A surprise Christmas present

I received these cute little pins featuring my veggie illustrations, from the creative folks at Bluehill.

    

Quite timely, as I’m busy chopping up mountains of veg. Forget mince pies, stodgy puds and fiddly canapés; all you really need in the fridge for the holidays is a huge pot of home-made Minestrone soup.

Its beauty is manifold... Start it off with all the lost souls from the vegetable garden, the split carrots, dried out beans and knobbly artichokes and then keep the pot topped up with any left over veg from dinner and once the bird is finished, the stock from the turkey bones. Just keep a vague eye on the proportion of veg to stock and it should get even tastier as time goes on. 

Such an accommodating soup always reminds me of a story we used to read to our children when they were small... 

A cold and hungry tramp arrives on the doorstep of a cosy farmhouse. The farmer’s wife very reluctantly invites him in but is adamant that she doesn’t want to share with him the mouthwatering ingredients she is preparing for her supper. 
Thinking she can fob him off she drops a rusty nail into her pot of simmering water and presents him with a bowl of “nail soup”. 
The tramp sips it, oh so gratefully and declares it delicious. She is flattered. 
There’s a but, though. 
He suggests that to elevate the soup to the next level of delectability she could maybe add an onion? 
You’ve probably guessed, she is persuaded one by one to rummage through her cupboards and add all the ingredients she was reserving for her own supper. The more she adds the more appreciative the tramp is, until they’re both sitting down together sharing a hearty stew.

While I do harbour an affection for the beauty of rusty nails, you will notice I have left them out of this soup. In the spirit of the story though, I am all for rifling through the fridge. In goes that drop of oil swilling around in the otherwise empty anchovy tin and likewise some tomatoes that are too squishy for slicing but perfect for squashing. 

Serves 6

2 tbsp olive oil
1 large garlic clove, finely sliced
1 large onion, diced
2 sticks celery, finely diced
½ bulb fennel, diced
2 decent carrots, diced
1 small parsnip, diced 
1 leek halved lengthways, then chopped

1.5 litres stock (veg or preferably turkey)
4 tomatoes (squashed!) or a 400 g can of chopped tomatoes
450 g fresh borlotti beans or a 400 g can of beans
¼ head savoy cabbage
50 g dried mini pasta shapes (or all those broken shards in the bottom of any normal bag)
2 tbsp chopped fresh marjoram
2 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

freshly grated parmesan to serve

Combine the olive oil and garlic in a large, heavy pot over a medium heat. Add the onion, celery and fennel and sauté for 5 minutes, stirring frequently with a spatula. Add the carrots, parsnip, and leek and continue to cook gently for a further 10 minutes, until the vegetables are beginning to soften. If they are starting to brown reduce the heat.

Add 1.2 litres of the stock, the chopped tomatoes, and the beans. Bring the soup to a boil , then reduce the heat to low and simmer, partially covered, for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Add the cabbage, pasta the fresh herbs and the remaining stock. Simmer for another 10 minutes or until the cabbage and pasta are cooked. Taste and adjust the seasoning with salt and pepper. 

Serve with freshly grated parmesan and warm crusty bread.

If you're likely to be deluged by un-announced 'first-footers' tonight, or maybe a weary tramp, there's ample time before midnight to get a pot simmering… 

In fact the local stray cat has just forced entry to my kitchen and plundered the meat I was planning to cook, so we might well be having Minestrone soup too! 

Happy New Year

It's that time of year again..

"A cucumber should be well sliced, and dressed with pepper and vinegar, and then thrown out, as good for nothing" 

Samuel Johnson

Funny, I really have just thrown out a jar of vintage 2013 pickled cucumber that I found languishing at the back of the larder. 

I have also found seven cucumbers partying in the bottom of my fridge. 

Armed with this nifty recipe I illustrated for Waitrose Kitchen recently...

I'm about to spoil their fun! 

Not for the squeamish!

At exactly the same time that my husband was limping around waiting for a knee replacement operation earlier this year, I was serendipitously commissioned to illustrate a book called “Nourishing Broth” by Sally Fallon Morell, “the definitive cookbook that can help you treat symptoms of autoimmune disorders, infectious diseases, digestive problems and other chronic ailments”.

It made fascinating reading and was definitely a first for me as far as painting gristle is concerned!

“Most people know cartilage as gristle. It’s the blob on the bone of a T-bone steak, the globs on chicken drumsticks”. 

