"Woodsy Quiche" - a creation for hubby's birthday

It was dear hubby's birthday this last weekend and he'd agonised for weeks - literally - over what to have for his birthday dinner.  Finally, the night before we went shopping for it and in what amounted to something of a desperate moment of being backed into a corner over the whole thing, he decided upon a quiche.

Not just any old quiche though.  He wanted a quiche that contained tiny sausage meat meatballs, along with chestnuts and a British white cheese.  Something of an artisan quiche, it seemed like!

Now I'm not exactly a dab hand with quiches, but I have made some creditable attempts at them in the past.  So I had a good idea of what to put with these ingredients to make a proper quiche-like texture and the additions of some curd cheese (bought from our local Polish shop), creme fraiche, a shallot and chives seemed to me to have the potential of doing the job.

We debated over adding mushroom, but didn't want the filling to become squishy.  Mushrooms are such a high percentage of water, this seemed highly likely unless they were fried off first and with the sausage meat, we were a bit leery of everything becoming too fatty.  Mind you, the sausage meat was 90% pork - so not much room for fat there.  As it turned out, I had a last minute good idea and added a couple of mushrooms as decoration - which because they were on top of the filling mix, were able to dry out under the fan of the cooker and so not cause any soggy problems.

Cooking and combining the ingredients for the filling was a simple matter of a bit of cutting and a-chopping, a little bit of rolling and frying and a lot of mixing - so no great difficulty there.  For some reason, the pastry had turned to concrete in our fridge (I think it may be turned up a little too cold) and it took a good few minutes of heaving and grunting over the rolling pin before it succumbed (warmed up, more like) and rolled out.  I was using a large quiche dish and had literally just enough pastry to line it, rolled really thin.  However, the thin pastry was a good thing, as it gave the filling lots of room to shine without having a mouthful of thick shortcrust pastry to contend with.

The flavours matched up really well.  The sausage meat loved the chestnuts, the chestnuts loved the cheese and the cheese loved the well seasoned egg mixture.

I don't recommend eating the quiche when it has just come out of the oven, as it is too bubbly then.  Allow it to calm down and cool to warm before you serve and it will be a lot more agreeable.  In fact, I ate the remainder for lunch today - cold - and it was excellent, so I can see the recipe would be well suited to a picnic or as a pot luck contribution, too.

I served ours with hubby's choice of vegetables; minted new potatoes, buttered asparagus and mange tout and it ate very well.  Cold, it would be just as nice with a potato salad and any number of green leafy or garden salads.

Summer is just around the corner, so why not tuck this recipe behind your ear for then!

I'm happy to announce that this recipe was "Recipe of the Day" for 1st April 2015 with eRecipe.com - and as such we have a badge to prove it!  Yay!



WOODSY QUICHE    (serves 5-6)

Ingredients :

Pastry

165g plain flour
pinch of salt
75g butter (if you're using salted butter, leave the pinch of salt out), at room temperature
100ml or so of cold water.

Filling

3 eggs
100g curd or cottage cheese
100g creme fraiche
pinch of sea salt
half a tsp freshly ground black pepper
1 tsp olive oil
1 small shallot, chopped finely
100g chestnuts, halved
250g (4 sausages) of 90% pork sausage meat
100g good Wensleydale cheese, crumbled into pieces
10g chives, chopped
2 mushrooms, sliced, to decorate.

Method :

1.  Begin by mixing up the pastry.  I use a food processor for this, but you can do the entire process by hand if you wish, in which case rub the butter into the flour until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.  If using a food processor, add the flour, salt (if using) and butter and process for as short a time as possible, or until the mix resembles breadcrumbs.

2.  Add the water little by little, mixing it through or by pulsing the processor and adding water in between pulses, until the dough has come together in a fairly dry, sandy, ball.

3.  Wrap the pastry in cling film and place into the fridge to rest for 20 mins minimum.

4.  In the meantime, mix up the filling.  Begin by rolling the sausage meat into tiny meatballs the size of your thumbnail.

5.  Then, pour the olive oil into a small pan and add the shallot.  Cook on a gentle heat until the shallot is beginning to soften, then remove it with a slotted spoon and reserve.

