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Posts Tagged ‘Food’

The Vicar’s Wife Recommends: Restaurants

Posted in Food, Fun, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 12 November, 2010| 1 Comment »

The Vicar and I had such a lovely lunch out today. An unexpected bonus after a breezy walk around the Clent Hills on the Vicar’s Day Off. I used my extensive Googling powers to find a pub near to where we would be walking and was extremely pleased to find a Good Pub Guide recommended place. And not just recommended, but the winner of 2010 National Pub of the Year: The Bell and Cross.

The pub's cosy Red Room

The pub seems to comprise about five small rooms, each about the size of an average living room and packed with dining tables and chairs. So it’s not the place to go with an enormous family party. We ate in the Red Room and were very cosy. The service was quick, polite and efficient. We didn’t want a large meal as the Engineer’s godmother is coming for dinner later. So we ordered from the Lunchtime Bites menu.

The Vicar very much enjoyed his Potted Farmhouse Chicken Rillette, Fruit Chutney, Leaves and Baguette. The potted rillette was very tasty, almost gamey and the chutney excellent. He could have done with a little more baguette, but we had cunningly ordered extra side orders of fries and green beans, so he ate some fries with rillette in a rather unorthodox manner.

My dish of Skewered King Prawns with a Catalan salad was fresh and zingy thanks to generous chunks of chorizo and a piquant dressing. Very tasty and light.

As we had an important Praise Assembly to attend (the Joker had an award for knowing his Spanish alphabet better than his form teacher), we didn’t stop for dessert. The price for the two of us, including a beer, a white wine and a single coffee: £28. Not exactly a weekly possibility on a clergy stipend, but a good price for an excellent meal. And only 20 minutes away from our inner city Vicarage. Just need to save up for next time…

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Vicarage Recipes: Whole Orange Cake

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , on 11 November, 2010| 17 Comments »

Another week, another baking session. This cake is very moist and zingy with orange as you make it using the whole fruit, skin and everything. It’s also very simple as there’s no strenuous mixing involved.

The original recipe was in cups, but being a British baker, the inaccuracy of filling measuring vessels makes me nervous, so I have given a weight translation based on my cup measuring last night.

Today I topped this with a couple of candles for little Lollipop who was two, and we sang her Happy Birthday at Cake and Chat (the school mums coffee morning that I hold). I don’t think she actually ate any of the cake (more for us mums…), as it doesn’t really have enough butter icing for smaller people, but she seemed to enjoy blowing the candles out. This cake would also be good served warm with cream as a dessert.

Not exactly the WHOLE orange cake...

Ingredients

1 orange, including the skin
180g melted butter or soft marg
3 eggs
1 cup/220g caster sugar
1½ cups/210g self-raising flour

Put the marg in a microwave or on the stove to gently melt. Whilst that’s on, blitz the orange in a blender, having chopped it first so you can remove the pips and that white pith in the middle. I use the mini chopper that came with my stick blender.

Put the melted marg and the pureed orange in a mixing bowl and stir in all the other ingredients to make quite a sloppy batter. Pop in a greased and/or lined 8″ cake tin and bake for 40-45 minutes at 180°C (Gas 4).

My original recipe came with an icing made with icing sugar, orange juice and zest and melted butter. If you like your cake very sweet feel free…

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Vicarage Recipes: Spaghetti Carbonara

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 4 November, 2010| 5 Comments »

This week I’ve not got a baking recipe for you. Instead I thought I’d share a Vicarage supper recipe. For Sunday lunch this week I cooked a gammon joint (I really must blog that recipe sometime soon aswell). The Vicar had bought the gammon, and it was on offer. Being a Scotsman, therefore, he arrived with a joint that was larger than usual. We love gammon and very much enjoyed our lunch, but there were lots of leftovers.

