Thursday 16th of May 2013

A simple roast tonight, just a lovely piece of pork shoulder, some baked potatoes and one vegetable; some sprightly-looking spring greens that I couldn't resist when I was out shopping..

Take a whole head of garlic, the cloves separated but unpeeled, two or three lemons, quartered, and 3 shallots, skins left on and halved. Add to this several fresh bay leaves and, if you can, a pig's trotter, split. I get these easily from my butcher, and they cost next to nothing (and often actually nothing).  Rest the pork on top, I unrolled the joint to allow for quicker cooking and maximum output of crackling. Pour over a little oil, then sprinkle with crumbled dried bay leaves (I dry the leaves from our bay tree in the microwave, giving them 30-second bursts until dry and crunchy) and a good grinding of white pepper. Obviously the cooking time will vary based on the size of your joint; I work on 20 minutes per pound (or 450g, if you prefer) in a hot oven.

Pouring a glass of white wine over the pork after about 20 minutes and later still adding 350ml, give or take, of stock (I used pork stock, but chicken would be fine too, as well as fine crackling (the secret to which, strange as it seems, is regular basting with the juices from the roasting tin) it produced an easy gravy that was not as thick and meaty as some, but aromatic and flavoursome with a kick of sharpness from the lemon.  Hubby wasn't as keen on this as he is on my more usual thicker and 'meatier' gravies, but the children and I adored it.  When the pork is cooked and resting, strain the juices into a saucepan.  Add a splash of boiling water to the roasting pan and, with a wooden spoon, scrape up the 'burny'- looking tasty bits from the bottom.  Strain this liquid into the pan too, then cover and boil hard for a few minutes to emulsify the gravy.  Season to taste and pour into a warmed jug.

Serve the pork, sliced, with shards of crackling, baked potatoes and simple steamed greens.  Perfect.

Cath xx

Old Favourites

With a lovely weekend like this one has been and the children content to play for hours in the sunshine,I've done very little but sit in the garden, listening to the radio, leafing through magazines and, as the evening draws closer, drinking those stubby little bottles of French lager that just say 'summer' to me.  Last night, we barbecued some quickly home-made burgers with some sausages and revisited our old faithful barbecue side dishes of barbecued garlic mushrooms and brown rice salad.  The smell from the grill was fantastic, and sitting in the garden, just chatting, is a really terrific way to spend a warm Saturday evening (even if it did have to be cut short, all too abruptly, by the children rushing indoors for their weekly Doctor Who fix).

Tonight, I'm continuing the weekend's classic favourites theme by serving up my cheeky, cheaty pasta bake with a simple lettuce salad and no fuss whatsoever.  Then back into the garden...

Cath xx 

Bunking Off in the Garden

Lovely, isn't it? To see the signs of Spring appearing everywhere, to feel warmth from the sun on your bare arms, to hang your laundry out in the breeze and even to be brave enough to eat supper out on the patio... I have been outside for so much of the last couple of weeks, often just sitting and breathing in the glory of nature (hence no posts - sorry about that, I do feel sort of bad). I have attempted to get our little garden in some sort of order and made plans for summer bunting and outdoor picnics (rather than the carpet picnics we have been restricted to for what feels like years, rather than months!).

Tonight's supper was a slightly spicy little number. We ate my version of Keema, a simple spiced meat dish, accompanied by the Spiced Potatoes with Spinach which my boys love so much. It somehow felt so right to be eating it outside.


Spiced Potatoes with Spinach

This, I suppose, is my approximation of the Indian restaurant classic Saag Aloo, which I love, love, LOVE!  Anything with spinach is A-OK with me, especially if the children love it too!

2 tbsp oil
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 bay leaf
1 onion, halved and sliced thinly
2 cloves garlic, minced
2cm piece ginger root, minced
 400g potatoes, cut into 2cm-ish cubes
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp garam masala
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp kalonji (AKA black cumin or nigella seeds)
140g bag baby spinach leaves

Heat the oil in a large pan (it needs to be one with a lid).  Frizzle the bay leaf and mustard seeds briefly, then add the onion to the pan and fry until soft.  Stir in the garlic and ginger and fry for a moment more before adding the spices.  Stir well, add the potatoes and then pour in 150ml water and clamp on the lid.  Turn the heat down and simmer for 10 minutes, then stir the spinach through the potatoes as best you can.  Lid back on, heat back up and cook for 3 minutes or so until the spinach has wilted down.  Try not to eat it all straight out of the pan before serving it (though this is the hardest part of the recipe for me).