6.  Add the sausage meatballs and increase the heat a little.  Cook until the outer surface has turned golden on at least two sides.  There is no need to ensure the balls are cooked through.  Remove them and reserve to cool.

7.  Roll the pastry out and line your quiche dish.  Cover the pastry with some baking parchment cut to fit and pour in some baking beans or rice.  Place into a pre-heated oven at 180degC/350degF/Gas4 for 20 minutes or until the pastry has turned a light golden sandy brown.

8.  Remove the baking parchment and set the baking beans or rice aside to cool before going back into storage.

9.  Break the eggs into a large bowl and whisk to combine.

10.  Whisk in the curd cheese, creme fraiche, shallot, chopped chives and seasoning.

11.  Add the chestnuts, sausage meatballs and crumbled cheese to the mixture and stir to combine.

12.  Pour the filling mixture into the casing and gently spread everything around evenly.

13.  Add the sliced mushroom in a decorative pattern atop the mixture and press lightly into the mix.

14.  Place into the oven (still at 180degC/350degF/Gas4) for some 30-40 minutes or until golden in colour on top and, when pressed, the surface feels firm.

15.  Set aside to cool slightly and serve warm, not directly from the oven.

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Catalan Butifarra sausage pasta with chestnuts - thank you, Quiet Waters Farm

Wow.  These are by far and away the best sausages I have ever had the very great pleasure of sampling.  However, having said that, I'm getting a bit ahead of myself.  As my Dad would say, "start at the beginning".

My lovely friend Marcus Bawdon, he of "Country Woodsmoke" blogging fame and a mean old barbecuing pal (if you've not been to his blog, do go - but be ready to salivate a LOT), has been singing the praises of Quiet Waters Farm and their produce, particularly the sausages, a fair amount just recently.  So when I spotted - on the Quiet Waters Farm Facebook page - a competition to win some of their sausages, I was quick to slip a late entry in and crossed my fingers.

Lo and behold - and much to my surprise - I trotted in as one of the runners up and won three packs of sausages!  Yay!  I even had a choice as to which sausages I would like and went for the Catalan Butifarra (a delicate balance of black pepper and sea salt in a pork sausage), the Toulouse (garlic and white wine) and the Siciliano (fennel, garlic and lemon).

Now because of Marcus' bigging them up on his blog, they had an awful lot to live up to.  However, I trust Marcus and know that if he says something is great - it's probably a little bit better than great.  So I was super excited to receive and try these sausages.

They arrived on the day they were supposed to, tightly packaged and still frozen inside a polystyrene box that made it very easy to put them straight into the freezer.  Because we'd arranged the day of delivery, I had been able to include them in this week's menu plan and had opted to try the Catalan Butifarra ones first.  Now I had also done a little research about the Butifarra/Botifarra sausage in general and discovered that there are a number of different kinds of Butifarra sausage that originate from different areas of the world - hence the slight difference in the spelling.  Having the "Catalan" bit there in the name enabled me to pinpoint the research and establish what the primary flavours were likely to be and what, generally, people put with them.  Of course, it goes without saying that whatever the general method of cooking and serving was, I would wind up doing something different.  However, I learned that these sausages are often eaten with broad (or fava) beans - so earthy type flavours - and did not necessarily require pan frying, as they were often simply placed into a stew type of dish and allowed to cook gently for a long time.

So, "earthy flavours" eh?  Immediately - and that'll be because of the time of year - my thoughts flew to chestnuts.  I adore chestnuts and so do piggies, so chestnuts were a definite.  Naturally, chestnut mushrooms were hot on their heels and would be just perfect, but I needed something that would give colour and sweetness whilst retaining that "close to the earth" theme.  Peas were no good, sweet yes but earthy?  No.  Butternut squash was the answer, but because it can be slightly bland I thought I'd roast it to gain that lovely intensity of flavour that roasting a butternut can bring.

So I'd got my main ingredients, but as of yet no sauce.  Pasta has to have sauce.  I also had no input from any herbs - and I love herbs.  The obvious choice for herbs was a pesto - and I debated red pesto versus green pesto versus home made herb pesto but with a nod towards the fact that I'd quite like you to be able to reproduce the recipe, I went with a common or garden basil and pine nut, green pesto.  The pesto would give the background herb flavour that I had in my imagination, whilst saucing the pasta - but I wanted more than just a potentially greasy pesto.

