The Cottage Smallholder

I am a huge fan of Colcannon, that amazingly comforting Irish mixture of cabbage or kale or spring onion greens beaten into glorious mashed potatoes with puddles of good melted butter.....I just adore it & make it all the time ....it is my default potato dish & I have a waistline to prove it.   I also make another version of it that I learnt years ago in Holland where you add chopped up raw curly endive to the mash plus tiny bits of fried smoked streaky bacon plus i'ts residual  hot fat& a slug of white vinegar (I use cider or white wine vinegar).  It is so good, especially with pork. I have also tried it with chorizo or salami as a main dish.  Today I think I will use nettle tops & young dandelion leaves sauteed quickly with some bits of cooking bacon (Sainsbury's sell big packs of offcuts cheaply) with a slug of chive-flavoured cider vinegar I made last year.

I noticed some of my pots of chives are coming into bud, when they flower nip the buds off & poke them into a bottle of cider vinegar & shake the bottle whenever you remember to.....delicious.