Category Archives: Cookery

After the ups and downs of the past week – currently standing at two Goat Escapes and one pig escape – it was nice to get back to the even keel of a school visit.

We picked a salad from the garden, and the only traditional ingredient in it was rocket which has self-seeded itself from last year. It was fat hen, chickweed, mallow, nasturtium, rose bay willow herb, dead nettle, borage flowers, chive heads and the petals of daisies and marigold.

In the absence of a salad spinner (which seems to have fallen victim to “tidying up” (I hate shared kitchens!) I had to use the old tea towel method. Only problem was that I’d forgotten how much water I was about to drive off…

Fortunately there was no damage done apart from a bit of mild surprise and a slippery floor.

Unlike the nettle soup I made with the same class last visit, most people seemed to try a bit of the salad, even if they didn’t all like it. I don’t mind that, it’s when they won’t try that I grow frustrated. Last time only one would try the nettle soup and only two tried the leek and potato, despite the familiar ingredients. I think it’s the fact that they see it being made that seems to put them off. It can’t be good for you if it doesn’t come from a factory…

We still have along way to go in food education.

Looking on the bright side they were good at the difficult questions (eg why didn’t Henry VIII eat chips?) and the best class I’ve ever had for cleaning up afterwards.

End of the week

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It’s 4.30pm on Saturday (though I won’t be posting until later), or 1995 if you follow the other form of dating I’ve been using. In 1995 I’m married with kids, happy and couldn’t tell you what was happening in the outside world because I didn’t have time to notice.

Wikipedia tells me that John Major called a leadership election to confirm his leadership of the party. I mention this only because it gives me chance for a John Major anecdote. I met him once and was introduced. About an hour later I met him again and he remembered my name. There was no need for him to have done that and it struck me that a man who could remember names like that, and appear to be pleased to meet you for a second time, would probably rise high in politics. He did.

There’s probably room for a whole digression on leadership and what it takes to succeed in politics here, but it wouldn’t be as interesting as cookery and gardening. I wish I’d realised that years ago.

Here are some pictures of a Wild greens quiche with guinea fowl eggs. My wife is making me describe weeds as wild greens now. Some years ago we went through a similar process with a product I now call “manure”.

It’s onions, blanched nettles and fat hen in a ready made pastry case. After adding the eggs and milk I dropped torn up chive blossom, calendula petals and whole borage flowers to the top. I will have to work on preserving the colour of the petals.

The water I blanched the nettles in took on a lovely green colour after just a minute or two of steeping and after removing the leaves I drank it. Much nicer than the cup I made earlier in the week, and much fresher tasting, though it did have overtones of calabrese. Compared with overtones of fox I’ll go for that. With hindsight I should have strained the insect shaped bits out of it, but I’m not a vegetarian so no harm done.

We have another school next week, a planning session, part one of my takeover of the catering side and I’m going to do some cuttings with willow water. The comfrey plant food is decidedly murky now – you wouldn’t want to swim in a pond that colour- and the indoor salads are really getting a move on now, in contrast to the disappointing outdoor salads.

Finally, after seeing my display of Wild Salad at the Open Farm Sunday I’ve been asked if I can do one at a buffet in a few weeks time. My weedy fame is spreading!

Breakfast at Scriffany’s

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OK, it’s not quite breakfast at the better known Tiffany’s but I’ve just been asked if I can take a booking for one of our Saturday morning cafe sessions. It threw me slightly because I had the office phone put through to my mobile to prevent the yoga class being disturbed. I never know whether it’s a call for me or the centre for the first few seconds, and the words “Can I book breakfast for fourteen?” left me sitting there with my mouth open.

So there it is – full English breakfast for fourteen. Birthday party (do you think candles in the sausages will be going over the top? Or sparklers?). I’ll be seating them under the awning, reserving the tables and picking a few wild flowers for the middle of the table. I’ll also assist in the kitchen because with just one four ring hob and no bain marie breakfast for fourteen is going to be a tad on the hectic side. I may press one of my chafing dishes into service, Maybe both of them, though I’m going to have to buy more tins of fuel.

