Tagliatelle with Oyster Mushrooms

Wow, two posts in a week! Two recipes, no less! Made this tonight and thought I’d blog it, because it was tasty.

Ingredients

• 200g tagliatelle
• Olive oil
• Butter
• 2 shallots, chopped
• 2 garlic cloves, crushed and chopped
• 1 packet of oyster mushrooms, sliced
• 1/2 packet shitake mushrooms, sliced
• Small glass of wine
• 1 chicken stock cube

Method

1. Put the pasta on to cook.
2. While the pasta is cooking, heat the olive oil and butter in a frying pan and gently sautee the mushrooms, shallots and garlic.
3. When the mushrooms are cooked, add the wine to the pan and simmer till the pasta is ready.
4. Drain the pasta water into a jug with the crushed stock cube, and add a glug or two of the pasta water/stock to the pan with the mushrooms. Simmer while you set the table etc.
5. Season the mushrooms with black pepper.
6. Toss the pasta in the mushroomy mixture.
7. If you like, grate over some Parmesan and devour.

I think this would be great with some fresh herbs, probably parsley, but I didn’t have any (I suppose marjoram, thyme or maybe sage would have worked, but our garden is under several inches of ice and snow!). A pinch of chilli flakes would give it a nice kick, too. And of course you could use some vegetable bouillion instead of the chicken stock cube.

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Daal

I made this today and thought I’d better blog the recipe before I forget it, because it was really tasty. It’s a jazzed-up version of a recipe a colleague gave me years ago. I’d made her recipe a few times as an easy side dish to go with curry, but I found it a bit bland. The version I made today was really good, and I thought I’d post it here for future reference!

Ingredients

• 200g red split lentils
• 1/2 tsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp chilli flakes
• 1/2 tsp fennel seeds
• 1/4 tsp turmeric
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• Approx 450ml chicken stock
• 1 small onion, finely chopped
• 1 tbl vegetable oil
• 2 tbl butter
• A handful of chopped fresh coriander

Method

1. Put the lentils, all the spices and half the garlic in a pan and cover with the stock. Bring it to the boil and simmer gently for 10-15 minutes, until the lentils are cooked.
2. Meanwhile, gently fry the chopped onion and the rest of the garlic in the oil and butter. Pour over and stir into the daal.
3. Just before serving, stir in the chopped coriander.

This made enough as a side dish for 2, plus enough left over for my lunch tomorrow. It would probably serve 2 as a main dish, with rice and/or chapatis.

 

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Game

I’m a big fan of game. I don’t eat it a lot, because I don’t have a regular source of it, but I very much value the idea of eating animals that have lived wild. I buy all my regular meat from the local butcher, and most of it is outdoor-reared or free-range, but the ultimate has to be eating meat from animals that have lived most or all of their lives in the wild, right up to the moment of death.

A couple of weeks ago a friend gave us a pheasant. We hung it in the shed (from what I’ve heard and read, I wouldn’t recommend hanging a pheasant for two weeks unless you want it really gamey, but for most of that time the temperature has been around or below zero!). And yesterday, after we did a bit of research on the Internet and using the River Cottage Meat Book (a fascinating read I’d recommend to all meat-eaters), I prepared the bird. Here are some photos (I picked the less gruesome ones!):

First, I removed the wings, legs and head, and pulled out the tail feathers. The crop was full, which was really interesting – we could easily tell that her final meal had been barley and beechmast! Then I made a slit in the skin on the breast and skinned it – it was really very easy (and I’ve never skinned anything before!). The skin just came off, feathers and all, as if I was stripping off clothing – it was weird (but fascinating) to pull the legs through and see them all naked and pink! Then I gutted it, which was also easy – just a matter of scooping out all the innards. I saved the heart, because I’m actually taking a sheep’s heart into school to show to my second years this week, so I thought they might like to see a pheasant heart too!

When it was all prepared, I cooked it using a friend’s delicious method: shallots, cider, a bay leaf and some thyme, and simmered it for about 40 minutes. I added some chunks of apple about 5 minutes before the end (I was surprised by how quickly the apple cooked). Just before serving it I threw in some cooked bacon and stirred in some sour cream. It was lovely with some veg and mashed potato and there was enough left, with plenty of sauce, to have with bread as a sort of pheasant soup for lunch today.

I’m all fired up now to try cooking more game. I’m pretty sure the butcher in Bridge of Allan has wild venison. Apart from that, I’m not sure how you go about sourcing game – any ideas?

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Some photos, some WIPs and some jam

I’m back from a week away in England, visiting Hadrian’s Wall, the Yorkshire Dales and the Peak District. It was great and we did lots of walking (and came back with a bit of a tan). Click on the mosaic below to see all the pics from the week (plus a few you’ve already seen of the allotment!).

So what crafty endeavours have I been up to? Well, before we went away I managed to knit most of a baby sweater.

The pattern is Five Fruits, originally from Magknits, and the yarn is Knitpicks Swish DK. It’s the first top-down raglan I’ve knitted and I cannot stress how much I love the construction. No seaming! Bliss! I just need to knit and sew down the hem, do some sleeves, sew in the ends and find some buttons. It’s for J’s baby, Emily, and I’ll probably whip up a hat in the pink to go with it. There’s lots of each colour left, and I have several friends expecting babies soon so expect to see another stripy baby jumper here soon.

While I was away I wanted a bigger project to work on, so I cast on for Wicked in the Swish Superwash. I can’t believe how quickly it knitted up – I started it on Friday 18th, and I finished the body today and started the first sleeve. It fits perfectly (as long as it doesn’t change too much when I wash it – I washed my swatch and everything just to make sure) and, as it’s only my third sweater (the baby jumper doesn’t count) it’s been a valuable lesson in getting the fit right, measuring, and that oh-so-clever raglan construction (oh yes, and waist shaping). Here it is a couple of days ago:

Expect another post very soon with the finished object!

We came back from our holiday to find that the allotment had produced yet more strawberries, so today I made jam. The gooseberries from our garden were finally ripe, too, so we got about a kilo of those from the rather wild bush (getting thoroughly prickled in the process, mind you).

We ate some of them last night in a gooseberry and elderflower fool. Half are in the freezer and some went to make one precious jar of very delicious jam (tip: if you’re after preserving sugar, try Sainsburys, not Tesco).

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Pavlova

As a large part of the allotment has been taken over by strawberries, we’ve been experiencing something of a glut recently. I made strawberry sorbet and stuck it in the freezer, and still had some left over (not to mention some raspberries that I bought just before we found out about the allotment). On Tuesday I decided to defrost the freezer, which yielded several egg whites (I hate wasting things and always freeze spare egg whites). So it was clearly time for pavlova.

I used this recipe and it was the best meringue I’ve ever made (although the mixture didn’t want to stiffen – I was using the processor but I ended up having to whisk it by hand).

Depending on how many strawberries I get off the allotment tomorrow, I think I feel some jam coming on…

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