Category Archives: Recipes

Rhubarb Jam and Wild Garlic Pesto

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This is my favorite time of year, without a doubt. The combination of the wild garlic flowers and emerging blue bells in the woods is stunning, one of nature’s many masterpieces.

Today I’ve been busy foraging for the last of the wild garlic for soup and pesto. Up early scampering around in the woods collecting armfuls of the stuff, there’s not much better than that!?

And jam making, of the rhubarb and vanilla variety. Here’s the recipe should you wish to join the preserving fun.

1kg Rhubarb, sliced into chunks

1kg preserving sugar, or sugar and pectin sachet 8g

Juice of one lemon

2 vanilla pods

  1. Put a small plate in the freezer. Put the rhubarb into a preserving pan or your largest saucepan with the sugar and halved vanilla pods. Heat gently, stirring, until all the sugar has dissolved, then squeeze in the lemon juice and increase the heat.
  2. Boil for about 10 mins, skimming off the scum as you go (the fruit should be soft). Test for setting point by spooning a little onto your chilled plate. After 1-2 mins, push your finger through the jam – if the surface wrinkles it is ready, if not, keep cooking for 2-min intervals, testing in between. (Or if you have a sugar thermometer it should reach 105C)
  3. Once the jam is ready, let it cool for about 15 mins before ladling into warm sterilised jars and sealing. Will keep for 6 months in a cool, dark place.

Lemon Polenta Madness

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IMG_1170Although lemons are not locally grown, our customers, and us, seem to be rather fond of them at the moment. There I am posting blogs on Preserved Lemons like there’s no tomorrow.  Well I blame the hungry gap, a difficult time in the lives of cooks and eaters alike. We made a delicious rhubarb cake for last weeks Pop Up! cafe and shop in Totnes, but apples…well at this time of year British apples, if found are generally poor quality. Other fruit is yet to pop up, so I celebrate the Spanish citrus. By popular (Very popular, three requests this week!) demand here’s our lemon polenta cake recipe. Enjoy

Elderflower and lemon polenta cake
x9
250g butter
250g caster sugar
63g rice flour (or ground almonds)
3 eggs
190g fine ground polenta
2 lemons
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tbsp elderflower cordial
 
Beat butter and sugar
Stir in flour
Beat in eggs
Stir in polenta, baking powder, lemon zest and most of juice, salt and cordial.
Pour into greased tray
Bake at 170C for 45mins, check after 30mins
Top with  a syrup of elderflower cordial and lemon juice.

Beetroot Horseradish and Beef Burgers

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Coming up this weekend, The Bay Horse’s Brilliant Beer Festival and BBQ. We, The Kitchen Table, are delighted to be invited back this year to provide tasty beer soaking treats in the back garden. Slightly skeptical about the fact it is supposed to be Easter, with sunshine and bunny rabbits, I will be wrapping up warm against the snow. Yes it’s snowing. So our menu planning has taken the weather into account and we will be cooking up the most deliciously warming burgers we can think of. First up is this little beauty of a burger…

Beetroot, Beef and Horseradish Burgers – an earthy, deliciously balanced burger. Come along to the Bay Horse this Easter weekend to try it and a wide range of tasty beers.

Serves 8

* 1kg best minced beef (chuck steak works well for this)

* 2 raw beetroots, peeled and finely grated

* 5cm fresh horseradish root, finely grated

* sea salt and black pepper

* 2 onions, fine chopped

* one free-range egg

Combine all the ingredients except the salt in a bowl and mix thoroughly with your hands. Divide the mixture into eight equal balls, each about 130g in weight. Shape them into a round and squash down until they are burger-shaped.

Cook on a hot griddle or frying pan for three to four minutes on either side, salting only after you turn them over, until they are still bouncy and moist. Burgers are best served medium rare – and, if you have invested in good quality minced steak, you will really appreciate it.

