Category Archives: food

Steamed broccoli, cavolo nero kale and cod bake

A delicious dish that is assembled and then baked to heat through and crisp up the topping. Takes about 35 minutes from starting to eating 🙂

Ingredients: Broccoli, cavolo nero kale, large cod fillet, cheese sauce, plain tortilla chips, grated cheese and black pepper.

Method:

Steam the broccoli and kale. Gently simmer the cod in milk. Make a cheese sauce.

Once all cooked or made then assemble:

Put steamed broccoli and kale across the bottom of an oven proof dish
Break the cod fillet in to large pieces and arrange
Cover with the cheese sauce
Sprinkle crushed tortilla over the top and cover with grated cheese and black pepper
Bake in the oven until heated through and top crisp

1.Put steamed broccoli and kale across the bottom of an oven proof dish

2.Break the cod fillet in to large pieces and arrange

3.Cover with the cheese sauce

4. Sprinkle crushed tortilla over the top and cover with grated cheese and black pepper

5. Bake in the oven until heated through and the topping is crisp

I served this with gf tortilla wraps smothered in garlic butter and baked till starting to crisp.

 

Blackcurrant cassis 

Posted in Aga cooking, drink, food, home baking, home grown, home produce, preserves, recipe, Uncategorized by

Ingredients:

650 g blackcurrants -washed and drained

750 ml red wine

500 g sugar

100 ml brandy

Method:

Put the blackcurrants in to a large bowl and partially mash them. Add the red wine. Cover the bowl and leave for 2-3 days at room temperature. Stir and mash each day.

Strain the liquid through a colander and then a sieve and place the liquid in to a large saucepan. Add the sugar and warm to dissolve stirring continuously. Allow the liquid to heat up but  do not boil. Keep the liquid hot for 15 mins stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and add the brandy. Stir. Bottle and seal.

Enjoy – this is delicious on its own, with a sparkling wine or drizzled over vanilla ice cream.

Banana and raspberry gluten free muffins

Posted in Aga cooking, cake, eggs, food, food is medicine, gluten free, healthy eating, home baking, home cooking, specialised diet, Uncategorized by

What do you do with the sad brown banana left in the fruit bowl?  Bake with it!

The natural sweetness of the ripe banana reduces the amount of sugar  needed in the mixture. Fresh raspberries with their tangy flavour compliment the banana extremely well.

Preheat oven to 180c /gas mark 5  Makes 16 muffins

Ingredients:

220 g gluten-free self-raising flour

140 g coconut sugar (or light muscavado)

180 g butter – softened

4 eggs

1 ripe banana – mashed

100 g fresh raspberries

Method:

Put the flour, butter, sugar and eggs in to a bowl and mix thoroughly. Add the mashed banana and mix till combined. Add the raspberries and mix gently. Spoon in to the muffin tin. Bake for 12-15 mins until cooked.

 

 

Baked apple stuffed with raisins and honey

A deliciously simple desert that reminds me of autumnal suppers as a child.

Take a large cooking apple and remove its core. Place on a oven proof dish. Stuff dried fruit of your choice into the hole and place a heaped teaspoon of set honey on top. Bake in the centre of the oven- gas mark 5 / 180 C until the apple is soft. I served this with a generous pouring of cream. If you wish to play around with the flavours and make it a grown up pudding – a drizzle of a liqueur on the dried fruit before cooking is a tasty addition.

Personally I like the simplicity of the flavours as it is.

What to do with some much produce…apple, honey and rosemary jam 

I first tasted this delicious combination at a friend’s house a couple of years ago. Whenever they visited some friends in France they would come back with a jar of loveliness called: Confiture de pommes au romarin et au miel de montagne. I acquired a recipe and then promptly forgot about it until recently. Recipe translated and tweaked resulted in 5 jars of apple, honey and rosemary jam in my kitchen yesterday. I resisted the urge to taste it until today to allow the rosemary to infuse the jam…delicious.

