Hazels-Homegrown

Book Review - Preserves by Jill Nice

2012-02-02T21:23:00.003Z

Book review – Preserves: A Beginner’s Guide to making jams & jellies, chutney & pickles, sauces & ketchups, syrups and alcoholic sips – by Jill Nice

Despite the number of books I have read (and indeed, written) on the subject of preserves, I was nonetheless excited to come across this book by Jill Nice. I’m always on the look out for new recipes and tips for jam and chutney making and this book looked like it was bursting with ideas.

Many recipe books these days are stuffed full of glossy photos, sometimes at the expense of information. This one, in contrast, has no photos at all but instead the occasional monochrome line drawing. When I say, monochrome, I don’t mean black on white, for the text and illustrations throughout this book are green and purple. It is a simple design that works well, giving colour but also a feeling of authority, like an old-fashioned reference book.

There are 47 pages of information about various aspects of different preserving technique before the recipes even begin. This offers in depth explanation as to why all the various parts of the preserving technique are required and I have to admit I learnt a thing or two from reading this section. The recipes themselves include serving suggestions as well as advice on how to adapt the recipe and when it should be followed without fiddling. There is also extra information within the recipes about the main ingredient and these paragraphs are both informative and very readable. There are a few recipes included that have non-British ingredients such as bananas, pineapples and mangoes but most recipes are made with British ingredients and give a nod towards dealing with gluts and using the freezer to bring together non-seasonal ingredients.

The back cover boasts that the book contains an impressive 140 recipes. Many of them are the basic recipes that every preserving book needs to contains, such as raspberry jam and piccalilli , but there are also recipes in there that I have not seen in any other book. I have to admit that I’m quite excited about the prospect of trying to make my own Worchester Sauce or Mushroom Ketchup, but I may not bother with Pickled Broad Beans!

Having read this book I’m left with a feeling that Jill knows her onions. She has clearly been making preserves for a long time and has had her share of successes and failures. In this book she attempts to impart this experience to her readers. For someone like me, it is a useful reference that has provided a few insights and given me some new ideas to try in the summer. As for it being a guide for beginners, well, it certainly is thorough and does provide the beginner with everything they need to know. However, I think in some ways there is perhaps a little bit too much information and anyone considering preserving for the first time might decide to jack in the idea before they get to the recipes.

When I pick up any book on preserves I want to see if it ticks certain boxes. Does it deal with realistic seasonal British ingredients? Does it explain why you should do the different parts of the method? Does it suggest ways to eat the preserve once you have made it? And does it allow for recipes to be adapted? I’m pleased to say that this one does tick all those boxes.

20 meals from one chicken

2012-01-17T16:14:00.003Z

Is it really possible to get 20 meals out of a medium chicken? And are those meal worthwhile and filling? I think so.

When Steve was growing up his mother would put a couple of ounces of corned beef into a mound of mashed potato and call it corned beef hash. He said it was mash potato with the occasional pink fleck. But that was one way to feed the family with not much. I would like to point out that we're not poor and don't need to eek out our food in this way (thank goodness), but I do feel a moral duty to make the most of what we have. So when I bought a chicken to roast last week I knew it would make more than one meal and I planned for this in my shopping and cooking.

On Sunday I roasted the chicken but at the same time I planned for the leftovers. This started by making the chicken tasty with the use of two different types of stuffing. The first type of stuffing is for the cavity to infuse flavour into the chicken but not to be eaten. To make this you need do little more than roughly chop up an onion, some fresh sage from the garden and a limp piece of celery that is no good for putting in salads anymore. Just drop this inside the bird. The second type of stuffing is for eating so needs more care. One small onion, some fresh sage, salt and pepper and either breadcrumbs or sausagemeat for this one. Finely chop the onion and then the sage in a food processor then mix together with the breadcrumbs (and a little water) or the sausagemeat. I tend to make a large batch of this in one go then divide it into portions and freeze it until required. This stuffing needs to be stuffed into the crop.

The next flavour consideration is the gravy and for this reason I also boiled a leek from the allotment to have with the dinner. When it was almost time to dish up, I made some gravy to go with the meal. This was just the usual Bisto granules but I put in enough to make half a pint of gravy more than we needed for the meal. Rather than just pouring water from the kettle for the gravy, I drained the leek water into the jug and then the water from the carrots too. It is a good idea to use vegetable water to make the gravy as some of the nutrients from the vegetables get leached out into the water so using it returns those nutrients to your meal. In the case of the leeks, it also adds flavour to the meal. Unless everyone in your family likes cabbage, I would avoid doing this with brassica water as it does tend to make the gravy taste like cabbage water! For further flavour, after the chicken was carved, I pour the juices from the meat into the gravy too. A very tasty gravy for the meal and for the leftovers.

That meal we ate both legs and slightly more than half of one breast between us. I do love meat myself but it is worth remembering that a portion of meat for an adult should be roughly the size of a pack of cards and the rest of the meal should be bulked out with vegetables.

On Monday afternoon I took a block of ready made puff pastry out of the fridge to come to room temperature and later that evening I made chicken pies. I make these pies for my girls because, although they like pies, they are a bit fussy about them and there are only certain ones they like. Buying a pie is a bit hit and miss but they always love my homemade pies. They are really easy to make too and I make 12 at a time so they last for weeks before I have to do them again.

Chicken Pies (makes 12)

The meat from a breast of roast chicken
1/2 pint of gravy
1 block of ready made pastry
Egg or milk to glaze

Take the meat from the breast of the roast chicken (or use the leg meat if you prefer to eat the breast for your dinner) and break it into small pieces with your fingers. Put this in a bowl and mix it with the cold gravy (left over from the roast). Cut the pastry block in half and roll it out into a rectangle. Cut the pastry into 6 roughly equal squares. Dollop a tablespoon of the chicken mixture into one half of each piece of pastry. Brush the egg or milk around half of the edge of the pastry then fold the pastry over the top of the filling to completely it. Brush the top edge of the pastry then turn over the edges of the pastry to seal the pie into a pastie shape (about the size of a Findus Crispie Pancake but sooooo much tastier!). Make a couple of vent holes with a knife and brush all over with egg or milk to glaze. Repeat for the second half of the block of pastry and until all the filling is used. Place the pasties on a tray and freeze then remove from the tray and put into labelled bags. Can be cooked from frozen for 20-25 minutes at 200°C, gas 6.

Having fed 4 people with a Sunday roast and made 12 pies, that was 16 meals from one chicken. Just another 4 to go then. There are so many possibilities - chicken soup maybe? I do on occasions boil up the chicken carcass, complete with its tasty cavity stuffy to make chicken stock which would be a good basis of soup or even a casserole so a meal or two from that. But I also picked the chicken over to remove the remaining meat to make chicken spud pies for dinner on Tuesday. This recipe is for 2 but I had just enough meat left to stretch it out to 2 smaller spuds for the girls but for them I mixed a little chicken with a bit of ham and pasta sauce and grated some cheese on top to call it a pizza potato pie instead.

Spud Pies (serves 2)

2 large baked potatoes
About one breast of roasted chicken
Butter
A slurp of milk
6-8 mushrooms, quartered
1 small leek, sliced
5 fl oz chicken stock
2 teaspoons of cornflour
Oil for frying
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Bake the potatoes using your preferred method. Turn the oven to 220°C, gas 7. Cut the potatoes in half and scoop out the potato from the skins. Place the potato in a bowl and mash with the butter, milk and seasoning. Mix the cornflour with a little cold water in a glass. Fry the mushrooms and leeks then pour in the chicken stock and the cornflour. Add the chicken and seasoning and stir until heated through and the sauce thickens. Spoon the chicken mix into the potato skins then top with the mashed potato then place in the oven for 10 minutes until the top of the potato is just beginning to brown. Serve immediately with a salad or hot vegetables.

It was £6 for that particular chicken. I think I got value for money.

Stuff the rush

2012-01-14T21:27:00.002Z

Thursday night I had a meeting at my daughters' school that started at 6.30pm. I could have gone down the easy option of having a ready meal for dinner but that's not my style. Instead, I opted to just start making dinner extra early. Just before 5 I put a couple of spuds in the oven to bake then set about preparing stuffed mushrooms whilst my eldest got on with making a scone-based pizza for her and her sister.

Stuffed Mushrooms (serves 2)

4 large flat mushrooms
1 leek
2 rashers of bacon
Pepper
Breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4. Pull the stalks out of the mushrooms and finely chop. Slice the leeks finely and snip the bacon into small pieces. Next, fry the mushrooms stalks, leeks and bacon together for about 5 minutes, adding a little pepper for seasoning. Divide this mixture between the 4 mushrooms then sprinkle breadcrumbs on top. Bake for 20-25 minutes and serve hot.

Scone based pizza is a really handy recipe to have up your sleeve because it means you can make a pizza from scratch with basic food cupboard ingredients - no need for strong flour and yeast. You just need self-raising flour, butter and milk to make the base and then some pasta sauce or passata, cheese and toppings.

Anyway, despite my best efforts and estimates, it took slightly longer to prepare and cook all this than I had anticipated and I ended up sitting down to eat at 6.10. I don't know about you, but I hate eating in a rush but that was what I had to do. I managed to cram most of it in ten minutes flat but decided to admit defeat on half my baked potato.

Half a baked potato is a good starting point for a left-overs lunch. You could put all sorts of things on that a make a complete meal. Baked beans maybe - only that would leave a part open tin as left overs for another day. Instead, I decided to make pizza-style baked potato for my lunch, using some left over pasta sauce from the girls' pizza and left over cheese from the Christmas cheeseboard. There seems something luxurious about a 3 cheese topping!

So for this I heated the half potato in the microwave for a minute then spooned on some pasta sauce and grated over plenty of cheese before returning it to the microwave for another minute to heat the sauce and melt the cheese. Two minute lunch from left-overs - yum!

Winter warmers

2012-01-05T22:23:00.002Z

Despite the stormy weather today I nipped over to the allotment this afternoon to fetch a leek for a casserole. The meat for the casserole tonight was left over goose from the Christmas dinner (thawed from frozen) but any meat would do just as well. Left over roast meat work best but you could also use fresh, raw meat but you would have to brown it off in a frying pan first. I, of course, love making good use of left over meat, combined with loads of seasonal vegetables.

Casserole (serves 2)

100-150g cooked meat
1 vegetable stock cube
2 carrots
1 parsnip (or some swede or turnip)
1 stick of celery
1 leek
2-4 potatoes (depending on size)
4 mushrooms
1 small onion
1 teaspoon mushroom ketchup
1 teaspoon soy sauce
1 teaspoon sweet chilli sauce
2 teaspoon oyster sauce
Freshly ground black pepper
Worstershire sauce

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas mark 4 and get out a suitable ovenproof dish. Crumble the stock cube into boiling water in a pan then add to it the peeled and chopped carrot, parsnip, celery and leek. Simmer for about 5 minutes. In the meantime, peel the potatoes and cut into discs about half a cm thick. Remove the vegetables from the pan with a slotted spoon and place them in the casserole dish then put the potato slices into the pan of vegetable stock. Bring back to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. In the meantime, slice the mushrooms and onions. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside then quickly fry the onions and mushrooms for about 3 minutes then turn down the heat and add the mushroom ketchup, soy sauce, chilli sauce and oyster sauce and stir. Add the mushroom mix to the casserole dish, along with the cooked meat. Pour the vegetable stock over the contents of the casserole dish until covered then layer the potatoes on top. Grind over the pepper and splash on some Worstershire sauce. Place in the oven for 1 hour and in the meantime go and have a lovely bath whilst delicious smells fill your house.

Once the casserole was cooked, I popped a bread and butter pudding into the oven to cook whilst we ate and to make good use of the hot oven. Bread and butter pudding is the ultimate use of leftovers - no one ever buys ingredients especially to make it! I decided to make it because I had nearly a whole pint of full fat milk left in the fridge from my mother-in-law's stay with us and half a jar of my rather yummy Figgy Pear Mincemeat to use up. Oh, and there were 4 slices of stale white bread left too. Perfect!

Bread & Butter Pudding

2 eggs
1 tsp caster sugar
2 tsp custard powder
12 fl oz (350ml) milk
1 oz (25g) butter
4 slices of white bread
4 to 6 oz (110-180g) mincemeat

In a jug, beat the egg, sugar and custard powder together then add the milk. Lightly butter a suitable ovenproof dish (wide and shallow is better than narrow and deep). Butter the bread and then cut the slices of bread into 4 triangles. Layer two slices worth of triangles into the dish then spoon over half the mincemeat. Lay the remaining triangles on top and spoon over the remaining mincemeat. Pour over half the milk mix and place the dish in the refrigerator until needed or for at least 15 minutes to soak. Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4. Pour the remaining milk mix into the dish and bake for 20 minutes then increase the temperate to 190°C, gas 5 for 5-10 more minutes until the bread on top is crisp and golden. Serve hot with custard or cream.

2012 - the year to reduce food waste

2012-01-04T21:29:00.002Z

Regular readers of my blog will know that I often find myself making one recipe, which leads onto another recipe and then another and so on, using up as many ingredients as possible. During the summer you will find me tirelessly trying to come up with new and inventive ways to use up the gluts that come off my allotment. I hate food waste and always do what I can to avoid throwing food away.

In Milton Keynes we have been provided with a green wheelie bin in which to put garden waste and food waste. I hardly ever put garden waste in it as that goes into one of the 3 compost bins I have on the allotment. In theory, all food waste can go into the green bin, including animal products, meat and bones but all my fruit and vegetable waste from the kitchen finds its way into the compost bin on the allotment so again doesn't go into the green bin. That just leaves the food waste that can't go into the compost because it would attract vermin and become very stinky. The combination of my compost bin and my efforts to avoid wasting food means that all that does go into the green wheelie bin once a week is one small paper bag of food waste. It is quite nice to have it all gathered together like this so that I have a measure of it to monitor.

Anyway, having decided that I'm actually quite good at avoiding buying too much food in the first place and using up leftovers in a practical way, I thought I would share with you on this blog any instances where I have made good use of leftovers along side my usual recipes for using homegrown food. Hopefully, you'll find this useful as well as inspiring and that 2012 will be a good year for reducing food waste.

So to get started, here is a short tale of using up excess potato.

My parents went away for 3 weeks over Christmas and asked me to pop into their house a couple of times whilst they were a way to check on things. On my first visit, I discovered a bag of huge onions and half a bag of huge potatoes under a t-towel on the kitchen counter with a note asking me to take them away and make good use of them. So on Monday night I used three of these huge potatoes to make some mashed potato to go with our sausages. It was the usual stuff - boiled potatoes, mashed with butter, seasoning and a little finely grated mature Cheddar. But because the potatoes were so huge I had over estimated the amount we needed and had made enough mash for 6 people. The left over potatoes went into a box in the fridge for the night. The next day, I cut it into slices and fried it as potato cakes. This I served with a mix of mushrooms and the left over bacon lardons from Christmas. Not a great meal for anyone trying to lose weight but, hey, my New Year's Resolution is to avoid food waste so I'm happy!

Thinking ahead

2012-01-02T21:16:00.003Z

It's funny how our brains change over the Christmas holiday. We start off focusing on preparing for the "big day". Organising presents, buying and making food and co-ordinating various visits. And then for a few days after Christmas we sit around, rubbing our fat bellies, feeling lazy and cosy. It all seems like we are right in the middle of winter, winding down as the year comes to an end...

And then, suddenly, New Year's Day arrives and we wake up. We chastise ourselves for our gluttony and make promises about how we will be better people in the coming months. We begin to look forward. For the kitchen gardener, it is all about the move into spring and the new growing season. It was hardly a surprise then to find me sat on the sofa this new years eve, with one eye on Jules Holland's Hootenanny as the minutes ticked past towards midnight, the other eye on my laptop as I placed my seed order.

It is a serious business buying the seeds for the coming season. Some people do it by going into a garden centre and selecting seed packets from the racks. For me it is a slower, more meticulous and enjoyable task done at home. I start by gathering together all the seeds that I still have left from the previous year. I go through the lot, making a note of anything I still have a good supply of. I use my judgement too as to whether the seed has become too old to keep. Most seeds will be good for a second year (although parsnip seeds should be fresh every year). Many seeds will be good for three years. You can usually tell when seed is too old because the germination rate will become poorer and poorer with age.

As I go through my old seeds and empty packets I make a note of anything I remember I definitely want to grow so I don't forget to order more later. Next I get out the collection of seed catalogues that started coming through my door in October and which I have carefully stashed away for this moment. I share this task with my girls too so they get a say in what they grow (with guidance) and feel ownership of the whole experience. We go through the catalogues and star those things we think we would like to order. These are a combination of things we have grown before and we know are reliable in our conditions or produce a particularly lovely crop. They may also be things we have grown before that failed but which we would love to try again to see if we can get them to work this time. And there will be selection of things we have not tried before but we fancy because of their description (and/or picture) in the catalogue.

The next task is the make a list of all the seeds (with their order codes) that we want to order from each catalogue. This gives me a chance to check that I'm not ordering the same thing from different catalogues, and checking I'm ordering the one at the best price. Finally, armed with this list, I can sit down at my computer and place my orders via the companies websites.

Once again my youngest daughter has chosen a selection of yellow vegetables to grow in her veg patch. I love this idea and it has led me to discover some very good crops that I might not otherwise have tried. The yellow mangetout and yellow climbing beans have been very good and this year I shall only be growing yellow courgettes as they taste better and have a better texture. Against that, I won't be ordering either of the Mayan potato varieties the girls chose last year as they provided too tempting for the slugs and gave a very poor yield of thoroughly munched potatoes.

I have ordered my usual favourite, reliable varieties, of course, such as Early Nante carrots, Boltary beetroot, Marathon calebrese, Mussleburgh leeks, Jack O'Lantern and Baby Bear pumpkins, Burpless Tasty Green cucumber, Blue Lake and Hunter French beans, Scarlet flowering broad beans and Sutton broad beans, Kestrel and Charlotte potatoes. But I'm also looking forward to trying out some new varieties, particularly as this year will be the first year ever that I've had a greenhouse. Placing the order is always exciting and as usual I'm eager to get started. Roll on spring!

Jelly, jelly & jelly

2011-12-21T21:43:00.006Z

Jelly is a funny old word with a surprising range of meanings. In my world it usually refers to an amusingly springy fruity dessert stuff, a jam without seeds in it or a soft, fruity, sugar coated sweet. Oh, and I guess it is also that stuff you get inside pork pies that some people love and others fund totally gross.

All of these types of jelly will be featuring at my table this Christmas.

The first will be made from homegrown raspberries from the freezer, pureed and mixed with powdered gelatine to provide the "jelly" set. This will be poured over slices of Swiss roll and topped with custard and cream to make a classic trifle. We all love trifle in this house and you can't beat the lovely fruity flavour you get from a homemade jelly rather than the weird artificial flavour of the stuff you just mix with boiling water.

Raspberry Jelly

3 tablespoons cold water
1 tablespoon or 1 sachet powdered gelatine
8 oz (225 g) raspberries
4 oz (110 g) granulated sugar
12 fl oz (400 ml) cold water

Put 3 tablespoons of cold water into a small pan and sprinkle over the gelatine, then stir and set aside for 5 minutes. Put the raspberries, sugar and 12 fl oz of water into a large pan and bring to the boil. Leave the fruit to simmer for 5 minutes until soft then press through a sieve to make a puree. Heat the gelatine over a low heat for a minute or two until clear then stir this into the raspberry puree.

Raspberry Trifle

1 pint (600 ml) of raspberry jelly (see recipes above)
1 small Swiss roll
Sherry or apple juice
1 pack of ready to make custard powder
150ml double cream
100ml creme fraiche
12g (1/2 oz) icing sugar
Decorations

Make raspberry jelly as shown in the recipes above. Slice up the Swiss roll and layer it into the bottom of suitable containers and pour over enough sherry or apple juice to cover. Allow the cake to soak up the liquid and become mushy. You could also add a layer of fresh raspberries too at this point. Pour the jelly over the cake and refrigerate for 2-3 hours until set. In the meantime, make up the custard as instructed on the packet and allow to cool completely to room temperature - placing a piece of clingfilm on the surface of the custard will stop it forming a skin. Once the jelly has set, pour the custard over the top and level off. Return to the refrigerator for at least another hour. Combined the cream, creme fraiche and icing sugar together and whip until it forms soft peaks then spoon this on top of the custard layer. Add any decorations just before serving.

The next kind of jelly will be redcurrant jelly, made from our homegrown redcurrants earlier in the year. Some people seem a little confused by the name "jelly" on a jar and it can put them off as they seem unsure how to use a jelly. Well, it really is just a seedless jam, usually strained to produce a beautifully clear end product. If you fancy spreading it on your toast then do so but it can also be eaten as an accompaniment to meat or a flavour added to it when cooking. Undoubtedly, we will use some redcurrant jelly to accompany a nice bit of lamb but I shall also use it for redcurrant cheesecake.

Redcurrant Cheesecake

Base:
6 oz crushed digestive biscuits
2 oz melted butter

Filling:
7 oz soft cheese
3 oz caster sugar
1 egg
4 fl oz whipping cream

Topping:
4 oz redcurrant jelly

To make the base: Put the biscuits in a bag and crush them with the end of a rolling pin until finely crushed. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs. Press the mix firmly into the bottom of a flan dish and chill for about 1 hour.

To make the filling: Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Cream together the cheese and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and cream and whisk until thick. Dollop the creamy filling onto the biscuit base and spread out evenly. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes then turn out the oven and leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to continue its slow cooling so that it doesn't crack. Once cooled but still slightly warm, carefully heat the redcurrant jelly in the microwave (2 x 20 seconds) or a pan of hot water until it is runny. Pour the warmed jelly evenly over the surface of the cheesecake. When sufficiently cool, refrigerate until ready to serve.

When I was a kid my lovely next door neighbour (Mrs P, we used to call her), used to give my brother and me a large tube of Fruit Pastilles every Christmas. A lovely treat, although back then they were full of artificial colours and flavourings. I'm pleased to say that, as so many food items have, they have vastly improved since then. Even so, they do not taste anywhere near as fruity as the homemade fruit jelly sweets I have made this Christmas. Using little more than fruit and sugar, I have concocted both blackcurrant and raspberry flavoured blocks of fruit jelly. They need to be stored in the fridge and they aren't quite as robust as the ones you get in a tube but, my God, they knock your head off with their lovely ziggy fruity flavour. And as an added advantage, they are a jelly that doesn't contain gelatine so are suitable for my vegan step-daughter. Hmmm... makes me wonder if I could make a vegan trifle... now there's a challenge!

Real Fruit Jelly Sweets

300-350g blackcurrants (or other high pectin fruit - e.g. gooseberries)
300g of apple or crabapple pectin stock
2 tsp lemon juice
250g granulated sugar
2 tbsp glucose syrup
Granulated sugar for rolling

Blitz the blackcurrants in a blender until it forms a thick liquid. Add the apple/crabapple to it then strain through a sieve to remove the seeds and skin. Pour the liquid into a large saucepan and add the lemon juice, sugar and glucose. Gently heat, stirring all the time, until the sugar is dissolved and it no longer feels gritty. Bring to the boil and boil vigorously for 15 minutes, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. Remove from the heat and pour into a greased plastic food container. Leave to cool then refrigerate until set. Use a spatula to loosen the jelly from the container then turn out onto a surface sprinkled with sugar. Cut into stripes then cubes. Roll each on in sugar then place in a container and keep refrigerated until ready to eat. The jellies do not melt if left out of the fridge but they do become softer and harder to pick up.

May I introduce Herman

2011-11-19T17:00:00.002Z

I was first introduced to Herman on 6th November by my friend Sue. She popped around with him unannounced that Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, I was out at the shops at the time so Sue left him with Steve, and an A4 page of care instructions. Despite the unexpected and unannounced way he came into my life, I was nonetheless pleased to take Herman into my care.

Herman, tucked up in his box, was in fact a sour dough starter for something called "A Friendship Cake". I am quite surprised I have never come across him before as he has obviously been around for years but I'm glad I have now made his acquaintance.

The idea is, for 10 days you follow the care instructions, which largely just involves a daily stir with a wooden spoon. On the fourth and nineth days he needs feeding with flour, sugar and milk. This allows the yeast within the mix to keep on reproducing as well as adding to the bulk of the mix. On the 10th day Herman is divided into 5 equal portions. One of these can be used to make a cake, whilst the remaining 4 can be given away to friends to continue the chain. It is, in fact, like a cake chain letter but without the menace.

The whole idea instantly appealed to me. Firstly I was pleased that someone had decided to give a "friendship cake" to me. Secondly, I had never made a cake based on sour dough so I was looking forward to experimenting with this new cake making technique. And finally, I liked the idea that I could pass on "friendship cakes" at the end.

My girls were fascinated with the whole idea too and asked after Herman daily, checking that I was caring for him appropriately. It was like having a pet but with the added advantages of only having to care for it for 10 days and getting to eat it at the end!!

I had always seen the 10th day as the end of Herman but of course I was wrong to think like that. I was merely a link in the chain and Herman was passed on to more people on the 10th day. I was pleased by the response that I got from the friends I passed Herman onto. He does seem to bring delight into people's lives, as long as you choose your friends appropriately! I also decided to keep one of the little Hermans to start off another one. However, the girls decided this one ought to be called Hermione as it made more sense for Hermione to have babies than a Herman!

The recipe I was given ended in a fruit cake, made with a little mixed dried fruit and two grated apples. Perfect for me as I was able to use a couple of apples from my stored harvest. But upon googling Herman I discovered a whole load of different end recipes for Herman, hence why I decided to keep Hermione for myself.

The fruit cake version was lovely. I cooked it in a 2lb loaf tin but obviously slightly overfilled the tin with mixture as Herman managed to have another baby in the oven, producing a blob on the bottom tray of the oven. As it happened, this blob cooked perfectly so that night when the girls got in from school we ate Herman's baby, "The Blob", leaving an untouched loaf of Herman intact for Steve when he got home. We all enjoyed the cake and it was eaten up within 3 days, whilst Hermione continues to grow in her bowl.

Below is the instructions for Herman. Should you not be lucky enough to have a Friendship Cake delivered to you, you can google for a Herman starter and become the start of a whole new chain.

HERMAN THE FRIENDSHIP CAKE

Herman is a friendship cake which you can’t buy, but you can give him away. He grows slowly but surely because of the yeast in him. It is usually 10 days before you can eat him.

Herman doesn’t have to be kept in the fridge and doesn’t require a lid – just covering him with a tea towel is sufficient. Herman grows at room temperature.

If you would like to spread a little friendship follow through instructions below and at end of 10 days you will have a cake to eat and four starter kits to pass on.

If you cannot wait to have your cake and eat it, go straight to day 10, but you will forego the opportunity to pass on some friendship.

Day 1: Today Herman is given to you. Put him in a big bowl (At least 4pt capacity). Cover Herman loosely so he can breathe. A tea towel or loose lid is ideal.

Days 2 & 3: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day with a wooden spoon (do not use metal, and which you can leave in the bowl)

Day 4: Herman is hungry. Give him the following:-

200mls milk

200g self-raising flour

250g sugar

Days 5, 6, 7 & 8: Stir Herman 2-3 times a day.

Day 9: Herman is hungry again. Give him the same ingredients you gave him on Day 4. Stir well then divide him into 5 equal parts. Give 4 baby Hermans away with a copy of this sheet. (or keep one back for yourself to grow and redistribute to other friends) Keep the 5th portion to bake.

Day 10: Herman is absolutely starving. He needs a holiday. He likes to go to a hot resort. The oven is his favourite. Pre-heat oven to 170ºC (150ºC fan-assisted oven) and grease a cake tin generously. Prepare him for his holiday using one of the following:-

1. Fruit cake Recipe:

150g self-raising flour,

100g finely chopped nuts/raisins,

100g light muscovado sugar

150mls oil,

half teaspoon of baking powder,

2 teaspoons cinnamon,

3 eggs, 2 grated apples,

Bake in loaf tin or 9” x 9“ cake tin

2. Chocolate Cranberry Cake Recipe: 150g self raising flour, 250g sugar,100ml oil, 1/2tsp salt, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 1tsp ground cinnamon, 1½ tsp baking powder, 2 eggs, 3 oz melted semi-sweet chocolate, 100g semi-dried cranberries. Bake 30-35 mins in loaf tin or 20-25 mins in two 8-inch sandwich tins, and sandwich together with cream &/ thick cooked cranberries sauce .

3. Double chocolate Cake: ¾ cup butter at room temp,1 cup white sugar, 1 cup brown sugar, 4 eggs, ½ cup unsweetened cocoa, 1½ cup self raising flour, ½ tsp salt, 1 tbsp vanilla extract, ¾ cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, ½ cup chopped nuts. Bake in 9 inch square pan.

4.Ginger Cake :150g self-raising flour,1½ tsp ground ginger, ½ tsp cinnamon, ½ tsp bicarbonate soda, pinch of salt, 125g golden syrup, 60g finely chopped stem ginger, 1 tbsp ginger syrup from stem ginger jar, 2 heaped tbsp sultanas, 75g dark muscavado suger, 2 eggs, 150 ml milk, 75 ml butter at room temp/softened in microwave

Mix everything together and pour into a very well greased cake tin. Bake for 40 mins to one hour, depending on your tin. Cool in tin for 10 mins then turn out.

Hello Autumn

2011-10-22T21:47:00.003+01:00

I think autumn has finally arrived. It has been a funny old October, what with the heatwave at the beginning of it. Usually we enjoy a hot, sunny birthday in July for my youngest daughter and a damp, grey birthday for my eldest in October but this year the two were swapped. It confused us and it certainly confused the plants too.

