Hake yourself at home

It's just before the holiday season. I'm in need of some inspiration, a lot more iron from some green veg and a bit of brain food from some white fish. There's fog everywhere and it envelopes everything. This, coupled with the rise in Covid Cases; that has caused paranoia and stress among my nearest and dearest going beyond that normally expected in the run up to the holiday season.

The edge is taken off this feeling of a siege mentality by a listen of Oasis' confident, slightly leaden but fun 2000 effort "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants". A quick blast of opening track "f%*kin' in the bushes" is just about enough to put some zest into life. It makes do and sometimes resting up and making do is the best thing to do in the run to the Holiday season. 

To make this flavoursome and green fish dish I took the following ingredients:

One White Onion, peeled, diced, topped and tailed.

Five Small Garlic Cloves, crushed. 

Two tablespoons of Smoked Paprika.

One tablespoon of White Pepper. 

A small head of Homegrown Broccoli. 

Three Homegrown Cabbage Leaves shredded.

One Homegrown Swiss Chard Leaf shredded. 

A tin of Haricot Beans.

A Hake Fillet, fresh from the supermarket fishmongers. 

The method went like this:

1. Sweat the White Onion, Garlic Cloves, Smoked Paprika and White Pepper in a Le Cresceut in Olive Oil for around five minutes stirring regularly. 

2. Add the Broccoli , Cabbage and Swiss Chard and fry for around fifteen minutes, stirring regularly. 

3. Add the Haricot Beans and keep the mixture warm on the hob. 

4. Fry the Hake separately on a medium heat five minutes each side. Serve with the bean mixture.

The dish conjured up a freshness like a clean warm, rock pool at the beach in the summertime while the bean mixture held a genuine smokiness and lots of protein. 

Soups you, Sir

 As we walked through one of the two main roads bisecting the valley, we realised that here at the bottom of the valley it had its own weather system. It was a little being at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, you're in your own world away from the surrounding towns and villages at the top of and over the hill where temperatures showed there were vestiges of summer hanging on. 

We walked in the direction of the curry house as a woman in an aged leather jacket and too tight jeans proceeded to stumble backwards showing a full moon to all the townsfolk as she collapsed with her dignity bleeding onto the pavement. 

In the curry house we met the rest of the team. Among them were two members of an amiable family containing three talented cricketers and all are friendly people who tell me they love the soup recipes I put on this blog. That means today's post is dedicated to them and it features a Swiss Chard Soup. 

The lead singer of the Smiths, whose album Meat is Murder, was on the player as I prepped the soup would approve of this dish as it is a vegetarian soup. The Smiths did not bother too much with Politics on their records but the title track, complete with surprisingly tuneful abattoir noises, has an impact in a way that was ahead of its time when the album was released in 1985.

So the ingredients of this soup, they are:

Five large Swiss Chard Leaves and their stems, that I plucked from my garden, and sliced and diced. 

One White Onion, peeled, topped and tailed and then diced. 

Two cloves of Garlic mashed up. 

A teaspoon of Nutmeg.

A teaspoon of British Coriander Leaf.

A teaspoon of Black Pepper. 

The juice of a Lemon.

Fifty grams of Fresh Parsley from my garden. 

Fifty grams of Fresh Mind from my garden. 

Half a pint of Vegetable Stock. 

Fifty grams of Chive and Onion Cheddar. 

The method for making this soup is simple. First fry the Onion and Garlic in a Le Cresceut or deep non stick saucepan with some Sunflower Oil for about ten minutes. Then add all the other ingredients except the stock and the cheese and stir together while warming through until the Swiss Chard has shrunk to about half its size.

After that add the Vegetable Stock and simmer for around twenty minutes. 

When that's done blend and return to the Le Cresceut. Add the Chive and Onion and warm through before serving. 

This soup has a strange dark rusted colour to it that is much like the leaves on the trees at this time of year. The Mint gives it a freshness that offsets the earthy taste of the Chard. It's a soup that's flavoursome and offers lots of health benefits. 

Steaks Alive!

