Calamari

A very stressful month … but enough about that, I ate at a local pub last Sunday, I think it is a Vintage Inn I had the calamari to start and I was pleasantly surprised by the flavours they had added, there was a mix of toasted fennel seed, coriander seed and what could have been onion seed that had been scattered on top and it was just a lovely element that lifted it from being “fried squid” in to a “calamari starter”, definitely one to take home and experiment with.

Christmas this year ...

Christmas this year was gloriously full of good food and great foodspiration, Santa happened to bring me River Cottage Veg , Nigel Slater's Tender vol 1 and 2 as well as The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler .... So I'm gearing up to buy my seeds for my veggies, but as I moved house at the end of the summer I have a lot of work to do; clearing and levelling off my veg patch and building a retaining wall where I'll be excavating a bank of soil. Hopefully all that can be completed for March so that I can get planting, but I'm not alone, some wonderfully kind friends have offered/ been coerced to help me (thank you).

So foodsparation updates; I made Hugh Fernley-Whittingstal's swede and potato pasties on Monday, delicious, and having dragged my self back to work yesterday I was slightly cheered up by the pasty I brought with me for lunch. I had rather a lot of broccoli that, as my mum would say, needed eating, so Nigel Slater provided me with a great recipe for broccoli soup, made with broccoli, bacon, potatoes, milk and pork stock and finished with crispy bacon on top. And I made a quick batch of a favourite of mine before work, Gordon Ramsey's wholemeal blueberry muffins, great for breakfast.

And finally ..... Christmas dinner was a success, the crackling was crispy everything was timed well enough to fit in the oven (note to Mr Gower, next kitchen we have we need 2 ovens!) and my stuffing was a triumph, I used this recipe from Delicious magazine (click here) and made it the day before and stuck it in the fridge, by doing this I really got all those flavours in to the pork and breadcrumbs, I will definitely be making it again, along with the plum crumble and Mary Berry's proper custard.