We had a 2nd class ‘Coupe’ compartment, meaning we had a small room with 4 beds in it, basically a set of bunk beds at either side of a small room. During the day the bottom bed is used as a seat, there is a small table and storage space below the bed. Apart from that there is nothing else in the room. The compartment measures around 6 1/2″ x 5 1/2″. We had no idea who we would be sharing this with.

There is a restaurant car to escape to if you fancy a break every now and then. Also the train stops every few hours for 20 minutes or so. During this time you can hop off and buy various foodstuffs from people on the platform.

It’s not a great idea to flash laptops and other expensive items around on the train, so this post will be a little different from the rest. I kept a diary for the time I was on the train, and this account of our journey is typed straight from there. I am not sure, but by the end I think I may have started to suffer from cabin fever.

12th January 2009

“Day One”

We are sharing our cabin with a quiet Russian girl and a very chatty Russian man who boarded the train with what looked like the Russian equivalent of Red Bull in his hand. He knew a few words of English so we had a bit of a chat with him, showing him through our little book of photographs of family and friends. We gave him a beer. He told us he was a Security Guard working in Moscow. He works there for 20 days and returns home for 10 days each month. Obviously a regular on the train. When the beers ran out he left us, heading in the direction of the bar, I expect he will come back very drunk later.

A very relaxed evening playing scrabble, backgammon and reading, currently Adulous Huxley “Doors of Perception”.

13th January 2009

“Day Two”

As expected the man came back after 2 or 3 hours last night very, very drunk. He plonked himself on the seat next to the girl, stripped his top half off, revealing a big wobbly belly and pair of man boobs and began gibbering. I’m not sure what’s worse. A drunk you can understand, or one who literally is speaking in a foreign language. At least this gave us some excuse not to join in with whatever ridiculous conversation he was trying to have with us.

He kept asking to shake hands then trying to kiss my hand. He kept touching the girls leg. She was amazing with him. I have no idea what words were being passed between them but she appeared to be being incredibly patient. She made him a cup of tea – which he promptly scolded himself on and spat out. She made his bed and told him to get in it. He did, but seconds later tumbled back down. A few stern words from train guard seemed to sort him out and he eventually settled and went to sleep.

The man left the train at about 1am. I think we were all quite happy he wasn’t going to be with us all the way!

Andy went out onto the train platform to buy us some breakfast this morning. He came back with a bag of small pieces of dry sweet bread. The girl, who’s name we have discovered is Natalia gave us a very strange look and offered us instead a boiled egg each and some beetroot salad. We had this on some bread we had brought with us.

A very tasty breakfast it was. Not sure if this is normal breakfast material, it seemed to be what she had brought for herself and we both enjoyed it, so I’m guessing it was. Very interesting to see what different people have for breakfast. It’s also amazing how much you can communicate between people when you have no shared language.

From the window we keep seeing huge areas of Dachas. These are like holiday homes for people living in the cities. They look a bit like a very fancy allotment. Lots of plots of land separated by wooden fences, each with a small house, space for growing fruit, vegetables or just relaxing. They are used as a base for forest walks and collecting wild mushrooms. How much would I love something like this at home?

Time on the train is odd. All timetables run to Moscow time, so all clocks show different time to what the ‘real’ time is off the train, or according to the light. We’re also moving across several time zones, about 1 or 2 hours a day. This is quite unsettling. A kind of slow motion jetlag. We will have gone forward in time 5 hours by the end.

14th January

“Day Two PM”

We went to the restaurant car last night for dinner. The menu was entirely in Russian. After some time scouring through it comparing each word to ones in our utterly useless phrasebook we eventually matched one up “Meat”. Eventually we managed to piece together a sentence meaning something like ” Do you have anything suitable for vegetarians” and took it over to the waitress. She read it out to the person who seemed to be running the restaurant, who smiled and said “NYET!”.

We finished our beers and went back to our compartment for a tasty bowl of instant noodles. Joy. John in St Petersburg had told us that the Russians call these things “Bomzh-paket”, which translates to “Tramps Packets”. Exactly.

The journey to the restaurant car is something of an adventure. Stepping into the gap between each train is a little like stepping out into Siberia for a few seconds. The door handles are coated in ice. The floor has a couple of centimeters of snow. It is really loud, dark and moving very fast. Scary.

