Category Archives: Cookery

Changes

As you may have noticed, we are slowly adding new subjects to the site. We already have a section on the Ecocentre and a selection of photographs and yesterday added a book review page. I’m going to add some food and recipe pages soon but there’s a problem I need to overcome first.

I meant to do some food blogging while we were on holiday in the Lake District last year but I ran into two problems. One is that I’m embarrassed by my own odd behavior in taking pictures of my food, particularly when the flash goes off or a small child points out what I’m doing. The second is that I often eat the subject of the blog before taking the picture. The pies at Tebay services on the M6, for instance, are really good (though they are possibly kept in the warming cabinet a little too long). We had them twice, and both times I found myself looking down at the biodegradable packaging and a few crumbs. What was worse is that on the second occasion I had gone there with the intention of getting a photograph.

The same applies to cookery – there’s no embarrassment but I do still tend to eat things before remembering to take a photograph. There’s the additional problem of having no flair for food photography, but it can’t be that hard compared to some branches of photography. It doesn’t explode and it doesn’t bite so how hard can it be? I will just have to try harder.

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That’s a cheese and home-made soda bread cob made from wheat that was harvested in the morning and eaten at lunchtime. It’s quite a good shot, but unfortunately it isn’t one of mine.

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This is one of mine. It’s home-made piccalilli. The red bits are chillis because somebody told me it wasn’t spicy enough last year. Nobody has said that this year.

Another day, another title

I’m struggling to think up new titles for my posts. Half of me wants to become a bit tabloid (“Great tits on the table today!” is so tempting when discussing the presence of Parus Major at the bird table.) The other half of me wants to take the easy way out with a dull title such as “Tuesday”.

The problem is that I don’t think the tabloid approach helps build a quality image, and the other approach just leads to a confusing number of posts named after days of the week.

We had a group from a MENCAP gardening group. They were out our way to collect horse manure and had arranged to drop in. We had a chat and home made mince pies, sold them a hamper and a couple of penguin tree decorations and invited them back next year for National Breakfast week.

We’re planning on having a few groups out for breakfast next year, raising some cash for Mary’s Meals and raising awareness of how important breakfast is. It’s a continuation of the work we’ve been doing on breakfasts , and a continuation of the National Porridge Day work we started last year.

The Bread Group raised £26 for Mary’s Meals last week when they did their Christmas meal, which was kind of them (as was the food they left in the fridge for me). Hopefully we will be adding to this next month, particularly as we will have the Saturday morning cafe participating for the first time.

Soup and Santa Claus

Warning: Several animals were killed in the making of this post – sorry if it upsets you but farmers don’t keep pets, as we tell all our visitors.

It was an eventful end to the week, with 35 wanting soup and a variety of other things taking place, including a double-booking that slipped through the system and another college visit.

I’m going to concentrate on the soup, because the rest aren’t so easy to photograph.

Here’s picture number one, consisting of a mass of bones in a pot with a few veg (known as mirepoix when making stock). We had the bones of several pigs available after sending some off for slaughter last week and it seemed too good an opportunity to miss. First we roasted the bones for the additional flavour, then set the whole mixture to bubble away for hours. How long? Well, from when it was ready till it was time to go home. Sorry, I really will start to do proper recipes soon.

With three pots of bones steaming away the place was, to be honest,  starting to look like Jeffrey Dahmer’s hobby room. I’m not sure if the addition of the vegetables made it look better or worse.

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                                                                                                                                                The “before” and “after” of the stock

Three pots of bones produced nine pints of stock. It lost a bit of flavour as I had to dilute it to make 20 pints of soup. First add barley to the liquid and cook for 15 minutes to half an hour – recipe suggestions varied so I just cooked it till it tasted half cooked. Then I softened onions and celery and added them plus 24 diced potatoes, a packet of frozen vegetables (carrots, peas, cauliflower, brocolli, onion) more diced carrot and swede. A bit later I added the cut up turkey left over from the turkey tasting event at the weekend then right at the end of cooking I added chopped kale.  If you’re going to reheat it leave things with a little bite to them so they don’t get overly soft. This isn’t a great picture because it shows the soup before it was properly re-heated so there’s a bit of fat on top. That’s something else that needs improving before I start doing more recipes.

I’m not particularly proud of the packet of frozen veg or the ready to use carrot and swede but I had plenty to do without spending all morning chopping veg. In my defence I would like to point out that I used our own free-range pork and turkey and picked the rosemary, thyme and bay leaves from the garden.

