The slow cooker chef: Chicken and red pepper casserole recipe
The best piece of kitchen equipment that I bought in 2008 was my slow cooker. I found mine in a sale at Tesco and had no idea how much more flavoursome slow cooking can be. So why did I buy one? I had been seduced by Angela and the thought of slow cooked steak and kidney. Initially I reckoned that I would just use it in the winter but it’s used all year round now and saves us lots of cash as the electricity used to run it is minimal. And most things do taste better when they are slow cooked. Now I’ve got to grips with how to cook with...
read moreHappy meat
Neil put the shin of beef on the weighing machine and punched in the price. “The price comes down for this in December. Which is good for cooks like you.” We’ve eaten all the “ready meals” that I made for the freezer so it was time to stock up on skirt and shin of beef and ox kidney. Organic meat tastes so much better and Neil’s prices are very competetive. There’s nothing I like more than the heady combination of meat, gossip and recipes that happens in Neil’s shop. I usually buy in bulk when I visit – putting in an...
read morePine needle vinegar update on the making stage
I dragged in the thoughtful gift from Anne Mary’s Caledonian pine tree and started to pull off the needles. They came off reasonably easily but they had a little brown husk on the ends that attached to the branch. As far as I could remember Robin Harford’s pine needles were green from tip to tail. So I shot upstairs to the laptop and examined his photos carefully. Not a dot of brown husk anywhere. The Sherlock Holmes in me detected that he’d probably cut the pine needles off the branch with scissors. I eventually unearthed our...
read moreCauliflower soup with blue cheese and orange zest recipe
This is another in our skinflint soup series. This delicious soup was run up with leftovers that could easily have just been thrown away. They made an elegant soup. The two key ingredients are mushroom ketchup and the zest of the orange which transformed this soup from good to sublime. Danny chickened out on the orange zest front. Refused even to taste it. He missed out on a real treat. I got the idea of combining orange and vegetables from a video from dehydrate2store where Tammy mixes dried ground orange peel with dried beetroot and...
read moreSave money supermarket shopping online
“I usually shop at Sainsbury’s.” Sam confided. He likes good food. He’s a great chef. But was it really worth motoring over to Cambridge or Bury to shop? “Oh no I don’t have time to do that. I buy online. I’ve done it for ages. Initially my neighbours all thought I was mad. But gradually, one by one they are all doing it. Go for it – you can save time and money, Fiona. And the delivery rates are much cheaper now.” We don’t have brilliant local shops in Newmarket. No green grocer, no fishmonger. There are several good...
read moreThe secret challenge
We’ve had a secret challenge at the cottage this past year. In the old days when oil was cheap we were wanton with our central heating. Our 900 litre tank was filled up four times a year. In October last year we worked out that four fill ups might cost as much as £1600. It was quite a shock when we did the maths. For the first time ever I decided to shop around for the best price. In the end we saved £60 on filling the tank. Up until then I’d used the same supplier for 25 years – but he just couldn’t offer a similar discount. Then...
read moreMake your own rosehip tea
“Those two rose bushes beside the back door are totally out of control and need cutting back.” Danny remarked back in June. I couldn’t oblige as I was planning to make tea. The bushes got more and more flamboyant until they were given a harvesting haircut at the weekend. There are lots of roses growing in the cottage garden so we have a profusion of hips for preserving in the Autumn. I usually make rosehip and apple jelly and sometimes rosehip syrup but this year I’d discovered the huge benefits of drinking rosehip tea. This would...
read moreKitchen Garden update September 2009
Thank goodness the cabbage white butterflies have stopped using our kitchen garden as a prime love fest location. They were attracted by so many tasty brassicas they are the new super food after all. Watching them canoodling was fun but fighting with their caterpillar offspring was a nightmare. For a good two months it was war. By the end I was patrolling morning and evening with the organic gardener’s version of a Kalashnikov – a powerful soapy spray gun. I don’t know whether it did much good. But the chickens enjoyed eating the...
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