Catch up

My tiny garden is keeping me busy with watering at the moment. We have had Strawberries and then Raspberries over our cereal of a morning for a few weeks. (My late raspberries have yet to flower!). Last week we emptied one of the spud bags and had a couple of day's worth of Pink Fir Apple Potatoes.
Most of my bizarre and varied Tomatoes are either in flower or have set fruit and the Courgette plant I was given will provide a meal later this week. In the hot box the assorted Chillies are flowering and seem to be loving the sweaty heat and the garlic (which I planted in October) is ready to be dug and dried.
The Beautiful Wife and I both like to see birds in the garden, and to this end we have various feeders to encourage them. The strange consequence of these feeders is that we have found ourselves grown some seriously agricultural crops. The ability of a family of sparrows to flick seed all over the garden is quite remarkable. So far we have grown (without planting) oats, barley, wheat, sunflowers and oil seed rape. I can't bear to cut down these impostors as the have such statuesque elegance.
On the subject of grains I am now using the Richard Bertinet methods of making bread and they seem to be working. More of this in a later posting.
And... on the subject of later postings, many years ago I promised an old colleague (the Recovering Vegetarian) that I would write at length about sausages this too will happen soon too.

Simon’s Favourite Fudge aka Millionaire's Short Bread

This is a family recipe, though I’m not going to suggest it is unique. My great Aunt was a governess and tutor and used to make it for her charges. She passed the recipe on to my grandmother and she used to make if for my brother and I when we visited the north to see her and granddad. This accounts for our family’s name of “Simon’s Favourite Fudge: Simon is older than me but when he was just speaking we would arrive in Stockton and he would apparently ask if any had been made, but he would ask with the limited vocabulary of a 3 year old. Fudge is easier to say than Caramel chocolate shortcake! Later my mother made this in industrial quantities for my brother and me to take back to boarding school with us.
The original recipe uses margarine (it is only for the children, after all) and a “thin coating of chocolate” (it's expensive, you know).

Millionaire’s Shortbread

Base
4oz Butter
2oz Sugar
4oz Self Raising Flour
Mix all in a bowl to form sticky dough; spread this dough out using your fingers into a high sided Swiss roll tin and bake at gas mark 4 until its golden brown. Allow to cool before adding caramel.

Caramel
4oz Butter
1sm tin Condensed Milk
1tblsp Golden syrup
3oz Sugar
Place all the ingredients in a pan and place on a medium heat. Bring all the ingredients together and very gently boil, stirring all the time, until it’s a golden brown. Pour over the base and allow to cool and set.

Chocolate
6-8oz Dark chocolate
2oz White chocolate
Melt both of the chocolates in separate bowls and pour the dark chocolate over the caramel. Take the white chocolate and, using a fork flick it over the top of the dark chocolate and allow to set. Cut up before everything is set hard.

Its strange that when, when in life, you think you've just got the measure of doing something well another person comes along and shows you a way to get much better results from your actions. A few weeks ago I raved about the making of bread and how much I enjoyed it. Well, when the village all came together for a garden party to celebrate the wedding of Kate and Wills we all brought a dish for the buffet. On the table was some beautiful bread: Crisp rustic crust, full of flavour and oh so much better than you could buy in a shop.

We enquired as to who the producer of this bread was and as it happens we know the gentleman concerned (henceforth, known as the Bread Machine) very well.

The beautiful wife arranged for us all to get together and bake bread -I learned so much.

My dough is now much wetter, I always make a starter of flour, sugar, water and yeast which I leave for a few hours. I've even started using real yeast (you can actually buy this on Amazon!)
In short My bread making has gone from strength to strength - I even made Croissants the other day and now the beautiful wife won't hear of having any "shop bought" breakfast snacks!

