Figs and things.

Not long after we came out here my brother and sister in law broke the normal family rule of only buying presents for children at Christmas. They gave me a baby fig tree and Steve their spare chain saw, despite the fact that we were flying back out here by Ryan air. I was a bit dubious about both gifts, terrified that the chain saw would kill us and that I would kill the fig tree if we could get them to Spain at all.
Steve flew back first as I was staying in the UK to sort out some family matters. The chainsaw was in his suitcase in the hold despite being questioned in front of all the other passengers he was allowed to fly. The fig tree came with me and remarkably suffered only only one broken branch.
The chainsaw despite my doubts proved to be one of the most useful presents we ever had and we still use it despite having brought a another more powerful machine since.
This year the fig tree produced its first harvest of beautiful black figs.

To celebrate I am including my favourite fig recipe.

For two people you need four black figs,four rashers of streaky bacon, half a small log of goats cheese and four slices of country bread.
For the dressing you need honey, mustard and sherry vinegar.


Squash the bread into an oven proof dish and sprinkle with olive oil.
Cut the stalks from the figs and then cut through them to about hhalf way to the base.
Put a thick slice of goats cheese into each slit and then wrap the fig in streaky bacon. Stand 1 fig upright on each slice of bread.

Whisk together a teaspoon of honey with a teaspoon of mustard and two teaspoons of sherry vinegar and drizzle over the figs.

Place in a hot oven until the bacon is cooked and crispy. Serve the fig on the bread with a small green salad.

Cleaning the freezer.

Most people, I guess, find stray and forgotten food parcels at the back or in our case the bottom of their freezer when they come to clean it out. Well OK there are one or two people who have colour coded labeling and super strong clips so that not even a rougue frozen pea escapes scrutiny. I am not one of them. We have a largish chest freezer which makes it even easier to loose things. The things lurking at the bottom of my freezer turned out to be random pieces of pig.  To be precise two stomachs, three tails, two trotters,and three packs of cawl.
I am slightly unsure how long they have been there. The reason for my uncertainty is because they were gifts, I know, I know normal people get chocolates or flowers not pig guts! I have a bit of a reputation for being willing to cook and eat anything so sometimes when friends do have a whole pig they bring me the bits that they don't want. I accept anything but I have to admit not always with a great deal of relish for the cleaning, scraping, salting or boiling that such things enevitably require to make them taste good.
I was for a moment (of weakness) tempted to bin them,however I have been a bit vocal in the paste about the crime of wasting food and we are as ever on a bit of a budget. I thawed one of the stomachs and repackaged the other things in the quick access basket. I then girded my loins and beafed up my determination, and set about trying to remember what to do with said stomach. We had cooked one once before and it had been surprisingly good.  It turned out that I had kept the recipe for the stuffing but not the cleaning instructions, YouTube came to my rescue of course. I have to ask who gets up in the morning and decides to video themselves cleaning out a pigs stomach? The answer is quite a lot of people apparently.
To cut a long story short, having spent two days brineing and scrubbing I ended up with a cleanish almost smell free casing for my pork meat sausage and potato stuffing.

These are the pictures of the cooked result. It was really delicious though I should have realised when the recipe (taken from a book of Amish memoirs) noted that it is a good recipe for a barn raising that most of it would end up back in the freezer. I better remind myself not to let it lurk!

Learning life skills

Almost every thing that I have done in life I have wished that I started with more knowledge.
 As I was gardening over the weekend I was thinking about school, about the fact that so much of my time was spent on things that I have never used and in fact no longer really remember. If only basic food production had been a subject, or even, more general gardening skills. I could have supported my family in a more enjoyable way. Basic carpentry and plumbing would have been so useful as well.
Understanding income tax and banking, calculating interest rates and basic car mechanics. Indentifying native trees and flowers, childcare and stain removal. I could go on. I know that some of these have been tought intermittently, primarily to the least academic children, as though brighter children never need these skills.
I never wanted to have a career in these things just to know when I took the car to be repaired that I wasn't being ripped off, or when I rang the plumber to be able to tell him in general terms what the problem was. Now having chosen a more practical lifestyle I know I would have learned the skills I need so much more quickly had I had some basic knowledge as a foundation.
Almost everything that I read describes poverty in purely financial terms, but what if it's not just about finances what if it's also about knowledge? I know that good heath and access to fresh food are linked so if people could grow, cook and preserve thier own produce what a difference that could make. I feel so encouraged when I read about local groups and sometimes even councils who are prepared to sponsor such iniatives but I still .wish that's what we all learned at school.

