A day in the life of my Rayburn

Got up to another showery day, with gaps between the showers too brief for a walk, and the flue on my fire requiring a bit of attention so a studio day out of the question, all leaving me a bit loose endy feeling.

So I reverted to my default setting for a rainy day, I lit the Rayburn and spent the day cooking.

I started by playing a little game I like to call  'Deep Freeze Tease', which basically involves finding random unlabelled packages in the chest freezer and cooking something out of the contents.

Today I found:

2 duck breasts
1 small joint of shin of beef
1 handful of chestnuts
5 hot dog sausages

which translated to:

1 spicy chinese duck with noodles
1 beef curry
1 mediterranean beef casserole
6 spicy beef kebabs
10 sausage rolls

So here are my recipes for June

Spicy Beef Kebabs

500g  lean beef 
3 slices of bread
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 onion
2 garlic cloves
4 tablespoons of dried parsley
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 tablespoon of tomato puree


I started by piling all the ingredients into my food processor and whizzing them all up together.

If you are going to barbeque these, then make sure you soak the kebab sticks, but as I am going to grill mine I haven't bothered.

Flour your hands and take a golfball size of mix and roll between your palms to create a sausage shape, then push the stick up through the centre.  Coat with flour and leave to set in the fridge for at least an hour before cooking.

 This the joint I found in the freezer, as you can see it is not that big, but it was half price, and that is always a selling point.

After taking the bit required for the kebabs, I cut the rest up into little chunks and spread them out between two further dishes, a curry (on the right) and a light summery mediterranean casserole.



Mediterranean casserole

2 large onions roughly chopped
1 kilo of tomatoes roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic
500g of lean beef cut into small cubes
1 large courgette cut into chunks
12 pitted black olives

Fry all the above in a little olive oil, then add a litre of water and a veggie stock cube and leave to cook overnight in a Rayburn or 4 hours at 150°C, season and serve with hot crusty freshly baked bread.

Spicy Duck Noodles

Marinade ingredients:


2 cm of fresh ginger
2 cloves garlic
1 fresh red chilli
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
2 limes
1 tablespoon of sesame seeds
1 teaspoon of chinese 5 spice powder
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper

Blitz everything up together in a food processor.

2 duck breasts
1 small glass of wine
1 teaspoon of brown sugar
250g of dried rice noodles

Take 2 duck breasts or chicken or pork or whatever meat you have, and cube, then stir over the marinade and leave for about 4 hours in the fridge.

Scoop the meat out of the marinade with a slotted spoon and fry.

Once browned add back in the marinade juices and leave to cook for a couple of minutes. 

In the marinade dish break up the dried noodles and pour over enough hot water to just cover the noodles, cover and leave for 5 minutes, enough time for the noodles to swell and soften and absorb most of the water. 

Add the noodles to the meat pan, pour over a little glass of wine and finally add a teaspoon of brown sugar to thicken and sticky up the sauce.

And finally, what are you supposed to do with 5 random hot dog sausages and a handful of chestnuts.....

....well sausage rolls of course.

Chestnut Sausage Rolls

Whizz up some hot dog sausages with a couple of teaspoons of whole grain mustard and a handful of blanched and peeled chestnuts.

Roll in some pastry, either filo or flaky, whichever you have or whichever you like to make, I like to make neither but usually have a roll of flaky in the fridge for tarts and the like.

Bake in the oven at 180°c for 20 minutes and eat either hot or cold. 

Well - that's the rainy day cooking over, just enough residual heat to make me a pot of coffee!

Feels like winter is arriving

Frozen cobwebs through the chives.

It feels as though winter has arrived, we have had varying forecasts for the end of the week from -10°C overnight on Friday to one forecaster telling us we should consider ourselves lucky to be below 1000m otherwise the freezing rain of the past couple of days would have fallen as snow.

Luckily the rain clouds have cleared and yesterday was bright and sunny - albeit not very warm - it did however mean that I could get outside and catch up on some of the outstanding pre-winter jobs.

