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Leek and potato soup with mushrooms and repeat offenders
After a busy week for tumbles — my husband fell backwards off his horse and frontwards off his bike — we had planned to go the beach for lunch on Sunday. Léo however had other plans; he performed a forward somersault off his bike and landed on his already twice-fractured arm.
Emergency departments are never a pretty sight, but even less so on Sunday mornings when they’re full of bloody rugby players (I don’t have anything against rugby players, but they always seem to have blood spouting from somewhere), and the dregs of Saturday night. As they fast track young children, I told Léo to make himself look little, which, as he’s over 6ft now, made me sound a bit insane.
The receptionist greeted us like old friends and commented more than once on the fact that our family’s records took up a substantial amount of room on her database. As this was potentially his fourth broken arm (he once very efficiently broke them both at the same time), she wondered if he might have any deficiencies. I said that yes, I was convinced he had a number of deficiencies: fear and common sense to name but two. She looked at me strangely and said that she had be thinking more along the lines of calcium or vitamin D. In the end, it turned out that his arm wasn’t broken, just badly dented, which didn’t really sound much better to me, but I suppose it made for a change. For some reason, on our way out I felt compelled to shout over to the receptionist like a madwoman that his arm wasn’t properly broken this time. I felt the need to justify as she’d made me feel like a repeat offender. I suppose she might have a point…
Leeks are an extremely rich source of vitamin K which is surprisingly important for bone health. Mind you, so is avoiding falling off your horse or bike. Vitamin K has repeatedly been shown to help avoid bone fractures. Leeks also contain substantial quantities of vitamins A and C, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus and are a rich source of allicin, a sulphur-containing compound with anti-bacterial, anti-viral and anti-fungal properties.
Ingredients (serves 6)
45g butter
6 small leeks, rinsed and diced
2 large potatoes, peeling and diced
1 garlic clove, crushed
2 shallots, peeled and chopped
1 thyme sprig
2 bay leaves
500ml chicken stock (or vegetable if you prefer)
1 teaspoon paprika
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
4 tablespoons crème fraîche
85g mushrooms, sliced
Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Add the leeks, potatoes, garlic, shallots and thyme and cook for about five minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking. Add the stock and simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes are soft. Remove the thyme and bay leaves. Blend the soup until smooth and add the crème fraîche. Fry the mushroom in a little butter until golden brown, seasoning with salt and pepper. Add a spoonful of mushrooms to each bowl of soup and serve. -
Chicken and sweet pepper tagine and cowboys on bicycles
Somebody is going to have to give me a crash course in human logic, or lack thereof, because there are things I’m currently struggling to understand. First of all, I thought that the main function of a butcher was to provide you with an endless supply of slobberingly succulent meat. Not so apparently. The Tall One believes our butcher to be of unparalleled counsel when it comes to his own joints, cartilage and bones and takes his advice over the doctor’s when it comes to treating his dodgy knee. So, since the butcher told him that cycling was the way forward, he has had his bicycle surgically attached (have you noticed that I’ve mastered the metaphor?).
The Tall One and Bossy sometimes take Texas, the very old horse, and Bijou, the very young, insufferably silly horse to a field where proximity to a river and shady oak trees means the grass stays lush year-round. Taking them there is one thing, bringing them back quite another. Bijou has a tendency to pinch the head collars from their ‘safe place’ and hide them. So, bearing in mind that humans are meant to be of superior intelligence, this is what I don’t understand: Why don’t they just find another place to store the head collars? Bijou gets the better of them every time which means that, as he’s quite good at hiding things, they invariably come back ‘au natural’ (the horses, not the intellectually-challenged humans). The sight of Bossy and Tall trying to round them up on their bicycles makes it all worthwhile though.
So to conclude, if you’ve got dodgy knees, the butcher’s your man. And if you want to outwit your animals Bossy and Tall are most certainly not…
I have to say that Bossy outdid herself with this dish, although I might only be saying that because I feel a bit mean inferring that she and her husband are ‘intellectually-challenged’. I’m not usually a big fan of spices, but this was subtly fragrant and the tagine dish was a pleasure to lick clean.
