Herb garden

Continuing with what seems to be a piece by piece reveal of my new garden (still waiting on some workmen), I finished planting up my herb garden today. I had and still do have, herbs down at the allotment, I’ve been pretty successful with growing the perennials but I should have guessed what would happen, I’m cooking a dish, I fancy adding a bit of rosemary, am I going to pop down the allotment (10 minute walk) to get some? Of course not. I need to investigate herb drying for the allotment herbs, it’s the only way I’m going to use them, harvest them in bulk, either that or transplant them back in my garden, but most of them are quite big now and I don’t really have the space, so cue my mini herb garden.

When the builders were working on my back garden they had planned just to raise the manhole cover a little and put a stone (instead of the original metal) lid on it, however as they worked the idea began to offend their artistic sensibilities a bit, so they set a rectangle of red brick around the manhole cover, laid down a membrane, filled it with gravel and went “there you go, you can put a plant pot on it”. Actually I had been planning on putting a ‘plant pot’ there anyway, I had been thinking of finding one of those old vintage sinks (which would have been around the right size), putting that on the manhole cover and hey presto, one hidden manhole cover. I’d always planned on having a herb garden there, as it’s so close to the back door. But I got my red gravelled ring instead and I had to rethink the vintage sink idea. Now I think that some people may have the idea that London is some vintage salvage yard paradise (it seems like it if you read all the magazines / watch the TV programmes), well my bit of London isn’t, however there is one place, full of beautiful furniture that looks like they need stories written about them and which I would need a house at least six times as large to even think about fitting just one piece in (those French cabinets are big) which luckily also had some garden stuff and I scored a couple of vintage French urns (one of which still literally smelled of a French farmyard, as I struggled to carry it back home). The herb garden is in one of the urns.

I started planting it up at the beginning of March; the supermarket survivor mint (which I had bought at the beginning of January and had already reached a survival record for a supermarket herb plant), oregano, thyme and I thought (trying to replicate the success of the supermarket survivor mint) I’d risk it by also planting a supermarket rosemary plant to. The supermarket rosemary didn’t make it and has since been replaced with a plant from a nearby florists which is so far doing well (my dad (a proper gardener) frowns on me buying plants from florists and supermarkets and heaven, DIY stores, but as well as a lack of salvage yard wonderlands, there is also a lack of decent garden centres round here, there is one but it’s a bit out of the way and so posh you literally feel like you can’t buy anything unless you’re titled, so I buy my plants where I can, or online, although online has it’s hazards to, as the plants always arrive exactly when you can’t get into the garden / allotment to plant them). The supermarket survivor mint is amazing, still going, it seems to have this cycle of looking like it’s died and is just a collection of thin sticks and then a week later it’s flourished back to life. I saw it do that again and again whilst it was a window sill plant indoors and again whilst outside in the herb garden, I’ve found it really appreciates being harvested pretty heavily, then it doesn’t go through the dying phase for a while. The oregano is a bloody menace, I should have remembered that from the allotment, it’s about four times the size from when I planted it, I need to expand my repertoire of dishes using oregano rapidly. The thyme is also doing well.

The new additions were bought at a local plant sale this weekend; ginger and Moroccan mints, purple basil, coriander and parsley. I have been attempting to grow basil, coriander and parsley from seed but I’m proving pretty rubbish at it, I can get it to germinate but it doesn’t get much bigger. I’m doing ok with big seed plants, I’ve grown from seed this year my courgettes, butternut squash, pumpkins and sunflowers but anything with little seeds …., I will persevere.

The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook

I am not doing too well in my efforts to get rid of some cookbooks, I’ve only got rid of one so far and now I’ve gone and bought another cookbook, so sum change = 0. In my defence the kids owed me some Waterstones vouchers, so pah, what was I gonna do? Anyway, The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook attracted me because I’d read in reviews how small Deb Perelman’s kitchen was and I thought “I’ve got a small kitchen to, this might just be the book for me!”, so I bought it. I don’t follow the Smitten Kitchen blog, although I feel I perhaps ought to now because I really liked the book.

