Pictures of Snowy Devon

I know it's not even remotely food related, but I can't let all this snow slide by without posting a few pictures up ...


The Jasmine/Honeysuckle fence between front and back gardens



Looking back down the garden past the fence



The back garden



Looking out over the hills next door



There are broad beans under there somewhere - hope they're OK!



A little while later - with two new additions ...



Close up of our new friends!

Wood Burner Cooking: "Braised Beef 0 - Boiled Ham 1"

Well trying some new does mean you make mistakes, and I think my braised beef in barolo could have been better. In my defence the wood burner is very tricky to interpret as one log will never burn like another, and without a thermometer on it I never really know what sort of temperature it is, I just have to judge by feeling the heat and signs of bubbles, etc. Don't get me wrong, it was very tasty, but when you've put an entire bottle of wine in a dish like this you kind of want it to be great, not just OK.


Browing the beef on the SMEG, just before adding the vegetables from the marinade and the red wine.

Once the meat had been marinaded over night with wine, herbs and vegetables it was drained, dried and browned, then back with all the ingredients and onto the wood burner for about 2 hours. Whilst it came out tender and flavoursome the wine was overpowering and it hadn't achieved any real depth that you'd expect. I think the bottom line is that the stove never really got to the right simmering temperature, at least not consistently, so it never really cooked enough. Oddly enough I used the left overs to create a sort of curry with lots of fresh spices, ginger, garlic and some mascarpone cream we had that needed to be eaten, and that was fabulous - I guess the extra cooking was just what the sauce needed.

Beef in Barolo (actually I didn't use a straight Barolo, but it was an Italian wine made with Nebbiolo grapes - the same as those in Barolo - so pretty much the right wine) is something I've wanted to make for years, and never got round to, so disappointing for the first one not to be great, but no doubt one day I'll have another go.

Just last night I was cooking again on the stove though, this time a Ham shank slowly simmered with shallots, carrots, black peppercorns, bay and thyme, and that came out great. Needed a bit of attention now and then, as logs went in and the lid needed to be pushed aside to compensate, but it made for a fab Saturday ham, egg and chips! And now I have about 2 litres of gorgeous ham stock :-)

So what am I learning about cooking on the wood burner? Well you need to pay more attention than a conventional stove as logs will burn at different temperatures. Slow cooking is relatively easy, so long as you're not cooking for a deadline as it's not unusual to need at least an extra half hour or even more. And it's messy - the Italian is, unusually, cooking today and I have a Sunday off for a change. She's busy frying off some Italian sausage with fennel at the moment, and you can see the state of our wood burner now in the picture below.


Frying Italian Sausage with Fennel

I can hear the odd expletive coming up the stairs so I'm guessing she's discovering the joys of wood burning cooking for herself, although that said she grew up with this sort of thing in the Alps so for her it's not so unusal.

One thing I'll end with though - the cost savings. We've recently got one of those doo-hickeys which measures your electricity consumption, and I don't think I ever realised just how much energy the electric oven uses - it's enormous, and that's with a very modern energy efficient oven! We know we're already saving loads of money on gas due to relying on the wood burner as our core source of heat, but it's also shifted our cooking so that we tend to do pot roasts and stews on the burner instead of using the oven. We also warm plates on it, heat up breads and pastries, pre-heat water for pasta, etc. I reckon we're going to end up saving loads on our electric bill as well as our gas bill as we shift our cooking over more and more to the stove. Interesting times!

Christmas Turkeys and all that

Just busy preparing a boned & rolled pork shoulder to go on the spit for lunch, and thought I'd better update things up here. What with all the Christmas travelling and other busyness that this time of year always brings I've been a bit remiss with posting!

Lots of things have come and gone Sunday Roasting wise, including lots of lamb and a fab bit of Sirloin on the bone, which Arthur up at the butchers did a special old fashioned preparation for creating a plinth to roast it on out of it's own bones. Worked a treat. Unfortunately you can't see it that well in the picture:



As you can see I roasted it up with new potatoes just chucked in with their skin and everything. This way they roast up slowly and get covered in lots of stickiness from the beef - you don't get the crunch of proper roasties, but sometimes I prefer them this way.

Sad news on the butcher front, as Dave Haggett has decided to give up and sold the business. Seems he's had enough of people not appreciating good meat, always wanting cheaper and cheaper cuts (with all that entails for animal welfare and traditional butchering). A much bigger business now owns the butchers and associated Spar, and whilst not much has changed yet only time will tell whether or not it will survive.

Christmas was a fun time, as I got a niece from my brother and sister in law. That did mean I did all the cooking for Christmas lunch though, not something I really mind but Christmas lunch is almost always the most stressfull cooking of the year, what with all the different things that have to be prepared. We did go for turkey too, which can be a bugger to cook, especially on my Mum's oven which has seen better days. Let's juts say what you pick on the dial as atemperature often seems to have little to do with what actually happens in the oven.


Mille Rose Osborne

I went for a variation on Jamie Oliver's way of doing Turkey for mine, separating the skin from the bird and pushing butter up underneath to baste the bird as it cooks. I was supposed to add sage leaves that my brother has sent from his garden as well (Mum's being a bit bare) but my brain took on a sieve like nature and I promptly forgot. Some herbs and manadarin also went inside, and I stuffed the neck as usual, then wrapped the legs in foil to stop them cooking too quickly.


Separating the skin so that I can push the butter underneath

Took a few hours to cook, but came out pretty well I think, although maybe a tiny bit overcooked. Wonderfully moist and favloursome thouhg, which is the main thing. The bottom line with Turkeys has to be that you have to check when they're cooked, there is just no other way of measuring them. Ovens and turkeys vary so much that no matter what recipe your follow you're going to have to use a bit of experience and testing if you want your bird cooked properly.


The finished bird


Making the gravy - bit blurry this one, but at least you can see the neck and vegetables I was using to make a trivet to place the bird on. Gravy was amazing just like that - I actually made the mistake of adding some stock to it to make it go further, but to be honest I don't think the stock was as good as the gravy so blending the two made things worse not better. Should of just used water!

I did the usual suspects with this, roast potatoes and parsnips, brussel sprouts, carrots, bread sauce, braised red cabbage, bacon wrapped sausages, and two types of stuffing.


Stuffing balls and bacon sausages. The stuffing balls I tried to keep very simple, just adding a little sage and lemon for a bit of freshness. I used chipolatas for the bacon wrapped sausages, and just snipped them in two once they were roasted

Seems made now - why on earth do we do this to ourselves! Once a year is enough - I guess we forget by the time the next year comes along just how much we have to get through ...


The finished meal - with a glug or two of red wine of course!

Then it was on to the christmas pud (thankfully my Mum's - wonderful stuff, although the Italian has never taken to it) and a little cheese. All in all a great meal, made even more special by my tiny niece sitting (well, laying - let's face it she's only a few days old) beside me.

Anyhow - must get back to my pork shoulder - it's not going to roast itself!

P.S. Excuse the photos - have a new camera on the phone and seeing if it's good enough for this sort of thing. Still trying to get the settings right!