rhubarb ginger sponge pudding

We were invited to Sunday lunch with some friends at the weekend, as Piers had a new toy to play with, and he wished to mandolin lots of potatoes to make a dauphinoise. It would have been churlish not to pop over and help them out with the consumption of same. So we did. As an…

a full oven, and a plum crumble

Further to the last post on energy saving cooking, here is the oven full of cauli cheese, roast potatoes, and plum and apple crumble. I poached the plums in water with a teaspoon of five spice for about 8 minutes, then put them in an oven proof dish, bubbled the liquor down a bit, then…

Sunday cooking

I’m desperately trying to make some space in the freezer for the festering season, and also the weather here is utterly vile, so I had a bit of a Reactive day yesterday. Chicken Pudding I had a rather small tub of chicken pie filling – chicken left over from a roast, with bacon and veg…

a quick almond sponge topping

Personally, I wouldn’t call greengages remotely exotic, but clearly Morrisons’ mileage varies. I picked these up at the weekend, and made an almond sponge topping for them. I halved the greengages and poached them in a little water for about 10 minutes, turning about half way through. I didn’t bother with any sort of sweetening,…

a sort of goulash

We had friends coming for supper on Sunday evening – lovely, as I love cooking for people, and don’t do nearly enough of it since we moved! I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cook, but I went to the butcher and bought some beautiful lean pork, and there was a big bag of mixed…

blackberry and apple crumble

At our old house in Somerset, we had stacks of brambles at the bottom of the garden, and I really do miss them – I must make an effort this weekend to go out and find some blackberries. However, Sainsburys yesterday had a couple of punnets of cultivated blackberries (not at all the same, but…

gooseberry sponge pudding

A friend of mine regularly sells produce from her garden to support the LibDems, and this week she was offering gooseberries.  I bought 10lbs (for a fiver!) – 6lbs have gone to make wine, 2 bags full in the freezer, and the rest I put into a pudding last night. The goosegogs went into a…

peach cobbler

I’ve wanted to make a cobbler for ever, but have never actually done it.  We were a bit overrun with soft fruits (we’re really bad at eating them), so I decided to have a bash. Cut up the peaches and nectarines, took out the stones, and put them in an ovenproof dish.  I tossed them…

plum and apple porridgy crumble

We had some plums going scrotal in the fruit bowl, so I cut them in to quarters and destoned them, and put them in an ovenproof dish. They didn’t look enough, somehow, so I got a Bramley out of the fridge and peeled and chopped it, and into the dish it went. Added a drizzle…

when the off licence gives you rhubarb …

We have a wonderful off licence in our village – we go in there and order wine, they deliver it, we give them a cheque. Works beautifully. I popped in there last week, and they asked where P was – “planting a rhubarb crown”, I said. Which he was. At which point, they invited us…