Home grown Summer Berries

Do nothing, just eat them straight of the bushes and plants!

DK Christmas

Chard lyf

Sarah vs Nature. Blood-Crimson colour coordination.

 

Rhubarb Chard, pizza-look alike tart.
Recipe courtesy of Jane Baxter. We reduced the quantity of butternut squash (less is more). We increased the amount of Blue Stilton (live like no tomorrow). We used walnuts as pecans evade our cornershop. More tabasco always welcomed. I would have made it 30 sage leaves rather than 20. Such is life.

—

Swiss chard, Squash & Blue Cheese Tart

• 175g plain flour
• 1 tsp caster sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 125g cold unsalted butter, diced
• 3 tbsp very cold water
• 75g pecan nuts
• 1 pinch cayenne
• A dash of Tabasco
• ½ tsp salt
• 1 butternut squash
• Olive oil
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 small onions, sliced
• 300g Swiss chard (or spinach)
• 200g blue cheese, chopped (I use Devon Blue)
• 50g grated parmesan
• 20 sage leaves
• 1 tbsp butter

Briefly process the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor, add the butter, pulse until it resembles fine breadcrumbs, tip into a bowl and stir in enough water to make a dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill for half an hour. On a floured surface, roll into a rough circle, lay on a greased baking sheet, prick with a fork and chill for 15 minutes. In a 200C/400F/gas mark 6 oven, bake the pastry for 10–15 minutes, until golden brown.
Mix the pecans, cayenne, Tabasco and salt on an oven tray and bake for five minutes, until lightly toasted.
Halve, deseed and peel the squash, and chop into 2cm cubes. Place on an oven tray, toss in oil, season and bake for 30 minutes, until tender. Sprinkle over the garlic, bake for five minutes, then set aside to cool.
Gently sweat the onions in oil for 20 minutes until soft but not brown, and set aside. Separate the chard stalks and leaves. Chop the stalks into 1cm pieces, blanch in boiling, salted water for four minutes, remove with a slotted spoon and set aside. In the same water, cook the leaves for a minute, remove, refresh under cold water and squeeze out any excess. Add the stalks and leaves to the onions, mix well and season.
In a bowl, combine the pecans, squash, chard and cheese. Use this to cover the pastry base, sprinkle parmesan on top and bake for 10 minutes. Fry the sage in butter until crisp and use to garnish the tart.

Some sort of asian

Experimental Asian'ish noodles salad:

Rice Thai noodle

Dressing:

1 tbsp toasted sesame oil

1 tbsp ground nut oil

1 tsp rice vinegar

1 tsp chopped ginger

1 tsp sweet chili sauce

—

iceberg

cucumber

carrots

chili

spring onions

coriander

–

tiger prawns

chili & lime

FRY

EAT EAT EAT EAT!

PERNILLE'S MUM'S BREAD

Pernille's mum's bread with 100g semolina + oil and quite a bit
of sea salt on top – makes for a crusty great experience

Pernille's mum's bread with 100g of oats (ad a bit extra water for the oats)
– Extravagantly poured into a bread shape for a fancy touch

Early teen receipe from my friend Pernille's mum (as in I was a teenager). This recipe is A M A Z I N G! I passed it on to my mum, who then started making variation by adding 100g of other flour (see above for two recent variations).

JUST DO IT. 

It is a success every time and it is super easy to make. Here's the recipe:
3/4 of a fresh yeast pack (if you are so unlucky to live in a country where fresh yeast is hard to get a hold of 14g of dried yeast can be used, ad a pinch of sugar to get it going then)
4 dl tepid water
2 tsp of salt
500g flour (as mentioned, can be exchanged with 400g of normal flour and 100g of oats, semolina, rye or... Use a strong white flour it is really worth it as the bread gets alot better than crappy normal white flour)
–
Mix water and yeast in a big bowl till the yeast has dissolved, ad flour and salt and mix with a hand mixer (or if you are the lucky owner of a mixer you can do it in there). As with any bread making the success is in the effort of actually holding the hand mixer for ten minutes so the dough gets a bit bouncy - There's some molecular explanation to this, we don't know exactly why... Don't worry that the dough is quite wet, this is the whole point of this bread. It's Easy: Mix in bowl. Leave. Pour onto baking tray. Leave. Bake. Done.
Now leave the dough to rest under cloth for 1 hour. Then poor it onto a baking tray with baking paper on it (or if it is fancy you can pour it into a bread shape but that just creates more washing up). Now leave it to rest for another 1/2 hour on the baking tray. Sprinkle with oats or flour or oil or nothing, then bake for 1/2 hour in the bottom of the oven at 225º. (if you don't put oil on top it is recommended to sprinkle with water half way through baking as this makes the crust crunchy). Let it cool a bit and then EAT.

