Red food

In the garden there are still beetroots that have survived the winter, in the ground. And in my cookbook from Druidstone Hotel, a wonderful vibrant recipe.

4 beetroots, roasted and grated

300gms of Greek Yoghurt, thick, creamy

3 tablespoons of fresh squeezed sharp lemon juice
a handful of tasted, chopped walnuts

a couple of tablespoons of olive oil

one clove of finely chopped garlic

salt

and always

black pepper.

I roast the beets in olive oil with some black pepper because I love the smell of the dark ruby roots and the cracked black peppercorns. There is something wonderful and jewel like about the grated beets. All you have to do is stir all the things together and then I find if you make it the day before and keep in fridge the taste is more wonderful and the colour is a feast for the eyes. 

Seedlings are sprouting up in the raised beds and I am wondering if I will have enough of everything, do I need more raised beds, should I just dig up the whole garden and plant food?

In Wales vegetables can be dangerous creatures so we keep them caged, or maybe this is just to keep the cats off the raised beds!

Red

The best things take time and I am looking forward to getting tomato seeds soon so that I can make this from fresh grown tomatoes. It uses so many so I hope that we get a good crop and the taste from bought tomatoes is amazing so home grown and fresh picked should be amazing. Untill then we have to buy them, and you can make this with cheap tomatoes. It will be fine. Or you can make it with vine cherry tomatoes and it will be most excellent ( but expensive). Sometimes we have chopped Charizo stirred in, sometimes just the tomatoes. Both ways are perfect.

So, you need about 2 kilos of ripe and beautiful red tomatoes. Put them into a tin or dish and sprinkle with three finely cut cloves of garlic. Add some sprigs of thyme, a handfull of oregano, a couple of bay leaves and a sprig or two of rosemary then douse with black pepper and a sprinkle of salt ( sometimes I put the pepper on when the tomatoes have cooked for about ten minutes because I love the scent of black pepper falling on something hot). Drizzle olive oil and balsamic vinegar over all and stir around. 

You can sprinkle chilli flakes, add charizo, lie sausages over all or place chicken pieces on, whatever. Or just have the tomatoes.

Cook for about three quaters of an hour at 195 and sit and read by the fire. The scent of the thyme and tomatoes is heavenly. ( If you put something on like the sausages you will need to turn it half way through.)

Eat with fresh bread, chipped potatoes, pasta. And if there is any left then heat up and stir in a tablespoon of creme freche for soup the next day.

Dedicated to Claire Carlile, SEO Wales, my guide in the tumultuous world of social media

All day long I have been prowling around a painting, looking and wandering and fiddling and colouring. And all day I have been thinking about soup, because my very good friend, Claire Carlile asked on facebook for a recipe for squash soup. So, this posting is dedicated to Claire. 

Ever since I first met her I liked her. She is fierce, fit, hardworking and wonderful, fragile and beautiful and faithful. She has also given me so much advice and help on how to make myself more visible in the very cluttered and untidy world of the internet, on social networking etc. It was Claire who first advised me to start a blog so in some ways she is the Cat's Mother, or mother of the cat blog anyway. And now she speaks a whole new language of SEO that boggles my mind, because she is a freelance search engine optimisation and marketing consultant and has her own website at SEO Wales. 

So, tonight I too am making butternut squash soup and decided to write about it, or as the kids say 'exploit our supper on your blog'.

My day has been a day of colour, with saffron flowers, bright beads of fresh beetroot pulled from the garden, cheetahs inside, on sunbleached savannah, green grass outside with sheep in the rain.

Get some butternut squash, about 3 lbs of it and being careful of fingers cut the squash into pieces. Baste and paint these with olive oil and put in the oven to roast for about half an hour. They need to be peppered, and ever since I forgot once and then took the hot slices of golden squash out of the oven to grate fresh black pepper on and found that the perfume of the pepper falling on the flesh is so beautiful I always put the squash in for five minutes and then add the pepper. While you wait you can slice an onion into thin strips and begin to stew it in some butter, stirring, to melt the onion. 

Next , after about 20 mins,  add 850 ml of veg or chicken stock to the onion and about 425 of milk. Then scrape the soft peppered flesh away from the tough skin and add the golden glow to the onion and stock. Grate in some nutmeg and add salt. My nutmeg grater is the one and only thing I have that belonged to my grandmother. So far to my knowledge it has passed through three generations of my family. Stir the stuff around, making sure you breathe in the scents and then bring up to simmer and leave for 20-25mins while you read a book, or drink a glass of wine, or both.

Then liquidize and heat back through. The soup should be glorious orange bright. With a dollop of creme freche, some chopped chives and some small cubes of gruyere or other cheese  it should be wonderful, rich, golden and just right for autumn or winter.

 

Meanwhile the cheetah painting began pale gold this morning, but lacked something, so I added more red. Still didn't look right, but neither did it look too wrong and sometimes it is time to stop before you spoil it, but I decided that it wasn't right so added blue. And the blue makes the atmoshpere more heavy dark, and the red more red.

Still prowling, but need to put it away now and work on the pieces that go either side of it in the book, to make the balance work.

