St David’s Day Pie
01 Mar 2012 Leave a Comment
As it’s St David’s day I made a Leek and Potato pie. Very much a spur of the moment decision so it’s a ‘make it up as you go along’ recipe. Came out really well so I’ll share it with you. And it will taste just as good on any other day!
Serves 3- 4
150g plain flour
75g butter
25g cheddar cheese, grated
1 tbs olive oil
15g butter
1 leeks,finely sliced
1 medium onion, finely sliced
2 or 3 rashers of bacon, cut into thin strips (optional)
200g waxy potatoes, finely sliced
75g cheddar cheese, grated
3 eggs beaten
2 tbs crème fraiche
1tsp wholegrain mustard
A little black pepper
Make shortcrust pastry with the first three ingredients plus enough cold water to bind it together. Roll out the pastry and line a flan tin, leaving a little pastry overhanging the edges. Bake blind at 180° gas 4 for 20 minutes. Remove the paper and cook a further 2 minutes. Remove from the oven.
Parboil the potatoes until just soft. Strain the water off. Fry the bacon until cooked then remove from the pan. Cook the leeks and onion slowly in the oil and butter until soft but not browned. Stir in the bacon and cooked potato and put the mixture into the flan case.
Mix the cheese, crème fraiche, mustard and black pepper into the eggs and pour carefully over the mixture. Bake for about 20 minutes at 180° gas 4 or until set.
Steak, Kidney and Potato Pie
16 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Beef, Recipe Books Tags: Beef, kidney, pie, potato, Simon Hopkinson, steak, steak and kidney, The Good cook
Husband is the whizz with pastry in our kitchen so he made this amazing pie at the weekend. It’s a Simon Hopkinson recipe from his book ‘The Good Cook’ Yum-yum!!
Heston v Baker Brothers
06 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in Reviews Tags: Baker Brothers, Channel 4, cookery programmes, Heston
There were two new food programmes on Channel 4 this week – How to cook like Heston and The Fabulous Baker Brothers. One felt ‘real’ and one seemed totally manufactured ……but which one was which? We expect Heston to be whimsical and off the wall but what he explained about how to cook beef properly made total sense and made me want to head off to my butcher NOW! We are definitely having steak this weekend.
The Baker Brothers however, were just eye candy. Do I believe they are brothers with adjoining baker and butcher shops? Not really. The spaces they worked in were styled to the nth degree. It looked like a production company had dreamed them up.
Apologies to the brothers if that is what they are but for me Heston was the more real.
Our Christmas
29 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Life's little extras, Pork or Ham, Puds Tags: Aldens, Christmas, gammon, Heston Christmas pudding, sticky toffee pudding, turkey
We’ve just had an amazing family Christmas, four days of eating,drinking and being merry!
This year I abandoned Waitrose and bought the turkey from Aldens in Oxford. It was the tastiest free range Bronze turkey bred locally at Staveall Farm in Thame. I only discovered Alden’s recently but I will definitely be a regular customer – they also own my favourite Fishmarket.
I was sucked in by the hype and went for the Heston Christmas pudding with candied orange and boy, was it worth it! The pudding fans decared it the best ever! For non Xmas pud eaters I made my famous STP’s.
Boxing Day we had a huge Cranberry and Orange Glazed Gammon with Dauphinoise potatoes and two more of my favourite puds – Apricot and Almond Cake, moist and gooey with its hidden layer of marzipan and a Lemon Meringue Cake with a sharp lemon curd and soft cheese filling.
As is the custom, my daughter provided the buffet trolley with a selection of mini quiches, crisps and nibbles. Champagne was accompanied by smoked salmon blinis. Just in case anyone felt a little peckish later on daughter had made the most deliciously moreish florentines and husbands, who has mastered perfect pastry, made a tray of beautifully decorated mince pies. Yes, I know goldfish aren’t what you’d expect on a mince pie but I’m sure they’re lucky!
(pics to follow soon)
Chocolate Mousse
22 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
This is the most amazing quick chocolate mousse recipe.
85g plain chocolate, finely chopped
2tbs water, brandy or rum
10g unsalted butter
3 large eggs, separated
Put the chocolate and liquid in a heatproof bowl over a pan of hot water. Leave until just melted. Remove the bowl from the heat and gently stir in the butter.
Leave for a minute then gently stir in the egg yolks one at a time.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff peaks form. Stir a quarter of the white into the chocolate mixture to loosen it then gently fold in the rest. Spoon into separate bowls or one big bowl.
Chill for at least two hours.
Serves 4
The Fat Duck
20 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Eating out, Life's little extras Tags: Fat Duck, Heston Blumenthal
’I've got butterflies in my stomach’ I said…….’I feel nervous’. Why was that? After all, we were only going out for lunch.
Well the reason was this – our very discerning children had paid for us to have lunch at The Fat Duck as a ‘special birthday’ present. I had some slight misgivings – what if I didn’t like something? Could I make myself eat snail porridge?
Well, we ate our way through about 16 different dishes and do you know, I left a clean plate every time! Even the snail porridge.
