Christmas oranges

So it is nearly Christmas again! This year has been an interesting one and unfortunately I have been ill for quite a lot of it. As a result I haven't been able to post as much as I would have liked to. Fortunately I did manage to keep making things and remained in the habit of taking photos. So over the next few days I am going to backdate my blog with the projects I have done this year. This may seem like cheating to many bloggers out there but this blog was set up as a scrapbook of my projects. It seems a shame not to use the photos I have taken - hope you enjoy! 

In the mean time a Christmas treat - dried orange slices. I have always seen oranges as a Christmas fruit and love them hung on the tree or in garlands. I don't know why I hadn't realised they were so easy before but this year I actually made some and they really are very simple. 

1. Cut your oranges in to equal slices about 0.5 cm wide is ideal (I used 2 oranges which filled a small bowl)
2. Line a baking tray with baking paper (this will stop the oranges sticking to or reacting with the metal tray)
3. Lay your orange slices on the baking paper and sprinkle both sides with icing sugar
4. Put in a cool oven (I used about 100 degrees centigrade) and bake until they are dry and hard (can take some time - the thickest of mine took ~ 2 hours)
5. Hang with ribbon for the tree or garland or put in a bowl with cinammon and cloves for a classic Christmas smell!

Spring herbs in a fish supper

The garden is bursting with herbs that have overwintered and are really coming back to life. These are the perfect way to enhance the British classic of fish supper. We served it with home-made chips but it would be equally tasty with a couple of slices of bread and butter. 


Preheat the oven to 210 degrees (190 degrees for a fan oven)
Serves 2 (although easily doubled)


Ingredients:
2 cloves of garlic
Rind and juice of half a lemon
3 slices of bread
2 fillets of white fish (we used haddock but you could use pollack)
8 sprigs of fresh mint
A handful of soft herbs (we used parsley and chives)
Frozen garden peas
2 tomatoes
Olive oil

1. Blend the herbs with the rind and juice of half a lemon and 2 cloves of garlic in a food processor. Add three slices of bread (crusts removed) and a tablespoon of olive oil and continue to blend until well mixed and chopped.
4. Put your fish fillets on a plate and spread over your herby breadcrumbs. Drizzle with olive oil, this will stop the fish drying out. Rinse the food processor out because you will need it in a minute.
3. Cut the tomatoes in half and put in a pyrex dish or baking sheet, drizzle with olive oil and put in the oven.
2. Boil some water in a saucepan and then add the peas (about half a cereal bowl) along with the mint leaves. Boil for three minutes and drain. Put the peas, mint leaves and a little oil in the food processor and blitz. Season with some black pepper.
5. Once the tomatoes have had 15 minutes put the fish on the same tray as the tomatoes and put back in the oven. 
6. Once the breadcrumbs on the fish have started to brown (approx 10-15 minutes) put the mushy peas in a frying pan and heat over a medium heat. 
7. Serve the fish, tomatoes, and mushy peas with some chips or a couple of slices of bread a butter. 


Variation: The breadcrumbs also work well baked on large mushrooms. Ideal if you have a vegetarian in the family or simply fancy something different. Put the mushrooms in with the tomatoes and add the breadcrumbs when the fish would have gone in! 

Wholemeal rolls

I have recently started making my own bread - it does take time but is so rewarding and actually much better for you than most shop bought bread. I have been experimenting with different flours and this is my favourite combination yet. These rolls aren't too heavy because of the addition of white bread flour but do have a lovely texture and a crispy crust. The preparation only takes about 20 minutes in total but you do need to leave the bread to rise so the whole process takes over 3 hours (although obviously you can do other things while you wait). 

