Transform leftover pastry scraps into deluxe cheese Christmas snacks
If Danny loads the dishwasher when I get back from work and the cycle finishes before supper has reached the table, I know that I’m running a bit late. The cycle is 108 minutes. This morning I discovered some chicken and ham pie filling in the freezer – all that I had to do was make the pastry. Anne Mary’s recipe for Magimix pastry works perfectly each time. Danny was amazed that I had made pastry in five minutes in the food processor. It normally needs to rest and chill in the fridge for an hour but I decided to speed up the process....
read moreBest Pheasant recipes: two winning recipes for pheasant
We are well into the pheasant shooting season in the UK. It runs from October to February. As we don’t shoot ourselves, we are either given game or swap plucking and dressing game in exchange for a brace. This gives us a reasonable supply for the last three months of the season. The first month is a bit of a desert for us – I hear the bang of guns and know that no one will knock at our door. Having waited eight months to bag the first brace this game is solely for the family tables of the guns. However there is only so much pheasant...
read moreHow to smoke bacon at home: adapting a chiminea
“Do you think that we could adapt a chiminea to smoke bacon? There are small ones on sale for £20.” It was early summer. Tessa and Colin don’t have a fireplace. Most of the smokers available in the DIY stores are hot smokers. Hot smokers cook and smoke the food. They are also quite expensive. My instant reaction was No. How could a chiminea be adapted for cold smoking? Smoke is hot, a chiminea chimney is short. The idea seemed crazy. But Tessa was stubborn. A few days later she mentioned chimineas again. We reckoned that the metal ones...
read moreSecret wet cure recipe for smoked bacon
Having had a baconless weekend, I have been actively seeking a new butcher. I’m told that there’s a great independent butcher in Bury St Edmunds, 14 miles away. When I next have a Saturday off, Jalopy and I will be pointed like an arrow towards that lovely old Cathedral city. In the interim, we’ve tasted some ‘good’ commercially produced bacon and been amazed at the thin and wishy-washy flavour and at the price. Even at special offer prices, bacon is a luxury. Finding a good pork supplier is now a priority. I drifted into Tesco...
read moreLate morning brunch: Cheesy mushrooms on toast with a dash of spice recipe
To cut our carbon footprint we decided to combine the post run and the weekly shop and travel to Newmarket in the same car. This meant that Danny had to face an experience that he refers to with tight lipped horror. Saturday supermarket queues. In fact he hates any sort of queue. Even the queue for the tote to collect his winnings. I now refer to queues as moving lines. This seems to calm him. As we drove into the Tesco car park we couldn’t find a space. I knew that unusually long moving lines were already threading across his mind as he...
read moreDelicious budget meals for frugal entertaining: Honey glazed gammon baked with star anise and tamarind recipe
Ham is generally superb to cook and eat. Gammon can be a bit disappointing with its rougher texture and stronger taste. A few weeks ago a good friend gave us two small joints of gammon, bought from the back of a lorry at a Bank Holiday market. The first one was simmered very slowly in the slow cooker and Danny gave it the thumbs down. “It tastes piggy.” The dogs didn’t agree. This weekend I spotted the other one, nestling in the freezer. Loathe to give the dogs another treat, I remembered Smart Wife’s deluxe budget dish. “I’m...
read moreSweet, spicy, slow baked beetroot recipe – the perfect accompaniment for roast lamb
Danny’s face fell ten years ago when John Coe stepped proudly into the cottage with a carrier bag bursting with home grown beetroot. Later he admitted that he hated beetroot. He imagined that beetroot had to be transmogrified to that vinegary stuff in jars. I made him beetroot soup and he loved it so much that we overdosed. Many beetroot free years have passed since then. To my surprise and delight D returned last week with a small box of “Sweetfire” beetroot from the “condemned food counter” in our local Tesco. This is wonderful...
read moreQuick no knead white bread rolls to bake from scratch for breakfast
Gradually Danny and I are eating more whole grain bread. It does taste good, is better fuel and doesn’t have one dashing to the car to search for a forgotten bar of chocolate mid morning. But sometimes there’s nothing like a crusty white loaf for breakfast. We woke to an empty bread bin this morning. I had a longing for fresh white rolls. Small warm puffs of happiness lavished with butter. So I decided to try and make some. With two hours to spare before work, I probably just had enough time to make some no knead bread dough and let it...
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