Last week I wandered around to the allotment mainly to empty the compost bin, carrying 4 empty carrier bags just in case there was something to harvest. Much to my surprise, half an hour later each bag contained several different crops. There were still a few ripe tomatoes, amongst the depressing remains of blighted plants. There was one butternut squash, previously hidden but now revealed as the exhausted plant succumbed to mildrew, and some skinny yellow courgettes. There were 4 more cucumbers and half a bag of French beans. There were carrots and beetroot and thought I would just see how the parsnips were doing so I pulled two of those up. In the brassica patch the broccoli, cauliflower and Romanesco were still offering a few heads. A few more pears had fallen from the tree too.

I was pleased with this yield in the middle of October - a mini harvest festival of crops for the kitchen. Somehow these are more rewarding than the bags and bags of fresh veg picked in June, July and August. But what surprised me most was the bowlful of strawberries and raspberries I managed to bring home! That afternoon I treated my girls to a fruit salad more suited to July than October. And what a treat it was - a taste of summer in autumn.

They threatened frosts by the end of this week. It did indeed get colder, forcing us into our winter coats but there wasn't quite a frost. I shall go out tomorrow and see what delights I can harvest before the frosts really do arrive but I don't expect there to be much left and I certainly won't be pinning my hopes on another crop of strawberries! But that is no bad thing. I love what October's seasonal kitchen has to offer. It is all about warming, comfort food, tree fruit, root vegetables, spices, chutneys and things from storage. I still have apples, pears, cucumbers, courgettes, onions, shallots, garlic, butternut squash, pumpkins and even a few tomatoes in boxes in the shed. Last week I made a fantastic pumpkin & ginger cheesecake (yes, really!) and today I whipped up a wonderful batch of butternut squash & cinnamon muffins. With such wonderful autumn fayre on offer who would miss strawberries anyway?!

Pumpkin & Ginger Cheesecake

Base:

3 oz crushed digestive biscuits

3 oz crushed gingernut biscuits

2 oz melted butter

Filling:

7 oz soft cheese

3 oz light muscovado sugar

1 egg

4 fl oz whipping cream

4 oz pumpkin puree

1/2 in root ginger

2 tablespoons icing sugar

1 tsp ground ginger

To make the base: Put the biscuits in a bag and crush them with the end of a rolling pin until finely crushed or blitz them in a food processor. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs. Press the mix firmly into the bottom of a flan dish and chill for about 1 hour.

To make the filling: Peel and cube the pumpkin and steam for 10-20 minutes with the piece of root ginger until soft then blend in a food processor with the icing sugar until smooth. Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Cream together the cheese and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg, cream, pumpkin puree and ground ginger and whisk until thick. Dollop the creamy filling onto the biscuit base and spread out evenly. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes then turn out the oven and leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to continue its slow cooling so that it doesn't crack. Serve chilled with cream.

Butternut Squash & Cinnamon Muffins

6 fl oz (175ml) sunflower oil

6 oz (175g) light muscovado sugar

3 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

8 oz (225g) fresh pumpkin

4 oz (110g) sultanas

1 orange, zest and juice

2 tsp ground cinnamon

8 oz (225g) self-raising flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

200g tub of cream cheese

3 oz (85g) icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180°C (gas 4) and place paper cases in a muffin tin. Put the oil, sugar, eggs and vanilla in a bowl and beat together. Grate in the pumpkin and orange zest then add the sultanas and the juice of half the orange. Sieve in the flour, cinnamon and bicarbonate of soda and mix until just combined. Spoon the mixture into the paper cases then bake for 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack. In the meantime, whisk together the cream cheese, icing sugar and the remaining orange juice until thick. Refrigerate until required. Dollop some of the cream cheese frosting onto each muffin just before serving.

What use is a conker?

2011-09-24T21:59:00.002+01:00

Conkers are funny things, aren't they? What is it that makes them so appealing when they are completely useless? Why do children (big and small) love collecting them with such enthusiasm?

I have pondered these questions this past fortnight as I have sat on my usual spot on the bench in the park whilst my girls have proudly brought me their collected conkers to show me. They are undoubtedly beautiful things, especially when first released from their prickly shells, all shiny and with their grain still showing. They feel lovely in the hand too and if you hold two or three of them you can't help but rotate them round and round in your hands.

There is no question of course that the girls will want to take them home. But what then? What can you do with conkers? With my hazelnut tree producing such a bountiful harvest of edible nuts it strikes me as a shame that conkers are not edible. Indeed, even squirrels don't seem to bother with them. In fact, if it weren't for children collecting them all up, the footpaths would be awash with conkers at this time of year.

So inevitably the conkers accumulate in the corner of the garden, eventually to rot.

But then this week, one of my friends commented on the large numbers of spiders in her house at this time of year. It is the same here, as I imagine it is in everyone else's houses at this time of year - unless you have a cat, as I am told they enjoy these crunching snacks. Generally speaking I'm not that bothered by spiders. Having to remove their cobwebs is a nuisance but their fly catching abilities are useful, particularly in my household where the excessive amount of fruit and veg that passes through my kitchen leads to annoying fruit flies in the kitchen. They really are annoying actually. Within minutes of bringing in a punnet of raspberries from the allotment this afternoon, a cloud of fruit flies were circling above them. Then with the raspberries used up in a crumble, the fruit flies were left circling the kitchen for the rest of the afternoon. I have two sticky fly tapes up (not the most attractive addition to my kitchen, it has to be said) and one of those electric fly traps that kills flies with a satisfying zapping sound, yet still they circle. And right outside my kitchen window lives a big fat garden spider, getting bigger and fatter daily on a feast of flies. So I have a happy relationship with this spider but I'm not so keen on those great, big, enormous black things that suddenly appear from under the bookcase and scuttle across the living room carpet whilst we are watching TV of an evening. Steve has put 4 of them out this week and my eldest was somewhat alarmed to find a shed spider skin on the kitchen floor the other day as she was quick to realise that this merely meant that the spider was now BIGGER!!

So what has all this got to do with conkers? Well... in my friend's discussion about the spiders, I found out that there are quite a few people out there who firmly believe that scattering conkers around your house keeps spiders at bay. Apparently, they don't like the smell. Is this true? I don't know but it sounds like it is worth a try. So one of the jobs on my to-do list this weekend is to dust off the conker pile and scatter them under the book case, on the window sills and under my bed. An end to spiders in my house and a use for the conker - sounds good to me!

Hooray for hazelnuts

2011-09-16T21:45:00.003+01:00

During the course of my childhood at various points we had in our garden a rosemary bush (my mum's name), sweet william flowers (my dad's name), and house martins (my brother's name), but we never managed to plant a hazel tree. So when I finally got my own home I planted one. It took it about 10 years before it yielded its first handful of nuts and now, at 13 years old it produces quite a reasonable crop of nuts.

I expect I'm bias, but I do love my hazel tree. I love the way the hazelnuts conveniently drop to the ground when they are ready, without damaging themselves. And how they patiently wait for you to get around to eating them without threatening to go rotten in the meantime. And just a gentle squeeze of the nutcracker lets you through their shell to the nut inside.

Back in 2009 I proudly blogged about using my first handful of hazelnuts; a yield of just a couple of ounces that I turned into hazelnut & sesame florentines. It is a delicious recipe so I started with it this year but it barely made an impression on the nut harvest.

Hazelnut and Sesame Florentines (makes 12-16)

1 1/2 oz (40g) unsalted butter

1 1/2 oz (40g) golden syrup

1/2 oz (15g) plain flour

1 1/2 oz (40g) chopped hazelnuts

1 1/2 oz (40g) sesame seeds

1 oz (25g) glace cherries

1 oz (25g) dried mixed fruit

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and line a large baking sheet. Melt together the butter and the syrup in a pan over a gentle heat then remove from the heat and add all the other ingredients. Stir well and leave for 2-3 minutes. Dollop teaspoons of the mixture well spaced out on the baking paper then bake for 5-8 minutes until golden. Cool on the sheet for 2-3 minutes then transfer onto a wire rack to cool completely.

After that, I scanned my blog archives to remind me what I did with my hazelnut harvest in 2010. Back in October 2010 I made a harvest fruit cake with hazelnuts, courgettes and an apple. With the same ingredients in abundance this year I decided to do the same. A lovely, substantial fruitcake, which lasted us all week but which too did not use up all the hazelnuts.

Harvest Fruit Cake

2oz (55g) shelled hazelnuts

8oz (225g) unsalted butter

8oz (225g) light muscovado sugar

8oz (225g) self-raising flour

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 teaspoon baking powder

6oz (175g) courgette or marrow

1 apple

9oz (250g) mixed dried fruit

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and grease or line a 20cm round cake tin. Place 1 oz of the hazelnuts in a food processor with a spoonful of sugar and a spoonful of flour and blitz until the nuts are finely ground. Add the butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, flour and baking powder and process until a smooth batter forms. Remove the blade and grate in the courgette or marrow and the apple then add the dried fruit. Stir thoroughly and spoon the mix into the cake tin. Coarsely chop the remaining hazelnuts and mix these with the cinnamon and demerara sugar. Sprinkle this mixture onto the top of the cake. Bake for 45 minutes then cover with foil and continue to bake for a further 25-30 minutes. Test with a skewer. Cool in the tin for 20 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack.

So, with my eldest daughter's challenge of making a cheesecake recipe book still in my mind, I decided to have a go at making a hazelnut cheesecake.

Chocolate Hazelnut Cheesecake

Base:

2 oz shelled hazelnuts

4 oz digestive biscuits

2 oz melted butter

Filling:

8 oz soft cheese

3 oz caster sugar

1 egg

4 fl oz whipping cream

1 dessert spoon cocoa powder

Few drops vanilla extract

Topping:

2 oz roasted hazelnut, chopped.

Blitz the hazelnuts, then the biscuits, in a food processor to make crumbs then mix with the melted butter. Press into a suitable ovenproof tin. Refrigerate for 1 hour or more. Preheat an oven to 180°C, gas 4. Cream together the cheese and sugar then mix in the egg and cream. Pour 8 fl oz into a jug and add the cocoa to this portion. Add the vanilla to the remaining portion. Independently whip each portion until thick. Dollop the two portions of cheese mixture onto the biscuit base and gently fold them together to produce a marbled effect. Bake for 20 minutes then switch out the oven and leave for another 10 minutes. Then open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to slowly cool to prevent it cracking. Once cool, chill for an hour or so until ready to serve. In the meantime, roast the raw hazelnuts in their shells for 15 minutes at 180°C, gas 4. Leave to cool then whizz in a food processor to chop. When ready to serve the cheesecake, scatter the hazelnuts on top. Serve with cream or ice-cream, if desired.

I'm pleased to report the cheesecake was a success. I'm also pleased to say that I still have enough nuts left to make another one!

Award winning hand-made ice-cream

2011-08-18T22:32:00.004+01:00

Regular readers of my blog will know that I enjoy making ice-cream but I never expected to get an award for it! This changed the other day when I entered the Farr Beach sandcastle competition. Inspired by a beach ice-cream set that I picked up in IKEA for a few pounds, we decided that this year’s entry would be a sand ice-cream van.

First we dug out a large hole and built up walls to make the outline structure of the ice-cream van and then the girls created a series of different ice-creams in cones and ice-cream sundaes to “sell” at the counter. This was the most fun part, trying to find suitable substitutes for yummy ingredients on the beach. Dry sand for vanilla, damp sand for caramel flavours. Green seaweed for mint. Small sticks as chocolate flakes, red pebbles as cherries, seaweed as chocolate sauce.

After an hour of digging, sculpting and creating, the ice-cream van and its stock was finished. Then, the judges walked up and down the beach, assessing each castle. We all gathered together at the end of the beach to hear the announcements – in reverse order of course. 3rd then 2nd places… then finally, 1st place for the ice-cream van! What a lovely surprise and a brilliant way to end an enjoyable, fun, family day out on the beach. Funnily enough, as we left the beach that afternoon we all fancied an ice-cream, sadly though my stock of real home-made ice-creams was in the freezer at home 600 miles away!

A Kitchen Gardener on holiday- Part 2

2011-08-16T22:05:00.003+01:00

By the time we needed to visit the supermarket again we were running low on homegrown vegetables too. There were still plenty of spuds and alliums, courgettes and French beans but the broad beans, peas and beetroot were eaten. It is somewhat surprising that vegetables such as courgettes and French beans should still be edible after a 600 mile car journey and 6 days out of the ground but compared to the journeys some fruit and vegetables have to arrive in supermarkets its nothing.

When homegrown is not available I like to shop local instead and this is probably easier here than anywhere in the UK. The Scots are very proud of anything Scottish so supermarkets are stocked with Scottish products including everything from haggis to cheese to carrots. And with the different pace of life up here, where Tescos only arrived a couple of years ago, there are still thriving local specialist shops such as butchers and fishmongers. It makes a pleasant change to shop in places like this and the whole family actively enjoys our shopping trips.

So a 40 minute, 30 mile drive to Thurso isn’t the chore it might be if this was something I had to do every week of the year. Instead we look forward to it, made more enjoyable by the ease of parking near to each of the shops we visit. First to MacKay’s the butchers – a large, rotund man with ruddy cheeks who was clearly born to be a butcher. He greeted us in his usual friendly way, recognising us from previous annual visits. All his meat is local, of course, and can be cut to order if necessary. His sausages are the highlight of our trip and my daughter claims they are the only sausages she likes. Here we stocked up on fillet steak, leg of lamb, a chicken and sausages as well as “olives”, pieces of frying steak wrapped round a sage and onion stuffing. I’ve never seen these anywhere else so enjoy having them when I can just because they are a bit different. We also bought half a dozen local free-range eggs and a punnet of Caithness grown strawberries.

A very short drive to the quayside and we parked this time outside the fishmongers. It is also right by our favourite café “The Tempest” and although we were all starving we decided to visit the fishmongers first as this, like the butchers, still have the quirky habit of closing for lunch. Like so many places up here this is also called “MacKay’s” but a different and unrelated MacKay to the butchers (Sutherland is of course Clan MacKay country). Here Steve stocked up on a pot of crabmeat, some enormous fresh scallops and a wedge of Orkney cheese before we headed into the café for lunch. I can’t help marvelling at the car park – a huge expanse of tarmac at the quayside, next to several shops and a popular café and with a seaview, overlooking the Orkney Islands. Firstly, it is remarkable because there are absolutely no road marking in it so you can park wherever you choose. Secondly, it is completely free of charge. And thirdly, it is almost entirely empty. Imagine such a car park in Cornwall, closely packed bay markings, pay and display and full by 9am.

Nicely stocked up with a variety of fresh, local produce we drove back to the cottage in excited anticipation of our next meal.

A Kitchen Gardener on holiday- Part 1

2011-08-14T22:44:00.003+01:00

When you love kitchen gardening as much as I do, it is a bit of a strain to leave it behind for 3 weeks to go on holiday. To lessen the strain, firstly, I have perfected the timing of my summer holiday to slot neatly between the end of broad beans and the beginning of the French beans, and between the end of the soft fruit and the beginning of the tree fruit. Secondly, I make sure there are people back home who can keep an eye on the plot whilst we are away and to keep picking the produce to stop them going over.

Before leaving on holiday I went around the plot picking everything that I could to take away. The peas and mangetout were winding down but I got a small bag of each. The broad beans I thought were over but got a few new pods from re-grown shoots. The first of the French beans were ready so I picked everything I could from these. I pulled up a few beetroots and cut all the courgettes. When freshly picked like this, it is possible to expect these vegetables to last at least until the end of the first week away. I added these last pickings to my previously harvested onions, garlic and 3 different variety of potatoes. Three varieties of potatoes may sound excessive, but when you are away for 3 weeks it is nice to be able to cook potatoes in different ways and each variety is particularly suitable for certain cooking techniques.

Our holiday destination was our little cottage on the north coast of Scotland. It is a very basic affair with a tiny galley kitchen but the kitchen is well stocked with utensils and vessels. It has an old but spacious fridge, with a dodgy door that has to be held shut with a bungy cord. It also has an electric cooker with an oven and 3 working hob rings. Work surface is almost non-existent but it is surprising what you can cook when you put your mind to it. I could, of course, live on ready-meals for a week, simply reheating them in the microwave that’s so old it doesn’t even have a rotating turntable and probably microwaves the kitchen as much as it does the food inside. But I’m a foodie at heart and part of being on holiday is enjoying lovely evening meals. I’m happy to cook as long as Steve does the washing up. And he’s happy to do the washing up as long as he’s well fed!

When on holiday we tend to choose luxury items that we wouldn’t normally eat every day so our first meal was roast duck, roasted Sharpe’s Express potatoes, carrots, tiny broad beans and peas. If cooking duck at home I would have strolled into the front garden and grabbed a bundle of fresh sage then stuffed the cavity with sage and onion. In the absence of fresh sage I decided to concoct a stuffing from the flavours I did have to hand. I finely chopped up a red onion, a clove of garlic, some root ginger, an inch of celery, a small yellow courgette, a mushroom and a rasher of bacon. This I stirfried for a few minutes in some olive oil then put it in a bowl with breadcrumbs made from two slices of wholemeal bread. I squeezed it together before stuffing the crop and the cavity with the mixture before roasting the duck. And very tasty the stuffing proved to be.

The next day we headed west around the coast. It was a beautiful sunny day and as we drove home later that evening I was struck by the picturesque beauty of the Kyle of Tongue in bright sunshine. We pulled off the road to take a photo and to my surprise there was a huge fennel bush growing at the edge of the layby. I guess not everyone would recognise a fennel bush when they see one, but for a kitchen gardener it was an easy identification. As megrin sole was on the menu for that night’s dinner I took the liberty of gathering a few sprigs of the fennel and back at the cottage I grilled the fish on a bed of fresh fennel.

The next day was another epic roast meal but this time it was a beautiful Scottish leg of lamb. Again, at home, a trip to the herb garden would be in order to pick a sprig of rosemary and then I would stab the leg all over, pushing in a slice of garlic and a piece of rosemary into each slit. With no rosemary to hand I sent Steve out to retrieve some of the wild thyme I could see growing outside the kitchen window. As usual I inserted garlic into every slit but this time a piece of thyme went in with it. Then I seasoned it all over with salt and pepper before spreading a good dollop of mustard all over it. This was accompanied by Kestrel roast potatoes, the last of the peas, carrots and some roasted yellow courgette. I had never roasted courgettes before but it was simple to do. Firstly I cut the courgette into chunks then tossed them in a mixture of olive oil, salt, pepper and dried mixed herbs. I then placed them carefully in the roasting tin with the potatoes, skin side down, and cooked them for the last 20 minutes of the roasting time. They were beautifully sweet with a lovely herby flavour.

After that, the next meal was a little simpler. Boiled gammon and baked potatoes. It still took an hour to cook but an hour when I could get on with other things. The potatoes, by the way, were overgrown Charlotte potatoes. Usually known for their boiling ability, I discovered last year that when left in the ground too long and grown too large, they actually make brilliant baked potatoes with lovely crispy skin. The secret to a crispy skin on a baked potato is to rub it with oil and a little salt before baking. Then to finish the meal, a few salad items such as tomatoes, cucumber, celery and some homegrown beetroot, cooked that morning after breakfast.

So for the first week at least, we managed to eat homegrown vegetables and enjoy the lovely flavours of the season.

The Broad Bean Harvest

2011-06-28T21:56:00.004+01:00

We're having a lovely broad bean harvest this year and I plan to make the most of them. I sowed 5 different varieties in the spring and kept them under plastic cloche tunnels until the heatwave in April when the first flowers started to appear. Obviously, the pollinating insects wouldn't be able to do their jobs if the flowers were kept under plastic.

When there were just a few remaining flowers and most of the beans had formed I went round and nipped off the top bunch of leaves from every plant. I don't know how or why but doing this significantly reduces the blackfly infestation. If you leave it too late and blackfly have already arrived by the time you do it then it doesn't work and if you don't do it at all then you can expect blackflies to inundate your broad beans, starting at the top and eventually swamping the bean pods themselves. With the top nipping done at the correct point this year we have a lovely healthy looking crop.

When growing lots of plants, as were are, it is worth eating the beans from the earliest possible point when the beans inside are still tiny. Some people actually eat the bean pods before the beans have begun to form but I'm not a fan of furry food! It seems a bit wasteful at first to split open the large pods to extract tiny beans that in no way attempt to fill their cosy sleeping bag. But, with steady eating from this stage you will still end up having beans on the plants that become old and unpleasant to eat.

Broad beans are nicest to eat when they are young and become increasingly less pleasant the older they get. When young they should pop out of their pods with their little green hats still with them. As they get older the hat begins to turn yellow and eventually the beans come out without their hats, leaving a black scar on the bean. At this point it is best to cook the beans then squeeze the inner bean out of the now tough outer skin. This is another fiddly stage in the preparation so it is obviously easier to avoid this by eating them before they reach this stage. Personally, when they reach this point I usually cook them up and turn them into pate or houmous (see archives for the recipes).

By this weekend the beans had grown quite large but they still had their little green hats and were pleasant to eat. It struck me that now would be the perfect time to freeze some beans for the winter months - rather than leaving it until they go past their best. So I set about harvesting half of what was left on the plants and came home with a bulging carrier bag full. These I podded until I had a huge bowlful of the things. Then I got a big pan of boiling water going and blanched the lot. Then I plunged them into icy water to cool them quickly then dried them roughly and lay them out on trays to freeze. The next morning I rubbed them off the trays and dropped them into freezer bags as handy individually frozen beans. It was very satisfying to put 3 bags of broad beans into the freezer for the winter.

The remaining beans on the plants are continuing to feed us and of course are continuing to mature. We will eat them fresh until they become tough then I shall make & freeze my pate and houmous for Steve's sandwiches throughout the year. What a handy bean the broad bean is.

I feel a cheesecake coming on

2011-06-17T17:43:00.003+01:00

Often when I'm baking it is one of my own recipe books that I refer to. I love creating and writing down new recipes. It is lovely to be able to share my kitchen creativity with others through my books but it is also really handy to have them to refer back to myself. Blogging is another useful way to make sure I don't forget my recipes.

Earlier this week I decided to turned the latest harvest of strawberries into a strawberry swirl cheesecake. Regular readers of my blog will know that I created this for the first time last year at the request of my eldest daughter. Having blogged about it back then I knew that now I need only delve into the archives of my blog to find the recipe again this year. This I did and printed it out for reference in the kitchen.

As usual, just as I got started my eldest daughter sprung into the kitchen to see if I required any help. I'm never one to turn down help so she found her apron and washed her hands. Then she spotted the recipe on a piece of paper and asked why it was only on paper and not in one of my recipe books. I pointed out that I'm always coming up with new recipes and the new ones aren't in recipe books yet. "Well," she said, "in that case, you need to write a cheesecake recipe book."

That night as I lay in bed, drifting off to sleep I started thinking about cheesecakes. Well, there are worse things to think about as you fall asleep. By the morning I had decided that a cheesecake mini recipe booklet would make a useful addition to my mini recipe book range but I am going to need more recipes. So what's seasonal, tasty and not something I have already done?

By the time I went to bed again the next night I had come to conclusion that an elderflower cheesecake was a strong possibility. And by the end of the next day I had elderflowers infusing in whipping cream in the fridge. Later, the idea of including gooseberries in the recipe too occurred to me so that night my daughter and I made gooseberry and elderflower cheesecake.

I couldn't wait to try it so had a sneaky slice after my lunch the next day. Straight after school my daughter asked to try it and she quickly gave it her seal of approval and informed me it was good enough to go into my cheesecake recipe book. That's a long term project but here's the gooseberry and elderflower cheesecake recipe in the meantime. By the way, if you have a cheesecake recipe that you think would make a good addition to my recipe book, please get in touch.

Gooseberry & Elderflower Cheesecake

Base:

6 oz crushed digestive biscuits

2 oz melted butter

Filling:

5 fl oz whipping cream

5 elderflower heads

4 oz gooseberries

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

3 oz caster sugar

1 egg

7 oz soft cheese

Snip the flower heads off the stalks and place the flowers into a container with the whipping cream. Place a lid on it then place it in the fridge overnight to infuse.

To make the base: Put the biscuits in a bag and crush them with the end of a rolling pin until finely crushed. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs. Press the mix firmly into the bottom of a 20cm flan dish and chill for about 1 hour.

To make the filling: Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Place the gooseberries in a small saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of water and the granulated sugar then cook for about 10 minutes until the fruit is soft. Set aside to cool. Cream together the cheese and the caster sugar until light and fluffy. Next, strain the cream through a sieve, squeezing the flowers to extract as much cream as possible - you should have approximately 4 fl oz of cream. Discard the elderflowers. Add the egg and cream to the cheese mix and whisk with an electric whisk until thick. Dollop the creamy filling onto the biscuit base and spread out evenly. Place a sieve over a bowl and pour the gooseberries through the sieve, crushing the fruit with a spoon to leave behind just the skin and seeds. Spoon a tablespoon of the gooseberry sauce onto the cream mixture then use a chopstick or skewer to carefully swirl the sauce through the cream mixture. Put the remaining gooseberry sauce into the refrigerator until serving. Place the cheesecake in the oven and bake for 20 minutes then turn out the oven and leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to continue its slow cooling so that it doesn't crack. Once cool, refrigerate the cheesecake to chill before serving. Serve each slice of cheesecake with a serving of gooseberry sauce.

Freshly cut herbs

2011-06-14T21:47:00.003+01:00

Most of my front garden is dedicated to herbs, which is quite a contrast to my next door neighbour's garden which is mostly dedicated to gravel, dotted sporadically with dandelions and thistles. I like my herb garden so was somewhat surprised the other morning when my neighbour knocked on the door to ask me if I could cut back the herbs that were overhanging her garden. Of course I said I would and later went out to see what she was fussing about. Yes, the herbs were definitely overhanging but in what I would consider an attractive way. Nonetheless, I was obliged to meet her wishes and cut them back.

Funnily enough I had also noticed this week that the postman was now taking a slightly different route to my front door. The reason for this became clear when I stood on my doorstep this afternoon and looked up my normal pathway - now almost completely closed up by herbs on either side - quite pleasant to walk down on a warm day but less so in the wet. Clearly, the herbs were getting out of control. With this in mind, I bought pack of sausagement and a few more onions; if I had to cut them back then I wanted to make use of what I could.

After school I said to my girls that I was going to trim back the herbs in the front garden and I would really appreciate their help and if not help, then company. Then, armed with shears, I nipped around the my neighbour's garden a began snipping. I was soon joined by my girls and my eldest got stuck in to scooping up the cuttings and loading them into the wheelbarrow. My youngest plonked herself down on the gravel and began playing. After several minutes my eldest said to her sister, "Are you going to help?" to which she replied, "I'm company." That made me chuckle.

They continued to help and provide company for the next hour as we trimmed back both the overhang into the neighbour's garden and the footpath. It was quite a heap of herbs in the wheelbarrow by the time we had finished but I also had several bundles for the kitchen. We were just finishing the sweeping up when my husband arrived and as he wheeled the lot around to the compost bins, I took the saved herbs indoors to sort them out.

My first job was to put the lavender flowers into a pot as a lovely centrepiece of the table. It both looked and smelt gorgeous. I didn't add any water to the pot and so over the next few days the flowers will slowly dry out and become preserved dried flowers, retaining most of their lovely colour and fragrance.

Next, I chopped up the sage and mixed it with finely chopped onion, breadcrumbs, sausagement and a bit of salt and pepper to make stuffing. This I placed in the freezer in handy portions. Tomorrow I shall use some of the rosemary to make herb mustard - this is lovely smeared on lamb before grilling or roasting it. Later, a couple of sprigs of savory went into the pan with the freshly picked broad beans we had with dinner.

Herbs are growing rapidly at this time of year so should you find yourself in need of trimming some back, enjoy the cuttings in the kitchen.

Does it get any better?

2011-05-30T21:45:00.003+01:00

With the beginning of June fast approaching it is now possible to plant tender seedlings out on the allotment. For us, this the brassicas, French beans, sweetcorn, cucurbits and tomatoes. That is a heck of a lot of planting so Steve and I got cracking straight after lunch on Saturday.

Whilst I started planting the brassica seedlings, Steve dug over the bed in readiness for the French beans. The bed was mostly weed free but was peppered with volunteer potato plants. It doesn't matter how carefully you remove the potatoes when you harvest a crop, it is inevitable that you will leave a few tubers in the ground. It is also inevitable that these forgotten spuds will grow the next spring. This is particularly annoying when they pop up in the middle of your onion sets or carefully sown row of carrots as they represent quite a tricky weed to remove. However, on this occasion they weren't much of a bother as the bed wasn't required until now. As such, we had left them to grow, hoping there might be the beginnings of a few new potatoes when we removed them. And so it was. As I methodically planted out row after row of brassica plants, Steve methodically dug up the potato plants, plopping any new potatoes found into a flower pot as he went.

By the end of the afternoon, I had a bed full of brassica plants (netted against pigeon attacked and slugs & snails protection measures in place), and Steve had a flower pot overflowing with lovely new potatoes. Anyone who reads my blog regularly will know I'm forever banging on about the joy of eating with the seasons and there is no better moment than that when you eat the first of something. They are always at their sweetest and tenderest and the months of waiting make them even more delicious.

Back in the kitchen, I washed the new potatoes, their skins slipping off as easily as... "silk knickers", as Steve says. Then a bit of gentle boiling and a dab of butter. Yes, there are a hundred and one ways to cook a potato but quite honestly, it doesn't get better than that.

