Vegetable Tagine

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and roughly chopped
• 2 carrots, peeled and chopped into large-ish pieces
• 1 parsnip, peeled and chopped into large-ish pieces
• 2 small sweet potatoes, peeled and you know what to do
• 2 cm piece of ginger, peeled and finely chopped or grated
• 1 garlic clove, grated
• 3 shavings of lemon zest
• 1/2 chilli, strength to taste, sliced, seeds removed or not
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1 tsp Ras el hanout spice mix
• 3 cardamom pods, squashed
• 1 tin of peeled tomatoes, roughly chopped up
• 1/2 red pepper, chopped
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• seasoning (salt and pepper to taste)
• a squirt of harissa if you have it and like it hot, baby
• a sprinkle of the omnipresent coriander leaves

Method

• Heat olive oil in a pan, add the first 12 ingredients. I am so sorry that I cook from scratch, scratch, scratch.
• Sautee on a low heat for 5 minutes. 
• Add a splash of water and cover with lid. Don't burn it. Add more water if needed.
• Let it simmer for another 5 minutes. Then add the tomatoes and half a tin of water.
• 15 minutes, covered with lid.
• Add the red pepper and the cinnamon and cook for a further 5 minutes.
• Season and add a squirt of harissa if you like.
• Serve with plain couscous and sprinkle with green angel confetti aka coriander leaves.

Thanks for looking in.

Patricia xxx...x

Glimpses of a Kitchen - Follow Up

Revealing just a little more of our almost one year old kitchen. You can find the first preview here

The cooker has moved with us from Belgium, where we were going to install it. But then decided against that plan, as moving house and country was on the cards again.

The cooker hood was a stainless steel contraption that we reused from the 'old' kitchen here. We boxed it in and painted it, to fit better with the style of cooker and kitchen as a whole.

The kitchen island

The worktops are Douglas fir from the local sawmill, treated with white Danish oil, suitable for kitchen surfaces. I would hate it if it turned into a nasty yellowy orange hue.

The place where I spend most of my time. The kitchen table, fabricated from a slab of macrocarpa  from same sawmill, but bought way back when we lived here first time round.

The coffee station. Ahem  Don't you just hate it when your interior is being photobombed by  electrical cables and dry dog kibble.

Where the kitchen used to be, behind door included.

Which is now the pantry. Yes, I tidied up for the 'photo shoot'.

Make sure to visit again for the great reveal.

Patricia xxx...x

In a Pickle - Asian Flavoured Cucumber Pickle

Ingredients - yield +/- 2.8 ltr

• 1.5 kg cucumbers, weight after washing, seeds removed and cut into batons (+/- 6 cm)
• 2 large onions, peeled and sliced - red or white
• 3 red chillies, sliced lengthways, leave the seeds in for extra kick
• many, many garlic cloves, from one bulb. unpeeled
• 4 tbsp sea salt
• 2 stalks of lemongrass, squashed (to release the essential oils) and cut into 6 cm pieces
• a substantial piece of ginger, sliced

• 1 tbsp coriander seeds
• 1 tbsp black pepper corns
• 1 tbsp fennel seeds
• 5 kaffir lime leaves (dried or fresh)
• 1 ltr white distilled vinegar
• 1 kg soft brown sugar

Method

• Put the cucumber, onions, garlic and chillies in a non corrosive bowl with salt. Mix well and set aside overnight, covered with a clean tea towel.

• Next day, drain the liquid that gathered at the bottom and rinse the vegetables under cold running water.

• Taste a piece of cucumber. If it is too salty, cover with cold water and soak for 10 minutes. Drain.

• In the meantime, bring the vinegar, sugar and spices to the boil. Cook for 10 minutes

• Add the drained vegetables and bring back to boiling point. Take off the heat.
• Scoop into sterilized jars while hot and seal.

• This can be eaten immediately, but has a shelf life of 1 year.

That's it. I'm all pickled out.

Patricia xxx...x

Our three times daily visit to the pigs.

And the times in between, just for a chat and a rub behind the ears.

No kissy on the nose for you, you mucky girls.

That dirt mound used to be higher than this.

