Goodbye Pestle and Mortar
I bought my pestle and mortar about 20 years ago when I was more interested in the kit than the cooking. It lay, a boxed virgin under the kitchen sink for at least ten years. Then Danny released it from it’s brown cardboard tomb. He ground some spices, it took quite a while. He pushed the P&M right to the back of the cupboard – the place where kitchen equipment goes to die. And we forgot all about it. Danny is away in Wales on business. I’m spending my time lounging and sleeping upstairs and developing a new Mango Chutney – recipe...
read moreOrange vinegar
I’ve been warbling on for months about the virtues of lemon vinegar in salad dressing. Last night our lemon vinegar finally ran out and I decided to make some more. It originally came in a dinky quarter carafe with a sturdy cork. I shook out the pieces of fruit, the equivalent of two chunky slices cut lengthwise into eight pieces. Then I removed the pretty label to check the ingredients. I discovered that it was orange white wine vinegar or rather Condimento all’ Arancio, as it was made by Raffaelli in Tuscany, Italy. No wonder it was so...
read moreThe best photographs add something extra to the image
When I was a teenager, my mother took watercolour lessons from Gilbert Adams . His father was Marcus Adams – the celebrated society photographer. Gilbert trained in his father’s studio and has quite a few well known portraits in The National Portrait Gallery. He also was a successful artist (easel rather than camera). He died at the age of ninety in 1996. Gilbert was a colourful, larger than life character. A real old bohemian. When he heard that I was going to study Drama and English at university he was astonished. “Why do you want to...
read moreWonderful tulips: Queen of the Night
When I first moved to the cottage I planted Queen of the Night tulips with scented white irises beside the new pond – the combination looked stunning but they petered out when the yew hedges grew large. The hedges are great for making compartments and adding structure to a garden but they also create dry shady areas on one side and on the other side very dry sunny areas if you have a south west facing garden like us. But a challenge is often a good thing. You are forced to think around the box, rather than just outside it. We have a vast pot...
read moreYou can eat the leaves of sprouting broccoli plants
For the past five years John Coe has supplied us with sprouting broccoli plants. The purple variety gives a bigger, longer harvest. But nothing can beat the sweetness of white sprouting broccoli. This is the Premier Cru of sprouting broccoli. It is generally not available from the shops as the plants are smaller, the yield is minimal and the harvest is short. Sounds like the sort of vegetable that you should ignore. Wrong. White sprouting broccoli is a real delicacy. On a par with the first longed for asparagus shoots. If you have the space,...
read moreThe best gardening tools are not necessarily the most expensive
I’d cut down the rose bushes to large stumps and wheeled away about ten borrow loads of rose branches and quite a lot of bindweed roots. John Coe cast an eye over the warzone border covered with hefty skeletal stumps. “I can see what you mean. With this and the new potato border you will have a much more productive space for growing vegeatbles. Kitchen garden borders always fill up fast.” He picked up my spade and stabbed at the biggest rose root. “This’ll take some shifting.” Within five minutes the base of the spade had snapped...
read moreThe landscape is never flat when it comes to cooking
I seem to have been cooking for days. When I get home from work. Loads of delicious pies. Fish, beef and oxtail and mixed game pies. I like pies. Somehow if we have a homemade pie for supper, I feel that we are almost there cooking wise. All is needed is a pair of thick gloves to tackle the freezer in the morning. And half an hour to prepare some tasty vegetables whilst the pie warms in the oven. Even though it’s spring here in the UK, with quite a few sunny days, it’s chilly after dark and I’ve had a longing for traditional English...
read moreApart from the salad spinner, the winner is…
Recently we bought a dinky little salad spinner from TKMaxx (Swiss – Zyliss, reduced from £20.00 to £7.99). A perfectly engineered addition to the kitchen. I have a horror of wet salad leaves but have always avoided those cumbersome salad spinners that take up loads of space and aren’t very efficient. I’ve been through the gamut of most alternatives. Whirling like a dervish with the salad leaves in a clean tea towel. Air drying the salad leaves on the drainer beside the sink. Padding the leaves with kitchen roll. The tea towel...
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