Anniversary

Wedding party-releasing lanterns

In two days' time, Mr T and I will be celebrating our 1st wedding anniversary! Our wedding was one of many unexpected events in 2012 and was a very small last-minute affair with only our parents. As many people were disappointed to not have been with us on our big day, we had a belated wedding party in the UK in February and will have a small family meal with my family in France next weekend.

Anyway, I thought that with the anniversary coming up, it would be a suitable time to show you pictures of our "pork pie" wedding cake from the celebrated pork pie establishment Stanthfords (Mr T's favourite pie shop located in a small town next to his)...

Largest pie reads "Mr & Mrs"

Not a factual representation of bride and groom!

I have shared with you before our love our pies, so it only seemed natural for us to have a pie feast back in Yorkshire in February (alongside an amazing hog roast!). One of our university friends also made this very special cake for Baby Suisse...

top layer: fruit; middle layer: chocolate; bottom layer: Victoria sponge

...and a LOT of marzipan!

As Baby Suisse is half-French and half-British (well, actually he is 100% French for now as we haven't done the paperwork with the British embassy for him to get a British passport like Mr T), our friend went for casual French racism with a giant beret-wearing frog, a garland of onions, with a final garland of Yorkshire roses for good measures.

I loved my unusual "wedding-party" cakes!

A weekend of fooding

Oops, I meant to write a blog post at the weekend but I got to Sunday night feeling completely shattered and desperate for an early night. Mr T left us last Thursday to go to Ireland on a stag weekend until Sunday afternoon and I was on Baby Suisse's full time duties after work on Thursday and Friday and at the weekend. My little boy and I had a great time together but we were pleased to have Mr T back home after a few days!

One of my resolutions for this year was to take up cooking again every now and again, and in particular to make use of the many great cookbooks we have accumulated over the years. Mission accomplished this weekend, with 3 recipes from 2 very different cookbooks.

The weekend started with a recipe I had tried before: chocolate banana bread from my Green&Black's cookbook. Last time, I added a twist to the recipe by making muffins rather than a loaf, but both are equally tasty!

A new recipe from the Jamie at Home book was tried and loved, simple but delicious home-made pizza with courgettes (home-grown), mushrooms, taleggio cheese and parma ham. I realise now that I was so desperate to tuck in that I forgot to take a picture of the pizza after it came out of the oven...oh well...

Sunday dinner was light, perfect comfort food again from Jamie's book: home-made beans on toast. Perfect for the evening, put all ingredients in a pot and simmer for an hour:

A new favourite in our house!

Apart from cooking, Alf, Baby Suisse and I went on many walks in the neighbourhood (including a trip to the Roman amphitheatre) and Baby Suisse spent a lot of time splashing about in his paddling pool. It's beginning to look a lot like Summer :-)

Do you have a favourite Sunday night dinner recipe?

Pie love

I heart pies and if I wasn't married to Mr T, I probably would be married to one of the Hairy Bikers...fact!

http://www.hairybikers.com

Maybe you don't have a clue what I am on about if you haven't lived in the UK, and even if you do you may not understand my weird crush on overweight hairy middle-aged men but I am digressing...PIES!

http://www.hairybikers.com

Being French, I had no ideas what pies (or Yorkshire puddings) for that matter where until I met Mr T, a Northerner...and God was I missing out!

I bought Mr T the Hairy Bikers' "Perfect Pies" book at Christmas and did not have the patience to wait for him to try one of the recipes (he never follows any recipes) so I got stuck in!

Mr T being lactose-intolerant, it was a bit of a challenge to find a pie recipe that did not heavely rely on cheese or cream but the "sausage and apple puff" recipe ticked the right boxes.

No fancy ingredients: good quality sausage meat, an onion, an apple, bread crumbs and seasoning.

Mix everything and put in the middle of a roll of puff-pastry.

Love pie

Cover with more pastry and be creative!

This glorified giant sausage roll is very good, super easy to make and got Mr T's approval (and he is a pie connoisseur).

With the left-over pastry, I decided to make some mini apple turnovers to be enjoyed with coffee the following morning.

Just stewed apples and a little bit of sugar...

Two were not enough!

I have really enjoyed doing a bit of cooking lately. Mr T is our official cook and does a very good job but I do miss taking the time to cook something special and trying out some new recipes. I have made more of an effort lately to actually browse all the cookery books we have at home and bookmark some recipes to try in the near future. This success has spurred me on!

The ring of fire...

