Isn’t spring wonderful after a long, cold and wet winter? Every season has features I look forward to but spring brings an explosion of colours and scents into gardens everywhere. Shrugging off coats and jumpers and boots feels so liberating yet I remember feeling excited when the change of season led me to wearing those boots!
Apart from clothing the other element that changes with the season is food. What is available, particularly fruit and vegetables, dictates what we eat as the temperature changes. Salads and other meals served cold appear often prompted by what’s available at the green grocer. Usually we go there with a few staples on the list but then allow the freshest, most attractive fruits and vegetables to dictate what we eat for the next week.
We go to green grocer which has been run by a family of Italian descent for jas long as I remember so we can buy sheep and goats milk cheeses and yoghurts, a selection of cold meats and some other items. I love their olives.
We couldn’t resist the first of the locally grown mangoes! Armed with a damp cloth we slurped our way through three. Pretty colour, great taste, a bit sticky.
making
TOMATO and CUCUMBER SALAD WITH MUSTARD and CRESS DRESSING
This week I was looking for a Lebanese cucumber to make a salad. I also bought tomatoes, but they’re always on the list! When we got home I washed, dried and diced the cucumber, tomatoes and three slices of red onion then mixed the vegetables with two heaped dessert spoons of bought mustard and dill dressing. I didn’t add any salt as it draws the juices out of the vegetables and makes the dressing watery. Into the fridge to chill for dinner. Served with a small sprinkling of salt and some grated pepper it was delicious!
BLOOD ORANGE SORBET
Blood oranges were also on display so I immediately knew I was going to makes sorbet. I put the icecream maker insert from the Kitchen Aid in the freezer overnight to chill. The next day I made the sugar syrup and put that into the freezer, too, until it was very cold. Washed seven blood oranges which resulted in two cups of juice, just the amount required to make the sorbet. Put the juice and sugar syrup into the chilled icecream maker and set it to stir for 12 minutes. Then we had blood orange sorbet!
BLOOD ORANGE CHOCOLATES
Meanwhile, I had sliced some of the peel from the blood oranges into thin strips after I’d scraped out the remaining pulp. I microwaved some 70% cocoa dark chocolate in a cup after I’d broken it into small pieces, checking every 15 seconds. When it was glossy and melted I tilted the cup and dipped the strips of peel, one at a time, into the molten chocolate. Then I left each strip to set on a sheet of baking paper. Of course, we had to taste one! There’s no point making something fiddly if it’s not great, is there? Very hard to stop at one each, but they needed to dry. I’ll be making theses citrus strips dipped in chocolate again!
The blood orange and chocolate strips look a bit gruesome but tasted WONDERFUL!
cooking
OVEN ROASTED MEATBALLS
Not everything I cooked this week was served cold. I made OVEN ROASTED MEATBALLS following a recipe from recipestineats.com. We like meatballs but I don’t like the splatter on the stovetop from frying them. Obviously I was attracted to a recipe where the meatballs are suspended over the tomato sauce made from tinned tomatoes, Italian herbs, onion, garlic and. Then it all went into the oven for about 25 minutes.
This recipe made two very generous sized meals for two people. Dinner one night was served with the Tomato and Cucumber salad in Mustard and Cress Dressing, a new favourite. The next time the meatballs appeared I served them with just picked and steamed snow peas and potato mash.
As usual, also made three loaves of rye sourdough. It takes three days to get the dough to the cooking stage but three loaves last a couple of weeks. While I’m feeding the starter I measure out the flour I’ll need later and set it aside.
Keep the flour in a plastic crate. I make three loaves at a time as it is a bit of a faff preparing the starter/sponge, then waiting for the dough to double in size , ready to cook.
growing
Using my newly sharpened hedge clippers I have reshaped a big rosemary bush. The way the blades cut through the woody bits and the soft regrowth without much effort is very satisfying. This particular rosemary bush was grown from a piece of my Mother’s bush and is very aromatic and strongly flavoured. She also propagated a bush for our son who felt the one he’d bought from the nursery wasn’t strongly flavoured nor really aromatic.
So as I almost effortlessly snipped off pieces of rosemary I collected the soft, new growth cuttings, stripped off the lower leaves and trimmed the growth off the top a little. Into water then on the end of the table which gets morning sun and soon little thread like roots will form and I’ll pot them up to share.
Beautiful spring weather, I hope you are enjoying the weather where ever you live!