This is what I made

Ratatouille sub

This was a semi regular attempt of ‘I’m going to get vegetables into my family even if it kills me’, the result? Boy Lacer devoured all of it (good boy), Girl Lacer picked out the bits she didn’t like (about half of it) and Mr. Lacer ate his to. Me? I really liked it but even though the ratatouille method was meant to be easier (and more small kitchen appropriate), I found it a bit of a faff and will be resorting to my normal ratatouille method next time. As for a ‘next time’, I’m not sure I would go and make ratatouille specifically for a sandwich again but it’d be a great way of using up left overs.

Toastie with emmental and red onions with green slaw

Pretty much the only thing that wasn’t burnt about the toastie was the emmental. I thought the red onions cooked in brown sugar and balsamic vinegar was a really nice idea but I felt that the cooking time was too long and I should have trusted my instinct more than the book. The burnt bread, entirely my fault. Still, it was nice and it’s tempting to do again because who doesn’t love a cheese toastie? And I love anything to do with red onions.

The green slaw was ok to but despite the claims in the book I thought it didn’t keep very well and I ended up throwing out the left overs the next day.

Apricot breakfast crumble

This was delicious, not sure it was particularly breakfasty mind you. It took a while to make as well, which resulted in Boy Lacer throwing a hissy fit, me having to make him a normal breakfast and then him having a second breakfast when this came out of the oven.

Butternut squash and caramelised onion galette

Making this felt like a Great British Bake Off moment, one where the contestant is about to go home, as the butter from the made from scratch pastry completely leaked out all over the oven. I think that the instructions to make the pastry were a bit iffy but I went along with it because I haven’t made that much pastry before, so I’m no expert, hmm should have trusted instinct again, as I later went and consulted how to make pastry in Paul Hollywood’s book and the method was pretty different. However thankfully, even with the butter all leaking out, the result was still absolutely delicious. I had been kicking myself whilst it was still in the oven, that I didn’t cheat like I normally did and bought ready made, however even with the butter leaking out, the pastry was still gorgeous and as nice as ready made pastry is, (badly made) homemade is nicer. The filling was gorgeous to (basically just cheese, butternut squash and onion) and would make a great topping to the Nigel Slater inspired tarts I usually make (with ready bought pastry). And the left overs were great cold to.

You can find a similar recipe here, interestingly the pastry recipe is different and is more how I’d expect to make pastry.

Leek fritters

(Made with a mix of the remains of my allotment leeks and shop bought ones). These were nice, particularly the creamy lemon dressing. They also freeze and defrost well.

Margherita pizza

OMG best homemade pizza ever, so simple and quick (relatively) to. I used the Rushed pizza dough method, which involves adding more yeast and letting your dough sit in a previously warmed for 5 minutes oven, I’ll admit I’m not sure the dough even raised (I think it was meant to) but still the resulting dough made the thinnest most authentic you’re ever going to get out of my kitchen, pizza base. The toppings were really simple to, which is what it should be.

The pizza above was for the kids’ tea, I just had to make it again a few days later for me and Mr. Lacer, I wasn’t convinced the pizza size above would be enough so I doubled the recipe. I consequently (for some reason) couldn’t roll the dough out as thin as before, although it was still pretty thin and doubling it for two adult was probably a bit too much. Will try it at 1 1/2 x the amount next time and there will be a next time.

Butter popcorn cookies

Oh just typing those words made me drool, these were, although a bit odd, absolutely gorgeous, they just had that perfect combination of textures, the crunch of the popcorn and the cookie itself, oh the cookie, the cookie itself was the closest I’ve ever seen to the sort of soft and chewy cookies you get at Millie’s, I will definitely be experimenting with that dough to see what other cookies I can make.

The kids, when they came home from school and I announced I’d been making popcorn cookies were all a little sceptical “Did you get that from a book mummy? Or did you just decide to put popcorn in?”, I think they were more siding on the mummy’s gone loco viewpoint. But even they liked the cookies once they tried them (sort of reluctantly).

