My first sourdough of the year.

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a while will have come across my sporadic flirtation with sourdough baking.  There have been varying degrees of success which generally resulted in my giving up the experiments.  But I'm at it again!  A friend of mine who has been happily and successfully baking sourdough for a while now very kindly gave me a tub of his starter which I put to use last night.  He also gave me his personalised, tried and tested recipe which I followed to the letter.  It's a no knead method in which the bread is baked in a pre-heated metal pot and is considerably less hassle than getting the kneading correct.  It takes ages, mind you, but it's sitting and waiting rather than actually doing anything. 


The results were very good, if possibly a little damp, but that may be because I couldn't resist digging in as soon as I could. I'll get a better idea tomorrow when it's cold. I used a temperature probe for the first time ever and waiting until 96 degrees Centigrade before taking the bread out of the oven, so perhaps I just need to wait for it to be a couple of degrees hotter.  I've done a little research and apparently the optimum is 96-98. I must remember to buy some non-stick baking parchment as the stuff I used stuck to it rather dramatically as you can see in the pictures!

I'll have another go in a few days making sure that the starter is in tip top condition by giving it a good feed up in the preceding days.

The aroma of Christmas is all around. Finally.

Despite the distinct lack of general Christmasyness at home; no decorations, tree, or twinkly lights and the cards aren't even up, there is a whiff of Christmas in the air.  Much of the whiff is down to the 5kg chunk of smoked gammon which has been cooking for nearly five hours in a coating of ground star anise, corriander seeds, dried chilli and basted with a dangerously sticky mixture of hoisin sauce and honey.  It smells wonderful and despite the inch thick patina of burnt black stuff around the edges of the tin, I think that all is well.  The meat has been transferred to a dish which hasn't had the lethally burny combination of honey and hoisin pooling in it's base for four hours and I do hope that it hasn't been tainted.  To add to the distinct aroma of the season is a pot of spicy red cabbage with apple bubbling away, I love this vegetable accompaniment and think that it will cut through the sweetness of the gammon nicely.  Very soon I hope to be able to detect the distinctly satisfying bouquet of crispy jacket potato skins as well.  There is a ruby red pot of cranberry sauce sitting in the fridge ready to go to mum's to glam up her turkey tomorrow.  I have wrapped presents for Peter and my parents and will no doubt be roped (or ribboned) in to do Peter's wrapping too.


My Etsy sales have finally dried up for the holidays and I have a great hope that once everyone has opened their gifts where ever they are in the world, all of my lovely customers will come flocking back to treat themselves to the gifts they didn't indulge in during December.

I shall finish off this Chrismas Eve with a very nice and peaceful green Treasury which features my Fresh and Green notecard, it's nice to have a break from all of the reds and snowflakery.

A Happy Christmas to you all!

Winter Greens by GMA Jewellery

Who needs meat?

We had a bit of a veggie feast for supper tonight, with a vat of roast vegetables. There were onions, carrots, garlic, fennel, red pepper and aubergine with some cherry and baby plum tomatoes and olives thrown in at half time. Along with this little lot was my long time favourite of brown basmati rice and to top it off a naughty little treat. The treat in question was a big, beautiful and spicy onion bhaji which we bought at Unicorn (local vegan co-op), heated up, it was delicious with wonderful crispy edges. Topped off with a dollop of plain yoghurt. Yummy!



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Chicken Pie Has Begun

Everyone know that you really should make your own stock. I confess to being a little lazy in this department but for my dinner tomorrow night where I want to impress I have done the right thing.

My very smart chicken was butchered for me beautifully at Watirose in readiness for it's destiny in my pie. I roasted the the remaining carcass and bits and pieces along with two packs of wings before covering in cold water and adding leek, carrot, onion, garlic, thyme and celery and simmering gently for three and a half hours.

Here's how it looked at the start.

Chicken stock in progress., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

And here's how it looked three and a half hours later.

 

It smelled delicious and I was a bit peckish by the time it was done at about 10.00pm so I had a little private feast from the soft and tender meat clinging onto the wings and the delicious soft carrots!

I'm off for a run in the park now with my new Nike+ for the first time, I'll set the timer for thirty minutes and see how I do.  It's been a very long time since I ran out in the real world and I suspect that I'll find it very hard work.  But any calories burned in preperation for tonight's binge will be fantastic!

I was interviewed!

My friend Laura is promoting a brand new drink called Carnaby Brown which is a lightly alcoholic fruit based tipple in two flavours, a melony, muscatty one and strawberry/watermelony one.  Both have a zingy sparkle.

