Sausage gratin

This is a slight variation on a recipe I've done before with sausage and asparagus, but it's a great way of cooking sausages if you're fed up of frying or grilling them!  To make, simply cook some potatoes in lightly salted, boiling water until they are nearly done.  Test them by sticking a fork or a skewer in and feeling the texture, it should still be firm and just ever so slightly 'gritty' which indicates that the potato is not fully cooked.  As we are going to be finishing them off in the oven, this is OK.

 While the potatoes are boiling, wash and chop some asparagus, peel and finely chop an onion, slice the sausages (I used three good sized, pork and apple sausages in this case) into good sized chunks.  Layer all of these ingredients into a heat proof dish, with the chopped onion at the bottom.  I added a layer of cherry tomatoes as well, as you can see.  I also put in a good bunch of freshly chopped herbs, in this case thyme, rosemary and sage.  A small pinch of course sea salt is a good idea at this stage to.  In this case, I am relying on the tomatoes to produce juice as they cook.  If you don't use tomatoes, you might find it necessary to add a little stock - chicken or vegetable would work well.

Once you've done that, slice the par-boiled potatoes and use the slices to cover the top of the dish, like so:

 Add some grated cheese and some freshly ground black pepper and place in a pre-heated oven at 180C for about 40 minutes to an hour.  You can tell when it's cooked because the top will be all nice and brown and the juices in the bottom of the dish will be bubbling away nicely.  I'd recommend at least 40 minutes though, just to make sure that the sausages are cooked through properly.

Seasonal produce

After all the fuss I made about the regional produce I bought in Waitrose last week, I thought it was probably time that I wrote a little more about it.  In the end, once I'd sampled some of the vegetables raw, I realised that they were far to fresh to be cooked to death in some complicated dish.  When vegetables (technically, tomatoes are a fruit of course...) are this fresh, I think it's almost a crime to cook them beyond the bare minimum.  The spinach and the asparagus in particular seem to really benefit from actually being in season at the moment, you can really taste it.  So, one super simple dish that I like to do when I get home from work and am hungry and in need of something fairly quick is to just basically cook some pasta and add some olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, course sea salt and the freshest vegetables available.  This could be done with almost any vegetables really, but in this case I used asparagus, mushrooms and spinach.  This dish is perfect when the vegetables are so fresh because they are not really cooked at all, just warmed through.  The end result should look something like this:

 This really is the simplest thing to prepare.  Put the pasta into little salted, rapidly boiling water.  While it's cooking, wash the vegetables.  Slice the mushrooms and the asparagus.  When the pasta is nearly done, add the slices asparagus for no more than three minutes, it takes a bit of practice to get the timing for the pasta right, but it's worth persevering.  A time saving trick I like to use is to wash the spinach leaves in a colander under the cold tap.  Once the pasta is cooked, drain the pasta through the same colander, leaving the spinach in.  This way, the pasta gets drained and the spinach gets steamed by the hot water!  Nice.  Tip the pasta and the spinach back into the saucepan, add olive oil, freshly ground black pepper and course sea salt.  Stir it around and add the mushrooms.  That's it!

 We've been having a lot of warm and wet weather just recently, which of course has done wonders for my attempts to grow my own food:

 As you can see, the tomatoes are coming on well, the mint is progressing but is still too small to use really.  Unfortunately, the sweet peppers are not doing much and appear to have been munched by snails.  However, the alpine strawberries are doing well, though I am surprised that they haven't produced any flowers yet.

Waitrose Regional Foods

I've just got back from doing my shopping at Waitrose, which happens to be my closest supermarket, although I do occasionally go to others.  Waitrose have quite a strong focus on local produce and actually have a whole section, albeit a small one, devoted to regional, local produce.  In my case, the region in question is 'South of England'.  As I say, it's only a small section so there isn't all that much there, but they usually have locally produced potatoes and mushrooms here.  Today, I also got organic spinach, plum tomatoes and asparagus.  I feel that although the selection is small, I have to do my bit by supporting this initiative.  If more consumers buy these products, the supermarkets will release that this really is something that we want to be able to buy and hopefully that will lead to an increase in the range of local produce available.  I occasionally go to farm shops and I would like to start using some smaller, local suppliers for things such as meat.  The trouble is, it is very hard to beat the convenience of a supermarket.  To get to a farm shop, I have to use my car, whereas I can walk to Waitrose.  There are one or two smaller, local shops I can drop into on my way home from work, so I shall have to explore that possibility.  The point I am trying to make I guess is that it isn't always possible to do your shopping at farm shops and small local suppliers, but at least if you're going to use a supermarket, try to support any local food initiatives they may have.  I am sure all the main supermarkets have similar local producer schemes to Waitrose.