Makes 6 rolls

Ingredients:

300ml lukewarm water
2 ½ tsp dried yeast
1 tsp brown sugar
225 g strong white bread flour

225 g strong wholemeal bread flour

1 tsp salt

• Mix the yeast and sugar in to half of the water and leave for about 15 minutes.
• In the meantime mix the flour and salt in a large bowl.
• When the yeast is ready make a well in the flour and pour the yeast mix in.
• Stir the yeast mix into the flour
• Add the rest of the water and combine into dough – this is easiest with your hands!
• You are aiming for slightly sticky dough that pulls all of the mixture away from the edge of the bowl. You may need to add some more water, do this one tablespoon at a time until the dough leaves the bowl clean.
• Flour a flat surface and knead until it is completely smooth and elastic, this may take 10 minutes but it so worth the effort.
• Get a clean bowl (or clean the one you were using before) and use a piece of kitchen towel to spread some olive oil in a thin layer around the inside. Put your dough ball in to this bowl and cover with some cling film and a tea towel. Leave in a warm place (e.g. airing cupboard or windowsill) for 2 hours.

•  Prepare a baking tray by sprinkling it with a fine layer of polenta grain (this will help to stop the rolls from sticking).
•  Take the dough out of the bowl and on a floured surface knock it back (literally push your fist in to it to knock the air out) and then knead for about two minutes (this might seem counter-productive since you have just left it to rise but is vital if your bread is going to behave properly!)
• Shape your dough into 6 equal balls and place on the baking tray.
• Loosely cover the rolls with cling film and a tea towel and put back into a warm place for about 30 minutes.


• Preheat the oven to 190 °C and boil a kettle of water. Find a deep baking tray or oven proof dish.
• Once the oven is warm put the deep baking tray on the bottom shelf filled with boiling water, the rolls need to go on the top shelf for about 30 minutes. They are ready when crispy brown on the outside and the bottom, when knocked, sounds hollow.
• Leave to cool on a wire cooling rack – enjoy!

Delicious with soup or as a sandwich! They will keep for a few days but also freeze well for a couple of weeks.

My first loaf of bread

This weekend I made my first ever loaf of bread! I have made focaccia and flat breads but never a proper loaf. Home-made bread always tastes so fresh and it was very rewarding to see it rise in the oven to something that looked like a real loaf! :-) This time I followed a recipe to the letter for a white loaf but I think in the future I might start to experiment with different flavours and flour combinations. It is amazing that this loaf was made from only three ingredients; strong bread flour, yeast and sunflower oil. The key to the crispy outside and moist inside was a tray of hot water in the bottom of the oven that generated steam whilst the loaf cooked. This was very effective and something I will definitely do again.

 

The salad plants are also doing well; they have survived  being transplanted last week. I have found that they are becoming more and more thirsty (which is not surprising considering they are growing fast and the weather has been so warm). 

 The seeds I have planted over the last few weeks are germinating well and making the most of the warm, sunny weather we have been experiencing. We have had temperature as high as 18 degrees over the last few days and it really feels like spring has settled in. The broad beans and mange tout seeds that were planted in toilet rolls filled with coir last week are coming on nicely and should be going in to the soil in the next few weeks. Planting seeds in to empty toilet rolls filled with compost proved to be very productive last year. The rolls help to absorb moisture so you have to water less often, you don't need to use as many plastic pots and best of all you can plant the seedling in to the ground still in their tube; protecting the roots from damage. All round this is a very easy way to recycle and the cardboard will bio-degrade over time to enhance the structure of the soil in your flowers beds. This technique seems to work particularly well with beans, peas, climbing plants, butternut squashes and courgettes. We now collect toilet rolls all year round with a plastic bag on the back of the bathroom door.

The ground is still pretty empty of vegetables and salad (although they are coming on) but some of the herbs are really doing well. We have sage, chives, oregano, thyme and even parsley that has overwintered on the patio.

Happy New Year!