I learnt all about boiling up bones for minerals, which in turn keep our own bones strong, marrow, which is important for stem cell regeneration and gelatin which is obtained from boiling up skin, cartilage, tendons, and ligaments. (Hmm, not your average cookbook ingredients, but worth reading on I assure you).  

I now understand that gelatin provides amino acids that the body needs to make connective tissue, i.e. all the bits that hold the body together. Perfect for an arthritic knee! 

At the risk of sounding like a school text book I even got to draw pretty pictures of glycoproteins and connective tissues.

This is all very pertinent, as the pigs are booked to go to the abattoir on Thursday and I’m busy making important decisions as to how I’d like them butchered and do I want the trotters and heads? 

Well, if only for the sake of a post operative knee I think I should boil up anything and everything!

A question for you...

What do a teaspoon, potato curry and a five pence piece have in common?

They all turned up in my compost heap yesterday! Well, strictly speaking the potatoes were not curried when I found them. The thin skinned, firm fleshed, tiny new potatoes were growing happily from a potato discarded months ago. Was it cruel to curry them? I guess mint and a knob of butter might have been sufficient. 

Too late, and anyway they were just the inspiration I needed for dinner. I’d had a long day in the garden. I’d planted out my sweetcorn, celeriac and celery, dug over some compacted soil, sown some more salad and potted up some more tomatoes (why did I sow so many?), culled barrow loads of weeds and now I needed comfort food!

..and a scattering of fresh coriander.

P.S. I am not the only one who has been taking advantage of a serendipitous dinner. A fox has been cruising past lately, picking up his supper 'to go'. Just four chickens left and my heart in my mouth every time I take the register at night!

Tomato Jam

Warm and sweet, bright red, pepped up with fresh chilli and a whisper of some of my favourite spices.

The perfect way, as temperatures in the greenhouse slide and my plants begin to wither, to cram the last few rays of summer sun in a jar, to be savoured throughout the winter. 

Great with cold meats, hot meats, fish, goats cheese... well anything!  A kind of grown up tomato ketchup.

1 kilo tomates, 

(plum tomatoes are especially good, with their dense sweet flesh and scant pips)

140g (1/2 cup) white sugar

1 fresh chilli, finely chopped (optional)

2 cardamom pods, seeds finely ground

3 cloves, finely ground

freshly ground sea salt and black pepper to taste

Roughly chop the tomatoes and mix in a bowl with the sugar. Ideally leave overnight for the sugar to draw out the juice from the tomatoes.

Transfer to a heavy bottomed pan and add the chilli, ground cardamom and cloves, salt and pepper. 

Simmer for about 20-30 minutes over a gentle/medium heat to thicken, stirring regularly.

Leave to cool slightly then pot into warm sterilised jars.

Ideal Home Magazine

As if perfectly timed to go with a wet and blustery weekend, when all I wanted to do was retreat to the kitchen and make courgette soup, bake bread and bottle plums, October’s Ideal Home magazine includes a comfortingly “feel-good” booklet of classic bakes. 

I was commissioned, a while ago, to provide some illustrations for the recipes which had all been sourced from back issues of the magazine. They're classics that may well have you reminiscing about having to be inventive with basics during wartime rationing or remembering the fun of experimenting with exotic ingredients in the flamboyant eighties. 

The project certainly had me digging out my hand-me-down chipped pudding bowls, enamel pans, vintage whisk and 90’s yogurt maker!

Copyright Ideal Home Magazine

A bit of butter

Well everything is in fifth gear at the moment... the weather, the veg patch and me! 

A few days ago, in a rare 'Martha Stewart Moment' I found I had run a couple of miles, made strawberry jam and whipped up a batch of fresh scones... before breakfast. By the afternoon, inspired by an article in the weekend papers I was even making butter! 

So, so easy, you're simply separating the fat and milk in cream, (why have I never made it before?), absolutely delicious and what's more, I had the perfect accompaniment for my jam and scones!

My Secret Ingredient

Packed full of vitamins, (twenty times that of oranges... so they say) I always slosh an amber spoonful of rosehip syrup into my winter gravies and stews; it adds a lovely rounded fruitiness.

Some recipes advise picking after the first frost, which concentrates the sugars in the hips. The hips will also have softened and picking them turns into very sticky activity and anyway, I can't be organising my diary around a frost! So I opt for the artificial chill and simply pop the hips in the freezer overnight, having washed them first.