This is what I did:

Ingredients:

2kg of cooking apples – peeled, cored and chopped in to small pieces (pips saved)

100g sugar

250g honey – I used set

Juice of 3 lemons – keep pips

20 ml of water.

Rosemary sprigs – washed and dried

Method:

Put the sugar, water, lemon juice and honey in a large pan and bring to the boil – stirring frequently. Put the apple pieces in to the syrup mixture along with the apple and lemon pips wrapped in a piece of gauze. Bring back to the boil and simmer gently for about 15 minutes or until the apples are soft. Remove from heat and mash about half of the apple mixture down – I used a potato masher. Put back on the heat and simmer for anohter 5 – 10 mins.  Put in to prepared jam jars and push a sprig of rosemary in to the mixture ahead of sealing the jar.

I have no idea how long this will store  – probably quite irrelevant as one jar has nearly gone already. I didn’t treat this like an ordinary jam, cheese or jelly in that a setting point wasn’t reached. The consistency is of a very, very thick sauce. Delicious on toast but I would imagine equally scrumptious with pork or game.

What to do with so much produce?

Posted in food, fruit, home cooking, home grown, home produce, Uncategorized by

Those people who know me well know that I cannot bear to waste any food that my garden produces. My cooking apple tree and damson trees are laden. So my husband is gathering a tub trug from each every few days and I am freezing it all.  Damsons are easy – I just wash them, drain, bag and freeze. Apples take a bit more effort. An old aunt showed me a simple and not too time consuming way to prepare the fruit:

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Peel and slice

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Put in water with a bit of salt to preserve colour and prevent browning

 

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Drain

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Spread out on to a cling film lined baking tray. pop in to freezer.

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Leave for about 2 hours until frozen

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Break the slices up as you pop them in to a freezer bag.

There you have it…sliced apple that with a quick rinse are ready for pies etc throughout the year until the next harvest 🙂

 

 

Spiced lentil / quinoa balls in a roasted butternut squash sauce

Posted in Aga cooking, coconut oil, coeliac, food, food is medicine, functional food, ginger, gluten free, healthy eating, healthy fats, home cooking, mains, meat free, recipe, specialised diet, turmeric, Uncategorized, vegetables, vegetarian by

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Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas mark 5.    Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper

Ingredients:

For the ‘meatballs’                                              For the sauce

1 cup quinoa                                                           Medium butternut squash

1 cup green / puy lentils                                     About 400 ml vegetable stock

1 tsp ginger                                                             4 spring onions (coarsely chopped)

1 tsp turmeric                                                         10 cherry tomatoes (chopped in half

2 tsp coconut oil                                                    About 100 ml coconut milk

1 egg                                                                          Spinach (large handful)

(Chick pea flour)                                                    Coconut oil

1 tsp cumin seeds                                                  1 tsp cayenne pepper

Method:

Deseed and chop the butternut squash in to medium-sized chunks. Drizzle with coconut oil and pop in the oven for 30 mins to soften

Rinse the quinoa and lentils and put them in a pan with 3 cups of water and the cumin seeds. Bring to boil and cook until soft. Drain any excess water.

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Allow to cool. Add all the other ingredients (except chick pea flour) and mix thoroughly. If the mixture is loose add a desertspoon of chick pea flour and mix again. You may have to do this a couple of times. Take a generous desertspoon full of mixture and roll in to a ping-pong sized ball. Lay the balls on the prepared tray

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and cook in the oven for 10-15 mins.

When the butternut squash is roasted, put half in to a blender along with the vegetable stock – you want a thick sauce consistency so add the liquid a little a time until this is achieved.

Fry the spring onions until soft. Add the cayenne powder and stir for a minute. Add the tomatoes and cook for another minute. Add the butternut squash sauce

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and once heated through add the spinach and allow to wilt.Stir in the coconut milk.

