Abercrombie & Feast

I want to tell you about my grandmother-in-law, Andy’s grandmother, Jethel.

Jethel was a proper, old-fashioned, Southern country woman.  She was beloved by the members of her small, Baptist church.  She never forgot to send cards for every holiday and birthday.  She collected thimbles and photos of her grandchildren.  She was an amazing cook.

She wasn’t an amazing chef.  There’s a difference.  Jethel didn’t use fancy seasoning.  She didn’t worry about presentation on the plate.  And she definitely didn’t cook anything hip and trendy.

But, she could cook.  She made food you can raise a family on.  Food that warms up grandkids on winter mornings.  She made cornbread every single day.  She could cook any meat that her family of hunters brought her from the woods around her little house.  She made tables groaning with food on Thanksgiving.

Andy and I have been a couple since I was in high school, so I’ve spent years and years celebrating Abercrombie family holidays out in the country at Jethel’s house.  We’d all drive out there, with various casserole dishes filled with food, or cakes wrapped in tin foil.  Jethel would have the wood-burning stove fired up and we’d all begin shedding our jackets and sweaters as soon as we walked into her tiny, toasty living room.  The TV was never on.  There was never a radio going in the background.  Instead, we all focussed on each other and on the food.

With Jethel on our wedding day

As she got older, more and more of the food was brought by relatives.  Fewer and fewer things came out of her well-worn kitchen.  But, the things that she did make were wonderful.  Sticky buns flavoured with orange, sweet and crumbly corn bread, greens or green beans braised with pork, and sweet potato pie.

For Andy, Jethel’s sweet potato pie is the standard against which all other sweet potato pies are judged- and found lacking.  Her pie was very simple.  No fancy spices, no whipped cream on top.  Basic and tasting of what it was… sweet potatoes.  Hers was a pie for purists.

I loved Jethel like she was my own grandmother.  She was always kind to me, always made me feel included in the family holidays… even before I was officially part of the family.  When she died this summer, I felt like I’d lost the opportunity to learn more from her.  I asked my mother-in-law to save me one of Jethel’s well-worn cast iron skillets from her kitchen.  I love the idea of having that little piece of Abercrombie family history in my own kitchen… being used to, some day, feed a new generation of Jethel’s family.

We don’t get to really celebrate Thanksgiving here in England, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t enjoy some of the traditions of this, the greatest of American holidays.  This year, for the first time, I made sweet potato pie.  I was prepared for Andy’s scrutiny, and I got it.  I added too much cinnamon to the pie filling.  But, I really liked the pie with a touch of cinnamon, so I said a silent apology to Jethel and left the cinnamon in.  This isn’t her pie exactly, but I was inspired by her whilst making it.

We’ll be at work on Thanksgiving Day, but I hope that many of you are lucky enough to be with your families, your own grandmothers, surrounded by food.  I hope that you’re lucky enough to have a slice of sweet potato pie.

Sweet Potato Pie

pastry for one pie crust (make your own or shop bought)
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
2 cups mashed sweet potato (I baked mine until they were super soft, then just scooped out the middles)
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cinnamon*
1 stick (113g) butter
1 small can evaporated milk

Preheat your oven to 350F.  Line a pie plate or a tart case with your pastry and place in the fridge to firm up.

Meanwhile, combine all of the other ingredients in a large bowl and beat well, until smooth and creamy.  The mixture will be very runny.  That’s ok.

Remove your pie crust from the fridge and fill with the sweet potato mixture. 

Bake the pie for 1 hour or until golden on top and firm to the touch.  The pie filling will “rise” up a bit during cooking.  Don’t worry.  That’s just the eggs.  The pie will settle down after a few minutes out of the oven. 

Serve warm, at room temp or cold… it’s delicious!

I have to admit something to you right up front here. I’ve based this entire meal, this entire blog post… hell, this entire DAY around cooking something in my new casserole dish.

