Chocolate Fondue Recipe

150g dark chocolate

100g double cream

Splash of some spirit (Quattro, whisky, whatever)

Lots of chopped fruit.

Heat the cream in a pan, don’t boil. Add the chocolate and stir until melted.

Put in to the fondue pan

Butchering a deer’s hind leg

 I followed a youtube by Outdoor Allie, really helpful!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=HP43Zm1-Jrg

Didn’t really fit on my chopping board, but had to make the best of it :)

The sirloin tip is in the sous vide bag. I’m making salted venison (like salted or corned beef)

Going from there left we have the bottom round - made in to 2 roasts for pot or slow roasting

Next let is the eye of round which looks like. tenderloin but isn’t. Planning on cutting in to medallions and slow frying one of them, the other I am salting to fry rounds of like ham.

Far left is the top round which I cut in to steaks to fry

At the back is the tri tip (triangular muscle off the sirloin tip). That went in to stewing chunks

Also at the back the sirloin butt which is a kind of raggedy cut which I cut up for stir fry.

The front legs I took out the flat irons and the rest was stewing chunks or mince.

Lamb ham

We were wondering the other day whether you could dry cure lamb, I looked it up on the internet and found several recipes!

Dry cured leg of mutton (or lamb)
Boned leg of mutton

The following are per kg of meat
30g salt
1tsp ground pepper
1tsp sugar
4 cloves
1tsp chopped rosemary
1 clove garlic finely chopped

Pinch of curing salt (optional depending whether you want the salt peter which will keep the meat pink or not)

Mix all the cure together
Smear all over both sides of the leg
Put the leg in to a plastic bag and seal the bag (or make sure the end is always above the rest of the bag)
Put the bag in the fridge for a week, turn every day and swish the cure around
After the week, remove leg from the bag and rince and wipe down with vinegar then dry it with paper towel or clean cloth
Roll in to a neat tube, as tightly as you can, and tie in place.
Hang somewhere well aired, humid and under 18°C until the leg loses 30 to 35% of its weight. This is probably about a month (but more or less depending on size of leg and conditions it is hanging in)

Yorkshire Blood Cake (black pudding cooked in a loaf tin)

400ml pigs blood (I used dried 80g dried blood 400ml cold water)

200g of diced pork back fat (or belly pork or sausage meat or lardons)

100g pearl barley (dry weight)

100g rusks (or bread crumbs)

½ large onion – finely diced

(you can vary the spices as you wish but you need salt, pepper, cayenne and nutmeg/mace as a minimum in my opinion)

1tsp ground pepper

1 tsp cayenne pepper

1 tsp ground coriander

2tsp salt

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp nutmeg

2 ground up cloves

2lb loaf tin or 3 x 500ml foil trays

Rehydrate blood

Cook the pearl barley

Gently fry the fat and remove from pan

Gently fry the onions in the fat left in the pan. Don’t brown them.

Mix everything together and put in to a greased loaf tin (or foil trays) It should be quite a thick mix which will keep the fat suspended.

Cover in foil and cook in bain marie in 170°C oven or in steamer until set solid. The loaf tin will be about an hour and the foil trays being smaller will take less long.

You can also cook covered in foil in a steamer.

Let it cool and then cut in to slices to fry.

Looks pretty gross before cooking! With fresh blood it looks a lot redder, but easier to get hold of the dried, and easier to work with too…

Thes photos have more wheat than I now have in the recipe…

Finally managed to get started on the pathio tiling despite setback caused by rampaging horses.

I guess I should have closed the gate when we moved the cows - but I was a bit distracted by the cow riot that started when I opened the gate resulting in all the cows running off in to the woods bucking and snorting with me in slow pursuit (fast pursuit just makes them run faster) 

We’ve had a lot of rain so been hard to find time for all the dry weather activities like tiling

 

Poppy helping make curtains

 Yes they will be much better for some paw pronts and dog hair!

Christmas cake done!

 Slightly worried I didn’t cook it quite enough, but I prefer a bit stodgy in the middle to too dry…

Cushions for Samoens apartment

Making some cushions and curtains for the Samoens apartment.

Exciting to have the overlocker out.

Pretty material I designed and ordered from spoonflow. We have a pine tree theme in the apartment.