At this stage, I was still envisaging the contents of the sausage pan being mixed into the pasta prior to serving.  Right up until I had a flash of inspiration and considered saucing both the sausages and the pasta, but with different sauces that would combine sympathetically in the bowl.  Aha!  We're onto something now.  It was a simple matter of adding a small amount of quite intensely flavoured vegetable stock to the sausage mixture, which would deglaze the pan and gather all those lovely sausagey, savoury flavours that would otherwise be lost.  Then, serve the pesto pasta into the warm bowl and add the sausage component next, with its light sauce that would trickle through the pasta just perfectly.  A small sprinkle of fresh chopped parsley over the top to underline the freshness of the herb flavours and a light grating of parmesan for its umami and salt and I was there.

All this just totally relied upon the sausages being ace for pork flavour and not exceptionally fatty.  Now flavour is a subjective thing and all I could do was hope, however the fat content of the sausages I knew about, as in talking to Quiet Waters Farm on their Facebook page, I'd established that the fat ratio ran at around 75/25 percent lean to fat.  Well that sounded okay to me - I'd just keep an eye on the fat that was accumulating in the pan and use as little as possible to begin with, then prior to adding the stock, if there was too much I could easily remove some by spooning it off.  Perfect.

You see, I had thought about this recipe before attempting it.  Just a little bit.  *chuckle*

Oh my goodness - or ERMAGHERD! - it worked and it worked absolutely beautifully.

These Catalan Butifarra sausages are incredible.  There is a claim on the website that "we know you will not have tasted anything quite like them before" and they are absolutely right.  After I had tasted a piece during the cooking, I described them to hubby as having a porky flavour that is more roast pork than sausage pork and that they are quite intensely porky.  He got a bit concerned at that, as he hates (with a passion) sausages that taste of "old pork".  You know how pork can sometimes taste really "piggy" more than porky.  Well not these babies.  Having tasted their succulent gorgeousness, he declared himself both surprised and relieved at the cleanness of the flavour.  The black pepper is slow to rise to the surface, behind the gorgeous richness of the intense pork that is subtly supported by the sea salt.  However, when it does, the flavours just dance across your tongue.  The robustness of the sausage is everything you would hope it could be - even without their natural casings to contain them (which I removed), there's no falling apart, no mushiness (that'll be the lack of cereal, then!), just firm, succulent, tasty sausage.  Oh happy days.  Hubby even went so far as to declare that they were the best sausages he had ever sampled (and he's a sausage connoisseur, let me tell you) - and I agree.

Having done "the fancy thing" with the Catalan Butifarra, we both then had a terrible hankering for a couple of them, pan fried, in between two slabs of doorstep Farmhouse bread, with lashings of real butter, HP sauce and a huge mug of builders' tea.  Which, at some point, just HAS to be done. 

Now, having got all the superlatives out of the way, let's have a think about any "Cooks Notes" I might have for you.

Firstly, if you should invest in some of these wonderful sausages (whoops, another superlative slipped in), which I heartily recommend, then you can follow the recipe as written.  However, if you're intending on using another type of sausage, go for as high a percentage pork as you can afford.

Secondly, when cooking the shallots it is important not to think "the pan is a bit dry, I'll add more oil".  No, add a splash or two of water, so that the shallots steam for a while before returning to frying.  You can do this several times, without any fear of loss of flavour.  The most important thing is to keep the oil to a minimum.

Thirdly, as with the oil, you need to keep the salt to a minimum.  The sausages have a natural saltiness in their recipe and you have the potential to make the whole thing over salted if you take into account the stock, the salt in the pasta water, the salty pesto and lastly the saltiness of the grated parmesan - so you definitely don't need any additional salt.  Tie your hands behind your back of you think you're likely to over season!

If you fancy it, to up the gorgeousness, you could add some porcini mushrooms along with the chestnut mushrooms - and use their soaking water to make the vegetable stock mixture.  They would add another layer of earthy flavour along with making the recipe a little bit more special.

