The Salad of the Century

Hello!

Despite the rain today it really does seem like spring is well on its way at last and not a moment too soon.  The temperature has been in double figures for a few days, it's still light well after 6pm, the magnolia is about to burst into bud and the chickens' eggs are getting bigger and bigger.  Everyone looks like they've just emerged from hibernation - pale and confused, squinting uncertainly at the sun when it appears and tentatively swapping skiing gear and woolly hats for lighter jackets and the occasional pair of sunglasses.  I even had the roof open on the way to work last week - not for long, mind!

After such a long, hard winter it really makes you appreciate the spring even more.  It's time to start sowing seeds in the vegetable garden and to adapt our eating habits to suit the new climate.  I'm less inclined to wallow in mash and casseroles than I was a month ago and more towards crushing new potatoes with chives, olive oil and lemon to accompany some juicy lamb or roast pork and spring veg.  Salads have suddenly become more appealing than hearty soup for lunch.  Sophie Dahl made such a delicious one on her new TV show this week, with ribbons of yellow courgette, shaved fennel with its frondy tops, slices of orange and mint, to go with creamy globs of fresh buffalo mozzarella on garlicky toasted sourdough - my kind of lunch if a bit summery for March.  

Today I'm waiting for British Gas to replace our meter and never one to waste an opportunity when stuck at home I applied myself to the kitchen, went through the cupboards and decided to make a proper chocolate fudge-cake to while away the time.  The icing is the key to the fudginess and for this you need evaporated milk heated and simmered with light brown sugar, then off the heat you whisk in butter and dark chocolate.  Once cool it's a gorgeous smooth, thick, dark mixture with which to slather your moist, dark sponge.  Of course it can be eaten as a teatime treat with a cuppa, or you can warm slices up  (20 seconds in the microwave should do it) and serve it with cream or ice-cream for pudding.  Yum!

In the last few weeks I've been searching for a new cooking job.  It's an eye-opener visiting different kitchens I can tell you!  Some of them make the awkward little galley kitchen I'm used to seem like a gleaming multi-roomed palace - how some of these places can exist like they do I've no idea.  And some of the food being served in this day and age sends me all agog.  I had a trial shift in a country pub this week and though the chef was a totally splendid chap I have to report that the food being served from a vast menu was definitely not of the splendid variety.  Fanny Craddock might even be spinning slightly in her grave at the salad which accompanied the crispy duck.  It was my job to assemble the salad upon which the duck would sit.  Radicchio, raw peppers and red onion, cucumber, tomato, grapes, coleslaw, avocado and strawberries, were arranged in the bowl.  I think I'd rather eat sauteed Chick Crumbs.  I was aghast a) at the ingredients, b) that people ordered it c) that people actually ate it.  Am I missing something here??  Thence to the apple crumble.  The apples were tinned and the crumble mix involved an unbranded soft margarine.  The garlic butter for the garlic bread also had seen no actual butter and was full of indeterminable dried herbs.  The liver and bacon and microwaved veg was pure school dinners (except our school dinners were much better).  The steak and kidney puddings were assembled with the cooked meat and gravy and the raw suet pastry into their little plastic basins and then nuked for 10 minutes - well you can imagine what they looked like when they emerged, a sort of flabby greyish beige - but fortunately the liberal cascade of bisto over the top disguised the truth, at least until the first bite was taken ...

Extraordinary!    Or maybe I'm just a frightful snob (if so, I'm proud to be such).  Luckily I have found a position at a splendid country inn where gorgeous, generous, stylish home-cooked dishes are cooked with gusto and integrity and where fruit is incorporated in a much more appropriate manner.  The shepherds pie is full to the brim with chunks of roast lamb and rich, glossy gravy, the chocolate cheesecake with raspberries is about 4 inches deep, the rhubarb crumble is fresh and zingy.  The kitchen is very mini indeed, but it's a small price to pay under the circumstances.