Place the ‘meatballs’ in to the sauce and simmer gently.20160916_180635Prior to serving pop the remaining butternut squash chunks in to the sauce.

I served this with naan bread. Enjoy.

If the egg was replaced with tofu, this would be a vegan dish.

Nature’s bounty

Posted in food, food is medicine, healthy eating, home baking, home cooking, home grown, home produce, Uncategorized by

Someone said to me over the weekend, ‘You never get anything for nothing.’

To which I responded, ‘Blackberries!’in probably a very annoying manner!

But it’s true…if you know where to look at this time of year nature provides an amazing array of gorgeous fruits to harvest. Riding through the forest this weekend I passed elder trees with boughs hanging from the weight of berries – jam, chutney and wine. The hedgerows were bursting with blackberries – perfect on their own or sublime when combined with apples. Old twisted and gnarled damson trees seem to survive on some otherwise inhospitable land – perfect for crumbles, chutneys, damson cheese / jelly / jam and of course drowned in gin and sugar and left for the next 3 months to create a warming and festive liqueur.

An afternoon stroll along a country path can reveal: sloe, bilberries, plums,  and hops.

I love this time of year – so much, for nothing. 🙂   All the fruit gathered and sitting in various receptacles in cold rooms in the house is then followed by hours of baking, cooking, freezing and of course the delight of eating these autumnal flavours throughout the following year.

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Damsons and cooking apples from the garden

 

Most peculiar

Posted in beating cancer, breast cancer, cancer, cancer treatment, eating disorder, food, food is medicine, functional food, Uncategorized by

It’s been a funny old week – definitely not the amusing type.

I am now in to my second week of cycle 1 of chemotherapy and have experienced some odd and some deeply unpleasant (won’t go in to that!) effects. Changing tastes:

Firstly I have absolutely no appetite –  a novel and curious feeling for a devout foodie.

Secondly – for a few days when I did feel the urge to eat it was for foods I never normally eat. I longed for shop bought fish, chips and mushy peas – the combination tasted like nectar! Another night I sent my poor husband to the shops to buy a tin of Baked Beans (reminiscent of a pregnancy midnight raid!) and wanted only beans on toast with cheese on top. This, unlike the fish ‘n chips, was a total  disappointment – unsure whether my tastes are changing or just that I have not eaten processed foods for so long.

I have gone off tea and coffee and am enjoying powdered skimmed milk as a hot drink!

I am seeking much stronger flavours  – no subtlety to my palate at the moment.

Somethings I eat have no flavour yet I can smell them. Flavour is the combination of taste -what your taste buds pick up (sweet, salty, sour, bitter and  potentially umami) and the smell of the food. The roof of my mouth seems to be completely inert at the moment (the same feeling when you have burnt it).  The roof of the mouth is the palate – and presumably where the terms palatable  / having a pleasing palate come from. I can only assume this change is what is affecting my dietary choices and experiences.

All very odd and quite fascinating … as long as it settles down!

 

Ginger cookies   – gluten free 

So…when is it a biscuit or a cookie?  These do not have the crack / snap of a biscuit but instead have the delicious chewy and slightly bendy quality that I think a  cookie should have (apologies to all biscuit and cookie aficionados). If left in the oven longer I am sure they would have been more like a ginger thin. The stem ginger chunks give a lovely warmth.

Preheat oven to 180 C / Gas mark 4      Makes  18 cookies  Lightly grease/ line a large baking tray

Ingredients:

350 g self-raising gluten-free flour        150 g dark muscavado sugar

100 g butter                                                    1 large egg

4 desert spoon golden syrup                     2 tsp ground ginger

5 pieces of stem ginger coarsely chopped

Method:

Put the butter, sugar and syrup in a pan and melt on a low heat. Remove from the heat and mix in all the other ingredients.  Spoon the mixture on to the prepared tray – allow for spreading. Bake for 10-15 mins. Leave to cool before removing from tray.