M is for Marrow

And this isn't just any old marrow, this is a whopper of vegetable that was gifted to me by my Mother who got it from who knows where. Unfortunately "Olivia and the Giant Marrow" doesn't quite have the same ring to it as "James and the Giant Peach" but there is still a story to tell none-the-less

My problem was, I hadn't a clue what to do with it. Now I don't mean in terms of I didn't know how to cook a marrow as I have vague memories of having baked marrow stuffed with spicy rice as a child and could probably replicate that to one degree or another. But at the same time the same memories also tell me that stuffed marrow gave me really bad gas and that is not at all attractive so that option was quickly crossed off the list.

So whilst I could have cooked it, it was more the sheer size and quantity of said vegetable that put me at a complete loss as to what to do, in fact, I found it quite intimidating having this cucurbita (fancy new word I found) sitting on my worktop glaring at me to use it each time I went in the kitchen.

So I reached out to friends on twitter for some help and the responses ranged from turning it into rum -not helpful, a cake - intriguing but not convincing, or jam - bingo!

So jam it was and after a quick search via Google I came across this simple recipe on the River Cottage website which matched up to the quantities of marrow I had. I wish I could say that I leaped into action there an then, after scribbling a quick shopping list (lemons, preserving sugar and root ginger) but it took another few days before I made it to the supermarket with The Two Monkeys in tow feeling über productive and positive because after a week of having this behemoth of a vegetable glaring at me I was finally going to use it.

On returning home, I got the boys settled The Two Monkeys down to eat their lunch (which I like to think gives me about 15 minutes to do something but in reality its about 5) and returned to the kitchen. Having donned my apron, grabbed my biggest pan and cleared some space I laid out my ingredients to do a "before" shot.

Looks good doesn't it. Very country kitchen. But that was when production came to a screaming halt...and why? Because I had no jam jars. None. Zilch. Because in my infinite wisdom I had the previous evening made tangy plum jam with some of the first fruit off the tree in our garden and used up all the empty jars I had. Talk about school girl error!

So I put my ingredients in the pan which sat on the stove not getting cooked Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I was reluctant to buy brand new jars so had scoured some of the charity shops on Monday but to no avail. Wednesday arrived and so did my Mother along with a hoard of empty jars, this is it, I thought...but no, I ran out of time during the day and I was not going to sacrifice watching Great British Bake Off for an overgrown courgette.

It was Thursday (yesterday) that I finally got to cut into the giant légume. I cut it into slices, scooped out the insides and (leaving the skin on) cooked with a little water but mostly letting it steam in its own juices in the pan.

 Now my thinking behind leaving the skin on was that it would be easier to separate the flesh from the harder skin and on that count at least I was right. The recipe that I referred to above also suggested squeezing the excess water from the marrow which I dutifully did as I removed the skin.

 This however, is where it started to go wrong.

Once I had plonked what remained of the marrow back into the pan it looked rather pitiful, I mean I had expected some reduction but not that much. I added the sugar, lemon zest and juice and the ginger as directed but chose to use fresh ginger over ground or crystallised ginger. I chopped and bruised it to release the oils and then added it to cook with everything else.

But it just didn't look right. Not only did the it just become really pulpy without the natural fluid from the marrow that I had squeezed out, there seemed to be nothing for the sugar to bind with in. It looked lumpy and not at all appetising for spreading on toast or having on a cracker with a really stinky cheese. So either I was meant to end up with more marrow in my pan than the recipe suggested or, and this is my thought, I should have ignored the squeezing instruction.

But what to do now? I am not a chemist and felt, not for the first time with this whole marrow debacle, at a loss.

I did what any normal, sane individual would do.

I added yellow plums.

Now you may be thinking "What?" but my logic went as follows; its similar in colour and these also had a fairly dryish flesh. I had lots of them. As some were still a little under ripe they may add a nice tang to pot which to be quite frank tasted like a zesty ginger stew, the marrow adding bulk but little flavour. And did I mention that I had lots of them?

Yup... please excuse me while I go off topic but I have to tell you about the plums. One of the joys of having a garden is that we now have a plum tree and whilst they are not the sweetest or most flavoursome, I am all about the free fruit and also my Little Giant loves them and will do everything he can to get at the windfalls. So far I had made a crumble, a first pick tangy jam, plum tarts, as well as de-stoning and freezing approximately 4kg and have given various neighbours 500g punnets of them. And there are still more to be picked.

So, back to the jam, why not add them? It couldn't hurt to try right?

