Fly agaric gallery

Amanita muscaria-fly agaric, like to grow in groups and are a good (almost always) indicator of the presence of ceps nearby, if there is peppery boletes growing it's game on!

Artichokes

Great plant as a border and of course the globes. There's a little preparation needed,and you will need a lemon quarter and a sharp knife.
Break of the stalk peel of the outer leaves until the soft centre ones and the choke seed heads are left. Quickly scoop these out with a spoon and discard, squeez some lemon juice over the heart and rub it in to stop it discolouring.
Now trim the heart paring any of the dark green leave ends remaining.
Rub with lemon again.
Place in boiling salted water to blanch for 4-5mins depending on the size of the hearts.
Eat as they are with some olive oil and salt, or use chopped and added to a creamy sauce with pasta.
In the picture on this page I served it with Hollandaise sauce, smoked bacon and sun-dried tomatoes.

Cold-Filtered Coffee, it's Hot!

A Simple Method.
Put 28g/ 1oz of ground coffee in your coffee plunger/ cafetiere add 840ml/ a pint and a half of fresh cold water or still bottled, cover and leave in the fridge for 12-24 hours. Then simply add the add the plunger and press down slowly.

This method produces a less astringent coffee with a round taste and more natural caramel notes, no need for all the technical data but put simply, in a normal brew proceedure if the waters too hot it burns your beans and burnt beans of any type never taste good.

Enjoy cold as it is or slightly sweetened with condensed milk.
Warm it in a pot if you wish to have a regular 'Americano'.

You don't have to drink it all at once this will keep for up to a week in the fridge, for drinking chilled or warmed as you desire.

Peaches

My favourite canned/ bottled fruit.
At the moment they are in season and apart from just eating them as they are enjoying their dribbly mess or wrapped with some salty bacon we like to serve them dried crisp, semi dried, poached and jellied, with Vanilla Meringue Champagne sorbet and Fresh Cream. Light and refreshing for summer.

Wild Garlic in Flower

Wild Garlic in perfect bloom. The flower heads are good for adding into a dish like Risotto, sprinkled onto a Salad or crushed with New Season Potatoes and lots of butter.
There's still time to get some!

Dandelion Lemonade; HERE COMES THE SUMMER

Dandelion Lemonade; HERE COMES THE SUMMER
‘Time to discover what fun is about’, 1.42 mins of perfect pop by the Undertones, there’s no guarantee of long legs lying in the sun in this quest but dandelion heads always appear, their florets clocking and disappearing in a breeze, they’re out now, grab some! Have a bit of fun making  pure ‘pop’ that’s good for you.

Dandelion Lemonade
Recipe.
30-40 dandelion flower heads
1.5 l / 3 pts water
1 Lemon, cut into quarters
50g Sugar
1tbspn Spoon of Honey
Method
Place the heads in a suitable sized bowl or bucket, first squeeze  the juice of lemon quarters into it then just chuck the skins and all in, add the sugar honey and stir in the water, leave to stand in a warm place uncovered/ or covered with muslin for 24hrs. Strain, taste adjust the sweetness with a little more honey if you like. Chill the ‘pop’ before drinking!

Here's a link to The Undertones, Here Comes the Summer, enjoy and for aural treats have a forage and listen to some of their other stuff while your there.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=31Dza1L8daA

Latte Sponge Cake and Olive Oil Scones- Updated Oldies-No Pictures

Latte Sponge Cake and Olive Oil Scones
I had to bake a cake recently and wanted something simple and quick, a quick browse in a book I always keep handy for such occasions, ‘Full and Plenty’ by Maura Laverty  a gem of a cook book from the 60’s commissioned by the Irish Flour Millers Association,  gave me up these two recipes, the first originally called ‘Hot Milk Sponge Cake’ in her book, I've just added the coffee to the original  recipe and called it Latte Cake. The second, while waiting for the cake to bake I retreated to the book and came across ‘Salad Oil Scones' new to me -at 500 pages and only a few pictures there's always something new in it.I liked the idea and gave them a go, I replaced the 'salad oil' with  Olive Oil,  (she had probably intended to use olive oil in her recipe but wanted to save you a trip to the chemist, just about the only place you’d get olive oil for sale in those days) She describes the scones as ‘extra rich and tender with a delicate crust top and bottom’.They are baked in a very hot oven, and bring the full fragrance of the olive oil out. Bake the cake first then turn up the heat and give the scones a go.


From the foreword of ‘Full and Plenty’ by Maura Laverty
‘Good ingredients are more readily available in Ireland than any other country in the world. An American agricultural expert once told me that we should go down on our knees and give thanks for those easy-going ways of ours which economist bewail. Thanks to the fact that our soil has not been worked to dust, we enjoy better-flavoured meat, more succulent vegetables, creamier milk, richer butter and cheese and more nourishing wheat.’
Prescient words considering in the sixties we'd be led down the supermarket aisles of pre-packaged food.Thankfully we are starting to turn the cycle back to appreciating what good foods we have to offer from our own land and the satisfaction of home cooking.

Latte Cake (Hot Milk Cake)
The original recipe used vanilla and lemon extracts for flavourings, and there no reason this one can’t be changed to use ‘Hot Chocolate’. I decorated mine with a simple coffee butter icing (50g soft butter beat with 100g icing sugar beat well with a teaspoon of coffee dissolved in a teaspoon of water as a simple topping).

Ingredients
2 eggs-large
6oz/176gcaster sugar,
 6 tablespoons/ 90ml of Hot Milk
 2 teaspoons Instant coffee
6oz/175g Self-raising flour - sifted

Method
Separate the egg yolks and whites.
In a bowl beat the yolks- use an electric hand mixer, and then add the sugar and coffee beat well adding the hot milk slowly until the mix is light and creamy. Fold in the flour, then beat the egg whites until stiff and fold in to the rest of the mix.
Bake in a buttered 8” 20cm cake tin at 325°f; gas mark 2,165°c in a pre-heated oven 25-30mins or until the cake  starts to shrink from the side of the tin.
Turn it on to a wire rack to cool.


Olive Oil Scones (Salad Oil Scones)
I like to add a little coarse sea-salt and dried rosemary to the surface of these before baking,
Like all soda breads these taste great split and toasted the next day.

Ingredients
8oz/227 Self-raising flour
Good pinch fine sea-salt
2 oz/56g olive oil
6 oz/176g buttermilk

Method
Sift the flour and salt into a bowl, make a well in the centre and pour in the oil and butter milk, stir in with a fork until the dough leaves the sides of the bowl. This dough will be wet and sticky, but we don’t want to add extra flour when kneading and shaping instead use a sheet of parchment paper or cling-film to work the mix on.
‘turn the dough onto a sheet  of  parchment paper or cling-film; lift paper/film by one corner and fold over in half, press down firmly, pull paper/film back. Repeat with other corners of paper /film until dough looks smooth.’
 Cover with another piece of parchment/film and press flat to ½” 12mm thick, at this stage try to get it rectangular in shape and cut into small rectangles with a knife and place onto a baking sheet. Bake for 10 mins, in a very hot oven 475°f/ 250°c/gas mark 7


For more info on Maura Laverty  follow this link.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio-documentary-mauar-laverty-agony-aunt-cook.html