Farmer's Market

Eleanor and I went to the Farmer's Market in Poynton today. We hadn't planned to go, we just dropped in on our way back from church, so I went without my proper camera (these fuzzy pictures were taken with my mobile phone) and more importantly, without my purse.

It was a great farmer's market with so many stalls that they could not all fit in the Civic Centre, so some of them were outside in the car park. The stalls were very varied. For example there were fresh fish, meat, sausages, pate, olives, honey, hand-made soap, sticky toffee puddings and more. Most importantly, they all seemed to be bona-fide small producers and they were all friendly and keen to answer my impertinent questions. They were also very generous with tasting samples and I came home quite full without even buying anything.

It's held on the first Sunday of every month from 9am - 1pm, at Poynton Civic Hall. I'll be marking the August date in my calendar and I'll remember to take my purse with me next time.

Mark Bennion of Ipstones Park Farm kindly allowed me to reproduce this recipe:

Ipstones Park Farm Meatballs in a Red Wine Sauce

Add 6 tablespoons red wine and 4-5 tablespoons double cream to a bowl together with 5 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs and leave to soak for approx 30 minutes. Heat 1oz unsalted butter in a frying pan and add a finely chopped onion. Fry until soft and golden. Once done, remove the onions from the pan and leave to cool.

In a bowl, mix the cooled onion and soaked breadcrumbs with a free range egg, 1lb Ipstones Farm minced beef, fresh herbs of your choice, and a pinch of salt and pepper. With wet hands for the mixture into meatballs. Heat 1oz butter in a frying pan and fry the meatballs until they are a dark golden colour on all sides. Once done remove them from the pan and keep them warm.

To make the red wine sauce, stir 1oz flour into the fat of the meatball frying pan and brown for a few seconds. Then stir in 9 fl. oz beef stock and 9 fl. oz red wine. Whisk lightly to combine then add 9 fl. oz fresh cream and let the sauce cook through for approx 10 minutes. Season accordingly. Add the meatballs and simmer gently for approx 45 minutes or until the sauce has thickened and the meatballs are cooked and tender.

Prepare fresh pasta and salad. Serve the dish with a sprinkling of fresh herbs and grated cheese of your choice.

You can buy Ipstones Park farm minced beef and other top quality meat from Mark Bennion at:
Ipstones Park Farm
Park Lane
Ipstones
Near Leek
Staffordshire

Telephone: 01538 266 049
Mobile: 07840 076 276 or 07808 086 234

10 Reasons to Cook with Quorn

There are only four days left to participate in our Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge. If you are running out of inspiration, here are ten good reasons to try a Quorn dish:

1. You can get Quorn chunks (which are rather like chunks of chicken), Quorn mince (which is like beef mince) and Quorn beef-style strips (which are self-explanatory).

2. Point 1. means that you can easily make many of your favourite meat-based recipes vegetarian. We like Quorn chili, Quorn lasagna, Quorn fajitas and Quorn Thai green curry, for example.

3. You can offer a vegetarian and non-veggie choice without all the trouble of making two totally separate meals, for example by making rice, Thai green curry sauce with vegetables, then pouring half the sauce over some heated Quorn chunks and the other half over cooked chicken pieces.

4. Quorn sausages make nice sausage casseroles, as well as bangers and mash, toad-in-the-hole, and Ed's favourite - sausage sandwiches.

5. Quorn is much lower in fat than the meat it imitates, so it can be a healthier option, especially as, just like meat, it contains high-quality protein.

6. Unlike meat, Quorn contains fibre which also makes it a good addition to a healthy diet.

7. Because it is similar in taste and texture (not identical, but similar) to meat, it can help die-hard carnivores cut some of the meat out of their diets. You know, the sort of people who would sooner starve than knowingly eat a lentil.

8. Because you use it in the same sorts of recipes as meat, you don't have to learn a whole lot of new cooking skills (such as how to cook lentils).

9. Quorn is lower in calories than meat and contains no cholesterol. So if you're watching your weight or your cholesterol levels you can still enjoy some of your favourite meals just by switching to Quorn.

10. Boil some water and cook some spaghetti. Fry an onion, add a tin of tomatoes, a pack of Quorn mince, and some Italian mixed herbs. By the time the spaghetti is cooked, the sauce will be cooked, too (Quorn is already cooked, it just needs heating through). If you've got some Parmesan cheese, put that on top. If not, just forget it. Quorn spaghetti bolognese is just as quick as heating up a ready meal - much quicker than phoning for pizza delivery - and it's tastier and healthier than either.

What is Quorn anyway? It's made from a fungus that occurs naturally in soil. Sometimes it's described as "mushroom-based" - that's stretching it a bit. The fungus it's made from is a microscopic mould, not a mushroom like the ones you put in your omelette. On the other hand I've heard detractors describe it as genetically modified - that's not "stretching it a bit", it's just hooey. The FAQ page of the Quorn website states clearly:

Q: Do Quorn products contain genetically modified ingredients?

