Home alone....

I'm in the sitting room watching the rain pour down outside. It's the kind of rain that hits the window like a child throwing gravel. It's a foul day. The waves are rolling in off the Atlantic and are hitting the west coast of the island making a noise like a creaking ship. Last night the wind gusted up to 90mph. It's the perfect day to be inside, to watch Scilly at it's most exposed and at its most perfect. 

We've been decorating the house. Using masking tape to cover the light switches and skirting boards and using big rollers to cover the smudges and scrapes from our guests suitcases as they came and went. Painting over 2012 and creating afresh for 2013. We've got another three weeks until our first guests arrive and it all starts again. We can't wait to share our house with people. To meet new faces and to welcome back some from 2012. But for now we are wrapped up warm, enjoying our solitude.

Chicken and vegetable pie (serves 4)....

1x 500g packet of puff pastry
a little flour
2 small chicken breasts
1 small leek
a little olive oil
1 fat clove of garlic
1 good handful of a green leafy vegetable (I used pak choi)
1 good handful of a sturdier vegetable (cauliflower, broccoli, mushrooms etc)
10g butter
10g plain flour
125ml milk
salt and pepper
20g parmesan cheese
egg for glazing

Cut the pastry block in half and roll both out to about the size of an A4 piece of paper (one should be slightly bigger than the other.)

In a pan gently fry the chicken and chopped leek in the olive oil until the chicken is cooked through. Add the other vegetables, stir and take off the heat. Grate in a clove of garlic.  In another pan melt the butter and add the flour. Stir for around a minute. Add the milk and keep stirring until the sauce has thickened a little. Add salt and pepper and stir into the chicken and leek mix. It should create a shiny wet glaze rather than a creamy sauce.

Put the smaller pastry half on a greased baking tray. Spoon the chicken mix on top leaving any remaining sauce in the pan. Grate half of the parmesan over the top and season. 

Lay the bigger pastry half over the top and seal around the edges using a fork. Glaze with the beaten egg and the rest of the parmesan and make a small snip in the top.

Pop in the oven for around 20-30 minutes.

Serve with vegetables.

* I actually made a lower dairy version of this pie substituting the butter and milk for soya spread and soya milk and the parmesan for pecorino. The pastry of course is still full of butter but it justified it to me! 

Sweet tart...

If you travel on the the boat between Scilly and the mainland on a flat day, it's magical. The Scillonian has a bad reputation which I think is unfair. The amount of times I've seen people wolfing down pasties declaring they never get sea sick only to be seen staggering around the main deck twenty minutes later a moss shade of green. You are travelling thirty miles into the Atlantic for goodness sake.

There's a technique to it. You have two options. One: stay on deck and don't move. If you're doing this, wrap up warm and wear a lot of sun lotion. Option two: go downstairs and keep going. There is a little room at the bottom with beds, blankets and pillows. Take sea sickness tablets and go to sleep...preferably for 2 hours and 40 minutes and wake up on the mainland.

When I leave the islands I'm generally taken on board crying and holding on to the ankles of my family. I go straight downstairs so I don't have to see myself leaving Scilly. But occasionally I wake up in time to watch the voyage along the south coast of Cornwall......

Last night mum and dad came over and I drove down to meet them in Penzance....

We went for dinner at The Navy Inn. I had Monkfish with Mushroom Risotto. It's just a stone's throw from Newlyn the best fishing port in the world and the monkfish was fantastic. Mental note: must cook more fish....

We had a bit of a wait before they docked so we sat crossed legged on the harbour eating these....

Strawberry and Clotted Cream Shortcakes.....(Makes 15 to 20 depending on how thin you like the shortbread)

150g plain flour

100g cornflour

70g caster sugar

125g salted butter

1 big pinch Cornish sea salt

150g strawberry jam

1 large punnet of strawberries (with about 10 strawberries in it)

1 200g tub clotted cream

Put the flour, cornflour, sugar, butter and salt in a food processor and whizz together.

Pull the mix together with your hands until it becomes a dough. Roll out until it's about the thickness of a one pound coin. Cut into circles about the size of a jam jar lid.

