Book Review: Virgin to Veteran by Sam Stern

Sam Stern first published in his teens, 5 books later and he’s now hit his twenties and his writing is growing with him. The target audience for this book is really those who are starting out, needing a bit of a ‘how to’ guide for eating well, including the buying and storage as well as the actual prep and cooking of food.

But don’t be fooled, this is no idiot’s guide, this is a book for all whether you know your way around the kitchen or not. The useful guides on buying, storing and basic prep are informative and easy to read for those who need a bit of background information, great use of typography make these pages fun too. But if you already know your way round the kitchen the recipes will still leave you pleased to have this book on hand. There is no patronising stuff here, although if you don’t know how to boil and egg, scramble and egg or make an egg banjo Sam will tell you how.

He will also show you how to cook everyday classics like spaghetti bolognaise and roast chicken. It doesn’t stop there though, the full range includes everything you need from a quick supper to a show-off lunch for friends; from thai style salads (delicious by the way) to boeuf borguignon; from asparagus ravioli to salmon nicoise via an amazing raspberry cheesecake. All with easily laid out and easy to follow recipes and some super photography.

If you are having summer BBQ’s now the sun is shining (hooray!) then Sam’s burgers and salads will do you proud, with everything to impress the devoted meat eaters and vegetarians alike. In fact the falafel style butternut fritters are brilliant, and made a perfect supper while Ella was supporting National Vegetarian Week and going the week without meat. Sorry no photo, they were devoured before I remembered to capture the moment!

If you have a sweet tooth, don’t worry you are well catered for too! Ever fancied making your own custard creams? I am all poised and ready to get going on the ice-cream , frozen yoghurt and sorbet suggestions, topped off with some salted caramel sauce.

What I like most of all? Sam’s little asides against the recipes, with ‘cash savers’ giving tips to make a dish go further; ‘change it up’ offering adaptations of the same recipe; and ‘bonus bites’ offering new dishes based on similar basic ingredients. These asides make the book for me, this really gives confidence in the kitchen, permission to play with food and an encouragement to think around adding new ingredients and flavours to a dish; this truly makes a veteran out of a virgin.

If you want to get your hands on this great little all rounder for your kitchen (or for those darling offspring leaving for uni after the summer), it is published by Quadrille ISBN 978-1-84949-114-3

Thank you to Quadrille for sending me a review copy.

Filo with Spinach, Filo with Cinnamon

Spinach & ricotta languishing in the fridge, filo in the freezer. What else could I do but bring them all together in happy parcels. Teen Piglet-Twiglet loves filo, so a quick and easy supper was made in no time at all.

But, if you’ve used filo you will know that once a packet is opened, it really needs to be used right away, it is so delicate and prone to drying out that it really doesn’t keep….Ella has the answer for any excess pastry, cinnamon and brown sugar every time!

For the savoury:
Sweat some leek or spring onion in a little olive oil, once soft add the spinach and wilt down. Take off heat and stir in enough ricotta to coat thoroughly and make a creamy soft mix. Season with seasalt and plenty of black pepper, add some freshly grated nutmeg. Cool.
Melt some butter ready for brushing the filo, spread layers brushing with butter in between to stick them together. I use about 4 or 5 layers, then spoon the spinach mix in and fold up the filo to enclose, brushing with butter. The shape and size of parcels can be whatever you choose.  Individual sized work well, square are easy to manage but triangles are more traditional. Brush the outside with melted butter and bake til golden brown at 180°c, about 20 minutes. Enjoy with a big Greek salad.

For the sweet:
With any leftover pastry, layer it up, brushing with melted butter and sprinkling with cinnamon and sugar between the layers. Fold or roll, bake at  180°c til golden brown. Ella’s favourite with vanilla ice cream!

Chilli, mint & coriander crab salad

Yesterday morning I wandered down the hill into town to visit my optician for an eye test, completely unaware that there was a French market to greet me, combined with a bit of a farmer’s market alongside. Now the town I live in is a sleepy Devon market town, so the farmers market tends to be just that, a no-frills gathering of locals from surrounding farms with produce to sell. I have bought the best eggs from the little stalls that seem to pop up at random on Tuesdays and Fridays. And it seems, on occasional Saturdays too.

The ‘French’ market was a bit disappointing really. Ok there was some nice goat cheese and air dried sausage to be had, but I couldn’t work out what was so French about baklava, dried fruits & nuts, and pick’n’mix.

One stall did catch my eye and pull me over, The Salcombe Fishwife. The sight of brown crab, lobster and spider crab had drawn a few others too. Sarah (the fishwife) is clearly passionate about her family business, her husband and son land the catch and Sarah brings it to the markets. It was great to see children fascinated by the crustaceans on display and listening avidly as Sarah described how to tackle the crab once home, and then persuading their parents to buy one for lunch.

