To follow on from this post, unfortunately our black hen died. Hens seem to be so vulnerable to attack from disease, foxes, dogs and perhaps even other hens. I imagined she was suffering from depression when maybe she was just sad to be sick. 🙁

We were (when I say ‘we’ I suppose I mean ‘I’ as, unlike me, neither husband nor son obsesses about our animals) rather worried about the white hen who had disappeared suddenly. We eventually found her over a week later under two enormous bales of hay in a little-used barn, sitting on no fewer than 23 eggs; The little minx had obviously been hiding, laying and hoarding! Don’t ever let it be said that hens can’t multitask. So to add to our  animals’ extensive list of mental disorders, we now appear to be the proud owners of a compulsively hoarding hen.  Can anyone tell me where I can get my hands on an animal that doesn’t have ‘issues’?

This savoury cake is based on an old French recipe and goes beautifully with soup or hors d’oeuvres. It’s quite light and crumbly and, being made with spelt flour, healthy, wheat-free and low GI.

Ingredients

175g spelt flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

1 teaspoon paprika

1 pot of yoghurt (125g)

3 organic eggs, beaten

100ml olive oil

50g red pepper, finely chopped

40g black olives, stones removed

50g sun dried tomatoes

6 anchovies

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Combine the flour, baking powder,  bicarbonate of soda and paprika and add the eggs and yoghurt, mixing well. Continue mixing and add the olive oil until you obtain a homogenous paste. Stir in the other ingredients and once well combined, spoon the mixture into a medium-sized, oiled loaf tin. Cook for about 40 minutes, or until a fork comes out clean.

Last week a courier service mistakenly delivered an envelope containing 1,580 rubber bands to our house. They were in fact destined for the UK, so they hadn’t even got the right country, which is really no recommendation when you’re an international courier service. Bearing in mind that we live well off the beaten track, about six kilometres from the nearest village, I had the following conversation with the misguided driver this morning:
Driver : ‘Hello we were wondering whether you still had the envelope containing 1,580 rubber bands  delivered to you last week by mistake?’
Me : ‘Yes. I kept the envelope – I was going to add them to my collection.’
Driver : ‘I have to come and pick the package up this afternoon and wondered whether you could bring it to the nearest village?’
Me : ‘Sure, I’ll make a 12km round trip to save you the trouble. Shall we fix a time now or later for you to come to me and muck out the horses and vacuum the house?’
In the end, he did reluctantly concede that it was probably part of his job description to drive out to us to pick up the envelope and anyway, he would definitely rather do that than muck out my horses. I don’t think he ‘got’ the irony though and probably just thinks that I’m a batty, lazy, rubberband-hoarding hermit!  Not that it really matters what he thinks because this conversation was six hours ago and he still hasn’t managed to find us :lol:.
Artichokes are an excellent source of fibre and also contain plenty of folic acid and vitamins C, K and B complex. They are also a rich source of antioxidants and minerals such as copper, calcium, potassium, iron, manganese and phosphorus.
This makes a delicious starter or even on its own as a light meal.
Ingredients (serves 4)
4 tablespoons of olive oil
2 medium sized onions, sliced
4 cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
8 baby artichokes, stems and outer leaves removed and chopped lengthways
4 rashers of smoked bacon, sliced
1 bay leaf
150ml white wine
water to cover vegetables
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon piment d’Espelette  (or paprika)
Brown the onions and garlic in a casserole dish (Dutch oven) in the olive oil. Add the artichokes, being sure to turn and coat them well with olive oil, and the bacon and continue frying for a few minutes. Add the wine and seasoning , cover and continue to simmer for about 45 minutes. There should be just enough liquid to cover the artichokes so you will probably need to add some water. Towards the end of cooking, remove the lid and reduce the liquid by about half.

If the 1980s bestseller ‘Real Men don’t Eat Quiche’ is anything to go by, you might want to refer to this as egg, leek and ham pie if you feel that might go down better with the men at your table. Of course, strictly speaking, I suppose it’s a tart and not a pie, but I’d put money on the fact that a man who won’t eat quiche won’t be buying into ‘tart’ either. Anyway, enough wittering, I believe in calling a quiche a quiche and if the neanderthals eating at my table don’t like it they can go and shoot their own dinner 😉 My alpha-male husband is actually the exception that confirms the rule – he worships at the altar of The Quiche.
The pastry is made with buckwheat flour, which not only makes it gluten-free, but healthier and tastier than regular pastry; it even stays crisp when served cold. And even if you don’t fancy quiche, it makes a superb base for apple, or any other fruit tart too.
Ingredients for pastry (serves 6-8):
220g buckwheat flour
80g butter
20g virgin coconut oil
Roughly 5 tablespoons of cold water
Ingredients for filling:
3 leeks, washed and chopped
2 shallots, sliced
1 tablespoon of olive oil
75ml chicken or vegetable stock
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 egg
150 ml double cream
2 thin slices of Bayonne ham (or Parma ham), cut into strips
50 mg Cheddar, Parmesan or Comté cheese, grated
To make the pastry, begin by cutting the butter and coconut oil into small cubes. Add to the flour in a mixing bowl and add a pinch of sea salt. Blend by hand until the mixture becomes crumbly. Add the cold water, mixing rapidly with a spoon. Remove the mixture from the bowl onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until you obtain a ball of pastry (if the mixture isn’t ‘sticky’ enough to form a ball, you may need a drop more water). Wrap in a clean cotton tea towel and leave to ‘rest’ in the fridge for about two hours. This relaxes the dough and makes it easier to use.
Preheat the oven to 180°C. Roll out the pastry on a clean, lightly floured surface and fill the tart tin or tins. Buckwheat pastry contains no gluten, which makes it very fragile. You’ll find that you have to treat it delicately and possibly fill in the cracks with remaining bits of pastry by pressing gently. I tend to use individual tart tins. Precook the pastry for 12 minutes.
For the filling, begin by frying the leeks and shallots in olive oil in a small frying pan. Add the stock and braise for about 20 minutes, or until the leeks are well-cooked and the stock is absorbed. Break the egg into a small bowl and add the cream and seasoning (salt, pepper, paprika). Beat well to form a homogenous mixture. Place a few small strips of ham on the pastry base, spoon the leek mixture over that, add some grated cheese and then pour the egg and cream mixture over the top. Cook at 180°C for 20 minutes, or until the top is golden-brown in colour.