In this very dificult time for books, for the economic life of the country, and in a very competitive world my sales are 'bucking the trend' and increasing, month on month. One of the reasons for this is all the hard work the sales team at my publishers put in, but I am sure that another reason is the advice and guidance from Claire. So, Ms Carlile, I hope you like your soup.

Blue sky, short horses and how to make an old man very happy.

 

A beautiful blue sky day, so walked the dogs over the hills and far away and met the smallest horse. Sky filled once more with ravens.

 

Back home and it was time to fullfill a promise made long ago. Robin had brought with him all the ingredients. There was no escape. So I made him the ginger beer scones that he had been nagging for for months. Easy......

 

 

....and delicious.

Being wicked whilst waiting for paint to dry.

Described in the cook book as 'wicked', this is one of the finest examples of slow cooking I have ever managed. It takes 6 weeks and 20 minutes and is a collaboration of two books, Roast Figs Sugar Snow and Unwrapped, The Green and Balck Chocolate Cookbook, though in the case of the Green and Black book it is adapted. They use damsons and gin. I have used plums and vodka.

First you need to make the vodka plums so travel back in time to an earlier post.

Then you wait six weeks and get yourself a dinner invitation where someone (Ffion) says, "you can bring pudding if you feel so inclined". Not wishing to be flayed alive and waiting fo paint to dry I gathered ingredients.

 

So, gather up

100 g (3 1/2 oz) caster sugar

8 medium eggs

500g (18 oz) chocolate broken into pieces 

250 g ( 9oz ) unsulted butter

 about 200g ( 70z) plums that have been drinking

Put the oven on at 200 c or gas 6.

Then break the chocolate, being careful not to eat too much, into a bowl with butter and melt it by putting the bowl into a pan of hot water. While this melts take the eggs and sugar and whisk them until they look sort of pale creamy. Pull some plums out of the vodka, being very very careful not to have any contact between lips and vodka depending on the time of day and whether work needs to be done. When the chocolate is melted put the plums in and then mix the chocolate mixture with the eggs and sugar and put in a flattish buttered dish. 

Cook for about 12 mins, until firm but wobbley, the pudding, not you. If you have managed to avoid contact between lips and vodka then you should be firm but not wobbley.

Take it round to a friend's house and share it, with some cream, just incase there are not quite enough calories in it. 

When it comes out of the oven it smells like some kind of heaven.

Lists x 2

1. On the beach this morning:

pattern drawings in sand, water and light
golden splinters of shells
reflective dogs
birds over waves like an elegant string of feathered beads, hunting jewel bright fish
clear air, salt on lips

2. On the beach this evening:

stones smoothed by the sea's touch

snipe and turnstone

ancient bones of long dead trees

my children

clear air, salt on lips

And in the woods they climbed the tree, woven by the sea wind, and sat like sprites in its cradle branches.

Back home, supper looked beautiful. Sweet, rich and spiced.

Roast Figs Sugar Snow Plum Vodka.

For a few days now I have been wittering away ( like twittwering only not much different) over on facebook, about plum vodka. I promised to share, so, here goes.

I have many recipe books. Some I use a lot, some I dip into. Sometimes I get bored of making the same old things and flick through a book to see what I can find. Sometimes the writing draws me in, the enthusiasm for food, the images. Roast Figs Sugar Snow by Diana Henry is a favorite for winter.

I first heard about this book while painting and listening to Woman's Hour on Radio 4.

So, flicking through the pages one day and searching for inspiration for the children's supper I found this recipe. It takes a while. Be patient.

Russian plum vodka.

You need........

 1 kg (2lbs 4oz) red or purple plums

700g ( 1ib 9oz sugar)

1.5 litres ( 2 3/4 pints) vodka.

Big shiney glass kilner glass jars.

 

 

Find some peace of mind and a sharp knife, put on some music and halve the plums, but leave the plumstones in. You can play 'he loves me, he loves me not'  in a few weeks when they have steeped in vodka. More fun then.

Put them into a container that will hold 1.7 litres (three pints) and pour the sugar over them. Now drown them in vodka. ( I use two jars now as it is difficult to get one big enough, and I confess to adding more sugar, because the first time I made this  my jar really wasn't big enough so had far too much sugar and plums and not enough vodka)

Close the lids and shake to mix the ingredients then stand the jars in a cool dark place for six weeks, but visit them now and again to shake or turn or just look at them. The plums shine like jewels in the darkening liquid as juice transfers from plum to vodka.

In six weeks time you are supposed to strain the liquid through cheesecloth and bottle it, but I just tipped it through a funnel into bottles and wondered what to do with the plums. I sniffed them, cautious as a cat, then curious as a cat I tasted one. Heaven.

Now, I am sure you are thinking, "Well, surely she didn't give Russian plum vodka to the children for tea?" and of course the answer is no. After all, even they wouldn't wait six weeks. We had roasted spare rib pork chops with pears, melting onions and Gorgonzola, roast potatoes and kale, another recipe from the same book.

Diana Henry tells of how her Polish friend, Kasia, put plum vodka into her tea in the winter. I would like to meet her.

So glad I bought this book. Lots of game recipes, small snippets of story inbetween, beautiful beautiful photographs by Jason Lowe.

Oh, and above I promised to share, share the recipe that is, not the plums.