It was another of those blissful Autumn Sunday mornings where the sun flies high and the blue sky appears bright but somehow cold to the touch. We had spent the morning foraging for edible mushrooms and trekking into the rural suburbs of a village that influenced my formative years. It had been a weekend for us to reset ourselves and dress sharply like a wannabe power couple to go and see the new Bond Movie, a movie that left us with dropped jaws and wonderfully wrought spontaneous memories. 

The Sunday trek left us in need of sustenance for Sunday Dinner and we found it in the shape of a steak dinner that used many ingredients that were grown or purchased within no more than a mile of my house. 

On the player was a side project by Genesis member Mike Rutherford in the form of his band of tools called Mike & The Mechanics. Their eponymous debut album was the record of choice. There's a fair bit of undemanding coffee table pop to take in, that serves as good driving music, and the searing dystopian epic "Silent Running" containing lyrics that -although written in 1985- could well have predicted the Covid Pandemic. 

So to the ingredients of this steak dinner:

Two Medallions of Fillet Steak supplied by Stretton Hall Farm Shop | Facebook

Two Free Range Eggs. 

Six Pods of home grown Mange Tout.

Twelve home grown Runner Beans. 

Five leaves of homegrown Iron Man Winter Cabbage shredded thinly

Twenty-Five grams of Unsalted Butter.

A tablespoon of Gluten Free Self Raising Flour. 

Fresh Chopped Parsley from my garden. 

Point one litres of Skimmed Milk 

Grated Arran Cheddar Cheese. 

The way to make this Sunday Dinner is simple and it creates a filling and protein laced meal:

1. Steam the Mange Tout and Runner Beans for twenty five minutes.

2. Fry the cabbage in Sunflower Oil on a medium heat for around fifteen minutes. 

3. Make the sauce by melting the Butter in a small saucepan and then mixing it thoroughly with the Flour. Add the Parsley and Milk and stir together on a medium-high heat until it is thick Add the Arran Cheddar and stir until the Cheddar is thoroughly melted in. 

4. After you've taken the above steps leave the ingredients in their pans, but covered to keep warm prior to serving. 

5. Fry the Fillet Steaks on a medium heat for three minutes on each side for a rare flavour. 

6. Remove the steaks and then add the eggs to the pan before frying them for around three minutes. 

7. Serve. 

There's something about the taste of fresh green vegetables that gives them a sweetness that you just don't get with their supermarket equivalent. Meanwhile the mixture of a fried Egg on top of the tender steak too is delicious and sauce provided a richness that was not overpowering. 

Rowan, can I?

It's probably the last week in November, two close friends safely were married two weeks earlier. I'm home alone so I root around in the freezer to discover the Rowan Berries that we foraged in summer time. Maybe making these into something edible might just go to show the importance of this thing that we do.

I never realised you could use Rowan Berries for food, but careful reading of a borrowed foraging book proves that you can and so we had foraged a fair amount in late summer.

I've got hold of about 150 grams of Rowan Berries, leaving plenty on the trees for the birds to chomp on, and boiled them up in some water- just enough to cover the berries, with the juice of a lemon and three tablespoons of Brown Sugar. All these ingredients were then, once the berries had absorbed all the water, mashed up into a paste, mixed with around ten Rosemary Leaves and put in an airtight jar. 

When everything had cooled down enough inside the jar, I put the jar of jelly in the fridge and left it there until the first weekend in January after New Year's Day. 

Saturday 8 January 2022, early lunch taken. The rain had washed out the morning walk, the phone had rung a bit but one important message was still finding its way through cyberspace. It was time to take a pause, reflect, plan, and have cheese and biscuits to which this Jelly was the perfect accompaniment. 

I opened the jar and tilted it slightly. The jelly moved slightly and in a way that confirmed it had reached that perfect medium between liquidity and solidness just as all good jelly should. 

The music on the player to which I would enjoy this sophisticated meal to was Joan Armatrading's first album, 1972's "Whatever's for Us". The sentiment in the title was appropriate to the moment. The record stands as one of the finest debuts of the whole singer-songwriter movement and is up there with James Taylor's first album in that respect. It's produced by Gus Dudgeon and some of his touches with the piano, string and vocal arrangements hint at early period Elton, but the overall sound Armatrading creates is unique and wonderful on the record's 14 superior songs. Each is just the right length and none outstay their welcome.