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So, in summary I wouldn’t get rid of this book anyway, I’ve only just bought it but I wouldn’t anyway, admittedly there are a few recipes in here I’d do a little different if/when I make them again but the book is fantastic inspiration and to be honest worth the price alone for that pizza and the popcorn cookies recipe. There is still quite a lot I’d still like to make from the book, the baking sections in particular I feel I’ve only just touched the surface of. So I’d recommend this book.

Flour-free chocolate and beetroot cake (Love, Bake, Nourish)

I’m in the middle of having a bit of a thing about beetroot, which is unfortunate for the rest of the family, as no one else likes it. Today it was flour-free chocolate and beetroot cake from Love, Bake, Nourish by Amber Rose. Love, Bake, Nourish is a bit like Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, in that it’s ‘healthy’ cakes, except this time as well as getting rid of the butter (in most of the cakes), Rose has also (in most of her cakes) got rid of the sugar to, well the processed sugar, there is honey, but not that much. But unlike Red Velvet Chocolate Heartache, where there you have various vegetables hidden in the cakes (to make up for no butter and to reduce the amount of sugar that is needed), the flour free chocolate and beetroot cake in Love, Bake, Nourish, is one of only a small handful of cakes in the book with vegetables in, I’m not quite sure how Rose does it, it’ll be interesting to see what her Victoria Sponge type cakes (of which there are quite a few variations), taste like with no sugar. So far though I’ve been talking about what’s not in the cakes (and puddings and tarts to), what is in them is quite a lot of fruit, hence the ‘nourish’ bit of the title I guess and of course that makes up for the lack of sugar.

So, the flour free chocolate and beetroot cake, it was fun making, which is a big part of the point of baking I think, it smelt gorgeous and was fairly simple to do. I was surprised when the cake came out of the oven, there’s still definitely a purple tint, I had thought the brown of the chocolate would overwhelm and upon tasting the cake, you could still taste it as well, but in a nice way (I suspect that the rest of my family aren’t going to think that). It’s very rich, more out of curiosity and less to do with me supposedly being on a diet, I worked out the Weight Watcher’s points value, 7, for those lucky enough to avoid Weight Watchers, a can of coke is 4, a bar of chocolate 5 – 6, no idea what a slice of normal chocolate cake would be, I suspect a lot more than 7. The richness is probably a good thing, makes it so that one slice is definitely enough, I will see if the rest of Lacers will eat it when they get home from work and school today but I suspect I’m going to have to try and freeze slices or something because there’s no way I could eat all that cake myself before it went off. There was one thing I didn’t really like about the cake to, although it was bearable (that’d be the chocolate for you), the ground almonds that allowed the cake to be flour free, I don’t ‘mind’ almonds, specially ground almonds, I can’t normally taste them if a cake recipe calls for them to be included but here I can and it’s a bit off putting. It’s a very strong flavoured cake thinking about it, with three things; the chocolate, the beetroot and the nuts assaulting your taste buds, no bland shop bought thing this cake!

Making my cookbooks earn a place on the shelf – Bill’s Basics

I’ll admit straight off that I knew I wasn’t going to get rid of this one, it contains the so indispensable I’m actually bored of it, Cake For a Crowd recipe, which I have made over and over and over again and is the go to recipe for quick birthday cakes or cake sales. I also hazily remembered there were some other good recipes in it to, but other than Cake for a Crowd, I hadn’t cooked from this one for a while.

Now, my testing was under the slightly ‘extreme’ conditions of it being the Easter holidays (where suddenly I was even more in love with my children’s school dinners than I normally am), my oven requiring several engineer visits and my kitchen floor was having ‘issues’. So I spent a lot of the time between now and my last cookbook test ‘giving in’ and cooking for the consensus (as Mr. Lacer also had a week off work) and cooking food that wasn’t guaranteed a chorus of “I don’t like that!’, so imagine lots of fish fingers, pasta and supermarket pizza. However when I did cook (and the oven was having a random bout of actually working), this is what I made.

Butterscotch madelines

The oven conceded to work for about 24 hours, so I made these, I even bought a madeline tray (Mr. Lacer buries face in hands as he know’s exactly how overflowing my cake tin cupboard is, actually *ssh* don’t tell Mr. Lacer but I couldn’t actually fit it in the cake tin cupboard and it’s on top of the fridge on top of the wok). However the madeline tray was a little bit pants, as the shell like ridges weren’t that obvious on the finished cakes (unlike on the kids favourite brand of shop bought madelines). However, the actual cakes tasted fine.