Divine with a dollop of raita; my lazy version is here.  Enjoy!

Cath xx

Grow Your Own

Tonight we ate, for the very first time, vegetables that I'd grown myself in our little back garden. Sure, it was only a lettuce, but baby steps are better than no steps at all and I can't describe the pride with which Christopher and I went outside, chose a lettuce, cut it, and prepared a simple Green Salad to accompany our dinner of Spaghetti & Meatballs. Anything that gets a three-year-old to eat a plateful of unadorned lettuce is worth it in my book.

I'm sure I'm not alone. I thought that vegetable gardening would be difficult, time-consuming and that you were either born with green fingers or you weren't. Sorry to all those gardening buffs who ply a trade full of seeding, weeding and feeding, but it's actually not that hard. To paraphrase Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (or 'Hairy Knitting-Wool' as he's affectionately known chez Homer), plants want to grow, leave them to it.

So that's what I did. I bought some plug plants from the local garden centre (£1.50 for 6 plants, not bad), stuck them in a patch of earth that I'd rather half-heartedly dug over and watered them occasionally when I remembered. I did a bit of weeding last week, but only because we'd been away and the lawn had begun to encroach rather badly on my self-styled 'allotment' .

I would feel quite smug, if I didn't know how little I'd actually done in the way of work (let alone back-breaking labour and - eek! - actual digging). Roll on the crop of 'lazy' broad beans - I can hardly wait!

Chickening Out

I'm hardly doing any cooking at the moment. It's so gorgeous outside that I just want to be out in the garden; reading, playing with the children and tending my plants. The most I seem to do lately is (lazily) stir a bowl of Tzatziki or Minted Yoghurt together to dip torn pieces of pitta bread, or potato wedges, into. I did, however, manage to sling some chicken fillets into a marinade, for tonight's dinner, this morning.

Herbed Chicken in Lemon

I used a couple of handfuls of herbs; parsley, chives, rosemary and a few bay leaves. Some thyme would be nice, too, but mine seems to have died. Pants.

4 chicken fillets

fresh herbs (and see above), very finely chopped

juice of 2 lemons

1 tbsp whole black peppercorns, crushed

4 tbsp olive oil

Stir together the marinade ingredients in a large, shallow, ovenproof dish. Turn the chicken in the marinade, coating it well with the herbs, the cover the dish and refrigerate for as long as you can, up to 12 hours. Bake the chicken at 200°c for 15 minutes or so, then slice and serve.

Supper in the Garden - just!

Only just, as well - the end of our meal was rudely interrupted by a crash of thunder, so (putting aside any wistful thoughts of a evening spent lingering in the sun with a drink) we rushed the children and the crockery inside before the rain came down. And how it came down!

Never mind, at least we did get supper outside tonight. We've had lunch outside for the last few days, but I hadn't been quite brave enough to go the whole hog until this evening. It was a lovely supper, though; just right for a warm evening and not too many pots to wash up afterwards. We started with chickpea patties and tzatziki. I used to make the patties for the children, when they were babies, as early finger food and I suddenly thought how easy it would be to make them again; to use for ambulant snacks or as part of a first course.

Cheesy Chickpea Patties

Strong Cheddar or Parmesan are my choices for the cheese, however any hard cheese would suffice.

2 x 410g cans chickpeas, drined and rinsed
60g cheese, grated (and see above)
1 egg
1 tbsp flour
1 tbsp tahini paste (if you have it)
2 tbsp olive oil
chopped parsley

Bung everything in the processor and whizz to form a nubbly purée. Scoop out spoonfuls of the mixture onto baking sheets, then bake for 30 minutes at 160­°c until just tinged with brown. Cool on a rack, then store in an airtight box until needed.

