Pizza dinner

1. Pizza with rosemary & garlic

Pound rosemary in salt & olive oil, add thinly sliced garlic, spread on pizza dough.

2. Pizza with mushroom & fennel

Cut mushroom into thick slices, fennel into strips, red pepper into cubes, season with salt, pepper and olive oil. Put ingredients on pizza dough and sprinkle grated Comte cheese on top.

3. Pizza with goat cheese & tomato

Cut fresh goat cheese into thick slices, salt lightly, cut cherry tomatoes into thirds, put on pizza dough and add a handful on sesame.

4. Pizza with rillette & prune

Cut red & green pepper into slices, prunes into thirds, season with salt & olive oil. Spread tomato paste on pizza dough, add peppers, prunes and spoonfuls of duck rillette, sprinkle grated Comte cheese on top.

Home cured bacon

Like most things, making bacon is easier than I think. 

 

bacon & egg

1. A piece of belly pork, without bones and skin, put in a dish of similar size.

curing bacon

2. Make a curing mix with:

            salt - 3% weight of pork

            sugar - 3% weight of pork

            crushed garlic, cracked black pepper, cracked juniper berries, wrinkled fresh bay leaves - as much as you like.

3. Rub marinade on all sides of pork, cover dish with cling film, than place a weight (e.g. another container filled with water) on top to press out liquid. Keep in fridge or a cool place <10˚C. Turn over every day, the liquid that came out act as brine to cure pork.

4. After 7-10 days, the longer the more salty, remove all spices and dry well. Hang pork in the fridge or a cool dry area <10˚C for another 7- 14 day depending on how dry you like it.

bacon after drying

5. To keep well, slice/cut into required thickness and pack in freezer, to enjoy over a long time.

More broad bean recipes

I continue to harvest broad beans and so have come up with more ways of eating them.

Broad beans with cashew nuts - Add a handful of salt roasted cashew nuts with just blanched broad beans.

Broad beans with tomato cream - Blend tomato and sieve out skin and seeds, mix with sour cream 2:1 ratio, season with salt, lightly whisk too add volume. Serve on top of cooked broad beans, enhance flavor and decoration with a piece of basil leaf.

Mackerel with chili prune sauce

Oily fish like mackerel goes very well with a rich spice sauce.

1. Fillet mackerel, marinate overnight with soya sauce and black pepper.

2. Sear mackerel until just cooked.

3. Cover cut up prunes with water, season with soya sauce, 5-spices powder and chili flakes, cook until prunes are soft. Add a big spoon of sour cream just before serving.

Spicy pork with red pepper

1. Cut shoulder pork into slices, marinate with fermented bean paste, soya sauce, brown sugar, rose wine, as much chili flakes and ground up Sichuan pepper as you like.

2. Julienne red pepper and cut garlic into thin slivers. In medium heat, with a few tbsp of olive oil, cook red pepper and garlic until soft.

3. Turn to high heat, add pork and stir-fry until just cooked. Add a handful of chive for colour and aroma.

Asparagus with avocado sauce

Avocado sour cream sauce has a rich taste that is similar in texture to traditional Hollandaise sauce.

1. Blanch asparagus,or bake at 180˚C for 15 minutes, until just soft but still crunchy.

2. Mesh ripe avocado, add a big tbsp of sour cream, season with salt and pepper.

Goat cheese with seaweed

A simple and tasty starter, or a healthy snack at any time.

1. Pan sear goat cheese at medium heat until warm through, or roast in oven at 180˚C for around 15 minutes.

2. Soak mix colour seaweed flakes in a little water and a spoonful of honey for 5 minutes to moisten, serve around goat cheese.

Baby Wagtail

baby Wagtail

This spring, 3 baby Wagtails were born in the nest on the roof. They just learned to fly, basically flop down from the nest to the ground and do low level flying. They don't know the art of catching bugs yet and wait for mummy to feed them.

mother Wagtail catching bug

 

Iberico pork loin with kaffir lime leaves

This loin is from the breed of pig that is being transformed into the famous Spanish Iberico Bellota ham, fed on acorns in autumn. There are streaks of fat even in pork loin, signs that it must be juicy.

To taste the pork, I simply cut into cubes and season with soya sauce, big pinch of sugar and olive oil. Sear in non-stick pan until just cooked. Then add kaffir lime leaves that are cut finely. The aroma is wonderful.

