Notes from a small island....

Last week I phoned to book my flight home. 'Would you like a return ticket?' I was asked. 'No,' I said, a huge wave on relief washing over me. No return. I flew back to Bryher knowing I wouldn't be heading back to the mainland until the autumn and it felt fantastic. We've been blessed with a week of beautiful March sunshine. My face is glowing from the hours spent digging in the garden but my body isn't coping as well. My thighs are black and blue with bruises, my legs covered in cuts from gorse attacks and I can't stand up or sit down without a ten minute warm up. But it is paying off as the garden is starting to take shape.....

The first lot of turf arrived from West Cornwall....

And it transformed the garden....

My mum and dad have been up here every moment they can. Look at the end of the garden...that's the sea!

Now it all feels a bit more under control I'm back in the kitchen and will be blogging about more than just making tea...

Hake cakes for chilly day....

We took a rare day off today as we've got friends staying with us from London. We've been blessed with some beautiful days since Christmas and it's easy to see why so many people decide to holiday here out of season. We wandered up to the shop to fill our baskets with fresh Cornish hake for tea, sausages for tomorrow's breakfast and a few beers to celebrate our friends arrival. After a wander around Samson Hill and a stroll along Rushy Bay we decided to walk to Tresco. Every now and again the tide between Tresco and Bryher is so low you can walk between the two islands without getting your feet wet....

We went for lunch at the New Inn on Tresco which was filled with other hungry islanders who had done the same thing. On the boat back we watched the crisp afternoon sun starting moving west and we knew we'd made the mistake of one layer too few as our hands started to freeze. We shuffled home across the beach as quickly as we could our coats pulled high around our necks. When you're that cold there was only one thing I could do with the fish I bought earlier. Something cosy and warming.....

Hake fishcakes with garlic and lemon mayonnaise..... (served 4 chilly people)

400g of hake fillets (usually about 2)

800g potatoes

a knob of butter

2 gherkins

a little flour

For the mayonnaise

1 egg yolk

sunflower oil

4 garlic cloves

a squeeze of lemon

Peel and boil the potatoes in salty water. When they are cooked take of the heat and drain. Put them in a bowl with the butter and mash. Add the chopped gherkin and season.

In a pan put a little water (about a cup or two for the fish to sit in.) Bring up to simmering point and add the fish. You don't really want the water to cover it. Let it cook half way up the side of the fish then carefully flip over and take off the heat. Leave for five or ten minutes. Remove from the water and peel off the skin and flake into the potato. I try to create big chunks because once you start mixing it all breaks down. Carefully mix together the fish and potatoes.

Shape into fish cakes (about 12) and dust with flour. Fry in a mixture of sunflower oil and butter. Carefully flip over when it is browned. I had to do this in two batches. Pop in a 180'c oven for another 10 minutes.

While it's in the oven make the mayonnaise. Put the egg yolk in a clean bowl and give it a whisk. Slowly start dripping in a little oil at a time while continuing to whisk. (This takes a while). If you want a measurement for the oil it should be somewhere between 150ml-200ml but I tend to go less rather than more. But keep tasting it to see if it looks and tastes like mayonnaise. Crush the garlic with the salt and add to the mayonnaise with a squeeze of lemon.

Serve the hake cakes with a wedge of lemon, some steamed spinach and the mayonnaise.

A dream come true....

It's a odd thing when all your dreams come true. It's something you don't expect and when you get it you feel a bit uncomfortable. I've been battling with a secret for months. We've done what I always wanted to do which was to move back home to the Isles of Scilly. Even writing that feels a bit like tempting fate. But it's happened. I am here. I'm sitting in front of my computer in my new house, the sun is rising over Tresco and oyster catchers are dancing around Green Bay. I'm home.

This is our new home. It's perched on the north end of Samson Hill on Bryher overlooking Tresco. I grew up watching it out of my window. I remember exploring its beautiful gardens drenched in fuchsias, agapanthus and hydrangeas. I loved its uphill drive way before you got to the little blue cottage at the top. I can't remember when it wasn't occupied anymore and the garden started engulfing itself. The flowers were buried by brambles and gorse and the driveway closed off. However, a couple of years ago there was talk that the house was being knocked down and rebuilt and the other half said if moving to Scilly meant living at that house then we should go for it. Finally in December we were allowed in.

We're going to run it as an eco friendly B&B (www.samsonhill.co.uk). I get to cook for a living...and I am so excited. And terrified. But we get to wake up to this everyday....

The work is incredible. Every muscle and bone aches as we try and reclaim the garden from years and years of brambles. But the plants are still there, succulents, fuchsia bushes, agapathus and echiums. They are just tangled in thorns and a lot of rhodedendrom. This is going to be the vegetable patch...This was before we started clearing.

And here it is....
I have two months before our first guests are in. I need to master croissant bakery and how to make a perfect bed. But it never stops being amazing and I keep pinching myself.

Padstow Christmas Festival in pictures....

Drifting away....

