Jottage from Lancaster/Cambridge - Lemon Tart the prequel

I bought the River Cottage Family Cookbook from Beverley. That's not to say that I didn't have it already as I had bought a copy from Amazon, but I saw one for 4.99 in W H Smith and I thought I would buy one for Heather. It wasn't long after this that the dilemma hit me - should I give my daughter the new one - or the second hand Amazon copy? In the end, she confidently picked up the new one and declared it as 'hers' which solved it very neatly. But that's not the point of this blog. As we are all together this Christmas there has been a lot of opportunities for cooking big quantities and some chance of cooking with the children. 


In the end, it was Heather who decided to have a go at the Lemon Tart. She has written her blog about this in Lemon Tart Part 1 so there isn't much more to say about that - but that it was really, really lovely. Much nicer than anything you can buy in the shops and far more lemony. So I thought I would introduce some of the cooks involved:

Ethan aged 5

Amelia aged 2

Tristan aged 9 months

Jottage from Cambridge – The Art of the Kitchen

When I was about eight months pregnant my bump suddenly started to grow in size by the day and, before long, it was almost impossible to get past my husband in our tiny kitchen. Cooking is something that we’ve always enjoyed doing together (n.b. Hugh’s Chicken Curry is a fabulous recipe to make with another person as there are lots of components (each complicated in their own way, and worthy of admiration by your other half) which are thrown into the same pot), but given the size of our kitchen it was always going to be a challenge in this house – even without a bump! So, imagine my delight when we started looking to buy a property in Cambridge and the place we agreed on had an enormous kitchen – in fact it was the biggest kitchen I had ever had the pleasure of using on a daily basis. So, this made me think about some of the kitchens I have had to contend with, and how they compare. Also, from writing this post, I have realised that over the past ten years I have switched loyalties (from Delia, to Jamie and now to River Cottage) depending on where I’ve lived and personal circumstances. 

Unsurprisingly the kitchen I encountered at my University Hall of Residence wasn’t up to much, and Baked Bean toasties were probably the extent of my culinary repertoire for those three years. I do remember buying packets of Safeway Savers fish fingers too so perhaps I did use the oven. (Like everyone else I had a Student Cookbook, though I’m certain I never used it.) It wasn’t until I was studying for my second degree that I discovered pesto. It was a perfect match and, after a night out or a day of dull seminars, nothing quite compared to spaghetti mixed with pesto and tomatoes and sprinkled with parmesan. I lived with three girls that I didn’t get on with at all so, although the kitchen in our shared house was ok, I didn’t want to spend any more time in it than I had to  another reason why I consumed so much pesto. 

Moving to London for my first job in 2000 I lived in a cheap flat in Cricklewood with a surprisingly large kitchen. Suddenly I had sophisticated friends who weren’t afraid to attend private views at the Serpentine Gallery with arty types. They invited me round for homemade pizzas and meals that didn’t come out of a packet. It was all very frightening, especially when one of my very best friends described coming round to another person’s house and being served pizza from a box! I was that very friend, though she had clearly forgotten it was me and I didn’t confess to such a faux-pas. However, I didn’t really take advantage of this big kitchen (and I was fairly terrified of my landlady who lived with me at the time and I didn’t want to spend too much time weighing out ingredients in our shared space), so going out to Pizza Express or Wagamamas became an almost weekly event. Also I never went out with anyone for long enough in those early years to need more than one recipe, so experimenting in the kitchen was hardly a priority. When I invited a boy round for dinner I would always give them pasta served with roast veg, passata and bacon. This was exactly what I gave to Theo (my now husband) when he first came round. It was quite frightening when I realised we were becoming more committed to each other, and a second invitation would be necessary. I didn’t know what on earth to serve up that would impress him (though my pasta dish probably didn’t win his heart so a good cook probably wasn’t top of his criteria for a girlfriend). Delia came to the rescue. Over the following months I served him up all kinds of meals which I printed out at work from Delia online. We also discovered that cooking was something we enjoyed doing together so some of the burden was taken off my shoulders. He adored cooking with fish, not something I had eaten much of previously – see ‘A Fishy Dilemma’ – and the stir fry became the fast-food option rather than pizza.  