I had to write a list otherwise I would forget what I had intended to do

Over the afternoon:

fennel was cut for drying inside and the root balls transferred undercover in the hopes that they may regrow next year,

dried on the vine haricot beans were collected in,

broccoli heads cut for the freezer,

red and white cabbage cut for the freezer,

bean canes taken in and the twine rewound ready for next spring,

red tomatoes in the greenhouse harvested,

five jars of passata cooked,

last of the patty pan squashes cut and cooked for dinner,

dill seeds collected, dried and bottled,

field mushrooms chopped and left to dry in the warming oven overnight.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrolepiota_procera

thanks again wikipedia 

I have just scrubbed the caps, removed the stalks and roughly chopped, then laid the pieces out on  baking trays and I will leave them in the warming oven of the Rayburn overnight and probably most of the next day.  Once dry traditionally they should be strung up to use, but I think I may put mine in a dry sterlie kilner jar.  To use they need to be soaked for about 4 hours before adding to a dish, but you can then use the soaking liquor to add flavour to soups and sauces too.

I have at least another two large bowl fulls of plum tomatoes to ripen, not sure if they will do so before it gets too cold in the greenhouse.

This time I just used the plum tomatoes and a little olive oil, salt and pepper, left them to simmer for 40 minutes then into some sterilised jars.  I make various flavoured sauces and a plain mix too to use for soups and as a base for ketchups.

If I told you I'd have to kill you.

That is how seriously the French take their mushroom foraging.

I found another three cep mushrooms on Tuesday but I can not tell you where as I am bound by blood oath never to reveal their secret foresty location.

We are intending to eat them gluttonously this evening in an omlette.

I put aside some time today to start conserving all my dried herbs, so far a large jar of dried parsely, a jar of dill seeds, a jar of coriander seeds and three smaller jars of dried chopped chillies.

The cold weather we had a week or so ago which necessitated in lighting the Rayburn left me with space in the warming oven to completely dry out all the seed heads. There is just fennel now left to do, but with the recent Indian summer I have not been lighting any fires, so they are still outside in the garden.

The smallest of the foraged ceps - I am thinking that perhaps one omlette tonight, and a thick creamy mushroom sauce for tomorrow.

Poor Thea - she really hates 'shrooms.

Never mind - I have her hard at work in the garden today, sanding off the new bureau she has been given, which, being a teenager, she is obviously not happy with in its natural wood coloured state and which she wants painted black for her room.


She is of course being ably assisted by Ferguson.

Passata Monday

After the Sunday of plasterboard hell, and then the Sunday of plasterboard clearing up that was even more hellish, I was determined to do something nice today.

So I went to the greenhouse and picked all the red tomatoes and made jars and jars of passata for the winter.

I call it passata because it is much runnier than a sauce.

Very simple to do, just throw your tomaotes in a pan, add whatever flavours you like and a splash of water, then bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes until the tomatoes are soft and cooked through but still retain some of their shape - I especially like to keep the cherry toms looking like cherry toms in the jar and on the plate afterwards.  I don't skin mine as I like the added texture and I don't boil them to a mush and make a thick paste - ditto, I prefer a bit of bite to my sauces.

I don't think that the 10 jars I made today is anywhere near enough to see us through to the next harvest but it is a start!

I am making three different flavours this time:

A red tomato and fresh oregano passata

A plum tomato and roasted garlic passata

A cherry tomato and fresh basil passata


The whole house smells lovely, full of garlic-y, basil-y and tomato-y flavours.

It is my birthday and I will eat cake for breakfast if I want to

It was just a question of which cake.

Here is an example of the kind of recipe I hate, full of shortcuts like ready made shortcrust pastry - nah can't buy that in my local supermarket, Victoria sponge mix - nada - not in France!

So you take a quick and easy looking recipe like this one and you have to go back to basics with it and it becomes very very long winded instead.

But that was what I wanted to eat for my birthday breakfast.


BLACKBERRY BAKEWELL TARTS

So I started yesterday with picking 3 kilos of blackberries! - also not in this recipe I know, but blackberries are what I've got.

