Norwegian fishcakes

After three months of FaceTime only contact this week it was time for little man to finally visit the Norwegian family. Selfishly it's also a great excuse for some Mama time for me and of course her super awesome cooking!

My Mum is my number one go to person for all things food (number two is coming to visit us from Sweden in June) and this week she has not disappointed with Norwegian fish cakes and raspberry panna cotta, not to mention the daily fresh bread, cookies and the best black current jam I have ever tasted!

Norwegian fish cakes

Ingredients
600g fish - you can use any fish but these were made with salmon
100 gm Potato flour
2-3  tbsp Milk
Large bunch of chives  or spring onion chopped
Salt and pepper to taste

1. Put the fish, in 2 or 3 batches, into a food processor and pulse until it forms a rough paste. Tip the fish into a bowl with the potato flour and chopped leek. Add salt and pepper to taste and mix thoroughly. Add enough milk (2-3 tbsp) to create a slightly sticky but not sloppy mixture.

2. With wet hands, divide the mixture into 8 equal pieces and shape into patties. 

3. Heat a small amount of oil in a non-stick frying pan and fry the fish cakes over a medium heat, turning 2 or 3 times, until they are golden on the outside and cooked through. 

Truck life

This week with the sun shining down on us we have been getting Priscilla our truck ready for the summer. Glastonbury Festival is our deadline for the completed works but we took her into Somerset for a mini festival this weekend and she's looking pretty good.

My summer wardrobe is all about glitter and sparkle (and the odd bit of animal print).

Old cheese boxes work really well as drawers by putting ceramic handles on them.

The newly tiled kitchen.

Beetroot patties and fruit, yoghurt and oat smoothie

I have had Rachel Demuth's recipe for beetroot and potato patties for ages and finally got round to making them tonight. They are really easy and didn't feel too unhealthy. I was feeling super lazy after a day of poorly baby and festival preparation so I simply served them with avocado and mozzarella with a generous grind of pepper.

After the mozzarella I was feeling a bit guilty so made a quick fruit smoothie:

Ingredients
Small handful strawberries
Small handful blueberries
1 banana
1 small handful oats
Small squeeze honey
Half a tub of plain natural organic yoghurt

Blend it all together thoroughly until smooth.

An English country garden

As the sun goes down on a beautiful weekend of springtime sunshine some pictures of the shire looking its absolute best. This garden is beautiful and inspiring all year round but in the spring time and early summer it is a riot of colour and scent as well.

On our walk we found a couple of great spots for Bath asparagus which only grows in a very small part of the west country. I am kicking myself for leaving it behind as I have not cooked with it before and was really looking forward to some foraging-based experiments this week - next time!

Cafe Society

One of the joys of maternity leave is having the time to explore new cafes and restaurants so I was super happy to be able to visit Society Cafés latest venture in The Corridor.

Small but perfectly formed, I think it is fair to say that I will be spending a lot of time in this one as well!

Summer playlist

A lighthearted blog gets heavy...for a little bit

Firstly let me apologise. As an ex politics and current philosophy student things like this really matter to me:

Only 9 days before a European election (and incidentally a year before the next general election), all I have had posted through my letterbox is UKIP tosh, two identical leaflets (one entirely superfluous) of Tory counter-tosh and one genuinely informative leaflet from the Green Party.

As a marketing manager in a sector ever more strapped for cash I am by no means a normal advocate of mass produced leaflets but on this occasion, in a country where pub stool politics is being distributed by the political parties themselves, the politicians of this country need to buck their ideas up and make sure that the British electorate actually know what they are voting for.

UKIP's leaflet, the first to arrive by nearly three weeks, makes such deliberately misleading comments as "it's been estimated that each family could be at least £400 a year better off without the EU's agricultural and fisheries policy", "Outside the EU our Economy could grow faster" (my emphasis) and the wonderfully over generalised statement that "anyone who says that 3 million jobs are at risk if we leave the EU is simply telling a big lie", which would be hilarious if I didn't suspect it is being believed, adopted and re-spouted in pubs and front rooms country wide.

The Tory counter-tosh leaflets do little more than argue about UKIP; only the Green Party have sent information about their policies and I have yet to receive anything from the Liberal Democrats or Labour.

Most of the electioneering around the upcoming European Elections (traditionally not well supported in the UK but the basis for much of UKIP's increasingly popular proselytising) is lazy and tabloid. However in a country where nearly 5 million copies of the top three selling tabloids are sold per month compared to just over 1 million copies of the three top selling broadsheets*, this strategy is not entirely surprising. It is not a massive leap to suggest that this means around five times as many people are being given simplistic and misleading information every day and that, judging by what has been posted through my letterbox, this mis-information is not being properly challenged by our political parties, who whilst we're at it, we elect to represent our views to higher governing bodies. If they can't even tell the voters what they stand for how on earth are they meant to represent our views?