Our hens are in exile; they have been forced from their homeland by an overabundance of horses. Four was fine, desirable even; it created a cosy ‘chicken sandwich’ environment. But the newly-arrived pony was the final straw – she’s a Quadruped Lout Too Far and a tiny bit scornful perhaps at the deference required to lay an egg.
So they’ve set up camp on the fourth-floor shelf of the workshop on some torn-up sheets. Not without much shrill, dyspeptic screeching, I might add. I feel a bit bad that all they found for their nest was old sheets and not pashminas, but such is the life of a hen. I only discovered their new hideout because, reaching for an old sheet to clean my saddle, I unwittingly scrambled an egg at my feet. I assume they think that the workshop is horseproof – I’m afraid they’re in for a surprise 😉
Puy Green Lentils (grown on the vocanic soil of the ‘Massif Central’) are prized above other lentils for their strong peppery flavor and firmness, even after cooking. High in fiber and protein, they also contain dietary fibre, folate, vitamin B1, and minerals. As if all that isn’t enough, they also have a very low GI (glycemic index).
Ingredients (serves four)
4 Toulouse sausages
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 small red onion, peeled and chopped
3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
5 mushrooms, peeled and sliced
3 medium sized carrots, peeled and cut into 3cm pieces
1 tin (400g) of plum tomatoes
200g of Puy lentils
2 sprigs of rosemary
1 bay leaf
250ml chicken stock
seasoning to taste: sea salt, fresh black pepper, paprika
Preheat the oven to 150°C. If you have a griddle pan, griddle the sausages briefly. If not, searing them will do just as well. Gently fry the onions, garlic and mushrooms in olive oil to soften them. Add the griddled/seared sausage, the plum tomatoes and carrots and continue to heat. Add the lentils, chicken stock, herbs and seasoning and bring back to a gentle simmer. Cook in the oven for about 45 minutes, checking from time to time that there is enough liquid – the lentils absorb an enormous amount.

I sometimes suspect I might be a bit of a slacker. I’m always hearing about people ‘power walking’, whereas I walk, or at a push, hike if hiking’s called for. And do I spend ‘quality time’ with my family? We eat lunch and dinner together and sometimes even load/unload the dishwasher (although this does inevitably involve heated discussion), but is this enough to qualify? ‘Foodies’ is a term also frequently used. I enjoy cooking and am a bit greedy have a good appetite, but does this make me a foodie?  I could go on, but will stop before I completely trash myself 😉
If I were a ‘power-walking’ sort of person, I would no doubt confit my own duck. As it is, I buy it in a tin. Quite apart from my ‘underachieving’ status, there’s absolutely no way I could confit a duck that I had built up a relationship with (ie caught a glimpse of whilst still alive).
Duck confit (or ‘confit de canard’) is a speciality of Gascony. Confit is a process of preservation that consists of salt curing a piece of meat (generally goose, duck, or pork) and then poaching it in its own fat. Duck fat is a healthy choice for cooking –  it contains 35.7% saturates, 50.5% monounsaturates (high in linoleic acid) and 13.7% polyunsaturated fats (which contain omega-6 and omega-3 oils).
Ingredients (serves four)
4 confit duck thighs (either from a tin or preserved in a jar)
Turn the thighs and solidified fat out into a deep frying pan. Heat on a very low heat to liquefy the fat very gradually. Little by little, drain the liquefied fat from the frying pan into another container and set aside to use as cooking oil for potatoes. Once the surplus fat is drained off, turn the heat up to medium and cook for about eight minutes on each side. The result should be dark golden-brown and very very crisp.
May be served alone with green beans or salad with walnut oil dressing, or with cubed potatoes fried for 15 minutes in the duck fat and garnished with crushed garlic.
And finally, once again for those worried about consuming dishes so apparently high in dietary fat:
‘A high cholesterol diet is not the cause of atherosclerosis. In 50 men with a fourfold increase in dietary cholesterol, two-thirds failed to show an increase in serum cholesterol. Seven patients in another study, while consuming large amounts of beef fat and vitamin and mineral supplements, showed a decrease in average cholesterol levels.’                                                                                                  Roy W. Dowdell, MD, Health Freedom News