Smoked Salmon and Herb Frittata

Is that how you spell frittata?!  Never mind...I was extremely grumpy when I came home from work tonight.  This was a) because I'd spent an unnaturally long time there yesterday and was tired and b) because I was HUNGRY.  I needed something fast, tasty and healthy for my tea.  As Alastair had bought a tray of lovely free-range eggs from a farm at the weekend and we still have a surplus, my mind turned to frittata.  Necessity being the mother of invention, I liberated some smoked salmon from the fridge, popped outside and picked some chives and some parsley from the herb-pots outside, and went to work.

I beat four eggs, as my pan is about 20cms across, seasoned with sea-salt and pepper and then snipped the herbs into the mix.  I melted a mixture of oil and butter in a cast-iron frying pan, and when it was sizzling, snipped the smoked salmon in using scissors which I find easier than chopping, scooping up, getting the hands fishy when transferring to the pan and then having to wash the hands.  Then I poured the egg mixture in and left it for a few minutes.  Alastair is the fying-pan master in our house (it is big enough and impressive enough to qualify as a GADGET, and therefore to come into his domain) so he watched it carefully and, when he decreed the bottom of the frittata to be cooked, popped it into the oven on a high heat and a high shelf (it should have been the grill, but you know about the grill issues in our house).  When the top was cooked, it was ready to eat.

Served with rocket, tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and bread and butter, it was delicious.

And for pudding...goodness me, for pudding there was something so wonderful that words fail me.  Salted caramel and peanut butter ice-cream, made by my wonderful husband.  All I can say is, make it.  And then eat it.  You will not regret it.  Mmmm....*groans*.

Tulips from the Garden

In the bedroom.

And in the kitchen.

A Walk into the Sunset

I spend a good eleven hours at work today; accordingly the first thing we did after I got home was to head out for a walk.  We walked the same circuit we always walk on a fine night after work once the clocks have gone forward: past the village green, down the hill past the farm to the next village, round by the church and back again onto the same path up the hill.  And it was magical.  It was about 7.30pm on an evening that could have been June, the air had that balmy feeling and that exquisite evening stillness.  The sky was streaked with mares' tales that were highlighted pink by the setting sun and the streetlights were starting to twinkle in the blue smudgy hills on the horizon.  Above us a new moon lay on her back with Venus riding on her coat-tails.

It was at once an absolute cacophony of sound and colour - the yellow, blue and pink of daffodils, hyacinths and tulips in the gardens and the acid green of the new leaves in the hedgerows, the endless liquid chirrups and twitters of the birds - and absolutely still.  The evening held its breath as we stood at the top of the hill by the kissing gate; as we walked past the field by the church a foal unfurled its delicate legs and stood up, so new, such a creation of Nature and the Spring.

Every year, the older I get the more miraculous the changing of the seasons becomes.  I savour every little change, and drink in the little miracles Nature presents us with every second of every day.  I want me and my loved ones to be around for many, many years to come, well and happy and feeling ourselves filling with joy and new life every Spring, drinking in the long days and beautiful balmy nights of the Summer, snuggling into Autumn with falling leaves and morning mists, retreating into our burrows in Winter, popping out to glory in sparkly blue mornings, berries in the hedgerows before returning to afternoons in front of the fire as the light fades outside.

The Hogs are Back!

Last year we had four hedgehogs in our garden, one big one, two medium-sized ones and one little one.  It became a summer ritual to put the cat-food out on the path and watch for them to come snuffling and trundling up for a snack.  One of them met his end on the road, which was very sad, but we desparately hoped that the rest would return.  And they have!  We saw two of them tonight - I am so pleased to see them back, and so looking forward to the smell of summer nights as we stand by the window in the summer dark watching in the light spilling out of the kitchen window.  Long may they return!

A Morning off Work - Part 2

I had two kitchen jobs this morning, firstly to use up some egg whites that were left over from Alastair's ice-cream making (he makes brilliant ice-cream, which deserves a post of its very own) and secondly to make some soup with the leeks Dad had given me from his garden.