If you look closely you'll see they have dug themselves a few holes, just for sunbathing in. They will choose a certain spot depending on the position of the sun.  If it rains they prefer the indoors obviously.

They are getting too fat, I guess. We'll have to use a lot of lard in that case. Harumph.

I always get a bit panicky when our animals don't act the way I expect them too and I told Bert that she was in a seemingly uncomfortable stance there, with an odd look on her face. All was well after she did a number two.

I can be such a stress chicken (literally translated from Dutch) sometimes.

Patricia xxx...x

In a Pickle - Bread and Butter or Cucumber and Dill Pickle

My go to cookery book when I want to make an exciting preserve is Preserving by Oded Schwartz . To me it is the most beautiful book to look at and as I said, the recipes are exciting.

Our friend, Sophie - who grows an awful lot of veg and fruit - gave me 6 kg of pickling cucumbers. It might be a bit late in the growing season, but if you have neighbours, friends, relatives who have been pickling themselves to death and can't tackle another cuke, here is your chance to store some of this year's harvest for winter use.

This first recipe is for a Bread and Butter Pickle and it is my take on it.

Ingredients - yield +/-  3.5 ltr

• 2.5 kg cucumbers - washed, weight after : cut in half, seeds removed and sliced into half moons (0.5 cm)
• 1 kg onions, red or white, whichever you find first, weight after peeled and sliced 
• 8 tbsp sea salt
• 2.5 l white wine, cider or malt vinegar. I only had white distilled, so that is what I used.  Mind you it is sharper than any of the others, so you should taste and tweak if you use the latter.
• 1.25 kg soft brown sugar
• 1 heaped tbsp ground turmeric
• 3 tbsp mustard seeds
• 1 tbsp dill seeds (or if you don't have any,like me, go into your herb patch and pick dill flowers and green). Whatever you do, don't leave out dill, because that is a main ingredient for this cucumber pickle.

Method

• Put cucumbers and sliced onions in a non corrosive bowl with all of the salt. Mix well, cover with a clean towel and leave overnight. So far so good.

• Next day you'll find a lot of liquid at the bottom of the bowl. Drain  

• Rinse under cold running water. Taste a slice of cucumber. If it is too salty, cover with cold water and leave for about 10 minutes. Drain again
• Pour the vinegar in a large cooking pot or preserving pan, add the sugar, turmeric, mustard seeds and dill seeds (if you have them). If you only have flowers and/or green only add them when potting up.
• A rapid boil for 10 minutes is required.
• Time to add the drained veg and bring the whole shebang back to the boil.
• Remove from the stove and start packing the pickle in sterilized jarred while still blistering hot. Seal.

This pickle is ready to eat immediately. Shelf life (according to the above mentioned book) is 1 year.

Come back for the Asian Flavoured Pickle.

Thanks for stopping by.

Patricia xxx...x

Aaargh ! The Laundry and CSI

I love it when I finally have come out the other end of doing a pile of laundry and ironing.
Ironing !! ? Yeees. Certain items I like ironed. Like bed linen for instance.

It usually does take me some time to get started and once done it takes me some time to put everything in their designated place, like the linen cupboard.
By the time I get there, I discover this !

Was it you ?

Erm..Nope. Wasn't me !

Time for some finger printing methinks. Do cats even have fingerprints ? Or fingers for that matter ?

Sigh.
Patricia xxx...x

A Whole New Road

The diggers arrived a bit later than anticipated, but once they get started, nothing is stopping the O'Briens. They came in the morning and finished the same day.

 Remember this ?

And this ?

You can read about that here

An extra drain pipe was placed underneath the road to lead the excess water from the stream. Hopefully now the little brook can cope after a heavy downpour. As you can see the level is low, because it hasn't rained in a while.

This is what used to happen.

 Would you believe me if I told you it is easier to walk too ?

This is going to last us forever (famous last words). At the top of the road they dug a new drain with pipe to lead flood water away into the stream instead of over the road.

Great job, lads !

I bet these will all have disappeared before Christmas.

Enjoy your day !

Patricia xxx...x

Salmon and Prawn Laksa - It is Just a friggin' Soup.

