Chicken & Kale Curry

Our vegetable and meat boxes from bel & Cole are great but at the moment due to the pressure they are under there is no opportunity to swap any of the contents. This has meant that I have a glut of potatoes and kale at the moment and quite a bit of chicken in the freezer. How to combine the two in a tasty way led to this quick but rich curry.

Serves 2

Ingredients
1 onion finely sliced
2 fat cloves of garlic
1 thumb-sized lump of ginger - peeled
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground fenugreek
1/4 tsp chilli powder
250ml coconut milk
1 chicken thigh diced
1 medium potato peeled and diced
1 good handful of kale stripped from the stem and sliced up
6 ripe cherry tomatoes
Small bunch of coriander

Method
Fry the onion in a little oil until softened and starting to colour. Mince the garlic and ginger together and add to the onion. Fry for a few minutes. Add the chicken and potato and fry for a few minutes. Add the spices and a splash of water to stop them burning. Add the tomatoes and kale and again fry for a couple of minutes. Add the coconut milk and simmer until the chicken and vegetables are cooked.

Serve with rice and chopped coriander. 

Seven Vegetable Soup

Crumbs it has been a very long time since my last blog entry! I've not stopped cooking - or eating, but work and a long commute have kept me very busy. However, the lockdown has given me the opportunity to experiment a bit with food again and the time to think and write about food again.
First of all, I know Liz and I have been very lucky. Both of us are able to work from home and so far none of us have contracted the virus. Secondly, we are still getting our regular organic fruit and veg box from Abel & Cole supplemented with an organic meat box from the same company which I subscribed too literally the week before the crisis hit. This has meant that our fridge has been full. Sometimes overfull as our last supermarket delivery from Ocado also came with some fruit and veg from someone else's order by accident (which they couldn't recollect so we suddenly had extra soft fruit and a lot of eggs!).

Anyway on to today's soup which combined a lot of the veg that we had collected in the fridge and 'needed using up. It's simple and hearty and went well with some of the bread I baked the previous day and a slice of cheese. The trick here is to use a mix of veg all cut up so as to cook at the same time.

Serves 3-4

Ingredients
1 tablespoon oil
1 rasher smoked bacon - finely diced
1 large leek - sliced
1 medium potato - diced
1 carrot - diced
2 small parsnips - peeled and diced
1/2 sweetcorn cob - kernels sliced from the cob
2 sticks of celery - diced
1/4 cauliflower - broken into florets, stems sliced
1 bay leaf
1/2 tsp turmeric
1.5 ltr stock (veg or chicken)
Small bunch of parsley

Method
Fry the bacon until crisp. Scoop out and keep for later as a garnish. Fry the leeks until softened then add the remainder of the vegetables. Stir in the oil until coated then add the turmeric and bay leaf. Stir again then add the stock. Bring to the boil then simmer for 15 minutes or until the vegetables are cooked. Blend with a stick blender. If the soup is too thick add more stock or possibly milk to dilute. Taste and season. Serve in bowls with chopped parsley and the crispy bacon and possibly a swirl of yogurt or cream if you are feeling fancy.

Stir-Fried Kale with Mushrooms, Garlic and Ginger

Yes, it's been a while since my last blog post. I've not stopped cooking or eating but lots of other things have happened over the last 18 months. First I was made redundant from my IT job of 23 years and then at the start of this year I was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes which has meant that I have had to modify my diet a bit. I now have a new job (5 days a week rather than 4 (boo) but it is at a great institution (the National Archives at Kew) so I'm very busy so quick and easy food is the way to go. I'm no Jamie Oliver but one can try! This serves two and can be on the table in 20 minutes.

Ingredients

300g of kale (or savoy cabbage) stems removed and shredded into bite sized pieces
1 small onion finely sliced
50g of chestnut mushrooms sliced
3cm piece of fresh ginger, peeled and shredded
3 cloves of garlic finely sliced
one dried chilli (optional)
2 tablespoons of rape seed oil
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
2 tablespoons of soy sauce
6 tablespoons of water

Method

Get your wok heating while you shred the kale, garlic, mushrooms, onion and garlic.
Heat the oil in the wok then add the onions garlic chilli (if using) and ginger. Stir-fry for a couple of minutes over a high heat then add the mushrooms. Keep stir frying for a minute then add the kale. Stir fry for 3 minutes until the kale has wilted then add the oyster sauce, soy sauce and water. Stir fry for a minute then put a lid on and turn the heat down for 5 minutes until the kale is cooked.

Serve with noodles of boiled rice.

Options

If you have some cold roast meat, shred it and add along with the kale.
Some toasted cashews or peanuts would add an extra crunch if tossed in at the end of the cooking.

Shopping Doesn't get better Than This

Yesterday was our annual visit to the Royal Berkshire Show. Liz has been coming to the show since she was knee high to a chicken (do chickens have knees) and I don't think we've missed a show since we've been together. During those years (notice I have not mentioned how many ...) I've seen the show ground develop - they now have tarmacked paths and a car park you don't need to be towed out of if it rains. Some things have stayed the same (Foxes Spices, Dart's Farm Butchers, the Flower tent, show jumping in the arena) while other suppliers have come and gone (yay the didgereedo man has gone!)

This year we took it at a gentle pace, spent less time (and money) in the fabulous craft tent - though we were tented by some art-deco ceramic owls and more time exploring some other parts of the show. As well as the show areas for cattle, sheep and goats there are the more specialised stands. We always go and see the otters in the otter pond, the wolves and huskies, the ferret racing and the mini zoo with the goats, chickens and geese. There was a display from the birds of prey centre but the drizzle made the falcon less than willing to return from its perch amongst the trees no matter how hard the falconer twirled his lure. Also discovered that large birds of prey can live to be sixty - in fact there was a large eagle there called Betty that was the same age as Liz (though not so well tempered).

