Posts Tagged ‘organic’
Sunday, November 14th, 2010
I am winning with Christmas food preparations this year, which seems unbelievable considering how little time I seem to have to do anything at the moment;. I am running about one week behind last year. However, as a man who cooks, I do actually find baking strangely therapeutic and calming at the weekend. I think it gives me some peace and quiet, allowing my thoughts to settle themselves down after a hectic week at Steenbergs, and this week has been one of those business nightmare weeks.
So Christmas cake was baked 2 weekends ago, Christmas pudding last weekend and this weekend I have made a new batch of mincemeat. I always make a mammoth sized Christmas cake and extra Christmas puds, giving one to my parents and another to some great friends of ours, both of whom deserve just a little something for their help during the year. As for the mincemeat, I have usually made one that does not include any sugar as I feel the dried fruit, apple and juices are usually sweet enough, however after some gentle prompting last year, I thought I would try a more traditional version and add some sugar, which is what I did this morning.
Basically, it is my normal mincemeat recipe with the addition of 250g / 8oz dark molasses sugar from Billingtons crumbled into it and a reduced amount of apple as it seems to ferment a little over time. Still simple and easy, so my old recipe is now called the “No Added Sugar Mincemeat Recipe” and this will become our “Traditional Mincemeat” recipe. It really is worth the effort making this as it is really just a case of chucking some ingredients together and leaving to develop flavour over the short time to Christmas.
Ingredients
175g/ 6oz raisins (Organic and/or Fairtrade if possible)
175g/ 6oz sultanas (Organic and/or Fairtrade if possible)
250g/ 8oz currants (Organic and/or Fairtrade if possible)
85g/ 3oz chopped mixed peel
85g/ 3oz flaked almonds, toasted
125g/ 4oz eating apples (Cox’s are good), cored and chopped but not peeled
125g/ 4oz shredded suet (I use Community Wholefood’s vegetarian suet, but Atora also do one)
250g / 8oz dark muscovado sugar (Organic and/or Fairtrade if possible)
1tsp organic Fairtrade nutmeg powder
½ tsp allspice powder
½ rounded tsp organic Fairtrade cinnamon powder
Grated rind and juice of 1 orange (or 50:50 orange and lemon)
75ml/ 1/8 pint “good” whisky or brandy (I use Bruichladdich from Islay)
1. If possible, use organic ingredients and/or Fairtrade ingredients, as they are good for the environment and the communities that grow the crops.
2. Simply mix all the ingredients together and seal in a large tub, or ideally a bucket with a lid.
Ingredients For Mincemeat Weighed Out
Mix The Dark Muscovado Sugar Into The Fruit And Nuts
Traditional Mincemeat All Mixed Up
3. Stir it once or twice in the maturation period – at the end of November and maybe mid December. Pot it up into a couple of good sized Kilner-style jars on or about the 20th December.
4. It lasts for a good 2 – 3 years, so don’t worry if you haven’t used it all in one Christmas period. It is good to use in baked apples or to make a quick mincemeat tart for pudding anytime in the year.
Tags: baking, Blog, Christmas, Christmas food, cooking, Fairtrade, Fairtrade blog, Fairtrade mincemeat, Fairtrade spices, food and wine, foodandwine, foodie, foodie news, homemade mincemeat, mince pies, mincemeat, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegan, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 3 Comments »
Thursday, October 14th, 2010
A Slice Of Carrot Cake
Jay kept on calling my “gingerbread” “carrot cake” over the last few weeks, so I took the hint and started trying to perfect a carrot cake recipe.
The first few attempts did not go down with the kids as firstly they contained walnuts (“I always have hated walnuts” was the response, but in our household it is more of a case that if I can see it then I cannot/must not like it) and then I found them a bit too dry. So walnuts removed and buttermilk added, I have come up with a carrot cake recipe that passes muster – moist and tasty. You can always add the walnuts back in again should you so wish; I would suggest 115g / 4oz / 1 cup of chopped walnuts.
The kids got to the icing and topped it with a vast amount of sprinkles which they loved eating as much as the cake itself. Overall, it is not a bad way to claim you have eaten one of your 5 -a-day.