Rainy season, Amazon, and preparations for the Christmas market.

We always have a rainy season here, and it´s a common joke that it lasts for 9 months of the year. In reality though November is often pretty wet, this year though the rain has started a bit early and has left us with  a dozen jobs that really need attention outside, including firewood which we are only halfway to chopping and storing. It doesn´t do to bank on normal weather patterns when in truth there is no such thing as normal.

Steve has just gone to collect an Amazon parcel from town, we have never been able to persuade them to deliver to the house, in fact they insist that the house doesn´t exist. We have tried persuasion and threats all to no avail, so off we go into town to rendezvous with with delivery drivers in cafes and car parks, somehow it rather defeats the object of internet shopping. The right thing to do would be not shop on Amazon, but they are so useful we have never been able to hold out for long. Such is modern life I guess, but all the same I am grateful don't  do that much shopping, internet or otherwise.

Our washing machine broke down at the weekend, yet another link to the commercial world. The repair man is coming tomorrow, simple life or no I am not wanting to wash everything by hand.

I am having a stall once again at the Christmas Market of a friend, I rarely sell much, and it is always cold but we generally have a good time. It is kind of a tradition now. Normally I take way too much stuff so this time I plan on taking cowls only in lots of different colours . We will see how they do.

The walnuts are going down though I have to confess to being slightly fed up of putting walnuts in everything. Any way all last years are out of the barn now and in the pantry so I shouldn't forget them.

Weekends are different

I suppose that I thought that living in the country would mean that all the days would turn out to be pretty much the same. As it has turned out weekends are different. To Start with all the shops in Sarria close for lunch on Saturdays and don't re-open until Monday morning. No major problem there, but it does mean that our attempts to have a rest day on Sunday is supported by circumstance which helps us. It does make a difference to, I have way more enthusiasm for life on a Monday if we have had a quiet day on Sunday.
Steve gives English lessons to a neighbor on a Saturday morning, he agreed because it is a neighbor but I know that he feels that it is the hardest lesson of the week. It think that we hope that it dies a natural death as it is our only chance in term time for Steve to get jobs done around the house. He likes to think that we are moving forwards or at least keeping on top of things. For me it's almost the opposite problem because Steve has the car all week I like the chance to get and go for a coffee or a drink. I rarely get lonely and relish the quiet passing of the days but I do like some contact with the rest of the world.
Whilst Steve was teaching yesterday I took the opportunity do some work in the garden, the weather was threatening to do something unpleasent. Heavy cloud and gusts of wind, but in the end only a few spots of rain. There is so much work need doing but I was determined not to repeat Friday's mistakes. I chose a bed to work on and closed my eyes to  everything else. You really can only do what you can do.

Plenty of Work here

 I get quite a lot of satisfaction from restoring some sort order in the garden. although it will never be quite as regimented as the Victorian Kitchen garden that has remained my secret ideal,despite changes in gardening fashion, with a few days of good weather I should be able to prepare it for the winter.

Blight

My tomatoes got blight whilst I was away, inevitable really as the weather changed and Steve really had no time to mess with them. In fact we have had a pretty good crop so I'm not too disappointed.

Peashoots

The cooler damper weather has given the green stuff a new lease of life including pea shoots grown from peas that fell in the spring they make such nice salad veg, that next year I might grow some specially.

Failure on the walnut eating front I will try and do better tomorrow.

Time

Today, not for the first time I completely forgot my normal mantra of tackling only one job at at time and as a result I was exhausted by lunch. The kitchen was littered with a dozen started, but not completed tasks and I had left no room for,and gave no thought, to preparing lunch. As I surveyed the worktops my heart sank when I calculated how much time I needed to finish everything I had started. It was not going to be before midnight.

I did the most logical things that I could think of:- Panicked and then shouted at Steve. Steve was obviously being unreasonable coming into the kitchen at lunchtime and offering to set the table, with the built in implication that that we might be eating sometime soon. The fact that the table was no longer visible under the piles of washing in various stages of organisation didn't help. Rather than let him mess with my laundry system I told him to make the Salad. He said nothing, just looked helpless as the ingredients for the said salad were still in a bucket mixed with random vegetables  green stuff for rabbits and chickens all with a healthy amount of soil attached. It was also still on the Patio so not really obvious ( but irrelevant he should know where it might be!)

