Dinner at the Chapel

Blackberry Jam, mirabelle plum compote and peanut butter granola

One thing I love the most is making food which feels super indulgent for free, well nearly free.

It seems a little early for blackberries, but here in the cotswolds there are a tonne of them ripe already with alot to come.

Yesterday afternoon was spent picking blackberries and any other free fruit I could find. I managed to get 2.5 kilos of blackberries and made some jam....

There was about 2 kilos of jam in the end...I am going to have to think of ways of using it!!!

I also picked loads of mirabelle plums (little yellow sweet plums) I can see why they might not be available commercially, they are small with stones, so are a faff, BUT they taste wonderful, and super delicious stewed with blackberries and some vanilla sugar. I had the compote for breakfast with home made peanut butter granola...which IS yum!

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The Granola was super easy to make:

Preheat over to 200 degrees

In a pan, put a glug of olive oil, a table spoon of honey, a table spoon of golden syrup, big table spoon of peanut butter (I used smooth)  melt it all together and then add oats keep on stirring them in until you have enough in there to absorb the mixter and its sort of crumbly (I will make it again and do proper quantities next time lol)

The chop up some hazel nuts or nuts you like and spread the mixture in a dish and bake in oven for about 10 minutes then take it out and give it a stir to break it up, and then put it back in, keep doing this until its nice and crispy.

Then let it cool and store in a airtight container, good for breakfasts or makes a nice instant crumble topping for fruit.

Been a travelling and fattening up!!

So....guess what my favourite thing about traveling is? Its the food I reckon....Its the food, then trying to find the recipes for the food, and then buying the things to make the food to take home with me so I can attempt a good stab at it.

This trip was a 2 week long business trip...first to Italy and then to the South of France, which was a total food fest :)

When ever travelling I always like to make sure I try something I have never had before...this has led to me eating things which might not be very urm...politically correct to some peeps, so I shall refrain from listing them all, but perhaps my proudest moment was the guinea pig salad I had in Peru. I didn't like it much but I ate it and thought it would make a good story someday for my grand children...who hopefully won't have any furry pets....

This trips extravaganza was Gesier's - turkey gizzard...in a salad, and it was so good I ate it 4 times over the course of 5 days in france lol! It seems however that I failed to take a photo....

Secondly I had supions...baby squids...I am a squid lover it has to be said, but the name....I love the name supions....

Rubbish pic...but it was taken on my iphone.

Also ate religeuse....which are like choux buns with creme patisserie filling, they are meant to be nuns, lol, I first had one of these when I was 13 on my french exchange, and I have never forgotten how good it tasted.

Those are just a few treats I ate, but suffice to say I am always inspired to cook when I get home from my travels. This time I was lucky because I went to France in my Van, which meant I could fill it up with as much French ingredients and wine as I could manage. I won't tell you how many bottles of wine I purchased, you would think I was alcoholic, but mainly its for dinners/cooking and for presents...so I am sure it will go fairly quickly lol!

Now the ingredients leads me onto the next conundrum. I love flour...the different types, the protein contents and ash levels and how it effects the dough, and yes I read extensively about flours, sad I know, but I have an obsession with substituting ingredients to get the authentic effect..I mean how many times have you come home from holiday and cooked something and it just doesn't taste the same....its not just because its not accompanied by a tequila, the beach and some sunburn, its because probably the ingredients are not the same...remotely....I know this because of my obsession with pizza bases and my eternal quest to get super thin ones like in Italy, its all about the protein and ash levels in the flour! I will write more about this another time, but suffice to say, I purchased about 6 kilos of french flour, so that I could compare them the the british versions to find out what matches the best for patisseries etc.

I also bought 3 cooking books in French...yup, and no I don't speak french that well...but strangely I learn fast when reading cooking books...who knew huh? Perhaps I should try and learn all languages this way!

I bought  bread machine book...cause it looked awesome...and 2 patisserie books. So far from one of the patisserie books I have made 3 things, an almond an apricot tart, creme patisserie....OMG how easy is this??? super easy...will translate recipe and take pics etc soon, I promise, and something else but I forget now...

So now I am being boring, there are no pictures and thats what peeps want...but if you are like me and you are flour obsessed, the table at the bottom is quite interesting: scrap that, this is much better...

