Food From Your Garden.

I aspire to be a proper gardener.  That means having a beautiful garden but it also obviously means growing an abundance of beautiful things to eat.  My Granda and Grandma's garden when I was growing up was overflowing with amazing flowers and all sorts of goodies to eat.  The peas were always my favourite but I loved everything I ate from that garden.

Several years ago (and I think somewhere around 10-15 years ago), I found a copy of a Reader's Digest book, Food From Your Garden, in a second hand bookshop near Forres and bought it for myself while dreaming of one day having a thriving garden.  I love the book and look at it often.  

My attempts at producing anything edible are pretty modest.  I do grow a few herbs and tend to be self sufficient in salad leaves for a few months of the Summer.  I also have a good supply of rhubarb after getting plants last year from Little Macaroon and I grow the odd other thing from time to time. I tried my beloved peas last year but failed by not putting netting over them from the beginning and finding the seedling got demolished by the birds (I managed about 4 pods in the end - last year's post).  This year I have the netting all ready to go on from the start but none of my fresh seeds have germinated.  Not one. I guess that's what I get for buying cheap seeds from B&Q. Lesson learned.

We have acquired two tomato plants and three courgette plants (thanks Little Macaroon) so far this year and I will be doing my salad leaves again (so good to have a constant supply for the sandwiches).  Seems a bit pathetic but I had intended to concentrate on the peas.

However, this post is about a recipe for cream of spinach soup and I have to admit to having bought the spinach in the sad supermarket plastic bags. Sorry.

Dom from Belleau Kitchen asked us to do a healthy dish for this month's Random Recipes (check out his gorgeous-looking prune and almond brownies). I got together the books I felt I would be guaranteed to pick something healthy from and they amounted to this little selection - 

Food From Your Garden, Reader's Digest

Veg Patch by Mark Diacono

Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook

Gordon Ramsay's Healthy Appetite

I used random.org which chose Food From Your Garden and I used it again to get a page number which led me to the spinach section. Excellent - I think I could do with topping up my iron levels.  

The recipe is very straightforward, quick and easy (yes, I did choose the easiest recipe on the page and I make no apologies for that).

Basically, saute some diced onion and carrot in some butter, add plenty of spinach.  Add some stock and parsley (aha - this DID come from my garden), a bouquet garni, some nutmeg and seasoning and simmer for half an hour then blitz.  Add the cream and heat through.

It recommended serving with croutons which are sprinkled with nutmeg - genius.  

What a wonderful soup.  I think the simplest and least fussy recipes are the best and I love how this is so healthy but tastes indulgent.  Maybe not quite as indulgent as Dom's brownies but I will be trying those very soon.  In fact, I reckon they would go with this recipe for a soup-and-pudding day.

I'm wondering about growing spinach next year.  It would do as one of my salad leaves for sandwiches and any leaves that I didn't get round to eating while young and tender would go to make this excellent soup.  In fact, I may decide to grow some this year instead of my peas.

The Pink Cake.

For May's Cake Slice Bakers, we were to make The Pink Cake which is the pretty cake adorning the front of the book we are baking from this year - Vintage Cakes by Julie Richardson.

The cake itself is a gorgeous chocolate cake layered with the raspberry buttercream.  It is only the raspberries making the beautiful pink colour.  We served the cake at our friends' house as dessert with cream and raspberries and it went down very well.

I am wondering about trying it with blueberries to make a purply kind of buttercream.

I'm sorry I haven't been baking along so much this year with the Cake Slice Bakers.  I am struggling with time and a lot of the recipes in this book are quite time consuming and more like celebration cakes than the every-day cakes I prefer to make (like those in Cake Keeper Cakes).  I'm not sure I will do next month's cake as it is another big, calorific, celebration cake similar to this one.  I enjoy being in the group but it is probably unfair of me to take a place and not bake consistently. Cake Slice Bakers - let me know if you are happy for me to tag along for the last few months of this book or if you would prefer for me to bow out.

Two Breads.

For this month's Random Recipes, we were asked to choose a random bread recipe.  Steve was more than happy to join in with this one as he loves making bread and is really the official bread maker in this house.  We have two dedicated bread books in the house - Bread Matters by Andrew Whitley and Dough by Richard Bertinet.  These were the ones we randomly chose. The other book I had in the mix was Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard - I love his bread recipes too.