 

Vegan Apple cake

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We really enjoyed doing the cafe for the YogaFest in Birdwood house for a second time. Hannah went to a couple of classes and loved them as much as all the particpants seemed to when they came for refreshments in the cafe space. We made some delicous treats, including hot soups, gluten-free muffins and fresh, seasonal salad – all made with local, mostly organic vegetables where possible. The sugar-free, vegan apple cake was a particular hit! So, here’s the recipe:

Sugar-free vegan apple and date cake

Peel, slice and cook 450g of cooking apples. Boil in a little bit of water, with the lid on until they are soft and falling apart. Remove from the heat and stir until you have an apple puree. Whisk 115g vegan margarine or 100ml of oil, with 115g of apple and pear spread, until well combined. Stir in 170g chopped dates. In a cup, dissolve 2 level tsp bicarbonate of soda in 1 tbsp of boiling water. Add this to the apple, then sift 225g wholemeal flour with 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground cloves and 1/2 tsp ground allspice into the mix. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake in the oven at 180C for 45 mins-1hr. In a small pan, combine 2 tbsp of apple and pear spread or date syrup with 2 tbs soya milk until it’s all dissolved and bubbling a little. Pour this onto the cake, ensuring it’s well covered.

Enjoy!

An offally good supper

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So what’s so great about offal? Why are we dedicating an entire meal to the beauty of the parts of the animal we generally don’t give a second thought to? The lungs, the liver, heart, kidneys, sweetbreads, tripe, the head, the trotters. Those vital parts of the animals we raise for food, and then choose to eat only a small part of. Offal may not be fashionable, but we love it and we are not alone in our offal appreciation society.

Our foodie hero Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall – “Offal offers us a chance to pay our respects, in a full and holistic manner, to the animals we’ve raised for meat. The nose-to-tail approach to using the animals we kill for food must be a central tenet of the contract of domestication and good husbandry. Waste is not acceptable. It’s all or nothing.”

We fully subscribe to this viewpoint. If we eat animals we must eat all the animal, celebrating everything. If we value what we are consuming it is the only way – the same goes for vegetables, we never throw away parts that can be used for the sake of rigid aesthetics such is the way of Michelin starred restaurants sometimes. The sight of such waste seems painful and unnecessary after so much love and care has gone into growing that carrot, that leek, that cow.

Another compelling argument for eating offal is that it is DELICIOUS when cooked well. So for our winter Supplier of the Season supper we feature our brilliant butcher A W Luscombe, Totnes, and our menu is ‘Offally Good’. We will be making Brawn (Pigs head pate), stuffed lambs hearts, and haggis (heart, lungs, and liver and sheeps intestine). All served with delicious organic vegetables from Occombe Farm, Torquay. Our guests of honour are Laura, head grower from Occombe, Liam, owner of Luscombes butchers and
Chukumeka Maxwell, our competition winner.  Stay tuned for menu updates and photos from our meal with recipes and offal ideas.

Offal at Barcelona Market

Tripe and intestines on display in Spain where offal is enjoyed.

 

Duck wings

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When our new supplier, Sladesdown Farm, mentioned that they had Duck wings coming out their ears we took it as the perfect excuse to make one of my all-time favorite winter dishes – Cassoulet. I LOVE Cassoulet, my mother used to cook in the the bottom oven of the AGA once a year or so when the Jones’ were coming over in force. Over the summer David and Elaine had been inundated with orders for duck breast and legs, but no-one wants the wings, poor duck wings, fiddly with not a lot of meat – but we managed to get a feast out of the 8 kilos we brought! Our clients were delighted, and Sima and I had a great time making the dish. Here’s the basic recipe, feel free to change the ingredients to include what is plentiful and cheap, or would otherwise be wasted. In our recipe everything we used apart from the beans and tomatoes were very local, and we made our own stock.

cassoulet – serves 4

Mise en place

Pre-heat the oven to 200° C (400° F – gas 6), [fan oven 180° C & reduce cooking time by 10 mins per hour]