To go with, I made tzatziki. For me, it is the apotheosis of hot-weather food and during the summer I make it once a week or thereabouts, as inevitable as the rain which follows the heat. I should own up, here, that I have never been to Greece, but I did know a lot of Greek students at university and something rubbed off, I guess. This is so easy and way better than the dismal stuff you can buy in a tub.

Tzatziki

The easiest way to dry the rinsed cucumber is to put it on a clean teatowel, gather up the corners and squeeze!

1 cucumber
salt
500g tub Greek yoghurt
2 tsp 'Lazy Garlic'
1 tsp lemon juice
chopped parsley

Quarter the cucumber lengthways and scoop the 'seedy' bit out of the centre with a spoon. Chop the cuke and plce in a colander. Sprinkle with salt, mix well then put a plate on top and set aside for 20 minutes or so to draw out excess water. Rinse and dry (see above). Mix the dégorged (for that is what you have done) cucumber with the other ingredients in a large bowl. Serve with, well, anything you like really.

The main course that followed is really simple and well received by all (maybe not veggies). You can, once assembled, freeze this in the dish, if it's freezerproof, then cook it (once defrosted) for 20 minutes at the same temperature given in the recipe. If you aren't prepared to 'lose' your oven dish to the freezer, line it with a big sheet of foil before you assemble the melt. You then freeze it like this and, once solid, simply 'pop' out the foil-bottomed block, wrap it over and return to the freezer. Bingo! I made one of these towards the end of both my pregnancies, to provide sustenance after each of our babies were born.


Tuna Melt

750g potatoes
25g butter, melted
1 small onion, finely diced
1 stick celery, finely diced
2 x 160g cans tuna in spring water, drained
chopped parsley
4 tbsp mayonnaise
150g Cheddar cheese, grated

Peel and grate the potatoes. Line the bottom of an ovenproof dish with the grated potato, press down and brush with the melted butter. Bake at 180°c for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, mix the other ingredients (bar the cheese) together. When the potato-lined dish is ready, spread the tuna mix over the base and top with the grated cheese (this is the point at which to cool and freeze it). Return to the oven for a further 15 minutes.

Sticky Chicky

This morning was a lot of fun; playgroup was cancelled today because the church hall was being used as a polling station, so I invited a friend and her little boy over instead. After playing in the garden, dressing up (and just a teeny bit of gossiping), we all had lunch together. I'd prepared Chicken Strips and made some garlic mayo to go with, plus we had bread, olives and all sorts of salad bits. I brought out some Chocolate Muffins for pudding. Chris trotted off to school with a full tummy and a big grin on his face. I only hope he wasn't too exhausted.

We've had, for the most part, a truly gorgeous afternoon. I took the opportunity to do a bit of pootling about in the garden, putting a trellis on the side of the shed for my sweet peas, weeding the patio pots and cutting dandelions from the lawn to bring indoors. Why is that that so many people seem to think of dandelions as a weed? They're one of my favourite garden flowers and look just like their name; a 'dandy' lion. If a flower could be a diva, this one would...a flashy, brassy cabaret of a flower. They are now sitting in an old Shippams fish-paste jar that we dug up when we moved in and started clearing the garden.

Tonight's dinner had a vaguely Oriental feel to it, but as usual it was inauthentically so. The first course is inspired by those lovely steamed dumplings, stuffed with char siu, that you get with dim sum.

Hoisin Pork Rolls

250g pork mince
6 tbsp hoisin sauce
1 tbsp tomato pureé

Fry the mince until browned, then stir in the hoisin sauce and tomato pureé. Leave the filling to cool while you make the bread dough.

3/4 tsp active dry yeast
400g strong white (bread) flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
300ml warm water

Mix together and knead to make a soft dough. Leave to rise until doubled, then knock back and divide into 12. Flatten the pieces into discs and place a blob of filling in the centre, then pull the edges up to cover it completely. Place the rolls on an oiled baking sheet, dust with flour and leave to rise again for half an hour or so. Bake at 200­°c for 15-20 minutes until puffy and tinged with brown.

The main course was these chicken pieces, doused in a marinade and left in the fridge earlier today, before being blasted in the oven tonight, accompanied by rice and a cucumber salad.