This year there our haul from the Farm Food tent and the other suppliers around it was of its normal high quality. The Dart's Fame Butchers were as persuasive as usual and I came away laden down with enough beef, lamb and port to see me through to Spring so if anyone wants to pop around for a casserole or a roast in the next couple of weeks I should have plenty. A few jars of garlic infused chutney and mayonnaise from the Isle of Wight garlic farm, balsamic vinegar with coffee and chocolate (yes it sounds odd but is fantastically rich and will work well over ice-cream), pork pies, a wide variety of herbs and spices , smoked meat and fish, flavoured oils, chocolate brownies with beetroot and spinach and a blood-orange liqueur will provide joy and presents for many months to come.

We have already planned some visits to some of the suppliers during the next year to top up and to see what else they do.

Roll on 2017!

Choc-Chip-Cherry Cookies

Time to make some biscuits for the twin boys of one of my best friends. Allegedly there isn't a biscuit they don't like. Hope they like these!

Ingredients

125g Butter 
50g Golden Granulated Sugar
1 tbsp Honey 
45g Chocolate Chips (I used a good plain bar smashed up with a rolling pin)
25g Soft Dried Cherries chopped up
125g Plain White Flour

Method
Blend together the butter, sugar and honey. Mix in the cherries, chocolate chips and the flour.
Place dessert spoons of the mixture on a baking sheet lined with baking parchment, leaving room for the cookies to expand.
Bake in the oven at 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4 for about 15-18 minutes but start checking at about 12 minutes.

Take out of the oven and leave to cool.

Some prep work in the garden

The spring weather here in London has, shall we say, been a little mixed! In the past week we have had bright sunshine, cold northerly winds, hail, snow, rain, thunder and frogs. OK we didn't have the frogs although there are some tadpoles up at the allotment centre!

Given that the weather has been a bit better this weekend and I have broad bean, runner bean and courgette seeds germinating in the shed I thought I had better get started and prep the vegetable bed.

As usual you turn your back for a couple of days and all the weeds wake up and try and take over!

The Before Picture

As you can see there are plenty of dandelions which I wanted to dig up before they seeded themselves everywhere. Amongst them were horsetails and bindweed as well as the dried stalks of the Jerusalem artichokes of last year.

Two hours of hard digging later (spread over two days)...

That Looks Better!

Now all I have to do is the same with the much larger bed. It helped that the soil was moist - when it gets dry it sets hard being London clay based.

Of course I was supervised by two of our cats...

Fitz - The handsome one!

Latte - Who had been rolling in the dust!

Tara - or She Who Must be Obeyed / Evil Mistress of Darkness / The Vomiting One was asleep upstairs and only came out when the work was done!

Hopefully the weather will be good next weekend so we can get out and do the other bed. Otherwise by the time we come back from holiday we will be facing fully grown triffids!

Ealing Farmers' Market Harvest & What to Grow

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. I've not stopped cooking - no sir - nor eating! Partially in the winter both Liz and I crave comfort food and I fall back onto the staples that I've already written about; stews, casseroles, roasts and so forth. Now that the grey, but mild, Winter seems to be passing and Spring is in the air with blossom on the trees and daffodils flowering thoughts turn to what to grow in the garden and a walk around the Farmers' Market in Ealing is a more attractive prospect as rain won't be trickling down my neck.

So on a sunny Saturday morning we took up our reusable grocery bags and visited the market. First up was a pair of red mullet from the fish stall. They had some nice looking crabs, mussels, oysters and clams as well but shellfish doesn't agree with me (apart from scallops for some reason which I love). Mackerel, fresh and smoked, monkfish, hake and gurnard also looked good on the ice. I chose the mullet because I'd never cooked with it before and it looked good and fresh so two of those were filleted and popped in my bag.

Next up was a cheese stall where Liz chose, after much sampling, a piece of Wife of Bath, a mild creamy semi-hard cheese. Bread next, a loaf of fig sour-dough, crusty and not too dense, an inspiration for my next baking session perhaps.

Two meat stalls, both from the Chilterns to the north-west of London supplied us with a rolled venison shoulder, some sausages (hickory smoked and Lincolnshire varieties), a kilo of beef shin (possibly the best cut for slow cooking) and a pheasant pie.

Some purple sprouting broccoli, winter purslane and land cress from the vegetable stall along with two punnets of  mixed tomatoes (red, yellow, green, striped and deep purple) from the Isle of Wight (stretching the local aspect of the market there me-thinks!) would provide an accompaniment to the pheasant pie and the fish later. Last up a mixed half kilo of apples; Egmont Russets, Braeburns and the wonderfully named D'arcy Spice to see us through the week.

After a lunch of pie, salad and apple at home we strolled down our street to the where the local allotment centre was having their Spring Show. I had no idea there were so many types of daffodil! From pure white to deepest golden yellow. From simple trumpets to frilly doubles. From single large blooms to multiple small ones there must have been at least thirty on display!

Cakes, jams, marmalades, sausage rolls and handicrafts were also on display for judging all crammed into the church hall. We bought some seeds from the HAAGA (Horsenden Allotments And Garden Association) stall and trundled home with a copy of the show schedule where Liz seemed quite keen for me to enter one of the classes in the Summer Show.

As to what to grow this year in the garden. The same as usual for the most part. Runner and broad beans, tomatoes (several kinds), Jerusalem artichokes (mainly because once you have them you can't get rid of them!). Courgettes, herbs, rhubarb (already 15-20cm tall and may be ready for harvest soon), apples and salad greens. If I see something interesting in the garden centre later this month I may stretch this list a bit more but let's see.