Natalia left the train in the evening and a few minutes later the train guard appeared at our door, “scoobely joov” she said, and passed us a bag. A little confused we used our only Russian, “Spaceba” (”thank you”) and took the bag from her.

I can only assume it was from Natalia. She had made a few phone calls before she left and this pack contained home made things packaged very precisely in exactly the way all the food she had brought herself was – in small plastic bags. How kind. She must have been horrified at our diet of packed soup and tramps packs. The parcel contained bananas, bread, some homemade oat cookies and something that looks like a kind of cheese plait. Before leaving the train she had already given us more boiled eggs and some rectangular pieces of squishy white stuff, which between us we managed to decipher were made of sugar and egg white.

I don’t think we could have had two more opposite room mates than the ones we have had so far. The man, very chatty, but after beers very rude. He rambled on the whole time, had little concern for the feelings of the people in his carriage and was very noisy and falling around before going to bed. And this girl, sat quietly for most of the journey, signed a cross each time we passed a church, was very thoughtful and generous and prayed for at least half an hour before going to bed.

This cheese plait is gorgeous! The taste, a mix of smoke plastic, string and salt works very well!

In the evening our new guest arrived. This is very strange. It’s like having people to come and visit you, but you have no idea who, or when they will arrive. Our new guest is a Russian man in a suit who speaks quite a bit of English. It turned out his name is also Andrew and he introduced us to a Russian superstition. If you find yourself sitting between two people of the same name you can make a wish, and it will come true. I made my wish and hope it comes true. I like this idea. I think we will keep it.

We had a few beers, chatted abut our trip and he mentioned that some people in Russia follow a different calendar, so today was actually New Years Day.

“Snovem Godom!”

Time for a celebration and a few beers!

14th January 2009

DAY 3

Russian Andrew got off at 1am and no more guests arrive at the next station. We have the compartment to ourselves for most of the day.

Really getting into life on the train. Drinking tea with hot water from the Samovar, reading (Now Gogol, “How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Nikiforovich”) and staring out of the window. It’s a beautiful day today. Clear blue skies, miles of leafless birch trees.

From the guide book, “From the train it appears as if there is a continuous forest in the distance. However, if you walk towards it you will never get there as what you are seeing are clumps of birch and aspen trees spaced several kilometers or more apart. The lack of landmarks in this area has claimed hundreds of lives.”

The cups on the train are great. Russian Andrew had told us that in the early days of the train they would be filled to the top to test the smoothness of the track. If one drop was spilt the person responsible for that part of the track would be in big trouble.

I’m beginning to think we don’t have enough time on the train.

Our new guests have arrived. 2 men in uniform.

They don’t say a word to us or each other. The younger one listens to terrible Russian pop music on his headphones. It is so loud! Must be deafening for him.

15th January 2009

Day 4

The boring railway men got off at 1am. We had the carriage to ourselves for the rest of the night. Nice.

Bizarre thoughts are starting to enter my head. I begin to wonder if I have gone insane. Maybe none of this is really real? I could be locked in a hospital room somewhere and this is all in my imagination. Is this why I haven’t left the train?

Apart from occasional odd thought flicking through my mind life on the train great. There is so much to do in our 5″x6″ room I don’t think I could ever be bored. There is no pressure to go anywhere. No pressure to do anything. Just relax and be. How long could I stay here?

3900km

Outside it’s turning gloomy. I can see snow drifting across the fields and whipping up in miniature whirlwinds at the side of the train.

Andrew has gone into full blown train spotter mode. He is taking photographs of of every train we pass and counting the carriages. I will buy him an anorak when we get back.

The radio on the train is controlled by the attendant. The music is played through all the corridor and we have a control in our room for the volume. Today lunchtime seems to be ABBA hour. I turn it up a little. We will start drinking VODKA soon.

There are two attendants in each carriage. Their jobs are: checking tickets, putting coal on the fire for the heating and samovar and hoovering the little carpet in each of the compartments once a day. Ours seem very friendly.

I AM NOT MOVING BUT MY BODY IS

I haven’t won a single bloody game for around 24 hours now. Andy has even beaten me at scrabble. I’m going to throw the cards off the train.

