Long Time No Blog

It's been a while since I've put fingers to keyboard. Several reasons, been on holiday in Wales, my better half has been away on various travels (so I've been living on home made chilli and curry!) and we have been busy in the garden clearing twenty years of ivy from a rotting fence so we can get a new one put up.

However there are a number of food related items to talk about.

The Garden
The garden has been a mixed bag this year; some thing have cropped well others not so well thanks to the odd summer we've had.

Success Stories:
Beetroot, Jerusalem Artichokes, Mixed Salad, Courgettes and onions have done really well this year and all will find a place in the garden next year though I may substitute red onions for white and I may reduce the number of courgette plants! Leaks are looking good for late in the year.

Could Do Better
Beans (French, Broad,Runner), Sweetcorn, Rhubarb. All suffered from the hot dry April followed by the humid cloudy summer. Harvested some nice early beans but quality and quantity dropped off rapidly. Sweetcorn didn't set well so carved off the kernels rather than boiling the cobs whole.

Very Poor
Tomatoes. Blighted by blight due to the humid dull summer (and having lots of water dumped on them thanks to a blocked downpipe/gutter!) I, for the first time, harvested no tomatoes, very disappointing! 

Newbury Show

I know I should call it the Royal County of Berkshire Show but for me it will always be the Newbury Show!

This is an agricultural show that Liz and I have been going to together for 20 years and Liz for even longer as this  the area in which she grew up. As well as show animals (huge bulls, primped sheep and pampered pigs) there are vast craft and food tents to explore. Amongst the food tents the highlights this year for me were: Watercress Pesto - great with sliced courgettes and pasta, a West Country butcher who always bullies me into buying more high quality meat than I can physically fit in my freezer, Fox's Spices where I stock up on my herbs and spices for the year ahead, WI jams and pickles and fine cheeses including Oxford Isis a rind washed cheese with a wonderful scent and flavour.

Beetroot and Bacon Risotto

31st of August and already it feels like Autumn! Need something warming and cheerful to buck me up and this fits the bill (especially as I have a lot of beetroot in the vegetable bed!) Serves 2-3.

Ingredients
1 tennis ball sized beetroot, grated
1 small onion finely chopped
220g rissoto rice
750ml stock
2 rashers of smoked bacon (chopped into lardons)
small handful of freshly grated parmasan cheese
large knob of butter

Fry the bacon lardons in a hot pan and when coloured add onion and butter and cook until the onion has softened. Add the rice and stir to coat in the butter. Add the grated beetroot and stir and fry for a few minutes before adding the stock bit by bit until the rice is cooked. Add the parmasan, butter and seasoning. Add a few parmasan shavings and a drizzle of olive oil to garnish (I used some mandarin infused oil which added a nice sweet/citrus edge to cut through the earthy beetroot).

Experiments with Courgettes

An unexpected evening with only me to cook for and after having several nights of chilli and curry I fancied something a bit simpler (and containing some vitamins!). Having popped out to the garden and collected an armful of courgettes, a basket of salad leaves and a handful of slender runner beans I decided to make some fritters.
Not made these before so it was a bit of an experiment and to be honest I'd only give them 6/10. More experimentation needed.

Ingredients (For 1)
1 medium courgette (grated)
1 medium egg
40g self raising flour
dash of milk
salt and pepper (be generous with both)
oil for shallow frying


Make a batter with the egg, flour, salt, pepper and milk. Add the courgette and mix. Heat the pan, add the oil and then when the oil is hot add blobs of batter/courgette mix (I made 3). Cook for 3-4 minutes on each side until golden brown and risen slightly. Serve with salad and tomato ketchup.

Next time I may add one or more of the following: some grated cheese, some herbs, some spring onions or serve them with a minty yoghurt dressing. Chips might be good too.

A Midweek Chicken Roast

Our garden is starting to produce plenty of goodies, in particular courgettes and this week I've had a couple of nice meals based around them (serves 2).