A: The main component of all Quorn products is mycoprotein, which is not soya-based, but is a member of the mushroom family. This is grown and harvested under strict quality controls and we can therefore reassure you that it is not a product of genetic manipulation.

Quorn is approved by the Vegetarian Society who do not allow any GM ingredients in approved foods, so that's that. Anyway, they grow this stuff in huge vats, dry it out, then process it, adding egg white (as a binder) and flavours to make it resemble chicken, mince, sliced ham, or whatever. It's a processed food, but then again so is cheese.

It occurs to me that this article reads like an advert, so I'll just be clear. I have no affiliation to Quorn. They haven't paid me or asked me to write this or anything fishy like that. I'm just a satisfied customer. We probably eat Quorn about once a week in our house. The main reason is that it bridges the gap between the carnivores and the vegetarians in our family. If it was just up to me, I'd probably never eat it - when I felt like chicken fajitas I'd eat chicken, and when I felt like a vegetarian meal I'd make dishes based on beans, lentils, quinoa and all the other vegetarian protein sources I enjoy. I resisted using Quorn for a long time because it felt like cheating. It's not "natural", it's a factory-made processed food. But so is cheese, so is tofu, so is bread unless you make it at home. When I gave in I found that a lot of new dinner possibilities opened up to me. Instead of reading a recipe and thinking "That sounds really nice, but it contains meat. I'll have to wait till Steph visits and make it for the two of us", now I often read a recipe and think "That sounds really nice. I'll switch the chicken for Quorn and make it for me and Ed next week".

So it's your last chance to join in the Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge. Why not try converting your favourite chicken or mince-based dish to Quorn? Don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar when you've done it.

Roasted Vegetables and Goats' Cheese Pasta

Here's another vegetarian recipe my sister Stephanie rustled up whilst she was visiting.




Roasted Vegetables and Goats' Cheese Pasta

Chop up a bunch of vegetables for roasting. We used courgettes, aubergines, red peppers and red onions. That was neither seasonal nor local for us at this time of year (slaps own wrist). But if you wanted you could roast onions, leeks, carrots or whatever seasonal vegetables you can get hold of. Personally I don't think I ever met a vegetable I wouldn't like to roast, so this recipe is the ultimate movable feast. Toss your vegetables in olive oil, add some sliced garlic, some fresh or dried herbs, and bung in a hot oven for a while. Sorry about the lack of precise weights, temperatures and times - regular readers will know by now that I just don't usually cook like that. I encourage you to experiment, to make use of the ingredients you have available, and to learn for yourself what ingredients work well together, how your own oven behaves, and to take food out of the oven or the pan when it is ready, not when your timer goes beep.

When the vegetables are almost roasted (which after all will depend on exactly which vegetables you use), put some pasta on to cook. I like quite chunky pasta with a chunky sauce like this one. I wouldn't use tagliatelle for example. We had some spinach trotolle from Seeds of Change that worked very well. When your pasta comes to the boil, stir a tin of chopped tomatoes into your roasted vegetables, arrange a sliced soft goats' cheese on top, and return to the oven for the cheese to melt. Steph used one of those little chevre cheeses between two of us. If you're cooking for more than two, use more cheeses. If you have some help in the kitchen, get someone else to bung a garlic ciabatta in the oven, rustle up a quick salad, and open a bottle of wine. If it's just you, open the wine and forget about the salad and ciabatta. By the time the pasta is cooked, the cheese should be melted. Serve the vegetables and cheese on top of the pasta, with the garlic bread and salad on the side if you have them, and a nice glass of wine. Lovely.

If you make this dish as part of our Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge, let me know how it turns out. And don't forget to vote in the poll in the right-hand sidebar.

Wild Blackberry Leaf Tea

Spring is springing and new leaves are starting to grow on shrubs and trees. Some of them make tasty herbal tea, so I went out foraging with my 4-year-old niece Rebecca for wild blackberry leaves.

You don't want to accidentally pick the wrong thing, and leaves are a bit trickier to identify than berries, especially when they're young. So this is perhaps a project for experienced foragers. If you already have your favourite blackberrying spots and you are confident you can identify the correct plants then you'll be fine. But if you haven't foraged before, wait until the late summer or autumn and then go looking for blackberries. There's nothing in the UK that looks anything like a blackberry that might do you any harm, so it's a great first foraging project. Remember the locations of the plants. Have a good look at the leaves and the stems and become familiar with them. Then pick wild blackberry leaf tea next spring.

You want to pick the bunches of young leaves as they emerge. You don't need gloves - you're not going to mess around with the thorny stems. Just grasp the leaves and tug them off. Don't strip all the young leaves off a single stem. You don't want to kill the plant, although brambles (wild blackberry plants) are devilishly tough and could probably survive. But it's good foraging etiquette to just take a couple of bunches of leaves from each stem and then move along.

Rebecca and I picked maybe half-a-pint to a pint of bramble leaves before going home. Actually Rebecca only picked one leaf, then ran off and picked some daisies and dandelions for her mum, leaving me to do all the work. I didn't mind, really.

