Duncan’s pickled nasturtium seeds recipe (UK capers)
Have you ever tasted nasturtium seeds? They’re nutty and peppery. I knew that they could be pickled to make an English version of the continental caper but I’ve never found a recipe when the seeds are green and perfect for pickling. So I was delighted when Duncan, a reader and contributor to the Cottage Smallholder site, sent me his recipe. He had already road tested it. “I sampled my first batch yesterday and wow they are good. I have got the next batch in brine as I type. As it was a success and it is a good free alternative to...
read moreHot crabapple chilli cheese
I only discovered how delicious fruit cheeses are a few years ago. Until then I had rejected them out of hand – using the left over pulp from jelly making seemed skinflint behaviour to me. And anyway would this pulp have any flavour at all? I didn’t even bother to taste the pulp when jelly making which was a big mistake as I missed out on this treat. Fruit cheese can be sliced and served with starters, chops, roasts, cheese and even with fruit desserts. Crabapples, particularly when they first start to ripen often produce very little...
read moreHerby Boulangere potatoes recipe
I like to bake food in the oven every now and then. Somehow I think that this releases me to get on with other things rather than keeping me anchored to the sauté pan or grill. So I prepare the dishes, work out the timings and pass responsibility over to a small green portable timer, that has a bleep so irritating that it can’t be ignored. I decided to make Boulangere potatoes to celebrate Danny’s first full trug of spuds. These are scrummy and low fat. They were to accompany pork chops baked in blackberry and apple jelly and oven braised...
read moreMy best easy recipe for delicious Mango Chutney
Growing up there were a handful of meals that I really liked my mum to cook. One of these was curry. Back in those days curry powder was the norm, with the remains of the Sunday roast diced into the mix. I loved the exotic colour of the sauce but it was the way that she served each plate that intrigued me. Curry on a bed of rice in the middle of the plate and around the edge of loads of little piles of things too cool the curry down. Thinly sliced banana jostled with desiccated coconut, dried fruit, sliced cucumbers, diced onion and glorious...
read morePork Chops with Tarragon and Elderflower cordial recipe
We don’t drink wine very much these days so we tend not to have wine hanging about in the kitchen for cooking. Danny developed a great pork chop recipe so as a treat I grabbed a litre wine box in the supermarket. There was a yelp when he finally opened the box and turned on the tap. I had bought red wine rather than white. “Well why don’t you try using some of my Elderflower and Lemon cordial?” He adds this cordial to roast chicken. He created a superb sauce, adding some cream at the end to thicken it. But he forgot to write down the...
read morePlum and Tamarind Chutney Recipe
This can also be made with damsons – cut the tamarind amount by half and add more sugar to taste. Anyone who owns Oded Schwartz’s superb book Preserving is very lucky indeed. Published in 1996 it is now sadly out of print. Danny found a copy on Australian Ebay for me one Christmas and I’ve used it endlessly since then. It is packed full of mouth watering photographs and inspirational recipes. Last week I spotted that he adds tamarind to a plum chutney, as this is one of my favourite ingredients at the moment my mind began to whir. How...
read moreHow to make your own tasty home cured bacon without a smoker
It’s often said that some of the best discoveries are made by mistake. This discovery was made through laziness. We have stuck rigidly to our low salt bacon cure for over a year now. When Tessa of chiminea fame came back from a trip to Cornwall she brought news. “We discovered some home cured molasses bacon in a small family butcher’s shop. The bacon was much darker than ours. It was so delicious that we’re going to add more molasses to our recipe.” So I added two more heaped teaspoons of molasses to our cure. We usually smoke the...
read moreSecret ingredients: Pickled Walnuts Grand Challenge 2010
Although I left Magic Cochin’s house in January clutching the trophy silver pickle fork, they were just being kind. The Cochinery had produced wonderful pickled walnuts. The vintage 2005 were to die for and all smugness ceased as I divd into the 2008 Cochinery jar. My pickled walnuts didn’t even reach the starting stalls. “So why have I been awarded the trophy fork?” “The trophy fork holder hosts next year’s event.” Admittedly this was our first year of making pickled walnuts but I reckoned that I was in with a chance. I‘d...
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