Gooseberry and Elderflower

Gooseberries are ripening at the moment and the elderflower is in full bloom and smells amazing.  It has the most heady, sweet aroma.

Both compliment each other perfectly. 

Gooseberry and elderflower jam is just one of those combinations that work.


For every 500g of fruit you need the same weight in sugar.  Place the fruit and 150ml water with 5 elderflower heads in muslin in a heavy bottomed pan.  Simmer the fruit until tender but before it completely breaks down. Remove the elderflower.  Add the sugar gradually, stirring until it dissolves.  Bring up to a rolling boil.  Test for a set after 5 minutes.  Setting point is usually 105 deg C.  Use a jam thermometer or just place a small amount on a cold plate and leave to cool. Run your finger through it and if it wrinkles it has reached setting point.  Turn off the heat while you are testing.  Pour into sterilised jam jars and seal.

Gooseberry and elderflower jam on spelt and multiseed bread.

Weekly Farmers' Market Shop and Cook

Shop and eat seasonal is a good mantra. However, it's very easy now in our global consumer society to eat stuff flown half way around the world, completely out of season and generally lacking taste. How many times have I fallen for a bargain only for it to be a waste of money? Recently I bought plums on special offer from a supermarket - I should have known better as their weekly fruit and veg specials are generally out of season and unripe.  I left them in a fruit bowl with bananas for ages and they just started to go bad!

I had wood pigeon a friend had shot in the freezer and wanted to use it up as it was beginning to get freezer burn.  So wood pigeon defrosted; I had to decide how to cook it and what to cook with it.  There was some cooked beetroot in the fridge so that and the plums were decided on.

The recipe for the plum and beetroot sauce went something like this - with a fair bit of adjustment as I put in far too much red wine vinegar and had to go to all sorts of lengths to rescue it.

10 plums (mine were small unripe little bullets)
1 medium cooked beetroot diced
1 teaspoon muscovado sugar
1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon red wine
1 teaspoon honey
Some grated ginger, salt and pepper and 1 star anise.


All above were cooked down and blended.  Adjust seasoning and sweetness to your taste.

I rubbed the wood pigeon with rape seed oil, seasoned and wrapped in Pancetta and roasted in a preheated oven on a bed of sliced red onion and fresh thyme for 30 minutes, which left it quite pink.  Leave another 10 minutes if you want it - to my mind - overcooked!









I bought a lovely celery in the farmers' market recently so far removed from those anaemic ones you buy in the supermarket with their leaves removed.   How is it that in France or Spain supermarkets sell fruit and vegetables that look like you would want to eat them while here we get the most dreadful specimens?  The leaves are really tasty too and it's a shame to waste them so I made soup with them.






Celery Soup
1 large onion chopped
2 cloves garlic crushed
bunch fresh thyme and parsley chopped
I medium potato
500 ml chicken stock
The leaves from a head of celery

Fry off the veg and roughly chop the leaves from the celery head and add.  Season, add stock and simmer for 20 mins.  Blend smooth.

 
                                     

 I also made some apricot jam

click on the link for the recipe - it's delicious!

Every Woman needs a Willie

If you are reading this expecting something phallic - stop now - Willie is my handyman!  Every woman needs a handy man and being married or in a relationship is no guarantee of having one.  I found this out to my cost as both of mine were not much addition in the handyman stakes.  The first had the patience to read the instructions which was one step better than me.  I was more inclined to hit stuff with a hammer.  The second when he could be bothered was a bit better, but in no way practical.

Willie has a full time job so his handyman stints are nixers (or foreigners as they say in the U.K).  That means you have to wait until he has finished whatever shift he is on.  Willie doesn't stand on ceremony and he doesn't believe in door bells.  Willie just opens the door and lands in.

He also shouts loudly and every conversation is peppered with expletives.  He is particularly loud with me as - I am able to take it - his words.  One time he was here doing a job and one of my sisters rang.  She heard him in full flow and whispered "are you ok"?

He has fixed my Kitchen Aid, blitzers, blenders, washing machines, tumble driers, dishwashers, pumps, and recently installed a timer on my immersion heater.  He has unblocked drains, plumbed in showers, freed up a Velux window, hung roller blinds and hung a clothes horse - pulley device on the landing to exploit the heat rising from the stove.  All were fixed with cheerful loud banter, usually berating women as being useless, annoying and the best way to deal with them is to agree with everything they say.

I had the misfortune to take out a 5 year guarantee on a washing machine I bought a while back.  The first time I needed a call out, I rang the number given on the guarantee and was connected eventually to a call centre in outer Milton Keynes (or somewhere) - to an operator who asked where in southern Ireland I was.  I told her there was no such political entity, I was actually almost in Ulster but was in the Republic of Ireland and was met with a stunned silence.  Then she requested my address.  No house number or name were bad enough, but no street address and; horror of horror; no post code!  By the time the call was over she was beyond stressed and I was ready to "fix" said washing machine with said hammer.

The 5 year guarantee still lingers but will never again be used and instead Willie rides in to the rescue, all the time cursing feckin women!

Postscript
It annoys me when companies sell their products here in Ireland but then cover us by a UK call centre who have no training or knowledge of the country geographically or politically.