I wanted...I bought...I made

We have one more cucumber to eat before I rip the plant out to make way for some winter veg planting and I'm planning to honour its fabulousness at lunch Saturday with some milky buffalo mozzarella and a scattering of pea shoots. Saturday night I think a steak is a serious contender. Sunday pasta bake, probably broccoli as I've not had broccoli for ages. Monday spicy chicken noodles with stock and chicken from the freezer, Tuesday fried green tomatoes as I despair of ours ever ripening, Wednesday steamed silken tofu, as I'm out early evening and it will be quick when I get home. Thursday we're off to Dorset for a fabulous weekend courtesy of team wholegrain. I won the prize for my fabulous shredded wheat fennel pasta.

Feels like autumn is on its way - definite cool breeze Saturday morning for added chill at the bus stop. Even though we were early - not even nine o'clock! - there was a queue at Ginger Pig. Wondered idly about marrow burgers but went for steak when I got to the head of the queue. Do love a well hung rump. £16.67

Headed straight across the road to Monmouth for coffee while the man watched the weekly spectacle of a truck trying to turn into Stoney Street while hitting no parked cars - £11.50

Is no Booths - missing it badly - so off to Ted's Veg for potatoes, an enormous cabbage and some leeks - £3.80

Lizzie at Wild Beef was delighted to hear that Marie and Jon have a fine little boy called Teddy who will no doubt one day be taken to Borough - £1.50 for eggs

Bought both mozzarella and parma ham from the Italian stall - £11.90

And a hard sheepy cheese from Gianni at Gastronomica - £5 the hunk

Some pies from Mrs Kings - £5

Milk from Neals Yard - £1.90

Spent £57.27 in total

Parsnip & Turnip Purée

On holiday last week we had dinner at a french restaurant in Bury St Edmunds - La Maison Bleue. The food was very good, particularly the side dish they served with the mains. The waiter set a steaming bowl before us and explained, in his very french way, zat zis was a purée of ze parsneep and ze turneep for us to share. And it was amazing - gloriously light, rich, creamy, buttery and delicately spiced with cumin. Eet waz true love for me on ze first mouth-ful.

Couldn't resist making it at home Sunday night to go with our lovely pork. It could not be simpler or more fabulous.

Parsnip & Turnip Purée

This will make enough for six servings so we had the leftovers in lunchboxes and it was as good cold as it was hot.

2 medium parsnips, peeled and diced
1 turnip, about the same weight as the parsnip, peeled and diced
50g butter
Scant teaspoon of cumin
150ml cream

Boil the diced parsnips and turnips separately in salted water till tender. I started early and did them one after the other to save washing up! Drain.

Melt the butter over a low heat in the bottom of the pan and add the cumin. Cook gently for a couple of minutes till the butter is fragrant. Add the vegetables back to pan and take it off the heat. Purée with a stick blender. Add the cream and purée again till all is light as a feather.

Serve with roasts - spiced pork for us this week, but also worked a treat with the monkfish I had at La Maison Bleue.

Steamed Crisped Aromatic Pork Shoulder

I think I have reached a perfection of pork.

I bought a piece of pork shoulder on the bone to roast last weekend, with cold for lunches in the week. Lovely bit of meat, huge expanse of skin, beautifully scored by the butcher at the Gigner Pig. Definite treat in the making.

Serendipity. Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's column in the Guardian Saturday was for organic pork. There was a recipe for slow cooked spiced shoulder which sounded gorgeous right up to the point where he was describing the skin. I read 'you won't get any crackling, but you will get "chewling" – tender, chewable skin with a lovely, spicy flavour' and thought, can't be right. Read it again and, shockingly, that was what he was suggesting. Love pork. Love roast pork. Most of all love crackling. That incredible tasty shattering when you bite down, the lovely oily crunchy mouthful, the brilliant flavour of pig. There was no way I was settling for "chewling".

