Ugly Vegetables

I think the first notable change I made to my host family in England was suggesting the wonders of a weekly organic vegetable box delivered to your door. My hint was to my utter surprise enacted upon instantly and since then I have had the pleasure of getting to plan my weeknight meals around seasonal produce and have been saved the depression that comes from visiting the 'plastic' veggies (sometimes even pre-cut!) at Tesco. The delight of wondering what will be awaiting me at the front door Thursday morning is thanks to the wonderful people at Riverford. Most of the vegetables are your familiar faces broccoli, carrots, onions and always a bag of potatoes. However I'm getting acquainted with a few new faces who I can only describe as 'deliciously ugly'.

The two ugly vegetables I have had the pleasure of meeting recently are Celeriac and Swede. The trick to getting along with these characters is to remove their tough skins and reveal their softer insides. Once this is done you will have the beginnings of a really good meal, read below if you dare associate with the deliciously ugly ones.


Celeriac and Pear soup

1 onion, chopped
clove of garlic, finely diced
1 celeriac, peeled and chopped
4 pears, peeled and chopped
500ml of good quality vegetable stock

Get out a medium saucepan and pour a generous amount of olive oil into it. Then add the onion and garlic, allow it to frizzle but not burn. Once the aroma of onion is invading your kitchen it's time to add everything else including the vegetable stock. Allow the celeriac and pears to soften in the simmering stock for about 20 minutes. Then turn off the heat and allow it all to cool for 5 minutes. Put the mix in batches through a food processor. Then serve it hot in some nice bowls on a cold day.




Potato and Swede Bake

1/2 swede, peeled and finely sliced
2 large potatoes, peeled and finely sliced
2 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
125ml vegetable stock
125ml milk
nutmeg, salt and pepper
parmesan cheese, grated

Get a medium sized baking dish and grease the inside with butter. Line the base of the dish with 1/2 the swede slices and the 1/2 the potato slices on top. Sprinkle all the garlic over it and hen get out your nutmeg and grate lots of it on top as well as a good shake of salt and pepper. If you want a creamy bake you could spread some creme fraiche on as well. Then it's time to arrange the other 1/2 of your swede slices on top and then the potoato slices on top again. Get the stock and milk you have kept on hand and cascade over your assembled mountain. Then get out your parmesan cheese and grate as much as you want on top of the bake. Put into a medium oven for about 60 minutes but if your oven has a habit of burning things as mine does do check on it at 40 minutes because it may be brown, crisp and very edible.

Now to finish I will talk of someone beautiful who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting. Alys Fowler is a divine Kitchen Garden Goddess who is responsible for a television show that is actually worth watching, The Edible Garden. Up until recently you could download episodes from the BBC itvplayer but unfortunately this no longer seems possible. If you can get you eyes on an episode do. She is my idol and therefore I think she deserves your worship. Also unlike my vegetable friends she is very easy on the eye. Happy cooking and looking.

Love London

Today is Saturday and I am doing loads of washing and ironing so I can pack my bag for our family trip to Devon tomorrow. The only good thing about today is that it's raining outside so I'm not really missing out on anything. While I undertake these domestic tasks I have been reminiscing about my previous weekend which was spent with Maddy in London and culminated in a delightful Valentines picnic on the Monday back in Kent. So instead of giving a long chronology of what happened in the past I decided to give love a list of my loves from the weekend.

1) Vintage Laura Ashley Dresses
Our Saturday morning was spent wandering down Portobello Road. We had a delightful time perusing antique stalls, then food stalls and finally clothes stalls. At one of the later stalls we managed to find a collection of Laura Ashley dresses that had been handily hemmed to more modern and practical lengths. I bought a long sleeved dress in Autumnal plum and green while Maddy bought a bright short sleeved summer dress that is sure to be worn at an Italian Villa in a few months.



2) Lulu Capes
At another stall in Portobello I spied the most magnificent cape. It was a blue check fabric 100% wool, handmade and lined. The lady behind these wonderful creations gave me her card and I still really want that check cape but I must be practical and 2 capes would really be too much for one backpacker. If you are not as concerned about excess luggage as I am you can order a cape online from
www.lululondon.com (I couldn't access the site from my computer but I put it anyway in hope that your computer will)

3) Red Velvet Cake
To finish off an exhilarating yet energy depleting shopping session we stopped at the Humming Bird Bakery. We shared a piece of the famous Red Velvet Cake and managed to demolish it on the side walk while watching the crowd of late comers (tourists) stream down the road. We vowed then and there to recreate the cup cake version of the cake for Valentines and the result is depicted below. They tasted as good as they look!





4) Picnics in Parks
On Valentines Day we sat down on a huge tree stump in Knole Park and filled grainy rolls with butter lettuce, goats cheese, beetroot and walnuts. We didn't share any of our lunch with the herds of deer because the signs told us not too and if truth be told I didn't even think of leaving a crumb for them. However we did manage to admire the deer from a respectable distance as we walked through the woodlands and reluctantly said goodbye to such noble animals. What we got in exchange 30 minutes later was a feral pack of school children who invaded the car, damn Mondays.

Hello England

So I know it has been ages since I last wrote a post but a friend suggested that this would be a good way of sharing my cultural experiences (yeah right) as an Au Pair to 4 children in Kent. Let's call them Caroline (pre-teen), William (preparing for 11+ with 4 tutors!), Harry (middle child) and Bobby (youngest at 6). As you can guess, all the children are very close in age and therefore constantly competing with each other. By the way, when I say competing I mean fighting.

So today I escaped the 18th Century stone house and went off to view my first ever hunt. I didn't really know what to expect, I was just given instructions to drive to the pub in a village 10 minutes away. As I drove up the hill I spotted 3 red coats, 2 blue coats and a pack of hounds waiting around outside the town pub. It seemed like all the unemployed locals were also out to view this unusual spectacle, appropriately attired in tweed coat, caps and wellies. I sauntered up and tried to act natural in my Hunter wellies but I think my constant picture taking was a dead giveaway. I thought that perhaps the hunt was only made up of 5 riders because it was a week day but half an hour later the rest of the field showed up. The master gathered everyone together and outlined his battle strategy for the day and then the horn was blown, rather feebly I must say, and the horses walked off down the road.

I headed back to my car perfectly happy with the sight I had just witnessed and decided to head home rather than trying to work out where on earth the hunt was actually going. I drove out of the town and got to the top of another hill close by where there seemed an easy pull over area that others had already taken advantage of. I stepped out of the car next to a small wooded area which two old men in green were watching intently. I didn't really know why they kept staring at an unmoving thicket of trees but I'm glad I decided to follow their lead because in a mater of minutes I saw the fox scampering out of the bushes. I'm not sure if it was a he fox or a she fox but it was much bigger than I expected and not red but fawn coloured. There was no mistaking it for a dog though because it wore a foxy grin and seemed to be working out how to avoid the dogs yapping in the distance. So I saw the fox but where were the hounds? We waited another good 10 minutes before the scarlet coats came trotting down the road while the dogs bounded along the woodland path that fox had already deserted. We informed them of our sighting and a lady in blue got out her mobile phone to update the rest of the field, obviously technology is catching up with tradition. I then walked further down the road to a clearing over looking the fields below. My final view of the day was the hunters going for a good gallop up another hill to try and get the fox which was suspected to have gone through the village. I called it a day after this because I am not vaguely familiar with these country villages and felt like I had got my share of luck for the day. View halloo!