While I'm a dedicated drinker of gutsy Italian and Spanish reds Laura bravely decided to interview me over a glass or two (actually quite a few) glasses of each variety.  During the interview we were chatting about who I thought the drink would appeal to and I thought that it would be a great drink for people who didn't really want to drink too much - perhaps at lunchtime or the afternoon when you still have to be able to function and not have a snooze......Part of drinking at those times for me is to be able to have a nice nibble at the same time - anyone who reads this blog knows how much I like my food and anyone who shares a bottle or two with us at home will be presented with olives from my Olive Pot and some toasted pumpkin and sunflower seeds.  Click here to read Laura's interview with me!

I mentioned lemon marinated nuts in my interview which is something I've never actually made as I tend to use spices with nuts.  I've had a go at remembering what it is I actually do when I pop to the kitchen to rustle up a nibble or two for unexpected guests.

Non-marinated nuts to have with an afternoon tipple:

Melt some butter in a sturdy frying pan.
Add to it:
Soft brown sugar and let it melt gently
A couple of handfuls of almonds and cashews - actually any nuts you have will do
Maldon salt to taste
1.5 teaspoons cumin seeds
1.5 teaspoons ground coriander
Fresh rosemary sprigs
A squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some finely grated lemon zest
Dried chilli flakes to taste if you like

Let all of this heat through in the butter, stirring it all the time with a wooden spoon until the nuts have taken on a healthy colour and smell delicious.  The spices should smell fragrant and toasty, if you smell any burning or acrid, remove the pan from the heat immediately.

When they look delicious and tasty spread the nuts out onto a flat surface, don't heap them on top of each other.  This will let them cool and crisp up a bit.  Eat when cool.


This is one of my favourite things to make when I need to find a nibble, a tried and tested method.

Savoury Seeds in Tamari

Heat a heavy frying pan and add to it a handful of sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds.
Move them around constantly until they start to smell yummy, the sunflower seeds will start to jump up at you and the pumpkin seeds will start to puff up.  They will both begin to colour.
When they are nicely coloured but not burnt, remove the pan from the heat.
Stir in a couple of good glugs of soy sauce - I like to use wheat-free Japanese Tamari but I'm sure that whichever type of soy sauce you have in your larder will work perfectly well.
Once the cold liquid hits the hot pan it will steam and will seem to stick, so you need to have a wooden or silicone spoon/spatula to hand to start stirring immediately.
Keep stirring until all the seeds are coated and again, not burnt!
Remove to a flat plate or tray until cool and crisp.
Enjoy with a glass.  Or two.

I have written a blog post about my Olive Pot and here's a link to it: Click here to read about olives.

More Easter Food

Here's what our Sunday lunch looked like in the end!

Watercress soup

Roast spring lamb with rosemary and garlic

Rhubarb and ginger brulee

Easter food.

 There's nothing like a long bank holiday weekend to prompt a foodie post and Easter's no exception.

We've got a small gathering for lunch tomorrow, Easter Sunday when I shall be serving:

Vintage pink cava
Smoked salmon on something

Watercress soup with crème fraîche

Roast leg of spring lamb with garlic and rosemary, home made mint sauce
Home made lamb gravy
New potatoes
Chantenay carrots, with butter and parsley

Rhubarb and ginger brûlée

Tea and mini eggs.

I had some time this morning to make the soup and the base of the brûlée while Peter was busy on an Easter egg hunt in the woods next door with his daughter and her four children who were visiting for the day.

It was a nice peaceful hour and a half or so where I did what needed to be done and it was all super easy and relaxed.

Here are some pictures of my progress - if I remember tomorrow I'll take some pictures of the finished dishes and of course, the roast lamb.

The ingredients for the watercress soup - leeks, white potatoes, watercress, butter, creme fraiche.  

Also used was Marigold vegetable stock, freshly ground black pepper

 I know it doesn't look too tasty, but it did!  Here's the soup after about twenty minutes 

simmering and just before being liquidised for the final assembly tomorrow.

Yummy ingredients for pudding - Yorkshire rhubarb, crème fraîche d'Isgny, Greek
yoghurt, stem ginger in syrup, ground ginger, muscavado sugar.

This is how tasty it the rhubarb looks when all the non-creamy ingredients are
mixed together before roasting for twenty minutes or so until tender.

Peter's grandchildren bought us a treat too, at first glance they looked like chocolate cornflake cake, but were actually marshmallow, pecan, coconut and chocolate cakes and were very nice indeed with a cup of tea!

New Year's Eve at home.

