No love sincerer...

River Cottage Rocks - Chickpea ketchup curry

2012-01-24T19:25:00.000Z

I don't normally take part in blog challenges - mostly because I don't often have the time to cook things that I wasn't already planning on cooking. However, the River Cottage Rocks blog challenge hosted by Jo's Kitchen is one that I could fit around my lifestyle - particularly as this month's theme is 'Everyday Easy'.

I have actually been catching up on the River Cottage Veg shows that aired at the end of last year on 4 on Demand. I have been inspired to cook more meat-free dishes again, now that I have more energy. So, I decided to cook Chickpea Ketchup Curry. It uses store-cupboard ingredients and is quick and easy to prepare - perfect for midweek!

First of all, my picture looks NOTHING like the picture on the website, even though I followed the recipe:

Yeah, I'm not that neat when it comes to chopping onions.

This was quite tasty, although I found it a little too sweet. I did find that the flavour grew on me as I ate, though. The spice is quite subtle and next time I would add a few more chilli flakes to give it bigger kick. It was very easy to make, although I have to wonder how healthy it really was given that the sauce is mostly ketchup (unless you made your own ketchup, in which case, I applaud you).

I also discovered this groovy thing I could do with my camera while zooming in or out while using a slow shutter-speed:

Far out, man!

Allotment update - week 1

2012-01-22T22:38:00.000Z

We spent a good few hours at the allotment this weekend. With help from a friend, we got rid of most of the rest of the rubbish to the tip. I also picked up more rotten potatoes than I care to think about, and we started doing some weeding.

Remember what the allotment looked like last week? Here's a reminder:

And here's me working in the allotment this week:

Don't you love my super glam 'allotment clothes'?

I hope you can see the improvement. We have yet to move all that gravel on the paved area (no idea why it was all left there - at least it is something we can use!), and we are going to get some slabs for the path.

My muscles hurt and I am tired, but I find working on the allotment thoroughly enjoyable. And it is much cheaper than going to the gym!

Plotting my plot

2012-01-18T17:36:00.001Z

I want to blog about my progress with the allotment as much as I can, to serve as a record for myself if nothing else.

On Sunday, we started clearing it of rubbish. We still need to take a lot of it to the tip, but at least it is bagged up and in one place now (there were all sorts of odds and ends in the bushes and all over the plot).

Our plot consists of three large beds, and I'm starting to have ideas about what I'm going to do with them. I'm not specifically aiming to grow organically, but I don't want to use chemical pesticides and will avoid chemicals in general as far as practicable. I've also been very influenced by reading The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler, and like the idea of having a pretty but edible plot, and I also like the idea of using a 'polyculture'-type method.

I've bought some seeds already - some from the garden centre and some ordered from Garden Organic (I've ordered from the latter before and found them reliable, etc., which is why I used them again - as I say, I'm not specifically going to garden organically).

These I bought from the garden centre the other day: Swiss Chard (Bright Lights), Sunflowers (Solar Eclipse), Radishes (Rainbox Mixed) , Beetroot (Boltardy) and the poppies were a freebie (I love poppies - and you can eat the seeds!).

My seed potatoes, from Garden Organic. The variety is Ambo. I didn't realise I'd get quite so many!

And the rest of my order from Garden Organic: Fennel (Finale), Kale (Red Winter), Pumpkin (Jack Be Little), Rocket (Wild) and Marigolds for pest control (one can hope) and a bit of pretty!

These seeds I bought last January and then never did anything with them. I am obviously hoping to rectify that this year. Thyme, Mint, Tomato (Red Robin - I went for a bush variety this time) and Spinach (F1 Reddy).

This pack was a gift from a friend a couple of years ago, which I never got round to planting. They are still good according to the 'use by' date, though. A really interesting collection. I hear slugs don't like Mustard Greens!

I got these seeds free two years ago from the BBC Dig In campaign. They have no use by date on them, but they haven't been opened, so I'm hoping they will still be ok.

So, that's my seed collection so far. I'm also thinking of planting some parsnips, and we are thinking about having a fruit tree or two. We certainly have the space!

A New Adventure

2012-01-14T16:59:00.000Z

I've been on an allotment waiting list for a little over a year and recently I got The Call. I was expecting to be on the list for a lot longer, to be honest, so I was surprised, but also excited.

The deal was done today, and I now have my very own patch of land.

It's actually been left in a pretty good state as you can see, but needs a good tidy up. Our plot is up to the 'path' which you can see at the edge of both pictures. It's a pretty big patch of land with the potential to grow a fair few veggies.

I'm excited, although a bit daunted given that I have only grown in pots before. We all have to start somewhere, though!

Even more leftovers: Chicken Noodle Soup

2012-01-10T21:38:00.000Z

I really didn't feel like cooking tonight but I had some leftover roast chicken from Sunday, including the carcass and really didn't want it to go to waste (and I will have less time for cooking the rest of the week). Once I started cooking though, I was glad I did, because my adaptation of this Chicken, Sweetcorn and Noodle Soup recipe from BBC Good Food went down a storm!

The stock in this recipe is made from raw chicken, including the meat, but I thought it could probably work with a cooked chicken carcass. I had already separated the left over meat from the carcass, so I just used the carcass in the stock and then added the meat when it came to making the soup. I left out the celery because I didn't have any, but I think the flavour of the stock was still pretty good. It was probably a subtler flavour being a cooked chicken, but it worked pretty well with this recipe.

As you can see from my photo, I also did not use sweetcorn (I didn't have any), so I used frozen petit pois instead; and I used fine egg noodles rather than vermicelli. I halved the recipe, which was enough for 2 with a bit left over.

We also add a little soy sauce to each of our bowls after serving, which worked really well and gave it a subtle oriental kick.

Sometimes leftovers are better than the original dinner.

Leftovers Part II: Friday Night Rice

2012-01-06T19:42:00.001Z

So, this is what happened to the rest of the pork joint:

This recipe is called Barney's Monday Night Rice, and very good it is too - much scrummier than the raw ingredients suggest. And healthier and tastier than anything you'd get from a takeaway. Barney is clearly a genius.

What I particularly like about this recipe that it uses leftovers and store-cupboard ingredients. I didn't have to buy anything in specially. I did, however, boil some rice first and then throw it in to be stir-fried rather than use leftover/ready-cooked, but that's not too much of a hassle.

This recipe is well-deserving of its 5 stars on BBC Good Food!

Leftovers

2012-01-05T21:31:00.000Z

I'm doing my best to put my New Year goals into action. I did a roast leg of pork on Wednesday evening (I like to break with tradition and cook my roast dinners midweek) and there was loads leftover. So, tonight I sliced up some of the pork and stir-fried it with some peppers, served it with some noodles and some crunchy lettuce and sprinkled it liberally with soy sauce.

Had a bit of an epiphany this evening as well, that I don't need to make culinary masterpieces or use fancy recipes EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. This dish would not win any points on MasterChef, but it was porky and noodly and soy-saucy, and it filled a hole.

Also, I get extra non-wasteage points for getting the lettuce from the bargain bin in Sainsbury's on the way home from work - no doubt, that would have gone in the bin if it hadn't been sold.

And I still have more leftover pork, and I bet the rest of the lettuce will still be good for sandwiches tomorrow even though the use-by date is today.

New Year Foodie Goals

2012-01-03T19:48:00.002Z

I never make resolutions. I don't think I ever kept one resolution that I made ever. Still, it's good to have goals and it doesn't hurt to re-evaluate them at the beginning of the year.

Last year was a bit of a strange one. I was ill a lot, and therefore all the food-related goals I'd made and maintained previously fell out of the window. We ate a lot of things from jars and packets and quite a lot of takeaways. I had to stop getting my fruit and veg box delivered. I didn't really grow anything. I even fell out of the habit of using the breadmaker, so most of our bread was supermarket bread.

I'm not intending to complain, though. We still ate and we ate well most of the time. We had two amazing but very different holidays last year, for which I am very grateful. I also achieved a dream of starting my MA last year, so 2011 was certainly not a wash-out.

My foodie goals this year will not be to take up all the previous goals I had. I still don't think I am 100% recovered from all my health issues yet, so I certainly don't want to give myself too much to do too soon. Also, my life and my routine has changed now: although I have reduced my hours at work, studying takes up a lot of my time and is very important to me, and as my wedding day draws ever closer, I will most likely be increasingly busy with all that that entails.

One of my biggest goals is to waste less food. I hate throwing food away, but I still do it far more often than I should. Sometimes in the past I have bought a particular, perhaps slightly unusual item, for a specific recipe, used a bit of it, never used it again and had to throw it away. No more! If I can't adapt the recipe to what I've got or to something I know will be used up before its use-by date, then I will not make the damn recipe! I also need to plan a little better what I buy in my weekly grocery shop.

There are three words I'm going to try and keep in mind when it comes to food and cooking. They are: simple, healthy, and economical.

I think I made a good start with tonight's dinner. I made this Lincoln Sausage and Lentil dish because I had nearly all the ingredients it required. I didn't have any pancetta or even any streaky bacon, so I left it out. I substituted vegetable stock for chicken stock and dried rosemary for fresh. Finally, I halved the recipe, and we still have plenty left over for lunch tomorrow! It was a really tasty meal - I think the white wine vinegar gave it a subtle kick, which seemed to bring out all the flavours. I served it with mashed potato - yummy!

Happy New Year, all!

Merry Christmas and a guest post

2011-12-20T12:35:00.001Z

This month I have done a guest post at Midlands Food Bloggers all about Food Banks. Please see my article here:

http://midsfoodbloggers.wordpress.com/2011/12/20/festive-food-bank-time/

Merry Christmas, one and all!

The M Kitchen Pop-up Restaurant

2011-11-26T18:28:00.000Z

If posts become ever fewer and far between from me, it is because since October this year I have started studying for an MA in History with the Open University. I have cut down my hours at work to accommodate this, but I am still pretty busy. And I am trying to plan a wedding (trying being the operative word, there...).

Wednesday afternoon I was supposed to be studying, but I went to the M Kitchen pop-up restaurant instead. This was a promotional event to market a new range of products from Morrisons. I went to the one in Birmingham at The Custard Factory.

As it says on the website, "Five of the UK's leading chefs – Pierre Koffmann, Aldo Zilli, Nigel Haworth, Atul Kochhar and Bryn Williams – have each contributed a classic dish to the delicious menu at the M Kitchen."

The picture to the right shows the five dishes that each chef has contributed. Theses dishes will be available to buy in ready-meal form from Morrisons M Kitchen range. But enough of that for the minute - onwards with the meal I had on Wednesday!

I had never been to a Pop Up Restaurant before and haven't ever really shopped at Morrisons, therefore I had no idea what to expect from a pop up restaurant run by Morrisons and a complimentary one at that. (Incidentally, this was the first time I have ever dined out alone too!)

First of all, the staff were wonderful. Very polite and attentive and helpful. Upon being seated I was greeted with a glass of Morrisons champagne. Now, I am not a champagne expert and to be honest can't massively tell the difference between the cheap stuff and a bottle of Bolly, so perhaps not the best judge; but, the Morrisons stuff seemed nice enough to me.

Then I was brought some bread and olives. The marinated olives were lovely and I ate most of them, which turned out to be a mistake given how much food was to come...

For my starter I chose Roast tomato soup with Chorizo and Manchego. I was interested to see what the chefs had managed to do with a tomato soup. It was very tasty and I loved the addition of the spicy chorizo to a classic soup.

I was then brought another starter, compliments of the chef! It was scallops with broad beans and peas. Hardly seasonal, but, this was the first time I had ever tried scallop (yes, I know, I am a rubbish foodie) and oh. my. god. The scallops melted like butter in the mouth and the soft, sweet, warm scallop was offset nicely by the fresh, slightly bitter (but also slightly sweet) broad bean and pea accompaniment. This was definitely a highlight of the entire meal.

For my main, I ordered the beef bourguinon with creamy mash. This dish was created by Pierre Koffman, who is apparently head chef of Koffman's at the Berkeley Hotel in Knightsbridge. The blurb says of this dish: "The rich, opulent and sticky flavours of Pierre's Bourguignon come from premium British ox cheeks, along with his unique cooking method." Not sure what his unique cooking method is, but again, this was very tasty. I agree that it was rich and sticky, but 'opulent' is perhaps going a bit far. The beef was lovely and tender and falling apart and the sauce was, as I say, rich and sticky. The carrots were perfectly cooked. The best part, however, was the creamy mash. The creaminess of the mash complimented the richness of the sauce very nicely. I can't quite imagine how this is going to translate into a ready meal, but I plan at some point to find out. If it's approaching as good as it was in the restaurant, I will be a happy lady.

For dessert I had the cheesecake. It was gooood. Very creamy and served with sharp, sticky berries. Yummy. I polished off the lot, despite all the food I had already consumed. Unfortunately, looking at the promotional material I was given, starters and desserts do not feature in the ready meal range - clearly, these were given to us to sweeten the deal.

I didn't try any of Morrisons range of wines because I was planning to do some studying once I got home; and I needed to make sure I could find my way back to the train station after the meal.

I very much enjoyed my meal courtesy of Morrisons and was very impressed with the quality of the food. I will definitely be trying their new range of ready meals. More details about the M kitchen range can be found here.

It was also lovely to bump into Jo of Jo's Kitchen and her adorable 1-month-old son! I look forward to reading Jo's review of the experience, as she ordered different things than I did.

Antigua part 1 - The Sandals resort

2011-11-18T12:38:00.000Z

I arrived home from a holiday to Antigua this week, and while still really rather jet-lagged (over-night flights are punishing!) I wanted to tell you about some of the lovely food I had.

Firstly, I should explain that I was lucky enough to win the holiday to Antigua. I won an all-inclusive 7-night holiday to Sandals Grande Antigua, and we paid to stay on another 7 nights to make a lovely long relaxing holiday.

This is the first time I had ever been on an all-inclusive holiday before and, boy, did I take advantage of it. (I didn't realise quite how gluttonous I'd been until I got home and got on the scales...). Not only were breakfast, lunch and dinner included, there were snacks and plenty of drinks to be had too (including cocktails, 'mocktails', beer, house wines and soft drinks).

The various bars did a wide variety of cocktails unique to Sandals as well as all the old favourites. I discovered a penchant for pina coladas, but also very much enjoyed the Sandals Banana Sip Sop, which was like a banana milkshake but with alcohol in it.

This bird enjoyed the cocktails too...

One of the swim-up bars at the resort.

Breakfast was a buffet-type affair. I was impressed with the range of items available. There was everything from fresh fruit to sausages and bacon to pancakes. I was a fan of the baked beans, which tasted homemade rather than from a tin, and the same with the hash-browns. I also enjoyed the nods to more local cuisine, including Jonnycake, Escoveitch fish and fried plaintains.

There were a number of different restaurants open for lunch and dinner. Our favourite lunch spot quickly became Barefoot by the Sea, as it did a variety of salads, sandwiches and some more local foods such as Antiguan Jerk Chicken. We also liked the pizzeria, which had a wood-fired oven, and served some very tasty pizzas. We tried the lunch buffet once, but found it a little uninspiring.

For dinner there were three restaurants which required you to book a table, and a few which you could just turn up at. Out of all the restaurants for dinner, two stood out for us, both of which you had to book.

Firstly, there was Eleanor's, serving Caribbean cuisine. I liked this restaurant for obvious reasons. When I am holiday, I do like to try some of the local cuisine. Highlights for me were the lamb curry (I love Caribbean-style curries - there's something about the mixture of sweet, savoury and spice which is very appealing) and the starter of Red Bean Soup, which was the perfect blend of meaty and salty - I could imagine eating a large bowl on a cold evening. I will have to try and find a recipe.

Next, there was Kimono's - a teppanyaki restaurant.

The food here tasted amazing. You chose a starter and a soup or salad and then were served a small(ish) portion of each of the three different mains on offer by the teppanyaki chef who cooked the food in front of you. The chef's name was Suga (pronounced 'suger') "aka Mr Lover Lover" and not only did his food taste wonderful, he was also a great entertainer. His talents also extend to singing, using his spatulas as percussion instruments and generally cracking jokes and making everyone laugh. This is a restaurant with great atmosphere as well as great food. I loved the salmon with garlic butter and lime and the orange chicken.

Other restaurants weren't quite as memorable but they all served pretty good food. The Bayside restaurant sometimes did themed nights, and Steak Night was truly excellent - I've never had a better Ribeye - and it was massive too! No wonder I gained so much weight...

My next post will be about food and drink that we consumed outside of the resort (which wasn't a huge amount given that the all-inclusiveness of the resort, but definitely worth its own post.)

Help! All this food is ruining my figure!

thespicery.com: Singapore Noodles

2011-10-11T20:49:00.000+01:00

For my birthday last month my sister-in-law bought me a subscription to a monthly spicebox from www.thespicery.com and tonight I made my first recipe from it.

The idea is that each month you get sent a box containing a couple of recipes (a main and a pudding) and the spices that are needed for it.

Tonight I cooked Singapore Noodles. It was handy having the spices already mixed, although I found the recipe itself a little fiddly. (It was supposed to have prawns and beansprouts in it too, but I left them out). The mix of spices made this a highly flavourful and fragant dish, although the spice was erring on the slightly-too-hot side for both myself and my fiancé, but we enjoyed it nonetheless.

I would definitely recommend giving a spicebox from thespicery.com a go. I feel like it is giving me inspiration for new and different things to cook. The recipes include what the spice packs contain, so you can recreate it yourself with your own spice blends.

The website also sells individual spices as well as various spice blends.

This certainly made for a unique (and useful!) birthday present!

Beer Experiment

2011-10-01T13:43:00.000+01:00

A quick post just to tell you about a new blog. My fiancé has started a blog all about beer - a subject on which he is very enthusiastic:

http://beerexperiment.blogspot.com/

I'd join him in his beer experiment, except I don't like beer.