Have wondered for a while about steaming pork on the bone for the incredible moist tenderness that results but hesitated because I was worried there would be no crackling. Have tried it with lamb shoulder, steaming for a few hours, then finished with a quick blast in the oven which crisped the outside nicely. I have also slow roasted pork shoulder. Start hot, add liquid cover with foil and drop the temperature, then finish it uncovered on a very high heat which resulted in tender meat.

And lots of crackling :)

I figured I could translate this method to use the steam oven for the slow cook bookended by hot blasts in the gas oven. The result was wow! like you wouldn't believe.

Slow-cooked aromatic shoulder of pork

I did use HFW's spicing, which was lovely and dark and slightly sticky, but the method is mine. As was the crackling!

Serves six-plus

2.5kg piece of shoulder of pork, on the bone
5 large garlic cloves, peeled
5cm piece fresh ginger, peeled
2 tsp chilli flakes
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tbsp brown sugar
½ tbsp flaky sea salt
1 tbsp sunflower or groundnut oil
1 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp five-spice powder - I used ready made, HFW makes his own
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 glass white or red wine

Heat the oven to 230C/450F/gas mark 8. With a craft knife, score the pork rind in parallel lines about 1cm apart and to a depth of 0.5-1cm (or get the butcher to do it for you).

Grate the garlic and fresh ginger into a small bowl, and mix to a paste with the chilli, ground ginger, sugar, salt, oil and soy sauce. Mix a tablespoon of five spice into the paste.

Put the joint skin-side up into the steam oven roasting tin. Using your fingertips, rub just over half the spice rub into the scored rind. Rub the rest into the meat.

Roast the joint for 30 minutes, then remove from the oven.

Pour the glass of wine and a glass of water into the roasting tin, cover with foil and steam in the steam oven at 100C for 3 hours. When the steam runs out after a couple of hours baste the meat before refilling the water. Finish the three hours of steaming.

Heat the oven to 230C/420F/Gas 8.

Take the pork from the steam oven, remove the foil, and carefully drain the dark spicy liquid that has gathered in the bottom of the pan, leaving only a couple of tablespoons. (Keep it to use for stock in noodle soup or a rich pork stew.)

Put the roast back into the hot oven and firm up that crackling for 20-30 minutes. Take the pork out of the oven, put it onto a warmed plate, cover with foil and allow to rest for 20 minutes or so before carving.

Serve with lots of roast potatoes and we had a light cloud of spiced puréed parsnip and turnip for a great Sunday supper.

Grouse

Saturday night I finally cooked my very first grouse. It was also my very first taste of this lovely bird. The man collected them from Charlie at the Ginger Pig Friday. Resisiting the temptation to cook immediately I lay the little beauties on a plate.

And tucked them into the fridge overnight.

I went through lots of suggestions and recipes and initially led astray by the idea of red wine sauce. Finally settled on simple is best. I unbaconed them, removed their hearts and livers, and dusted with flour. Sprig of thyme and a knob of butter in the cavity.



The innards I poached briefly in a small amount of chicken stock. The bacon I chopped and put into a roasting pan with a serious knob of butter. Pan into hot oven - Gas 7 - till bubbling. Add birds, drench with hot fat, roast for 10 minutes.

Baste again with hot fat, roast another ten minutes. Remove birds to a warm plate and let rest, covered with foil, for another ten minutes. Make toast. Drain most of the fat from the roasting pan and add the hearts and livers, mashing them into the bacony juices.

Dance the birdies onto plates. Spread toast with the livers and juices mash. Insert bunch of fresh washed watercress into fundament. Add side of creamed cabbage with (more) bacon. Because you can never have too much bacon.


My first ever grouse dinner is served. Brilliant thing - and a worthy meal to match my excitement at the prospect.

No idea why I waited so long.