I brought this dish back in my hand luggage from Holland, where we just spent a wonderful long weekend. I will tell you more about Holland in my next post, but for right now, let’s just take a few minutes to admire the pretty pretty dish.

Ahhhh, so pretty.

So I wanted to use the pretty pretty dish to make our dinner. And, I wanted dinner to be quick and yummy and hot. And, I wanted there to be leftovers that I could have for lunch tomorrow. And, I didn’t want the meal to have any meat. And, I am a total pain in the patootie who thinks that finding the perfect recipe can make my whole day better.

Cue:  Baked Lemon Pasta!

It was a tall order, but I think this recipe ticks all the boxes. I’m not going to type out the recipe because I (GASP!) followed it exactly and that blog describes it better than I ever could.  I’ve actually been eyeing this recipe for a while, but never got around to making it before tonight. Don’t know what took me so long… it’s lovely. Perhaps I was just waiting for the perfect pretty pretty dish??

Glutney.  An apt title for this recipe, and how I feel after a week of cooking from The River Cottage Year!  I feel stuffed full of vegetables.  Bursting with seasonal goodness.  And… ready for a tiny little salad for dinner!  All of the recipes I’ve made have been to serve 4 or 6 people, so we’ve been faced with a fridge bursting with leftovers this week.  I’ve had three root vegetable mash two days in a row.  I’ve had roasted pumpkin soup for dinner, then again for lunch.  I literally ate creamed sprouts for breakfast on Friday.  Breakfast! 

Next week, we’ll be back to simpler food, and less of it.  But for my final recipe from The River Cottage Year, I thought it would be appropriate to share Glutney with you all. 

This is a recipe designed to use up all the seasonal vegetables that you might not be able to eat yourself, no matter how many times you have Brussels sprouts for breakfast.  BREAKFAST!  It’s a recipe for chutney, designed to be made with whatever you’ve got extra of, and eaten along side cheese, sandwiches and cold meats. 

We love chutney, but I’ve always had a huge fear of making anything that required canning.  I know, it’s simple.  I know, it’s environmentally friendly.  I know.  But I’m totally scared of poisoning my husband and potential dinner guests.  So, in general, I avoid recipes that have to be canned. 

But, I had too many tomatoes.  And far, far too many courgettes (zucchini.)  And there were even a few too many apples on my counter.  So, I made the chutney.  It was easy, actually.  Mine looks really different from Hugh’s in the book, but I think that’s because he calls for brown sugar ad all I had was white sugar.  So, his is much darker than mine.  But I’m ok with that.  Hugh even says, “No two batches of glutney will ever be quite the same.” 

Now, here’s the catcher.  I’ve not tasted this recipe yet.  It has to age for “at least 2 weeks- ideally 2 months” before serving.  So let’s all just pretend that it’s delicious and wonderful and I am the Queen of Chutney.  Because, God knows, I am certainly the Queen of Glutney. 

Glutney
I am going to give you Hugh’s recipe, rather than the precise version I made.  I used this recipe as a guide. 

Makes about 10 jam jars worth

1 kilogram (2 lbs) courgettes (zucchinis)
or
1 kilogram (2 lbs) pumpkin
plus
1 kilogram red or green tomatoes
or
1 kilogram plums
plus
1 kilogram apples
500g (1lb) onions
500g sultanas (raisins)
500g light brown sugar
750ml white wine or cider vinegar
1-3 tsp dried chilli flakes, depending on how much heat you want
1 spice bag, made by tying the following in a bag of muslin:
     a one inch piece of ginger, peeled and chopped
     10 cloves
     12 black peppercorns
     a tsp coriander seeds

If using courgettes, begin by cutting them into dice no bigger than 1cm.  If using pumpkin, peel, seed and dice no bigger than 1cm. 

If using tomatoes, scald them and remove the skins.  Then chop roughly.  If using plums, stone and chop roughly. 

