All That I'm Eating

Recipe ideas for budget meals, everyday cooking and a little indulgence. Travel inspiration and restaurant reviews too.

Delicate Carrot Soup

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homegrown carrots

Sometimes carrots can be taken for granted. The base of a soup or stew, added to stock or shoved on the side of the plate. What a shame. They are such glorious things in their own right and there is no carrot sweeter than a home grown carrot. I planted these little beauties a few months back expecting them to be riddled with carrot fly and a complete disaster. The results have been quite the opposite. I am now inundated.

Before you ask, the one second from right is not a parsnip, it is a white carrot. The two on each end are orange and the other is a yellow carrot. I didn’t know what a rainbow I had underground until I pulled them up.
Whether you’re using home grown or bought carrots, a lovely subtle carrot soup has to be the way to go. Carrot soup is one of my favourite soups but the carrots can sometimes be overshadowed with what they are paired with. Sometimes coriander can be a little too much or the orange overwhelms the humble sweet carrot flavours. Not this time though. read more

The Royal Oak at Ecchinswell

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Several things can occur when out for a meal. One of these is that the food you order is made from poor ingredients and cooked badly, another could be that the dish is too complex and cooked terribly. My favourite meals out are those where excellent ingredients are cooked to perfection in a simple way and The Royal Oak at Ecchinswell does exactly this.
The menu looked very promising, choosing what to have was the only issue. I decided to forgo a starter and save room for pudding for a very good reason; the head chef here had, at one time, been the second best pastry chef in France. I’m not sure anyone would ignore the pudding menu knowing that.  read more

Making Sloe and Hedgerow Gin

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picking sloes for gin
Apart from autumn being the time for pumpkin soup, squash in all its forms and stews galore it is also the time for making sloe and hedgerow gin. There are some sloe purists who will not touch this lovely berry until a frost has been. Then there are those like me who pick them nice and early and speed nature up a bit. Either way if you’ve got sloes around it means it’s time to make some sloe and hedgerow gin.   Whether you decide to make sloe gin, hedgerow gin or both you will need to wait a little while before it’s ready. But that’s part of the fun of it, knowing that stashed at in a corner of a cupboard somewhere you are sitting on a purple elixir which is just perfect for sipping in the winter.  

Top Tips

I very much advise you wash your sloes before freezing otherwise you might end up with a few (used to be) living hedgerow beings in your finished gin. I’m not sure anybody would appreciate you pouring them a spider.

When you go out to pick your sloes I must warn you that 1kg of sloes is a good couple of hours of work, scratched wrists, attack of the stinging nettles and excellent fun if you take a friend. I’m not making it sound very appealing but what you get at the end of all the work makes it so worthwhile. You can take a look at this handy guide if you’re new to foraging to help you identify the sloes. I also have a few golden nuggets of foraging advice too. read more

Caramelised Apples

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apples

Apples are everywhere at the moment. They are falling out of trays at the market, falling off the trees along the road and falling onto my plate at any given opportunity. As much as I enjoy an apple on its own, it has to be a good one mind, sometimes you can have too many to know what to do with. Apple cakes, crumbles, pies and flapjacks are all lovely but I wanted to enjoy some apples at their very best and not shrouded by too many other flavours.

These caramelised apples are so quick and simple. They are wonderful to have for breakfast, a light, filling snack for the afternoon and an unctuous end to a meal. Get yourself four apples, any will do but I prefer sharp, juicy apples. Core the apples and cut into slices or chunks.  read more

Vegetable Patch Recipes

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Home grown vegetables

Recently it has become apparent that most of the meals I eat are vegetable orientated. There are two reasons for this; firstly I have a cornucopia of vegetables in my garden at present and each one needs celebrating in its own way and secondly meat is so expensive.

 

I can go into Sainsbury’s and pick up four chicken breasts for £6. Not the extra special ones, not the organic ones, just the standard ones. My alternative is to go to the farmer’s market and pick up two whole chickens for £10. These are free range chickens and I would still get four chicken breasts but I would also get four drumsticks, four wings, four thighs and two carcasses for making beautiful stock with. It’s a no brainer really.  read more

Quince and Apple Pie and a Pastry Lesson

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farmers' market pastries

Pastry has to be, without doubt, the best cradle, blanket or hat for any rich, sumptuous bed of fruit, meat or vegetables. It is that crunch, that warmth and that way it crumbles which makes it just so. I thought of pastry as my nemesis. Stupid stuff that was invariably delicious when prepared by anyone but myself. All this was to change when I met Jane. 

