Butterfly Cakes

I haven't been doing much interesting cooking recently, mainly due to lack of funds. We have spent the summer eating salad, jacket spuds and pasta, old favorites which I have already blogged about! I have been a very lazy blogger, no excuse, just need to get myself motivated!

I made these butterfly cakes for little F's 5th birthday party back in August. They were just decorated with thinly rolled marzipan shaped with a butterfly cutter, painted with diluted colour paste and edible glitter (which stayed with me for days!)

J told me that one of her friends, who was just about to eat her cake, had a real butterfly landed on her shoulder and there it sat for quite a while!

Le Tour de France

G's step-father has an apartment in Avoriaz, right in the heart of the French Alps. Stage eight of this year's Tour de France just happened to be finishing there so it seemed fairly stupid not to make the most of a perfect opportunity. So last Friday we made the ten hour drive, arriving at two in the morning, creased, tired and very excited.

It was the most fantastic day, I have never experienced anything like it, the people, the colour, the atmosphere, the noise, the carnival and those amazing cyclists. And it was all there for free! It must be the only major sporting event with so many world class athletes that you can go and watch without spending a fortune on tickets.

Vile Morsels No.1

I have been such a bad girl and haven't blogged for over a month! I have no reasonable excuse for this and I certainly can't blame my hectic social life or highly stressful career!

Due to a very small budget and the fact that we go out cycling as soon as G gets back from work at seven, we tend to eat quite lightly when we get home, shattered. There wouldn't be anything less boring than a daily photo and ode to the jacket potato?

I was recently remembering the most disgusting sausage roll I ever had to eat and this started me thinking about all the food I have eaten under duress, and how the hell I managed to swallow some of the vilest pap ever.

And so to that horrible sausage roll . . . . there was a girl with whom I became 'friends' on the basis that she lived over the road from me and we were both starting at the same secondary school. In my teenage naivety I looked up to her and thought she was the last word on every subject a teenage girl would need to know about - fashion, music, politics, boys etc.... in fact she was a complete and utter B*t*h and she ruined my life at secondary school. It seems fitting then that her mother is in fact the first recipient of my Worse Cook Ever Award and should be jailed for heinous crimes against sausage rolls.

It was the said girl's thirteenth birthday and she had invited four of us to join her for a picnic in the grim field next to her house. Her mother gave us some really grubby, greyed Tupperware boxes full of picnic 'treats' to carry the full fifty yards across to the grim field where we could sit on the barren ground, in January, and eat. Maybe it was a blessing that the first box contained the sausage rolls, this effectively killed my appetite and spared me the horrors that lurked in the other boxes. The cold, half raw sausage roll had the clammy texture of a fat finger that had been floating, bloated, in the sea for weeks; as I bit into it my teeth pushed through the thick pastry, that could easily have just been a layer of neat lard, and then came the nerve-piercing squeak as my tooth enamel scratched down against the gritty texture of the 'sausage' centre. I felt all the blood drain from my head as I tried to control the gag reaction that was desperate to launch the contents of my mouth into the grim field. I held it in for seconds whilst I grabbed a paper napkin into which, at the first unnoticed opportunity, I 'transferred' the yuk. Even now the thought of it makes me shudder. I have never in my entire life, so far, found a sausage roll that comes close to the sheer nastiness of that one . Congratulations Mrs. K!

Elizabeth David

There were two moments in my life that I can still vividly remember, two moments which made me think about food differently. The first was my tenth birthday, my parents took us out for dinner to an Italian restaurant in Whitstable called Giovanni's, I think it might have even been the very first time I had been to a 'proper' restaurant? I had lamb chops. I will never forget how they tasted and my amazement at the flavour of the dried rosemary they had been sprinkled with, I had never tasted anything like it before and it was wonderful.

The second moment was just after my daughter R was born, we were staying with R's paternal grandparents for a few months. I spent a lot of time with R's Great Aunt N who lived next door. R's father would be away working on a film somewhere and her grandfather,C, would be down in the hop garden helping with the harvest. N and I would spend the mornings making soups or stews, at lunch time C and a small group of polish hop pickers would arrive for lunch. They were the simplest, most humble of lunches and the happiest of meals. Most of the ingredients were from my little vegetable garden or soups made from the biggest and most perfect Puffballs which kept appearing in The Valley that year, to this day I have never seen the like again.

During this time of discovery N gave me one of her copies of Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, I read every page of it and was seduced by the modesty, the simplicity and the respectful understanding of food. I treasure this book, it is one of the tiny number of core books from which a million celebrity cook books have been spawned. Everyone should own a copy!

Barbecue on the Beach

It was a beautiful day today and we decided, at the last minute, to take the little disposable barbecue (that we never got round to using last year) to the nearby beach of Seasalter and have our tea there. We took some thinly sliced chicken and beef, a pack of sausages, lots of french bread, Ketchup and mustard. G packed the Gin and Tonic, our only luxury item.

The three children ate hot dogs and the strips of meat as it cooked. The bread was slathered with mayonnaise, mustard, Ketchup and coleslaw and tasted surprisingly good - probably a result of the mood and place in the same way Ouzo tastes so wonderful drunk in Greece, but bloody awful on a grey damp day in England!

We drove home full and tired, promising ourselves we should do it more often. There is so much on our doorstep and we don't see it!

Jo's Dough

For the first time this year I have just sat on the grass in my friend's garden! I know it sounds a little extreme but this could indeed herald the official beginning of summer; of balmy(ish) evenings, eating and drinking outside. It was nice to sit and drink coffee outside whilst being entertained by F skipping up and down and demonstrating her hand-stands!

My friend J had made some bread dough earlier that day but hadn't had time to knead and bake it so she gave me a piece for my supper. I thought I had some leftover pizza sauce but R had already eaten it, that scuppered my pizza plan. Instead I've just scattered some bits of onion, tomato and thyme, drizzled olive oil and seasoned my flattened dough. I will cook it as soon as G and I get back from our bike ride later this evening.

Raised Pie

With the elusive arrival of summer comes the promise of meals eaten outdoors. I love picnics and evening meals eaten on the half rotten table that wobbles on the decking in our 'communal' garden. Last year we would take one of those disposable barbecues out there, once it was up to heat we would sit it on a 'fireproof' base (a couple of bricks and an oven tray!). I would have a plate of very thinly sliced beef, chicken, pork and streaky bacon and we would each take a slice, cook it in seconds over the heat and eat, dipped in Dijon mayonnaise, Hollandaise, ketchup, HP sauce - whatever we had to hand.

One of my favorite picnic foods is the pie, shortcrust or hot water crust I'm not fussy I love them both, and the filling too (although I'm not too keen on a lot of jelly in my Pork Pie). This recipe for Raised Game Pie is simple and very savoury.

RAISED PIE - A carried meal or served hot or cold for lunch

80z plain flour 3oz fat bacon, minced

1 teaspoon salt 1 onion, minced (2oz)

2 oz dripping or fat 2 level teaspoons mixed herbs

1/4 pint water 1/2 level teaspoon salt

8oz sausage meat 1/4 level teaspoon pepper

Mix the flour and salt. Boil the dripping or cooking fat and water and add to the flour. Knead well and line a 1 lb bread tin with the pastry, keeping back enough to make a lid. Mix the other ingredients thoroughly, place in the tin and cover with the remaining pastry. Brush over with a little egg or milk and bake in a moderate oven for 1 hour.