German Whist – lost – 20-1
Shithead – lost – 2-1

Our new guests have arrived. Boo. We were going to have a party.

A Russian couple. The posh looking lady changes her clothes for a fetching blue and white shell suit. Her husband has gold teeth.

Being in the room with these other people is strange. Both couples are independently having conversations with no idea what the other is saying. They may as well not even be in the room.

I feel like they are just in my brain. Someone is talking in my ear. Are they really there? They could be completely imagined. No interaction has taken place between them and anyone else. Not even the guard. They haven’t spoken to anyone..

The lady hasn’t been to hoover our carpet today. How disappointing.

Only 12 hours until we get off the train. I don’t think I am ready to leave.

I have invented a new variation of scrabble. 10 extra points for every word on a theme. Eg todays theme is animals. I have:

Beef
Hog
Beavers
Lion
Bee

I will never play this game again. Not only has Andrew worked out how to play properly, but he has also memorised ALL of the 2 and 3 letter words. This is very bad. Dza = a small boat?!! I don’t stand a chance. I don’t have the inclination to do the same so I can compete. So all is over. I suppose these differences are what make us interesting. But for now GRRR.

I have a theory that words chosen are related to what is on your mind. Psychology and awareness studies show you are more likely to answer designed questions with certain words if primed earlier. The main ingredient of KVAS is Rye.

I just lifted my pen to play a move in scrabble. The letters seem to slide around on their platform.

This game of scrabble is over. Andrew claims he has won, but he has clearly forgotten the animal rule. I gain +60 points.

The lady in our compartment is asleep.

We have found a secret compartment. Next to the toilets, no one is in the room. We have left the lady to sleep.

We have taken 57 photos.

Here’s a lovely recipe for a quinoa salad I got from Scrumptious a random food blog I stumbled across while wondering what to do with the jar of quinoa that’s been sitting in the cupboard for well over a year. I’ve been a bit scared of these small grains ever since I saw them, not sure what to do with them, how to cook them, what they would taste like blah blah blah, but it turns out they’re pretty easy going little chaps and they assisted in making this very tasty, hearty but fresh tasting salad. Apparently it’s very good for you too. A ‘Super Grain’ no less. Wooo. I wonder if that’s a bit like Super Gran. There’s only one letter in it, must be. Maybe super grains turn you into Super Grans?!

Now, I said I got the recipe from a blog, but what actually happened was I’d seen it and decided I was going to make it after I’d been to the shops, then got part way through and realised I was missing several of the key ingredients, so I would say this was influenced by rather than a direct cover of the original. I’d also intended to make it with goat’s cheese rather than feta, but was quite surprised to find that the (non-organic) goats cheese was almost twice the price of the organic feta and promptly changed my mind.

Another note on the missing ingredients, the original was fairly heavily based on parsley and mint which  I tried to get from the supermarket at the end of the road. I’d already walked the half hour there and back to the other shops and it had started pouring down so I reluctantly decided to see if I could pick the herbs  when I went to get the feta.  The only fresh herb they sold was basil. In my opinion another pointer that they don’t really care about food or their customers. Grrr. Shouldn’t really be shopping there in the first place, but it’s the only place within walking distance I’ve found where you can buy organic milk, cheese, eggs etc. What to do, what to do?

Anyway, enough whittering on, it all worked out fine in the end. Maybe one day I’ll make the other too and do like a taste challenge. Here’s the recipe, thanks to Juno for the inspiration…

Quinoa, Beetroot and Feta Salad

For the salad:

• 2 beetroots peeled and cut into smallish wedges
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup quinoa
• 2 cups water
• 8 cherry tomatoes, quatered
• 3 spring onions, finely sliced
• 5 tbsp finely chopped fresh coriander
• S+P
• 100g feta cheese in small cubes

For the dressing:

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• Juice of one lemon
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• ½ tsp chilli powder
• 2 chunky cloves of garlic, finely chopped
• 1 tsp tahini
• 1 tsp English mustard

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Put the the beetroot in a roasting tin, add a drizzle of oive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper and toss well to coat. Place in the oven and bake for about an hour or until tender right through.
2. Put the dried quinoa into a sieve and rinse well under cold running water. Now put the quinoa, water and salt into a saucepan and bring to the boil. Cook for 15-20 minutes, or until the quinoa is fluffy and tender. Drain off any remaining water (there shouldn’t really be much/any) and leave to cool a little.
3. In the serving bowl put the tomatoes, spring onion and coriander.
4. Whisk together the dressing ingredients.
5. Now tip the warm quinoa into the salad bowl, pour over all but 2 tablespoons of the dressing and toss well to combine. Season with salt and pepper. Top with the beetroot slices and feta.
6. Shake the remaining dressing over the top of the salad.
7. Allow to stand for 30 minutes to allow the flavours to develop.
8. Serve at room temperature with hot pita bread.