You should have preheated the oven now by the way to 180'c. Grease a bun tin and place the circles in each hole. Prick with a fork. (I have no idea why you do this. I do it because it's been drummed into me. If you know..tell me!)

Bake for about 15 minutes until light brown. Take out of the oven and leave to cool for 20 minutes. Run a knife around them just to make sure they haven't stuck to the tins. Put a small tsp of good quality strawberry jam on each shortcake and pop back in the oven for 10 minutes.

Take out of the oven and leave to completely cool. Top with a small scoop of clotted cream and half a strawberry.

Promise I made, starting to fade....

New Year is all about promises. Promises to eat more healthily, be nicer to your family, save money, read more books. But it's also about broken promises. Eating Eggs Benedict for breakfast when it was supposed to be blueberries. Sulking with your boyfriend because he just washing the whites with our Christmas red tablecloth.

I also promised to blog about the food I made for our new years eve party. But I drank several bottles of wine and didn't take any photos.

So I will just give you the recipe for the Stilton and Leek Tart. Imagine crispy, buttery pastry with gooey, green creamy leeks spill over the top. Meanwhile...here's what the party looked like.

Stilton and Leek Tart (serves about 8 people)

1x340g block shortcrust pastry

Spray oil

3 leeks

2 onions

a knob of butter

1/2 pt double cream

3 eggs

50z Stilton

2oz Parmesan

Preheat the oven to 200'c. Roll out the pastry into a large circle. Spray a large flan tin with oil and place the pastry over the top. Push the pastry into the fold, letting some over hang. Roll your rolling pin over the top and it will cut off most of the overhanging pastry leaving you with a neat edge. Get a fork and prick the pastry base. Place a piece of grease proof paper over the top and fill with baking beans or lentils. Pop in the oven for 15 minutes so it cooks through. Then remove the paper and lentils (carefully...mine went everywhere) and pop back in the oven for 5 minutes to brown a little.

Melt the butter in a large pan and add the finely sliced leeks and onions. Over a medium heat fry them for 15 minutes or so, every now and again giving them a stir so they don't catch. Leave the cool somewhere.

In a bowl whisk the eggs and the cream, 3oz of the Stilton and 1oz of the Parmesan. Add to the leeks and mix through. Pour into the pastry case and bake for 30 minutes or until the top has browned and it looks as if the egg mix has set.

Serve warm, cold or at room temperature with pickles, chutneys and salad. (Do not do as I did and serve it with several bottles of wine.)

Spring onions.........

Over the last few weeks I've been filling the pages of this blog with autumnal cooking. But this weekend I've had a taste of spring. My sister has been staying after spending the week back at home on Scilly and look what she bought me. The first daffs of the season. If you didn't already know Scilly has it's own micro climate which means we have early daffs as well as ripe juicy strawberries much earlier than our Cornish neighbours less than thirty miles away. And don't the flowers look pretty for a November afternoon?

I've still got armfuls of brown crispy onions happily sitting in the greenhouse waiting to be eaten. They are so patient. Unlike the apples currently holding me to ransom in my kitchen and the summer parsley which is starting to turn brown at the curls as an act of defience for my lack of interest recently.

But I ignored them. Today I had a craving for that sweet, sticky confit you get when slow cooking onions in butter.

Onion and fennel tart.....

8 small onions (although I should have used 10)
2oz butter
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tbsp soft brown sugar
1 pkt puff pasry

Preheat the oven t 180'c. Chop up the onions into thin strips. Melt the butter in a pan over a low heat and add the onions, vinegar and sugar. Cook slowly for about 30 mins or until a deep brown.

Roll out the pastry on a floured surface. Slice a thin line around the edge (about 1 inch in). (Make sure you don't cut all the way through

Pop into the oven for 10 minutes. (If you want you can brush the edges with beaten egg.) Take out of the oven. Add the seeds into the onion mix and spread over the tart. (As you can see I could have done with more onions.) Pop back into the oven for 10 or 15 minutes until risen. Serve with watercress.

We had treacle pudding and custard after it!