Is it a Paella?

Or is it a kedgeree? Or possibly a risotto? I made it with Paella rice, but the main ingredient was smoked haddock and finished it with butter and parmesan. Sweat diced onion, celery and carrot in olive oil. Add the rice and chicken stock. 3 or 4 minutes before the rice is cooked add the diced haddock and spinach. Just before serving stir in a knob of butter and some parmesan.

Salmon en Croute

This is a favourite party recipe. Spread two salmon fillets generously with taramasalata and cover with chopped spring onions. Put the two sides together and wrap in puff pastry. Bake until done and then let rest for 30 minutes or so before serving. Important not to overcook as, apart from making the fish less palatable, a lot of water will be squeezed out making the pastry very soggy. I test the 'doneness' by inserting a thin knife into the centre of the fish. When the knife comes out warm, that is time to remove from the oven and leave the fish to continue cooking through with its own heat. Also delicious served cold.

Start of the New Year

Yesterday was the first time on the allotment since way before Christmas as the weather has not been conducive with the ground frozen solid much of the time.

We had made an earlier start however with garlic planted in modules. This proved very successful last year producing the best garlic. Unfortunately the allotment is contaminated with Onion White Root Rot virus, for which the only cures seem to be expensive and/or impracticable. Over wintered alliums seem particularly prone to the dreaded infection, so I try to minimise the time they spend in the ground and starting them off in modules gives them a good head start.

We sowed some onion seed in modules and put these in the cold frame. The job of the day however, was to cut down the autumn raspberry canes and mulch them. Not a moment too soon as the daffodils, which are planted amongst the raspberries, are just starting to show. The mulch was all the beech tree leaves that we'd swept up from the access road.

The artichokes seem to have been hit very hard by the recent weather and where there is still green growth showing it all seems to be rotten at the base. It would be very disappointing if we lost them as we have cultivated a good patch of excellent plants.

Unharmed by the weather were the parsnips, swede and beetroot. As we hadn't had any produce for so long these were a bonus.

At last Christmas is over and it has been a good one. I've even dared to step on the scales, not such good news, 104kg which gives me a BMI of 29.5. Ouch.

We had a quiet 25th with a walk and roast belly pork for dinner.

We'd bought a whole salmon from Tim in the market, which we picked up on the 24th. The idea being to make gravadlax with the tail and eat the rest in various forms throughout the holiday period. So, 24th poached salmon, 26th salmon in a creamy sauce with pasta, fishcakes on the 28th and for lunch on 30th. The gravadlax (pictured) was a great success and we served that on my homemade sourdough bread at our party on 1st January.

The 27th is my father's birthday and we had offered to cater for the family at his home in Herne Bay. I made lasagne for lunch with homemade pasta. For tea we had a boned and stuffed chicken and a boiled ham. Great to see so many members of the family: Ruth, Debbie, John, Ginny, Pam, Butty, Wilson, Tom, Amy, Will, Charlotte, Sam W, Chris, Kiri, Tamsin, Sam G and James plus Joe and Charlie and of course the birthday boy himself.

The weather has been bitterly cold and we've not even bothered to look at the allotment as I doubt that we'd be able to get to any of the root veg. We used the last of our potatoes, onions and garlic over Christmas. They have been great. I threw away some Charlotte potatoes that had become tainted with the flavour of the sack they'd been stored in.