The Rowan Jelly was served with some Cheese and Almond Biscuits and a couple of slices of Double Gloucester with chives. The Jelly's taste was a little like a richer yet slighter bitter version of Cranberry Sauce. It certainly needed the Brown Sugar to counterbalance the Rowan Berries' and Lemon Juice's very sharp flavour. The Rosemary meanwhile added a lovely sweet and sour tang to it all. 

To be sure the Jelly is set, you're best leaving a gap between making it and storing it of around six weeks prior to using it. Once you've first used it, then it should be good to use for a month before it's fully consumed. 

Dark yet glowing, the Jelly is very flavoursome if served with Cheese and Biscuits

Ploughing through Pudding

During the Autumn lots of foraging took place in Norfolk, a place I have visited on a semi-regular basis over the years. While I know a fair bit about the nature, its most famous fictional character and its main football team, I realised I knew little about its native cuisine. Further investigations led me to discover something called Norfolk Plough Pudding, this is a savoury pudding made with sausage meat, herbs, onions and streaky bacon. It is traditionally served in January to mark the first spring ploughing. 

During the first weekend after the New Year return to work in January, I got myself into spring mode by sewing some seeds in my conservatory and making my own take on this recipe.  On the player was Joan Armatrading's eponymous third album.  It's well produced and contains, perhaps, her most famous song "Love and Affection".

The ingredients for the filling of this recipe are:

Pinch of Mustard

2 Fresh Sage Leaves.

2 Fresh Sprigs of Rosemary

2 Fresh Sprigs of Thyme.

1 Fresh Parsley Head. 

A teaspoon of White Pepper.

1 White Onion that's topped, tailed, peeled and diced 

2 Tomato Pork Sausages shredded.

1 slice of Corned Beef shredded. 

The ingredients for the Dough go like this:

225 grams of gluten free Self-Raising Flour.

80 grams of suet

10 soup spoons of cold water. 

Method:

1. Fry onions, Pork Sausages, White Pepper and Mustard on a medium heat in a cooking oil of your choice for around 10-15 minutes until the onions are translucent and the Sausage meat is browned slightly. 

2. Add the Herbs and Corned Beef and warm through for another five minutes before taking the filling off the heat and leaving to one side. 

3. Mix the Self Raising Flour and Suet together while gradually adding the cold water. This will create a thick pasty, pastry. Knead it into a wide and flat circle and put it in the refrigerator for around ten minutes. 

4. Take the pastry out of the fridge and put the filling on it in a heap about three inches wide and five inches tall. 

5. Mould the pastry round the filling to cover the filling and create a dome shaped object that's a similar shape to the Death Star or the Technodrome in Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. 

6. Cook in the Oven on Gas Mark Six for around forty-five minutes. 

I served this meal with a side of homegrown Broccoli and Cabbage. The pastry remained moist throughout the time in the oven while the tomato in the Sausages blended well with the Corned Beef and the herbs and onion provided a bonanza of flavour. 

Before and after cooking

Gluten Free Christmas Part 2: Breadcrumbing

 A life-affirming Zoom call last week helped to give all participants some advice on life and how to live it. It also gave me some inspiration to try a bread sauce recipe, a sauce that one of the participants will not eat their Christmas Dinner without.

The fog had closed in again. It was like the toxic, clingy, misty, web in the recently re-discovered nineteen sixties Doctor Who noir classic "The Web of Fear". The fog gave the impression that touching it would result in something nasty. It was certainly not a day to travel very far and so I cheered myself up by cooking an early Christmas Dinner which featured my friend's Bread Sauce recipe.

The night before, following our Zoom call, I had a downloading spree and obtained the Bonus EP Tracks for the Queen albums that were re-issued in 2011. It was a good opportunity to do this before Amazon ban the use of many types of credit cards, including mine, on 19 January. 

At any time of year the music of Queen gives inspiration to smash it at parties or in sporting events, while in winter time it takes on the extra dimension of showing how the band members were able to feed of each others' stress in tough times to make something special. That's a lesson we can all learn from if we have the winter and the Christmas Blues so as we can turn potential hard times into something good. 