For the cake:
175g / 6oz / ¾ cup unsalted butter
175g / 6oz / ¾ cup light muscovado sugar
3 egg yolks at room temperature and gently whisked
3 egg whites at room temperature
30ml / 2 tbsp sunflower oil or buttermilk
175g / 6oz / 1½ cups organic self-raising flour
5ml /1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp sea salt, finely ground
¾ tsp organic cinnamon powder
½ tsp organic ground nutmeg
50g / 2oz / ½ cup ground almonds
225g / 8 oz / 1½ cups freshly grated carrot
For the icing:
175g / 6oz / ¾ cup mascarpone cheese, or cream cheese
40g / 1½oz / 3tbsp icing sugar
1tbsp lemon juice
Walnuts or sprinkles to decorate
Set the oven to 160C / 325F. Line a large loaf tin with baking parchment (dimensions: 12 x 19cm; 4½ x 7½ inches).
Sieve the self-raising flour, salt, cinnamon powder, nutmeg powder and baking powder together into a large mixing bowl. Separate the egg yolks and whites; mix the egg yolks together gently with a fork or a whisk and set the egg whites aside.
Cut the butter into small pieces and put into a mixing bowl, then add in the soft brown sugar. Cream together the butter and soft brown sugar. Add the egg yolks and the buttermilk or oil and whisk until thoroughly mixed in.
Put Butter And Sugar In Mixing Bowl
Cream The Butter And Sugar
Add the self-raising flour together with the other dry ingredients and the ground almonds; mix it all up with a silicone spatula or hand whisk.
Whisk the egg whites until stiff, then add this and the grated carrots to the cake batter and fold in fully.
Add The Whipped Egg Whites And Stir In
Scoop the carrot cake batter into the prepared loaf tin.
Scoop The Carrot Cake Batter Into The Loaf Tin
Put into the centre of the warmed oven and bake for about 70 minutes. As the hour comes up, start checking the carrot cake by gently pressing the top in the centre to feel whether it feels springy and spongy rather than liquidy; when done a skewer should come out without any dampness on it.
Leave to stand for 10 minutes, then turn out of loaf tin, remove the baking paper and allow to cool on a wire rack.
Baked Carrot Cake, Cooled And Ready For Icing
When cool, it is time to start preparing the mascarpone ice cream. To make the cream cheese icing, put all the icing ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix together thoroughly. Spread this over the top of the carrot cake and decorate with sprinkles or walnuts or other nuts for that matter.
Spread The Mascarpone Icing Over The Carrot Cake
Decorate Your Carrot Cake
Enjoy with tea or a coffee, or indulge yourself and enjoy as is and without the excuse of a beverage.
Tags: baking, Blog, cake, cake recipe, cakes, carrot, carrot cake, Fairtrade spices, Food, food and wine, foodandwine, foodie, gastronomy, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, sea salt, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, October 5th, 2010
September has been a busy month for food bloggers. I think that is partly as many have had a holiday in August and recharged their batteries, but also it is harvest time and so there’s a huge amount of culinary stimulation in the fields, gardens, markets and shops. For me, harvest time is perhaps the most wonderful time of year as the earth’s bounty repays the effort you have put into the soil; perhaps not as light and joyful as spring and as full of promise, but fulsome.
At A Slice Of Cherry Pie run by Julia Parsons, there are a couple of a nice and simple looking recipes – Autumnal Welsh Lamb Steaks With Butter Beans and Baked Figs With Maple Syrup.
At Cannelle et Vanille (how come the photos are just so beautiful – it is just not fair as mine look like an amateur has snapped them however hard I try), Aran has been still enjoying her vacation in here native Basque region in Spain and wrote a beautiful piece about apples and an apple cake, which puts my efforts on apples to shame; I must try Aran’s recipe as I am on a quest for a decent apple cake at the moment. Also, I love her post about mushroom picking with her father as my mum enjoys her mushroom foraging at this time of year, which earths her back to the soil; I am so pleased that the mushrooms were cooked in a simple risotto dish as good food should be simple and natural and not overfussy. Finally, the Leek, Butternut Squash and Potato Soup with the Apple and Gruyere Muffins have a delectable, autumnal feel about them, but with the amount of apples I have got at home an apple soup recipe would have been welcomed with open arms.
At Chocolate And Zucchini, there is a really useful post called Tomato Burger Buns, which sounds intriguing as a title. What interested me the most was the links into an article in the New York Times about the perfect hamburger. So I feel minded to rekindle my quest for the perfect burger, which can restart now that the nights are drawing in and I have some inspiration for the buns’ component, which was where I had been struggling for a way forward.
At Chubby Hubby, he and his wife flew off to Bangkok to eat at David Thompson’s new restaurant and has shared the recipe for Grilled Pork Neck With A Spicy Sour Sauce, which has that wonderfully Thai feel to it. This links in nicely to a pre-press viewing at Delicious Days of David Thompson’s up and coming book on Thai street food – David Thompson’s Pork Skewers; they also do not seem too hot so would be great as children’s food.