Normally, I’ll use leftover gammon for sandwiches and a pasta bake with cheese sauce. But I didn’t feel like a pasta bake and there was far too much left for sandwiches. So I did what all social media junkies do: I tweeted my request for recipes for leftover gammon. And bingo! Spanish hotpot, rissoles and  many other great suggestions. One of the dishes I was reminded that I could make was a spaghetti carbonara. I often find recipes a bit of a pain when they are for four, as we almost never have an easy number eating. So I’ve organised this carbonara recipe per person:

Ingredients

Per adult, you will need (I used 5 times this recipe for 3 adults and 3 kids):

  • 1 egg yolk (look at it as an opportunity to make meringues)
  • 2tbspns double cream and 2 tbspns creme fraiche (or other proportion to make a total of 60ml if you’ve not got those in the right quantities)
  • 40g grated parmesan (or emmental, gruyere, mature cheddar)
  • 70g cubed gammon, bacon or pancetta
  • 1tbspn dry vermouth (or white wine, or leave it out altogether)
  • 10g/1tbspn butter
  • chopped parsley, black pepper to garnish

First put the spaghetti on to cook.

Then mix the cream and creme fraiche with the egg yolk and cheese. I mix it in a jug so it’s ready to pour out when the spaghetti is cooked.

Then fry the bacon/gammon until sizzling and crispy. Add the vermouth to the bacon and wait until the liquid has reduced and you have a good saucey consistency.

Then all you do is wait for the spaghetti to be cooked. Drain the cooked pasta and return it to the saucepan. Add the bacon with its sauce and the butter. Put it on a low heat and add the egg mixture. Gently stir until the sauce has warmed up. Serve with parsley and black pepper (or not, if your kids are fussy or you’ve run out).

Enjoy with a glass of wine. Or you might have to wait until after the trek down the M5 to piano lessons.

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Vicarage Recipes: Choc chip (or Pecan) Banana Loaf

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 20 October, 2010| 3 Comments »

Wednesdays is my baking day and since the recipe for lemonies seemed to go down pretty well the other week, today I’m going to share another Vicarage favourite bake. I’ve adapted the recipe from one in an Aussie cookbook sent to me by my oldest friend, who now lives in Sydney.

Wildwoman is a big foodie and thought I should would enjoy Bill’s food, which I did, very much. This cake has become a staple in our house, where we always seem to have some overripe bananas attracting fruit flies in the corner of the kitchen.

If you have a kitchen mixer, like a Kenwood chef, this is extra easy, but it should be just as simple with an electric mixer, or even to do by hand. Both versions are great. The pecans seem to almost caramelise as they bake, so I think it’s my favourite. But there’s also something about chocolate and bananas…

Choc Chip or Pecan Banana Loaf

Ingredients

250g/8oz self raising flour
250g/8oz caster sugar
125g/4oz soft margarine
4 ripe bananas
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
150-200g/4-6oz chocolate chips or 100-150g/3-5oz chopped pecans

Plop everything in your mixer, or a bowl, and mix together. The batter doesn’t need to look too smooth – mine always look pretty lumpy. If your bananas are not very ripe at all, you should probably mush them up separately with a fork first. Then pop the mix into a lined (I use a nifty pre-cut reusable silicone liner) 2lb loaf tin.

Bake for 1hr-1hr15mins in your oven at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC). When it’s done, it will be firm to the touch and a skewer should come out pretty clean. Leave it to cool in the tin. This cake keeps really well, if you can manage not to eat it.

Here’s last week’s Pecan Banana loaf, which was popular with both the family and the gang at Cake and Chat.

I really hope you're not here for the quality of the photography

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Vicarage Recipes: Lemonies

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 7 October, 2010| 6 Comments »

As anyone who follows me on Twitter (or is a friend on Facebook) knows, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. My kitchen time is especially intense on Wednesdays, which is my baking day in preparation for the weekly coffee morning I organise which  is mainly attended by school gate mums.

Every week I bake at least two cakes or biscuity or bready type things. Others often bring toast or crumpets, and we eat together and talk about how to solve the problems of the week. This morning it was improving working memory in dyslexic and ADHD affected kids.

This morning’s Cake & Chat delicacies from the Vicarage Kitchen were malt loaf, apple turnovers and lemonies. When I mentioned the lemonies on Facebook, my friend Snap asked for the recipe. Neatnik at Cake and Chat was also very keen on them, so this recipe is also for her.

I’ve decided that the only way to blog recipes is to give up the exalted aim of photographing step-by-step cooking, but to be content with a finished product pic. My photography skills are just not up to those of the Pioneer Woman, whose recipes always look so easy as she shows the whole procedure from cast of ingredients through to half-eaten plateful.

 

Just the finished product, I'm afraid. Delicious though.

