The big freeze...

Until last week I was still swimming in the sea without batting an eyelid. Now the autumn storms have arrived. The dusty roads are puddles again and the rain seems to have sent the message to the ferns to turn rusty brown. Scilly changes immediately once the autumn arrives. It's suddenly much quieter although you still see happy visitors lying with their backs on warm rocks enjoying the seclusion of a beach to themselves. 

It's time to start filling the freezer too. The last of the apples I used to make jam with have been sitting waiting so I made them into apple sauce and froze it into portions ready for crumbles, granola and roast pork. Blackberries are all bagged and frozen and the herbs in the garden have all been picked and frozen or made into jellies. I had a basket full of mini butternut squashes leftover from the Food Festival  so this week I decided to make my winter soup base. I make it every year- a really basic vegetable soup with a freeze into portions and then add things to so I don't get bored. Ideas to add to this one include...

* Toasted nduja (you can stir through or just place on top)

* Add coconut cream and  1tsp of thai red curry sauce

* Add leftover chopped vegetables and shredded chicken from a roast dinner

* Fry some pancetta and stir through then crumble in some Cornish Blue cheese

* Or spread it on to pizza bases as an alternative to tomato and top with crispy chorizo, goats cheese and fresh rocket

Winter Soup Base.....(serves 16 portions) 

12 mini butternut squashes or 4-5 larger ones

2 small white onions

2 tbsp olive oil

4 garlic cloves

4 pints of chicken stock

In a large pan put the finely sliced onions and oil on a low heat and cook until soft. Add the cubes of butternut squash (about the size of a 10p piece) and continue cooking for around 10 minutes. Add the stock and crushed garlic and bring to the boil. Boil until you can cut through the squash pieces easily. 

With a hand mixer blend until smooth. Leave to cool and portion up and freeze. Use within 6 months. 

Get left-over it...

There's two days a year when a fry up is essential. Boxing Day and New Years Day. What I love about Christmas fry ups is your have a whole fridge full of leftovers to be creative with making a standard fry up so much more fun. And when you're dressed is festive PJ's with a hot water bottle up your jumper it makes the cold weather a lot more bearable....

Leftover fry up cakes......(serves 1)

2 cold roast potatoes

4 cooked sprouts

3 cold roast parsnips

1oz/25g butter

Chop the cold vegetables into rough chunks.

Press together with your hands into a small cake shape.

Melt the butter in a pan and carefully place the cake in the pan. Let is cook for 2 or 3 minutes without moving otherwise it might fall apart. Carefully flip over and cook until brown and crispy.

Serve with a poached egg and Primrose Herd bacon. (Just a word on the bacon, I bought 4 packets from the Cornish Food Box and it is completely fantastic. Buy buy buy.)

The smell of fudge is dancing around the kitchen. There's a huge black cloud hanging over the town about to spit out fat snowflakes. I say spit but that makes it sound unwelcome. It's not. I've been waiting for the snow all week.

Today is the first day of Christmas. The day I make fudge for Christmas presents.

The flat is decorated now. All the presents are wrapped (apart from the fudge)....and I'm not sure what else I'm meant to be doing except enjoying myself. I've managed to cram in four parties this weekend....if the snow allows....

So until those begin I'll sit back and enjoy the snow.......

Chocolate Coin Spice Hot Chocolate......(makes one mug)

Place three large chocolate coins in a mug. Measure out a mug of milk and place in a saucepan with a clove. Bring to the boil (but don't let it boil.)

Fish out the clove and pour over the coins. Stir until all the chocolate is melted. Top with mini marshmallows and a pinch of ground cinnamon.

Sweet home Bryher...

I'm coming home
I've been gone so long
Time has marched on
Love changed her song
I'm coming home
I've travelled far and wide
to chase away demons that I had long denied
I'm coming home to the love that is there
To try to make peace
To rebuild and repair

*By Mary Ann Rudy (who lives in Cornwall, New York!)



I'm back at home on Bryher in Scilly.....

Enjoying the sunshine......and the long walks....(well as long as you can make a walk on an island 1 mile long).

And enjoying my mum's home cooking....

Mum's chicken and cardamom pilaf... (serves 4)

4 small handfuls basmati rice

3 handfuls leftover roast chicken stripped from the bird

Enough chicken stock to cover the rice twice over (and a cup more in case you run out)

10 cardamoms

1 tsp cinnamon

2 cinnamon sticks

1 small onion
2 handfuls frozen peas

2 handfuls sultanas.......

Pop the rice in a large pan with the chicken stock and cinnamons.

In a separate pan fry the onion in a little oil. Every now and again give the rice a little stir to make sure it isn't sticking....but make sure you don't beat it into a rice pudding...

Bash the cardamon pods with a wooden spoon so they break open and pop the pods in with the rice. Add all the other ingredients.

Serve hot in bowls with mango chutney and poppadoms.... (This is essential)

It's good to be home...

Twisted traditions....

At the moment I feel like I am growing up and it scares the hell out of me. The new house, a pension, everyone coming to ours for Christmas (even the word 'ours' sounds grown up). But aside from the fear, the commitment phobia and the smaller bank balance the fun parts are starting to come through as well. Like Christmas traditions. The excitement of remembering something you did last year and recreating it.

Back on Scilly in Taylor Towers we have all kinds of festive traditions. A family photograph....

(This was actually a summer one...any ideas why I refused to wear trousers??!!)

A reindeer decoration on the tree with the back legs spray painted green, sweet and sticky honey roast ham studded with cloves on Christmas eve, shivering in Bryher Church at the island carol service, fights over who makes the bread sauce, mum's annual bingo, dad's annual fight about why he has to play bingo...these are the memories that makes Christmas.