Method

  1. Pour a splash of olive oil into a large roasting pan on a hob at a high heat. Add a grind of black pepper, add the duck and sausages and use it like a huge frying pan to brown the meat. This may take 10 to 15 minutes.
  2. Remove the browned meat and set to one side.
  3. Slit the chilli length-wise but don’t disturb the seeds.
  4. With the heat still on, add the herbs, chilli, onions, pancetta, garlic bulb halves, cut side down. Season with salt and pepper and fry for 5 minutes, stirring now and then.
  5. De-glaze the pan with the wine and the sherry vinegar.
  6. Add the beans and chopped tomatoes and mix well.
  7. Arrange the duck and sausages on the top, duck skin-side up. Pour over the chicken stock and jiggle the roasting tray to bed everything down.
  8. Roast uncovered for 1.5 hours, checking a few times to see that it’s not drying out. see comments
  9. After 1.5 hours, tear the baguette into small pieces and push into the tray so that the bread soaks up all the fat and juices.
  10. Return to the oven and roast for 30 minutes more.

Relishing the vegetables

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The other morning Sima and I awoke, in our separate houses, and had the same thought. Time to start jamming. It’s one of the great pleasures in food production (according to us), taking surplus fruit and veg and preserving it for future enjoyment. What better than to savor the sharpness of early gooseberries all over again in September, after eating them fresh in early summer. How fantastic that we can still enjoy rhubarb in the form of relish with our Sharpham cheese in winter. We rang each other with our lists of preserves to make this year. Great bottles of cider, white wine, red wine, and balsamic vinegar sit in the store cupboard in anticipation of turning the kitchen into a fog of chutney scented fumes. First up on my list – Gooseberry and Elderflower Jam, Rose Petal Jelly, and Rhubarb Relish. Here’s the Gooseberry jam recipe, please enjoy responsibly.

Gooseberry and Elderflower Jam

Makes 6 jars
1kg young gooseberries
8 head of elderflower
1kg granulated sugar

Top and tail the gooseberries, and pop them into your pan with 300ml water. Place the elderflower heads on top of the gooseberries. Cook gently until the berries are soft but haven’t yet lost their shape. Remove the elderflowers.
Add the sugar. Stir until dissolved, then bring to a rolling boil for 10 minutes or until the setting point is reached.
Remove from the heat and allow to sit for 10 minutes before pouring into warm sterilised jars.

Eat and enjoy

Summer cheer

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Guy Watson’s called it Cropaggedan…. This weather has sure been a challenge for us all. I see dripping, glum tourists grimacing against the rain as they try and see the upside of a holiday in rainy Totnes. The farmers in the area are no doubt struggling – although we are still able to find fantastic local produce and ingredients from Devon and the UK, which is amazing, considering the changeability of weather we’ve had the last two months!

Those of us who survive the winter purely to enjoy the beach come June are loosing hope, music lovers are swimming in mud in fields all over the country and festival, county show, fairs and markets throughout England and Wales are loosing money, and I imagine good humour with all the cancellations and wash-outs!

I’ve tried to not get down about the lack of summer. There are upsides to every down and I’ve noticed that when the sun does shine it feels more precious and wonderful because of it’s rareity and fleeting presence!

When it’s been grim, I’ve set about making mint jelly, elderflower cordial and sorbet, gooseberry jam and nettle pesto. Cooking is my rainy day salvation.

For a grey summers eve I thought I’d share a warming supper recipe. The spring lambs are now hoggart which is delicious and quite different from lamb in flavour. At the last Good Food Market in Totnes I bought a couple of Hoggart shanks from a local small holding farm and am cooking them in a slow cooker to take to a friend’s for dinner. I’ve cooked the shanks in red wine, tomatoes, mint, garlic and rosemary for several hours and the meat falls off the bone and is deliciously rich and flavoursome – fantatsic summer comfort food, lovely served with new potatoes, steamed asparagus and broad beans.