Often on New Year's Eve we're very happy to just spend the evening at home with some nice food, fizz and usually Jools Holland on the telly - how middle aged does that sound!?  Going out becomes a hassle as you've got the taxi issue if you're not offered a bed by your hosts and that's a pain and a dull end to a nice evening, so that's why we often stay in.  This year we were planning the same but our neighbours called to say they were coming home and did we have plans so of course we invited them round and two more friends so I was planning a meal again.....We had three omnivores, one fish eater and one pregnant lady, so no meat, raw fish (was thinking of sushi for a starter), no raw egg (was considering chocolate mousse) and no unpasteurised cheese.  So a menu was forming:

Spiced pumpkin laksa.
Nice a spicy and coconutty, a perfect soup for a cold night, I'd never done this before and wasn't too thrilled with it, there was a subtlety of flavour lacking somehow, a late addition of nam pla made it a bit better.  Everyone seemed to like it though.

Whole baked salmon with tomatoes and salsa verde.
A tried and tested favourite, very simple but impressive.  It's a whole salmon filleted into two pieces, laid on a bed of tomato, capers and garlic, with a layer of salsa verde making a filling between the two pieces, then baked in the oven.  The hardest part of this is serving it as it's nearly impossible to slice through two seperate pieces of soft fish with a differently textured filling.  It totally fell apart, but tasted lovely!

 

Baklava.
No cooking involved, not heavy or filling, nice easy finger food to nibble.

We played the Logo Game after food and helped along by several bottles of fizz, the baklava, some Carluccios chocolate stars and a smattring of advertising and marketing people who knew almost every single answer we arrived at midnight very happily.  We popped out on to the terrace in the freezing cold and crystal clear night with Jools in the background (we had to fit him in somewhere) had more fizz and watched the fireworks erupt around us. 

This was lunch on Xmas Day...

Christmas lunch was totally untraditional this year, I've never cooked a turkey (my mother always does on one of the holiday days, in fact, this year today is turkey day).  I cooked the beef and the pudding on Xmas Eve and had the ingredients for the nibbles all ready to go on Xmas day and just sort of made them up at the appropriate time.

Here's what we ate to start with nibbles to go with out fizz:

Prawns in my special made up marinade (coriander, fish sauce, ginger, garlic, red chilli, sugar), smoked salmon with horseradish creme fraiche on blinis, smoked salmon pate also on blinis, Dolcelate and Blackstick's Blue on chickory leaves.

 

For our main - shin of beef casserole with herby mustard dumplings, sprouts with bacon, cabbage and cavolo nero and squashed new potatoes.

Pudding - Chocolate and chestnut terrine - seriously rich and rather nice!

Eyeshoot's First Calendar has been born!

I've finally finished my 2010 calendar - for the last couple of years I've wanted to do one but just haven't got around to it, but this year I seem to have got my act together! I think it looks great - I especially like the clear cd style cases, they're so simple and effective. I plan to make a 'print it yourself' version as well and possibly a version all on one page like a poster as I've seen other that sell well on that layout and now I've got the artwork sorted out I can tweak it to my heart's content!

The images are a collection of my favourites all of which have been for sale in my Etsy shop, some are very good sellers, others undiscovered gems!

You can find it here.





I've been very busy lately which shows in the scarcity of posts here.....I've had plenty to say and show, but haven't quite got around to it. I was working in London for three days with mum last week which was hard work, but it's always nice to be there for a while. We had a terrible journey home, arriving back late on Thursday and then the next morning, Peter and I drove for seven hours to start our long weekend in Dartmouth for a family wedding. I took photos as a freebie, I haven't even looked at them yet & we have the happy couple staying with us on Wednesday this week so I'd better get my skates on and at least do a first edit. On Thursday we're off to stay with our friends in Henley and in the evening going to The Young Vic to see one of Peter's sons in a play called Lub You at the Young Vic. The short play was in the 24:7 theatre festival in Manchester this summer and was voted as one of the three most popular plays which let to a short run at the Bolton Octagon and then to London. There's a great website designed by Peter and built by anther of his sons.

I've been planning and cooking a supper tonight for seven for what seems like forever. We're just having a swift g&t while we wait for our guests to arrive. On the menu:
Smoked Mackerel Mousse with capers and salad leaves.
Boeuf Bourguignon with new pototoes and green veg.
Pears poached in spiced vanilla syrup with chocolate sauce.
Brie with garnishes.

I need a holiday.

Chocolate Pavlova

Here's the yummy pudding I made for supper last Sunday, if you want to read all the detail, just click and it should pop up in another window large enough to read.

It was very delicious!

Mackerel on the bbq.

Fwd: BBQ mackerel., originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

Mum phoned this morning (well at 11.00) when we were still in our dressing gowns, Peter snoozing and me at my computer having just printed of a print to post to the USA on Monday (I do like to wake up to a sale) to ask if we fancied bbq mackerel for lunch. After considering the proposition for about five seconds we got our acts together and the day begun.

