Home grown food

 In my last post I promised to blog about my latest efforts to grow some of my own food.  As I don't have a garden, I am slightly limited in what I can grow, but I think you can do quite well with just a patio.  So, here are some of the things I am growing this year:

 Last year I grow a few tomato plants in a grow bag, which worked really well, but I thought that this year I would go for something that looked a little better!  I think the pots provide a bit more flexibility as well as you can move them around and arrange them more easily.  Anyway, I have two tomato plants, of different varieties, so hopefully they'll do well.

 These are radishes, which are really very easy to grow and make an excellent salad vegetable.  They grow quickly, particularly  in the hot weather we've been having recently, so I am keeping a couple of pots going planted some time apart.  I hope that this will allow me to have an extended supply of radishes, though continuous would be even better.

 These will be spinach fairly soon...

 This is regular garden mint, which I find is superb for making fresh mint tea!  It's a bit too small at the moment, but when there is enough of it, the thing to do is to simply cut a short branch, wash it, put it into a mug or a cup and pour boiling water of it.  This makes a suitably refreshing hot drink for the hot weather!

 I also planted some Alpine strawberries, which are those really small berries you sometimes see in the shops.  They may be small, but they have a lot of flavour, so hopefully these will turn out well!

 And these are red peppers!  To be honest, I'm not sure how well these will do but I bought them as seedlings from the garden centre and the label said that they were ideal for patios...  It will be exciting if they do produce fruit, but I tried growing sweet peppers indoors last year and it wasn't very successful. 

 I've got space for quite a few more pots, so if I have time I shall be making some additions.  The great thing about using pots is that, once planted, they are really low maintenance, except for needing watering and the occasional feed.

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!

Salmon Risotto

 On the meat front, the original EatingBritish project was actually quite easy.  A quick glance over almost any supermarket meat section will reveal that a significant quantity, if not all, of the meat was produced in the UK.  However, one of the areas that does become slightly questionable is fish.  When is a fish a British fish?  When it's caught in British waters perhaps?  I'm still slightly undecided on this issue myself, so instead I make do with sustainably farmed fish, which is definately produced in Britain!  In this case, I am using Scottish farmed salmon.  I quite like a nice piece of salmon every now and again, particularly pan fried (click on the 'fish' label to the left to see more recipies).  However, I thought I would try something a little different this time round and so I tried a salmon risotto.
 Salmon is ideal for a risotto because it requires only the gentlest of cooking, assuming its nice and fresh to start with, so it can go into the cooking pot right at the last minute.  Here is a nice piece of Scottish farmed salmon:

To make the risotto is really easy.  Heat some oil and butter (the oil raises the smoke point of the butter, allowing a higher heat to be used, but still giving the nice buttery flavour) in a pan and fry a finely chopped onion on a medium heat until soft.  Add about half a cup of rice.  Some would say to use risotto rice, which is certainly very good, but to be honest I used regular, long grain rice and it worked just fine for me.  Stir this around for a couple of minutes.  Meanwhile, make some chicken stock (I just use cubes, but if you have fresh stock it would be awesome!).  After the rice has been in the butter/onion/oil mixture in the pan for a few minutes, start adding the stock.  You want to do this quite slowly, allowing it to be absorbed by the rice before adding a bit more.  For this amount of rice, I found 3/4 pint of chicken stock worked very well.  You can always add more water if the rice still isn't cooked by the time you've used up all the stock, but it's much harder to take excess water out without over cooking the rice!
 While the rice is cooking, cut the salmon into cubes, removing the skin first if it was still on.  Once the rice is cooked, add the salmon, some chopped basil (dried works OK, but fresh would be so much better!) and two table spoons of double cream.  I also added some pine nuts because I like them and some halved cherry tomatos.  Stir this all together over a low heat.  Continue to cook until the salmon has turned nicely pink and is starting to fall apart.  Most risotto recipies would call for Parmesan cheese to be added, but of course, Parmesan cheese is not British.  It's an excellent cheese, but I didn't have any and I was keen to try a British alternative.  So, I used some of the Winchester mature chedder I've blogged about before (see here), which was a nicely mature chedder with a fairly robust flavour which I think did it's job as a Parmesan replacement fairly well.
 This was the end result:

Venison Steak Stri Fry

 The last dish I wrote about, the roast Venison rump steak, was rather more than I could eat in one go, so I had left overs.  A stir fry is often a good way of using left overs from a roast, or many other kinds of left overs come to that.  Anyway, in my opinion a stir fry requires relatively little meat, but with plenty of fresh and interesting vegetables.  On the subject of fresh and interesting vegetables, I have to say that I am finding the going a little difficult at the moment in terms of keeping to only British produce.  This time of year is something of a gap between the last of the previous seasons winter produce (see my posts from January, there was still quite a variety available then) and the next seasons early spring produce.  We have had an especially long and cold winter as well, which almost certainly will make things more difficult.