You make wild blackberry leaf tea almost the same way you make ordinary tea - pour boiling water over and steep. There are only two differences. The first difference is that you use more fresh leaves than you could fit in a tea bag. How much leaves for a cup? I'm afraid that's the same sort of question as how long is a piece of string? About yay much. If you use more it will be stronger. Less and it will be weaker. But at any rate, use a lot more than the teaspoon or so you would use of dried leaves. I usually about half fill my tea pot with leaves (not packed, just loosely dropped in) then top it up with boiling water. If you only want to make a single cup, half fill your tea cup with leaves and fill with water.

The second difference is that you steep for longer than you would steep normal tea. I'd steep blackberry leaf tea at least half an hour. I've also steeped it a lot longer than that - even a few hours. This time I steeped a jug full for about an hour or so, drank a cup, left the rest steeping overnight, then strained the cold tea into a smaller jug and put it in my fridge.

It's nice hot or cold. I like it better with honey than without. You wouldn't usually add milk, but hey, if you like it that way it's your cup of tea. If you can collect loads of leaves you can dry them and drink wild blackberry leaf tea all year long. After spring the leaves become darker and tougher and don't make such nice tea. But I enjoy it as a spring treat, a fresh taste of the first new greenness of the year.

Update: A reader has reported developing a rash after using this tea. I know that many commercially available herb teas contain blackberry leaves without bearing any warnings, and I can't find any warnings about allergic reactions to blackberry leaves on the internet or in the foraging books I have. I suppose it's possible to have a reaction to anything - I know someone who is allergic to apples but I don't post allergy warnings with apple recipes. If you've never tried blackberry tea before, don't overdo it the first time, and be on the lookout for allergic reactions. I should reemphasise that you must never eat anything you've foraged unless you are totally 100% positive you have identified it correctly.

Fried Halloumi with Redcurrant Chili Sauce

One of the nice things about having my sister Stephanie staying with me is that I eat better, especially at lunch times. I usually just grab anything quick for lunch, but I make more of an effort when other people are here. Steph has been doing a lot of the cooking, too, and todays lunch was a bit of a joint effort.

Fried Halloumi with Redcurrant Chili Sauce

Assemble some salad ingredients on a plate. We had lettuce, radishes, spring onions and red pepper in the fridge, but you should use whatever you've got. Slice a halloumi cheese and dip the slices into a beaten egg and then into wholemeal breadcrumbs to coat. Fry the slices in olive oil until golden, then put them onto the salad. Thin some redcurrant sauce with some red wine. Or you could use mango chutney, apricot jam - just have a rummage in your cupboards for something fruity that might go with fried halloumi, and be adventurous. If you don't have red wine to hand, thin it out with wine vinegar or water or apple juice - use your imagination. Add half a chopped chili to the sauce (or some dried chili, or a few drops of Tabasco sauce - you get the idea). Warm up the sauce in the same pan you used for your cheese, then get your arty sister to drizzle it artistically over the top. Serves 2 for a delicious and companionable lunch.

Why not try this recipe (or your own variation of it) as part of April's Try A Vegetarian Meal Challenge?

Top Ten Uses for Apples

(The total lunar eclipse was a washout, with a thick layer of cloud across most of Britain. The alarm clock went off at 2:45 am, but when I looked out of the bedroom window all I could see was a bright orange glow caused by the street lights of Manchester bouncing off the unbroken low cloud, so I rolled over and went back to sleep.)

Here are ten uses for too many leftover apples, hanging around in the bottom of the fruit bowl and looking unappealing.

1. Tarte tatin

2. Gordon Tracy's Favourite Way of Eating Apples - bear with me. This is our family name for apples cored and cut into wedges, served with a dish of sugar mixed with cinnamon, for dipping. The name was a desperate attempt to trick Tom, then aged 2, into eating any kind of fresh fruit or vegetable at all. He was obsessed with Thunderbirds at the time, and his favourite character was Gordon Tracy. I offer the recipe to any parents who can't get their kids to eat fruit. Feel free to rename it with your own child's favourite fictional character.

3. Sourdough Apple Fritters

4. Cheese and apple toastie - cut an apple into quarters and grate it on a cheese grater. Also grate some Red Leicester cheese (or other cheese) and mix with the grated apple. Season with sea salt, freshly ground black pepper and ground cumin. Make into sandwiches with sliced wholemeal bread and toast (we use one of those electric toasted sandwich makers, but you can also do it under a grill)

5. Chutney

6. I often chop an apple into my porridge or muesli for breakfast.

7. Apple Spiced Muffins

8. Stuffed baked apple - Core an apple and stuff the hole with something nice - leftover Christmas mincemeat works well, my dad keeps a jar of raisins soaked in rum to stuff apples with, or just improvise a mixture of raisins, porridge oats, chopped nuts, honey, or whatever you can find in the store cupboard. Bake the stuffed apple either in the microwave (you don't need one of those stupid plastic doodads they sell in the Bettaware catalogues, just bung it in a bowl, for heaven's sake) or in a moderate oven until the apple has softened. Serve with ice cream.

