Allotment Pie

Introduction
This random assortment of food all started out with me wanting to cook something where I could say, "I grew this, well all the bits that are grown."  The result was a new take on an old favourite.  I have seen it called homity pie in Devon and Cornwall where it is made with potatoes, cheddar, friend onions and (optionally) bacon in a pastry case or some  people just call it cheese pie.

Ingredients
Boiled potatoes
Beans, peas or both (cooked)
Any other veg you fancy throwing in
Fried onions
A block of feta cheese
Dried mint, if you like it.

Instructions
Mix the cooked veg
Crumble up the feta
Sprinkle over the mint
Stir it up a bit but you want a good bit of the cheese near the top 
Pop into an oven at 180 degrees for around 15 minutes until the top is a nice crispy brown in places and the rest it nicely heated through.
If you are sure that all your ingredients are hot when you mix everything together then you can get away with putting it under the grill.

Other Ideas

You might have noticed that this is a great left over meal. Prepare and cook extra veg with a meal one day, mix with fried onions, feta and herbs for a second meal the next.

It would also work using some frozen mixed veg and tinned sweetcorn.

Frozen spinach or kale could be crumbled in as well, if you are trying to increase you veg quota.  Both work really well with feta.

Feel free to use the veg that you like!

Lastly, let me know if you try it out and what you think please?

Easy Home Meals

Introduction

The world is full of cake recipes, nearly as many as there are posts on the evils of sugar.  Some days I feel like my lively hood is based on peddling poisons and contributing to net world unhappiness.  So I thought it was time for a new series of recipes and posts, this time focussing on a subject that is much closer to my heart and much better for my own state of mental well being, namely, quick, easy and healthy dinners.

In these recipes I want to inspire people to cook real food from scratch.  In a time when most people get home late, often with hungry children in tow, it is easy to understand why we all reach for pre-prepared food that just needs popping in the oven.  Don't get me wrong here, I am not some sort of domestic goddess, I personally think that every house should keep some instant food in the freezer as a sound basis for stress free living.

However, there are also some things you can cook and the secret to doing this is being brave enough to throw away the recipe book.  Seriously, most foods do not need a recipe book or scales.  Half the time you don't have the right ingredients anyway or you family hates some key aspect.

I am hoping that people will take these recipes and make them their own.  If nothing else this will serve me as a list of "things I can cook" for days when I run out of ideas as well.

Lastly, before I start a new post with some actual recipe in it, please send me your comments and recipes too.  We all need inspiration sometimes.

Bread Ovens

Hello again,

I have been very quiet on here for years.  Now I have slightly more time and more importantly a computer that will allow me to upload photos I am hoping to once again get writing.  Somehow my plans always seem to exceed my time but it doesn't stop me trying.

In the mean time, for those people who have stumbled across my site looking for information on historic cooking, have a look at this blog below.  It is all about wood fired ovens, something I really really want to have a go at, just as soon as I get around to it.

https://bakedinfire.wordpress.com/2015/05/11/a-clay-oven-the-beginning/

https://bakedinfire.wordpress.com/2015/05/12/the-first-firing/

Sour Dough

Life recently has been hectic to say the least and time to experiment with interesting recipes has been severely limited.  Apart from a brief encounter with Eliza Acton (of which more in the future, she is definitely a cook to return to) I have been investigating sour dough in as many forms as I can. 

I have been making sour dough loaves for years, ever since I went on a specialist bread making course and came away with my own pot of gently bubbling rye paste and detailed instructions of how to care for it.  I have used this recipe time and again and it makes a very reliable loaf of bread.  It fulfils my main cooking criteria of being virtually faff free and it tastes great. 

With my own sour dough course looming I have been cooking as many of the other recipes and methods as I can and my freezer is slowly filling up with loaves for interested cookery students to sample.   It is also filling up with lots of pots of gently bubbling flour and water paste for other people to take home a cherish.

Life at the moment is full of Victorian jam tarts, (they were creative with preserves, I will give them that) and sour dough bread.  With a sour dough course less than a month away now I am madly preparing lots of pots of bubbling, smelly, fermented wheat and rye creations.  I need enough for everyone to take home, eno9ugh for everyone to cook with and enough different recipes to make the course interesting.  Unfortunately, what I don't have at the moment is a working camera.  I am the first to admit that sour dough does not make a very interesting picture but the jam tarts look quite decorative.

A selection of vegetable recipes from the 1600s

Introduction

Page contains a list of recipes from the 1600s and is designed to compliment the Forty Hall First Fruits event.  I have written about most of these recipes elsewhere on my blog, website or Facebook.  I have included links to these resources at the bottom of the page for people who would like to have a look.

i am starting off with just the original recipes and then where I can I will add some modern instructions.  Most of these recipes are in the public domain and have been for a long time.  However a few are still under copy write and so I have not taken the liberty of reproducing the work of a modern cook whose book is still in print, that would be a bit too cheeky.

When choosing the recipes I have focussed on ones that are vegetarian, don't rely on exotic ingredients and don't use raw or lightly cooked eggs. 

A quick look will show you that the cookery writers of the time did not feel constrained by quantities and the lack of accurate measurements can be very annoying to modern cooks.  If it helps, try to think of this in a positive way, if you hate a certain ingredient then use it very sparingly.  Make small quantities to start with and have fun experimenting until you arrive at a recipe that works for you.

