Belly of pork roasted on a nest of tomatillos recipe. Halogen oven/conventional oven recipe
Tomatillos are extremely easy to grow. They are great for making salsas and sauces and they freeze well. They also do not get blight so it’s always worth growing a couple of plants if you have a greenhouse or conservatory to get some tomatoey tangy flavour if your tomato crops fail. You do need to grow at least two plants to guarantee that the fruit will set but apart from that I’ve always found them very obliging, tolerant to haphazard watering and they always give a good harvest. I tend to freeze tomatillos, but they can be dehydrated...
read moreDeluxe macaroni cheese recipe
Well I wish that I’d put my tiny foot down years ago and insisted that Danny tried macaroni cheese. All those years spent out in the wilderness without my comfort food. “Why it’s just like cauliflower cheese, with macaroni instead!” He had three helpings. I did have to work on my cauliflower cheese recipe though, before he’d admit to enjoying that meal. It took a good six months but I was determined to burrow under the apprehensions and the stalwart status quo. It’s very easy to ask people to be a bit more flexible if it’s...
read moreChicken legs baked with apricots and garlic recipe
I was surprised to hear that despite the recession the number of people eating out has shot up in the UK. I’m not sure whether this is people visiting places like Pret for a snack or proper sit down eating out with napkins, main courses and hovering waiters. Danny and I rarely eat out. Perhaps twice a year at most. It’s not that it’s expensive (although 35 quid for pizzas and a couple of beers was shocking) it’s because it’s often disappointing in this neck of the woods. So good food has to be cooked at home. Two things that...
read moreTasty Baked sausages, bacon and flageolet beans recipe
I’ve never been keen on beans, definitely was not one of the Beans means Heinz fans as a child. Even the recent change to Beanz hasn’t tempted me. In fact I was so out of the whole world of beans as a teenager that I didn’t even understand the flatulence jokes in Blazing Saddles. Now beans are almost considered the new ‘meat’. Economical, packed with goodness and promise. Some varieties can even be grown in UK gardens – come the revolution these could be a valuable source of protein. So I decided to experiment a bit with...
read moreEasy and deluxe prawn, spinach and gnocchi recipe
I adore prawns. Could eat them everyday. Two favourite recipes are Donagh’s Gambas al pil pil and Clare’s prawn gnocchi. Prawns are expensive but often there are great reductions to be found in the frozen food section of the supermarket. Yesterday I discovered through MySupermarket.com that Tesco Finest Canadian prawns were half price. Perfect. With a limitless budget I probably would have bought uncooked prawns for added flavour but the cooked prawns tasted fine. The beauty of Clare’s dish is that it can be assembled and cooked in 15...
read moreRoast chicken thighs with summer vegetables recipe
Why chicken thighs again? For one thing, it makes a succulent, tasty and economical meal. Also, Fiona split her jam making over two days, which is a great idea because it is then less of a major task. The house is filled with the aroma from the two jam saucepans. One has wild plum and the other is greengage. I am the unofficial taster and quality assurance agent, apparently. So I am giving her a night off from writing. We had this variation on Shereen’s excellent original already this week. I found a large gammon at the CFC on Thursday and...
read moreDelicious pork steaks recipe: baked with wild plum jelly and blackcurrants
However careful I am about constructing my fruit cages a hungry bird or twenty always seems to crack the code and get in. One year one of our fruit cages was constructed with high security in mind – nothing apart from me could get in or out and it was such a struggle to access that I cursed the plan all Summer. It seemed to work initially and then deteriorated fast. A family of wrens had built a teeny nest in the climbing roses at the back of the cage. I didn’t notice them during the construction process and only realised that they...
read moreRecipe to add zest to boiled rice, frittata and other dishes
Simple boiled rice, such as good basmati, or a dish like frittata can be a joy, especially if you add a little something to lift it above the ordinary. In my wilder years, I learned to cook by trial and error after accepting a position in a Chelsea, London household even though I did not have the foggiest idea of even how to boil an egg. Nowadays I would probably be summarily fired after Day Two but this couple were exceptionally kind people. On this blog I call them Smart Wife and Kind Husband. In England, the term Smart means relatively...
read more
FD