Jane makes an awful lot of pastry. She is Jane of Jane’s Kitchen and prepares a marvellous amount of amazing pastry each week for different farmers’ markets around the area. There are trout and caper parcels, Moroccan mountains, seasonal fruit tarts and some classic pies. Best of all Jane uses as many ingredients as possible from the farmers’ market.  read more

The White Hart at Hamstead Marshall

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I trust very few people when they tell me if a restaurant is good or bad. All of these select people went to The White Hart (after its recent reopening) before I’d had a chance and to say they were less than impressed would be somewhat of an understatement. 

However, I have learnt recently that a poor first experience is not always a fair representation of a restaurant although, to be honest, why should you put up with a poor experience when you’re paying for it? That’s another matter. read more

Damson and Apple Crumble

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baked damson and apple crumble
Crumble is the food I turn to when the evenings start getting darker and it starts getting cooler. Especially this damson and apple crumble. The way the sweet, slightly tart fruit of choice bubbles and seeps through the crunchy, crumbly, biscuity top is a sure fire way to warm you from inside to out. What I love about crumble is that it’s so versatile; the fruit is whatever fruit you can get your hands on.  I think that a person’s crumble is as unique as their fingerprint. Some crumbles are like a great wave of shortbread on top of the fruit, some are all big and little bits scattered willy nilly all over the place, some add extra sugar on the top, some add nuts and some add oats. Whatever your crumble style, it’s your own.    Recently I bought some damson jam out of politeness at a local market. I don’t even like jam. When I got home I wondered what on earth I was going to do with it. I got some crusty white bread, some soft unsalted butter and a dollop of the damson jam and it was a revelation. I’m ashamed to say that the loaf and jar were consumed in one sitting. What have I been missing out on all these years? It turns out I do like jam but was left wondering where damsons had been all my life.  When I noticed some lovely damsons outside my local greengrocer I just had to have them – I’d run out of jam for one thing. They were crying out to be made into a crumble. As I didn’t have that many of them I added an apple to make it go a bit further and add a little sweetness. This damson and apple crumble was absolutely fantastic. The damsons add such richness and gorgeous colour, the apple is just detectable in the background giving it a lovely homely feel. This crumble had extra caramelised bits on the edges of the dish and peeling them off and chewing them has to be one of the most enjoyable things there is. If you’ve not had damsons before or are unsure how to deal with them then I urge you to give this a try. Crumble is such a tried and tested favourite, how could it go wrong?

Top Tips

Just like the crumbliness of your crumble is rather personal, so is what you choose to serve the crumble with. Cream, custard or ice cream? If you go for cream is it single, double, Gold Top or clotted? If custard, ready made or home made? If ice cream should it be vanilla with or without vanilla seeds or should it be clotted cream ice cream? It’s all very complicated and someone will always be upset no matter which you choose. I always opt for cream because I can stir it all together in the bowl and pretend I’m 8 years old again.  read more

Purple Cauliflower Cheese

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When you have a cauliflower and you add a little cheese you can’t fail to make something unfathomably gorgeous. There is no other place I know of that you can get a purple cauliflower apart from my local farmers’ market. If you saw it at a glance you may have to do a double take to reassure yourself that it is real. 

I think the cauliflower is a very lucky vegetable. It’s no looker but I’m yet to meet someone who doesn’t think the union of cauliflower and cheese is glorious. Being purple as opposed to its equally delicious, much paler, white cousin adds something extra to what might otherwise have been a beige overload on the side of the plate.  read more

Glo Restaurant at Reading

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This was a gifted meal.

Glo restaurant in Reading might be one that you walk right past without even noticing it. It is slightly understated and doesn’t make a meal of itself. I have to say that I thought Glo was a chain and it was all mass produced microwaved food. I was invited to review this restaurant by a PR company. It turned out that in fact the food is locally sourced and freshly prepared on site.

There are grills, pizzas, curries and all sorts; something for everyone. They also have an extensive range of cocktails and some rather inviting combinations and flavours. It was nice to see that the non-alcoholic cocktails on the menu had been considered and were not just an afterthought. The picture is of a delicious mango lassi and it took us a while to realise the swirls actually spelled something out! read more

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