Slow braised Devon Hoggart shanks. I use a slow cooker, but this can be made in a casserole dish in a low oven

x2 shanks

x2 tins of tomatoes

x2 onions, diced

x2 garlic cloves, roughly chopped

x2 rashers of local, free-range streaky baco, chopped up into strips

x2 glasses of red wine

x2 sprigs of rosemary

x2 bayleaves

x2 tbs homemade or good mint jelly

s+p to taste

Fry the bacon and onions, then add the garlic and fry until golden, then remove from the pan into the slow cooker. Brown off the shanks in the fat left from the bacon and put them to the slow cooker. Add the rest of the ingredients and cook for several hours, turning the meat occasionally.

Spring inspiration

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Spring is here! The daffodils are out and the lanes are beginning to have a faint scent of garlic as the wild leaves are sprouting and populating the hedgerows. It inspires me to walk and forage and I look forward to making wild garlic pesto which works spectacularly well with stuffed spring lamb (recipe below), in pasta sauces, risotto and swirled into dips.

Last year, it was such a pleasure to spend my Sundays wondering the lanes around Totnes, picking wild garlic. Being outdoors, rather than in an aisle of a floridly lit supermarket, plucking my ingredients for that evenings dinner (and many more – pesto keeps in the fridge for weeks). Obviously it’s not feasible to forage all our kitchen cupboard contents, but there’s something so satisfying about growing, picking, hunting and foraging your own food. Just like with Adam’s gourmet mushroom kits, where we observed over several days, the delicious and delicate oyster mushrooms grow, then harvest, cook and eat them – foraging has an innate pleasure to it.

Wild garlic is such an easily foraged, safe and simple to identify wild ingredient. It inspires me to find others. I would love to learn about seaweed, seeds and nuts, berries and wild fruits. In an age of austerity, how wonderful to be able to find free, wild and deliciously seasonal food!

My mission for this spring and summer is to forage as much as I can, to learn about foods I didn’t know about before and to cook! Watch this space for delicious recipe’s and culinary experiences.

For now, I’ll share a recipe I made last year.

Stuffed Lamb breast
for the Wild Garlic Pesto:
100g wild garlic leaves, washed well.
100g raw walnuts
Olive oil
s+p to taste
1tsp honey
whiz in a blender, adding enough oil to get a pesto consistency.

Mix the pesto with the zest of one lemon, about 200g breadcrumbs and fresh ground pepper to make a moist stuffing, adding more oil if it needs help binding. Form the mixture into a sausage shape and lay along the lamb breast and press into the meat. Roll the joint like a Swiss roll and tie with string. Wrap the joint in foil and put in a roasting tin and roast in a medium to low oven for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and roast for a further hour and 30 minutes so that it has been cooked tender right through, but it is crackly and crisp on the outside and the fat has been rendered out of it. You can add par-boiled potatoes in after about an hour of the 2 hour cooking time.

Carve the meat beforehand by simply cutting the whole joint into thin slices, handling them carefully so the stuffing doesn’t fall out. Then arrange the slices on a serving dish and put them back into the oven for a few minutes to get hot again until you are ready to serve.

Delicious with steamed spring greens, carrot and swede mash and a rich gravy!

Gourmet food grown from waste?!

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FUNGHI FUTURES, founded by Adam Saynor, is a not-for-profit social enterprise growing gourmet mushrooms from recycled waste. They make mushroom grow kits from recycled coffee grounds, with the aim to help set up a network of projects across the UK – recycling waste coffee grounds and cardboard in UK cities and turning them into delicious Gourmet Mushrooms and nutrient-rich compost.
The pearl oyster mushrooms are grown from 75% recycled coffee grounds which are full of cellulose, lignin, nitrogen, sugars and other nutrients and have already been sterilised while going through the espresso machine, and 25% recycled cardboard which comes from Paperchain – a recycling social enterprise based in Exeter who collect waste cardboard from local businesses and shred it.