(Not so lemony) Lemon Drizzle Loaf

Then the oven wasn’t working again and in desperation I resorted to our smaller microwave-combi oven, which I am normally very distrustful of baking anything in, you can see what happened to the cake, it broke apart when I tried to get it out of the tin, I don’t know if that’s something to do with the oven, maybe too many blueberries or maybe I should have lined the bottom of the tin (which I did grease) with baking paper, even though the recipe didn’t say so. Anyway, the cake includes a lemon drizzle, which I didn’t do as Girl Lacer hates lemon cake but even missing that step out she still thought it was too lemony (honestly the cake was about as lemony as my shoe, it only have a very tiny amount of lemon zest in it and I couldn’t taste it) but anyway, that just meant more cake for us because despite its appearance, it was quite nice (it’s beginning to cramp my baking style Girl Lacer’s dislike of citrus based cakes, she also doesn’t like cakes with buttercream icing, unless it’s chocolate buttercream or cakes with jam, sigh, Boy Lacer is distinctly less complicated, cake of any form is one of his favourite food groups).

Chicken parmigiana

(Cooked in the microwave-combi oven again). This was ok, a little too meaty for me (I would definitely not call myself a vegetarian but I don’t eat much meat and when I do I prefer dishes where meat is an ingredient amongst many others and not the star of the show), Boy Lacer wolfed his down, as when he’s not eating cake, he’s eating meat, he’s quite a carnivore.

all’Amatriciana

I may have made this before, I can’t remember, it probably wasn’t that memorable, just as it wasn’t that memorable now, could have done with being spicier. But still, this marked the kids being back at school and me cooking for myself at lunch times, yay!

Chickpea burgers

This was an attempt at ‘my kids are going to eat decent food even if it kills me’, they didn’t eat it. I quite liked mine but I hate cooking with chickpeas as tinned chickpeas smell so strongly of cat food (well I think so anyway), it always puts me off. Will probably not be making again.

Beetroot soup

This was yummy, one of my favourite soups is Yorkshire Provender Beetroot and Horseradish soup, this soup lacked the kick of the horseradish (although is fairness to Bill Granger he did say to make an accompanying horseradish cream but I didn’t have any cream), so I’m still not sure which soup I prefer, I have tons of left overs in the freezer, so will have to try it with the horseradish cream next time I heat some up but I think even without Bill’s Beetroot soup had a nice warm depth, due to the added tomatoes that my favourite branded soup lacked. And of course, making the soup is so much more cheaper than going to buy a posh branded one, I have another five portions in the freezer and considering I’m the only one who likes beetroot soup, I’m all right for beetroot soup for quite some time.

Tomato soup

After attempting to make tomato based homemade baby food for Girl Lacer, I decided that life is definitely too short to peel a tomato (and she still doesn’t like them anyway), so I rarely cook with fresh tomatoes, they’re quite expensive anyway compared to tinned tomatoes or passata and if you buy them out of season, nowhere near as much flavour as tinned tomatoes or passata anyway. But this soup, although involving fresh tomatoes, at least didn’t involve skinning them, so I gave it ago, halving the ingredients as no way was I buying four packs of plum tomatoes (ouch). The tomatoes are roasted alongside a pepper and some carrots and it gave the soup a nice rich added extra warmth that I don’t normally associate with tomato soup. It was ok, I’m not a massive fan of tomato soup, I think someone who actually really liked the stuff would really like it.

Peach and blueberry pudding

This was gorgeous, I substituted the fresh peach and blueberries with tinned peach (meaning I missed out the first baking stage) and frozen blueberries, I was worried that this would add too much liquid to the dish (even with draining the peach) but it was fine. There is no way I’d get fresh peach this time of year and blueberries would have been shipped in from god knows where, so this was a really great way of getting a nice, colourful, flavour packed pudding in early spring, the bright orange – yellow of the peach and the purple of the blueberries was just so cheerful! Even Mr. Lacer the pudding hater liked this one and it literally vapourised from Boy Lacer’s plate, will definitely be making again.

