Pork Chops with Tarragon and Elderflower cordial recipe
We don’t drink wine very much these days so we tend not to have wine hanging about in the kitchen for cooking. Danny developed a great pork chop recipe so as a treat I grabbed a litre wine box in the supermarket. There was a yelp when he finally opened the box and turned on the tap. I had bought red wine rather than white. “Well why don’t you try using some of my Elderflower and Lemon cordial?” He adds this cordial to roast chicken. He created a superb sauce, adding some cream at the end to thicken it. But he forgot to write down the...
read moreThe Alternative kitchen Garden an A-Z by Emma Cooper. A review.
I’m always really pleased when bloggers publish books as it proves to me that books are still treasured and valued. Who wants to stare at a computer screen for hours even though there’s access to an unbelievable breadth of knowledge and experience. There’s nothing to beat opening a really good book. And this is one that I’d highly recommend. When Emma Cooper emailed me asking if I’d be interested in doing a review of The Alternative kitchen Garden an A-Z I was pleased but had that slightly panicky feeling that I might not like the...
read moreFruit steamers are a brilliant addition to any busy kitchen
For years I longed for a Vigo fruit press to process our apples, pears and fruit for wine, juices and cordials. They are beautiful objects but too expensive to justify occasional use. Then one lucky day last year, Ronald Hayles left a comment about the wonders of the Mahu Liisa. I had never heard of this type of extraction steamer before but they clearly would be very useful for processing juices. Basically these special steamers extract fruit juice using steam, this also pasteurises the juice which can be drawn off into sterilised bottles and...
read moreApple and Blackberry Cordial recipe
2009 is a great year for blackberries. We have loads in our garden and I’m bottling them and processing them for winter. I’ve also become very interested in cordials. Danny has started using my Lemon and Elderflower cordial instead of white wine in cooking. I reckoned that Blackberry and Apple cordial and a Wild Plum cordial would appeal to him. Deep into Oded Scwartz’s Preserving I read his words on making cordial, “Boil for just 4-5 minutes as you don’t want to turn it into jelly.” Basically making cordial is very easy...
read moreOur new site search engine: Zoom
For Fiona’s blog 3rd birthday we invested in the Zoom site search engine. You can try it out in the right-hand sidebar. One of the weakest features of the standard WordPress package is its inbuilt search facility. It is practically useless. We even had visitors email us to help find specific recipes! So we launched a project to find a better alternative and to customise the results page for Cottage Smallholder. We tested five search engines including the free Google site search offering. But Google was ruled out because the licensing terms...
read moreAnd Baby made four. The arrival of our new Leghorn chickens.
“Did you know that cockerels all have distinct voices?” Kevin put down his mug of tea and stared into the garden as a cockerel crowed. “That’s Sage.” Caroline nodded. She explained that ours are still finding their voices on the crowing front. And as if to order we heard a rasping cry. “That’s one of yours.” I was sitting in Caroline and Kevin’s new conservatory. Admiring their lemon tree – laden with fruit on their sunny terrace. Finally after so many weeks of ogling our new Leghorn Family through Caroline’s...
read morePlum and Tamarind Chutney Recipe
This can also be made with damsons – cut the tamarind amount by half and add more sugar to taste. Anyone who owns Oded Schwartz’s superb book Preserving is very lucky indeed. Published in 1996 it is now sadly out of print. Danny found a copy on Australian Ebay for me one Christmas and I’ve used it endlessly since then. It is packed full of mouth watering photographs and inspirational recipes. Last week I spotted that he adds tamarind to a plum chutney, as this is one of my favourite ingredients at the moment my mind began to whir. How...
read moreAbel and Cole’s chilled prepared meals: a review
Despite endeavours to cook from scratch, the market for chilled meals is a growing one. More people are buying these as an alternative to a takeaway or eating out. Sometimes even D and I succumb when we see something tempting. Living alone and not always feeling tip top, my mum welcomes our hampers. She has a bird-like appetite so everything is served in ramekins that she can defrost and heat up easily. She also loves Duchy Original soup and pies. When Able and Cole offered to send her some chilled ready meals to review she was thrilled. Apart...
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