The lobster and crab for sale had been landed the day before and cooked the night before coming to market. After a few Twitter discussions about how most of our local spidercrab end up abroad, I was happy to see these rather alien looking creatures being sold locally, and bought a little one, just big enough for lunch for one. Sarah removed the gills , or ‘deadman’s fingers’ for me which saved me one of the messy bits. It isn’t difficult to take the meat from the shell, claws and legs, a little fiddly and a bit messy but the sweet delicious meat is worth a bit of effort. The Salcombe Fishwife website has a handy guide on how to prepare the crab if you are unsure (I used a hammer!), the stall is in Newton Abbot town centre on Fridays if you are tempted.

It has to be said that there is not so much meat in a spider crab as a brown crab, but it is mostly white meat and is so deliciously sweet I urge you to give it a try.  I picked a small crab, which yielded just over 100g of white meat, enough for a salad lunch for one or a starter for two.

Crab cakes would have been lovely but I was impatient and so it was a quick and simple salad.

I mixed the lovely crab meat with chopped red chilli, mint, chives and coriander, then squeezed some lime juice over. Delicious alongside some rocket leaves and sliced avocado, with a drizzle of sesame oil.

Foodie Pen Pals April goodies

March saw the launch of Foodie Penpals in the UK, a food sharing idea born in the US and brought to the UK by food blogger Carol Anne of This is Rock Salt. Open to anyone who likes the idea of giving and receiving little food parcels, Carol Anne explains it all here.

April’s parcel arrived and was as fun and thoughtful as the previous month. This time my goodie bundle was sent by Jennie who also runs a supper club, more info from her Facebook page here. I have to say the supper club looks fabulous, the two I have spotted that they have run have been African Fusion, and Tuscan… If only I lived closer…..

So what was in the box?!

A sushi kit- Love sushi, this was fab! One thing about making your own sushi is the faff with the rice, this little kit had it all ready done.
Chopsticks – If you read my 7×7 post you’ll already know, chopsticks are my favourite eating tools, I eat tuna salad with them sometimes.
Wasabi  Oh how I adore wasabi, it’s nearly all gone!  I think I should do a whole post dedicated to it.
A raw cacao brownie. I usually avoid all sugar (and yet I make cakes I know..) but I had to try this, it’s agave not sugar as such. Chewy and chocolatey and good raw stuff. It was so good I hunted one down in Totnes and sent to my Foodie PenPal his month.
Coconut tea – I’ve never seen this so was a lovely new one to try. You know me and tea.
Lemon grass – The proper grass, again I’ve never seen the actual grass (we usually see the stem), I’m going to use this when I next do little steamed parcels wrapped in cabbage.
White miso – I’d said to Jen that I hate soya, and she took a chance on this. Good call! I love miso, but haven’t had white before, it’s fermented soya that is good (rather than soya processed into breakfast cereal and such like). I love miso , and often poach the cabbage parcels mentioned above in it.

Suya spice – This is completely new to me, Jen helpfully included a recipe for chicken suya in the parcel so I can make  my own Nigerian dish. It’s used like a rub so I tried it on some salmon before oven baking. It’s spicy! And Delicious!

Thank you Jen!

And if you want to see what was in the box that I gave, head on over to Jenny’s blog where all will be revealed! Yes Jennie and Jenny!

Spiced Honey Cinnamon Roasted Chick Peas

Snacking. We shouldn’t really should we? But we do, don’t we? The lure of crunchynibblythings gets too much to resist, and can become a danger not just to the waistline but also to health, many packet snacks are laden with trans fats, sugar and salt, and don’t even get me started on the soya that is hidden within. So many packet snacks are processed beyond recognition as real food. Without going overboard or beginning a lecture on what’s good and what’s bad, we all know that lots of these packets aren’t great for us and that the temptation to overindulge once the packet is open is hard to resist.

Nuts are excellent, but good unsalted nuts can get expensive. Roasted soya beans are even more pricey, as well as being salty. Roasted pulses are great snack foods though, those little lentils in bombay mix, wasabi peas, satay butterbeans…and…. roasted chick peas.

Making your own is so cheap, easy, and tasty. You are in control of the salt and sugar, and can create your own flavours. And then you can revel in the healthy glow of a truly good-for-you snack.

I made some of these for my most recent foodie penpal, Jen, who follows the primal way of eating much of the time. This is basically how our primal ancestors would have eaten, a diet based on what can be hunted or gathered readily. So no grains and no sugars, apart from fruits. I myself avoid grains and sugars and agree with the primal principles; largely as it means that foods are natural and unprocessed.

Ok, so our cave dwelling cousins probably didn’t sit around the campfire nibbling on roasted chick peas, but at least the ingredients are recognisable as food.

For the spiced honey cinnamon version you will need:

• 1 can chick peas, drained and patted dry with kitchen paper
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 tablespoon oil (walnut oil is good)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne

1. Heat oven to Mix together the honey, oil, cinnamon and cayenne in a bowl.
2. Add the chickpeas and mix until they are all thoroughly coated.
3. Cover a baking tray with baking parchment and tip the chickpeas onto this.
4. Roast in oven for about 40 minutes. They may need a few minutes longer but they can burn suddenly so keep an eye on them!
5. Cool and store in an airtight container.