I’m part of the generation who adores Jamie Oliver. I doubt that I have any friends who don’t have a pile of his books stacked up on their kitchen counters with well-worn pages. Moving to Manchester in 2007 I bought one of those characterless flats in the ‘trendy’ Northern Quarter, and Jamie became part of the furniture. All painted white (the lease actually forbids the tenants from painting the walls any other colour) the kitchen was an add-on to the main living space. Although it wasn’t very big, I found it perfectly suited my needs. The trick was not to make anything too complicated (which is where Jamie really comes in) so that when friends came round for dinner they wouldn’t see me getting all flustered in the kitchen. Instead I would pour them a glass of wine and try and keep myself sober while I made a recipe I knew by heart. I invited various new acquaintances round for dinner, and a risotto of some kind, or indeed homemade pizza (see Jamie’s Italian), was always on the menu. 

From Manchester to Cambridge, and I have already described the contrasting kitchens I have experienced here. As you can see from the photo I now have ample space – Tristan is at the centre of things and around him are cupboards, and a huge stove which have eight hobs, and two ovens! I even have a shelf in one cupboard for my expanding collection of Tupperware. I will definitely make the most of my new fancy kitchen and, in the spirit of this blog, will endeavour to concoct as many things as possible from my River Cottage cookbook. Living just off Mill Road with a wealth of food shops surrounding me I should be able to source all the ingredients and, with dinner parties becoming rare treats, it feels worth venturing beyond Jamie and Delia and into new territory. 

Too small for me and a bump...

Big enough for all of us and more...

Jottage from Lancaster - Shin of Beef with Ginger and Soy (2)

It went well last night with the braised beef and I added a parsnip and potato as well as some leeks on the side. Although it tasted really lovely, it would have benefitted from a longer cook to get the veggies more mushy. But there was enough left over to make it do for another dinner so I added a tin of canellini beans and left it all overnight. 
I cooked it up in the oven tonight for about 90 minutes tonight and it was just amazing. The flavours  had all strengthened and intensified. It happens over and over again that if you make things the day before they have changed quite dramatically for the better when it comes to eat them. 
I have spent much of the afternoon planning meals for Christmas but I am not at all sure I will have time to write up anything here. One thing I will really need to do is to try and plan ahead and maybe cook 24 hours in advance!

Jottage from Lancaster - Shin of Beef with Ginger and Soy (1)

It's one of those days - and they happen all too frequently - when I just can't think of anything to eat tonight. Added to which, I don't feel much like cooking. So I opened the freezer and stared at it for a while wondering whether to throw away that Elderflower Sorbet that must be 2 (or is it 3?) years old now. But I can't bear to throw away food so it will just stay there a bit longer until I can stand it no longer and I will just shut my eyes and drop it into the bin. 
I didn't have much that inspired me to make anything. Maybe that single piece of salmon would make a fishcake, maybe that lamb mince would make up a moussaka (although it would have to be aubergine-less), but what, what could be in those anonymous white plastic bags??? They were definitely something I bought from the butcher but I couldn't for the life of me recall what I had bought and what might be in them. Some frosty poking about made me think that in one was sausages - but there seemed to be too many of them and they would come in next week when the family were all here for Christmas. 
One bag seemed to have something in that I just couldn't identify. In the end I poked a hole in it to have a look and it was a nice bit of braising steak. Goodness knows when I had bought that. Having made a hole I then worried that it might not be a good idea to leave it in the freezer. Then I remembered Hugh's recipe for Shin of Beef with Ginger and Soy. Nice braising steak is hardly shin of beef, but it would do...it would do.
I left my frozen braising steak in the sun in the window, but in the end, I threw it into the frying pan to defrost and brown off all in one seamless process. It was then I realised that I needed 150ml of soy sauce. That was over a bottle full! It sounded a bit too generous, so I cut that down. And I didn't have any apple juice so I just used stock made with powder. I had some garlic and some fresh ginger so at least some of the ingredients were spot on.
Then I threw the lot into the slow cooked along with a carrot which was in the fridge and seemed to need eating - maybe that would make up for the lack of apple juice. I gingerly tasted the juices in the cooker and amazingly enough - it seems to taste totally gorgeous. Give it another couple of hours and we will see....