Right! After 5 minutes boiling with the plums in the mix I could already see the difference in volume and the consistency looked a lot better too. I continued to cook it at a simmer for another 20 minutes stirring occasionally so the sugar wouldn't catch, but it still did a bit but that's OK because it added a nice bit of colour. I was so pleased to have rescued the jam as I hate waste and I was loath to throw it away.

But now all is said and done I have learnt my lesson, if I am ever offered a marrow in the future I will politely decline and change the subject :)

L is for Leftovers

Leftovers.

Lets not just consign it to bubble and squeak...there are so many things that you can do with your leftovers.

Now I am not talking about eating the same chilli for 3 nights in a row, common sense would dictate that if you make a large chilli freeze at least half in 2 person portion containers for later in the month for an evening when you don't want to cook.  What I am talking about is all those bits and pieces from meals where you made too much that all too often get scraped out of the pan and straight into the bin without a second thought. But what if you were to save the extra pasta or rice or cut of meat for another day or another meal?

Since becoming a mummy I have learnt that even the little bits of what I or my dear husband don't eat are worth keeping - they will often be a perfect sized lunch (or at least part it) for The Two Monkeys the next day and its a time saver too. I can honestly say that when it gets to 5 to midday and the Little Giant has just woken up from his nap and is clamouring for food and I got busy doing other things with The Bug while he was sleeping...it makes me feel like I am winning at being a Mummy if I can just grab and reheat some lasagne or blend all the veggies and potatoes from last nights dinner into an instant soup.

Food waste and the amount of food waste households and supermarkets produce has been big news so far this year, along with various pieces on sell by and use by dates and funny shaped fruit and veg being discarded. But why has it taken so long for mainstream media to catch onto something that most family households already know and have probably known for decades...that often something like meat from a roast chicken on a Sunday will easily go into lunch boxes on Monday and even a stir fry on Tuesday. 

What has made our own food waste more visible is having to separate it out into a separate green caddy bin - we didn't have to do this when we were in Wimbledon, we just recycled our glass and plastics. We have the smaller caddy in the kitchen along with a biodegradable liner that once full gets put in a slightly larger one outside which is then emptied weekly. I think on average I fill the kitchen caddy twice a week  unless we have had a lot of friends over at the weekend in which case there may be more.  It hasn't been too difficult or overly smelly but I do make a point of washing both bins out each week to get rid of any nasty bacteria that may have decided to grow. I have also found since moving here with putting food waste in one bin and recycling in another I find that it takes a lot longer for our general waste bin to get full and is a real visual indicator of exactly how much we throw away in our culture.

So what is the point of this? Well, this year I am aiming to reduce, reuse and recycle more in our house and the kitchen is one of the main places in our house that I can do this.  Quite often with leftovers I just turn them into a stir fry or sandwiches but occasionally I will get quite creative. Lets be honest, if I have made a custard from scratch with egg yolks, the best thing to do with the whites is make meringues the next day and that is always a popular pudding in our house!

If you don't tend to keep food, why not try...especially with things loke stews and curries, as we all know they taste better the next day.  And if you are a food saver specialist do you have favourite recipes for your leftovers? Why not leave me a comment with your ideas as I love to swap kitchen tips!

K is for Kitchen

I love being in the kitchen, it is a place that I associate with fun, friends and (of course) food.

I was incredibly lucky that the kitchen we had in our flat in Wimbledon was not only large but full of light. I had a window to look out of whilst doing the washing up and a second aspect towards the common which not only provided us with a great through draft if I had burnt something but the boys and I could keep a look out for when Daddy would come sweeping round the corner on his bicycle after a day a work. In additon to the two windowns it was, as far as London flats go, palatial. There was a table that seated four comfortably or seven at a push, a slim line dishwasher (which I miss terribly), and a fan oven that was just great at being the right temperature and producing amazing cakes.

When  we first looked at the house we moved to in March one of my concerns wad that the kitchen was TINY. The rest of the house was totally huge in comparison and was going to suit us perfectly so I thought that it was something that I would just have to put to the back of my mind and deal with.

Or so I thought.

Come moving day and the subsequent week spent unpacking boxes my new kitchen just absorbed everything into seemingly endless cupboards. In fact, I would go as far as to say I have more storage space now than I had previously. So what had happened?