There's really only one thing to do with egg whites (apart from Hungarian Tea Bread of course), and that's meringues!  Again, not my own recipe (I usually follow other people's), it was a Delia Smith one.  There is no-one but Delia when it comes to meringues.... 

Making meringues is easy (unless you don't have a food processor, in which case, not so much), fun and they always impress people, so very good for when you are entertaining.  Here's how I did it, courtesy of Delia.

Line a baking tray with baking paper and grease.  I use sunflower oil, spread with my rather brilliant silicone pastry-brush (thanks Mum!).

Chuck the egg whites into your faithful food processor, remembering to measure out the sugar first..

Whisk until they form little peaks if you stick your finger in and then lift it out. 

Another way to test the stiffness factor of your egg whites is to hold the bowl upside down.  If the egg whites don't fall out, they are stiff enough.  This is fun, but only if you tilt the bowl first - if the egg white mixture starts to slide, don't try and turn the bowl upside down.  It will be messy!

Add the caster sugar a tablespoon at a time, whisking after each addition. 

Plop about half of your mixture onto your lined and greased baking tray and smooth it out into a circular shape.  It should not reach to the each side of the baking tray.  Then take a tablespoon full of mixture and drop it onto the outside edge of your circle in a little whirl, and repeat until you have made an edging of little whirls all around your circle.

Your finished product will look better if you manage to get the result circular unlike mine!  I also think - although my egg-whites stayed in the bowl when I turned it upside down - that my mixture wasn't stiff enough.  You ideally want it a bit stiffer than this, so that the little whirls stay whirly rather than slumping.

Chuck it in the oven and bake for an hour, then turn the oven off but leave the meringue in the oven to dry out.

I had loads of egg-white mixture, so made another smaller meringue and one circle-base before I ran out.

My Chief Taster (Alastair) said that my meringues were perfect - you can tell he liked them, this is what the big one looked like about 5 minutes after he got home!

It was very kind of him to say this, but I wasn't pleased with them.  It's not easy to see - for some reason all photos taken in my kitchen at night are tinted orange - but they are a beautiful cream colour with highlights of the most delicate golden-brown.

However, I wasn't happy with them.  They weren't cooked enough, and were foamy inside, more like the meringue on top of a lemon meringue pie than a pavlova.  You might be able to see in this picture.

They taste nice mind!  And that's why - apart from the fact that for some reason it gives me immense pleasure to keep this on-line diary - I have posted about my meringues.  With cooking it doesn't have to be perfect, and it doesn't have to be right every time - in fact any good cook knows it's not going to be.  It's just fun and all about the pleasure it gives you while you're doing it.  If it's served up to loved ones and they appreciate it that's wonderful, but rest assured that every so-called failure or not-quite-right dish will make you a better cook.  And, to prove my point, I'm off to have a bite of meringue served up with tinned peaches and creme fraiche!

Eek!

Have just gone onto the wonderful BBC gardening website to find out what to do with my cauliflower seedlings (I am meant to be doing my household accounts but I'm sorry, the lure of the virtual garden is just too great).  I suspected they would need thinning, and am most pleased to find out that I am correct. 

However, eek!  It says "most brassicas are relatively easy to grow; however, unless you're an experienced gardener, cauliflowers are best avoided.".  Apparently they are prone to club root, a dreadful thing by all accounts, and if you grow them you must be very careful to rotate your crops afterwards.  Well, evil cauliflowers, who'd have thought it?! 

Off now to thin out my tray full of potential doom, to precisely 7.5cm between each plant in accordance with the instructions on the website...I shall keep you posted as to any signs that they are turning to the dark side!

A Morning off Work - Part 1

I was away at the weekend - having a wonderful time in Nottinghamshire (and bits of Lincolnshire!) with Mum, Dad and Jules - and I booked this morning off work so I could get some pottering done before starting the weekly grind. 

