Passionfruit, Mango and Raspberry Mess

As much as I love Eton mess, there comes a time in summer when it's just a bit too sickly. Strawberries? Again?

With the recent boiling hot weather, I decided a tropical twist on the English classic was the way forward. There is nothing more to this 'recipe' than great ingredients and very gentle folding (blitzed meringue just makes for a load of sweet cream rather than chewy texture variation). I used raspberries, shop-bought meringue (shhh), lovely Westcountry double cream and some of this lovely-jubbly passionfruit and mango coulis that I got at the Cheltenham food festival. (I tried the damson, blackberry, strawberry, raspberry...) I spoke to the chap, Nick, who own the company and apparently they regularly win taste awards. I'm not surprised, it is delicious. If only I can wangle some free bottles...

I whipped the cream, crumbled the meringue in large pieces in with it, added a touch of coulis and folded it over twice with a large spoon. Scooped out, daub of cream and a drizzle of coulis on top, raspberries sprinkled on top. Yum. Yum yum yum.

Back to the gym...

Megrim with Tarragon

I have learnt from experience that it is better to wait until after you have eaten a fish to google what it looks like (monkfish was the point in case). So when I found out that the alternative name for a megrim was a 'whiff' and that it was specifically a left-eyed flat fish (a relative of turbot), I was surprised that it was actually quite a cute little critter. What's more, it made pretty nice eating pan-fried quickly and then lidded and cooked for 10 minutes with butter, fresh tarragon and lots of lemon juice.

It was a moist, meaty white-fleshed fish, which came off the bones easily and tasted just delicious. It was the first time I have put tarragon with fish and it gave a fennel-y zing to the proceedings.

I'd only gone for the megrim as they were reduced in the supermarket to £2.49 per fish - and I naturally chose the biggest one there was (which was probably twice the size of some of the others). Served with some bread and some lovely fresh peas and broad beans it was certainly stuffing.

It took longer to pod the peas and beans than it did to cook the fish! I love summer eating, where you can laze in the garden doing the prep before a quick flash in the pan.

Green Garlic Sausages in Quince and Grape Sauce

Without doubt, the most swamped stand at the Cheltenham Food Festival was the Ragley Estate Meats stand as they were serving up tasters of their pies and sausages. People kept going back for more of their sausages, and when I tasted I could understand why! They were so deliciously moist. I snapped up two packets: one of their 'award winning' standard pork sausages, and one of their green garlic variety (which I was led to believe were very garlicky indeed).

One of the most exuberant stalls at the festival was a man selling a plethora of quince products. Never having tasted quince, I duly tried some and thought it was lovely, bought a jar and was given a handy sheet of recipes. I'll come back to that sheet, but I immediately thought of my bangers when I got the quince (I usually put apples in with my sausages).

Today a friend at work, who has been swamped by broad beans, brought a huge bagful of them for us all to dip in to. I took my handful and thought merrily about dinner.

Maybe it was because the broad beans are small and green, or maybe the quince man mentioned grapes, but I decided to include grapes too (I thought the garlicky sausages could hold their own against the sweet sauce). So I set to dinner, making the mash as usual and podding the broad beans.

My usual method with sausages is to give them a bit of a grilling (lets at least some of the fat out) and then put them in a pan with some caramelised onions and finish them off bubbling away under a lid. To make the sauce today, I cooked an onion for a long slow time, adding water at intervals to stop it burning on the pan. I added a tablespoon of quince jelly, a slosh of double cream and a handful of grapes. I then put the sausages in and let it cook for 4-5 minutes to combine.

The garlicky sausages were as good as I'd tasted them at the festival and their robust flavour worked very well with the quince and grape sauce. The broad beans added an interesting texture, but were perhaps overwhelmed (spinach next time instead?) - I did notice however that they tasted LOVELY and didn't have a yukky fibrous skin like school broad beans. In all, I think it almost worked. I'd cut the grapes in half next time and probably have spinach or broccoli or savoy cabbage instead of the broad beans.