Chicken and chorizo jambalaya and cajun seasoning

2011-09-18T21:26:00.002+01:00

I had the sudden urge to cook something different tonight, but it was too late to amend my online grocery order which was due to arrive this afternoon, so I had to work with what I had already ordered. After a quick search on BBC Good Food, I decided to make this Chicken & Chorizo Jambalaya. The only things I didn't have were the chorizo and the Cajun seasoning. I sent my boyfriend out to get the chorizo (he ended up getting one from Asda from their Extra-Special range, and I can recommend it - it was delicious!).

Although I didn't have ready-made Cajun seasoning, I do have a lot of spices in my store cupboard, so I googled it and found this recipe. I pretty much followed the recipe, except I didn't have any onion powder/granules, so simply left that out, and I used less salt.

It worked well in the jambalaya recipe, giving it a warm heat without being too spicy. Perfect for a chilly Autumnal evening!

(NB: I used more chorizo sausage than the recipe said because chorizo sausage rarely comes in packs of 75g and I wasn't going to waste it. And, I love chorizo. Nom nom nom. I also used about 500ml chicken stock.)

All in all, a fairly simple, hearty, warming dish. And one that could be easily doubled or tripled if you are entertaining friends. I will definitely make this again!

Recipe: Summer Chicken and Chickpea Stew

2011-07-30T19:17:00.001+01:00

I made this dish a couple of weeks ago, but have only just got round to blogging about it. I suddenly had inspiration to concoct something of my own design after a long, dry spell. Have I mentioned how much I love one-pot cooking? This is possibly related to the fact that we don't own a dishwasher.

My fiancé and I both thought it was very tasty, so here is the recipe should you want to recreate it in your own home.

Serves 4

Ingredients

Olive oil
1 large onion (I used red onion because it was all I had, but I'm sure white would work just as well), chopped
2 large cloves garlic, crushed
1 red pepper, chopped
1 medium aubergine
2 free range chicken breasts, diced
300ml chicken stock
1 400g can tinned tomatoes
2 table spoons tomato puree
1 teaspoon dried thyme (fresh herbs could be used, but I didn't have any...)
a pinch of dried chilli flakes
salt and pepper
1 400g can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

Method

1) Heat a little oil in a large pan. Fry onions over a medium heat for a few minutes until starting to soften.

2) Add garlic and pepper and fry for a couple of minutes.

3) Add chicken and cook over a medium-high heat until starting to brown.

4) While the chicken is cooking chop the aubergine (it is important not to chop beforehand as aubergine oxidises very quickly - if you prefer to prepare your aubergine by 'salting' or 'relaxing' it, you will need to prepare it beforehand. Me, I can't be arsed.) and then add to the pan.

5) Cook until chicken and aubergine are cooked all the way through.

6) Add chicken stock, tinned tomato, tomato puree, dried thyme and chilli flakes. Season to taste. Bring to the boil and then turn down the heat and simmer, partially covered by a lid, for about 20 minutes.

7) Add chickpeas. You can also add some more water if it's starting to look a little dry. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

8) Serve with some nice bread.

Bon appetit!

Restaurant review: Mount Fuji - Birmingham

2011-07-09T14:24:00.001+01:00

I must have written this review ages ago and then forgotten about it. I only discovered it among my Word files because I have recently got a new laptop, so I have been moving things across from my old hard drive. Anyway, on with the review...!

A few yards from Jamie’s Italian in Birmingham, there is a rather underrated Japanese restaurant called Mount Fuji.

Before I dined in Mount Fuji I’d never really tried Japanese food (I don’t think Marks and Spencer’s sushi really counts...) and I didn’t know what Bento was. Essentially, it’s a lunch box – a meal in a box. I have had several bento boxes at Mount Fuji now and they have all been delicious, interesting and nutritionally balanced: the meat and rice is served with equal amounts of vegetables and salad. I love the organisation and the aesthetics of the compartments of the box – it makes your meal feel a little like a picnic or a buffet.

And that reflects the atmosphere of Mount Fuji – Japanese food served simply in an informal setting. The high bar-stool-type chairs and the long counters give the restaurant the air of a coffee shop or diner. The food is generally brought out as and when it is ready and it works well to order several different things from the menu and share with friends.

Favourites from the menu include the vegetable tempura – coated in paper-thin batter and served with a sweet chilli dipping sauce, a light and flavourful starter perfect for sharing; the sushi must be tried particularly if you’ve never had genuine Japanese sushi before; and the freshly made desserts are definitely worth a go – I like the giant profiterole filled with matcha cake, cream and ice cream.

The service is quite informal to match the informal style of eating that this restaurant provides and staff are polite and usually attentive. The kitchen is an open kitchen in the middle of the restaurant so you can watch the chefs at work!

Mount Fuji is truly an experience not to be missed.

The McDonald's Experiment

2011-06-15T20:24:00.001+01:00

When I was in my late teens, I made a conscious decision not to eat at McDonald's anymore. This was for a number of reasons including not really finding the food that appetising. I was also starting to discover my own political and ethical views and decided I didn't like the way McDonald's marketed their, what was in my view, massively unhealthy food products to children. I decided they deserved no more of my money or custom. (My KFC habit took a little longer to die, however...)

Therefore, until yesterday, I hadn't eaten a McDonald's meal for about 10 years. The documentary Super Size Me and the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser kept me mindful of the fact that McDonald's is Bad.

So, what made me crack? Simply, a massive craving for a Big Mac. I cannot even fully explain why, especially given that I never even ate Big Macs when I used to eat at McDonald's.

And, how was the meal? Not bad. I quite enjoyed it in a guilty kind of way. McDonald's, it seems, is my forbidden fruit. It was a little on the cold side by the time I got it home (no longer do McDonald's provide polystyrene boxes for their Big Macs!) and I felt the special sauce overpowered the flavour of everything else in the Big Mac. Not that anything else tasted of very much. Except the gherkin. The gherkin was probably the best bit. The fries were goooood, though. There is something about the crispiness and saltiness of McDonald's fries that is very more-ish.

Buying the meal was interesting. I just asked for a Big Mac meal and was immediately asked if I wanted a large meal (I opted for a medium). According to the menu, you have the choice of having it with fries or a salad. Seriously, who orders a Big Mac with a salad? Not very many people, apparently, because I didn't even specify and got given fries. I chose to have orange juice as my drink in an attempt at having something healthy, though.

Another thing that has changed since I last stepped into a McDonald's is that they now print nutrition information on the boxes of their products. I was actually slightly impressed that my entire meal came in at about 800 calories; I was expecting it to be at least 1000. There's obviously quite a lot of salt and fat in the meal, though - but I guess that's what I was craving.

I have since been trying to work out why I have been strongly craving McDonald's for quite a while now and why I finally caved. At first I thought it couldn't be anything to do with advertising because I don't watch commercial TV and I don't listen to commercial radio. But then when I was walking into work this morning I noticed two McDonald's posters on the way. Also, often when I go into the shopping centre in town, I go past the open plan food hall, which includes a McDonald's.

One of the things discussed in Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser is the associations made with food during childhood and how fast food companies exploit this to gain lifelong customers. Having been thinking about this recently, I've realised that I have quite a few memories associated with McDonald's and all of them actually make me feel warm and fuzzy and nostalgic. I remember The Little Mermaid Happy Meals; I remember birthday parties and getting to go 'behind the scenes' to see them 'cooking' the food; I remember Ronald McDonald and the Hamburglar. So, perhaps something triggered a nostalgic memory for me and I suddenly wanted a McDonald's.

Or maybe I am just greedy and crave sugar, salt and fat in large quantities.

Would I eat food from McDonald's again? Yes, I think I might, although I am unlikely to make a habit of it. It's not that I've stopped thinking certain things about the fast food industry are unethical; it's just that sometimes I really, really want a Big Mac. Like NOW. (See, I told you - greedy.) I HAVE BEEN SUCKED IN BY THE CORPORATE MACHINE. RUN, SAVE YOURSELVES. There's no hope for me now.

For an alternative look at fast food from the Super Size Mes of this world, check out the episode of Penn & Teller's Bullshit! on Fast Food.

Product Review: Very Lazy Posh Sausage Casserole

2011-04-24T08:59:00.000+01:00

The nice people at Very Lazy recently sent me some of their Very Lazy Posh Sausage Casserole to try and review.

Now, I'm not usually a fan of sauces that come in jars, but as you're aware I haven't been too well recently and haven't been able to cook so much, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to try something new that may well fit with my lifestyle.

It certainly was pretty easy to make. I followed the instructions and fried the sausages (I used 6 rather than 8, as there were only 2 of us), even though I normally oven cook sausages (I prefer them that way - plus, it is easier than poking sausages round a frying pan!). I cooked them well in the frying pan before transferring them to a casserole dish because I am always paranoid about undercooking things like sausages.

I then chopped an onion and added it to the pan with the concentrate - I thought it smelt a little weird; not unpleasant, just a little strange. Probably because the sauce is concentrated, so it smells quite powerful.

I added the 200ml water and then poured the sauce and onions into the casserole with the sausages. It didn't look like very much considering it is meant to serve four people. It does say on the packet to add more water if you want more sauce, but I wanted to follow the instructions exactly for the purposes of this review - and as there were only 2 of us eating it, I didn't think I would need to add more.

It then went into the oven at 180C for an hour, as instructed. It didn't say whether to put a lid on or not, but I did because I didn't want what liquid was there to evaporate. When it came out it was very well cooked. This might have been my fault for cooking the sausages so well before putting them in the oven, but when the instructions say 'brown' the sausages, I never know how brown it means.

Anyway, this was the result served with some mashed potato:

It was quite nice. My fiancé thought that the flavour of the sauce overpowered the flavour of the sausages (which were Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Outdoor-reared Cumberland sausages - normally quite a nice flavour: very meaty) and I have to agree. The sauce is quite strongly flavoured. And, it's not a bad flavour - as I say it was nice, but nothing overly special. Also, 6 sausages and 200ml water in the sauce was about enough for 2. I know we are both a bit greedy, but I'd say you'd definitely need to dilute the sauce more for 4 people (and that probably would have made it taste less overpowering as well!).

I do think that if I'm going to go to the effort of frying sausages, chopping an onion and making mashed potato as an accompaniment, I might as well cook a sausage casserole from scratch. But that may well be because I enjoy home cooking and am confident enough in my cooking to do so; less confident people may be more inclined to go for the jar option.

For the record, here is my favourite sausage stew recipe from BBC Good Food: Italian Sausage, Puy lentil & rosemary stew.

Foodie adventures in Guernsey

2011-04-16T08:33:00.001+01:00

Last saturday we arrived home from Guernsey. It was a great holiday and one which included many foodie adventures as well as cultural ones!

We stayed in a self-catering holiday cottage at Les Brehauts Farm. This was the first time we had opted for a self-catering holiday and we liked the flexibility it offered. Our welcome pack from the lovely people at Les Brehauts Farm provided everything we need for breakfast the next morning.

There was also a little shop on site that sold fresh eggs from the farm and homemade jam.

I was impressed by how much local produce was sold in Guernsey - they are very self-sufficient! Many people sell their produce on the road side using a honesty box. I did find purchasing food for home consumption to be a bit more expensive than here, but then there are no really big chain supermarkets in Guernsey (apart from Waitrose, which has recently opened) and a lot of the food was local, so probably not mass-produced on the same scale as on the mainland.

I of course loved the Guernsey milk and butter and ice-cream, which were all very creamy and rich. The butter is so yellow! I will have to see if I can get hold of some over here.

There are plenty of great places to eat out in Guernsey too. Our favourite was the Longfrie Inn, which was a five minute walk up the road from where we were staying. We liked its informal atmosphere and varied menu. The lamb cutlets were absolutely divine. I commented to my fiancé at the time that that particular dish reminded me how good lamb can be - they were as good as any steak I've ever had!

We ate out for lunch a few times at St Peter Port, the capital, which is hustling and bustling with restaurants and cafés.

Most places sold fresh Guernsey crab and lobster. I tried the crab and then realised I'm not a huge fan of crab in general!

We also discovered some fabulous tea rooms that sold sandwiches and cake. Mmm, cake. My favourite was probably Hearts Tearoom at Sausmarez Manor. I had the most fabulous ginger cake there and a banana milkshake.

Another very good piece of cake was had at The Pavilion Brasserie. Unfortunately, we never managed to make it for lunch or dinner, because the one day we decided to try there for lunch (Monday), it was closed and then we somehow never made it back until the morning we were due to fly home. Still, we had a damn fine piece of cake.

I had the victoria sponge and my fiancé had the chocolate cake. The victoria sponge was very moist and had a crazy amount of icing sugar on the top - delicious, though. The chocolate cake was also very tasty - it was more like a mousse than a cake and very chocolatey - yummy! A great end to a great holiday.

If you would like to see a few more photos of our holiday to Guernsey, please check out my Flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/norfolkian/

No Love Sincerer now available on Kindle!

2011-04-10T08:42:00.000+01:00

You can now subscribe to my blog via your Kindle should you feel so inclined.

Subscribe to No Love Sincerer via Amazon!

We checked it out on my fiancé's Kindle and it's pretty good - it displays pictures as well (albeit in black and white)!

Clever, huh?

Graze boxes

2011-03-13T15:43:00.002Z

Recently a friend gave me a voucher code for www.graze.com which got me my first box free and my second half-price. I'd heard about these boxes before but been a bit sceptical as I got the impression for some reason that it was just all nuts and seeds and it didn't really appeal. Once I actually had a proper look at the website though, and received my first box in the post, I was pleasantly surprised.

There is quite a range of foods included, including focaccia breads, olives and many weird and wonderful combinations of dried fruits. Also, they have a system when you can tick what you like and what you don't like, so you can choose not to be sent the stuff that doesn't appeal or you can try it and if you don't like it ask not to be sent it again.

The idea behind the box is to provide healthy snacks to nibble on throughout the day, keeping your blood sugar balanced and as the tagline says "eat more health food (fewer biscuits)".

As with my fruit and veg box, one of the things I like about it is the surprise of finding out what you have got this week. Here was my first Graze box:

I like nuts and I like dried fruit, so I ate the nut mix (mmm, pecan nuts!) and lemon raisins first. Raisins were very lemony and very tasty, but I found alternating a few with the nuts best to cut through the sharpness of the lemon a bit! Still, they kept me going through a day of work and I would have got through the day without any other snacks were it not for the homemade apple cake a colleague had brought in that day - it would have been rude not to have a piece, really.

I was expecting not to like the cracking black peppercorn rice-crackers in the top left, because in my experience rice-crackers are bland and comparable to swallowing a load of air. These were small and concentrated rice-crackers, though, with a really good crunch and bags of flavour! I needed a glass of water after such pepperyness, but I'd definitely eat them again - they're very low in calories as well!

The orange and ginger flapjack was nice and much less sweet than I was expecting, which is probably a good thing for blood sugar levels and whatnot.

This box was free and I wasn't sure whether £3.49 was a lot for four punnets of nuts and fruit etc., but then when I happened to be in Marks and Spencer one day last week, I spied a small bag of raisins which cost £1.60. So I've reasoned that as the price of the box also includes delivery, and the snacks it includes are really, really yummy, it is utterly worth it. I am completely sold! Here's a peek at this week's box, which I haven't eaten any of yet:

I can't wait to get stuck into this weeks tasty treats - I will do my best to save them for work, though. I have opted to get one box a week delivered to my home on a Saturday, so I have all my snacks ready for the week ahead at work: I can't guarantee how much of the week they will last me though...

If any of you would like to receive a free graze box, go to www.graze.com and use the voucher code: NTBYZLQ. I believe the offer is only available for a limited time. You have to sign up to receive the box, but if you decide you don't want it anymore, you can cancel at any time. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did, though!

Product review: Hotel Chocolat Happy Egg & Tiddly Pot

2011-03-04T22:02:00.001Z

Thanks to Jam and Cream PR, this week I received my first ever foodie product to review courtesy of Hotel Chocolat.

The product I was sent was the Happy Egg and Tiddly Pot from their fabulous-looking range of Easter eggs. This particularly Easter egg is supposedly aimed at children, although it does acknowledge on the packaging that it is also for those of us adults who are still children at heart.

I suppose it is a good size for a child - it was a lot smaller than I was expecting when I received it! Here is a picture of it next to a wine glass for scale:

And here it is in my hand.

I ate the entire Easter egg in about 5 minutes while my fiancé was out the room so I didn't have to share any. When my fiancé returned, he said, "You appear to have inhaled the egg." It was good, though. I really like Hotel Chocolat's 40% milk chocolate - it is pretty chocolatey, but still pretty milky - a nice smooth balance!

My favourite part of this Easter egg, though, was the tiddly pot:

This was filled with solid milk chocolate chicks and bunnies. Now, these I did share with my fiancé who really liked them too and was impressed that they weren't hollow. And that's what made them preferable to me than the egg, because they were good solid chunks of chocolate to get your teeth into. Also, nibbling on one or two at a time was enough and I was able to enjoy these over a few days. I did feel I needed to give them a thorough testing before writing this review, though.

Oh, dear, all gone! :(

This Easter egg perhaps seems a bit pricey at £7 a pop compared to most Easter eggs, but it really is good quality chocolate and I'd rather have a smaller egg like this that tastes much better than one of the more widely-sold larger and cheaper ones.

Now, I'll just sit and hope someone buys me this for Easter...