Oaty Apple Slice

Have been with the man for a long time now - loving every minute obv - but it surprises me that still, sometimes, we are entirely foreign to each other. On the weekend I bought some lovely Bramleys from Chegworth with the intention of making apple pie with a cheddar crust, and then when that idea was abandoned, a repeat on the lovely apple and blackberry duff. Monday night, when I got home, didn't fancy the faff of doing either. I have plenty of Flanahans Irish Porridge Oats from the Bord Bia evening at the Irish Embassy and thought they would make a very good - and much simpler - combination with the apples. Decided to make a slice.

Peeled and sliced the apples and mixed them liberally with cinnamon, mixed the luscious oats with flour, melted butter and brown sugar and added it to the dry ingredients. So far so good. Then I asked the man to get the slice tin out for me. Complete incomprehension, total and utter bewilderment. Not a clue. 'You don't have slices in this country?' As soon as I said it I knew it was true. In the twenty five years I have been in this country there has not been a single slice.

They are a quintessential Australian delight, passed down from generation unto generation, added to packed lunches and made fresh to serve up for afternoon tea, served with tea every time. My aunt used to make a lovely one with a biscuity buttery base topped with apricot jam topped with coconut. My mother made a fabulous one with dates and chocolate. My entire childhood was punctuated with these treats and yet my sweetheart had no inkling.

It's difficult to explain them really. They are not cake and they are not biscuit but a kind of halfway house between the two. The mix is made and then flattened out to line the base of a slice tin - a rectangular baking pan that is usually 18x32cm and about 2 cm deep and is also known as a lamington pan but only to those who know what a lamington is - then baked and cooled in the tray before cutting into, well, slices. The beauty of a slice is that it is not as ostentatious as baking a cake for visitors, yet it says you've made so much more of an effort than just knocking up a batch of biscuits. Final rule of oz etiquette - you offer them round as a piece of slice, not a slice of slice. Obv.

I told him all this and he was amazed. A new sweet treat for my cakey pig.

Oaty Apple Slice

Makes 20 pieces

150g porridge oats

275g plain flour

1 tspn salt

110g light brown sugar

225g unsalted butter

2 cooking apples, weighing about 450g before peeling

1 tspn cinnamon

2 tspn golden caster sugar

In a large bowl mix the oats, flour and salt. In a small saucepan melt the butter and sugar together till thoroughly combined and foamy. Add the hot butter to the dry ingredients and mix together with a wooden spoon.

Peel, core and quarter the apples, slice thinly - no thicker than a pound coin - and mix with the cinnamon and caster sugar.

Line a slice/lamington/rectangular baking tray with parchment. Put half the oat mix into the base and press it out to cover the whole base. Top the oat mix with an even layer of the sliced apples. Top the apples with the rest of the oats, again pressing it out evenly to cover the fruit.

Bake in a Gas 4/200C/375F oven for 25-30 minutes till the top is golden all over.

Cool in the tin on a rack then slice into rectangles.

Next time you fancy a cuppa grab yourself a piece of slice!

Stir fry beans and pork balls

Last Friday Quadrille kindly sent me a copy of Real Food From Near and Far - Stevie Parle's book in their series New Voices in Food. It's a lovely looking book - buff covers and beautiful illustrations and a utilitarian feel to it makes me think it is a practical tome to have in the kitchen when the temperature rises. It is meant to be cooked from as well as devoured.

The timing of its arrival was fortuitous. I had made my usual rough outline for a menu for the upcoming week, deciding to go for grouse Saturday night rather than Friday, and a fair variety of things filling the rest of the week. But I had no definitive plan for either Friday night or what to do with the next lot of beans on the wigwam in the garden. What is appealing about Real Food is that it is not only divided into the months of the year with recipes themed around what is abundant but the inspiration for the food comes from all round the world, placing British ingredients into a much broader context, which is the way I love to cook.

A quick flick to August reveals beans and myriad ways to use them. I contemplated the salad with rocket and Parmesan but had nothing to go with it, having even run out of eggs last week. I did have some bean curd puffs in the fridge and little packets of pork mince so the Chinese delight of beans and pork beckoned needing only a minor tweak or two to accomodate the stuff I had to use.