Sticky Chicken

10-12 chicken thighs or drumsticks (or both!)
4 tbsp sunflower oil
4 tbsp dark soy sauce
3 tbsp dark muscovado sugar
2 tbsp garlic vinegar
1 tsp ground ginger
black pepper

Whisk all the marinade ingredients together, then turn the chicken pieces in the mixture and leave them to soak up the flavours for a few hours. When dinner time is looming, lift the pieces out and place them on a rack over a baking tray, then cook at 200°c for 30-40 minutes, until cooked through, crisp and burnished.

Deck the Halls!

We put our Christmas tree up yesterday, after Karl and Christopher went out on the annual buying excursion. We spent the afternoon decking out the tree and the rest of the house, so everything now looks, well, as camp as Christmas. Yay! Proper paper-chains, three trees of varying sizes and no less than seven sets of fairy lights dotted around the house mean that it's begining to look a lot like Christmas. I went and ordered the turkey yesterday as well, a job that had been on my to-do list for a while. I can pick it up a couple of days before Christmas and get any last-minute bits from the nearby greengrocer and The Treehouse while I'm in town, thus saving myself the bustle and indignity of supermarket shopping immediately before Christmas.

It would perhaps be the understatement of the decade to say that I love Christmas. I adore it, and start getting excited about the whole shebang earlier than anyone else I know. I love settling down with my Christmas recipe books, planning what I'll cook, and making lots of lists to do with Christmas. The up side of this is that it's all pretty organised. The down side is that it just makes me worse! This year I have also (finally) got around to setting up a database of addresses so that I can print out all the address labels for our Christmas cards (complete with decorative holly clip-art, natch) and therefore have thankfully not practically broken my wrist by writing all the envelopes out by hand.




We've had such awful weather over the last few days that I was quite relieved to have a dry spell this afternoon so that I could nip out into the garden with my shears to cut greenery for decoration. Some ivy sprigs, round-leaved holly, rosemary branches and bay all came together beautifully to frame the mirror hanging over our fireplace. There's a lovely herbal fragrance scenting the room now, which is even better. It's especially lovely to have an open fire at this time of year; it always seems so festive and welcoming. The garland on the mantel itself is an artificial one with tiny baubles already attached, but I think it looks pretty good and the combination is great. I can't wait to sit in front of the fire with a glass of wine tonight. Maybe I should make some mince pies...

Dinner for the workforce

Today we've been putting up the new shed. Not so difficult, however dismantling the two other sheds it replaces and taking them to the tip was less fun. Karl was really quite taken with the whole 'Shedopolis' look of three(!) sheds in the garden, but that was never going to fly, was it sweetheart? Now that it's all up and painted with wood preserver stain thingy, it looks great. Chris enjoyed helping his Dad with some of the painting, althought 'muggins' here volunteered to climb around behind the shed to do the back wall, which is probably less than a foot from the neighbours' fence. Still, at least it's exercise. James just sat, in his Bumbo, under a parasol, watching us and chewing on a selection of toys. Never mind a dog's life...

Because we'd been hard at work in the hot sun, we had dinner tonight in the garden. I made a risotto, something we all love but that we haven't had for quite a while. I really enjoy making risotto, a mindless half an hour spent stirring means some much-needed down time. Today I listened to good old Radio 4 while I was cooking dinner, but I always have the radio on or some music playing.

I prefer to use carnaroli rice for risotto, which has larger grains than the other two kinds I've tried (vialone nano and the most widely available type, arborio). I can't find it locally, so it's another of those things that I have to stock up with when I'm away from home, or chat up visitors into bringing some for me. The stock should be homemade, but chicken stock is so easy to make that it shouldn't be a problem. My freezer is normally full of the stuff since we have roast chicken so often. It's not the same, but the Knorr liquid stuff called 'Touch of Taste' will do if you really can't face it. I should probably point out that James eats this because it's made with homemade (and therefore salt-free) stock, but if you use a prepared stock it won't be suitable for babies. Put the stock in a saucepan and keep it hot, but not boiling, at the back of the stove while you cook.