It burns... it burns!

2011-05-20T21:26:00.002+01:00

I don't know how many jars of preserves I have made in the 12 or so years that I have been making jam and chutney but it must be a fair few. When you think about it, it is quite a hazardous occupation, particularly when it comes to decanting the finished preserve into jars. I do take the precaution of not wearing sandals when I do this, even though it is something I often do at the height of summer. I also use an oven glove when handling the hot jars, a jar funnel and a ladle to lessen spillages and drips . I should perhaps also wear googles but somehow that just seems a bit silly. So far, these precautions have been sufficient to prevent injury.

This week, I made a rather spicy tomato sauce with a good chilli kick. I don't have much tolerance for chilli but I do believe in tasting everything I make so I had tried this one with a tentative dab on the tongue. Several minutes later as I was bottling it my tongue was still gently humming to the chilli tune.

My usual technique for bottling is to ladle the preserve, hot from the pan, into the jar through an jam funnel into jars warmed in the oven. When the jar is full, I remove the funnel, place the lid on the jar and gently twist then pick the whole thing up by the lid into a gloved hand to give the lid a final twist to firmly close. Potentially dangerous maybe but I have never burnt myself doing this...

... until this week when as I picked up the jar by the lid the lid came off and in one graceful movement I dropped the jar the short drop to the work surface and stuck the full length of my thumb into the jar of hot tomato sauce.

Reflexes are undoubtedly a good thing and do on the whole save you from injury and danger. Unfortunately, they occur without wasting time consulting the brain. In this situation I had two reflex reactions. The first was to pull my thumb rapidly out of the hot liquid (sensible). This had the unfortunate side-effect of sending the jar of sauce toppling over, spilling its contents all over the work surface, splashing hot sauce onto my other arm in the process. The second reaction was to stick my thumb in my mouth, complete with its coating of chilli sauce!

For the next few minutes I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself but it did involve copious amounts of cold water.

I'm pleased to say that no serious harm was done. I had a couple of very small burns on my arm and my thumb kind of felt like I'd trapped it in a door for the rest of the day. My tingling tongue stopped buzzing after about an hour too!

Amazing May

2011-05-14T22:16:00.006+01:00

I was so tempted when I was Tescos earlier this week to buy a punnet of strawberries. Usually I have a strict rule about not buying strawberries as I think it is so important to enjoy fruit in season and at its best. But, these were in season British strawberries and it had been MONTHS since we last ate fresh strawberries. We even finished off the last of the strawberry & marshmallow ice-cream last week. Sigh... but with our own plants already bending with green fruit it seemed silly to spoil the moment by having shop bought ones a bit ahead of time.

And how glad I was that I didn't buy them in the end when on Wednesday afternoon a quick visit to the allotment revealed that several strawberries were already beginning to turn red. The girls were very excited by this and rushed round, checking for any signs of redness. Then this afternoon, with the girls slopping around the house lethargically, it was the possibility of ripe strawberries that enticed them out of the house and onto the allotment. They rushed straight to the ones that had been most promising on our last visit and a moment later they reappeared at my side with a beautiful perfect specimen. After months of waiting, I made them wait just a moment longer whilst I photographed it then they tore it in half and shared it. What joy! We have never had ripe strawberries in mid-May before. There is a lot of promise for the soft fruit this year.

Barring the occasional early strawberry, May is probably the leanest month in the kitchen from the kitchen garden but there are a few exceptions. Our asparagus is still going strong, despite the best efforts of the asparagus beetle. Rhubarb is still available, although we don't currently have any growing on our plot. We did, however, manage to do a mutually agreeable swap with an allotment neighbour for his rhubarb in exchange for our asparagus. Herbs, if they are not flowering, are at their best now so it is a good time to cut some for drying or to make herb mustard. Most of our herbs grow in our front garden and right now they on the verge of closing up the footpath. Still, brushing past them on the way to the door is an aromatic delight!

We have a few herbs on the allotment too - though this is less convenient. I noticed that the mint we grow as a marginal at the edge of out teeny pond was in danger of swamping the whole thing so this afternoon I took the secatures to it. Back in the kitchen I chopped the whole lot up and it is currently infusing in 10 fl oz of milk in the fridge. Tomorrow I shall add double cream, sugar and chocolate chips to make mint choc ice-cream - not like the stuff you buy in ice-cream palours, this stuff tastes of "proper" mint.

Mint Choc Chip Ice-cream

A big bunch of mint

10 fl oz (284 ml) milk

2 oz (55 g) icing sugar

10 fl oz (284 ml) double cream

Green food colouring (optional)

4 oz (110 g) chocolate chips

Remove the mint leaves from the stalks and coarsely chop. Pour the milk into a non metallic bowl and tip the mint leaves into it, pressing down so that they are covered. Cover the bowl and place in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight to infuse. Pour the milk through a sieve to remove the mint leaves. Add the sugar to the milk and stir until dissolved. Add the cream (and food colouring if using) and stir. Pour into suitable containers and add the chocolate chips. Freeze the mixture for 2 hours until beginning to freeze then stir with a fork to break up the ice-crystals. Return to the freezer for another 2 hours then stir again, making sure to stir the chocolate chips through the ice cream. Repeat again 2 hours later than return to the freezer until solid.

On the school run earlier in the week I noticed the elderflowers were just beginning to bloom so before leaving the allotment we walked over to where the hedgerow grows over the fence and harvested some. Then we took a slight detour on the way home to harvest some more from the nearby hedgerow. The gorgeous smell alone makes me want to drink thirstily from a glass of sparkling elderflower cordial.

Elderflower Cordial

2lb 4 oz (1kg) sugar

1½ pints (900ml) boiling water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon lime juice

about 15 large elder flower heads

1 lemon, sliced

1 lime, sliced

Put the sugar in a non-metallic bowl with the boiling water and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Add the lemon and lime juices. Wash and flick dry the elder flower heads then snip off the flowers into the bowl. Add the sliced lemon and lime. Stir then cover the bowl with Clingfilm and leave to stand for 24 hours. Scald a jelly bag and drain the mixture through it into a clean bowl. Funnel into sterile bottles then refrigerate. Dilute to taste with chilled water (sparkling if you prefer).

So our mid-May harvest consisted of rhubarb, elderflowers, herbs and asparagus... and a strawberry.

Tonight I have mint and milk infusing in the fridge, elderflowers and lemons infusing on the counter, and rhubarb and ginger steeping in a bowl. I don't need a fortune-teller to know I shall have a busy day in the kitchen tomorrow but hopefully by the end of it I shall have mint choc chip ice-cream, elderflower cordial and another batch of rhubarb and ginger jam.

Tomberries and profiteroles

2011-05-08T13:47:00.002+01:00

There I was standing in Costco the other day contemplating buying a huge bag of Rooster potatoes when I spotted something that looked like a pack of teeny tiny tomatoes. I moved closer to inspect and discovered that that is just what they were. About the size of a fat redcurrant, these tiny tomatoes were called "Tomberries". I knew then and there that I had to buy some as it was bound to appeal to my tomato-loving youngest. Sure enough she loved them. So I have served them up to her on several occasions now - a handful in a small sauce/dip dish to stop them from rolling all over her plate.

It has been a couple of weeks since I bought them now and some of them are getting a bit wrinkly (hardly surprising). I took a wrinkled one the other day and squashed it onto a piece of kitchen towel to extract the seeds. I have never seen "tomberry" seeds available to buy from seed catalogues so I thought I might try growing these. Of course, I don't even know whether "tomberries" are a particular variety or just the very small ones of a cherry tomato of some kind. I also don't know if whatever variety of plant it came from is an F1 or not. If it is, then the seeds of these berries are unlikely to come true and I could end up growing some unexpected tomato plants. Nevertheless, worth a try I reckon.

At about the same time that I bought the tomberries, I also bought a stack of profiteroles. These weren't on my shopping list as it happens but they were reduced and... Well, anyway, the girls and I enjoyed them! Having emptied the stack I couldn't help noticing that the container looked like a mini greenhouse - similar to one of the Eden Project domes. It even had circular indentations on the base that looked perfect for holding flower pots. So I washed it out and put it in the shed.

Having squashed a tomberry I decided now might be the time to try out the profiterole greenhouse. Back into the shed I went and retrieved the dome, plus several tiny flower pots that had once homed small cactus plants. These fitted perfectly into the indentations on the base so I filled them up with potting compost and placed a tomberry seed in each. The dome top didn't fit perfectly back on now that the flowerpots were inside but it slotted over them quite well with a bit of an air vent at the bottom.

A week later I see that 3 or 4 of the seeds have germinated already. But now I'm wondering if I should eat another stack of profiteroles in order to complete the Eden Project look. It really wouldn't be too much of struggle!

MK's most expensive carrots!

2011-05-01T23:23:00.003+01:00

I bought a 1kg bag of carrots from the supermarket the other day for a quid. That's cheap! Unfortunately, supermarket carrots are always a bit dull - lacking flavour mostly but also a bit of character. It's just not the same if you don't have to wash off a bucket of mud before you can start peeling - and of course, the odd fork just makes the peeling process all that more interesting!

It is undeniably easy to take a pre-washed, straight carrot out of a bag, peel it, chop it and boil it but they are pretty much tasteless. And at this time of year they are on the verge of rotting from the moment you buy them. A couple of days in the fridge and one end or the other starts to go squidgy and brown. It is for this reason that I grow my own carrots.

Every year I struggle to get the carrot seeds to germinate in our thick clay, then struggle to keep them alive and fend off the slug attacks. And then in the summer I struggle to break them out of the concrete-clay and in the winter I struggle to heave them out of the sticky clay. Most of them grow with forks, others split and some grow so close together they wind round and round each other and produce twisty carrots. At the same time, we sow a few seeds in wooden planters on my girls plot in a mixture of potting compost and sand. When they want to harvest their carrots they just give a gentle tug and out they pop, all straight and very nearly clean.

So this year I found myself wondering why I don't just grow all out carrots like that. There was no sensible answer to that question so I went out and bought 3 window box troughs and 2 "salad" growing sacks. To fill them, I also bought 3 x 120l multi-purpose compost and 3 bags of sharp sand. I mixed the compost and the sand in fairly equal measures in the wheelbarrow then filled the containers, watered and sowed the seeds. The need for watering did not stop there and I have watered regularly ever since and I even had to go out and buy a replacement rose-end to my watering can so as not to damage the seedlings as they emerged.

Today I have repeated the process to sow parsnips in potato bags. My hope is that they will still grow to their usual 18 inch length but that it will be sooooo much easier to harvest.

Now I'm wondering how much it has cost to grow a few carrots - the cost of the containers. the compost, the sand, the seed, the watering can accessories, not to mention man-hours that have been invested into these carrots. When you think how cheaply you can pick up a bag of carrots from the supermarkets you have to wonder if it is worth it. Purely economically speaking the answer is very likely to be no but when it comes to variety and flavour the answer will be yes!

Growing peanuts

2011-04-26T23:02:00.003+01:00

For the past 3 years I have grown peanut plants on my allotment. The British weather is not really suitable for such a task but I like a challenge. Usually, I buy my peanut seeds from the Plants of Distinction catalogue. Inside the packet there are 3 monkey nuts, providing 6 (although often only 5) peanuts. These I sow in pots in February and germinate on my windowsill. Finally, the seedlings are planted out in June. During the summer the plants produce small yellow flowers very similar in shape to pea flowers. This is not surprising as peas and peanuts are related, both belonging to the legume family. If the flowers are pollinated then a long stem grows out of the dying flower and heads downwards until it finds the soil. There it buries itself and in due course a new monkey nut forms underground - hence the other name: "ground nut".

Germination of the peanut seeds is never 100%, then keeping them alive for several weeks indoors is tricky. They don't like drying out and they are prone to pest attacked. Then once in the garden, they can struggle in the cool British weather. As a result, I have never managed to grow more than a handful of peanuts - scarcely more than I start with! Still, I enjoy the challenge and persevere every year, despite the somewhat high price of the seeds (£1.65 for 6).

This year has been no different. Once again I ordered my 3 monkey nuts from Plants of Distinction. Once shelled, I planted the 5 peanut seeds and waited for a few days for germination. Only 3 germinated this time and when I investigated the others the seeds had rotted to soft mush. Several days later, when I checked them again, I realised the pots had dried out and unfortunately 2 of the plants succumbed to this neglect. So I was left with one plant - not likely to yield a good harvest for that!

Frustrated by this I decided it was time to experiment with supermarket monkey nuts to see if I could get these to grow. I bought a 400g bag of "natural" unroasted (obviously!) peanuts, shelled 3 of them and planted the 6 nuts. Then just one week later when I returned from holiday I was delighted to see 5 of them had germinated and were growing away strongly. Success, I would say! Time will tell if I manage to get a reasonable harvest this year but next year I shall be sourcing my seeds from the supermarket not the seed catalogue - it is a good deal cheaper (£1.50 for maybe 200 seeds) and so far, more successful.

As for the rest of the bag of unroasted monkey nuts, these I roasted as a single layer on a large baking tray in a preheated oven at 180°C, gas 4 for 25 minutes. Steve declared these the freshest and tastiest roasted monkey nuts he'd ever tasted! Well, hopefully only until we harvest our own peanuts in the summer!

Dandelions - weeds or ingredient?

2011-04-14T22:33:00.004+01:00

At this time of year the dandelions on the verges along side the grid roads in Milton Keynes are a spectacular sight - a sea of yellow, easily able to compete with the daffodils from a few weeks previously.

It's funny how we tend not to appreciate the humble dandelion. If it were a rare or exotic plant it would be considered a thing of beauty. But because it is so common we do not seem to notice its head of bright yellow flowers followed by the delicate perfect ball of silver seeds. Indeed, not only do we not appreciate it, but we seek to destroy it when it appears in our lawns, flower beds or amongst our vegetables. I am no different. Many a time I have dug down... deeply... to remove the long tap root of the dandelion plant from my veg patch, or cursed as I brushed past a dandelion clock, sending future weed seeds across my plot. But, in it's place - as a wild flower - it is beautiful, particularly when flowering en mass.

Having ooh-ed and ahh-ed from the car window at the dandelions last week, I found myself paying particular attention to Pam the Jam helping John the Forger to make dandelion jam on River Cottage Every Day - Bread on Saturday evening. I don't know what time of year they filmed it in but between them they struggled to find the necessary hundred flower heads for the recipe. I looked at my girls and said, "Shall we make that?" They nodded with enthusiasm - my youngest loving the thought of picking her favourite flower, my eldest keen to take up the challenge of making something edible from a weed.

That night I searched the internet for Pam's recipe but I couldn't find it. Instead, I found a variety of other recipes and soon learned that finding enough dandelion heads would be tricky, pulling the petals off fiddly, and getting the jam to set time-consuming. I was not deterred.

So on Tuesday afternoon the girls and I set off to pick dandelions. Quite frankly, it was ridiculous. There were literally thousands of the things! I spent most of my time taking photos but still managed to pick several hundred flower heads. My girls filled their baskets to overflowing yet still they didn't want to stop. It was a thoroughly lovely way to spend an hour.

Back home we spent another hour pulling the petals away from the sepals. This proved less interesting and half way through my youngest sloped off to do something else. My eldest was determined to empty her basket but eventually admitted defeat. We had, however, by then accumulated 500g of dandelion petals!

In the absence of a decent recipe, I was kind of making it up as I went along so I put the petals into my preserving pan with 4 oranges & 2 lemons, 1 lb of gooseberries (from the freezer) and a few litres of water. This I heated up and simmered for an hour. I hoped the gooseberries and citrus combination would provide the necessary pectin as well as mild flavour to compliment the dandelions. Whilst it cooked, the kitchen was filled with a smell reminiscent of honey & lemon.

Once boiled, I poured the contents of the pan into a jelly bag and let it drip for a couple of hours. By then it was late so I left the liquid covered for the night and recommenced the next day. In total I had four and three quarters pints of liquid so I decided to add 4 lb of sugar to it. Once dissolved, I brought it to the boil and attempted to get it to reach its setting point. After nearly an hour of boiling I admitted defeat and added a 250ml bottle of Certo pectin. Then with still no obvious set, I boiled it up again for a few minutes before I finally managed to achieve the tell-tale wrinkle on a cold saucer.

Before bottling I added the petals of a few more dandelion heads to the jam for added texture/appearance. It is a beautiful looking jam - a glowing amber colour as sunny as the flowers it came from. The flavour is admittedly subtle but a sort of perfumed honey flavour with a hint of citrus - perfect on hot cross buns.

So what have I learnt about making dandelion jam?

Collecting enough heads is not difficult if you time it correctly.

Pulling the petals off is fiddly.

Getting it to set is difficult and needs a good source of pectin.

Also, dandelions stain - yellow from the pollen and brown from the stems - so wear old clothes when picking them!

The flavour is subtle but it is satisfying to make jam from a weed.

Dandelion Jam

250g dandelion petals (no green parts) + a few extra

2 oranges

1 lemon

225g gooseberries

1.5 litres water

1 kg granulated sugar

225ml Certo bottled pectin

Pull the petals from the green parts of the dandelion heads and place in the preserving pan. Slice oranges & lemons (peel & all) and add to the pan. Add the gooseberries and water then bring to the boil and simmer for an hour. Scald a jelly bag then pour the mix into it and allow it to drip for a few hours. Clean the preserving pan and return the liquid to it. Add the sugar and stir until fully dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil rapidly for about 10 minutes. Add the bottled pectin then return to a rolling boil until the setting point is reached. Remove from the heat, stir in the reserved dandelion petals and ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately.

When things don't go to plan!

2011-04-13T22:07:00.003+01:00

Last weekend with a week of glorious weather fit to continue it was an obvious time to get a lot of seeds sown in pots. My only reservation about this was the state of the garden shed. I knew there were a lot of flower pots and seed trays in there but seeing them or getting to them was not that easy after a winter of shed neglect.

I pottered about in the house during Saturday morning, doing housework whilst Steve ate a leisurely breakfast and drank his coffee. This is a ritual that can go on for hours so I was quite surprised when around lunchtime he went off to change into his work clothes and announced he was going to tackle the mess in the shed. What a stroke of luck - I could find all the flower pots I'd need and not have to tidy the shed myself!

However, after giving the girls their lunch I appeared in the garden to discover a variety of objects from the shed that Steve had put to one side for cleaning. Everything in the shed was covered in mats of spider webs with various pits of dirt clinging to them. A few other things had been nibbled by mice and Steve firstly discovered lots of mice droppings and later the mouse itself! Straight away I could see that my assistance would be required for the great shed sort and that it would take the rest of the day. *Scraps plan to sow seeds today*

Later that day I had cleaned 2 old pushchairs complete with rain covers, several deck chairs, a variety of garden toys, 3 bikes and a rotatory washing line. I'm pleased to say that by Sunday lunchtime the unwanted pushchairs, bikes & washing line had all been rehomed by a successful use of my local Freecycle group.

Late on Saturday afternoon the shed was empty and swept clean and Steve stood looking at the stuff in the garden wondering how to get it all back in. I spotted the walk-in plastic greenhouse that I had bought several years ago on a whim, thinking it was a good idea and a bargain. I had made the mistake of putting it in the shed to deal with later and that had been the last I had seen of it. With enthusiasm I suggested I tried assembling it now and finding a use for it in this current growing season.

The box was a bit battered and the picture on the box had been mostly eaten by snails but the contents still seemed good. On tipping it out it was obvious that the plastic cover was missing - so just the poles for the framework remained. I concluded it must be somewhere so decided to press on with the task. Also missing were the instructions so I took a comfort break, switched on my computer and "googled" to see if I could find instructions for it. It turned out I couldn't but there were adverts for replacement covers to buy should I fail to find mine. My next task was to study the damaged box picture at length to try to work out which pole might go where and how best to tackle the assembly. That done I started by laying out all the poles "B" and poles "C" on the ground to assemble the base before connecting them with the correct connecting pieces.

And so it went on for the next hour until it came to putting the roof poles onto the wall poles. The greenhouse was really rather tall so this job was quite awkward and as I pushed one roof pole into a connecting piece, the incorrect application of force caused the connecting piece to explode into several pieces of useless plastic. Cursing followed. Not to be deterred, I enlisted the help of Steve and a roll of duct tape in order to repair the damage. Then as I came to put on the final roof support pieces I realised they didn't fit. I puzzled over this for a moment before Steve pointed out that I must have mistaken my poles "B" with my poles "C" and by doing so had made the greenhouse narrower yet taller than it should have been! More cursing followed.

I paused briefly to emotionally adjust to the waste of a hour and then I began the complete disassembly if the structure. But unfortunately, as I did so several more of the connecting pieces shattered, clearly having suffered from several years in storage. By the time it was disassembled, the shed had been reduced to a collection of useless poles, missing several vital connecting pieces as well as the plastic cover.

By this point Steve was making progress with getting things back in the shed but wondering whether he should stop and put some shelves up to improve the storage space and accessibility. Brainwave! How about using some of the poles and remaining connecting pieces from the greenhouse to construct a set of freestanding shelves? Brilliant! So that is what I did - something at least savaged from experience.

The next morning, with the sun still shining, it was time to get those seeds sown finally. So I walked into (yes, you heard correctly - walked into) the lovely tidy shed and selected the seed trays I required for the job (instead of just making do with what I could see/reach). By the end of Sunday I had sown a tray of beetroot, all the brassicas, cucurbits, tomatoes & sweetcorn seeds and had them safely stored in the coldframe. It hadn't been how I had imagined I would spend my weekend but it was a useful & productive one nonetheless.

By the way, we never did find the plastic cover for the greenhouse!

Hugh would be pleased!

2011-04-06T21:49:00.002+01:00

Steve bought a Mothers Day meal for 4 last week. Of the available options he selected the roast beef, some vegetables for roasting, a strawberry trifle and a bottle of red wine. Considering that the meat was worth £10, the whole meal for £15 is a definite good buy.

Of all the roasting meats I do find beef the trickiest. Get it wrong and it is like chewing on flavoured shoe leather. The piece was top rump but I was still a bit nervous that it might end up tough. So I decided to slow roast it in stock for a few hours. As it happens, the selection of vegetables for roasting were perfect for this as they were chunks of red onion, carrot, parsnips and swede - very tasty.

At half past 3 on Sunday I set the oven to 140°C and browned the beef all over in a hot frying pan. Then I set it in the centre of the roasting tin and chucked the prepared vegetables around it. To add flavour I also chopped up a stick of celery, 3 cloves of garlic and a few springs of rosemary and threw these in too. Finally I poured in a pint of beef stock and covered the whole thing with foil.

I let the meat cook at this temperature until about 5 o'clock when I turned the temperature up to 190°C so that I could cook some roast potatoes too. I moved the meat to the very bottom of the oven at this point and cooked the roasts in their own tin above it.

At quarter to 7 I took the meat out to rest. Carefully I poured the stock off the vegetables and returned these to the oven to keep warm. Then I thickened the stock in a pan with a mixture of flour in cold water.

It was a lovely tasty dinner and the meat was suitably tender. It was, however, more than we could eat. Clearly M&S's idea of a meal for 4 would be for a family that included 2 teenage boys rather than two small girls!

Having watched a repeat of River Cottage Everyday, which had focused on lunch only the day before, I decided that the remains of this meal would make prefect Cornish pasties. So as I cleared the plates I chopped the leftover vegetables up into small chucks and put them into a box in the fridge. I saved a container of gravy too. Then on Tuesday when I went shopping I picked up a pack of puff pastry.

Tuesday afternoon I made the pasties. Firstly, I rolled out the pastry then used a saucer to cut out a total of 6 circles. I made the filling by combining small pieces of the cold beef, the chopped vegetables, some chopped up cooked potatoes and a few spoonfuls of gravy to moisten in all. This I spooned onto half of a circle of pastry then used milk to help seal it as I folded the pastry over and crimped it shut. Finally I glazed each pastie with milk and put a couple of steam vents into each before placing on a tray for the freezer.

There is something satisfying about looking down on 6 neatly made home made pasties, made even more so by virtue of making good use of leftovers. Let's hope that I am equally as satisfied when it comes to eating them!

2011-04-02T22:37:00.009+01:00

I opened my daughter's bedroom curtains this morning to be greeted with the view of spring below. In the right corner our plum tree in full blossom, to the left our cherry tree with buds close to bursting then just over the fence on the allotment a greengage tree in glorious white and an ornamental cherry in full pink. What a beautiful sight and with so much promise of things to come. It made me itch to get out onto the allotment.

It was after lunch when we finally headed off. Having weeded the strawberry bed last weekend my first job of the day was to plant the 6 strawberry plants I had bought from Lidl's last week into the few spaces that had appeared over the winter. Do you remember the cardboard packaging that came with my jam jar deliveries that we thought we might use as strawberry matting? Well, my next job of the day was to lay that out around the strawberry plants. It went down very easily and seemed quite secure despite the strong winds today so so far so good. I'm hoping it will help to retain moisture, suppress weeds and keep the fruit clean but we will see.

By the time I had finished that task, Steve had finished rotavating the bed I'd dug over last weekend. During the week I had bought a tray of growing salad from Lidl's for 89p. 89p! What a ridiculously cheap price! It's supposed to be used as a windowsill supply of fresh salad but last year I tried dividing it up and planting it out and it was superb - a cheap & easy way to grow instant salad. I'm not sure if it's a little early to plant it out but for 89p it's worth a try so I found a space for it.

In the meantime, the girls were busying themselves in their imaginative worlds. My youngest skipped around the plots picking dandelions and fashioned them into dandelion chains and wove them into her hair to transform herself into a bridesmaid. None of the other plot holders are in the least bit bothered about her picking dandelion flowers from their plots and all in all she offers a useful service.

My eldest, the more serious one, busied herself with a fossil hunt in the pile of gravel that someone had had delivered. It may sound unlikely but in fact she has managed to find quite a hoard of Jurassic sea-creature fossils. She spent half and hour with her father in the week examining the specimens from last weekend's hunt under a hand lens. Who enjoyed it more? The enthusiastic 8 year old or the ex-Geology lecturer? A close run thing.

With the salad in, my next job was to sow the peas. I had 8 varieties of peas to sow including mangetout, sugar snap peas, petit pois and purple flowered. This year I'm experimenting with different supports for peas. As well as the traditional twiggy pea-sticks, I'm growing the tallest plants over a metal rose arch and I'm using posts with horizontal wires between for some of the others. This is the method my grandad used and in fact they are the same posts, which he gave me shortly before he died but which are still going strong.

The final job of the afternoon was to pick the asparagus - the first of the season and just enough for a couple of meals. Back home I steamed the asparagus and served it with lamb chops, boiled potatoes, leeks from the plot and leek-gravy. The 2nd day of April and we already have two homegrown vegetables on our plates - love it!

Rescuing Burnt Preserves

2011-03-28T09:20:00.002+01:00

Having made the effort to prepare the fruit for jam or vegetables for chutney, it is more than a little disappointing when you accidentally burn the stuff whilst making the preserve but sadly this does sometime happen. I find that apples & plums are the worst fruit offenders, whilst sultanas are the most likely to catch when making chutney.

So how do you prevent all your hard work from being wasted?

Firstly, it is important to never stray far from your preserving pan; althouth it is tempting when it takes 40 minutes to cook blackcurrants or 2-3 hours to reduce a chutney. Your attempts to not waste time and get on with something else could result in the whole process being a waste of time if it burns. For this reason, be sure to have everything to hand before you start - e.g. don't go rummaging elsewhere for your jam jars after you have started the cooking process. Be on hand to give your jam/chutney a stir every now and then. I have a fantastic preserving spoon - a long handled wooden spoon with a squared off spoon-end (from Lakeland) that is just perfect for scrapping the bottom of the pan to make sure everything is still moving around.

The key point for stirring a jam is after the sugar has gone in. Stir and stir and stir until all the grittiness has gone and then a bit longer to be sure because any undissolved sugar will catch and burn. I remember reading in several preserves books that once you get jam onto a rolling boil to reach the setting point you must not stir it as this will lose the boil. Good grief, they make it sound as if doing so will somehow destroy the jam setting spell and all will be lost. I have discovered from experience that stirring during a rolling boil is essential when making plum jam. It is true that the boil drops for a moment but it soon returns when you stop stirring and it is better than having plums sticking to the bottom of the pan and burning. I would add a note of caution: sticking a spoon into a vigorously boiling pot of jam turns it into an angry volcano that spits and spats at you. Speaking as an ex-science teacher, I would not let a pupil of mine do such a dangerous thing and would certainly recommend the wearing of goggles if they did! So, hold your long spoon at its maximum length and stand well back, wearing glasses if you have them. Alternatively, temporarily remove the pan from the heat, give it a thorough stir then return it to the boil.

Chutney becomes more prone to sticking the thicker it becomes so be prepared to dedicate more of your attention towards the end of the chutney making process.

If you have ever burnt your jam or chutney then you'll remember the smell well and will be super sensitive to it in the future. This is a good thing as it will give you the chance to save the preserve before it is ruins beyond saving. Be aware that a similar smell occurs when small amounts drip or splatter onto a hot hob so it may not be your preserve that is burning after all. If you suspect burning then remove the pan from the heat and give it a tentative stir. If you feel a layer at the bottom that is stuck then stop stirring. If you are to save your preserve then it is not a good idea to stir the burnt layer into the non-burnt stuff above. It may be that your jam is set or your chutney is thick and you can carefully bottle the non-burnt preserve without disturbing the burnt later at the bottom. I would strongly advise tasting it though to check that the burnt flavour has not penetrated it. Should your jam or chutney not be ready for bottling then tip it into another pan or bowl, clean out the preserving pan then return it to the preserving pan and continue as normal, again checking that the burnt layer hasn't affected its flavour.