So there you have it!  I cannot recommend these sausages enough - do, please, to go the Quiet Waters Farm website (just click on the name) and check out their Farm Shop where you'll find the hundreds of different type of sausages that are on offer.  The next ones to cross my cooker will be the Toulouse - and I can't wait!

CATALAN BUTIFARRA SAUSAGE PASTA WITH CHESTNUTS   (Serves 3)

Ingredients :

1 tbsp olive oil, split into 3 tsp
half a butternut squash (the thin end is best)
2 banana shallots, finely chopped
200ml warm water and 300ml warm water
1 pack of 6 Quiet Waters Farm Catalan Butifarra sausages, skinned and broken into small pieces
5 chestnut mushrooms
1 tsp vegetable stock base
250g pasta (spirali is good)
2 tbsp basil and pine nut pesto
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
parmesan cheese, for grating
sea salt and black pepper.

Method :

1.  Pre-heat the oven to 220degC/425degF/Gas 7.

2.  Cut and peel the butternut squash, then slice into small bite sized cubes.  Put one tsp of olive oil into a bowl with the butternut pieces, add a touch of seasoning and stir until the pieces are all coated in the seasoned oil.

3.  Tip the butternut pieces out onto a baking tray and roast for 20-25 minutes.

4.  Fill a large saucepan two-thirds full with water, add a pinch of salt and place on to boil.

5.  In a large frying pan, add the last two tsp of olive oil and the finely chopped shallots.  Do not add any salt, as between the butternut and the sausages, you already have a fair amount of salt there.  Sweat the shallots down for 5-10 minutes or so, if you find the pan is a little dry, add 100ml of warm water to add a little steam which will hurry them along a bit, without the threat of excessive colour.

6.  Once the shallots are softened, but not coloured, add the broken sausage pieces.  Increase the heat to keep the pan going, otherwise the cold sausage pieces will reduce the heat in the pan and everything will just boil instead of fry.  

7.  Once the sausage pieces have started to colour, add the mushrooms to cook alongside.  Cook everything until the sausage pieces have changed colour and are just cooked through.

8.  Once the water in the saucepan has boiled, add the pasta and cook to manufacturer's instructions.

9.  Back to the sausages.  Add 300ml of warm water and the vegetable stock base.  Stir to combine and cover the pan.  Reduce the heat and simmer for as long as it takes for the pasta to cook, then remove the lid and stir.  If the contents are particularly wet, leave the lid off to evaporate some of the liquid while you deal with the pasta.  If there is just enough liquid to form a glossy sauce, replace the lid - you're ready to go.

10.  Once the pasta is cooked, drain it well and add the pesto.  Stir through.

11.  Serve the pasta into warmed bowls, then add the sausage mixture on top.  Then sprinkle on a tsp of chopped parsley and grate a little parmesan over the top.

12.  Sit, eat and enjoy.

Printable version

It's never a meal plan? Yes - it is!

There you are, you see .....

We have been planning our meals all through the Christmas and New Year period - it's just that the meal plans have very regularly gone to pot as we've been either too poorly to make the things we've planned for, or just didn't fancy what we'd planned to have.

As a result, I've not been posting up the meal plans as it would be too confusing to try and follow what happened to various dishes that never saw light of day.

I have got to admit, though, that this situation hasn't improved much.  I reckon that for the seven meals that we plan, probably between 4-5 have been made just recently.  Last week was one of the better ones, but even then we've only managed five out of the seven!

... we have been eating - and rather well, too!

We're setting off on this week's meal plan with determination to see it through.  Whether this determination lasts, depends on whether either of us parents go down with the sore throat that is currently keeping son & heir from his studies at school.  We whisked him down to the doctor this morning, just to make sure that it wasn't tonsillitis he'd got - which it wasn't, thank goodness.  He's now all sorted out with antiseptic gargle and penicillin, so fingers crossed it won't last long.

Hence, of necessity, the meals for the beginning of the week are non-confrontational and designed to be easily swallowed.  So what's on the agenda?