Convenience foods: the argument for

2011-03-01T22:03:00.001Z

Since starting this blog, I've become rather taken, some might say rather sanctimonious about, cooking from scratch. Normally, when I have been in full health, I have cooked a meal from scratch 4-5 evenings a week (with the odd takeaway, meal out, meal at someone else's house thrown in in-between). I work full-time too - 37 hours a week. (My fiancé generally works longer hours than I do and has a much longer commute and does not enjoy cooking, therefore I have happily taken on the role in lieu of other responsibilities (e.g. washing up)). I have generally eschewed all things convenience food from microwaveable dinners to sauces that come in jars to ready-made pizzas.

I'm all for slow food. Totally. It tastes better, I get more enjoyment from eating it, and plenty of satisfaction from preparing it. It's food how food is meant to be.

But the key phrase above was "in full health". Recently things have been a bit more tough. I really don't like to complain too much because my illness is not that serious and is treatable (and I am in the process of being treated), but the fact is that as a result of the radioiodine therapy my thyroid now cannot produce enough thyroxine to keep my body functioning properly and I am in early stages of treatment, which may involve some tweaking of medication before balance is fully restored. Anyone familiar with the spoon theory will know what it can be like to have a chronic illness. I'm not going to expand too much on what it's like to live with thyroid disease, because that's getting off the point a little.

The point is, I've come to learn that convenience foods have a place in life. In particular, they have had a place in my life recently.

At first I felt guilty. I felt like I'd failed in my mission to provide myself and my partner with nutritious whole foods, as is my general aim when it comes to food. But what choice did I have but to load the freezer with things I could stick in the oven? (I could get my fiancé to cook, but some nights recently he hasn't been home until 9pm, by which point I would be crawling up the walls...) Not all of these things have been convenience foods as such: things like sausage and mash have been do-able some of the time. But I still felt crappy about it - of course I did. It's natural to feel crappy about not being able to do everything you normally can do.

Eventually you begin to accept it, though - that this is the way things are at the moment and you have to make do as best you can. And, actually, stocking the freezer with things that are easy for me to cook has proved to be a smart piece of forward planning - during previous periods of illness, I have been less prepared and this has led to more disappointment, more guilt and more takeaways.

Quite often, I'll have two options for dinner on the go - for example, I may have some braising steak in the fridge to make a stew should I feel up to it, but at the moment, I usually have a back-up plan too, either in the fridge or freezer.

The convenience foods may not taste as good, may be less nutritious, less good for the environment and hardly using local or seasonal ingredients, but when my choice is between going hungry because I physically do not have the energy to stand up in the kitchen for long enough to create a meal and eating something ready-prepared in a plastic packet, I'll take the food where I can get it. And I'm not going to feel bad or guilty anymore, because I'm doing the best I can.

I still check the ingredients labels on everything though before I buy and I still can't face eating battery-farmed chicken. Most places seem to do ranges of ready-meals, soups etc. which have pretty (if not, wholly) natural ingredients too. I like Covent Garden soups and I recently tried a dish from Marks and Spencer's Gastropub range which was both tasty and filling (shock, horror!).

The good news is that I'm gradually starting to cook more as I'm starting to feel better. I still don't feel I'm functioning at 100%, but I did cook from scratch three nights in a row recently. That was huge for me. It felt good. It tasted good too.

Chicken and Mushroom (not) Pie

2011-02-01T18:42:00.000Z

I think it was random Googling that took me to the Morrison's website at the weekend – it had never occurred to me to look there before: I don't shop there and I didn't really associate it with yummy recipes (before now). But then I discovered their 'Great taste less waste' promotion and found this great recipe for chicken and mushroom pie using leftover roast chicken (or chicken and mushroom not pie, as I called it - I didn't want to get my fiancé's hopes up that it might be a pastry-based pie!).

It's a fairly simple recipe and really, really tasty! I didn't have any dried tarragon, so used dried thyme instead, and I adjusted the quantities to how much chicken I had left over.

This stretched a 1.3kg free-range chicken which serves 2-3 people into two whole dinners for two. Economical, I think you'll agree!

Butternut Squash Risotto

2011-01-17T20:00:00.002Z

I promised to post what I cooked with the obscene butternut squash, didn't I? I decided to make this Simple Squash Risotto recipe from BBC Good Food. One of the things I love about the BBC Good Food website is the user reviews and ratings of recipe - it's a really good guide to picking the right recipe, and as this recipe had great reviews, I thought it was worth a go!

This was the first time I had ever made a risotto and to be honest I thought the 'simple' label was pushing it a bit. But then I was also making this on Monday evening after quite a long day at work - I think if I make this again it might have to be one of my weekend recipes.

Anyway, I set about turning my butternut squash into something more family friendly:

That's better!

I was really worried I wouldn't get all the stirring in the risotto right somehow and that the rice would be ruined. But somehow it all worked out. My fiancé really liked the dish even though it had no meat in it. I left the parmesan cheese out for him because he can't have cheese - because of that this is the first risotto he had ever eaten. It was fine without the parmesan, although personally I wouldn't have minded some on mine to add a bit of saltiness. It looked pretty good in the end, though:

Yummy!

Sleepy now...

And now for something completely different

2011-01-15T14:21:00.003Z

A slightly more 'serious' photo.

I'm currently taking part in a project called the 365 project where the aim is to take a photo every day for a year, and if you click on the photo above (which is today's photo) it will take you to my 365 project page. Not all the photos are or will be food-related and my efforts are of the amateur variety, but it is a fun project which is making me look at things in a different light and, I hope, will ultimately improve my photography skills, which will in turn improve my food photography for this blog perhaps!

Possibly not safe for work...

2011-01-14T19:42:00.001Z

Well, it's not that I haven't been cooking, folks, just that I've not felt massively inspired to blog about any of it. Or I've scoffed it so quickly I have forgotten to get a photo.

So, yes, I'm sinking to a new low in order to keep you entertained: rudely shaped vegetables.

Well, if it was good enough for Esther Rantzen...

To make up for this appalling lack of taste, I promise to blog about what I cook with it!

Android App Review: Urban Spoon

2011-01-03T08:29:00.000Z

I have an android phone, so have decided to review some of the many food-related apps that are available. I will only be reviewing free apps, because I am too much of a tight-wad to pay for any.

The Urban Spoon app is based on the website of the same name. It uses Google Maps and GPS satellites to pinpoint your location so it can tell you the yummiest places to eat in your vicinity - could be very handy when travelling; except, my phone takes so long to get a satellite signal that I usually give up and opt to 'choose city' manually instead.

This app has the little novelty feature of using a slot machine-type interface which allows you to lock certain wheels and then you either click 'shake' or actually shake your phone and it comes up with a random restaurant fitting those particular options along with user reviews. This is good if you're not sure where you want to eat and want some suggestions. You can also look at a list of all the restaurants in a particular city and search for restaurants by city, but what you can't do is search for a particular restaurant name. You could argue that that's not what this app is for, but it would be handy if you wanted to look at reviews of a particular restaurant.

Of course, any app like this is only as good as its user generated content. From what I understand, users have to add restaurants before they appear on the app (at least there are relatively few restaurants actually on there for Coventry - but not that surprising considering it's a fairly small city), which means there could be some great restaurants that you are missing out on because they are simply not featured on the app. (I could, of course, fix this myself by personally adding all my favourite restaurants along with reviews, but so far I haven't had the time nor the inclination.) The reviews themselves are generally helpful. There is also the option to click 'like' or 'don't like' for each restaurant, the app then giving a percentage of how many people like the restaurant. I found it a bit frustrating that there isn't an 'it's ok' button.

I was going to write here how this application is generally reliable and doesn't crash very often, except when I've used it this morning to write this review, it's crashed twice on me and I've had to force it to close. Oh dear.

This is probably one of the better free restaurant finding apps on the market, however, and it can be fun for finding restaurants you never knew existed near you. It is also available for iPhone, apparently.

Left-over mincemeat tart (with dinosaur motif)

2011-01-01T10:16:00.002Z

Happy New Year, everyone!

Last night we had our usual New Year celebration - my sister-in-law (to be) and her husband visited for a quiet evening of DVDs and games. I laid on a small buffet, and my centrepiece was a mincemeat tart using leftover mincemeat, my new silicone bakeware and dinosaur cookie cutters.

Unfortunately, we were so full from all the other food available, that we failed to have any room for tart! But I'm sure it will get eaten today!

Anyway, on to the recipe...

Dinosaur-themed Mincemeat Tart

Makes a 9" tart (wahey!)

Ingredients
200g unsalted butter, cut into cubes
450g plain flour
50g icing sugar
2 large egg yolks
3 tablespoons cold water
about 500g mincemeat (or however much will fill your tart...)
beaten egg to glaze (optional - I forgot)

Method
Sieve the flour into a bowl, add the butter and rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Stir in the icing sugar. Then make a well in the centre of the mixture and stir in the egg yolk and the water to make a soft dough.

Knead the dough lightly until smooth, wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for about half an hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out most of the dough (about 2/3) until it's (very) roughly half a centimetre thick. Carefully line your pie/flan/tart dish with the dough.

(I used a silicone pie dish, which was a mistake in the end because the tart is delicate and you want something you can cut the tart in, like a heatproof china flan dish (something like this, perhaps). My fiancé just managed to transfer the tart to a plate without the whole thing crumbling, but it was touch and go. I am pleased to report that both the tart and our relationship is still in tact.)

Fill the tart with mincemeat (here is the recipe I use for my mincemeat) and then cut the excess pastry off with a small sharp knife.

Roll out the remaining pastry and then use the cookie cutters (you can use any shapes you fancy) to cut out as many figures as will fit nicely on top of the tart, and arrange them nicely on the top of said tart.

If you remember to, brush the pastry topping with beaten egg. Then bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

NB: Pastry recipe is largely based on a mince-pie recipe from Christmas Cakes and Cookies.

Our first free range turkey

2010-12-30T21:44:00.001Z

I hope all my lovely blog followers have had a wonderful Christmas and are looking forward to a glorious New Year! I have recently got back from visiting my relatives in Kent, which meant that I wasn't organising the Christmas dining this year (in fact, I never have, as my flat isn't really big enough to have people over!), but I did want to ensure we had a free range turkey this year. So, I offered to order the turkey for my parents.

As I live in Coventry but my parents live in Kent, I wanted to order a turkey which could be delivered to their door to make it easier for them as they would both be working and be busy the week leading up to Christmas day.

After doing my research on the internet, I decided to order the turkey from Waitrose, as they had a good selection of fresh free range turkeys, would let me order as far in advance as November, let me pick a two hour time-slot and offered free delivery! Which was great... and it would have been even more great if Waitrose had an easy-to-use website.

It took me half an hour to find the 'register' button for online deliveries. When I tried to make a purchase, a login box came up, but whereas most websites will say, "Not a member? Register here!" or similar, the Waitrose website offered no such simple option. At least not on that page. I can't remember where I found it in the end*, but it wasn't obvious or easy to do at all - if I hadn't been so keen to get a free range turkey and if they hadn't offered the free delivery, I would have given up and ordered from a different supermarket. Perhaps it was just me being a numpty, but I thought online shopping was supposed to be quicker and easier?!

Anyhow, once I had managed to register with the site, it was pretty quick and easy to place the order. I chose a turkey in the 'serves 8-11 people' range, despite the fact that there'd only be four of us for dinner. But we like leftovers.

When the day arrived for delivery, I was a little nervous as I'd made the order a long time ago and had visions of us not having a turkey at all for Christmas. But turn up it did, in its allotted time slot. We ended up with a turkey that would serve 8 people and it cost £31. Not bad at all considering how much we got out of it.

It was the first time I'd ever had a free range turkey, and it was the most flavourful, moistest, juiciest turkey I had ever had. It was well worth the money and worth the hassle with the website in the end. And definitely good to know that the turkey we ate hadn't lived in complete squalor before ending up on our plates.

It's chiefly about chicken welfare, but if you're interested at all in the plight of intensively-farmed animals in this country and want to help the cause, I recommend going to http://www.chickenout.tv/ and lending your support.

*I have since had another look on the Waitrose website and it seems you have to put your postcode in to the box first to see which services are available in your area and then click the small green 'register' button in the right-hand corner.

Adopt a Veg

2010-12-19T19:25:00.002Z

My blog posts are like buses: you don't get any for ages and then two come along in one day!

I just wanted to bring to the attention of all my green-fingered friends Garden Organic's Adopt a Veg scheme. In order to protect our heritage veg and to help support the work of the Heritage Seed Library, Garden Organic have set up a scheme whereby you can "adopt" a variety of vegetable. There are a small number of varieties which you can adopt for £20 and get a packet of seeds too. I'm quite tempted by the transparent tomatoes. The others are £15 and come with a gift pack including information about your chosen variety.

These could make an unusual Christmas gift for any green-fingered chums!

Meatloaf Part Deux

2010-12-19T09:22:00.000Z

It's been a while since I've posted - apologies if you've missed me at all. It's been a combination of having a lot going on and having lost my blogging-fu. Anyway, I'm determined to get back on the wagon, as it were.

Last week it was my fiancé's 30th birthday. I made him a couple of special birthday dinners to celebrate this event (I also made him a birthday banana bread, which was a disaster!), the first of which was toad in the hole, the second was another attempt at meatloaf.

I decided to use a different recipe this time, which is from Nigella Lawson's Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home. I thought this would be an extra-special treat for my fiancé because it has boiled egg in the middle and is covered in bacon! I used oak-smoked streaky bacon and it really helped to keep the meatloaf moist and gave it a lovely smokey flavour.

Before:

After:

Sadly, I neglected to get a picture of it sliced, showing the egg in the middle. It reminded me of when we used to have slices of pork pie with egg in the middle as kids.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

2010-11-22T20:00:00.001Z

I love winter. I really do. I love all the winter root vegetables, the stews, the hotpots, the snuggly warmth of a cup of hot chocolate, wrapped up, indoors, looking out at a frozen world, the excitement of Christmas just around the corner...

The cold I can just about deal with, but I have to admit that even I struggle sometimes with the short days. And this weekend just gone was a classic: heavy, ominous, dark grey clouds, not a glimmer nor a spark of sun or blue sky. There wasn't even any rain, just this constant threat hanging the air. We had to have the lights on to see all day both Saturday and Sunday.

And that's partly why Christmas is so exciting: we counteract the darkness with sparkling, glittering lights, glimmering tinsel, shiny giftwrap; and then we fill ourselves with warm, rich, exotic foods. We feast, we drink - we damn well make the best entertainment for ourselves that we can to ease the pain of the long, dark, cold winter.

So, I spent this dark and dreary November weekend comforting myself with fruits from sunnier climes and spices from exotic lands... and then soaking them in lots and lots of booze.

I made this mincemeat last year as well, and lots of people said my mince pies were the best they'd ever tasted! Recipe here.

My first attempt at Christmas Cake! It looks and smells good, so here's hoping it delivers on the day... Recipe here - thanks to Farmersgirl Kitchen for linking to it on her blog.

An unusual drink (and how I became radioactive)

2010-11-20T12:44:00.000Z

As I've mentioned before I suffer with an overactive thyroid (or hyperthyroidism or thyrotoxicosis). I was first diagnosed with this over two years ago, although it was in remission for a while, but this year it relapsed.

As a result, on Thursday I underwent radioactive iodine treatment in an attempt to sort it out once and for all. This is a lot less scary than it sounds, but still a little daunting. It was, however, quick, painless and, largely, side-effect free so far.

Oh, yeah, apart from the radiation my body is emitting that is. (I also may develop an underactive thyroid, but that is far more treatable and can be controlled effectively with drugs.)

I took the treatment at the hospital in the form of a drink. I can bet this will be the most unusual thing I have ever consumed. It came in a large, round lead pot. The technician had trouble removing the lid because it was so heavy. Inside was a tiny shotglass-sized glass pot. I was given a straw and told to proceed when I was ready. This was probably the scariest part because it does feel a little weird willingly putting something into your body which has to be transported in a lead container. But then I thought of the alternative permanent treatment, which would involve having my neck cut open, and I gulped the liquid down. It tasted like water, save for a slight metallic aftertaste. I was surprised at this, because when they told me it was flavourless, I didn't believe them.

What has this got to do with food? I hear you ask. Well, for the next three weeks my body will still be emitting beta particles, although this will lessen as time goes on. This is affecting almost every aspect of my life at the moment. I have to avoid close contact with people as much as possible, particularly pregnant women and children for the next 3 weeks; I'm currently sleeping on the sofa so as not to expose my partner to radiation for 8 hours a night; I have to wear gloves while handling food (that's been interesting so far...); and while I am allowed outside, I can't go anywhere crowded, like, you know, shops and stuff. So, I am trying online grocery shopping for the first time. I am going to be working from home for a few weeks, as I can't go to the office, which means that while I'm being restricted in lots of areas, it gives me more flexibility over my cooking schedule.

Swings and roundabouts, eh? :)

Sausage and Bean Stew

2010-11-19T15:58:00.001Z

I've really been enjoying the second series of Nigel Slater's Simple Suppers. His passion for creating delicious meals is really inspiring and shows just how much you can do with a few simple ingredients. Although, he did upset me this week by putting raisins in a curry, but I am willing to overlook this blatant wrongness.

Last week I decided to make Sausage and Bean Stew from the 'Making Things go Further' episode, and it really is a cheap-to-make, yet hearty and scrumptious recipe.

The stew turned a gorgeous shade of crimson as colour from the tomatoes and chorizo blended together.

I adapted the recipe for 2, but I think this meal would be brilliant when you are cooking for a large number of people. I definitely plan to cook this again!

Bonfire & Bangers night at the Red Lion, Hunningham

2010-11-06T10:05:00.000Z

We've been frequenting the Red Lion pub in Hunningham for about a year now, and it has quickly become our favourite pub ever. There are a few reasons for this, which I will present in a list format like the anal retentive that I am.

