Grow your own and a Rocket Gardens Salad

 Long ago and far away, in a land of shoulder pads and big hair (1984) we had an allotment.  I loved that allotment, we had been on the waiting list for so long that we only had one summer there before we moved from our flat to a house with it's own garden.  The garden was low on the priority list in our new home as we spent all our time on home improvements and a year later circumstances changed and we moved to the farm.

I also had a fairly extensive garden when we first moved to the farm and grew all sorts including celery and kohl rabi.  When I returned to full time work, I found the garden was difficult to manage and one Easter holiday, after spending all my time digging over the ground for potatoes and I decided that I'd had enough and we put in a lawn.  I've had a few pots or grow bags since then, mostly growing mange tout peas or courgettes.  Some years they are successful, other years not. The weather is the deciding factor as we get late frosts, rain and are exposed to strong south westerly winds, so it can be a bit soul destroying sometimes.

Recently, I've been thinking about creating some raised beds so that I can grow veg again, but with some control over the weeds and less digging! Family matters meant that didn't happen this year, but I was delighted to be contacted by Rocket Gardens to try out their neat concept of a garden in a box.


A Rocket Garden is a box full of baby plants already given the very best start in life, lovingly reared on a Cornish farm in a fully organic regime. They aren't sent to their new home until they are ready to flourish, saving time, effort and disappointment.

There are a range of different types of gardens so you can select a Rocket Garden that suits your requirements and once your delivery arrives, all you have to do is pop the plants in their new home and enjoy all the organic goodies they produce.
Serious about living the good life, but want a complete solution? Try the Small Constant Garden (£199). You’ll receive a series of five deliveries during 2015 to ensure your garden is the envy of all your friends. Each delivery is packed full of organic plants that are raring to grow so you’ll have a constant supply of seasonal produce and enjoy living the good life all year long.

And what about my Rocket Garden?  I chose the Patio Container Garden  (£36.99) which contains the following baby plants:

Tomatoes  x 5 (I didn't get tomatoes but some extra Chard)
Courgettes x 4
Mixed lettuce x 30
Dwarf French Beans x 10
Runner Beans x 5
Mizuna x 20
Rainbow Chard x 5
Rocket x 20
Garden peas x 12
Strawberries x 6
Spinach x 10
You order your garden on the website, it's a pretty straightforward online shopping process, however it doesn't arrive until the plants are ready to be planted out.  I really liked that you get lots of warning via email and a definite arrival day too.  Unfortunately I had to be away from home when the plants arrived, this was a test for my husband who duly read the instructions, unpacked the plants and made sure they were well watered until I got home the next day.  He did, however, jumble up all the plants and there are a lot of them!  Fortunately, there is one of each plant variety labelled and  I used my own knowledge to sort them out.  I then planted them up in containers according to the comprehensive instructions provided with the plants, there were so many plants I had to go out and buy a few more containers.


After a couple of weeks the various salad leaves were starting to really grow.  The peas were happily climbing up the canes although the French Beans seemed to be in stasis!  The poor little courgettes were none too happy either, none of this had anything to do with the quality of the plants but due to the unseasonal weather we have been having in Scotland. Heavy rain and northerly winds do not a happy courgette make.


Fast forward another two weeks and the salad leaves are ready to pick, what a glorious selection of leaves which I combined with some edible flowers to create my first Rocket Gardens Salad.  It was  a lovely surprise when my strawberry plants arrived and I got them potted up into little troughs.

Rocket Gardens Salad (Serves 2)
60g mixed salad leaves
2 hard boiled eggs
2 large ripe tomatoes
1/2 cucumber
1/2 red pepper, seeds removed
3 chive flowers
1 Calendula (Pot Marigold) flower

1. Arrange the leaves on two large plates alternating the different leaves.
2. Cut the cucumber into long thin slices using a mandoline, roll and place around the edge of the plates.
3. Cut the tomatoes into 1/8ths and arrange inside the circle of cucumber.
4. Finely slice the pepper and scatter the pepper slices over the centre of each plate.
4. 1/4 the eggs and place over the pepper slices in the centre of the plates.
5. Scatter petals of the chives and marigold over the salad.