I’m also going to have to remember that after use they have a remarkable amount of soot under them. The black hand prints on the car upholstery took some getting off last time.

This is when your jack of all trades status is called into question. Can the man who does the gardens and the blog, the marketing and the teaching sessions on baking and beetles, manage a simple breakfast for fourteen? I didn’t do too well when I had to do breakfast for nine a few months ago, though there were extenuating circumstances.

On the other hand I can do a sit-down three course meal for 40, so why not give it a go? I’m only going to be assisting after all so if it goes wrong I can blame the cook. That’s another of my many skills – management. Or passing the buck as it is also known.

Mushrooms, books and cookery

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It was a day for firsts yesterday (yes, I’ve slipped another day – fell asleep writing and decided to take the hint). It was the first time I’ve “planted” mushrooms, first time I’ve used chive flowers in a quiche, maybe even the first time I’ve admitted cooking quiche (I’ll have to look back and check that). And it was the first time I was able to be really critical in a book review.

The quiche thing sort of crept up on me, as I’m definitely of the Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche school of cookery.

Anyway – first the mushrooms. I bought two sorts of mushroom spawn – one for grey oyster mushrooms because they are supposed to be easy to grow and one for blewits because they are a local delicacy. We will see.

I’m growing them on paperback books. The Art of Captaincy by Mike Brearley. I bought it on the basis that it was supposed to be about the psychology of leadership but it turned out to be about making decisions based on the amount of grass on a wicket. I’m sure it’s a great book for a cricket captain, but overall I was disappointed. I bought it cheap in a sale because it had a damaged cover so it seemed a good way to recycle it.

Port Mortuary by Patricia Cornwell was a mistake. I’ve given up reading her novels because I want puzzles and whodunnits not super-successful wooden characters and… Well if you like them you won’t read further and if you don’t like them you will know what I mean. Growing mushrooms seemed a more fitting end than passing it on and perpetuating the series.

You soak the books in water, spread the spawn on pages about 50 pages apart and hold them together with elastic bands, Easier said than done with wet books and escaping mushroom spawn, I can tell you. They suggest 400 pages, so The Art of Captaincy was a bit short, though it hadn’t seemed like it when I read it. They are now bagged up and incubating in my desk drawer and will be refrigerated later. Ironic when you think about the way Scarpetta’s clients end up. I will keep you in touch.

The quiche was more of an immediate project – done in about 45 minutes from picking the herbs. We had smoked salmon left over from the weekend sandwich making so I bought two pastry cases, added torn up chive blossom, chopped fennel leaves and a splash of nutmeg and that was basically it. Four eggs and 300 ml of milk wasn’t quite enough for the filling but it was adequate. I will make a note next time. cook for 30 minutes at about 180 C in a fan oven.

I wanted to see if there was a way of ensuring a good decorative effect so I tried two methods of filling – one laying the chive blossom and fennel on the salmon and pouring the egg mix on top. In the second I mixed them in the egg and milk and poured it all in.

Results? No real difference. The salmon and fennel showed up OK but the chive flowers seemed to disappear.

Taste. Three tasters in total – two were happy and I thought the smoked salmon made it just a bit too salty. Seems to be a success, and as the salmon, chives and fennel were free it was quite economical. Picture below is a guide to quantities – I never remember to weigh and make notes.

Focaccia and nettle soup

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It was the baking group again today, though they were slightly thinned out by holidays. It’s always good to see them because they are a happy lot. This is good when you’re baking (as some of my attempts have been horrendous and several, despite exhortations to “re-use the dough” have ended up in the bin – sometimes scraped from my fingers, and sometimes propelled with at speed). The fact that Focaccia was bread of the day was a bonus. It always smells so good.

I wasn’t baking today – I lost my baking mojo a while back and my enthusiasm has faded. I need to start getting it back now, particularly as several schools have been asking for bread making as an option when they come to visit. The smell of freshly baked focaccia and rosemary is just the sort of thing to bring back that enthusiasm. Not that I’m overly enthusiastic about the school sessions – it can be a bit of a dull day for the kids when you keep dragging them back into the kitchen for the next stage.