Overlocked edge. I use pink all the time because rethreading with different colours for different projects is a bit of a fag…

Finished cushion. There’s going to be 16 in total…

Scotch Pie Recipe

Filling 

500g lamb mince (or 450g mince and 1 medium onion, can also use beef or mutton mince) 

1 tsp mixed herbs (optional - I prefer my pie plain with no herbs or onion) 

1 tsp nutmeg (or 1/2 tsp ground mace)

4 tbsp stock or gravy 

1tsp black pepper 

Pastry 

100g lard (or vegetable equivalent)     

250g plain flour 

115ml water 

1tsp salt 

Special Equipment

 4x10cm spring form cake tins  You can also form the cases round a jar and then wrap baking paper round them, but it is a lot more tricky this way as the pastry has to have much better structural integrity. It’s quite thin and more tricky to do than for pork pies…   

Method

Make the pastry 

Heat the lard and water gently until the lard melts. Don’t boil, just heat until the lard is melted on a lowish heat.

Mix the salt in to the flour in a bowl 

Add the water/lard to the flour and mix in to a soft dough. If the dough seems too soft mix in a bit more flour, it can depend a bit on type of flour. It should be pretty soft but firm enough that you can roll it out and lift the piece in to the tin. It will get firmer as it cools also.

Take out of bowl and knead a little until smooth (not loads like bread, just a little bit)

You need to work the dough while it is reasonably warm, but it holds its heat well so no rush.  

Divide dough in to 4 pieces. 

Then take about 1/4 of each piece to be the lid.  

Butter the tins. Roll out each big piece and put it in a tin, make sure there are no holes, it should come nearly to the top of the tin. The dough is quite squishy so just smosh a bit on if you get a hole and squidge it around until it is the right shape in the tin. 

Shape each lid in to a circle that will fit inside the case, it should be a little smaller as it just sits in there. 

Put the lid on a plate and put in the fridge with the cake tins while you make the filling.  

Preheat oven to 180°C  

Add salt and pepper to the mince to taste (approx amounts in the ingredients list) also add the herbs if you want. Remember if you use gravy it will probably add a bit more salt. Add the gravy and stir. 

You can fry a little piece to make sure it is sufficiently seasoned. 

The mixture shouldn’t be sloppy, you just want the liquid to help the meat bind together.  

Put 1/4 of the filling in to each cake tin, it should not come anywhere near the top of the pie crust, probably it fills it half way.    

Cut a hole in each lid and place over the meat. Don’t seal to the sides, there should be a tiny gap all round the lid.   

Place on a tray in the oven and cook for 30-40 minutes until lightly browned.  I like mine a bit peely wally, but you can cook longer for a browner pie.

Let them cool a little before removing the cake tins.  Eat hot with chips and beans or cold with salad (or however you want!).

General Haggis Recipe (meat or vegetarian)

Filling - lamb/lamb lung and offal/Veggies 1kg (this is the cooked weight, so when using meat 1.25kg raw meat)

Fat -  200g butter (or vegan alternative) + 50g flour (cornflour if wanting gluten free) or 250g suet

Pinhead Oats (also called steel cut oats) 350g

Onion - 2 medium approx 400g

Liquid 600ml - veg or meat stock. When making veggie I used the cooking water from the lentils and some marmite, some veg stock and maybe worcester sauce. For meat ideally use the liquid you cooked the meat in

Spice  - eg

2tsp salt approx, you need to taste the mix. Salted butter or marmite will also add salt

3 tsp ground pepper (or 1tsp pepper and 2 cayenne pepper)

1 tsp ground coriander seed

1 tsp nutmeg (or mace)

1 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp vinegar (but not needed when you use olives in the veggie version)

For the vegetarian option you can use anything you fancy for the filler, but consider how much flavour lamb has, you need to add this somehow.

Popular flavour enhancers are marmite, worcester sauce or soya paste, consider the volume of liquid if you use worcester sauce.

250g black beans (cooked - I used Cassegrain tinned haricot noire with Lemon grass and combava leaves)

100g mushrooms

180g carrot (2 largish carrots)

250g cooked green lentils (125g dried lentils)

150 g cooked black lentils (75g dried)

30g peanut butter

40g olives 

Cook the lentils (reserve the liquid to use with the stock), grate the carrot, chop the mushrooms and olives small and mash the black beans

Mix everything together all these ‘filling’ ingredients

Fry the onions gently in the butter until soft not brown

Mix with the veg mixture and add the liquid, flour and pin head oats.