Wondering what to have for tea - whatever it ends up being, it will be totally bisto, marg and strawberry-free...

Happy cooking!

AMT

Let it thaw, let it thaw, let it thaw

Hello and a very happy New Year to you all!   Twelfth Night has been and gone in a flurry of snowflakes but our little twinkly tree still adorns a corner of the living room quite happily - fear not, superstitious readers, I am merely making the most of my Swedish roots here, for in Sweden the Christmas decorations stay up until the 20th day.  So there.  What with the glistening winter scene outside, keeping the lights going a few days more seems appropriate!

However, the novelty of a second helping of this unusually thick snow and sub-freezing temperatures is wearing very thin - bring on spring and bring spring soon!  In our non-centrally-heated house it's a daily challenge just keeping warm and since I can't get to work at the moment I'm spending a lot of time trapped and wrapped in about 9 layers.  It's a shame because we have a new menu this week at the pub and I haven't had the chance to try it out on the customers yet.  Juicy hot steak sandwiches made with succulent sirloin, onion rings and dijon mayonnaise, homemade fishcakes and tartare sauce, beef and ale casserole with jacket potatoes and fresh seared tuna nicoise are amongst the tasty new menu items.  And of course tapas on a Thursday night as usual, such fun!

Even on the days I can't make it to work there is always plenty of cooking to do at home so I haven't been slacking, have no fear!  After all the festive gluttony it's good to eat slightly more plain food for a while.  I never make New Year's resolutions as they'd only get broken within a matter of hours, if not minutes, but I have managed to avoid butter for over a week - mainly because I've largely been avoiding bread.  Not missing it so far which is a good sign...  Tonight we're going to make a good old-fashioned toad-in-the-hole with lovely fat pork sausages from our village butcher and the batter will be made with our hens' eggs.   We can use up the rest of the goose fat we roasted our spuds in on Christmas Day to cook it all in too. The chickens are being fantastic by the way, still laying every day even though they hate the snow because they can't get to the grass - and they get very confused when they can't see the ground bless them.  We are giving them lots of treats and attention though and they seem happy enough.

And one can always bake one's socks off on a gloomy day can't one?  It always cheerifies things, the smell of baking on a cold, dark day.  All the Christmas cake has gone and such is husband's fondness for fruit cake, good old wifey made him one today - it's not as dark, spicy and rich as the festive version, but is a lighter, more golden fruity sponge flavoured with vanilla and orange zest, the fruit having been soaked in liberal quantities of yummy Pedro Ximenez sherry.  While the cake was still warm we prodded it liberally with a skewer and poured thick white icing over it so that it sank in and left a soft crackly glaze on the top.  We also made a chocolate yule log the other day, the sponge as light as can be with no flour or butter in the making and a rich, dark chocolate buttercream over the top, mmmm.

But we haven't discussed the feasting of the festive variety yet!  We had some delicious venison fillet on Christmas Day but there was far too much for the two of us, so we recycled the hunk we didn't use a couple of days later when ma and pa came round for lunch.  It was seared quickly on all sides, roasted for 10 minutes in a hot oven then wrapped in parma ham, surrounded by a duxelle of chestnut mushrooms in madeira and then baked in a shroud of golden, flaky, buttery puff pastry - essentially it was Venison Wellington.  Twas to die for - slightly fiddly but totally worth it.  Juicy, pink melting meat, earthy mushrooms and crisp pastry.  To accompany it we had braised red cabbage cooked with pear, apple and dried cranberries, brown sugar and red wine vinegar - no potatoes this time, just some buttered green veg on the side.   As we'd started with rich crab souffles (hurrah, they turned out to be puffy delights) we didn't need afters, so just had coffee with homemade florentines and Christmas puddinis (sorry to put the same picture in as in the last blog but they are so yummy!) 

