Herb garden salad

The herb patch is loving this rain.  Although my garden lettuces are nowhere near ready, I have plenty of delicious herbs to jazz up a shop-bought lettuce.  I generally pick whatever combination of herbs happens to take my fancy at a particular moment.  With this one, my ingredients were:

Iceberg lettuce plus the following chopped fresh herbs:

mint

chives
parsley
a small handful of fennel leaves

It's good with a light oil and vinegar dressing.

All of the above could be grown in pots too, so you don't need to be a serious gardener to create something like this!

Is this a drought?

I could not resist posting this photo. It makes me cheerful!  And its quite hard to believe we are in a drought..a very peculiarly English drought...lush really.

view outside the front door...

Blossom!

Fruit trees in flower:

cherries

pear

apple

Salmon fillets with lentils

There are some things that I always like to have in stock in the larder and freezer, which make it very easy to throw together a meal.   This recipe uses two of those things: frozen salmon fillets and tinned lentils.  It is as simple as could be possible, and takes hardly any time at all to prepare and cook.

Crème Caramel

More and more eggs to use up!  So yesterday I made a large mix of baked custard mixture, which resulted in a big pot of rhubarb creme caramel and four small ramekins of simple crème caramel.  This type of dish seems to be a staple of many cooking traditions in Europe.  In Spain, its called 'flan', in France  'crème caramel' or 'crème anglais', and in England I think that the traditional name is 'caramel custard'.  The Spanish version always seems to me to be very sweet.  My mum used to make it, and we called it 'baked custard' or caramel custard.  Like the best comfort foods, it is very simple, quick and quite cheap to make (even more so if you have your own chickens like we do).

The version I made yesterday is a bit more at the luxury end, as I pushed the boat out for a Good Friday feast, and made it with double cream instead of milk.  I made a double load, so I had enough to make a big pot with rhubarb at the bottom, and another 4 ramekins of the basic creme caramel because some of my family dislike rhubarb.

This recipe is for the basic crème caramel, which can be made in one large dish or several ramekins.

Veg patch news...and RIP the chicken..

Its been a very busy month in the garden.  Spring has taken off at a cracking pace, and I am trying hard to keep up.  I have up-dated my planting chronology on the Veg Patch page of my blog.   There are two major challenges this year: first the drought, which is really serious here, and secondly the bizarre weather and weather forecast.

Strawberries with mint..

The taste of summer! Fresh strawbs, with apple mint from my herb patch.  Delicious!

Poached Trout

I cooked this for the main course for the birthday dinner party I organised at the end of last week.  Its pretty simple and quick to cook.  I used a fish kettle, but a large flat bottomed pan, big enough to fit the whole trout in, would do the job.  The advantage of a fish kettle is it is much easier to lift the fish out and slide them onto a serving plate without breakage when cooked.

Ingredients
Fresh whole trout (rainbow or brown)-one per person
Onion
bay leaves
Sprig of fresh oregano
about 10 juniper berries
a good splosh of dry white wine
water

First I made a stock by putting the chopped onions, herbs, wine and water into the fish kettle, and simmered for about half an hour.  Then I left it for the flavours to steep into the stock.

I put the trout onto the rack inside the fish kettle to steam just as we were sitting down to eat our starter, as it takes 15 minutes or so to steam.  The liquid should come up to the level of the fish but not cover it.  Cooking time depends on how big the fish are, and how many are in the pan.  It is ready when the flesh is still firm-ish but easily comes away from the central bone when gently sliced into with a knife.

I served this with caper mayonnaise, new potatoes with mint, and braised fennel.

Fish Stock 2

Further to my earlier recipe for fish stock, here is another variation on a theme.  This time I used salmon heads, for a strong and quite oily stock, suitable to use as a base for a marmite-style fish stew. (No I don't mean marmite spread, I mean the traditional French fish stew dish...).

Ingredients:
4 large salmon heads (£1.89 from Waitrose fish counter...very fresh!)
1 very big leek, washed thoroughly and chopped
2 big carrots, peeled and chopped
3 sticks of celery
1 large sprig of fresh thyme (actually, it was more of a small bunch than a sprig)
6 bay leaves
6 black pepper corns
200 ml sherry vinegar
1 bottle (75cl) of dry white wine (I used a Bordeaux sec)
1.5 litres water

Put all the ingredients in a big casserole pan, bring to the boil, cover, and put in a low temp oven to simmer slowly for at least 4 hours.  I find that oven cooking stops the fish smell from pervading the house too much...

After straining and cooling, put the liquid stock in the fridge.  Once it is cold, it is easier to skim off any surface residue and excess oil.

I have frozen this stock for use at a later date.