I had been deceived by the smaller floorspace and hadn't taken into account that the cupboards went back into the corners. The room is also darker due to the single window which also visually shrinks the space, but the view is lovely and I have been able to watch my roses grow and the yellow plum tree bare fruit.  In fact, despite the lack of dishwasher (something that I am still coming to terms with) there were many other good points to this kitchen, for example, above the oven is a nifty concealed space in which the microwave can hide. The itself oven was higher up which had two really good pluses to it, it was now out of reach of the Two Monkeys (the combined name for our boys) as well as having a very deep drawer underneath to stash all my various baking tins and stoneware. 

And yes, my kitchen may not have the little ikea pine table in it any longer, but instead we have a whopper of a walnut table in the dining/family room which is right next to the kitchen and actually means it gets used as a table for arts and crafts rather than the dumping ground it ended up in the flat.

So all in all, it all came right in the end. The kitchen hasn't been a disappointment at all, if anything it has become more of my own "space" and I even have a bit more freedom in this kitchen as there are no child locks on the doors - instead we put a gate across the doorway which allows us to be in the kitchen and also have the back door open without either of the Two Monkeys escaping into the garden unsupervised or invading the cupboards.

What's more my dear husband has been doing some excellent DIY and put up a floating shelf for all my cookbooks as well as making  me the most beautiful handmade spice rack too.

And who knows...with a bit of shuffling of the cupboards I may even get a dishwasher!

J is for Joy

Everyone needs joy, that little something in our day that fills us up with a warm fuzzy feeling that reaches all the way to your toes.

Joy can be found in the smiles of your children, watching a loved one win a race, for some people it may be an afternoon in the garden and whilst all those things are perfectly wonderful and true...there is nothing that brings me so much joy as to see my dear husbands face when he realises I have made something sweet to eat, particularly if that something is chocolate based.  What is even better is that the Two Monkeys also want in on some of the cooking action and The Bug loves to put on his apron and become my assistant chef. His words "I have a taste...purrrleeease" melt my heart and I cannot help but indulge him.

Chocolate & Hazelnut Fudge

Now I know that I already covered off how to make fudge in this post, my chocolate fudge is from a slightly different recipe (found here), with dark chocolate and nuts stirred in as the mixure cooled. Today I wanted to share with you a recipe that has given me little bits of joy since I was a child which should be perfect for this overcast July afternoon.

The recipe is called Biscuit Crunch and is taken from the Winnie the Pooh Cookbook as originally printed in 1979.  It is essentially a type of fridge cake which is great for making with little people as there is plenty of opportunity for spoon licking and was always affectionately known in our house as "Pooh Crunch"

Ingredients:

• 1/2lb rich tea biscuits
• 4 oz unsalted butter
• 3 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 tbsp golden syrup
• 4 oz chocolate - plain or milk or a mixture of both (depending on taste)

Instructions

• Grease a 20cm (8') dish or tin, it can be round or square
• Measure butter or margarine, cocoa powder, sugar, syrup into large saucepan. Place on low heat and using wooden spoon stir until ingredients have melted. Take pan off heat.
• Crush biscuits up coarsely in a bowl (this bit is great to do as a little person) and pour over melted ingredients. Use a fork to blend ingredients and coat biscuits. Spoon mixture into cake tin, spread level and press mixture firmly into tin
• Break chocolate into bowl and melt over saucepan of warm water . Pour melted chocolate over biscuit base and spread evenly. Place in fridge until set

Extras : Should you wish to make your dish a little bit more exciting you can add in dried fruit such as cranberries, or nuts, or chocolate chunks into the mix once you have added the melted ingredients.

I is for...

...inert, idle, immobile, inactive.

All these words could be used to describe the state of this blog. And yes, if this post seems familiar it is because I wrote something incredibly like this in October last year but it got deleted and no other posts followed on. Life got in the way - which is no bad thing! Being a stay-at-home-mum has, and continues to be, a lot of fun...even if it does mean I am constantly on the go.

When I started this blog I had fully intended to write about my experience of weaning The Bug, and our journey discovering food together. I had envisioned that I would write the alphabet series over 26 weeks and be done with it before moving onto another title sequence. Only problem them is that The Bug is just about to turn three and eats pretty much anything and everything we put in front of him.

Not only that but in the intervening years The Bug's little brother the Little Giant arrived (as you may have guessed from previous mentions of The Two Monkeys) and is also completely weaned and has a more voracious appetite than his brother. So I can't talk about his weaning journey either. Talk about blogger fail.

What's worse is that I have plenty of material to hand. I have meticulously photographed my baking and epic cooking achievements but they just sit idle on my laptop gathering digital dust.

