No-Cook Apple, Date and Onion Chutney Recipe
Our old friend, Kate Auty, makes this excellent chutney every year. It does not have to be cooked at all. In fact all you do is mince, mix and leave to mature. If you can leave the chutney longer than three months it will continue to improve. We let a jar mature for a year, it is treasured and strictly for family consumption. It’s great for children to make, under supervision. By the time it has matured for three months the daily bleat of, “Is it ready yet?” has died down completely and they have forgotten that it is lurking...
read moreThe best crispy baked potatoes that I’ve ever tasted
These poatoes in their jackets are superb. This simple recipe must be the fastest, easiest and tastiest base for any busy midweek meal. Pop them in the oven and forget about them for an hour. I’ve cooked baked potatoes for years and they’re definitely comfort food for me. It took me ages to twig that the secret of great baked potatoes is in the skin. The timing in this recipe is as important as the spicy rub. To eat them at their crispiest they mustn’t hang about in the oven past their cooking time as this softens their...
read moreGrape Jelly recipe
When I first came here I planted a spindly grape vine on a trellis at the back of the pond garden. This was part of a master plan to disguise a neighbour’s rusty corrugated iron fence. I was purely interested in the look of the vine. Large leaves through the summer and decorative gnarled stems in the winter. Pottering by the pond last summer, I spotted a tiny bunch of grapes peeking out from under a vine leaf. Closer inspection revealed a mini harvest of grapes, puny but fat and dark. Thrilled with the prospect of making wine with our...
read moreOverwhelmed by fruit flies. Time for ‘Baked Bananas in Rum’ recipe
When I got back this evening, Danny was muttering about the fruit flies in the kitchen. Unfortunately one had taken a nosedive into his whisky. He paced the room looking for the source of the invasion. Could it be the tomarillos, the wild plums, the carrier bags of grapes, the tiny greengages that Jocelyn and I had picked on Wednesday that were ripening on the side? I nervously pointed to a bag of elderly bananas that were sitting on the wood-burning stove, just behind his chair. Danny just laughed and asked, gently, “Why do you keep on...
read moreGuest Spot: Steve Catchpole’s Cucumber, Tomato and Onion Chutney Recipe
This is the launch of the brand new ** Guest Spot ** on the Cottage Smallholder Blog. Lots of visitors email us. We love this and always respond. These emails have loads of great stories about others’ attempts at self-sufficieny. Some are hilarious. Others are full of new ideas. A few include recipes that sound really promising. We thought it would be good to include some of these contributions in our blog and invite a guest article from time to time. Seve Catchpole, from Helmingham, Suffolk, has the singular honour of being the first...
read moreCottage Smallholder Plum Chutney or Damson Chutney
This chutney recipe works well with plums, wild plums or damsons. It does not need months to mature and keeps well I had some spare time today so finally retrieved the stock pot from Danny, swooshed it out with bicarbonate of soda to get rid of the taint of clove chutney (see Tricks and Tips below) and found the plum chutney recipe from Anne Mary’s old cook book. This was going to be the base of our own Cottage Smallholder Chutney. I had collected three pounds of windfall wild plums yesterday and simmered them last night for 20 minutes...
read moreSlow cooked roast Spanish lamb recipe infused with thyme and white wine
One Sunday many years ago, Danny and I were pressed for time before a lunch party. In a desperate, ‘they’ll be here in 5 minutes’ move, we threw all the dirty pots and pans from the sink onto the lawn. It was deep winter and we felt confident that our friends wouldn’t venture further than the kitchen table. Danny locked the door to the garden, just in case. All went well until a child, bored with the extensive lingering over coffee and Armagnac, got up and peered out of the tiny window that overlooks the garden. I knew...
read moreSlow cooked Steak and Kidney Pie Recipe
One great thing about autumn and winter is savouring a really good steak and kidney pie. Another is that we have streamlined our weekday cooking but still eat well. We both love good food; even our mid-week meals of sausage and mash consist of Newmarket sausages (superb!) with creamy mashed potato and heaps of vegetables fresh from the garden. Neither of us wants to spent hours making supper during the working week. Even those ’30 minute meals’ seem to take us at least an hour. Eventually we twigged that we could avoid kitchen...
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