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You may spot a small red dot on top of the soup. That’s because I’ve had complaints about seasoning in the past. Each of the three pots got two tsp of sea salt, two of ground black pepper, a six inch sprig of rosemary, four big springs of thyme, a couple of bay leaves, a finely diced red chilli with a few seeds left in and a piece of fresh ginger about the size of the top joint of my thumb.

It had a good rich taste of stock and herbs and a bit of an afterburn. I’d say it was a satisfactory warm soup for use after a morning disturbing game birds.

Two of the pots contain enough for ten portions or so and the bigger one should do a bit more. In the end there were fewer than 35 wanting soup, but we still got through 27 portions with no complaint.

Meanwhile, to ensure the contents of the blog match the title, here’s a picture of me trying out my costume for the Christmas Event at the weekend.

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I’m not big on the concept of jollity but sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Bay Leaves

Before I go any further, this is the European Bay tree I’m talking about- Laurus nobilis. I’m sure all bay leaves can all be dried in the same way but it’s best to be clear.

I ran out of bay leaves last week and as I hate having to buy things that are growing in the garden I thought I’d have a go at drying some. During the summer I used some for pickling but never got round to drying any. At the time I wasn’t using many and thought I had enough.

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Anyway, it’s a simple technique – pick good, sound leaves (preferably in summer when the flavours will be at their peak), wash, dry and microwave.

We have just bought a new microwave for the farm kitchen so I could only find two choices for heat (I’m a man, we don’t read manuals). Thirty seconds on defrost produced an aromatic blast of eucalyptus when the door was open. That’s why dry and fresh bay leaves produce different flavours: fresh leaves produce a much harsher flavour due to the eucalyptus taste while dried produce a subtler effect.

Another six sessions at 30 seconds each didn’t quite do the job so I decided on full power for the next thirty.

That’s what the browning is on the tips of the leaves – I managed to overcook them in just half a minute. There’s a moral about patience in that story. Despite this they still helped make a great stock (more of that later).

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Nearly Christmas

Yes, it’s nearly Christmas – just over a month away. You can tell that when the turkeys leave the farm, as they did on Saturday. They will be back in a while, with their giblets shoved somewhere undignified and a complimentary sprig of rosemary. Meanwhile we have cleaned out the chiller (we tend to use it as an apple juice store at this time of year).

My original plan for Christmas was to have beef as the family has asked not to have turkey this year. That was replaced with a cunning plan for a seasonal recipe – reindeer pie. Then I saw the price. Back to beef, I think. Rudolph is safe for another year.

Today we started the decorating in earnest – we’re scouring the hedges for foraged decorations and going for a Victorian Christmas look. It’s sustainable and cheap, and keeps people occupied

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More food

It’s a shoot day on Saturday, though from the casual attitude of the pheasants we saw this morning they haven’t it’s clear they haven’t been told.

I’ve no strong feelings either way – I like birds but I also used to enjoy shooting. The lack of feeling is further intensified by the fact that I don’t find pheasants particularly enthralling. though I am quite fond of partridges in both their varieties. We have a number of red legs about. They potter down to the barns like middle-aged married couples in thee summer evenings to browse through the poultry food.  There were as many as three pairs at one time this summer,

We’ve also raised grey partridges this year. Also known as English partridges they have been going through a rough time over the last  few years with a 91% decline in numbers between 1967 and 2010. Hopefully we will be able to do something to stop the decline.The farm has spent a lot of effort on hedges and headlands and the gamekeepers have been working hard so there is a good chance of improving the population.

As we wait and see at least people won’t go hungry on Saturday as I’ve been cooking Honey and Treacle tarts for lunch. I don’t always get on with celebrity recipes, though I won’t go into it here, but this one worked well. I didn’t have any black treacle and I upped the ginger after my practice run, though that could be down to my powdered ginger being a bit old. I might tone down the orange and have a go with root ginger next time. And I cheated by using ready-made pastry cases. Life is too short to make pastry.

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Nearly forgot to say – the recipe makes a bit too much filling for a bought in pastry case – I’m going to cut it back by around 15% next time and see how it goes.

Soup

There’s been a lot of soup about this week. There’s been a lot of many things to be fair, but I happen to have a photograph of the soup and photographs are important for blogs.

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It isn’t the greatest picture of soup: I clearly need to work on the presentation.  I had intended to take a better one today with a swirl of cream and some chopped herbs but I forgot the cream and nobody wanted any chopped herbs.

We had someone renting the main room for a couple of days and they asked if we could do lunches. Soup seemed a good idea, being warm, nourishing and within budget. What, as they say, could possibly go wrong?

Well, on the first day it turned out that three of the six attendees didn’t like soup. Unfortunately  I didn’t find out until I had made the soup for the second day.

