Baking again and Snowdrops

 

I’ve been baking again.  How I love to make my loaves now that I’ve got my recipe off pat and can gather and add the ingredients without consulting my printed reminder.   I love the huge china bowl with its golden yellow outside.  Not a true Mason Cash bowl, officially called a “cane bowl” because of the colour created by the local clay, but a generic example which is just as good.   I no longer realise it isn’t the traditional model which my mother used and which I used to stand by in the hope of gliding my fingers round the white glossy interior to collect the last scrapings of raw cake mix.

 

As I open the paper wrapping of the strong white bread flour there is always a teaspoonful of its white dust trapped under the creases of the top fold, and the powder drifts across my wooden kitchen table settling like snow on the verges of the lane.  I so enjoy opening a fresh bag of flour and of sugar too but I always hold the sugar bag over the sink so the grains hidden in the origami of the bag top fall harmlessly onto the stainless steel so I don’t hear the crunch underfoot.

 

 

This week I made my first white plait loaf.  I  understand that you're supposed to plait from the centre out to the ends by turning the tray around half way through, but I just plaited straight down from the top, like I used to do for my daughter Libby's hair.  It worked well and it was a lovely loaf both to eat and aesthetically.

 

 

While the oven was hot I popped in a fish pie which was covered in breadcrumbs made from the remaining end of my last loaf.

 

 

It was lovely especially the sauce - so tasty and yet not overwhelming the cod and prawns.  In case anyone wants to make these individual fish pies, here is my recipe.

 

 

125g of cod per individual pie              2 shell-on prawns per individual pie

Petit pois                                            Lemon

Milk                                                    Celery leaves

Parsley                                               Bay leaves

Cornflour                                            Butter

Salt and Pepper

 

Pour some milk into a lidded flat pan and add three bay leaves, a few sprigs of parsley/stalks and a couple of celery leaves, salt and pepper. 

Put cod, without bones, into pan and top with butter before putting on the lid.

Gently poach the fish until almost cooked and remove fish to a plate.

Slake some cornflour with milk and add to the fishy milk in the flat pan stirring continuously while it thickens and cooks through, then remove from heat.

Shell the prawns.

Place the shells, a chopped garlic clove, parsley stalks, a little milk and butter in a small saucepan and cook for a few minutes.

Pour the contents of the saucepan into a liquidiser and blitz.

Use a ladle to push the result through a sieve to remove shells and bits.

Add the sieved pink sauce into the flat pan and mix well with the white sauce.

Place a good spoonful of sauce into the bottom of each 10cm/4”ramekin.

Flake a good layer of the cod onto the sauce.

Next sprinkle petit pois into the ramekin.

Place two shelled prawns on top of the peas and sprinkle with a little lemon juice.

Spoon more sauce in until it covers the prawns.

Add another good layer of fish and sauce nearly up to the top of the ramekin.

At this stage you can place them in the fridge, clingfilmed, for breadcrumbing later in the day or tomorrow.   Remove from the fridge an hour before cooking. 

When you are ready to cook, blitz bread into crumbs to give a good final layer on the pie fillings.  Then put ramekins on a baking tray and cook in the oven for 8-10 minutes until heated through and golden.   Salad or chips – you choose. 

I ate my first one with fresh, peppery watercress.  I picked some roots from my neighbour's, currently with all this rain, fast flowing stream and put them in my fish pond which has pumped water running through it.  

You can double click any photograph to see it enlarged.

 

 

 

The leaves are large and wonderful to eat with a little fresh ground salt sprinkling their leaves.

My grumpy neighbours in Cornwall had watercress growing in their stream but refused to allow me to pick it.  They were mostly away as it was a holiday home, so for ten months of the year I enjoyed fresh watercress in salads and sandwiches.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the banks of the watercress stream there are bright clumps of brilliant white snowdrops - just lovely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 There are catkins - fully developed now - on the young hazels bordering the little triangle of grass outside my west facing kitchen window.

 

In spite of the dreadful winds and rain we are experiencing so far this winter, nature is managing to carry on and bring a little beauty to the village.

