Your favourites and mine 2013

Last year I did a round up of blog posts for the year, choosing the recipe with the most page views for each month your favourite, and the one that I like best, my favourite.  I enjoyed writing the post and you, dear readers, seemed to enjoy it too.  I've excluded those posts which had major giveaways as those do rather skew the page views!  Many thanks to all who viewed and/or commented  and to the hosts of all the challenges that I have entered.

January 

A soup of bacon and celeriac from The Kitchen Diaries II

Your favourite post in January 2013 was the launch of Dish of the Month, a blog challenge to cook the recipes of Nigel Slater.

My favourite was the Croque Monsieur Whoopie Pies from Let's Make Whoopies by Sophie Gray all part of Breakfast Club and Shake up your Wake Up Farmhouse Breakfast week.

February


Your favourite was this Rye and Spelt Bread and my review of Paul Hollywood's book 'Bread' 

My favourite was Mon Cherry Amour Cupcakes from Le Cookie by Michael Benichou.

March


Your favourite was The Marmalade Awards where I met up with Sue, from A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate and Vivien Lloyd - The Jam Mistress!


My favourite was the birthday cake I made for my Mum's 80th, decorated with crystallised edible flowers.

April

Your favourite was my Random Recipe for April - Treacle Bites

My favourite was this Rhubarb and Orange Frangipane Tart, a recipe I got from Dom at Belleau Kitchen.

May

You favourite was my Rhubarb, Mango and White Chocolate Almond Cake which was an entry for We Should Cocoa.

My favourite in May was the Kugelhopf which I made for Alphabakes.  I have to say this is probably my overall favourite of the whole year, it was quite a labour of love and tasted so good.

June
Your favourite was this White and Green Cabbage with Coconut Chillies and Ginger from the Farm Shop Cookbook.

My favourite is the Vanilla and Coconut Cake I made from the Clandestine Cake Book for Tea Time Treats.

July

Your favourite was Cherry Frangipane Ramekins based on a Nigel Slater recipe for Dish of the Month.

My favourite was the Chocolate Lime Ice Cream I made using Mackays Lime Curd.You can see that my OXO Good Grips Ice Cream Scoop is well used!

August
Your favourite in August was the Cicchetti I made from Valentina Harris and Lindy Wildsmith.

My favourite was the Beef, Red Pepper and Lime Burgers from Miranda Ballard's Burgers and Sliders. I'm not much of a burger person but these were so good.


September




Your favourite in September was Dish of the Month, Lamb Pot Roast and Peach, Bramble and Almond Crumble

My choice is an old favourite with a twist, my Summer Falls into Autumn Pudding.

October
Your favourite in October was the Chelsea Buns I made from The World's Best Cakes book.

I've chosen Braised Scotch Lamb Shanks in Red Wine as my favourite, I cannot begin to tell you how good they were!

November

Sloe Cordial was a popular post in November and I can now report that it went down very well with the recipients!

I loved these Hot n Smoky Cheese and Tomato Wraps, quick and easy to make and very tasty.

December


My Virtual Christmas Party was a favourite post in December, I even won a prize from Pidy for these canapes!

It may not be the most photogenic of dishes, and I didn't think you could really improve on baked red cabbage,  but  Spiced Ginger Red Cabbage made with Mackays Spiced Ginger Preserve was even better than I expected.

Thank you so much for visiting Farmersgirl  Kitchen in 2013, I  hope you will return to see what I am cooking and baking in 2014.  I'll be back to wish you a Happy New Year and tell you about my future plans tomorrow.

Labels: 2013, Burgers, Dish of the Month, Farmersgril Kitchen, ice cream, Kugelhopf, Mackays, Nigel Slater, Paul Hollywood, review, rhubarb, Scotch Lamb, summer pudding, Vanilla and Coconut Cake

posted by Janice @ 08:30 6 Comments

Dish of the Month Round up - a year of Nigel Slater Recipes

Last Christmas I recevied a copy of Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries II, my friend Sue, of A Little Heaven on a Plate fame, is also a fan of this book and we resolved to cook from the book every month and to make sure we actually did it, we created a blogger challenge, and so Dish of the Month was born! As everyone may not own Kitchen Diaries II we opened up the challenge to any recipe by Nigel Slater, and there are many freely available online.

We never intended that it should run for more than a year so this is the end of the line for Dish of the Month. First I am going to share the round up of the December entries:

London Busy Body has gone all festive and offers us A Partridge in a Pear Tree as a Dish of the Month. It looks amazing and comes highly recommended.