So now we have a long forecast of cold, wintry weather and we need to keep cooking things to make us toasty - thick soups, stews, braises and roasts, hot puddings and custard - endless tasty possibilities, so get creative and keep safe and warm all.

Happy cooking!

AMT

'TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS ...

Hello and festive greetings to fellow food-lovers everywhere!

Christmas Eve, the best day of the year in my book, with all its delicious anticipation of good things to come.  When you've finally sat down in front of a roaring fire - perhaps with the Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings on the radio, a glass of sherry (mine's a dry Oloroso please!) and a mince pie in hand, the presents piled up under the tree, the Christmas cake iced and the candles lit - you can relax and forget about rushing about on icy roads and in busy shops because there's nothing you can do now - if you've left something off the list it's too late to worry about, so you may as well chill out and enjoy the evening in its full festive glory! 

I'm going to make the most of a couple of days off work to potter about and cook in a leisurely fashion in the familiarity of my own kitchen, something I don't do enough of these days - much as I enjoy cooking at work it's totally different. Today we baked a small ham and will have thick slices of it tomorrow morning for brunch with buttered croissants and warm crusty rolls, fresh clementine juice and lots of coffee.  Tonight we are just going to have a candlelit picnic and nibble on smoked salmon sandwiches, homemade sausage rolls, prawn cocktail and salads.   Tomorrow's main feast will be a twinkly twilight affair, after we've had time to phone our families, open our presents and play with our new toys. There's a lovely hunk of juicy venison fillet to be rolled in herbs and crushed juniper berries then seared in a smoking hot pan, finished in the oven and served rare with fresh cranberry gravy.  Venison does like a fruity accompaniment as the meat is rich, though very lean.  To accompany we have maris pipers roasted in hot goose fat, sprouts blanched and then tossed with smoked bacon and toasted almonds, honey-roast parsnips and buttered carrots.   No leaden lumps of Christmas pudding for us but we might be able to force down a couple of these little homemade Christmas puddinis (thank you Nigella!) which are tiny orbs of loveliness made with little pieces of crumbled christmas pudding, melted chocolate and sherry, rolled up and decorated to look like a mini Dickensian pud.   Genius!  

Depending on the weather we might go for a walk at some point but won't beat ourselves up if we don't manage it!  Dinner will be a late afternoon/early evening event and though it takes virtually no time to eat such a feast the amount of time and effort spent preparing it is a work-out in itself and no mistake.  For non-foodies this can seem an insurmountable marathon and I can fully understand the appeal of Aunt Bessie and other ready-made alternatives to home cooking - the main thing is that people are eating happily together on this special day.

Boxing Day is a working day for me but those of you who have made merry with turkey go forth and fashion yourselves some wonderful leftovers - I adore a cold roast turkey sandwich with cranberry sauce and stuffing and indeed the much-maligned - though goodness knows why - turkey curry, coronation turkey and turkey goujons.  Long live the turkey leftover is what I say!  

Anyway, it's time to bid you farewell and to wish all my beloved blog-readers and Lobster Cards customers a very happy Christmas.  Merry munching one and all - and to all, a good night.

AMT xx

Blustery days, dark nights

Hello!  I hope Autumn is treating you all well - didn't we have a fantastic Indian summer in October? How lucky we were!  Just a few days ago I was on the beach near Rye in hot sun, we were staying in a beautiful beach house and had lunch outside in T-shirts and evening drinks on the patio watching the sun set over the sea - amazing. The trees have been gorgeous over the last couple of weeks and a visit to the National Trust's beautiful Scotney Castle near Lamberhurst has some stunning examples, especially the maple shown here by the old boat house.

Then November arrived with gusto -  gales, torrential rain and a real nip in the air on sunnier days.  More like real Autumn. I love frosty blue mornings more than any other I think, to be able to wrap up warm without having to take your fleece off 5 minutes later, to go for a walk and come back all rosy-cheeked and in the mood for hot chocolate and crumpets by the fire.