Three things I like:

1.   Being able to use my washing machine again after having the water turned off for two days of plumbing repairs.

2.   Hearing from my Deerhurst-based cousin that so far, their flood defences are working.

3.   Looking forward to lunch with friends the day after tomorrow.

 

 

Wet weather and good food

The rain continues to fall even though the ground cannot absorb any more water.  The hen runs are lethal and I fall frequently in spite of always holding a very long handled fork and stabbing this into the quagmire to try and stay upright.  This is the short cut I usually take

 

 

but it is now too wet to use this path without ending up lying on the sodden grass.

 

We have also had hail and, I think overnight one night, a very light sprinkle of snow.  This was left on the ground when I walked up to the field.  The winds have been very strong, noisy and frightening.  The rain seems to have been relentless although we have had periods of sunshine which have been lovely but too short.

 

Because of the rain and not wanting to go outside I have been cooking.  I bought from SuperU four aubergines for just one euro.  I have only eaten aubergine once before and so I searched the internet for recipes.  I ended up doing my own thing which was:

 

Halve, drizzle with olive oil and put in the oven on a baking tray for about fifty minutes until soft.  Then with a spoon carefully empty the half skins of the aubergine flesh and save the skins for stuffing.  Meanwhile in a frying pan gently fry in olive oil chopped onion and garlic and then a tomato in small cubes with chopped parsley, salt and pepper.  Add the onion and garlic back into the pan with cooked basmati rice, a good handful of golden sultanas, which give the dish intriguingly sweet notes, and the chopped flesh of the aubergine.  Add one teaspoon of cumin powder.  I had never used cumin before and it is delicious.  Gently stir everything together before stuffing the aubergine skins and putting them onto the baking tray.

 

 Using fresh breadcrumbs, cover the heaped filling of the aubergines and drizzle with olive oil before placing in the oven for 5-10 minutes or until they are a deep golden colour.

 

 

They were lovely and I will be making them again and again.

This afternoon I made cauliflower cheese with English Cheddar cheese, which I then ate with fresh tomato and crispy fried streaky bacon rashers.

While I was cooking, my oldest cat, Purrdy, brought in a robin.  Luckily I saw her coming through the cat corridor and managed to get it away from her.   I calmed him for a few minutes and took his photo before placing him on the garden wall from where he flew to freedom.

There was another taste of wildlife inside at the Pub Quiz this week when a Red Admiral butterfly was flying around the room.  At one point he landed on a paper I was holding but he ended up resting for about thirty minutes on one lady's white hair.

 

 

 

This is a photo of some of the horses in the village being exercised in the lane.  I love that the riders are texting with mobile phones while in the saddle!  You can click on the pictures to enlarge them if you like.

 

 

In Cornwall too the weather has been atrocious.  Here is Emma, Mia's Mummy, lying on the wind at Trevose Head with the sea crashing in below and the waves coming over the top too in the second photo.  I stole these from her Facebook page. 

 

Lastly Claude and Grace lying on the settee.  I think Gracie is telling Claude that her legs have gone to sleep and will he please shift himself.

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   Experimenting with food and making something I want to eat again and again.

2.   Getting back into the warm  and dry after dealing with the animals.

3.   Linking up two of my friends who may get together.

Pancakes and Fête de la Chandeleur

I often wondered why pancake paraphernalia started arriving on the shelves in the supermarkets so far before Shrove Tuesday in France.  Thanks to a posting on a forum I belong to I now think I understand. 

 

 

Fête de la Chandeleur is the Catholic holiday of Candelmas which falls 40 days after Christmas Day, on 2 February every year.  This date is fixed, unlike Shrove Tuesday, Pancake Day in the UK, which is tied to the moving date of Easter. 

 

The pancakes are eaten in the evening, traditionally by candlelight, and every member of the family tosses a pancake with the handicap of holding a coin in the hand they write with and using the other hand for holding the pan.  A successful toss ensures prosperity in the year ahead and for farmers, a good harvest.

 

Back in the 80s two friends and I all had birthday within four weeks of each other.  We would each do lunch for the birthday girl.  On my 37th birthday, my friend Viv made me stuffed pancakes which I loved ever since.  I don't suppose the recipe is exactly the same as hers but this is the one I have used for the years since then.  It is very popular in my family.