1. The food. With an emphasis on local, fresh produce, they already go some way to winning me over, but they also make tasty and delicious and fairly unusual dishes. Their menu is constantly changing to reflect the season, but highlights for me have included the Ploughman's Platter (because you can't beat a good ploughman's), British rosé veal and Napton Water Buffalo cheese tart. Mmmmm.

2. The wine. It is both varied in selection and reasonably priced.

3. The decor. There are framed comic book covers all over the walls. There is a tube which runs from the bar to the kitchen which delivers the orders. There are open fires. What more could you want?

4. The staff. They are all bonkers.

5. The events. August bank holiday weekend there was a film festival (which sadly we didn't make it to). But, this brings me neatly onto Bonfire & Bangers Night 3, which was last night.

Of course, it chucked it down, but when you're in a field with deliciously spiced mulled wine, a massive hog roast, sausages, bonfire and fireworks, who cares?

The pork & stuffing baps were truly amazing. And huge. And amazing. Did I mention amazing? Good.

I AM THE GOD OF HELLFIRE! Or something.

Fireworks were also very pretty (although didn't get any pictures because I was too worried about the camera drowning) and very impressive, particularly for a free-entry display!

So, yes - Red Lion in Hunningham - go there.

Roast squash with bacon & mushroom rice

2010-11-04T20:10:00.002Z

It was time to play guess the mystery squash this week when our veg box arrived. A few googles later, I came to the conclusion it must be a carnival squash. You've got to admit, it's quite funky.

I decided that peeling this would be a bitch, so opted for roasting in the skin. I'd never baked a squash before, but my whole recipe ended up being quite successful and I made it up myself! I'd learnt from my first attempt at cooking pumpkin last week that the sweetness of squash goes quite well with salty, savoury flavours (check out this recipe), so I just kind of worked on that basis and on the food I had in.

Here goes, folks.

Serves 4 (or 2 very greedy people)

Ingredients
2 squash (carnival or otherwise)
olive oil
1 pack streaky outdoor-reared bacon, chopped
250g chestnut mushrooms, chopped
200g white basmati rice
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
a bunch of kale or cavolo nero, chopped
a few sprigs thyme
pepper to season (unless you also fancy adding salt to salty bacon)

Method
Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

Prepare each squash by cutting in half. Do this carefully with a big, sharp knife. It may take a bit of time to work it apart. Use a spoon to remove the 'guts' of the squash (this is the seeds and stringy stuff in the middle - I call it the guts). You should then have something which looks a bit like this:

Drizzle with a little olive oil, place on an oven tray and bake for 40 minutes until golden and soft.

Meanwhile (although not immediately - co-ordination, people!), fry the bacon over a high heat until cooked and beginning to crisp. Add the mushrooms and cook until they are starting to brown and soften. Add the rice and stir and then add the stock. Simmer with the lid on for 12-15 minutes, until the stock has nearly all been absorbed by the rice. Add the thyme leaves and kale and stir through until wilted. Season with the pepper.

Remove the squash from the oven when ready. Stuff the squash with the bacon and mushroom rice. You should have something which looks a little like this:

This was so delicious that I ate far too much and gave myself tummy-ache. And even the veg-phobic fiancé approved (although the bacon probably helped a lot)! I think it could be improved, however. Maybe a bit of garlic next time and some lemon juice.

Nom nom nom.

Willesborough Windmill Bread Flour

2010-10-27T20:58:00.000+01:00

At the weekend my fiancé and I were visiting my family down in Kent. We had a bit of a lazy Saturday and trundled along to a local farm shop, Perry Court, late morning.

Perry Court is set on an apple & pear orchard and we got some great stuff including their own apple juice, a bag of their dried apple crisps (an interesting snack!), some homemade rolls and a bag of Willesborough Windmill Strong Wholemeal Flour, pictured on the left.

I had to buy some, obviously, and it isn't too pricey at £1.99 for a 1.5kg bag.

I grew up near Willesborough Windmill, and it is a striking part of the landscape in that area and something I very much associate with my childhood. I am very excited that it is now producing flour - if I still lived there this would have been a very local product, but I supposed now I have hauled it all the way to Coventry, it kind of ceases to be 'local'! But nevermind, we were making the trip anyway, so it was a bonus to come back with something so reminiscent of my childhood, yet so useful too!

I remember when the windmill used to look like this, which is partly why I find it so amazing that it now has the capacity to produce flour. In fact, this is a great webpage showing how the windmill has changed over the years.

If I were really to do this flour justice, I suppose I ought to have handmade the bread, but you wouldn't catch me having the energy to do that on a school night! So, I let my breadmaker do the work. It has made a really nice loaf - in fact, I would go so far as to say it is one of the best wholemeal loaves I've ever had: flavourful, not too dry and fairly light in texture for a wholemeal loaf. But my tastebuds are more than likely coloured by fond childhood memories - it is quite stunning how taste can be influenced by so many other factors.

Roast Partridge with Blackberries

2010-10-25T19:29:00.002+01:00

I love Autumn. Not only is it filled with an amazing abundance of fruit and vegetables, but it is also game season. I'm always on the look for things I haven't eaten or cooked before, and a trip to Berryfields Farm Shop meant taking home a couple of partridges.

I decided to use a recipe from Nigel Slater's Tender Vol. II - a book I am absolutely loving at the moment. I've now cooked two recipes from it: this partridge and blackberries dish and a weekday supper of pork and pears (the latter scoffed before I could get a picture). Both have been absolutely amazingly delicious. Both use fruit and meat and then alcohol to deglaze the pan. I'm totalling getting into this deglazing lark. Also pairing fruit with meat.

The one thing I regret about this dish, is that we tried (and failed) to forage our own blackberries - we did find some blackberry bushes, but no salvageable fruit - it was all shrivelled up and pathetic. Have I completely missed blackberry season? I just thought it was generally during Autumn.

I ended up buying blackberries from the supermarket, which were from Mexico of all places. The dish held up well enough with the massively jet-lagged fruit, but I'd love to try it with some freshly-picked blackberries one day.

And partridge meat is a very tasty meat. I just couldn't help wishing there was slightly more of it...

And, yes, I did serve it with chips. And roast carrots and fennel. It went surprisingly well!

Stuffat tal-Fenek (Maltese Rabbit Stew)

2010-10-15T21:14:00.002+01:00

Cottontail is not impressed by this blog post

One evening we were walking along Spon Street and I noticed a sign in a butcher's window advertising, amongst other things, wild rabbit. I vowed that soon I would purchase some of this rabbit and make a stew. Last weekend that's exactly what I did.

I purchased some diced rabbit from T J Rowland Butchers on Spon Street. It is possibly the tiniest butcher's shop I have ever set foot in and the displays are rather haphazard, but it has a certain charm and the guys in there are very knowledgeable and extremely helpful.

The Maltese like rabbit a lot. My grandparents used to breed them for eating. Unfortunately, several attempts at trying to feed me rabbit when I was a child failed because I couldn't stand the thought of eating cute ickle fluffy bunnies. And I was smart enough to know it wasn't chicken - nice try, parents.

However, my views on the subject have changed somewhat over the years. Ok, well, I've watched a lot of River Cottage, basically, and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is very persuasive. So, I'd much rather eat something which has been happily bunnying about in complete freedom and then killed humanely, than something intensively farmed which has been waddling around in its own excrement for months on end. In short, I now have no problem with eating bunnies, particularly wild bunnies, and am probably more comfortable with the idea of eating rabbit than chicken. How things change.

I decided to recover those opportunities I'd missed as a child to have some authentic Maltese rabbit-based grub, and plumped for cooking Stuffat tal-Fenek (Maltese Rabbit Stew). I looked at quite a few different recipes, all slightly different in various ways - I suspect every Maltese family has their own version of all the classic recipes, but this is one I've never learnt - and in the end, I think I mostly followed one on this page (you'll have to scroll down a bit, but it's there). Fellow food-blogger Mer also has a recipe on her blog which looks like an interesting variation using venison.

Anyway, my first attempt at cooking rabbit, and my first taste of it since the sordid attempts at deception during childhood, went rather well.

There is some rabbit in there, I promise you.

Conclusion: I like rabbit. A lot.

Meatloaf

2010-10-10T08:29:00.000+01:00

After I'd badgered Jen of In the Kitchen etc. for her recipe for meatloaf, I kind of had to go ahead and make it. I normally avoid any recipe which uses cup measures because it is just weird and wrong, but I sucked it up and dusted off my cup measures for this one. You can find Jen's recipe which I followed here.

Before:

And after:

My fiancé enjoyed this dish very much and is already nagging me to make it again. He likes it because it is essentially a giant burger. I have to admit I wasn't such a massive fan, which is neither the recipe nor Jen's fault, but probably me doing it wrong. For a start I used 50% pork and 50% beef, because I happened to have that, so I don't know if that affected the flavour. I was probably also a little haphazard with my measurements, and I found the meatloaf itself a little dry and a little bland, and the glaze was far too sweet for me. I blame the Americans and their incomprehensible measuring system.

Having said that, I enjoyed making this. And there is plenty left over which I plan to serve in baps for lunch. And my fiancé is happy. :)

Restaurant review: Thai Dusit, Coventry

2010-10-09T18:40:00.000+01:00

We went to visit the Thai Dusit last night for a romantic meal. It had been a long time since we'd been, as I'd gone through a period of suspecting I had a shellfish allergy, but it now looks as if I probably don't. It is perhaps more worrying that this means that a restaurant I used to really like most likely gave me food poisoning - it still makes me wary of eating shellfish in restaurants now, as the memory of that incident is still potent! It's a shame because I love seafood of all varieties.

However, we figured the Thai Dusit was a safe bet, as we have had good experiences there in the past and you'd hope a restaurant of their kind of calibre would be using nice, fresh ingredients! And we weren't disappointed.

For our starter we had the mixed shared platter, which is a little pricey at £6 a head, but utterly worth it.

This photo doesn't do justice to the presentation. The starter includes prawns, which I ate, and I wasn't sick, hurrah!

For my main, I had Moo Priew-Warn, which was battered pork in a sweet and sour sauce. It was delicious and the stir fried egg noodles I had with it complemented it nicely - a heavenly combination of sweet, sour and savoury. The pork was delicately battered and the sauce was rich and warming, like an electric blanket on a cold winter's evening. But an edible one. My fiancé had Ped Pad Khing, a duck dish with ginger and stir fried vegetables. On the side he had coconut rice, which I hadn't tried before and now I'm not sure why. The creamy coconut with the rice was an amazing background to the spices in our meat dishes.Wow.

Wine was the house red, which seems to be a good complement to the spices in most of the dishes.

I skipped pudding, but my fiancé had the Chocolate Trofito. He kindly let me share some. Nothing spectacular, but tasty as frozen desserts go. But we don't go to the Thai Dusit for the desserts!

Service wasn't as good as it has been in the past on this occasion (it is usually very good - very attentive and polite waiting staff). At first they brought us the wrong dishes, but this was quickly rectified. I had booked the table earlier in the day, but when we arrived they couldn't seem to find our booking - fortunately they were able to seat us anyway.

If you like Thai food, it would definitely be worth your while checking out the Thai Dusit. They do takeaway too. You can have a look at the menu at their website.

Writing this review has already made me want to go again!

A simple soup

2010-10-03T09:46:00.002+01:00

Yesterday evening it was just myself for dinner. That doesn't happen often and when it does, I usually can't be bothered to cook properly just for myself. I'd planned to have something on toast, but I hadn't got the breadmaker on early enough and it was still whirring away when my tummy started rumbling.

I needed food and fairly quickly. I had no meat or fish readily available and popping out to the shop was out of the question in the dark, damp and cold. So, I would have to make do with what I'd got somehow... I decided soup might be a good idea: I was feeling cold and I could make enough so that I would have some for lunch the next day too.

But what to make? If you didn't realise already, I was feeling lazy and rather tired - I didn't fancy anything that needed blending or an excessive number of ingredients. The BBC Good Food website always comes up trumps in situations such as these, and this recipe for hearty pasta soup seemed ideal. I didn't have all the ingredients - I didn't have any vegetable stock cubes, nor all the ingredients (or energy) to make my own and I didn't even have any chicken stock cubes and the homemade stock I had in the freezer would take forever to thaw. I also didn't have any fresh tortellini, or frozen beans, or fresh basil. A few substitutions and additions and this is what I ended up with.

Ingredients
1tbsp rapeseed oil
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
1l beef stock (from a cube)
400g can plum tomatoes
250g dried pasta spirals
100g fresh runner beans, sliced into chunks
50g frozen peas
handful of curly leaf parsley, chopped

Method
1. Heat the oil in a pan over a medium heat. Fry the garlic, onions and carrots for about 5 minutes until starting to soften.
2. Add the tinned tomato and stock, bring to the boil and then simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring.
3. Add the pasta and simmer according to packet instructions (usually about 10 minutes). Add the runner beans as well.
4. A few minutes before the pasta is done, add the frozen peas.
5. Once pasta is cooked through, stir in the parsley.

A versatile, easy (and tasty!) recipe, one that is ideal I think for cooking on a budget or when you don't have much food in the house!

The growing season's not over yet!

2010-10-02T16:49:00.002+01:00

My tomato plants had started to go a bit rancid, so last weekend I chopped them up, uprooted them and disposed of them. (Incidentally, I still haven't mastered doing things like this without hurting my back - I only have to so much as look at a spade and my back muscles start twingeing.) So, things are looking a little bare on the balcony now, save for a slightly withered pot of parsley, which I have now brought inside.

I wasn't organised in sowing anything over the Summer and my tomato plants took up too much room, so once the tomatoes were gone, I had nothing growing on the balcony. But I still want to grow things. After a little research, I decided that I would definitely grow garlic. And according to one of my gardening books, you can still sow rocket and salad leaves at this time of year; according to the seed packets you can't, but I figured it couldn't hurt to try.

I was a bit worried about my compost. As I'm growing in pots, would I need brand new compost for all my pots? After consultation with some folk on Urban Gardeners, I decided I would definitely need new compost for the pots I'd grown tomatoes in. However, one of my pots, I'd only grown a handful of radishes and carrots in, so I've experimented by removing some of the old compost and mixing in some new stuff, in the hope that this will contain enough nutrients for my garlic. I read somewhere that garlic can cope in poor soil, but I have to hope that I don't lose any to fungal problems, as I hear this can be an issue when compost is no longer sterile.

I ordered my garlic bulbs for growing from Garden Organic and they arrived yesterday.

So, garlic, rocket and mixed salad leaves sown. Things are still barren at the moment, obviously, but I will update on my progess, as ever.

Mini apple pies

2010-09-26T17:34:00.001+01:00

A few weeks ago a friend of ours gave us a carrier bag full of cooking apples from his garden. (Apparently, his next door neighbour has been complaining about the apples which have been falling into his garden - I can't help thinking what a miserable sod this neighbour must be!) Until today, time and energy to do something with them has eluded me.

I wanted to make something that we could share with the friend who gave us the apples, so I decided to make mini apple pies. This was a bit of an experiment, in that I used the pastry recipe from this mince pie recipe (because it is easy to make and scrumptious too) and the filling from this apple pie recipe.

Above is one of the ones that broke when getting it out the tin.

If I make something similar to these again, I will make a different kind of pastry - this pastry works brilliantly with mince pies, but doesn't seem to quite have the structural integrity to cope with sloppy apple. However, their wobbly framework does not impair the flavour - crumbly and sticky and sweet and tart and gooey. Heaven.

Sweets!

2010-09-26T07:18:00.001+01:00

Ok, I have a confession to make. I am 27 years old and I love sweets. I always have, probably always will. I'm something of a sugar addict.

I know that most sweets are filled with enough E-numbers to send even the dourest child into a hyper-manic frenzy and enough sugar to cause a diabetic coma; but love them I do, and they are one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to food.

It probably all started when we sometimes used to stop at the Corner Shop on the way home from school, and if I'd been good (which was, you know, ALWAYS), I'd be allowed to get 20p worth of penny sweets. Fizzy cola bottles were my favourite.

However, I think that most 'modern' sweets such as Haribo and those pick'n'mix you get from cinemas nowadays do not taste the same as the sweets I had when I was a kid; in fact, many of them leave quite a nasty, bitter aftertaste in the mouth.

Yesterday afternoon, as the weather was so glorious, we took a trip to Bourton-on-the-Water for an afternoon of English cream tea and Christmas Corner. There are also a couple of old fashioned sweet shops in Bourton, so naturally I bought some sweets.

Now, these sweets taste like the ones I used to have when I was a kid. My fiancé reckons it's all in my head and it's just because they come in jars. But what would he know? He doesn't even eat sweets! Also, they had flying saucers. FLYING SAUCERS!!

Carluccio's, Stratford-upon-Avon

2010-09-18T07:56:00.002+01:00

Last week we visited Stratford for my birthday. We did some shopping, had a scrumptious pub lunch and went for a cruise on the Avon. As we started walking back to the carpark, I suggested we stopped at Carluccio's to pick up some things for dinner.

I'd decided that for tea we'd have bread from the breadmaker with some olive oil for dipping, and maybe pick up some olives at Carluccio's to accompany it, as I'd heard that they had a deli in there. This is what we ended up with:

Freshly sliced mortadella and parma ham

Sun blushed tomatoes, as well as some olives (not pictured).

It was really good stuff and made our dinner a whole lot more exciting than I'd planned! We haven't actually eaten in Carluccio's yet, but plan to next time we are down Stratford way - it seems like a great place if you like your Italian food.

Tomato fever

2010-09-12T11:01:00.000+01:00

After posting a while back that things were all going horribly wrong with my tomato plants, they managed to recover from the blossom end rot and have been producing healthy fruit for a while now. At first there was just the odd one or two at a time that had ripened, but now we're almost getting a glut, and that's just from 4 plants!