9. Braised red cabbage with apple (recipe is near the bottom of the page).

10. Apple pie - Here's a little-known secret. The best apple pies are not made with cooking apples such as Bramleys. Cooking apples turn to mush when you cook them. They're great for applesauce, and that's about it. If you want large succulent pieces of apple in your apple pie, use eating apples. But let's start with the pastry:

You can use your own shortcrust pastry recipe, or ready-made pastry or a ready-made pie shell. Here is my favourite shortcrust pastry recipe for when I'm really pushing the boat out. It makes the best ever mince pies, for example. Sift 14oz plain flour into a bowl with 1 teaspoon of salt. Make a well in the centre. Add 8oz diced softened (really soft) unsalted butter, 4oz caster sugar, 8 egg yolks (sorry - this is not a frugal recipe unless you have your own chickens and plenty of eggs. But it really does make excellent pastry) and 1 teaspoon vanilla essence into the well. For apple pies I like to add some grated orange rind and ground cardamom, cinnamon or nutmeg. Rub everything in. In fact I usually heave it all into my food processor with a dough hook attachment and let it run until it looks like pastry. Bring it together into a ball and knead it lightly, then wrap it in clingfilm and chill it for at least half an hour before using.

Divide it into two, and roll one portion out, but it's a b****r to handle, so if it falls apart when you try to line your greased 9-10” pie tin with it, don't panic. Just smoosh it back together with your knuckles, and feel free to cover any holes with leftover bits of pastry and work them in until you can't the join. Put the pastry shell, and the unused portion of pastry back in the fridge whilst you sort out the filling. Oh, and turn the oven on low.

Peel, core and roughly chop about 2lbs of eating apples. Put them in a pan with the merest splash of water, 2oz sugar and a few whole cloves, cover and cook for a few minutes until the apples are tender but not mushy. Carefully drain the apples. Don't go banging them about or they'll go to mush. Carefully put the drained apples in the bottom of the pastry shell (I don't bother picking out the cloves, I rather like the burst of tongue-numbing flavour when you bite into one in your wedge of apple pie, but if you hate that you'll have to pick them all out - I advise counting them when you put them in so you can be sure you get them all). Roll out the other portion of pastry and lie it on top of the pie. Pinch the edges together to seal the top layer to the bottom. Make a couple of slits in the top of the pie to let any steam out and stop the pie going soggy or exploding. Sprinkle generously with golden brown sugar, and bake in a low oven until it's done (I don't know how long, it depends on your oven, how big your pie dish is, how thin you rolled the pastry etc. Check on it after about 25 minutes, but be ready to give it an extra 5, 10, 15 minutes or whatever until it looks golden and done. Also listen to your nose - if it smells done after 20 minutes then maybe it is. Have a look at it and see.)

Apple pie is nice hot or cold. Either way, serve with custard, ice cream, or whipped cream. But I love it best served cold with a big dollop of smetana.

Tarte Tatin

I don't want you to get the impression that frugal cooking is all about eating stringy burned meat just because I'm too stingy to throw it out. How about this tarte tatin? The kids were moaning they were hungry so I told them there were plenty of apples in the fruit bowl. But apparently the apples "weren't nice ones". I had a look - yes, they had been there a bit too long and were starting to look wrinkly and tired. There were also two cooking apples I bought a couple of weeks ago but I can't remember why. A recipe to use up cooking apples and eating apples? Tarte tatin of course.

Tarte Tatin

Peel, core and chop a couple of big cooking apples. Toss them in a pan with a splash of water and 5oz light brown sugar. Cook until they're soft, then mash them and dump the puree in a sieve to drain - save the liquid that drains off them.

Fling 10oz plain flour, 5oz fat (I used half Pura and half margarine), and 2oz sugar in the food processor and whiz until blended, then add a little cold water until it comes together.

Roll out the pastry thin and use it to line a greased quiche tin. Spread the apple puree in the bottom of the pie. Peel, core and slice a few eating apples and arrange them on top of the puree. If you have nice red eating apples you don't need to peel them. Bake at 200C for about half an hour.

Take the liquid you kept from straining the apple puree and boil it until it is reduced. Brush it on the cooked tart to glaze, and sprinkle sparingly with cinnamon.

If you think my glaze looks a bit lumpy, you're quite right but don't panic - yours won't be. Eleanor came in crying at a crucial moment because she had fallen over and skinned her knees. By the time I had cleaned and band-aided her and given her a cuddle, my glaze had begun to congeal. That's family life.

By the way, this recipe makes too much pastry for one tarte tatin, so use the leftovers to make jam tarts. Roll the leftover pastry thin, cut into rounds, and place them in a greased jam tart tin. Put a dollop of home-made jam in each one and bake for 15 minutes. If you put them in at the same time as the tarte tatin, they'll be ready to eat just in time for a little girl with skinned knees. Very convenient.

UPDATED: The little boy from over the road came to play, helped eat all the jam tarts, and then asked me to write out the recipe so he could get his mum to make them. He also said his granny made the best pastry in the world and it tasted just like mine. That's what I like to hear.

