Pierre Herme’s Macarons are all the rage (as opposed to the little unfilled, crack-topped little petits fours or larger macaroons I learned to make at bakery school ages ago).

Their funky fun nature appealed to a hen party choosing petits fours to make in a cookery class at The Bordeaux Quay so I perfected a recipe for some filled with hazelnut ganache…(we made raspberry meringues and salted caramel truffles too). 

Bruce took the pictures. (Thank you Bruce)

                                                                                        The plum tree at the bottom of the garden which gives us bountiful fruit in June is hopefully not going to be missed when we move to Wales…

I’ve cut some scions (twigs, basically!) from it today and put them in the fridge to keep them dormant. Hopefully in May we’ll be able to graft them onto some of the blackthorn trees in our new home where they can live to fruit another day on their new hosts. 

The plums on Foodolution’s header will be a happy reminder if our plan doesn’t work. I’m savouring the last of the chutney I made with them now though!

(Sorry about the size of the chutney pic…need Bruce to resize properly!)

My Christmas Pudding Challenge: to use all wild or garden-harvested fruits

…I succeeded! Our puddings were made with hedgecurrants (dried elderberries), home-grown dried apple and plums, candied angelica harvested from a Welsh small-holding, a grated fresh carrot and stoned sloes from 2007 sloe gin. I can’t say how they taste yet but they look good…

Update after eating:

And it was good! More tart (mouthwatering), than a typical Christmas pudding but with the same deep, dark squidgyness. It felt somehow exotic to eat, in the sense of unusual but special.

There’s just one Christmas Cupcakes class left to go (this Friday (4th Dec) at Bordeaux Quay Cookery School in case you’d like to come) which seems a bit sad, when they’re so nice to do!  Above are some I made during last Friday’s class at The Bertinet Kitchen. There was a rum truffle cake too but I said Bruce could eat it the day before he took the photo. 

 The Biscuit Bling class had everyone in the mood for Christmas too with plenty of decorated gingerbread and shortbread to hang up…pictures of those may follow later but you can see some from last year here.

Kid’s didn’t want to be left out of trying a sprinkle of roasted goosegrass burrs from our pepper grinder! Picture courtesy of EAT PICTURES food photography (c) All Rights Reserved (See Monday’s pictures by Matt Burgess here).

Every morning at 9am at Greenbelt Festival, Bruce and I led for EarthAbbey what became a bit of a pied pipers walk around the festival site at Cheltenham Racecourse (Apparently the group was swelling to 200 one day – sorry if you couldn’t hear us!). 

We’d identified over 40 plants with edible or other usefulness and had a hamper full of goodies we’d made with foraged produce to show and share…roasted dandelion twiglets, hedge currants (dried elderberries), haw dipping sauce, fruit leather, jack-by-the-hedge-blow-your-socks-off mustard, rowan jelly, roast gooseburr sprinkle, willowherb tea, plantain seed digestion aid, ash-dyed-silk, nettle yarn and an elder whistle.

See the FoodLife page for more events Bruce and I have put together.

This is a sneak preview of one of the designs I’ve created for my Christmas Cupcakes class at the Bertinet Kitchen

I know it’s a bit early to be thinking of Christmas but book now if you’d like to come! (See the baking classes page for details).

This tea is made from hawthorn flowers and leaves with granny’s bonnet (aka aquilegia / columbine) and is almost too pretty to use!

I’ve just started Max Drake’s Herbal Summer School and learnt that hawthorn blossom is selected by expert harvesters ‘when it’s at its most beautiful’. This was verified when the active compound content was analysed as 20% higher compared with flowers picked at a different time.  On 15th May it certainly was beautiful when I picked it, so look out for it again next May!

The granny’s bonnets are edible flowers and some are still out now – the nectar is wonderfully sweet, like honeysuckle and I thought they would enhance the tea with their dusky shades.

To dry them I just left them in a sieve in the airing cupboard for a few days.

The young leaves of hawthorn picked in spring make good tea too. When dry the leaves seem to smell of raspberries (I ground some to a powder and mixed into raspberry icecream – pretty!). The tea has a mild lemony note and both blossom and leaves can be useful in treating some heart conditions.

If, on the other hand coffee’s more your thing, read about haw coffee here (and ketchup!).

A rainy day has been transformed into a valuable day with the smell of baking permeating the air.  I’m looking forward to the rewards of flavoursome foccacia (made with Shipton Mill’s English flour) and homegrown salad from our polyhouse (not quite a tunnel!).

I’ve tried dandelion leaves in salads and haven’t aquired the taste for them as they’re pretty bitter, but the leaves in the garden are so lush-looking at the moment I wanted to try them cooked. They’ve featured in four meals in the last couple of weeks and all were delicious. Nutritional benefit: Vitamins A, C and K, Calcium and Potassium (Vitamin C is water-soluble so reduced if cooked).

Hot Potato Salad with Smoked Mackerel and Dandelions (recipe abridged from ‘Rick Stein’s seafood’)
(Serves 4)

300g New Potatoes, boiled until tender and sliced
25g Dandelion leaves, washed, long stems cut off, blanched in boiling water for a few seconds then refreshed under cold water
75g Smoked Mackerel Fillet, sliced
2 Tablespoons Red Wine Vinegar, whisked with the oil below
150ml Sunflower Oil
15g Onion, finely chopped
Salt and Pepper

Put everything except the dandelion leaves into a large hot pan and heat through. Add the dandelion leaves and serve hot.

Garlicy Lion Mash – Mash roasted or sauted garlic and blanched, chopped dandelion leaves with your potato. (Blanching the leaves reduces the bitterness).

Bacon and Dandelion Risotto – Add blanched dandelion leaves to your own recipe or try my recipe here, replacing some or all of the nettle with dandelion leaves.

Tomato and Dandelion Panzanella – Panzanella is traditionally an Italian ‘left-overs’ salad, made with stale bread and tomato – so go with the flow and adapt it according to the ingredients you have to hand – cube or tare some bread, drizzle with olive oil and toast in a frying pan or roast in the oven then add garlic, chopped tomatoes and anything else you have which would work (try nuts/seeds/cheese/olives/herbs/peppers/onion…), not forgetting some dandelion leaves. Serve hot – the bread goes a bit soggy soaking up the tomato juice in the same way as bruchetta – it’s meant to!

 

I’ve made a couple of batches of marmalade recently – one using Riverford’s ‘marmalade bag’ of oranges and one using lemon and orange shells I would normally have discarded after I’d used the zest or juice. Instead I built up a stash of them in the freezer until I had enough to bring my husband’s concept to reality…Lemon marmalade with gin and juniper berries and no tonic actually, though I may try that another time!

Both are lovely…I’ve posted the G&T recipe on EarthAbbey here (including lots of tips!)

G&T Marmalade – Lemon Marmalade with Juniper Berries, made using the permaculture principle promoting ‘Multiple Uses’

Traditional Oxford Marmalade