At CookSister, there is a fabulous round up of braai recipes in celebration of national (South African) barbecue day; I like the sticky pork ribs from Simply Delicious and a Kudu Potjie which is a really traditional South African type of pot cooked casserole and Cooksister’s own Whole Leg Of Lamb Barbecue and later her Lamb Sosaties. There is a definite autumnal, harvest-like feel to Stuffed Courgettes and inspires me to cook up our marrows from the garden.
David Lebovitz has been busy travelling to Ireland and showing folks around Paris on a chocolate tour. In amongst it all, he has included some great recipes – a recipe for a brown soda bread inspired by his trip to Ireland and a lovely post about making butter in Cork, as well as a perfect sounding Plum And Rhubarb Crumble cooked by the lovely Rachel Allen, who is one of my favourite cooks.
Helen at Fuss Free Flavours has cooked a healthy and wholesome courgette and red lentil dhal and a Four Seed Tapenade that would be excellent on pasta, plus a Harissa Lentil Salad With Lettuce which (I must declare an interest here) uses my Harissa With Rose Seasoning. I like the idea of the Polenta Bread that uses this corn meal staple within the bread; with Helen Best-Shaw and David Lebovitz baking bread, I reckon this winter is going to involve experiments with bread making, something which has been hold for a couple of years now.
…continues in part 2 [lots of activity in blogosphere this month]…
Tags: A Slice Of Cherry Pie, baking, Blog, Cannelle Et Vanille, Chocolate And Zucchini, Chubby Hubby, cooking, Cooksister, David Lebovitz, David Thompson, Delicious Days, Food, foodie, Fuss Free Flavours, Julia Parsons, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | No Comments »
Saturday, October 2nd, 2010
For whatever reasons, I have not been quite happy with the original teabread recipe that I created and posted a few weeks back, so I have been playing around with the recipe now and baking away. Now several teabreads and a family of very happy tasters later, I think I have cracked it.
The key is still in the tea – the better the tea, the more interesting the tea, the better and more interesting the end result. I have now made it with breakfast tea, Assam tea, Christmas chai tea and Redbush Chai tea and they all come out with slightly different flavours, but they are all great. The tea should always be made with loose leaf tea as you lose that fustiness from the tea bag, plus why use good ingredients then spoil their subtleties with the imperfection of the flavour from a bag. The other addition that I have made is I have substituted buttermilk for the butter, which adds a different richness to the cake that was not completely right beforehand, however you can either substitute this for a full fat milk or omit this ingredient but then add extra tea to compensate, otherwise the teabread loses some of its moistness, which is part of the joy and vital to the texture.
The other part that I have played with is to work on variations of the steeping of the fruits. Firstly, I think it is better to boil the fruit for 10 – 15 minutes, then to leave the fruit to cool and steep in the brewed tea ideally overnight, but certainly until the fruit has cooled to a warm to the touch temperature. The alternative of steeping in freshly brewed tea did not seem as successful, although fine; perhaps the initial boiling softens up and gets the fruit more receptive to taking up the flavours of the tea.
Finally, I have upped the quantities, the better to fit my loaf tin. The end result is moist, rich and moreish, tasting great with butter.
Revised Ingredients And Recipe For Axel’s Teabread
175g / 6 oz / 1 cup sultanas
125g / 4½ oz / ¾ cup raisins
50g / 2oz / ¼ cup currants
175g / 6 oz / ¾ cup light brown muscovado sugar
250ml / 8 fl oz / 1 cup strong, freshly brewed tea
1 egg free-range, at room temperature and lightly beaten
50 ml / 3½ tbsp buttermilk
230g / 8 oz / 1 cups plain white flour
1½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp Fairtrade cinnamon powder
½ tsp Fairtrade nutmeg powder
Preheat the oven to 180C/ 350F. Line a loaf tin with baking paper.
Place the dried fruit and muscovado sugar into a heavy bottomed saucepan, then add the strong tea, heat and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes until the fruit has plumped up. Leave to cool in the pan, ideally overnight.
Sieve together the plain flour, baking powder, Fairtrade cinnamon and nutmeg powders. Make a well in the centre of the flour, then add in the egg and stir thoroughly with a spatula. Add the buttermilk and stir until you have a soft dough. Add the fruits and throughly beat together with the silicone spatula.