Ingredients (serves 4)
3 tablespoons of olive oil
2 medium onions, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
8 chicken thighs
Juice of half a lemon
4 medium-sized carrots, peeled and cut
1 red pepper, washed and cut into strips
1 green pepper, washed and cut into strips
2 teaspoons cumin seeds
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon coriander
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
Bay leaf
Two tablespoons of honey
200g dried prunes
150ml chicken stock
Fresh coriander to serveGently brown the onions, garlic and chicken in the olive oil in a medium-sized casserole dish (or a tagine if you have one). Once golden brown (after about five minutes), add the lemon juice, carrots, peppers, seasoning and spices and continue to brown for a further five minutes. Add the honey, prunes and chicken stock and bring to a gentle boil. Simmer for about half an hour with the lid on and then remove the lid to allow the sauce to caramelise slightly. Sprinkle with freshly chopped coriander. Delicious served with couscous. -
Crab and kelp noodle salad and kayak dyslexia
For anyone who hasn’t tried kayaking, I can highly recommend it – it’s enormous fun. Especially if the person at the helm (in our case, my husband) yelling navigation instructions suffers from left-right dyslexia and is wearing heavy-duty earplugs. We had friends to stay and decided to hire two kayaks to travel 10 kms down a very wild and unspoilt river nearby. Léo organised the teams, taking the person most likely to agree to capsizing at will with him, leaving me with my momentarily deaf husband and girlfriend with whom I chat relentlessly. Hence the earplugs.
Between the incessant chat, barked back-to-front instructions from our ear-plugged, laterally-challenged helmsman, our unheard retorts and copious giggling fits, we descended the river in the most inelegant and perilous zigzag fashion imaginable, ploughing into the banks on one side, only to veer off to hit the verges on the other side. At one point, we all had to disembark to dig the front half of the kayak out of particularly prodigious sandbank. Meanwhile, Léo and his teammate’s boat was approximating a washing machine on spin cycle, and they were dunking in and out of the water like over-excited labradors.
When we finally arrived at our destination, I was mortified to see that our party were the only ones to be soaked through. I was also covered in wet sand, bumps and scratches and a tree branch had taken root in my hair.
Glancing at the brochure when we got home, absolutely wrung out, I was amazed to see that there were all sorts of wildlife to be seen on the descent – turtles, rare birds, salamanders, otters and beavers. Of course, we had created such chaos that all the wildlife had fled, bar a very intimidating and bossy-looking duck that had quacked at us in outrage. Who can blame him?
Needless to say my shorts were no longer white at the other end!
Ingredients (serves 4)
400g kelp noodles
200g crab meat (I used tinned)
3 shallots, chopped
100g sweetcorn
2 small carrots, julienned
1 red pepper, julienned
100g cashew nuts
handful of mint leaves
Dressing:
4 tablespoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon peanut butter
1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, crushed
1 clove of garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon chilli powder
Drain the noodles and add to a large bowl. Add the crabmeat, shallots, sweetcorn, carrots, cucumber nuts and mint leaves and mix well with your hands. Combine the ingredients for the dressing together in a jar and shake well. Add the dressing to the salad, mix well and serve.
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Red and green beans and a four-legged clown
I’ve long suspected Bijou, our five-year-old gelding, to have a highly-developed sense of humour. (One of his first jokes was to chuck me in a ditch and then tread on me. That was a real howl.) He’s also a non-smoker with a lean, muscular physique and indisputably good looks; really quite a catch. Always happy to be of service, he opens field gates to allow the other horses to come and go as they please, although he has yet to learn to to shut them. And he picks up buckets in his teeth and flings them against the wall, which is great fun I suppose as long as you’re not a bucket. He clings on to his bit with his teeth when his bridle is removed, like a baby refusing to give up his dummy and chews on freshly-washed clothes drying on the line.
His latest trick though was quite the most audacious, even for him. Luc, who had been working in the field, stripped off his t-shirt and put it over the tractor door as it was very hot. Bijou, who had been hanging out with him (he loves to socialise), didn’t miss a beat: He reached up and seized the t-shirt between his teeth, turned on his hooves and took off at a gallop, dust flying in his wake. When he finally stopped, he turned around defiantly with the t-shirt hanging from his mouth as if to say ‘well aren’t you coming to get it?’ There followed a lengthy negotiation before he would unlock his teeth, but the t-shirt was eventually retrieved sporting several chew holes and large grass stains.