So how do you remove a burnt on layer on the bottom of your pan? Firstly, a soak in very hot soapy water is a good idea. Try to remove anything that will come away easily so that only the really tough stuff is left. Next, use a blade hob scrapper if you have one or a wire wool pan scrubber. You can also use a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda and boiling water to shift it.

Inevitably, however you clean your pan it will leave it scratched. This happened to my preserving pan and eventually I found that everything I cooked in it was sticking to the bottom. Somehow the scratches in the bottom of the pan make it more likely for things to stick in the future. I was finding it very labour intense to have to stir everything pretty much all the time, including things like blackcurrants that never normally stick. I feared it might be time to buy a new preserving pan but first I thought I would try polishing the bottom of it smooth again.

I started with a scourer and a thin layer of vegetable oil. This immediately came away black so I knew I was removing the top surface of the steel (a good thing in this case). Having rinsed that away with soapy water, I fitted a mini drill with a buffer pad and smear the bottom of the pan with toothpaste. Then I picked up the phone and had a nice long chat with my mum whilst polishing the pan with the drill in the other hand. Finally I gave the pan a thorough clean to remove the toothpaste and hey-presto it was smooth and shiny again!

For the final test I cooked up a batch of rhubarb (another sticker) and ginger jam and it cooked perfectly with no more than the normal level of stirring required.

I don't think I have ever met a preserve maker who hasn't burnt something at some point so if you do burn something you'll be in good company. It is disappointing and it is tempting to try to save what you can. As I have said, most of the time something can be salvaged but always check the flavour. Don't let it put you off, just chalk it up to experience and learn from your mistakes for next time.

Red Hot Sauces

2011-03-24T21:39:00.003Z

At the beginning of the year I was asked if I could devise a sauce for Red Hot World Buffet. For anyone who has never been, Red Hot offer an all you can eat buffet with a variety of world cuisines.

With so many different cuisines on offer in the restaurant, it was initially difficult to decide where to start with a suitable sauce... Indian, Chinese, Italian, British...? So I decided not to focus on just one but to come up with several sauces and to see which one they liked best. On that basis I made a lime chutney suitable for Indian food, a plum sauce for Chinese food, a sweet chilli sauce, a tomato ketchup and a brown sauce.

After several weeks of maturing in the bottle, it was time for the sauces to have their first outing so on Tuesday I took them to the Red Hot restaurant in Milton Keynes' theatre district where the chefs & service staff had a chance to have a taste. Oddly it was both exciting and slightly nerve-raking to be present as people tasted my sauces. After many years of making preserves I have learnt to have faith in what I make because lots of people have told me that it's good stuff but usually people just buy a few jars and disappear, to eat and comment in private.

The feedback from the Red Hot staff was both useful and interesting and soon it became obvious that the Lime Chutney, Plum Sauce & Sweet Chilli Sauce were the 3 favourites. Another or maybe several tasting sessions are needed yet but it was a good start. It will be interesting to see how the process unfolds.

Horray for spring

2011-03-19T21:25:00.003Z

On Friday afternoon 200 children left school with a Red Nose biscuit they had made and I left with aching feet but a feeling of satisfaction. Then several hours later I sighed, felt my shoulders drop back to their normal position and realised it was the weekend!

And what a glorious weekend it turned out to be. The frost was just thawing as I pegged my washing out in the garden early on Saturday morning. And by the afternoon it was very nearly... er... warm. Time for another family outing to the allotment. Whilst Steve wrestled with the temperamental Mantis, my first job was to plant the onion sets.

I have tried planting onion sets at various times in the year with varying success. The worst time from the onions' point of view seems to be in the autumn as many of them succumb to the winter weather. Those that do survive tend to only reach a small size and the whole crop is ready about the same time as spring sown sets so no advantage there either. The worst time for planting from a human point of view is February when everything is still cold. I used to dread the onion planting as by the end of it my fingers & feet would be numb. Heat-treated onion sets need to be planted later - usually April, which is nice time to plant onions. Only thing is, heat-treated onions are more expensive to buy and don't seem to be significantly better than ordinary ones. So now I buy ordinary, spring planting onions and wait until March to sow them.

Having planted 100 brown Sturon, 100 red onion sets and 40 shallots, I turned my attention to the girls' plot which needed digging over. In the background, the Mantis was reluctantly being coaxed back into life. By the time I had forked over the girls' plot the Mantis was up and running so Steve gave the bed a going over with it. Then I marked it out with string to separate it into five main sections - two sections for potatoes, one for shared sweetcorn and one section each for their main vegetable growing area.

By this point the girls were getting bored with their quest to dig down to bedrock so I suggested they got their potatoes planted instead. My youngest is growing Mayan Gold again this year. She started growing all yellow vegetables last year and enjoyed it so much she's doing it again this year. Despite Mayan Gold being chosen mainly on the basis of its yellow colour, it turned out to be a very tasty potato that made lovely crispy chips. My eldest this year will be trying out Mayan Twillight - a yellow potato with big pink patches. It looks very pretty and I'll be interested to see how it cooks.

With the girls' potatoes planted they were ready to go home so we left Steve planting 3kg of Charlottes. Back home the girls were hungry & thirsty so I put some apple & cinnamon hot cross buns under the grill and made it extra tasty by spreading plum & cinnamon jam on top. A lovely springtime snack to end a lovely spring day.

Red Nose Day

2011-03-16T21:35:00.003Z

I'm spending the day at my youngest's daughter's school tomorrow & Friday making "Fruity Face" biscuits for Red Nose Day. I did the same thing two years ago for the last Comic Relief and volunteered to organise it all again this time.

I sometimes wonder why I do these things. Sorting out a simple recipe and testing it is one thing but scaling it up to make 220 of them over two days with children between the ages of 3 and 7 is another. It involves meetings, letter writing, spreadsheets, budgeting, delegation, people skills, teaching skills... shall I go on?

So far this week I have worked out how much stuff I needed to buy, collected and counted a vast quantity of 50p donations, been out to buy the ingredients, organised my team of volunteer helpers, tweeked the timetable with the deputy head and cooked a test batch to remind myself of what equipment we'll need and any possible pitfalls to highlight in advance.

Phew... no wonder I'm feeling tired. 180 biscuits to cooked tomorrow... expecting to feel tired tomorrow night too... and Friday night as well.

Still, this time next week I'll have a rosy view of the whole thing and be pleased to have done it and who know, in two years time I might do it all again despite several times today saying this would be my last time !

Fruit Face Biscuits (makes 6)

4 oz (110g) self-raising flour

2 oz (55g) margarine or butter

2 oz (55g) caster sugar

A few drops vanilla extract

1 fl oz (2 tablespoons) milk

3 glace cherries

12 raisins

2 dried apricots

Preheat oven to 190°C, gas 5 and grease a baking tray. Sift the flour into a bowl then rub in the fat until it feels like breadcrumbs. Stir in the caster sugar then add the vanilla extract to the milk and use it to bind the mix into a soft dough. Divide the dough into six balls. Roll each ball in your hands then flatten onto the baking tray. Press two raisins into the biscuit to form eyes, half a glace cherry for a nose and a thin slice of dried apricot for the mouth. Bake for 20 minutes until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack.

A busy day in the kitchen

2011-03-14T09:53:00.002Z

Phew, Sunday was a busy day in the kitchen. It started with breakfast where I whipped up a batch of banana waffles. After that I turned 4 lb of thawed out blackcurrants into my famous blackcurrant & liquorice jam. Then it was time to make some banana bread so that it could be cooking whilst I sorted out lunch. At this point I got to sit down for a few minutes whilst I joined the girls in cheese toasties & soup.

After lunch I spent maybe as much as half an hour sat down whilst I looked up some recipes on the internet then it was straight on with making some garlic and ale mustard with some of the garlic we still have in store from last year's harvest. There is quite a lot of if left and it's starting to shoot so I need to use it or lose it (as they say).

Garlic & Ale Mustard

100 g whole yellow mustard seeds

2 teaspoons sea salt

4 garlic cloves

15 g plain flour

175 ml ale

Grind the mustard seeds with the salt to a smooth powder using an electric spice grinder. Put the mustard in a bowl and add the flour. Whiz the garlic in a food processor until finely chopped or crush in a garlic press, then add to the bowl. Gradually add the ale, mixing until it forms a smooth paste. Leave to stand for about 10 minutes then check the consistency again and add more ale if necessary. Spoon the mustard into sterilised jars and seal. Leave to mature for at least 2 weeks in a cool place before tasting.

By the time that was in jars it was just after 3 o'clock so time to get my piece of brisket into the oven. For this I browned the brisket all over in a frying pan then placed it in a casserole dish. Then I quickly fried some snippets of bacon (2 rashers in total) and some slices of leek. This joined the beef in the casserole, along with 10 shallots, some chunks of carrot & a few sprigs of fresh rosemary from the garden. The whole lot was surrounded by a pint of beef stock then put in the oven at 160°C for 3 hours.

I do remember a brief sit down after getting that in the oven but as my kitchen looked like a bomb had gone off it was soon time to get the washing up down and the clear everything away. By the time that was done I had to get the potatoes in the oven to roast. That left me just long enough to get the washing in from the garden, have a bath (and bathe the girls) before it was time to get the brisket out to rest. With the brisket resting, the oven temperature was increased to crisp up the roasties whilst I tidied Sunday's activities off the kitchen table. Then a couple of spoonfuls of flour mixed with cold water was needed to thicken the gravy from the casserole. All that was needed then was to thinly slice the meat whilst the frozen Yorkshire puddings cooked (give me a break, I'm not going to make my own Yorkshires after a kitchen marathon like that!).

Ahh... lovely to sit down for a family roast dinner whilst watching Countryfile on the telly...

Then, up again, tidy away, sandwiches made for tomorrow's packed lunches, stories read to the children, kids in bed and time to do the ironing... don't you just love Sundays?

2011-03-12T21:56:00.005Z

Having got the first early potatoes planted yesterday with the Year 2 children, I took my girls around to the allotment this afternoon to get the polythene cloches from Lidls over them. In the meantime Steve dismantled our Mantis tiller. Last weekend when he had tried to start it it had failed. We can't remember when we bought the tiller but it is probably about 8 years ago and we have never maintained it in any way other than putting new petrol in it as needed. So Steve got on the internet and looked up all the possible things that could go wrong and decided to splash out £25 on a maintenance kit. Now armed with the necessary bits and pieces and determination he stripped the thing to pieces. I left him to it.

Once the plastic hoops were in place over the two rows of potatoes I decided I needed to enlist the help of the girls in order to maneuverer the plastic sheeting into place. This proved to be a hugely entertaining game as far as the girls were concerned as the wind ballooned the sheeting up whilst they had in out stretched. I let them run around giggling with it for a few minutes before attempting to train it into place. As well as the two large tent pegs that came with the cloche, I secured the edges of the plastic with several bricks and a good scattering of soil.

Once the potatoes were covered I moved my attention onto the broad bean bed to finish the job the children had started on Friday. I pulled out 4 long trenches then my eldest reappeared, asking if she could help sow the broad bean seeds. She very patiently worked her way up and down two rows before her sister arrived asking if she could help too. So together they finished the last two rows together.

I left them to it and went to admire the apricot blossom. Oh I so hope this doesn't get damaged by frost - it would be great to get some apricots this year.

With the broad beans all sown, I covered up the drills and placed the cloche hoops over the rows before asking the girls if they fancied another go with the plastic parachutes!

Job done! Stand back and admire.

Oh yeah... and Steve got the Mantis working again just before dinner.

Allotmenting - The Next Generation

2011-03-12T10:46:00.002Z

The first 30 Year 2 children arrived on my allotment at 1.30pm yesterday afternoon, along with their class teacher and 2 helping parents. The walk from school had taken them 15 minutes as predicted so they were right on time. They arrived with wide eyes, seeing the site in a way I have never seen it and already asking lots of questions even though we hadn't formally started yet. They all instantly spotted the slide that we have on one side for the girls, of course.

I started by welcoming them to the site and asking what they knew about allotments. I knew from my youngest that they had been talking about allotments at school for a few days already so they had some idea from that. Some of them had even helped out at Grandad's or Aunty's allotment. Then we talked about the seasons and I explained why there wasn't much growing at moment. It was then that I invited them to plant some potatoes and broad beans.

Eighteen children took seed potatoes from me and lined up along the trench Steve had dug out last weekend. There was a plant label at each point where a potato needed to be planted and I explained to the children to pull out the plant label and place their seed potato where it had been. The instructions were clear and the children managed it easily. Then as I pulled the soil over the top of the potatoes we talked about how potatoes grow, the tools I was using and other random things like the cat they spotted in the background or empty snail shells on the soil. Those children who hadn't planted potatoes then got to sow a row of broad beans with me.

Planting done, as I leaned on my hoe like an old-time gardener, the children asked me questions. Great questions like, what things do I grow, how long do things take to grow, where does the water come from and what things eat the plants. Then there were the amusing questions that you might expect from 6-7 year olds such as: are cats allowed on the allotment, do I stand guard all the time, why don't I get my dad to fix a tap close by for watering, and how old am I? You've got to love them!

We were just finishing off when the second class of 30 children arrived. So then a repeat of the session, although with slightly different directions taken depending on the questions asked by the children.

By 2.30pm the children were heading off back to school, having thanked me in the enthusiastic way that primary children en mass do: "Thaaaaannnk yooooouuuu!" The teachers also thanking me and saying they felt inspired to get an allotment now, or at the very least plant some strawberries.

So not a bad afternoon at all. My first early potatoes and 2 rows of broad beans planted and hopefully lots of learning having taken place too.

Spring Cleaning

2011-03-06T22:42:00.002Z

We ran out of apple juice on Thursday. I like a glass of apple juice with my breakfast and any other juice just isn't the same. After suffering orange juice for 2 mornings I decided on Saturday that I couldn't wait until my scheduled Tuesday visit to Lidl's and I needed to go straight away. My youngest agreed that a trip out was in order whilst my eldest was too engrossed in Saturday morning TV to be bothered. What I hadn't expected was the selection of gardening supplies that was on sale in Lidl's this weekend. Everything from apple trees (buy 2 for £10) to kneeling pads to coldframes.

So after picking up the apple (and other) juices, I added two large self-watering flower pots, a pair of secateurs, a large rose arch, a new pair of gardening gloves and 4 cloche tunnels to my trolley. I came home, in the spring sunshine, feeling ready to get out in the garden - or onto the allotment to be precise.

After lunch, all of us headed out to the allotment. The girls scootered round on their new scooters and were soon busy in their fantasy world. The allotment looks pretty good despite the lack of attention it has had recently. I did make quite an effort to clear it and deweed before the winter and now it is relatively easy to bring it back into usage. The raised beds with their wooden edging stand empty, like trampolines on an out of season beach.

My youngest's topic for this half term is "growing" and her teacher asked me before the holiday whether it would be OK for Year 2 to visit out allotment as part of this topic. I did point out that there isn't a lot growing at this time of year! Anyway, on Friday she asked if it would be OK for her to bring Year 2 to the allotment this coming Friday. As you can imagine, my youngest is very excited at the prospect of all her year group visiting our allotment. Having informed Steve of this immanent visit, he started our Saturday visit to the plot by passing a health and safety eye over it and removing anything hazardous. This largely involved moving trip hazards and eye-poking canes.

In the meantime, I dug out old carrots and a few weeds so that Steve would easily be able to dig over beds ready for planting. Then I unpacked one of the cloche tunnels I had bought from Lidl's that morning and soon discovered that each cloche is about 5m long and 1 meter wide. That is bigger than I had imagined but great for £4.99 each. So Steve and I discussed their possible uses for a few minutes and decided we would try them over broad beans and first early potatoes to get them off to a good start. So I packed it back into its box whilst Steve dug over the beds we had identified as the potato and broad bean beds. We are thinking that with a bit of organisation we should be able to get every child from Year 2 to plant either a potato or a broad bean when they visit.

We returned to the plot on Sunday to finish the preparations for the visit. Steve raked over the bed that will be the broad bean bed and then dug out 2 long trenches for the potatoes. He dropped compost into the base of each trench and marked out 18 points in each trench in which a potato can be placed by a Year 2 child. In the meantime, I pruned the raspberry canes with the help of my eldest who just loves using secateurs. Later, bored with the pruning, she decided to hook the blanket weed out of the water trough only to discover a bundle of frogs spawn in it. This is not a good place for frogs spawn so she fished it out in a flower pot and transferred it into our little pond. She told Granny all about it excitedly on the phone later so it must have been a highlight of her weekend.

The first and the last

2011-02-26T21:47:00.003Z

Spring arrived on Thursday - it was just for a day trip; a exploratory visit ahead of the scheduled main event next month. Still, it was nice to see it and it made me want to rush outside and get planting. I've heard it said that to test if the soil is warm enough to plant into it you need to pull down your pants and place your bottom on the soil. If you can stand it then the soil is the right temperature. I grant that it was a nice day on Thursday but I didn't feel the inclination to whip my bottom out. Instead, I limited myself to the two jobs I always plan to get done during February half-term - to sow leeks and peanuts in pots - the first sowing of the year.

Whilst the girls bounced up and down on the trampoline, I retrieved a bag of compost from the shed and filled some empty yoghurt pots. Then my youngest appeared at my elbow and asked if she could help plant the peanuts so we did this job together. It didn't take long and it was too nice a day to return indoors so soon. Instead we moved round to the front garden where the girls filled yoghurt pots with herbs and mashed them up to make potions & medicine. I trimmed the herbs that had been browned by the severe frosts this winter then chopped down some of the dead seed heads in the rockery that had stood like natural sculptures all winter.

By now my arms were beginning to tremble with the effort of welding shears and the light was beginning to fade so we went back inside. Later, when it was time for dinner I made a lamb casserole, using lots of season veg (carrots, parsnips, leeks, onion and swede). This I topped with the last of our homegrown potatoes. A moment to mourn... it will be 4 months until we have homegrown potatoes again. This was followed by an apple pastry made with another rather wrinkled apple from store. 6 months till the next fresh apple. Oh I'll be glad when I'm scratching my head, wondering what to do with the glut.

Apple pastry

1/4 block of puff pastry

1 small apple

1 date

15g caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1 dessert spoon flour

A little milk or egg to glaze

1 teaspoon demerara sugar

Preheat an oven to 200°C, gas 6 and grease a baking tray. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface into a rectangular shape. Peel, core and finely chop the apple and chop up the date too. Mix the fruit with the sugar, cinnamon and flour then heap onto half the pastry. Brush the edge of the pastry with the milk or egg then fold over the other half and seal. Brush the top of the pastry with more milk or egg and slash diagonally with a knife several times then scatter the demerara on top before putting in the oven. Bake for 20 minutes until risen & golden. Eat hot or cold, on its own or with custard and/or cream.

Waffle, waffle, waffle

2011-02-21T22:31:00.003Z

I bought a waffle making machine from Lidl's a couple of weeks ago and then found myself feeling ridiculously excited at the prospect of making waffles. I even prised the box open when I got back to the car to see if it contained a recipe book. It did - so I skimmed it then went off to Asda to buy a few key ingredients. As it happened, the same day, I bought myself my very first Wii Fit. Two very exciting purchases in one day - I was almost giddy with it!

I was very good, though, and left both purchases in their boxes until after I had collected the girls from school. On the school run, I met up with one of my eldest's friends, his little sister and his dad and invited them round to try out our new toys. So whilst the big kids amused themselves with the wonder that is Wii Fit, I invited the two year old sister into the kitchen to see if she wanted to help me try out my new waffle machine. I have never met a small child who would pass up the opportunity to weadle a wooden spoon in the name of cake making so we washed her hands and adorned her with an appropriately small apron.

We measured and mixed our way through a simple waffle recipe then switched on the machine and got cooking. Soon all the children were sat around the kitchen table, tucking into waffles and cream, their Wii Fit efforts thwarted temporarily by the irresistible smell of freshly cooked waffles. I bagged up a few spare ones for the two year old to take home to show her mum what she'd been making and the others I stuck in toastie bags the next morning for the girls to have for breakfast.

The girls always like to have a bakery type product for breakfast rather than cereal. This may be brioche, fruit bread, pancakes, crumpets or toast. Having purchased the waffle maker I saw a huge range of breakfast products stretching before me so I quickly set about trying out the recipes that came with it and modifying to suit my own whims.

My first thought was that I would try the pumpkin waffle recipe from the leaflet as I had a bit of pumpkin left in the fridge in desperate need to using up but on getting part way through the recipe I discovered that the pumpkin had in fact gone past its best and was only fit for the compost bin. Instead, I decided that apple puree would do just as well so I retrieved a few wrinkly apples from storages and made the substitution. It worked beautifully.

Apple Waffles

3 apples (weighing about 250g)

2 eggs

80g light brown sugar

1 teaspoon lemon juice

2 tablespoons honey

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

100g flour

Peel, core & chop the apples then cook with a little water until soft & fluffy. Beat the eggs with the sugar, lemon juice, honey & cinnamon then add the apple puree and then then flour. Dollop the mixture into a hot, greased waffle machine in suitable amounts and cook for about 3 minutes until golden brown.

A few days later I remembered I had pumpkin puree in the freezer that I had earmarked for making pumpkin pancakes but instead I thawed out and made into pumpkin waffles. These aren't particularly sweet and need to be accompanied with something. My youngest likes her's spread with homemade raspberry jam.

Pumpkin Waffles

250g plain flour
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 tsp mixed spice
55g light brown sugar
3 eggs
284 ml carton buttermilk
175 g pumpkin puree

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, salt, bicarb and spice. In another bowl, mix together the sugar, egg, milk, pumpkin and oil. Make a well in the centre of the flour and gradually mix in the wet ingredients until a batter forms. Dollop the mixture into a hot, greased waffle machine in suitable amounts and cook for about 3 minutes until golden brown.

There was also a recipe in the booklet for potato waffles. Aha, I thought, that could be a great way to process & preserve our lovely potatoes in the summer to use from the freezer at this time of year when the potatoes are beginning to sprout again. So I gave the recipe a go, surprised that it used raw grated potato rather than cooked mashed potato. Now, I don't know whether it was because I started with a poor quality spud or whether it was the recipe but the result was disgusting and quite ruined our dinner. So the next time I had a bit of mashed potato left over I tried again with the potato waffle idea and this time I created something much more reminiscent of a shop bought waffle, which pleased the girls no end.

Potato Waffles

800g mashed potato

160g plain flour

1 egg

Mix together the ingredients until it forms a sticky dough. Dollop the mixture into a hot, greased waffle machine in suitable amounts and cook for about 3 minutes until golden brown.

And so the waffle maker's glory lives on. About once a week I cook up a batch of waffles, freezing the excess. Then in the mornings I pop them into the toaster (from frozen) via a toastie bag and the girls tuck into to their breakfast. And with a different recipe ever week they are not bored yet and nor am I... I still have looks of ideas to try.

A box of surprises

2011-01-28T22:22:00.003Z

Having retrieved several pounds of tomato puree from Sue's freezer on Monday, I decided to stock up on cider vinegar and basil in readiness for making a batch of tomato and basil ketchup. However, making brown sauce on Thursday had used up all my glass bottles. So whilst the brown sauce was still bubbling away, I went onto Ascott's website and ordered some more bottles so I would be able to make ketchup next week.

Ascott's site is really interesting and I've lost count of the number of times I've contemplated buying sausage making equipment or an egg incubator before getting back to the task of buying more jars. There is only one draw back of buying from them and that is the massive box that the jars arrive in and all the really annoying polystyrene chips. I understand the need for big boxes and lots of polystyrene chips to get glass jars safely through the post but it takes ages to scoop chips out of the box and they inevitably make a mess and then I have to throw them away. Usually I use a dustpan to scoop them out then bundle them all into a black bag before either offering them on Freecycle or putting them into the green waste bin (if they are maize chips), or throwing them out with the rubbish.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I returned from the school run around 9am to find that my replacement jars had already been delivered. Impressive service! Suddenly, I had to decide if I was in the mood for making ketchup after all. A few minutes later I had retrieved the tomato puree from my freezer and had it gently warming in the preserving pan. Then, armed with my dustpan, I set to to remove the bottles from their enormous box. Another surprise! Rather than the dreaded polystyrene chips the jars were packed with cardboard mats. I've seen this used before. It seems that they take ordinary corrugated cardboard boxes and punch them with some brutal machine that turns the box into a sort of lattice. I thoroughly approve of this as it makes use of waste cardboard and, more importantly, it does away with the dreaded polystyrene chips!

I was standing there marveling at this new packaging as Steve was getting himself ready for work. "Hmmm... that looks useful," he said.

"Not for packaging," I replied, "It's too heavy for us to use through the Royal Mail." It is definitely a lot heavier than bubble wrap or chips and, although this doesn't matter to companies using couriers with set rates, for Royal Mail it puts the postage price right up.

"No," Steve said, "I wasn't thinking packaging necessarily."

So we stood there for a moment, scratching our heads.

"Strawberry mats!" Steve said at last, "put them under the strawberries to keep them mulched and clean."

I had to laugh. We were so determined to find a use for them! Still, this seemed a very sensible suggestion and definitely worth a try so I bagged up the cardboard mats and stashed them at the back of garage. Then with the box empty I realised that the girls would be thrilled to find this massive empty box in the living room when they got home from school. In the meantime, I used the actual intended contents of the box to bottle my tomato and basil ketchup. Win, win all round.

Tomato & Basil Ketchup

11 lb (5kg) tomatoes

1 lb (454g) onion

2 to 4 garlic cloves

4 x 500g passata

1 lb (454g) caster sugar

1 pt (660ml) cider vinegar

2 oz (55g) salt

2 tablespoons tomato puree

2 to 3 teaspoons soy sauce

Freshly ground black pepper

½ teaspoon ground all spice

½ teaspoon paprika

½ teaspoon ground ginger

3 to 4 sprigs of basil

Wash the tomatoes and put them in a preserving pan. Gently heat, stir and begin to break up the tomatoes. Once the tomatoes have begun to break up, finely chop the onions and add them to the pan. Crush the garlic and add it to the pan then cook the vegetables slowly for about half an hour. In batches, pour the mixture into a blender, liquidise and sieve into a clean bowl. Wash out the pan and return the liquid to it. Add all the other ingredients except the basil, bring to the boil and simmer for several hours until it has reduced to the thickness of ketchup. Add the finely chopped basil, remove from the heat and transfer into warmed bottles and seal immediately.

Frozen food - update

2011-01-27T22:07:00.000Z

You may remember that back in December when the temperatures plummeted to -13°C, my cupboard full of potatoes froze, along with the apples and onions in store. Well the temperatures have been above freezing for a few weeks now and to be honest I have avoided opening the cupboard door to deal with the potatoes.

As it happens, Tuesday night Steve decided he really needed a bottle of cider to go with his pork chop. The cider just happens to be in the same cupboard as the potatoes so off he went. A few minutes later I heard him exclaim, "Oh my God!". Then he returned to the kitchen to get an black bin bag. Fortunately, it is bin day on Wednesday so the timing was good. I didn't feel the need to see the sight for myself but Steve described the potatoes as bags of soggy, stinking mush. Thank goodness of the cider urge I say... except, of course, after all that he forgot the bottle of cider and had to go out again.

Strangely, the onions didn't seem to succumb to freezing in the same way and I have been continuing to use them up since they thawed out. I wonder whether the internal chemistry or cell structure of onions is significantly different and prevents the bursting of cells damage that goes on when potatoes freeze. Whatever the reason I'm glad that that crop is still usable.

But what of the apples? They were in a box on a high shelf and I couldn't see into the box without lifting it down. I had hoped to use the apples up to make brown sauce. Brown sauce is Steve's favourite homemade sauce and my parents are fond of it too. Unfortunately, I'm down to my last bottle of last year's vintage so need to make some more. It had been my intention all year to make some more but over and over again it seemed to be thwarted. At first, when the plums and apples were harvested I simply didn't have the time to make the sauce. The sauce takes about 5 hours to make from start to finish, whereas jam may only need one to two hours to make. Then the next problem was the low plum harvest because I only managed to gather a few pounds of Victoria plums from my tree this year. After making jams etc. I used up all my plums. But then on Monday Sue invited me round for a coffee and before I left I re-acquainted myself with the contents of her chest freezer. I had remembered the 3lb of greengages and pounds and pounds of tomatoes but had forgotten about the 4lb of plums. Hurrah, brown sauce back on the menu... Wait... what about the apples. Brown sauce needs 1lb of plums and 4lb of apples.

So it was with some trepidation that I lifted the box down with morning but what a pleasant surprise! Three mouldy apples but otherwise a perfect box, apparently unaffected by their freezing. The skins were a little wrinkled but they was destined to come off anyway. Brown sauce here we come.

Brown Sauce

Makes about 3 pints (2 litres)

4 lb ( 1815g) apples

1 lb (454g) plums

2 large onions

2 pints (1300ml) water

3 pints (2000 ml) malt vinegar

2 teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon allspice

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

2 oz (55g) salt

2 lb (900g) light brown sugar

Peel and core the apples and cut into pieces. Halve and remove the stones from the plums and cut into pieces. Peel the onion and finely chop. Put the fruit and vegetables into a preserving pan and pour in the water. Bring to the boil then simmer for 10-20 minutes until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Blend in batches until smooth in a blender then return the puree to the preserving pan. Add all the other ingredients and bring back to the boil then simmer until thick. Remove from the heat and transfer into warmed bottles and seal immediately.

