Herbal teas

Image source: Twinings.co.uk

You can't beat a herbal tea for being a sly, deceptive creation. In the supermarket you examine the shelves looking at all the tempting flavours and hoping that your eyes will land on the one that may actually taste good. You take it home, boil the kettle and enjoy the aroma that fills the room as it brews. Three long minutes whilst the infusion sits steeping. Finally the bag is removed and you lift the drink to your lips. The aroma swims about your head, making sweet, sweet promises. Finally you take a sip, hoping that this time it really will taste as good as it smells.

Fruit Juice

images from tesco.com

What is up with Tesco fruit juice at the moment? We enjoy fruit juice but because of the price only have it occasionally but recently I've been stocking up. The Tesco value apple juice has been only 16p for a litre carton. 16p! Can it even be made that cheaply? I'm assuming that there must be a huge pile of this stuff sitting in a warehouse that needs using up.

What to do with stale bread.

Bread and butter pudding

When visiting my mother earlier this week she sent us home with two loaves of bread. These have sat on the side for a couple of days going stale. I hate waste so put on my thinking cap as to how to use these. My first thought was bread and butter pudding. This is loved in this house providing I don't put any fruit in. You would have thought that my boys were in heaven they loved this so much. I forget sometimes how easy it can be to make them happy.

Storing coriander

Coriander packs straight from the freezer

I love coriander, an indian meal is not complete without it in my book. I also love to use it fresh in salads but my boy complains loudly. Unfortunately, despite trying every year, I have not yet succeeded in growing this plant, it either runs to seed or just doesn't get going. Thankfully I can now buy large bunches from the supermarket but I still never seem to have any when I need it.

Dried coriander just seems tasteless to me. I have tried coriander paste in a jar before, it was a bit like mint sauce but without the vinegar and was handy to use but ultimately expensive and still lacked flavour. Thankfully I have, thanks to an accidental throw into the freezer, found a solution that works for me. 

Coriander is broken up whilst still in the bag

After a quick look to check that the leaves are healthy, they now go straight into the freezer. Once frozen within the bag it is easy to crumple the plant including the stems and tip into a storage box.

Frozen coriander ready to use. 

A big pile of coriander ready to flavour my curry! Though it doesn't look as good as fresh the flavour is retained and that's the important bit. Time to cook some dahl, I think.

My 2013 Christmas Food: Chocolate Yule Log

Yule Log

I have just found lots of photos that I haven't yet shared so though my decorations may now be down and packed away Christmas is not yet over on this blog!

First to share is this Chocolate Log. It was so easy to make that I highly recommend that you give it a go. Don't worry about making a swiss roll, just bake a normal sponge cake and leave it to cool completely. Then you can attack it with your knife, shaping it as you wish. My Yule log was made in two loaf tins, one small and one large. Despite this good start they both had to be carved quite a bit to resemble the correct shape and fit on the plate. Then they were sliced horizontally to sandwich in a couple of layers of plum jam. Finally I let my youngest have at it with lots of cocoa butter icing. Yes, an eight year old iced this cake. If he can, you can. The icing on the ends was a little that I had saved prior to adding all of the cocoa to the icing mix and I carefully smoothed this onto the 'cut' ends.

Don't bother trying to make the icing smooth, the rougher the better. A final dusting of icing (I used a tea strainer) gives a good finish.

It only lasted one day.

It tasted that good.

Christmas: food

Icing fondant snowman

It is amazing the wide variety of traditions that different families have. Over the years I have taken on some that I grew up with, tried to incorporate J's and have tweaked them over the years to suit us. I have also learnt not to get quite so picky with creating a perfect day!

Christmas pud

Z zesting the oranges

A couple of weeks ago I felt like being organised so I dragged out my mothers old recipe and made this years Christmas pudding. These are so simple to make and always taste better than the bought ones but in recent years it has been a task that I have put off until it is too late.

Fudge.

Vanilla fudge

Home made fudge, using the recipe from the good food channel. This took a lot longer than the 25 minutes they suggest for cooking, but then I did double the ingredients. I must remember next time to use my largest pan for a larger surface area to hopefully speed things up. It has a lovely soft texture, instead of beating the mixture with a spoon I took my electric whisk to it for a few minutes. Well worth doing.

All my preserves

A fine larder

Dough nuts

Dough nuts

Drink!

