Cooking With Richard

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.

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.

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.

Ask N-sama …

(This is not actually Hatfield House, but the chapel in the west garden)

A medlar (similar to an apple or a quince) that I borrowed from Hatfield House today. These have to be rotted down slightly (a process called bletting) before we can eat them, and then they are supposed to taste of apple sauce and cinnamon.

Pevsner’s Hertfordshire from the famous series the Buildings of England. I’m pretty sure Maki would like this a lot.

This recipe along with 2 lbs of our own courgettes, our own basil, and our own chives, was very delicious.

Snails might have a homing instinct …

Better not “home” here, coz I’m going to eat you.

With blackberries from the garden, oranges, greengages.

These ones are headed for the freezer …

We went to the Dacorum Steam Rally again on Sunday.

Previously …

Thanks Netherbury and P for all these lovely cherries.

We stoned the whole lot of them. It took 1 hour with both of us:

Nom nom …

Previously …