STUFFED PANCAKES

Bacon - small pieces like lardons
Roast chicken in bitesize pieces or fresh chicken breasts cut into small pieces
Onion
Mushrooms
Frozen peas
Garlic clove
Herbs
Salt and freshly ground pepper
Cornflour
Milk
Cup a soup
Cheddar cheese


First make some pancakes.  I usually cook mine a day in advance, making twelve for this dish which I fridge until the next day and extra for eating straightaway with sugar and lemon juice, or butter and maple syrup.

Fry bacon, mushrooms, onions and a crushed garlic clove and then add chicken, peas, herbs, salt and pepper. 
If using fresh chicken put this in at the same time as the bacon.
In a mug mix some cornflour with a leek and potato cup a soup and half a mug of milk.  Add boiling water to top of mug and stir well before pouring over the contents of the frying pan. 
Stir gently and allow the sauce to cook through. 
Cool the mixture a little and use it to fill pancakes. 
Fold in the sides and roll into neat packages. 
Place them in an ovenproof dish and cover with cheese sauce, finishing by sprinkling grated Cheddar cheese on the top. 
Cook in the oven until heated through and cheese is golden and bubbling.  
Enjoy!

Extreme gardening and new birds

My Breton neighbours have been working hard all week clearing up the back garden, visible from the lane, of a neighbour who hasn’t been to the property for more than four years.  It looked like Sleeping Beauty’s garden out there - completely impossible to reach the door of the house.

The only good thing about it were the blackberries that the huge quantity of brambles produced around September each year.  Cooked down gently with sugar they make a wonderful sauce for vanilla icecream.  Some of them must have been domesticated plants because the huge, sweet, juicy lobes were nothing like the smaller, harder wild ones.    That same area now looks like this:

 because of the hard work of my two neighbours

I helped them yesterday afternoon and we removed the old, leaning fence between the driveways of our two properties.  

 

This then meant I could reach the ivy roots which have been eluding me for so many years, and pull as many as possible of them out of the soil with Paulette and her husband, Christian raking and mattocking too.  He then arranged the stones we’d disturbed into a neat surround to the area and the plan is to put wild flower seed in the newly cleared and dug soil in March/April.  I am so pleased with it all.

Underneath one of the old tarpaulins half buried in the ground were two bright and  shiny salamanders.

We covered them up again with a pieces of old wood and soil leaving an exit for them.  This afternoon we attached the trailer to the Land Rover and took all the non-burnable rubbish to the déchetterie, including rubbish from another neighbour's property over the lane.  The aim is to have a much prettier village and they've certainly made it look so much cleaner and tidier.

This is my neighbour's tower, in a rare moment of good weather last Friday.  I like the way the shape of the trees echo the tower roofline.

 

I like the cloud formations too in this photograph and here is one of a red morning sky here this week.

 

 

On Sunday morning I went to collect a trio of Araucana chickens from a French friend who breeds birds.  As always when I visit her, I came away with more than I went for.  I bought another pair of Orpingtons, Splash Orpingtons and they have settled in well with the Black and Blue Orpingtons and other mixed hens that I have in one area.  The Splash Orpington hen is in the centre here with a Grey Orpington to the left and a Black Orpington to the right.

Here's the Splash Orpington cockerel in all his glory.

 

The photos I took of the Araucanas are poor - they're very nervous and it's hard to get them all standing still at the same time so I won't post them.  Maybe I'll have some decent ones for the next posting.

 

I also bought one Araucana and five Cream Legbar eggs to incubate.  They are now tucked up in the spare room in the incubator with ten mixed eggs from my other hens, so come 20-21 February, hopefully chicks will be emerging from their shells.

 

 

Three things I like:

 

1.   The ginger and golden sultana cake I made this afternoon and can't stop eating.

2.   Catching up with the Writers' Group on Monday - first meeting of the New Year.

3.   Winning the Pub Quiz at St Mayeux on Wednesday.  We each went back home with a bottle of cider or red wine - result!