Festival food – see Abroad

New potatoes

Vegetarian week is over but there is still nothing better than a new potato from your own garden with a big knob of butter.

Ooops, ate a bit of bacon…

Forgot I was on veggie week and had bacon and eggs for breakfast, but made up for it by making delicious pakora with spinach out of the garden for lunch. Ruth gave me her recipe – it’s so easy – but it’s on the gram flour packet too, if you can find any. I asked in Tesco just to see if they knew what it was, not expecting them to have any, and they bought me Rye flour. So went to Ipswich to the Norwich road shops where they have everything you could possibly ever want and spent too much on scotch bonnet peppers, plantain chips and frozen samosa’s as well.

Tanya’s lunch

Without knowing my plans for vegetarian and curry, Tanya has cooked me curry again – kerala fish curry – so delicious. Will have to excuse this fish as wouldn’t strictly speaking be eating fish as a vegetarian, but still -  no meat.

Veggie is in!

Following the vegetarian edition of OFM this weekend, will try to follow Paul McCartney’s example and not eat meat for a week. And as long as I stick to curries this shouldn’t be a problem as I am having a bit of a craving for a good Leicester dhal and rice, with puri’s and samosas. So made a chick pea and potato curry tonight – one of the easiest and most delicious, with fennel and coriander from the garden.

Jam is easy!

Look at my produce! I thought jam was a hassle (thermometers, muslin, big aluminium or not pans, rolling boils, saucers of cold water…) until I discovered the sugars with pectin in and now there’s no stopping me. This week bought kilo bags of two types of the sugar (one for soft fruit jam, one for fruit with stones) Then got just over a kilo of apricots first, made that one in an hour. Then bought raspberries, made that one in half an hour. Will make one more lot from wild bullis plums later as these are my real favourites and just fall off the trees into my carrier bag.

See recipes for a couple of handy hints.

Lavenham Swan

I suppose being Suffolk born and bred you tend not to go to these touristy villages, but I had one of my favourites here recently at The Swan - calves liver.  

It beat other liver (and bacon) dishes I’ve had recently hands down, and it was nice to have a walk around afterwards – the houses really are fascinatingly wonky.

World Cup 0 – Tapas 4

What a boring final, but good excuse for a family food event – supporting Spain with jugs of Sangria and various Tapas (a kind of English tapas – whatever you can make without going to the shops.) Had more fun with intermmittent singing of Y Viva Espana and flamenco music and eventually, finally, yawn - the goal.

   

Breast of lamb – is it the new belly of pork…?

This is the bargain of the week – a rolled breast of lamb from Asda, already cheap, but reduced to £1. I have cooked this lots of times, and it’s been tasty, crispy but as tough as hell. This time I read the intructions in a recipe book instead of guessing and rushing, and it said SLOW cooking. So I put it on at 100, went to work for four hours and came back to the most delicious and tender piece of meat ever. Turned it up for twenty minutes to crisp up and WOW, what flavour! It’s not for everyone as it’s very fatty, but with rosemary, broad beans and the first new potatoes out of the garden it was as tasty as anything I have had lately. Next time I will unroll it, put some stuffing in and serve it to my best friends.

The perfect gift for a foodie…

 

…a fruit clock! Found this in a fab cheap London variety store and just had to buy it for my kitchen. It’s about twenty two orange to pear as I write this.