Peel and dice the apples and the onion.  Put all of the vegetables into a large, heavy based pan with the raisins, sugar, vinegar and 25oml of water.  Add the chilli flakes and a pinch or two of salt. 

Make the spice bag and add to the pan, pushing it into the middle.

Heat this mixture gently, stirring occasionally to dissolve the sugar.  Bring the mixture to the boil briefly, then allow to simmer for 2-3 hours, uncovered, stirring regularly so it doesn’t stick to the bottom. 

The chutney is ready when it’s thick and very reduced.  You can tell if it’s ready if it parts to reveal the bottom of the pan when you pull a spoon through the mixture.  If it starts to get dry before reaching that reduced stage, you can just top it up with water.

Whiles still warm, pot up the chutney into sterilised jars with plastic coated screw-tops.  It’s important that the tops are plastic coated, so the vinegar doesn’t interact with the metal. 

Leave the chutney to mature for at least 2 weeks, ideally 2 months.

It was pissing down with rain last night.  Really raining hard.  And it was cold.  I left work around 5.30pm, wearing my red wool coat and my fuzzy black gloves.  I also had a huge, heavy tote bag and my laptop for work with me.  I walked all the way from my office, across town to my gym.  I was meeting my mate there for a painful hour of Circuit class. 

Have you ever done Circuits??  It’s like… being in the Army.  Whistles and push-ups and running and OH. MY. GOD.  Needless to say, I was totally wiped out when I left the gym.  But, I still had a 15 minute walk, with all my bags, up the hill to our flat.  And it was dark.  And it was cold.  And it was STILL raining. 

I finally made it home around 7.30pm.  I opened the door and dropped my bags on the floor.  I took off my heavy coat and hung it near the door.  Then, I turned around and faced the kitchen.

Oh, my.  Andy had started dinner.  We were having Hugh’s recipe for Three Root Vegetable Mash.  On Sunday, at the farmers market, we picked up carrots, potatoes and parsnips.  Andy had peeled and chopped these veggies, cooked them in separate pans, combined them and mashed them up. 

They smelled amazing as I walked in from the cold, wet Thursday night.  I was suddenly starving.  And I felt SO lucky to have a husband who started dinner whilst I was out on a cold night.  Is there anything better than coming home to cozy cooking smells? 

So then, I jumped into the preparation.  Hugh recommends serving the Three Root Vegetable Mash on it’s own, but I wanted to use it to top a shepherds pie.  I thought the sweetness of the carrots and the parsnips would make a lovely addition to the traditional shepherds pie, which I often find too heavy.

So I browned off some bacon and some turkey mince (I was trying to lighten up a traditional shepherds pie, so I stayed away from beef or lamb.)  I browned onions and a carrot.  I mixed it all together with some worchestershire sauce, some tomato paste and some beef stock.  Poured into a casserole dish, topped with the sweet vegetable mash and baked.  What an amazing dinner to enjoy while the rain came down.  And a complete team effort. 

I may have just had a long day.  I may have just been starving after the workout.  I may have just been pleased to share a cozy meal with my husband.  Maybe this was just the best shepherds pie.  Ever.  I’m not sure why… but it tasted so wonderful to me.  Savoury and hot and a little bit sweet.  It was stick to the ribs, banish the clouds kind of food.  Perfect. 

Three Root Vegetable Mash
This can be made with any variety of root vegetable that you have on hand- potatoes, parsnips, carrots, celeriac, turnips, etc.  But, at least one of the vegetables you use should be potatoes.  It will make the texture better. 

Serves 4 as a side or tops one large shepherds pie

500g of potatoes and at least 2 other root vegetables, chopped and peeled
125g butter
1/4 cup milk
black pepper
salt

Cook the potatoes in one pan and the other roots together, simmering in lightly salted water until completely tender.  Drain the vegetables and return them to the pans to steam off and dry out a little bit (you don’t want much water in your mash.)

In the large of the pans, heat the butter and the milk.  Season the butter and milk with black pepper to taste.  Add the potatoes and mash until smooth.  Add the other vegetables and mash again. 