Tues : Bacon & leek pasta

Weds : 2 sausage paella

Thurs : Lamb & mozzarella stuffed aubergines with a side salad

Fri : Gammon steak, cheesey champ, courgettes, mushrooms & peas

Sat : Pork, aubergine & porcini ragu with pasta

Sun : Beef & beetroot curry with rice

Mon : Chicken pie and vegetables.

The bacon & leek pasta is there because it is one of son & heir's favourite dinners - and just in case he might need some tempting.  It is very easy to eat and just slips down with the minimum of bother, so shouldn't be too challenging for a boy with a sore throat.  Fingers crossed!  Of course the fact that it is one of our favourite "go to" quick dinners doesn't hurt either.

Wednesday's 2 sausage paella is an idea borne of having the remaining half of a very nice chorizo sitting in the fridge looking for a home.  Hubby is planning on putting it together with some good pork sausages, red pepper, mushrooms etc. into a paella type rice dish.  Sounds like it will be lovely - and again, easy to eat for son & heir.

The Lamb & Mozzarella Stuffed Aubergines is a Peter Gordon recipe from the Good Food channel.  We're going through a bit of an aubergine (hubby's favourite) patch at the moment and as soon as hubby clapped eyes on this recipe, he was as keen as mustard to try it.  It uses Sumac, which is a new spice for us - but we have liked the little we've tried of it so far.  The recipe also makes use of all our favourite spices along with lamb mince (my favourite) and mozzarella cheese (son & heir's favourite), so as you can see, it just had to be done.

Friday's gammon steaks with cheesy champ (mashed potato with spring onion) is entirely down to a certain Mr Rod Tucker of the Good Food Good People Facebook page.  He recently posted a couple of photographs of his gammon steak dinners that made my mouth water so much, I just had to include gammon in this week's list.  We've a few spring onions that needed using up, so mashed potato became Champ, then migrated into Cheesey Champ - the idea of which is making me very hungry.  I'll make my creamy courgette & mushrooms which will provide some lovely moisture to the combination, along with some peas for colour.

Saturday is another of hubby's recipes, where he's planning a rich minced pork ragu using smoky griddled aubergine and soaked porcini mushrooms.  The combinations sound delicious and this should be really good.

Sunday is a curry recipe that I found in the BBC Good Food Magazine.  The sheer idea of marrying up beef with beetroot and curry spices is intriguing me and I can't wait to find out how it will be.  I can imagine it will prove to be sweet, earthy and rather gorgeous.  I may very well do a small vegetable curry to go with it, along with the rice.

Monday's chicken pie and vegetables is a meal that has (so far) been moved along from the Monday spot for three weeks in a row.  You never know, we might even get to eat it this week!

I daren't even make the tiniest suggestion of other makes or bakes - probably best not to tempt fate, don't you think?

 

"Turn the meal plan for this week over to me" he said ...

... and because I don't particularly like Bernard Matthews Turkey Steaks, I didn't.  *chuckle*

However, I did let hubby take the lead on this week's menu plan - only reserving the right of veto over things like putting two major carbohydrates together in a tart case.

My very favourite meal when we lived in Germany

I think we've wound up with an interesting combination of meals.  Although, our first choice for Tuesday (Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat - a german sausage with german potato salad) had to be dropped at the shopping stage.  For starters, we couldn't find the Jelly potatoes that we've been lapping up (they're only available in some Tesco stores, which obviously weren't the four we went to) and secondly, the supermarket(s) we were in hadn't ever heard of Bockwurst.  ~rolls eyes~

So we wound up with pizza.  Desperation struck, I'm afraid.

Retro - but flipping gorgeous!

Regrettably, I think we're going to have to re-think Sunday's Beef Olives, too.  We weren't sure what cut of beef to get - and decided upon Sirloin - but the price for the quantity we're going to need - even downgrading the cut - is just prohibitive.

I'd quite like to do a pot roast of Brisket or maybe a Chicken, but done in the Slow Cooker.  I'm really not sure about that one yet, I will have to ponder it further - but I've got time for that.

So, what does the menu plan look like?  Why, like this ...

Tue : was Bockwurst & Kartoffelsalat, became pizza

Weds : Rissoles, baked Sweet Potatoes with chilli lime cream, plus peas.