Food-wise I adore autumn and winter, when you can slow-cook meltingly rich casseroles, make thick pureed soups and hot fruit pies and crumbles. In the pub where I cook, we have a huge log fire roaring in the grate and are serving plenty of comfort food - Thai curry, Hungarian goulash, hearty soups - spicy butternut squash, curried parsnip and roasted tomato and basil. Pies too - chicken, leek and tarragon with a puff pastry lid and a creamy fish pie bubbling with bronzed cheesy mash on top.  Yummy in your tummy and so much more satisfying to make and eat than another caesar salad, much as I love those in summer.  

There is so much produce around at this time of year, a haven for the fruit and vegetable-lover. Game is also in season - and venison will definitely feature at home and at work soon. Whether you casserole it or sear the beautiful fillet leaving it pink and juicy in the middle it's a wonderful lean and tasty meat. I love it with dauphinoise potatoes and perhaps some savoy cabbage. It's a good festive alternative to turkey as well ... but let's not go there just yet, it's only early November!  

Oh and Lobster Cards will be offering a selection of Christmas cards soon and also some items which would make great presents, so please do look out for a few new things appearing in the online shop in the next couple of weeks.

Meantime, happy cooking!

AMT

Welcome to the season of yellow fruitiness!

Hello!

1st September can only mean one thing : Christmas stuff in the shops.  Bah, I say, BAH!   That element of the onset of autumn I do not relish one little bit - can't we at least get Bonfire Night out of the way first?  BUT looking on the bright side, September also means trees groaning with ripe fruit, juicy brambles down the lane and the trees starting to turn into hues of burnished gold - with a bit of soggy brown thrown in no doubt.    

We have 3 mature Victoria plum trees and this year there are so many rosy golden plums we will be making jam and chutney for months - hurrah.  The Bramley apple tree is weighed down with huge red and green orbs, unfortunately most of the apples on the higher branches are rotting in their too-close clumps and we can't get to them before they are ruined.  How the chickens haven't been felled by the falling ones plummeting to earth or bouncing off the shed roof I don't know!

At work we have freshly-picked brambles to go with Bramleys in yummy oaty crumbles.We made little steamed blackberry sponges too, with lemon and honey to have with hot custard or cold cream.  We're looking forward to changing the menu soon - the salads will be on the wane and there will be a welcome influx of homemade soups, casseroles and pies.   Not that any of us would complain if we had an Indian summer over the next few weeks, it would be lovely to have hot sun for a bit longer.  But I'm really looking forward to being able to cook proper comfort food again.  As the weather cools down people will drop in on their weekend hikes in boots and fleeces with rosy cheeks and cold hands ready to wrap around a mug of hot chocolate or a bowl of pumpkin soup, or to tuck into a deep-filled steak and ale pie with creamy mash to have with a pint of the local brew before they stride off suitably fortified, their breath billowing on the frosty air - or not, as the case may be ... if we have a damp and murky autumn they're more likely to be peering reluctantly into the gloom and mist and deciding to stay for another pint!

So, the nights are drawing in noticeably now - the chicks are zigzagging off to bed by 8pm and the runner beans are finally slowing down their mammoth production.  We had a tasty lunch the other day - a salad of runners mixed with cannellini beans, red onion, a garlicky vinaigrette, smoked crisp bacon and toasted flaked almonds - if I'd had some pine-nuts they would have been great instead but the almonds were tasty and it all made a suitable accompaniment to homemade puff-pastry pizza tarts filled with pesto, parma ham, ripe tomatoes and melting cheese.  Then warm oozing brownies with boozy cream afterwards ...