Here goes......

Strain through a jelly bag. Set the juice aside and repeat the process with the rosehip pulp. 

Combine your two lots of juice and boil fast to reduce by half.

Measure the juice and add 350 grams of sugar for every 600 ml of juice.

Boil hard for about 5 mins then pour into small sterilised bottles. 

Either freeze or store in a cool dark place.

Refrigerate and use within two weeks once opened.

Not restricted to gravy however.... try diluted with sparkling water, or hot water for a healthy tea or drizzled over ice cream or pancakes!

Raspberry Vinegar

Vinegar has long been a valuable household cleaner... it will remove a scummy ring from the bath, red wine from the carpet and will blast through the blackened base of a burnt saucepan with ease.

As a child the first tickle of a sore throat was warded off with a hot mug of my mother’s raspberry vinegar. Not only did I love this steaming, fruity concoction, but I’m sure it had the bacteria in my throat reeling too.

Fruit vinegars are also a delicious base for salad dressings, so I’m off to gather a load of raspberries whilst the sun is out.

Raspberry vinegar

Makes about 4 pints

900g (2lb) raspberries

950ml (2 pints) distilled vinegar

Granulated sugar

Leave the raspberries to steep in the vinegar for 2-3 days.

Strain through a jelly bag (where is it when you need it? A new, rinsed kitchen cloth will do)

Measure the liquid and put into a large pan with 225g (11/4 cups) per 500ml (2cups) water.

Over a medium heat, gently stir until all the sugar has dissolved, then boil for 10 minutes until it becomes slightly syrupy.

Pour into warm sterilised bottles and seal. Dilute to taste, will keep for ages!

Adapted from The Painted Garden Cookbook, Running Press

Something for the weekend

Heat the water and sugar in large pan, stirring until the sugar has dissolved, then transfer to a non-metallic bowl. Cool and stir in the citric acid.

Shake any bugs out of the flower heads, (more for the bugs benefit than yours, as you'll be straining the syrup later) before adding the blooms to the sugar syrup, along with the sliced lemons.

Cover and leave in a cool place to steep for 2-3 days. Stir two or three times daily. Done!

Strain through a muslin (or clean kitchen cloth) into sterilised bottles, and store in a cool dark place, or fill plastic bottles (leaving room for expansion) and pop in the freezer for a year long supply.

5-a-day

“Must grow more winter veg” is my mantra as my head hits the pillow after another late night session with the seed catalogue. It’s all very well picking sprouts, Swiss chard and cavolo nero every day but it wouldn’t it be nice to intersperse our diet with sweet fleshed parsnips and aromatic leeks? 

I'm a bit of a purist where Brussels sprouts are concerned. As long as they are really fresh, I adore them simply steamed. However, I've been picking the best stalks first and those that are left are looking increasingly scruffy. Instead of serving them as an apologetic heap they're better suited to shredding into stir fries, sautéing with a splash of cream, roasted garlic and black pepper or being given the chorizo treatment.....

Serves 4

12oz/300g Brussels sprouts (fluffy ones or sprout tops are ideal)

4oz/100g good quality semi-cured chorizo (casings removed)

Sea salt and freshly ground pepper (optional)

Thinly slice the Brussels sprouts. Cut the chorizo into ½ inch chunks.

Set a large skillet over a high heat. Add the chorizo and sauté until the fat starts to render. Add the sliced sprouts and stir well to combine. Cover and reduce the heat to a moderate level, and cook for about 5 minutes. Give the pan a shake now and then to ensure even cooking, and lift the lid to make sure the sprouts are not overcooked. If they are beginning to stick to the pan, add a couple of tablespoons of water. They should be cooked through but not soggy.

The sprouts may not need any further seasoning if the chorizo was good and spicy, but taste, and add salt and pepper if necessary.

From The Painted Garden Cookbook (Running Press)

One thing led to another...

This weekend, no sooner had I tried to snatch ten comatose minutes on the sofa with a glass of wine than I was seduced by an annoyingly chirpy but captivating demonstation of rosewater distillation on television. Perhaps I should get out more often. 

Something had obviously chimed in me, next morning I found myself gathering rose petals and googling marshmallow recipes. Because once you’ve made rosewater you have to use it to make marshmallows don’t you?  And once you’ve made marshmallows you need a bonfire to toast them over.  

