatoes, purple podded peas, baby courgettes, wild carrot leaf,  cosse violetto beans, lambs lettuce,  nasturtium leaves, norwegian dry beans, mixed lettuce, purple and green orache, northeastern beans, lemon balm

As the hens have been laying well recently, and one of my favourite ways to use our eggs is home-made pasta, I decided to make some goats cheese tortellini and have them with the veg.

From LHS: tomatoes, baby courgettes and peas, mixed salad, goat cheese and lemon balm tortellini and frazzled garlicky beans

Goats cheese and lemon balm tortellini
This was just a standard pasta mix which I stuffed with a mix of goats cheese and chopped comfrey - but I laid a lemon balm leaf onto each piece of pasta before I put the cheese stuffing in. The lemon balm was stronger in flavour than I expected, but to get a really strong lemony -goat cheese filling  I'd put an extra leaf in each tortellini. I tossed the coooked tortellini in butter, pepper and some torn tarragon leaves before serving.

Frazzled garlicky beans
Having sliced the beans diagonally into bite-sized pieces, I quickly boiled them then tossed them into melted butter with some of the fresh garlic and freshly ground black pepper and 'frazzled' them a bit.

Baby courgettes, tomatoes and peas
The courgettes and tomatoes were sliced in half and lightly cooked in olive oil for a few minutes. Towards the end of the cooking time as the tomatoes were softening slightly, I threw in the peas that had been boiled for about a minute, and some of the chopped fresh garlic.

Salad
I used the various salad leaves (not the comfrey which was used in the goat cheese and lemon balm tortellini) and added some olive oil and balsamic vinegar and mixed together to make a vinaigrette

Enjoy!

Reducing waste in the kitchen - using up the ends of the bread

Bringing two families together means there are rather a lot of us and we get through a lot of bread in a week - sadly very rarely made by me at the moment.  The ends of the loaf always get left  - occasionally they are cut thick enough that we are able to slice it thinner, but usually not. So what to do with the leftovers, apart from fill up local ducks and our chickens, so that we reduce the waste?

I love gnocchi and vaguely remembered a recipe for gnocchi made from breadcrumbs so got searching for ideas. I've done my usual adaptation to suit what ingredients I have available and what I think feels right - and to take advantage of all the very abundant stinging nettles at this time of year!

Nettle and breadcrumb gnocchi
115g nettle tops
340g bread - ends of old loaves are best and use up what would might be wasted.
1 egg
Pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
Seasoning

Drop the nettle tops into boiling water and leave for about a minute then drain but don't squeeze out all the water.

Pop the bread into a food processor and start to turn it to breadcrumbs - it really does need to be very fine breadcrumbs to allow the mix to hold together - the first time I made breadcrumb gnocchi I didn't have fine enough breadcrumbs and the gnocchi fell apart.

Once the breadcrumbs are fine enough, drop the stinging nettles in to the food processor - this results in a bright green mass of breadcrumbs

Add the nutmeg, salt and pepper and then bind the whole lot together with egg to form a nice dough.

Pinch off bits of the dough and roll into marble sized balls, and place on a floured board.

Once you have made all the dough into gnocchi  you can drop them into rapidly boiling salted water then drain them once they have all risen to the top of the water

At this stage you can drop them into a frying pan with some butter in it and fry briefly, or mix them into a cheese sauce.

Very quick cheese sauce
Carton of double cream
Whatever cheese you like
Seasoning
Bay leaf

Put the cream and bay leaf into a pan and bring to a slow boil with stirring. Remove the bay leaf and add in the grated cheese (I used a mix of emmental and mature cheddar - about 100g in total), and stir and heat very gently until you have a smooth and creamy sauce, season and the pour all over the gnocchi.

Serve with a garden salad and vegetables.  Its not possible to tell this is made of stinging nettles - but the bright green colour they impart makes this perfect for kids: 'alien bogies in sauce' - even our 5 year old ate all of his knowing it was made with stingies!

