Uist Wholefoods Co-operative

I made this using the recipe from Maw Broon’s Cookbook with very little of my own variations.

First, set the oven to hot (around gas 7, 220 C)

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Serve with plenty of fresh seasonal vegetables and potatoes.

We have had a few really summery days, so we have had some opportunities to try al fresco eating. We had planned a barbecue, but rain stopped play, and we ended grilling these. Better on the barbecue though. Don’t forget to marinade the ingredients the day before.

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Serve with nan bread or pitta bread, side salad, and greek-style plain yoghurt.

More experiments with lovage. I had seen it written that lovage went well with chicken, so I adapted this recipe from the Waitrose website.

Ingredients:

• One Organic free-range chicken, jointed (easy to do this yourself)
• 500ml good cider
• 2 tsps ground allspice (from the wholefood co-op)
• 40g organic butter
• 2 crisp desert apples, sliced into wedges
• 250g mushrooms, sliced
• 2 good sprigs of lovage; use the leaves very finely chopped. (from the garden)
• 4 tbsp double cream

Method:

• Put the cider in a large pan and simmer until reduced by half
• Put the chicken joints in a plastic bag with the allspice and a little salt and rub the spice into the chicken. The bag stops me making a big mess
• Melt half the butter in a deep-sided frying pan, and fry the mushrooms and apples until golden. Lift out with a slotted spoon and set aside.
• Melt the rest of the butter in the same pan and add the chicken pieces until lightly browned.
• Stir in the reduced cider, and bring to the boil, then turn down to simmer for 20 minutes to cook the chicken
• Add the mushrooms and apples along with the very finely chopped lovage and the cream. Season to taste and heat for a further five minutes.

We had this with mashed potatoes and peas. It was good, but the lovage did tend to turn into clots of leafy stuff. Maybe I didn’t chop it finely enough. If you like a thicker gravy, I would suggest mashing 20g of flour into 20g of butter and adding that instead of the cream.

Similar to the last recipe. Child no 2 said she liked it and then had more. This is a big result. We served this with asparagus as a starter, and then with roast potatoes and beans.

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I took an Italian recipe for stracotto, and substituted to try and use more local seasonal ingredients. This is really tasty.

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We took another mystery bag out of the freezer, and it contained six lambs hearts, all from Marie Ladyman. I found six recipes to try, and this was the first, very tasty and worth reposting. Please note I have never done this before, and I got comments from my work colleagues about my status as an ex-vegetarian. In my defence, I am reducing the waste from raising livestock, which is costly and expensive in terms of land use and water use.

This took a while to cook as well, mostly because of all the chopping. We found that 1 heart was a good portion for one person.

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We served this with basmati rice and spring cabbage, although it would be equally good with clapshot or similar. Coudn’t get the teenager to try it, but it was very tasty. The texture of the heart was a little like kidney, and the flavour closer to beef than lamb.

I miss my friend Marie, who has gone to live in Luxembourg. We mostly did emails, but she has been a kind and hospitable friend for years. Anyway, I shall just have to keep in touch and go and visit her, but it won’t be quite as easy as a trip to Aird. As a parting gift, we got a few things out of the bottom of her freezer: what were you planning on doing with all those kidneys, Marie?

We had steak and kidney pudding tonight, and tomorrow, sausage and kidneys in red wine. Steak and kidney pudding used to be a big favourite of mine when I was little. Here is how we did it, and it came out super-well and very filling. The kidneys came from Aird, and the beef was Ken Wilson’s, also from Aird. The recipe is from Nigella Lawson, although I have a similar one in the excellent and battered ‘Farmhouse Kitchen’.

Please note: this is easy, but it works best if you start early because it takes a while… It might be worth making the stewed filling well beforehand, and making extra so that you can freeze some.

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For the filling:

For the suet crust

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This serves six, and is very filling.

This recipe is even betterthan the last one; I was caught eating the remains with a teaspoon while clearing the table. This recipe is from Norman Tebbit’s book The Game Cook. He advises that cider can be used instead of wine, and suggests mashed potato as a good accompaniment. We had rice which was also good, but not very local.

Ingredients

• Organic plain flour from the wholefood co-op
• 1 rabbit, skinned and jointed
• 1 tbsp organic olive oil
• 50g organic butter
• 8oz diced salt bacon or streaky bacon or pancetta
• 2 homegrown onions, finely chopped
• 450g mushrooms, sliced
• 1 large glass dry white wine
• 2 cloves of homegrown garlic, finely chopped
• bouquet garni
• 300ml ‘marigold’ stock
• salt, pepper and parsley to garnish

Method

• Preheat the oven to 170C gas 3
• Season the flour with salt and pepper, and coat the rabbit joints in the flour
• Heat the oil and butter in the bottom of a large stainless steel saucepan. Fry off the onion until soft.
• Add the bacon then the rabbit, and continue frying until the rabbit is brown on all sides and the onions are golden
• Next, add the herbs, wine, garlic and mushrooms, along with the stock. Bring to the boil and stir it well.
• If the pan is suitable, cover and put into the oven. Otherwise, transfer to a casserole dish. Either way, make sore the rabbit is covered
• Let the casserole simmer in the oven for 2 or more hours. When you are ready, drain off the gravy and reduce by boiling. Alternatively, add a little beurre manie (butter and flour mixture) and simmer untuil thickened.
• Serve the rabbit with the sauce poured over the top, and with vegetables and potatoes.

This is what we had this evening, part of our quest to see what we can feed ourselves on. The rabbits were stored in the freezer, having been shot in the early winter. Malcolm tells me that this is prime rabbit shooting time: they are fat and ready for winter, and good eating. Susannah found the recipe and tried it out on us, and it was very tasty.

Ingredients

• 2 tbsp organic olive oil from the wholefood co-op
• 300g bacon, freerange, diced
• 1 rabbit, cut into joints, available locally
• 12 baby carrots, homegrown for preference, or 4-6 larger ones, peeled and sliced 
• 8 whole shallots, homegrown for preference
• 4 garlic cloves, homegrown for preference, crushed
• 2 tbsp organic honey from the wholefood co-op or fairtrade from the scottish co-op
• 1 sprig of thyme, homegrown
• 1 bayleaf, homegrown
• 400ml cider
• salt and pepper to taste

Method

• Fry off the bacon in the oil and remove to a large casserole dish
• Fry off the rabbit in the same oil, and put in the dish with the bacon
• Fry off the carrots, shallots, garlic and honey, on a low heat, until the mixture looks caramelised. Leave the shallots whole, just trim them only.
• Put the caramelised vegetables on top of the rabbit, and add cider, herbs and seasoning.
• Cook at 120C for 2-3 hours, until the rabbit is cooked.

We also had bread and butter pudding afterwards, but that is another story.

This recipe comes from Valentia Harris’s excellent book on risotto, which I use frequently. This is the only recipe for risotto that I have found that uses pork. Earlier this year we bought some locally raised and slaughtered pork from Ken Wilson, and I used a piece of a hand of pork, and some dripping that Malcolm had clarified.

Ingredients:

75g pork dripping, lard or pork belly fat (from locally raised source)
1 finely chopped onion (home grown)
300g finely cubed pork, eg from shoulder or hand of pork (locally raised)
1/2 glass dry white wine
1 tin organic chopped tomatoes (from the wholefood co-op and local shops)
pinch of safron strands soaked in a little warm water
500g organic risotto rice (from local shops and the wholefood co-op)
1.5 litres hot stock (I used marigold stock from the wholefood co-op)
50g freshly grated pecorino/parmesan cheese
salt and freshly ground black pepper (from the wholefood co-op)

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