Weekly rumblings – 6

This week has flown by, which meant that I didn’t get a chance to put down as many recipes as I’d like. Blame friends and holiday planning! On the day they came over, I needed to cook a light supper in advance so that I could spend time holiday-planning with them. An absolute winner for occasions like this is “quiche”. Versatile and relatively easy to do, it’s an excellent dish to master. Smaller versions are great for an outdoor picnic in the summer and overall the combination of crisp pastry and fluffy interior is a winning one.

Recipes this week

Please bear with me when you go through the recipes for the quiche and the shortcrust pastry. They are a bit long-winded, but I felt the need to explain the thinking behind the recipes.  There’s absolutely no need to make your own shortcrust pastry, you can always buy ready-made pastry and no one will be the wiser. However, mastering shortcrust opens up a world of possibilities; of tarts and flans, and quiches and pies. The choice is yours.

Last week, one of the meals we ate out was a bit of a meat fest. The next day, expectedly, there was some remorse. This was swiftly alleviated by the thought of eating something light and fresh like salmon sashimi. To ring a few changes, I seared the salmon with sesame seeds before slicing. Not only does it look pretty, but also it does a fine job of killing off any bacteria lurking on the surface of the fish.

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Book review

Rick Stein’s Long Weekends

Stein’s new book is a good repository of recipes from across Europe, acquired on Mr. Stein’s travels. Oddly, what I found most interesting  were his baking recipes. Knowing his attention to detail, and the success I have had trying out his other recipes, these are worth a go. There’s a read more….

In the papers this week

Some of you might have read about the need to eat  10 portions of fruit and vegetables.  Such topics make front-page news here in the UK, so it’s hard to miss. Traditional guidance has been to eat 5-a-day of fruit and veg, although countries like Canada and Australia have had a higher figure for several years. Moreover, not all fruit and veg are equal, so no surprises to find greens at the top again.

My takeaway from this furore is to reinforce the two edicts I believe in and impose them upon my unsuspecting family:

  • Eat greens with every meal. (The reason my kids will never to go a boarding school is because no one will make them eat their greens!)
  • Plan a meal around seasonal vegetables.

We sat down to debate if we were indeed eating 10-a-day, and realised that it was hard to reach this target, unless one is very conscientious. Personally I reach this figure only because I have a glass of green juice (remember I am the compost heap?) in the mornings, which straight off accounts for 3 portions of the good stuff.

On that green note, Love your family and cook greens for them!