A man, a woman and their veg.box.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that the aim for this year was to mix a sense of frugality with food ethics and good eating. Paradoxically, this challenge is being helped by a regular delivery of an organic fruit and vegetable box. I buy our veggie box from Abel and Cole who are probably the most famous provider of boxes in the UK.
The reason I stay with them goes back a few years: We had a box from them on a fortnightly basis when we lived in the inner city and we were very happy with it. However, it began to be stolen and we had to cancel. Not only were the sales people perfectly understanding, they also re-funded the stolen boxes. It was no surprise to learn, when we looked into getting a box again, that they had won awards for the quality of their customer service.
We get a weekly fruit and veg box for 2/3 people and it costs us less than £18 including delivery. Seen as a simple figure, this seems like a lot to pay for just vegetables but that would be far to simple a look at the issue. Since we have got this box we have eaten at lot less meat and we're both eating more fruit (usually chopped over cereal). Owing to the fact that this wonderful produce has been delivered to our door we feel sinful if we don't use it all, this means that two less meals in most weeks have meat as their star ingredient.
Abel and Cole also include leaflets and little books about the farmers who supply them and there's always a humorous card with recipes.
We don't plan our box - we simply take what we're given. I don't even check online as to what's in the box this week, I prefer to be surprised when I open it on getting back from work. The joy of not picking and choosing is that I have been "forced" to use fruit and vegetables that I would not ever buy (even if they were available). Jerusalem artichokes, Sharon fruit, Purple Sprouting Broccoli, Spring greens (oh how I love spring greens now) and Beetroot never look so good in the supermarket.
My dear readers I can't encourage you enough to become part of a box scheme - it is not an overstatement to say it has changed the way I cook and eat.

Pasta proof!

Here's a photo taken by the Beautiful Wife of my latest ravioli making splurge. They were stuffed with roasted Butternut Squash mashed up with a single amoretti biscuit. I served then with noisette butter.

The joys of making your own Pasta

Pasta, like bread, is shrouded in many layers of myth and fantasy. The truth is, it is very easy to make and wonderful when you do. However, this is not a quick and simple process - its one for a long lazy Sunday afternoon.
When you first consider making your own pasta your thoughts will turn to pasta making machines. My experience is that there is no point in buying a cheap pasta roller, you willl use it a few times, the gearing will go and it will be next to useless. I made this mistake and eventually purchased an Imperia machine and I have never looked back.
Unlike most items on this blog, making your own pasta will not save you money. Dried pasta of ordinarry quality is available for very little in the supermarket (though high quality dried pasta is a thing of great beauty).
So, it costs a lot to do and its going to take a great deal of your weekend - so why do it? Once you have tasted the sliky smooth little pillows of your own ravioli you will be forever enchanted, I promise.
I always use a "oo" Italian flour and my recipe is below. I tend to make mine into ravioli. The beautiful wife has a particular love of Butternut Squash ravioli in a beurre noisette sauce.

Pasta
3 eggs
300gms "oo" flour
Pinch of salt
Glug of good olive oil

Sift the flour onto a work surface and make a well in the centre. Break the eggs into the middle of the flour and slowly, with a fork, draw the flour into the egg. I find using a gentle, angled, stirrring motion works well here. When it is just starting to come together, get your hands in there and mix it untill it fully holds together. Now kneed the dough until it is smooth and pliable. Wrap the dough in cling film and allow it to rest for 20 minutes outside the fridge.
Squeeze the dough into a tongue shape and feed it into your pasta machine which should be set to its widest setting. Fold in half and send through again. Do this a further 4 times before reducing the gap and running it through without folding. Lower the size everytime you pass the pasta though and finally you will be left with a great long strip of lasagne. You can cut this into shapes, use it as Lasange, use the slicing gadget on your machine to make Tagliatelle or even make nice little Ravioli.

I recently purchased a Ravioli plate (also ny Imperia) and now make twelve little cushions of loveliness in a batch. Photos to follow!

One a penny, two a penny....

These are the Hot Cross Buns I made. I mentioned them in my last blog - get baking people!