Thurs : Hearty Pasta Soup and Soda Bread

Fri : Smoked Haddock & Fennel Tart with Greek salad

Sat : Chicken kebabs with salsa & greek yoghurt in pitta bread

Sun : Beef or Chicken with potatoes of some kind, broccoli, carrots & peas.

Mon : Meatballs and pasta.

Because the majority of the dishes are hubby's ideas, he is inevitably doing a fair amount of the cooking.  It is difficult to take an idea and not convert it to your view of "how it should be" as he will obviously have a picture in his mind of how he wants the dish to turn out.  As we don't have the technology to be able to download these pictures for public consumption, he's going to have to cook them!

How I imagine Rissoles to look

Case in point being tonight's Rissoles.  Now I can't ever remember eating a Rissole.  Not the kind of Rissoles that he has been speaking about - made with lamb or beef mince, coated in seasoned flour and fried.  For hubby, however, this is part of his childhood and not only does he have a picture in his head, but also the memory of a flavour - which I have neither.  I'm intrigued to find out about these Rissoles, having heard a fair amount about them over the years!

Because of their potential for being high fat, we've decided on having a baked sweet potato with the lovely chilli/lime cream dressing.  For all that it's sour cream based, I'm quite sure there's less fat involved than using a great dollop of butter - and with the green peas to accompany them, hopefully a balance will have been struck.

Picture c/o BBC Good Food website

The Hearty Pasta Soup is my choice and it is a BBC Good Food recipe that I've known about for (literally) years and have put on the menu a couple of times, but each time it's been bumped off and I've never got to make it.  So, I'm having another go.  I was hoping to be able to get some of the walnut & blue cheese tortelloni (which is double yum) to be included in the soup, but  - probably because I was after some - there was none in the shop.  I settled on a spicy sausage tortellini that I'm hoping will have some flavour.  So many of these filled pastas are just little knots of flavourless Plasticine, but I'm hoping that due to the "spicy" aspect these will be different.  I'm looking forward to it - and I will be making some soda bread rolls to eat with it.

Eggs, versus ...

Friday's Smoked Haddock and Fennel Tart is a concept that came about through exhaustive brainstorming one evening.  I do so enjoy making tarts and can't quite decide - in this instance - whether to go down the "eggy quiche" route with it, or deviate into a "white sauce" route.  I know both the fish and fennel will be happy in a thick white sauce that has the fish poaching milk used in it along with maybe some herb or another (possibly parsley & the ferny fronds from the top of the fennel) and perhaps a light sprinkling of cheddar over the top that will melt when baked in the oven (sounds gorgeous).  However, the eggy quiche route is a much more reliable route to the final product.  You know, I can feel an inexorable pull towards the white sauce going on.

....... white sauce?

I think (hope!) that it would be nice when paired with a Greek salad of large sliced tomatoes, cucumber, olives and red onion with a sprinkling of Feta cheese - but is that too much cheese for the fish?  Hmmn, possibly.  We might have to lose the Feta, if so!

Saturday's Chicken Kebabs is another brainchild of hubby's.  He's envisaging strips of chicken that have been marinaded in lemon, thyme & olive oil, laced onto skewers with alternating pieces of courgette, cherry tomatoes, mushroom, aubergine and possibly apple.  He's proposing to grill them (maybe in the char grill pan, I'm not sure) and then once done, release them into a pitta bread.  Slosh on some Greek yoghurt and some suitably tasty salsa and you're done.  Sounds pretty darned yummy, to me.


I touched on Sunday's dinner earlier - and since then I notice that our local butcher is doing whole chickens for around £2.50!  Even if they're tiny little things, for that price we could get two.  I'm contemplating having a crack at jointing the chicken(s), which is something I've never done but would be interested at having a go at.  I'm assuming it'd be easier with a smaller chicken and I know my "Big Knife" (as it's known) is man enough for the job, it just depends on whether I've got the oomph to push it through a chicken!

Monday's meatballs and pasta is going to be an interesting one.  Yes, I've been having a bit of a meatball fest just lately - but I spotted a bag of frozen meatballs in Asda the other day, for a very affordable £1.55 for 500g of cook from frozen.  Now my guess is that these are going to be parlous as best and inedible at worst, but they've just got to be tested.  They purport to be 80% beef and have an encouragingly short ingredients list that doesn't appear to contain anything that would make your eyebrows lift in horror.


