Salaric Cooking

Recipe: Perfect Honey Roast Parsnips

This is my friend Becca’s Recipy.

Ingredients: Parsnips Animal fat (fat drippings from roast chicken/duck/meat) or olive oil Salt Pepper Honey

• peel the parsnips and slice into long wedges
• Place in a bowl and add animal fat/olive oil and mix till all parsnips are coated
• Place parsnips on a baking tray and sprinkle with salt and pepper
• Place in a hot oven (180oC) for 15 mins or untill golden brown
• Remove from oven and drizzle honey over the parsnips, mix well till parsnips all coated.  Return to oven for a futher minute.

Tasty Savoury Pastry (Wheat and Dairy Free!)

This recipy belongs to my friend Becca.

Filed under: Savoury recipes, Becca on the 15th April 2007 at 4:44 pm After much searching for recipes and experimenting by baking one pie a week i have discoverea very tasty savory pastry recipe. Of course olly and i were both getting fatter from eating all the pies i was making, so i have now had to limit pie making to just once a month.

Ingredients: 75g rice flour 75g cornmeal 75g potato flour ~ 1tsp xanthan gum 1 pinch salt 150g soya butter 1 egg whisked

• Sift the rice flour, cornmeal, potato flour, salt and xanthan gum into a large bowl and mix well.
• Add chunks or cubes of the soya butter and rub into the flour (or use a pastry cutter) to make “breadcrumbs”.
• Add enough of the egg to bring the pastry together but make sure it isn’t too wet as it will shrink in the oven.
• On a lightly potato/rice floured board knead the dough. Roll into a ball slightly flatten it, wrap in cling film and chill in the fridge for a minimum of 30 mins but best left overnight.
• When chilled roll the pastry out between two baking sheets and use as required.

Tips • I brush a bit of whisked egg over the top of the pastry after it is half cooked, it makes the pastry go golden. • if cracks appear in the raw pie casing smooth pastry dough with a little water to fill in the gaps. • Always use a pie funnel to stop pastry collapsing and filling from boiling over.

This recipy has been sent to me by my friend Ella 🙂

You need 300g plain flour 50g butter some milk Baking soda raisons golden syrop cinnamon (if u like it)

1. Sift 300 g of flour throgh a seive into a big bowl, add 50g (about an inch block cut off a standard size pack of butter) chopped into bits, 2 teaspoons of bakin soda and cinamon.

2. squish hte butter between you fingers in the flour (this bit can be messy!) until you have a mixture that looks like bread crumbs (funny that) i.e. all hte butter is mixed up with flour.

3. In another bowl add soem treacle (50g or a bit) and some milk (50g or a splash). Whisk these together until the milk is treacle coloured and the treacle is no longer stuck at hte bottom of hte bowl.

4. Add milk / treacle mixture and raisons (as many as you like) to hte breadcrumbs. Mix to makea sticky dough like thingy.

5. plop (it doesn’t really pour, its kinda sticky) the mixture into a bread tin/cake tin/thing that has been greased with butter then covered ina bit of fluor.

6. put into hot oven… er can’t remember temp, was between 180 C – 200 C with a bit of foil on top for 40 minutes or until brown on top and smells nice

7. After 20 minutes of cooking time remove hte foil

8. remove from pan and wait to cool

9. get impatient and eat it hot with butter!

Dandelions

Well we are pretty much burried under dandelions here. Tthe fields that surround us are just covered in the things, so I thought, why don’t we do something useful with this little lot! So out came the herb books, the food for free books and the wine- making books!

Since then (which was about a month ago) I have been drying the petals for wine., I have quiet a lot now but it still wont make much wine. My plan is to steadily pick and dry them all throughout the summer this way it doesn’t matter if I can’t pick enough to start the wine off straight away. Having said that, I still hope to make a batch from fresh dandeilion flowers so that we can compare the two wines when they are ready!

I had a few demijohns already (thanks to dad!) and then Barbara has lent us the stuff that Ron (Al’s step- granddad) used to have for wine-making. This basically includes everything we were missing, including a big bucket that is graduated (has measurements on) with a lid, and a corking machine!

I am very excited and can’t wait to get going with this properly!

The leaves have made their way into many a salad we’ve been eating and now I am drying the roots to make a coffee substitute. I will also be drying the leaves as a herb in its own right and making tea from the leaves and roots -– dried again. The main reason for the tea is that it is a diueretic that helps and is prescribed for people with gout, and as poor mum has gout -– not nice, not pleasant and very painful -– I thought it might help her!

So the dandeilion problem is still a problem because they are everywhere, including blocking the doors to the little garage, but I will be making much use of them:

Wine Herb Salad Root vegetable Tea Coffee

Pretty good for one plant that is seen as a weed!

Important lessons

Well I have been making preserves again. 🙂

The important lessons I have learnedt are:

Do not fill my my preserving pan up with more than 9 pints of strained juice –- I put 12 in, thinking it would be ok, not realising exactly how much space the sugar would take up!

Lesson No. 2: – Aalways scaled the jelly straining bag -– I am actually using a wine sieving bag, but hey, same priniciple. I couldn’t work out why the first lot I strained went through brilliaently whilst the second lot was still straining! Drip, drip… and drip again it went. This was becuase with the first lot, I poured boiling water through it to sterialise it in a fit of hygiene paranoia. Where as the second lot went into a cold, damp bag. I have since found out about ‘scalding’ jelly straining bags/seieves -– this is where you pour boiling water onto the bag in order to allow the fluid to drain through it, rather than being absorbed by the bag, which then acts as a sort of seal for the liquid left in the bag.

Lesson No. 3: – Make sure that when dealing with fermentation buckets full of juice for jam- making or preserving pans or anything else –- do it, especially any pouring -– over a plastic matt.