We managed lunch eventually, Steve went to work, I had a cup of coffee and tried to calm down. I also tried not to be angry with Steve for the unpardonable sin of finishing early on a Friday (Glass of wine, crisps and a film) and no chance of extracting myself from the unintentional chaos I had created this morning. I sighed and thought longingly of the life that some of my old friends in England still think I lead. A villa with a pool in the Sun and me on deckchair with a Gin and tonic.

Tomorrow I need to tackle the garden but tomorrow is another day.......

PS I didn't forget the walnuts, we had vegetable tagine for lunch and I replaced half the chickpeas with roasted walnuts, it was good move definitely worth repeating. Not as good as the walnut sauce yesterday but good enough. If walnuts really are a super food we will be so healthy by the end of the week.

And now for that glass of wine

Mushrooms and another walnut recipe

My first find this morning

Frades and the surrounding woodland is well known in the area for wild mushrooms and every year we see people park in the lane and head out with baskets. Among them are commercial pickers and this sometimes creates a little annoyance in the village. I have heard my my neighbour M getting quite loud ( he has one of voices that carries), suggesting that his cows are being disturbed and his gates left open When he found a couple with full baskets in his field.  The ladies just gossip shaking their heads at the cheek of strangers. The truth is no-one minds people gathering mushrooms or later chestnuts for themselves, if anything it is a matter of pride that we have the best mushrooms and the best chestnuts. The line is drawn when people pick to sell though people usually mutter amongst themselves rather than confront the offender. rather than confront the offender.

 I went out this morning, not really hopeful because I had seen pickers in the fields yesterday. The wood below the village was awash with ceps and probably for the first time ever had to stop because I couldn't`t carry any more rather than stopping because I couldn´t find any more. The pickers were probably looking for field mushrooms so I will try for those maybe tomorrow.

Maggots got there first.

Ceps are my favorite for drying as they re- hydrate well and have a lovely concentrated flavour.So today's haul will be dried rather than eaten fresh.

 I have to honest about mushroom collecting as so much is written on the Internet which is a bit misleading. Ceps are loved by all kinds of creatures and it is a rare day when you will get a whole mushroom for yourself above are the mushrooms that the maggots got to first. I always expect to throw away some of what I pick and I keep dried ones in the freezer for a while just in case any little creature or egg survives both the drying process and my inspection. Don't be put off it's worth it and soon becomes a bit addictive. What could be better than tramping though the woods on a clear autumn day with the promise of a gourmet meal (Have seen the price of them in the shops)at the end.

Today's Walnut recipe

Spinach and walnut sauce

Half a dozen leaves of everlasting spinach stalks removed or a big pile of normal spinach

a big hand full of walnuts

3 cloves of garlic

a grating of nutmeg

the juice of half a lime

olive oil.

Blanch both the spinach and the walnuts(unless they are very fresh) and add to a blender with all the other ingredients except the lime juice. When smooth add lime juice and salt and pepper to taste 

and maybe extra olive oil. We ate it with Salmon and it was so good.

Raining Walnuts

The thing about rain in Galicia is that once it starts there is little to be done in terms of outdoor work, that is for wimps like me. I mean it really can rain here. So after a three day downpour pretty much all of our walnuts are down from the trees. We have three sacks in the hall drying and two roasting tins full(The wettest) at the back of the cocina. I know that there are more to collect.


 The thing is that we still have a sack full left from last year, we do like walnuts quite a lot but they take such a long time to shell so somehow they haven`t all been eaten. They are really good for you so I have decided that this next week will walnut week with walnuts featuring in at least  one meal each day.


Today´s recipe was a no- brainer. Coffee and walnut cake. It´s Steve's favorite cake and since it's only for us, Needed no fancy layers and will be cut into squares. The icing makes it last a bit longer and for extra walnutness I've added walnut fudge icing to the coffee butter icing.

The cake is a simple pound cake recipe using 250g butter sugar and flour (baking powder added), 4 eggs and for the flavour 1 teaspoon coffee granules mixed with half a pot of yogurt. I used our own eggs which at this time of the year are enormous but had my eggs been smaller I would have added more yogurt. I threw in a couple of handfuls of walnuts at the end.

This recipe is very versatile and can easily be dressed up by cooking in round tins with layers of butter cream and walnut halves for decoration. I often leave it un-iced but throw over a handful of demerara sugar as it comes out of the oven. Its never going to turn heads but will hold it's own with a cup of coffee in the morning, and lasts for a few days in the cake tin.