At work we have a post show meeting. We finish playing the news jingle, make sure the next programme is underway and then discuss how the show went. On Monday it went a bit like this....'So who wants to start....what did we really like about this morning's show?' Me: 'Yeah great show. Can I tell you all about my dinner at the Driftwood on Friday night....' then for about 15 minutes I launched into a full scale review, course by course. Cue weatherman with his head in his hands. Presenter shaking his head trying to work out what I'm going on about. But I couldn't help it. That's just how good The Driftwood is. You want to tell everyone about it.

I'm so over excited by just how great Friday was that my written review will be rubbish. Because even when I think about how to describe it the sentences in my head speed up and phrases like 'yummy crumbly stuff' and 'a red sauce thing' keep making an appearance. Basically it was fantastic. The only thing I will go into detail with is the pudding. I don't really order puddings mainly because I love cheese so much. So I ordered the cheese board and the other half went for a chocolate pudding under the agreement that I could have a spoonful.

It was a chocolate mousse (although it could have been a foam it was so light) a chocolate ganachy layer, puffed rice and then....salted caramel. Not just any salted caramel but the best I have ever tasted. I had my one designated spoonful. Then I went in for another. I think I even managed another swipe before my other half threatened some kind of scene if I didn't return it to his side of the table. Oh God I miss that pudding.

So The Driftwood closes for a couple of months from Friday as it does every winter. And I need something to fill that pudding shaped hole. So I made my own salted caramel pudding. No where near last Friday's effort. However when the other half thought his father in law had polished it off he did almost cry...so it can't have been that bad.

Banana and salted caramel chocolate cheesecake....(serves 8 but probably more...)

2x 200g tubs of cream cheese

250g mascarpone

3 tbsp condensed milk

1 vanilla pod

2 tbsp icing sugar sieved

1 pkt chocolate digestives (I think it was 200g)

100g salted butter

4 bananas

2 tbsps golden syrup

50g butter

2 tbsp dried milk powder

2 flake bars

a little melted chocolate

Crush the biscuits in a food processor. Melt the 100g of butter and add to the crumbs. Push into a cake tin with a detachable base. Chill for an hour or so. To make the salted caramel melt the butter and syrup together when it starts to boil take off the heat and sieve in the dried milk. Give it a good stir and put to one side.

In a bowl put the cheeses, condensed milk, sieved icing sugar and vanilla and give it a good stir. Once the base has been chilled slice the bananas onto the base and drizzle over the salted caramel. Spoon the cheese mix over the top and sprinkle with the crushed flake and the melted chocolate.

Ideally leave it overnight in the fridge. I only left it four hours and it was spooned into bowls. It still tasted awesome but didn't look very cheesecakey. By the next day it was much firmer.

Thanks again to everyone at The Driftwood for a brilliant night.

The Driftwood, Portscatho, 01872 580644

Bonfire Night cake....

It's a race against time. Wasps vs me on who can get through the most apples and pears.

Yesterday I made a delicious apple coleslaw with red cabbage from the Cornish Food Box Co. I sliced it with grated apple and carrot and a few slices of spring onion. It didn't even need a dressing it was so crunchy and sweet. This cake was made for bonfire night. It's not a cake for a birthday or a special occasion. It's just one of those cakes that takes about half an hour so when you fancy a cup of tea and a slice it's there hot out of the oven.

Toffee apple cake (8 slices, 6 if you're as chubby as me)

3 eggs (172g)

172g self raising flour

172g soft brown sugar

172g butter

2 medium apples (don't bother peeling, just core them and chop into chunks about the size of sugar lumps)

10 cubes fudge

Preheat the oven to 180'c. I weighed three eggs in their shells and it came to 172g so weight all the other cake ingredients to exactly the same weight. If your eggs weigh more or less alter the amounts for the flour, sugar and butter. Put the butter and caster sugar in a bowl and mix together. (I usually pop the butter somewhere warm to soften it.) Add a beaten egg one at a time. (If it curdles add a little of the flour. Then add the rest of the flour and give it a good mix.

Add the apple and fudge and spoon into a lined 8 inch tin. Pop in the oven for about 30 minutes or until a knives comes out clean.

Cool on a cooling rack for as long as you can.

I managed to take a photo of a piece with no 'toffee' in at all. #rubbishblogger

Da Bara Sour dough toast with nduja and mozzarella

There's almost something unsettling about walking along a Cornish beach in October wishing you hadn't worn jeans. Normally I'm kicking myself for not packing enough layers but this weekend it was the opposite. It was one of those summer weekends when you spend so long on the beach that your hair curls with the salt and your skin starts to smell like sand. We came home last night beach worn and although we'd had barbecue earlier we were hungry.

Da Bara Sour dough toast with nduja and mozzarella.....(serves 2)

It must have been the sunshine that meant we craved something hot and fiery. I sliced four pieces from the Da Bara sour dough bread we bought the day before from the Fifteen Farmer's Market and toasted it. I then spread each slice with a teaspoon or so of nduja and popped it in a 170'c oven for about 5 minutes. (This is very hot so just use a scraping if you don't want to burn your mouth!) I chopped up a selection of different tomatoes and mixed them with basil and some of the mozzarella.

I then put handfuls of the salad on top of the toast and we washed them down with beers, our lips tingling.

* For another nduja recipe try here