Stirring Up The Fruit Bread Mix
Pour the fruit teabread mixture into the prepared loaf tin. Bake for 1 hour 10 minutes, remove from the oven then leave to stand in the tin for about 10 minutes, before turning out and leaving to cool on wire rack. Start checking the consistency of the teabread towards the end – when it is springy to a light touch on the surface of the teabread, it is done.
Yorkshire Teabread
You do not need to leave this to cool down completely as it is lovely eaten warm.
Tags: baking, Blog, cake, cake recipe, cooking, Fairtrade blog, Fairtrade spices, Food, food and wine, foodandwine, foodie, gastronomy, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, teabread, teabread recipe, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe, Yorkshire
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 1 Comment »
Sunday, September 26th, 2010
We only have three apple trees in our garden, but they have been massively fruitful this year. In fact, they have produced so many apples I cannot even hope to use them all, even with friends and family taking them. Nature has been so very fecund that even the quince bush outside of our front door has fruited; in the last 10 years, I reckon we have had had one quince on the bush in total, whereas this year there are seven. It must be nature’s response to two harsh winters – up the reproduction and spread more seeds to survive.
Fruitful Apple Trees In Garden
Apples Picked From the Garden
Windfall Chutney 2010
So over the last two weekends, we have peeled for hours, then: picked and stored the eaters for later this year rather than chomp on out-of-season, flown in fruits from some high street chain; made apple puree, which has been frozen to lighten the fruitless days in the depths of winter; eaten baked apples using up leftover mincemeat for last Christmas that is now gorgeously matured and very boozy; made two types of chutney – General Gordon’s chutney and Windfall Chutney; and still made no dent in the apple harvest.
I love the plenty of harvest time, but I hate to see the waste when there is such an excess, while I know that in February/March I will be longing for fresh fruit in the knowledge that I was so wasteful in September. And we have so little fresh fruit in this part of Northern England.
I have, also, cobbled together several different versions of apple cake, which both have a charmingly spiced, old world flavour to them.
Apple Puree Cake
Apple Puree Cake
Ingredients:
175g / 6 oz / 1 cup apple puree – cooking apples, stewed, pureed then sieved
110g / 4 oz / 2/3 cup sultanas
1tbsp currants
1 mug strong black tea (optional)
200g / 7 oz / 1 cup Fairtrade organic caster sugar
225g / 8 oz / 1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 large eggs at room temperature, lightly whisked
340g / 12 oz / 3 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of sea salt
½ tsp nutmeg powder
½ tsp cinnamon powder
Preheat the oven to 180C / 350F. Prepare a 22cm / 9 inch cake tin by lightly buttering it and lining the base.
If you have not got any pre-made apple puree, peel some cooking apples then core and quarter them (weight will be more than the 175g / 6 oz but you can eat the balance with some sugar, while cooking the rest of the cake). Place in a pan and put lid on; heat under a medium heat until hot, then reduce heat to a low heat and let the apples stew until soft. Squash them through a sieve to give you your apple puree.
This next bit is optional and involves preparing the dried fruit. I put the dried fruit into a pan, then brewed a strong mug of black tea. The black tea was then poured over the fruit and I boiled the fruit for about 10 minutes until nice and plump. Sieve off the excess tea and leave to cool. You can ignore this stage and simply use the dried fruit, but I like doing this as it reduces that jaw-aching, chewiness of dried fruit, while adding another flavour dimension to your baking.
Sieve together the organic plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, sea salt, nutmeg and cinnamon.
Cream together the butter and caster sugar. Add the eggs – half at first, followed by a tablespoon of the flour mix, then add the remainder. Now add in the cooled apple puree and mix thoroughly. Add the rest of the flour mix and mix together. Finally add the sultanas and currants and make sure it is mixed well.
Pour the cake batter into the prepared cake tin and bake for 50 minutes. Towards the end start checking the consistency of the cake, by gently touching the top and feeling whether it is springy rather than liquidy. If it is cooking too slowly reduce the temperature to 160C / 320F and cook for another 5 – 10 minutes.
Leave to cool in tin for about 5 minutes, then remove from the cake tin and let cool completely on a wire rack.
For the second apple cake recipe, this will be in my next blog…
Tags: apple, apple cake, apple recipes, apples, Autumn, baking, Blog, chutney, cooking, Food, foodie, foodie news, green blog, green way of life, lifestyle, organic, organic food blog, recipe, Recipes, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe, Yorkshire
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010
One of the classics of British cuisine is to poach pears in red wine or syrup. As a variation on this, I sometimes create a sweet spicy syrup to poach the pears in, then reduce these to a thick, sweet sauce. Recently, however, I have been thinking about how to use teas and infusions in my cooking, as well as the impact of different liquids such as beer versus wine and even different beers, to add extra depth to the flavour of your food without bringing in too much extra complexity.