Serve with the dressing of your choice.


The Review

Who is it for? There are lots of different kinds of Rocket Gardens, so you can choose whatever is suitable for your garden.  In terms of level of gardening ability then I would say that a very keen beginner or a gardener with a little experience and no space or time to grow from seed.

Pros: The concept of receiving little plants in the post is not new, however Rocket Gardens have put together  some really nice packages and I was impressed by the care and attention paid to communicating with their customers and the excellent instructions.

Cons: With the plants being grown in the warmer climate of Cornwall, they got a bit of a shock coming to southern Scotland.  I have completely lost the runner beans, the wind battered them to death, some of the French Beans have also died and only one of the courgette plants has survived.  This has happened to me many times before, even when growing from seed, so I am not too surprised, but it might be a bit off putting to beginners.

The Verdict: I will be ordering a Rocket Garden next year for my garden. Which garden will depend on whether I've managed to make the raised bed I have promised myself or if I will be sticking to the patio garden.  I just love having all those vegetables on my doorstep, the salad leaves have done so well that we have been able to stop buying mixed leaves and they are so much fresher and taste better too. So Rocket Gardens are a definite hit with me.

I'll keep you posted as to how the other plants come along, the peas and strawberries have already begun to flower so I have high hopes for some more delicious fresh fruit and veg very soon.

I was provided with a Patio Container Garden from Rocket Gardens, I was not paid for this review and all opinions are my own. 

Labels: allotment, chard, chives, containers, courgettes, edible flowers, Egg, garden, grow your own, marigold, plants, Rocket Gardens, salad, spinach

posted by Janice @ 21:00 20 Comments

Gnocchi with Spinach, Bacon and Mustard Cream Sauce and a Giveaway

I've always wanted to make gnocchi but there was one thing missing.  I didn't have a Potato Ricer and, while I could have spent hours mashing and pushing potatoes through a sieve - it never really appealed.

However, just before Christmas OXO Good Grips sent me a Potato Ricer to review and it is now one of my favourite kitchen tools. It makes the most fantastic smooth mashed potato, lumps are a thing of the past and that is why you need one to make good gnocchi.


I made my gnocchi using a recipe I found on Pinterest which was posted by Nicole at Cooking for Keeps: How to make Light as Air Gnocchi.  It was a very simple process, once the potatoes have been pushed through the ricer, you add eggs, flour and salt, then roll out the gnocchi, cut and press a fork into the cut edge.  The gnocchi is then boiled for 7 minutes before being served with sauce.

One of the joys of social media and the Foodie community is that you get some great advice about making the best of new recipes you are trying.  I had posted a photo of the uncooked gnocchi expressing my hope that it would taste as good as it looked once cooked.  Becca from Amuse Your Bouche replied to suggest that I sauted the gnocchi in butter after boiling in water to improve the flavour and texture.  You can read more about Becca's Sauted Gnocchi in Simple Garlic Butter Sauce  you don't need much more than this simple sauce when you saute your gnocchi.


The sauce I made had a few more ingredients wasn't too complicated. It's another recipe I found on Pinterest for Gnocchi in Mustard Cream from Maras Wonderland (it's a German blog, but if you scroll down Maras also has the recipe in English.  I added about 200g of spinach to the pan with the onion and let it wilt down before adding the other ingredients.

The most excellent news is that I have one OXO Good Grips Potato Ricer worth £30 to Giveaway to one lucky person, just follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter.


a Rafflecopter giveaway

Labels: Amuse Your Bouche, bacon, cream, giveaway, Gnocchi, mustard, potato, Potato Ricer, spinach, win

posted by Janice @ 06:00 122 Comments

Creamy Trout and Spinach Pasta

This is a real 'store cupboard'  and 'no waste' recipe.  I had two Scottish trout fillets in the freezer,  in the fridge there was half a lemon,  a bag of 'reduced by the supermarket to 45p' spinach, half a carton of soured cream from the Fish Tacos we had at the weekend, and an onion, Add to that some pasta and seasonings from the larder and hey presto...

