Lemon curd, lemon puffs and Cheese, 'bacon' and leek tarts

 I bought a box of puff pastry and looked for recipes to use the whole sheet up. No waste and only use the oven once.

First we made the 'mushroom bacon' to go onto the savoury tart. Cheese, Pesto and 'Bacon’ tart

I then made the puff pastry cases and filled them with the lemon curd that I had made yesterday as it was properly cooled and set.   lemon curd, Lemon Curd Tarts, 

The lemon curd was made at the end, so I can use it to go into yoghurt or go onto my toast.

 A surprise visit from Holland where Gwen and Emma took this picture of me explaining how to make my mother's favourite Lemon Curd

'A sort of Thai curry'

Coming back from the garden with all this lovely organic produce I needed to think what to do with it. I also had a can of coconut milk and some yellow curry paste so decided to combine a few recipes I had used before. The result was lovely.

We cut up a medium sized butternut squash into small cubes, some green beans, carrots, red peppers  and broccoli  florets into similar sizes.

This post was first published on 15/10/2018

In a non stick pan we heated oil and added a chopped onion and a clove of garlic once translucent we added a good table spoon of yellow curry paste and cooked for a minute to develop the flavour.

When fragrant we added a quarter of a tin of coconut milk and mixed it all through.

Once done, we added the rest of the coconut milk, rinsed out the tin with 2 tbsp of water and added to the pan.

Then we added the butternut squash chunks, the rest of the vegetables and a little salt to taste.

We simmered it for another 15 or so minutes.

Meanwhile we dry roasted a handful of peanuts nuts. When toasted, we put most into the coconut mixture, keeping behind a little as topping when we dish up.

We served the curry with noodles and topped with cashew nuts and coriander leaves. MMM!

Puy lentil dish with a refreshing carrot salad

This post was first made on 26 April 2020

Today's from Spade to Plate zoom session, we even ventured outside! We had a little walk through the garden where we saw the cherry, apple, pear, and strawberries in blossom. The coriander and mint were used in the carrot salad and the Purple Sprouting Broccoli leaves were used instead of Kale in the Lentil , lentil and goat's cheese dish

Instead of the goats cheese curd, I mixed cream with goats cheese to pour over the lentils. (Big success)

What is left of this curd, will be used up in the beetroot soup tonight.

As we had 1/2 a preserved lemon left I used this in the Carrot Salad as well. 

All in all a delicious meal

Stepover apple in blossom

Cherry and stepover apple in blossom

Blueberry  in blossom and grape showing first leaves
 

Strawberries in vertical garden in blossom

Broadbean in flower

Ciabatta bread with a fig and Goat's cheese topping

 We made ciabatta bread which went down a storm. 

As the fig harvest is so good, we used the ciabatta as a base and the figs and goat's cheese with a balsamic vinegar and rocket topping. 

Instead of the balsamic vinegar we used the blackberry balsamic vinegar that was made a month or so ago.

As we had some waiting time, I showed how I normally make yoghurt. The yoghurt has just come out of the tea cozy and has set well. It will be in the fridge overnight. I will then put it through a muslin cloth to get a thicker greek style yoghurt and the whey will be just for scone making. As my old school friend Franka and her husband will be coming for tea and they love to try a real English scone (Alice's recipe)

Alice's scones

Ingredients

225g plain flour

3 teaspoons baking powder

1½ teaspoon salt

50g frozen butter 

1 small egg 

125ml plain yoghurt

150g crumbled feta cheese

2 spring onions, chopped, or herbs or chilli flakes (optional)

A little milk to glaze

Method 

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C
2. Sift flour, baking powder and salt through a fine sieve into a bowl.
3. With your fingers, rub in the grated frozen butter until the mixture looks like breadcrumbs.
4. Add the crumbled cheese and chopped spring onion.
5. Whisk the egg into the yoghurt with a fork. Make a well in the flour mixture, add the liquid and stir again with a fork, making a soft dough.
6. Gather the dough in well-floured hands and knead very lightly. On a floured surface, press out the dough with a rolling pin to not less than 1.25cm thick.
7. Using a 5cm glass or ring cutter, firmly cut out the scones. Gather up the scraps, kneading them together to more scones. 
8. Transfer the scones to a well greased baking sheet. With a pastry brush wipe the tops of the scones with milk mixture.
9. Cook in the oven for 10-12 minutes, or until well-risen and golden brown.
10. Makes 6-8 scones depending on the size of cutter.