A quick trip into town resulted in my lovely new and much desired Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens to replace and upgrade my similar but slightly lacking 1.8 version of the same. Adam will be pleased that I won't be constantly borrowing his!

Then off to mum's garden in a rare show of properly summery weather. Wine was uncharacteristically refused after our excesses last night and the shiny silvery fishes were slapped on the barbie bursting with bushes of rosemary and lashings of garlic. This was a first time cooking experiment and despite losing most of the skin after the first turning due to not oiling the bars, the results were delicious especially with the flesh liberally sprinkled with Maldon salt, freshly ground black pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice. The result was very yummy and the rescued bits of skin had crisped up to perfection. I suspect we'll be doing it again!

It's pesto time again.

Pesto - The taste of summer!, originally uploaded by Eyeshoot Photography.

I don't have a garden and if I did have, I'm sure it would be full of dead things and weeds as I most certainly don't have a green finger anywhere on my body. One of my regrets in this department is that I miss out on growing edibles, never mind the pretty and useless flowers, I'd use any garden of mine for herbs and veg. I do slightly envy gardening friends at this time of year as they swim in basil and I buy mean little plastic packs from the supermarkets which turn to sludge overnight in the fridge. These packs irritate me so much that I hardly buy the delicious green herb at all these days. But yesterday I was shopping at my local Vegan Co-op Grocery, Unicorn, in Chorlton when I saw the most luscious bunches of basil for only 99 pence each, there was no way I could resist so I picked up two bunches. All I needed to do was to buy some pecorino and some pine nuts and I'd be all ready to make my pesto - here's how

The Ingredients:
2 big bunches of basil
pine nuts
Pecorino or Parmesan cheese, grated
(all of one or a mix of both, the pecorino gives a slightly softer taste.)
4 garlic cloves
the best quality extra virgin olive oil
salt and pepper

The Method
Blend together the grated cheese, raw garlic and pine nuts. This is much better than using a pestle and mortar because, firstly it will stop your arm from dropping off and secondly and most importantly, it lets in much less air and keeps the colour lovely and vibrant.

Fill the mixer bowl to the top with lovely fresh basil, stalks and all.

Mix and inhale the intoxicating scent.

Drizzle in enough olive oil to make a thick paste.

Season

Pour into sterilized jars, and very important - make sure to cover the top of the pesto with more oil and keep it covered at all times, else it will go off really fast. The jars will keep unopened in the fridge for ages, but eat open jars fairly fast. As if you could leave it alone!

If you make lashings of the gorgeous green goo, you can decant into ice cube trays I'm not blessed with a big freezer and I like to keep my ice cube trays fully primed for gin and tonics so I decant the pesto cubes into a bag. It was a bit of a green and messy fiddle as the cubes wouldn't come out easily, so I warmed their bottoms and then lined up on a board and re-froze the melted edges before putting in a bag. Just pop one in the pan with your pasta before serving for long enough for it to melt - which won't be long. Enjoy!

Italian Feast.

Last night's Italian supper was a great success, despite not going quite to plan.

We scrubbed, cleaned, hoovered, tidied, shopped, cooked and faffed pretty much all day - I even fitted in a lovely 'early' morning run in Alexandra park in the cool sunshine so all was good.

It's one of those meals which is very easy but somehow extremely time consuming to prepare. Friends popped round at 4 for tea and to plan a possible trip to India in September, which turned into g&ts and they didn't leave till after midnight, so that was two extra for supper, but the food was such that it didn't really matter and it was lovely to add them to the party. After a brief rest for g&t time I got back to my kitchen and worked solidly for a couple of hours and then it was all done. The vegetables had been grilled, dressed, mixed and artfully arranged on their platter, the mushroom risotto had been prepared as far as I could without getting to the rice stage, so dried porcini reconstituted, rinsed and dried, field mushrooms, chopped, fried and cooled, herbs chopped and mixed, onion and garlic prepared, home made chicken stock seasoned and measured, Vermouth measured, lemons squeezed, mushroom juices strained, asparagus trimmed and char grilled and Parmesanned, cured meats prettified on platters, radished chilled and de-gritted and mozzarella torn into chunks. I think that was about that for the savoury stuff. Ice cream was doctored - stem ginger chopped, ice cream softened and ginger added, back in the freezer, rhubarb roasted (Peter did that, I don't do rhubarb).

