Easy and delicious spicy pickled onions recipe
Unless you already make pickled onions, let me share a secret. Pickled onions are ridiculously easy to make! They are great Christmas or anytime presents, especially if you use a decent quality vinegar. Poor old Danny’s acid tum can’t take malt vinegar so I always make a couple of jars for him every year using white wine vinegar or cider vinegar. I didn’t realise that I hadn’t posted my recipe until someone emailed me asking for one. This chutney is based on Oded Schwartz’s method from his superb book Preserving. I’ve added...
read moreHow to hot water bath tomatoes: canning/bottling
I’ve been bottling tomatoes like a woman possessed. This might seem strange as tinned tomatoes can be so cheap if you know where to go. But these are our own organic tomatoes, they are sweeter than the tinned ones and once made they sit in the barn waiting to be added to dishes until our first tomatoes ripen the next summer. Last year I bottled whole tomatoes and passata. Once we discovered that Bloody Marys made with homemade passata were to die for, we used up our winter supply within a couple of months. Danny was dead keen for me to...
read moreBlueberry and blackberry jam recipe
“Why are you letting the raspberries rot on the canes? The birds are getting the blueberries and I haven’t seen you pick more than a handful of blackberries this year.” Danny is generally fairly easy going so this remark was a bit of a surprise. He was right about the fruit though, I’ve been distracted by other things. What a terrible waste. Suitably chastised I slunk down to the fruit cage and picked a bowl of raspberries. The Autumn fruiting raspberries have a much better flavour than the summer ones and will keep on fruiting...
read moreDay off making jelly and a few secret jelly and jam making tips to create your own great recipes
“We’re making crab apple chilli jelly. It’s a deep ruby red. I’ll send you the photos later. Now what are you eating tonight. Sardines. Hum. How about sardines on toast. What about vegetables – do you remember them?” The Chicken Lady was on the phone to Rollo who has just started Uni. Back at base we were on a jelly making marathon. TCL has access to a large crab apple tree (secret location) and she had gone out early in the morning to pick the fruit. My role was to demonstrate the fruit steamer in action, bring some hot dried...
read moreTasty beef pot au feu recipe
I remember our best pot-au-feu recipe meal. Years ago Danny and I were in Paris. We had wandered deep into a residential area. Feeling peckish we were on the lookout for a good restaurant but could find nothing. The time was about 7 pm. It was Sunday and the streets were empty. Then we noticed that people were passing us with a spring to their step – all going in the same direction. Where were they going? Was it Church or could it be a restaurant? We decided to follow them. We turned a corner and saw the welcoming lights of a small...
read moreEasy strawberry jam recipe
“Wow. This jam is amazing. It’s so fruity and not too sweet.” Jean examined the jar of strawberry jam. “Would it be OK if I helped myself to a bit more?” We were sitting at the kitchen table indulging in a jam tasting session. I’d discovered that Jean eats toast and jam for breakfast. So we thought that she might like some homemade jam as a present. Precious stuff, just for family and best friends. Once you’ve tasted homemade jam there’s no going back to the shop stuff. Unless you are a genuine hair shirter. So when Jean...
read moreChicken and green tomato risotto recipe
For years I thought that risottos were hard to make. I’d order them in restaurants and drool over the creamy rice with bite. I reckoned to cook the rice like that would take real skill. Oh how wrong I was. Risottos are easy. It would take ‘real skill’ to ruin the rice. Risottos are the ultimate comfort fast food. We eat a lot of risotto throughout the year. They are a delicious way of padding out very little meat. Even Danny, the King of Carnivores adores them. Completely vegetarian risottos are delicious and I don’t think that it...
read moreLamb ribs with a green and orange tomato piquant sauce recipe
I spotted some *CFC lamb ribs – knocked down from £3.99 to £1.42 – so snapped them up. I’d never seen lamb ribs before – the price was tempting but how on earth was I going to cook them? I floated some recipe ideas past Danny. With zero response. “I’m happy to cook them.” He offered. “Grilled ribs and chips. How about that?” “No way.” The weather has been cold and drizzly for days. On my daily blight check I spotted that quite a few tomatoes had split and the skins were peeling back. Not blighted yet but...
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