This is my waste not a drop way of using blackberries, which can be quite labour intensive not to mention painful to pick.  We had to squeeze in our picking between storms yesterday afternoon, than a quick run back indoors to light the Rayburn and get on with the cake making.

Start by making sure all the stalks, leaves and bugs have been rinsed off then throw all the blackberries into a large pan, pour over enough water to cover and then a splash more and start simmering.  I left mine for 30 minutes or so while I got on with making the shortcrust pastry.

SHORTCRUST PASTRY

125g plain flour
pinch salt
55g cold cubed butter

rub with your fingers to create breadcrumbs then using a palette knife start cutting through the breadcrumbs as you add 2 or 3 tablespoons of cold water.  

Work it together into a dry dough with cold hands, don't overwork it, you want it stay dry not become greasy, roll into a ball, cover with cling film and throw into the fridge for half an hour.

By this time your blackberries should have cooked down into a thickish stodgy mess but a complete sludge.
 I love my big witch's hat colander - I am sure it has a fancy name, but we call it the witch's hat, the tiny perforations let all the juices through but keep even the smallest pips out, and because it is metal you can bash the fruit against the sides to get every last drop out, not that you need to do this for this recipe, just get the majority of the juice out.

Drain the juice off into a large jug and keep the fruit bits to one side.

While the juice is still hot, add some sugar and stir well to dissolve it, no actual measurements here, just add sugar to taste - then decant into a couple of bottles and add vodka - well, every birthday girl needs a birthday cocktail!

Now take the fruit pulp, stick it back on a low heat and add sugar - again no measurements just add enough to make a sweet mixture.  You are not making jam so no need to watch the temperatures or anything like that, just stir until the sugar has dissolved.

While that is cooking away, take the pastry back out of the fridge and roll out on a floured surface.  Prepare a pastry case with butter and some flour sprinkled in, then add the shortcrust and bake blind for 20 minutes.

A top tip I read recently or saw on the TV, use tin foil instead of baking parchment when baking blind as it makes the pastry crispier instead of soggy.

So while your pastry is baking, and your fruit pulp is cooking, time to make the sponge.

VICTORIA SPONGE


As you can not buy this is in ready made packs here in France, here is a basic and easy recipe.

250g unsalted butter
250g sugar
4 eggs beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
250g self raising flour

Beat the butter and sugar together first, basically this means mash the sugar into the butter with a wooden spoon against the side of the bowl repeatedly until the mixture is soft and creamy, then add the beaten eggs, vanilla and flour.

As this is a bakewell tart and not a victoria sponge, now add the 50g of ground almonds required in the original recipe at the top of the page, ignore the additional egg asked for.

The resulting mixture should be quite dry and not runny.

Take your pastry case out of the oven, remove the baking beans and tin foil and allow to cool.  Use the space in the oven then to sterilise a couple of jars.

As you can see my oven is doing double time here sterilising jars having baked the pastry, and also has a couple of trays of roast patty pan squashes on the go too.  Did not want to waste the oven space so shoved them in quickly.

Why the jars - well we started with 3 kilos of blackberries, and even with having extracted the juice you can't put 3 kilos worth of fruit pulp into a bakewell tart.

Back to the recipe (wow I'm rambling today!).

Spoon some fruit pulp into the pastry case, add your sponge mix on top, then throw on a couple of handfuls of sliced almonds on top to finish.

Bake at 200°C for 25 minutes.

Then eat!

Oh yes and the rest of the fruit pulp, stick it in your sterilised jars ready to use next time as a pie filling.

My not so secret, secret addiction. (updated)

My name is Monika and I am a Rayburn-a-holic.

It started when we were in the process of talking ourselves into buying a permanent home in rural France as opposed to a fixer-upper to use in our summer holidays, in amongst all the mental bargaining and deal making we had decided on wood fired heating incorporating a stove and a means of meeting our hot water requirements.  The perfect solution was a Rayburn (ours is a no.3 built in 1953), with an integral back boiler, multi fuel so coal as well as wood, and a kitchen classic from the 1950s, right in keeping with a stone rustic farmhouse from the 1850s.

