Farmers Market

Jan22

I like going to Farmer’s Markets but I don’t always have the get-up-and-go required to get there. Which is one reason why I like Marylebone Farmer’s Market. It is held on Sunday mornings, when I am much more likely to have the time to potter around, and only starts at 10am, meaning it doesn’t finish until 2pm and I have plenty of time to drag myself out of bed and get there.
This morning I went in search of nothing in particular but didn’t want to buy a ton of food as I had done a big shop on Friday.

I came away with two nice looking pheasants, a big bag of kale to eat with them, and a loaf of Pugliese bread from Exeter Street Bakery. Then I got some Kirkham’s Lancashire and some Tomme de Savoie from La Fromagerie, which has it’s Marylebone outpost opposite the car park where the market is held.

I had a vague idea that I might follow Matthew Fort’s excellent ideas from yesterday’s paper and braise the pheasant with chestnuts, but I got home and looked again at the recipe and realised that I was short many of the ingredients. So I turned to Nigel Slater’s Kitchen Diaries, where he pot-roasts pheasant with vermouth and celery. In the end I compromised by pot-roasting using Nigel’s method, but with Matthew’s flavourings of a little Marsala, allspice, juniper berries and bay. I roasted some potatoes in the duck fat leftover from last week, and braised some kale. An excellent meal – all moistened with the unthickened marsala-ey juices from the pot-roast.
And to go from the sublime to the ridiculous, we finished it all off with Jamaica Ginger Cake (bought), Bird’s custard and bananas!

The Kitchen Diaries

Jan12

kitchen_diary
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

One of the wonderful things I got for Christmas (thank-you Jenny!) was Nigel Slater’s new book, The Kitchen Diaries. I am a big fan of Mr Slater’s, and have several of his books. I look out for his columns each week in the Observer and I particularly like the way he writes with greed and hunger about the food he cooks.
In case you have not seen this book yet, it is a record of a year of Mr Slater’s cooking and eating, arranged chronologically, so you always have a recipe to hand that is appropriate for the season. What could be better for re-adjusting to English seasons than this?
So far I have made two of January’s recipes: Dal and Pumpkin Soup and Marmalade Cake – both were wonderful (and both orange – I do have a bias for orange foods: pumpkin, carrot soup, mangoes, orange juice – you get the idea) .

Partly as a result of this inspiration, and partly as a result of the good advice of my cooking teacher at Tante Marie’s, I have bought myself a thick notebook to keep my own cooking diary. In it I am recording where I make a recipe from a book, and when I make something up, as well as changes and adjustments I made as I went along and tasting notes on how it turned out. I let you know how it goes…

Sometimes only pasta will do

Jan10

Re: Pasta photo
Originally uploaded by louise_marston.

Today I went to Ikea for about the 6th time in a month. This time was a trek on foot – which isn’t too bad, as it’s only about 10 minutes by tube, but there is still 20 minutes or so of walking in there. I struggled back with an upright and two shelves for our storage in the study, two wastepaper bins, a mason jar and 6 storage boxes. After all that, despite my good intentions to eat up the soup in the fridge, I felt I needed something more. Browsing through my food blogs RSS feed I came across Amateur Gourmet’s brilliant description of the complexities of making pasta with butter, nutmeg and parmesan. Spurred on by this, I went to the kitchen and followed said directions to create a big bowlful, and proceeded to stuff my face. I compensated for the heart-attack-inducing richness by accompanying it with an Innocent Detox smoothie … mmm.