Calamari

A very stressful month … but enough about that, I ate at a local pub last Sunday, I think it is a Vintage Inn I had the calamari to start and I was pleasantly surprised by the flavours they had added, there was a mix of toasted fennel seed, coriander seed and what could have been onion seed that had been scattered on top and it was just a lovely element that lifted it from being “fried squid” in to a “calamari starter”, definitely one to take home and experiment with.

Christmas this year ...

Christmas this year was gloriously full of good food and great foodspiration, Santa happened to bring me River Cottage Veg , Nigel Slater's Tender vol 1 and 2 as well as The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler .... So I'm gearing up to buy my seeds for my veggies, but as I moved house at the end of the summer I have a lot of work to do; clearing and levelling off my veg patch and building a retaining wall where I'll be excavating a bank of soil. Hopefully all that can be completed for March so that I can get planting, but I'm not alone, some wonderfully kind friends have offered/ been coerced to help me (thank you).

So foodsparation updates; I made Hugh Fernley-Whittingstal's swede and potato pasties on Monday, delicious, and having dragged my self back to work yesterday I was slightly cheered up by the pasty I brought with me for lunch. I had rather a lot of broccoli that, as my mum would say, needed eating, so Nigel Slater provided me with a great recipe for broccoli soup, made with broccoli, bacon, potatoes, milk and pork stock and finished with crispy bacon on top. And I made a quick batch of a favourite of mine before work, Gordon Ramsey's wholemeal blueberry muffins, great for breakfast.

And finally ..... Christmas dinner was a success, the crackling was crispy everything was timed well enough to fit in the oven (note to Mr Gower, next kitchen we have we need 2 ovens!) and my stuffing was a triumph, I used this recipe from Delicious magazine (click here) and made it the day before and stuck it in the fridge, by doing this I really got all those flavours in to the pork and breadcrumbs, I will definitely be making it again, along with the plum crumble and Mary Berry's proper custard.

Lettuce guttering

I've just seen a great idea posted on River Cottage's Facebook page by Joseph Woosey; lettuce guttering, have a look for your self:

Great to fit in a little bit more veg in a small garden and looks like it could help in the war against slugs too!

An idea for on the side of our shed I think...Get to it Mr Gower :-)

Mysterious veg box ;)

Because I have a veg box delivered it's always a little bit of a mystery as to what will turn up, and always a fresh inspiration for the week. So it was great to see some huge Portobello mushrooms and some shallots in there, to my mind perfect for stuffed mushrooms, so last night that's what Mr Gower and I had. I softened the shallots, the mushroom centres and some garlic in butter first (of course!) and then added some white wine and a little chicken stock, after cooking for a short while I strained the shallots and mixed them with a blue Stilton, topped the mushrooms with the mixture and then transferred them in to the pan with the wine and stock, lid on. Served with a walnut and parsley couscous, delicious! I can't wait for my next veg box adventure!

Christmas etcetera

Ha ! this blog really should be called Mrs Gower's failed attempts of varied proportions .... spun sugar baubles! It sounded like such a simple and exquisite plan, what it actually was; a sticky and somewhat blobby mess, that rather than curled delicately in to a bauble snapped in rigid pieces. Failed!

The last few days have of course, and quite predictably, been rather Christmas orientated and one of my favourite things to do is wrap my Christmas presents while watching as many Christmas cookery programmes as I possibly can, so you've got all your turkey tips and interesting accompaniments, alternative Christmas puddings and such, but what I appreciate is when someone tells you (the cook) that here's something for you, so in order to keep your strength up on Christmas eve, Jamie suggests griddle pan waffles and epic hot chocolate have a look at it here. So lucky Mr Gower will of course get to partake in waffles and hot chocolate too!

Now what's on the Christmas menu this year? At my house it'll be me and my side of the family (Mr Gower's to arrive after Boxing day) so I'll be doing roast pork loin with crispy, salty crackling, and apricot stuffing and mustard sauce, there will also be sprouts cooked with pancetta and chestnuts, my perfected (finally) Yorkshire puddings, pasnips, pigs in blankets and my mum's roast potatoes, and for dessert; plum crumble with homemade vanilla custard, Superb!

Spun sugar baubles

Melted sugar and a whisk flung about and persuaded in to a bauble shape, with a dusting of icing sugar and ribbon. It sounds like the perfect Christmas plan to me, so we'll see how it goes!

Bento boxes and pretty food

All food is pretty, apart from a cheap beige buffet, but bento boxes are lovely, everything is separated, neat and where it should be, exactly how you wish your life was. I tried my own, a Mediterranean one; onion, red pepper and mozzarella frittata, butternut squash curls and lettuce and mayo rolls, really it was a 'bits that I needed to use up from the fridge' sort of lunch done in a neat fashion. At some point soon I'll buy all the ingredients to make a healthy Japanese bento box, perhaps not as cutesie as some that I've found, but they do look good. I also came across Carl Warner and his 'foodscapes', with bento boxes being the link between beautiful food and food made in to wonderful pictures it is a gorgeous stretch of the craft of cookery.