And 5 hours later, in a freezing cold kitchen (doors and windows open), I had 8 bottles of brown sauce. I also had half a box of apples left so I whipped up a batch of apple waffles (recipe to follow) and apple & cinnamon flapjacks too.

Apple Cinnamon Flapjacks

3 apples

2 tablespoons granulated sugar

2 tablespoons apple juice

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 oz (25g) corn flour

7 oz (200g) oats

2 oz (50g) light brown sugar

4 oz (110g) butter

Preheat oven to 190°C (gas 5) and grease a shallow tin or baking tray. Peel, core and chop the apples and place them in a saucepan with the granulated sugar and apple juice. Bring the fruit to the boil and simmer for 10 to 15 minutes until soft. Place in a blender and blend until smooth. Mix the corn flour with enough cold water to make a thick liquid. Return the puree to the saucepan, add the cinnamon and the corn flour and bring to the boil, stirring continuously until it forms a thick paste. Remove from the heat and set aside. In a bowl, mix together the oats, sugar and butter until it just binds together. Press half the oat mixture into the tin. Spread the apple paste onto the oat base then cover with the remaining oat mixture and press to form a sandwich. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden. Mark out the biscuit whilst still hot then allow it to cool completely in the tin.

Out with the old

2011-01-16T13:30:00.002Z

I'm not particularly keen on setting New Year's Resolutions. They always seem to be things you are supposed to give up or stop doing. Instead, I like to make a New Year's To Do List - the sort of to do list that will take you all year, those big targets or those little jobs that always get put to the bottom of the list to do "if I have time", which inevitably I don't. There is definitely a feeling of out with the old and in with the new at this time of year and when you're a kitchen gardener this is perhaps a little more pressing because in just a few weeks time the first signs of spring will be here and before you know it the new growing season will be upon us.

So one of my things on my New Year's To Do List is always to empty my freezer of last year's fruit before this year's fruit is demanding its turn. Somehow I always run out of time to jam all of it before Christmas then after Christmas there is a distinct lack of urgency with no immanent craft fayres to prepare for. However, this time of year I usually find I have a bit more time available and it seemed sensible to use that for making a few preserves that would be there ready and waiting whenever the next craft fayre was scheduled.

My first job was to rummage in the freezer and see exactly what I had left. That was a job well worth doing as I discovered all sorts of things lurking towards the bottom of the freezer that I hadn't realised I had and would come in handy for meals over the next couple of weeks. There wasn't a huge amount of fruit left - a few pounds of blackcurrants, raspberries and plums plus about a pound each of strawberries and gooseberries. So during this week I made a batch of blackcurrant and a batch of raspberry jam and a spicy Chinese plum sauce.

More immediately, I used a pack of frozen chicken breast strips that I had found in the freezer to make a tasty chicken spud pie, along with a leek retrieved from the allotment. Goodness me, the allotment looked a bit bleak this week - all the brassicas have collapsed into a soggy mess after the snow and cold temperatures in December and the only thing still harvestable are the leeks. Roll on spring I say... I'm ready!

Chicken Spud Pie (serves 4)

4 large baking potatoes

Pinch of salt

A little oil

8 closed cup mushrooms, sliced

1 leek, sliced

Black pepper

1 teaspoon of cornflour

100 ml chicken stock or milk

2 cooked chicken breasts or left over roast chicken, shredded

A knob of butter

Preheat oven to 220°C, gas 7. Scrub the potato skins, pat dry then sprinkle over a little salt and rub in a little oil. Prick the skins of the potatoes then bake for an hour or microwave for 10 minutes. In the meantime, heat some oil in a frying pan then fry the mushrooms and leek for a few minutes, grinding in some black pepper as you do. Sprinkle the cornflour in then gradually add the chicken stock or milk, stirring to combine with the flour. Add the shredded chicken and cook for a little longer to warm through. Cut each potato in half and carefully scoop out the flesh, trying not to damage the skins. Place the potato in a bowl with the butter and some seasoning and mash well. Place the potato skins on a baking try and spoon the chicken mix into the skins. Top with the mashed potato then place in the oven for 10 minutes or until the mash is just browning on top.

Beating my food nemesis

2011-01-07T21:44:00.003Z

It seems to me that everyone has a particular food that they just can't stand... you know... that one that makes your stomach gurgle just at the thought of it. Actually, I have 3 things that do that to me: lychee, tinned butter beans and macaroni cheese.

The macaroni cheese thing was compounded when I was about 10 year old and my grandma dished it up for dinner and my grandpa insisted I ate it despite me not liking the stuff. So I never really expected the stuff to re-enter my life after that. But one summer when Steve's son was on holiday with us he chose a macaroni cheese ready-meal for his dinner and my eldest daughter took an interest in it, saying she thought she might like it. And indeed, on trying it, she did. That meant, that every now and then I would buy her a macaroni cheese ready-meal. But then I began to wonder what I was doing! Macaroni cheese is bad enough but a ready-meal... what was I thinking?!

There really isn't anything to making macaroni cheese - as long as you are not frightened by the prospect of making a rue. It is, after all, simply some boiled macaroni pasta covered in a cheesy sauce. Very basic and inexpensive store cupboard ingredients. I would give you the recipe but I never weigh or measure anything. Here's the basic gist:

Put some macaroni in a pan of boiling salted water and simmer for 10 minutes until tender. In the meantime, put a knob of butter into the bottom of a non-stick pan and stir with a wooden spoon or spatula whilst you heat it gently to melt. Don't let the butter boil. Once melted, add about as much plain flour to it as there was butter and stir until it forms a little doughy ball - add more flour if necessary until this forms. It is also a nice idea to add about a quarter of a teaspoon of mustard powder when you add the flour. Stir the doughy ball around for a minute or two to cook the flour so it doesn't taste funny later. Now pour in some milk and stir. Continue adding milk, a little at a time, until you have a smooth batter. Now grate in some nice strong Cheddar cheese and stir until it has melted. Taste and add seasoning if desired or more cheese if necessary or more milk if it is too thick. Drain the pasta then pour the cheese sauce over the top and serve.

I now make macaroni cheese for my daughter on a fairly regular basis and you know what...? I've even tasted it and it isn't at all bad! Maybe my food nemesis after all was ready-made macaroni cheese.

The other night when my eldest said she fancied macaroni cheese for dinner my youngest complained, saying she wanted cheese & tomato pasta bake. "OK," I said, "you can both have what you want." So I chucked a load of macaroni in a pan to boil then made a batch of cheese sauce. Then, with a stroke of genius, I dug out a dish with a central divide. I spooned macaroni into each compartment then poured cheese sauce over one. Then I mixed a few spoonfuls of tomato pasta sauce into the remaining cheese sauce and heated it for a couple of minutes before pouring that over the second portion of macaroni. Finally, I grated some Red Leicester over both portions and put it in the oven at 160°C, gas 2 for about 15 minutes whilst I got the girls out of the bath. I have to say it looked and smelled delicious and I was pleased that there was enough of the macaroni and tomato cheesy sauce leftover for me to reheat for my lunch today.

Macaroni cheese can now be ticked off my taboo list... shall I tackle lychee or tinned butter beans next?

What day is it anyway?

2011-01-05T21:37:00.002Z

It was the first day back at school for my girls today. Somehow I had managed to get myself quite into the Christmas holiday spirit and didn't feel entirely organised this morning. It was only last night that I remembered that I hadn't washed one of the PE kits or rinsed out the water bottles. Then this morning, with our coats and shoes on, I remembered that my eldest's Christmas homework was due in first day back! So there she was, hurriedly penning a book review as I got the bikes out. Homework done and to school on time... just, phew!

To continue the mixed up feel of the day I had a hot cross bun for my mid-morning snack. There doesn't seem to be a break in the availability of hot cross buns in the shops these day. Usually I'm a stickler for seasonality but I let this one go as I really like hot cross buns! Yep, hypocrite! I was somewhat alarmed when standing in my local Tesco Express on New Year's Eve to see that Cadburys Mini Eggs were back on sale and then yesterday Cadbury Creme Egg adverts appeared on the TV. Good grief!

For lunch I had a quick sweet and sour chicken meal made from left-overs but I don't think you could quite accuse me of being premature for Chinese New Year! After lunch my Lakeland order arrived. It was a huge box filled with items I had bought in their sale and most of them were stocking fillers for next Christmas so I guess I have started my Christmas shopping already!

After school I set about dealing with the 7 over-ripe bananas in my fruit bowl. I always have bananas in my fruit bowl and usually my eldest takes one to school every day. Somehow I had not quite got it sorted in my head and had ended up with a bowlful of school bananas at the beginning of the Christmas holidays. Bananas, sadly, are somehow not at all festive so they had remained in the fruit bowl for two weeks whilst people snaffled satsumas from around them instead. So yesterday I bought a tub of buttermilk and decided to make a batch of banana pancakes this afternoon. Yes, pancakes and it's not even February!

With the remaining bananas I tried a banana and chocolate cupcake recipe so that I could use up the remaining chocolate butter icing that had been in the fridge since I made the chocolate Yule log.

Banana Chocolate Cupcakes (makes about 30)

125g caster sugar

125g plain flour

25g cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of salt

1 egg

2 small over ripe bananas, mashed

120ml warm water

4 tablespoons milk

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

+ chocolate butter icing

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and put paper cases into a cupcake tray. Put the sugar in a large bowl and sift in the flour, cocoa, raising agents and salt. In another bowl, combine the egg, bananas, water, milk, oil and vanilla. Mix the wet with the dry then spoon into the paper cases and bake for 20 minutes until well risen and springy. Cool on a wire rack then dollop a little chocolate butter icing on top.

As I was making these my eldest came in the see what I was doing and immediately made herself useful with the sifting whilst I made up the wet ingredients. Then she spotted the tube of Cadburys Mini Eggs on the cake ingredients shelf in the food cupboard (left over from last Easter, I hasten to add). So she asked if she could decorate the cakes with mini eggs when they were cool. Well, after the weird day I had had why not!

Christmas food - desserts

2010-12-28T21:22:00.005Z

I warn you now - this is going to be a long post as it'll contain my Christmas dessert recipes. I hope you enjoy the recipes and will perhaps make them either sometime soon or next year but I shall certainly be checking back to this post next year instead of scratching my head and wondering where the recipe is for this and that!

The other day I was reading a magazine article where a woman had asked her children what the best bit about Christmas was and she was somewhat disappointed that the only response she could get was "presents". As my two were sat with me at the time I tried the same question on them and sure enough my youngest replied, "presents!". My eldest said that she liked present too but seeing the family was good too. Ahh... what a good girl - just like a model pupil who knows what the correct answer should be. But then she asked me what I thought was the best part about Christmas and after a brief thought I decided it was the food.

That is not to say that I'm a greedy-guts but I really enjoy planning, organising and cooking the food over the Christmas period. In a way, Christmas is like the grand final of some competition - a chance to showcase all the best bits. And it is a chance to cook indulgent food that would be simply over the top on a Wednesday evening sometime in March.

I am known for my organisational skills but even so I'm not generally the sort of person who starts buying Christmas presents in August. However, I do start organising Christmas food during the summer. Not because I'm super-efficient but because I like to preserve food from the allotment ready to bring out at Christmas - chutneys for hampers and cold meat leftovers, mincemeat for pies and cherries in brandy for...

Well, to be honest I was never quite sure what to do with the cherries in brandy. Yes, they are great with ice-cream... or straight out of the jar... But then I came across a recipe for Black Forest trifle that I modified for our Boxing Day dessert.

Black Forest Trifle (serves 4-6)

250ml ready-made custard

50g plain chocolate

2 slices of chocolate or marble sponge cake

385g jar of cherries in brandy (or cherries in kirsch)

150ml double cream

100ml creme fraiche

1 dessert spoon of icing sugar

A little extra chocolate for grating

A few fresh or glace cherries

Put the custard into a pan with the chocolate and heat gentle until the chocolate is melted then stir thoroughly. Remove from the heat and set aside to cool. Place the slices of cake into the bottom of a suitable dish. Drain the cherries from the jar, reserving the liquid. Cut each cherry in half and arrange them over the cake. Spoon 2-3 tablespoons of the reserved liquid over the cake until it is moist. Spoon the custard on top and refrigerate until ready to serve. When ready to serve, mix together the cream and creme fraiche and whip until thick. Spoon over the trifle then grate over a little more chocolate and place fresh or glace cherries on top.

As usual, I had made plum & orange mincemeat, apple & cider mincemeat and figgy pear mincemeat during the summer which I had sold at craft fayres. They had sold well but I had a few jars leftover. So I made two batches of mince pies this year - the first for Steve to take into work and the second for us to enjoy at home. My eldest said that she really wanted to leave a homemade pie out for Father Christmas so he could taste one - which was a nice thought. Anyway, just as I was wondering what to do with the rest of the mincemeat I came across a recipe for making Christmas cake using mincemeat. This is not a new concept to me as I have made fruitcake from my apple and cider mincemeat before but it was a new recipe and one that seemed suitable for using my figgy pear mincemeat instead.

Mincemeat Christmas Cake

150g light muscovado sugar

150g softened butter

3 eggs

200g self-raising flour

450g figgy pear mincemeat

100g dried cranberries

50g glace cherries

Preheat oven to 170°C, gas 3 and line a cake tin. Cream together the sugar and butter then add the eggs. Sift the flour and stir in. Add the mincemeat and fruit and stir well. Spoon into the cake tin and bake for 2 hours or until the middle feel springy. Cool in the tin for 30 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack.

Having made sure my vegan step daughter was provided for with her walnut and mushroom rolls and her vegan chocolate log, I decided this year I would try making normal chocolate yule log. I don't usually get the opportunity to do this because when my mother-in-law comes to stay she brings masses of food with her - sausage rolls, pork pies, ham, cheese, bread, cereal, tea-bags, biscuits, cakes, mince pies, bacon, butter, stuffing, pigs in blankets, chocolate log... This year she got snowed in and wasn't able to get her usual amount of shopping so came without her yule log so there was a vacancy that needed filling. It is a fairly complicated thing to do but satisfying when you get it right.

Chocolate Yule Log

5 eggs

140g muscovado sugar

100g self-raising flour

25g cocoa powder

200g soften butter

200g icing sugar

200g dark chocolate

Heat oven to 190°C, gas 5 and grease and line a swiss roll tin. Separate the eggs into two mixing bowls. To the egg yolks add 2 tablespoons water and the muscovado sugar. Use an electric whisk to beat the mixture for about 5 minutes until pale and the blades leave a trail when lifted. Sift the flour and cocoa into this mix and fold in lightly. Clean the whisk and beat the egg whites until stiff then fold these into the chocolate mix in three batches. Pour this into the tin and level out. Bake for 10-12 minutes until the cake is springy to the touch. Turn out onto a greased piece of baking paper and straight away roll the cake up with the paper into a swiss roll shape. Leave it rolled up to cool completely. Next make the butter icing. Melt the chocolate then mix it together with the sugar and butter until smooth. When the cake is cool, carefully unfold it then spread the butter icing onto it and roll it up without the paper this time. Spread more butter icing over the outside of the cake and draw "bark" texture into it.

So that's dessert sorted... what about the main course...?

Frozen food - but not in a good way!

2010-12-23T21:23:00.002Z

For the past two or three years we have stored our allotment crops for long term storage on shelves under a car port shelter that Steve erected in our garden. The flat-packed, self-assembly car port kit just happened to fit neatly between the conservatory and our neighbour's outer wall. Not necessary the most attractive outbuilding but certainly very practical - a large mostly weatherproof storage area for garden toys, bikes and produce. In the corner we have a tall cupboard and high up on the wall are shelves where we put boxes of onions, shallots, garlic and apples and bags of potatoes. Ideal really as it is cool and dry yet warmed enough by the adjacent walls to be frost-free.

Or so it was until this week... with nighttime temperatures getting down to -13°C on Saturday, even the potatoes inside the cupboard and double-wrapped in hessian sacks froze solid. So that's that, suddenly no more potatoes, apples or onions in storage.

Fortunately, I happen to have a bag of potatoes in the fridge which was just enough for Sunday's roast dinner but not quite enough for Monday's. Instead, I decided to use the last of these potatoes with some parsnips and a slightly frozen shallot to make potato and parsnip rostis. These turned out to be quite tasty and probably something I shall make on another occasion when it isn't quite such a necessity.

Potato & Parsnip Rostis

Some potatoes

Half the weight in parsnips

1 small onion or shallot

Salt and pepper to taste

A little oil for frying

Place a clean t-towel into a bowl. Peel the potatoes and grate them into the t-towel. Do the same with the parsnips. Peel and finely chop the onions and add to the bowl. Season well then gather the t-towel up around the mixture. Squeeze the t-towel hard to remove the water. Open up the t-towel and scoop out the ingredients in handfuls, squashing them together between your hands. Heat the oil in a pan and fry the rostis gently for 15 minutes in total, turning occasionally.

Later in the week I used a lightly frozen apple in a pork casserole. I imagine that whilst the weather remains bitterly cold I shall be able to use the onions and apples in certain recipes straight from their slightly frozen state but at some point I will have to empty all the boxes and the bags of potatoes into the compost bin before they turn to rotting mush. It is a little disappointing but at least we don't depend on this food for our survival. I now have 4 bags of supermarket potatoes safely stored in our cool front hall so at least we'll have spuds with our Christmas dinner and maybe next year we'll learn our lessons and rethink our storage solution!

Making hampers for Christmas

2010-12-22T10:42:00.005Z

From the first year that I started making jams and chutneys I made hampers for friends and family for Christmas. Back then my preserves were bottled in a variety of reused jars and the labels were handwritten but they were still warmly received. This year I have made up 5 hampers for various purposes and I have to admit I think they look great!

I was leafing through a Freecycled copy of Olive magazine from December 2007 the other day and there was a small section on food gifts not to buy for Christmas. This included a wicker hamper of food. What?! But on further reading I understood what they meant. They said that by the time you take the basket etc. into account the food inside it is worth very little. So, all the more reason for making your own hamper. It's probably a bit late to sort out a hamper now if you haven't already been planning one but here is some of my advice should you like to try it next year.

Start first with the contents of the hamper. If this is going to be homemade jams and chutneys then you'll probably be busy making these in the summer and the autumn. If you are stuck for recipes then try getting yourself a copy of my preserves book. You may want to start saving jars from the beginning of the year so that you have plenty to hand. Alternatively, you can buy jars from ironmongers, John Lewis, supermarkets (seasonal), www.lakeland.co.uk or from small holders suppliers such as Ascott or bee keepers supplies such as Thornes. Once you have bottled your preserves, you will need to label them. You can buy blank labels with decorative borders from the same suppliers as the bottles. For a more professional look, I design and print bespoke labels for jams, chutneys or honey.

The next thing you need to source are the baskets for putting the preserves into. A useful alternative are jute gift bags which you can buy online from companies such as the natural bag company or islepac.co.uk. These are handy because you just need to pop the jars inside and the job is done.

You can source baskets from many different places. I often buy mine from ebay and my last lot my mum bought for me whilst she was in a French hypermarket. The only thing I would say is think about buying baskets in the summer and autumn because the closer you get to Christmas the higher the demand for them so the more expensive and harder to get they are. If you are thinking of posting your hamper then consider forgoing the basket altogether as it increases the weight of the parcel quite considerably without really adding value to the gift.

For the presentation of the hamper you will also need some sort of packing material which can be straw (bedding for small pets from pet supply shops/garden centres), or shredded paper. I have bought shredded paper from ebay before and you can get it from craft supply shops too. This year I have been using gold shred from Lakeland. You will also need to buy some cellophane - extra wide is useful if your hampers are large. This I buy from ebay or Hobbycraft.

To put it all together, put some shred into the bottom and sides of the basket. Place the food items inside, tilting them so that the labels can be read and so that they look attractive. Fill the basket so that it looks full but not crammed, adding more shred around the items as necessary to hold them in place. Next wrap the whole thing in cellophane. Wrap the cellophane completely around the basket, ensuring that the ends meet at the back of the basket rather than underneath it. Tape it in place then make cuts in the cellophane on either side of the handles. Push the flap of cellophane through the handle and gather the cellophane together as if wrapping a present and stick it in place.

Hampers can look so attractive at this point that you may not wish to wrap it further in wrapping paper. If you do decide to wrap it so that the contents are hidden then consider wrapping it in a new t-towel. This can look fantastic as well as adding the t-towel as an additional gift. Use a few pins to keep the ends tucked in neatly then hold in place with ribbon.

Job done - a fantastic looking gift that will be well received and for which you can feel proud!

A week to go - serious preparation for Christmas!

2010-12-18T21:55:00.002Z

When was the last time you cleaned your fridge? I don't know for sure how long ago I cleaned mine... thorough, deep cleaned that is. It's been a few months I think. Stupid really that we allow ourselves to store food inside a "cupboard" that we clean so infrequently. I wouldn't dream of putting the plates down ready to dish up dinner on a messy work surface yet I put food onto a fridge shelf that I haven't wiped clean for a few days. With the last Christmas food shop planned for a few days time, I decided today would be a good day to tackle the fridge - whilst it was still relatively empty and so that I would have lots of space for my Christmas goodies.

My whole houses needs a good tidy actually. With the hectic rush of the last couple of weeks things have really got cluttered. There are half-finished hampers on the kitchen side, part-done stockings on the living room carpet, toys that need to be put back in their boxes, magazines that need recycling, ironing that needs doing... Mother-in-law is coming in a few days and Santa a couple of days after that so we really need to tidy up and clear some space. But I hate tidying.

It seems to me that there are two main ways to tidy up. There is the proper, sorting out as you go and putting things in their proper place type tidying. And then there is the shove everything in a cupboard and make things look neat on the outside type of tidying. Both have their place but I much prefer the proper type of tidying as it is the only solution in the long term. In our house, I usually start with the proper tidying but then after a few days when I am pooped and fed-up I turn a blind eye to Steve finishing off the last of the tidying with the shoving it in a cupboard method.

Proper tidying up is deathly time consuming and usually results in an intermediate state that is messier than when you started. I also find that doing it solidly for days at a time makes me thoroughly miserable and grumpy. I have decided this time to tidy up in small bursts, interspersed with nice activities that I want to do. So this morning I started by making a batch of mince pies but whilst the pastry was chilling for half and hour I cleaned the oven. Then at lunch time I lazily flicked through food magazines, cutting out recipes I wanted to keep so that I could stick the remaining pages in the recycling. Then I cleared Friday's Christmas shopping off the work surface by wrapping it and putting the parcels into the incomplete stockings. And then I tackled the fridge.

The best way to go about this is to remove everything from the top shelf then remove the shelf from the fridge and clean it in soapy water. Then clean the sides of the fridge that surround that shelf, ideally with an antibacterial spray. I usually wipe the shelf and the fridge sides dry with kitchen towel too before putting the shelf back. Then, put the food back onto the shelf, throwing away anything that is out of date or otherwise spoiled. Personally I hate food waste but sometimes you just have to admit defeat and throw it away! Then continue down the fridge, a shelf at a time, until every shelf is clean, the whole inside of the fridge is cleaned and all the old food is in the bin. Next tackle the door, removing anything that can be detached to clean. Don't forget to wipe clean the inside of the door, the edges of the door and the bits in between the folds of the rubber seal. Finally, clean the outside of the fridge - this is a lot easier to do and maintain if you don't have lots of fridge magnets stuck all over it!

Now that your fridge is nice and clean and all your old food has gone you are far less likely to give yourself or your guests food poisoning over the Christmas period. However, it is important that when you stack your food with Christmas food you do so in a way that minimises the risk of contamination. Try to avoid pushing food to the back of the fridge as fridges work best when air can flow down the back - you know you have done something wrong if food starts to freeze. Always store food in sealed containers or wrapped in clingfilm, foil or bags. Keep cooked food away from raw food and place raw foods towards the bottom of the fridge so that if they drip they will not drip onto cooked foods. Don't forget to wipe the shelf space clean after removing raw food from the fridge. Never place warm food in the fridge as it will cause the fridge to heat up and cause condensation which can drip onto foods, causing contamination. You may like to check that your fridge is at the correct temperate too which is ideally 4 °C but certainly not over that.

With that done, stand back and admire your gleaming fridge! Then go and make a shopping list of all the things you thought about whilst you were doing it. It is rare thing to precisely know the entire contents of your fridge so make the most of it!

Tomorrow the cleaning and tidying will continue... although I expect I shall spare some time to go and play in the snow with my girls and maybe finishing putting those hampers together.

Priceless inheritance

2010-12-12T22:16:00.006Z

Last week whilst making fudge, I found myself thinking about homemade honeycomb. Fudge... honeycomb... they somehow seem to go together. So I thought, maybe I should find a recipe and give it a go. Actually, I have at least one memory of making honeycomb before; with my grandma and she was definitely the one in charge on that occasion as I think I was probably about 12 at the time. But having dredged up that memory it struck me that rather than googling for a recipe I decided to pull my grandma's recipe book out of the cupboard and see if I could find that very same recipe.

When my grandma had died 17 years ago I had inherited her recipe books. Back then I liked cooking just enough to appreciate these books and to take them into my care. I'm glad I did - they seem to have become more valuable to me with time as I have grown to appreciate them even more. Mostly, the recipe books are ancient published books, including 2 volumes of Delia recipe books from the early 1970s when "The Delia Effect" was slightly less impressive than it is these days. But amongst them is my grandma's handwritten recipe book. This she started as a school exercise book back in her cooking classes, aged about 14. The handwriting was neat and the layout followed strict instructions. The first page has been marked by a now long-dead teacher in red pencil and dated 15/10/1936.

Then, about half way through the book, the now adult version of my grandma continues adding recipes to her old school book but now in her loose, untidy handwriting with little attention to the layout. These are her own recipes for her own use, not to be approved and marked by a teacher. I just love to see her handwriting and the occasional comments such as "lovely" next to a recipe cutting from a magazine pasted onto a page.

And there on page 68 I find the recipe for honeycomb - that very one from my memory. As is so often the case, the recipe is somewhat on the vague side but clear enough for me so I decide to give it a go. It all seems very straight forward but my friends warn me that making honeycomb can be tricky and can result in failures. Nonetheless, with my newfound fudge expertise, I get on with it, following my grandma's written instructions (although wishing she were there to guide me through it as I go).

But then disaster... it turned brown and I took it off the heat but whilst I was fiddling around measuring bicarbonate of soda the caramel continued to cook and as I stirred in the bicarb I could see that it had burnt. Yuk! On cooling it tasted like burnt coffee beans! Ho hum... we learn from our mistakes so I tried again, this time removing it from the heat at an earlier stage, adding the bicarb in a rush and getting it out of the pan as quickly as I could. Aha! Second time lucky!

When it was cooled, we broke it into bits, melted some chocolate and dipped each piece into it. Later, when the chocolate had set we wrapped a few pieces individually in cellophane, doing the same with the pieces of fudge we had made. Then my daughters filled old coffee jars with our homemade sweets and we designs some labels on the computer. Job done, 4 beautiful Christmas gifts for 4 very lucky teachers.

I have to admit that I'm pleased with the result. The jars of sweets look fantastic and the sweets inside taste great too. I am also pleased that I managed to make honeycomb and that I had done so from my grandma's book. My eldest spotted the date in the recipe books and said "Wow, you should take that to the Antiques Roadshow!" I smile, looking at the tatty, heavily stained book and wonder what value an antiques expert would place on it. Well, to me, it is priceless!

Homegrown sweets

2010-12-05T22:39:00.002Z

I'm busy next weekend at a couple of craft fayres so I decided this weekend I needed to make my annual batches of fudge, in preparation for providing my girls' teachers with Christmas presents before the end of term. Last year I finally cracked the technique and conquered fudge-making so this year I dug out the same 3 recipes I had before. As it happens, on the same page of my recipe clippings scrapbook there was a recipe for blackcurrant pastilles that I'd intended to make last year. I stared at it again and wondered why I hadn't done it last year... probably something to do with it requiring liquid pectin. I don't have any in my cupboard this year either... do you?

What I did have in my cupboard (maybe you don't) was a pack of gelatine and a pack of vege-gel. So I dug out my recipe for Turkish Delight and wondered whether I could adapt that recipe to make blackcurrant jellies instead. So I went to my freezer and pulled out a bag that happened to contain 310g of frozen blackcurrants. These I emptied into a pan with a little bit of water. I cooked these for about 10 minutes until they were breaking up then forced them through a sieve to squeeze out their juice.

Next I scattered a sachet of gelatine over a couple of tablespoons of water and set it aside whilst heated 135ml of water with 225g granulated sugar. Once the sugar was dissolved I added the gelatine and stirred until that was melted. Then I brought the mixture to the boil and stirred it on a simmer for about 15 minutes until it was thick. When I removed it from the heat I realised that I couldn't substitute the usual tablespoon of rose water (for Turkish Delight) with the juice from the blackcurrants without messing up the liquid content and probably stopping the whole thing from setting properly. So instead, I sprinkled a sachet of vege-gel over some of the blackcurrant juice before adding that and the rest of the blackcurrant juice to the gelatine mix. I brought the whole thing back to the boil briefly before pouring it into a plastic food box to cool. It didn't immediately set - like vege-gel does - so I was a bit nervous about the whole thing.