Cheltenham Food Festival

Today I went to the Cheltenham Food Festival and have returned with a bag of produce and a head full with ideas. I'm sure they will feature on here before too long! I'm currently rather whacked, so here are a few highlights:

1. Seeing last year's Masterchef winner, Mat Folas, demonstrate his cooking. The best bit was when he told everyone to come and have a look (rather than remain hermetically sealed to the plastic chairs). The organisers were scurrying around, visibly stressed, while everyone tried the food and asked probing questions about basil, how to smoke things and what exactly was going on with Raymond Blanc.

There followed an incredibly teeny plate of food (his winning meal, I believe, of rabbit three ways - kidneys, loin and rack).


2. Being mesmerised by people with skills I can only hope to master. I watched while he filleted two fish.


3. Enjoying a 'wine talk' (I took notes) where the six wines sampled were given in rather generous portions. Because TLM was driving home I also availed myself of his after he niffed and sipped the wine.

It was a great day, sunny but not too hot, and has left me with lots of inspiration for both food and drink. Brilliant!

Elderflower and mint cordial

This was a bit of an experiment as I wanted to use some of the mint which is growing copiously in the garden. I knew it would either make a deliciously refreshing cordial or something that tasted like toothpaste. Thankfully it turned out to be just right.

Ingredients (makes enough to fill 2 x 75 cl bottles)

• 15 large elderflower heads
• 1.5 litres water
• 350 g caster sugar
• 100 g brown sugar
• 25 g citric acid (finally found it in a chemist's, read the saga of the citric acid here)
• 5 full stems of mint
  
• 1 orange
• 1 lemon

How to make it

Boil the water (should be about one very full kettle's worth) and pour it over the sugar and leave to cool. Once it's cool, stir in the citric acid.

Lightly rinse the elderflower heads to remove any dirt or little insects (but don't plunge them in water). Peel the orange and lemon with a vegetable peeler and throw the peel in with the elderflower heads. Slice the fruit and add. Pick five tall, young stems of mint and add to the fruity and fragrant mix. Pour the now cool water, sugar and citric acid mixture over the fruity concoction. Cover with cling film and leave to infuse for a day.

Strain the fruit, through muslin or cheesecloth ideally to make it as clear as possible. The cordial should be put into sterilised bottles (I pour boiling water into the bottles, right to the top, pour the water out and leave them to dry in a hot oven for about 20 minutes) and the lids tightly added.

I was really pleasantly surprised by this cordial as it was heady and fragrant, but had a zingy and completely refreshing edge. It was the perfect antidote to a full morning's gardening:

During which I found these growing merrily! I'm going to eat them before anyone, or anything, else does!

Croissants, by the light of the silvery moon

TLM has been working some extremely unsociable hours recently (two months down, two to go) and we often pass like ships in the night. We live in a perpetual time-delay, asking how the 'day' of work went some 18 hours after it happened. He arrives home after I've left for work and I wake him at 6pm as I return. We make the bed for each other, leaving the corner turned down and PJs for the other person folded up neatly (and, of course, Dr Cuddles who takes the place of the 'spoonee'). It's only right when the bed is in near 24-hour use.

When he's not working nights, he's working all weekend as long days (7am-10pm) and so I am left to my own devices. For a while I spent some fantastically self-indulgent days sitting in the park, cycling, getting my hair cut, shopping, wedding-scheming... and then I decided to try new, labour-intensive recipes that are not possible when you have to think about other people.

So I made croissants, using the recipe from the new River Cottage Bread Book. Lordy. They were everything they promised to be (waiting for dough in large bin liners, pounding butter between cling film, endless rolling, precise isosceles-triangle cutting) and more. They tasted fantastic, and I was overwhelmed with pride that they actually looked like croissants. They were soft, moist, crackly and endlessly giving. One was filling enough (TLM usually eats three, and a few pain au chocolat to boot). They really rewarded the effort that went into them.