Elephant Pancake

It's ridiculously early this year, but today is Shrove Tuesday - pancake day. Traditionally in Britain we eat pancakes, often served with sugar and lemon, on the last day before Lent.

The best pancakes in the world used to be made in the Welsh Fudge Shop in Aberystwyth, now sadly closed down. They made all sorts of pancakes. I fondly remember pineapple and Malibu pancakes, the hot chocolate fudge pancake of course, and peanut butter and banana. But their finest creation was the elephant pancake.

I worked in the Fudge shop as a short-order cook for a while, so I can reveal the secrets of the elephant pancake. Surprisingly, the pancakes were made from McDougal's pancake mix, mixed with water "by eye", rather than from flour, eggs and milk as you'd expect. The orange and Grand Marnier and the pineapple and Malibu pancakes originally had the named liqueurs in, but one day they ran out and the chef (not me) improvised with substituting orange juice for the Grand Marnier and pineapple juice for the Malibu. There were no complaints so they never bothered ordering any more liqueurs. But I remember the day I ordered a pancake with liqueur and noticed it wasn't the real deal any more.

The recipe for the elephant pancake is as follows:

Elephant Pancake

Put a pancake on a large plate. Spread tinned cherry pie filling on top. Put another pancake on top and place tinned pineapple chunks on that. Pour maple syrup over the pineapple. Put another pancake on and place banana slices on that. Pour maple syrup over the banana. Put the final pancake on top and microwave the whole lot for a couple of minutes. Pour hot chocolate fudge sauce over it all, sprinkle on dessicated coconut and serve with ice cream and cream.

Sourdough Apple Fritters

As promised, my recipe for sourdough apple fritters.

Sourdough Apple Fritters

Peel 2 or 3 or more apples, core them and slice them into rings. Beat together 1 1/2 cups of sourdough starter, 1 egg, some sugar (maybe 2 or 3 tablespoons? - I didn't measure, I just shook it in), a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda. Dip apple rings one at a time into flour then into the batter. Drop a battered apple ring into a saucepan half full of very hot oil. Fry for a minute or two on both sides and serve with vanilla ice cream. You could sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the fritters if you liked. I don't have a very sweet tooth and thought they were sufficiently sweet just as they were.

Sourdough Latkes

One of the nice things about baking sourdough bread daily is that you always have a dish of sourdough starter hanging about. Sourdough starter is flour and water which is fermenting - in other words, it's batter. So you can quickly cook anything that requires batter. I already posted a recipe for sourdough pancakes. I forgot to photograph my sourdough onion rings, but next time I make them I'll tell you all about it. I've plans to make sourdough apple fritters sometime soon. But today I want to show you my sourdough potato latkes.

It's basically the same recipe as the potato latkes I blogged about in July:

Grate two pounds of peeled potatoes and soak in cold water for at least a couple of hours. Strain the potatoes and dry them well, for example by wrapping in a tea towel and swinging them round your head. Do this outdoors. And don't blame me if you accidentally let go of a corner and decorate your garden with grated spuds. If you're chicken you could just pat them dry between sheets of kitchen paper. Put the potatoes in a large bowl and add a grated onion and plenty of freshly ground black pepper and sea salt.

But then instead of making batter from scratch, I took a cup and a half of sourdough starter. I added a beaten egg, a splash of milk and half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. I mixed the spuds with the sourdough batter, then fried dessertspoonsful of the mixture in butter, in a frying pan.

You can serve them as a side dish with roasted stuffed butternut squash, as I planned to do. But apparently they taste better red hot from the pan, stolen from the cook, and eaten with your hands burning your fingers in the process.

Weed of the Week - Cleavers

Cleavers are every child's favourite weed. Pick up a handful and gently touch it against someone's clothing and it will stick there like velcro. See how much you can hang off mum or dad before they notice. They're covered in tiny little hooks, which is what gives them this power. There are some amazing microscope images of the hooks at the microscopy UK website.

They're known by dozens of common names, including clivers, goosegrass, stickywilly, Stickyweed, catchweed, and bedstraw (lots of plants are called bedstraw). What did you call them when you were kids? We called them "stickybuds", but we made that up ourselves and I don't know anyone else who calls them that. Maybe that's how they acquired so many names - from children.

You can get some thick patches of cleavers in new or neglected ground, but they're very easy to dig out. You don't even need a spade, you can just pull them out with your bare hands. The roots are very shallow and not extensive. Their big propagational trick is the sticky seeds, which stick to birds' feathers and animals' fur just as easily as dad's jumper, and get everywhere. They'll also be in any consignment of fresh manure you bring to your plot (I'm told horses are very fond of eating cleavers, and I know my chickens love them), and probably in any compost you use as well. Just hoik the seedlings out when you see them. Cleavers are no big deal. Not like couch grass, bindweed or ground elder. Those are the weeds you lose sleep over.

According to http://www.herbalremedies.com/:

The dried or fresh herb is said to have anti-tumor, anti-inflammatory, astringent, diaphoretic, stimulant, laxative and diuretic properties.