I'm planning to make this chutney with them, which I made last year, but this year it'll be even more special with my homegrown tomatoes!

Bread machine

2010-09-11T17:06:00.001+01:00

For my birthday this year (which was yesterday), my fiancé bought me a bread machine. Now, although I went on a course and technically know how to bake bread by hand, I haven't managed to do a lot of it because of being busy and illness and being disorganised etc. etc. etc.

There's a great bit on the Campaign for Real Bread website here about bread machines and why they can be a good idea.

I'm not going to give up completely on making handmade bread, and will still do so when I get the time and the urge and the inclination, but at least with my bread machine, in between those times I don't have to rely on supermarket bread.

We baked our first loaf in it yesterday and this was the result:

It was yummy:

The breadmaker I have is the Panasonic SD257. It has a brioche programme, a gluten-free programme, a raisin and nut dispenser and a bake-only and dough-only feature. So, it seems very flexible in what you can do with it and I look forward to trying out all the different features in the years to come!

Hilltop Farm Shop, Hunningham, Near Leamington Spa

2010-08-28T07:19:00.004+01:00

Thanks to Lucie of Cooking at Marystow, last weekend we discovered Hilltop Farm Shop, in the picturesque village of Hunningham. They grow sunflowers.

The shop itself is quite small, but it stocks a wide variety of produce. It sells a good range of fruit and veg, as well as milk, cheese, jams and chutneys, and meat. It doesn't have a butcher's counter like at Berryfields, but there is a fantastic range of different meat, both chilled and frozen, including the cuts you wouldn't find in your average supermarket, such as lambs' hearts.

We bought some oak-smoked garlic, which wafts a delightful scent of wood-burning every time I open the cupboard. There was a good variety of local cheeses (including Warwickshire Truckle, which is one of my favourites) and I decided to try Napton Water Buffalo Smoky Bello Cheese. The texture is not dissimilar to cheddar, but it is creamier and smoother and has a slightly different quality to cows' cheese. I'd definitely buy it again!

Hilltop Farm Shop has a restaurant and a café, but we didn't get a chance to try it out this time. There are great facilities for kids, including a bouncy castle and a play-park. Hilltop Farm Shop also has some of the animals on display.

My fiancé gently informed me that I am too big to ride the ponies.

Aubergine stew with tomatoes and coriander

2010-08-23T21:54:00.003+01:00

I thought I'd actually write about something I'd cooked for a change - I don't think I have for ages! To be truthful, things have been a little quiet on the cooking front as my health is not brilliant at the moment - I have an overactive thyroid which had been in remission for about a year but recently has decided to start its ritual ass-kicking again. There are plenty of worse things in the world, but it does make me very tired sometimes, hence all things cooking being pretty quiet. Still, I'm on medication now and should start feeling better soon, so onwards and upwards!

I have decided that having some meat-free meals might be quite a good idea, because we do eat a lot of meat. Because we like meat (mmm, meat). But we like vegetables too. And what with our veg box and our new-found love of farm shops, we have quite an abundance of them at the moment. So, I'm attempting to make at least two vegetarian meals a week.

Last week I made this Mushroom & Potato Curry, courtesy of BBC Good Food, and it was nice enough - nothing particularly special, but we enjoyed it.

This week I decided to have a look through Nigel Slater's Tender for inspiration, as it is such a good book for all things vegetable. I settled on something from the aubergine section called 'A hot stew with tomatoes and coriander' (for owners of the book, I refer you to pages 58-59; for non-owners, I refer you to the link above where you can purchase this wonderful tome).

The lemon juice, ginger and garlic paste was hard to make. I only have a hand blender and it didn't work well at all. I gave up eventually, when the ginger and garlic had kind of turned to a mush, but they they were still floating stubbornly in the lemon juice. I chucked it in the pan with the aubergines and it worked, though.

I also didn't 'relax' the aubergines. I never even knew that this was the done thing before reading Tender. This is where you chop the aubergine up, put salt on it and let it rest for half an hour. Sorry Nigel, but I'd had a full day of work, was tired from a bad night's sleep and, goddammit, I was hungry. So, the aubergines went straight in the pan. I actually happen to like the way aubergines soak everything up anyway: the pieces are like little gelatinous cubes absorbing everything in their wake.

And that was actually the best thing about this dish: the way the aubergine absorbed the flavours of ginger, garlic, lemon, chilli, tomato and coriander. What a beautiful mingling of flavours. Oh, how I wish blogger had smell-o-vision. I served it with warmed flatbreads and it was loooovely.

A warning, though - unless you really like the spice do not, I repeat DO NOT, put in two chillies with seeds, as Nigel intrepidly suggests. I did one with seeds and it was at about my limit for spice (and I think next time I will remove the seeds to make it more suitable for my palate).

Allesley Park Walled Garden Market

2010-08-21T19:24:00.001+01:00

In my continuing endeavour to write more about local events, today, dear readers, I travelled all the way to deepest, darkest Allesley, to visit the monthly garden market, the existence of which was recently brought to my attention by EcoExplorer.

Allesley Park Walled Garden dates from the 18th century and used to belong to Allesley Hall. The official website can be found here, although it hasn't been updated in a while by the looks of things.

Over the past few years, the garden has been restored as an authentic 18th century kitchen garden and is now used as an educational resource. The market garden takes place every third Saturday of the month at 10.30am - 12.30pm during the Summer, and it was today that I decided to pop along for the first time.

There were four or five stalls selling a random collection of different items ranging from paintings to cakes. The stall that I was most interested in though (and so was everyone else) was the stall selling fresh vegetables, which I'm presuming and hoping were from the garden (on reflection, I should have asked, but didn't think of it at the time). I didn't buy a huge amount because of the veg box I get delivered and because I had to carry it home on the bus, but this is what I did buy:

I bought a pound of curly kale and a pound of white beetroot (which I had never seen before), all for the grand price of 80p! Bargain!

What a great idea this market and the Walled Garden itself is - a fabulous part of Coventry's heritage which until recently I knew nothing about. (I should point out that I have lived in Coventry for a measly two years, which is nothing compared with people who have had a lifetime to discover all the nooks and crannies of a place!)

Next month at Allesley Park Walled Garden it is a Heritage Open Day, and as well as the garden market, there will be a photographic competition and a cookery demonstration. This will be take place on Saturday 11th September and Sunday 12th September. For more information go here.

Allesley Park is very accessible by road (there is a car park on site) and by the number 23 bus - please go here for a map of the route.

Berryfields Farm Shop, Meriden, Near Coventry

2010-08-15T11:52:00.003+01:00

I want to blog more about local foodie places in and around Coventry and the local area. I'm currently collecting some links to go somewhere in my sidebar, so look out for that in the near future!

Recently I decided that I want to try shopping at some farm shops, and looking for things to do this morning, I had a google and came across Berryfields Farm Shop, which, handily, is open on a Sunday.

After consultation with the other-half, he decided that it would be a great idea to go because the on-site café does an all-day breakfast, and we hadn't eaten yet...

The farm shop is situated in a converted farm building on the farm itself surrounded by beautiful countryside. I am still enamoured of the fact that one of the directions to get there is "past the duck pond"! It is, judging by the smell when we got there and that it states that all the pork is home-reared and pork products are all made on site, mainly a pig farm, so if you like your pork, it really is the place to go.

I hadn't actually been to a farm shop for a long time before this morning, and I remember the local one I used to go to as a child growing up in Kent as quite dirty and dusty and placed in a old shed. I presumed this one would be similar given that it is situated in a converted farm building, but the reality couldn't be further from how I imagined it. The building is light, airy, clean and modern. They stock a range of different products: plenty of fresh meat, frozen fish and meat, fresh fruit and vegetables, cheeses, pickles, oils, vinegars, bread and more. I was delighted to see that they stock Peter's Yard crispbreads! The amount of fruit and vegetables in there isn't huge, but it is local and seasonal (there were some truly impressive beetroots!). The items the farm doesn't produce itself are sourced from other local farms and suppliers.

We went up to the café first before looking round, as I was ravenous. I wanted to try and be fairly healthy and was thinking about having poached eggs on toast, but the lure of the fried breakfast was too great - how could I miss an opportunity to try the meat before buying it? It was truly scrumptious - it came with a thick round of black pudding, lovely thick back bacon and a deliciously meaty sausage, as well as fried egg, beans, tomato and two slices of toast. I think £7 each was reasonable for that!

Suitably fed and watered, we proceeded with the shopping. We bought some vegetables, some sausages, some bacon and a pork pie. I was tempted by the bread, but we already have a fair amount at home. All the prices were, I think, comparable with what you would pay at Sainsbury's for similar items.

I then got home to find I had failed to close the fridge door properly the night before. FAIL.

But anyway, we have decided that we will try and shop at a farm shop once a week or every other week, to supplement the veg box we get from Down to Earth, the idea being that we will be spending even less money and time in Sainsbury's. I am going to be trying some different farm shops in the area as well in future, so watch this space for that.

Balcony update: tomatoes and potatoes

2010-08-02T19:49:00.002+01:00

So, my tomato plants haven't been doing too well. I think they've come down with a case of 'blossom end rot' and possibly another kind of rot as well (there seem to be several associated with tomato plants). I think it's because our watering of them has been a little inconsistent (ok, so I haven't always got the best memory...) and also when we had the scorching hot weather, I'd water them in the morning and the soil would be bone dry by the time I got home from work.

Growing tomatoes isn't as easy as I thought it would be. They also take up a lot of room. I have enjoyed watching them flower and then fruit though, even if I haven't had anything edible from them yet. Ah, well, I'll see how it goes and maybe try again next year.

The surprise success of my balcony garden though has been the potatoes. The leaves were starting to die off over the past week or so, so I decided it must be time to dig them up. So I dug and dug and dug and they just kept on coming...

I was not only impressed with how many I unearthed, but also by the size of some of them! Bearing in mind, this was from one grow bag!

Growing potatoes was easy-peasy. All we did was plant them and then as they grew covered the shoots until the compost was near the top of the bag. Then we just watered them most days, but otherwise left them to their own devices.

I also had great fun digging them up - I loved getting my hands right in the soil and coming across these tasty treasures with surprising frequency. My fiancé compared me to a pig searching for truffles. Charming! What's wonderful though is because you can't physically see the potatoes growing, it's very pleasing when you realise what good work has been happening below the soil. I certainly wasn't expecting potatoes in such quantity - everything else we've grown on the balcony, we've hardly had any of because of the lack of space.

I definitely have a better idea of what's good to grow on my balcony now. Next year I want to grow more herbs, probably radishes again, definitely cut-and-come-again salad leaves, maybe try some courgettes and I'm feeling pretty inclined to grow potatoes again. All hail the mighty potato!

I used some of the potatoes to make this cottage pie from a recipe by The Hairy Bikers. It was lovely, although not quite as lovely as the recipe I normally make which is from English Food by Jane Grigson.

Obviously, potatoes do keep for quite a while, but I reckon those must have been the freshest potatoes I have ever cooked with - from earth to plate in a few hours, and dug up a mere few metres away from the kitchen - you can't get much more local than that!

Butchery Masterclass: Perfect Poultry

2010-08-01T14:12:00.001+01:00

I attended the above course about a week and a half ago now run by Tom of Loaf and Steve Rossiter of Rossiters Butchers in Birmingham. I wanted to go on the course because being able to butcher a chicken seems like such a great skill to have, not to mention a useful one.

First we watched Steve butcher a chicken - he made it look so easy. Steve has been a butcher for 35 years and Rossiters is the only certified organic butchers in Birmingham. All the chickens we used were organic and free range.

Then, it was our turn and 'butcher' the chicken we did.

We worked in pairs for this and needed lots of help from Steve!

We also learnt how to spatchcock a poussin ("Is that legal?!" asked my fiancé when I mentioned this to him) and helped make, and got to take home, some yummy recipes. We were shown how to butterfly chicken breasts and used them to make Chorizo-Stuffed Chicken Breasts (using homemade chorizo). I took one that we had prepared home and cooked it the next day for my fiancé, who is now a big fan. Tom used the chicken legs to show us how to make Raz el Hanout Chicken, which was gorgeous, and the spatchcocked poussin was marinated in lemon and garlic and cooked on a grill pan. I haven't done so yet, but am looking forward to testing out my spatchcocking skills at home!

We also made chicken stock from the raw carcass - I have since used the same recipe at home twice and it has turned out wonderful each time. I don't know if it's because I was using a raw chicken carcass, but I've never had the fat form so perfectly on the top before of my stocks - it made it very easy to remove. I now have quite a lot of home made stock in the freezer, which is great.

I also had my first taste of chicken liver since I was at school. I wanted to like it, and while it wasn't horrible, I still can't get into that livery taste.

Learning the butchery skills was great and I am extremely glad I went on the course. Butchery seems to be one of those forgotten skills that we think we don't need anymore, but it is much more economical to buy a whole chicken and butcher it yourself than to buy the pieces individually. And having these kinds of skills makes me feel closer to where my food comes from, because it means I'm more involved in the basic preparation of it.

I have to admit though, that my favourite bit of the course was eating all the food we had helped to prepare.

We also got to taste some of Tom's homemade elderflower champagne - yummy!

I have since had a go at butchering a chicken at home, once I'd bought myself a boning knife. Here is the result:

I think I did quite well! It is thanks to Steve's patient and expert guidance that I was able to do so well on my own at home - that and a very sharp knife.

If you'd like to find out more about Tom's courses, please go to http://www.loafonline.co.uk/cookeryschool/. Thanks to Tom for the pictures from the course.

Kusksu (Maltese Spring Soup)

2010-07-21T11:43:00.000+01:00

I have mentioned on this blog before that I am half Maltese and I love eating and cooking Maltese food. I can cook a few things my mum has shown me and a few things from a book we got when we holidayed in Malta, but really I think my repertoire when it comes to Maltese cooking is quite limited. That is why I was delighted to discover Did You Put Garlic?, a blog predominately about Maltese food.

There's some great recipes on there and the first one I decided to try was Kusksu or Maltese Spring Soup. Now, I did have a slight problem in that I couldn't find any dried kusksu or Israeli cous cous or even orzo pasta in Sainsbury's, and I didn't have time to go to Holland & Barratt, where Mer of Did You Put Garlic? says she gets hers from; so, I ended up using small pasta shells, which is the kind of thing my mum always puts in her Maltese soups. Here is the result:

Yeah, I may have gone a little overboard on the pasta. And I added fresh peas to mine, because I love fresh peas! It took me around half an hour to shell all the broad beans and peas though! This was a very tasty soup and I will definitely be making it again, perhaps with the right ingredients and I might try a poached egg in it next time.

Incidentally, I had never had this soup before I made it the other week. My mum never cooked it and I found out why when I spoke to her about it: when I told her what it was, she said, "Urgh, my mum used to make that. I hated it!" But then she also said she used to hate Maltese meat stew, but when I cooked it for her she thought it was delicious!

Apple sauce & the secret of crackling

2010-07-11T21:38:00.001+01:00

The last couple of weeks I've been practising creating lovely, lovely crackling on different cuts of pork; last week was roast pork belly with coriander and fennel seasoning from my River Cottage Everyday cookbook and this week I had a go at a pork leg joint. Both times I've succeeded in getting nigh-on perfect crackling, and I've got to agree with Nigel Slater, that there's really nothing to it. He says:

There is no great secret, despite what silly people may tell you. Simply get the butcher to score the skin, then rub a little oil and seasoning in it before you put it in the oven. Roast at a high temperature for a while, then turn the heat down a little. No secret.*

And if I can get good crackling in my pokey little oven, then anyone can. Unfortunately, both pork dinners were devoured before I remembered to take a photo, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

I did, however, get a photo of the apple sauce I made to go with the pork today:

You know, just looking at that photo is making me want to go into the fridge and get the leftover apple sauce out and eat it with my fingers...

But, anyway, the recipe is another one from River Cottage Everyday and it is very simple - I used 2kg Bramley apples (cored, peeled and sliced) and 4tbsp caster sugar (the sugar is dependent on how sweet you want it) and simmered it gently in a large saucepan until it looked pretty much as it does above. My fiancé says he would have liked it a bit sweeter, but that was just right for me, as I like to still get some of the tartness from the apples coming through.

I think next time I will make less because I have quite a lot left in the fridge, although the book says it keeps for about two weeks. (It can also be used as an apple compote - so I think I'll be having some mixed with some natural yoghurt over the next couple of weeks. Yummy.)

And while it is a simple recipe, it took a long time to peel, core and slice all those apples. I chose to listen to Aerosmith while I did this - you may have a different rock band you like to listen to while slicing apples, but I recommend something with a good beat.

*Real Cooking by Nigel Slater

Keema with (or without) peas

2010-07-05T21:30:00.001+01:00

First of all, let me say, this is not the most photogenic dish. I mean, look at it:

Well, I suppose it's not that bad... It doesn't look too much like dogfood, does it?

I can assure you that it smells and tastes great. The recipe is adapted from this BBC Good Food recipe, which I followed pretty much exactly last week. I found using minced lamb made the dish quite greasy, so I decided to use some chopped up lamb leg steaks this week for a chunkier texture. I also used three, rather than two, chopped fresh tomatoes this week to make it a bit more tomatoey and a bit more saucy (oo-er). And I didn't have any peas in this week. But it still worked well without, although I could have done with adding a little more yoghurt (I was adapting it for 2 people), as I managed to make it almost hotter than the sun in terms of spice. It was edible though, which was good (unlike the time my fiancé decided to make red thai curry and put an ENTIRE JAR of red thai curry paste in...).

I served it with Dina Khobez Wholemeal Flatbreads (because I was too lazy to make my own), which were a great find in the supermarket on the way home from work this evening! It goes well with rice too.