Szechuan beans with little bits of pork

In Szechuan they use yard long beans for this dish. We don't often find those here, though you can grow them.

Serves 4-6

green beans, tops cut off, 250g

garlic cloves, green sprout removed, 1

anise seeds, 1 tsp

dried chilli, 1 tsp

szechuan pepper, 1/2 tsp

minced pork shoulder or belly, 80g

tofu puffs, 6-7, each cut in half

flavourless oil, a splash

fresh root ginger, grated, 5cm

rice wine vinegar, a splash

Chop the beans a bit. Crush the garlic in a mortar, add the spices and crush them until they become a paste, then mix this well with the pork. Roll the pork into little bits about the size of a marble.


Heat a large pan or wok and pour in the oil. Put in the little bits of pork and fry them, mixing. When they start to turn a little crispy, add the tofu, stir for a minute then throw in the beans and the ginger. Fry until the beans start to look cooked, splash in a bit of vinegar, reduce the heat and cook until the beans are soft.

Adding the garlic and spices to the pork was good and the end result was a great mouthful of crispy meat, crunchy beans and slightly spongy tofu. Recommend.

I wanted...I bought...I made

There will be grouse! The man is collecting them today - Friday - and we shall have them either tonight or tomorrow - thinking probably tomorrow as it will be more leisurely and so more enjoyable. Saturday very special they were. But I don't know if I can wait! He also bought a new tin of olive oil so had spent £50 in one quick trip.

Sunday I think the paella we didn't have last week with some left for lunches. Monday I fancy beef stroganoff - literally years since I made it and it used to be my absolute go to favourite dinner but had some zigni from the freezer with herbed couscous and cabbage. Tuesday cheesy pasta bake with some of the cheese sauce from the freezer, quite fancy broccoli - went to the Canton Arms instead. Wednesday viet rice paper parcels and hot cabbage salad pasta bake with cauliflower and it was amazing, Thursday noodles and Friday omelette and salad.

Saturday was bleakish and quiet at the market. Started at the Ginger Pig where Charlie gave me a few more clues about my grouse - it was his post about them which I found really detailed so that gave me the confidence to cook grouse for the first time. Everything else I'd read starts with 'oven ready birds' and not knowing what that is had made me wary. Bought some bacon on toast for breakfast after the market and with cabbage for dinner and a slice of pork steak into the paella Sunday for the very reasonable price of £2

Then to Booths, my last visit as they move out next weekend, and bought carrots, garlic, nectarines and a cauliflower - £4.40

Eggs and sausages for the freezer as it seems wrong to have no sausages from Lizzie at Wild Beef - £5.30

From Chegworth I bought apples - both cooking for oat slice and eating, an enormous lettuce salad Wednesday night and a punnet of apricots - £4.80

At Gastronomica they had one piece of Bra left - and the man does love Bra - a snip at £5

From Teds Veg I bought potatoes to mash with pie and peas Thursday for £1.90

A scoop of avocadoes on rye for lunch Saturday and, sadly, the rest binned as they didin't last but still almost a bargain £1

Olives from Turkish olives, tried the cheese stuffed ones but bought the chilli stuffed ones - £4.30

Was delighted to see Ian at Mrs Kings Pork Pies - his son runs the stall most weeks now so it was good to catch up with a chat. Turns out he has been concentrating on developing some new ideas for new pies - what joy that notion brings to my soul! There will be more on that in a couple of weeks - in the meantime I bought a steak pie as the man has a steak and kidney pie in the freezer and I'm thinking pie & mash would be a lovely thing this week - £3

Coffee from Monmouth - £11.50

Milk, cream and yoghurt from Neals Yard - £6.60

So spent a massive £99.80 - a lot. But the oil will last for months and the grouse were sublime as well as a thoroughly British event.

Next week is holiday week so eat well and I shall return anon.