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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! -
Chicken and coconut curry and gastronomy courses for dogs
I seem to remember Bossy writing a post about my food preferences recently. I don’t always read what she writes because I often find her anecdotes too irritatingly trivial for words. Unfortunately I did read this and my response is: I’m not a whingeing fusspot, I’m discerning. Please learn the difference. My palate is refined and subtle and I won’t be fobbed off with any old food, unlike some dogs I know whose names begin with ‘J’. I’m currently looking into gastronomic appreciation courses for ‘J’ because her lack of taste is beginning to depress me. It’s difficult to live with someone with so little culinary culture, or any other culture for that matter.
Bossy and Noisy went on holiday for a few days recently, not that I’m familiar with the concept of holidays, never having had one *woeful and exploited doggy sigh*. The Tall One is easier to
manipulatenegotiate with than Bossy and the leftovers are far more appealing as he doesn’t eat anything green or strange when she’s away. Also, he doesn’t know that I’m supposed to have vitamins added to my food, so that’s one less battle to fight. All in all we had a very peaceful time and even ended up by agreeing on the best camembert to buy. Result!I’d better go now – Bossy is uttering very naughty words because she just unloaded the washing machine to discover that one of Noisy’s pockets was stuffed full of popcorn. I’ll leave the state of Bossy’s nerves and the inside of the washing machine to your imagination…
Ingredients (serves 4)
1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 red onions, peeled and sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed1kg chicken legs and thighs, skinned
1 red pepper, sliced
4 carrots, peeled and cut into rounds
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, grated
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 teaspoons coriander seeds
1 stick cinnamon
2 teaspoons curry powder
3 kaffir lime leaves
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
400ml coconut milk
Preheat the oven to 150°C. Heat the coconut oil in a medium-sized casserole dish or dutch oven and soften the onions and garlic. Add the chicken pieces, frying for a few minutes on each side and then add the pepper and carrots. Add the spices and seasoning and continue to brown for a few more minutes. Finally add the coconut milk, bring to a simmer and cook in the oven for at least an hour. It may be left for longer, in which case you may need to add a bit of water or stock.
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Honey mustard chicken and lots of beefing
I don’t know whether it’s a January thing, but I’m surrounded by whingers. First there’s Léo who says I should take a leaf from his grandmother’s book and buy him clothes that are big enough. According to his theory, I refuse to buy him bigger clothes because I don’t want him to grow up. He might have a point – there’s something very disconcerting about rollicking a 6ft tall 13-year-old. But to be honest I think it’s more to do with the fact that clothes shopping turns me into a perspiring, hyperventilating, irascible wreck. Even more so than usual. You know those parents that complain that their teenagers don’t talk to them? Well that’s not me; mine talks to me in spades and the words are incisive and abundant. I’m preparing myself for further stories of woe about freezing-cold ankles and wrists.
And then there’s Hugo who is displeased with his new food. As you might imagine, he’s not subtle in his revulsion and sneers at his bowl before leading us to the cupboard in search of something more palatable. He is also very put out by the fact that we prefer he lie on his bed than the sofas and, to top it all off, is quite underwhelmed by our new choice of camembert.
On the other hand there’s little Java. I bought her a new collar and, if her look was anything to go by, I don’t think the colour can have been her absolute favourite. But did she go on and on about it? No, she graciously refrained from chewing it to bits and quickly moved on to other things. Oh the joys of the innate Attention Deficit Disorder of young English setters!
This dish is very easy and very delicious, perhaps even more so as I used my husband’s rather expensive, fragrant honey. Anyway, we won’t dwell on that or I’ll be in for another ticking-off. Mind you, it’ll be water off a duck’s back because I’m about to invest in some heavy-duty earplugs.Ingredients (serves 4)
3 tablespoons Dijon mustard
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 clove of garlic, crushed
1 teaspoon paprika
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
8 chicken thighs, skins removedPreheat the oven to 180°C. In a small saucepan over a gentle heat, whisk together the mustard, honey and olive oil. Add the garlic and seasoning, mixing well.
Arrange the chicken thighs in an oven-proof dish and pour the sauce over the top, making sure that the thighs are well covered. Bake for abour 45 minutes or until the sauce begins to caramelise. I serve this with mushroom risotto and a green salad.