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So eight dishes from one book! And there’s still quite a few more I’d like to try, the baking section looks particularly good but I obviously wasn’t doing much of that over the last few weeks. There’s also a good breakfast section for when my life miraculously transforms into the sort of life where I have the time and energy to make those sort of breakfasts, hmmmm. I wouldn’t say that Bill’s Basics has loads of blow your taste buds away type dishes, most of them are more a little run of the mill but they’re incredibly doable, don’t have massive ingredient lists and are the sort of basics you want to have in your repertoire, so it does exactly what it says on the cover. So of course this book is not going to go down the charity shop, in fact I’d say if I ever had to reduce my cookbooks down to just a fraction of a shelf instead of the more minor going from 3 shelves to 2, which is what I am doing, this cookbook would be on that fraction of a shelf.

Related articles

• The Re-Return of the Naked Chef aka the balsamic week (making my cookbooks earn their place on the shelf) (lacer.wordpress.com)

Garibaldi biscuits

Our refurbishment earlier this year did not agree with our oven, since moving back in I’ve literally now lost count how many times it’s broken down and we’ve had to call the engineers out, only for them to get it working long enough for me to use it for a day (for example the day I cooked the hot cross buns) and then for it be as dead as a dodo again when I tried to turn it on the next day. So far since the latest engineer visit it has been working for two days, I still feel like I’m dicing with baking jeopardy every time I switch the thing on though and the pessimist in me is absolutely convinced it’s going to break again, so I thought I’d better bake whilst I could (we also have a small microwave – combi oven which I’ve been using, but it’s not brilliant at baking, I’ve tried).

So I made Garibaldi biscuits from the Peyton and Byrne book. Garibaldi biscuits are very much a biscuit from my childhood, in the same way my kids are probably going to get fond memories of plain Hob Nobs, I’d never tried homemade Garibaldi biscuits before so I was interested to give them a go. Well, the dough was tricky to handle and needed at least twice as much milk as the recipe suggested for the dough to stick together and even then the dough was definitely not ‘firm’ as the recipe suggested, hence the biscuits rather shoddy appearance. I also used a dried fruit mix instead of just currants as that’s what I had in the cupboard (from the aforementioned hot cross buns). However, even with all that they were pretty delicious, so much so I’ve just eaten way too many of them, oops, and not at all like the shop bought biscuits of my youth.

Easter Boxes

My kids eat too much chocolate at Easter and it never makes me particularly happy, after all I spend all year trying to make sure they don’t eat their body weight in the stuff and then twice a year (Christmas is also bad), I’m meant to give them free reign? Anyway, I know I can’t win on that one but this year I thought I’d tone down the amount of chocolate they were getting from us (grandparents are a law onto themselves). This decision came at a point anyway where I had to switch what sort of Easter eggs I was getting them, they’re too old for the little kiddy ones and I’m certainly not getting them full size ‘adult’ eggs, you know the sort of branded ones for Dairy Milk, Maltesers or whatever, as I definitely don’t like them eating what I term ‘grown up’ chocolate, as the portion sizes are too big (actually Maltesers aren’t that bad*, if they’re shared ….). So, anyway this year I got their chocolate from Marks and Spencer, it’s less obviously branded, has some nicely designed packaging and comes in a range of sizes, so I could buy smaller eggs. So I bought a small hen egg each, a tube of Jelly beans (after I succumbed to temptation in the queue in Smiths, WH Smith are getting increasingly annoying with their peddling of sweets and god knows what at the check out) and taking inspiration from Angry Chicken, I bought a few bags of various small chocolate eggs plus two little mini bunnies from M&S and made some ‘candy terrariums’.

Really I could have done with some bigger containers than the Kilner jars I used, as you can’t really see the rabbits in the middle but I liked how they kept the chocolate safe from the elements and I thought the kids would like a jar each of their own, as sometimes we have a family jar of sweets up on the shelf. I also thought it would encourage them to make the chocolate last longer. (I’m grabbing the jars back off them when they’ve finished with them).