Creamy Trout and Spinach Pasta 
Serves 4

10g butter
1 onion, finely chopped
1 Knorr Herb Flavour Pot (or tsp dried mixed herbs)
150ml Soured Cream
240g baby spinach
220g Scottish Loch Trout
Juice of half a lemon
250g pasta of your choice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. Melt the butter in a frying pan over a medium heat and gently saute the onion.  It should start to soften and become translucent and not brown.
2. Put on a pan of water and heat until boiling, add a little sea salt and then the pasta, cook for around 10-12 minutes until just cooked.
3. While the pasta is cooking, either poach the trout in a little stock in a pan or cook for 3-4 minutes on medium in the microwave until the salmon is opaque. Flake the fish.




4. The onion should now be soft, so add the soured cream and the Knorr Herb Flavour pot (or dried herbs), then add the lemon juice.  If it looks like the cream is going to split keep stirring, because it's soured cream it's more stable and should hold together, season with sea salt (I use Skye Sea Salt) and freshly ground black pepper to taste.


5. Drain the pasta and place in a warmed, oiled serving dish.
6. Place the spinach into the pasta pan with a a tbsp of water, put on the lid and cook over a medium heat until the spinach starts to wilt.  This will only take a couple of minutes.
7. Add the spinach and the flaked trout to the sauce and mix gently, then add to the pasta and mix through with two forks.


Serve as it is or with a salad. You can find more Omega 3 filled fish recipes at the Fish is the Dish website.

I'm entering this dish for the 'No Waste Food Challenge' the blog event run by Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary and hosted this month by Slice Off Me

Labels: fish, Fish is the Dish, Omega 3, pasta, soured cream, spinach, trout

posted by Janice @ 07:00 8 Comments

Spinach, Mushroom and Blue Cheese Lasagne

Lasagne is one of my favourite dishes.  But sometimes it's nice to have a change from an 'al forno' meat sauce and make a vegetarian alternative.  Spring bring lovely fresh green vegetables, one of which is spinach, it always seems to be a sort of magical leaf the way it fills the pan and then a few minutes later it has reduced to damp, dark green blob in the bottom of the pan!  Mushrooms do a similar thing but not quite so dramatically!


Spinach and Mushroom and Blue Cheese Lasagne
Serves 6

2tbsp olive oil
180g pack spinach leaves
2 garlic cloves
250g pack chestnut mushrooms
400g can chopped tomatoes
300g lasagne sheets
600ml milk
3 tbsp cornflour
100g  Castello Danish Blue Extra Creamy
100g mature cheddar
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
salt and freshly ground pepper 

1. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.  Heat 1 tbsp of olive in a large pan, add half the garlic and spinach leaves and stir fry for 1-2 minutes until the leaves have wilted.  Remove from the heat, season well and set aside.
2. Add the remaining oil to the pan, add the mushrooms and cook over a high heat for 6-8 minutes, stirring occasionally until the mushrooms are browned. Stir in the remaining garlic.  Mix in the tin of tomatoes and heat for a few minutes. Remove from the heat and season to taste.
3.  Make the white sauce, take two tablespoons of the milk and mix to a paste with the cornflour.  Heat the rest of the milk until just below boiling point and add to the cornflour mix, then heat stirring all the time until thick and glossy, cook for 5 minutes to cook out the starch. Season well.
4. Place a layer of lasagne in the base of your dish. Top with half the mushroom mix, then add another layer of lasagne.  Spoon over a third of the white sauce and sprinkle over half the blue cheese.
5. Repeat the layers.  Place a final layer of lasagne on top and spread over the remaining white sauce and top with the cheddar cheese.
6. Place on a baking tray and bake for 40 minutes or until the lasagne is tender and top golden.  Serve with a green salad.

This was a really tasty dish, I love blue cheese and the sharp bite of the Danish Blue was a great foil to the mild mushroom flavour and the deep earthy taste of the spinach.