British air dried ham and early season asparagus

 Dear Readers!

 I must apologise for the rather long break I've had from the blog!  But, do not dispair, I have not given up on the project.  April turned out to be a rather hectic month and I ended up getting stuck in Canada because of the Volcano and, well, lot's has been happening, so unfortunately the blog took a back seat there for a while.  Anyway, I'm back now and there is quite a lot of catching up to do!

 My regular readers will remember that I did quite well with growing tomatoes last year on my little patio.  Well, I'm trying to do even better this year and have gone all out and got some nice pots.  I'm trying to grow all sorts of things this time round, including radishes (which have to be the easiest to grow vegetable ever!), spinach, spring onions (though they're not looking so good), tomatoes, mint, thyme, lemon thyme, rosemary, sage, corriander and alpine strawberries.  I shall post some pictures of all of this at some point in the near future and will of course keep you up to date with my progress!

 Anyway, today I'd like to blog about the British air dried ham that I bought at Richard Woodall's butchers in the Lake District some time ago.  I finally got around to using it!  This ham is very much like Palma ham from Italy, if you've had that and as such goes very well with asparagus.  Now, of course, asparagus is in season right now (make the most of it, it's a short season!), so I thought that this would make the perfect combination.

And the ham:

Now, this is really easy to do!  I've found that many people will say that they don't like asparagus, but I often find that this is because they have never had it when it has been cooked properly.  All too often, it's served after having been boiled and it has turned to nothing more than a slightly strange flavoured green mush.  This is not good!  Asparagus must be cooked gently in my opinion, or very quickly on a high heat.  So, grilling works well, or the BBQ!  However, in this case, I've opted for boiling in lightly salted water. 

Trim the woody part off the bottom of the stalk, but otherwise they should need no preparation beyond washing.  Get the water boiling rapidly and then add the asparagus and start a timer.  I let it boil for as close as possible to three minutes and then whip it out as fast possible onto some kitchen paper to dry off.  For this dish, I then allowed it to cool, before carefully wrapping each stalk in a piece of the ham, like so:

 Personally, I think this is a fantastic combination and it seemed to work very well with the Richard Woodall ham.  However, aware that nobody should simply take my word for it, I took some to work and shared them around with my work collegues.  It seemed to go down very well!

Chicken and asparagus stir fry

Another nice recipe for using all that British asparagus that's now in season!

This is a really easy and really tasty recipe. First, cut the chicken breast into strips and place in a bowl with some soy sauce (for a British alternative, consider anchovy sauce, it doesn't taste the same, but it adds the same kind of rich, saltiness that you get from soy sauce), chopped garlic and dried (or even better, fresh) basil. I also like to add a generous portion of freshly ground black pepper. Mix all this up and set aside for around half an hour.

Then, simply chop two or three (depending on the size) shallot onions, half a red pepper, half a yellow pepper and some asparagus. I like to keep the asparagus fairly long, so I cut it into three or four sections. Add some oil to a wok and heat until it's nice and hot. Then fry the shallot onions until they are soft and beginning to turn brown. Add the chicken and continue to cook on a high heat. I find that you can tell that the chicken is cooked through when you can break a piece in two using only a blunt wooden spoon, but this will generally take about 5 minutes. Stir regularly while it's cooking to avoid anything sticking to the wok. Next, add the chopped sweet pepper and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes, until beginning to soften. You could also add some frozen peas at this point if you like.

Add the asparagus last, as it requires the least cooking and you don't want to over cook it.
Cook for a further three or four minutes. Serve with rice, as shown above. That's it!

Asparagus

Apparently, British Asparagus is now in season! It's a very short season, so make the most of it while you can! As an example of all the wonderful things that can be done with Asparagus, I made a sausage and Asparagus gratin. It's very simple:

Finely chop a medium sized onion. Cut the sausages into roughly 1 inch lengths and mix with half of the chopped onion in a heat proof dish. I like to use whole Asparagus, rather then just the spears, but I think it's best to cut off the woody bit right at the very bottom of the stalks. I then chopped the Asparagus stalks into sections and mixed them in with the sausages and onions. Add some salt, pepper, a splash of olive oil and some herbs (fresh herbs are always best if you have them!), I like to use basil in this kind of dish, but parsley would also work well. Add half a tin of chopped tomatoes and the rest of the chopped onion. Then, cover with thinly sliced, raw potato and a final dusting of salt and pepper, as shown:

Cook this in the over, at 190C for about an hour. After it's been in for about 45 minutes, I like to take it out and add some grated cheese to the top, but this is optional.

OK, maybe I need to work on my presentation, but I'm not a professional chef (poor excuse) and I can assure you that it was very tasty!