Then the next four guests arrived bringing with them vast amounts of wine and we had the first Pimms of the summer in the sunshine on the terrace. The one extra guest who'd been invited late on in the week, didn't arrive and then continued to not arrive. So we ate the antipasti - every last delicious bit of it, there's not one slice of salami left, and then we moved on to the mushroom risotto. This is always a labour intensive dish and you really shouldn't make it if you don't want a bit of down time in the middle of the evening to do 30 mins stirring and ladeling. So I stirred and ladled and added the delicious mushrooms, an indecent quantity of butter and Parmesan and the delicious Vermouth. I think it was one of the best I'd ever made, seriously decadent. We ate all of it and then our last guest arrived, in fact he had turned into two guests. And there was no food left, nothing, no salad, no antipasti, nothing. Rather awkward and embarrassing for me to have no food for guests, but it was after 9.30, they said they had already eaten and seemed happy with their wine and bits of bread and anything they could find. What we did have was pudding, and they had bought a massive tray of Baklava which is always a great gift for a dinner and a tasty bunch of grapes. Pudding was excellent, the rhubarb rich and sticky and the icecream soft and gingery. Yummy.

The evening was a great success and I hope enjoyed by all!

I remembered to take a photo of the table before it was messed up but forgot to snap anything else - as usual!


We're off to a wedding in the Trough of Bowland in a few hours, two great friends are getting hitched and we're all staying overnight in a beautiful country inn where I've wanted to stay for years, so we're really looking forward to that. It's a gorgeous day and it feels like we're on holiday!

Food, food and more food.

We've friends round for supper on Saturday night, and we have promised to make mushroom risotto as there's a bit of an Italian theme to our meals. I've been pondering what to make and I'm on a strict budget so am more limited than normal so this is what I've come up with - it may change.....

Antipasti to start
Peter's bought a selection of cured meats.
Buffalo Mozzarella - sprinkled with my best olive oil at the last minute.
Marinated grilled veg - peppers, courgettes, aubergine (home made).
I might make bread sticks, I might not make bread sticks. I've never made bread sticks before.
Olives from my olive pot.
Home made sun dried tomatoes.
Possibly some squid - blanched and dressed with lemon and parsley or grilled with chilli? Might be too much - hassle and food.
A sprinkling of pomodorini, basil leaves and Belazu balsamic vinegar.

I like to serve my antipasti on big white square platters so that people can eat exactly what they like. I find that if I plate it up, it always looks like far too much food, and I personally prefer the veg to the meat and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Main Course
Fantastic mushroom risotto from River Cafe Blue, I've made this loads of time and it's a joy.
Rocket salad, nice and simple with a little olive oil and white wine vinegar.

Pudding.
This is the problem, I wanted to make Angela Hartnett's chocolate, mint and vanilla semifredo, but I've not got room in the freezer, I've only got a silicone loaf tin which might go a funny shape when full of delicious goo, and it will be about 10 million calories and I'll have to scrounge some mint liqueur from a bar. Apart from all these negatives, I really want to make it, it sounds so delicious and it's properly Italian!
But, Peter came home last night with two massive bunches of rhubarb which has set me in a spin as I quite like it but I don't want to just serve a bowl of sloppy pink stuff nor do I want to faff with pastry. So I think I have a compromise, when we had our last meal at mum's she did a great pudding which was roasted rhubarb which means it's quite firm and not the sloppy gloop you get when it's poached and it was served with a cheats ginger ice cream, which is basically a good vanilla ice cream mushed up with chopped stem ginger. It was delicious and I think it's what I'll do.

Cheese?
Too much? I don't know, everyone loves cheese and we have a fantastic local cheese shop and I'd get a big chunk of one cheese, Dolcelate probably and serve with celery, walnuts and grapes.

As well as all that I've got to go for a run in the morning to undo the vast amount I've been eating lately (pizza on Wednesday, Chinese tonight, all of the above tomorrow and then a wedding on Sunday - I am doomed), the flat if filthy and messy, so that's tons of hoovering, cleaning and sorting. Busy busy busy. At least the food is hassle free!

Contemplating Olives.

As regular readers of this blog will have noticed by now, I love my food. I love to eat - at super smart eateries, at cheap and cheerful Indians and at friend's houses, but most of all I love to eat in, I love to cook for people, and the most satisfying way of cooking of all for me is not to plan elaborate glamorous feasts (although I quite enjoy that too if I'm in the right mood and it's for the right people), the best way is to forage in my larder for the goodies I keep for either every day use or for a bit of a rainy day (and we get plenty of those). I'm convinced that the key to being a successful 'home' cook is all down to your larder/cupboard/fridge/freezer.