Hugh calls for running the vegetables through a sieve or processing with beaters until totally smooth.  But I wanted a bit of texture in our mash, so we just used a potato masher.  You could achieve the same outcome with a fork. 

Taste and adjust the seasoning as you see fit.  This would be GREAT served with some spicy sausages as bangers and mash, or served with a steak and gravy. 

Dave Barry, American comedy writer and all around funny-guy once wrote, “We kids feared many things in those days – werewolves, dentists, North Koreans, Sunday School – but they all paled in comparison with Brussels sprouts.”

Was there ever a vegetable with worse PR than the humble Brussels sprout?  Brussels sprouts are a joke, a gag, the go-to food when you want to get a laugh, or a shudder, out of your audience. 

But, honestly, I cannot understand why.  Andy and I both LOVE Brussels sprouts.  LOVE.  We eat them boiled and roasted and stir-fried and sauteed.  I love the nutty flavour of a well-cooked Brussels sprout, the slightly bitter taste that’s tempered by a lovely sweetness if you caramelise the edges.  I love the tightly packed little leaves, almost like the petals of a rose that hasn’t opened yet. 

So, this recipe was always going to be a winner for us.  Any Brussels sprout recipe is a winner for us, but when you add cream, bacon and chestnuts… well, we’re talking gold medal winner.  World Series winner.  Powerball Lottery winner. 

In The River Cottage Year, Hugh calls this a recipe that even Brussels sprouts haters will love.  If you are amongst the Brussels sprout haters out there, give this recipe a go just once.  I bet you like it.  I bet you’ll be wooed over to the cult of the Brussels sprouts love-ahs!  And if you don’t please feel free to put the leftovers in some Tupperware and send them to me.

Creamed Sprouts with Bacon

Serves 4-6 as a side dish

4-6 strips bacon
100grams roasted and peeled chestnuts (I found chestnuts already roasted and peeled in the deli in Winchester), crumbled or roughly chopped
500g (1lb) Brussels sprouts
1 1/2 tbs butter
2-3 tbs double cream
salt and pepper to taste

Place the bacon in a frying pan and fry until crisp.  Remove from the pan, place on a plate lined with papertowels and allow to drain.  Then, crumble the bacon into large chunks. 

Trim the bottoms and the tough outer leaves off the Brussels sprouts.  Place the sprouts in well-salted water and simmer for 8-10 minutes, until just tender.  Drain and place in a food processor.

Add the butter and cream to the food processor, along with a good pinch of both salt and pepper.  Pulse several times until you have a rough puree.  Taste for seasoning and add more salt and pepper as needed. 

Stir the chestnut pieces into the Brussels sprout puree and scrap the puree back into a pan, to reheat.  Heat through gently and serve hot, sprinkled with the bacon. 

Our third  recipe from The River Cottage Year is for poached pears with granita and panna cotta.  I would like to tell you more about this recipe in a poem.

Ode to a Dessert

Poached pears and granita,
I really really want to eat ya.
But panna cotta, you’re not so lucky.
I think you are kind of yucky.

You are part of this recipe, written by Hugh. 
But panna cotta, I’m going to skip you.

So on to the pears, poached and sweet.
And on to the granita, crunchy to eat.

Placed in a pan and covered with wine,
(There was one glass left, that was mine!)
Added a bit of citrus, nothing wrong with fruit,
A bit of pepper and cinnamon to boot. 
Poured in some sugar, made it nice and sweet,
Simmered ‘til soft and ready to eat. 

The liquid was strained into a clean pan,
Tasting sweet and tangy, that was the plan.
Then it was frozen, all fragrant and rich,
‘Til scrapped up with a fork and placed in our dish. 

Pears slightly warm, granita nice and cold,
Eaten with a fork so we could grab hold. 
When it was all gone, husband said, “Nice try…
but not quite as good as your sweet potato pie.”

