Saturday 27 July - Turnip Glut and Summer Supper

We found a rather huge row of turnips ready to be harvested in the back garden, and I remembered seeing a Claudia Roden recipe for pickled turnips, or Torshi Left. I've made one jar to see what they are like, as they don't keep for ages.

They were placed in a jar with some chopped raw beetroot and some sliced garlic, and a mix of hot vinegar water and salt poured over - we can try them in couple of days.

Summer has finally arrived on the South Coast, so a summer supper was called for - I made Delia Smiths Feta Cheesecake for a starter, but replaced the cream cheese with Quark and low fat cheese from Lidl - this was very light and quite sharp - a lovely way to start a meal - we added some tabasco to liven the mix up a bit.

Main course was Thai Beef Salad - this recipe is from Sophie Grigsons wonderful Meat book, and a recipe I do actually follow properly - even measuring the ingredients for the dressing!

The steak was rump, and Bob cooked this for 90 seconds on each side - I'm not allowed to cook steak as George says I'm no good at it.

It was lovely and spicy and perfect for a hot summer evening.

Afters were not so healthy - George had been blueberry picking with Granny and Grandpa this week, so I made the Lurpak raspberry blondies, but using blueberries instead - these were made with white chocolate and lots of chunky almonds, and served with some vanilla icecream.

Very tasty, and lovely and squidgy, but I still prefer the plain chocolate version.



Sunday July 22nd Making Sausages

Hello, I am Francie's guest blogger today. I'm her brother, Andy and she has been visiting me this weekend along with Bob and of course my fab nephew, George. Just like my sister, I am obsessed with food and also a chubby! So she as asked me to write the blog today to tell of my first sausage making experience.

Francie and Bob bought me a meat mincer and sausage making kit for christmas 2 years ago. As she has come to visit me in Lincolnshire I decided that it was time for a master class. She had given me the skins and a couple of seasoning mixes so we plumped for chorizo which I must say smelt heavenly. The process began after fixing the mincer sturdily to my kitchen table. It was then a case of brute force and a lot of winding to get the pork through the machine on coarse setting; lots of lovely wriggly worms of only slightly fatty meat pouring out!

To this minced up mess we added 12g of stabilizer and 35g of chorizo spices and then lots of fun mixing it together by hand..

Now the tricky bit - getting the sausages into their skins!! FortunatelyBob was on hand to oversee, and the process was quite slow as the meat seemed to come out of the miner rather slowly. It wasn't as hard as I had imagined and now I feel I feel a bit bad for not having tried before.

 The final result was a long, long chorizo sausage which I decided would be well put to use as a scarf..

The clever bit was out of my hands; Bob really showed off his sausagey skills by linking the bangers. Apparently he watched an instructional video on YouTube. This was all beyond me, but I have to say they looked amazing and a bit too professional for my liking! No one is going to believe we actuallymade these!!

 The proof of the sausage is in the grilling as the old adage goes. So BBQ time in a few moments. Maybe my sister will add a few photos of the cooked product. Bon appetit!

Sunday 15 July - PIE!

Not diet food, although a few concessions were made to this recipe, but it was my Birthday weekend, so not a lot of dieting took place really!

We decided to make use of some of the potatoes from the allotment, along with other things found in the fridge that needed using up - such as bacon, and a large piece of Lincolnshire Poacher cheese.

Bob was in charge of pastry, which he made with half lard and half butter - this was left in the fridge for a couple of hours while we went to watch someone walking past with the Olympic Torch.

The pie tin was lined with pastry, and then layers of sliced cooked potatoes, onion and bacon which had been gently softened, and the grated cheese. The layers were repeated twice.

Then the whole pie was spread  with some half fat creme fraiche whisked with a huge dollop of dijon mustard, and the pastry lid added.

This was baked for about 40 minutes, and served with home made coleslaw (with cabbage from the allotment), tomato salad and a big green salad. Lots left for the rest of the week too!

Wednesday 11 July - Turkey Kebabs

A bit of a disaster has befallen us at the allotment - the torrential rain, and humidity has led to the rapid spread of blight in our potato crop, so Bob is digging them all up and sacking them. So lots of meals with potatoes in are the order of the the next few weeks.

Tonight, using up things in the vegetable rack, we made turkey kebabs, marinating the meat in lemon juice, garlic and chopped herbs, and then threading on skewers with some peppers and red onion.

 

This was served with a tomato and mozarella salad using light mozarella, and some of our little potatoes that were simply boiled and dressed with chopped herbs.

 

 

Saturday 7 July - Gok Wan

Decided to try out some recipes from the latest cookery book purchase today - so a trip to Eastern Stores in Portsmouth took place this morning - the weather is so bad that we drove round...

Lots of ingredients purchased to keep the store cupboard filled, and a bit of an impulse buy as well...

 

For a starter our favourite low fat chinese wontons - with the usual Rick Stein dipping sauce - Bob made light work of the veg with the new chopper!

 

 

Also some plum sauce and some sweet chilli sauce to serve with the steamed chicken and prawn wontons

For mains - Goks twice cooked pork belly - first it was poached in rice wine, with various aromatics added for a couple of hours, then roasted with a glaze of honey and soy

 

Served with a stir fried mushroom dish - we used dried shitake, fresh shitake, oyster, chestnut and enoki mushrooms in this dish - George declared it to be the best part of the meal!!

Saturday 30 June - Allotment Feast

We went down to the allotment in the morning to dig up some more potatoes, and came back not only with those, but also the biggest cabbage I've ever seen, some beetroot and some beautiful rainbow chard.

We were planning on having crab as a main course, but the chard made me rethink, so we turned the crab into a starter, along with some avocado and a few prawns. I made a dressing of yoghurt and some 3% fat mayo mixed in with a bit of tomato ketchup and tabasco.

We made pork saltimbocca to serve with the allotment veg - potatoes were crushed and mixed with a head of roasted garlic, some chopped rosemary and a touch of olive oil stirred through - this was then put into a hot oven to roast.

The chard was quite small leaves, so I roughly chopped it, stems and all, and this was stir fried with some chopped chilli and chopped fresh garlic.

When the potatoes were ready, they were sprinkled with some parmesan and popped back in for a couple of minutes.

 

The pork was bashed out fillet, topped with parma ham and a sage leaf, then fried quickly and finished off with marsala

The best bit of the meal was actually the chard.