Cooking With Richard

From the garden, thanks N-sama.

Guineafowl is pretty tasty.

Sushi loves Waitrose Duck and Rabbit cat food (adult version). She ate the whole bag in one go, which never happens with other cat food.

I think she might be a growing up posh …

Update: 30p per packet = £ 1.20 per day = £ 438 per year

After feeding them on lettuce for 3 weeks I starved them in the refrigerator for a couple of days:

Rinsed:

Plunged into boiling salty water, for 12 minutes:

Sushi, playing with a stick. It’s her favourite toy now:

Garlic and parsley:

Winkle-picker:

After boiling them, I drained them and extracted them from their shells:

Fried in garlic and butter:

The result, with a bit of parsley:

We all agreed they tasted a little bit like slimy mushrooms. An enjoyable day was had by all in the garden.

Thanks to P-p for taking the photos.

A bramble cobbler, brambles from the garden of course. The recipe is this one.

I was just cleaning out the snail cage:

Actually three of them were dead, so I have 20 altogether. Just right for a nice meal for two this weekend.

Sage sausages from the butcher, bubble and squeak, and apple sauce.

Apparently this is what you do with leftover haggis in Scotland. Just roll into small balls, cover them in breadcrumbs, and deep fry them.

The result is pretty good in fact, rather like faggots.

Actually we are 1 day late …

This is the recipe I used.

Previously I was very confused by this:

But someone came over and told me it’s a pickle picker!.

Grasmere farm sausages, salad and green tomato chutney both grown in our garden, eggs from Sarratt, apple sauce made with bramley apples from my friend’s garden in Tring, best mashed potatoes.

M-kun gave me some lemongrass paste, so I decided to make this recipe. It was fantastic, very “thai”. Also easy.

Bread with cumin, coriander seeds and turmeric. The dough was made for naanbreads originally, and the bread was made with the leftovers.

Thanks N-sama and H-san for making it!

The recipe was from here. Easy and delicious.

This was both tasty and very quick to make.

This recipe except I used port instead of marsala, because the useless off license in the Big Village doesn’t sell marsala wine (I don’t think they’d even heard of it). I served it with salad from the garden.

Actually I used a Coquina squash, although they are barely any different from a butternut squash.

Loosely based on this recipe, or rather on the recipe in the comments, but heavily adapted by me.

We have an elder growing at the end of our garden. My plan for this year was to climb up to the top and get everything from it, but that didn’t really work out. We don’t have the sort of ladders to do that, and so I had to rely on my trusty stepladder. Unfortunately that meant not getting very much, just the bottom 10′ or so from the side over the garden. The photo above shows exactly what we ended up with.

Roast pork belly and pears recipe from the Times.

In case the Times decide to put it behind a paywall, here is this recipe:

2kg pork belly, bone in, skin scored by the butcher into 1cm strips
Cider vinegar
3 plump cloves of garlic
Fine salt and freshly ground pepper
8 sprigs of thyme
2 tbsp olive oil
1 bay leaf
4 red onions, peeled and quartered through the root
4 pears
125ml dry cider
200ml chicken stock

Eight hours before you want to eat, place the pork, skin side up, on an oven rack in the sink and pour over freshly boiled water. This helps open up the fat to create good crackling. Dry the skin thoroughly, then brush with cider vinegar. Place uncovered in the fridge for at least four hours, ideally overnight. If you don’t have time, dry thoroughly with kitchen towel.

Mash the garlic cloves with a pinch of salt. Strip the leaves from 4 of the thyme sprigs and add to the garlic. Stir in the olive oil.

Place the pork, skin side down, in a large roasting tin. Season the flesh generously, then poke a few shallow holes between the bones with the point of a knife. Massage the garlic mixture into the meat. Turn skin side up, tucking the bay leaf underneath, and leave at room temperature for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas Mark 6. Dry the pork skin again, then scatter with a good tbsp of salt and massage in well. Place in the oven, skin side up, and cook for 1 hour. Add the onion quarters and stir until coated with the fat. Return to the oven for 30 minutes.

Turn the onions, then halve the pears and add to the roasting tin, cut side down. Scatter with the remaining thyme. After 15 minutes, turn the pears and increase the oven temperature to 240C/475F/Gas Mark 9. Cook for another 20-25 minutes or until the skin is puffed and crisp. The meat should be juicy but cooked through, the onions caramelised and soft, the pears on the verge of collapse. Transfer everything to a serving dish and keep warm.

Tip off most of the fat from the pan, leaving behind the meaty juices. Place on the hob, pour in the cider and allow to bubble for 1-2 minutes – scrape all the caramelised bits off the bottom. Pour in the stock and bubble for a few minutes more. Taste and season.

Carve the pork at the table, cutting between the bones into rustic ribs.