What's for dinner tonight.....

 

Continuing the theme of leftovers this week - poor family, they have been fed a smorgasbord of leftovers this week - old grotty ham from the fridge in quiches, soft squidgy tomatoes in yet more quiches, frozen chilli con carne leftovers in pasties, and limp hot dogs and out of date ready roll flaky pastry for sausage rolls.

But tonight I am going one better, the whole dinner is made up of random leftovers I found when making space in the freezer in the barn, so here goes:

Take a couple of handfulls of frozen cherry tomatoes

About 1 large chopped leek

A bowlful of frozen french beans

and 8 random chestnuts

Unfortunately I did not peel the chestnuts before freezing them, therefore first things first, boil the chestnuts for a couple of minutes then while still hot, peel the bitter skin off, although this does scald your fingers, it is much easier to do while the chestnuts are hot.  Once peeled, roughly chop the chestnuts.

In a large pan, pour in a tablespoon of olive oil, then the chopped chestnuts, a couple of grinds of black peppercorns, and 2 cloves of garlic just smashed up with the blade of your knife.  Fry for a couple of minutes, then add a teaspoon of salt, and a teaspoon of paprika, and a teaspoon of dried chillies.

Add the leek to the pan (no need to defrost), fry until the leek is soft, then add the cherry tomatoes, and continue frying until the tomatoes are soft too.  

Add a litre of chicken stock, the beans and leave to cook for about 8 minutes, until the beans are cooked through.

To finish, a big pinch of dried oregano, stir through and serve as a side to whatever meat you have knocking around, we had ours alongside some beef steaks I bought reduced a while ago.  Mop up the juices with a couple of doorstep wedges of homemade multi grain bread.

I find my family can manage to stomach leftovers if served alongside some good thick portions of quality meat, pork chops, roast chicken legs and beef steaks.

Mmmmmm - left overs

The best thing about making too much chilli for 6 people to eat, is being able to eat the leftovers the next day.

Wrapped up in some flaky pastry into little samosa shapes, then oven baked for 20 minutes at 180°C.

Delish.

I finally got stuck into some of the digging over that needs to happen this year, and as this is for some gooseberry bushes near the front of the house, I decided to stick them next to the herb patch.  When I started to dig I found several clumps of roots from my very rampant horseradish, so these have now been cleaned up ready to be dried and made into horseradish sauce.

 Obviously the chickens had to come over and investigate before deciding that horseradish root is inedible.











This is so easy: 

• just grate enough fresh root (once cleaned) for 4 tablespoons, 
• add 2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard, 
• pinch of salt, 
• pinch of sugar - no sugar if using shop bought mayonnaise, in fact you might want to add a squirt of lemon juice to tart it up a bit, 
• some ground black pepper, 
• a tiny pinch of cayenne pepper
• then stir through 6 tablepsoons of mayonnaise (preferably homemade).  

Serve with any roast meats, not just beef, or use instead of mustard for a hot and tasty ham sandwich.  It will keep in the fridge for about a week.

All over for another year

Christmas is over for another 12 months. Everything drops back to normal instantly.

There is an anticlimactical air to this post Christmas period. Never really having been one for big New Year celebrations, Christmas is my personal big event, and once gone it all feels like a bit of a wind down before gearing back up towards spring and the first bits of gardening.

Especially so in France, as here bank holidays do not carry over into the working week, therefore today is just another Monday work wise, and Boxing Day is not a celebration at all.

In that spirit of Monday bleurgh and back to work, Thea and I set to a bit of cleaning up around the chicken house, sorting out some fresh hay and straw for the rabbits, attacking the piles of washing lying around, tackling the mounds of leftovers and a general air of putting away and tidying up around the house.

We finally found the stash of eggs hidden in the upper barn, from one of our meat birds who has decided to be a house chicken and is laying like mad in an endeavor to endear herself to us and preserve her life. Unfortunately the -18°C the other night froze the eggs solid and they have all cracked. Eggy popsicles for the dog though who was quite happy with them. Dread to think what effect that is going to have on his guts later this afternoon.

With my freezer now refilled with left over turkey pie and a left over lamb pie and a lamb curry bubbling away ready for tonight now, I have a sense of achievement. The sun is out and the snow is glistening so may even get to take the dog out for a post Christmas 10km stroll.

Or perhaps I may just relax with my new Kindle.

Very impressed with the screen on it, (even if it did take me an hour on Christmas day to pair with the internet modem and get it to perform its WiFi functions), so impressed in fact that I have even bitten the proverbial bullet and bought some books for it.

From the BBC 100 greatest books - I am going to try to work my way through the unread books on the list, but I was quite surprised how many of these I have not only read but stand well thumbed on my bookshelves.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman
4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling
6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë
11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller
12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier
15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger
16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame
17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres
20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell
22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling
24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling
25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy
27. Middlemarch, George Eliot
28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving
29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck
30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez
33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson
37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
38. Persuasion, Jane Austen
39. Dune, Frank Herbert
40. Emma, Jane Austen
41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery
42. Watership Down, Richard Adams
43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald
44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
46. Animal Farm, George Orwell
47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens
48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett
52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy
55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
56. The BFG, Roald Dahl
57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell
59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden
63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton
67. The Magus, John Fowles
68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett
70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding
71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind
72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
74. Matilda, Roald Dahl
75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding
76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins
78. Ulysses, James Joyce
79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens
80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
81. The Twits, Roald Dahl
82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
83. Holes, Louis Sachar
84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy
86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
89. Magician, Raymond E Feist
90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac
91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo
92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel
93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett
94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
95. Katherine, Anya Seton
96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez
98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot
100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie