'Cookability'

For the past few weeks I've been attending the Cookability course, run by Brighton & Hove Food Partnership. It's designed to support food activists to deliver cooking courses of their own, out in the community.

It's been great fun, with some really interesting people. We've been working together week-after-week to build up our group-working skills, develop knowledge around healthy eating & nutrition, and practice our food-prep by cooking lunch together.

This week was 'fish week', and I took the chance to demonstrate a recipe in front of the group - Smoked Mackerel Pate. It's a great recipe: a really simple prep, it's cheap, it keeps well, and of course the mackerel is a good source of protein and omega fatty acids (as well as being a relatively sustainable fish).

The finished dish tastes like a posh, richer version of tuna mayo. Which can't be a bad thing! :)

Half a packet (150g) cream cheese - can use quark or other low-fat version
Packet (250g) of smoked mackerel
A generous spoonful of yogurt, sour cream or creme fraiche
Lemon, pepper, chopped herbs etc. for flavouring

Remove the mackerel flesh from the skin, and remove any major bones. Blend the cream cheese and yogurt (etc.) into the flesh, and season with the lemon, pepper etc.

That's it! Can be kept in the fridge for several days, and you can flavour batches with additions like sweetcorn, sweet chilli, wasabi, and so on.

A photo of the group cooking lunch together...

...and the finished article, including a Palestinian-style stuffed trout:

Delicious! :)

Sunday 10th March

I've been booked by Louise of Grow Wild to lead another foraging walk around Telegraph Hill.

Louise is the Food Activities Coordinator for Grow Wild - she runs the popular Souper Sunday events at Common Growth. So, I'm hoping she can help us set up a field kitchen, and our foraged Telegraph Hill produce can be used to prepare an exciting wild lunch.

Watch this space for more details!

Food-shopping in Amsterdam



...with my sister, Lindsay. We spent a lovely morning with friends, savouring home-made apple tart with lashings of whipped cream and strong Dutch coffee (thank you, Wolf!). Then we strolled around the famous Noordermarkt organic food market - every Saturday, come rain or shine (or heavy snow!!) farmers and producers come from all over the Nederlands to share their wares. I got a lovely chunk of my favourite Dutch cheese, an 'oud kumin' (matured cheese with cumin seeds). Delicious!

Boxing day mushroom forage

Boxing day, and I'm preparing a dish to take to a cocktail party.

So I decided to combine the traditional Boxing Day stroll, with a bit of food foraging.

December might not be the most fruitful time of the year, but as it's mild this time around it's an ideal chance to search for edible mushrooms.

Sure enough, I found oodles and oodles of these things:

Jew's Ear fungus. Not the prettiest name, but the fungus itself can be quite pretty, as the sunlight shines through the silky, salmon-coloured flesh.

I found these in a boggy part of my hometown (Castleford, West Yorkshire). They almost always grow on old, slightly rotten or damaged Elder trees. And of course, on a patch of boggy wasteland, such specimens aren't hard to find!

So I picked about half a kilo of Jew's Ear, and the plan is to fry them - whole - with just some light seasoning, and use the cooked shrooms as a stylish garnish for my mushrooms vol-au-vents.

I hope they're as good as they look!

Goodbye, Telegraph Hill...

Goodbye, Mr Fox.

 

 

 

I'll miss you, and everyone on TH!

 

xx

Final forage around Telegraph Hill?

I am preparing to possibly leave Telegraph Hill and move in with friends in Brighton.

Today I was invited by Louise and Ella at Grow Wild, to lead a farewell forage around Telegraph Hill. We went out under leaden skies, to find a whole host of wild weeds still growing. We identified nettles and dead-nettles, mallow, cleavers (goosegrass), dandelion, plantain, mint and chickweed. All these were growing just behind St Catherine's church, around the edges of the new community garden. I picked mostly nettles (both stinging and 'dead' varieties) which I made into a hearty soup for my lunch. I also showed them the sloe-berries in the Lower Park, which were picked to make sloe gin.

I made certain to share a link to the Transition Lewisham Foraging Map, an open resource for all foragers in the area. Here's a link: http://goo.gl/maps/ds38T

More info about local foraging might also appear on the Grow Wild website.

Concern Bake a Difference event...

Thanks to all who came and contributed... We had a fabulous day, baked innumerable cakes, and raised £73.57 for hungry and malnourished children. 

Okay, I'll enumerate the innumerable cakes:

1x weird sugar-free egg-free Yorkshire Brak

12x chocolate brownie buns

1x magical apple meringue pie

2x experimental orange & caraway syrup cakes

1x plate of delicious bread-buns

1x plate of gluten-free, blue cheese straws

1x heart-shaped coffee cake

and lots of love.