Pottering and Potting
I'm still cooking away and trying out new recipes, perhaps not as frequently as I might. My excuse: it's August and everyone's on holiday. That said, I made potted shrimps and strawberry ice cream with shortbread biscuits from the Norfolk cookbook for a family lunch earlier this month. I loved the potted shrimps and the ice cream wasn't bad. Would you be surprised to learn there was freshly ground pepper in it?
A former colleague presented me with homegrown courgettes quite unexpectedly. They're not my favourite vegetable so I knew I'd have to make something interesting with them: charred courgette with tomato and bean salad from the Riverford Farm Cook Book helped to brighten things up.
A couple of days ago I got home from work earlier than I'd anticipated and so had time to make a mushroom tart from a Martha Day recipe. (I strayed from Martha's path by making wholewheat pastry and adding bacon to the mushrooms.)
Coffee, cardamon and walnut cake
I love home-made coffee and walnut cake - and home-made by other people is even better. Not that I come across it very often. For some reason I have been yearning gently for coffee cake with cardamon. I found a couple of recipes but chose this one for coffee, cardamon and walnut cake by Fiona Cairns. Both the cake batter and buttercream are flavoured with freshly ground cardamon. The smell from the ground seeds is rich and exotic and reminds me of my childhood. I was a little surprised by the very small amount of powder yielded from the seeds and I had expected more flavour from the completed cake. It was delicious nevertheless but I will be more heavy-handed with the spice next time. I will also try to caramelise the walnuts more neatly.
Bee hospitable
The spouse and I enjoy cooking and we enjoy inviting people to our home to share our food and catch up with their news. The rules of hospitality are vague and intangible but my basic tenets include making guests feel welcome and feeding them well. My hospitality extends to the bees who are making the most of the lavender in my front garden. Suck it up, girls, because next month I'll be cutting the plants back.
In the context of hospitality it's apt to mention that I'm currently reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. One of the protagonist lives in a house in Paris called the Hotel of Bees, which had been the home of a wealthy privateer who "gave up raiding ships to study bees in the pastures outside Saint-Malo, scribbling in notebooks and eating honey straight from combs." The Hotel of Bees is described as having crests above the door lintels featuring bumblebees carved into the oak, a fountain shaped like a hive, an hexagonal bathtub and ceiling frescoes portraying giant bees.
And so back to laziness.
I'm still cooking away and trying out new recipes, perhaps not as frequently as I might. My excuse: it's August and everyone's on holiday. That said, I made potted shrimps and strawberry ice cream with shortbread biscuits from the Norfolk cookbook for a family lunch earlier this month. I loved the potted shrimps and the ice cream wasn't bad. Would you be surprised to learn there was freshly ground pepper in it?
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| Strawberry ice cream in preparation |
A former colleague presented me with homegrown courgettes quite unexpectedly. They're not my favourite vegetable so I knew I'd have to make something interesting with them: charred courgette with tomato and bean salad from the Riverford Farm Cook Book helped to brighten things up.
A couple of days ago I got home from work earlier than I'd anticipated and so had time to make a mushroom tart from a Martha Day recipe. (I strayed from Martha's path by making wholewheat pastry and adding bacon to the mushrooms.)
Coffee, cardamon and walnut cake
 |
| Coffee, cardamon and walnut cake |
Bee hospitable
The spouse and I enjoy cooking and we enjoy inviting people to our home to share our food and catch up with their news. The rules of hospitality are vague and intangible but my basic tenets include making guests feel welcome and feeding them well. My hospitality extends to the bees who are making the most of the lavender in my front garden. Suck it up, girls, because next month I'll be cutting the plants back.
In the context of hospitality it's apt to mention that I'm currently reading Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See. One of the protagonist lives in a house in Paris called the Hotel of Bees, which had been the home of a wealthy privateer who "gave up raiding ships to study bees in the pastures outside Saint-Malo, scribbling in notebooks and eating honey straight from combs." The Hotel of Bees is described as having crests above the door lintels featuring bumblebees carved into the oak, a fountain shaped like a hive, an hexagonal bathtub and ceiling frescoes portraying giant bees.
And so back to laziness.
Minnie
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