Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday..

I love Pancake Day, the local name for today.

Almost without fail, my evening meal is constructed to make provision for the main event... Beautiful pancakes doused in Maple syrup, or hiding sultanas.... or both!!

Here is my own Pancake Recipe, yried, tested and developed ove many years of celebrating this special day in this traditional way...

 

Basic Pancake Batter

(makes eight) except it only really made 5 or 6

75g/3oz plain flour

Pinch of salt

2 large fresh eggs

150ml/1/4pt milk

a dash of water

A little oil for frying

Mix the water and milk and beat in the eggs.   Place the flour and salt in a large bowl, then add half the milk. Whisk until the mixture is lump-free. Add the remaining milk and whisk again until smooth. If you prefer place all the ingredients together in a food processor and blend until smooth, Pour the batter into a jug. The batter can be made in advance and chilled for up to eight hours before use.   I think it improves if left to stand and usually leave it about 30 minutes or so

Heat a 20cm/8in diameter non-stick frying pan until hot, drizzle a little oil over the centre and wipe it around with a piece of kitchen paper. Now pour a little of the batter into the pan and immediately tilt the pan to spread the batter thinly and evenly over the base. Cook for two minutes or until the top is set and the base golden. Turn the pancake over with a spatula or if you are feeling brave, flip the pancake!

Cook for a further one to two minutes or until the base is golden. Transfer to a plate and interleave with greaseproof paper, keep warm. Use the batter and a little more oil to make a further seven pancakes in the same way. Serve simply with lemon and sugar or try them in the following recipe ideas.

French Mushroom, Ham & Goats Cheese Crepe

Fill the pancakes with sliced mushrooms sauteed in oil, a slice of ham, then top with thinly sliced goats cheese. Fold up to enclose the filling then pop under a hot grill until the cheese begins to melt. Serve scattered with flat parsley.

 

Redcurrant and apple

cook the basic pancake and just before serving add a mixture of stewed redcurrants and apple, then roll and serve immediately.

 

Or, simply add a handful of golden sultanas to the pan immediately before adding the batter.    These are great served with Maple syrup.

Boeuf Cherhomme

	We have had a couple of family guests staying with us here in the south west of France over the past two weeks and whilst they were here we decided to throw a small party to allow our friends and neighbours to meet them. As the weather had turned cool I decided to serve a hot dish amongst our party fare and after much discussion in the kitchen I was designated the task of making a dish I particularly like. In our household we refer to this dish as Instant Moussaka..... but I have to admit, I decided that I really couldn't call it that now I am writing it up on the blog.....
	You see, Moussaka is traditionally made with minced (ground) lamb but I make this dish with beef..... and traditionally, Moussaka has aubergine as a constituent part but I omit the aubergine...and of course, traditionally, Moussaka has a Béchamel sauce topping.... I use potato....  So, as you can see it's not really Moussaka.... We had quite a long discussion about this and eventually agreed that we would adopt a name which obliquely referred to it's origins... so in the future it will be known as:
	Boeuf Cherhomme I took1kg (2lbs) minced (ground) beef and sauteed it in olive oil with a large onion and a couple of cloves of garlic, adding into the mix, some herbs de Provence, Italian herbs and of course, a glass or two of red wine.    Once the mix had cooked well I added tomatoes.   I used a tin of tomatoes as, at the moment, I don't have any of my own.
THIS IS THE PICTURE OF THE FINISHED DISH WHICH I FORGOT TO TAKE	Once this had all cooked down nicely, I covered the bottom of  a large dish with a layer of pre-boiled potato and then spooned half the mixture over them.  I then added further layers of potato, meat and a top layer of potato and cooked the whole dish in the oven for about 20 minutes. After sprinkling cheese over the top I grilled the beef and then served immediately....
	We also made a marinated sweet and sour carrots dish that I love and which was enjoyed by our guests.
	All this cooking activity for the whole day meant we didn't really have time to prepare our own meals so about mid afternoon, we all stopped for afternoon tea in the British tradition.....  I had a French pastry - a "Religeuse" or Coffee Nun, a very tempting piece of choux pastry stuffed full with coffee cream and then topped with coffee icing.  It certainly made the cup of tea taste better..........

Gardening with Kate

Sunday was to be a day in the garden with Kate....

In preparation we had bought leek and small white onion seedlings at Villereal market.

But Kate was staying here so first it was a breakfast of grilled tomato, with sautéed red kidney beans and mushrooms eaten with some of my homemade bread and a cup of good French café au lait.....or Flat White, as I gather it is called in Australia.

My vegetable plot is not large, so the first decision was where to plant about 100 leek and another 100 onion seedlings. The Chinese Cabbage leaves are still being eaten as fast as I can mix up and use my insecticide, the red Cabbages are now very nearly ready to be harvested, half a dozen frisée lettuce have been picked and picked and picked and now there are just a few leaves left growing and then there is the volunteer pumpkin which has grown to about 10metres long (35ft) and has only a couple of tiny fruits on it...