I'm entering this for blog challenge 'Extra Veg'  hosted this month by Shaheen at Allotment to Kitchen .  Its blog challenge created by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours and Michelle of Utterly Scrummy.  The theme this month is Savoury Vegetarian which fits my Mushroom, Spinach and Blue Cheese Lasagne perfectly.
I'm also entering this recipe for Four Seasons Food celebrating the vegetables of spring.  FSF is run by Anneli at Delicieux and Louisa at Eat Your Veg who is hosting this month.

Thanks to Castello for the Danish Blue Extra Creamy Cheese.

Labels: Castello, cheese, Danish Blue, Extra Veg, Four Seasons Food, lasagne, mushrooms, spinach

posted by Janice @ 21:32 22 Comments

7-a-day Slow Cooker Challenge Round Up

It seems that packing 7 fruits or vegetables into a slow cooker recipe was quite a challenge as, other than my own, I only had two excellent entries which I will share with you.

First up was Pravina from Indo-Global Food with a simple vegetable curry: Aloo-Palak (Potato and Spinach) Curry which can be eaten with rice, naan, roti or paratha.

 My own dish was Chicken with 7-a-day Mediterranean Vegetables a great one pot meal best served with something that will soak up the delicious juices.

Natalie at The Tofu Diaries brought a Vegan dimension to the Slow Cooker Challenge.  Regular readers may have noticed I have a real love of paprika, so this Sweet Potato and Three Bean Paprikash is going on my recipe wish list.

Many thanks to Natalie and Pravina for taking part in the Slow Cooker Challenge.  I hope you will join me on 1st of May to find out what we will be making in our Slow Cookers as we move towards the warmer weather.

 Woo hoo!  I must have left the linky open longer than I though and the lovely Sarah of Tales from the Kitchen Shed has snuck in at the last minute with a delicious Vegetable Biryani and what a gorgeous vibrant photograph.

Labels: 7-a-day, beans, Biryani, potoates, Round Up, Slow Cooker Challenge, spinach, Sweet Potato, Vegan, Vegetables

posted by Janice @ 21:29 16 Comments

Spinach and Cheese Souffle with Barbers 1833

Spinach and Cheese Souffle with Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar

Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar

 The lovely people at Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar invited me to join them at the BBC Good Food Show before Christmas. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend, but instead they sent me some Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar and the ingredients to make a Spinach and Cheese Souffle.

Ingredients for Spinach and Cheese Souffle

First I'd like to say a little about the Barber's Vintage Reserve Cheddar: this is one of the best cheddar cheeses that I have ever tasted.  It had a little calcification (the crunchy bits you get in mature cheddars) but not too much, but the flavour of the cheddar was rich and tangy with an aftertaste that just makes you want to eat more!  Beautiful stuff! 

The Barber family have been farming and making cheese at Maryland Farm in Ditcheat, Somerset since 1833. In the early days, milk from the farm was sold locally and the cheese made was used to feed the family and farm workers. As time went on, the milk needed to make cheese increased and soon the family were buying milk from neighbouring farms as well.
Today the Barber farms comprise 2500 acres of prime Somerset dairy land and are home to some 2,000 dairy cows. They continue to use traditional ‘cheddaring’ techniques combined with a unique collection of traditional starter cultures for which they are sole guardians, to create a truly typical West Country Farmhouse cheddar.

The Spinach and Cheese Souffle was the ideal vehicle for this strong cheddar, only 100g is used but the souffle still tasted strongly of tangy cheddar.  I also used some in a cheese sauce for cauliflower cheese and, again, a little went a long way.  I can highly recommend this cheese and will be looking out for it again.


Spinach and Cheese Soufflé
Serves 6-8 depending on the size of the ramekins

Ingredients
200g/7oz bag washed and ready to eat spinach
40g plain flour
300ml/half a pint milk
25g/1oz white breadcrumbs
100g/3 and a half oz Barbers 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar, finely grated
1tsp Dijon mustard
Freshly grated nutmeg, salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 eggs separated

Method
1. Heat the oven to 200C/Gas 6. Pierce the bag of spinach in several places and microwave on full power for 1 1/2 - 2 minutes until wilted. Leave until cook enough to handle then squeeze out as much liquid as possible. Chop roughly.

2. Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the flour. Cook stirring for 2 minutes. Gradually whisk in the milk until smooth then cook gently, stirring for 5 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and set aside to cool slightly.
3. Brush 6-8 ramekins or small ovenproof dishes with melted butter and coat with breadcrumbs.

4. Stir most of the cheese and the mustard into the sauce and season with nutmeg, salt and pepper. Gradually stir in the egg yolks, then add the spinach.

5. In a large bowl, whisk the egg whites until forming soft peaks. Take care not to allow them to become dry. Spoon two tablespoons of egg white into the cheese mixture to slacken the mixture then fold in the rest of the egg white with a metal spoon.

6. Place the ramekins in a roasting tin and pour in boiling water to come half way up the sides of the dishes. Bake for 10-12 minutes until well risen and golden brown, but still with a little bit of a wobble!
Serve immediately with green salad.

I made some small changes to the recipe, I baked mine in a single dish as I've put my ramekins into storage due to the work which is about to start on my kitchen.  The recipe also stated that you only use 2 tbsp of the egg white, I'm not sure if this is an error in the booklet, but I used all the egg whites and the souffle seemed the correct texture to me. I can't see 2 tbsp raising this amount of bechamel sauce. 

Spinach and Cheese Souffle

The Souffle was light and fluffy, with the fresh sharp taste of the spinach contrasting nicely with the richness of the cheese and eggs.  A lovely dish, I do love a souffle, but not how much washing up it creates!

Labels: Barber's 1833 Vintage Reserve Cheddar, Cheddar, cheese, Souffle, spinach

posted by Janice @ 09:30 8 Comments

Crunch-Topped Cod - A Random Recipe

I've missed a couple of months of Random Recipe posts, the blogger challenge run by Dom at Belleau Kitchen.  It's a lot of fun to take part, however due to impending work on my kitchen I've had to clear all my cookbooks away into bags and boxes, but I came across a pile of old Bella Cookbook magazines to which I applied the standard Random Recipe formula!

My random choice was January/February 2004, goodness nearly 10 years ago!  I did love this magazine, looking through these copies there are loads of recipes that I have made and must revisit.

However, Random Recipes is about making recipes you have overlooked and never made so my random pick is Crunchy Topped Haddock Cod, or other white fish of your choice.  I used frozen cod because it was what I had in the freezer.

Crunch-Topped Cod
Serves 4
4 (175g/6oz) pieces of cod fillet (or other white fish)
4 small tomatoes, sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
1 garlic clove, peeled and sliced
2 (250g) bags spinach, rinsed and drained
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/2 (250g) tub mascarpone cheese
75g/3oz Cheddar cheese, grated
1 (30g) bag plain crisps, lightly crushed

1. Preheat the grill to high.  Place the cod on a foil lined grill pan. Season with salt and pepper.  Top with tomato slices. Grill for 3-4 minutes until the fish is cooked through. 
2. While the fish is cooking, heat the oil in a large pan.  Fry the garlic of r1 min.  Add the spinach. Cover; cook over a medium heat for 3-4 minutes until wilted.  Draini n a sieve, pressing out the excess liquid with the back of a spoon. Season with nutmeg and freshly ground black pepper.  Keep warm.
3. Apread the mascarpone over the tomatoes an fish.  Top wth Cheddar chees; season.  Grill for 2-3 minutes until melted. Scatter over the crisps; gril lfor 1 min until golden. Serve the fish with the warm spinach.


I made some mashed potatoes and served them topped with the spinach and cheesy fish.  The from fish fillet flaked easily and the combination of the creamy mascarpone, juicy tomatoes, sharp Cheddar cheese and crunchy crisps was a total delight.