Jottage from Lancaster - Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon

I had the rainbow trout I had bought from the worst Sainsburys in the world - Morecambe - and it really needed eating. I decided to have a shot at the Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon. I had remembered to buy capers at last and so the vital ingredients were all to hand - I even had the right herbs and a lemon. I decided to roast some carrots, baby potatoes and parsnips with it - making a nice veggie accompaniment. Hugh has had a big influence on me this - I rarely use only one vegetable and more often than not, potato takes a back seat. However this wasn't an unqualified success. I should have added some nice green veggies like leek or cabbage, which would have gone better, I think. And the herbs and lemon mix was very lemony. I'm not sure it was the best thing to have with the Rainbow Trout - it seemed to need thick fish to take up the real lemoniness of the juices. But even with these reservations it was very nice and I am pleased with myself for cooking fish twice in 2 days. I should have cooked the trout in the parcels and the haddock with the lemon and herbs and a more experienced fish cook would probably know that.

Jottings from Lancaster - Pheasant and Chorizo, birthday celebrations

It's my sister Gwenda's birthday today and she and her husband are over from Germany for a short stay during which she turns 57. OK, she isn't really 57 but that's near enough, particularly as I conveniently have those wax candle numbers left over from my 57th birthday which will do nicely on top of Hugh's little black cake and which is looking very chocolately and ready to eat later for tea time along with a glass of Prosecco.

We thought of going out to lunch and tossed about a few ideas ranging from the tried and trusted Lunesdale Arms (quite near and not too expensive) to the Inn at Whitewell which is altogether a bit posher, further away and more pricey. Eventually we decided to stay in and I would cook. It would be hard to think of what to make from a book which is for everyday cooking since a celebration meal usually entails a book that is dedicated to entertaining, but Hugh evidently thinks we could all be eating pheasant a couple of times a month and we all decided that it was worth a try. 


I haven't cooked pheasant before and Hansotto, who is my brother in law had some doubts about how it would work with butter beans and chorizo. He is a superb cook himself, as is Gwenda, so I had a lot to live up to. Normally I would have defaulted to roast lamb or something that I had cooked up enough to be confident with, but knowing and trusting the Everyday recipes I was keen to have a go at this one. For a start I got muddled up with lots of pans frying onions and pheasant and realising I hadn't used a big enough dish to cook the pheasants in the oven and I had to find increasingly bigger dishes out of the cupboard until I ended up the biggest one I had - which would do just nicely. Once I had sorted out all the pots and pans I put it into the oven and forgot about it for 2 hours as instructed. 


I had decided to do parsnip, carrot and potato mash, knowing that Gwenda likes parsnips. I would normally have done roast potatoes but somehow reading the mash recipe I felt that it was better to make that. It took some preparation and as I had to cook the potatoes and the carrots/parsnips separately it involved more saucepans - more washing up. But although it was a bit of a faff to make, having to whizz up the veggies and mashing the potatoes, it was well worth the extra bit of effort.


After 2 hours everything was ready and if I had had my wits about me I would have taken a photo BEFORE we ate all of it. As it is this is the best I can do...

Remains of a pheasant.

This is what was left on the plates (after 2nds all round)...

Carrot, parsnip and potato mash...

Satisfied brother-in-law...

All in all it was a very successful celebration lunch.  This is the birthday girl afterwards in some kind of ecstatic moment after eating the rich and tasty juices...???

Jottings from Lancaster - a tale of 4 mistakes

I never got round to making the blue vinny and leek tart. Somehow other things took over. But I had another go at making the chicken and mushrooms which was nice, but somehow not quite as nice as when I first made it. And then I made the curried fish pie. Heather's version of this was stunning - gorgeous crispy pastry and a delicately curry flavoured filling. Mine wasn't like this at all. I had been up in the morning early to make the filling. In a fit of wildness and haste I made the bechamel sauce by guessing the quantities (mistake no 1). It was clear almost immediately that if I added the milk to it to make a smooth sauce it would create enough Bechamel to float a battleship. Instead of just throwing away some of the roux and then adding the milk I just kept adding milk but in the end I didn't feel I could keep on adding it - so I ended up with a sauce that was just too thick (mistake no 2).