Sorry I know it has been a while since we last posted. This is partly because we have been away visiting relatives over the Christmas period, but also because we have been finishing the Christmas presents we were making. It was a close run thing but we did get them all finished in time! Here are a few pictures of some of the things that we made:



The presents include homemade beads strung on to ribbon to make necklaces and bracelets. Some paper stars made in to earrings and a bracelet. Shopping bags made with curtain material and lined with satin. Picalilli, Chilli Jam, filled spice grinders and the hampers mentioned in a previous post. We also finally finished the baubles (we managed to make 6 whole sets although there were unfortunately a couple of disasters (a new method for sticking needed I think)). I also found some really cool buttons in a local material store which I attached to ribbon to make bracelets. There were some other bits and pieces but I forgot to photograph them - oops but I think you can get a good feel for what we have done.

It was so much fun making them all but such a relief that we managed to finish them all in time. Hopefully the coming year will be filled with new projects to write about! We wish everyone a happy New Year - and hopefully won't leave it quite so long until we post again. 

Lemon and lime cordial

Over the last month or so we have been collecting homemade items to include in our Christmas hampers. One of the things we have made is lemon and lime cordial. It is so easy to make, has no artificial ingredients and tastes so much better than the ones you buy in the shop!

You will need:
1 kg of caster sugar
500 ml of water
10 lemons
5 limes

This makes about 1.5 litres.

1. Using a potato peeler peel the rind of 4 lemons and 2 limes; do this gently so that you include as little of the white pith as you can. (The pith is bitter and will change the taste of your cordial).
2. Put the water in to a large saucepan and bring to the boil.
3. Stir in the sugar.
4. Once the sugar is dissolved add the lemon and lime peel and simmer for about an hour, stirring occasionally.
5. While you wait juice the lemons and limes (a food processor with a juicing attachment will help with this). You need about 1.5 litres of juice.
6. After the hour is up, add this juice to the saucepan and simmer for a further 30 minutes.
7. Remove the peel from the cordial (using a slotted spoon) and lay out on greasproof paper.
8. Bottle up the cordial in pre-cleaned and dried bottles. Store in a cool dry place until opened when it should be put in the fridge. It tastes great with sparkling water, a slice of lemon and some fresh mint!
10. You can preserve the peel by sprinkling it with a little icing sugar. It is delicous as a sweet or sprinkled on ice cream. 

The hamper also includes carrot jam (see earlier post), pineapple chutney, spice grinders and recipe cards.

Our first post - carrot jam

Last weekend we started to tidy the garden up for the winter and discovered that hiding in the back of one of the borders were some carrots that we hadn't picked yet. It has been a good year for carrots but I thought we only had a few left - oh how wrong I was! The next 5 minutes revealed over a kilo of carrots, in beautiful condition, waiting to be eaten. We already had some supermarket carrots in the fridge, so I dug out a recipe for carrot jam and on Saturday morning we started to grate carrots! 

1 kg carrots
2 lemons
1 orange
900 g granulated white sugar
6 cloves

900 ml water
1 tsp grated nutmeg

2 tsp ground cinnamon

On the night before you want to cook the jam wash the carrots, peel and grate them in a food processer. Grate the rinds of the orange and lemons and then squeeze the juice. Add the carrots, peel, juice and sugar in to a large saucepan. Tie the cloves in to a square of muslin and add to the pan. Stir the carrots up mixing all of the flavours in and leave overnight.   

When you get back to your jam pour over the water and add the nutmeg and cinnamon stirring the mixture through. Heat the jam gently for about 10 minutes and then bring to the boil. It can take anywhere from 30 minutes to about an hour for this to boil down depending on how hot you have it and how much water the carrots released overnight. When it is ready carefully remove the cloves and then allow the jam to cool for a little bit (about 5 - 10 minutes). You can tell if it is ready by spooning some on to a chilled plate and seeing if, after leaving it for a minute, it wrinkles under your finger. When it does pour in to sterilised jars and seal whilst the jars and jam are still hot. 

It took quite a long time for ours to fully cook but the results, as you can see, are 4 jars of beautifully coloured jam. We had a bit left over which we tried on toast and it is very tasty - a bit like marmalade. Our first ever attempt at making jam a success! Definitely a recipe to keep for future carrot gluts.