That’s a rather geeky way of saying the liquids you use in cooking can alter subtly the flavour of the meal and they are something we all tend to ignore when cooking, focusing on the big ingredients like the meat or the vegetables or the mix of spices, then just pouring in tap water or “red wine” when we should be screaming hard or soft water, bottled water, fizzy and which red wine, wine from where, as it makes a huge difference.
So as an experiment, I brewed up a large pot of Red Chai Tea, which I make with an organic rooibos tea from South Africa and my own flavour combination of spices. I left this to steep for a bit then filtered out the sweet, orangey-red tea that is coloured like an amazing African sunset. Next, you add a mix of ginger powder, saffron and Madagascan vanilla and a light muscovado sugar to the tea; in my usual recipe, I add lemon zest but not here as there is lemongrass in the chai spice mix. This is the base flavour for the pears and the sweet sauce, which you then use to poach some pears.
At this time of the year, pears are deliciously ripe but you can use this recipe even on the most flavourless brick of a pear in mid winter and get some flavour into them and soften them up, so it is good for your five-a-day. The result are perfectly soft and succulent sweet pears in a sweet sauce that has a richly luxuriant saffron-vanilla flavour. Sometimes, I finish my normal versions of this recipe with a vanilla whipped cream, but that really is almost too decadent and I did not have any cream the other night. Eating with a knife and fork, the knife just glides through the soft flesh of the pear and the taste is heavenly with the characteristic sweetness of the pears perfectly offset by the chocolately, creaminess of the vanilla.
It does take a bit of time to make, but not much effort. And simple is often the best thing in life.
How To Make Pears In Rooibos With Vanilla And Saffron
4 pears (choose the nicest you can find, but they should still be hard)
500ml normally brewed rooibos tea or Red Chai tea
125g Fairtrade light muscovado sugar
1 organic Fairtrade vanilla pod
½ pinch organic saffron
¼ tsp organic Fairtrade ginger
125ml double or whipping cream (optional)
1 organic Fairtrade vanilla pod (optional)
Peel the pears leaving the stalk, then cut a small slice off the base of the pear to enable them to stand upright in the pan and on the plate. Find a heavy bottomed pan that is tall enough to accomodate the full height of the pears with the pan lid over the top. Leave the pears on a plate to the side for the moment.
In a family sized tea pot, brew the rooibos tea. It is best to use loose leaf tea as the tea bag imparts a dusty, foisty flavour to the tea, but a teabag will do for convenience. Brew as normal based on equivalent of 1 teaspoon per person so that is 4 heaped teaspoons into the pot, using freshly drawn water that has been brought to the boil, then steeped for 5 minutes; strain and pour into the pan.
Brew Your Rooibos Tea
Add the light muscovado sugar, saffron and ginger. For the vanilla, slice this lengthways and scrape out the vanilla seeds into the rooibos tea, then place the whole bean into the liquid for good measure.
Place the pears upright into the pan, put the lid carefully over the pears slightly off the rim. Bring to the boil, then reduce heat to a gentle simmer and poach for 45 minutes until the pears are perfectly soft; you may need to adjust the cooking time depending on the ripeness of the pears. Take the pears out of the sauce, put on a plate and leave to cool fully.
Strain the sugar syrup to remove the saffron and any bits. Return the pan to the hob and heat to a vigorous boil and reduce the syrup to about 150ml. Leave the syrup to cool.
To make the vanilla cream: pour 125ml of cream into a bowl; slice a vanilla bean lengthways and scrape the seeds into the cream; using an electric or hand whisk, whisk to a thick, whipped cream. Place in fridge while the pears and sauce are cooling to allow the vanilla flavours to infuse the cream.
Poached Pears In Rooibos Tea, Vanilla And Saffron
Place the pears onto individual plates and pour over some of the sauce. Add a tablespoon of vanilla whipped cream on the side of each plate.
Tags: Blog, cooking, Fairtrade spices, Food, food and wine, foodandwine, foodie news, gastronomy, organic, organic food blog, pudding recipe, recipe, Recipes, redbush, roibos, saffron, spice, spices, Steenbergs, Steenbergs spices, sweet recipe, tea, vanilla, vegetarian, vegetarian recipe
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 4 Comments »
Monday, August 16th, 2010
Cooking at home differs from fancy cuisine in restaurants in that it is about compromise. While a top notch chef does not need to compromise on ingredients and quality, at home you need to juggle your precious time with what you have got available in your storecupboard and can find in the shops. Also, you need to take into account what your family will and won’t eat; in a restaurant, the customer can chose his/her own menu to suit their mood and likes/dislikes from the menu, you have got to make one meal that satisfies everyone.