We went out for the day and when we returned I put the puff pastry on the top and cooked it. I forgot the bit about brushing it with egg (mistake no 3), and I put it in the oven to cook. But instead of letting it cook properly, I took it out of the oven too early (mistake no 4) and the pastry wasn't quite done and a bit soggy underneath. So the lovely crispy topping wasn't really crispy but the fishy bit was nice enough. I was - I am - quite disappointed with myself. 


Today I am going to keep to the recipe, keep to the cooking times, and keep my fingers crossed!

Jottings from Lancaster - Blue Vinny and Leek Quiche (not)

We had our credit card statement through the post a few days ago and it was much lower than usual. Part of that, I know, is my propensity to shop in Primark rather than Monsoon, and my dedication to making my own face cream from bits and bobs I find lying round the house (some beeswax someone gave me, a bit of rose water I had left in a bottle from the Christmas Cake I made a few years ago and some very cheap face oil bought from Walmart does the trick) rather than buying expensive fancy pots at some unlikely price - which even at 3 for 2 would probably feed a family of 4 for the couple of months it takes me to smear it on my skin. But I was triumphant to spend so much less even so. 'It's Hugh!', I cry, 'You see all this cooking actually SAVES us lots of money'. I actually do believe that. 


Go back in time a couple of weeks when we were going down to Heather's. As she says in her earlier blog, we like to come with a bit of food to pay our way a little for staying down there and eating her out of house and home and so we usually turn up with a ready meal or two, and the scrapings from our fridge at home which may well be a few tomatoes, a pepper and, almost inevitably, half a cabbage. We stopped off at Waitrose at Sandbach on the way down - a much nicer place than Sandbach Services on the M6, believe me. Waitrose is a bit of a luxury for us as they haven't extended their reach this far north west and Sandbach, some 70 miles away, is about as near as they come. I didn't mean to be long, but I went off to look for something to buy. And here a sudden Damascus moment occurred, right there in the ready meal aisle. There was nothing, and I mean nothing, that I thought would be nicer than I could cook at home using my trusty and increasingly rapeseed and smoked paprika splashed River Cottage Everyday book. 


The prices were horrendous - you could pay restaurant prices here for a meal you had to cook yourself, then take out of the foil and arrange on a plate and then wash it all up. There was a lamb thing I quite fancied but it was £8.99 a portion - and that was without any veggies. OK, this was Waitrose and I can see that I could buy packaged meals 2 for £5 in Tesco. But even so would I actually LIKE what I was eating? I kept thinking about the standard ready-meal sauce consistency. What DO they use to make it that gelatinous? 


Now there's no question that sometimes I make a meal, even slavishly following the recipe and we both think that it wasn't quite right somehow. I made the Fried Fish Fillets with Herbs and Lemon and it was far too lemony for instance, but overwhelmingly the recipes have been successful - more than successful and in some cases quite stunning. And at least I knew what was in it and I can use less lemon next time - and it is definitely worth another shot. 


So since River Cottage I have learnt a few things. 


1. Ditch the ready meals - they don't save you much work, they cost you lots more money and they aren't always very nice
2. Eat food - not things that are dressed up to look like food (i.e. most ready meals)
3. And with the money you save, you can buy better quality food and make meals yourself from scratch.


This sounds so prissy and I would be annoyed if I'd read anyone else writing this. And I am lucky enough to have the time to cook - and I am really enjoying it. I thought it would be a luxury being able to buy expensive ingredients like decent free range eggs and meat from the butcher and proper sustainable fish (I haven't quite got that sussed yet but I'm working on it). What I didn't realise is that even if I do that it still saves me money. And I do actually love eating it!


PS I forgot to mention the Blue Vinny and Leek Quiche...

Jottage from Cambridge - Polenta and How Much Does it Cost to Feed a Baby?