 

The original recipe book name for lemonies is Bahama meltaways. I renamed them lemonies, as they are like a lemon brownie, with a shortbread base.  Also I have no idea what the Bahamas have to do with a traybake. The topping is sweet and chewy like a brownie, but with a great lemon kick. The recipe was originally in a Royal Scottish Country Dance Society cookbook given to me by my most excellent mother-in-law, who knows a thing or two about baking.

Lemonies

Shortbread: 3oz butter, 5oz plain flour, 2oz icing sugar

Topping: 8oz granulated sugar, 2 eggs, 2tbspns lemon juice, 2 tbspns plain flour, 1/2 tspn baking powder

I make this the quick way, using my food processor to blitz the flour and butter for the shortbread base before pulsing in the icing sugar. But if you don’t have a processor, just rub the butter into the flour until you have a fine sandy mixture. Then mix in the icing sugar.

Scatter the mixture in a tin (9×11″/23x28cm) which you have lined with baking paper or greased well. I have reusable liners cut to fit the tin, which saves lots of hassle when baking but is a bit of a faff for washing up. Flatten the mix down with your hand and put it to bake at 180ºC (Gas 4, Fan 170ºC) for 15 minutes.

Then mix all the topping ingredients together in a medium bowl or a jug, and then, when the 15 minutes are up, pour over the partly cooked base. Return to the oven for another 20-25 minutes until the topping is golden and set.

Leave to cool for 5-10 minutes and then cut into squares. These are quite sweet, but have a wonderful crisp and chewy texture.

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Vicarage Puddings: Easy Peasy Elegants

Posted in Food, Vicarage, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on 14 May, 2010| 5 Comments »

In our house, apart from at Sunday lunch, ‘pudding’ is nearly always fruit or yoghurt. Bor-ing. So I have recently developed a way of making dull weekday desserts seem exotic and elegant.

I love these glasses

It mainly involves some rather lovely tumblers from Ikea. Our parish is only 12 minutes (on a good day, when the M5/M6 junction isn’t blocked like a festival loo) from the Swedish superstore. Another advantage of West Midlands inner city ministry. Anyway, we have the tumblers in blue, and although they are obviously excellent for gin, we more often use them as pudding bowls. They are short and wide and a happy summery colour. Perfect for puds.

In them I place yoghurt or icecream, often some fresh fruit, perhaps a sweetie or sprinkles and a biscuit of some sort. Favourites are those Italian trifle sponge fingers with ‘Boudoir’ stamped on them. But yesterday we used some chocolate macaroons I’d made for my school mums coffee morning, using up some left-over egg whites. And if I’m feeling extra kind, the kids are also allowed to have umbrellas. I was feeling particularly munificent yesterday.

Leave one for me... (and don't look too closely at the mucky table)

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The Vicarage Garden goes Edible

Posted in Garden, tagged , , , , , , , on 6 May, 2010| 8 Comments »

It’s our second spring in the Vicarage and this year I am planning vegetables. I’ve been inspired by Alys Fowler and her Edible Garden series on BBC2 (tho’ I’ve not watched as much of it as I’d like due to a lack of tv licence and running out of broadband download). I would like her hair, dresses and funny little dog. And garden, obviously.

Only a few plants were munched by the evil slugs...

So far I have planted masses of seeds in a plastic greenhouse (see pics) and fended off a some evil slugs who had a chomp when the first rain arrived after planting. I have ordered the Vicar about with a spade and he has kindly dug up small parts of a couple of our massive herbaceous borders so I have veggie space. He also planted out the sweet pea plants I succumbed to in the garden centre.

Normally he is the gardener and has managed a couple of allotments in our time in Vicar college and in curacy. Now he is generally too busy to do much gardening and has said that I have to be in charge. This is a new experience for me (in the garden, at least).

Since I’m so bad at housework, gardening has always seemed like an excessive luxury. Why tidy the garden when the house is such a mess? But I’m desperate for home-grown veggies so am attempting to do some growing this year. Hopefully with some help from my husband, who actually enjoys gardening when he’s out there. The kids love it as well, the Queen in particular. She’s in the school ‘EcoClub’ and spends almost every lunchtime gardening in the school’s new allotment.