Labels: Belleau Kitchen, cheese, cod, crisps, Mascarpone, Random Recipes, spinach, tomatoes

posted by Janice @ 20:50 7 Comments

Duck Legs with 'Bramble' Gin and Duck Fat Potatoes - Dish of the Month

Phew!  I've finally managed to get my Dish of the Month made, half way through the month.  I had four Goosenargh duck legs from Farmison in the freezer so adapted Nigel Slater's recipe from The Kitchen Dairies, 30 October.  

The duck is marinated in brown sugar, vinegar, crushed juniper berries and sloe or damson gin.  I didn't have any sloe or damson gin, but I did have some gin and some blackberry cordial that I had made the day before, so I added half and half gin and blackberry cordial.  It seems to have worked well.  

As I had duck legs rather than breast, as in the original recipe,  I decided to follow the technique used by Tom Kerridge in his TV series Proper Pub Food, this involved cooking the duck legs on a tray over a roasting tin (I used my grill pan) at 200C for 25 minutes, then you drain off the fat and reduce the heat to 120C and cook until tender (1 1/2 hrs for a whole duck, about 40 minutes for the legs). 

I only made a little change to the  Duck Fat Potato recipe,  using less fat, just what I gathered from the pan when roasting the duck legs, which I brushed over the potatoes and then baked in a dish in the oven.

I also put the remaining marinade in a pan and reduced it to create some sauce for the duck legs. I served the duck and potatoes with spinach and tomatoes cooked together with...a little bit more duck fat.

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: Blackberry, Bramble, Dish of the Month, duck, Duck Fat, Duck Legs, Gin, Nigel Slater, spinach, tomatoes

posted by Janice @ 19:06 4 Comments

A Pie and a Pint

First the pies!  Finding these Higgidy pies was a bit of a challenge for me in the first place, mainly because of my rural location and lack of access to a wide range of supermarkets, however I am glad that I persevered and finally tracked them down in the little Co-op store opposite Glasgow Central Station on one of my frequent trips up and down on the train. 


Pie #2 is British Beef, Stilton and Ale and has to be my favourite.  I don't often buy beef pies because I am usually disappointed with the sloppy, gloopy gravy and a game of hunt the beef. 

This pie is different, just look at those chunks of real beef and thick gravy and the mashed topping with a little tang of Tuxford and Tebbit Stilton cheese really did taste homemade.  I would definitely buy this pie again. 

And the pint?  Well,  sorry to disappoint if you were expecting something alcoholic, I just wanted to entitle the post 'a pie and a pint' and I wanted to tell you about these Juice Burst fruit drinks.

Juice Burst is the first digitally interactive soft drink - WHAAT?  I hear you say, well if you 'blipp' the bottle you'll be taken into an interacive world, where the fruit literally bursts off the label and out of your phone/ipad.  You'll be invited to play the fruit machine game where you could be in with a chance of winning your own stash of JuiceBurst. 

There are 14 flavours to choose from but I was provided with a bottle of Apple and Rhubarb and a bottle of Still Lemonade, each bottle contains 500ml (not a pint!) RRP £1.29. These are two of the new flavours, the other being Orange and Passionfruit.

I'm not a huge fan of fizzy drinks and usually drink water or if I want a flavoured water, I use cordials, but if I was out and about and looking for a soft drink, I would buy one of these Juice Burst drinks as they have a fresh fruit flavour and are not too sweet. The digital interactive thing really isn't my thing either, I'm more interested in what is in the bottle than playing games with it, but I'm sure it will appeal to many people for a bit of fun.

Juice Burst is stocked at WH Smiths, Superdrug, Onestop, Greggs and selected Tescos stores.
You can find out more about Juice Burst, the first digitally interactive soft drink on their Facebook page    and You Tube channel.

Thanks to Hannah for the vouchers to purchase the Higgidy pies and thanks to Emily for supplying the Juice Burst drinks.  I was not paid to write these reviews and all opinions are my own.