Poached Pears with Granita

Serves 2

2 pears (Conference or Comice are good for this), peeled
3/4 of a bottle of white wine
1 orange
1 lemon
1 cinnamon stick
3 peppercorns
2 cloves
2 strips of lemon peel
50g caster sugar

Place the pears in a pan into which they fit snugly.  Pour in enough white wine to cover them by 3.4.  Add the juice of one orange and 1/2 lemon.  Top up with water to cover the pears completely.  Add the cinnamon stick, peppercorns, cloves, lemon peel and sugar to the pan. 

Bring gently to the boil. Stir occasionally to dissolve the sugar. 

Simmer the pears until they are soft, but not so tender that they are falling apart.  The time will vary, depending on the size of your pears.  Mine took about 15-20 mins. 

Remove the pan from the heat and allow the pears to cool in the liquid.  Once they are cool, lift the pears out of the liquid and place into a plastic bag, along with a few spoonfuls of the cooking liquid.  Keep in the fridge. 

Strain the remaining liquid into a new pan.  Discard the spices and lemon peel.  Taste the liquid.  Does it need more sugar or lemon juice?  If so, add it in!  Make it to your own tastes. 

Pour the liquid into a plastic container and place into the freezer.  This will become your granita. 

To serve, take the pears out of the fridge and bring to room temperature.  Place one pear on each plate.  Remove the granita from the freezer and use a fork to scrap up the frozen liquid into frozen shards.  Scoop up big spoonfuls of the ice and place it over and around the pear. 

Eat right away before it all starts to melt!

We’re on Day Two, folks, and we’re on to more orange-coloured food.  I’ve noticed that a great deal of my food has taken on an orange-tinge lately.  Must be the abundance of sweet potatoes, pumpkins, squash and carrots in the shops and in my weekly veg delivery box.  But, I’m really ok with that.  To paraphrase a favourite saying of Syracuse University alumni everywhere, “Real Women Eat Orange.”

I am going to go ahead and apologise to Hugh Fernley-Whittingstall, author of The River Cottage Year, right up front today.  This is really not a very good interpretation of his recipe. 

See, the thing is.  I had sweet potatoes in my weekly veg delivery this week.  And, as I was scanning through The River Cottage Year, I spied Hugh’s recipe for Parsnip Risotto.  I immediately skipped over it, thinking, “But, I don’t have any parsnips!”  And that is true.  I didn’t have any parsnips.  I did have sweet potatoes, another starchy, slightly sweet tuber.  So, I basically talked myself into completely changing the recipe to suit my sweet potatoes.  It went like this:

Swaying Towards the Sweet Potatoes- A Play in One Act

Lights up on a yellow kitchen in a small town in southern England.  Two identical women (both wearing oversized Syracuse University sweatshirts) face off in front of an old, out of date oven. 

 Sweet Potato Skate- “But, sweet potatoes and parsnips are very much alike.”

Trying to Stick to a Recipe for ONCE Skate- “Sure.  But,  sweet potatoes are not parsnips.  This recipe calls for parsnips.  I want to follow the recipe.”

Sweet Potato Skate- “If you go buy parsnips, these sweet potatoes might go to waste.  You know how you hate to waste food.”

Trying to Stick to a Recipe for ONCE Skate- “That is true.  I hate to waste.  But maybe I would find another use for those sweet potatoes?”

Sweet Potato Skate- “You won’t.  You’ve planned your meals for the whole week and the sweet potatoes don’t fit anywhere.  And you have a whole new box of veggies being delivered on Thursday.  The sweet potatoes will have to be thrown away.”

Trying to Stick to a Recipe for ONCE Skate- “But, would sweet potatoes even taste good in this recipe??”

Sweet Potato Skate- (sensing victory) “Of COURSE sweet potatoes would be good in this recipe.  They’re sweet, just like parsnips.  They’re starchy, just like parsnips.  And, best of all, they are here and want to be used.  What would HUGH do?  Would HUGH let these sweet potatoes go to waste, just to follow a recipe??”