More veg watch : although the beans have been a huge success in our novices' veg garden, I'm afraid we were too idle with the weeding to have a successful crop of carrots and everything was a bit overcrowded so the vast courgette plants overshadowed the peppers and chillis and the courgettes never grew much bigger than a manly-size finger - tasty though.  The strawberries were delicious though we only had 7 and they got eaten straight off the plants and the tomatoes are in full swing but next year must do better with feeding them and staking them.    We've pulled out all the broad beans and peas now - moderately successful on both of those but the broccoli has been nibbled heavily and is covered in furry caterpillars, so the best we can do is feed the holey leaves to the chicks who would do ANYTHING for a bite, broccoli leaves are their absolute favourite.  They also adore the runner bean leaves so they get daily treats of both.  If only I were so easily pleased!

As regards Lobster Cards, there was an exciting event in August - the Telegraph contacted me and asked for images so that they could put a small feature in the Saturday magazine on the Food News page - it was a wonderful snippet and generated a flurry of welcome sales - things had been rather quiet over the summer so far - so thank you very much to the Telegraph and specifically to Carolyn Hart for that very timely piece of free advertising!  I've sold lots of jute bags, cards and cookie cutters and am about to introduce a new design of jute bag and some more lobstery artefacts the shop so watch this space ... and thanks to all of you who have purchased so far and for reading this blog - I'm looking forward to sharing more cooking tips and photos with you again soon.

Must go bake ...

Happy cooking!

AMT

Shall we dine?

Hello!

Sometimes it's so nice to have someone else cook for you.  Now that I cook at home AND at work I don't always want to have to think about what to have or to cook.  Takeaways - well, they have their place, but going out for dinner and being waited on is even better once in a while. We are spoilt for choice here and it reminds me that when I was growing up what little choice there was by comparison. I mean, unless you are in a tiny village most people can go out for dinner these days, not too far from home and choose from almost any international cuisine rather than just Italian, Chinese or Indian as in days of yore. I mean, amongst everything else we have two Nepalese restaurants in our small town and both are superb. But before we decide whether we fancy sushi, eclectic British, French or Himalayan Gurkha fare let us go back in time for a moment to those days when eating out was such a special treat - something that was planned for weeks and for which best dresses were donned and best behaviour was required ....

OK, so we're back in the mid-'70s. Can you tell it was my favourite era? When we were little and went out it was so exciting. Certainly there was no such thing as a gastro-pub or one of those super-family-friendly kind of places you get now - but because of that it made the event more special somehow. We couldn't just dash out to the Japanese noodle bar for a quick fix and Zizzi hadn't been invented, so what did we do? Well, when we were splashing out for an occasion we had a few favourite places near us. The Three Kingdoms was the only Chinese restaurant in town that wasn't just a takeaway and it was  attractively situated on a mad roundabout in the middle of the one-way system near the railway station.  Parking, as you can imagine, wasn't easy.  But once we had battled our way to the entrance, dodging traffic, trains and weather, we were faced with the enticingly (and forbiddingly) modern, smoky, dark plate glass frontage (you couldn't see in but They could definitely See Out) with its blue Diners Club and American Express symbols stuck slightly skew on the door. Inside there was a patterned, bamboo-y interior, around which wafted some relaxingly exotic plinky music.  Shiny and slightly fierce waiters slid about tinily between the white-clothed tables with deliciously fragrant and sizzling dishes. We'd dive on the prawn crackers (who doesn't) and then share a selection of dishes which haven't really changed at all over the years. Special fried rice, sweet and sour prawn balls with all that orange shiny gloop - divinely disgusting. Cashew or lemon chicken - bliss. Chow mein - hmm, too many slimy beansprouts for me. Crispy beef - got stuck in your teeth for weeks but one muddled through somehow. Aromatic crispy duck was the piece de resistance, with all the fun stuff attached - the waiter theatrically  shredding the meat at the table and donning a pile of thin white pancakes and accompaniments with alacrity, after which we could roll our own juicy morsels with the tiny batons of cucumber, spring onion and a lovely dollop of plum or hoi-sin sauce. Yum!  I could have eaten a whole half duck on my own I'm sure. Then of course we'd spoil it all by forcing down a few eyeballs for afters ... I mean shouldn't lychees (along with okra) be banned from the planet forthwith, or is it just moi? Anyway, so that might be a Friday night once in a while and lovely it was too. We'd get home at 10 and be allowed to stay up and watch a bit of Dave Allen or Monty Python before bed while Ma and Pa had a nightcap.  