We bought the carcass of a Rayburn from ebay for 99p.  I still remember clearly the guy's face when we turned up with the Land Rover and trailer and he asked us how we thought we were going to lift three quarters of a tonne of cast iron onto a trailer and we replied that we were going to dismantle the Rayburn first!

The Rayburn we bought had excellent enamelling however it was pretty rotten on the sides and back, but the back boiler was in good order and it had all of its door handles, hinges, plate rack and stove tops.

So started the restoration.

We had the good fortune to be living about 50 miles from the home of Aga and Rayburn (a Rayburn being the solid fuel incarnation of the more well known Aga), so finding replacement firebricks was a doddle, then the rotten sides and back were replaced by shiny stainless steel, the gaps filled with Rockwool, a few screws and some fire cement and my beautiful stove was reborn.

This is the point at which some photos are called for but the battery is on charge again.

My beautiful Rayburn now runs two bedroom radiators, provides our winter hot water, kitchen heating and I do the majority of my cooking in it.

So why am I telling you all this? -  because I was going to light it today to get started on my beetroot pickles and marrow jams, and then went and got all distracted tidying up my greenhouse instead - it was a bit Day of the Triffids in there.

 Having cut back all the tomatoes, weeded and harvested those lovely little cherry tomatoes ready for cooking I then came back inside and tackled all those housework things that Brendan had been blind to whilst I was away, hence the stairs got swept, dusting got done, floors got mopped and bathroom had a proper clean round.

If this wet weather that I have bought back from the UK persists I may light the Rayburn tomorrow and start pickling then.



So - updated - Saturday afternoon while I was busy hacking away in the greeenhouse it started to persist it down, coupled with Brendan declaring all the plums being ripe, I decided to light the Rayburn and get on with the first lot of autumn harvests - feels a little odd to be doing this in August but hey ho - funny old weather.

We picked a row of beetroots and set them to boiling for the pickled beetroots.  I always scrub mine very clean before boiling because I preserve the water afterwards to make Barszcz for Christmas.  This beetroot soup is a good old fashioned Polish addition to our menu.

To preserve the juice, once I had claimed all the beets out of the water, I simply poured it into a freezer bag held upright in a measuring jug and put it in the freezer, then I can remove the jug and just have a solid block of purple-y beetroot stock ready for use.

 With 7 jars of beetroots pickled, I also managed to bottle up 9 jars of plum and elderberry jam, delicious.

This is only the second year that our plum tree has fruited, they are small dark purple plums but so juicy and tasty.  I have no idea what variety they are as the tree was already here in the garden when we arrived, and even our neighbour does not know what sort it is - although he has told me on several occasions that the tree won't fruit.

It overlooks the chicken pound and as they get ripe and fall the chickens fight over them.  They wolf them down to the point that they end up with discoloured poops everywhere - today all the poops are a virulent shade of red due to them eating beetroot peelings and drinking the last of the beetroot water, then scoffing elderberries and plum skins.

We also had a go at pickling some of our quail eggs - but in red wine vinegar to stain them pink - no I don't know why it just seemed a good idea at the time.

And of course in the background you can see some plum syrup heavily doused with vodka ready for autumnal cocktails!

I am a domestic goddes I am - no really I am. I AM!

I made a cake to prove it too!

Not that anyone actually wants to eat it (altogether now "ahhhhhhhhhhhh").

Why don't they want to eat it I hear you proclaim, it looks all lovely and risen and moist and yummy and scrummy and all things nice?

Well I'll tell you why no-one wants to eat it (the ungrateful so and so's), it's because it is a courgette cake.

Yes that's right - the scourge of the glut harvest, courgettes rear their ugly heads again.  The courgette bread my family could cope with but they seem to feel that cake is taking it one step beyond.

In fact Brendan went to extremes to declare that courgette cake was just 'wrong' 'wrong' 'wrong' and thrice 'wrong'.

