Marmalade...

In a way, Scilly can be at its best when shrouded in fog. Your senses aren't distracted by the stretches of beaches and rocky cliffs. Instead you listen to the confused birds singing for their companions. You notice branches drenched in sea mist.

And sometime the jobs you hate can be the most relaxing. I can't say I enjoy making marmalade. It's not my kind of cooking. Soaking, peeling slicing, boiling, more boiling, settling. It's just not for me. But sometimes sitting on a stool thinly slicing orange peel, listening to the radio can be cathartic. When you've got a 5 month old baby making demands of you 24 hours a day it's nice to have a pile of oranges just sitting there, happily waiting to be sliced. 

This is a combination of about 5 friends and families recipes. I don't even use Seville oranges so sorry to the marmalade purists.

My Marmalade (makes about 5 jars)

2kg oranges

2kg jam sugar

About 4 litres of water

Pop the whole oranges in the water and leave overnight. The next morning remove them from the water (but keep the water which now will have the faint smell of oranges.) Peel them and put the insides in a bowl to one side. Start slicing the peel and put into the pan of water. 

Bring to the boil and boil for about an hour until the peel is soft. Add the jam sugar and boil until it reaches 105'c or put a little on a cold saucer and run a spoon across it to see if it makes creases. You can scrape the frothy scum off as it makes the marmalade cloudier.

Pour carefully into sterilised jars and leave the lids off. Leave to stand for 12 hours (as it helps it set better) then put the lids on. 

Back for 2014....

So I'm out of the baby haze. 5 months after the birth of Cordelia Anne I'm finally back at the computer and back to the blog. 

Today we wandered over to Tresco as it was the first proper opening day of the Ruin Beach Cafe. It's one of our favourite places to eat. They have a wood fired oven so we love getting ideas for our garden oven. 

If you're worried about visiting the South West this spring time (post storms) just look at what you are missing...

The food was fantastic as usual and my in laws loved it (it was their first visit).

Thanks for sticking with me (and the nice emails!)

Summer on Scilly....

Three businesses a part time job and a baby on the way. That's my explanation for why I've been away since April. Here are some summery shots of food and I'll be back soon....

A salad for a sunny spring Scilly day...

The first hint of sunshine and we're making a salad. A salad for lunch, then an afternoon on the boat, then a barbecue. It's panic stations at Samson Hill. We decided to make the most of this sunshine as if it will never come again. (The forecast actually says next week should be sunny but still...) We got our new boat in the water. We've called her 'Per Ardua' as that was the original name of Samson Hill Cottage and is the first part of the phrase in Latin that means 'Through adversity to the stars.' And I love that. 

We drove over to St Mary's with the wind in our hair to wander around Hugh Town with dozens of other people enjoying the warm sun trapped between the granite buildings. We popped into Plowman's Food Co for some fresh beef for a stew this week then we headed back to the harbour. Visitors were walking down the quay with their rumbling suitcases being pulled behind them. The Scillonian was filling up getting ready to head back to the mainland. We darted over to Samson and motored along the shore. 

Although it was cold it felt good to be in the fresh air and it was lovely to be filling our conversations with 'In the summer...' and 'On a nice day let's...'

Anyway back to that salad. The rocket is still going strong at Hillside Farm. I bought a big bag yesterday and decided to use it all today for lunch. It was my favourite lunch this year...

Bryher rocket salad with Cornish blue and St Agnes honey dressing (serves 2...)

 2 big handfuls of rocket

3oz Cornish blue cheese

2 small pears

2 tbsp garlic infused oil (or olive)

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

1 tsp St Agnes honey (usually available from the local produce market in the autumn)

6 small slices baguette or bread

herb olive oil

First for my herb olive oil. I've started blitzing herbs from the garden with oil and keeping it in my fridge for a few days. At the moment it's mint, sage, fennel and thyme. It's brilliant for spooning over omelettes and makes blander meals look and taste a little bit more exciting. 

Preheat the oven to 180'c. Slice the baguette into rounds and spread a tsp of the herb mix on each round. Put in the oven for about 5 minutes until crisped up. 

Put the rocket in a large bowl. Peel, core and slice the pear into matchsticks and toss in with the rocket. Crumble the blue cheese in too. In another bowl whisk the oil, vinegar and honey and drizzle over the salad. Give it a good mix with your hands or salad tossers. 

Serve with the herb toasts. 

How to self cater an afternoon tea wedding (part 5)

We wanted the evening part of the wedding to be as relaxed as the day with people helping themselves to food as they chatted, danced and drank. The menu we decided on was....

Huge cheeseboards

A hog roast

Chocolate brownie wedding cake

Ice cream sundae bar

Pick and mix

Starting with the cheeseboards. The cheese tasting was probably one of my favourite parts of the wedding planning as I love cheese! We got all our cheese from The Cheese Shop in Truro which is fantastic. I used to live in a flat opposite and used to love going on a Saturday morning to buy fresh bread and a lump of cheese and fig chutney and read the Saturday papers. It all felt very grown up. We took our best man and his wife with us and we decided on.....

Beenleigh Blue (one of my favourite blue cheeses)

A strong Cornish cheddar

A french sheeps's cheese (very like brie) called Brebirousse d'Argental

A Cornish brie

We served them with homemade chutneys and biscuits. We had about 200 people for the evening part of the wedding and we were advised to estimate about 50g cheese  per person. However, we knew our friends would eat way more than that, as well as hog roast, sundaes etc so instead of 10kg we decided on 15kg and that was just about enough (there was a little left over.)

We then had a caterer in to do our hog roast...again enough for 200 people. Now....one thing that always happens at a wedding is some kind of disaster in the planning...recently I found out what our was. Apparently something happened with the hog roast machine which set fire to the marquee it was in. The marquee then melted onto the cooking hog. Anyway the local hotel saved the day and hacked up the roast into lots of piece and cooked it bit by bit. It turns out we'd borrowed the friend's marquee...and I feel awful!