After a lot of discussion, a fair amount of poking and prodding and a good deal of giggling Kate decided to sacrifice the pumpkin and the lettuces...who am I to argue??? so we set about pulling out those plants that had lost the right to live.

After removing the plants and the weeds we set about breaking up the soil to prepare the bed before making trenches, laying the seedlings in and then simply pushing the earth back over the roots and firming.   The whole thing took us about 3 hours including the discussion on what to do!!!!  I think this is the most productive way of planting out seedlings I have ever come across!!  A big thanks Kate.

All this activity during the morning meant that Kate had worked up quite an appetite and as it was now something past 1 in the afternoon we stopped for lunch.   Kate had already decided to cook a risotto for dinner that evening so lunch was destined to be a light affair... fortunately, we had some chicken in the fridge so everything was ok.

After lunch, it was back out into the garden to plant out some broccoli and fennel seedlings which I had raised from seed...  Yes...from seed!!!!   I had sown the seed about a month ago and all 24 plants had been hardened off and were ready to be planted out.   All the spare space was filled wit the seedlings until there were just a few broccoli left.

Next we discussed the 25,000 other things I wanted to grow... and decided that we had better extend the bed.

My vegetable bed is slightly raised and is contained with some wooden border fences.    It was a relatively short job to define the new bed size by moving fences and once that had been done we soaked the grass that the bed was now going to cover for about an hour....Next we smothered the grass with newspaper using the thickness of about half a newspaper, and then soaked that for another hour.  While that was soaking we collected a trailerful of compost from the compost area at the bottom of the garden.

We then added about 150mm of compost and soaked it all again.  Finally we spread a bog of commercial compost across the top before leaving the new area of bed to settle.

At the end of a long day we decided to  relax in the new pool for a few minutes before I dispatched her to make supper....

I had a great day, wonderfully relaxing and topped off with the best risotto I have ever tasted..

 

Thanks Kate.. Come again next year....

Feeding the world

The world is getting smaller, I know it is. Certainly the amount of it available for me to enjoy is getting smaller.

We are frequently told that the current population of the world is 6.7 billion and will raise to 9 million by 2050. In fact I think this is an underestimation! In 1991 the population was given as 5.5 billion and estimates at that time, were it would rise by 1.7% per annum, If you adjust that figure down to an increase of 1.25% per annum you arrive, in 2007 with a predicted figure of 6.7 billion, which is about right. If we extrapolate that growth to the year 2050, we get a figure of 11.5 billion rather than 9 billion.

But enough of all this mathematics, after all, as Mark Twain, or was it Benjamin Disraeli, said "There are lies, damn lies and statistics".

But what actually does it all mean. I can’t even imagine what 6.7 billion or 9 billion or 11.5 billion people means. I have no concept of that sort of magnitude of figure. How about you?? Thought not.

So how can we express this in terms that we will all understand and that might get to actually mean something.

How about if we go back to the statistics for a minute and see if there is anything else we might be able to comprehend?

My figures show the increase in the population for 2008 at 83.8 million people. Scary huh, I mean that IS an understandable figure. If you live in the UK that would be about 1.25 times the population of the whole country . Or maybe in the USA you could imagine the world population increasing by 10 times the population of New York City or simply 4 times the population of Australia.

So now we do have some imaginable figures. Put simply, not withstanding any change in the eating habits of the world population we just need to produce enough extra food THIS YEAR to feed another 10 New York Cities.

And when we’ve done that, hey come on , it’s April already, then next year the figure is 84.9 million and the year's after 85.9 million. By 2050, my figures show an annual increase of 143 million. So that’s an extra 10 New York Cities this year and another ten (that makes 20) New York Cities next year and so on, year on year.

In the world today we have ten million hunger related deaths every year with almost 5 million of those being children. Developing countries are having to grapple with both the unprecedented consequences of climate change and the huge complexities of biotechnology.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we seem to have descended into self interest, seeking to modify grain to ensure the reliance of the poorest amongst us on our grand corporations for decades to come.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we have decided to divert food production in order to feed our insatiable thirst for energy, whilst still ensuring that the energy we use is not renewable and can only be provided by the continued intervention of big business.

At a time when we are failing to feed the world, we seem happy to allow market forces to further increase world food prices making it even harder for those developing nations to survive.

But don’t worry, this isn’t a new problem, we’ve known about it for years:

from BioScience , November, 1992
"Though it is certainly possible that intensifying human impact on the planet will precipitate a sudden disaster, it seems more likely that humanity will just gradually erode Earth's life-support capabilities over the next few decades."

And that is what we are doing, gradually eroding the planet’s life supporting resources.

Today, growing your own food is not only a fabulous pastime it is also a big help with the environment, creating vast savings in packaging and transport. As a friend’s blog pointed out recently "No government recognises this vital work", although many have seized upon the opportunity to tax "greenhouse emissions".

Perhaps now is the time to get a tax break for those of us who are helping to reduce pollution and control greenhouse gases; those of us who are providing a degree of self-sufficiency and contributing vastly to food security; those of us who are Kitchen Gardeners.