Otherwise, there were a couple of  little genteel family-run restaurants aspiring to be a bit posh - this type was often above a shop  - with names like Le Chanticleer or La Petite Maison, where we would go for birthday meals on Saturday nights or Sunday lunchtimes. People whispered in these places, above the barely audible and crackly tape playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons or Air on the G string  - everyone behaved as if they were in church and the clink of glasses and clatter of cutlery on china was much louder than the sound of people actually enjoying themselves. You could just hear the odd "pass the salt, dear" or "waiter, could my wife have another fork please", things like that. I remember my sisters and I got the giggles terribly once, because an awfully serious and tidy silver-service waitress whose face I can remember to this day came along with the vegetables and as she got to each person she'd look us in the eye and hiss "parsley potatoes Sir/Madam?" under her breath at us one by one, until we couldn't sit up straight for trying not to laugh and tears were sprouting cos it was so funny and ridiculous. Mum and Dad were trying hard to keep us under control but were beside themselves too so it all went hopelessly wrong. Our lovely Granny always came out with us for family meals and her crisp perm would bob about anxiously above her Liberty print frock as she watched the horror unfold and whilst trying to keep a straight face herself. Which only made things worse of course. The waitress fortunately didn't take too much umbrage at our shocking manners and gave in to giggles herself eventually - she couldn't even get the words out by the time she got round to Dad - "ppppsly pppptatoes, Sssir?" - let alone deliver the green-flecked bullets to their rightful slots without pinging them on to the floor. I fear that a couple of them did bounce under the table and possibly got kicked about slightly, to a soundtrack of tutting from the lady who had got another fork.

Then there was the odd Italian "Trat" (checky tablecloths, breadsticks, floppy pasta, raffia'd Chianti bottles housing dusty red candles) or the little French-style brasserie (checky tablecloths, baskets of fake french bread, langoustines, steaks and lovely thin frites). Or if we were on holiday, perhaps driving around the Lake District or Devon, there would be hotel restaurants to eat in. I loved those. We wore our best dresses, lacy knee-socks and patent leather shoes and we would meet for drinks in the swirly-carpeted bar half an hour before our table was ready. Dad would come down in his grey flannels, navy blazer and some dreadful paisley cravat to sip a G&T, mum would waft in in a caftan on a wave of Elnette and teetering on her wedges towards her dry Martini. We would slurp lemonade or Coke on the rocks through stripy straws and then suck on the slice of lemon grimacing hideously. There was  much nipping to the Ladies to check that our alice bands were on straight before we were directed to our table. 

In the dining room, waiters pulled out red velvet chairs and pushed us up to the table, flapping proper napkins onto our laps - soooo swish and sophisticated. And they'd come round and deliver the plates and condiments swiftly and silently - shame about the "mustard, sir?" moment though ... my sister was most put out and wished she hadn't had her hair cut so short...

Menus were very limited of course, though at the time we didn't think so - they seemed just splendid. Starter choices would always include the obligatory half a grapefruit with a glace cherry perched classily in the middle. Then there might be some sliced melon with port (hmm, OK but even better if there was a sliver of salty Parma ham atop) or half an avocado pear ("eugh, it's just like eating soap" said Cousin Richard), with a pool of vinaigrette in the hollow. Or a small glass of concentrated orange or tomato juice, on a plate WITH A DOILY.  Why concentrated juice was considered an adequate starter I'll never know. Or "Soup of the Day" - woe betide if it was minestrone but I loved the French Onion with its cheesy crouton on top. If poss I went for prawn cocktail, or pâtė if it was on the menu, with bendy toast and a sprig of parsley on the side. Often, it had more than a hint of Pedigree Chum about it ... Dad once peered down at his and asked the waiter why his slice of "pâtė maison" was so perfectly round and the answer was "because chef can't buy it in square tins, sir".