This recipe came out of that need to compromise. My sister’s two girls do not really like potatoes and will eat pasta forever, while Jay wanted meatballs. So I came up with meatballs in tomato sauce with spaghetti. While everyone ate the pasta, some ignored the meatballs but enjoyed the tomato and red pepper sauce that they had been cooked in. Success all round.
Ingredients For The Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce:
1tbsp cold pressed organic olive oil
1 medium sized onion, roughly chopped
1 garlic clove, roughly chopped
1 red pepper, topped and tailed, deseeded and roughly chopped
½ tsp natural sea salt
½ tsp coarsely ground organic black pepper
2 bay leaves (I used fresh from garden)
1 tsp finely chopped fresh thyme leaves (I used fresh from garden; if using dry use ½ tsp)
2 tins / 800g / 1lb 12oz chopped organic tomatoes (near enough 2lbs)
2tbsp white wine (optional)
1tbsp soured cream
Ingredients For The Meatballs:
500g / 1lb 2oz minced beef steak (organic and locally sourced, if possible)
1 small onion, finely chopped (or even minced to hide from fussy kids)
50g / 2 oz breadcrumbs (ideally use bread that’s gone slightly over rather than fresh, as they are more flavoursome plus it’s less wasteful)
1 egg
½ tsp organic nutmeg powder
½ tsp organic mace powder
½ tsp natural sea salt
½ tsp freshly fine ground organic white pepper
1tbsp organic sunflower oil
Ingredients For Tomato Sauce
1. In a decent sized pan, add the organic olive oil and heat under a medium heat. Add the chopped onion and garlic and cook gently for 5 minutes, then add the chopped red pepper and cook, stirring regularly for another 3 minutes.
2. Add the herb and spice flavours – sea salt, organic ground black pepper, thyme and bay leaves. Stir and cook for another 1 minute.
Frying Base Ingredients For Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce
3. Add the white wine and chopped tomatoes, mix together, cover with a lid, then raise temperature until tomatoes just start boiling. Reduce heat and allow to simmer with the lid on for about 15 minutes. Leave to cool. While cooling, taste and adjust flavourings if you feel it is needed.
4. Remove the bay leaves. Then using a food processor or hand held blender, chop the sauce to a fine puree. Stir in the soured cream until thoroughly mixed through.
Pureed Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce
5. The best time to start making the meatballs is while the tomatoes are hubbling away for 15 minutes. Put all the ingredients into a large mixing bowl and mixed through completely. Cover and put into fridge for about 30 minutes to let the flavours flow through.
Mixture For Meatballs
6. Take from fridge and scoop out dessert spoon sized amounts of meatball mix and roll into balls and put onto a plate. You can then put these into the fridge to cool again for 30 minutes which will make the meatballs firmer and less likely to collapse while cooking, but this is not necessary.
Shaped Meat Balls
7. Warm an oven to 100oC / 212oF. Bring the tomato sauce to the boil and allow to simmer.
8. In a heavy bottomed frying pan, tip the organic sunflower oil and heat until hot. Lightly fry all the meatballs until golden brown and cooked through. Put the cooked meatballs on a baking tray in the oven to keep warm while you are cooking the others.
Frying The Meat Balls
9. Put the meatballs delicately into the tomato sauce and cook in the sauce for 15 minutes.
Meatballs In Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce
10. Serve with pasta or rice and, perhaps, garnished with a little finely chopped parsley.
Meatballs In Tomato And Red Pepper Sauce With Spaghetti
Tags: Blog, cooking, Fairtrade spices, mace, meat balls, meatballs, nutmeg, organic, organic food blog, pepper, recipe, Recipes, sea salt, spice, spices, Steenbergs spices, tomato sauce
Posted in Recipes, food & cooking | 4 Comments »
Saturday, July 31st, 2010
My blog posts about Dumfries and Galloway would not be complete without talking about Cream O’Galloway, an ice cream producer between Gatehouse of Fleet and Kirkcudbright. We seem to spend much of our family holiday centred around their farm at Rainton, where they have developed a tasteful and sustainable attraction around the Cream O’Galloway ice cream factory experience.