It was brilliant doing the rounds this morning, firstly as it's a glorious sunny day and secondly as so much has changed in the garden just in a few days.  Noticing the tiny changes in twig, bud and leaf as Nature performs its miracles in miniature before your very eyes is one of the most wonderful things that anyone can do.  I was about to say "and it's entirely free", but then I thought again - it doesn't cost anything in monetary terms, but we all have a price to pay if we're not going to ruin this amazing world of ours.  Supporting charities that campaign against the destruction of natural habitats and the animals and plants that live in them, like the World Wildlife Fund is something that I do, as well as adding my voice to the petitions that the amazing people at 38 degrees organise.  I also try to do a number of smaller, day to day things like recycling, switching off the lights when I go out of the room, eating fresh, local, seasonal food as well as growing my own, and just generally loving and respecting Nature and the countryside I love. 

Anyway, I noticed many pleasing things this morning.  In the back garden my divided geraniums are sitting up and looking perky, which I'm *very* pleased with, and my philadelphus is breaking out into leaf.  At least I think it's a philadelphus, I could swear it started life as a cutting from Mum and Dad's garden where there is the most amazing and prolific philadelphus, but Mum denies all knowledge and the flowers do look a bit different...if there are any flowers, it's a bit temperamental and did not at all like my inexpert attempts at pruning a couple of years ago.  I plan to give it a bit of a trim after it finishes flowering (or not) this summer.  I am, however, sad to report that Clematis Seboldeii is, I am pretty convinced, an ex-clematis.  Fortunately I have found the most wonderful website, http://www.clematischoice.co.uk/shop/, where I can buy a replacement.

In the front garden, the crocuses around the base of the apple trees are looking so pretty.  I love crocuses. 

Some pretty orange tulips are out, the miniature daffodils are also looking pretty, and the hyacinths are bravely struggling out (I think I planted the poor things way, way too deep!).

On the edible side, King Rhubarb is well through, the gooseberry bush is in leaf, the blueberries are budding up a storm and, very excitngly, the broad beans Dad sowed for me, and which have been living in the splendid cold-frame that Alastair built, have sprouted. 

King Rhubarb is such a splendid creature that I feel sure you will meet him again in his very own post.  Gooseberry will probably also feature, as he needs a prune.  He's never done very well, the year before last he had a grand total of one gooseberry on him, and this year he had none.  I'm going to see if a good prune does any good.

The splendour of the cold-frame is such that I promised Alastair it would have its own post.  In the meantime, here's a photo.

Inside, my cauliflower seeds have germinated.  I will have to find out what to do with them next!

The front garden is going to be my Easter project.  Hopefully you will soon see some photos of it looking much tidier!

Anticipation

There is a cake in the oven...

...and a delicious smell wafting around the house.  I made the filling whilst waiting for it to cook...

...then took it out, with trepidation and oven gloves.

 It seemed to be quite a splendid cake...

 ...and the turning out worked!  When it's finished and decorated, half of it is going to be left in Durham with Alastair, and the other half is being taken down to Nottinghamshire for Mum, Dad and Jules.  I'll tell you what kind of cake it is when they've had a slice - wouldn't want to ruin the surprise!

Cake update - it's a messy cake!  The topping/filling is made of whipped cream, marscapone cheese and maple syrpup (drool) and I didn't whip it enough, so there was an awful  lot of oozing and licking of fingers when I filled and topped it!  I haven't got a photo of it in its whole state, as it has now been cut into slices and packed in tupperware for its journey to Nottinghamshire, I but will try and get some pictures of it before it's devoured this weekend!

Update

It was a Maple and Pecan Cake -  not my own recipe, but one from the marvellous Olive Magazine, I recommend you go there straightaway.  I would subscribe if I didn't want to be the size of a house side.  I thought it was a trifle dry, and can see why the recipe wanted you to slice the cake into three horizontally and put filling in between each section as well as on the top and sides (I sliced it twice) but my guinea-pigs were very complimentary.  The icing also became less oozy after a journey from Durham to Newark on the East Coast mainline - you might be able to see the difference between the first and the other pictures - not sure I would recommend this as a solidification method though!

Doing the Rounds

Now that the evenings and mornings are getting lighter, if it's fine and if I'm not running late I have a little walk around the garden in the morning before work.  This is what I saw yesterday morning - my daffodils are out!