We also made some yoghurt. I normally do this using milk delivered in  returnable glass bottles so that we reduce plastic containers

How I make yoghurt 

Ingredients

2 cups  whole milk

2 tablespoons plain greek yoghurt

Method

1. In a saucepan, over low heat bring the milk to a simmer. It will take around 15-20 minutes. The freshest milk will yield you better yogurt.
2. Once it starts to bubble turn off the heat and set aside. You notice a skin has formed on your milk, that is normal.
3. Let it cool down to 120 degree F. 
4. Once cooled whisk in the yogurt.
5. Pour into a sterilized jar and tightly close the lid.  • Line a deep bowl with a thick tea towel and place in the jar of yogurt. Wrap the jar up well in the towel and let it sit out in a warm part of your kitchen over night.  (you can also use a thermous flask
6. After this time, pop the jar in the fridge and let it get cold, roughly 2-3 hours. Once chilled your yogurt will be firm and thick in texture. (you could drain this through a muslin bag to get a greek style yoghurt, keep the whey for baking)
7. Before you add anything, keep a couple of spoonfuls aside for the next batch. At this point you can add sugar, sweetener, honey, fruit and vanilla.
8. Keep in the fridge for up to 3 weeks.

Courgette curry

 courgette curry

To use up some excess courgettes this curry went down very well. Would be good with rice as well as naan bread.

Courgette Bread with tomato sauce

 Today we made courgette bread and tomato sauce.

Having been away for a few days, the courgettes became too big and the tomatoes needed processing for storage.  As I found this crock pot recipe for tomato sauce, I thought to try this one. There was a lot of juice, I made soup with it and used the thick tomatoes for paste.

We also roasted tomatoes to store in oil.

For a drink with our meal we made a refreshing cucumber and mint cordial

Mung Bean Curry, Flat bread, and apple rose pastry

This post was first published on 24/06/2020

Finishing off what is in the fridge I made this curry today,  bringing back lovely memories from 2nd february 2010

After a very stormy night a warming curry is just the job.
WE made some mung bean curry with rice and flatbread.
  

In September Melendra, June and I went to pick apples in Storey's way. June wrapped them in newspaper and today was the day that we turned about 15 apples into a on the stove apple crumble
    

In the topping we put walnuts and maple syrup instead of pecan nuts and we added

crushed branflakes in the mix.

Courgette soup with a garlic bread

A busy morning today with 7 people joining in our cooking session. The courgette chickpea soup and garlic bread turned out very well. And as a bonus we made some sunflower petal infusion, to be used in a couple of months time and it will be turned into lipbalm and hand creme.

Missed one. After 3 days of not going to the allotment, found this enormous marrow

 Missed one. After 3 days of not going to the allotment, found this enormous marrow.

So off I went to the internet and found this extremely tasty and easy courgette soup

The first of the runner beans were ready too but not enough to make a large meal, so the runner bean samosas are on the menu tonight.

The filo pastry I made before and froze to make it a quick and easy snack.

strawberries galore

 A grey but productive day. I went to the allotment to harvest 4 kg of strawberries from the raised beds. The first few weeks have been disappointing as there was so much slug damage.

Todays harvest was turned into 15 bottles of strawberry cordial, 500ml of strawberry vinegar, and strawberry compote.  In our zoom session we made drop scones which we topped with the compote and vanilla ice cream (which we made with the Monday group.

As usual, it was fun to see Meghan and June and make these tasty recipes.

Elderflower cordial and asparagus

The sunshine has brought with it some long waited for warmth and allowed nature to catch up.
I noticed from last year's blog entry that exactly a year ago we were making elderflower cordial.
Looking around I found some lovely flowers which I turned into the first batch of cordial.

This annual activity I wanted to share with our visiting scholars as many would be able to find Elder in their own countries.

For those of the group who live near the Graduate centre, we went on a recce
 yesterday and found 5 very accessible elder trees.

The garlic in the back garden is ready to be harvested too, so that it can dry off and turned into a plat next week. We shall transplant the peppers (be sowed the seeds of peppers used earlier in the year) and inter plant them with the basil cuttings

We steamed Asparagus for lunch with poached eggs (added salt, pepper, chives and smoked zucchini)

as a sauce we used vegan garlicky mayonnaise.(with only milk and oi) or you can use the aqua faba mayonnaise recipe.

asparagus and poached eggs

strawberries almost ready

This post was originally made on 20 may 2018