Thence to the the main courses ... there were a lot of stews and breaded things, I remember. Veal escalopes - very contraversial and they were my fave, fried and with a twist of lemon on the side and some sautėed potatoes and peas  - heavenly. Gammon and pineapple - vile and to be avoided at all costs but no hotel or pub menu would be complete without it. Steak and kidney pie or Coq au Vin. Baked trout with almonds, the occasional lobster thermidor - only for super-special occasions! Dad would usually go for a mixed grill or sirloin steak - rare - and chips. Possibly with a flat grilled mushroom and a gobbet of garlic and parsley butter on the side.

Then there was The Dessert Trolley which is thankfully a thing of the past now - we'd have our beady eyes on it throughout the meal, whilst eying up our fellow diners to see who was ordering what and whether the flaccid chocolate profiteroles would all go before we had a chance to get any. It would squeak past us throughout the evening and then go back again to its dark corner minus a few more portions of ghastly gateaux, the remains of which were all the while getting warmer and runnier. (It always paid to book your table early - get in there at 7pm and you might not get salmonella by 9). Sherry trifle (Granny always ordered it and the soggier the better), lurid cream cakes of varying types, Black Forest Gateau being the most sophisticated of course, fruit fools and possibly a rubbery chocolate or lemon mousse, so loaded with gelatin that you were chewing on it for hours. Much safer to have the cheese (brie, stilton, mild cheddar) and biscuits with obligatory grapes (seeds in of course). Absolutely splendid and I wouldn't have changed any of it for the world!

Happy eating out!

AMT

Lavender Loveliness

It's been rather too cool and windy for several days now and this weather is playing havoc with both my already wild hairdo and my 9-foot beanstalks - time for some stillness and sunshine I think! I haven't spent as much time in the garden as I would have liked in the last couple of weeks but I'm choosing to believe the optimistic forecasts of a gorgeous August. The haze and cloud is good for taking floral photos though as it makes colours stand out so much better than when they are blasted in harsh summer brightness. This breathtaking field of lavender is located not in Provence but in a corner of Kent and I was lucky enough to be standing in the middle of it the other day, breathing in the headily scented air while I snapped away and came home feeling thoroughly restored. If you get a chance to visit Castle Farm near Shoreham it's well worth it both for the beautiful views and the gorgeous farm shop.  See http://www.hopshop.co.uk.  

I trundled home happily with goodies of course - some culinary lavender essence (milder than regular lavender oil) and some dried buds and a recipe leaflet and got baking forthwith. The smell of the shortbread emanating from the oven was fantastic - buttery, fragrant and sugary-warm all at once. You can use the essence for cold drinks, jams, ice-creams etc too and the the combination of citrus and lavender in baking is particularly good.  The shortbread can be served on its own or with strawberries and lavender cream perhaps.  Chocolate and lavender are also a gorgeous combination so I think some floral truffling will be occurring sometime very soon ...

Anyway, to make the shortbread just mix 100g soft unsalted butter with 50g golden caster sugar till creamy.  Add a few drops of culinary essence and some grated lemon zest.  Tip in 100g plain flour and 50g rice flour plus a good pinch of lavender buds and combine into a soft dough. Press it into a 20-inch loose-bottomed cake tin, sprinkle with sugar and mark into 8 slices with a knife. Bake for about 30 minutes at 160C/gas mark 3 until golden.  Cool in the tin and then separate into wedges.  Yum!

Next time I'm hoping my little green beans will be big enough to harvest - at the moment they are tiny, furry, spindly things.  Plenty of time for me to research tasty beany recipes for the weeks to come ...

Happy cooking!

AMT