And it burned, burned,burned... I have learned my lesson last week chopping and de-seeding chilies for some new recipes ;-(

Red hot "chilly" peppers

With the snow paying us a visit 10 days ago (albeit a brief one), we decided that it was time to bring some of our balcony plants in for the winter. We harvested all the chilies from our chili plants and ended up with two punnets of them!

What to do, what to do??? We don't like our food that spicy (and these little b*ggers are hot!) but it seemed a shame to not attempt to make something with them. Once again, the Tinterweb came to the rescue and I found a recipe for Chili Jam courtesy of Nigella. I can't stand the woman but her food often turns out to be good so I thought I'd make peace with her, just for this time.

 

All I did was cutting and de-seeding 150 g of chilies. It doesn't even look THAT much in the picture below but oh god, did I suffer!!

Schoolboy error, I didn't have any plastic gloves so I wore no protection on my hands. I didn't feel anything while doing it but I did not escape THE pain!! I tried rubbing olive oil on my hands to take the sting off and although it momentarily worked, it didn't make removing my contact lenses later on that day any less painful!

 

Chop chilies finely in food processor,

then do the same with 150g of peppers

In the meantime, disolve 1kg of jam sugar into 600mL of cider vinegar

before adding the chilies/peppers and bringing to the boil for 10 minutes

Leave to cool for about 40 minutes before pouring into sterilised jars

We are yet to try it so I have no idea how spicy it is or what we can have it with but I will keep you posted!

While I was in agony, I thought that I might as well cut a few more chilies and make some chili oil! Why not? This time, I found a recipe on the BBC Food website.

I chopped another 40g of chilies

and added them, along with 8 whole chilies, to 1L of olive oil that was gently being warmed up in a pan.

Pour into sterilised glass bottles using a funnel

ermmmm, I am not sure we will go through this amount of chili oil in a year (or whether putting it in my mouth is a wise idea) but at the very least, the bottles will look good in the cupboard!

Let's hope that it was all worth THE pain!!

Waste not, want not

Hello again,

It has been a little while since I have been able to sit down and spend time with you all. I have been kept rather busy with Baby Suisse and a stream of visitors coming from France and the UK to marvel at the little one.

Every time I sit down to start a blog post, Baby Suisse wakes up from his nap or decides that playing alone on his mat is not fun anymore and my efforts are thwarted...fingers crossed this time...

Let me tell you about my tomato plant...

 

 

We have now moved into Autumn and while we still have a few days of sunshine every now and then, the temperatures have dropped and it is well and truly the end of the summer vegetable growing season. The tomato plant would unlikely survive the winter so I decided to scrap it but I didn't want to waste all the green tomatoes that were still on it.

One full kilogram of green cherry tomatoes...what to do?? After looking around on the internet, I came across this recipe to make green tomato chutney. The French recipe calls it a chutney but to me it is closer to relish than chutney taste-wise. But enough about semantics.

The recipe calls for green tomatoes, onions, brown sugar, cider vinegar (although I only put half of what the recipe called for), chillies (I used 2 of these from my garden)...

 

...cloves,laurel,coriander,salt and pepper.

Not too many ingredients (unlike my rhubarb chutney) and an easy-peasy recipe. Mix everything in a big bowl and leave to macerate for an hour.

Then cook for an hour on a medium heat,occasionally stirring before blitzing with a food processor.

Pour into sterilised jars et voilà!

It truly is delicious, best enjoyed with meat or add a spoonful to ratatouille or pasta sauce.

à bientôt :-)

Pink chutney

We are very fortunate to have fruits growing of their own accord in our garden here in Brugg. Although this year's weather hasn't been good for the cherry tree or the fig tree, the plums have done ok (and been nailed by the birds) and our lonely plant of rhubarb has gone wild. I am not a big fan of rhubarb-based puddings and would certainly never make them at home but I could not bear to let 2kg+ of free rhubarb go to waste.

 

Thanks to the BBC Good Food website, I came across a recipe for rhubarb and date chutney which was perfect as I also randomly had dates lying about in the cupboard (and we all know that I am a sucker for chutney!). I must admit that preparing all the ingredients (ginger, red onions, dates, raisins, rhubarb and apples) that went into the chutney did take an awful long time, see for yourself!

First step is to bring the onions, ginger and vinegar to the boil before simmering:

The rest of the ingredients (except the rhubarb) then go into the pan until the apples are tender:

Before finally adding the star of the chutney, the rhubabrb!

Once cooked, I like to use a blender to give it a smoother texture. Et voilà, pink chutney!

As with all chutneys, it is best to leave it for at least 1 to 3 months before enjoying as the vinegar taste may be overwhelming although this pink chutney was very sweet tasting on the day and could be eaten sooner.

Definitely a recipe for you to try at home!