Lesson No. 4: – Make sure that when Al is helping you pour hot liquids that he is wearing shoes! It saves on moaning!

Lesson No. 5: No matter how many jars you think you need -– it will not be enough -– so double the number!!!

Lesson No. 6: Recipey books have a strange idea of temperature converstions! 220˚ F apparently equals 110˚ C -– yeah right, on whose scale? Not that this actually matters but it just annoyed me -– I am awear it’s the same magnitudte, but still!

Lesson No. 7: Make sure that there are enough tea towles clean.

Wild Leaf Salad

Ingredients:

• Ransom leaves (wild garlic)
• Young fresh spinach
• Hawthorn leaves or leaf buds (though only in spring)
• Dandelion leaves (small new leaves are best)
• Mint leaves
• Chives
• Radishes (optional)
• Pine nuts

Dressing -– balsamic vinegar and hazelnut oil to taste

Make sure that the ransom (wild garlic) makes up just over two thirds of the salad greens, mint, one sixth, and the rest a mix of the remaining leaves. Radishes are a lovely addition, though are not a wild leaf!

When picking the spinache make sure that you only pick the new/young leaves, same with the dandeilions.

Once the leaves are picked, wash them then tear them wroughly and place in a bowl together; chives can be cut up, as can the radishes.

Add pine nuts and dressing, then toss salad to get even coverage and serve.

We have served this up to people and they love it though no-one has yet guessed what’s in it, even with hints!!!

The ransoms does give it a garlick flavour so if you don’t like garlic this isn’t the salad for you, though it is a subtle flavour and not over powering. The mint makes a fresh contrast and the hawthorn a nutty one. This salad will also be full of nutrients.

Radishes

This was written in response to a question asked by my friend Becca who’s recipies themselves will hopefully soon be appearing on here!

Becca Radishes are mainly a salad thing.

Al eats them by themselves, but they can have a strong, peppery taste so I would advise that you get some nice greens for a salad, like rocket, lettuice, maybe some cuccumber and peppers to eat with them.

You should wash them then ‘top and tail’ them -– this means you cut off the spindle hair-like root bit and the bit where the leaves attach. Then you can leave them whole or slice, or if you are feeling really adventurous then you can cut a zing zag around the ‘equator’ of the radish, creating to ‘flowers’ from the radish -– my dad used to do this for my lunch all the time -– placed on a slice of cucumber it becomes a water lilly!

Dads other ‘peiece-de-la-resistaonce’ is where you slice half way into the radish and then ‘wrap’ the knife around it in a spiral as you go. Then place the radish, which should still appear whole, into a glass of water where a) it will end up with a milder taste, and b) the radish will open up into a lovely spiral.

Do not top and tail until just before eating as they can shrivel, not being shop- bought ones injected with water! (I had given her radishes from our garden to take home with her after she had visited!)

I hope that was helpful.

I think the Japanese may do lots of other things with radishes but then they have lots of types of radish!

How far will one dish stretch?

I decided to make a huge ratatouille, so in went the six tins of chopped tomatoes, four cloves of garlic, four large oinions, four courgettes, an aubergine, two peppers and half a bottle of tomatoe suauce. Slow cookers are so handy. 🙂

Then I thought, well, I can use this as a base for other dishes instead of freezing it and lo!

First of all we were going to have tacos, so in went in some of the ratatouille into a frying pan, followed by some canneallini beans and a tin of re-fried beans. Add some fajita seasoning and away we go!!! This was tasty and was great cold the next day as an accompaniment to salad.

Secondly, I served it actually as ratatouilleee with some rice.

Thirdly, I used it as a base for pasta bake. – Now I was also planning on turning it into a soup, but we’ve had lots of guests including Al’s cousin Phillippa and her boyfriend, and my mum and dad, – so I sort of ran out!

Dandelion Tea

Dandelions contain the same diaretic as gout medicine and so for my diabetic mother who has gout I dried some dandelions and made her drink the tea! We checked with doctors first and this is what I would recommend anyone else doing.

The tea appears to be working; mum even took Jean for a couple of walks up and down the drive, which with gout should have been too painful. Then she decided she wouldn’t drink anymore becuause it made her need the loo (something dad suffered too but Al and me didn’t?). As a result of not drinking the tea, the next day her gout flared up and she was in lots of pain. 🙁

I found that the best tasting brew was created by chopping the dried roots up but leaving the leaves whole. The leaves were dried too. I put the equivalent of a 5cm- long by 5mm (sorry about the units) diameter root into a tea pot, per person. This is 2/3rds of the mix, the remaining third being the leaves.

It needs quiet a lot of brewing/steeping, so a tea cosy is useful (I have a Rrastarfarian- looking one that Al’s aunt gave us -– I love it!). Honey is also good as a sweetener in it. I only served small coffee cups of the stuff.

I now have a waiting list for the stuff!

I suppose I’d best dig up a lot more dandeilions!

Asparagus Soup

Barbara (Al’s aunt) gave us some of her aspaeragus which grows in abundance in the garden. – It was about enough to serve steamed as a starter for one and a half people so I decided to soup it!

I boiled it up then poured it and and the boiling water into the blender, adding a veggy stock cube and a paint of milk (goat’s milk becuause that’s what I had in the fridge at the time). I then cheated and use dried chopped garlic -– about a tea spoon full and crushed fennel seeeds, again about 1 teaspoon full too flavour it with. It was, however, a thin, insubstantial soup, so out came the corn flour, and the soup rapidly thickened.

It was lovely and filling, and as always, I had accidentally made enough for four people -– oh well, Jean loves it too, which is good, as she’s getting it again tomorrow!