Labels: Apple and Rhubarb, Beef, British Beef, Feta and Toasted Pine Nut pie, Higgidy pies, Juice Burst, review, spinach, Still Lemonade., Stilton and Ale

posted by Janice @ 21:17 1 Comments

Stilton, Spinach and Walnut Bake

One of the most fun opportunities which has come my way as a blogger has been the #BoothsCheers Twitter Party. As a #BoothsCheers VIP, every week for six weeks,  I receive a delivery of wines and beers from Booths Food, Wine and Grocery Stores



Then on a Wednesday night, between 7pm and 8pm, it's time to taste the wines and beers, give your views and suggestions for what to eat with the wines using the Twitter hash tag #BoothsCheers. Now we have had forewarning that one of the bottles that will be delivered this Wednesday is a bottle of Croft Indulgence, Finest Reserve Port.  So I thought I should get prepared with something suitable to eat while tasting it.



I rarely prepare meals from scratch during the week, if I did it would be far too late when we finally sat down to eat.  So I tend to prepare meals at the weekend and put them in the fridge or freezer, ready to be popped into the oven to heat through.  I also often make double, so we had this bake tonight (Sunday) and will have it again on Wednesday.

Anyway there is some very obvious word association going on here: Port > Stilton >Walnuts.  I did think about making a flan but in the end decided to make a bake instead.

Stilton, Spinach and Walnut Bake

4 large potatoes
240g pack of smoked, dry cured streaky bacon
4 spring onions, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
500g spinach

1/2 pint white sauce
1/4 tsp nutmeg
250g Stilton cheese
200g 0% fat Greek Yogurt
1 egg, beaten
75g breadcrumbs
50g chopped walnuts

1. Slice the potatoes, cover with a little boiling water and some clingfilm and blanch the potato slices in the microwave for 3 minutes.  Drain the water off and lay the potatoes in the base of an ovenproof casserole dish.
2.Chop the bacon into small pieces and dry fry in a large pan, turn down the heat slightly and add the onions and garlic.  Cook until softened. 
3. Add the spinach and put the lid on the pan, cook until the spinach has wilted.
4. Spread the mixture over the potatoes.
5. Crumble the Stilton and spread over the spinach mixture.

6. Make the white sauce add the nutmeg and season, but go easy on the salt as the cheese and bacon are both very salty.  Mix the egg with the yogurt and add to the white sauce, pour over the rest of the ingredients.
7. Cover the sauce with the breadcrumbs and sprinkle over the walnuts.
8. Cover with foil and bake in the oven for 25 minutes at 200C, remove foil and bake for a further 5 minutes to crisp the breadcrumbs without burning the walnuts.

Join me at the Twitter Party by following @BoothsCountry and tweeting with the hash tag #BoothsCheers on Wednesday night 7 - 8 pm, to find out how well my Stilton, Spinach and Walnut Bake goes with this week's special deals. Click through the link to find out more about the 12 Deals of Christmas, the Twitter Party and also the in-store tastings.

Labels: 12 deals of Christmas, bacon, Bake, beer, Booths, BoothsCheers, breadcrumbs, Port, spinach, Stilton, walnuts, wine

posted by Janice @ 12:00 5 Comments

Haddock Mornay Layer Bake - keen as mustard!

I opted to make a fish dish and only specified some spinach, the rest of the ingredients were a surprise to me a bit like doing 'Ready Steady Cook'! 

So here is what came in my bag:
2 Haddock Fillets
260g bag of Spinach
220g Blue Stilton
300ml Creme Fraiche
2 Leeks
3 potatoes
215g jar of Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard

You will also need:
2 tbsp olive oil
75g butter
1 tsp cornflour
50g Gran Padano cheese, grated
100g mature cheddar, grated
salt and freshly ground black pepper


After much thought and some inspiration hunting through my cookbooks, I decided to make a layered bake.

Labels: celery, cheese, creme fraiche, Dijon Mustard, fish, Grey Poupon, haddock, Leeks, lettuce, potatoes, salad, spinach, Stilton, waldorf salad, walnut

posted by Janice @ 20:25 16 Comments