Recipes

To butter Gourds, Pumpions, Cucumbers or Muskmelons. Robert May 1660

Cut them into pieces, and pare and cleanse them; then have a boiling pan of water, and when it boils put in the pumpions, &c. with some salt, being boil’d, drain them well from the water, butter them, and serve them on sippets with pepper. Otherways. Bake them in an oven, and take out the seed at the top, fill them with onions, slic’t apples, butter, and salt, butter them, and serve them on sippets. Otherways. Fry them in slices, being cleans’d & peel’d, either floured or in batter; being fried, serve them with beaten butter, and vinegar, or beaten butter and juyce of orange, or butter beaten with a little water, and served in a clean dish with fryed parsley, elliksanders, apples, slic’t onions fryed, or sweet herbs.

Vegetables in 1600s

A list of Vegetables from 1669

(I will be adding to this post in the future)

Sir Kenelm Digby was a gentleman, a privateers, diplomat, scientist and intellectual.  During his varied life, lived through one of England's most turbulent periods of history, he collected recipes from his friends.  Published after his death, The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Knight Opened, covers and extraordinary range of subjects and gives so many recipes for different alcoholic drinks that you might be forgiven for thinking that the favourite hobby of the English aristocracy was making home brew.

 

Sir Kenelm Digby, artist unknown

At the very end, in Appendix III it lists all of the herbs, flowers, fruits and less common vegetables used in the cook book along with other flavourings.  He does add that he left out the more common vegetables. For instance I know that he definitely has recipes that include peas, beans and asparagus.  So for anyone interested in what green and growing things the people of the 17th century might have been using, here is the list.  I have added  some spacings.

It must be remembered that Sir Digby was wandering around Europe with the royal court who would have had access to a lot more food than everyone else.

APPENDIX III A LIST OF THE HERBS, FLOWERS, FRUITS, ETC., REFERRED TO IN The Closet Opened:— 

1. Agrimony; alexander; angelica; avens, leaves & flowers; balm; bay-leaves; beet leaves; bettony, wild; bettony, Paul's; bistort; bloodwort; bluebottles; blue-button; borage, leaves & flowers; bramble, red, tops of; broom-buds; bugle; bugloss, leaves & flowers; burnet; carduus benedictus; carrot, wild; celandine; cersevril; chicory; chives; clove gilly-flowers; clown's all-heal; coltsfoot; comfrey; cowslip & French cowslip flowers; dragons; elder flowers; endive; eyebright; fennel; fever-few; garlic; ground-ivy; groundsel; hart's tongue, leaves; hops, flowers; horehound; hypericum, tops & flowers; hyssop; ladies' mantle; lettuce, leaves & stalks; lily of the valley; liquorice; liverwort; maidenhair; marigold, flowers & leaves; marjoram, sweet; marjoram, wild; marshmallow, leaves, flowers, & stalks; may-weed, brown; meadowsweet; mellilot, flowers; mint; spearmint; mouse-ear; mugwort; muscovy; nettle, red; oak of Jerusalem; organ; origanum [wild marjoram]; oseille; parietary; peas (chick); pellitory-of-the-wall; penny-royal; philipendula; pimpernel; pourpier; primrose, flowers; purslane; ribwort; rocket; rosemary, tops, flowers, & sprigs; rose; rue; sage, (red & wild), leaves & flowers; saxifrage; sanicle; scabious; scurvy grass; self-heal; shallots; sibboulets; skirrets; smallage; sorrel (wood); spike [spignel?]; spleenwort; spinach; St. John's wort; strawberry leaves; sweetbriar, leaves, tops, buds; sweet oak; sweetwort; tamarisk; tansy; thyme (broad, lemon, mother, & wild); violet, leaves & flowers; wallflowers (yellow); wall rue; watercress; wheat (green); white-wort; winter savoury; woodbine; wormwood (sea & Roman); yarrow. (From this list I have omitted the commoner vegetables.) 

2. Roots.—Alexander; angelica; asparagus; beet; betony, bittersweet; bluebottle; borage; coltsfoot; elecampane; eringo; fennel; fern; galingale; horse-radish; marshmallow; nettle (red); orris; parsley; scabious; sorrel; strawberry; succory; thyme (wild); tormentilla. 

3. Seeds.—Anise; cardamom; carraway; citron; coriander; fennel; gromwell; melon; musk grains; mustard; nettle; parsley; saffron; tulip, seedy buds of; wormwood. 

4. Fruits.—Apples (codlings, ginet moils, pearmains, pippins, golden pippins, red streaks); apricots; barberries; bilberries; cherries (black, Kentish, Morello); currants (dried, black, red); damsons; dates; jujubes; juniper berries; lemons; pears (bon chrétien & wardens); plums; prunes; raisins; rasps; sweetbriar berries; strawberries. 

5. Barks, woods.—Ash-tree bark; lignum cassiæ. 

6. Nuts.—Almonds; chestnuts; pine kernels; pistachios; walnuts (green). 

7. Juices.—Balm; celandine; cherry; hop; lemon; onion; orange; spearmint; spinach; tansy. 

8.—Distilled waters of angelica; cinnamon; mallow; orange-flower; plantain; rose (red & damask). 

9. Spices of all sorts; cloves; cinnamon (also oil of, & spirit of); ginger; mace; mustard; nutmeg; pepper; peppercorns. 

10. Wines.—Canary sack; claret; Deal; elder; Malaga (old); Muscat; Muscadine (Greek); red; Rhenish; sack, sherry sack; Spanish; white.

11. Other liquors.—Ale & beer; afterworts; lees of beer & wine; aqua vitæ; orangeado. 

12. Vinegars of elder wine, & of white wine. 

13. Verjuice of cider, & green sour grapes. 

14. Other notable seasonings and ingredients:— Ambergris; ivory; leaf gold; powder of white amber; powder of pearl; Spanish pastilles

Digby, Kenelm  (2011-12-22). The Closet of Sir Kenelm Digby Knight Opened (New Illustrated) (Kindle Locations 3755-3781).  . Kindle Edition.