Live For Food

Photo: Slavik Gormah

Occasionally I dabble with growing fruit and veg. It didn’t take me long to figure out that for me it’s best kept as a hobby rather than trying to live off the fruits of my labour. I’m not a talented gardener and I’m also a fair weather gardener. I like pottering in the garden on sunny evenings after work, but forget it if it’s wet or windy.

Anyway, probably my most successful endeavour was some bird’s eye chillis I grew a couple of years ago. I had probably a couple of hundred of them, and they are not exactly the kind of thing one can take into the office for a morning snack.

Then someone told me that you can freeze them just as they are. So I put them in a little pot in the freezer, and it worked really well.

Because they are so small you can get them out immediately before you need them. You can chop them up semi frozen. In fact they are probably easier to chop up when they are a bit frozen. Then pop them in your recipe to cook. Voila!

Ingredients:
6 pork loin chops
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
Small bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/2 tsp fennel seeds, roughly crushed
Grated rind and juice of 1 lemon, plus 1 lemon, quartered
3 tbsp olive oil
6 bay leaves

Method

1. Marinate the chops
Put the chops in a dish. Mix together the garlic, parsley, fennel seeds, lemon rind and juice, olive oil and bay leaves, then rub all over the chops. Leave the chops to marinate for at least an hour, or up to a day.

2. Cook the pork
Heat a barbecue, frying or griddle pan. Season the chops, then cook for 5-8 minutes on each side until cooked through (if cooking in batches, wrap the cooked chops in foil while you finish the rest). Add the lemon quarters for the last minute to char, then serve alongside the pork.

Notes
Serves 6
Takes 20 mins plus marinating
362 kcals per portion
Not suitable for freezing

Copyright BBC Easy Cook Magazine, Immediate Media Limited
Reproduced with permission

My variations

I used pork steaks instead of chops, and I only did 2, so I used 1/3 of the marinade ingredients. My parsley was the curly variety because that was all the supermarket had. I couldn’t crush my fennel seeds as they were a bit tough and I don’t have a mortar and pestle.

Verdict

This was a very nice marinade. The fennel was quite subtle. I’m not sure the bay leaves added anything as I couldn’t taste them.

Great quick and easy recipe for summer to serve up at a barbecue, or for dinner with new potatoes and fresh veg.

Photo: lauri koski

If your digestive system is like mine, it detects when you go on holiday and says, “What do you think you’re playing at? Where’s my routine? Why are you eating out so much? Where’s my fibre?”

If you don’t respond to it, the consequences can be unpleasant. So here are my top tips for keeping your tummy happy on holiday:

• Keep well hydrated, preferably with plain water, of the boiled or bottled variety (even in the UK).
• Have a glass of fruit juice with breakfast.
• Have a piece of (washed) fruit every day.
• Don’t eat to excess at every meal. If you have a big breakfast have a small lunch or a late afternoon snack instead of lunch.
• Don’t have three courses every night. Have a starter one night, and a dessert the next night.
• If you normally eat low fat or low carb, try and keep to this to some extent as a drastic change of diet is not advisable.
• Don’t have ice in your drinks if the ice is made from tap water.
• Avoid open buffets and street food.
• Avoid seafood.
• Ensure salads are washed.
• Eat some vegetables or salad every day.
• Make sure leftovers have been properly cooled and reheated.
• Alternate alcoholic drinks with water.
• Avoid alcohol when its extremely hot.
• Keep various stomach medicines to hand: anti-nausea, glucose for rehydration, diarrhea and constipation treatments, and antacids for indigestion.

Make sure your stomach has a good time on holiday too!

Aluminium foil is great for making life easier when you are cooking.

When you roast a joint of meat, if you don’t need the juices, line the roasting tin with foil for easy cleaning afterwards .

When you cook chicken pieces, especially ones that have been marinated, again line the baking sheet with foil for easy cleaning.

Turn the edges up slightly to stop liquid dripping off. Be careful when removing meat from the foil as you want to try not to rip it as this will spill the juices on the tray.

Line your grill pan with foil, under the rack. This will catch all the fat and juices for easy disposal.

Finally, line the base of your oven with foil, and it will catch all the drips. Simply replace it from time to time. Much easier than cleaning the oven – a particularly hated task of mine!

Do you have any other uses of foil that make life easier?

Blackberries are found widely across Europe and North America, and are common here in the UK.  They are the fruit of the bramble bush, which itself it generally considered to be unwelcome in gardens and either removed or extremely well trimmed back.

Blackberries may be out already in certain parts of the U.S.A. but here in the UK it will probably be August before we see them in the hedgerows.

Photo: Enrica Bressan

The best thing about blackberries is that no-one who lives in a rural or semi-rural area ever need buy them.  In the house I lived in as a little girl there was a bramble hedge at the bottom of the garden.  As we backed on to a large field the hedge was encouraged and kept in check with the added bonus of blackberries every year.  I remember trying to make myself eat the sharp unripe red ones just for fun, for some reason!

Where I live now there is a little country lane a few minutes walk away which is awash with blackberries for most of August and September.  I love to take a box down and fill it, come home and weigh it, and work out how much it would have cost me to buy in the supermarket.  As 250g will cost say £1.99 it’s well worth it.

I can’t believe how few other people there are picking them; I have the whole lane pretty much to myself.  One year I shared it with two elderly ladies.  I think they did better than me as they cunningly brought their walking sticks with them so they could get to the higher up ones.

Of course there are hazards to picking blackberries so make sure you know the Rules of the Hedgerow before venturing out:

• Wear long sleeved tops and full length trousers and shoes that cover your feet – this will reduce scratches.
• Ensure said clothing is not your best – you will get scratches and snags.
• There will be nettles – but where there are nettles there are dock leaves
• Scratches and nettle stings are fair game – its the pay off for getting free fruit.
• There will be spiders.  Many of them.
• The best fruit will always be just out of reach.
• Test your footing carefully – if you step too far into a hedge you may up down a ditch.  The ditch will be full of nettles.
• If you eat as you go along check the berry carefully for maggots and bird doo-doo.
• Don’t pick berries from the bottom of the bush because they may have dog wee on.  If you take your mother with you, she will remind you of this every single time 😉
• When you get your blackberries home put them in a large bowl of water to soak.  All the hedgy bits and any spiders and maggots will float to the top of the bowl.

Ways to enjoy blackberries

Blackberries can be eaten as they are and are great with an accompaniment of cream, ice cream or yogurt. If you have picked your own chances are there will be a few sharp ones so you may prefer to cook with them.

Here is a round up of blackberry recipes to check out. These are not recipes I have tried, they are merely a useful selection of links with yummy pictures that sound nice.

blackberry jam

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/530439/how-to-make-blackberry-jam

plum and blackberry batter cake

http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/631715

blackberry and coconut slice

http://www.vegbox-recipes.co.uk/recipes/blackberry-recipe-2.php

crunchy apple and blackberry crumble

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/crunchyappleandblack_7679

summer pudding

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/528209/summer-puddings

no fuss fruit tart

http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/no-fuss_fruit_tart_11008

Nutritional value of blackberries

Not only do blackberries taste nice, they are good for you too, and contain antioxidants, and vitamins A and C. They are low in calories, and make a great sweet and juicy snack!