I'll be making a lovely powerful tomato sauce (possibly with a little chilli) to put them in and we'll have some grated cheese to sprinkle over the pasta.  It's rather like having your favourite curry the first time you use a new Indian takeaway, just to test what they're like.  Before I try doing anything startling with them, let's try them with a bog-standard sauce and get their measure.  I'm sure you'll hear, whatever the results are!


Apart from that, I still have three types of packeted rice pudding to try out (we tried the chocolate one the other day) and report back on.

I am STILL intending on cooking the Dorset Apple Cake - and had better get cracking on it, because the Bramleys I bought for it are slowly getting older and older!


I've also entered a Watercress Soup competition - so I'll soon be trialling a few recipes before deciding on my potential competition winner.  It's a good job son & heir is out for 5 lunches out of 7, as he'd probably leave home if faced with successive bowls of watercress soup for lunch!


Something else that's going to require some thought is what to cook for National Pie Week!  I'm considering steak and kidney, at the moment.  I do love a good steak & kidney pie, but it needs to contain loads of lovely pieces of kidney as well as be in a luscious rich beefy gravy.  Goodness, I've just made my own mouth water!  It is just such a good job that you can't put weight on by just thinking about food - I hope.

.

The black pudding experience continues!

Bacon, black pudding, mushrooms, poached egg and
sausages all served with hubby's perfect bread.
Now that's what I call lunch!

We found ourselves on the Ashley Road in Poole today and, while I went to the Library (bringing home Silvana Rowe's "Feasts" and Adam Byatt's "How to eat in"), Hubby managed to pick up some mushrooms, sausages and more black pudding - this time from the butcher's.

With the bacon that was surplus to requirements and in the fridge already, this all equated to a superlative lunch!

Oh, and I am filled with poached egg success, having produced two perfectly poached little beauties. 

It was Son's first go at Black Pudding (coming to the stuff rather more quickly than either his father or myself) and he declared it - after quiet consideration whilst chewing thoughtfully - as "nice!".  He said it was rather like the sausage from a bought sausage roll, except without the pepper - which I think describes it rather well.

Of course, he'd be rather better able to converse, if he wouldn't put quite so much in his mouth at one time - and maybe wearing a t-shirt to the table would be a good idea?  *sigh*  Kids, eh ....

Another butcher!

Sausages from Terry's the Butchers

I know!  We're getting carried away with butchers now.  LOL  Well, we just happened to be in the opposite end of our neck of the woods today - and right beside the award-winning Butchers, Terry's on the Ashley Road, Poole.

So, we popped in and got four of their plain pork sausages, as a comparison with Spring Fields.

As you can see from the photograph, they are of a somewhat coarser texture than Spring Fields', which is what hubby was looking for in a sausage.  They didn't smell as enticing, although they smelled jolly nice, but not mouthwatering.  They do, however, look better.

Once cooked, they have a similar saltiness with that lovely crispy skin and a very definitely coarser texture which is quite satisfying on the tongue, however, I didn't think they tasted as good as Spring Fields.  Hubby, interestingly, thought they were better than Spring Fields' both in texture and in taste!  Just shows what an individual thing, preference is.  :)

Still, Terry's Butchers make a very creditable pork sausage that I certainly wouldn't turn down!

A butcher - at last!

Ever since we first moved into this County (from Kent), nearly three years ago, I've had it in mind to find a local butcher to use regularly instead of keep buying sub-standard meat from the supermarket.

Up until now, this hasn't managed to happen (for one reason or another).  However, this morning we visited the butcher that Chef uses at work - who just happens to be en-route to Asda.

We caught Spring Fields Butchers on the Herbert Avenue, Parkstone, Poole, before they'd managed to get their complete display out into the cabinets, but oh golly, what mouthwatering goodies they had already on display.  Beautiful dark red Sirloin steaks, Wild Boar sausages, lamb shanks, plus your regular mince, chicken breasts etc.

