The slow cooker chef: Hot spring game pie
It’s the time of year when we start to clear the freezer of game given to us during the shooting season. We tend to keep our eyes peeled for cut price game. Waitrose stocks rabbit, venison, pigeon, partridge and quail. All quite expensive but often marked down to half the original price –these are brought home and secreted in the freezer until we have the perfect ingredients for this subtle game pie filling. Our favourite combination is venison, rabbit and pheasant. This pads out the pheasant and gives a tremendous range and depth of...
read moreGardening presents
The pleasure that I get from special garden tools and gardenalia is immeasurable. I love my two traditional Sussex garden trugs (giant and baby sized), the set of three cedar seed trays, my paper potter and my new mouseproof Burgon and Ball Seed Packets Tin. Seraphina has given me most of these luxury items. As with friends who have given me plants, I always think of the donor when I use them. Good solid old fashioned quality. The things seem timeless. The seed packets tin was given to me when I gave Seraphina a hand with her elegant...
read moreThe Grand Potato Challenge
“If we have thirty feet of ridges , three potatoes wide, spaced a foot apart, we’ll need 90 seed potatoes. I’ve only chitted 2 kilos of seed potatoes. We won’t have enough.” Danny and I were digging in our rich vegetable compost into the new potato border. “We can cut the potatoes as long as each section has at least one eye.” “Really?” “Yes. I remember my Dad sitting on a wooden butter box and cutting up the potatoes with his sharp knife.” Suddenly Danny has been fired with enthusiasm. Enough to overcome his loathing of...
read moreThe Easter morning bear
When we were small children my mum always gave us cardboard eggs on Easter Day, which we opened to reveal a present. I’m sure that we must have been given chocolate eggs too but it’s the cardboard ones that have stayed in my memory. One year she made small bears for my sister and I. They lay curled in the cardboard egg shells. The bears had boot button eyes and were made of brown furry bear material. I was enchanted. As a special treat we were allowed to take the bears to church with us. I walked with my bear sitting in my pocket with his...
read moreThe landscape is never flat when it comes to cooking
I seem to have been cooking for days. When I get home from work. Loads of delicious pies. Fish, beef and oxtail and mixed game pies. I like pies. Somehow if we have a homemade pie for supper, I feel that we are almost there cooking wise. All is needed is a pair of thick gloves to tackle the freezer in the morning. And half an hour to prepare some tasty vegetables whilst the pie warms in the oven. Even though it’s spring here in the UK, with quite a few sunny days, it’s chilly after dark and I’ve had a longing for traditional English...
read moreIn praise of the animals that give us meat
With the sunnier days I’ve been working out of doors again. Back at the 40-acre estate. Basking in the opportunity to watch the wildlife as I paint. Now there are sheep grazing one of the large paddocks. Many ewes clearly remembered that the approach of humans meant that their lambs disappeared last year. When they see me looking, they hide their lambs on their offside and steadily stare. My heart goes out to them. We’d feel the same if our babies were mainly bred for meat. Although I know now that free range doesn’t mean a 100% happy...
read moreNew border
The one photograph that stands out in my mind in Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s first River Cottage Cookbook is the picture of a fenced vegetable garden with a large plot outside the confines. We now have this too. I saw HFW’s photo before John Coe and I created our kitchen garden a few years ago, and was careful to create enough space for what I imagined would be natural growth. Wrong. Obviously, I had no idea how much space our vegetables would require. John wanted to contain everything into a small area that we could easily nurture and...
read moreEaster Trees
I don’t have a long family tradition of making Easter Trees. Occasionally, over the past few years I’ve seen them in clients’ houses and been intrigued. Finally the blog Finding Simplicity gave me the nudge last year and we enjoyed the tree so much that we’ve made one again this year. The tradition is far simpler than the Christmas tree one. You can use any sort of twiggy growth for the tree. If you didn’t need it to last long and need to make an off the cuff tree Forsythia would be ideal (as it is already in flower). We followed...
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