That reminds me, I have a teacher to ring back.

At the end of the session I gave out nettle soup. One or two slunk out without taking any (though I bear no grudges) but several drank it cold there and then and the rest took pots home with them. I’m easy with foraging and can take it or leave it, but it’s good to produce food from found ingredients and to introduce people to new experiences. It’s also, as somebody once said in a book, good to eat foraged food once in a while because it gives you a range of nutrients. However, there are reasons that we eat spinach instead of nettles, with the stings being just one of them.

I have actually set myself a target of learning something new every day this year. My learing for today was that I didn’t know how to spell focaccia. In fact I just had to check it after writing that.

Finally, can anyone tell me how ro swirl cream into soup and have it still look good by the time you’ve switched your camera on. In an effort to raise my game last night I swirled the cream, sprinkled the freshly picked chives and took this picture that looks like a curdled face.

Focus! First week report.

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A week in and little has changed – seems like I’m going toi have to do some fine-tuning.

The intention was to narrow down my workload and achieve more by focussing relentlessly on getting results. The reality was that I’ve been given more to do and I’m still sprinkling my effort lightly over too many projects. Sprinkiling lightly seems to work with fairy dust, but in real life it doesn’t bring many results.

On the other hand, we did make nettle soup today, something I’d been meaning to do for two years. I’m hoping to move on to other nettle products as the year progresses. With luck, they will appear on my new nettles page, but considering my track record the result may well be that one of the other pages disappears.

It’s been a productive week with two days delivering the college course, a day of Woodland Trust training and a school so far. I’ve even had chance to try out my new soup and soda bread lesson, which went a lot quicker than I thought it was going to do. I’m going to be running it twice more next week so I’ll have to add a few bits.

Meanwhile Julia has landed me with running a party for twenty five-year-olds tomorrow – looking at lambs, making butter and being generally nice. It’s not really my forte.

Latest news on the guinea fowl is that several have gone in the pot and were delicious. The survivors are currently engaged in escspe-related activities and the outside group has risen to eight. They are so successful at escaping that we have been accused of helping them. If you remember when I first pased an opinion on the captivity I said that in a battle of wits my money was on the birds – seems I’m right.

This a picture of guinea fowl at liberty during a solar eclipse. Not much different to a normal picture of guinea fowl but I was bored after borrowing a welding mask and staring at the sun with a bit missing so just took some random photos.

Birds, frogs and staying inside while my wife gets cold

Windy weather and photographs

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Windy today – most of the morning it’s been gusting between 19 and 35 kph – so it’s felt colder than the temperature suggests. As luck would have it we managed to have both doors open today at one time. Someone was holding the front door open to talk when someone else came in from the toilet and opened the back door. The result was a wind tunnel effect with instant temperature drop.

Before I had time to shout “Shut that door!” (or something similar but possibly ruder) I heard a smash as the vase of artificial sunflowers hit the floor by the front door. They’ve been an accident waiting to happen since they were put there (the blooms were too long and too big for the vase) so in a way it’s a relief.

One group of piglets has been weaned this week, much to the relief of the mother, who was looking fit to fade away. We still have two more litters with the sow and another looking ready to farrow soon.

If a picture is worth a thousand words here’s the equivalent of a few thousand words for you, including porridge and the smoothie bike.

More breakfast

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We had a new experience yesterday – five sample breakfasts for 38 pupils at the local school, followed by a vote on which they preferred.

We had:

English (toast and marmalade)

French (pain au chocolat)

German (cheese and sausage on black bread)

American (pancakes and syrup)

Australian (Vegemite and toast)

To be fair, we weren’t showing English and Australian breakfasts in the best light but we needed something that was easy to do.

The results were:

French – 12

American – 10

German – 8

English – 6

Australian – 0

It doesn’t add up to 38 but it’s close. As usual with these things the unhealthy options got the most votes!

For more world breakfasts click the link.

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Life after the Care Farm