Devon Apple Cake

Driving to Tavistock last week, we found an apple tree hanging over the road, with lots of apples potentially going to waste. In true foraging fashion, I liberated a bagful, while Yvonne kept watch.

Anyhow this is Yvonnes recipe, but she didn’t feel like cooking it today, so I filled in and had a go.

Quantities for two 7 inch square tins:-

8oz baking margarine (or butter)

8oz sugar,

2 large eggs

16oz self raising flour

32oz Apples (Before peeling)

Some Sultanas

Cinamon to taste.

Method.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees.

Peel and core the apples and cut into small chunks.

Mix the eggs, half the flour and sugar in a bowl.

In a saucepan melt the margarine/butter and add it SLOWLY to the mixture in the bowl, adding the rest of the flour as you mix, until you have a paste.

Line the tins with foil and grease.

Spread about a sixth of the mixture over the base of the each tin

Cover with sultanas and sprinkle the cinammon over them.

Add a layer of apples

Cover each tin with half of the remaining paste. Dont worry if it doesn't cover, it will spread out.

Cook for about 40 minutes, or until cooked through.

Enjoy warm with Cream, Ice-Cream, Custard or all three. Or cold if you wish, keeps for about a day(or less in our house)

Catching Up

Perhaps someone can tell me where the last three weeks have gone, I seem to have been running around in circles and achieving very little. Since my daughters wedding there has been a constant stream of things to do and all my energy seems to have been diverted away from everything non-essential. Also Georgina has had my camera, so a lot of what I have been up to has not been recorded for posterity, this may or may not be a good thing, but most of it WAS edible, honest. Especially the chocolate digestive fridge cake, the cucumber relish and the fish cakes made with fresh Pollock caught by my next door neighbour.

 Looking back it’s been a good year, my first full year of trying to live a bit more sustainable, and while there have been a few failures along the way, think Dandelion wine, salad leaves and carrots, but most of my projects have worked, and I know what went wrong so next year hopefully things will be better.

On the plus side, I have over 3kg of berries in the freezer, ready for winter warmers, and have made a lot of Wine and Jam. Also there are still Tomatoes to ripen, Cucumbers and late Raspberries to pick and Strawberry runners to transplant for next year.

The tomatoes have been ready one at a time, so I’ve been keeping them in the fridge, I finally had enough to try and make a sauce, with onions, pepper apples and a peach that was looking a bit over-ripe.

Anyhow I chopped all the above up and boiled them in some vinegar (just enough to cover) with a bit of salt and mixed spice. When they were softened, I liquidised them and added about 600g of sugar.

Returning it to the cooker I boiled it until it thickened, and then bottled it. It probably needs about a month before using, but it’s added to the store cupboard

I did try a Spanish bread recipe, but with little success, it made good breadcrumbs but that was about it.

Georgina has been down for a few days, she returns to Picton shortly, but she asked me for Roast Gammon on Wednesday, without the meat! She just wanted Roast Potatoes, Veg and Gravy. This meant a load of Potato peelings and a chance to use my new toy.

It’s a lot easier than part cooking them in a frying pan, and this time I added them to onions, peppers and mushrooms, with some chopped Chorizo and garlic. It was so successful that I will be doing it again, very soon.

I also made some Stromboli, like the ones in my previous post; I took some to work, and tried it out on two of my Italian colleagues. They seemed to like it, and I found a good use for the last little bit I had left over, more of that later.

It’s been really windy here, and unfortunately my Tomato house has blown over, so I have had to prune the broken plants, I’ve put a load of green tomatoes in a paper bag with banana peel to try and get them to ripen. I think that the remainder of the plants will be OK, at least with them now being out in the open I don’t need to water them in the rain.

Jean next door presented me with a huge bag of apples this morning and I got Yvonne peeling them, whilst I cooked them up for freezing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough plastic boxes so I’m having to freeze them in glass jars.

Back to the Stromboli, for lunch I cut thin slices and toasted them, meanwhile frying up tomatoes with garlic and herbs. A drizzle of Balsamic glaze on the bread, then top it with the tomato mixture.

 Anyway I'm sorry if this post seems a bit rushed, but I have a lot of catching up to do.

Chorizo and Roasted Vegetables

After the success of my last post (Chicken in Peanut Sauce), I thought you might like my Chorizo and roasted vegetables recipe, it’s a good way to use up any bits of veg or meat that you have spare.