Sue made this gloriously thick and creamy Sweet Potato Soup for her final Dish of the Month.

I made Mincemeat Hotcakes which were easy to make and surprisingly tasty especially with some butter slathered on them hot and straight from the pan.

I've loved co-hosting this challenge with Sue, but all good things must come to an end. I hope you will all keep cooking the recipes of Nigel Slater. I got a copy of Eat this Christmas and, no doubt I will be sharing some of the recipes with you, just not as Dish of the Month.

As a final hoorah, I thought I'd choose my favourite Dish of the Month from each month of the year.

January Dish of the Month - Slow Cooked Shetland Lamb from Elizabeth's Kitchen

February Dish of the Month - Carrot and Coriander Fritters from Marmaduke Scarlet

March Dish of the Month - Coffee Cake from Belleau Kitchen

April Dish of the Month - Parfait of Lemon and Orange from A little bit of Heaven on a Plate

May Dish of the Month - Lamb Flatbreads from The New Mrs P

June Dish of the Month - Smoked Salmon and Cucumber Dip/Spread from Lavender and Lovage

July Dish of the Month - Mixed Tomato Chutney from Fab Food for All

August Dish of the Month - Smoked Haddock Chowder with Leeks and Sweetcorn from Foodie Quine

Many thanks to everyone who has taken part, it's been such a pleasure to see what you made each month. Remember you can see all the dishes cooked for Dish of the Month all year on our Pinterest Board.

 

Labels: A little bit of Heaven on a Plate, Dish of the Month, Nigel Slater, The kitchen diaries II

posted by Janice @ 20:22 5 Comments

Dish of the Month December - Cooking the recipes of Nigel Slater

Sue from A Little Bit of Heaven on a plate  and I have cooked Nigel Slater's the kitchen diaries II all year and here we are at the end of our journey.  It started as a way of making sure that we both got the most from this large repository of recipes which we feared might otherwise be neglected.  I have to announce that this is the last time we will be launching the linky for you to join in. 

I'd like to thank all of you who have travelled the Nigel Slater journey with us, some hopping on and off the carousel, others who bought a season a ticket and rarely stepped off for a break. There will be a December round up and a final post where Sue and I will choose our Dish(es) of the Year and celebrate the fabulous recipes that you have all cooked up for this little blog challenge. 


My final hurrah, as 2013 draws near to its end, features one of my favourite things about Christmas - the leftovers!  Mincemeat Hot Cakes is a very simple recipe using lightly whipped egg whites to help, the flour, mincemeat and egg yolk mixture to rise.  I managed to whip them up in about 15 minutes from ingredient assembly to pan.


If you would like to take part in Dish of the Month, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
• Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @FarmersgirlCook or @Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers.

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe. Likewise recipes on the Guardian Lifestyle website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.

Labels: A little bit of Heaven on a Plate, December, Dish of the Month, Hot Cakes, mincemeat, Nigel Slater

posted by Janice @ 21:24 4 Comments

Slow Baked Sausages - Dish of the Month

In the November chapter of Nigel Slater's the kitchen diaries II there are all kinds of warming dishes for those cold damp days as autumn draws to a close and winter begins.  One of these is Slow-Baked Sausages, pork butcher's sausages cooked with dark beer, onions and brown sugar.

Nigel suggests serving the sausages with mashed potatoes, but I served my sausage dish with roasted and mashed butternut squash and some fresh green broccoli as a bit of a contrast.  The rich beery gravy worked really well with the sweet butternut squash and the sausages were tender and meaty.   Another big success from Mr Nigel Slater!  I'm really looking forward to watching him with Countryfile favourite, Adam Henson,  on BBC 1 from 20th November for Nigel and Adam's Farm Kitchen.

If you would like to take part in Dish of the Month, then please:

• Make a Dish of the Month from ANY recipe by Nigel Slater
• Link to Farmersgirl Kitchen or A Little Bit of Heaven on a Plate
• Use the Dish of the Month logo in your post
• If you use twitter, tweet your post with @FarmersgirlCook or @Heavenona_plate and #DishoftheMonth and we will re-tweet it to our followers.

Rules:

• If you own The kitchen diaries II please do not publish the recipes on your blog without permission, they are copyright.
• If you are using recipes from the BBC Food website, please link to the recipe on BBC Food rather than publishing the recipe. Likewise recipes on the Guardian Lifestyle website.
• One entry per blog.
• Recipes must be added to the linky by the 28th of each month.

Labels: Dish of the Month, Nigel Slater, sausages, slow cooked

posted by Janice @ 22:23 2 Comments