Steve chose Bread Matters and randomly chose page 221 which is Cheese Bread.

He made three lovely loaves of cheesy bread.  He used mature cheddar and half white and half wholemeal bread.  This bread was particularly good for dipping into soup but Steve also liked it just spread with butter.  Obviously the kids loved it too.

I got Dough and opened it at page 88 - Ciabatta.

I must say I was a bit disappointed - how boring.  I noticed the variation called for Kalamata olives so I intended to make this.  Unfortunately, despite having bought some beautiful olives, I completely forgot to put them into my dough.  Ooops.
So there I was slightly bored by my white ciabattas.  However, they were incredible!  Perfect ciabattas, and full of taste (probably due to the 24 hour ferment).

They took a few steps over 24 hours but the actual work involved was minimal.  The recipe calls for avocado oil but I couldn't find any.  I'd love to give it a try again with either the olives or the avocado oil and Steve has asked for me to make them again so I guess I will.

Cheesy Bakes.

These are cheese, bacon and apple muffins that I made for this month's Random Recipes.  When I first saw the recipe I had to do, I thought I would manage to kill two birds with one stone as our baking club Pinnies and Petticoats was having a cheese themed evening this month.  I soon realised, however, that I would have to make my bake for P&P the night before and transport it to work and I really felt these muffins wouldn't be very tasty a day and a half later. The recipe is from Nigel Slater's Kitchen Diaries II and he says in the recipe that you must eat the muffins the same day as they are cooked so that made my mind up for me.

So, for Pinnies and Petticoats, I decided to do a recipe I have made before - Chilli and almond biscuits from Dan Lepard's Short and Sweet.  These are fairly cheesy and with a bit of a kick.  I forgot to take any photos of them but have found some old photos on the computer of a previous batch I made - not sure if I have mentioned them on the blog before.  They really are very tasty nibbles to have with drinks so I have made them a few times and Steve has made them a couple of times as well.  The recipe is on the Guardian here.

The Fromage Fest was just brilliant. I didn't have any tea beforehand and stuffed myself on cheesy treats.  We had a lovely mixture of savoury and sweet things.  I'll try and list what I can remember - 

Savoury:

• lamb and stilton pasties (amazing!!!)
• pear and goat's cheese tartlets
• feta and olive samosas
• cheesy monkey bread with homemade mozzarella and apple & chilli jelly
• parmesan shortbread
• parmesan and chilli stars
• cheesy feet 
• blacksticks blue and poppyseed sables
• bacon and cheese twists
• goat's cheese puffs with a chutney surprise
• stilton puffs
• homemade oatcakes and celery seed hearts served with cheese
• a cheese and pickle hedgehog
• basil and feta cupcakes
• cheese and bacon cupcakes

Sweet:

• basil and mascarpone tart with a walnut base (also amazing!)
• summer fruits cheesecake
• rhubarb crumble cheesecake
• lemon and poppyseed cake with cream cheese frosting
• chocolate cheesecake
• dark chocolate and mint mini-cheesecakes

If anyone fancies joining in with Random Recipes each month, go along to Dom's blog and have a look - he gives us a new challenge on the first day of each month.

If anyone in the Aberdeen/Aberdeenshire area fancies coming along to Pinnies and Petticoats, we are a very friendly, non-competitive baking group and wee meet once a month on a Wednesday evening at Tiger Tiger.  You can get full details on the facebook page.  Next month we are doing a Eurovision theme.  Everyone picks a Eurovision country and makes a bake from there.  I will be doing a Slovenian bake and will post here when I do. 

Surprise Ingredient Swap 3 - Florentines.

This was the lovely selection of things I received from Ruth from Makey-Cakey for her Spring Surprise Ingredient Swap. For some reason as soon as I saw the hazelnuts and the cocoa nibs I decided I wanted to make florentines.  I felt that was failing a little though as it meant I didn't use the cute kitty biscuit press she included in the parcel and I also didn't manage any kind of nod towards the seasonal Spring theme.  However, I totally succeeded in making lovely florentines which will make a nutritious snack for the boys if there are any left by tomorrow (I am finding them a little bit too perfect with my cups of tea tonight). 

By the way, does anyone notice that Ruth has rather cleverly sent me a card with a dog on that looks very like my gorgeous Bob?

So back to the florentines - I roughly chopped the 115g of hazelnuts leaving some big chunks.