Add all the spices.

Mix well

Should now be sloppy but not wet.

Put in to foil trays or loaf tins and cover with foil and cook in a 140°C oven for 2 hours (or steam in a pan)

When cooked the pinhead oats will be soft and have grown a lot in size (maybe 3 or 4 times the size they started off) and the mix will no longer be sloppy, it may be lightly browned.

Let cool and can be frozen at this point. 

To reheat cook in oven at 150 for about an hour mins. I like to leave the foil off for half that time so it goes a bit crispy, but this may not be highly traditional.

Serve with mashed potato and mashed turnip - or any veg you want!

Ready to out in the trays and cook

Cooked (twice) and ready to eat.

Failed to take a pic of it on the plate as too busy scoffing :)

Soft bread rolls recipe

1 egg plus warm water to make 150g of liquid 

1 tsp active dry yeast 

250 g bread flour 

15 g sugar 

1 tsp salt 

25 g soft butter

Knead everything together for 10 mins or whatever you normally do for bread

Put in a bowl and rise until doubled in size. Approx an hour.

Divide in to 4 rolls in an oiled oven tray and let double in size again

Cook in the tray for about 20 mins until lightly browned

Just need the tiling done…

Need to finish the bit over the septic tank too so we can get rid of the hardboard…

Food food food

 Sweetpeas and runner beans

Crispy aromatic duck

Biggest cucumber I have grown! I have mixed success with cucumbers generally…

Courgettes got out of control, made some soup

Pizza with home grown and not home grown pineapple

Happy 15th Anniversary!

 

15th wedding anniversary, strange weather, but enjoyed eating outside anyway

Special champagne

Giant beef chop

With veg from a friend. Yum!

Sheep shearing time again

We are loving the head holder so we can shear them standing up (them not us - although we do think about making a bench for them to stand on one day). The sheep much prefer it this way too - it seems they didn’t read the ‘How to be a sheep’ handbook where it mentions going floppy when lying on your back…

Shearing a bit later than usual this year, partially due to the work on the house and partially because the cool wet weather has taken away the urgency…

So much work!

So much work!

We need to rerender the front wall now the new windows are in (it is cement and doesn’t breath). To do that we need to take up the old path, so we are replacing it with a bit of a better one with a little patio in it for some outside lounge chairs and umbrella.

Will be fab when done, but painful now!

Happy 28 years together!

 

Moulinex pain doré bread recipe

I just bought a breadmaker, because although I enjoy making bread I hardly ever manage to fit it in around the house building schedule, or when I try to I fail to make it back in time for the next step and it goes wrong…

190ml warm water (warm enough to warm the milk to room temp) + 60ml milk

(or 240ml water + 4tsp powdered milk)

1.5tsp salt

1.5tsp sugar

25g butter

400g bread flour

1.25tsp yeast

Program 1 (though I did 3 by mistake!)

Browning 1 if you want to use in sandwich maker

Weight 500g

Adding a garden tap

With people coming to render the front wall with lime (it has cement based render at the moment which doesn’t breath and also  it is a mess with the new windows), we need to add an outside tap so they can get water.

It took a bit more excavation than we had hoped to find the pipe!

Now it all needs filling back in…

Flowers

I grow veg far more than flowers, because you can eat them, plus I think they are easier!

Some friends gave us some flowers from their garden and they are amazing, food for thought!

Spring potager

 It always looks it’s neatest at this time of year, then it gets horrifically overgrown with some parched bits as the weather gets too hot to do so much!

Getting rid of the wall by the stairs

We were suffering from covid when the window guy announced he was coming a month earlier than expected. This wall needed to go before we could clear stuff out of his way to install all the windows. It was a bit of a trial tbh! But so glad to have it gone. There is another one the same the other side of the stairs still to go. Boo hoo hoo.

It looks fantastic now it is gone. But we are sticking with the plan of having a new wall here eventually to keep kitchen smells in the kitchen, plus a large part of the kitchen units need to be against that wall!

Spring gardening

Rhubarb growing - I thought it was dead!

Blossom on an apple tree

Broad beans starting to bean

Mowed and strimmed ready for weeding!

Planted cabbage, spinach, peas and mangetout

Strawberries planted. Cigaline (non remontant) in the front 2 rows, mariguette (remontant) in the middle 2 rows and some that we had in pots in the back 2 rows.