There are many, many reviews of the tasting menu around so I’m not going to go there! Anyway who am I to ‘review’ Heston Blumenthal? All I can say is this – the whole experience is out of this world. It’s an amazing blend of science and whimsy. Some of the dishes are scary – the frozen cocktail that you have to ‘down in one’ and dry ice comes out of your nose, some are spacy – like eating fish and foam while listening to the sound of seagulls and shingle.
Some are confusing….how can a drink be hot and cold at the same time?
Others are amazingly complex – a wafer of oaky taste that melts on your tongue to precede a dish of chicken liver parfait, quail jelly, crayfish cream and truffle toast…..oh, and a little lawn of green moss in front of you with a fog of oaky dry ice.
One of the desserts arrived with ‘Happy Birthday’ scribed along the plate which made me cry.
The bag of ‘Sweet Shop’ delights at the end which made me laugh!
Whoever can invent a chocolate that tastes like a jam tart deserves a gold watch when he retires. But if it’s a Heston gold watch it will dissolve into a bouillon to pour over the Mock Turtle soup! Mad as a Hatter………brillig!!
If that wasn’t enough, the recommended wines we chose were perfect, the service was impeccable and the bill was……….well who knows, we weren’t paying! All I know is that our children must love us very, very much!
Lamb Shank Casserole
11 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in Lamb Tags: cannellini beans, Lamb, lamb casserole, rosemary, stew
Whatever the weather, well almost, hubby goes bike riding with a friend on Friday afternoons. What better to come home to, after a couple of chilly hours on The Ridgeway, than a rich warming casserole of lamb and beans – the scent of rosemary reminiscent of a mediterranean summer!
Serves 2
2 lamb shanks
1 onion, peeled and chopped
2 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 sprigs of fresh rosemary
500ml chicken stock (can be made with stock cube)
1tsp plain flour
1tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp Worcester sauce
1 tbsp mint jelly
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 can of cannellini beans
In a large frying pan, fry the onion and garlic in the oil until soft. Add the lamb shanks and brown all over, then add the rosemary sprigs and leave to wilt for a minute. Strain all these into a lidded casserole.
Add the flour to the remaining oil in the pan and stir for 30 seconds. Add the tomato puree and stock and stir until thickened. Add the Worcester sauce, mint jelly and balsamic.
Pour this over the lamb shanks and put the casserole into an oven gas 4 or 180 for 2 hours or more. About ½ hour before serving add the cannellini beans to the casserole.
This is my entry for the competition at Sheepskin boutique holiday cottages.
Carrot and Potato Pie
09 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in From the veg patch, Veggie Tags: carrot, cheese, Crecy Pie, pie, potato, tartiflette, vegetarian
Just picked a load of charentais carrots so thought I’d try a carrot and potato pie. As I also fancied a Tartiflette type pie, without the lardons, I came up with this….and delicious it was too!!
1 small onion, thinly sliced
10 smallish new potatoes
4 medium sized carrots
1 clove garlic
4fl oz milk
2 tbs crème fraiche
1 small egg
75 g mixed Red Leicester and Cheddar cheese
Salt &pepper
Pinch nutmeg
(bacon or lardons optional)
Pastry made with 120g plain flour and 60g butter.
Line a tin with the pastry and bake blind until cooked. Cook the onion slowly in a little olive oil and butter. Add the garlic and cook for a few seconds. Slice the potatoes and carrots thinly and simmer until nearly soft. Mix the onion, potatoes and carrots together and put half of them into the pastry case. Sprinkle over half the cheese. Add the rest of the potatoes, carrots and cheese. Whisk the crème fraiche, milk and egg together, season with salt, pepper and nutmeg and pour on top. Bake at 180 gas 4 for about 20 minutes or until set.
This is my entry for the Lovethegarden.com Christmas Carrot Recipe Competition.
Say no to Packaging.
01 Dec 2011 1 Comment
in ....just a thought Tags: bananas, broccoli, packaging, waitrose
A few months ago I moaned about the price of Waitrose bananas! The price discrepancy between loose and packaged fruit is huge….twice as much per kilo for the packaged ones.
This week I came across the same ridiculous pricing on broccoli. Loose broccoli at £2 a kilo…packaged broccoli was £3.44 a kilo. You’re effectively paying 70% more for the privilege of someone picking and packaging it for you!
Aren’t supermarkets supposed to be cutting down on packaging? I don’t need my veg cling wrapped, I just pop it all into my ‘veg shopper’ – no bags, no plastic, thank you!
The Gallery -The Table!
30 Nov 2011 2 Comments
in ....just a thought Tags: Sticky Fingers, table, The Gallery, The Kitchen
Someone suggested to me that, as its about the kitchen, this would be a good week to do my first ‘The Gallery’ post.My kitchen has evolved over 20+ years, it’s the hub of the house. I spend many hours cooking in it, we eat there most days, we sit around with friends and a glass of wine….and what is the most important thing in it? The table. This table is about 70 years old. It was my mum’s table, I grew up with it, made tents under it, had picnics with Big Ted under it….there are still scorch marks where I lit candles on the ledge where the drawer opens. Then my Dad used it as a work bench in his garage until I rescued it. One day it will belong to Baby Genie!!