Here at The Kitchen Table, having so many amazing producers and suppliers within a few miles of Totnes, we felt we could showcase what they grow, make, process and produce on a regular basis with a celebratory ‘cook-up’ every season! Adam’s beautiful mushrooms are wonderfully rich and delicious – the perfect ingredient for a gloomy January evening.

Adam gave them to us already a little started – the small pin-head fungus were showing and we watched over a few days as they blossomed into beautiful oyster mushrooms. To harvest them, on the day we did our big ‘mushroom dedicated cook-up’, we simply cut the ‘bunch’ away from the compost and we were ready to cook and eat!

Unfortunately, Adam couldn’t be at our feast but we invited some friends who loved the unique flavour of the brandy reduction and succulent mushrooms with the rare griddled wood-pidgeon breast and the delicious braised puy lentils and mushroooms that Hannah made. Both dishes were beautifully complimented by locally grown organic curly kale and a glass of red wine!

Mushrooms in brandy reduction
Ingredients:
150g finely chopped onion
2x cloves of garlic, crushed
100mls chicken stock
100mls brandy
400g oyster mushrooms (cut as you like; diced, sliced)

Method:
Sweat the onions in some good olive oil (or sustainable duck fat) on a low heat until translucent, add the garlic then the mushrooms and raise the heat a little and brown them off. Add the brandy, reduce the heat and cook for 5 minutes or so then add the stock and simmer for 20 minutes of so, stirring occasionally. The sauce should thicken and reduce.

Served great with game or beef.

Adam says “Fungi are the great recyclers of the Earth. They recycle waste… Some even produce delicious gourmet fruits along the way. Morel, Shiitake, Wine Cap, Oyster mushrooms – in the wild they all live on dead organic matter, waste… they have evolved incredible enzymes which break down the complex bonds in these materials to make use of them as their food, and ultimately to help them to produce mushrooms from. In doing so, they also recycle these materials back into the soil for trees and plants to make use of again.
… some of the enzymes they have evolved to break down wood and leaf litter are capable of breaking down other organic wastes too…
Here at Fungi Futures, we have become interested in other forms of waste that mushrooms can live on. Cardboard for one is produced and used en-masse every single day – often it’s only used once before being discarded or sent for recycling into weaker and weaker cardboard of low value. Coming from trees originally, it’s makeup is similar to wood, and many mushrooms are able to eat it up – breaking it down and producing delicious gourmet edible protein along the way.
And then there is coffee waste. Something we are all familiar with. An estimated 80 millions cups a day drunk in the UK. And what happens to the waste grounds? Most of it is put into black bags and thrown into landfill. Oyster Mushrooms, however, are a very versatile mushroom and can feed off of these tons of waste coffee grounds – converting it to rich compost and producing edible delights too.
Over the coming months we will look at other sources of waste and see what mushrooms we can grow from it. Ultimately, we think it is a crime to throw this waste away when high-value, nutritious, protein-rich food can be grown from it. It is a fact that we will not be farming so many animals in the future. The scale of our current methods are unsustainable for multiple reasons (not least the amount of land, water & fertiliser required). So, we best start looking at alternative sources of protein…And not soya – this too requires vast land and resources.
What we do have though is truck loads of waste….and a method to convert it into tasty, healthy protein. The future will undoubtedly involve more Mushrooms from Waste!”

One of the other exciting projects/ ideas Adam has is to visit schools and teach about funghi. I don’t think we learned much about this crucial part of the eco-system in my school and I can imagine watching your dinner grow, harvesting it, cooking and eating it while learning about the incredible environmental benefits of funghi would be amazing for children and young people alike!

If you would like to know more or buy a mushroom kit, check out Adam’s website – www.fungi-futures.co.uk