Will I be bothered to do them again? Probably not. I just don't see how so much attention can be lavished on any meal, let alone a breakfast pastry. Also, I'm clearly terrible at cutting them as I had about 200g of wasted pastry (this I cannot tolerate) and so it's probably more economical to buy them. But to have a croissant with substance was a pleasing change. And they did work lovely as a 7pm dinner/breakfast for me/him.

Halcyon days, and a mission that would make Guy Ritchie proud

There's no place like home and, for me, that means there's no place like the Westcountry on a summer day. Having spent recent summers tied to a desk at a university library, or cooped up in a sticky city, or semi-stranded on a tropic isle where the sun sets at 6pm every evening, I've been longing to get back home. Home to hot air balloons, cricket, ducklings on canals, fayres, cider festivals, bandstands, open fields and ekeing out hazy evenings with a blanket on knees.

One of the most evocative tastes of a British summer, aside from strawberries and new veg smothered in butter, is the elderflower. Near where we live all the elderflower were plucked from the riverbanks some time ago, so when I spotted a bush still bearing white flowers, I had to take my chance and merrily denuded everything within reach. I collected over 60 heads (perhaps a little over-ambitious) and made home with my haul.

now follows... the citric acid saga
in which many frustrations befall the frolicking foodie

SATURDAY:

3pm: with a veritable heap of flora, the ingredients to make cordial must be sourced - sugar, water, lemons, oranges... fine. Citric acid? Well that must be with the bicarbonate of soda.

4pm, a well-known supermarket: OK, so it's not in home-baking. Or specialist foods. Or the medicines aisle. Or the cleaning fluids. Or the alcohol. I'll ask this helpful chap. OK, looking it up on the store's system. None. Bugger. Looking it up on the Sainsbury's mainframe. 'no populated content for this search'. That means that there is none, in any Sainbury's supermarket, anywhere. Onwards.

4:30pm, a well-known chemist: So people cut their drugs with it and you can no longer sell it? I could try and independent pharmacist? OK...

4:35pm [by this point, running Anika Rice-stylee down the high street]: You do sell it! YESSS! Oh... you can't get it for love nor money? Elderflower cordial season y'say. Funny, that.

4:40pm, an independent kitchen shop: Oh you'd love to help me, m'lover, but everyone's been asking for it! You'ves no idea what's got into every man and his wife!

4:50pm, a health food shop: Well, I'm at least the tenth person to ask today for this citric acid stuff. Not quite sure what it's for, but tell you what if you like, there's the man that owns the little chemist on the end of the bridge, good Lordy, can't even remember the name of him. Could be Gerald, or maybe Germone? Definitely began with a G of some sort, and, well, he's pretty good with stocking stuff, he is. What's it for anyway?

4:55pm, Gerry's pharmacy (no clearer idea what his name really is): Why haven't I tried the home brew shop? WHY haven't I tried the home brew shop!!

4:59pm, outside the home brew shop (which is next to a small church with a bell tower), the clock striking out 5pm as I turn the corner to face the front door. CLOSED. I raise my fists to the sky, shake them helplessly at the air and let our a prolonged 'Nooooooooo'. I resist falling to my knees and sobbing into them. Just.

5:00pm, car: slight mini-tantrum thrown.

6:00pm, kitchen: elderflowers reluctantly placed in a shallow bowl of water and covered with cling film. Cordial scuppered.

MONDAY:

Home brew shop closed till Wednesday. Phoned every independent pharmacy in town. None, anywhere. There's been a run on it, apparently. Then I get a phone call back... there will be a delivery. They can't say when. They can take my name and my number. They can't sell me more than 100g, cause the law's on their back. But they can do me two packets, if I can come in at lunch time.

I go in at lunch time. I sidle up to the pharmacy assistant. Got any citric? No, all out. She eyeballs me. I'm on the list, I try feebly. Oh, well, she says. That makes all the difference, she says. She unlocks a drawer below the till and takes out 'the list'. She crosses my name off and hands me two small boxes of acid. I pay cash, and stash them in my handbag.

Got to be careful round these parts, anyone'll have you for 100g of citric acid.