I don't want to write an essay or get into a debate about the pros and cons of negative electioneering but
I urge those of you who have registeered to vote on 22 May to find out who your candidates are and what they stand for as it seems that they are not necessarily going to tell you themselves.

*based on this and not extensively researched yet (baby crying = only perfunctory research possible but you get the picture).

Cauliflower rice

We were given a beautiful big cauliflower last week and not wanting to make the same old boring cauliflower cheese (and having forgotten to buy anything for supper!) I experimented with cauliflower rice for the first time.

As an avid bootcamper who is trying to get her pre-baby bod back, I am always keen to try new vegetable based dishes and so many people have told me about cauliflower rice that I thought I would give it a go.

I used what I had in the house and the result was delicious:

Ingredients

• I head of cauliflower
• 1/2 an onion
• 2 tsp mixed spice (I would have used Garam Masala if I had had it)

1. Blitz the cauliflower head in a food processor until it is roughly the same size as rice
2. Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan and then add the mixed spice and heat for a couple of minutes on a low heat 
3. Fry the onion until soft and then add the cauliflower. Fry on a medium heat, stirring gently until the cauliflower is cooked and just starting to brown. It should still have some crunch to it

Served with fried halloumi and steamed green beans it was an oddly satisfying simple supper! The cauliflower rice was really delicious and will definitely be making another appearance on our table. This recipe served two.

 

Cheese and beer

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon at all.

Egg-free Birthday brownies

After recently taking it upon myself to bake a mountain (literal not figurative) of lemon drizzle cakes for a party of 40 I was asked this week to bake an egg-free birthday cake for a neighbour who is allergic to eggs.

The irony of this is that baking is in no way my strong point, my cooking is a little too haphazard for the precision that baking requires. Nevertheless I agreed and started searching the net for an egg-free cake recipe.

I found this super simple brownie recipe deciding that a mountain of cake is obviously meant to become my thing:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup Green & Blacks Dark chocolate
• 1 cup Plain Yogurt
• 1/2 cup Granulated Sugar
• 3/4 cup All Purpose Flour
• 1/2 cup Cocoa Powder
• 1/2 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1/2 cup Chopped Walnuts
• 1/2 cup Water

1. Preheat oven to 350F/180C. Lightly grease an 8×8 inch square pan and line it with aluminium foil, with some extra foil hanging around the edges so that it is easy to lift the brownie.
2. In a large bowl melt the chocolate over a pan of boiling water. Let this stand for a minute or two.
3. To the melted chocolate add the yogurt and sugar; mix until combined.
4. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and nuts (if using) and stir until combined.
5. To this mixture add water and stir carefully until the batter comes together.
6. Bake for between 20-25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
7. Remove the pan from the oven and leave it on a cooling rack for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes carefully lift the foil and let the brownies cool completely before you can cut it.

I used Doves gluten free flour blend as that was what I had in the house and it worked perfectly so these brownies are both egg and wheat free!

They went down really well at the party where we lit the neighbours caravan up with a projector!

Three months old...

...and to celebrate, Little Man and I went to the pictures. I may not have the cinematographic references to give a full blown review but I can tell you that Tracks, the true story of a woman who walked nearly 2000 miles across Australia with four wild camels and her dog, is exquisite.

Mia Wasikowska plays Robyn Davidson, who made the trip in the late 70's, with quiet poignancy letting the beautiful scenery and calm determination of Davidson shine through. Having secured sponsorship from National Geographic in return for allowing a photographer to meet with her at various points of the trip, the result is a story all about a woman's desire to be alone. This film is not only beautiful but massively inspiring; Davidson completed the trip despite the danger it clearly posed without justification, she simply wanted to complete the trip and had the determination and strength to do it.

This film really touched me and I highly recommend that you go and see it and as The Times review of the film said last week, take your teenage daughters to see this beautiful example of womanhood at its best.

Fabulous Fashionistas

Bath in Fashion is now in full swing but with little man in tow and a summer of festivals to get ready for it looks sadly as if it is going to have to deal without me this year. One event that I would love to get to is tonight at The Little Theatre in Bath; a screening with live Q&A of Fabulous Fashionistas Sue Bourne's wonderful documentary about six women successfully carving out a stylish and confident path in their twilight years. One of the stars of the film is local woman Jean whose story of how she reinvented herself after the death of her husband and true-love is one of the most moving pieces of film that I have seen in a long time. Since the documentary first aired on Channel 4 Jean has rightly become a local (and national, a portrait of her has been shortlisted for the BP Portrait Awards) celebrity and this weekend opened a local Bank Holiday Weekend Festival in Bath.