If we have people dropping in, which happens surprisingly often, I always search out something to nibble. I know for sure that I never have crisps or biscuits in stock but can always knock up a nice little savory snack. My constant on the spot nibbles are nuts and seeds quickly fried in a little olive oil and sprinkled with some Maldon salt, smoked pimenton and rosemary, a quick hummus from a tin of chickpeas (which takes about three minutes in the blender), some pitta bread thrown in the toaster from the freezer and the easiest of the lot, olives. I adore olives, black, green, purple, big, small but always with their stones in unless they are replaced with almonds or whole garlic cloves, I really dislike olives which have been left heartless or stuffed with a slimy slither of red pepper, I hate the dry wrinkly ones which remove the surface of my tongue and the ones coated in so many dried herbs and flakes of chili that you can't taste any olive.

What I love is my Olive Pot and to be reminded of holidays in Greece and Spain. I've had an Olive Pot on the go for years now, and it's basically a tall Kilner jar filled with tasty olives, extra virgin olive oil and some judiciously chosen flavours. The olives last for a very long time, becoming stronger and more and more fragrant as time goes on, if there are lots of bits other than olive in the jar and it's around for some time, you do get a rather unappetizing layer of olive compost at the bottom and then it's time to replenish and refresh. This time came today!

The pot was almost empty, with just a few green Queenie's sitting at the bottom with some rather sad looking lemon slices and olive cloves. So this is how you bring your Olive Pot back to life.

Sad, old Olive Pot

Line a sieve with a sheet of kitchen paper and suspend over a glass bowl, pour the remaining oil and olives into the sieve and wait for most of the oil to filter through, how long this takes will depend on how much gunge is at the bottom of The Pot.

The remaining olives with some sad lemon, filtered oil below.

Fish out the limp and sad lemon, garlic and herbs and shift the olives into a clean bowl and give a wash to get the gunge off them, they don't have to be spotless, but you don't want to introduce any foreign bodies to your lovely fresh oil. If the filtered oil looks nice and clear it can go back into the Pot after you've given it a good wash in hot soapy water. So you've got a couple of inches of salvaged oil and some sort of clean olives.

Lovely new Kalamata's for The Pot, soaking in cold water.

Put your brand new olives into the pot after you've soaked them in fresh cold water for a little while to get rid of some of the residual salt from their stay in brine. I've garnished my new Pot with slices of lemon, squashed peeled cloves of garlic and some big sprigs of rosemary from my mum's garden.

Olives, lemon, garlic and rosemary - all very good friends.

Give the olives (old and new) a good mix up with your seasonings and top up with extra virgin olive oil - it doesn't have to be the best cold pressed single estate oil, but you may wish to do as I do and use the oil in dressings and so on, so you really want something that you'll be happy to eat. Make sure the olives and bits and pieces are totally covered with oil, otherwise you risk fur growing on any poking out bits.

Once your Olive Pot is replenished it will be a thing of beauty in your larder and you'll always have something tasty to nibble when the mood takes you and something impressive for the table. The olives will take a while to pick up the flavours, they'll be yummy straight away if they're nice olives, but wait for a bit to get the benefit of the extras.

All done and ready to eat!

Delicious and Easy.

It was miso soup for my lunch today. There's always a jar of thick brown savory Miso paste lurking in the fridge. It can be forgotten about for months on end, but it's quite happy sitting there being ignored. Today was most definitely a Miso day. Peter had gone out and I didn't want any more bread, it was cold and I was hungry. So the Miso called.



Here's what I did:
Put cold water in saucepan.
Add liberal sprinkling of dashi stock.
Add handful of thin soba noodles.
Add sliced garlic and ginger.
Simmer until noodles are almost cooked - they always take longer than I expect.
Meanwhile - chop any veg you fancy, I had a couple of carrots and a few sugar snaps.
Chop some coriander.
Add vegetables to stock.
When veg are as you like them, put a spoon of Miso paste into a cup, bowl or whatever you're going to eat from and add a ladle of the stock.
Mash until mixed and pour back into the saucepan.
Turn off the heat and leave for a minute.
Decant into suitable bowl, find your chopsticks and long Japanese spoon.
Slurp and enjoy!

My first Sourdough starter has started.

sourdough

• noun 1 leaven for making bread, consisting of fermenting dough, originally that left over from a previous baking. 2 bread made using such leaven.

I love to cook, as you may have gathered from my blog, but I'm not a baker, in fact, I'm not really a pudding person at all. I think I've made one traditional Victoria sponge in my whole life. Despite this, I have dabbled with bread making on and off over the years with my most successful phase being the time of my chef training. I had to take my turn in 'pastry' and a really enjoyed the magic of bread, but I was dissatisfied with the inferior ingredients we used and so I took my new found interest home where I made brown, white, olive, cheese, walnut and more, all of which were yummy. I didn't try sourdough, I don't think it even crossed my mind to try and we certainly weren't shown how to do it at college. Fast forward sixteen years or so and I believe my turn has come to give it a go. I have the taste for sourdough which has developed over the years, I have the time as I now work from home and I have the lack of funds which stop me from buying the artisan breads of which I've become so fond.