Other suggestions for flavourings:
honey & cocoa
cayenne & cocoa & agave
maple syrup
sea salt & rosemary
sea salt & black pepper
soy sauce, honey & sesame seeds
Ras-el-hanout
smoked paprika & cayenne
wasabi & soy

and endless other possibilities………let me know if you come up with some new ones!

7×7 Award!

An award! I am shocked stunned and rather mystified as to how this happened, but yes, it’s true and is thanks to Carol Anne over at This is Rock Salt, very sweet of you Carol Anne to bestow my first award and I thank you.

Ok, there are rules, I’m a bit rubbish at rules but will try to stay on the straight and narrow.
Rule 1 is to thank the nominating person – done, my manners wouldn’t allow me to flout this rule!
Then there are 3 lists of 7 to complete; firstly 7 random things about me, then a selection of my blog posts that fit into each of 7 categories given, and finally 7 blogs who I forward the award onto.

Ok, here  goes….
7 things about me:
1. I once stuffed my nose so full of  paper that it bled. My mum went and got the butcher from up the road to pull it out. True.
2. I am every waiter/waitress’s nightmare; I never order straight from a menu  it’s always “Can I have that but with this instead of that” for this I apologise to everyone who ever gets to take my order. And I give thanks to the chefs for always dealing with it admirably.
3. Eating with chopsticks makes me happy, doesn’t need to be oriental food; although if it is sashimi my happiness meter goes off the scale.
4. Favourite weather is hot hot hot. So hot that the ground is too hot for bare feet. Lovely.
5.   Second favourite weather is an honest to goodness pelting, rumbling, crackling, flashing thunderstorm. The ones that make you go “wow”.
6. I have appeared in Casualty, Sherlock, Dirk Gently, Upstairs Downstairs, Dr Who…. yes I’m a Supporting Artist (dah-ling).
7. I am a bit of a numbersy and sciencey geek, I love how stuff happens but the best of all I’m fascinated with fate/chance/coincidence. Like the 6 degrees of separation rule.
8. Lists, I live my life by lists.

That’s 8, I told you about how I am with rules……
My 7 post categories, well I’m a new girl and not many posts to choose from but here goes:
1. Most Beautiful: Chicken Pomegranate Salad
2. Most Helpful: Foraging for your Supper
3. Most Popular: Smoked Butter Fudge
4. Most Controversial: Avocado Pudding
5. Most Surprisingly Successful: Smoked Butter Fudge
6. Most Underrated: Caraway Seed Oatcakes
7. Most Prideworthy: All of it. I’m constantly surprised anyone reads it!

My 7 nominations for the 7×7 link Award – some local SouthWest Foodies:
Kate at Grazing Kate
Marcus at Country Woodsmoke
Choclette at Choc Log Blog
Freya at Giggling Wombat
Jan at Maddocks Farm
Suzy at Sudden Lunch
Jules at Good Golly Good Gobble (not in the South West but, there go the rules again!)

Thank you again Carol Anne, it was a super surprise to find the nomination. Please do go over to visit each of the blogs above and see what makes food and blogging in the South West so good.

Pipers Farm: Review

I don’t know about you, but I am increasingly suspicious of ‘cheap’ food. With costs rising in everything from animal feed to fuel for transportation I wonder where the corners are cut to keep the costs down? What bothers me most is what is used to maximize output in food production, the residues of which end up on out plates and in our bodies.

So, when I was asked to review some meat from Piper’s Farm, the first thing I did was to take a look at their website to see if their principles fit with mine. The answer is yes! They are local, family run and have been in business for over 20 years. The animals are reared over a network of small farms, no mass production here. Animals are reared slowly and naturally to maturity, with a clear focus on welfare.

The result is good, dense, deeply textured and coloured, tasteful meat. Have you noticed how supermarket meat has become ‘spongy’ and pallid? Say goodbye to that with good properly and traditionally farmed meat. The Pipers Farm cattle are all grass fed, this makes a big difference nutritionally, more information for those who wish to delve deeper is here.

Photo from Pipers Farm

Piper’s Farm have a butcher’s shop in Exeter but also offer next day home delivery, with ordering via phone or their website.

The sample box contained pesto stuffed topside of lamb, I am not usually a big lamb eater and Piglet-Twiglet is still on her red meat ban so I passed this one over to my mum who thoroughly enjoyed it, telling me it was tender and delicious, she is used to eating home reared lamb from my sister so this is a good comparison.  Piglet-Twiglet did really enjoy the pesto stuffed chicken breast though; now being a teenager she is, well, let’s just say ‘particular’ about her meat. Anything that passes the P-T test must be good. The chicken had a good deep mature flavour, was dense and succulent; the pesto was fresh tasting and the breast was well stuffed and tied with string. The Ruby Red beef grilling steaks were also lean and tender, a good dense meat with true beef flavour..

Also included were pork and apple sausages which were fine but were very much overshadowed by the lamb and mint burgers! These vanished in seconds at a family get together on Easter Sunday!

Lamb & Mint Burger from Pipers Farm

If you would like to be eating good, healthy, tasty and well reared meat Piper’s Farm would be a good place to try.  We are lucky in Devon to have such great producers on our doorstep.

Let’s hope for a barbecue summer to enjoy it in the sunshine!