Cream O'Galloway Visitor Centre
There are indoor wooden play areas for under 6s and older children, as well as outdoor climbing areas in the woods pitched at varying degrees of skill, athleticism, ranging from the simple to the hard work – I am no longer as agile as I once was so Level 4 is too much bending down, twisting and turning and scrabbling through tunnels for me; I actually do think it is easier for people below 4 foot in height as that’s the level of the holes and obstacles have been built for. Then there are tracks for mountain biking past the wind turbine, zip wires, chutes, and a race track for go-carts, as well as nature trails and gentle ambles.
Cream O’Galloway also have farm tours, pond dipping, ice cream making sessions (my third year in a row and this year we made vanilla, honeycomb and chocolate chip flavour ice cream) and ice cream tasting sessions as well as other nature tours later in the year when the tourists and holiday-makers become less evident. In 2009, we bought a year’s pass and this year (2010) we got a week pass for the second week, which are both really good value and are worth it if you will be visiting more than about 4 and 2 times, respectively.
Karting At Cream O'Galloway
The kids love it so we love it. The tea could be better and after one week an alternative to burgers would be great, but we did discover the veggie burger this year which was a welcome break for meat, meat and meat. My favourite burger is the double Mexican burger; most of their burgers I think are better as singles, but with the Mexican you can put a dollop of spicy guacamole, tomato salsa and soured cream in the middle, which is totally fabulous. As I have already said, it is worth a trip out of your way to track down their organic, 21 day matured steaks that you can get in the cafe area before going into the main attraction.
Then, their ice cream is, also, worth a special detour to taste and savour. Oh and everything is organic and some is also Fairtrade.
Cream O’Galloway is a really successful farmer’s diversification scheme. The farm, Rainton Farm, is a dairy farm with a smallish herd of Ayrshire kine. The farm went organic with the Soil Association many years ago and is at the forefront of ethical, organic dairy farming, so for example they are currently building a new milking parlour and anearobic digester, while they are the only commercial dairy herd that keeps the mother and calf together for the first 6+ months and milks the mother only once a day rather than twice a day. The milk is delicious as it comes from a grass fed cows and an ocean air pasture, so the milk is the dairy equivalent of salt marsh lamb. Most of the milk gets sold into one of the dairy groups, so finding its way into the major supermarkets, mixed in with other milks.
Rainton Farm Herd At Cream O'Galloway
Dairy At Rainton For Cream O'Galloway
Some of the fresh, unpasteurised milk is taken every morning after the morning milking to the ice cream factory which is just in a small converted threshing barn. In fact, it is remarkably small and compact, full of gleaming stainless steel machines and vats; the milk is pasteurised before it goes into the vats and ice cream machines as part of the manufacturing process.
The ice cream is tasty and there is a great range of flavours, with all of it using their organic milk (but not all certified as organic) and some of it Fairtrade as well. Our family’s favourite flavours are:
You can get quite a lot of their flavours in some of the supermarkets in Scotland, such as Morrisons and Tesco and then loads of independent stores – use their stockist finder to locate your nearest one.
We still rank the Cream O’Galloway centre in our family top ice cream parlours as in an earlier blog.
Tags: Blog, Cream O'Galloway, Dumfries, Dumfries and Galloway, eco, Environment & science, foodie, foodie news, Gatehouse of Fleet, Holiday, Kirkcudbright, organic, organic food blog, organic ice cream, play area, Scotland, Steenbergs, visitor attraction
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Tuesday, July 27th, 2010
21/7/2010 – I am sitting here at a table overlooking a glorious lake; not some picture postcard view across Lake Como in brilliant sunshine, but a grey, overcast day with some low lying wispy clouds moving slowly across the conifer plantations opposite me as I look across Loch Ken between Castle Douglas and New Galloway. Soaring up in the sky there is a red kite, and sometimes you can even see ospreys around here. I am watching my son sailing with what little wind there is over the loch. It is your normal British style holiday – activity by the water, or over the dales or over climbing frames. In the background, I can hear screams of fun and joy as four families battle it out in the laser quest battlefield beside us. But at least it is currently dry, but probably will start to rain when I go out kayaking this afternoon.
Boats On Loch Ken
So I turn my thoughts to other hidden foodie secrets of this wonderful part of Scotland.
Firstly, one that isn’t worth it. Castle Douglas bills itself as a foodie town, but it’s all a bit of a let down, so other than a decent butcher (Hendersons – good for sausages), a goodish deli/chocolate shop (In House Chocolates) and Tesco, don’t get overexcited about the hype.