Green beans are more nutritious than t-shirts and contain substantial amounts of chlorophyll, which can block the carcinogenic effects of meat grilled at a high temperature. In barbecue season, green beans make the perfect accompaniment. Green beans are also a good source of copper, vitamin B1, chromium, magnesium, calcium, potassium, phosphorus, choline, vitamin A, niacin, omega-3 fatty acids, iron, vitamin B6, and vitamin E.
Ingredients (serves 6)
1kg green beans
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 spring onions, peeled and sliced
1 red pepper, sliced
1 tomato, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper
1 teaspoon piment d’Espelette or paprika
Handful of fresh basil, chopped
Precook the beans until ‘al dente’, strain and set aside. Gently heat the olive oil in a large frying pan adding the onions and cooking for a few minutes. Add the sliced red pepper, tomato and garlic and continue to cook until the red pepper and tomato soften. Add the green beans and seasoning, gently combining and cook for a few more minutes. Add the basil and serve. -
Garlic mayonnaise and tractor-shaped puff pastry
Never judge a book by its cover, or a mechanic by his trade. My husband’s beloved tractor broke down this weekend, which is always something of an emotional upheaval. When we first moved here and people came to visit for the first time, he would always show them his shiny red tractor before the house or grounds, which he seemed to consider to be of secondary importance.
Upon his much-anticipated arrival, Repairman and Husband started talking in earnest, and I scathingly thought to myself that this was a conversation I would rather gnaw my own arm off than listen to. How wrong was I? It was actually a conversation that taught me an awful lot – and not about tractor entrails either – about the trials and tribulations of puff pastry! Thinking about it, I suppose the two are not that dissimilar; they both involve oil, sweat, swearing and tears and even then, with so many uncontrolled parameters involved, the results are decidedly unpredictable.
Mayonnaise, like puff pastry and tractors, is also temperamental. If the bowl is too cold, the air too hot or your mood too irascible, you WILL screw it up. Earlier in the year, I made a wonderful batch to go with a seafood platter, only for it to end up splattered over the floor, interspersed with broken glass. I tried again to no avail – my cool, calm, collected demeanour had deserted me and we had to eat seafood sans mayonnaise.
Ingredients (roughly 12 servings)
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
150ml olive oil
2 garlic cloves, crushed
Squeeze of lemon juice
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
½ teaspoon paprika
Beat the egg yolks and mustard together. Add the olive oil, little by little all the time whisking well in order to obtain the right consistency. Ad the garlic, lemon and seasoning, whisking continuously. The result should be glossy and luscious. Be careful to refrigerate before dropping on the floor! Must be kept in the fridge and served cold. -
Courgette and cumin bread (gf) and haywire hens
My husbandorderstrains our hens to lay their eggs in a methodical fashion in satisfyingly tidy wooden boxes filled with hay. Each box is equipped with an enticing ‘wooden egg’ in case the hens are still in doubt as to their duties, and emptied of any real eggs at 5pm. The anomaly is, that when they’re not ‘working’ (i.e. laying), they’re allowed to cause mayhem anywhere they please – in my more fragile plants for example – and even come into the house should the idea take their fancy.
There are three identical boxes, but for some reason they greatly favour one above the others. I think it’s a case of full restaurant syndrome; everyone crowds into the full restaurant, even if the food is just as good at the empty restaurant next door. I invariably find five eggs in this one box and none in the others. This morning there were three hens and a cat piled on top of each other in an alarmingly chaotic way in the preferred box. Needless to say, the sight made my husband break out in a cold sweat. I see an intensive revision course on the horizon.