But just in case you feel differently, here's the recipe anyway.

Chocolate and Courgette Cake

350g self raising flour

175g melted cooking chocolate

1 teaspoon mixed spice or cinnamon if you don't have mixed spice

175ml olive oil

3 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

150g chopped mixed nuts

Melt the chocolate in a pan, grate the courgettes and whisk the eggs and oil together  - obviously if you are a domestic goddess like me you can do all three simultaneously.

Combine all the ingredients together in a bowl with a spatula - no need for electric gadgetry for this if you are a domestic goddess like me.

Grease a springform cake tin or a large loaf tin, pour in the mixture and cook at 180°c for about 40 to 50 minutes - if you are a domestic goddess like me you will know automatically when the cake is ready to take out of the oven, if you are not a domestic goddess like me, stick a metal skewer in it and if it comes out clean the cake is ready.

Cupboard Love - Apricot Frangipane Tart

.... but first this.

How anally retentive does a person have to be to have spent an afternoon and a whole morning arranging their cupboards AND ENJOYED IT?

Answers on a postcard (rectangular, at least 31⁄2 inches (88.9 mm) high × 5 inches (127 mm) long × 0.007 inches (0.178 mm) thick and no more than 41⁄4 inches (108 mm) high × 6 inches (152.4 mm) long × 0.016 inches (0.406 mm) thick).*

With my knicker drawer, my baking cupboard, my bread making/flour shelf, the bathroom cabinet and my chest of drawers now alphabetised and cross indexed I could finally get on with some baking.

Remember those apricots I bought yesterday, well here is the first inroad into them.

Apricot Frangipane Tart


- and instantly I digress if only because I just had a fit of the giggles - the first line of the recipe I followed says "This elegant tart is well worth the effort"  - now drag your minds out of the gutter and consider what made me snigger - yes that's right - the word 'elegant'.  Because one thing I am not is an elegant baker so perhaps I am shooting at the moon here but I'm going to give it a go anyway.

1. Pre-heat oven to 200°C.
2. Make a pastry case from 250g plain flour and 125g cold cubed butter and a pinch of salt.  Rub together to form breadcrumbs then add a tablespoon of very cold water and turn out onto a floured surface to knead.  
3. Roll out and line a greased baking tin then bake blind for about 15 minutes, take the beans out and put back in the oven for a couple of minutes to crisp up the base.
4. Turn the oven down to 180°C.
5. Cream together 100g of butter with 100g of sugar.
6. Whisk in 2 beaten eggs.
7. Stir in 100g of ground almonds.
8. Halve about 6 very ripe apricots, remove the stones and press them cut side down into the tart base.  If your apricots are not very ripe, cook them in some water for a couple of minutes just to soften them.
9. Spoon over the frangipane filling.
10. Bake in the oven for 20 - 30 minutes until golden and bubbly on top and cooked through.

To serve I made a very quick apricot jam, just a couple of apricots peeled and stoned, cut into small pieces, a tablespoon of sugar per apricot and cooked until the sugar had dissolved and the flesh of the apricots was all mushy - more of a compote than a jam I suppose.  

More courgettes and preserving under oil.

Having had our fill of courgette recipes over the last few days, I picked the rest from the plants and spent an hour preparing them for freezing ready to use throughout the winter.

Each plant has at least one large marrow sized courgette still on it - ready to be made up into stuffed marrows, and more baby courgettes on the way, they just need a couple more days to warrant picking.

I freeze them in either baby courgette thin slices, thicker courgette chunks or larger thicker skinned courgettes, peeled and sliced, ready for whatever a recipe may demand, use from frozen otherwise they go all limp and mushy.

While feeling inspired to get preserving, I found a couple of sweet peppers mouldering away in my veggie basket and rather than waste them or even worse, they go off and I have to bin them, I thought I would preserve them under oil.

I do this whenever we get a glut of things in the garden and as an alternative to freezing stuff all the time.  I like the flavoured oils I get at the end too.

