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