Where to start? The randomness has continued. We began our Scotland leg of the trip on Arran. Beautiful 25ish mile long island, “Scotland in miniature” it says in our guide book. It does seem to have it all. Beautiful beaches, seals, deer, eagles, lots of ancient sites, standing stones, forests, rivers and mountains, the tallest of which, Goatfell (2868ft!) we climbed for Andy’s birthday. Anyway when we arrived we took a wrong turn looking for our campsite, stopped to ask a lady for directions and she told us we could camp the garden at her B+B for the same price as the campsite if we wanted, but then decided that as it was raining and the para-gliders who were meant to be staying hadn’t turned up we’d might as well just stay in the house! She showed us around the house, which was lovely, and told us we could, “sleep where we liked, eat what we liked and pay what we liked”! Somewhat bemused by this offer Andy and I went to the car to collect our things and ended up staying for 5 nights.

Patsy was a really lovely lady, she had lots of good advice of places to walk and things to see, on our final night we all had dinner together, we made her the famous “Laura Pike Pie” and she told us the amazing tale of how she’s arrived on the island 30 years ago with her 3 small children and only what she could carry. “It was like Robinson Crusoe, a real adventure” she said. People from around the island helped them out bringing them the various things they needed, like knives, forks and plates, and they settled there. They’d lived in a caravan on the beach for 6 years, collecting welks occasionally for a bit of money until they finally moved into the old coastguard’s cottage, which was where we stayed. It was on the cliffs of Kildonan at the south side of the island. Anyone thinking of of a trip up north, or going to Arran I would really recomend going to stay there, it’s a lovely place, there are some booking details on her daughters paragliding website, flying fever, you can also see her own website where you can see some of the portraits she does here.

We went to a couple of creameries while we were in Arran, which both had visitor centres. Don’t get too excited if you go to visit though, there is no guided tour or interesting information on the different cheese production techniques, you can just stare thorough a window at some one dipping cheese in wax or at a big machine stirring milk. Still there are always lots of samples to try, my favourite was just the plain cheddar at the Torrylinn Creamery in Kilmory, so creamy, mmm.

We made halloumi!

A couple of weeks ago now Andy and I spent a few days WWOOFing at Canon Frome Court, a community of around 45 people in Herefordshire.

As part of our UK tour we’ve been trying to fit in a bit of WWOOFing, as well as it saving us a few pennies (a few hours work in exchange for accommodation and food) we also wanted to experience different ways of living, both from the ideas of having a small holding, and also living as part of an intentional community.

This was our first stay in a community and we really didn’t know what to expect. We has just spent a week entirely by ourselves, doing very little, house sitting in Devon, so as you could imagine it was a bit of a shock to the system to drive through the 15ft gates topped with a statue of an eagle with a bloody torn off hand in it’s mouth and then down a half mile drive, to a beautiful, though rather daunting, Georgian mansion where we were to join the whole community for dinner just 20 minutes after we arrived.

Luckily everyone was very nice, no one tried to chop off our hands to feed to birds of pray, and we spent the evening eating lovely homegrown food, drinking wine and chatting. Phew!

From what I’ve seen it appears no two communities are the same, they all run differently in terms of numbers, membership, ideals, living arrangements etc. Before we got to Canon Frome we weren’t really sure how this one was set up, we’d just been recommended them by a friend who told us it was the best example they’d seen of a community that “worked” in that things got done and people didn’t just constantly argue.

Canon Frome was set up in 1978 (so it’s exactly as old as me!) and they do seem to have managed to get things sorted in that time (although I was told there were a few fist fights in the first few years).