If you are not able to make it to the screening tonight I highly recommend that you watch the documentary which is still available online. It is moving and incredibly inspiring to realise that our visible, external self does not need to dwindle with the years but instead can provide the platform for a new, bolder, more confident self...who would not find that idea appealing and empowering?

Fear and pumping in Somerset

On this sunniest of bank holidays, filled with food and friends, I have been slightly preoccupied with thoughts about my parenting; in particular worries about feeding. As I sit and write this post the now familiar and oddly comforting drone of the breast pump is my sonic backdrop (as it has been for most if not all if my posts so far). As a result of mini man not ever getting the hang of breast feeding, I have spent the last three months expressing his milk for him and bottle feeding. To begin with I found it upsetting to think that I could not do this most natural thing of feeding my own child as nature had intended but (as I am fast learning) each day delivers a fresh new worry...what if I'm not feeding him enough; what if my milk dries up; what if I selfishly decide to stop expressing and switch to formula? Of course I realise that this is neurotic and that little man will be wonderfully fine whatever I decide but it did make me think that we need to be honest about our choices and our experiences so that we can hold our heads up and say confidently that we do not judge how others decide to bring up their children. 

I do not mind admitting that I really did not enjoy the first week and a half of parenthood...I couldn't breast feed, cup feeding, as anyone who has ever had to do it will tell you is a nightmare, the hormones make you feel the lowest, deepest kind of unhappiness, and all when you are supposed to be feeling your most content. This all prevented me from having any kind of gushing rush of maternal love for my child, but of course none  of these reasons actually matter. My point is that I should not need to justify or explain it but that being honest enough to say that I did not enjoy my initial experience of motherhood it is what matters. I met a woman at lunch today who was honest enough to admit to not being maternal and that for her breast feeding for three months was more than enough (something that some, the current medical establishment included, would disagree wholeheartedly with). It was refreshing to hear this said without guilt or agenda.

It sounds so obvious to say, so obvious in fact that I have nearly deleted this post several times, but whatever is right or wrong, enjoyable or downright hellish for you is OK. But most importantly it is also OK to admit and talk about it.

Gnocchi on heavens door

A super quick note to herald the arrival of my first foray into pasta. Well gnocchi at least. I made it last night and it wasn't half bad even if I do say so myself. I used a Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall recipe and cheated with some pesto I had in the fridge. 

This weeks experiment will be egg free brownies for a friend's birthday, requested on the strength of a mammouth pile of lemon drizzles that I recently made for a party of 30. I have however had to reluctantly admit that even the simplest of dishes can take forever when there's a baby about so this will only be one tray bake (plus a little extra for me and big G of course).

Food porn

Today has been wonderfully sun filled and indulgent. With the boy and I left to our own devices, a quick weekend house clean was followed by a much needed sort out of my recipe folder...

...and the realisation that I couldn't possibly cook any of the recipies it now very neatly contains (this is the food equivalent of never having the right pair of shoes to go with your outfit despite all shoe purchases bring justified as the last on the grounds that these will 'go with everything'). Cue a sneaky trip into town and the entirely justifiable purchase of two new books:

I realise that I have arrived very late to the Ottolenghi party, the fruit punch is a distant memory and limp drunk bodies lie strewn over the furniture wondering how this happened again, but I am so excited to start cooking from this book I can't tell you.

As a west country bumpkin I am also late to the Leon party (too many Shire-based parties and not enough shoes) but having recently received their Breakfast & Brunch book I could not resist. In a predominantly veggie house these two are fast hurtling toward High F-W's Veg Everyday in becoming firm family favourites and I've only managed a quick glance through both between feeding the boy and cajoling Big G into a dog walk. 

Happieness IS these books in Society Cafe | www.society-cafe.com | in my trusty Havaianas (which really do go with everything).

Womans hour takeover

All week BBC Woman's hour has been taken over by a series of guest editors and today's was BBC 6 Music presenter and bloody marvellous lady Lauren Laverne. 

The absolute best bit for me was her interview with Caitlin Moran. Rather than try to do justice to their brilliance, listen to it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01ycqx3

While you do that I'm going to go and contribute to a positive feminist future (with bigger hair).

Partying with the best in Brighton

I took my boys down to Brighton last night for Komedia's 20th Birthday party and what a great night! Littlest boy did us proud and proved his party credentials by falling asleep as soon as the band came on! 

Now just chilling!