Ingredients (10 servings)
4 eggs, separated
100g olive oil
100ml plain yoghurt
170g courgette, grated
100g hard cheese, grated (I used Comté)
70g chickpea flour (you could substitute plain flour)
40g buckwheat flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
Pinch of salt
1 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon paprika
Preheat the oven to 180ºC and prepare a medium-sized loaf tin. Whisk the egg yolks, olive oil and yoghurt together until light and smooth, then combine with the grated courgette and cheese and set aside. Whisk the egg whites until they form soft peaks and set aside. Mix the flours and spices into the egg yolk mixture and then gently but thoroughly fold in the beaten whites. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the tin and leave to cool. Delicious accompaniment to soup, salad or vegetable dishes. -
Crab avocado and playing chicken
Once again I find myself at my wits’ end. The Spring is a very busy time for me as I’m out every night until at least midnight escorting invaders off the premises. There are so many animals coming out of hibernation in a foggy daze, having forgotten who’s boss and needing to be reminded of their boundaries. I actually think I’m being charitable; they’re probably not in a six-month sleep-induced daze at all, they’re just disrespectful, trespassing hooligans. As if this isn’t enough for my nerves to contend with, Java, having finally understood that she must eat neither the hens nor their eggs, has decided that she should play with them instead. I suppose her rationale (if she’s capable of such a thing) is that they must be useful for something (er, Java have you and the hens actually met?). Of course, this makes them screech, which in turn makes Bossy screech and the general mayhem is such that I can’t catch up on my sleep. I sometimes think it’s a shame that dogs don’t hibernate…
Ingredients (serves 4)
1 tablespoon Greek yoghurt
1 teaspoon lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1 clove garlic, crushed
½ teaspoon chilli powder
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
100g white crabmeat (I used tinned)
2 ripe avocados, cut in half with the stone removed
5 basil leaves, shredded
Combine the yoghurt, lemon juice, mustard, garlic and seasoning in a small bowl. Add the crabmeat and mix well. Fill all four of the avocado halves with the crab mixture, scatter with the basil leaves and serve. Makes a delicious starter. -
Sunbathing is good for you
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White wine chicken casserole and apple turnovers
It’s that time of year again: The time of year when, in this area of France at least, the countryside becomes speckled with well-stuffed apple turnovers. Upon closer inspection (admittedly not always advisable), the apple turnovers morph into ladies of a certain age, neatly folded in two tending to their vegetable patches. Whenever I see them, I have an overwhelming urge to pick them up by the waist and set them down in our vegetable garden. Perhaps they wouldn’t even notice, and if they did, surely the change of scene would be welcome, although I imagine one patch of weeds looks much like another. In the meantime, my husband serves as our apple turnover, although he’s not nearly as generously-stuffed as some…
Ingredients (serves 4)
8 chicken thighs (you can use a mixture of breast and thigh if you prefer)
1 tablespoon flour
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons olive oil
20g butter
2 red onions, peeled and chopped
2 cloves of garlic, crushed
30g pancetta
5 mushrooms, sliced
2 large carrots, peeled and sliced
Sprig of rosemary
350ml dry white wine
500ml chicken or vegetable stock
200g fresh garden peas
Preheat the oven to 150°C. Place the chicken in a bowl, coat with the flour and seasoning and set aside. Heat the oil and butter in a medium-sized casserole dish, add the onions, garlic, pancetta and mushrooms and cook until softened. Set aside and place the chicken in the casserole dish and cook for just over five minutes, turning to brown evenly. Add the carrots, rosemary and wine and continue to cook until reduced by about half. Add the stock and the set aside onion/pancetta and bring to a boil. Cook in the preheated oven for about an hour, adding the peas (and more stock if necessary) 20 minutes before the end of cooking. Delicious served with minted, mashed, potatoes. -
Waldorf salad and committed to film
Java has a new Favourite Thing: Rolling around energetically on the grass (or even better, mud) next to a fast-flowing river with high banks until ‘accidentally’ ending up in the water with a back flip. Rince and repeat ad infinitum. The first time she did it, Hugo looked on quizzically and I thought that he was probably thinking ‘OMG what an absolute tool – whatever next?’ But I misjudged him; he watched her do it a few times to study her technique and then got down and did it himself. It was most out of character, but very amusing and I couldn’t drag them away. He did stop rather abruptly though as soon as I got my ‘phone out to video them. He obviously wasn’t prepared for his frivolousness to be committed to film, although he didn’t seem to object to Java making a spectacle of herself.
Ingredients (serves 2)
200g celery, chopped into 1cm chunks
100g apple, cut into cubes
50g walnuts, roughly chopped
1 small red onion, sliced and chopped
1 head of chicory, chopped
10g flat parsley, chopped
For the dressing:
50g natural yoghurt
1 teaspoon mustard
Juice of half a lemon
Clove of garlic, crushed (optional)
Sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper
Paprika to taste
Combine the celery, apple, walnuts, onion, chicory and parsley in a medium-sized salad bowl and mix. Make the dressing by whisking together the yoghurt, mustard and lemon and then adding the garlic and seasoning. Drizzle over the salad, mix and serve!