  I weighed out 40g of the cocoa nibs and 100g of chopped dried apricots.  I melted 30g of unsalted butter in a pan and added 95g caster sugar.  I combined the butter and sugar and let cook gently for about 5 mins then I added 20g plain flour.  I took off the heat and whisked in 150ml of double cream.  I then added the nuts, nibs and apricots and mixed well. I then put heaped tablespoons of the mixture onto baking sheets lined with baking paper. I left plenty of space for them to spread.

  I put them in the oven at 180 C fan for 10 mins.  

I let them cool on the trays then flipped them over with a palette knife and spread melted dark chocolate on the undersides.  

Yum. 

Florentines are so easy to make.  I don't know why I haven't been making them all the time!  

Thanks Ruth for the brilliant parcel. I still have lots of cocoa nibs to use and my biscuit cutter. I might try Dom's classy cupcakes from a previous ingredient swap when I sent him some coca nibs. He gives a good explanation of what they are in this post too. 

I Love A One-Dish Recipe.

This is Mango chicken, bean and rice bake and is a recipe I had cut out of a recent Good Food.

It is exactly the kind of recipe I am likely to pounce on from a magazine because it is all made in one dish, takes just a few minutes of preparation then bakes in the oven for a while giving me time to set the table, listen to Boy 1 do his reading, get them to wash their hands, etc..  

I randomly chose this recipe from my cuttings file for this month's Random Recipes.

I did change it a little bit but not a huge amount so I'll just give you a rough idea of the recipe - one of these ones that is easy to play around with and bung things in in quantities that suit.

I blitzed in the processor some onion, garlic, chilli, coriander stalks, lime zest, lime juice, allspice and oil.  I then poured the paste over about 8 chicken thighs, covered and popped in the fridge for the day.  I had intended to do it the night before, but forgot.  It did make me feel very virtuous doing it before taking the kids to school in the morning, though, as usually I do nothing but grunt and drink tea in the mornings.

After school, I put 500g wholegrain rice into the bottom of an oven dish with a can of kidney beans.  I took the chicken out of the marinade and set aside then mixed the remaining marinade with  900mls of chicken stock and poured over the rice and beans.  I then placed the chicken thighs and a packet of frozen mango chunks on top of the rice and beans, covered the dish with foil and bunged in a moderate oven for 30 minutes.  I removed the foil, spooned some mango chutney over each chicken thigh, turned the oven up to high and returned the dish uncovered for another 40 minutes. 

It was rather nice.  I will certainly use the basic idea behind the dish and make my own variations.  Especially good for using up whatever you have in the house.  

I must say I get a lot of great recipes from Good Food.  They do a lot of budget or quick and easy meals  and, as you get the magazine a month in advance, great for seasonal ideas too.

Fideos En Cazuela.

So, this is pasta with peas, chicken and pork chops.  In fact, it has sausages in it as well and basically used the amount of meat we might buy in a typical week all in one meal!!!

For this month's Random Recipes, Dom gave us something of a free-reign.  I decided to randomly choose a recipe from the beautiful book - The Food Of Spain by Claudia Roden.  I got the book for Christmas from my lovely husband but hadn't actually managed to make anything from it yet.

I may not have chosen this recipe if I hadn't picked it for Random Recipes.  I don't generally do pasta and meat unless it spag bol.  I'm just not entirely tempted by it.  We did manage to make it last two nights but, even then, it really was a big dent out of our food budget with the sheer amount of meat in it.  You can use rabbit instead of the chicken and I would certainly do this next time I found rabbit available in the butcher - I think the rabbit flavour would complement it perfectly.

You basically cook half a ton of meat then add it to the pasta and peas with a sauce of onions, peppers, tomatoes and garlic and chicken stock.  At the end you stir through a picada - paste made with hazelnuts, garlic, parsley and saffron.  Certainly there was LOADS of flavour in this meal to go with the huge amounts of meat and the kids loved it because it was pasta.  I did like it but I think I am going to have to adapt a bit to suit my tastes and budget a little better.  I loved the flavours in it but I wonder if I might prefer it made with rice or another carbohydrate rather than the pasta.  I will certainly use the picada for something else - it was very tasty.

Hmmm, I wonder if I might need to stop posting pics of my kids now they are at school? This might be the last pic of my wee ones on here. I might need to be more like Little Macaroon who shows The Boss in pictures but keeps her partially hidden.  Probably sensible.