I've read in several different places that the seeds can be roasted and ground, and used like coffee, but I've never tried it. And The Really Wild Food Guide has two recipes for the leaves (not the stems, though, which are very tough): Spicy Chicken and Goosegrass, and Birch Sap and Cleavers Risotto.

Cleavers get my vote. They're not much trouble in the garden, and they gave me so much mischievous fun as a child. I'd have to say that cleavers have probably enriched my life as much as any vegetable. They're my favourite weed.

How to Make Greek Yogurt

If I convinced you that everyone should make yogurt, here's how to do it in ten easy steps (and with no special equipment).

1. Fill a thermos flask with milk (you can choose any kind of milk - skimmed milk, full cream, goats milk - anything at all), then pour it into a microwave-safe container or a pan.

2. Bring the milk to the boil. I used a microwave, but you could heat it on a stove if you prefer. Just watch that it doesn't boil over. This step is to kill off any unwanted microbes that will cause the milk to spoil.

3. Allow the milk to cool to around 50°C (122°F). I've got a new whizzy electronic thermometer so I used that, but you could use any kind of thermometer, or you could stick your clean finger in it. 50°C isn't hot enough to burn you, but it's too hot to comfortably keep your finger in for long. This is the optimum temperature for the yogurt culture beasts to grow.

4. Add some live yogurt to the milk. You can use a little of your last batch, or you can buy some fresh yogurt to start your culture off. This contains some of the yogurt culture microbes that are going to multiply and turn the milk to yogurt. You don't need much. I usually use about a dessertspoon, but in extremis I have swilled the milk in an empty yogurt pot to rinse off the bits of yogurt clinging to the sides, and it worked fine.

5. Pour the proto-yogurt into the thermos flask. Fill it to the top. It won't change in volume at all. Now seal the flask and leave it somewhere it can be undisturbed for 8-14 hours. Overnight will be fine.

6. After 8-14 hours with any luck your flask will be full of yogurt. When you take the lid off, you'll think it has failed, because it has not changed in appearance at all. It gets me every time. But when you try to pour it out, you'll find it is no longer thin and liquid, but has thickened considerably*. But the chances are good that if you followed my instructions, you have made yogurt. Well done!

7. You can put your yogurt in another container and put it in the fridge (warm yogurt is kind of yuk) and eat it just as it is. But if you want to make Greek (strained) yogurt, there is another step to the process. Pour your yogurt into a muslin cloth, and suspend it over a bowl for two hours (I put the cloth in a colander over a bowl).

8. After two hours the colourless liquid whey will have strained into the bowl and the remaining yogurt will be thickened and creamier. You couldn't pour it now. You'll have to scrape it off the muslin cloth.

9. Congratulations, you've made Greek yogurt. It's deliciously thick and creamy, even when made with skimmed milk. It's more stable in cooking than normal yogurt (but did you know that if your yogurt separates when cooking, you can stir in a spoonful of cornflour and stabilise it?). I like it on its own with honey. It also makes wonderful raita.

10. If you leave it straining for longer than 2 hours it becomes thicker and thicker and eventually will have a consistency like cream cheese. Stir in garlic and herbs if you like, and use it like Philadelphia. Delicious.

*Well - sometimes batches fail. It happens to everyone. Here's a troubleshooting list:

• If the milk was too hot when you added the culture, all the beasts will have been killed. Warm it up to 50°C (122°F), add more culture and try again.
• If the milk was too cold, the beasts won't have reproduced. Warm it up to 50°C (122°F) but no hotter and try again
• If the starter was old, it may not have had any live beasts in it to begin with and the milk will still be runny. You'll need to get a fresh starter from the shops. It's up to you what you do with the warm milk. I suggest cocoa.
• If the milk was old it may have curdled. Pour it away, it's ruined.
• If the equipment wasn't clean, some spoilage microbes may have got in and spoiled the yogurt. Pour it away, it's ruined.
• If you didn't leave it long enough, it won't have had time to set (sometimes it seems sort of slimy but not really thick). Make sure it's still warm enough and leave it a bit longer.
• If you left it too long, it may have separated into yellow whey and white curds. It's fine. You can stir it back together, or use it as it is to make Greek yogurt.

Sourdough Pancakes

I've been feeding up my sourdough starter, and it's grown pretty big. I don't need this much starter to make bread, but that's OK - there are lots of uses for surplus starter. For example, we've been eating sourdough pancakes.

Sourdough Pancakes

To a cup and a half of sourdough starter, add a beaten egg, a tablespoon of sugar, a tablespoon of melted butter, two teaspoons of ground salt, two tablespoons of milk and beat well. At the last moment, add half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda and beat in, then make your pancakes. (The soda reacts with the lactic acid in the starter and makes bubbles of carbon dioxide. These expand in the hot pan and make the pancakes rise. The end result is somewhere between a drop scone and a crumpet). Drop a dessertspoon into a hot frying pan with a little melted butter. You can probably fit 3 or 4 of these little pancakes in your pan at a time. Cook until golden brown on one side, then flip over. Cook for less than a minute until golden brown and serve hot with syrup. My kids devour them, and my husband is very keen, too.