When it was cool enough, I put it into the fridge and left it alone overnight. I was pleased to see the next day that it had set so I cut it into little cubes and rolled each one in granulated sugar to finish the sweets off. I fed one to each of my children and to Steve and they all were impressed by the strong blackcurrant flavour and I'm pleased to say that I had got the sweetness right too. What I wasn't sure about was what would happen if I left them out of the fridge - would they stay set or melt back into a pool of liquid. Not feeling too confident, I put them into a container in the fridge and left one out to see what would happen.

By tea time the lone jelly was still a jelly! I shall now leave it there and see if anything else horrible happens to it at room temperature. In the meantime, I think I may just purchase some liquid pectin - if it hasn't been removed from the supermarket shelves to make way for Christmas cake and mincemeat! And I think I may experiment with raspberry and orange flavours.

Walking with the seasons

2010-11-30T09:45:00.003Z

As you know I'm always banging on about the joys of eating with the seasons. It struck me this week that is as equally important to get outside and notice the seasons too. Every day I cycle the school run. Being in Milton Keynes we're not exactly in a rural setting but there is plenty of manciple planting, rows of trees in every street and a park on the way - just enough to get a sense of the changing seasons. Back at the beginning of the school year we were cycling without coats in warm sunshine. Then we cycled in thin coats through falling leaves, over conkers and crab apples. Last week we cycled through frosty mornings with bright sunshine breaking through mist in thick coats, hats and gloves. Today I abandoned the bikes and we walked through snow in ski-suits and fluffy boots.

I like the way that my girls have learnt to appreciate what they see each morning. The bright yellows and reds of the autumn leaves, the almost spiritual nature of sunshine through mist. They comment on it with things such as "Mummy, did you notice how beautiful that looked this morning?" I haven't had to teach them to appreciate it, merely provide them with an opportunity to.

I once worked with a man who had recently moved from Nigeria. He was truly amazed by the beauty of the autumn changes and slightly unnerved by shortening of the days. When snow finally fell he wouldn't let his children outside in case they were hurt by the coldness of it. He did, of course, eventually relent under their pressure and got to experience the fun. He made me think again about the beauty and wonder of the changing seasons and not to take them for granted. Last night as I picked my handbag up I accidentally tipped it upsidedown and everything fell out, including an odd combination of "essentials" such as lip balm and factor 50 sunblock. Isn't it amazing that 3 months ago I was stood in the school field, dabbing sunblock onto my children as they ran around for sports day and today I am applying lip balm to protect their lips from freezing temperatures. The best thing is, by and large, we just accept it and cope with it, getting out the appropriate clothes and footwear and getting on with the day.

The only disappointing thing is that some people don't fully embrace it, instead retreating to their cars for the school run for every little excuse. It's raining, it's windy, it's frosty, it's snowing... yes, horray! It is, don't retreat into your expensive metal motorised umbrellas, stick on the appropriate coat and footwear and go out and see how beautiful it is!

How to sell preserves to the public

2010-11-13T11:43:00.002Z

I didn't think I'd made that many jams and chutneys this year. That was, until I came to label them all! I spent the best part of last Saturday printing labels and sticking them onto my jars and then I had to do a few of the ones I'd missed on Tuesday evening.

It's funny really that the bulk of my business these days is printing personalised stickers for people because the only reason that happened is because I figured out how to print labels for my jars. Having got over the complexities of printing on circular labels for the lids, I found that there was a market for this sort of thing from people who didn't have the time, inclination or knowledge to figure out how to do it themselves. And from jam labels thing expanded to a all sorts of circular stickers for all sorts of purposes.

When I first started making labels for my jams and chutneys they were very basic and contained little more than "Hazel's Homegrown" and the name of the preserve in the jar (often hand written). This was fine for making sure I knew what I had in my food cupboard or for giving them away as Christmas presents to my family. But when it comes to selling to the public, not only does the attractiveness and professional look of a label help to sell the preserve, but it has to contain, by law, certain information. This is the case whether you are selling at a church coffee morning or a farmers market. Even so, the required information is not too arduous to sort out: the name of the preserve and the weight. It is also advisable to include a list of ingredients in descending order, allergens and a best before date. And that's it - as long as you are standing there next to your preserves when they are being sold, ready and willing to answer any questions the customer may have. This is called direct selling. If you pass on your stuff to a third party to sell then this is called indirect selling and the labeling information becomes a bit more complicated. If this is something that you need to know I suggest you see my trading standard information page and contact your local trading standard.

The other thing people seem not to realise is that if you are selling to the public - yes, even at that church coffee morning - then you need to be registered with environmental health. This isn't as terrifying or tricky as you might imagine and well worth sorting out if you want to go beyond giving your preserves away to friends and family. Have a look at my environmental health page for more information.

On Wednesday this week I went along to a Pre-Christmas shopping evening at my daughter's school to sell my preserves and recipe books. Earlier that morning I had finished labeling the last of my jars, then loaded them into 3 sturdy, stackable lidded plastic boxes. I couldn't possibly shift all of my stock in one go so I had to select 3 or 4 jars of each flavour. Along with these boxes I have a 4th box that I think of as my "shop box". This contains vinyl table clothes to cover the table when I get there, business cards for the enquiring public, paper carrier bags (pre-labelled with my shop details), miniature blackboard price tags, and a pen (I always need a pen!). Then there is a basket full of jute gift bags, my fantastic ex-Usborne Book display stand and finally my folding trundle trolley for transporting the stuff from my car to the table when I arrive at the venue. The very last thing to be loaded into my car is always my money box which I always keep stocked with a £25 float because that is one less thing to have to organise on the day.

I turned up half an hour before the event was supposed to start, unloaded my car, moved the car from the unloading position to a parking space, spread the table clothes onto the table and unpacked the preserves onto the table. Then I erected the book stand to display my recipe books and stickers. Finally, I made sure my price labels were somewhere nice and visible.

And then the customers arrive. Some of them glance briefly at my stall and move onto the next. Some say something like, "Oh, we have jam at home," and keep on walking. Others come up all excited and get even more excited when the see the lovely selection of jams on offer. "Oh," the say, "it's so hard to choose!". Then there are others who stop and chat and ask questions such as, "do you make all these yourself?" "Yes," I reply, "from the fruit and vegetables I grow." They look impressed. And so they should...

Let's review...

Firstly, I grow the fruit and vegetables, then I hand make them into jams and chutneys with all natural ingredients using skills that not everyone has. Then I make and print all my own labels and stick them on by hand. I have been to the bother of being checked by environmental health and trading standards. And I have got off my bum for the event, packed boxes, heaved them into the car, moved them from the car and sorted them out into an attractive display. And now all that is there for the customer to buy for a price that doesn't really do it justice.

So thank you to all those people who have stopped long enough to appreciate even a little of the work that has gone into it, or even just realised when they eat it that it tastes better than the stuff you buy from the supermarket. And pah! to anyone who sticks their nose in the air and whips pass my stall saying, "Oh we have jams at home." Well, so you might, but you won't have Hazel's Homegrown jam at home and that's something you're missing out on!

Handheld food

2010-11-07T14:34:00.002Z

This weekend was one for celebrating with fireworks and bonfires what with Guy Faulkes night and Diwali. And these celebrations often require us to stand around outside in cold weather, celebrating with food that is both warming and simple to eat in the hand. This is not always easy to achieve.

We started our celebrations on Friday night when my parents came over with a couple of boxes of fireworks. This has become a bit of an annual tradition for us, with all of us, bar Steve, sitting in the relative comfort and safety of our conservatory whilst Steve sets off the fireworks close to the windows. As such, we don't get as cold as we otherwise might and the need for handheld convenience food is less. Nonetheless, there does seem to be the need for a certain sort of food on fireworks night. Personally I would have opted for some sort of tasty sausage in a finger roll with ketchup, mustard and onions but the girls had already had a fireworks night special hot lunch at school that day which consisted of a sausage in a bun with potato wedges.

Instead, I went for the 2nd best option of a burger in a bun, using quarter pounder Aberdeen Angus Waitrose beefburgers. These I grilled then when they were ready, I toasted the sesame seed buns and assembled the base with the burger, smeared on some Dijon mustard, added a spodge of ketchup and a slice of cheese and put them back under the grill for a minute to melt the cheese before adding the top half of the bun. In the meantime, I made some chips and fried some onions and mushrooms together and served the whole lot together with a dollop of homemade red coleslaw.

Red coleslaw

1/4 red cabbage

1 raw beetroot

A small red onion

Salt & pepper

3 tablespoons mayonnaise

Finely chop the red cabbage. Grate in the beetroot then finely chop the onion and add that too. Season to taste then dollop in the mayonnaise and stir until well combined. Keep refrigerated until ready to serve.

The meal was well received and for afters I handed out homemade apple puffs. These I made as a modification on my Eccles cake recipe - just the same technique but with a cooked apple & cinnamon filling. The great thing about these is you get a lovely consistent mouthful of apple and pastry with every bite... and you can eat them in your hand with no need for custard or cream.

Apple puffs

2 apples

1 tsp cinnamon

1/2 block of ready-made puff pastry

Egg

Demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 220°C, gas 8 and grease a baking tray. Peel and core the apples and cut into pieces. Place the apples and cinnamon in a pan with just enough water to cover the bottom of the pan then cook gently for 10-20 minutes until the apples are fluffy. Set aside to cool. On a floured surface roll out the pastry. Use a large biscuit cutter (about 10cm in diameter) to cut out circles in the pastry. Place a heaped teaspoon of apple filling into the centre of each pastry circle then bundle to pastry up over the filling. Turn the pastry bundle over and flatten with a oval to make a thick biscuit of pastry with the fruity filling just showing through. Slash the biscuit 3 times with a sharp knife then brush with beaten egg and scatter with Demerara sugar. Gather up the pastry trimmings and repeat until all the pastry is used up. Place the pastries on the baking tray and cook for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Alternatively, place the pastries on a tray and freeze raw. Can be cooked from frozen for about 25 minutes.

After dinner Steve braved the rain and went into the garden to light fireworks whilst the rest of us watched from indoors. Soon, however, it became clear that we would have to abandon the event as the fireworks were proving difficult to light and Steve was feeling cold and wet. So, despite having two boxes of fireworks left, my parents went home and we got the girls to bed.

I do feel that with a burger bun there is the need for only a few chips to go with it because the whole thing is quite filling. Otherwise I think I might have been tempted to serve it with jacket potatoes - another fireworks night classic. Recently I discovered that Charlotte potatoes make the best jacket potatoes ever. This was a surprise as I had always thought of Charlottes as waxy potatoes, perfect for boiling and using in salads. But, inevitably when you grow your own potatoes you never quite manage to dig them all up at the right time and we ended up growing some whopping Charlottes. They looked like baking potatoes so... I baked them! And you know what, they produced the most amazing crispy skin I have ever experienced on a jacket potato. So delicious were they that my fussy eldest daughter even ate the skin and whats more declared it her new favourite way to cook potatoes and nagged and nagged her father to go out and dig some more up. This he did so we had jacket potatoes for our second fireworks night on Saturday.

Whatever variety of potato you manage to get hold of the best way to bake one is to preheat the oven to 200°C. Wash and dry the potatoes then drizzle over some sunflower oil and add a sprinkle of salt then rub it in with your hands. Microwave the potatoes for about 5 minutes then place them in the oven for at least an hour. Remove them from the oven then slice open and serve with your favourite topping.

Nicely full of hot potato it was time to light the remaining fireworks. What a contrast in the weather - a cold, clear and calm night. Steve had taken the precaution of finding the weed wand in the shed - a long handled device that shoots flames out the bottom. This proved a most excellent firework lighting tool. Within minutes the fireworks were over so we wriggled into our thick coats and went outside to light 5 paper Chinese sky lanterns. As each one went up we made a wish and watched them until they were out of sight. Beautiful. Let's hope our wishes come true!

Samhain

2010-11-06T23:10:00.003Z

I came across the term "Samhain" (pronounced Sa:wain) for the first time last week. It is apparently an old Gaelic harvest festival, held between 31st October and 1st November to mark the end of the harvest and the change from the lighter half of the year to the darker half of the year. Mixed into this festival is stuff about the otherworld and the dead being able to come back as well as the use of bonfires as a cleansing ritual. It seems to me to somehow encompass everything apt for this time of year including harvest, Halloween, bonfire night and the clocks changing. No doubt its ancient existence had a great deal to do with the development of Halloween and Guy Faulkes night at this time of year.

I really felt the Samhain mood and change from the one part of the year to another this morning when I decided to embrace the crisp sunny day and get outside. Somehow in the past week the cherry and plum trees in our garden seemed to have dumped all their leaves onto the ground and the lawn was in danger of dying due to lack of light. So I started by racking up the leaves and having a general tidy up in the garden. This included checking the stored boxes of vegetables on the shed shelves. A few of the marrows were going mouldy so I added those to the pile of stuff for the compost heap. Amazingly the cucumbers weren't going mouldy but they had ripened to yellow and I know that when they go like that they taste awful so I cleared them out too. It was slightly sad to trot the last of the summer vegetables back to the allotment in order to dump them into the compost.

I had known earlier in the week that we were onto our last courgette for the year, that the French beans were finished and we were down to the last of broccoli. I briefly contemplated buying some vegetables from the supermarket this week but in the end I figured we may as well eat up the head of red cabbage, the courgette and some frozen peas first. But as I chucked the mouldy marrows into the compost I looked around and realised there was a fair bit to harvest. Not the summer vegetables we had been enjoying but the winter staples: carrots, cabbage, leeks and a like.

Before getting stuck in to the harvesting, I continued the tidying up whilst I was still in the mood. The frosts had taken their toll on the pumpkin, marrow, cucumber and tomato plants and these stood dead and soggy on the plot. So I cleared these first then chopped down the asparagus ferns in order to prevent the crowns being damaged by the ferns blowing about in the winter winds. I confess that the long dead and dried pea plants were still in their bed so I got on and cleared these too, pulling out the twiggy pea sticks as I went. Finally, I dismantled the cane supports for the French bean plants and removed the dead plants from around the canes. The sound of the canes clattering together as I dropped them on the ground reminded me of the sounds you hear when a market or fete is packing up... it is a definite end of something sound.

By this point it was lunchtime so I headed home. The girls had stayed at home all morning with Steve but during my tidy up I had had an idea that I thought might be appealing enough to get the girls outside. I was proved right as both girls were very keen to return to the plot after lunch to build a hedgehog hibernation house. I told them they could use the old pea sticks as well as the dead dried peas plants to build the structure. Then I suggested that they gather leaves and use bits of asparagus ferns to form the roof. Once they had done this they asked me about the eating habits of the hedgehog so that they could provide tempting treats to try to entice a hedgehog inside. Having explained that hedgehogs are omnivores, the girls collected a few dropped apples and damsons to scatter outside the entrance and hid grubs and worms inside. I admit that my main aim had been to encourage them to get outside and be active but by the time they had finished I really thought that a hedgehog could well decide to take up residence.

In the meantime I had planted the garlic, ready to overwinter and Steve had arrived to dig up the potatoes. Now it was time to harvest some fresh vegetables. By the time we headed home as it was getting dark we had two huge bagfuls of potatoes, some carrots, beetroot, leeks, calebrese, romanesco cauliflower, red cabbage, and some haricot beans. How wrong I had been to think we didn't have any vegetables left! It was just a matter a shifting with the seasons, to acknowledge the end of summer and to start harvesting the winter crops. It was time for Samhain.

The perfect combination

2010-10-31T21:13:00.002Z

You may well think that the perfect flavour combination at this time of year is blackberry and apple but you'd be wrong... that is so last month! Surely right now it has to be pear and vanilla.

I'm not really sure when I first tried the pear and vanilla combination but it is a true winner. I have a preserves recipe book in my cupboard with a cover image that is poached pears in a kilner jar with a pod of vanilla in with it. This very well may have been the inspiration for me first trying this combination. When my eldest was a baby and I was making baby food for the weaning process I used to steam some pears with a bit of a vanilla pod then blend it and thicken it with baby rice and it was her all time favourite food. If you are in the process of weaning a baby right now have a look at my weaning guide All Gone for more recipes for babies. But for me weaning is well and truly over but I still hanker after ways of using this beautiful combination of flavours.

A few years ago when my mum brought round a basket full of pears from her tree I tried making some of them into pear jam. For those of you who don't know, pears are a low pectin fruit so make a jam that is hard to set. It's funny really when you think about it because they are so closely related to apples which are so full of pectin it is hard not to set the jam too firmly. Some people resort to using jam sugar on such occasions because it contains added pectin but I have always thought that is a bit of a cheat and I'm always up for a challenge. So I hunted the internet and came across a recipe for pear and lemon jam, the lemon adding pectin as well as helping to extract pectin from the pears. I tried this and achieved a fairly runny jam and didn't feel particularly satisfied with the result. Pear and lemon... who thought that was a good combo?

So several years later, and now with my own pear trees bearing fruit, I have returned to the issue of making a satisfactory pear jam. One thing I have learnt in the meantime is how to make my own pectin. This can be done quite simply by boiling up apple peelings and cores in some water for about half and hour or so then draining off the liquid. I do this usually when making apple & ginger jam or some sort of apple chutney. The liquid that is created is the apple pectin. You can test the quality of your pectin if you choose by dropping a small amount of it into methylated spirits or rubbing alcohol. If you have good quality pectin the stuff you have dropped in should form a ball. I don't usually bother with this bit as it seems to work out well every time. Instead, I just pour the liquid into an ice-cube tray and freeze it until required.

Now armed with a tray full of homemade pectin, I decided to embark upon the pear jam quest once again but this time with added vanilla. I confess, I still used the juice of a lemon in with the cooking pears to try to extract as much pectin from the pears as possible but I did not want this to be the dominating flavour. Instead, I added half a vanilla pod to the pears whilst they were cooking and for added flavour, half the sugar I used was vanilla sugar. If you are mad enough you can buy vanilla sugar from the supermarket for some ridiculously expensive price. On the other hand, with a little bit of organisation you can make your own: Put a load of granulated sugar in the largest jar you can find, pausing briefly in the pouring process to poke in a vanilla pod. That's it! Even after a few days the flavour of vanilla has begun to permeate the sugar but I always have a jar of vanilla sugar in my cupboard and simply replace the sugar and vanilla pod each time I use the sugar up so I always have some with a good strong flavour.

So this time, with added apple pectin I managed to attain the set of a runny honey! It's never going to set like blackcurrant jam but at least it won't run off your toast. With a flavour reminiscent of fairy cakes, I'm thinking this jam is also going to be lovely in cake recipes and for glazing under icing etc.

Pear & Vanilla Jam

Ingredients (makes 3 to 4 jars)

3 lb (1400 g) pears

16½ fl oz (450 ml) water

1/2 vanilla pod

Juice of 1 lemon

3 lb 6 oz (1570 g) sugar (half of this can be vanilla sugar)

10 fl oz (300ml) apple pectin

Method

Peel, cut the pears into pieces and core. Place in a preserving pan with the water, lemon juice and vanilla pod and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer the pears for about 10 minutes until they are soft and pulpy. In the meantime warm the sugar. Once the fruit is cooked, remove the vanilla pod, cut it length ways and scrap out the tiny seeds and add these to the pears. Discard the remaining bit of the vanilla pod. Add the sugar and apple pectin and stir over a low heat until all the sugar is dissolved. Boil rapidly for 8 to 12 minutes until the setting point in reached. Ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately.

How many times have I typed the word vanilla so far? The word vanilla and not once the word ice-cream. How can we consider vanilla without ice-cream?! This is not a new thought for me and back to the time of the basket full off my mum's pears I invented pear and vanilla ice-cream, using the same technique I used for the baby food. So this week I made a batch of pear and vanilla ice-cream too... divine.

Pear & Vanilla Ice-cream (make 1 pint)

3-4 perfectly ripe pears

2 cm length of vanilla pod

2 oz (55 g) icing sugar

4 fl oz (110 ml) milk

5 fl oz (147ml) double cream

Peel, core and chop the pears into pieces. Cut the piece of vanilla pod in half length-ways and scrape the seeds out onto the pieces of pear then add the pod shells to the pears too. Steam the pears and vanilla together for 10 minutes until very soft. Remove the pod shells then blend the pears until totally smooth in a food processor, adding the sugar towards the end of the blending process. Allow the pear puree to cool down then mix the puree with the milk and double cream. Pour into suitable containers and freeze for 2-3 hours. Remove from the freezer and beat then return to the freezer. Repeat over two hours until solid.

Oh, but that's not the end of it.... remember last week when my eldest suggested I wrote a cheesecake recipe book? What could be better that pear and vanilla cheesecake. So yesterday I gave it a go... Baked pear and vanilla cheesecake... yummy! My eldest thinks it tastes strongly of vanilla, my youngest thinks it tastes strongly of pears... both are happy!

Pear & Vanilla Cheesecake

Base:

4 oz (110g) crushed digestive biscuits

2 oz (55g) melted butter

Filling:

4 ripe pears

1/2 vanilla pod

7 oz (200g) soft cheese

3 oz (85g) caster sugar

1 egg

4 fl oz (115ml) whipping cream

To make the base: Crush the biscuits with the end of a rolling pin until finely crushed. Melt the butter and mix it with the biscuit crumbs. Press the mix firmly into the bottom of a flan dish and refrigerate.

To make the filling: Peel, core and chop the pears then place in a steamer with the vanilla pod for about 10 minutes until very soft. Cut the vanilla pod in half length ways and scrape out the seeds and add these to the pears and discard the pod. Place the pears in a blender and blend until smooth then set aside to cool.

Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Cream together the cheese and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and cream and whisk until thick. Stir in the pear puree then pour the mixture over the base. Bake for 25 minutes the switch off the oven but leave the cheesecake inside with the door shut for another 20 minutes. After that, open the door and leave it to cool for about another 10 minutes before removing from the oven. This process continues to cook the cheesecake gently then stops it cracking as it cools. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

Halloween!

2010-10-28T12:03:00.011+01:00

There I was thinking that this week would be a continuation of the pear saga but instead it turned out to be all about pumpkins and Halloween.

We had a Halloween Treasure Hunt evening planned with friends for Wednesday evening so when the girls started Monday with "I'm bored..." I decided we might as well get the Halloween lanterns carved. My eldest proved last year to be an excellent pumpkin carver so I gave her the honor of carving our single home-grown pumpkin (and to think we grew 19 pumpkins last year!). We had a few monster marrows too so I helped my youngest carve one of these as a Halloween alien head.

An hour later we had a splendid scary alien and a spooky ghost pumpkin. We had also generated a big bowlful of pumpkin flesh. Steve's all time favourite cake just happens to be pumpkin ginger tea bread so half the flesh was destined for a loaf of that... all the tastier for not having it for a year.

Pumpkin and Ginger Tea Bread

175g melted butter
140g clear honey
1 egg, beaten
250g fresh pumpkin
100g light muscovado sugar
350g self-raising flour
1 tablespoon ground ginger
1 tablespoon Demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and line a 2lb load tin. Mix together the butter, honey, egg and pumpkin. Add the muscovado sugar, flour and ginger and stir until well combined. Pour into the tin then sprinkle over the Demerara sugar. Bake for 50-60 minutes until risen and golden. Leave in the tin to cool for 10-15 minutes before turning out to cool on a wire rack.

The remaining flesh was steamed, ready to make pumpkin pancakes. This has long been a favourite breakfast recipe of my girls and I feel all the more virtuous about feeding them pancakes for breakfast since watching last week's episode of River Cottage Everyday which advocated pancakes for breakfast. They take a bit of effort to make but they can be frozen and reheated from frozen with about 1 minute in the microwave so they are even suitable for a weekday morning breakfast. Better still served with a squirt of cream from a canister!

Pumpkin pancakes (makes 16-18)

250g plain flour
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 tsp mixed spice
55g light brown sugar
3 eggs
284 ml carton buttermilk
175 g pumpkin puree
4 teaspoon sunflower oil

A few sultanas (optional)

In a large bowl, sift together the flour, salt, raising agents and spice. In another bowl, mix together the sugar, egg, milk, pumpkin and oil. Make a well in the centre of the flour and gradually mix in the wet ingredients until a batter forms. Heat a little oil in a frying pan and add 60ml (2 tablepoons or 1/4 cup) of batter at a time. Cook until the base is set then flip and cook until the second side has set and browned. If you wish, you can scatter a few sultanas into the batter as you cook it. Either serve hot or cool on a wire rack and freeze for use later.

We had a buffet tea planned for dinner after the treasure hunt so I spent Wednesday morning in the kitchen cooking some buffet food such as cocktail sausages and sausage rolls but the great thing about Halloween is the opportunity to get creative and invent spooky food. We made a batch of the chocolate fairy cakes in Halloween themed paper cases then I mixed up some butter icing and dyed it green with a bit of food colouring. The girls then had great fun sticking sweets on top to make monster faces.

Halloween Monster Cakes (Makes 6)

3 oz (85g) self-raising flour

2 oz (55g) butter at room temperature

2 oz (55g) light brown sugar

1/2 oz (15g) cocoa powder

1 large egg

1½ oz (40g) butter

2 oz (55g) icing sugar

A few drops of vanilla extract

Food colouring

Sweets

Preheat oven to 190°C. Place all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk with an electric whisk for 1 minute. Place a heaped teaspoon of the mixture into petit four cases on a baking tray and bake for 10 to 12 minutes until risen and golden. Cool on a wire rack. Cream together the butter, icing sugar, vanilla and food colouring to make the icing. Spread the icing onto the top of each cake then decorate with sweets to make monster faces.

I also experimented with a mixture of melted marshmallows and rice crispie cereal which I moulded into balls and stuck on cocktail sticks to make "brains on sticks". Not only did this make me chuckle but they tasted great too!

Brains on Sticks

1 oz (25g) butter

2 oz (55g) pink & white marshmallows

3 oz (75g) Rice cereal

Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat. Add the marshmallows and stir continuously until melted. Remove from the heat and add the rice cereal. Stir until well mixed then leave to cool for a few minutes until it can be handled. Whilst still warm, mould into small balls and poke in a cocktail stick. Chill to set before serving.

Then for a few savoury bits I used Halloween cookie cutters to cut out gravestone pieces of cheese and pumpkin sandwiches - or should that be sand-witches? And to garnish the plate, I cut a few fang shaped pieces of cucumber. But the bit the girls loved making most were the "Mummy Mini Pizzas". These proved to be very tasty too.

Mummy Mini Pizzas (makes about 15)

1 pack of pizza base mix

Pizza or pasta tomato sauce

Ham

Mushroom

3 "Cheese Strips"

Preheat oven to 200°C. gas 6 and grease a large baking tray. Make up the pizza base according to the pack instructions and roll out the dough. Cut the base into small circles using a large circular biscuit cutter. Spread tomato sauce onto each one. Use the large end of a icing nozzle to cut out circular pieces of ham to make eyes. Use the small end of the icing nozzle to cut out tiny circular pieces of mushroom to make pupils. Break the "Cheese Strips" into its smallest strips and use these to lay across the pizzas for the mummy's bandages. Cook for 10 minutes and serve hot.

I think making the food was almost as much fun as the treasure hunt itself!

Some inspirational ideas

2010-10-23T21:04:00.005+01:00

Having had a bit of an apple theme going on recently, my attention has now turned to my pears. Steve popped out to the allotment last Saturday afternoon on a mission to pick some more beans before the frosts arrived so I requested he checked on the pears at the same time. In the end, he came back with a wheelbarrow full of stuff including a couple of enormous marrows, a good deal of broccoli, a few beans and quite an impressive yield of pears. The pears, he informed me, had mostly been on the ground so he had picked all that was left and brought them home. These were the conference pears so apart from the slug damaged ones they should store quite well for a week or two.

Steve stashed most of the pears in a cardboard box in the shed but placed a couple of damaged ones on the draining board. They lurked there through most of Sunday and every time I came to the sink I wondered what I should do with them. I contemplated cutting them up and feeding them to my youngest daughter but to be honest they were so dripping with juice I would have had to have striped her off and sat her in the bath if she was to eat them without making a mess!

Then late Sunday afternoon I was struck with inspiration and decided to add grated pear to an Eccles cake recipe. So there I was rolling out puff pastry with one hand whilst cooking a roast dinner with the other. The kitchen, which often suffers during the production of the Sunday roast, looked devastated by the time I sat down to eat. But looks aren't everything, and as we tucked into our roast turkey the delicious smell of roast dinner was replaced with the equally appealing smell of cooking Eccles cakes.

Just as we finished our main course the Eccles cakes came out of the oven and as they cooled down I asked my daughters if they would like one for afters. My youngest, a huge food fan at the best of times and particularly keen on "afters", agreed readily. In contrast, my eldest, who is naturally suspicious of food and somehow half-expects me to poison her, instead asked me what is in an Eccles cake.

"Eccles," Steve replied, quick as a flash.

She raised her eyebrow and gave him her best "don't be silly, Daddy" expression. Somehow this was lost on my youngest, as later when she saw me spooning the last bit of left over filling into a container she said, "Is that Eccle, Mummy?". So now I have a tub of Eccle in my fridge and it makes me smile every time I see it!

Anyway, the Eccles cakes were delicious. I'm not sure I have ever eaten hot Eccles cakes before but I'm a fan now. Best of all, after cooking 6 on Sunday I froze the remaining 12 and have since cooked 2 more batches this week so we have been eating fresh Eccles cakes all week.