So where does this leave me now? Playing catch up for the most part...but that is OK as my family (and cooking for them) come before my writing, or my crafting, or anything else really. Part of me wishes my writing could come before housework but invariably that also wins out too. But I am going to try and post every Friday from this point on for the remainder of 2014...I even have it scheduled in my diary.  In the meantime, if you want to read a real foodie blog, pop over and visit my friend Lucy at The Pie Patch as she is fairly awesome and is also into all sorts of crafty things that I like too.

'H' is for Hot Pie

OK, so I have kinda skewed the title of this post to make it fit the topic that I want but who can blame me? After all it is British Pie Week and therefore it is most appropriate to write about the British passion for pastry encased yumminess.

I mean, who ever came up with the idea for pies deserves an award for services to humanity and doing the world a huge favour. I mean there are chunky meat pies, then potato topped pies, little tarts and then fruity pies, cobblers and hot crust pies.

It makes my mouth water just thinking of it.

The alternative for 'H' is homemade, which is also (in part) what this post is about. I can honestly say that making a pie from scratch beats a store bought one of the same flavour (and I can say this as I bought one at the weekend) because you stir in that extra ingredient...love. (Smell the cheese of that last sentence there) But seriously, it does taste a whole lot better and you know exactly what goes into it. And most people will shrug off looking at the label but when it comes to feeding The Two Monkeys, it really does matter to me how much salt is in something and what additives it may have.

Having been inspired by the Hairy Bikers cookbook I was given for Christmas 2012 (as mentioned in an earlier post), I made my dear husband pick out a recipe for me to have a bash at for dinner one night.  My only previous pie attempts have been a fruit filled pies or a very lovely and sweet "Pumpkin Pie" from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, this would be my first foray into the world of savoury pies and I was a little nervous.

However, I want to make it perfectly clear that making pies really does take baking to a whole new level. It's more than just a mixture in a cupcake case, it is a process that leads to combining filling and pastry and doing your best to avoid a "soggy bottom"

So today I set about creating the "Creamy Chicken, Ham and Leek Pie" that my dear husband had selected, if you're interested in trying it you can find it here. The prep for the filling took me just under an hour, which was good as I could fit it in whilst my Little Giant had an afternoon nap and The Bug played in the room next door.  From there on in it was just a case of making the pie prior to cooking.

Interestingly enough, the shortcrust pastry for this recipe differs from others that I have previously made in that it uses an egg rather than just water.  If anything it created a smoother dough that I could use instantly rather than needing to let it rest.  I also made a point of using cold and cubed butter to make the pastry which I haven't  done in the past and it worked much better.

So we sat down to a very lovely hot pie for dinner tonight and enjoyed every last bite.  There was even some pastry left over for me to make some mini chocolate tortes for pudding.

G is for Gravy

Yes, you heard me, gravy.  There are certain dishes out there that are just not complete until you add this, the most wonderful and versatile of all sauces.

Sausage and mash. Pie and mash.  Actually, lets make that anything with mash.

A roast dinner (of any kind). Toad in the hole.

The americans even have a thick sausage gravy they eat at breakfast!

The great thing about gravy is that it can be made to match whatever you are eating and there is no firm rule about what goes in it. You can thicken it...or not. You can add onions...or not. Each batch is unique and in our family my dear husband is the king of gravy makers (and roast dinners). You can drench your dinner in it or (in the case of a certain friend) drink it straight from the jug.

You can try and dress it up and call it a jus but really it all boils down to the same thing (quite literally in fact.)

But for me, the most bizarre thing about gravy is that while I am now more than happy to wax lyrical about its many and marvellous uses... I used to despise it as a child. You make think that despise is rather a strong word but I couldn't stand to have any gravy pass my lips, any meal with said condiment would be rejected. Or very grudging picked at because I was generally a good child who did as they were told.

I am sure my mother must have despaired.

It sounds odd but I decided at about the age of 5 or 6 that I didn't like "wet food" and avoided it at all costs.  I have to add that I also liked to keep all the different foods separate on my plate but that is probably another story and one that I am sure some psychologist would have something to say about.  But back to the story in hand, I would refuse gravy on any and every meal, my especial fear was that it would turn my potatoes to mush.  This strong aversion of "wet food" extended to include brothy stews, custard and pouring cream....all things I now eat in abundance.

So lets give it up for gravy...I know I will be having a double helping next time it is on the menu.