I was particularly after two lamb's kidneys to go in the Lancashire Hotpot we're having on Sunday and was fairly gobsmacked to be charged 35p for them both.  I'd been envisaging paying a lot more than that!  While we were there, we indulged in four of their pork sausages - as the worth of a butcher can often be found in his sausages!

Having got them home and unwrapped them, immediately you could smell that they were different to supermarket sausages.  They smelled lovely - all herby and peppery and porky.  Better than a supermarket sausage - which generally smells of nothing.

When cooked, they were even better - although hubby had a few areas of disappointment in them.  I loved their crisp skins and the flavour that was somewhere between pork sausage and pork sausagemeat stuffing with a lovely initial hit of saltiness.  I also liked that they kept their shape and didn't shrink under heat.  Hubby agreed with me, except was disappointed that their texture was slightly pappy (he was hoping they'd be coarser than that) and suspected that the saltiness hid the fact that they didn't taste all that porky.  However, we were both agreed that for the extra 30p or so for 8 - over a supermarket special offer sausage - they were infinitely better quality and well worth the extra.

I'm hoping that they'll let me have a copy of their full price list, which would make menu planning so much easier.  I'll be able to use cheaper cuts of meat which just aren't available in supermarkets and be able to plan it all out at home, using their price list, before ringing them up on a Monday, to order for Tuesday's collection.  Fingers crossed they'll do that!

Sausage & Mozzarella Pasta Bake

This is a dish for those days when you want to provide a good wholesome meal that pleases everyone, but have completely run out of inspiration.

It is such a ridiculously simple dish but it is an evergreen that we simply don’t seem to be getting bored with. The original recipe was one of Jamie Oliver’s “Food for a Fiver” recipe cards produced by Sainsbury’s. However, I felt that the tomato sauce was a bit weak, so have broadened the flavours with the addition of a few extras.

If you’re feeding a number of people, you can include a green salad and/or garlic bread. However as it’s just us three and none of us need the extra calories, we don’t bother.

The dish is just as nice the following day, for lunch, so perfect for anyone carrying lunch to work provided you've a microwave there!

Sausage & Mozzarella Pasta Bake

Ingredients (to feed 3-4) : 

1 pack of 8 sausages
200g approx of penne pasta
Sufficient Mozzarella to cover the top of your casserole dish.  I used 3, but then we did eat almost half of one before it ever reached the dish. lol
As much broccoli as you think your family can stand.
2 tsp olive oil
1 onion, chopped fine
1 clove of garlic, grated or chopped fine
1 small red chilli
400g tin chopped tomatoes
1 tbsp tomato puree
1 tbsp tomato ketchup
A shake or two of Worcester Sauce
Half a teaspoon of Oregano
Salt & pepper

Method :

1.  Place the sausages onto a baking tray and bake for 25 mins at 190deg C. You want them to be just browned, as they’re going to cook further in the casserole dish.

2.  While they are cooking, put a large pan of salted water on to boil and then cook the broccoli florets for no longer than 2-3 minutes. Remove with a slotted spoon (reserving the cooking water for the Penne pasta) and place into the casserole dish. Place the pasta in to cook according to the instructions on the pack, once the water is back to boiling.

4.  In the meantime, in a high-sided frying pan, sweat off the onion and chilli in the oil and add the garlic and oregano when almost done.

5. Add the tomatoes, tomato puree, tomato ketchup and Worcester sauce. You may need to add 100ml of water, depending on how juicy the tomatoes were. Allow this to simmer gently while the pasta cooks and you chop the part-cooked sausages into four.  Taste and adjust seasoning as necessary.


6.  Ultimately, combine the sausages, pasta, broccoli and sauce together in the high-sided frying pan, mixing gently to ensure everything is covered with sauce. Decant into the casserole dish, add a layer of sliced mozzarella cheese on the top (try not to eat it all!) and bake in the oven at 190deg for around 30 minutes or until the cheese is golden and bubbly.

Scrumptious "in front of the t.v." food.  :-)

{Edited to add the broccoli, which I forgot to add to the ingredients list, and to say no, you're not seeing things, this is the second time I've posted this recipe.  *sigh*  Call it blog blindness, I'm forgetting what I've posted where!}.