Peary Eccles Cakes (makes 18)

1 oz (25g) butter

9 oz (250g) mixed dried fruit

4 oz (110g) light muscovado sugar

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon ground all spice

Juice of one small lemon

2 ripe pears

1 block of ready-made puff pastry

Egg

Demerara sugar

Preheat oven to 220°C, gas 8 and grease a baking tray. Melt the butter in a pan then stir in the dried fruit, sugar, spices and lemon. Peel the pears and grate them into the fruity mixture and stir well. On a floured surface roll out the pastry. Use a large biscuit cutter (about 10cm in diameter) to cut out circles in the pastry. Place a heaped teaspoon of filling into the centre of each pastry circle then bundle to pastry up over the filling. Turn the pastry bundle over and flatten with a oval to make a thick biscuit of pastry with the fruity filling just showing through. Slash the biscuit 3 times with a sharp knife then brush with beaten egg and scatter with Demerara sugar. Gather up the pastry trimmings and repeat until all the pastry is used up. Place the Eccles cakes on the baking tray and cook for about 20 minutes until golden brown. Alternatively, place the Eccles cakes on a tray and freeze raw. Can be cooked from frozen for about 25 minutes.

Also this week, I turned a few more pears into my lovely Figgy pear mincemeat. This has got to be my favourite mincemeat recipe. Do I say that for all my mincemeat recipes? Then, with half a pack of dried figs left I decided to convert a date slice recipe into a Figgy Finger recipe instead.

Figgy Pear Mincemeat

1½ to 2 lb (680 – 900g) pears

2 lb 4 oz (1 kg) mixed dried fruit

9 oz (250g) dried figs

1 lb (454g) Demerara sugar

1 lemon, zest and juice

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

5 fl oz (150ml) sherry

Put the mixed fruit in a non-metallic bowl, grate in the pear and use scissors to snip in the figs. Add the remaining ingredients, stir well, cover and leave overnight. Heat in a preserving pan until boiling then simmer for 10 minutes. Transfer into warmed jars and seal immediately.

Figgy Fingers

8 oz (225g) dried figs

1 tablespoon lemon juice

4 tablesoons water

5 oz (150g) oats

2 oz (55g) self-raising flour

2 oz (55g) wholemeal flour

2 oz (55g) light brown sugar

4 oz (110g) butter

Preheat oven to 190°C (gas 5) and grease a shallow tin or baking tray. Snip up the figs and place them in a saucepan with the water and lemon juice. Bring the fruit to the boil and simmer for 10 until soft. Place in a blender and blend until smooth. You may wish to force the mixture through a sieve to remove the seeds. In a bowl, cream together the sugar and butter then add the flour and oats and mix until it just binds together. Press half the oat mixture into the tin. Spread the fig paste onto the oat base then cover with the remaining oat mixture and press to form a sandwich. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until golden. Mark out the biscuit whilst still hot then allow it to cool completely in the tin.

Then on Thursday, my eldest daughter brought home a homework sheet that included a recipe for banana and marshmallow cheesecake. I was quite excited about what appeared to be an interesting and unusual piece of homework until I realised that the task was merely to read the recipe and answer comprehension type questions on it. Still, not one to pass up an opportunity, I suggested to my daughter we should also make the cheesecake... I mean, banana and marshmallow cheesecake... who could resist? Having then read the recipe through I began to wonder if someone had just made it up for the sake of producing a worksheet but by now I was committed to the task so decided to do my best to adapt the recipe into something that might actually work. I'm glad to say that I managed this, even if it did look a bit like a clown's custard pie when we were done. It tasted good and the slightly melting pieces of marshmallow in it added interesting texture. Having produced that my daughter then told me it was time I wrote a mini-guide to cheesecakes book to add to my collection of other mini recipe books. Well, you know, that's not a bad idea.

Banana and marshmallow cheesecake

115g (8 biscuits) crushed digestive biscuits

55g (2 oz) melted butter

142ml (4 fl oz) whipping cream

75g (3 oz) cream cheese

1 tablespoon lemon juice

2 very ripe bananas

25g caster sugar

6-9 large pink and white marshmallows, cut into small pieces

A little chocolate

Crush the biscuits and mix with the melted butter then press into the base of a flan dish and refrigerate. Slowly beat together the cream and the cheese and whisk until thick. Mash the bananas and mix in the lemon juice to prevent it browning. Carefully fold the bananas, sugar and marshmallow pieces into the creamy mixture. Spoon over the biscuit base then finish by grating some chocolate over the top. Return to the fridge to set and serve cold.

With quite a few pears left in the box in the shed I'm thinking I might try my hand at some sort of pear jam tomorrow and whilst I'm at it I might just see if I can invent a pear cheesecake!

A Harvest Festival

2010-10-16T10:34:00.003+01:00

When I was a kid I loved our school harvest festival. We would all be asked to bring in some food for the celebration and this was all gathered together in the school hall along with some traditional corn dollies. There would be piles of stuff ranging from tins and packets to freshly baked cakes and bread and fresh fruit and vegetables. Come the celebration we would all troop into the hall and sing appropriate hymns about seed sowing and gathering crops and all feel jolly good about it. Then the next day a few of the more sensible children (which always included me, of course) would walk around the local area delivering boxes of this food to the elderly and needy.

I'm sure this "traditional" harvest festival that I remember was far removed from how they first started when it was all about giving thanks to God for the crops they had grown in order to please God and ensure that He would provide the appropriate weather to allow it all to happen again the next year. But having attended my daughter's harvest festival this week it seems we have all moved a little further away from what it is all about.

I'm not a religious person and I know that whether crops grow or not isn't decided by some divine entity but I am still glad that my daughter's school hold their festival in the church across the road. We were asked to donate food but now it all has to be tins and dried foods that can be stored for months if necessary. These are then all given to the Food Bank who distribute the food to identified needy families in the area. So gone are the days when the gathered food is stacked at the front of the festival for all to see and gone are the days when beautiful loaves of bread and fresh fruit and vegetables were piled high for everyone to admire. It was certainly a sight that it felt appropriate to rejoice about.

At this time of year I can come off the allotment with a wheelbarrow loaded up with vegetables and for a moment I feel like bursting into song about seed sowing and gathering crops! In a culture where we can buy any fruit or vegetable at any time of year I think the whole concept of a "harvest" has somehow been lost. Personally I would love to see a room somewhere stacked with pumpkins, marrows, potatoes, apples, pears, onions, tomatoes, beans, broccoli, carrots, cabbages and adorned with corn dollies. Yes, I think the Food Bank are doing a fantastic job and the tinned, dried food is a very practical solution but let's rejoice in all things fresh and seasonal, homegrown, homemade and communal. Let's for once appreciate that we aren't facing starvation and uncertainty and not take this for granted. Let's gather together our seasonal produce and be proud and thankful for it!

Harvest Fruit Cake

2oz (55g) shelled hazelnuts

8oz (225g) unsalted butter

8oz (225g) light muscovado sugar

8oz (225g) self-raising flour

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 teaspoons mixed spice

1 teaspoon baking powder

6oz (175g) courgette or marrow

1 apple

9oz (250g) mixed dried fruit

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon demerara sugar

Apple week

2010-10-09T22:17:00.005+01:00

At this time of year there are numerous "Apple Day" events on around the country. They are lovely events, usually along the lines of a farmers' market or country fairs but with an emphasis on apples. They are a celebration of the humble British apple, of which there are over 1200 different varieties. With all these varieties available, it is possible to eat British apples between August and May but October is the prime apple season. So if there is an apple day event near you why not go along and have some fun as well as enjoying this lovely fruit. But if you can't manage that then at least try to find a bag of apples with the union flag on (rather imported apples) to buy and enjoy.

On our allotment site, every allotment plot was pre-planted with an apple tree in one corner when they were first established. We have two allotment plots, hence two trees, of different varieties. I don't know the names of either variety but one ripens from the end of August, producing soft, sweet eating apples. The other is ripe by October, producing firm cooking apples that store well for months. Together they supply us with more than enough apples.

When I went out onto the plot in a brief break in the rain last Sunday I discovered yet more of the eating apples blown to the ground. I scooped up as many as I could that weren't already rotting. They don't store well anyway but with bruises and nibbles they last only a few days so would need immediate attention. Then I went and checked on my pears. I only planted the pear tree two years ago and this is the first year that we have had any fruit. It is a dual pear, with two different varieties grafted onto a single trunk. One variety is clearly a conference pear which should be ready towards the end of October, but the other was already looking almost ready when I had been to the plot the previous weekend. Now, with the wind howling around my ears, I discovered nearly all of this variety on the ground. I gathered these up, harvested the last of them from the tree, feeling especially pleased with myself for having my first ever homegrown pears.

With October now with us and the first frost surely just around the corner I snipped off all the remaining trusses of green tomatoes and took them home. You may remember that last year with strung them across out conservatory and in our kitchen as an autumn garland and tomato chandelier. They provided us with fresh tomatoes all the way to Christmas so it was well worth it.

Back at home I made another batch of apple and cider mincemeat since it is such a quick recipe. On Monday, I used some of the green tomatoes along with the apples to make my grandma's green tomato chutney recipe. Just the smell of it took me back to holiday picnics with cheese and chutney sandwiches! Then on Tuesday I made cucumber and apple chutney. Wednesday was apple flapjacks, Thursday was pork and apple casserole and Friday apple, pear and plum jam.

So not just an apple day for me but a whole apple week... maybe an apple month!

Grandma's Green Tomato Chutney

Ingredients (makes 2-4 jars)

2lb (900 g) green tomatoes

1lb (450 g) cooking apples

8 oz (225 g) onions

1 oz (25 g) salt

4 oz (110 g) sultanas

1 pint (600 ml) malt vinegar

½ tsp ground ginger

1 tbsp pickling spice (e.g. cloves, cinnamon, allspice berries)

8 oz (225 g) light brown sugar

(optional) 1 tbsp black treacle

Method

Coarsely chop the tomatoes then peel, core and chop the apples (weigh after preparation). Peel and chop the onions and tie the spices in a piece of muslin. Mix all the ingredients except the sugar in the preserving pan and bring to the boil. Drop in the spices. Simmer gently, uncovered, until the pulp is tender (20 to 30 minutes). Add the sugar and stir well until it has completely dissolved. Bring back to the boil and continue to boil until thick. Pour into warm jars and seal immediately.

Cucumber and Apple Chutney

Ingredients (makes 1 jar)

For every 1 lb cucumbers:

8 oz (225 g) apples

1 large onion (8 oz; 225 g)

1 to 2 sticks of celery (depending on size)

½ pint (300 ml) white wine vinegar

8 oz (225 g) light brown sugar

1 tbsp salt

¼ tsp turmeric

Pinch of ground allspice (Jamaican pepper)

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Method

Cube but don’t peel the cucumber then finely slice it in a food processor. Peel the onion and core, but don’t peel, the apples. Use the food processor to finely chop the celery sticks, apple and the onion. Place the vegetables in the bowl and place a small plate on top. Press down on the plate to squeeze the water out of the vegetables, and discard. Place the vegetables in the preserving pan and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring to avoid sticking. Pour in the vinegar, sugar and other flavourings and bring to the boil. Simmer, stirring occasionally until the liquid has almost gone. Ladle into a warmed jar and seal immediately.

Apple Flapjacks

1 lb apples

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon demerara sugar

4 oz light muscovado sugar

1 tablespoon golden syrup

4 oz butter

2 1/2 oz flour

8 oz oats

Preheat oven to 200°C, gas 6 and grease a suitable shallow tin. Peel, core and chop the apples then toss with demerara sugar and cinnamon. Melt together the butter, sugar and syrup then stir in the flour and oats. Spoon half this mix into the bottom of the tin then layer the apples on top. Finish with the rest of the oats mix and press down lightly. Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes then cut into pieces before leaving it to cool completely.

Birthday buffet

2010-10-03T13:09:00.007+01:00

It was my eldest daughter's 8th birthday yesterday and in the afternoon she invited 4 friends over for a Science party. As an ex-science teacher myself, I ran the party, guiding the children through a series of exciting science experiments for an hour and half, followed by a buffet tea, jelly and compulsory cake. It was a lot of hard work and the kitchen looked trashed by the end of it but I'm pleased to say the children had a great time and they went home bubbling with excitement and telling their parents all about it. Any parent of children of that age will know that things have to be VERY exciting for a child to voluntarily tell you anything about it!

Knowing I had this party at the end of the week, I had to get myself organised at the beginning of the week. My youngest daughter had a cake sale at school on Friday and I knew that by then I would be too busy with party preparations to make cakes for that. So last Sunday, with plenty of apples harvested from our trees, I made some individual apple pies and instead of cooking them I popped them in the freezer until Thursday then baked them fresh for Friday. I had a few spoonfuls of the apple filling left over so I put some into the bottom of foil tart cakes and made a little bit of crumble topping to go on top. These I cooked after taking the Sunday roast out and we had one each, served with whipped cream on top.

Individual Apple Pies (makes 12)

1 lb (450 g) apples – peeled and sliced

¾ oz (20 g) light brown sugar

¼ teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon water

4 oz (110g) plain flour

4 oz (110g) wholemeal flour

4 oz (110g) butter or margarine

2 oz (55g) caster sugar

A little milk

A little extra brown sugar

Placed the apples, sugar, cinnamon and water in a pan and cook with the lid on for twenty minutes until fluffy, stir occasionally. In the meantime, preheat oven to 180°C (gas 4). In a bowl, sift together the flours and rub in the butter/margarine to make a breadcrumb consistency. Add the sugar then bind with a little water to form a dough. Roll out the dough and cut out circles to form the bases. Place the base circles into foil tart cases or a suitable pie tin. Add a heaped teaspoon of the filling to each base. Cut lids out of the pastry and place a lid on each pie, crimping the lid and base together between finger and thumb. Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until almost cooked. Remove the pies and turn the oven up to 190°C (gas 5). Brush each lid with a little milk and sprinkle brown sugar over then return the pies to the oven for a further 5 to 10 minutes until golden. Cool on a wire rack.

Whilst we were at it, we used some of the smaller apples to make horrible shrunken heads to go on the shelf in the science party "lab". To do this, we peeled the apples then cut faces into them, similar to Halloween lanterns. Then we stuffed them into Kilner jars of brines for several days. After that, we rinsed them off, patted them dry and put them in a warm place to dry out for a few more days. By then they were ready to sit on the shelf, the brining and drying process stopping the usual apple browning long enough to serve their purpose. I expect we may make some more of these for Halloween.

One of my daughter's favourite restaurants is Red Hot World Buffet and she asked if we could make her party food similar to what you can get there. That's a big ask but I did my best with a selection of savory buffet food but it was the desserts I had most fun with. The girls love the desserts at Red Hot because they are tiny and they can eat lots without getting full. So I made some tiny little jellies, teeny blackcurrant cheesecakes, bite size pots of popcorn and some homemade iced-gem biscuits.

As you might imagine, these all went down very well with the children. Although when Steve tucked into a large version of the cheescake later that evening, slumped on the sofa in post-party exhaustion he said, "This cheesecake is really good... I mean REALLY good." I guess he was all out of adjectives by that point but I appreciated the sentiment!

Blackcurrant Cheesecakes

1 and half oz butter

6 digestive biscuits

250g tub marscapone cheese

1 and half oz icing sugar

3 tablespoons blackcurrant and lemongrass cordial (or something similar!)

Melt the butter. Crush the biscuits in a blender or in a bag hit with a rolling pin. Mix together the biscuit crumbs and butter then press the crumbs into 4 small dishes or large glasses. Refrigerate the dishes whilst you make the topping. Mix the cheese and sugar together until smooth then add the blackcurrant cordial a spoonful at a time, stirring between additionals. Dollop the cheese mixture onto the biscuit bases and smooth. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

2010-09-17T22:05:00.002+01:00

Judging by the number of chutney recipes books I sold this week, the preserve season is definitely in mid-flow. It was good timing then, to be invited to a local gardening club on Tuesday evening to give my talk "What to do with the stuff once you're grown it". I spoke about jam and chutney making of course, but also how to use up fruit and vegetables in a variety of different ways so as not to get sick of it. I had my recipe books and some of my jams and chutneys available for sale too that evening and most people went away with something in their hands as well as a few more ideas in their heads, I hope.

Hopefully, I'll sell a few more books and preserves tomorrow too when I go to the first fete of the season. As it happens, I'll be selling the last few jars of last year's stock as my current preserves are in boxes awaiting their pretty labels before they will be ready for sale.

One way or another it has been a week of busy evenings. Monday was OK, then out on Tuesday to the gardening club. My mum came over to dinner on Wednesday so she could drop off a few plants for me to look after whilst she's on holiday for two weeks. The girls were particularly interested to see the orange pips and peach stones in a jar that she had managed to get to germinate. Oh, that stem of lemongrass I stuck in a jar sprouted its first root this week by the way.

Despite it being midweek, I still thought I ought to make an effort to make a special dinner so after collecting the girls from school we went round to the allotment to gather a few more windfall apples to make an apple crumble. Whilst we were there we also gathered a few bean, mini corn and a diddy little cauliflower. Back at home, my youngest helped me make the apple crumble then I put some potatoes in the oven to bake and some gammon on the hob to boil then squeezed in a quick bath before Mum arrived. It was a lovely meal and tasty dessert.

Thursday night my eldest had her first karate lesson. All very well except the class runs from 5.30 to 6.15pm, which clashes with the time I'm usually making dinner. When she had asked if she could do the lessons we had decided it would only work if I dropped her off and Steve picked her up on his way back from work. Unfortunately, Steve was out at a meeting and didn't get back in time for his part of the arrangements so just for once I found myself drawn to the Chinese restaurant outside the class. Well, sometimes you just have to!

With everyone stuffed with Chinese take-away Thursday evening, there was still crumble left over after dinner Friday, which was handy. But with me being out most of Saturday I figured I wouldn't have time to make something for dessert on Saturday. So after dinner I made some lemon and lime cheesecakes. I came across this recipe a couple of weeks ago and it's fantastic - so simple you can make it in about 20 minutes or slightly longer if you choose to make it with the help of a child or two. I think it has a lot of potential for some fiddling with to make some different flavours so watch this space.

Lemon & Lime Cheesecakes (makes 4 individual ones)

1 and half oz butter

6 digestive biscuits

1 lemon

1 lime

250g tub marscapone cheese

1 and half oz icing sugar

Melt the butter. Crush the biscuits in a blender or in a bag hit with a rolling pin. Mix together the biscuit crumbs and butter then press the crumbs into 4 small dishes or large glasses. Refrigerate the dishes whilst you make the topping. Grate the zest off the lemon and squeeze out its juice. Grate some of the zest off the lime but do not use all of it unless you particularly like lime flavour. Squeeze out the juice of the lime. Mix the cheese, juices and sugar together until smooth. Dollop the cheese mixture onto the biscuit bases and smooth. Refrigerate and serve chilled.

A deep freeze juggling act

2010-09-05T21:17:00.003+01:00

There is something magical about this time of year when there is such an abundance of food ready to pick from the plot. I can quite understand why people have historically held harvest festivals at this time of year. I too feel the urge to give thanks (not quite sure to who or what) for the gluts of tasty fruit and veg. I could quite easily burst into song too!

Yet, at the same time, it can also be somewhat overwhelming. Nobody needs 16 cucumbers a week, or 8 courgettes and several pounds of apples. You can feel yourself beginning to drown in the stuff, wondering which form of preserving to turn to next. On Saturday, with the help of my girls (who were feeling particularly obliging), we harvested the onions, shallots and garlic. With the courgettes and cucumbers from a few weeks ago, a few plums and the windfall apples I now have all the main ingredients required for making chutney. But as chutney making is a stinky business that causes offense in my household, it is something I can only do in peace during the week and only one type a day so it's not an instant solution. And "instant" is what windfall apples and pass their best plums demand. So freezing would seem the better option (at least for those things that can be frozen).

Unfortunately, my chest freezer is neither huge nor empty. It is, apart from the more useful day to day meal items, largely occupied by the summer's soft fruits, all waiting patiently to be jammed. So in order to put something in it, such as chopped plums or cooked apples, I have first to remove something from it. The first to go this week was a bag of blackcurrants to be converted into blackcurrant cordial. I have made cordial before from blackcurrants but I found a recipe from Olive magazine http://info.olivemagazine.co.uk/ for blackcurrant and lemongrass cordial. So, having purchased 4 lemongrass sprigs from Tesco, I used 3 of them with the blackcurrants to make the cordial. And very tasty it was too, the lemongrass adding a refreshing citrus undertone. The fourth sprig of lemongrass I have popped into a jar of water to see if I can get it to root (these things amuse me!).

Blackcurrant and Lemongrass Cordial

500g blackcurrants (thawed, if frozen)

3 lemongrass stalks

300ml water

300g granulated sugar

Finely chop the lemongrass and place it in a pan with the blackcurrants and water and put a lid on the pan. Gently heat to bring to the boil, boil for 1 minute then turn off the heat. Leave the pan to infuse for a few hours or overnight. Add the sugar to the pan and bring back to a boil, stirring all the time to dissolve the sugar. Strain the mixture through a sieve, squashing the berries to remove as much juice as possible. Ladle the juice into sterile bottles then refrigerate. Dilute to taste and use up within a month.

Next I removed a few more blackcurrant bags to make several pounds of blackcurrant jam. And then a few strawberries and raspberries to use with some fresh windfall apples to make summer fruit jam. Where next? I have a couple of pounds of windfall apples to use asap - do I make apple and blackcurrant jam or cucumber and apple chutney, green tomato chutney or brown sauce? Decisions, decisions... although it matters little as I shall make them all within the next couple of weeks and have my store cupboard well and truly stuffed by Christmas.

Blackcurrant Jam

Ingredients (makes 4 to 5 jars)

4 lb (1800 g) blackcurrants

2½ pints (1400 ml) water

4 lb (1800 g) sugar

NB: Every pound of blackcurrants requires 12½ fl oz water and 1 lb sugar

Method

Pick over the blackcurrants but there is no need to wash the fruit. Put them into a preserving pan with the water and bring it to the boil. Simmer for 40 to 50 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the skins are tender. In the meantime, warm the sugar. When the fruit is cooked, add the sugar to the blackcurrants and stir over a low heat until the sugar is completely dissolved. Boil rapidly for 6 to 8 minutes until the setting point is reached.

Summer Fruit Jam

1 lb (454g) strawberries

4 oz (110g) raspberries

1 lemon

2 lb (900g) apples

16 fl oz (450ml) water

3 lb (1350g) sugar

NB: Every pound of apples requires 8 oz (225g) strawberries, 2 oz (55g) raspberries, half a lemon, 8 fl oz (225ml) water and 1 lb 8 oz (680g) sugar.

Cooked the strawberries and raspberries with the lemon juice and about 4 fl oz (100ml) of water for a few minutes until soft. Pour into a jelly bag and allow to drip until cool then squeeze the juice through. Peel, core and chop the apples and cook with the remaining water until soft and pulpy. Add the red fruit puree then the warmed sugar and stir until dissolved. Bring to the boil and boil vigorously until set. Pour into warmed jars and seal immediately.

Feeding a house guest

2010-08-29T21:43:00.003+01:00

My mother-in-law was staying with us for a week this last week. It is slightly different having a house guest for a prolonged period compared to guests over for the evening. For a start, you have to tidy up properly rather than just pushing things into cupboards out of sight otherwise you're stuck for a whole week not able to open that cupboard! But also, you can't eat like a dinner party for 7 nights in a row. No one has the stamina to cook like that night after night and no one has the stomach for it either. Having said that, you know you can't just boil some pasta, grate some cheese over it and fork it into your mouth whilst watching TV... it just won't do!

So for the past 7 nights I have been cooking a variety of "nice" meals. Not overblown, show-off cookery nor reheated make-do meals. Instead, a few good quality ingredients, simply cooked. What makes that a good deal more achievable is access to the very freshest, organic fruit and vegetables, something top chefs not only prefer but often insist upon. Seasonal vegetables, picked within hours of being eaten, fruit hand picked and handled with care. Something that is worth paying a premium for and yet readily available from my allotment plot just on the other side of my garden fence.

On the menu this week, chops, gammon, fish and sausages, served with chips, mash, santed potatoes, new potatoes, baked potatoes, French beans, carrots, broccoli, sweetcorn, beetroot, tomatoes, lettuce, cucumber, courgettes, onions and fresh herbs. Perhaps the finest meal was Wednesday's when everything in the salad was homegrown.

And for dessert...? Strawberry swirl cheesecake, raspberry trifle, chocolate courgette muffins and apple & cinnamon crumble.

With a menu like that who needs to eat out?

Apple Crumble

Apple crumble is a classic bake but some versions can be overly sweet with a sickly, sticky crumble topping. This recipe retains its fruity flavours and the crumble topping is reminiscent of flapjacks.

2 lb (900 g) apples – peeled and sliced

1 oz (25g) soft light brown sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

3 oz (85g) sultanas

2 tablespoons water

4 oz (110g) wholemeal flour

4 oz (110g) oats

4 oz (110g) light brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

3 oz (85g) butter

Place the apples, sugar, cinnamon, sultanas and water in a large pan and cook with the lid on for twenty minutes until fluffy – stir occasionally. In the meantime, preheat oven to 180°C (gas 4). In a bowl, add the flour, oats, sugar, baking powder and butter and use finger tips to rub into crumbs. Spoon the apple mix into a suitable ovenproof dish and layer the crumble mix on top. Level it off then bake in the oven for 30 minutes until golden brown. Serve with custard.

Variations:

Replace the apples with fruit such as plums or rhubarb. Also try reducing the weight of apples and replacing it with blackberries.

A picking perspective

2010-08-20T10:57:00.002+01:00

When you grow your own food there is never anything tastier than the first picking of a particular crop... the first strawberry in June, the freshest first pea, the tastiest new potato. This seems to be a combination between the build up of anticipation as we watch a crop mature, the fact that we have not tasted a homegrown version of it for almost a year and some physical reality that the first is always the freshest and juiciest of the bunch.

This is certainly the case with peas and mangetout where the first ones are truly delicious and the last ones are... well... full of fibre and definitely good for you... but somewhat lacking on the enjoyment front! Then there are other crops, such as courgettes, where the first ones, fried simply with a bit of garlic and ginger are delicious but three months later we are so sick of the sight of courgettes we quite frankly need a nine month break before tasting another one.

There is another similar phenomenon that comes with the quantity of a crop that is available. The first few raspberries are picked with care and each one enjoyed. But a few weeks later when you have been picking punnets of raspberries once every three days you find that if you accidentally drop one whilst picking you don't even bother to bend down to pick it up. Not so the few blueberries from my blueberry bush where each one was carefully placed in a bag and retrieved when dropped if necessary.

We have just been away on holiday for three weeks and we took with us some freshly picked peas and mangetout, a few French beans and 4 courgettes. These ran out during the first week away so then we had to buy vegetables. On our return, whilst my parents and Sue had become sick of the sight of courgettes and fairly fed up with French beans, we were back to first picking perspective and once again enjoying our crops as if they were the first of the year. My mum was telling me about all the raspberries they had picked whilst we were away and how many ways they had been eating them. "Oh, do you like raspberries?" asked Steve. "Used to," my dad replied, which sums it up really!

Gardening Club Party

2010-08-06T11:27:00.003+01:00

After another successful year of running a gardening club at my daughters’ school, it was time to celebrate our successes by holding an end of year party. Once again I sent out an invitation to all 34 children who had done gardening club at some point during the year and of those about 22 were able to attend the party. The week before, my current gardeners came inside for the afternoon and we made strawberry ice-cream lollies and raspberry jellies with the fruit we had grown in the little school garden. They also sowed some cress onto cotton wool to make a quick catch crop for sandwiches, and printed garden designs onto paper party bags.

A few days before the party, I made vegetable samosas with our homegrown potatoes, shallots, broad beans and peas. And then some onion bhajis with our onions. This was something of a challenge as I don’t own a deep fat frier but I managed to do an oven baked version that turned out well, providing 12 bite sized bhajis, just perfect as a taster. Children are never big fans of onions so it was a challenge to find a way of making onions appeal to children. With the mild spices and no added chilli powder these morsels proved to be a tasty sweet and savoury snack that the child

ren enjoyed.

On the day of the party itself, I boiled some eggs and grated some cheese to go with the cress in sandwiches. I crushed some garlic, mixed it with butter and chopped parsley and spread it in between slices in two part baked baguettes to make garlic bread. We had grown some Yukon Gold, Rooster and Blue Danube potatoes in a stack of 3 old tyres. To preserve the beauty of the yellow, red and blue skins on the potatoes I simply washed them and sliced them into chunky wedges. They just needed a quick mix with some sunflower oil, salt and pepper before going into the oven for half an hour. The remaining potatoes (Rocket and Vales Emerret varieties) I boiled and served with melted butter. Finally, for anyone feeling unadventurous, I also brought along a pot of homemade raspberry jam.

So for half an hour, whilst I cooked and prepared the food with a couple of helpful parents, the children went outside with Sue and built up an appetite running around playing games in the garden. Then they came inside to tuck into their feast. I invited the headteacher down to join us and she too was impressed by the spread of food. “Isn’t it amazing what you were able to grow in the school garden,” she said as she tucked into a samosa.

“Isn’t it amazing what you can make with potatoes and onions,” I quipped back.

But let’s face it, if you are able to grow potatoes and onions you’ll never starve!

Vegetable Samosas (makes 32)

1 large potato

1 medium carrot

1 handful peas

6-8 broad bean pods

2 shallots

½ teaspoon mustard seeds

½ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground coriander

¼ teaspoon garam masala

Salt

250g pack filo pastry

Sunflower oil

Peel the potato and cut into small chunks. Peel the carrot and cut into small pieces. Boil the potatoes and carrots until soft. Remove broad beans from their pods then boil for about 10 minutes. Drain and cool then remove the outer skin from each bean. Peel and finely chop the shallot and fry until softened. Remove the shallots from the frying pan then add the mustard seeds and fry until they start to pop. In a bowl, combine the vegetables with the spices and salt to taste (add more spices if you prefer a stronger flavour). Preheat oven to 200°C, gas 6 and grease a large baking tray. Open the pack of filo pastry and keep it covered with Clingfilm and a tea towel to stop it drying out whilst you work.

