Peanut butter, oaty raisin cookies

Who doesn't love a cookie ?

These cookies are based on a recipe in River Cottage "Light and Easy", with a few tweaks as I didn't have all the required ingredients as recommended. The resultant cookies are soft and tender and not overtly nutty or sweet, great for an afternoon treat and easily whipped up in a flash.

Ideal for snacking on whilst having a brew and a quick browse of a magazine, low in sugar and gluten free, whats not to like.

What you need

• 200g smooth peanut butter
• 50g Honey
• 1 egg - free range please
• 1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 70g raisins
• 100g porridge oats 

Makes approx 12 cookies

What you do

• Pre heat the oven to 170c, prepare your tray either line with baking parchment or use a silicone sheet if you have one
• Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl until you have a firm stiff chunk dough
• Roll dessert spoon sized balls with slightly moist hands, place on baking tray and press down to make a cookie shaped round
• Bake for 10 - 15 minutes until golden , cool initially on the tray and then gingerly transfer to a wire rack to cool fully
• Store in an airtight tin

Chicken, green bean and courgette salad

The harvest from the garden is starting to slow but we are still battling a couple of gluts, mainly green beans (well actually purple beans as they are Blue Lake) and courgettes ( both yellow and the more traditional green), we still also have a pretty good selection of salad leaves growing too. Inspired by a recipe in River Cottage "Vegetables" this is a versatile lunch dish which has the comforting warmth of the beans and courgettes to lift it on these cooler days, the addition of  cooked shredded chicken ups the protein content, but can easily be omitted if you require a vegetarian dish.

Ingredients

• Shredded cooked chicken
• Mixed salad leaves (spinach, rocket, lettuce leaves, maybe a little mint)
• Cucumber
• Courgettes - sliced 
• Green beans, cut into bit sized pieces
• Olive oil
• Lemon juice
• Honey
• Salt and Pepper

Method

• Arrange the salad and shredded chicken on a plate
• Cook the green beans until tender
• Mix the olive oil, lemon juice, honey and salt and pepper in a jar to make a dressing, taste 
• Fry the courgettes until softened and lightly coloured
• Add the beans and courgettes to the salad leaves and then drizzle with dressing
• Serve immediately

River Cottage Rocks #4 Baking Bliss - Chocolate and garden mint cake

I have been meaning to take part in the "River Cottage Rocks" blog campaign for quite a while now, but I couldn't miss out this month as the theme is "baking bliss". I have quite a few of the River Cottage books and have been an avid follower of Mr HFW since the gastro wagon, so I think I qualify to take part. River cottage rocks is a blog campaign run by Jo's Kitchen (@Jos_?Kitchen) with this month's theme being hosted by Charlotteskitchen (@gofreecakes)

My choice for the baking theme is Chocolate and Mint loaf from the River Cottage Cakes No8  Handbook, by Pam (the jam) Corbin page 161, this was actually a lemon verbena cake but there is a twist version using cocoa and mint. One of my earlier posts is a recipe to use mint from the garden in a River Cottage mint syrup, this is another recipe which uses garden mint. (I've got to get rid of it somehow !). The Lemon verbena - Scent from Heaven Cake recipe is posted on the River Cottage website here

The recipe calls for Ground rice but I didn't have any in the store cupboard, so I was going to substitute with polenta which I do have in, but I managed to get hold of the ground rice. I think the mixture would work well with gluten free flour for our ceoliac friends as there is more ground rice than ordinary flour in the mix. The recipe basically consists of making a tea with the herb and then using this in the cake mixture and in a drizzle syrup that you pour over the cake once baked. 

The cake smelt lovely whilst baking just like after dinner mints.

I am also posting this as a contribution to we should cocoa run by the lovely Choclette over at Chocolate Log Blog and Chele at Chocolate Teapot, guest hosted by A kick at the pantry door for June 2013.

                                                        

Jamming !

After picking up a bargain of 2 kilos of fresh English strawberries at the market, jam making was in order. I always feel that homemade jam is far superior to shop bought, the flavour sparkles and is delicious on scones or in Victoria sponge.

I experimented with two different recipes, the first one was a "Pam the Jam" from River Cottage, the second off the back of the jam sugar packet. We will have to see which one comes out better, Strawberry jam is particularly problematic and can easily up as strawberry soup, so its all in the set.

Jam is a great addition to the store cupboard and preserves the fruit for those dark winter days.

Lancashire Elderflower delight

I love this time of year when the Elder tree is in flower, from earlier blog posts you can see I have somewhat an obsession with the flowers and what you can do with them. So when I purchased River Cottage Handbook no 7 Hedgerows I was pleased to see another way to use them. Elderflower delight. I just had to have a go, especially as on my last visit to The Red Cat, my favorite restaurant, the team had prepared their own Turkish delight which was served with coffee.

Ingredients

• 20 Elderflower heads
• 20g leaf gelatine
• 700g granulated sugar
• Juice of 2 lemons
• 400ml water
• 130g cornflour
• 30g icing sugar

Method

Soak the gelatine in a shallow dish of water, meanwhile strip the elderflower heads of the flowers and place in a piece of muslin which you are going to make into a bag tied with string. Take the granulated sugar, lemon juice and 300ml of the water, put in a saucepan and heat gently until all the sugar is dissolved, leave this to cool.

In a bowl mix 100g of the cornflour with the remaining water until smooth, then mix into the cooled lemon sugar syrup. Put the saucepan back on a low heat, add the gelatine sheets, squeezed of any excess water and whisk until throughly dissolved.

Bring back to the boil slowly and simmer for 10 minutes stirring all the time. suspend the muslin bag in the mixture and simmer for a further 15 minutes, squeezing the bag to release the flavours. The mixture will become very sticky and gloopy, keep stirring, when ready cool for 10 mins.

Mix the remaining cornflour and icing sugar in a bowl to create the tossing powder, line a shallow baking tin with baking parchment and dust with a tablespoon of the tossing mixture. Poor in the warm delight, removing the bag. Leave to cool fully and then put in the fridge to firm up until rubbery. Cut up with a knife or scissors into cubes and toss in the tossing mixture.

Very impressive and very delicious. The ideal gift.

A taste of the unexpected

I recently purchased a copy of this book after becoming aware that this was the same chap who did the majority of the food gardening for River Cottage. Mark Diacono of Otter Farm has developed what he calls a “climate change farm” , it run on loose permaculture principles, but more on the basis that he got bored with growing mediocre standard fruit and vegetables and thought he would try something different.

He was inspired by the “mulberry” initially, I agree with Mark, life is too short to be growing vegetables that you can buy cheaply locally , plus these are always the vegetables that are most susceptible to pests and disease because they are grown commercially.

It’s a beautiful book and Mark is very knowledgeable and his enthusiasm comes over well in the book. He also recently featured in the Radio 4 food programme and advocated hosta’s as a vegetable, this meant that myself and Mr B dashed to the garden to try our selection. He tweets and has a blog if you are interested in finding out more.

Inspired by his book we have planted a goji berry and a Japanese wineberry in the garden, so lets see how we go on. I would also like to try a blue honeysuckle as well.