In a casserole, combine your chopped veg with chunks of chorizo, whole garlic cloves, sundried tomatoes and a sprinkle of mixed herbs. Mix in a small amount of Olive Oil (Not too much, as the sausage gives up oil as it cooks) and some Balsamic Vinegar.

Raw Veg

Half Cooked

Roast in the oven at about 180 degrees for about an hour, stirring after 30 minutes, until the veg are soft. Serve with bread to dip in the sauce.

Ready to Enjoy

This also works with chicken, prawns or your favourite sausages. And the proportions of veg can be whatever you have available.

By the way, a quick plug for my other site, http://figmants.blogspot.co.uk/, where I will be posting some short stories and other articles that I have written.

The other "Royal Wedding".

As I said last time, my eldest daughter was getting married, and I’m pleased to say the day went very well. We’re still waiting for the official photos but here are a couple to keep you interested.

Giving my Baby away

The other Women in my Life

The new Mrs W

The wedding featured some wonderful food, which I will be attempting to re-create, depending on the results I will share soon.

We seem to be at that time of year when nature offers up all the goodies at once, and it’s a bit of a struggle keeping up with laying in supplies to see us through winter, whilst still keeping on doing the (boring) things that need to be done, and finding the time to blog about it all. So since the wedding, I have made Elderberry wine, pickled onions and beetroot, and started converting blackberries to cordial.

After the success of my chicken and wedges, (and by the way thanks for all the compliments, I hope you enjoyed it as much as we do) I have a couple of other things to try.

Regular readers will know that I’m always on the lookout for cheap ways to eat well, with the object of zero waste, and using my potato peelings is just one way of getting the maximum out of everything that we have.

Last time I made the Homity pie, this time I thought I would try Corned Beef Hash, as I was using the Potatoes for mashed topping on a Cottage Pie.

So fry 4 large chopped onions with crushed garlic to taste, when softened and starting to brown reserve half for the pie and add the potato peelings, cut into small pieces, to the rest in the pan.

Fry until the potatoes are starting to go soft, then stir in one tin of corn beef cut into cubes (Tip: put the tin, unopened in the fridge overnight, the meat is easier to cube)

Fry this, stirring all the time, until the onions, beef and peelings are well mixed, then strain into an ovenproof dish and top with grated cheese. Bake at 200 degrees for about 25-30 minutes until bubbling.

Meanwhile add minced beef to the reserved onions and put in the same frying pan to brown the meat (saves washing up). Strain into a casserole, top with the mash and either put it in the fridge till tomorrow or freeze. That’s two days dinners in about 30 minutes.

 My beetroot this year have not been good, neither have my carrots, so I had to buy some beets for pickling, I found a 25lb bag for £9.50, after cooking and peeling I got 18lb of pickles, enough to last me through the winter, at a cost, including vinegar of about £0.70 per lb. (roughly half shop price)

I also pickled onions, salting them first to keep them crisp.

In the middle of all this Jason next door brought me a bag of mixed fish, Pollock and wrasse, which have now been gutted and frozen.

After all that I was in need of a Cream Tea, a local delicacy, if you’ve never tried one, you really ought to: - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cream_tea this one is from Fermoys Garden Centre, quite close to my house.

I digress:  Blackberry Cordial.

At this time of the year, the blackberries are starting to get a little soft and overripe, so a good use for them is in a cordial, basically just a sugar syrup with fruit flavouring, I use roughly the same method for all my cordials and that is,

An amount of fruit,

1.5 times that amount of water,

Sugar equal to the water.

So last time that was 700g fruit, 1050g water and 1050g white sugar.

Boil up the fruit and the water and simmer to reduce. As the level falls add the sugar, in three or four stages and stir well each time. When the mixture has reduced to about a litre and all the sugar has been used, take off the heat and strain using a jelly bag.

Bottle the liquid and freeze for winter use, keeps in the fridge for about a fortnight.

This is very good for sore throats as well as making a delicious drink when diluted.

After you have strained the juice out the pulp makes a good addition to plain yogurt, or rippled into ice-cream.

There are no photos as I’m sure you can all visualise blackberries in a saucepan, or a bottle of red liquid!

But the sunrise was very nice as I was picking them.

My tomatoes are very reluctantly turning red, I’ve hung banana skins in the greenhouse to increase the ethylene and try to give them a helping hand, and at least none of my neighbours have turned yet. And we now have cucumbers as well, and runner beans.