Wine

We did a quick review of alcohol yesterday. 4 demijohns of wine went down the drain, there really wasn't any hope of them turning good now as over two years old and they take up space. Over the years the only wines that I have consistently succeeded with are blackberry and elderberry, delicious! I'll occasionally experiment with other ingredients but those demijohns then seem to linger around for years whilst we wait for them to mature and hopefully improve in flavour, they usually don't. I'm not making any this year, we've been too busy harvesting our own fruit to get out and find wild berries and most of my demijohns have been stolen by J for his cider.

Bread: Granary

Granary loaf

This loaf was made using Hovis Granary flour following the recipe on the packet. It was a surprisingly light loaf with a good texture. It was unfortunately also a bit light on the taste side too but I love the chewiness of the grains so this is definitely a flour I am going to purchase again. Next time I'm going to make two small loaves and pop one into the freezer as despite us enjoying it this bread is still going four days later. This is the problem with having boys who worship sliced white bread.

Spicy vegetable soup

Spicy vegetable soup

This is one of my favourite cold weather lunches, chunky, warming soup. Quick to make and we love it!

Harvest loaf

Wheat sheaf

I made the dough for this loaf but the design was put together by our local home education group. It is based on a traditional harvest wheat sheaf (lots of images here). I had to keep my hands firmly behind my back to stop myself from interfering too much! It was an interesting activity, the children are all used to the feel and texture of playdoh but found the springiness of bread very odd to work with but did enjoy attacking it with scissors to make the wheat heads. They were also intrigued by the idea of adding a mouse to it (the bit at the bottom).

Apples and cider

Windfalls

Apple season is upon us. We have four trees in our garden but we don't eat many apples. Some will be bottled as apple sauce but the majority of them will be juiced to make scrumpy.

Bread

Blue Vinny bread

A few weeks ago we purchased a lovely dorset blue vinny bread at the cheese festival. I'm not a huge blue cheese fan but the saltiness that the mould brings gave a lovely zing to the bread itself. It has definitely rekindled the desire for more so I've been keeping my eyes open for what we have locally. I also love a good granary but I've not managed to find any of these at all! I find it hard to believe that they have disappeared. There are plenty of good white bread options around, especially if I visit the local farm shops. But they get a bit steep on the pocket, on the other hand supermarkets do not have the variety that they used to (my local ones anyway).

I don't want tasty bread everyday, I'm actually trying to cut back on bread. But a small loaf each weekend would be enjoyable. Many years ago I had a small bread maker. It made excellent dough but the bread it baked was somehow lacking though the same dough cooked in the oven was delicious. So I would be very tempted to try this again if only I had more counter space in the kitchen. I don't but I do have a dough hook for my ancient kenwood chef which probably ought to see more use.

Easy Soda Bread

To start the ball rolling I have here a soda bread made using the simple recipe from A girl called Jack . I'm not a big fan of soda bread but I cannot deny that this was a quick and easy make, another bonus is that it doesn't require any special ingredients. I'm not going to pretend that it tasted gorgeous but it was good to eat hot with the butter melting in. Will I bother to make it again? Maybe, the recipe is going into my recipe folder should I need to make a quick loaf.

Plum/Damson/Sloe Gin/Rum update

sloes

Well, this has certainly been a popular post. So popular that I felt that I probably ought to add a few more details to how we do this. First the basic recipe:

• 1lb fruit
• 6oz sugar
• 75cl of gin or white rum

Cheese festival

Three cheeses, a pot of hot mustard and a packet of nuts.

Our local market town hosts an annual cheese festival. So far we have visited every year that we have lived here. The first time we bought far too much cheese and now make the effort to be a bit more restrained in our choices, you can get a bit fed up with them when the fridge is still full three weeks later!

Plum/Damson Rum

Home made wines

Another recipe I don't want to lose track of.

Plum/damson rum
We use a basic sloe gin recipe substituting the sloe and gin:
1lb fruit to 6oz sugar to 75cl of alcohol
For using sloes many recipes say to prick them with a pin, I prefer to use the freezer technique of letting them burst their skins whilst frozen.

I haven't made any rum yet this year though I have started the sloe gin to get rid of last year's sloes that have been hiding in the bottom of my freezer. It is a firm favourite with our extended family though J and I are not so keen. My mum in particular loves the damson gin that we make and has been known to arm wrestle my sister out of her portion!

This post has been so popular that I have provided more information here: Plum/Damson/Sloe Gin/Rum update

Preserving plums

Preserves

I've felt a bit 'bleurgh' this weekend so chose to take things gently. This conveniently tied in with getting on with making more preserves, not particularly hard work but I don't like to leave food alone whilst it's bubbling away.