Ingredients
2 skinless chicken breasts (or 1 monkfish tail)
4 rashers of streaky bacon
2 red onions quartered
2 red or yellow pepper cut into large chunks
2 medium courgettes cut into large chunks (I used a yellow spherical one)
2-4 sage leaves
Olive oil

Cut a pocket in each chicken breast and insert the sage leaves. Wrap the streaky bacon around the breast and secure with a skewer or cocktail sticks. Heat the over to about 180 degrees and mix the vegetables with the olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Roast vegetable in the oven for 15 minutes then add the chicken breasts and turn the oven down to 160. Roast for 20-30 minutes until the chicken and vegetables are cooked through.

Serve with a simple green salad and/or crusty bread to mop up the juices.

The Awesome Courgette Monster

You turn your back on the garden for 5 minutes and suddenly everything starts to crop. I have already harvested half a dozen round yellow courgettes (each the size of a tennis ball) and the same of long green ones. Then I found hiding under the mixed salad leaves a whopper of a green courgette.

An Assortment of Courgettes

I'll probably make this into a vegetable curry at the weekend Most of the yellow ones have already been claimed by the wife to take into work for her boss or to give to our neighbours. I have been able to roast some with red onions, peppers and tomatoes and served them with herby couscous and fried hallumi cheese and they were very tasty. Good texture, quite firm and tasty. Broad beans, planted late, are just about ready. Interestingly they have not been attacked by blackfly instead slugs have been eating the leaves. The mixed salad leaves are doing well and the runner and french beans are flowering nicely. Jerusalem artichokes are taller than me and the sweetcorn is shooting up. Onions, beetroot and leeks are filling out nicely so I should be cropping all the way through to Christmas.

Aubergine Bake

We love aubergines we do. They take up the savoury flavour of anything they are coked with and in particular fit in well with aromatic North African spicing. So after a brisk bit of work in the garden I threw this together.
Serves 2-3

Ingredients
1 medium aubergine cut into 1/2 cm rounds
250g minced beef (or lamb)
1/2 a pepper (diced)
1/2 a courgette (diced)
1/2 a can of chopped tomatoes
1 large onion (finely chopped)
6 button mushrooms (diced)
1 bay leaf
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon corriander
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
olive oil
salt and pepper

For the topping:
1 egg
50ml milk
50ml yoghurt
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
handful of grated chedder

Fry the meat in a little oil until brown, add the onion, courgette, mushrooms and pepper and fry until softened. Add the spices and tomatoes and simmer gently for about 15 minutes.
Fry the aubergine slices in olive oil until softened and lightly browned.

In an oven proof dish layer the sauce and the aubergines. Beat the topping together and spoon over the top of the meat and aubergine layers. Bake in a moderate oven for 20-30 minutes until browned and bubbling. Serve with a green salad or peas and garden beans.

For a vegetarian option replace the mince with cooked lentils, beans or extra vegetables.

Chicken Stretching

Been a while since I blogged, work has been very busy, but it hasn't stopped me from cooking and thinking about food. Over recent years we have cut back on the meat we've eaten, instead buying less, better quality meat. Also I hate waste so when we have a roast chicken I like to make the most of it!
This weekend I roasted at free range corn fed chicken with some onion wedges, bay leaves, sage, thyme, onion, and new potatoes, adding a punnet of cherry tomatoes for the last half-hour.
Plenty of leftovers after this which went on to make the following meals:

• Monday work lunch of couscous, herbs, red onion, pepper, chicken and tomatoes
• Monday supper of a soup (made with chicken stock from the picked over carcass) of chicken, carrots, onion, canned tomatoes and sliced spring greens (with a portion for my lunch the next day).
• Tuesday supper of chicken curry (chicken, grated onion, carrot, spring greens, apple, dried fruit, cumin, coriander, fennugreek, turmeric, cardamom and creamed coconut), with a portion left over for my lunch the next day.

So from one chicken we got nine meal portions (and could probably have made 10-12 as they were generous portions) not including the little treats the cats persuaded me to dispense!