Salaric Cooking

Roasting Soup – from my personal blog.

Ok, I bought lots of veg for a nice roast but with Jean’s impromptu hospital trip etc … it didn’t really happen. So I had stuff left over – so I souped it! It was tasty too; Al really liked it. 🙂

*1/3 celeriack *1/3 swede *2 medium potatoes *1/2 butternut squash *3 salsify *1 courguette *2 large cloves of garlick *Black pepper *1 tbl spoon fennel seeds *pumpkin seed oil

I had par boiled a lot of it all ready, to roast and put in with the left over roast veg (these had been roasted in sunflower oil with rosemarry and pepper). I had also kept the water as a veg stock, which I then boiled everything up in that hadn’t yet been par boiled. These were the potatoes (for some reason there are never any roasted potatoes left after the meals reguardless of how many I cook?), butternut and courgette.

Then we blend the whole lot! Bzzzzzzzzzz!

Into the suaucepan about a quarter of it went, along with the garlic crushed, and fennel seeds, – also crushed. I also drizzled about 1/2 a tbl spoon of pumpkin seed oil into it and ground in some pepper in (using our phallic pepper grinder from an Italian restruarent!). Add the fennel seeds and away we go!

Oh and don’t forget to add a pint of milk -– I use a 50:50 mix of semi skimmed goat’s and skimmed cow’s milk but that’s becausecos of special dietary requirrements and should be fine what ever you use. It would probably be tasty just with a pint of veg stock instead!

Gently heat until the odd bubble starts to appear, try not to let boil! This allows the garlick and fennel to permeate the soup properly. 🙂

I had it on the heat for about 1/2 hr.

Be warned, me and Al and I have had this two days in a row and I have frozen enough (without garlick, fennel and milk) to feed 6 people a thick soup and 10 people a thickish soup!

Jean (who was just weaning at the time being our baby) also loves this but she had it mixed with mash potato. 🙂

Opps!

Ok, on the cooking front I have learnedt two valuable lesasons this week: 1) When making a sponge don’t use the electric whisk as the cake collapses, and 2) Ddon’t try and soup Protein Chunk Gunk unless you like mineistronei- type soups, and even then beware!

p.s. Al ate the soup!

p.p.s. Protein Chunk Gunk is the turn I put to a stuff containing soya chunks that have been dried and reconstituted by being soaked for half a day.

I went A whoring

Ok, well actually I went hawing but I couldn’t resist the pun!

I went for a walk with the idea of picking elder berries but found there to be very few elders, all of which where behind barbed wire, even if they where heavily laden. :/ There were, however, loads and loads of blackthorns heavey with sloes, and which after picking five I realised they were not quiete ripe!

I then looked around and realised that the hawthorns where groaning under the weight of their little red berries -– well they are one of the most prevalent hegdgerow plants -– and I started picking the little beauts! Got nearly a whole basket too. 🙂

Some haw trees haws were not quiet ripe so there will be plenty for me to pick all the way through the autumn I feel. T- there are so many of the berries that I didn’t even have to think about how much to leave for the animals! I gave up on trees when I got bored rather than when I couldn’t reach any more berries. 🙂

What am I going to do with them all I hear you cry!

Well I am going to dry as many as I can for use in a berry tea -– a tea that is supposed to be good for those with high blood pressure and/or heart problems. – I’m going to get mum and dad to check with their doctors if it’s ok for them and add it to the dandeilion tea I force- feed mum.

There has been much merriyment here whilst Al me and Al I have been ‘doing’ the haws i.e. pulling the staolrks off of them -– but, well, this is us and our wrarpped and twisted minds, so innuendo here we come!!! I also said quiet innocently that I couldn’t do all these haws tonight! 🙂

Al is currently hawing away!

Of course any left over haws will be frozen for incorporation into hedgerow jam and/or haw jelly. Mmmm, I’m sure that you can make a coffee substituete too but now can’t find the recipe. :/

This is from our blog

Cheese sarni ideas!

• Cheddaer and sliced apples
• Cheddaer and spiced pear jelly
• Cheddaer and cranberry jelly
• Cheddaer and piccallilliy
• Cheddaer and apple sauce
• Cheddaer and stilton
• Cheddaer, lettuice, and salad cream
• Replace the cheddaer with red leicesteure, cream cheese or cottage cheese.
• Wensleydale and cranberry cheese with apple sauce in crusty rolls
• Mexician cheese with lemon corriander and humous

Olive Pannini Yummyness

Get/make a paninnis with black olives imnbedded in it – again this recipe calls for a flate bed toaster!