I've been wanting to make laksa for some time now, but 'exotic' ingredients, like rice noodles, are often hard to come by in this neck of the woods. Let alone, laksa paste or lemongrass. So most of the time improvising is on the agenda. But that is okay, because I'm an improvisatrice extraordinaire, even if I do say so myself.
I can't think of a time that I have ever had the honour of eating laksa, but looking at recipes on the web, I could 'imagine' the flavours. A choice had to be made though, last Monday, whether  it was going to be a fish based, chicken or vegetarian laksa. I opted for this recipe from BBC GoodFood .
While I had foraged the not-too-far shops over the last month or so, I had most ingredients in the house, except for laksa paste or Thai red curry paste, but in the freezer was a small (very small) plastic container with homemade Malaysian curry paste

Here is how I set to work.
Ingredients - serves 3 as a main course

• sunflower oil, 2 to 3 tbsp
• butternut squash, the neck only, peeled and cut into 1.5 to 2 cm cubes
• courgette, one that has been laying around the kitchen for a while (but you can use a fresh and firm one too), de-seeded and cut into similar size cubes as squash
• laksa, Thai red or homemade Malaysian curry paste, 2 to 3 tbsp.
• lemongrass stir-in paste, a squirt
• 1 tin of coconut milk, 400 ml
• chicken stock, 600 ml, more or less ( can be made from a stock cube)
• rice noodles, 150 gr, soaked in boiling water and drained (according to the BBC Good Food website). Don't use this cr*p, because they become too mushy :

• fresh beansprouts, 300 gr
• salmon, 300 gr, sliced or cut into chunks
• king prawns, the frozen kind, but defrosted. 1 handful (a shovel sized hand)
• fish sauce, a splash
• juice of half a lime
• chilli, red or green or yellow, as many as you like and as hot as you can stand, sliced into rings
• a small bunch of coriander, roughly chopped.
• 3 spring onions, sliced on the diagonal.

Preparation

• Heat  the oil in a pan and sautee the butternut squash for 5 minutes
• Add courgettes and cook for another 5 minutes while regularly stirring. 
• Spoon in the paste of your choice, together with the lemongrass squirt and coat the vegetables, cook for a few minutes.
• Pour in the coconut milk and stock, simmer for 10 minutes
• Add noodles, beansprouts and fish, simmer for another 2 minutes or till the salmon has lost its translucency.
• A splash of fish sauce.
• Turn off the heat and add the prawns. If you use the kind I used they are already cooked and just need heating through.
• Stir in the lime juice, some of the coriander, chilli and spring onions, keeping some behind to sprinkle over the served dish.

And there you have it.  It tasted just as heavenly as I imagined.

If by any chance my recipe scares you, I won't be offended if you use the one from the Good Food website. Well, maybe just a little bit.

Patricia xxx...x

Glimpses of a Kitchen

The view from our kitchen is its best feature.
This is not the kitchen that was here when we moved in two and a half years ago. Oh no. I hated the kitchen that was here. It was style over substance and even then, it wasn't my style. The layout was clumsy and was only meant to attract potential buyers who never cook a meal from scratch.  There was a wine fridge, though. Says it all really (well, it does to me).
Last year, in August we had an addition built to the existing house and we opened up the kitchen considerably. It was late November before we could actually 'move in' and start using the extension.
The kitchen is spacious and the panoramic view of the estuary and mountains make it feel even more so.

Not wanting to reveal this room from the onset, I will give you some glimpses of my cooking paradise. In the photos above are the fruit bowl and my quick-grab ingredient bowl that grace the kitchen island.

The chalk board. It is my shopping list for the things I might forget on a normal shopping trip.

The spice drawer. For the small spice jars.

Two more drawers with larger jars and pots of spices, but also for flour, lentils etc.

We've got 41 drawers in the kitchen , besides a few cabinets with doors,  That seems like a lot, but look how easy it is to get to a mug for your tea or coffee.

Be it in a drawer or cabinet, the plastic containers are always a mess. 

The food processors. No they are not hiding at the back of a cupboard. They get used a lot.

Millie's favourite drawer.  The doggy treats. If she could open it by herself, she would.

Ah. Butter wouldn't melt..

Till next time.

Patricia xxx...x