And for two years it's broken my heart not to be a part of it. Last year I sat on the sofa, head in hands, and sobbed that I wasn't with my family. But we created another Christmas tradition, me and the other half, a tradition of never being apart at Christmas.

We also wore festive pjs and drank hot chocolate while watching films. We made a mountain of brownies and spent hours boiling Christmas fudge which we wrapped in sparkling boxes for our friends.

And this year the Taylor family and the other half's family are coming together to spend a Christmas in Cornwall. Hopefully this gaspingly crisp cold weather will stick around so we can go for walks at Trelissick and watch Boxing Day swimmers.

But it won't all be new. All of my mum's best recipes will be coming out of her handwritten cook book. The flour dusted pages will be dusted off and the pages glued together will be prized apart. (The sweet and sour sprouts didn't make the final cut...sorry mum).

Cheese and pickle twists are a favourite with all of us. Hot, crumbly pastry with melted cheese and sweet spicy chutney. They are a brilliant was of using up extra pastry, cheese and half used jars of chutney. (If you're dairy intolerant my little sister uses manchego and says they are just as good.)

Cheese and Pickle Twists

Leftover puff pastry
Leftover cheddar
Mango Chutney (I use Geeta's because it's by far the best)
Egg to glaze it with

I haven't given exact amounts because it depends on what you have leftover. Chop the lump of pastry in half and on a floured surface roll out each piece thinly until it is about the thickness of a 1p coin.

Spread a thick layer of mango chutney on one layer. It's worth trying to get nice big lumps of mango in there. Then grate thinly some cheddar cheese over the chutney. Place the other layer of pastry over the top like you would a sandwich. Then roll your rolling pin lightly over the top to fix the two layers together. Cut the pastry into one inch vertical strips.

Then hold each strip at both ends and twist around. Don't worry about little bits of cheese falling out. Place of a lined baking tray and glaze with some beaten egg. Pop in the oven for around 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Some of the mango chutney will spill out and my go dark brown and sticky but they still taste yummy. Eat while warm. You can eat them on your own or with hot soup.

Party time job....

Are you going to your work Christmas party tonight? I heard on the radio that seventy per cent of office Christmas parties take place tonight. Ours is. This was ours last year......(there was more than three people...but this is the only picture I have!)

So I'll not blogging this evening as I'll be eating, dancing, singing and drinking! So here is last night's tea instead.....

Creamy Lemon Chicken....(for one)

1 chicken breast
25g/1oz butter
1 clove garlic
4 spring onions chopped up
1/2 small tub creme fraiche
1 lemon
parsley

Melt the butter in a pan and when it begins to foam add the garlic. I love the smell of garlic in butter. Keep it moving around the pan and add the chicken. Leave it to cook until browned on one side and flip it over. Add the spring onions and cook for 2 minutes or until cooked through.

Add the creme fraiche, zest of the lemon, the juice of the lemon, and bubble away for 5 minutes or so until it is thickened. I then raided my herb drawer in the freezer. I still have big bags of all the herbs from the garden. They are so useful.

Sprinkle a handful of parsley into the sauce and serve with plain noodles and peas. (I would normally serve it with brown rice but I didn't have any.)

It doesn't look much but it tastes great!

PS. There's a story behind this dish. We often end up with extra people for Christmas dinner...people that decide to holiday on Scilly without realising how remote it is in winter, random family etc. One Christmas we had a man come to stay in a holiday let. His family were staying on another island and he just assumed he'd be able to get a boat over on Christmas day. He couldn't so he ended up spending Christmas with us. We loved him. He was great fun...he's been back to stay with us several times and this was the first thing he ever cooked for us. (I remember because we thought creme fraiche was the most exotic thing we had ever eaten!) But he's a bit of a mystery. We don't really know what he does because he always manages to stay off the subject. We think he might be an international spy like James Bond. I hope he is. If I ever find out he is a tax man or parking officer I'll be gutted.

Souper drug.....

My mum swears by soup. At any opportunity she grabs her aga pan, chops up as many leeks, potatoes and onions as she can find it and boils them away happily. Before she reads this and takes offence.... I love everything my mum cooks from her juicy roast pork with crispy crackling to her eton mess style lemon lapis. She is what a cook should be. But she likes thicky hearty soups and I can never get past the idea that it is just pureed vegetables. I want a thin consome or a creamy light mushroom soups. For me potato has no place in a soup bowl.

I've been off work sick for the past few days (cough cough splutter splutter). Today I finally braved the kitchen to make something for my lunch and noticed the leftovers of a roast chicken. It seems criminal not to make a chicken stock for the next roast dinner....but then realised I could kill two birds with one stone and have a lovely chicken soup.

Be warned this is a very light, subtle chicken soup only suitable for eating while in pjs watching Loose Women.

PS. I would rather be here.....


Chicken Soup/stock (makes 3 tubs of stock and 1 bowl of soup)

1 leftover chicken
4 carrots
1 parsnip
1 large onion
1 bay leaf
fresh parsley
salf and pepper

Put the bones in a big pan and cover with water. Add all the other ingredients. Simmer for about an hour until the chicken starts coming off the bones.

Sieve into a large container. (That's the stock done.) If you are making soup, pop some in a warm bowl. Take out some chicken from the sieve. Chop up the hot vegetables and add to the soup. Eat.

If you are sticking with the stock pop it in a tub and freeze until you need it. This is why I always keep take away boxes!