La vie à la petite ferme

Wednesday, 1 November 2023

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…

Monday, 30 October 2023

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!).

Saturday, 29 July 2023

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