More food!

Continuing my food theme, here are a few more "experiments" -

some of which were more successful than others!

The cheerfully coloured thing on the right wasn't an experiment, as I have made it several times before.  Sweet Potato Tagine, from a BBC Food website recipe.  I now leave out the green olives on the original recipe because, frankly, they don't add much.  I also omit the preserved lemons, because I don't like them.  And serving the tagine with the Lemon Couscous included in the recipe would be a complete no-no in a house where the couscous word is only ever pronounced with venom.  Instead we ate it with the yummy looking bread alongside, which was made with a Francine "Pain Maison" mix.  I have yet to find a French equivalent of "strong white bread flour".  All I can find in our neck of the woods is flour with all sorts of raising agents already in it, so that you just add dried yeast.  I've tried a few and this was my first real success.

Back to the sainted Nigella for a little treat for me.  Kevin isn't really a cake fan, so when I am occasionally overcome by the need for "CAKE!", the best thing to do is make something small.  (Only because if I make something big I end up eating it all anyway!).  These were Nigella's Christmas Morning Muffins, which, as you can see, I ate as suggested on the recipe, warm from the oven and spread with butter.  Like this they were gorgeous.  I must admit that I thought them less exciting once they had cooled, as I found them a bit chewy.

This is my "potato pastry thing".  The recipe was titled "Potato-pastry Leek and Mushroom Tart".  The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted a lack of mushrooms on the finished product.  I didn't have any mushrooms, so used some cherry tomatoes instead.  Prettier anyway!  Despite being re-named "Leek and Fart Pie" by my Chief Taster before he had even tasted it, the tart was delicious and we polished off the whole thing for lunch!  It's a great way of using up a bit of leftover boiled or mashed potato.  You add 100g of mashed spud to your pastry mixture and it comes out light as a feather and beautifully crispy.  I'll definitely be making this one again - although next time I think I'm going to try adding some finely chopped fresh rosemary (which we have growing in the garden) to the pastry mix to make it even yummier.

No experimental cooking session would be complete without something massively sweet.  This time it was a Good Housekeeping recipe for Dark Chocolate and Coconut Fudge.  I was interested by the recipe because it only required a bit of melting of ingredients and stirring, no actual cooking.  Quite nice as an easily-made massive sugar hit, all it really did was prove that "proper" fudge has to be cooked to the right temperature or the texture isn't right.  Given that Kevin is as particular about the texture of fudge as I am about the correct use of the apostrophe, I'll be sticking to more traditional methods of fudge cooking in future!

Widening the Repertoire

I have hundreds of recipes that I haven't tried yet.  Like most people, I tend to stick with familiar things that we like.  Then suddenly I go through a phase of trying new recipes, keeping the ones we like and recycling the ones we don't.  That way the culinary repertoire at La Folie is frequently refreshed.  Some of my successes over the past couple of weeks include.....



Broccoli Clafoutis

Any foodies reading this will be thinking, "but clafoutis is sweet!"  Well, usually it is, but you can follow the same idea for savoury, replacing the sugar with grated parmesan.  The broccoli florets are cooked in a mixture of milk, eggs, and cheese and it comes out like a kind of quiche without the pastry (which, for people like me who are not particularly fond of pastry, is a bonus!).

Nigella's "Holiday Hotcake"

What a thing of great joy!  Very easy to make, once you can persuade yourself to pour boiling water over a bowl containing what essentially is a cake batter.  I have learned that when a Nigella recipe includes the words "trust me", she feels your suspicion but urges you onward.  The top comes out like a lovely moist sponge pudding with a layer of Christmassy-spiced sauce underneath.  I only wish I had had some Advocaat in the cupboard to make the "Egg Nog Cream" that was suggested on the recipe.

Potato and Banana Curry

Yes, you read that right, banana.  Sounds bizarre, tastes fabulous!  You use green (i.e. madly underripe) bananas and add them in at the end of cooking for a couple of minutes in a sauce that includes turmeric, ginger, and coconut milk.  Yummers!  This was our lunch on Valentine's Day, and was followed by....