Suitably inspired by collections of rarities including "I Go Crazy" from the re-issue "The Works" and kick-ass live versions of some of the songs from the re-issue of 1982's criminally underrated "Hot Space", I tackled the bread sauce as part of a special Festive Sunday Dinner.

The ingredients for this Bread Sauce are as follows:

One Chicken Oxo Cube- crushed heavily. 

One Hundred and Twenty Grams of Gluten Free Breadcrumbs. 

Two Tablespoons of Boiling Water.

One Onion, diced and lightly fried for around ten minutes. 

A pinch of Nutmeg.

A pinch of All Spice. 

Two Sprigs of Fresh Thyme.

A teaspoon of White Pepper. 

A pinch of Garlic Salt. 

Point One Litres of Oat Milk. 

The way to make this sauce is to mix the crushed Chicken Oxo, Boiling Water and Breadcrumbs together into a paste in a measuring jug.  

After that's done add the Onions, All Spice, Nutmeg, Thyme, Garlic Salt and White Pepper and stir these in. 

Then add the mixture to a sauce pan and stir on a low heat while gradually adding the milk. When the milk is stirred in serve. With my meal I served it with Pigs in Blankets and Chicken Breasts marioneted in homegrown herbs from my local farm shop together with steamed carrot and frozen peas as well as some cabbage that was still growing in my garden. 

The sauce added a new dimension to my early Christmas Dinner as it is savoury with a touch of sweetness and in that way encapsulates in one recipe what the taste of a traditional Christmas Dinner is really like. I can well see why my friend insists on having this with all her Christmas Dinners. 

Gluten Free Christmas Part One: The Pies Have It

 Often associated with the festive period, Mince Pies have been a staple sweet dish for some time in midwinter. Today's blog recipe gives a modern twist on these type of pies that does not include gluten.

The fog had rolled round the park and even the next village, with its Comptonesque Council Estate, could not be seen. There was a sense of claustrophobia and already it seemed a little dark in the house even though it was just 2pm. In the lounge and the conservatory, coats and shoes not belonging to me rested in their usual places, just as they had done for a couple of years. They were seemingly half complete without their owner. Looking at them made me think the house was like one where one of the occupants had just passed away before Christmas and the survivor had not been able to bring themselves to move the items away. 

Against this backdrop it was easy to feel like I was on a journey dark places, and yet I had much to be happy about. I had somewhere to go for Christmas, lots of friends to meet with via video link or outdoors with the Dogg and my team and I had achieved much, against the odds, at work during 2021. 

Whatever happened next, it was time to get into the Christmas Spirit. Remembering that consuming more than one meal containing gluten in a week makes my mind do strange things, I resolved to make some Gluten Free Mince Pies. 

On the player was something upbeat in the shape of Meatloaf's 1993 comeback "Bat out of Hell Part 2: Back Into Hell". The video for opening "I Would Do anything for love (But I won't do that)" seems to feature someone hurriedly driving a car to a deserted house where once someone well-loved lurked. 

So to the recipe which goes like this:

200 grams of Gluten Free Plain Flour.

125 grams of Unsalted Butter. 

A jar of Mincemeat. I used some non-gluten free Mincemeat strongly flavoured with Port. 

A tablespoon of tap water. 

The first job was to cut the Butter into small cubes and add it to the mixing bowl. Then came the Plain Flour. I rubbed these ingredients in until I saw that they had formed golden breadcrumbs. 

After that I stirred them together using a butter knife and dropping in a tablespoon of tap water to help bind the mixture together. 

The thing with Gluten Free Pastry is that it is often moister than normal pastry and harder to roll out because it sticks to the rolling pin. The best approach is to knead it flat using some spare flour to grip and then chill the rolled out pastry in the fridge for half an hour. After that it is easier to use it. 

I followed this approach and after chilling the pastry I cut circles out of the pastry and placed them in greased bun tins and added the Mincemeat. I then covered them more pastry to form small pies. 

The mince pies were then placed in the oven and cooked on gas mark 4 for 20 minutes. 

So what was the difference between these mince pies and ones with gluten in? Well the pastry had a lighter taste and with the use of more butter there was a more golden colour to the pastry. They were certainly an interesting diversion this Christmas and one worth taking.