So - with some jars sterilised in the oven, (at a high heat for 20-30 minutes), I chopped the peppers quite thinly, so they are ready to use straight from the jar, sliced up a couple of rich ripe plum tomatoes, and peeled a whole head of garlic.

Stuff the peppers into the jar, about half way add a few slices of tomato then keep stuffing with peppers, as a finishing touch wedge a couple of cloves of garlic in, I do this with the jars piping hot direct from the oven.  Then pour over your oil of choice.  Because I want a flavoured oil at the end, and olive oil has too rich a taste of its own to take on the delicate flavours of peppers and tomato, I use grape seed oil instead.  It is also much lighter in colour so you see a lovely mix of colours from the veg themselves.

Day 10 - Baked fish with mediterranean topping

Well it is Day 10 of the larder challenge and I am feeling quite proud of myself. A different meal every night from the contents of my pantry, fridge and freezer! I used up some things that had been knocking about for ages and tried a few new things too. And best of all no supermarket so some pennies saved too.

It has been a busy day today generally, there is something about seeing the sun in the morning that perks me up and gets me going.
By 10 am this morning I had completed my day's project - one living room floor waxed and polished, one bathroom floor waxed and polished and one set of wooden stairs waxed and polished - must remember they are done before I go flying down them.

After work I got the big brush cutter out, and cut down the thistles that were encroaching on the grazing field, and once I had run that one dry I got out the smaller strimmer and tackled the nettles along the perimeter fencing. With all that hard work done in the sun, it was time to put the sun brolly up and relax with a glass of cold squash and nurse my poor blistered hands.

I could not think of anything to make for dinner tonight so I turned to one of my cook books for inspiration, and tonight we have my interpretation of baked cod mediterranean style.


Baked Fish with Mediterranean Topping.

I am not using cod because I don't have any. I am using frozen 'lotte' which is a type of monkfish readily available and cheap to buy here in France, but any white fish will do.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lophius - for the fishy info)

I laid the fish on some of the defrosted green beans left over from the other night just so as not to waste them. They are not part of the recipe, neither is the sweetcorn, but while I had an open tin that needed finishing I threw them in too.

1 onion
1 red pepper
1 tin of tomatoes (400g)
1 clove garlic crushed
1 red chili deseeded and finely chopped
1 tablespoon tomatoe puree
1 pinch brown sugar
salt and pepper
8 stoned black olives (optional)
chopped fresh parsley

Fry the onion and pepper in some olive oil, until softened, then add the garlic and chili and saute for another minute
Add the tomatoes, the puree, sugar and seasoning (in keeping with the challenge I did not have a tin of tomatoes so I added a whole 40 g tin of puree and some water instead) and simmer until it starts to thicken.
Place the fish on a baking tray, pour over the sauce and scatter the black olives on top. (I didn't because, 1 I don't have any and 2 I don't like them that much.)
Bake in the oven at 180°C/Gas 4 for 15 minutes if using fresh fish, 30 minutes if using frozen fish.
Garnish with the parlsey to serve (although I also threw in some dried parsley to the topping before it went in the oven).

And reading that back goes to prove why I never normally use recipe books because I never do what they say anyway!

Day 2 - Aubergine and potato layer bake

This is a bit of a made up recipe from my larder

Augergine and Potato Layer Bake

(because I love one pot cooking)

serves 2

Slice one large aubergine thinly, place in a sieve, salt and set aside to allow juices to drain

Slice one large potato equally thinly, as well as a large onion

Mix some lean beef mince with some tomato puree, teaspoon of paprika, teaspoon of garlic powder, and some oregano, then season

Make up 500 ml of veg stock

Rinse the aubergine well, then layer into an over proof dish, aubergine, then potato, then onion, add the meat, then layer onion, aubergine and potato on top

Finish with some mozzarella, a tomato and some black pepper

Then bake for 1 hour at 180°C

Right - I'm off to eat the fruits of my labours having spent an hour this afternoon catching up with paperwork, and organising myself neatly - got fed up of searching for things all over the place, putting them into those poly pockets only for them to slide about all over the place, including down the back of the bookcase!