Cherry Clafoutis

In an unusual fit of romanticism, I decided to christen the heart-shaped silicone mould that I bought in a sale at Lidl (!!!) over a year ago and hadn't yet used.  (I also had to bypass the fact that Kevin always calls clafoutis "Chlamydia Pie".  I don't know why, you'll have to ask him!).  I used up the other half of the tin of coconut milk from the curry in this, but have to confess that I couldn't really detect the coconut flavour in the finished object.  Nonetheless, it was delicious.

History in my sewing box

One good thing about being stuck indoors by lots of snow is that you have the time to get round to all those fiddly little jobs that seem to wait forever while you find five minutes to do them.  One such job was mending a hole in one of Kevin's smarty-tarty lambswool jumpers.  It has been looking accusingly at me from the wardrobe for over two weeks, so I decided to break out my extensive stock of vintage darning wool and get to work.

Of course, being probably the only person left on the planet who keeps darning wool in her sewing box means that none of the wools I had was the right colour.  Wah!!

Which proved to be less of a problem than I had thought, as the hole was in a seam, so it didn't need darning at all, just careful sewing up with tiny stitches and strong thread.  BTW, can you see that little multi-coloured cushion lurking in my sewing box?

Well, that was my Dad's pin cushion.  Stitched by him and in which he stuck his needles when he was doing needlepoint!  My Dad had always been too busy working to have any hobbies, but when he retired the fact that my Mum and I had been stitching away at things for decades obviously left its mark, as he took up needlepoint.  And very good at it he was, too!  When my Dad died in 2003, Mum gave me his pincushion.

And it now lives in my sewing box along with the beaded and embroidered needle case made for me by my Mum and a "vintage" wooden needle holder with a picture of Hastings Pier on it (!), which belonged to my Gran (Dad's Mum!).  So there really is history in my sewing box!

It's all in the timing!

In a rash moment back in December, I signed up for a swap called "31 Letter Challenge".  I hadn't properly considered how much of a challenge it would be but, I made it!!

One of the swap requirements was that each letter be enclosed in a handmade or hand decorated envelope.  These are my letters and a big chunk of an old copy of Good Housekeeping gave its life to make the envies!

On Sunday afternoon, Kevin and I wielded the shovels and cleared a path through the snow and ice that had been lying on our garden all week so that Emily could get out onto the road and we could go shopping and, more importantly, to the post office.  My little box of 31 letters is now winging its way to Georgia, USA!

It was the first time I used one of Julie's lovely return address stickers!

And our timing was perfect, as this is what was happening to next door's tree at 09.30 this morning!  Yup, there's more white stuff falling out of the sky.

What's in a name?

Last weekend I came across a recipe for "Old Henry Bars" on Maria's lovely baking blog.  Given that I'm susceptible to unnaturally high levels of excitement when reading recipes featuring both chocolate and peanut butter, it was clear to me that I would have to try out the recipe very soon!

At three o'clock on Wednesday morning I was lying awake, listening to the wind howling outside, thinking about Maria's recipe.  Only I couldn't remember the name of the bars.  Eventually, by a thought process I really don't want to analyse too deeply, I convinced myself that they were called "Uncle Neddies".  I do not now have, nor have I ever had, an Uncle Neddy, so I have no idea where this name came from.  However, now that I've decided they're Uncle Neddies, that's what they're going to be!

I had to adapt the quantities, because I didn't have a baking tin the right size, but having worked it all out with the assistance of a calculator, I put on my magic apron and got to work.  I made the flapjack-esque base and spread the peanut butter on it.  Then it was time for the chocolate.

Although I had reduced the quantities of all the other ingredients (because my biggest baking tin was smaller than the one on the recipe), I didn't feel able to reduce the quantity of the chocolate.  Or to leave any on the spatula when I had finished topping the base...

No, I mean it.  You just don't leave chocolate on spatulas -

Mmmmmmm!

Not content with the dark/milk chocolate mix spread all over the top of the base, I added some white chocolate in random blobs and swirls.