Guest Post on Jo's Kitchen

2010-07-03T14:30:00.000+01:00

Please go to Jo's Kitchen to see a guest post I did on there this week - it's a yummy recipe for Mediterranean vegetables, garlic chicken and cous cous!

Almost mellow fruitfulness...

2010-06-27T17:13:00.000+01:00

My tomato plants are fruiting! I noticed the first fruit a week or two ago. Exciting times.

Perhaps I will make a chutney when they are ripe, as preserving them will make them a special treat come winter.

Dinosaur cookies

2010-06-21T20:28:00.000+01:00

While in London, we also visited the Natural History Museum, mostly so my fiancé could gaze at the dinosaurs. Obviously, we went to the dinosaur shop while we were there and I managed to pick up a set of awesome dinosaur-shaped cookie-cutters for only £3. Because my fiancé loves dinosaurs and because I love my fiancé, I ended up spending a large chunk of my Sunday making dinosaur cookies.

I decided not to use the recipe on the back of the cookie-cutter packet because I didn't have all the ingredients, so I found this recipe instead. And, yes, while these claim to be "christmas cookies", I can confirm that you can used this recipe for any kind of cookie and the world doesn't collapse in on itself or anything. This recipe actually worked pretty well for my dinosaurs. Here are my cookies before going in the oven:

Once they'd been cooked and cooled, I set about icing them (after we'd eaten the broken ones, of course). I'd never iced anything before and found it rather fiddly and annoying. It's also the first time I've used food colouring in anything and I don't really want to make a habit of it, but it did look cool.

The oval-shaped shiny balls are dinosaur eggs. My fiancé helped me decorate them. Ironically, although the decoration was cute, we thought the cookies tasted better without it - they're so buttery and lovely (almost like shortbread - yum!), that it was a bit of a shame to have them coated in anything. Perhaps next time I'll just leave them plain.

As experiments go though, this was a good one!

The Ministry of Food

2010-06-20T08:10:00.001+01:00

Last weekend, my fiancé and I visited London, and one of the things we did was go to the Imperial War Museum - specifically to the Ministry of Food exhibition. I already have the book, but wanted to see the exhibition for myself. One of the things I loved was the film reel of short 'food flashes' from the Ministry of Food - you can see some of them here on the website. They had some great displays and it was a fascinating insight into what it was like on the homefront during the war.

Here are some pictures I took at the exhibition.

I love how the propaganda that was used focussed on winning the war through not wasting food!

An example of a war-time shop.

Another fine example of some propaganda. Who needs lipstick when you have cabbage?!

We could follow a few of these hints and tips today!

Imagine trying to do all your cooking on this!

An old recipe book and a thermos and gas mask - very useful for air raids.

The exhibition runs until 3rd January 2011. On certain days they also do cookery demonstrations. Please go here for more details.

Flowering tomato plants

2010-06-08T21:24:00.000+01:00

Just a quickie today: life is busy, busy!

Let's hope my tomato plants will also be getting busy producing fruit in the near future! They're looking pretty good so far, although I have planted too many in one pot. Slight underestimation of maximum growing size there - what can I say, I'm a novice!

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's Booster Bars

2010-06-02T18:13:00.001+01:00

Hugh, Hugh, Hugh. Why do you make me do crazy things like decide I'm going to make my own cereal/energy bars? The recipe was from his book River Cottage Everyday. If you go here you can find the recipe and see someone who did it much better than I did.

Here is my version just before it went in the oven:

I actually did the banana variation and used a mashed up banana instead of the peanut butter, because I don't like peanut butter: peanuts are nice, butter is nice, but the two mushed together make my tastes buds individually die a little death. I also used just pumpkin seeds instead of a mixed batch because I couldn't be bothered to buy lots of different seeds from the supermarket.

Having seen the picture accompanying the recipe I linked to, I do think mine could have done with a bit more baking. My bars are very gooey. So gooey, in fact, that they didn't slice up very well and now I have a mound of gooey oats in a tupperware box which I pick bits off when I'm hungry. I'm too embarrassed to show it to you, although it is very, very tasty. Gooey and sweet and yummy.

Carrot cake

2010-05-30T12:41:00.001+01:00

Yesterday we were visiting a friend's house in the evening for another friend's birthday. Kerry was planning on providing a buffet of hot meals, so I offered to bring some pudding. I got quite a few carrots in my fruit and veg box this week, so decided that naturally I had to make a carrot cake. I've not made many cakes before, so I was interested to see how it would turn out.

I used a recipe from Louise of Comida Y Vida, which you can find here. I had already tried Louise's carrot cake at the Midlands Food Bloggers meet-up, so I was looking forward to recreating it at home!

I didn't make the topping because it has cheese in it and I thought I'd be kind to my fiancé and make it edible for him, so I just dusted the top with icing sugar. Louise has since told me that she's made a topping using icing sugar and orange juice before and that works quite well, so I might have to give that a go in the future. I also used rapeseed oil rather than sunflower or vegetable oil, and that seemed to work pretty well.

This was before I dusted it - I managed to forget to get a picture of it after it was finished. Anyway, it was lovely - beautifully moist, sweet and very more-ish. Almost as good as Louise's! Everyone at the gathering appreciated it, the birthday boy, Febs, especially as he got to take the leftovers home.

I do love baking cakes. CAKE! Nom nom nom.

(NB: My cakes always come out slightly funny shapes because I am rubbish at lining cake tins.)

Potatoes: A lesson

2010-05-29T16:46:00.001+01:00

Another gem from the QI Fact of the Day:

When the potato first reached England, a potato-tasting banquet was given at the court of Queen Elizabeth I. Only the leaves and stems of the potatoes (which contain a poison called solanine) were served. All the guests became ill and left early.

The picture above is of the potatoes I am growing on my balcony, leaves bursting out of the growbag. As beautiful and abundant as the leaves are, we will not be eating them!

Jam-making & berry identification FAIL

2010-05-23T14:22:00.000+01:00

This week's fruit and veg box brought with it some blueberries. At least, I thought they were blueberries. I even looked at some pictures on the internet to check and they look very similar, so I concluded they were blueberries.

Now, what to do with them? Some googling about took me to this recipe for blueberry jam. I had never made jam before and this sounded so ridiculously easy, it seemed almost criminal not to give it a go. I always thought that making jam meant dicking about with large copper pots and thermometers, so this sounded too good to be true (note to self: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is).

Once I started simmering the 'blueberries', I quickly realised that they were blackcurrants, given the colour oozing out of them. No matter, though, I thought. Surely the same principles would apply and I could carry on regardless. It actually looked quite promising and after adding the sugar it really looked like jam should look and I was excited about eating it.

I duly left it in the jar to cool and decided to spread some on some toast for lunch; which I would have done, were it possible to spread the substance which had now congealed in the bottom of my jam jar. Hard as a rock. Well, not quite, but too hard for jam.

And I've no idea what went wrong. Lots of things could have gone wrong - I may have boiled it too much, not boiled it enough or this recipe might not work with blackcurrants - but I can't pin it down to any one thing.

I still intend to make jam in the future, so if anyone has any good recipes, please pass them on!

First radishes and other tales from my balcony

2010-05-16T08:03:00.003+01:00

My radishes were getting a little overcrowded, so I decided to thin some out - I was surprised to see how big some of them had grown!

The problem with balcony gardening, is that I do not have the capacity to sow successionally - I need to wait until my radishes and carrots are completely ready and out of the ground before I can sow anything else in that pot, because there just isn't room.

I'm considering applying for an allotment, but the things that worry me about it are: how much work it will be initially, especially if it's covered in brambles or something. I work full time and weekends are pretty much the only decent amount of time I get to do any housework. My flat is already a mess as it is! How would I balance trying to keep an allotment in order as well? I've also been reading Norfolk Kitchen's blog about some of the trouble she's been having with "allotment politics". Anyway, it's just something to have a think about at the moment, but if anyone's got any tips or advice, it would be most gratefully received!

Back to my balcony garden... I have an infestation! Of dandelion seeds! This time of year, the area I live in turns into a floating sea of dandelion seeds. It looks quite pretty - bits of fluff gracefully floating around... However, they are a menace! They land in my pots and then five minutes later, there's a seedling. And there are millions of them. I have to keep raking the soil (being careful to avoid the plants I actually want) because they are too tiny and too numerous to deal with by hand. On the whole, we are pretty lucky being on a first floor balcony with walls on either side, though: I've never seen a slug up here and we've got very little chance of any ground frost this time of year up here because it's fairly warm and sheltered. Dandelion seeds, however, are my enemy.

Italy Part 3: Eating out in Malcesine

2010-05-15T17:32:00.004+01:00

This is the third and final part of my Italy updates. We had some great food in the small town of Malcesine and I thoroughly disagreed with my travel guide which suggested that most restaurants in the town are awful! Here are some of our highlights.

Italians do like large meals - menus in Italian restaurants give you the option of five or six different courses: antipasti (starter), first main, second main, a cheese course, dessert and then coffee. All the restaurants in Malcesine never batted an eyelid at us ordering either just one course for lunch, or a couple of courses for dinner, although one restaurant did try to convince us to have coffee (neither of us are coffee drinkers).

We ended up eating at Al Gondoliere twice during our stay, as it impressed us so much the first time. We decided to stop there for lunch one afternoon after perusing the menu posted outside.

As you can see from the photo, there was an open area upstairs which had a lovely view over the cobbled streets of the town.

Most Italian restaurants charge a "bread and service" fee. This is usually about €1 - €2 each and you get as much bread as you want and breadsticks. At Al Gondoliere, we were also brought some olives - I was very taken with how green and fresh they were - a couple of them even still had their stalks on!

We both order a 'first main' course on this occasion. I had some delicious gnocchi in a tomato sauce. The only gnocchi I'd had before this occasion was shop-bought stuff, which can't even compare to what I had in Italy. It was so soft and creamy.

My fiancé had tagliatelle with Italian sausage and mushrooms, which he enjoyed very much (I didn't get a chance to taste any of it myself!).

We then decided to have pudding, as we'd had a relatively small meal for lunch. I had Bavarian cream with chocolate and my fiancé had a mint mousse. I was very impressed by the presentation!

I couldn't fault the taste, either. My Bavarian cream was delicious and very more-ish.

With our bill they also brought a small chocolate liquer each in edible pastry cups. Yummy! If you ever happen to visit Malcesine, I definitely recommend this restaurant - it is good value for what you get and the quality of the food. The staff are also very friendly, although a mixture of English-speaking and Italian only, so it's handy to have your phrasebook with you if you're not already fluent in the language!

Another lunch we had was overlooking the lake itself at Ristorante Pizzeria Lido Paina - a beautiful location, although the restaurant itself was so-so. I ordered my first (and only) authentic Italian pizza. There was nothing wrong with it - it was nice (and huge!), but just not as stunning as I was expecting for pizza in Italy. Perhaps I just didn't pick the best restaurant in which to have my only pizza from the holiday. My fiancé had breaded veal, but we were a little suspicious it might be pork in there. But I'm not an expert, so we could of course have been wrong. I tried a bit and it was delicious anyway!

On our final night's stay we decided to sample a restaurant just a few yards from our hotel, as I liked the look of the menu and it was recommended in our guide book. Al Cosaro, uses freshly caught fish from the lake it overlooks as the basis for many of its dishes, although they do plenty of other things too.

For my starter I ordered pike with polenta. Polenta is something I have had limited success with at home, so I wanted to see (and taste) it done properly. It was good, particularly with the strong taste of the pike to accompany it.

My fiancé had pate de foie gras. I tried some and it was seriously good - so light and creamy. I just had to blot out of my mind how they make it...

For my main, I had beef with asparagus and 14 month matured parmesan. Could there be a more indulgent meal? I was a bit scared of the cheese at first, as it smelt (and tasted) really, really strong, but it went very well with the strong flavour of the asparagus and the beef. The beef was also wonderfully tender.

My fiancé had lamb cutlets, which were presented really nicely and were cooked really well too - pink in the middle, nice and brown on the outside.

An excellent meal to end our holiday and another top restaurant in Malcesine.

Finally, I simply had to sample some ice cream from one of the many Gelataria in the town, so here's me, a bit windswept, enjoying a chocolate ice cream by the lake:

Italy Part 2: Zeni winery

2010-05-09T16:46:00.002+01:00

While on holiday in Italy we had hired a car (an Alfa Romeo 147, no less! Fortunately, it didn't break down; but both headlight bulbs did fail one day apart), and we used the opportunity to drive to Bardolino. Bardolino is a big wine producing region (we knew we were in for a treat when driving through rows and rows of vinyards on the way to our hotel from the airport), and we visited the Wine Museum there.

It was really cool getting a glimpse of the factory floor and seeing all the wine being bottled. Mmmm, wine...

It was also really cool seeing some of the equipment they used to use for wine-making in days of yore.

That's one of the barrels they used to use to crush the grapes with their feet. I always thought that looked like fun: it reminds me of that episode of I Love Lucy.

After the wine museum, there was the shop, where you could taste and buy wine. I tasted some wine, during which my fiancé felt the need to point out that there were pots you could spit into or pour the rest of the wine out the glass - "You don't have to neck it down," he helpfully explained. I just looked at him incredulously.

The best thing about the shop was the prices. You could buy really good quality wines for dirt cheap prices. There were also some massive bottles on sale, should you feel the need to own a ridiculously large bottle.

I went for something a little less excessive, but as you got better deals the more wine you bought, we ended up buying six bottles of the stuff. Fortunately they also sold polystyrene 'flight cases' for wine to keep the bottles in tact in your suitcase, which worked a treat. This is the one we bought:

It cost less than £25 for six of those and it has won awards and everything and I can vouch for the fact that it is very nice.

The only thing the winery was lacking was the capacity to deliver overseas: we would have happily purchased more bottles (especially at those prices), but were limited by what we could reasonably transport home. We already had to buy another bag as we had not banked on buying anything that bulky!

A few wines from Zeni winery can, however, be purchased from two suppliers in the UK: Averys of Bristol and Tanners Wines in Shrewsbury. Just remember to drink responsibly and never ever spit out free, good quality wine. Because that's just a waste.

Italy Part 1: Wedding!

2010-05-08T21:42:00.003+01:00

Last night (Friday) we landed back in the UK after a short holiday to Italy. Specifically we went to Malcesine, a small town on Lake Garda. The main reason we chose this destination is that a friend of mine was getting married there, and I'd always wanted to visit Italy, so this seemed the perfect excuse!

Food formed quite a large part of the holiday: my friend's wedding included a 7 (or was it 8?!) course meal - the longest meal I'd done before that was 5 courses. We also visited some fantastic restaurants and pizzerias and had ice cream from one of the many Gelateria. I do feel like I ate an awful lot and have probably gained about 100 pounds in the course of 5 days. I also don't even want to look at another piece of cheese for a good long while.

I'm going to be writing about my holiday in a few different posts because there's a lot I want to tell and think if I tried to do it in one post it would be too long, so I'll start with...

The Wedding
I thought I would begin writing about the wedding we attended, because this was definitely a highlight of our trip, in foodie terms as well as emotional ones! Everyone loves wedding pictures, right? So here's one of the happy couple:

What a backdrop!

Jo & Rob (pictured) decided that they would have a seven course feast for their wedding, and where better to have that than Italy?! The dinner was held at the Hotel Excelsior, Malcesine and their wedding menu was as follows, accompanied by pictures:

* Strips of marinated salmon with herbs, breaded in black crumbs and fried with olive oil on green beans, salad and Grana cheese

*Toasted ham and cheese parcels, served with melon strips and green olive pesto

*Small fresh lasagne with tomatoes, baked au gratin with beef ragout in a white sauce and chicory spit covered in Fontina cheese

*Risotto with blueberries, bacon and Fontina cheese

*Green apple and vodka sorbet

*Fillet of oven roasted beef, coated in almonds with potato chips and fresh thyme
(no picture of this one - sorry!)

*Mango and passion fruit pastry

It is worth mentioning at this point that the hotel painstakingly provided a cheese-free version of each course for my lactose-intolerant fiancé. Much kudos to them for that!

I think my favourite course (aside from the sorbet, which everyone agreed was wonderfully more-ish - best sorbet I've ever had!) was the mango and passionfruit pastry. Fruity, light and delicious. A perfect end to a perfect feast.

At least, we thought that was the end, and then the cake appeared!

Sadly, I can't give much of an opinion on what the cake tasted like because I was so full I only managed one bite!

Canapes were also had earlier in the day before we went on a champagne cruise on the lake, which consisted of various nibbles including freshly sliced proscuttio and fresh parmesan cheese. There was also much champagne and both red and white wine for everyone. It was heaven!

This was a wonderful way to celebrate such a happy occasion and I'm very glad I got to share it with Jo & Rob. I can definitely say that their marriage has got off to a cracking start!

Flatbreads

2010-04-28T18:25:00.000+01:00

Last week I'd had a pretty stressful week, so I did what any sane homecook would do and bought myself a new cookbook. I bought the River Cottage Everyday cookbook because I love the TV show and spend most days day-dreaming of becoming a Dorset small-holder.

Anyway, as I have failed to organise my time sufficiently to make all those loaves of homemade bread I dream of making, the idea of making flatbreads appealed. They are really quick and pretty easy to make - the dough only needs 15 minutes to rest and once rolled-out, a couple of minutes in a hot pan, et voila! You don't even need to use strong bread flour or yeast; just bog-standard plain white flour, some water, some olive oil and some salt.

Here I am cooking a couple. I ruined the first one because the pan wasn't hot enough and it went rubbery and not very nice.

My one complaint about the recipe is that there is way too much salt in it for my palate. I will definitely be using less next time! Still, I was proud of my achievement and I can see these being really versatile. I served mine with my dinner of salad (with homegrown salad leaves) and a Higgidy mushroom and spinach pie (the latter was ok).