Bacon & Pea Risotto

25g butter and a drizzle of olive oil
1 onion, diced
200g risotto rice
glass white wine
800ml hot chicken stock
170g chopped bacon or lardons
100g frozen peas
fresh parsley, finely chopped
20g fresh parmesan, grated

Melt 15g of butter with a drizzle of olive oil in a deep, heavy frying pan. Soften the onion, then tip in the rice, stirring to coat all the grains with the fat. Pour in the wine and cook for a minute or so to evaporate the alcohol. Then, still stirring all then time, add a ladleful of chicken stock at a time and allow it to be absorbed by the rice each time before adding the next. After you've put in 2-3 ladlefuls, add the bacon and continue cooking in the same way. When only one ladleful of stock remains, and the rice is almost cooked through (test as you go, scooping out a grain of rice with a fork), stir in the frozen peas and the last of the stock. When this is absorbed add the parsley, parmesan and the last 10g of butter, cut into pieces. Give it all a good stir, then take the pan off the heat, cover it and leave it for a couple of minutes while you finish off any last minute bits.

Serve with a green salad and another glass of wine for the grown-ups (or at least the over-18s!).

Why did the strawberry cry?

Because he was stuck in a jam! (boom boom)

As it's almost the bank holiday weekend, half-term to boot and Hubby didn't start work until 1pm, we spent most of this morning doing housework and laundry - getting ahead of ourselves as we probably won't do much this week. Christopher's godmother (and nearly James' too!) is coming to visit us tomorrow. Hubby's parents are also coming to visit - they've booked a holiday cottage nearby and are bringing our nieces to stay for the school holiday. Christopher is so excited about seeing everyone!

I took the boys food shopping this afternoon, knowing I shall have at least one meal to cook for 9 people in the week. I hope to do more, but plans have yet to be made. I've stocked up on planty of sandwich-making things, too, as if the weather hold we'll be off picnicking, I'm sure.

After a busy day, I gave Chris some chicken, potatoes and peas for his dinner. James had the same, puréed a little. For afters, Christopher enjoyed a big bowl of the first British strawberries we've had this year. Not, sadly, ours from the garden yet, but we walked past a display of them and the heady, unmistakeable scent of ripe strawberries was just too much to resist. I've got some more to eat later, too.



As to the garden crop, I'm hoping for a bumper year, judging by the large number of flowers and the small fruits already appearing. Karl is checking them regularly and I don't think it'll be long before he appears at the back window, grinning, clutching the first homegrown strawberry of the year. I still don't think they'll be enough, so I'm already planning a trip to the pick-your-own farm at Penlanlas. I really fancy having a go at strawberry jam this year. That is to say, making it, though I'll doubtless eat more than I should. Story of my life really...

Green Fingers?

We've had pretty good weather here for the last couple of days, so I took advantage yesterday to get some gardening done at last. I'm hoping the weather will be good enough to use the garden when we have people over to celebrate James' baptism in a month or so, but until yesterday it was lo0king a bit neglected. I put a load of bedding plants in; stocks, pansies and snapdragons. This is the best way I know to brighten up the garden quickly (thanks Mum) and I filled a few containers on the patio too, two with impatiens (busy lizzies) and one large one with a gorgeous hydrangea grandiflora I spotted at Arthur Newman's Garden Centre, which is on the other side of Aberystwyth, but well worth the drive.

We also planted some Clematis montana var. rubens against the back fence, to grow up the trellis there. I grew sweet peas there last summer, which were glorious but they took so much work to keep them flowering that I decided to go for something less high-maintenance.

I also tidied up the herb garden. That's my rather grandiose-sounding name for what is actually a herb bed, sorry. It's well stocked now with

- oregano - mint - sage - tarragon - chives -
- rosemary - bay - thyme - marjoram -

So, the only herb in regular use that I need to buy now is parsley. I use so much that to grow enough I'd have to grow nothing but parsley. To be honest, though, part of it is that all the herbs we have are perennial and take little looking after (except regular culinary pruning).

Our little fruit patch is doing well too. We're rich in rhubarb, the gooseberries are coming on well and Christopher is asking if the strawberries are ready on an almost daily basis. The raspberries are a bit disappointing, but they didn't come from the garden centre, they came (pretty tiny and sad-looking) from Woolworths' sale, so perhaps they'll take longer to establish. Still, I wish we had space for more. Maybe vegetables in pots on the patio next year, what do you think?