They run a 40 acre farm, with cows, chickens, geese, sheep, an incredible 1.5 acre walled garden for veg and an orchard. Everything seemed very well managed and productive. At this place people buy an individual unit, their own house basically. In fact I suppose it’s a bit like buying one of these “luxury apartments” in a converted old house in Manchester, except for these really were luxury and you actually interacted with your neighbours instead of ignoring them in the hall ways.

People have responsibilities for a certain space of land or care of animals, it’s recognised that some people may be able to do more than others and all produce is shared equally. Most people have a job outside of the community too. Really it was all very sensible and definitely not just a load of hippies rolling around naked in fields as part of some kind of cult (you can tell this is what some people are thinking when we say where we’ve been).

Not sure it’s the place for us, definitely not at the moment at least, I think I would prefer somewhere smaller with more communal meal and activities (although I’m sure that’s exactly the kind of place where people constantly fall out!), but it was a great experience anyway. I imagine it would be a lovely place to bring up kids. At one point while we were working we saw a group of kids appear from between the trees. They peered over curiously at what we were doing, all of them were munching their way through whole cucumbers. Kids choosing to eat cucumber, imagine that.

I think my favorite part was the walled garden, which was fantastic. It had a great rotation system, split into four sections the same group managed the same plot each year and the crops moved, so you would have your own patch to nurture and improve while getting different things to work on each year.

The polytunnels were very impressive, one was entirely full of tomatoes, the other had melon, early courgettes and crazy cucumbers, which on one single day had produced a crop of 42 cucumbers, some were wriggly and spiky.

Perhaps the best thing about it though is when you get to go pick and make your dinner out of the food grown there. On the last night of our stay Andy and I cooked for ourselves and we had a small feast including the halloumi we’d made that day, lots of different spicy salad leaves, nasturtians, courgettes, tomato, basil and mozzarella salad and tzatziki all of which were made entirely from home produce. So satisfying.

I was particularly excited about the tzatziki- goats yoghurt fresh from the day, garlic they’d just harvested, mint I’d just picked, cucumber from the polytunnel. I just thought it was crazy it was possible. I want a goat now. Halloumi and Tzatziki. Hurrah!

Thanks to all the people at Canon Frome for all you taught us and the great time we had there!

Click here for more information on WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms).

Click here for more about Canon Frome including how it is run, farm stays, room hire  and membership application.

I’m going to really miss the chickens. They’re so funny. The way they walk is ridiculous, and the way they run even more ridiculous. It’s as though their head is attached to their legs by a string through their body and it wobbles backwards and forwards faster the faster they go. They hear you coming out of the back door and if they’re not already there by the time you have got outside they’ll come racing across the yard sliding to a stop by your feet. Bwoooooooaaak! Can’t wait until I have some of my own.

Despite their cheeky bean eating behaviour I’ll also miss the cats. In fact I’d rather they were eating beans than their habit of bringing various animals in for us. They seem to have been brought up with great manners and like to eat them at the table. The sound of the cat eating my beans was much more enjoyable than the sound of it crunching through a mouse’s skull. Still they are very cute and seem to like hanging out with us on an evening, which is nice.

I think we’ll both be sad to leave tomorrow. We’ve had a great time, what a lovely place, and what lovely people for trusting us to look after it despite the fact the really don’t know us at all, very grateful to them we are. I couldn’t imagine that kind of thing having happened in Manchester. Anybody else in need of a friendly pair of house sitters feel free to contact us. This is my kind of job. Just pottering around doing very little for a week. Nice.

Here’s the recipe for the quiche I made last night. I was worried after an attempt some years ago that it would go horribly wrong somehow, but it was really easy and incredibly tasty. Andy was making some very strange faces and noises while he was eating it.

Broccoli and Blue Cheese Quiche

For the pastry:
6oz plain flour
3 oz butter
pinch of salt

For the filling:
1 small head broccoli
8 eggs
1/2 pint milk
100g blue cheese
150g mature cheddar
black pepper

Mix all pastry the ingredients together, rubbing the flour into the butter until it is like fine breadcrumbs. Then add a tablespoon of water and mix it together. Add a tiny amount more water if necessary to bring it together. Not too much or it will go sticky. Put this in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 190.

