Mushroom season is here. Hurrah! I'm not sure if it's normal, but the floors up here seem to be carpetted with them too, hurrah! We've seen over 55 different types so far. I'm thinking of starting a new section on here devoted to my little friends, so if I can work out how to do it I'll be posting all the different types we find plus notes on edibility, habitat etc.  But obviously don't believe anything I say, we use three different books, which though generally a good mix, cross referenced say different things sometimes and I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's poisoning. The books we are currently using are the Collins Gems "Mushrooms", which is great, has good, clear pictures, pretty much all the common things you are likely to see and references similar mushrooms things can be confused with, then "Mushrooms" by Roger Phillips, which is really comprehensive, but maybe a little too much so when you're just starting out, it's best to look for things in the little book first and then check there's nothing else simlar in this one. We also have the River Cottage "Mushrooms" (all these people clearly spend days trying to ...

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 ...

BBQs seem to be featuring heavily in our summer tour. My friend Karen bought me a great little fire bucket BBQ for my birthday, it only needs a few coals, gets to cooking heat pretty quick and lasts more than long enough to cook everything we've wanted to so far.  We've been really lucky with the weather too, even when it appears to be chucking it down in the rest of the country we've been sat out in sunshine, so it's had quite a few outings. A good thing I've found to do it just to get everything you intend to put on, mushroom, peppers, onions etc and just stick em in a big bowl and stir them round with marinade, then you can just keep putting them on as you want more. We did these ones with a bit of sour cream, paprika, crushed garlic, cayenne pepper, olive oil, salt and pepper. Yum. We then eat them in pittas with loads of guacomale, soured cream with salald and nachos. And drank cider. Lots of cider. The place we were staying on these picture was pretty cool too. It's a place just outside of Cirencester called Abbey home farm. It has an ...

This Christmas I have mostly been eating. And drinking. And eating more. I've probably eaten more over the past couple of weeks than I did for the whole of the rest of the year... ok maybe that's a bit silly, but it was definitely a lot. Very nice it has been too, lovely people, lovely food and lots of fun. The feasting started a few weeks ago with the first of 3 Christmas meals we somehow volunteered to make for people. For the main course I'd made a Mushroom Wellington, which was so nice we decided to make the same thing for the other two Christmas meals. (Image nicked from Yum Blog - hope you don't mind! ;-)) Mushroom Wellington 500g Puff Pastry 60ml sunflower oil 675g onions, chopped 4 garlic clove, crushed 450g chestnut mushrooms, left whole 2 tbsp chopped tarragon 4 tbsp soy sauce salt and fresh ground black pepper 320g broken cashew pieces 175g fine breadcrumbs, freshly made, white or wholemeal 320g ground almonds 1 egg, beaten Roll out the puff pastry into two rectangles, each 30 x 23 cm, and set aside in the fridge to rest. Meanwhile, make the filling. Heat ...