Peach Harvest

Because the washing basket of peaches which broke a branch off the tree and were.....

washed and sliced....

stewed and moulied.......

bottled and chutnied...... (27 jars!)

...weren't enough to deal with......

Now the other half of the tree is ripe!

Look what I grew ::or:: the freshest dinner I ever cooked

We have started to harvest the 7.5kg of seed potatoes we planted.

Some carrot "thinnings".

A marrow as long and thick as my armed, sauteed with some onion, bacon and brie from the fridge.

The kind of dinner I plan to eat more often.

Puffy pastry

In the spirit of cooking posts that has been happening, one for the puff pastry i made a couple of weekend back. So delicious, and worth the relatively minimal effort required.

Just any puffy pastry recipe will do, but a bit of googling gave me these pointers:

The trick is to make the butter think it is one with the pastry, while not letting it melt into the pastry. This means keep things cold. Chill between rollings.

Two, cook in a hot oven (heated up). And cook from chilled. This probably applies to store bought pastry too. The recipe I used had 250g of butter in it and made enough for 4 rhubarb and apple pastys, and a bacon and egg pie two days later. Prehaps 200g of butter woulld have been ample.

Give it a go, you won't be disappointed!

Errata and the mock chicken recipe

In the last recipe I told you to use 1 3/4 c of flour to get a sticky biscuit dough. This is wrong as I clearly can't do basic sums. The correct amount is 1.4 cups. 1 1/2 is fine I'm sure. I double checked myself, not by calculating it, but by making the biscuits. I hope if any of you have made them and run into problems, you just added an extra egg like I did. Luckily my egs are just wee, which is maybe why it was so dry in the first place.

Also, I'd just like to point out I think its cute how the Edmonds Classics recipe use both cup and weight meaurements- I guess using the measurement the original recipes were in. They do only use grams tough, no emperial system here. I prefer to use cup measurements though, as it's just easier than getting out the scales.

So, Mock Chicken. No photos today as I haven't made it. The recipe is intriguing though.

Chop one medium onion finely and cook in a little butter, but do not brown. Add a small tomato, skinned and sliced, 1 teaspoon of mixed herb, salt and pepper and one beaten egg. Cook slowly unitl mixture thickens. Pile on cheese or water biscuits and garnish with parsely.

The recipe is accompanied by a note which explains there was no chicken during the depression, and that women had to be "creative in the kitchen". (Which doesn't really explain the extravagent use of butter and cheese in this recipe.)

So, do let me know if you try this. I can't imagine it will resemble chicken all that much, but it may be good of it's own right.

Best Biscuit Recipe

For the first time in 4 years of living together, Michael and I have a fully functional oven. It's a case of 6th (!!) time lucky, and only because we bought a brand new one. Every time we spend money on the house, I reckon it's the best money we've spent. Which reminds me, I must show you the power gardening. Please note, this is the cleanest you will ever see my oven.

So I opened the recipe book, and as Michael was passing asked hime which ones I should make. He said those ones (the top left of the page), pointing to the 'Chocolate Cream' biscuits. I usually stick to tried and true recipes, but sometimes it's good to branch out. Maybe I will try a few more of the recpies in the the book (Edmonds Classic). Except the mock chicken, cos I just think that's weird.

So the second time I made them I modified them slightly (cos really, mixed spice in a chocolate biscuit? It just wasn't right.) I thought you might like to make them too.

{chocolate biscuits}

75g soft butter

3/4 c sugar

1 egg

1 t vanilla

1 1/2 c flour

1t baking powder

2T cocoa

handful of chocolate chips (optional)

Cream butter and sugar. Beat in egg and vanilla. Mix in flour, cocoa baking powder and chocolate chips. Roll into balls and flatten onto baking tray. Bake at 190 C for 12 minutes.

These make a lovely, cakey, soft biscuit. The mixture seems quite sticky, but just go with it. Somehow, with less butter and an egg, these seem healthier than my usual go to recipe (which has condensed milk AND sugar in it!) Enjoy!

Orange Marmalade

Our orange tree is covered in oranges. They're not quite ripe yet, perfect for sticky marmalade. Unfortunately, I barely made a dent (Michelle, would you like some?) After scouring the internet for recipes, I simply chopped up some oranges, added the same volume of water, boiled till the rind went soft, added an equal quantity of sugar (next time I would use a cup or two less) and boiled till the setting point was reached. It is sticky and sweet, and ever so slightly bitter. Yum!

The Duck, and some Domestic Confessions.

Just in case I left you with the impression I'm a domestic goddess after yesterday's post I thought I should clear a few things up. I burnt the cake, loaf and biscuits.

The cake's also kinda falling apart.



Yes, they are big holes in the top where I picked out all the burnt pieces of fruit. At this point I don't think brandy icing will be enough to salvage this cake so I can give it as a gift.

I guess it depends on the amount of brandy.

The loaf was salvagable. And very moist.

The biscuits on the other hand, like rocks. Luckily I only burnt the first tray.



I'll have you know I blame the oven. No really- a new oven which appears to have a thermostat defeciency. Seriously. I baked the loaf for 30 mins, not an hour. And the (successful) biscuits? 13 mins at 100oC, where the recipe calls for 25mins at 180oC.

Yeah, it's the oven.

Anyway the neighbourhood birds have been doing well at our place.



Guess who turned up? A duck. She came by a few days ago and I fed her bread. Apparently burnt chocolate chippie biscuits make a nice change from pond scum.

Isn't she beautiful?

So I took some photos. And I thought, I might try drawing her. So I did.



And I thought, I've got those colours in my stash.



So I embroidered her.