I need to do some more research and compare then to the flours I have...I will write a post for me more than anything soon. I am about to make some bread from the book 'du bon Pain' which is called Pain Marguerite, it has kamut flour in it and I have some.... I'll let you know how I get on ;)

Chow!

 

 

Wild Rose petal jelly and elderflower champagne

Today involved some awesome foraging and cooking fun stuff.

We decided that we wanted to make rose petal Jelly and some elderflower champagne, especially as I found a pink elder flower bush :)

So firstly I used this recipe for the elderflower champagne and this is how its looking so far...all I would say, is that it wasn't easy to get rid of all the bugs...this is the first time I have tried it, so it might take a few attempts before I get it right...

I am hoping the pink will make it pink...I am also very grateful for having a load of cava bottles from my book launch party!

SO secondly I have always wanted to collect wild rose petals and make rose petal jelly....and today we spent 2 hours searching for wild roses and we managed it! We did include 3 red roses to add to the colour, but apart from that the rest were all wild...very satisfying...

So the recipe we used was from a book called Herb Sufficient by Christina Stapley, its an interesting book with alot of things in it...the basic recipe was:

90ish grams of rose petals (the more fragrant the better)

425ml cold water

100ml of liquid pectin

juice of 1/2 a lemon

900g of sugar

3 jam jars which equal about 1 litre in total or 2 kilner jars of 500ml each.

 
This is what they looked like. I used my Le Crueset heavy pan to do this as it kept the temp controlled better...

You pop the petals and the water in the pan and warm it up, BUT  don't boil it, or even simmer it, ist just below that, keep the lid on as you want to keep all the moisture in.

set the pan aside and leave to cool for 2 hours.

The petals will have lost all the colour, and the fragrance will be in the liquid.

Strain them, and then give the petals a good squeeze to get all of the moisture out, return the liquid to the pan and add the lemon juice.

Gently warm it, whilst adding the sugar until its all desolved, then heat it so its boiling rapidly, add the pectin and boil for 2 minutes, then pop in jars....

Apple cinnamen rolls...

I should really go to work rather than posting this, but hey, I never seem to record my triumps, cause they get eaten so quick!

So this recipe is an adaption of this on Green cilantro's blog I made the dough with a slight vatiation, and also used a chunky apples instead of a mushier sauce, and no syrup.

They are absolutely delicious...I will write the recipe here, but I need to calculate the percentages into grams.

It started off like this:

 to this:

to this:

To this  ;)

Caraway cake and growing things to eat

I have this little tiny book called 'Food from the wild', which is a proper old fashioned foraging book, and I love reading it because I love that kind of stuff. I was reading about caraway growing in the wild, and I am going to see if I can grow some of my own, however there was a tiny and brief recipe for seed cake....sounded a bit intriguing, so I thought I would have a go...I made it and its really good, the caraway has a wonderful flavour in the cake.

I will pop the recipe here as it was very vague and so I had to guess quite alot of it and yes the little black things are seeds!:

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees.

Butter a tin, I used tin where the bottom comes out, which is approximately 25cm in diameter.

Ingredients:

4 Eggs

250gms Plain Flour

250gms Butter

250gms Sugar

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 Heaped desert spoon of cornflour

1 heaped teaspoon of caraway seeds

Pinch of salt

Sieve the flours together with the baking powder and salt, I did this a few times to make sure it was well aerated and blended, I hate the taste of baking powder if its not mixed in properly. Then add the caraway seeds.

The cream the butter and sugar until pale and then whisk in the eggs.

Fold in the flour gently into the mixture.

Pop it into the tin and into the over, turn it down to 180 and then cook for about 35 minutes, until golden brown and the knife comes out clean when you pop it in the cake.

The next bit of the blog is linked to cooking, kind of ;) I love growing stuff to eat, I don't think I have ever tried to grow anything that can't be used in cooking....

I went to the garden centre to see if they had some citrus trees because have a lovely warm conservatory type thing on my house and it would be perfect for a lemon tree, but all the trees in the garden centre were non edible, so to my disgust I just picked up an aubergine and squash plant and a few packs of seeds, one being swiss chard (it looked easy to grow) and lemon grass, which is slightly unusual so I thought I would try it. After looking at the pots I was deterred because its so costly, I decided I would find something suitable at home to house my seeds.

I came up with the idea of egg boxes:

I will let you know if anything happens....