The Uncle Neddies are complete!

Belly-cicles and Birthday Cards

When I got back from walking The Hairy Boy on Wednesday, his belly hairs bore witness that there was still a lot of snow on the ground.

Having been prevented from getting up the hill for two days by the white stuff, La Poste bravely made it through on Wednesday, bringing me some lovely birthday post.

A pressie parcel from my Mum, a letter from penpal Paula in the USA (who makes the most wonderful envelopes) and a fat envelope brimming with generosity from the lovely Julie in Canada.

Julie loves owls, has lovely handwriting, designs wonderful stationery, has an absolutely beautiful blog for snail mail addicts like me, and clearly panders to my love of LARGE stamps!!

Julie designed and had printed sheets and sheets of return address labels for me.  Aren't they wonderful?  BTW, the cute little chap peeping out amid the contents of the envelope is Julie's son, Louis-Justin.

So, anyone reading this who also receives snail mail from me can look forward to one of these lovely stickers very soon!

Three layers indoors, five layers outdoors!

The snow is beginning to diminish, but not disappear (we still can't get Emily out onto the road!) and temperatures are "interesting".  This morning it staggered all the way up to minus 6 Celsius at 9 o'clock.  Lovely!

Three layers indoors: vest (not sexy, but neither are frozen boobs!); cotton long-sleeved polo neck; fleece.

Five layers outdoors: non-sexy vest; polo; fleece; another fleece; outdoor fleece that zips all the way up to the nose.  Then add woolly hat, fake pashmina (I'm allergic to wool!), gloves, an extra pair of trousers over my indoor trousers, and I'm just about ready to take the dog out for a walk.  Now where were those wellies...?

Congratulations, Ma'am!

For those of you who may not be aware of it, my birthday falls on the same day of the year on which Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II got her job.  For anyone who thinks being Queen is fun, just remember that Her Maj won't be allowed to spend the day in her pyjamas, eating chocolates, and watching telly.  Sixty years of devotion to duty and putting up with everybody telling you how to do your job because they know better deserves large-scale congratulation.

The choice of the most perfect birthday present also deserves congratulation.  Neat, you're a genius!  I've wanted an apron for ages and I couldn't have chosen a more delightful one myself.  Thanks!

The observant among you may spot some white stuff through the kitchen window.  That's because yesterday afternoon, this happened...

....and it didn't take long before we were all covered in snow!

Some brave dogs have already been out in it this morning.

Brr!

Never a dull moment....

Sunday morning, got up late, decided I would undertake the thrilling task of cleaning the "fritoosie" (as we call her).



I had just finished, when I happened to glance out of the window and saw two loose horses trotting down the Route de la Boulzane.  The "horses" turned out to be mares, so they stopped a little way from La Folie to say "Bonjour" to Kater, Myriam's Arab stallion (or, I should say, ex-stallion, as he's just had the op!").  I kept an eye on what they were up to while Kevin 'phoned our horse expert Myriam to ask her what we should do.

Myriam calmly announced that we should close Kater in his stable to stop him getting too excited, then round up the mares and get them into the enclosure beside the stables.  Easy for you to say, Myms, you've spent your whole life around horses.  The nearest Kevin and I ever got to a horse in London was seeing one being driven past by a bored looking police officer!

I know nothing about horses, except that they have a leg at each corner and that one end bites while the other end poops.  Still, nothing daunted, I grabbed Athos' lead (which is actually a horse lead) and set off along the road.

On the basis that horses are animals and animals can usually be bribed with food, I persuaded Kater into his stable and shut the doors.

Then, armed with some leftover bits of baguette, I approached the mares.  To my amazement, the big one wandered right up to me,

 

so I snapped the lead onto her bridle and led her down to the paddock, followed closely by her smaller chum.

You may be able to see that during all this, snow was falling.  That's because it's bloody freezing!  I had to take a little sledgehammer to the ice on top of the water bin so that the mares would have something to drink until their owner arrives to take them home.

So much for a quiet Sunday morning at home....!