Yummy!

Hobz biz Zejt (with homegrown salad leaves)

2010-04-24T17:23:00.000+01:00

I haven't been posting much lately because life has been very hectic for the past few weeks. Things are happening on the balcony garden, though and I have started harvesting some of my baby salad leaves. Today I had some for lunch.

It's a take on Hobz biz Zejt - a Maltese delicacy. My baby salad leaves added a nice crunch!

Meal plan

2010-04-20T17:43:00.000+01:00

I've started using a mini-white board stuck to our fridge-freezer to plan our meals for the week. It's really handy as it reminds me what I need to get out the freezer the night before. My darling fiancé has also started using it to score the meals I make.

Wonder how I'll fare for the rest of the week.

Balcony Garden update!

2010-04-11T07:47:00.000+01:00

Time for an update on my gardening endeavours. Mostly pictoral.

Salad leaves

Tomatoes

And things happening outside! These are my radish seedlings. I've sowed carrots in the same pot too, but no sign of those yet. Very excited about my radishes, though!

Cooking disasters: Corned Beef Casserole

2010-04-11T07:30:00.000+01:00

I nearly began this post with the picture of the Corned Beef Casserole I cooked on Tuesday night, but decided it might put people off from reading any further.

Recently I bought two old cookbooks from a second hand bookshop. One of them was an American book, first printed in 1942.

I decided that as an "experiment" I would cook something from the book. This book not only has 1300 tested recipes, but also contains cooking and nutritional advice. Did you know that vitamin B1 is "For good appetite, good digestion and steady nerves"?

I decided to go for Corned Beef Casserole because I already had most of the ingredients and would just need a tin of corned beef. My mum used to make Corned Beef Casserole but it was completely different to the one in this book: it had corned beef, baked beans and potatoes in it and it was one of my favourite dinners as a child. This version of Corned Beef Casserole, however, contains the following:

4 cups cooked rice
2 cups cubed cooked or canned corned beef
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 No. 2 can (or 2 1/2 cups cooked) tomatoes (no idea what a "no. 2 can" is, so I just used a standard 400g tin of tomatoes)
1 tsp salt
Few grains pepper
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce

Now, first things first, I can't deal with working in cups. This tends to be why I avoid American recipes. We have cup measures, but I don't understand in my head how much each thing is, so I can't visualise what 2 cups of corned beef looks like, unlike when I work in grams or litres etc. I can even work in pounds and ounces better than I can work in cups. Cups give me a headache. Especially when they ask for something like "1/4 cup chopped onion". Why can't it just say 1 small onion or something? That makes much more sense to me.

Secondly, 1 tsp of salt when you're already using salty canned corned beef is an awful lot. I would never normally put that much salt in any of my cooking, but for the purposes of the "experiment", I did. I could feel my arteries shrivelling in horror as I did it.

Everything was put into a casserole dish (for some reason you were meant to put alternate layers of rice and beef and then mixed the rest of the ingredients and pour over the top) and then cooked for 30 minutes. Here was the result:

Mmmmmmmm!

It tasted like ass. It was so salty, I couldn't get the taste out of my mouth for hours after eating some of it. I served it with some nice bread and butter and we both agreed that the bread and butter was tastier than the dinner. The dinner tasted of corned beef and salt. If you like those two things, go ahead and cook this. If, however, you are sane and have tastebuds, please don't put yourself through the trauma.

The Great Pasty Adventure

2010-04-07T19:48:00.001+01:00

On Bank Holiday Monday, making Mini Egg Tiffin wasn't enough. No, I decided that I HAD to make Pasties. I got the idea in my head when browsing through Nigel Slater's Tender looking for something to do with swede. And when I get one of my schemes in my head, there is very little that will prevent me from following through with it.

The recipe makes 6 pasties, which I thought would be fine, imagining them to be small pasties – my fiancé and I could have a couple each for dinner and then one each for lunch the next day. Perfect!

This pastry required me, for the first time in my life, to buy some lard. I have never bought lard before, mostly because my reaction to it is, "Ewwwww, lard!". Anyway, I bit the bullet and purchased the lard and some more butter, which was also required.

I duly froze the butter and lard for a good hour before use and then came the grating. I had to grate the frozen butter and lard into the flour. Dear God, it was hard work. And while this was going on I was boiling the chopped potatoes and swede and frying the onions and beef for the filling. I am not usually very good at co-ordinating lots of things at the same time when cooking (contrary to the popular belief that women are fantastic at multi-tasking), but I (mostly) stayed in control of the situation.

As an aside, I ended up buying beef shin instead of beef skirt – because that's what happens when you decide to cook something at the last minute on bank holiday Monday and you have to purchase your meat from the supermarket – and it worked perfectly well. I was worried about it being too tough at the end of cooking, but it was lovely and tender.

Assembling the pasties was quite fiddly and I wasn't very neat at all with it. My work surface in my kitchen is so small, that I didn't have room to roll out all six balls of pastry at once, so I had to work in batches. I also wasn't able to use a round plate to guide me because all the plates we own are square. Once all the pasties were made and I put them on the oven trays ready for baking, I realised the enormity of what I'd done.

Yeah, I made six of those. There are only two of us in my household. Overcatering, much?

I was tired by the time it came to brush them with egg, so the browning ended up quite uneven. But they still tasted good, if lacking a little in pepper (when you only have a small pepper mill, there is only so much grinding you can do...). I served one each with chips.

We donated two to family and then had one each for lunch the next day. They were even tasty cold and I was quite impressed by how well they stayed together!

According to Nigel Slater they're not proper Cornish Pasties because in this recipe the filling is cooked first, whereas in a traditional Cornish Pasty the filling should be placed in the pastry raw and then the whole thing cooked.

Not bad for a first attempt though, eh?

Mini Egg Tiffin

2010-04-05T14:35:00.001+01:00

When I saw that Jam and Clotted Cream had posted a recipe for this Mini Egg Tiffin (originally posted by Butcher, Baker), I knew I had to make it this weekend, especially as it's a "no-bake" recipe and my fiancé absolutely loves Mini Eggs. Fortunately they still had some left in Sainsbury's this morning.

It was the first time I've ever broken digestive biscuits using a rolling pin to use in a recipe, and it felt a little like a rite of passage. Crushing mini eggs with the rolling pin was fun too, although this distressed my fiancé who felt I was "destroying" the mini eggs. He agreed that it was worth it in the end though.

As you can see, mine does not look that neat, but it was very yummy all the same! In fact, it is quite rich and not a good idea to eat too much in one go.

Follow the links above for the recipe. And try not to eat too much and make yourselves sick. You have been warned!

Happy Easter and an award!

2010-04-04T08:57:00.000+01:00

First of all, Happy Easter, everyone! However you celebrate it and whatever you are doing today, I hope you have a wonderful day.

Secondly, I've been passed an award by Luigi of Luigi's Tastes of Italy. I'm glad that he enjoys my blog and in the spirit of the award, I thought I'd pass it on to highlight some of the blogs that I enjoy too.

The Sunshine Award is given to bloggers whose positivity and creativity inspire others in the blog world. Here are the "rules":
* Put the logo on your blog or within your post. Pass the award on to as many as 12 bloggers.
    * Let the nominees know they have received this award by commenting on their blog
    * Share the love and link to the person from whom you received this award.
    * Link to the nominees within your post.

Like Luigi, I don't think I will comment on people's blogs: I'm just going to use this award to write briefly about the blogs which inspire me. I know I've done a similar thing before, but I've started following some new blogs since then, so it's always good to update! So, here they are, in no particular order.

1. A Taste of Savoie
Sarah who writes this blog is currently attending the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery in France. A fascinating read!

2. Butcher, Baker
Butcher, Baker are a husband and wife team writing about fantastic, delicious-looking food. The most recent update about how to make your own cheese press is inspired!

3. Chocolate Log Blog
For all things chocolate, you won't find a better blog than this!

4. Comida Y Vida
I am including this one in the hope it will encourage Louise to write more in it! Louise has a passion for Spanish food and is a fellow West Midlands-based blogger.

5. Farmersgirl Kitchen
A wide variety of recipes and updates about the development of Janice's brand new kitchen.

6. Horror Kitchen
One of the funniest food blogs I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Documents kitchen genius as well as kitchen disasters, with some inspired ingredient combinations along the way.

7. In the Kitchen, etc.
By Jen, an American blogger. I love reading and learning about the differences between British and American food culture!

8. Jam and Clotted Cream
Great recipes and info about local food events in Cornwall. Makes me wish I lived in the West Country!

9. Jo's Kitchen
Jo is a fellow Midlands-based blogger who is doing a stellar job promoting food bloggers in the Midlands. A wide variety of scrummy recipes on this blog.

10. Norfolk Kitchen
I love following Tracey's adventures in allotment growing. I lived in Norfolk for a time and this blog makes me pine for the flatlands!

11. Serenely Full
An amusing collection of recipes, observations, pictures and video. Love the MasterChef innuendoes!

12. The London Vegetable Garden
Helped inspire me to start my own balcony garden. Well worth checking out if you like to grow your own.

13. Where's My Pork Chop?
A unique take on a food blog, where Food Urchin asks other food bloggers to cook him food, he eats it then writes about it. A witty and interesting blog.

14. Loaf Online
Great information about local food in the Birmingham area and also home of the Loaf Cookery School.

I realise that is more than 12... Also, don't forget to check out Luigi's Tastes of Italy - his blog is great if you like authentic Italian food!

Pork Steaks with Fruity Red Cabbage

2010-03-29T20:16:00.002+01:00

This week in our fruit and veg box, we also received half a red cabbage. I like red cabbage but I had never cooked with it before and initially wasn't quite sure what to do with it. My fiancé insists that he doesn't like cabbage of any kind, but I was damned if I was going to eat half a red cabbage by myself!

Some nosing around the internet found me this recipe for Pork Chops with Fruity Red Cabbage. I thought this would be perfect because the apple and cranberry sauce might just make the cabbage palateable enough for my fussy fiancé. Also, I very rarely cook with pork and am interested in learning how to!

We bought outdoor-reared pork loin steaks rather than chops (I'm not entirely sure what the difference is, although the steaks seemed thinner than chops and tastier too), but I didn't see why this recipe wouldn't work just as well with those. On the whole, this is a fairly simple recipe, but I did have an issue with timings, as I got the cabbage on too soon, and being nervous about undercooking the pork, I inevitably ended up overcooking it. I kept the cabbage warm by leaving the lid on to keep some heat in.

One of the things that really surprised me was that the cabbage smelled lovely when I was stir-frying it; I am so used to the pungent smell of boiling cabbage, that this came as a shock to me!

The pork steaks ended up a little dry thanks to my over-zealous cooking, but were still very tasty, and the potato wedges having been cooked in the same roasting tin as the pork were heavenly. The cabbage tasted as nice as it smelled while cooking: the sweetness of the apple and the cranberry against the slight bitterness of the cabbage was really good. And, yes, my fiancé did eat it and said it wasn't too bad, but he's not too keen on me cooking it for him again (at least not with the cabbage included)! Apparently it still tasted too much of cabbage for him! A shame, because this was a really delicious dish.

Plum Crumble

2010-03-28T16:17:00.000+01:00

A short while ago in my post about Nigel Slater, I said that although I had a copy of his Real Fast Puddings, I had never made anything from it.

Well, today I rectified this and made plum crumble. I got some plums in my fruit and veg box this week, and I'm not really a huge fan of eating plums raw, so I decided to do something with them and this is the result.

I had less than half the plums required for the recipe, so I halved the ingredients for the crumble. I'm not sure if I could have done with making more of the crumble mixture or indeed using a smaller baking dish (although I haven't actually got one smaller), but, nevertheless, I think my first crumble has turned out quite well! Although the crumble takes 35 minutes to bake in the oven, it was very quick and easy to prepare - it took me about 10 minutes! If I had known how easy crumble was I would have made it a long time ago!

We have not eaten it yet as it's for later, but I have had a quick taste and it is sharp, but sweet and quite sticky and lovely. I'm not sure if it is a little too sharp and whether I have used enough sugar and whether the plums were ripe enough (although they seemed pretty soft), but I'm sure I'd happily scoff the lot anyway!

I've made my One Pot Pledge!

2010-03-26T11:14:00.001Z

Garden Organic's One Pot Pledge campaign is now open for business, so I have signed up.

This scheme is aimed at people who have not grown anything or not grown much before. You pledge to grown one thing (I'm growing more than one thing but put my pledge as 'carrots' as I am planning to grow those too) and you get advice and tips as well as discounts and offers on gardening equipment. If you are already an experienced grower you can join as a 'Gardening Guru' and help new gardeners to grow food.

My Favourite Food Podcasts

2010-03-20T13:45:00.003Z

I am slightly addicted to podcasts. I subscribe to 24 different podcasts and I will probably never ever catch up with them all, but still I subscribe and still I go in search of new ones. I listen to podcasts on the way to and from work and most nights I fall asleep listening to podcasts. (Quite often I fall asleep listening to Woman's Hour, which my fiancé is convinced conveys subliminal messages while I'm sleeping, making me cook nice dinners for him!)

Anyway, a few of the podcasts I listen to are food-related. Here are my top 4.

4) Cooking with Paula McIntyre
This is a podcast of a radio show from BBC Radio Ulster. I like it because it's interesting and it's only 10 minutes long (the internet killed my attention span a long time ago), but I could never cook the recipes from it because I can't deal with audio instructions. It's something to do with the way I learn and the way I take in information: for example, if someone gives me verbal directions to a specific destination, I will find it very difficult to follow them; however, I can read a map just fine. You may well find this method of instruction suits you though, in which case, why not give it a go?

3) Food Philosophy
Food Philosophy do a mixture of video and audio podcasts at varying lengths. They're very American (for some reason Americans sound even more American in a purely auditory medium) - my favourite episode was when they were in Scotland marvelling at their "Scottish" breakfast of sausage, tomato, eggs, beans and black pudding. Only amusing if you're British, I suppose.

2) Spilled Milk
This is the podcast from Molly Wizenberg of http://orangette.blogspot.com/ and Matthew Amster-Burton of http://www.rootsandgrubs.com/. It is truly hilarious and no episode so far has failed to make me Laugh Out Loud. Matthew and Molly have a great sense of humour and a great on-air chemistry. I recommend all foodies should listen to this because it is about food and laughter, and what could be more endearing than that? I also love learning about the weird American food I've never heard of: I spent most of the 'Milkshakes' episode wondering what the hell a 'malt shake' was. I'm still not entirely sure, but I definitely want to try one.

1) The Food Programme
I was so excited when BBC Radio 4 began doing a podcast of The Food Programme, because I was very rarely able to listen to it when it was broadcast, and inevitably forgot to 'Listen Again' online. Now all the hassle of remembering stuff is taken away, as it automatically downloads to my Zune software. Obviously this does not have the amusement factor of some of the other podcasts on this list, but for me it is must-listen radio for its informative and fascinating items, tackling subjects as diverse as school dinners, breadmaking, tea and cheese (the programme on cheese was particularly fantastic - there was a story about a guy who risked going to jail for importing French cheese into Australia!).

If anyone has any other food-related podcasts to recommend, I'd love to hear your suggestions; not that that will make it any easier for me to catch up on my podcasts! Still, I am never short of things to listen to.

West Midlands Food Bloggers' Meet Up

2010-03-15T19:56:00.002Z

On Saturday afternoon a bunch of West Midlands based food bloggers (including myself) all descended on Tom Baker's (director of Loaf) house to swap foodie know-how, experiences, loves, hates, desires etc. I'm almost making it sound as if there were huge swathes of us, which isn't quite true; there were in fact five of us, which turned out to be a very nice number – large enough to be a proper gathering but small enough to be able to get to know everyone a little and to have a good old chinwag (certainly not large enough to devour all the food we collectively brought along, however!).

As well as myself and Tom (artisan breadmaker and educator), there was Louise of Comida Y Vida, new blogger and Spanish food aficinado; Wendy of Peter's Yard, who make the scrummiest Swedish crispbead I have ever tasted; and last, but certainly not least, Jo of Jo's Kitchen, who diligently organised the event and keeps a delicious-looking recipe-filled blog. What I particularly enjoyed about this gathering of people was, not only meeting some like-minded and lovely people in the local area, but also the different foodie backgrounds that everyone was from and the different interests everyone had and was able to contribute to our meet-up.

But, onto the important stuff: the FOOD. For starters Wendy had kindly brought along some samples of the Swedish crispbreads made by her company Peter's Yard, along with some goats' cheese from local producer Brockhall Farm Dairy. The crispbread does not taste anything like Ryvita and the like; it is very flavourful (nothing like cardboard at all!) and although the crispbreads are thin they are somehow quite weighty and substantial. The goats' cheese was a lovely complement being beautifully creamy and mild.

For our main meal Tom had prepared some dough and we had all brought along some pizza toppings. We made a pizza each in Tom's outdoor earth oven and shared slices of our creations. How we then managed to eat some pudding after eating so much pizza, I don't know, but we soldiered on.

I had taken a bit of a gamble that morning and decided I would bake some scones to take with me. I had never made scones before but fortunately they turned out well. They are so quick and easy to make! I've already made another batch for Mother's day and will be making more for a birthday next week!

Jo contributed some heavenly, indulgent Rocky Road (apparently the recipe is Nigella's). I took some leftovers home with me – my fiancé tasted a piece and then promptly scoffed the other two pieces, and is urging me to make them myself!

Louise had made a carrot cake. I'm glad I managed to try a small piece even though I was so full I was beginning to feel a bit like Mr Creosote in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, because it was undoubtedly the best carrot cake I've ever tasted. It was wonderfully moist. Apparently, Louise's secret is that she uses oil instead of butter. And, better still, the cake is low fat!

