Gravadlax

Last year, just before Christmas, we bought a whole salmon, turned some of it into gravadlax and poached the rest.  The cold poached salmon makes a great standby, excellent with a little mayonnaise: in sandwiches, with salad and hot potatoes and many other veg.  It worked so well that we did the same again this year.

The gravadlax takes 5 days maturing in the fridge, under weights, turning daily.  This is an easy dish to make, but this latest version was good and worthy of noting the method.  Unfortunately I didn't make a note of the exact quantities but: 2 packets of fresh dill, twice as much sugar as salt, (around 100g sugar and 50g salt) and lots of ground black pepper.  I chopped the dill very finely in the food processor and gave a final whizz with the other ingredients, just to mix them.  Cut the tail into two fillets, leaving the skin on.  Press half the dill mixture onto one fillet and the rest onto the other half.  Put the two fillets together to make a sandwich with the dill in the middle.  Wrap well in clingfilm and place in a dish at least as deep as the salmon parcel, as it gives off a lot of liquid while it is maturing.  Weigh the salmon down and refrigerate.  Turn daily, do not discard the expressed liquor until the 5 days are up.  This recipe gives a higher proportion of sugar to salt than I have previously used and I liked the less salty, sweeter flavour of this gravadlax.

We like to serve this with a mixed leaf salad that has been lightly dressed with a dill and mustard dressing and more dressing either served separately or drizzled over the gravadlax.  The dressing is simply made.  Put a large dollop of Dijon mustard into a bowl, add a teaspoon of sugar and a tablespoon of chopped dill.  Whisk in olive oil until a good consistency/quantity is achieved.  Whisk in lemon juice or white wine vinegar to taste.  The sauce should be slightly sweet and very mustardy.

Chilli Jam

Andrea suggested Chilli Jam might be an interesting way to use some of the excellent chilli harvest.  Brilliant.  Perfect.  What a great idea, I love sweet and savoury and especially something with a kick.  Found a recipe on the BBC good food site www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/8257/sweet-chilli-jam The recipe page recommends it as an accompaniment for cold meats and pies, I just love it with cheese.  Sharing the plate with the jam are: Gorgonzola, Berkswell - a local ewe's milk cheese and a mature Red Leicester.

Italian Sausages in Red Wine Sauce

We love french and italian cooking sausages: coarser grind, lots of garlic and of course 100% meat.  If you've never tried them I can't recommend them highly enough.  Unfortunately they are not always easy to find as English butchers don't even attempt them and the ones sold in supermarkets are just poor.  A good french or italian deli is a must.

I fried these sufficiently to give them a good colour, then removed them from the pan before sauteeing finely diced onions, garlic, carrot, celery and sliced mushrooms.  Add a good sized glass of red wine and stock (or more red wine) to cover.  Return the sausages to the pan and simmer gently until the sausages are cooked all the way through and the sauce has reduced to a good consistency.

Deep freeze

 Apologies for the quality of these photos of asparagus fern and the allotment, these were taken with my phone as the light was fading.

The whole country has been in the grip of a cold spell for a  couple of weeks now.  In Warwick we've managed to escape any substantial snowfall, but over the last couple of days we've experienced the most amazing hoar frost.  Any foliage has attracted incredibly dense formations of ice crystals.


Seen through the freezing fog the landscape has a ghostly black and white quality of unusual beauty.  When the sun does break through the effect is magical.  The photo below was taken with the usual camera.