However, on Saturdays in Gatehouse of Fleet, they hold a small farmers’ market with a bigger one on the first Saturday of each month. Last Saturday was the smaller version and it was belting it down when we were there with a few others. Jen Hen’s is a stall that sells eggs – surprise, surprise – from a flock of mixed hens on a farm near Tongland. Then, there’s Wigwam Bakery, which was the reason I was here bright and early, as last year when I pottered down the hill, her small selection of beautiful hand-baked goods had all been sold. I was especially after her Roman Spelt bread and Maslan Bread (a mix of 50:50 white to wholemeal bread using a rye sourdough base), plus she does a goodly variety of other breads, including one called Aphrodite with seeds and things. Susie had a great selection of sweet baked goods and people were busy trying to get her delicious chocolate cake, while I went for two of her cookies that are a health meal in themselves, packed full of amazing seeds. You can tell she has a reputation as the locals all queue from her stall early and even on that bitterly cold Saturday.
Then, there was the mobile butcher’s shop, Wullie’s, which is the shop for Wm. Lindsay in Creetown. I bought some lamb chops from Willie, but really was there to ask him about salt-marsh lamb as I had spotted last year (and this) a flock of sheep on the salt marshes beside Creetown. Sure enough, he gets 6 lambs every year “for the English” in mid August, but told me he preferred the “blackies from the hills” which he gets in late August/ early September. I said I would ring him in August about the salt-marsh lamb, so I will keep you posted if I succeed with that.
Sheep On Salt Marshes Near Creetown
Blackie Sheep On Hills In Dumfries And Galloway
Amazing Horns On Blackie Ram In Cairnsmore Hills
Other than that I had been hunting around for decent meat, which there is little to come by at this time of year, what with lambs being out of season. The two places I have found good meat are Barstobrick Farm Shop and Cream O’Galloway. Barstobrick is a fairly soulless site with an equestrian centre, some walks and holiday cabins, plus a dreary cafe and farm shop; however, they do sell their own meat within the farm shop. It is Aberdeen Angus beef, reared on the farm and slaughtered at their own butchery. Robin & Hilary Austin then let the meat mature for 21 days before it is packed and sealed and frozen on site. They sell fillet and sirloin steak, as well as beef sausages and beef-burgers. We went for the sirloin steak (£24.99/kg), which had great marbling and a lovely deep, brown-red hue. We tasted it that night, fried simply in butter to medium-rare and eaten with new potatoes and runner beans; it was deliciously meaty with a sweet hint of grassiness, while your knife just glided through the meat with no problem. They were really good and worth the visit to this otherwise unprepossessing place.
Sirloin Steaks From Barstobrick Farm Shop
At Cream O’Galloway, they butcher some of their Ayrshire dairy herd for meat for their burgers that they serve within the cafe area. They are delicious burgers (as well as organic) and are made on site; I have had pretty much every type of burger they do over the last three years, with my favourite being the double Mexican burger, where I put a mix of the guacamole, soured cream and salsa between the burgers and then enjoy. They use decent bread rolls for the burgers, overcoming one of my major bugbears about many burger joints in the UK. Sometimes, hidden between all the pots of organic ice cream (I’ll talk about those in a separate blog), you can get a few fillet steaks (or other cuts) in one of the freezers before you go into the main activity centre.
We bought a couple of fillet steaks that had a deep red-brown colour and were decently marbled; they were also nicely thick at about an inch or so. They cost £30/kg and are worth every penny. We lightly fried the Cream O’Galloway fillet steaks (sold as Rainton Farm which is the name of the farm while the brand I am using is strictly speaking for the ice cream). We ate them with new potatoes, broccoli for the kids and tomato salad for Sophie and me. They were heavenly: and were perfect “melt in you mouth meat” as our daughter called them – you knife just sliced through as if you were cutting through silk, and the taste was a rich, luxurious, umami taste of healthy, well-reared meat; you got the sweetness of the organic grass together with the pure salty air off the Solway Firth. Everyone’s plates were quickly emptied to sounds of “more please?”, but as for Oliver there was no more to be had, except that we had scoffed it all.
Fillet Steaks From Rainton Farm In Dumfries And Galloway
Rainton Farm steaks are one of the best meats that I have ever come across and if you can ever get close to the Gatehouse Of Fleet area, I urge you to make the detour, as this is one of those amazingly awesome food sources that you stumble across once in a while.
Tags: Barstobrick, Blog, Christmas food, Cream O'Galloway, Dumfries, Food, foodie, foodie news, Meat, organic, organic food blog, rural, Scotland, vegetarian
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