Home cured Christmas ham
I love ham, bacon, salami – well most processed meats actually. They get the thumbs down from the nutritionists due to their high salt and fat content. Having found out how easy it is to cure bacon at home using far less salt than traditional cures I decided to have a go at curing a ham last Christmas. We bought some local free range pork and used our wet cure for bacon recipe as the soak. The recipe is here the only difference in curing a loin of bacon and a leg is time. The leg was soaked for three weeks in the fridge submerged with...
read moreDelicious classic British food: Best Toad-in-the-Hole recipe
When the weather starts to get chilly I have a longing for a really good Toad-in-the-Hole. Not the rather chewy offering that I munched as a child but a light and puffy one. A dish that would have Danny pleading for more rather than the slightly suspicious response, “I don’t think that I’ve ever eaten Toad-in-the-Hole.” Long pause. “I’d be interested to try it.” The problem was that I didn’t have a recipe. Then I twigged that our Yorkshire Pudding recipe probably would be good. So I used Delia’s version as a guide for...
read moreOther people’s recipes: Diana Henry’s Baked Pork Chops with Pears, Potatoes and Onions
We had two rather thin pork chops earmarked for supper last night. I thought that they might be good baked with pears so drifted onto the internet for inspiration and found this recipe from Diana Henry. I like her recipes and my copy of Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons: Enchanting Dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africais a well thumbed tome. Her recipe was just what I wanted – throw everything into a roasting pan for about an hour. I didn’t have Roquefort cheese, substituted a teaspoon of dried fennel for the...
read morePork 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 moreBest melt in the mouth pork meatballs in a piquant tamarind, fresh ginger and honey sauce recipe
I love meatballs. But only the melt in the mouth variety. Having sharpened my teeth on ultra firm chewy meatballs, I decided never to attempt to make them myself. What was the point? Why push hardened walnut sized balls of meat onto anyone else? Several years ago Danny’s special brother, Donagh, gave me the secret of melt in the mouth meatballs. He had served meatballs to die for and I was desperate to get his secret. “It’s so simple. I learnt the method from the mother of my Spanish girlfriend.” He finally revealed. I was all...
read moreThe slow cooker chef: a great slow cooked spare rib recipe
To celebrate Jalopy’s heroic performance passing her M.O.T. with flying colours, I ordered an organic belly of pork from The Carter Street butchers in Fordham. I also remembered to ask for the bones. Daniel, the butcher does not ‘bone out’ the joint but slices them off as a rack of spare ribs. What could be better than sticky sweet and sour ribs for Saturday night? As I was working that day I decided to try and find a recipe that could bubble away all day in the slow cooker/crock pot. I found Lyn Utsugi’s tempting recipe for...
read moreBaked sausages recipe with Bramley apples, honey and star anise
Sometimes it’s really good to get home, pour a large glass of wine and rustle up a dish that takes just ten minutes to prepare and is cooked in under an hour. This dish also keeps warm well and is a delight when you eventually tuck in. It’s one of those easy dishes. Filling the kitchen with great aromas as you get on with the more enjoyable sides of life than standing by a hot stove. I made a very similar dish a few weeks ago and we loved it. This evening I discovered that the recipe had been swept away on a kitchen clearing binge....
read moreDanny’s Belly of Pork slow roasted on a bed of Bramley apples recipe
Danny was upbeat as he swung his car into the space front of the butcher’s shop. “Let’s stop mourning Fred’s old shop closing and enjoy the search for a new butcher. It could be fun.” The Chicken Lady had reminded me that there was a good butcher in Fordham, a fifteen minute drive from Cheveley. This shop specialises in free range local meat. Some of their cattle graze on the stud farms that surround our village. We stepped over the threshold past a long fringe of spiced beef and hunks of biltong. This was an unusual sight in a...
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