• Walnuts -– broken up, preferablly fresh
• Brie or stilton depending on taste
• Avoacardos – if you’re Alaric -– sliceds

Make the damn paninni and put in toaster! Eat! Well after you’ve taken it out of the toaster of course!

From Snell-Pym

Bread Pizza

• French stick
• Pasta suauce -– the more garlicy, oniony and chunky veggy the better
• Sweet corn
• Onion
• Pepper, optional
• For meat-eaters, bacon, sausage and salami are also extra toppings!
• Grated cheddaer/hard goat’s cheese
• Blue cheese, optional

Chop onions, peppers, and any meat things. Cut Ffrench stick into appropraiate sized pieces -– 25 cm long is good. Slice each section lengthongways to make two pizza bases out of each. Toast the crust side of the bread. Spread pasta suauce on the non- toasted side. Place topping on. Sprinkley grated cheese on liberally. Add a few small chunks of blue cheese to taste. Grill to perfection -– eat making satisfied noises.

From Snell-Pym(http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/)

Toasted Cheese Heaven

For this you will need a flat bed toaster – ie two hot plates that you close on the sandwitch – not the ‘shell’ patterned traditional sandwitch toaster. Flat bed toasters are the kind used for paninis.

• Sliced square bread -– bog standard loaf kind. Brown/white/whole meal, you choose.
• Hard goat’s cheese -– looks like a pale cheddaer.
• Black olives -– pre- sliced ones will save you a lot of work, though they go off quicker!
• Red oOnions chopped into ‘strips’.
• Sweet corn

Put spread or butter on bread to taste. Cut thin slices of cheese and arrange on bread. Put on the onion, olive slices and sweet corn. Put other slice of bread on top -– make sure the spread/butter sides of the bread are inside the sandwitch and not on the outside as with traditional toasties. Put in toaster until ready (this will depend on the toaster, some experimentation may be needed.).

From our blog.

Avocado and Walnut Sandwitch

• Bread of your choice.
• Walnuts – preferablye fresh
• Avoacardo (1/2 per person/sandwitch on average) -– quiete wripe ones are best.
• Salad cream

De-shell the walnuts and breaake up into reasonable chunks. Spread/butter to taste. Peel, pitt and slice avoacado and place on bread. Place walnuts on top and drizzele salad cream over. Best as a closed sandwitch!

From my blog

Some of our favourite sandwitches – thought it would be unfair not to share!

1) Fruity stilton rolls * Ssesame seed roll preferably the long ‘finger’ kind – crusty naturally. * Rroasted Mmediterraneian vegetable humous * Mmango chutney * Bblue stilton cheese

Put spreaed/butter on bread to taste. Then generously smear the humous on. Cut thickish slices of stilton -– careful, too thin and it crumbles! But beware, stilton is a strong cheese! Probably best if you just put chunks on, do not cover the entire surface. Then drizzele mango chutney -– the runnier the better – over the top. Options are: do you have it as an open sarni or as a closed roll? It’s up to you.

This origonally appeared on our internal home wiki and then later was placed upon our personal blog!

This was written by my husband Alaric:

I like [[Wikipedia:Pesto]] sauce with pasta, and so does Sarah – as long as it’s freshly- made pesto, as encountered in restaurants. I’ll tolerate pesto sauce from a jar, which she won’t, but I still vastly prefer the fresh stuff.

One day I’ll set up the resources needed to make it, but in the meantime, today we found a way of reviving jar pesto… we were having [[Wikipedia:gnocci]] with sun-dried tomato pesto, but were both craving garlic, so I decided to liven the pesto up by pouring a bit of oil into a pan and frying a crushed garlic clove, then adding the pesto, then the gnocci.

The result was YUMMY. Not in the way that freshly made pesto is, but in a different way; the garlic somehow took the bitter edge off of the pesto’s taste, and made it lovely instead.

I plan to experiment with doing this to other types of pesto and seeing what the result’s like – but I’d still like to make my own fresh pesto sauce one day.