After consulting many books, blogs and websites I've gone with the starter recipe by Andrew Whitely who was the founder of the fantastic Village Bakery in Melmerby in Cumbria. The Village Bakery was an early haven for 'real' wood fired bread which I discovered when on a wheat free phase and I became addicted to several of his breads, in particular the Borodinsky and the Rossisky Russian Ryes. I visited several time to lunch on home made soups, sausages, breads and cakes and would always come home with a boot full of edible goodies! I was lucky to go behind the scenes at the bakery while recording some radio adverts for Booths Supermarkets which were (and still are) one of his early big stockists and it was a fascinating pleasure to see the big wood fired oven and all of the skill, experience and work which went into every single loaf. So of course I had to buy his book and as I don't (didn't) bake, I very generously gave it away to a friend. So it was to her I turned for a photocopy of the starter recipe which I've started today.

This is what you do.

Day 1

25g Wholemeal (dark) rye flour

50g Water at 40 degrees C

Doves Farm organic rye flour, spring water, pot and scales.

Mix the flour and water into a sloppy paste in a plastic tub. Seal the lid and keep as near to 30 degrees C as possible for 24 hours.

Not really the most attractive food photo I've ever taken!

So far, so simple except for the fact that I've nowhere anywhere in the flat which reached 30 degrees - this is a rainy early summer in the north of England I the heating is switched off for 'summer'. I've been lurking around in what I thought were the few warm spots with my newly purchased thermometer and have found that the warmest spot is actually on the metal shelf above my computer.

An unexpected addition to my work space!

While I obviously hope for some serious activity with my starter, I really don't want it to be so active that I have to cope with a yeasty explosion. That could be really nasty. So here it sits, above my desk where I spend most of my days with the temperature at the moment at 24 degrees which isn't so bad, it will just take a little longer. At least I'll be able to keep an eye on it's progress as this is where I spend most of my time.

I'll leave it alone now until about 4.30 tomorrow when I'll 'feed' my fledgling starter.

Subsequent Posts

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

Day 4

A splendid Sunday lunch at home.

It's been a weekend dominated by today's lunch. Planning started way back on Wednesday when mum was over for supper and we hatched a lunch. It's wasn't big on catering standards, but we were expecting to be eight and that's actually quite a lot of work when you cook every little thing yourself. I wouldn't have it any other way. I'm a great believer in that if you invite people to your house for food that you should make an effort and cook for your friends, you don't have to spend days or a fortune, but generosity, good seasoning and plenty of wine with generally do the trick. Here's what I cooked and what it looked like.

Lamb Koftas in progress

Lamb Koftas

Chicken with mint, garlic, chilli and lemon

Couscous Salad

Harissa

Tzaziki

Roast vegetables with feta cheese

I cooked the roast vegetables on Saturday so that they would all mix together nicely overnight. Yesterday I also skinned and boned a pile of chicken thighs and marinated them in their tasty marinade and mixed up the koftas. This morning, I added the feta cheese to the roast veg and made it look pretty, made the kofta mix into little balls and cooked in the oven, cooked the chicken in batches in the wok, made the tzaziki and the harissa and chopped a forest of herbs for the couscous. Then everyone arrived and we ate. It was delicious and I've enough couscous left to last me for days!

Whole Chicken baked in Aluminium Foil - Murgh Musallam

It's been a bit of a while since a food post what with all those Treauries on Etsy taking up my blogging time!

So here's another slice of my culinary life.

Yesterday we took advantage of the Marks and Spencers food offer whereby for a measly £10 you can have a meal for two. For those of you who don't know about the National Treasure which is M&S they have stupidly expensive food halls in their shops packed full of tempting delights and I very rarely shop there as I find the prices to be a joke compared with my normal food shops. On the rare occasions on which we succumb we spend an unreasonable fortune on their 'real' food as against their ready meals which made them so famous way back in the 80s. So to get a good meal for two for such a low price is not to be missed. From a rather limited selection we chose the Oakham chicken, vegetables to roast (I had them with a foil baked salmon fillet while I was in on my own last night), a bottle of Cotes du Rhone and a lemon tart. Amazing value really.