I have managed to get through the first thirty-four years of my life without using polenta, or indeed knowing what it is. Yet when I typed ‘polenta’ into the recipe finder on Epicurious, 173 recipes were returned, including a dazzling array of cheesecakes, stews and lasagnes. Thanks to Hugh I now have a large packet of the bright yellow stuff sitting in my cupboard, having used it to make the polenta chips (Baby & Toddler Cookbook) for Tristan. Polenta is ever such a funny thing. Made from yellow cornmeal it quickly thickens up into a grainy paste if you add a splash of water. I don’t find the taste particularly pleasant, and most of Tristan’s chips ended up on the floor – though the quantity of leftovers is by no means a measure of how much Tristan likes or dislikes something. More about that later.


Polenta is considered ‘peasant food’; perhaps less so now though as again I had to go to Arjuna to get a packet as it wasn’t stocked in the supermarket. It’s pretty cheap though (see photo) which leads me on to the next section of this post about the cost of feeding a baby.

All you really need in the first week of weaning is a carrot and a packet of baby rice (£1.64). In the next week you might introduce apples and pears, but the baby isn’t really going to eat anything which might break the bank. Within a couple of months though, when the baby is on three meals a day, the costs start rising and tins of sardines and mackerel, as well as unsalted butter, whole milk and yogurt (I have just acquired a yogurt maker – more on this coming soon), quickly become staples. However, although there are a few more packets in our larder (along with polenta, we now always have  Weetabix, porridge, baby pasta, and peanut butter, as well as the above), Tristan generally eats our leftovers. This, of course, saves time and money and means that I only really need to think about what to give him on toast for lunch as the other meals are covered. However, what if I had succumbed to all the brightly coloured pots and pouches which even the dinkiest Tesco and Sainsbury’s stock? Even Annabel Karmel who, judging from her Complete Baby & Toddler Meal Planner appears to encourage home cooking, has her own range of baby meals at £2.29 a pop. Heinz probably rule the school though with a range strangely called ‘Mums Own’, even though all Mum has done is open up her purse and gotten a few Clubcard points.  So imagine a typical day as below:


Breakfast: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Apple & Banana Breakfast 128g = 65p
Lunch: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe, Cheesy Tomato Pasta Stars 200g = 62p
Dinner: Heinz Mum's Own Recipe Vegetable Hot Pot with Chicken 250g = 84p + Heinz Egg Custard Dessert, 128g = £0.42
Total: £2.53


So each week you could be spending nearly £18 on baby food. (n.b. Sainsbury’s prices in November 2011)


Now, I don’t know anyone who actually feeds their little ones Heinz pots for every meal, but I bet some do. If you choose to be organic and buy the Ella’s Kitchen range or anything branded Plum you would be even poorer - in some stores each pouch costs £1 or more. These meals do serve a purpose though and, when you’re out and about, it’s really handy having a nutritious meal on hand (I know one baby who will only eat Hipp Porridge though which must be quite frustrating!) and I did have a variety of Ella’s Kitchen meals when we holidayed in Cornwall. In fact, in these days of baby-led, there’s a bit of a fear of being judged with a baby ready meal. In the café at Cambridge’s Botanical Gardens last weekend I had a box packed with peanut butter on toast cut into fingers, a banana and a pouch. I noticed the woman sitting across from us was trying to give her little girl of approximately the same age a few pieces of bread, and slices of cucumber. She also had spoons filled with some concoction laid out on the table for her daughter to pick up and put in her mouth. As Tristan didn’t seem to have eaten many of his peanut buttered fingers and the café floor was looking worse for wear, I contemplated opening my pouch of Ella’s Kitchen butternut squash, carrots, apples and prunes, but feared disapproving looks. I enviously looked at the other woman, though her daughter wasn’t making progress either and, as I was leaving, I noticed her getting out a little pot of Heinz baby food from her bag! That made me feel much better. So not only, in these austere times, can people still afford expensive baby food, but it also seems that many people are willing to follow Rapley up to a point and then succumb to puree which, if it comes from a pouch, has the texture and gloss of Pantene Pro-V, though hopefully tastes nicer.