To distinguish between jars I made a couple of embroidered tags, a vintage pattern for Boy Lacer and a free pattern from Lilipopo for Girl Lacer. They were embroidered on felt, I’m really pleased with how Boy Lacer’s turned out.

But no so much with Girl Lacer’s, I should have used white felt again but ran out.

The light’s also bad in these photos, I predict light is only going to be good some time in mid April (I hope).

Also in the boxes are a small present each; Girl Lacer was easy, a bubble writing book, she is obsessed with that at the moment, so should love it. Boy Lacer was harder, he’s always hard, as to be honest he’s not really happy with anything unless it’s electrical, but as he sometimes likes building thing in real life as well as on screen, I took a chance on some art straws, ah well if anything Girl Lacer will get her hands on them in 6 months time.

And finally I made them a softie each, well aware as I was working on them that a) I hadn’t made softies in a long time (the number of rookie mistakes I made with these!) and b) my kids really are getting too old, but it’s the thought that counts and I’m going to make the most of every last available opportunity to do things like that for them whilst there’s still a chance they might appreciate it. Unfortunately of my generation, in my immediate family, there aren’t many kids and certainly no babies anymore (actually there is one but I don’t really see the parents that much, if at all), so my small children crafting opportunities are non existant, will have to twiddle my thumbs for twenty odd years till I’m a grandma Anyway, the rabbit bodies were from an Aranzi Aranzo book but I changed the eyes and added the tummy detail.

(sneak peak of my new garden)

The rabbits were heavily inspired by my absolute Twitter favourite @MYSADCAT  , a cat with the most soulful, staring eyes.

*I read once, an interview with some master chocolatier and he said that of all the main stream branded chocolate, in his opinion Maltesers were the nicest, most ‘proper’ chocolate sweet, I could always see what he meant.

Hot cross buns

Easter is like Christmas, craft wise, but with far less pressure, so I wanted to cook something Easter-y and considering I’ve been eating my body weight in Waitrose hot cross buns (imho the nicest supermarket hot cross bun ever, particularly the wholemeal or the apple and cinnamon varieties and unfortunately for my waistline always on special offer if you buy two packs), I thought I’d give the real thing a go. I had planned to cook a Rachel Allen recipe, well, I certainly wasn’t going to try the hot cross bun recipe I tried last year, which was a disaster. But then I caught up with The Great British Bake Off Easter Special on iPlayer and old blue eyes himself was making hot cross buns and well of course I jumped ship. The recipe from the show is here but I used the recipe from Paul Hollywood’s How to Bake, which is pretty much exactly similar, except in the book he uses a mix of milk and water for the liquid component and on GBO he used just milk.

So, this morning I kneaded the dough.

Making the most (for the first time since the kitchen was done) of the real wood worktops, I would never have done that on our old disgusting, hard to get properly clean laminate and it is one of the reasons why, when I was busy finding the cheapest possible tiles and quibbling over the costs of towel radiators, I completely splashed out on the worktops (although in my defence, at least one benefit of a tiny kitchen, I wasn’t ordering an awful lot of real wood worktop).

I then left it to rise whilst I went shopping (Girl Lacer being a complete sweetheart and wanting to buy Grandma and Granddad Easter Eggs with her own money, whilst Boy Lacer wanted to buy an Easter Egg for himself …). Then back to knock the dough down and add the mixed fruit, apple and cinnamon, kneaded again (helped by Girl Lacer this time) and then left to rise for a second time. I then shaped  them into buns (struggling to get 12 buns, settling instead for 10) and left to rise for a final time.

I then added the crosses (watching Paul Hollywood do this on TV the night before really helped) and in the oven they went!

They then tortured us for 20 minutes with the most divine smell ever (although to be honest it was smelling pretty good when being kneaded earlier to) and came out looking like this (after I put apricot glaze on)!

And they tasted gorgeous (the kids have been road testing them against some Waitrose ones we still had in the cupboard and they say mine are nicer, they’re definitely more airy and less doughy / squishy and the addition of apple is genisus, they’re very filling though).