Waiting in the ‘greenhouse’ for planting out I currently have the following:

  • Sweetcorn
  • Radishes
  • Mixed salad leaves
  • Broad beans
  • Runner beans
  • Sugar snap peas
  • Courgettes
  • Sunflowers
  • Er…I think that’s it just now

Our main veggie space for this season - starting small

Planting out is this weekend’s project. And fighting the slugs. Three little ones climbed into the greenhouse just after planting and sampled a good few of my germinating plants. Evil blighters. We moved the greenhouse out of the long grass and surrounded it with ash from the fire, which seems to have kept them off so far. The advice for planting out is used coffee grounds to keep them off. So I’m tanking myself up on caffeine for Saturday…

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Shallow pros and cons of the inner city

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , on 25 November, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I love food. You may not have noticed, but cooking is one of my passions. We have a friend who says that everyone should have a hobby that they could practice wherever they lived and whatever their age. His is fishing. The Vicar’s is photography (and golf I guess) and mine is completely definitely and utterly cooking (and eating).

Anyway, living in our multicultural neighbourhood has pros and cons for the practise of my hobby. The many positives include:

  • A vast selection of spices available in bulk at the local corner shop
  • A fab butcher (for chicken, lamb, mutton and fish only) who will chop my meat as I want it for no extra cost
  • Cheap cheap cheap onions (in 10kg bags), garlic, fresh ginger and coriander. And milk.
  • Exotic fruit and veg available too (big boxes of mangos are a fave)
  • Cookery advice from local friends of all cultures

Mine didn't look as fancy as this

On the minus side, yesterday I was in search of couscous. I’d bought my ‘chopped for curry’ chicken on the bone and was looking forward to cooking a Moroccan tagine. But not enough couscous was available in the Vicarage pantry and I didn’t want to trek into town. It’s not like couscous is a matter of life or death or anything. It’s just right with tagine.

So I tried our local Indian supermarket. Because it’s a multicultural area I sort of expect all sorts of interesting foodstuffs to be available easily. But there was no couscous. Not much call for it in our neck of the woods. We have Punjabis, Pakistanis, Kenyans, Jamaicans, Somalis and Polish folk plus many others. But not enough North Africans for the right selection at the shops yet. And they don’t stock parsley either, so if I’m making tabouleh or kedgeree I have to think ahead a bit. Oh the trials.

Maybe it’s not multicultural enough here.

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Sunday Lunch – Menu considerations

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , , on 16 November, 2009| 4 Comments »

After the guest list, next up for consideration for the Vicarage Sunday lunch is the menu. Our Sunday lunches have a few criteria to meet:

  • Cheap, otherwise the Vicar’s stipend would be sorely stretched. This means fancy organic meat and any red meat not on special offer is usually off the menu.
  • Acceptable for consumption by all the guests. This is why I tend to stick to pretty traditional roasts. We don’t live in an area where we can cook our beef raw or serve the lamb with a fancy salsa verde. And since I cooked roast pork for some dear friends in our last parish and only discovered on serving that one of them couldn’t abide it, I ALWAYS check whether there is anything that people won’t consume. I’ve been surprised by people’s dietary restrictions.
  • Possible to cook on the oven timer, or otherwise be worked around our absence at church between about 10.00am and 12.30pm. And we want to eat by 2.30pm at the latest, otherwise the Vicar has indigestion at the Evening Service and the children have consumed so many snacks that they don’t eat the lovely meal I’ve just slaved over.
  • I like if possible to make desserts the day before, or have a dessert that’s really speedy to make on a Sunday. There’s enough stress in the Vicarage on a Sunday morning without having to whip cream.
  • A few good leftovers always makes a good meal perfect.

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Anniversary lunch recipe

Posted in Food, tagged , , , , on 30 April, 2009| 2 Comments »

Yesterday the Vicar and I celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary.

I’ve got a bit hopeless at anniversaries these days, but spotted some English asparagus going cheap at Sainsbury’s that morning. So I cooked two big bundles of it. We added shaved parmesan, freshly ground black pepper, drizzles of lemon juice and extra-virgin olive oil and some Sainsbury’s Basics salami, which is very thinly sliced.

It was delicious, and at a perfect temperature after the Vicar took it into the living room first to get better light for his photograph. We ate it with bread on the side to mop up the oil and lemon.

Impressive, eh?

Looks professional, eh?

PS The Joker was messing around with this post before I put it up and tried to re-type the title. He called it “Annaversy lunch”. Ahhh.

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