Line 25cm quiche dish with pastry. Line the pastry with silver foil and fill with baking beans. Bake for 20 minutes covered up , then remove the foil and bake for another 5 minutes.

Lower the oven to 150

Put the broccoli into boiling water for 3 minutes, drain and put in the pastry case.

Mix together the eggs crumbled or grated cheese, milk and pepper and pour them into the case with the broccoli.

Bake on the bottom shelf of the oven for 35 minutes until golden brown. The quiche will begin to rise up a little and should feel fairly solid to the middle. Well not like rock hard, just not sloppy eggs.

I realised it’s been a while since I actually wrote a recipe on here, and that being one of the main reasons for the blog I thought it was time I did. So here’s a run down of what we had for dinner last night, using the things bought from the market that morning which I’d written about yesterday and also a few eggs from the chickens in the yard. Thank you chickens.

On the menu last night was:

• Pan con Tomate
• Tortilla
• Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms with Roasted Garlic
• Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad

Pan con Tomate

Really simple, just relies on good quality ingredients. Get some really nice thinly sliced bread, ciabatta, or a baguette type thing is good, ours was homemade (woo, get you). Toast the slices of bread. As you eat them rub the surface all over with a raw garlic clove, then drizzle with virgin olive oil, then rub with really ripe juicy tomato. Then eat it. This is one of my favourite things to do with a meal like this. We’d tried it in Spain (surprise) last year and have been hooked since.

Tortilla

This takes a while, maybe even allow about an hour or more altogether. Since I have nothing to do (woop!) this is fine by me. Even when I was working it was still well worth it. I prefer to cook the tortilla even slower than is probably really necessary as I’m sure it makes things taste nicer. Also this time I was cooking on a Rayburn which is definitely not a cooker for someone in a hurry. Perhaps they ought to be installed in houses throughout the country to force us into the joys of slow food.

1 onion, thinly sliced
3 potatoes, thinly sliced
6 eggs, beaten
olive oil

Heat the oil in a frying pan, not really sure how much it is, but it’s quite a bit, probably about 1/2cm on the bottom of the pan. Basically it needs to be enough to well coat the onion and potatoes and a bit more, so if you need to add extra, tip some more in.

Stir in the onion and potatoes so all are well coated in oil, put a lid on the pan and leave to cook over a low heat (erm no temperature control on my cooker as far as I could see, but it was pretty slow on one side anyway). Cooking on gas I’d put it as low as possible and let them sweat and slowly cook through, stirring round every ten mins or so for about 40 minutes. I think. I’ve never actually timed it, it may be longer. You can tell when it’s ready though as you can try a potato and if it’s cooked it’s cooked. Some little bits might stick to the bottom and onions go caramelly and a bit brown. This is good. They taste nice, just make sure you don’t let it get too stuck, scrape around when you stir.

Pour in the eggs. Again keep the heat low. Now you just leave it. The eggs will cook through, hopefully without burning and you don’t stir anymore from now. I always end up pushing the eggs away from sides a little bit as I just can’t leave it alone. You don’t need the lid on anymore.

After some time (20 minutes?) you will see that it looks as though the cookedness of the eggs is near the top. The whole thing will be quite firm all the way through, with just the top needing a little a little heat to brown it off. At this point I would usually do some fancy two plate manouver to flip the tortilla and return it to it’s pan to be cooked on the other side. This time however I was a little worried about the non non-stickness of the pan and also thought I might throw egg all over the kitchen, which isn’t mine, so just popped it in the oven for a little bit. You could also probably just put it under the grill for a few minutes too, sure that would be fine. And that’s it.

This makes a huge tortilla, which serves about 6 people, but Andy ate all of it that night. Only joking. We kept the rest in the fridge which you can then have for breakfast, or lunch as I did. Saving the effort of cooking another meal or 3. So really it doesn’t take that long. 1 hour divided by 3 meals = 20 minutes. Coolio. More time for sitting in the sunshine.

Blue Cheese Stuffed Mushrooms with Roasted Garlic

This is dead easy and quick to prepare. Very rich tasting. Not sure it’s that good for you, but who cares, I’m not eating it every night. This is quantities for 2 people, any more and I think you’d be sick, although you’d want to keep eating them.

