Leftovers

In the Herbert household we have had another week of fine eating.  It all got off to a great start with the cooking of an enormous piece of Gammon on monday.  I boiled it up in cider and bay then roasted it with honey and mustard.  To serve I roasted some veg, including a garden marrow, and made oodles of 

parsley sauce and vichy carrots.  Obviously all this cooking has left us with a whole load of leftovers, we are slowly nibbling our way through the ham, but the kids weren't so keen on the parsley sauce so I had about a cup left.  Also loitering in the fridge were some egg whites, I thought I would see whether you can wing a soufflé.  I loosened the parsley sauce with an egg yolk then added the egg white to the others to probably make three, I whisked these up to stiff and folded through the parsley sauce mix and  popped them in ramekins into the oven for fifteen minutes.  I ate two with leftover ham: a perfect late breakfast.

My other leftover discovery of the week is chocolate truffles, I made a ganache to ice our big girls chocolate cake, there was a tiny bit left, so I whacked it in the fridge and will roll teaspoons in cocoa powder to make some little truffles, tasty.

Granola

Tom tells me that eating badly is the consequence of bad organisation!  With the eagerness of a September school girl I made granola to give us all a healthy start. 

Recipe 

250g quinoa flakes

400g oats

200g nuts

100g seed mix

4tbsp desiccated coconut

4tbs of honey( we used the delicious stuff above)

1tbs brown sugar

1/2 tbs salt

5tbs rapeseed oil

Mix together the honey, oil, salt and sugar.  Smash the nuts in the pestle and mortar.  Add all the ingredients to the honey mix, stir well,

Put in a lined big roasting tin, cook at about 170c until browned, for about 25 minutes stir then cook again until all golden.  Turn the oven off and leave the granola in it to dry out further.

Eat.

We like ours with fruit and yoghurt.

I poached a mixed pack of dried fruit salad in earl grey, star anise and cardamon. 

Good food Tuesday

After a blissful six weeks of chasing around small children they returned to school.  In a start as you mean to go on kind of a way, the kids get to school early and me and the smallest hit HHB Nailsworth for breakfast.  There's a breakfast we haven't tried on the menu:  Chorizo, roasted tomato and fried egg on wild white toast: almighty.  We flaming loved it the toast had turned crimson with juices, a sensational flavour explosion unfortunately equally appreciated by the three year old who enjoyed it more than her sausage roll.

With out tummies full, we hit the locals and revelled in shopping locally.  Williams had their beautiful celery in, some girolles, a long radish and the ingredients for scampi and tartare sauce.  Bramleys had some fine English plums, great salad bits and pears for a pound.

I am rather guilty of making dull lunches, I always used to make soup with the help of Riverfords veg box, but since that stopped and I spent last winter making hundreds of litres of the stuff we don't manage much more than a boiled egg or cheese on toast.  Today however I was particularly pleased with my cold beef salad and tartare sauce.

I decided what the kids needed after a first day back at school and the boy to secondary was a mighty fine meal.  

The cooking began with a marble cake http://sheshopslocal.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=marble+cake.

In a good mother moment we all sat around the table and had cake and apple juice together when they got back from school, bliss. 

On the last day of the holidays the kids declared they wanted scampi for dinner, obviously I couldn't just buy a pack of the stuff so I set about making it.  Heres the recipe.

Scampi Recipe

1kg of uncooked headless prawns in a shell

3tbsp flour

2 eggs

50ml milk

Breadcrumbs

Oil to deep fry

Firstly fry the uncooked prawns in olive oil until pink, shell, (saving the shells for a fish stock). Put your 

flour in a bowl, whisk your eggs and milk together in a bowl, put your breadcrumbs in a bowl and season.  Dip your cooled peeled prawns in the flour, then the egg mix, then the breadcrumbs, then the egg mix then the breadcrumbs.  Repeat until they are all coated at this point I refrigerated mine. When we were ready to eat I filled my medium saucepan with some previously used frying oil and heated it to hot.  I then dropped the prawns in in batches until golden, we served ours with salad, tartare sauce and leftover roasted new potatoes.

Tartare sauce recipe

1tbsp parsley, capers, gherkins, onion/shallot finely chopped

3tbsp mayonnaise

As if this wasn't enough we finished with the sublime new Winstones fudge brownie ice cream featuring Hobbs House Brownie.