Trying to Stick to a Recipe for ONCE Skate- (feeling defeated at the mention of food waste and knowing that Hugh would hate to waste perfectly good sweet potatoes) “That is true… Ok, ok.  Fine.” (huffs off to have a Diet Coke.)

Curtain

So, after that debate, and a restorative fizzy drink, I made Sweet Potato Risotto, not Parsnip Risotto.  I’m sorry, Hugh.

The recipe called for the parsnips (or, in my case, sweet potatoes) to be cooked in the pot with the onions at the beginning of the process.  This is where I think I went a bit wrong.  I don’t think I put enough fat in with the onions, which is often a problem for me.  I get nervous about using lots of butter and oil.  Basically, the onions started to burn before the sweet potato pieces were cooked through.  This made the whole risotto a slightly brownish colour that was a bit off-putting. 

I think that in the future, I’ll probably roast the parsnips (or sweet potatoes) in the oven first, and then stir them into the risotto half way through.  That way they will already be soft and caramelised and the risotto will cook more quickly.  Or, in the future, I might just stick to the damn recipe.  We’ll see. 

 Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how many times I typed “sweet potato” today.  It feels like a million.

Parsnip Risotto
I’m going to give this recipe to you guys as Hugh intended.  You can make up your own mind about whether you follow it. 

Serves 2

2 parsnips, peeled and chopped into 1cm dice (cut out the woody core)
1 onion, chopped
2 tbs butter
900ml chicken or vegetable stock
175 g Arborio rice
1/2 cup white wine
Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

Place the butter in a heavy-based pan over medium heat.  Add the onion and cook until it is becoming translucent.  Then, add the parsnips and raise the heat a little.  Cook the parsnips until almost totally tender, stirring frequently to prevent sticking. 

As you are cooking the parsnips, bring the stock to a simmering point in another pan. 

When the parsnips are soft, add the rice to the pan and stir constantly for 2-3 minutes.  Add the wine and continue to stir.  When most of the wine has been absorbed by the rince, begin to ladle the hot stock into the risotto.  Wait for each batch of stock to be absorbed, then add more stock. 

Keep stirring and adding stock until the rice becomes tender and soft, but with a little “bite” in the centre. 

Taste the risotto and add seasoning as needed.  Add a large handful of grated parmesan to the risotto and stir it in to combine. 

Serve the risotto with more parmesan for sprinkling and extra black pepper. 

And… away we go.  Here’s the first recipe of our week of exploring The River Cottage Year.  I thought it was only fitting to start with one of my all-time favourite foods.  SOUP!  Specifically, roasted pumpkin or squash soup. 

I’ve never made pumpkin soup before. To be painfully honest, I don’t really like pumpkin soup.  It’s usually too sweet.  Pumpkins are sweet enough on their own, but then people put things like cinnamon and vanilla into pumpkin soup and it ends up tasting like a bowl of melted pumpkin pie.  Soup should not taste like pie.  I feel strongly about this.

Despite my previous reservations about pumpkin soup I gave this recipe a go, for a few reasons:
1. This recipe contains roasted garlic. There is pretty much nothing in the world that is not improved by adding some roasted garlic. Except, maybe bubble gum.
2. The pumpkins at the farmers market looked so gorgeous and knobbly and bumpy. I just had to bring a few home with me to hack into small pieces.
3. There’s nothing sweet added to this recipe. No cinnamon, no vanilla, not even a trace of nutmeg. Score!
4. This recipe seemed very easy and I didn’t want to tackle some huge project late on a Sunday night. I love you guys, but I love watching football with my husband more.

The soup turned out pretty well, actually. It was sweet, but it was pumpkin sweet, not pie sweet… so that was ok. It was creamy without having any cream added, which is brilliant. And the colour was gawgeous… a creamy pale orange, like the inside of a cream-sicle.