Oh and as for the lemon tree...I cut up a lemon and have followed these instructions....

 

Wild Garlic Pesto

I decided that foraging for food is much more fun that going to the supermarket and its also something I want to learn about alot more, so the only way to learn is to experiment.

Wild garlic is still in season, but I don't think for long, the great thing about the leaves is that you can freeze them, so you can pick loads and loads and loads and keep them, as they are quite strong so you don't need loads for a dish.

I think the flowers would be amazing in things too, and actually coated in a thin batter and fried would be lush, I intent to try this before the garlic season is over.

So I think the wild garlic I have is the ramsons type. I picked about a kilo and then froze it, so I could just take plenty when I needed it, its a bit like spinach, so it disolves really quickly, so you can use it straight from the freezer.

So to the recipe....

This makes plenty for 2 people.

A big handful/bunch of wild garlic,

75ml olive oil

25 - 30 gms of grated parmesan

a handful of chopped walnuts

half a teaspoon of sugar

3/4 of a teaspoon of salt.

Put the olive oil into a bowl and pop in the garlic leaves, (stems are ok too, they are well tasty).

Blend them with the olive oil with a blitzer, and then add the walnuts and blitz these too.

Stir in the cheese, and sugar, and then add salt and pepper to taste.

You may want to add more cheese and salt.

Stir into hot pasta, if you find the taste too strong, it is softened with a dash of cream.

 

 

 

 

I am back and chicken and fennel risotto

Well....I had some serious time out there for a while...I moved, and didn't get the opportunity to cook very much as I was being catered for by my darling mother, Now I have my own little space again and despite only being there 3 days have relished the wonderfulness of cooking and creating again...expext to see lots of recipes here from now on starting with yesterdays... no pics, but I will remedy that following this!

One of my favourite things about cooking risotto is the process, accompanied by a glass of good wine, and some good company, risotto is a treat to make. This one came from me using up leftovers and OMG it was so good!

Serves 2

Ingredients:

300gms of risotto rice

200gms left over roast chicken.

3 strips of smokey streaky bacon chopped

1 fennel bulb chopped

1 crushed garlic clove

1 good glug of dry white wine

50gms parmesan

knob of butter

sale

600mls of HOT home made chicken stock

Saute the fennel and then the garlic in olive oil on a lowish heat until soft, add the bacon and chicken, and then the rice and get them coated in the oil. Then add the good glug of wine. when it is nearly absorbed, start adding the chicken stock bit by bit until its all absorbed, (can take about 25 minutes), keep stirring all the time.

When the rice is pretty much done, take it off the heat and stir in the butter and then most of the cheese.....Serve the rest of the cheese sprinkled on top.

Yum!

 

Baking queen

Baking up until recently has been an uncommon occurrence in my household, mainly because I love savoury food, and I just kind of get mystified with flour and all the different types, don't get me wrong, I have used all sorts of flours in my time, and I have a good knowledge of weird flours, lol, but I have been trying to replicate certain dishes like a very thin Romanesque style pizza with not much success for years, i.e. can't get it really really thin.

So I decided to get scientific about it, after all, I hate not understand why things don't work. So I went on amazon, and I purchased 4 books which I felt might help me on my journey to becoming a better baker.

I think the two worth mentioning are the following: Ottolenghi which does have some really nice baking in it, but I think what I loved was the fact that for most of the recipes I had the ingredients in my cupboard, I did have to invest in some sumac and pomegranate molasses, but more of that in a later post.I LOVE this book, it made my stomach turn over with excitement, and I planned my first recipe, which was the ricotta ravioli with sage butter and aubergines, there are no pics, but this turned out to be a gorgeous dish, and the vegetarian claimed it as a favorite.

Then I decided to make brioche, I had it in my head this would not work, I don't know why, and then when I couldn't use a mixer because mine broke and I only have a blender, I thought it was even worse, but I tried anyway, and I tried to use my blender to mimic the way the mixer works as closely as possible. You have to leave this overnight to rest in the fridge, but this was the result before cooking, it looks a bit lack luster and sloppy:

BUT this is the result after cooking:

And this after cutting:

It was absolutely beautiful and soft and buttery, I ate it warm with butter, warm with jam, warm with cream and jam, and toasted, lol, it was absolutely fabulous, I suspect it could have risen a bit more, but I shall try it again and perfect it. I also made some bread, and adapted the recipe a bit, and again it was really really good!!