On the second day it turned out that we had two untouched bowls and one half eaten (or drunk?) bowl. Progress indeed.

I would offer you the recipes but with that sort of success rate it probably isn’t worth your time. If you want a couple of imprecise recipes for Carrot and Parsnip soup or Pea Soup feel free to ask.

 

Croissants

The community bread group was in today and they were attempting croissants. Considering that the group has only been going for eighteen months and some of them were not confident bakers when we started they have come a long way. We have diverged over that time and I mainly deal with school parties now – pizzas. soda bread and scones. The bread group is an altogether more sophisticated affair where they produce lovingly crafted continental breads, sourdoughs and, today, croissants.

I felt I just had to come along and record it with a few photographs. I wasn’t going to miss this, if there’s one thing I like better than warm croissants it’s people struggling with exotic bread recipes.

It was much quieter than a normal session as there was more concentrating to be done. I’d never thought of it, but there was more measuring to be done too. As you laminate the dough you have to work to certain sizes and then you have to use  atemplate. You don’t get that with the sort of things I do. I’d assumed that you made a shhet of dough and carved out a load of freehand triangles. That is not the case – there is no room for free spirits in the world of the croissant and my deplorable slack ways with triangular scones were not welcome here.

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We’ve always said that the secret with bread at any level is that if it doesn’t look perfect at the end you can call it rustic or artisan – a couple of catch-all terms that cover a multitude of imperfections. That’s why they call me an artisan baker – it isn’t a statement of competence, it’s because I’m lumpy and not quite symmetrical.

In the end we had plenty of croissants to show for the day and though they may not have looked like shop bought croissants there was nothing wrong with the taste and everyone went home happy.

I you want to join the group they meet on alternate Thursdays at the farm.

Sadly, by the nature of the internet, most of you reading this won’t be close enough, but if you ever find yourself in Nottinghamshire we normally have something on every week.

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Now, if you’ll excuse me I have an appointment with a warm croissant.

Up to date

Wednesday news posted on Wednesday – up to date at last!

We’ve levelled the plot from the ill-fated “ploughing” attempt, we’ve spread compost, we’ve made pumpkin soup and we’ve had two parties.

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One party was to say goodbye to Beth, our office supremo, who is moving on to a job in catering management and the other was a surprise one to celebrate 25 years of marriage for me and Julia. I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve eaten too much cake today!

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We’re off for a few days in the Lake District now so no new posts for a few days. See you all later.

Not a boring day

Now that the remnants of hurricane Gonzalo have passed over we have blue skies again. It’s almost shirt sleeve weather at the moment, though that will pass by tonight I’m told. It’s October so this is a bonus. I usually associate this time of year with mist and drizzle rather than crisp clear days.

We haven’t suffered too badly from the hurricane. Some chairs in the outdoor area were blown over, door mats moved and the doors in the fruit cage blew open.They tend to blow open in anything stronger than a stiff breeze so it’s not surprise. What we’re looking at there is badly fitting doors rather than a high wind. Considering that the fruit cage is built from a polytunnel frame that was donated after it blew down in its original site it has stood up well.

The guinea fowl had disappeared when we arrived to see how they had coped with the storm, but we found them later. They have flown back into the chicken field where there is plenty of shelter and people bring them food every day. Maybe they aren’t as stupid as they look.

It can be difficult to tell the difference between days on the farm and this will be remembered as the day we had to pick the chairs up.

Meanwhile we have polytunnels to clear out and Cape Gooseberry  to cut back. We will be trying to keep the plants for a third year. All the articles talk about them only lasting 3-4 years so we have taken cuttings this year to give us a new group of plants. We are also talking about growing some from seed again, which was how we got the first lot. I’ve also been throwing squashy fruit into the hedgerows in case they seed naturally. It’s worth a try.

They have been good croppers though the size of the berries has dropped off. Not sure if this is due to the weather or the age of the plants. We have been able to eat the berries, give some away and use them to decorate frangipane tarts. If we get a decent crop next year I will try something more ambitious.

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This is one ready for the oven – cutting the fruit in half makes it go further and gives a better effect after cooking. When you use whole fruit the frangipane seems to rise to cover them.

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The one on the left was made with halved fruit. The one on the right used whole fruit.

Later: I should have kept my thoughts to myself. The weather turned grey and the day will probably be known as the day the pigs got out.

At least it won’t be known as a boring day.

And yes, this might be a good time to admit what some of you with sharp eyes may have noticed – I do use ready made pastry cases. Given the choice between paying 98 pence or wrestling with a sheet of pastry, shrinkage and baking beans it’s not a difficult decision for a lazy man.