And now confession time. I followed Hugh’s recipe to the letter and tasted a sample before serving it. The soup was lovely just as Hugh intended it. A creamy blend of roasted pumpkin, hot chicken stock and roasted garlic. But, the thing was, I wanted more flavour… more strong, savoury flavour. So, like a rebel with a hungry husband, I added a few quick dashes of cumin to the soup after blending, but before reheating it.

I liked the soup before adding the cumin. I loved the soup after adding the cumin. The cumin added a smoky flavour that balanced beautifully with the sweet pumpkin. When I make this again (and I totally will, it’s easy and healthy and yum), I’ll shake a bit of cumin over the pumpkin as it roasts and then just follow the recipe from there.

Oh!  I just remembered another confession.  Damn.  There was I was thinking I’d only altered the recipe a little tiny bit.  But, in The River Cottage Year the recipe called for thinly sliced slivers of garlic to be fried and sprinkled over the soup before serving.  Well, I tried this twice, burned the garlic twice, said some words I would not say in front of my mother, stomped my foot a little bit and gave up.  Instead, I threw  few sage leaves in the frying pan and topped the soup with fried sage leaves.  Sorted.

Roast pumpkin soup
Adapted from The River Cottage Year

Serves 4

1 medium pumpkin or 2 small squash (I used one butternut squash and 1 acorn squash)
4 cloves of garlic, with their skins on
2 tbs olive oil + more for frying
salt and pepper
2 tsp ground cumin
1 litre chicken stock
8 small sage leaves

Preheat your oven to gas mark 5 (180C, 350F.)  While the oven is preheating, cut your pumpkin to large chunks.  No need to peel!  Just remove the slimy fibers and the seeds from the centre. 

Place the chunks of pumpkin in a large roasting tin.  Drizzle with 2 tbs olive oil, 2 tsp ground cumin and salt and pepper to taste.  Scatter the cloves of garlic around the tin.  Toss together so the pieces and the garlic are coated. 
Roast the pumpkin and garlic for 35-40 minutes, or until tender and nicely browned.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool enough to touch.  Then, using a spoon, scrape the pumpkin flesh from the skins.  Squeeze the garlic cloves out of their skins and add them, along with the pumpkin, to a blender or food processor. 

Heat the chicken stock in a large pan. 

Add enough stock to cover the pumpkin pieces to the food processor and liquidise until completely smooth.  You may have to do this in batches.  Once the soup is liquid, you can adjust the consistency.  Add more stock if you like a thinner soup.  I like this soup to be nice and thick.

Once you have the consistency you want, put the soup into a pot and heat over medium low heat without letting the soup boil. 

While the soup is reheating, warm up olive oil in a small frying pan.  Add the sage leaves to the hot oil and allow to fry for approximately 10-15 seconds.  Remove with a slotted spoon and allow to drain on papertowel.

Serve the soup hot, with fried sage leaves and an extra twist or two of black pepper. 

This week, we’re going to be doing something different around here.  Between now and Friday I’m going to post a new recipe, complete with pictures, each day.  The twist is, all of the recipes will be from the same cookbook. 

I love my cookbook collection.  When we made our recent international move, I culled my collection down to the bare essentials.  It was hard.  I got rid of a few cookbooks that I’d never used (goodbye, 101 Finger Foods) and a few cookbooks that I’d outgrown as a cook (so long, 30 Minute Meals.)  My collection is now a finely honed group of cookbooks that I really love. 

Despite my love for my remaining cookbooks, I do often find myself referring to other food blogs or the internet when I’m searching for a recipe.  It just seems so much easier.  But, I do find that I miss my books, the weight of them, their heft.  I miss the little stories that authors often put with the recipes, personalising them far more than a recipe from a food database. 

This week I’ve chosen to cook from The River Cottage Year, by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.  Hugh is a very famous British chef who works tirelessly to encourage everyone to eat more local, seasonal food.  He has written a number of books and stars in TV shows and, my favourite bit, runs a cooking and learning centre in Dorset called River Cottage.

