Sunday Roast: Best roast pork with perfect crackling and apple gravy recipe
There’s a great section in Waitrose branded “Cooks Ingredients”. A range of rather special things, attractively packaged. Thinking about it, the majority of products that any supermarket sells are cooks ingredients. It’s just that we don’t think about that as we plod round doing the weekly shop in Tesco. We buy our anchovies from the “Cooks Ingredients” section (Update March 4th 2007: Tesco now has a similar section and sells a similar jar for a similar price). A decent amount packed into a Le Parfait...
read morePerfect quick paella recipe
All too often I’m doing the big shop with only seconds to spare before the doors close. This is only possible if you know exactly where every item on your list is located within the store. I have been known to complete the weekly shop in ten minutes. Every month or so I arrive early and dawdle in the supermarket. Examining the shelves carefully, looking for new lines. Last month I spotted a pack of Gallo Bomba Paella Rice. I had just bought some seafood from the fish counter and a paella would be a perfect supper. I turned the pack over...
read moreBest mincemeat recipe for mince pies and puddings
Mince pies are the quintessential Christmas treat. But every year loads of us bite into a proffered mince pie and resolve never to accept one again. it’s a shame as nothing beats a homemade one, bursting with mincemeat and a slug of brandy. I always make a few on Christmas Eve. I was pretty smug about them until Anne Mary mentioned that she always made her own mincemeat. I’m embarrassed to admit this but five years ago I didn’t know that you could make your own. I rushed home and thumbed through our cookbooks, convinced that...
read moreChristmas Pudding Recipe
Everyone wants to make the perfect Christmas pudding. The pressure is on from November 1st. Even if you make yours then, you are bound to hear of someone’s cousin’s friend who makes the pudding to die for, just after Easter. Don’t worry. We have the recipe for a perfect pud. We’ve made this the week before Christmas and it still tasted great. It is better if it has a few weeks to mature. Our recipe was initially inspired by Myrtle Allen’s recipe from The Ballymaloe Cookbook and we have tweaked it for the last...
read moreApple Chutney recipe
I’m not surprised that the fruit that tempted Eve was an apple. It is such a useful fruit. From sweet apple puree to flagons of frothy cider, the apple plays a major role in our lives. It always troubles me when I see apples left unpicked on trees. We’ve had a great cooking apple harvest this year. Danny and I have spent the morning picking apples from the old trees in our tiny orchard. We are going to make cider this year and have a go at apple wine. So we left a great pile of them on the garden table to soften in the frosts. If...
read moreJocelyn’s Baked Garlic recipe
Our friends Jocelyn and Miles have a house in France. They worked there for years and have kept it on as a retreat. Like the French, they love to eat out and one of their favourite local restaurants is run by a gloomy individual called Monsieur Misère. I was intrigued to meet this fellow who bobbed and smiled as we crossed his restaurant threshold. When he realised that our French wasn’t quite as fluent as our friends’, we were relegated to fourth division and tolerated with that polite distance, usually reserved for unruly...
read moreWinter Celery soup recipe: oven baked
Nothing beats the intense flavour of Winter Celery. We lament the fact that the season is so short. Just six weeks, from mid November to New Years Day. Winter Celery is grown in the dark soil of East Anglian Fens, just a few miles from our cottage, so we can always find it at its freshest and best. When I spotted it in the shops on Saturday I was so pleased to find my old friend again. I returned home with a couple of heads and one purpose in mind: Winter Celery begs to be made into this superb winter soup. If you are feeling naughty reserve...
read moreQuince Jelly recipe (also works with Japonica quinces)
Our friend Bunty gave us a Portuguese quince tree three years ago. Besides being very decorative, with dark branches and lazy, floppy leaves it produces the large firm fruit that make the tastiest jelly. Mature quince jelly (over six months old) turns a gorgeous amber colour. The first year our tree produced one small quince. It bore three last year and this year suddenly came into its own. The crop would be at least ten. The fruit are quite big so there would be enough to make more than jelly. Anne Mary and I poured over her old recipe books....
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