(If you haven't been following the story so far and you're wondering what "sourdough starter" is, it's a mixture of flour and water which is fermenting. You use it to make naturally leavened bread, without store-bought yeast, although there is "wild" yeast in the starter, along with other microorganisms. You can buy sourdough starters, and you can make your own. I made this one. If you don't have one you can't make this recipe. You could substitute a batter of flour and water and you can make some pancakes, but they won't be sourdough pancakes and they won't froth up as I described.)

Recipe: Ginger Muffins

The sediment of the ginger beer plant contained yeast and ginger, so I thought I'd use some to make some yeast-risen muffins. They turned out really well, and the kids have been devouring them. The best thing about the recipe though is the smell as they cook. So don't forget to take a few great big lungfuls and enjoy.

Ginger Muffins

Mix a couple of heaped teaspoons of the yeasty/gingery dregs with half a pint of warm water and one and a half cups of plain flour (all-purpose flour). If you don't have an expired ginger beer plant, you could just add a packet of instant dried yeast and a couple of teaspoons of ground ginger. Let it sit somewhere warm for half an hour or so, it should froth up so make sure it is in a large container or it may overflow. Cream 300g of sugar with 200g of butter, beat in 3 eggs one at a time. Beat in half a cup of treacle (molasses - or if you don't have any, substitute Golden Syrup, or honey, or corn syrup. It'll taste different to mine but it will still taste good). Add two teaspoons of cinnamon, half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda, a pinch of salt and a bunch of chopped nuts (I happened to have these in the cupboard. Could as well have been sultanas, chopped crystallised ginger, or just nothing). Mix it well, slop it into muffin tins and bake it at 180C for 25 minutes or so until the muffins are springy and done.

It's a big batch - I made about 30 muffins with it. And sorry for the weird Frankenstein mix of ounces and grams, weighed measures and cup measures. It's a bit of a Frankenstein recipe.

I still have lots of ginger beer plant sediment left, so I plan to do more experimenting with recipes that need ginger and yeast. I was thinking some kind of spicy tea bread next.

Recipe: Cheesey Bread Pudding

I love traditional bread-and-butter pudding with raisins and nutmeg, all hot and gooey and served with custard. This is a savoury variation that makes a delicious and cheap vegetarian main course.

Cheesey Bread Pudding

Butter 8 slices of bread and make sandwiches with grated mature cheese and sliced onion. Quarter the sandwiches and arrange in a baking dish. Feel free to vary to contents of the sandwiches. If it doesn't have to be a vegetarian dish, some ham would be very nice. Or you might want to put some pickle on the sandwiches, some sliced tomatoes, cooked sausage or whatever you fancy.

Beat 2 eggs with some milk, salt and pepper, and any other flavourings you like. I just rummage through the cupboards and see what I fancy - sometimes it's a generous helping of mixed dried herbs, or I might grab some fresh herbs from the garden. Or I might go for mustard powder, tabasco, or horseradish if I feel like something a bit spicy. It's up to you. It's that sort of recipe. You need plenty of liquid though, so add more milk until you think you have enough mixture to soak the sandwiches thoroughly. I reckon about half a pint or so.

Pour the flavoured eggy mixture over the sandwiches. If you had any cheese leftover, sprinkle it on top. Onion, too if you have any. Now bung it in a moderate oven for 25 minutes or so, until the eggy mixture has set and the cheese on the top is golden.



In a nutshell - it's cheese sandwiches with savoury custard poured over then baked in the oven. Now you know how to do it, go and invent your own family's favourite version.

Soda Bread Recipe

This is the bread recipe for people who are scared of breadmaking. That's because it's not actually bread at all, it's really more like a great big scone. It's quick and easy and really pretty foolproof.

Soda Bread

Dump about 1lb of wholemeal flour (not strong bread flour, just regular baking flour) in a large mixing bowl, add 2 tsps of bicarbonate of soda, 2 tsps cream of tartar (or you could add 4 tsps of baking powder instead of the bicarb and cream of tartar, and if you don't have any cream of tartar, don't worry about it just go ahead and make the recipe anyway with bicarb only) a good grinding of sea salt and 2-4 tsps of brown sugar if you have it.

Mix it all together with your hands, and then add about half of a half pint of milk, stirred yogurt or buttermilk (who has buttermilk nowadays? If you have it, use it, but otherwise just use milk. Oh, and if you didn't have cream of tartar or baking powder, be sure to use buttermilk or yogurt at this stage. If you just have bicarb on its own and plain milk then your bread won't rise. It will still taste good, but it will be very dense and chewy). Mix the flour and liquid together and add more liquid until you have dough. Feel free to add a bit more liquid than I said if that's what's needed to make dough, and if you overdo the liquid, work in a bit more flour. It's not a fussy recipe. As long as you have a ball of dough you're doing fine.