 There was actually an interesting article on this on the Guardian website that I came across today, which is worth a look (click here).  I had a good look round at the Sunnyfields farm shop when I was there to see what local vegetables I could pick up.  I came away with curly kale and purple sprouting brocoli, both of which are quite suitable for a stir fry.

 All I did was tear off some handfulls of the curly kale and purple sprouting brocoli and wash them under the tap.  I then heating some oil in the pan, added a chopped onion and fryed on a high heat until softened.  I then added the washed vegetables.  Continue to fry on a high heat until the leafy vegetables start to wilt. I then added a generous portion of soy sauce, some freshly ground black pepper and the sliced left over Venison.  I also added some frozen peas.  In the picture below, I have also added the left over roasted vegetables from the previous meal and as much as possible of the remaining juice, which will add a nice depth of flavour to the stir fry.

Continue to stir fry for a few minutes more to make sure that the frozen peas have defrosted, then serve on a bed of rice:

Roast Venison from the New Forest

On my last trip to Sunnyfields Farm Shop and Market, I picked up a pack of Venison rump steak.  I have to say that I am something of a fan of Venison, it's got a great flavour and it naturally very lean.  So, this is what I bought:

And out of the wrapper:

I'm not a butcher, but to me that looks like a good bit of bit of meat!  To make a nice roast from this, I lightly seasoned the meat with salt and pepper and then sealed it in a very hot frying pan.  This simply involves putting a little oil in the pan and getting it nice and hot, but not smoking.  Then, simply place the meat in the pan and leave it alone for a minute or so.  Then, turn onto the other side and leave for about a minute or so.  Keep turning until all the sides have been browned:

Here, I have placed some carrots, a chopped onion and 4 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped.  I added some cold pressed rape seed oil over the vegetables and then placed the sealed meat on top.  Put this in an oven at 180C, for about 45 to 50 minutes.  The exact cooking time will vary depending on the size of the joint of meat of course.  The best way to tell if it is cooked is to push a metal skewer into it, at the thickest point and check that the juices coming out are clear.  If not, then it needs another 10 minutes or so.  Once it's cooked, remove it from the over, cover it with more kitchen foil and leave it to rest for about 5 to 10 minutes.  This helps to ensure that the meat will be nice and tender.

When rested, slice thinly and serve!

British Tomatoes

 I was pleasently surprised to find that British tomatoes are already available!

 These, as can be seen from the label, have been grown at Thanet Earth in Kent, which is the largest greenhouse complex in the UK (http://www.thanetearth.com/).  Of course, the important question is; Did they taste good?  They were really quite good, juicy and sweet as a tomato should be.

Edinburgh, Chutney & Tebay Services

 On my way up to Edinburgh, for my recent visit, I felt I couldn't drive past Tebay Services without stopping there for a coffee and maybe to do a spot of shopping.  I've blogged about Tebay Services before (here), so I won't write more about it here and now, but surfice to say - well worth popping in should you find yourself on that particular stretch of the M6.

 Anyway, I had been very kindly invited to lunch on one of the days of my visit, so I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity to pick up a gift of some sort.  I was really looking for some kind of local food produce and after much browsing I found a selection of rather lovely sounding chutney:

 They looked rather delightful, though I must admit I don't know what they are like to eat!  However, I hope they are good.  In return for these, I not only recieved a really rather good lunch, but was introduced to a whole new world of chutney swapping.  This kind of made me wish I'd come armed with some of my tomato chutney from last year!  I shall have to try to make some smaller jars of it this year when the tomatos are back in season, to use as gifts.  Anyway, I received a lovely looking jar of homemade tomato and red pepper relish:

 Which I sampled this evening with some Pondhead Farm pork sausages which I picked up at the Sunnyfields farmers market when I was last there.  The relish was really rather good, with a subtle sweetness from the peppers carefully balanced with the vinegar.  Very nice indeed.

As I say, next time I make chutney or relish of my own, I shall certainly invest in some smaller jars - they really do make excellent gifts.