8 mushrooms
Blue cheese (I used Danish, but any will do)
3 big garlic cloves, cut into thirds
Butter
Breadcrumbs
Black pepper

Pull out the stalks from the mushrooms and arrange them in an ovenproof dish.

Fill the centres with blue cheese.

Put the chopped garlic around the mushrooms with dots of butter.

Sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and black pepper.

Put it in the oven at about 220 for about 25 minutes until breadcrumbs start to brown.

This was really really nice. As well as the mushrooms being mega, maybe the best bit is the scrapings of breadcrumbs and roasted garlic from around the dish. Mmm mmm mmm.

Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad

For some reason I’d been led to believe that cooking beetroot was a difficult task and that the only possible way to eat them was from a big jar of pickled vinegariness. For that reason I’ve not really eaten them since I was about 12 until recently when I discovered it was all lies. Beetroot are easy to cook and taste so much nicer cooked this way than pickled. You can even just roast them like a potato. It’s crazy. Who’d have thought it. You can roast a vegetable other than a potato. Wow.

1 beetroot per person, peeled and cut into chunks
Broad beans
A hard cheese, I used the Cornish Yarg we’d just bought but I think something like pecorino might be better
Olive oil
Balsamic Vinegar
Lettuce leaves

Prepare the beetroot and put it in a pan with about a tablespoon of oil and a couple of balsamic vinegar and enough water to cover. Bring to the boil and let it boil fairly rapidly until cooked and the liquid is reduced. This will take about 40 minutes. You may need the lid on to steam the beetroot of the liquid is going down too quick, or take it off if you need it to reduce more. Eventually all you want to be left with is cooked beetroot and a little thick tasty sweet juice.

The broadbeans need podding, dropping into boiling water for 2 minutes and then shelling. They don’t then need to be eaten by a cat, as half of mine were. I couldn’t believe it. Shelling broadbeans is such a mission I get Andy to do it. The salad was nearly ready to be put together, I’d turned my back for two minutes and the cat was on the table gobbling them down. AND when it saw me see it instead of stopping it started eating faster so it could eat as many as possible before I got close enough to shoo it away! And then after dinner the cat acts all sweet and meows and wants to curl up and sleep on your knee so you think it’s so cute you forgive it. Humph. Very cunning.

Anyway, back to the recipe. When the beetroot is cooked and the beans are out of their shells, arrange the lettuce on a plate, pile the warm beetroot on top, lay thin slices of cheese across (however much you like) and top with the broad beans (or what’s left of them if you have a cat. Grrr). You can drizzle any remaining juice from the beetroot over the salad.

The Beetroot and Broad Bean Salad (with less than the intended quantities of beans):

The cat that ate the beans lounging on my knee after dinner:

The Gurnards Head Near Zennor, St Ives

Erm you can’t really see the cheese on here, I was distracted by the amazing elderflower pudding with gooseberrys that I accidently ordered when we got the cheese. Some how we also accidently ordered main meals aswell. I would recommend doing the same. While the choice for veggies wasn’t huge what there was was lovely, and if you’re not veggie the meals looked amazing. I’m pretty sure they will have sourced a lot of it locally too as there are a lot of great organic farms around here and the owner seemed well involved with the local community. We went on a wild food walk starting from here the day before and the lady who ran it supplied the pub with various wild food she’d foraged that day for their menu including rock and marsh sampire, wood sorrel, seaweed and mallow flowers. Going off on a tangent a bit her walk was great, if you’re ever in the area I would recommend going on one and also she does weekends which look fantastic where you go foraging then cook various wild food dishes. Here’s her  Fat Hen website. Oh the cheese yeah, one blue, one brie, one cheddar, we’ve found it to be the standard arrangement. Should start asking what they all were and taking notes as that’s about all I can remember. Oops. We’ll have to go back. Damn. Anyway I can safely give them about 8 out of ten. More biscuits might have been better, but then I’d always say that.

The Bird in Hand Hayle, Cornwall

I liked this one, lovely sunny day, bench outside, good generous chunks of cheese, bit of fruit. I’d normally go for crackers rather than bread but I guess this was a plougmans, which comes with bread not cheese erm… and the bread was very nice, so it was all ok.  Good pint of lovely 7% farmhouse cider to wash it down with and I left the pub with a sunny cidery smile on my face. 8.5 out of 10.