Shape it into more-or-less a ball and plonk it on a greased baking sheet. Sprinkle a few porridge oats on the top if you like (you can add a couple of handfuls of porridge oats to the flour next time if you feel like a change). Make deep cuts in the top, as if you were thinking of cutting it into quarters but changed your mind. Then bake it in a moderate oven until it is done. It will puff up and come apart at the cuts you made, which makes it easy to tear into chunks with your hands. Soda bread cut into neat slices with a knife makes me laugh. I would look at it after about 30 minutes, and take it out and tap it on the bottom. If the top looks cooked and the tap sounds hollow I would call it done, but if the top looks pasty and the tap sounds dull I'd give it another 5-10 minutes.

Wild Mushroom Soup Recipe

Wild Mushroom Soup

I didn't collect enough shaggy ink cap mushrooms to make a whole batch of soup, so I stretched them with some shop-bought mushrooms. This recipe works well with bog-standard shop mushrooms, shop-bought exotic mushrooms, or wild mushrooms. But you do need plenty of them. Fry a finely chopped onion and one or two crushed garlic cloves in a little olive oil. Add plenty of chopped mushrooms. They shrink down a lot as they cook, so add more than you think you need. When they mushrooms have darkened and shrunk, cover with milk. Add a bay leaf and simmer for a while. Keep your eye on the pan so the milk doesn't boil over. I left it to simmer very gently whilst I made some soda bread.

When you are almost ready to serve the soup, liquidise about half of it and add the pureed soup back to the chunky soup. I don't like totally smooth mushroom soup, but it's a bit watery just as it is. This step thickens the soup without adding anything gloopy like cornflour. Now taste the soup and add a little sea salt and freshly ground black pepper. Add a good slug of cream (or creme fraiche etc.) If you have any Madeira or port knocking about, a slosh of that wouldn't do any harm either. A garnish of finely chopped chives finishes the job. Serve with your soda bread which should be ready about now.

Recipe - Cheesey Number Sixes

... or sevens, threes, thirty-fives, or anything else.

This is the recipe I use to make cheese straws in the shape of numbers for birthday parties. Kids like them, the dough is easy to roll and cut with novelty cookie cutters, and being a wholefood recipe it's even moderately healthy, for party food.

Cheesey Number Sixes

Rub 2oz butter into 4oz self-raising wholemeal flour with some salt and a pinch of mustard powder. When it is the texture of breadcrumbs, add 3oz grated mature cheese, and a beaten egg. Bring it together with your hands into a lump of dough. Roll out and cut into numbers with shaped pastry cutters (we got a set of 99 pastry cutters from Lakeland and it's one of the best things we ever bought, I use them all the time), or make a paper template and cut around that with a pointed knife, or cut long strips with a knife and shape them into numbers. Place them on a greased baking tray and bake in a moderate oven until they're golden (about 10 minutes).

Ginger Beer Plant

Meet Ginger, the ginger beer plant.

We made her by adding half an ounce of baking yeast to 3/4 pint of warm water, 2 tsps sugar and 2 tsps ground ginger in a roomy bowl. Then we covered her with a clean cloth. See how much she had grown half an hour later.

We'll feed her every day for a week with a teaspoonful of sugar and a teaspoonful of ground ginger, and keep her warm and covered.

After a week, we'll strain her and add the liquid to 24oz of sugar, 2 pints of water and the juice of 2 lemons. Then we'll add 5 more pints of water and mix well. Then we'll bottle her in clean screw top bottles and store her in a cool place.

I'm pretty sure this was mum's ginger beer technique. I got it from Marguerite Patten's book 500 Recipes for Home-Made Wines and Drinks, which mum had. And I remember helping mum make and feed her ginger beer plants. The "beer" is only weakly alcoholic - the main point of the yeast is to make it fizzy and extract the flavour, not to make alcohol - so this drink is perfectly suitable for children. I think there's a way of dividing the plant at the end so you make a batch of ginger beer and keep the plant going for the next batch. I need to do a bit of research and find out how to do that, because it isn't mentioned in the book.

I'll keep you posted about Ginger's progress. Watch this space.

Black Forest Gateau

Black Forest Gateau

Separate 6 eggs. Beat the yolks until they thicken and become pale, then add 5oz sugar and continue beating until they thicken even more (but stop short of turning them into stiff glue). Now beat in 2oz cocoa powder until well mixed. Beat the egg whites until they form soft peaks. (If you only have one egg beater, you must wash the beater scrupulously in hot soapy water and dry well after beating the yolks. If your beater has the least bit of grease on it, the whites will never peak). Gently fold the chocolate mixture into the egg whites. This is the skillful bit, because they need to be well mixed but you don't want to knock all the air out of the beaten whites. Spread the mixture into two 9" loose bottomed cake tins, greased and floured, then bake at 180C/Gas 4 until the cakes are risen and springy, about 15 minutes.

Let the cakes cool, then place one on a serving plate and spread a small jar of home-made cherry jam all over it. Smother the other cake with whipped cream and carefully sandwich on top of the first cake. Cover the lot with more whipped cream, and sprinkle some grated dark chocolate on top for decoration.

If you "don't like black forest gateau", try this anyway. It's not like the Tesco version, I promise.