I have forbidden bonfires for the past few weeks because several courgette plants, of a wandering habit had self seeded themselves in the bonfire spoil. Gardening doesn’t get easier than that. Their round, yellow fruits are delicious, sautéed in olive oil or whizzed up in soups. The remainder were tucked in the freezer before the fire was lit.

My rosewater was not very fragrant, I have since learned the best is “triple distilled”. The marshmallows were yummy, and while there was a bonfire smouldering it was silly not to take advantage of it’s heat....

Bonfire Beets with Anchovy Dressing

Serves 4

4-5 beets of roughly equal size (about 1 pound or 450 grams)

2 tablespoons olive oil

3 garlic cloves, crushed 

3 or 4 sprigs of fresh rosemary

Coarse sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Anchovy dressing

2 tablespoons Greek-style yogurt

2 tablespoons crème fraîche

6 anchovy fillets, finely chopped

Light the bonfire! Alternatively preheat the oven to 375˚F (190˚C)

Wash and dry the beets well, leaving the roots intact and twisting off the leaves while taking care not to damage the skins. Place the beets on a double layer of heavy-duty aluminium foil, large enough to wrap them securely in a package.

Drizzle the beets with the olive oil, and scatter the garlic, rosemary and salt and pepper to taste over them.

Wrap the foil tightly around the beets and pop the package into the hot embers of the bonfire, remembering it’s location!

Leave for about 1½ hours, until the beets are soft when pierced with a sharp knife. Alternatively bake for about an hour in the oven. Remove the foil package and vent to release steam.

For the dressing: Mix together the Greek yogurt and crème-fraîche. Stir in the anchovies.

When cool enough to handle, rub the skins off the beets and chop them into large chunks. Serve warm or at room temperature with the dressing on the side for dipping.

from "The Painted Garden Cookbook" by Mary Woodin (Running Press)

To all you Radio 4 Archers' Fans..... you know who you are!

Well, I for one have been tuned in to the Archers’ for as long as Angela Piper has been playing Jennifer Aldridge (if being rocked in a pram to the signature tune counts!), so I was thrilled when a few months ago, Angela asked me to provide some illustrations for her new cookbook.  

And here it is at last, Jennifer Aldridge’s Archers' Country Kitchen, written by Angela Piper (published by David & Charles), a fascinating scrapbook of recipes and musings gleaned from the many and varied kitchens of Ambridge. 

Take a trip down memory lane with dishes from Doris Archer, Nelson Gabriel and Marjorie Antrobus, try out Clarrie's frugal family fare or pull off an impressive supper that Jennifer might serve with a flourish to out-class the (related only by marriage!) Carters.  

I've already made a start on Jean-Paul’s Green Tomato Jam.  My outdoor tomatoes have stubbornly refused to ripen during our "typical" British summer but thanks to the frenchman's flair they are now well on their way to being transformed into a delicious condiment.  Cinderella shall go to the ball!

Still wondering what to do with the last of the plum crop?  ...and wondering what to do with the kids in the last few days of the school holidays?  Here's a quick and easy recipe from my Painted Garden Cookbook (Running Press)

Hot Cross Kebabs

The origin of this recipe was a hastily engineered dessert of leftover hot cross buns and a bowl of freshly picked plums. As a rule, anything served on a stick generates an extra level of expectation in our house, and this yummy treat of warm, juicy, spiced plums and toasty currant croutons did not disappoint. 

Serves 4

8 large plums

1/4 cup (60 ml) maple syrup

1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

2 hot cross buns

1/4 cup (60 ml) sunflower oil

Plain Greek-style yogurt for serving

Preheat the oven 400º F (200º C). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Halve the plums to remove the stones, and then quarter the flesh. Combine the plum quarters in a large bowl with the maple syrup and the spices, and stir to coat evenly.

Cut each bun into 8 cubes, then toss the chunks in another large bowl with the sunflower oil. Thread the pieces of plum and bun on 4 metal skewers, alternating between 2 pieces of fruit and 1 piece of bun.

Place the skewers on the prepared baking sheet, drizzle over any remaining spiced maple syrup, and bake for 10 minutes, turning once, until the plums look juicy and the bread is golden-brown. Allow to cool slightly.

Serve the kebabs, scraping every last drop of gooey syrup off the parchment, with a dollop of creamy Greek-style yogurt.