I think Hugh’s philosophy on food is inspiring.  He encourages urban-based home cooks like me to take advantage of every opportunity that is available to us.  Growing tomatoes on the window sill, buying things you can’t grow from your local farmers market, becoming friends with the butcher and finding out where your meat comes from.  His recipes are seasonal, sustainable and, most importantly, delicious. 

Each chapter in The River Cottage Year is devoted to a certain month.  The recipes in that chapter will explain how to make the most of the freshest and best ingredients available for that specific month.  I’m cheating just a little and I’ll be cooking dishes from the October, November and December chapters of the book. 

I’m really looking forward to focusing on one cookbook for a whole week.  Really learning the tricks of the chef who wrote the book.  I probably won’t do things just as Hugh would, but I’m sure I can learn something from the book that he’s written.  Those of you who have been reading this blog for a while probably know that I’m phsyically incapable of not altering a recipe somewhat, but I think that’s ok.  In fact, I think flexibility and adaptability are key for any cook… and I think Hugh would agree!

Finally, we’ll have some company this week.  My gorgeous and wonderfully talented husband will be taking all of the photos for this blog this week.  Andy has recently started his own blog called abercrombieandphoto.com and this week’s project will be featured on both blogs.  I feel very lucky to work on this with him!  Hope you all enjoy the week!

You know what I used to love?? Potatoes au gratin from the red box. The ones with the perfectly pre-cut round “potatoes” and the gooey cheese-style sauce. Yum. I think I’m going to start wearing lots of orange and white and call it cheese-style. Watch for it in Paris next summer.

Anyway, I loved those instant potatoes and could have eaten the whole box myself when I was a kid. Then, around this time last year, I tried to make my own. As you can see, the results beat the pants off of anything from a red box. My potatoes had the red box “potatoes” sobbing in a corner, feeling really inadequate.

Now, with that victory firmly under my belt (and… let’s be frank, on my thighs and other jiggly bits), I have tackled rainbow chard au gratin.

This was a harder test. Potatoes + cheese-sauce + oven baked = internationally popular best friends, like Matt Damon and Ben Affleck . Dark leafy greens + cheese-sauce + oven baked = odd pairing that people are initially skeptical about, like Merryl Streep starring in an ABBA-themed movie.

And lo… like Mamma Mia, and all things ABBA related, this was a hit! The dark, earthy greens tasted mellow in their robe of cheese-sauce. The crunchy bits on top only highlighted the velvety texture of the cooked greens. This rainbow chard gratin played a supporting role in our dinner, but I think this could easily fit the starring role in a meat-free meal. Just serve it with some slices of bread and a smooth red wine and you’ll be havin’ the time of your life.

Rainbow chard and Stilton gratin

Serves 4 as a side dish

butter
500g (or 1lb) rainbow chard
150ml cream
100ml milk
3 tbs Stilton or other creamy blue cheese
2 cloves of garlic, chopped finely
salt and pepper
2 handfuls of breadcrumbs
2 handfuls of grated cheddar cheese

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4 (180C / 350F.)  Butter a shallow casserole dish and set aside. 

Wash the chard very well.  Meanwhile bring a large pot of water to the boil. 

Chop the stems off the chard and, once the water is boiling, add the stems for 4-5 mins.  Chop the leaves into large chunks and add them to the water for a further 2-3 minutes. 

Drain the chard in a colander and dry very well.  I used my salad spinner to get rid of the extra moisture and it was great. 

While the chard is drying, add the cream, milk, Stilton and garlic to a saucepan and place over medium-low heat.  Stir constantly until the cream thickens slightly and the cheese melts.  Season with salt and pepper to taste and remove from the heat.

Spread the chard out in the buttered casserole dish.  Pour the cream sauce over and make sure the chard is well covered.  Scatter with the breadcrumbs and the cheese. 

Bake in the oven for approximately 30-35 minutes, or until golden.