Saturday 27 July - New Dishes

Watching Rick Stein on Saturday Kitchen this morning made me reach for one of his books from my shelf - and a hunt through led to a couple of dishes for supper that were new to us.  Much of our menu planning at the moment revolves around the vegetables we have on the allotment, and so finding meat to serve with them - so Dauphinoise Potatoes were the star of tonights show.

I found an unusual recipe for a starter - flavours I wouldn't put together myself and thought it time to branch out - so here it is -  a salad of mozarella, parma ham, tomatoes and nectarines, with a basil oil dressing - and surprisingly delicious it was too!!

Main course was the potatoes, but we found a recipe for pork chops with a cider butter sauce in Rick Steins French Odyssey book - the sauce was made from cider vinegar and soy sauce which I thought would be horrible, but it worked brilliantly.

For afters, from the same book, Prune and Amagnac (or Lidl Brandy in our case) Tart - a bit like a sweet quiche with some almonds in - and again delicious, and enough left over for tomorrow.

Sunday 21 July -Trofie Pasta and The First English Cherries

A new Italian cookbook called Bocca Cookbook appeared in my kitchen, and the first page I opened showed a recipe for Trofie with potatoes, green beans and pesto. This sounded lovely and Summery, and also included instructions for making the pasta, so we decided to give this a go.

The Pasta was simply semolina and water -  I mixed it in the Kenwood using the dough hook as it's too hot for major kneading.

After resting the dough was shaped - there is a definite technique to doing this, and it took me a long time to get it!

 

Once the pasta was all shaped, it was left for half an hour to dry.

To serve with this, home made pesto - I've not made this myself for years, and the difference from bought pesto is incredible.

To serve, the pasta was cooked, and added to cooked green beans and new potatoes, and the pesto was stirred through. This was so simple, but probably the nicest thing we have eaten for ages  - I'd probably buy the pasta ready made for a midweek meal though!

 

 Summer is well and truly here, and we had also picked up the first English cherries of the year.

As the chickens are laying really well at the moment we had a surplus of eggs, so Clafoutis seemed the obvious thing to make here.

The cherries were stoned, and placed in the buttered tin and then the batter - similar to yorkshire pudding batter but with some sugar and vanilla added - was poured over, and it was baked.

This was served warm with some cream, and was absolutely delicious.

Thursday 18 July - Pork, Prunes and a Glut of Raspberries

We popped into Lidl for milk this morning, and spotted that their special this week was fillet pork medallions - perfect for Pork and Prunes

The pork was quickly fried, and served with a sauce made out of reduced white vermouth and chicken stock, finished with creme fraiche and some dried prunes

This was delicious, but probably took second place in the meal to the vegetables, which were all home grown, either on our allotment, or in the raised beds in our botttom garden - tonight we had roasted potatoes with rosemary and garlic, carrots and rainbow chard.

We had been given a large punnet of raspberries by my parents, and decided to use these to make a raspberry ripple icecream

The left over egg whites from making the custard base were used for meringues to serve alongside.

Basic vanilla icecream was churned until nearly frozen and then pureed raspberries with a touch of sugar and framboise added to it were swirled through before it went into the freezer to firm up.

This was served along with the meringues which we had baked topped with some chopped pistachios, some more raspberries, and the left over coulis.

Sunday 14 July - Crab

Yet another trip to the Fish Sheds in Old Portsmouth, and we returned with three live crabs and a bag of beautiful prawns to make a salad with.

The crabs were dispatched by chilling down, then boiling for 15 minutes in very salty water - after chilling the painstaking removal of the meat commenced.

However the strange tool that Mum brought me back from Boston did prove to be quite useful!

We ended up with quite a lot of white meat from three crabs, but not as much brown meat as we had hoped for.

Mayonnaise is a must with crab and prawns, and I made one with loads of lemon added at the end - this was made using the yolk from the first egg our Exchequer leghorn had laid this afternoon - bit of a soft shell so needed to be used quickly.

The crab and cooked prawns were served with various salads - tomato and basil, cucumber and fennel, green and a handful of radishes along with a big bowl of new potatoes from the allotment.

 

All delicious, but next time I'd buy a ready dressed crab as I don't think we did as well as we could have done extracting the meat.

Tuesday 2 July - Spicy Bean Burgers

I belong to a Facebook food group that sets a weekly challenge to the members - this is great fun and people take their entries very seriously. This weeks challenge was 'homemade fast food' so definitely one that is bound to be popular with all generations. I decided to try and make bean burgers for the first time in my life. Had a good google and came up with a few recipes which I cobbled together in my normal way.

I cooked some turtle beans - I did the quick soak method by boiling the beans hard for 10 minutes and the leaving for half an hour.

 

I then rinsed, boiled again, and popped into the slow cooker for the rest of the day. After about 8 hours they were cooked to perfection.

 

These were mashed, and added to some fried onion, spring onion, garlic, chilli, some mexican seasoning (don't tell anyone but after I'd added it I noticed that this unopened jar was best before Feb 2010) , chopped coriander, an egg, some breadcrumbs and finally some crumbled Feta cheese.

I shaped them into burgers, and then I dipped into flour, egg and panko crumbs before shallow frying.

I topped the burgers with cheddar and grilled for a seconds before serving in home made burger buns.

The burgers were topped with guacamole, salsa and some pickled jalapenos, and served with some potato salad with new potatoes from our allotment - the first batch of the year, so very little seasonings needed as they tasted so delicious - a simple yoghurt and chive dressing was all they needed.

Saturday 22 June - Stracotto on Polenta

Decided to try something new again, so ended up with Stracotto -  a joint of beef braised in Chianti and passata and served on Polenta.

The beef was studded with garlic, and then sealed in a pan. Then finely chopped onions, carrots and celery were sweated for 30 minutes (I also added garlic here which wasn't in the recipe.

 

Then a good glug of Chianti, a bottle of passata and some beef stock were added, and the beef was cooked in this along with a bouquet garni of home grown herbs - and into a very low oven for 6 hours.

Another change that I made was to make a gremolata of lemon rind, parley and garlic to serve over the final dish.

Once the beef was tender, the sauce was pushed the a mouli - one thing I really, really dislike to eat is cooked celery because of the texture, but it's ok hidden in a sauce!

The meat was thickly sliced and served over polenta with the sauce and gremolata - as it's still in season we added some asparagus and some spinach wilted briefly with garlic and chilli.

The left over meat was shredded and added to some sauce, and I will serve it with pasta later this week.

For afters some chocolate mousse served with salted caramel - not good for the diet, but delicous.

Saturday 15 June - Pink Pralines

I've had a pack of Pink Pralines lurking at the back of my cupboard since we came back from France last year, so I decided the time has come to use them up.

I tasted one out of the packet, and it was not unlike trying to eat a pebble - rock hard .

In order to be able to melt them a lot of bashing with a hammer took place, then they were placed in a pan of cream and slowly melted.

Once melted they were boiled until the mixture reached 100 degrees, and then this was cooled before filling some tart cases that we had blind baked.

First course was some bargain smoked salmon we'd picked up made into a pate with some cream cheese, dill and lemon juice - and this was served with some soda bread.

Main course was a sort of Osso Bucco but made with cubes of veal rather than the traditional slices cooked in white wine and tomatoes.

This was topped with a gremolate mix of parsley, garlic and lemon rind and served with a saffron risotto.

We rounded off the meal with a cheese board purchased from Chichester market