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A few things I have cooked recently

Work’s been getting in the way again… So here is a random selection of recent adventures in the kitchen.

I made some more gazpacho – partly because I was ridiculously excited about getting bargain tomatoes from one of the stalls in Borough Market (my online research tells me that what I got from there for £2 would have cost me nearer £14 from my usual delivery store!). I was asked to provide the recipe – I sort of used Felicity Cloake’s how to make the perfect… method, but adapted it a bit. I have to confess, I didn’t sieve it, but it was still lovely. To my 2kg of tomatoes, I added two red peppers, one green and one yellow, three small cucumbers, four cloves of garlic, less olive oil than the recipe suggests, plus four tablespoons of sherry vinegar and some salt. The little olive oil people still make me smile.

Angus and Clive came over recently and I decided for once I’d do a proper non-dairy dessert. I usually seem to do a pastry based pud when they come over and Angus a) survives and b) forgives me.

I dusted off Lighten Up by Jill Dupleix and made these little Persian rice puddings, using soya milk and with a hint of rosewater. They were lovely (but a little too sweet for my liking – due to the milk I chose). Now I’ve checked the recipe, I see that I will have used a bit of butter to grease the moulds, dammit.

It was the Summer Show at the Horticultural Society at the weekend – just a few cookery categories for this one, as there are lots of flowers and vegetables on display at this time of year. The peach and rosemary tart from Richard Bertinet’s Pastry got a third (shouldn’t have made it a day ahead, as the peaches wrinkled a bit overnight). My strawberry tart got a first and the brioche came in second in the “anything goes” category.

I also got a first for this my chilli apple jelly and a second for this lovely muscat jelly.

 

A couple of other prizes too – so the cookery cup is now gracing my mantlepiece. It’s very small, but it makes me happy.