Tapas-style tea

Chilli spiced potatoes

Scrub the skins of some baby new potatoes and cut into pieces a bit bigger than an inch. Heat some olive oil, chilli oil and paprika in a frying pan then toss the potatoes in and coat the potatoes thoroughly. Turn the heat down low and cook for 15 - 20 minutes until golden browned and softened.

Artichoke and asparagus salad

Snap and discard the woody ends from some asparagus spears. Boil the asparagus spears in salted water for about 3 minutes, drain and set aside. Quarter some globe artichoke hearts and mix with the asparagus spears,  Add some lemon zest, lemon juice and sesame oil into the artichoke and asparagus and season with pepper.

Comfrey, hop, courgette and chipotle tortilla

Slice up some baby courgettes and gently fry in a frying pan with olive oil and some chopped spring onions.  Chop up a chipotle chilli (a smoked halapeno chilli pepper) and add to the courgettes and spring onions. Add some chopped comprey leaves to salted boiling water and simmer for 2 minutes, throw in some hope shoots, simmer for a further 30 seconds then drain and add to the courgette mix.  Mix about 4 eggs with some cottage cheese and pour over the vegetable mix in the frying pan. If you like it, chop up some goats cheese and sprinkle that over the top with some mozzarella. Continue to warm over a low heat until most of the egg mixture has set, then put under a hot grill to finish off the top and brown the cheese.

Plate the asparagus and artichoke hearts onto a bed of mixed leaves and nasturtium flowers.  Make a mint and cucumber raita to take off the heat from the chilli potatoes, and serve with big wedges of tortilla and salad.

Pea, hop shoot and goat cheese mezzaluna

I love the golden hops round the greenhouse - but they are misbehaving, sending suckers inside and then revelling in the heat and abundant water and crowding out my tomatoes - so it was time for another chop this evening.  I cut down a large handful of hop shoots (the top six inches of each shoot) and then realised that I didn't want omelette or fritatta which is how I normally eat them - instead I was rather keen to have some pasta.

So, I made pasta  using Doves Farm pasta flour mixed with egg yolks, and a tiny bit of water to bind, then rolled it into strips and cut out circles to make mezzaluna (half-moon).

The stuffing was made from an approximately equal mix of peas, hop shoots, goat cheese and mozzarella - slightly pureed down and then put into the pasta circles which were folded over and sealed. I boiled them for about 3 minutes then tossed them in melted butter with lemon zest, basil leaves and freshly ground black pepper.

I'm not sure that I could taste the hop shoots in there at all - maybe they don't add to the flavour - or just have a very delicate contribution to make? I think I'll try hop fritters next, or maybe one of my favourites: battered halloumi (a la Terre a Terre) on a bed of buttered hops - whatever, the hops are already planning their next greenhouse takeover so it won't be long.

Comfrey and Fat Hen Pie

The smell of comfrey tea, a fantastic homemade fertiliser of plants, stewing in the water butt has always put me off eating comfrey myself. Until now.

The comfrey in the garden has grown ridiculously fast, and with the high winds this week, much has blown over forcing me to cut the first lot to make comfrey tea. So I took the opportunity to pick some of the best leaves for myself - with trepidation.

I started by blind baking a pie case that would end up a bit crunchy on the outside (I preferred it to a a very short pastry crust). The comfrey and fat hen were boiled for about 3 minutes - and actually smelled fantastic which I was not expecting! I then chopped them up and added them to a bechamel sauce to which I had added two egg yolks and some cottage cheese. This was all mixed up and put into the pastry crust, topped with some panko breadcrumbs and baked for 20-30 minutes.

I did not expect this to taste as good as it did, but I'm delighted to have found another leaf in the garden that can be used in place of spinach. Comfrey puts down incredibly long roots and is able to bring a lot of nutrients back to the surface - why its used to make liquid fertiliser for plants.  Fat Hen was traditionally used in cooking until mass-produced spinach replaced it. Hens also love it hence the name (and its effect on them apparently).

Recipe inspired by Rosamund Richardson's recipes for Fat Hen and Comfrey.

Veggie breakfast recipe

Potato rosti topped with sloppy tomato, mushroom and garlic mix,
served with a poached egg

Here is my entry for the Demuth's restaurant veggie breakfast recipe competition.