E5 0DN garden lunch

first summer garden lunch

The easiest baked peppers from my mum's receipes (can feed 4 as a side dish):
-
2 peppers (yellow, red, orange)
2 big ripe tomatoes, finely chopped (half a can of tinned tomatoes can successfully be used in winter times)
2-3 slices of stale bread, finely chopped or put through the blender
1-2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
finely chopped parsley
salt and pepper
olive oil
-
Pre-heat oven to 200ºc. Cut the peppers into small boats and place them in an ovenproof dish. Mix the finely chopped tomatoes with garlic (we prefer two cloves...) and parsley, season with salt and pepper (generously) add a slug of olive oil. Spoon in a tablespoon of the tomato mix in each pepper boat. Sprinkle a layer of chopped bread crumbs over each boat and finish with a drizzle of olive oil and salt and pepper.
Bake the peppers for half an hour.
-
EAT
-
Hot or Cold

empty plates!

Great meal moments with non-great meal images (I) Circa 2008–2010

The Birdcage — Free supper, Sour Wine, Snimky, Tatiana.

Bow — Such days, 12:30pm, GG

Lower Clapton — First non-vegetarian meal, Adrian & Sara

Evelyn House — No one
makes Sticky Toffee Pudding
like Sarah does.
No-bo-dy
(recipe stolen from Nigel Slater)
-
For the pudding
150g dates, stones removed, chopped
250ml hot water
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
60g butter, softened
60g caster sugar
2 free-range eggs
150g self-raising flour
-
For the toffee sauce
200g butter
400g brown sugar
vanilla pod, split
250ml double cream
-
Preheat the oven to 180C. Mix the dates, bicarbonate of soda and the water together in a bowl and leave to soak for ten minutes. In a clean bowl, cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
(we are lazy and do it with the electrical whisk, you have to keep going until it has almost turned white - a bit of patience is needed) Still stirring the butter mixture, gradually add the eggs, making sure they are well mixed in. Still stirring (yup lots of stirring), gradually add the flour, then add the date mixture. Pour the mixture into a 20cm/8in square cake tin. Place into the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes, or until cooked through
(handy trick: you can stick a match in the cake, if it comes out covered in dough it needs to cook for a bit longer).
-
To make the sauce, melt the butter in a thick bottomed pan over a medium heat.
Add the brown sugar, vanilla pod and cream and stir well. Simmer for five minutes.
(In our experience there's N E V E R enough sticky toffee sauce, we are considering making double next time)
To serve, spoon out a portion of the pudding onto a plate and pour over the hot toffee sauce. E A T !

Kingsland Rd — Aftermath Village Fete,
Pre-moving London, Household, Yuri.

Lansdowne Drive — Cake & Death, Sarah

Roding Rd — Sugarless walnut brownies

Roding Rd — D E N M A R K

BN1 — Nothing to declare

Roding Rd — Meal itself erased from memory,
but it appears to be the first ever dinner at Roding Rd.
Memorable

A post like these should to be followed by mores posts like these. And recipes to great meals. With great photos.

A little of what you fancy

Finally got to go to A little of what you fancy on 464 Kingland Road, London E8 4AE!
The place has been open for about 6 months, but I think my wallet had told me to wait for my mum to come visit and take me there... It's a little in the expensive end, sharing starter and desert, two mains, two glasses of white, half a liter of red, two espressos came to £76.50 - BUT the quality of the food was amazing. The dishes were simple letting the ingredients speak for themselves. Almost like Italian cooking... But with a East London vibe.
The place has a very nicely relaxed atmosphere and the service is sweet and the kind that knows when they need to pass by to check you haven't fallen of your chair of pure joy.
Here is what we ate:

Smoked Salmon, ryebread, capers berries, peashoots

the salmon was soft as butter, and the ryebread was soft inside with a crunchy crust

Mouthwatering tower of lamb cutlets, jersey potatoes and wild garlic pesto

The dessert was so delicious I forgot to photograph it...
Olive oil cake with salty caramel ice cream

JUST GO!
http://www.alittleofwhatyoufancy.info/