Moving on from the small fire....we decided for pudding to have a chocolate brownie wedding cake...made by my lovely bridesmaid and darling cousin Charlie. (See below).  We also had an ice cream sundae bar with ice creams, chocolate sauce, sprinkles, sweets etc. 

Then there was pick and mix for people to nibble on later on (about 2kgs worth!)

Money Saving Tips

Find someone who loves making cakes and get them to bake your wedding cake! Most wedding cakes cost around £500. Brownies meant people could eat them with their hands and could have them with ice cream if they wanted. Grown up and children loved them. (There were none left by the end of the night. 

What I'm glad we did

We used wooden cutlery in buckets to save on the washing up. 

We over catered. We knew a lot of the guests were staying a week so if there was too much we could always give it to them for lunches etc for the rest of the week. 

Kept it casual. I loved seeing everyone chatting and enjoying themselves.

Chose strong cheeses and a good mixture. 

What I wish we hadn't done

Errrr burnt down someone's marquee?

How to self cater an afternoon tea wedding (part 4)

Ok so this is embarassing. A year and a half I started a series called 'How to Self Cater an Afternoon Tea Wedding'. Then I got caught up in moving to a small island and opening a B&B and suddenly it's 18 months later. Now my little darling sister is getting married in 4 weeks and it's reminded me to carry it on. So here is part four...and it's all about the drink. 

First you need to decide how you want the wedding to work. Having a wedding on a small island meant everyone was staying or travelling by boat which meant that we knew most people would be drinking. We also knew that we wanted it to be a free bar so we could make it a really great party. 

So we started off deciding what we wanted....it went like this.

Welcome drinks: Gin and Tonics

Cornish Beers

Elderflower Cordial (for children and non drinkers)

Wine for the afternoon tea

Champagne for the toasts

Kegs of beer for the evening, more wine and spirits for the late nighters.  Coke and lemonade. 

Trying to work out how much to buy is the next challenge.

 * With the welcome drinks we decided that two drinks each would be fine. 

*A bottle of red and a bottle of white per table (8 people on a table, so that's one and a half glasses each)

* Two glasses of champagne

* Evening drinks: We split the evening crowd in half. So half wine and half beer. Now we were told half a bottle of wine is the best estimate per person. We went for a bottle of wine and I am so glad we did as we had none left by the end. We estimated three pints per person. That was a little too much as we still had some left over. (It was drunk at the post wedding events.)

Money Saving Tips:

First if you are getting married after Christmas buy your alcohol at Christmas. We bought the gin, wine and champagne in the Christmas sales. You can save a fortune.

Don't be snobby about champagne. (I was). My mum convinced me to go for Tesco Premier Cru as it had beaten champagne heavyweights at the International Wine Challenge Awards. It was £15 a bottle and again we got it at Christmas so got it a little bit cheaper. 

Do your research. We actually got our wine from Waitrose because they had a really good deal and did free delivery to Scilly.

What I'm Glad I Did: 

Stuck to our guns about the welcome drinks. Both sets of our parents did not like the idea of gin and tonics and beers as our welcome drinks. There was a lot of talk about people not liking gin or beer and what would they drink then? (Our answer a) elderflower b) go and ask the bar for a glass of wine c) wait until afternoon was served.) We arrived half an hour after everyone else. Most people were on their second gin and tonic and seemed very happy....

What I Shouldn't Have Done:

Left the late night spirits on the bar. They had already been opened by 4pm. By 7pm they had gone. My sister ran down to mum and dad's and raided their alcohol cabinet bringing up all the bottles they could. My dad was horrified. The guests were very grateful. We should have ordered more spirits. I think there were 4 bottles. We should have gone for 8. 

Next Post: 

The evening do.... Hog roast, cheeseboard, brownies and ice cream sundae bar. And a fire that burnt down a marquee. 

Bananatoffeerama....

Buds are starting to appear on the fruit trees, ferns are bursting through the ground and there's the coconut  smell of the bright yellow gorse flowers whenever the sun shines. We've made use of the sunshine by clearing the garden. It's stage two of the garden plan which should take us about five years to get looking presentable. This week we had friends to stay and they helped Gareth put in the chicken run. (These chickens are going to have one of the best views in the world.) They'll arrive once the passenger boat starts running in the next couple of weeks. 

I've been working on the old entrance. I've been clearing brambles as thick as a 50p piece and as long as swimming pool. I'm constantly followed by a robin and a fat blackbird taking advantage of all the bugs and worms that are exposed as I pull rocks back. 

Then this week the sunshine stopped. The forecast said snow (which we kind of ignored as it's so rare.)  But it did snow and very heavily. Unfortunately it didn't stick. I had high hopes of building a sledge but there wasn't even enough for a snowball.  

On our friends' last night we cooked pizzas in the wood fired oven. We had a few black bananas left and between them they came up with this recipe....which may become a post pizza tradition.

Wood fired bananas with fudge, chocolate and biscuits (serves 4)....

4 bananas

4 chunks of fudge (preferably Veronica Farm Fudge available here) 

8 chunks of chocolate

4 chocolate digestive biscuits

Chop up the fudge and chocolate. 

 Make a slice down the middle of the bananas (leaving them in their skins.)

Stuff the bananas with the fudge and chocolate. 

Wrap them tightly in foil. Pop them in the embers of the woodfired oven or barbecue for 5-7 minutes (or a 200'c) oven for 15 minutes (using oven gloves). Crush the biscuits in a bowl. 

Carefully take the bananas out and very carefully unwrap the foil using oven gloves. Sprinkle the crushed biscuits over the top.