The chicken was destined to be devoured on Sunday and as we had delicious roast chicken at mum's on Friday night and didn't fancy it again so soon so I turned to my collection of cook books and finally alighted on Madhur Jaffrey. Her recipes always work wonderfully and cooking Indian at home is always a treat as I love the ritual of finding the spices, lining them up, crushing, roasting and pureeing along with the grating or pounding of the inevitable ginger, garlic and chilli. Even better if there's something in the long ingredients list which I don't have in my well stocked larder as it means a trip to Rusholme to one of my favourite Indian food shops to buy whatever ingredient I need along with fragrant bunches of parsley, mint and coriander which will last well into the week wether they're needed for that day's cooking or not. A generous chopping of mint, parsley and coriander never fails to perk up any dish however dull and mundane. And I really resent buying my herbs from the supermarket - it diminishes the pleasure in the chopping when I think how much I've been ripped of for the tiny, mean plastic bags of slightly sad herbs.

Here's the recipe - if the ingredients list looks terrifingly long, it's not really as the two sections do have some repettion and most of these things should be in your larder anyway if you like to dabble in spices.

Whole Chicken baked in Aluminium Foil Murgh Musallam
by Madhur Jaffrey From Illustrated Indian Cookery

For the marinade:
2.5 cm cube of fresh ginger, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 large cloves of garlic, peeled
6 Tbs. natural yoghurt
1/2 tsp. ground turmeric
1 and 1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 - 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
Freshly ground black pepper
You will also need:
One 1.5 kg chicken
225g onions
4 cloves garlic peeled
4 cm cube fresh ginger,peeled and coarsely chopped.
25g blanched, slivered almonds (I didn't use these as I just don't like cooking with almonds)
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
1 Tbs paprika
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp salt
8 Tbs vegetable oil (I used a fraction of this amount, probably less than half)
2 Tbs lemon juice
1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
1/2 tsp garam masala (I used a whole spice mix which I whizz up in our coffee grinder, it tastes much better than the dust you buy in packets)

Make the marinade:
Put the ginger, garlic and 3 tbs of yoghurt into the container of a food processor or blender. Blend, pushing down at the edges until you have a paste.
Add the turmeric, salt, cayenne and black pepper. Blend for a second to mix. Empty into a bowl. (Do not wash out the food processor or blender yet) Add the remaining 3 tbs. of the yoghurt to the marinade and beat in with a fork.
Skin the entire chicken with the exception of the wing tips. Skin the neck.
Put the chicken breast up, in a large bowl or on a platter and put the giblets and neck near it. Rub the chicken, inside and out with the marinade. Set aside unrefrigerated for 2 hours.

Meanwhile, put the onions, garlic, ginger and almonds in the blender or processor. Blend, pushing down with a spatula occasionally until you have a paste. Add the cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, cayenne and salt. Blend again to mix.
Put the oil in a large non-stick pan over medium-high heat. When hot, put in the paste. Fry stirring for 8 - 9 minutes. Add the lemon juice, black pepper and garam masala. mix. Turn off the heat and let this cool.
Pre heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas4.
When the chicken has marinate for 2 hours, spread out a large sheet of aluminium foil, large enough to enclose the chicken. Put the chicken, breast up, in the centre of the foil and put the giblets near it. Rub the chicken inside and out with the fried spice mix. Bring the ends of the foil towards the centre to form a tight packet. All the 'seams' should be 5 cm (2 inches) above the floor of the packet.
Put the wrapped chicken on a baking tray and bake for one and a half hours or until chicken is tender.
It's a nice easy recipe with no tricky bits, but you need to get your hands dirty and if you're squeamish about chicken skin you probably won't be too happy as you do need to get down and dirty with your bird to get all the skin off. A mini chopper is fine for the quantities for both chopping operations and it's nice not to have to clean it out halfway through the recipe. The smell as the paste is frying (in the significantly reduced quantity of oil) is divine and it smells good enough to eat by the spoonful once it's cooled down. My willing helper and partner in eating kindly offered to do the second rub, so I managed a photo of this. I had intended to photograph the whole process, but as usual forgot the first bit and then it all proved a bit too messy to have my camera involved, so the pictures here are a bit random really. Perhaps next time I'll be a bit more organized!
I served the chicken with brown basmati rice which I cooked with a big onion and a good quantity of garlic in chicken stock and some steamed greens.
*Later*
That was seriously yummy - soft, tender and fragrant. The meat just fell from the bones once the steaming silver package had been carefully opened. It wasn't the best quality chicken in the world, but it was delicious. Where you had a forkfull of the spice paste it was a beautiful mouthful of spicy sweetness. I've never cooked a whole bird in a tin foil package before as I've always been worried about it being a bit limp and sad, but coated in this quantity of flavour, you really can't go wrong. I'll definitely make this dish again.
I didn't say that it was the prettiest dish in the world as these photos prove!

The blended marinade and my cup of tea

The chicken after two hours marinading.

All wrapped up and ready to cook.

Out of the oven and well worth the wait!