I make a potato rosti - the very best potatoes to do it with, in my opinion, are pink fir apple - but hard to get hold of in supermarkets. I clean the skins and then grate them (the best pink colouration is just under the skin in pink fir apple hence not peeling them). I then melt some butter and put the grated potato into that. The potato is then put into stainless steel rings in a frying pan which has olive oil in it (with a touch of my chilli oil for a bit more of a kick!), the potato is packed down and then fried, flipped over and fried on the other side. 

While that is going on I chop up some mushrooms and cherry tomatoes and start to fry them down in some olive oil. I add slices of garlic (fresh 'wet' garlic from the garden is best, but wild garlic also makes a showing in this when its in season) and then some basil leaves towards the end - with a good grind of black pepper too. I tend to do this with chestnut mushrooms - but for a real treat this would be with shiitake and oyster mushroom.

The sloppy mushroom and tomato mix is then put on top of the crisp rostis, and all topped off with a poached egg.

The tomato mushroom mix is also really nice on top of a good piece of toast - that's how I first had it in Barcelona - but I am potty about potato rosti so prefer it that way at home.(any waxy potato is good in my opinion for a potato rosti - possibly because I don't make them the traditional way.)


Competition details in Rachel Demuth's blog

Lemon meringue pie

Lemon meringue pie; made using the recipe from the hummingbird cookery book.

Here I have doubled the meringue mixture so there is a veritable mountain on top of the lemony goo.

Hop Frittata

The golden hop growing up the side of the greenhouse (LHS of picture)

April and March see the re-introduction of hops into our diet as the hop inside and outside the greenhouse gets going again.  I leave all the tendrils growing on the outside of the greenhouse as they provide some temperature control over the summer to the tomato plants inside, but woe betide any tendrils that come up inside the greenhouse. They are far too aggressive and invasive and as they send runners up to ten feet in all directions, have to be kept under control.
Eating them is by far the best way. They have to be cooked as they tend to have lots of silica spikes along the stems (that help them climb and cover) but these can be incredibly sharps - plunging into boiling water deals with this problem.

Probably our favourite way to eat them is in a Frittata. I chuck fresh garlic, hop shoots, cubes of re-cooked potato (or some raw grated pink fir apple potato into a frying pan with some olive oil and cook for a few minutes. In the meantime I mix eggs with a dollop of natural yogurt (Yeo Valley is the best), and some chunks of goats cheese and then pour this all over the potato, garlic and hop mix. This is then cooked until all the egg has set, and often finished for a minute under the grill to brown the top a little.

I vary this recipe throughout the year - its a great way to use up our permanent glut of eggs and the occasional glut of courgettes, patty pans and cherry tomatoes.

Odd-sized eggs

The very different sized eggs laid by our ex-batts on December 7th 2011.
The smallest had no yolk - but sadly the largest did not compensate for this by being a double yolker...

[Update: May 2012 - we no longer have chickens, the six we had when these eggs were laid, Tilly, CJ, Chicken, Madeline, Eggbutt and Pebbles, are no longer with us. Eggbutt and Pebbles vanished without trace one weekend in February this year, Madeline was plucked from the jaws of a fox by Rod on Feb 16th and died later that morning, CJ died a week later, and Chicken and Tilly have joined a new ex-batt flock in rural North Wales where there appear to be no foxes!]

A very simple pea ravioli recipe

Make  pasta; mix egg yolks, strong white flour and a bit of water into a firm dough and roll out into thin sheets.

For the filling mix peas (thawed petit pois or fresh from the garden and lightly cooked) with cottage cheese, goats cheese and some veggie parmesan - season and then liquidise briefly. Put dollops of the filling on the pasta, cover with another piece of pasta and form into raviolis squeezing all the air out.

Cook for about 2-3 minutes in boiling water and drain. Melt butter and add freshly ground pepper, a touch of chilli oil to give it a bit of a kick, some zested lemon rind and some sage leaves - toss the ravioli in this.

It also works well to melt the butter and just add some peas to that and then toss the ravioli into that.