Tomorrow I feel that I am going to have to be a bit more creative with my walnut recipe.

Autumn, woodsmoke, and quiet.

I have arrived back in Galicia with the autumn, rain outside and my cocina lit. The cocina is fueled by wood and is the most common form of cooking, heating appliance in rural areas. For those of you in Britain it is similar in appearance to an "Aga", less sophisticated and far less expensive. In the UK I know that wood burners are trendy at the moment here where the population is small and most people in the countryside own a piece of woodland they make economic sense.

The down side of using a cocina is that they involve a great deal of work, felling trees if you have them (we buy uncut logs locally) chainsawing, splitting and stacking. all of which should be done by now. We still have logs to cut, but have some ready for winter from last years supply. Working a year in advance means the wood is better seasoned anyway, but every fine weekend is spent cutting wood and in our case scavenging wood from local logging sites (with permission) to eke out our supply,
Cooking on a cocina is also more of an art than a science and takes a degree of practice.

The up side of all this is that winter fuel costs little in terms of cash, the kitchen is always warm, the kettle is always hot as is the oven. A faint smell of wood smoke hangs over the village which adds to the welcome and I love it. I always wondered with Aga,s whether the attraction was purely psychological,  the always warm kitchen, the reassuring solidarity, the potential to dry anything from wellington boots to kittens, and the promise of casseroles and cakes. Our wood stove  would have no place in the super hygienic, pristine, kitchens of home makeover shows but carries the comfort and warmth that I want in a home.

I have just returned from a whirlwind week in the UK. The time shared between cooking for friends and being a Grandma. Both are occupations which are high on my favorites lists and I miss my family dreadfully. The longer we live here though the harder I find it to tear myself away, I am used to the quiet, the clean air and the steady rhythm of rural life. Besides that, being used to Galicia´s roads, good quality and almost empty the M1 seems like a nightmare version of eternal punishment. The cost of a bad cup of coffee is also bewildering as is the size of the cup. I fear that these examples of progress may one day reach here,and have to remind myself that "sufficient unto the day the evil there of....."


+

monday morning and sunshine

In terms of hope and inspiration, sunshine on a Monday morning is a blessing, especially in the middle of winter and following a spell of grey skies rain and snow. Cold as it is my mind is straying to spring planting and to clearing the garden, to eating outdoors. As always with us some of this will remain a dream for a while yet. Steve has the patio dug up. the yard and the entrance to the garden has piles of rock sat in large large pools of water the rock comes from the old broken and very uneven patio. The water used to run under the gate from the road and gather in muddy pools outside the back door, it now runs though a pipe but as yet the pipe goes nowhere and the water rock mud combination makes venturing into the garden a difficult and dangerous undertaking.

On the other hand the patio is shaping up well, I can´t wait for the first BBQ.

All the little finishing jobs in the downstairs cloakroom have now been done,( hence the start on the patio) and  we are determined to plough on with jobs  that will make us a bit more visitor friendly. time and finance might conspire against more than large project in a year but we have decided that we would feel better  if everywhere looked less like a builders yard, quite how we achieve that is another matter as we don.t want to throw anything away and building materials that will be used eventually have to go somewhere in the meantime.

In the garden

Well actually there is nothing really growing at all. My cut cabbage stalks, where we have already eaten the cabbage, are regrowing so we and the rabbits are eating the resulting green leaves. I have also got purple sprouting broccoli that has already given us a couple of pickings but has slowed down again because of the cold and that´s about it. Next year I am hoping that a bigger greenhouse will give a few more winter veg.

In the Kitchen


We still have salted beans, stored squashes and loads dried stuff so thank goodness we are not without home grown food

I am still finding ways to use the dried food. At the weekend with our curry I did make a raita with dried cucumber and dried mind and it was surprisingly good

It really doesn´t look promising, and that´s one of the problems with home dried goods`but I think that I liked the end product better than with fresh ingredients, It is really simple to make a spoonfuls of chopped dried cucumber half a teaspoon of dried mint salt and pepper and fill up the ramekin with yoghurt. Then you have to leave it in the fridge for an hour for the dry ingredients to rehydrate. the yoghurt thickens up quite a lot as the cucumber soaks up the liquid so I added a little lemon juice at the end. As Steve does not really like yoghurt salads I always have to make small quantities and this makes it easy


Next year I will dry more more cucumber s( assuming that we have a glut again) just to make this dish.