Then came to Easter baking, I purchased another book, which I feel is going to turn my cooking around, because it has science in it, it explains about protein contents of flours and why they are suited to certain types of cooking, especially with Italian cooking, which for me is v exciting.
Its called The Italian Baker.

I shall talk more about this in a separate post, but I made pizza dough, and it was the closest I have ever got to one of those wonderful pizza's in Rome, lol, but its a story/recipe in its self.

Finally I made hot cross buns using this recipe and they turned out beautifully, so soft and moist inside, they were the best hot cross buns I have ever had, they were great toasted next day too, I can highly recommend this recipe; (by the way, I couldn't be bothered to put crosses on, lol)

 

Finally I made cookies from this recipe for the children, I had to stop stuffing myself, they were so so good!

Hope you had a great easter too ;-) xx

Raspberry scones

OK, I love freshly cooked scones because they are so quick to make,  I don't mind dried fruit in them, but actually, I prefer them without. But because scone dough is a dense mixture its makes putting soft fruit in it sort of impossible, because they all break up. So I discovered a way to add fruit to scones which works like a treat!!

Basically use frozen fruit, I LOVE raspberries, and I always have raspberries in the freezer, I make these at least once a week and they are best with raspberry jam and a little cream ;-)

Ingredients:

8oz/225gms of self raising flour
1.5 oz/ 40gms butter
1.5 tbsp caster sugar
pinch of salt,
5floz milk
0.5 tsp of baking powder
Large handfull of frozen raspberries.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees/gas mark 7, or 425f

Line a baking sheet with grease proof or grease a baking sheet.

Sift the flour and baking powder into the mixing bowl to get plenty of air in, and then rub in the butter with your fingers till its like breadcrumbs.

Stir in sugar and salt stir in so it is evenly distributed, add the raspberries (still frozen of course) and then start adding the milk, and stirring it in, keep adding and then use your hands to make it into a dough, but don't man handle it too much, just bring it together because the raspberries will start to defrost immediately.

Roll out the dough until it is about 2cm thick, use a round cutter and cut the rounds out.

pop on baking sheet and bake for about 12 - 15 minutes.

These are best eaten slightly warm.....

yum yum  xxx

My fav cake recipe in the world - plum cake

I am predominantly a savoury person, I do like cake, but I can have cake lying around and I wouldn't eat it; unless it was pop's fruit cake. But I do LOVE sponge and fruit, but stewed fruit. Infact stewed fruit is my fav way of eating fruit, lol.

And on one of my health kicks, I bought some figs, because they are super nutritious, but then kind of wasn't sure what to do with them, so in a desperate attempt to use them before they went bad I found a recipe for fig and raspberry cake, the sponge is kind of something between pastry and sponge, and has a super texture, its also so easy peasy to make, and actually you can stuff it with any fruit you like in the middle, I often use apples and raspberry's or today I used plums which worked a complete treat, it really good as an afternoon treat or even a very satisfying pudd.

So here goes, the recipe is slightly adapted from one in the book 'The Produce bible' by Leanne Kitchen, the amazon book link is on the left sidebar and I can highly recommend this book, its stupendous.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Ingredients:
175gms unsalted butter
145gms of caster sugar
1 egg
1 egg yolk
260gms of self raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
7 plums, chopped
tsp of grated lemon peel
sugar for sprinking on top

Method:

Cream butter and sugar until its light and pale, Add the egg and egg yolk, and beat again, sIft in the flour and baking powder and add a pinch of salt, stir it to combine, chill for a few minutes until its firm enough to roll out.

Divide the dough into 2 halves. I used a loaf tin this time, and it worked superbly, take half the dough and fit it into the bottom of the tin, I just spread it out with my hands rather than rolling it out. Add the layer of chopped plums and sprinkle lemon yest over, roughly shape second half of dough and pop it on top and then spread this out gently to the edges, but don't compact it though, sprinkle sugar on the top ad cook for 30 minutes, then let it cool a bit and gently turn it out, its nice to eat still warm or cold is nice too.

You can use any fruit that cooks well, like raspberries or cooking apples or apricots, or mixtures of them are superb as well.

I like it served with a bit of creme fraiche.....