Freshly ground flour

Just read that a lot of commercial bakeries use industrial foaming agent ADA to puff up bread so that it can stay in that soft fluffy condition over a long time. Together with the fact that to produce flour with a long shelf life, the practice in industrial grain mill is to remove wheat germ before milling, the most nutritious part of the grain. Bread and other wheat products made with this modern day flour are deprived of the nutrients originally present in the grain. 

 

Hawos Billy 100

I purchased this small grain mill to ground Kamut, an ancient wheat grain with higher protein and mineral contents, before making bread. Kamut bread has a wonderful sweet nutty fragrant and surprisingly stay soft and fresh longer than usual.

Turbot eggs with seaweed vinaigrette

In the fish market in spring, a lot of fish comes with a bellyful of eggs. They are good when slightly salted to firm up the texture.

1. Sprinkle a tbsp of 2/3 salt & 1/3 sugar on each sac of fish egg, marinate overnight.

2. Dry fish egg and sear until golden on all surfaces.

3. Mix olive oil, balsamic vinegar, mix colours seaweed flakes and black pepper to make vinaigrette.

Tuna in soya & seaweed

tuna marinate with soy sauce & seaweed

Marinate tuna in soya sauce, a spoonful of sugar and a sprinkle of seaweed overnight helps to make it more juicy after searing (high heat, 1/2 minute each side), whereas seaweed adds umami taste.

Pizza

The weather is pleasant enough to eat outside at night, so here is the menu of the first pizza dinner of the year.

1. Pizza with rosemary and sesame

 - roughly pound rosemary in olive oil and salt, spread on pizza dough and sprinkle sesame on top.

2. Pizza with goat cheese

- spread rosemary oil on pizza dough, place sliced goat cheese (season with salt & pepper) and red pepper on top, add a handful of pine nut .

The flavor combination of pine nut and goat cheese is great.

3. Pizza with duck rillettes

 - spread thick tomato paste on pizza dough, place fresh coriander leaves (in olive oil), red pepper and spoonful of duck rillettes on top, put thin slices of Guyere cheese around.

The unique flavor of coriander offset the richness of duck rillettes.

Apple pear cider

After 6 months slow fermentation in a cool barn, the apple pear cider made last October is ready to be bottled.

Last year's fruit are not very sweet and so all sugar was consumed by the yeast, as such the drink was not fizzy.

I added 2gm of sugar per litre of cider when bottling, so that the remaining yeast can produce bubbles in the bottle.

White asparagus with cooked egg sauce

This cooked egg sauce give a fuller mouth feel compare with the traditional Hollandaise sauce.

White asparagus is grown under cover, minimising sunlight. In such condition, they do not produce chlorophyll, grow slower, hence sweeter and more juicy than the green one.

1. Break the tough end of asparagus off, peel from bottom end to remove fibrous outer skin.

2. Blanch in boiling water, or bake at 180˚C, until just soft but still crunchy ~1 minutes in water or 15 minutes in oven.

3. Boil egg until just cooked, while hot, crumble until creamy with salt, olive oil and pepper.

Lettuce basket

I like to plant lettuce seedlings closely in a container. Gradually they grow big, touch each other and leave no exposed soil, so very few weeds can germinate.

At that stage, I will start removing leaves from the outside of the plants to eat, to make room for the leaves in the middle to grow big.

This is far better than cutting the whole head of lettuce off, the conventional way that lettuce is sold in the market. I could start eating lettuce earlier (before they grow to a full head), and last over a much long period.

Goat cheese dressing, favorite of the moment:

Cream together a piece of goat cheese (the popular one is Cabecou in France) with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, soy sauce, honey and black pepper.

Artichoke

Last year I grown these artichokes from seeds, when they are half foot tall in autumn, they were planted out.

 

round artichoke

Now they have grown big and tall, produce flower buds like what we see in the market. I am not going to eat them but rather let them carry on to develop into beautiful giant blue flowers.

purple artichoke

Fresh broad bean with ricotta

The south European way to enjoy fresh broad bean is to mix with ricotta, season with olive oil and salt, beautiful colour and a filling dish. 

Just blanch peeled fresh broad bean in boiling water until colour turns vibrant green.