Cafe

As I have been tearing though my garden of late, getting everything ready for a nice summer. Well judging by the march weather we've been having this is probably our summer now.

In my garden i have an old coffee table, not sure why I bought it, its not the prettiest item. Now the dilemma is this, its a little too large to fit in a wheelie bin. Throws a spanner into the whole clear out plan really. After ripping its legs of and cutting it down I was feeling pretty triumphant.

It still Does not fit.

It's now the only thing left in my garden that's not growing or sitting related. But while watching 'Le Salvager' the other week I was hit with twin bolts of inspiration. Not only would I re purpose the table, a drew an idea for a sign from a 'cafe' in the opening credits. Because the table lacks legs, it is essentially just a big wooden sign, so i drew up a stencil and opened some rather fetching paint.

the stencil in situ

red equals class

Stay tuned as I'll be adding to it here and there over the weeks to come

Panoramic III

Panoramic II

Ebay

I do love Ebay,
the rush you get for winning is like spitting in Gods Face.

Honey mustard gammon

When you want a good sandwich, you need a good filling And nothing makes a good sandwich like ham.
Making your own ham is delicious and actually pretty cheap. Consider how much you spend on a packet of cheap smart price ham, chances are you won't be getting better than one pound per one hundred grams. Now the bit of gammon in the picture cost five pounds and weighs 1.2 kilos. For the same weight of packaged ham your looking at twelve pounds.

To cook the gammon it's three easy steps,
First, stud the ham with cloves and boil with peppercorns and onion in salted water for around two hours.
Second, make a simple glaze of honey, and mustard, remove the skin and rub the glaze all over.
Third, roast the gammon for half an hour in a hot oven.

Ta da! Carve thickly and enjoy (if you let it cool it's a little easier to carve).

Panoramic

Lunch in the garden

With a little sun, nothing like eating outside

Just a thought...

Is it me or does the 'united nations' sound like a group of super heroes while the 'Arab league' sounds like the villains.

Meatballs

Because I'm lazy I'll just be showing you a real easy recipe this week, Spaghetti. Now there are endless variations on how to cook up a la bologna, but I'll show you mine. It's really very simple.

Firstly I prefer meatballs over mince any day, so how do you make simple meatballs?

Well, quite simply with meat. In the picture above i have used 200g of minced steak, almost every meat is suitable for meatballs (try half pork, half beef). You can add egg, breadcrumbs etc... but to be honest just by adding a little salt you can shape the balls well enough. I have added a little paprika and oregano (O REG GANO if your American, ORI GANO if sensible) as well as basic seasoning to mine.

To cook, seal off the meatballs in a little olive oil until nicely browned. Remove to a baking tray and finish in a oven at 200 degrees c for roughly quarter of an hour.

And now how to make the sauce

To make a good Italian sauce all you need is onion, garlic and tomato. But we'll add to this a little, firstly fry some sliced or diced onions in the same pan you used for the meatballs, we want to use all that meaty fat left over, add crushed garlic to the party and cook lightly till soft. Add a couple of good sized chopped tomatoes and simmer till reduced alittle, and basically your there, when you cook the pasta (in salted water with a good splash of olive oil) reserve alittle oil to loosen the sauce, add the meatballs to the pan to warm and serve over the pasta, which will have been drained and tossed with olive oil and black pepper.

Et Viola, bein appreveche

(none of the above is Italian)

Jansson's Temptation,

Scandinavians are cool, that's a fact. But one things always worried me and that's the food. Every time I have saw pictures in books it all looks distinctly eighties, the bad sort of eighties, now surely that can't be right? Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Iceland have gave us some brilliant design quirks as well as this excellent movie.

No they have a healthy coffee and cake culture that i'll be exploring in the near future, but what about food? Well I have been experimenting Viking style. The first dish that i have tried is 'Jansson's Temptation' (Jansson's Frestelse), This is quite a traditional Swedish dish that was apparently born when an explorer was lost and only had potatoes, cream, onions and anchovies in his pack.

Here's what you'll need,

Jansson's Frestelse,

(Makes Two)

500g Potatoes

2 Cloves Garlic

2 Onions

Anchovies

Butter

Thyme

150ml Cream

Breadcrumbs

How to,

1, Peel and grate the potatoes and squeeze out any excess moisture.

2, Gently fry the garlic and add the onions, Diced or sliced its up to you. Cook lightly till golden and add half a tin of anchovies and a little oil.

3, After letting the onion mix cool, its time to start building, start with a layer of potato (i used a nice earthenware dish, looks are important) then the onion, garlic and anchovies mix, on top of this add the thyme before topping wish the rest of the potato.

4, pour the cream over the dish, topping off with a little milk if necessary.

5, Sprinkle with breadcrumbs (an easy way to get good breadcrumbs is to let a slice of bread dry out in a warm oven and then break it up with your fingers) and dot with butter.

6, After forty five minutes at two hundred degrees Celsius it should be light golden on top and ready to eat.

Scandinavia

It has to be said I did really enjoy this, I served it with a pan roasted fillet of Lamb and a red wine sauce. I think the only thing i would consider changing is the anchovies, maybe reducing the amount a little. They tasted good, its just the smell while cooking was, ermm prominent.