To make a samosa, cut a sheet of filo pastry in half and brush it all over with some sunflower oil. Fold it into thirds along its longest length to make a long, thin rectangle. Place a spoonful of the filling at one end of the pastry strip then fold the end of the pastry diagonally over the filling to make a triangle shape. Then fold this over and over in a triangle shape until it reaches the other end of the pastry. Brush both sides of the parcel with sunflower oil and place on the baking tray. Cover with Clingfilm to stop it drying out whilst you make the other samosas. Cook the samosas for 15-20 minutes until lightly brown. Either serve immediately or store in an airtight container until needed then reheat for 10 minutes at 200°C, gas 6 to crisp up the pastry before serving.

Onion Bhaji-Bites (makes 12)

5 oz onions

Sunflower oil

¼ teaspoon turmeric

¼ teaspoon ground coriander

Pinch ground cumin

Pinch ground ginger

2½ oz Gram flour

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon ground cumin

½ teaspoon ground coriander

1 generous teaspoon tomato puree

2 tablespoons water

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and grease a baking tray. Peel the onions and top and tail. Cut the onions in half then slice thinly. Fry the onions in a pan with a little oil until softened, stirring constantly. Add the turmeric, cumin, ginger and coriander to the onions and stir well before removing from the heat. Place the flour, salt, cumin and coriander in a bowl and mix well. Add the onions to the bowl and mix well until the onions are well coated. In a small cup, mix together the tomato puree and water. Add the tomato puree mixture to the flour and stir in to make a sticky mixture. Take teaspoonfuls of the mixture and form into small balls then place on the baking tray. Bake for 10-15 minutes until golden. Serve immediately or allow to cool. To reheat, place in an oven at 180°C,

A night to remember

2010-07-18T11:17:00.000+01:00

As usual I’ve been extremely busy but now the summer holidays are here I have a bit of time to catch my breath and catch up on my blogs, although I'm currently away on the North coast of Scotland where the mobile broadband signal is flaky to say the least so blogging isn't too easy!

On 15th July Steve and I attended the gala awards evening for the 2010 Brit Writers Awards at the O2 in London. My Preserves book (available to buy from my ebay shop, by the way) had been nominated for the non-fiction category prize. Apparently there had been 21000 entries to the competition as a whole so reaching the top 6 in any category was a huge achievement. It is fantastic to have people read your work and to decide it is good enough to be seriously considered for such a prize. Amazing really that a recipe book can generate that much excitement in people who aren’t actively seeking a solution to a glut of fruit or veg.

As the evening was a black tie event we had to get ourselves poshed up for the event. This is not something that comes naturally to me. I’d rather be stood on the allotment in a t-shirt that has seen better days and a pair of trousers with a few holes in. It’s not to say that I neglect my appearance but with so many things to get done in a day, spending time on my hair and make-up is a low priority and my clothes need to be practical. So it was a rare treat to go to the hairdressers and have someone spend 45 minutes transforming my long red locks into a glamorous “updo”. And then slip into a long velvet dress and give myself a makeover. As an unexpected finishing touch my Business Buddy friends had buttonhole flowers delivered to our door for Steve and me.

At 3 o’clock, with my mum setting off to pick the girls up from school, Steve and I headed into London. It’s not often that I get treated like a VIP but I think I could get use to it should I ever become a famous writer! At 6 we sat down for our VIP meal and then around 8 the awards ceremony began.

I didn’t expect my humble recipe book to win, and that proved to be the case, but it was an honour to get that far and to treated like a VIP for the night. Like Cinderella, I was home and in bed for midnight but unlike Cinderella, the next morning there was the school run to do and plenty more potatoes to peel!

A tale of two cakes... and a trifle.

2010-07-14T21:26:00.005+01:00

It was my youngest daughter's 6th birthday on Friday. Of course for her it was a very important and special day and rightly so, so it was only proper that I helped to make it a special day too despite the timing of it being smack bang in the middle of the busiest fortnight since the week before Christmas!

Her birthday also happened to share the day with the school's sports day and summer fete. From her point of view it just helped to make her day even more special. For me, it meant squeezing her birthday around fete preparations and spending a couple of hours standing in a field watching her throwing bean bags about. As well was the usual jobs of sticking tombola tickets on donated prizes, this year I was running a fruit kebab stall with the members of my after school cooking club. This required some last minute shopping for fresh fruit as well as organising equipment and so on. So from dropping the girls off in the morning I remained in school until 11.30. Then it was time to nip home, have lunch, slap on sun block and rush out again for the sports day at 1pm, followed directly by the fete at 3 until 5pm. So when exactly was I going to make her a birthday cake?

I had made arrangements to visit Gulliver's Land for her birthday treat on the Saturday, followed by dinner at my parents' house. For this I had planned a white chocolate raspberry ripple cheesecake as her "birthday cake". My daughter absolutely loves soft fruit so she welcomed the idea of this cheesecake with enthusiasm. With no cooking involved I managed to make the base and the raspberry sauce bits on Thursday in between other jobs and I just needed to assemble the thing at some point on Friday. So in my lunch break I blended the creamy bit together, swirled in the raspberry sauce and returned it to the fridge before dumping the messy bowls in the sink and dashing out again.

White Chocolate Raspberry Ripple Cheesecake

For the base

75g digestive biscuits, crushed

75g gingernut biscuits, crushed

75g butter, melted

For the topping

200g white chocolate

30g butter

1/4 vanilla pod

250g cream cheese

90ml whipping cream

100g raspberries

25g caster sugar

For the biscuit base combine the crushed biscuits and the melted butter in a bowl then press into the greased base of a 20cm circular tin or dish. Place in the refrigerator for at least half an hour to solidify. Next, melt the chocolate, butter and the seeds from the vanilla pod in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. Leave to cool. In another bowl, mix together the cream and cheese and beat until smooth. Once the chocolate mix is suitably cool add it to the cream mix and stir thoroughly. Spoon onto the biscuit base. Reserve a few raspberries and place the rest in a saucepan with a couple of tablespoons of water and the caster sugar. Heat gently, squashing the raspberries with a spoon to break them down. After about 5 minutes remove from the heat and strain through a sieve to remove the seeds. Spoon the raspberry sauce over the cheesecake then gently swirl it through the upper surface of the creamy layer with a skewer or spoon handle. Chill over night then place the reserved raspberries on top before serving.

It slowly dawned on me that it was her birthday that day and she didn't have a birthday cake to stick candles in whilst we sung happy birthday to her. So back at school as the final preparations were being made for the fete I scanned the pile of donated cakes for the cake stall and under a piece of foil I found a homemade sponge ring cake. Perfect! I threw a donation into the pot and stashed it away at the back of the fruit kebab stall.

Several long and hot hours later, tired and stuffed with ice-creams, sweets and hot dogs we returned home. I grabbed the remaining whipping cream left over from making the cheesecake and whipped it until it was thick. Then I spooned it into the centre of the sponge ring cake, topped it with a selection of our soft fruit and decorated the ring with sugar flowers and six candles. Wow! It felt like I'd performed some sort of miracle!

Needless to say that with bellies full of fete food there wasn't much appetite for the cake, although the candles and song were greatly appreciated. So today with half the sponge ring left over I used it as the base for a raspberry trifle. I don't know who made that delicious sponge cake but whoever it was I am hugely grateful to them!

Gradually getting there

2010-06-25T22:00:00.003+01:00

On Monday we had homegrown mangetout with our dinner.

On Tuesday we had homegrown mangetout and broad beans with our dinner.

On Wednesday we had homegrown mangetout and broad beans with our dinner and strawberry cheesecake for afters.

On Thursday we had homegrown mangetout, broad beans and new potatoes with our dinner, strawberry cheesecake for afters and elderflower cordial to drink...

It sounds a bit like a game like "I packed my bag", doesn't it? But what a satisfying meal we had on Thursday night.

I started the week by picking a small sandwich bag of mangetout and a few strawberries. Well, it was my daughters who picked the strawberries. Off they went in their enthusiastic way with their plastic mushroom trays to put their harvests in whilst in the meantime I picked the mangetout. They appeared at my side a few minutes later and as I raised my eyes from the plants I caught sight of my eldest's tray, half full of lovely ripe strawberries already. "Oh, well done," I said, raising my eyes further to see how my youngest had done. Her tray was empty and her mouth stained red. "I was peckish," she said with a grin.

On returning home I asked my daughters what I should do with the strawberries that had made it as far as the kitchen. As it happened a few weeks ago there had been a deal in Tescos where you could buy a meal for 4 people consisting of a main course, side and dessert for £5 so I gave it a go, choosing a raspberry swirl cheesecake as the dessert. My eldest had always been suspicious of cheesecake (as I had been at her age) so had never felt adventurous enough to try it before but this one was so pretty she decided to brave it. And she loved it so when I asked about the strawberries she asked if I could make a strawberry swirl cheesecake. Well, I'm always up for a challenge but I needed to buy some ingredients first.

I went to the supermarket on Tuesday and along with the cheesecake ingredients I also went in search of some potatoes to tide us over until our own were ready to harvest. As I have said many times before I hate old potatoes and supermarket potatoes at this time of year are rubbish. They were harvested sometime in 2009 and stored for months so when you get them home they immediately start sprouting and when you fry them they are so full of sugar that they burn and taste sweet. So I spent several minutes in the vegetable department scrutinizing the potatoes looking for something that was harvested in 2010. Eventually I found a bag labelled "Organic new potatoes" so I went for those. At dinner time I chopped them into chips and fried them and then it became obvious that these potatoes weren't new at all. They browned and turned soggy and were completely horrible. Surely, they meant "boiling" rather than "new" potatoes. Isn't there some kind of rule about the use of such a word?

On Wednesday, as I tackled the strawberry swirl cheesecake challenge I sent Steve out to the allotment to investigate our own potatoes. He returned with a little pot of small potatoes just as I was removing the cheesecake from the oven. Success on two accounts.

Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake

Base:

6 oz crushed digestive biscuits

2 oz melted butter

Filling:

7 oz soft cheese

3 oz caster sugar

1 egg

4 fl oz whipping cream

4 oz strawberries

2 tablespoons icing sugar

1-2 tsp lemon juice

To make the filling: Preheat oven to 180 °C, gas mark 4. Cream together the cheese and the sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and cream and whisk until thick. Place the strawberries in a blender with the icing sugar and lemon juice and blend until smooth then sieve to remove the seeds. Dollop the creamy filling onto the biscuit base and spread out evenly. Drop teaspoonfuls of the strawberry puree onto the cream mixture then use a chopstick or skewer to carefully swirl the strawberry puree through the cream mixture. Place in the oven and bake for 20 minutes then turn out the oven and leave it in the oven for another 10 minutes. After that open the oven door and leave the cheesecake inside to continue its slow cooling so that it doesn't crack. Serve chilled.

By Thursday my little bag of mangetout had all been eaten so I went back to the allotment to see if there were any more. I was amazed that in those few days everything had shot up several inches. The potato plants seemed to have put on about a foot of growth and the peas had not only grown upwards but had grown numerous pods. The mangetout plants had been busy too so once again I set to work picking them as my daughters went on their strawberry hunt. We came home with 1lb of mangetout, a bag of broad beans, a punnet to strawberries and a lettuce. A pound of mangetout!! In the shops that would have cost £4. And so to cook the tastiest meal of the year so far. Forget gravy and put away the ketchup... time to taste fresh vegetables at their absolute best.

Reasons to be cheerful!

2010-06-18T09:42:00.002+01:00

One of the major drawbacks of having an allotment is the amount of time and effort it takes to do it well. I happen to love every minute of it and would probably dedicate more time to it if I could but life has other obligations. Some people say to me things like, "I don't know how you manage to do so much, where do you find the time." Well, come to my house and I'll tell you, or rather my house will tell you. I do try to keep things clean and tidy but when there is always so much going on it is difficult to keep on top of it. My kitchen, particularly, as the hub of everything I do, is always a little choatic. It would be unusual, for example, to find the draining board clear rather than stacked with the last batch of washing up or a few jars of cooling jam. And in the corner you may find a bowlful of something steeping for a few hours before being transformed into something amazing.

But every now and then I just have to stop, take a deep breath and do a proper tidy up. Not the sort of tidy up that happens the day before visitors arrive where things get put into cupboards out of sight and then forgotten. No, a proper, throwing things out, organising and rearranging sort of tidy up. It is six weeks until the beginning of the summer holidays and this is how long I have given myself to sort the house out. So at the weekend the allotment was given just 2 hours of attention on Saturday afternoon and the rest of the time was spent indoors sorting. Well, actually, I did take off about an hour on Sunday to make a batch of rhubarb and elderflower jam...

Rhubarb & Elder Flower Jam

Makes 1 jar

1lb (454g) rhubarb

1 oz (25g) elder flowers

1 lemon, rind and juice

1lb sugar

NB: Every pound of rhubarb requires 1 lb (454g) sugar, 1 lemon and 1 oz (25g) elder flowers.

Chop the rhubarb into inch long sections. Mix all the ingredients together in an non-metallic bowl, cover and leave to stand overnight. Decant the mixture into a preserving pan and bring to the boil. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar, and cook until the rhubarb is pulpy. Bring to a vigorous boil until the setting point is reached. Ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately.

Whilst I was picking elderflowers for the jam I picked a few more and put them in my freezer. For the last two years I have wanted to make gooseberry and elderflower jam but have failed to manage it. The first year I somehow missed the elderflowers and the second year the elderflowers I froze for the job were still in my freezer when I stupidly accidentally turned my freezer off before going on holiday! This year I am determined.

Although there is a certain satisfaction to be gained from cleaning and tidying it generally makes me grumpy. I do like the smell of a freshly cleaned bathroom and there is something pleasing about a dust-free surface but I would rather be doing something else. So come Monday I was feeling a little cheesed off. By Tuesday afternoon I was desperate to get out into the garden again so after school I took the girls round to the allotment with me. There is something special about this time of year - the strawberry and mangetout season I call it. As the girls raced around looking for ripe strawberries I picked a bagful of mangetout. When the girls had had their fill there were still enough strawberries to bring a handful home to start a collection in the freezer. Eventually I'll gather enough in this way to make some jam. We had half the mangetout with dinner. I just love being able to cook a large portion of mangetout without forking out £1 on them and knowing that there will be the same amount ready to pick again in 3 days.

As always when we came in from the allotment I checked my answering phone for messages and was more than somewhat surprised to hear a message from a lady from the British Writers Awards 2010 telling me I needed to ring her urgently. That got my heart fluttering as I had only read the day before that this was to be the day they announced the finalists in the non-fiction category, to which I had entered 4 of my books. You can imagine my excitement when later that evening I read an email telling me that I was indeed one of the 6 finalists for the non-fiction award for my "Preserves" book. It was one of those emails you read over and over again just to check there hasn't been some sort of mistake. So now I have been invited to attend the gala black-tie awards evening at the O2 in London on 15th July! How exciting is that? But how pleasing too to have a book that is considered so good that it should be short-listed for such a thing!

So I started the week feeling a little grumpy and ended it feeling elated and to top it all the cherries are ripening too!

The Glory of Strawberries

2010-06-05T21:41:00.004+01:00

I went away last weekend for the Bank holiday to visit relatives. It was only for 3 nights but I was anxious to get as many of the seedlings in pots out of their pots and into the ground as possible before going away. With a bit of time/task juggling I managed to get everything except the pumpkin and tomato plants in the ground before I left. It was, therefore, something of a relief that it rained on the Saturday and gave everything a good watering.

On return from the relatives on Monday afternoon I went round to check everything had survived their unsupervised transplantation. I was pleased to see that the brassicas had settled in well, that the sweetcorn was thickening up nicely and the cucumbers were still intact. I was surprised, however, that the asparagus had grown so much in the meantime. The stems were so long that I hated the idea of cutting them back so I decided it was time to let it grow on. Usually asparagus can be cut until mid June so it was a bit early and it did mean that for once we had no veg to harvest from the allotment. At times like that I'm glad there are shops to fall back on.

One of the things I really hate about buying fruit and vegetables from the shops is the way you can buy anything at anytime regardless of whether or not it is in season. Not only are there issues about food miles and so forth but it takes away some of the variety and excitement associated with eating with the seasons. I have a rule never to buy strawberries so that when they are in season and growing on the allotment they are really a very exciting treat. My girls, particularly, look forward to June when the first strawberries ripen.

Well, I broke my rule this week and bought 2 punnets of strawberries - they were at least new season British strawberries, so fairly close to being homegrown. The reason being I needed to trial a strawberry knickerbocker glory recipe before the World Cup starts next week. The recipe, "Knickbocker World Cup Glory" uses the classic combo of strawberries and cream to create a red and white recipe to represent the England flag. As I'll be making the recipe next week with six seven year olds in after school cooking club, I decided it would make sense on many levels to try it out when my youngest had her best friend over for the day. I'm pleased to say it worked well - the 3 girls had a great time making it and an even better time eating it!

Knickerbocker World Cup Glory

(Serves 2 to 4)

1 tin of strawberries in juice

1 sachet of gelatine

400g strawberries

125ml apple juice

80g icing sugar

50ml whipping cream

50ml Greek yoghurt

Glace cherries

Open the tin of strawberries and pour the contents into a pan. Bring to the boil and simmer gently for 2-3 minutes. In the meantime, put 2 tablespoons of water into a small pan and sprinkle the gelatine over then set aside. Drain the strawberries over a bowl then push through a sieve into the bowl. Gently heat the gelatine until melted then pour into the strawberry liquid. Leave to cool for a while then pour into a rectangular container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until set.

Weigh out 200g of fresh strawberries and place in a blender with the apple juice and blend until smooth. Add the icing sugar and mix thoroughly until dissolved. Pour the strawberry sauce into a jug. Place the cream into a small bowl and whisk until it forms soft peaks then gently fold in the Greek yoghurt. Finally cut the jelly into small cubes. Now assemble the kickerbocker glory by layering together the remaining strawberries with the jelly, cream and strawberry sauce in tall glasses. Finish with a cherry on top.

When I did this I gave the girls plastic tumblers with an England flag on the side and then made mini England flags from pieces of paper and cocktail sticks. Great fun!

After walking my daughter's friend back home we stopped off at the local hedgerow and picked some lovely elderflower heads then later that afternoon I put them into a bowl to steep with the sugar water and citrus fruit. The kitchen was soon filled with the unmistakable summery smell of elderflower and lemons. The next evening I strained and bottled it and Steve had the first try, making it up with fizzy water and a good dash of gin. He declared it a definite hit!

Elderflower Cordial

2lb 4 oz (1kg) sugar

1½ pints (900ml) boiling water

1 tablespoon lemon juice

1 tablespoon lime juice

about 15 large elder flower heads

1 lemon, sliced

1 lime, sliced

Dilute to taste.

This weekend when we went out to the allotment what did we find? The first 3 ripe strawberries! Despite their Knickerbocker Glories earlier in the week the girls were still very excited about this and pulled each strawberry in half to share before running off to see if they could find anymore... a fruitless search (ho ho)!

Whilst they amused themselves in their strawberry hunt I pulled the autumn planted onions out of the ground. They have all bolted now so they aren't going to be particularly great onions and the ground can be better used for something else. I had just tossed the last of last year's stored onions in the compost bin so these new onions will at least fill the gap before the main crop ones are ready.

During the hunt for strawberries, the girls discovered the radishes were ready to pick. Not quite the juicy delights of strawberries but a useful crop nonetheless. So there I was thinking it was going to be a second week without fresh food from the allotment but instead we had 3 new things plus elderflowers from the hedgerow. And with the mangetout, peas and broad beans all flowering their socks off hopefully it is just the beginning of many weeks of homegrown food to come.

2010-05-24T21:26:00.004+01:00

So two weeks ago I was shivering in the wind and rain whilst potting on strawberry plants and this weekend I was roasting in a May heatwave - no wonder us Brits are always talking about the weather! Now I'm suffering from Gardener's Sunburn. This is along similar lines to the Builder's Bum, except it is sunburn along that line of skin that becomes exposed between top of trousers and bottom of t-shirt when bent over.

I started my weekend with a hunt for the sunblock, shorts, hats and sunglasses for the girls. Somehow summer had snuck up on me and left me completely unprepared. Suitably attired and protected from the sun we went out to the allotment before it got too hot. First I helped my eldest plant a couple of rows of Mini Pop sweetcorn at the edge of her plot. It has been about 5 years since I last tried growing these as my attempts in the past have failed to produce the desired crop. It is all too easy to wait too long before picking by which time they have turned from mini corn into a not particularly great variety of corn on the cob. Still, I have decided to try them again and work a bit harder to pick them small. Maybe having impatient young children nagging to harvest them will help. We'll see.

At the other end of the plot we planted 12 conventional corn on the cob sweetcorn plants. I've been struggling with low germination rates on the sweetcorn this year so after planting the ones that had germinated I investigated the others to see if they had in fact germinated but were yet to emerge. This was the case for 2 apparently empty ones but in two more I found tiny maggots in the sweetcorn seed. Not sure what they were but it certainly explained the problem.

After that the girls each sowed 12 beans. My youngest went first, sowing a yellow climbing French bean to fit in with her all yellow vegetable plot this year. My eldest is trying bollotti beans, mainly because they are speckled red when mature and that fits nicely into her red and purple colour scheme. By the time we had done that it was nearly midday so I picked 5 more rhubarb stems and a big bunch of mint from our little pond before heading home again.

Whilst mad dogs and Englishmen had there turn in the garden, I retreated inside and made mint choc chip ice-cream from the bundle of fresh mint. If you're a fan of the bright green stuff that tastes like toothpaste then you'd probably not like my version. It is still surprisingly green but the taste is of fresh mint, not mint essence. I think it's yummy... my youngest thinks it takes like leaves! Oh well, more for me.

Mint Choc Chip Ice-cream

A big bundle of fresh mint leaves

10 ml milk

3 oz icing sugar

284ml double cream

2-3 oz dark chocolate chips

Strip the mint leaves from the stems and coarsly chop. Put the milk and the leaves in a pan and heat gently, without boiling, for about 5 minutes. Pour the leaves and milk into a blender and blend until smooth. Add the sugar and stir until dissolved. Add the cream and stir. Pour into a suitable container then add the chocolate chips. Freeze for about 3 hours then remove from the freezer and whip up to break any ice crystals and to distribute the chocolate chips. Return to the freezer but repeat this after another hour.

Having chopped up the rhubarb, ready to make a second batch of rhubarb and ginger jam we went out to B&Q to replenish our supplies of potting compost and to buy some new canes. That morning whilst erectly a wigwam for the bollotti beans I had almost impaled myself boob first on a garden cane as it snapped under my pressure. They really do get quite brittle and dangerous after a few years and it was definitely time for some new ones. On our way home we popped into Dobbies and bought a few vegetable plants too. I know it's not best value for money but it is handy to have this facility when germination rates are poor or slugs have nibbled your seedlings. We bought carrot and beetroot seedlings (having failed to get any seeds to germinate so far this year), swede and red cabbage (having had snails eat all my seedlings), and sweetcorn (to make up for the poor germination rates).

That afternoon my girls went off to a party and Steve and I went back to the allotment. Steve cleared the last two beds whilst I planted my new carrot and beetroot seedlings and picked the asparagus. By then it was time to pick the girls up again before making tea.

On Sunday morning I made the rhubarb and ginger jam and in the afternoon we slapped on more sunblock and went back to the allotment. I started by erecting the new canes to support the French beans that Steve had sown the weekend before, whilst Steve rotovated the two beds he had cleared the day before. I soon filled these new beds with our freshly bought sweetcorn and brassicas. In the meantime, Steve sorted out the old strawberry bed ready to home our 48 new strawberry plants. By the end of Sunday things were really starting to look good - just the remaining brassicas, tomatoes and cucurbits to plant out now.

Back home, after a refreshing shower I decided to extend the feeling of a hot, sunny day by digging 8 oz of blackcurrants out of the freezer and making a blackcurrant trifle for pudding. The question is, will the trifle last longer than the heatwave?

Blackcurrant Trifle

Plain sponge or maderia cake

Apple juice or Creme de Cassis

1 sachet gelatine

3 tablespoons water

8 oz blackcurrants

5 oz granulated sugar

Custard

Whipped cream

Place the spong cake in the bottom of the trifle dish and soak with apple juice or creme de cassis. Place the gelatine in a small pan and sprinkle 3 tablespoons of water over it and leave to one side to swell. Place the blackcurrants, sugar and water in a pan and bring to the boil then simmer for 20 minutes until soft. Drain through a sieve, pressing the berries to extract the remaining juice. Gently heat the gelatine until melted then pour into the blackcurrant mix. Leave to cool then pour the blackcurrant liquid over the sponge and refrigerate for a few hours to set. Next, pour the custard over the jelly and return to the fridge. Add the cream before serving.

15 fl oz water

2010-05-15T22:06:00.003+01:00

What a difference between today's weather and last Saturday's. Sunny, warm... cheerful even and just the right weather to really get on with things. So, after hanging the washing out in the lovely sunshine that's just what I did.

I started with potting on the brassica seedlings. I had sown loads of brassica seeds two or three weeks ago and they had germinated with enthusiasm. Unfortunately, snails had crept into the coldframe and munched quite a few of them, preferentially the Brussel sprouts it would seem. I put out slug pellets mid-week which seems to have helped but in the meantime the seedlings towards the back of the cold frame have grown leggy. So I rummaged around for a collection of small flower pots, some plant labels and compost and potted the seedlings up, burying their long stems deeply. I returned them to the cold frame with fresh slug pellets and a dose of hope.

After lunch we all headed around to the allotment. Here I started by running my hoe between the rows of onions, shallots, garlic, peas and broad beans, all coming along nicely. Next I moved some self-sown leek seedlings to a more convenient place and added my deliberately sown leek seedlings to the same rows. Then I resowed carrots and beetroot. I had sown them originally the weekend before Easter but apart from one very small patch of carrots nothing had germinated. They are notoriously difficult to get started and there is lots of conflicting advice out there on how best to get them started. I have heard it said that watering them every day for 14 days after sowing is the answer but I have also been told you should never water carrots but only let the rain do the job. Who knows! Anyway, this afternoon I used up a whole bag of sharp sand, lining the bottom of each drill before sowing the seeds. Maybe this finer medium will help. Time will tell.

Whilst we were there a man from the parish council turned up with a map of the site in his hand. He told me he was checking to see if any of the plots were not being worked at the moment since our tenancies are due for renewal right now. We had received the renewal notices in the post this week. I don't know whether our parish council is typical but I found the whole thing very unfriendly and a little stressful. The notice went on about things which were against policy and the checks that would be made. There was a deadline for returning the payment by, after which time your plot would be offered to the next person on the waiting list, and to top it all they had increased the annual fee from £12 to £25 without a word of warning. Not that that is expensive but it is still more than double what it was and no mention it was going to happen. Allotment gardening is a great deal of fun and other plot holders are a friendly bunch so why can't the parish council be a bit friendlier too? You know, thanks for being a tenant every year for the past 13 years, always paying on time, keeping your plot tidy... and so on... and is there anything we can do for you... cut the grass more often, trim the over hanging surrounding trees maybe? So when this man in his bright red jumper appeared with a clipboard and map this afternoon I found myself feeling nervous, wondering who would pass the grade. Is May really the best time to work out which plots are being properly worked? Lots of bare ground and the sudden growth of grass and weeds at this time of year is hardly catching us at our best. The man in the red jumper didn't look like he knew much about gardening and I suspect he didn't have the imagination to work out what the plots would look like in a month or two when the seeds have germinated, when the things in pots growing at home had been planted and the weeds were a bit more under control. Not that I need to worry but some of the other plot holders might need to, and they are my friends and they have lives too which can at time get in the way of perfect plots for a short while.

Anyway, shortly after the man in the red jumper left I did too. The girls were keen to go home and I had some rhubarb prepared and ready to turn into jam too. Usually I bottle my jams in cute little 4 oz jars, and a few 2 oz jars too, which I label and sell at craft fayres around Christmas. However, this batch of jam is already earmarked for one of the school run mums who bought my entire stock of the stuff last year. She's impatient for her new supply and not at all bothered about cute little jars and pretty labels so I ladled this panful into three 8 oz jars, slapped a simple name label on it and emailed her to arrange delivery. Job done. What a satisfying start to the preserve making season. £25 a year... worth every penny!

Rhubarb and Ginger Jam

4-5 stems, weighing roughly 1 lb (454g)
The same weight of sugar as rhubarb
1 small lemon, rind and juice
1/2 oz (15g) root ginger, bruised
1/2 oz (15g) stem ginger, finely chopped
1 tablespoon syrup from stem ginger jar

Wash the rhubarb and cut it into pieces roughly 1 inch (2.5cm) long. Layer the rhubarb in a non metallic bowl with the lemon rind and sugar then pour in the lemon juice. Cover the bowl and stand overnight. Tip the contents of the bowl into a preserving pan and add the root ginger, wrapped in a piece of muslin. Bring to the boil then simmer for a few minutes until the rhubarb is soft, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar. Bring to a vigorous boil and boil for 5 to 10 minutes until the setting point is reached. Remove from the heat and discard the root ginger. Stir in the stem ginger and syrup. Ladle into warmed jars and seal immediately.