All in all, a wonderful day. I met some fabulous people, ate some gorgeous food and drank some lovely wine. What more could you want from an afternoon?!

QI Fact of the Day

2010-03-13T07:24:00.001Z

Yes, I am blogging again. Apologies, but this is too interesting not to share. In fact, I would say it's Quite Interesting:

Until 1800, cookery was so dangerous that it was the second commonest cause of death among women (after childbirth). Their skirts caught on the open fires of the hearth. Deaths were dramatically reduced by the invention of the closed range by George Bodley in 1802.

I think we ought to count ourselves lucky that we live in technologically advanced times. And a time where it is acceptable for women to wear trousers.

(Subscribe to the Quite Interesting Fact and Quotation of the Day.)

Why I love Nigel Slater

2010-03-12T21:50:00.001Z

I love Nigel Slater because his passion for food is so sincere and so unpretentious. This really comes through in his writing and, on listening to a recent edition of Radio 4's Food Programme, I was shocked to learn that he a) writes while he is cooking and b) hardly ever re-writes anything. Those are both admirable skills.

I currently own four of Nigel Slater's cookbooks: Real Fast Food, Real Fast Puddings, Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch and Real Cooking. All of these books are wonderful in their own ways, but Real Fast Food is particularly great for those of us who work full-time because all the recipes can be made in about half an hour - as Nigel Slater himself points out, about the time it would take to oven-cook many ready-meals. And all the recipes are made from real ingredients and plenty of them are superbly delicious. Who needs Delia's cheat book?

I also love the fact that when he was writing this book he didn't have a very big kitchen (see the quotation in my side bar), which just goes to show that even in the tiniest of spaces you can make great culinary creations.

This is Wholewheat Pasta with Sausages, Mustard and Caramelised Onions from Real Fast Food. This has become a favourite in our house and has become one of those meals that I start to crave every so often. The combination of mustard, sausage and onion is heavenly and it is so quick and easy to make. I tend to use more sausage than Nigel Slater says in the book (because you can never have too much sausage).

I have to admit I have yet to make anything from Real Fast Puddings; I think working full-time means my priority is cooking dinners, but I will definitely endeavour to make more desserts. Tender is great for growing tips as well as cooking and is filled with so many wonderful ideas for vegetables - it is a must for veg-lovers. Real Cooking is good for classic dishes - I've done a lovely roast chicken recipe from it.

I have Suz at Serenely Full to thank for my discovery of Nigel Slater, as she was the one who recommended his books to me. Which cookbooks/chefs inspire you and why?

Free seeds!

2010-03-12T17:16:00.002Z

Continuing in my vein of growing things, I thought I'd share this link with you. If you go to the BBC Dig In website you can apply for some free seeds: french bean, basil, mixed salad, carrot, and courgette.

Anyone can apply, and if you've not grown anything before, why not give it a go? I'm managing it so far, which means anyone can do it! And think of the lovely things you could make with those ingredients!

As a bonus, here is a picture of my tomato seedlings:

Post about fully-grown edible food coming soon, I promise!

Seedlings!

2010-03-08T19:48:00.001Z

It was another beautiful day here in the West Midlands on Sunday and I woke up to find that both my lettuce and my basil have produced some super-cute seedlings!

As it was such a nice day, I decided (after my ongoing losing battle with some black mould) that a trip to the garden centre was in order and we are now also fairly well equipped for when the little plantlings make the leap to growing outside. I think we are actually quite fortunate in that our balcony has a very sunny wall at one end and a shadier wall at the other, so we can organise our planting accordingly.

I look forward to watching my seedlings grow and develop into adults, and I especially look forward to eating them!

My first seeds

2010-03-02T14:12:00.003Z

I've been meaning to plant some of my seeds in my propagator for the last couple of weeks now, but things have been a bit hectic and I hadn't got round to it yet. Today has been a bit of an unusual day because this morning I was in court as a witness - I had to take the whole day off work because you don't know when you are going to get called into the courtroom and how long you will be there. I was fortunate in that I got called in about an hour after proceedings started and was only questioned for about 5 minutes. This has meant that I've been free to do with the rest of the day as I wish.

So, despite being surprisingly tired considering how short a time I was in court, I decided to take the opportunity to do my first ever bit of planting. So far I have planted basil, tomatoes and lettuce leaves. I already have the makings of a lovely salad!

Obviously, there's not a lot to see at the moment other than compost, but I'm hoping that soon I will have more to show you! I have moved the propagator from the sunny spot above to somewhere that I'm hoping will have a more even temperature (I was a bit concerned that by the sliding doors might get too hot during the day and too cold at night). I am excited at the prospect of growing my own produce: isn't it amazing that from nondescript little seeds you can grow something so fundamentally important as food? Here's hoping, anyway!

Restaurant Review: The Bull's Head in Meriden

2010-02-28T15:22:00.001Z

This review has also been published at www.itsallaboutcoventry.co.uk.

The Bull's Head in Meriden's claim to fame is that it is situated on the exact centre of England. This is marked by a sign outside displaying how many miles it is to various cities and, according to my fiancé, there is a spot inside the pub which is meant to be the actual central spot of the country, but the place was too packed full of bodies to go searching for it, so instead we sat at a table content that we were somewhere very close to it.

It was a busy Saturday lunchtime at the Bull's Head and we had wandered in a bit aimlessly trying to work out if we ought to wait somewhere to be seated or if we should grab our own table. A waitress must have noticed us looking lost and answered our question before we even asked it, informing us to find ourselves a table and someone would be along to serve us.

The speed of service was quite impressive considering how busy they were; we did have to wait for about 20 minutes for our mains to arrive after our starters, but we were kept informed of the wait and received several apologies from waiting staff.

The Creamy Mushroom Gratin with a Cheese and Herb Crust starter was reasonably priced at £4.75 but hardly spectacular. I failed to understand the 'crust' part of the description, as mine was mostly just soggy and rather bland. I've certainly had better, but at the same time it wasn't awful and I'd probably eat it again without putting up too much of a fight.

My fiancé had bread and olive oil rather than a proper starter and he praised the bread as being particularly good.

The main meals were somewhat more impressive, however. My fiancé, ever the meat connoisseur, went for the mixed grill (£14.95) and it was certainly one of the most well-presented and tastiest mixed grills I have ever seen. It included steak, gammon, lamb cutlets and hand-cut chips. His one complaint was that his steak was a little overdone (he had asked for it medium-rare).

I decided to have the Venison Steak (£13.95) while it's still in season, which came served on a bed of root vegetables, mushrooms and bacon and served with seasonal vegetables on the side (carrots and broccoli). The sweetness of the roasted root vegetables complemented the meat very well, and the saltiness of the bacon and mushrooms made for a scrumptious flavour combination. The sweetness was a little overpowering at times, but on the whole it was a very tasty dish.

I have yet to be asked in a restaurant how I like my venison steak and it always comes well-done; having some pink left in the meat is much more agreeable to my palate. I can't be the only one.

We saw some delicious-looking desserts whizzing past our heads, but we were more than sated by the food we'd already had, so decided to call it a day. I'd happily visit again if we were passing but feel I'd be unlikely to make a special effort to go. It's a perfectly good pub-restaurant, but not special enough to make it onto my list of favourites.

Valentine's Day Meal(s) & Pancakes

2010-02-16T17:43:00.000Z

Valentine's Day this year for us was kind of overshadowed by hunting for a suitable wedding venue, so we didn't really do anything out of the ordinary: I cooked, but that is hardly unusual!

Our Valentine's meal was kind of in two parts: on Saturday evening I cooked a delicious free-range roast chicken, with roast potatoes, carrots, mushrooms (mushrooms popped into the roasting dish are delicious because they soak up the juices and take on a beautiful flavour), and decided to use up the homemade vegetable stock I had left in my freezer, by making this onion gravy recipe. It is very easy to make and went surprisingly well with the chicken. I blended mine and it turned out quite thick, so it was almost like a sauce - yummy!

The leftover chicken then made two wonderfully succulent and delicious sandwiches for me the next couple of days. This really brought home to me how much more economical it is to buy a whole chicken than to buy chicken breasts etc. We bought a (fairly small) free-range chicken from Sainsbury's for about £5.50 - this provided us with the roast, two lots of sandwiches, and I then made chicken stock from the bones which turned into a soup.

I made the chicken stock during the day on Sunday and it turned out much better than last time. I simmered it much more gently this time and it was much less greasy. I then used the stock in a favourite soup of mine - Egyptian Lentil Soup. I first made this soup after buying lentils for the first time on a whim, and it's been a favourite in our house ever since. Simple ingredients and ridiculously simple to make, it is filling and hearty and is wonderful served with some chunks of bread.

This is the first time I had made the soup with homemade chicken stock rather than a stock cube and I really noticed the difference in colour and flavour. It looked lovely and rich. It tasted pretty good too! I love the addition of the lemon juice - it gives it a real zing.

For dessert we had pancakes. My fiancé did the honours using the batter I had made earlier.

Yes, he cheated and used a spatula to flip them. We like our pancakes served with sugar, lemon and orange. Simple, but tasty!

Sharon Fruit

2010-02-14T17:28:00.000Z

Every once in a while something turns up in my fruit and veg box and I haven't got a clue what it is. This happened the first time we got some kale. This week I was utterly stumped by the Sharon Fruit (or Persimmon).

I mean, if you've never seen one before this looks a bit weird, right? Like a large berry. My fiancé's mum kindly informed us what it was and how to eat it. So, today I tried it.

I didn't dislike the sharon fruit, but I wasn't exactly bowled over by it. I think there is some kind of primal instinct in my brain saying, "Warning! This fruit is not in my database! Could be poisonous!", which is weird because I don't usually get that feeling when trying new foods - maybe it's because it's a fruit and looks quite berry-like. Who knows. Anyway, perhaps I could grow to love it!

Chicken, Leek and Bacon Pie

2010-02-07T08:13:00.005Z

Yesterday I had some boneless chicken thighs in the fridge to use up - I had been planning on making some spicy jerk chicken thighs and had even bought some chilli peppers in town in the morning with this in mind. But then we picked up our fruit and veg box from my fiancé's parents. There were two giant leeks in there this week, and so the rusty old cogs in my brain began to squeak into life as I began to mull over what could be done with them. All of a sudden, I decided I would make chicken and leek pie. I have these mad whims sometimes.

Now, the slight problem with this is that my fiancé has a slight lactose intolerance - semi-skimmed milk is fine, but cheese and cream are not good for him. A lot of chicken pie recipes use cream, so I had to find one that didn't. After some googling, I found this recipe for Chicken, Leek and Bacon Pie from the Waitrose website. Perfect!

Yes, and I would make the pastry myself, damn it! I only really skim-read the recipe before I set to work, and I really didn't realise what a faff making puff pastry involves. I mean all that sticking it in the fridge for 30 minutes in between!

It is important to bear in mind at this stage that the only other kind of pastry I had made before yesterday is the one in this recipe for mince pies - it is massively easy (you don't even have to roll it out!) and makes the tastiest mince pies known to humankind. So, with this puff pastry malarkey, I really didn't have a clue what I was doing and whether what I was doing was right - I probably could have done with some visual aids to guide me. I think some of the instructions in this recipe aren't that clear, especially if you are a novice - a couple of times I had to get my fiancé to read it and ask what he thought I should be doing.

I got there in the end, though. Hours later, after all the cooling and rolling out again, I had something which looked like pastry! This then went back in the fridge while I made the filling. This was considerably easier than the pastry, although by this point, I couldn't be bothered to fry the chicken in batches - I used my stock pot, which is quite big anyway, so I fried the lot all at once. I ended up with very dry hands last night as I had to keep washing my hands from handling raw meat!

Once the filling was done, you were supposed to leave it to cool, which I did for 20 minutes. I'm not sure if it was as cool as it should have been when I spooned it into the pot, but it was gone 7pm by this point and I was tired and hungry. On went the pastry lid, which I did my best to seal round the edges, steam hole slashed in the middle, and egg brushed over the top by my faithful assistant (fiancé), then into the oven for 40 minutes. This was an epic day of cooking, people.

I was thoroughly expecting the pastry to be a disaster, but see for yourself.

You can see that the pastry kind of sunk on one side where I didn't quite seal it properly but it doesn't really matter. The pastry tasted really good and was how puff pastry is supposed to be - crispy on top with softer layers underneath. I was astounded that it had worked! A fair bit of butter did seem to leak out into the pie, and I'm not sure that was supposed to happen, but it didn't seem to impair the pastry. I'd be tempted to use a little less butter next time, though.

The filling was absolutely delicious too. It's been a long time since I've had a homemade pie, and it just tasted like the most delicious pie on earth - very hearty and rich. I used chicken thighs, rather than chicken breast because that's what I had in the fridge, but next time I'd like to try it with chicken breast, as I think it would be even nicer. I used 2 large leeks, not 4 as the recipe suggests, and that seemed to be plenty.

My fiancé had to suffer the rest of the evening listening to me exclaim, "I made a pie!" at every available opportunity.

Garden Organic Ryton

2010-01-31T17:33:00.000Z

Yesterday, as the weather was glorious here in the Midlands (frost, a dusting of snow in some places, but bright, sunny and cold, but warmer in the sun!), I decided that this was the day to go for a wee trek around Garden Organic Ryton. I've been starting to get interested in the idea of growing some of my own produce and I thought this would be a good way to find out more about organic growing as well as getting some fresh air and (much-needed) exercise!

There wasn't an awful lot to see this time of year, but it gave us an idea of what sort of things are there, and there was a certain frosty beauty to the scenes we saw.

Ah, good old kale!

What we didn't realise when we set off is that we had arrived on Potato Day at Ryton Gardens, which might have explained why it was so busy at 10am on a cold January morning. Apparently, the world and his wife had turned up to buy potatoes for sowing. We had a quick look in the 'potato marquee', but it was very busy and all a bit daunting. We drifted towards the 'potato tasting' instead, which sounded jolly interesting, but they seemed to have run out of potato products to taste.

On our way out I paused by a stall advertising something called the 'One Pot Pledge', intrigued by what it was. This was explained to us by an over-enthusiastic lady who told us that it is a scheme aimed at people who haven't really grown anything before to help get them started. Telling her that this applied to us made her even more excited, possibly because the majority of people passing through were well-seasoned potato growers who were visiting for potato day. I duly handed over my email address and apparently I will receive some free tips and things in exhange for pledging to grow at least one pot of something. I haven't got a link to share with you yet, as there doesn't seem to be anything on their website about it at present, but I look forward to receiving an email.

I would have liked to have eaten some lunch at the café on site, but there was already a very long queue and no free tables before lunchtime, so we headed off after a quick look round the (very busy) shop.

It was a good visit and I would love to go back in Spring when more things are growing. It has helped inspire me to get on and grow some things and I am currently reading a couple of books specifically about growing in pots and in small spaces: Patio Produce and Grow Your Own Fruit & Veg in Plot, Pots or Growbags (I only have windowsills and a balcony to grow on). I also happened to mention to a work colleague who has an allotment that I was interested in growing some produce and she very kindly came into work one day having bought me some kit to get myself started!

Still feeling quite nervous about the whole thing, as I have a long and varied history in killing plants, but I do really want to give this a go. Something that has also given me some inspiration is a blog called The London Vegetable Garden, which is written by a guy who is growing produce on his London balcony. Let's see if I can have some similar success with my Coventry balcony!

Burns' Night Supper at The Old Mill, 25/01/2010

2010-01-28T19:50:00.003Z

On Monday night we had booked a table at The Old Mill for 8 to celebrate a birthday and to try their four-course Burns' Night Supper for £18.95 a head! Literature and food - my two favourite things!

We are semi-regulars at The Old Mill, as they do good food at reasonable prices in a relaxed, pub atmosphere. Unfortunately, I found this trip hugely disappointing - probably more so because it's one of our 'regulars'.

Firstly, we waited about half an hour before we even got to see the Burns' Night menu because the serving staff had seemed to have forgotten we were there (or there weren't enough, which seems more likely). Next we waited another 30 minutes before we were served our starters. By this point I was so hungry I devoured the food before I remembered to take a photo of it! Shocking! It was yummy though - I had chicken liver parfait with onion chutney, and it was really good: the paté was smooth and silky and was lovely smeared on bread with some butter and chutney. It's a shame such good food was let down by the service.

It was then starting to take a while for the next ('taster') course to arrive. There were discussions among those of us gathered about leaving and going somewhere else, but thought we'd try mentioning how long we'd been waiting first. To be fair to The Old Mill, they were very apologetic and gave us a free bottle of wine, and the next two courses were got to us more quickly.

The taster course was haggis topped with pastry, which was an interesting experience as I'd never actually tried haggis before! I liked it though (and, yes, I do know what it is made from!) and thought it went well with the pastry topping.

For my main course, I had chosen seared venison with neep and tattie rosti and seasonal vegetables. Venison was lovely, although a little overdone for my liking, and the rosti was amazing. Seasonal vegetables, though? Carrots, yes, ok... But peas and mangetout? They must have a different definition of 'seasonal' than I do.

Still, things had slightly improved thus far in our dining out experience. But then the manager lady who had been keeping an eye on things for us disappeared (as did everyone else) and again we waiting an age for our dessert. When the dessert did arrive, imagine how deflated I felt when I discovered that my 'Bonnie Chocolate Mousse with Drambuie Cream' contained less than a spoonful of chocolate mousse, the rest of the pot being filled with sickly cream. What a swizz. I clearly drew the short straw with this one because everyone else had more chocolate than I did.

We finally left the restaurant 3 hours after we'd arrived. Needless to say, we didn't leave a tip.