It's lovely to have a walk round the garden when you get home from work too.  It's an ideal way to switch off the white noise and connect with the important things in life - things growing, home, family.  This is what I saw this evening - my miniature irises have been joined by equally miniature daffodils!

Cakes and Cats

I actually made this cake a couple of weekends ago, on the same grey and drizzly day I made the date and walnut slices with maple syrup icing, but I didn't get round to posting about it.  Now I have decided that this is a house and garden blog, however, I can post about cakes with impunity (and a cup of tea, hee hee).

This was an unusual cake.  Alastair had made ice-cream and used four egg yolks, and this cake used up the egg whites.  You had to whisk the egg-whites, then fold in melted butter, sugar, flour and currants.  You were meant to fold in toasted flaked almonds too, but I couldn't be bothered to toast them, so just sprinkled some raw ones on the top of the cake mixture when it went in to bake.  This worked really well as you can see.

Because of the egg-whites, this cake had an unusual, quite foamy texture.  I wasn't as keen as I am on normal cake but, although I say so myself as shouldn't, it was a very good example of its kind.  I think this would work well in the summer with raspberries and white chocolate chips - I've made a note to try it!

Pastry is keeping me company while I blog.

Blogging is enormous fun, I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying it.

A Good Morning's Work

Well, I have had a splendid play in the garden this morning.  Also, I think I might have to re-name this blog my House and Garden Blog because I can't seem to resist talking about things I've cooked.  As I write this - freshly showered and glowing with righteousness and the Watermint Scrub/Spritzer set that Mum bought me for Christmas - there is what will hopefully be a splendid lunch of cod baked in chorizo and tomato sauce in the oven.  I did start out following a recipe, but ended up making it up.  I've posted about it in a separate post, it was in this one but it got too long! 

Anyway, back to my garden.  I ventured into the world of garden design this morning.  This is not my natural habitat, as I have the aesthetic sensibilities of Ghengis Khan.  However, I'm quite pleased with what I've done.  I've had so much trouble in the past visualising what my garden would look like with things in it (you've no idea how I agonised how one planted bulbs for the spring *and* summer-flowering plants in the same space without digging one, or both, up at some point), and I decided only recently that the best thing was to imagine it as a series of little projects rather than one big one.  In this I was inspired by Cherry Menlove's lovely blog which I shall probably be mentioning again as I am a huge fan and my blog is by way of a tribute to the lovely lady.

I decided to deal with the corner near the buddleja today (who, you'll notice, is sprouting out nicely after his slash-and-burn style pruning the other week).

I do like the euphorbia (I think it's euphorbia), especially its glossy dark green leaves and its acid-green blossoms, but it doesn't really go with the cottage-garden look that I'm going for, and also, digging it up fits in with my plans to slightly reduce the size of the flower border and give us more room for growing veg (I'm addicted).

I marked out a new shape with some random string I found in the shed.  The whole bed should be a (rough) semi-circle when I've finished.

Then I divided the geraniums!  These geranimums have sentimetal value for me as they come from my mum and dad's garden, so I really, really hope they don't die.  I think they needed to be divided though, especially the purple ones, as the big clump hardly flowered last year.  I re-planted them along the new edge of the border, so I should have splashes of pink and purple by May (if they grow, fingers crossed!).

Then I turned my attention to the veg-beds - this is the before and after shot.  They were covered in bits from the conifers that we removed in February, and the weeds were doing very well. 

As you can see, it was warm enough to take my coat off after a few minutes of digging geraniums, and it stayed off!

After the veg-beds were tidied up, it was time for a cuppa, a biscuit or two, and to think about seedlings.

Some, like the spinach, rocket, peas and carrots, will be planted straight into the ground when it's a lot warmer, but I dealt with the sweet peas, courgettes and cauliflower today.

I hope they grow!

Incidentally, you will notice that they are not on windowsills.  This is due to the feline contingent, which will almost certainly knock them off.  Instead, they are temporarily occupying our coffee table.  As you may have guessed from the piles of books, Alastair is currently building us a new set of bookshelves, so the dining room table is being used as a work-shop and now the living room is being used as a greenhouse!