Where does it all go?

Time, that is.

I realised the last time I posted the results of a Chiefs home game was back in September - slack or what! Well then - I will let the pictures tell you the scores; and weather, for each match.

Firstly we had Newcastle Falcons on 18th Sept. A win of 22-17 with a true nail biting finish as Newcastle made a last ditch surge and the fans counted down the clock.

The next home game was against Montpellier for the Amlin cup on 9th October. This was our opening game for the European Challenge cup, as opposed to our home nations Aviva . It also proved to be our first loss on home soil, with the French club proving the stronger for most of the game. A late surge gave us hope but sadly we'd left it a bit too late so ended on 13-20.

Most recently we hosted London Irish last Saturday, 23rd Oct. A tight game; with the points gained solely from penalties, it saw a tit-for-tat notching up on the scoreboard in 3 point increments. Half time saw us 6 all and in the final quarter we were winning 9-6 Sadly we gave away some stupid penalties for a final score of 9-12 to London Irish. A tough game this; and combined with the away results of losses to Leicester [hwak ptoo], Harlequins and Northampton Saints sees us go from 3rd on the board after the Newcastle game to (as of today) 10th. Not where we want to be at all. However, there's another 7 months to the end of the season so let's hope we can hang on in there in the premiership. As they say in the stands 'Oggy Oggy Oggy - Chiefs Chiefs CHIEFS!'

Random foodness

Brought back from China - Candied Haws. Apparently. They were a lot bigger than what we'd know as haws, more like cherries so whether this is down to different species or mistranslation I'm not sure. I liked the inclusion of 'food addictives' on the ingredients though, and the information that 'Usage: Bag open instant' which seems an elegantly minimalist was of saying it to me. :-D

Where we can forgive the 'food addictives' from a non-native speaker translating a box of sweets, this inclusion of 'Steak & Kidney Pudding Chips' on a Wetherspoon's menu made me unable to decide between laughter and a wry shake of the head at the appalling lack of standards written English seems to have sunk to. Whilst not wanting to sound like the punctuation police it did conjure up a somewhat bizarre mental image where Heston Blumenthal has got his hands on the humble chip and injected it with S&K pudding extract or something along those lines. Anyway, it does irk me that something that's been professionally printed has not been proof-read properly and spotting spelling mistakes and such like on menus is almost a hobby of mine. By that I mean that I don't set out to do it I just can't help spotting them. Not to say that I never make any myself but if it's for your menu, i.e. what diners first judge the food by, surely a little care is in order?

[If like me you weren't taught proper usage of apostrophes at school because evidently there's no point knowing stuff like that anymore (how old do I sound?) try here. It tells you pretty much all you need to know on the front page; which does make me wonder why they couldn't have spent an hour at school covering it...]

Curried Roast Cauli Soup

I have to admit that I actually made this on my week off but haven't posted it yet. Whereas perhaps sometimes I'd not bother this far after the fact this was so very bloody lovely that I feel it's justified in its slightly tardy arrival to the reading public. :-p
I adapted this recipe from one I found on the Martha Stewart site - the only thing I can really say about Martha Stewart is neatly summed up by fellow CSH forum visitor Betsy: "Martha Stewart pretends to be the lady of the manor with nothing better to do than whip up insanely complicated handwoven-edible-birdseed-lavender-beeswax-table-decorations, while she's actually head of an entire corporate empire which bears her name. She probably spends her days in boardrooms and on her Blackberry."
I did say I adapted it though right? Here goes then:

Curried Roast Cauli Soup
1.5 lb cauli florets [save the leaves for soup]
1tbsp EVOO + a splosh
1tbsp veg / sunflower oil
1tsp salt / seasoned salt
1 biggish onion
2 sticks celery
Knob butter
2 heaped tsp curry powder [mine's korma]
0.5tsp garam masala
0.5tsp cayenne
500ml / 1 pint veg stock
500ml / 1 pint water

Preheat oven Gas 6.
Break cauli into small florets and spread on a baking sheet. Drizzle with the veg/sunflower oil and 1tbsp of the olive oil. Sprinkle salt over and toss with your hands so all reasonably well covered.
Roast in oven for about 30 mins - until florets just start to brown on edges. [Incidentally if you've never tried roast cauli do so - it's lovely! Leave florets a little larger and roast a little longer, prob with less/no salt too.]
Roughly chop onion and celery. You don't need to be too conscientious at this point as it's all getting blended later.
Heat butter and splosh olive oil in big enough saucepan to cook whole recipe in. Add veg & cook until softened.
Add spices; adjust depending how hot your curry powder is / how hot you like it.
Mix well and add stock and water.
Add approx 2/3's of the cauli ensuring all the biggest florets and any stalk bits that *crept through go into the pot, leaving out only those small florets you'd be happy to see floating in your bowl at mealtime.
Cover pan and bring to the boil. Cook 5-10 mins until veg soft. Liquidise with a stick blender or FP.
Return to pan and add the reserved florets.
Heat gently until all warmed through then serve.

This was frankly lovely. I was fair chuffed I must say. I had been slightly concerned that it would be a little thin as there's no spuds in it but it pureed to a good thickness and was smooth and tasty.
It could take a little more heat; I'm not a massive fan of very hot stuff as I like to be able to taste the flavours but I think I'd add a whole teaspoon of cayenne next time rather than the half, just to give that little extra kick for winter.
I can also report that it freezes well, and keeps it's flavours. [In fact I ended up adding about 1/3 of this to 2/3 of the roasted onion soup I made but didn't rate much, and it was lovely like that too. Flavours still came through really well in that proportion and against the onion.]
A definite keeper recipe for me. :-D
*When I say 'crept through' I don't really mean it. Don't throw out stalks of cauli and broccoli; keep them and use for soup, discarding the tough outer layer. The inside of a broccoli stalk is a sweet and lovely thing!

How to make a gift bag

Quick post as we've been discussing the options of preserves / handmade etc for xmas pressies and there was a query re packaging. We used to make bags from colourful magazine pages when I was young, you could use xmas wrap or perhaps brown paper and stamp it with something festive. Even wallpaper etc – anything. These make bags with a base so ideal for jars:
One sheet appropriately sized paper. Fold round to make 'bag' shape. I've folded the top edge over to neaten, also strengthens if you want to add handles at the end.

Glue edges. Fold section up from base – bear in mind that the final whole width of the flat base to your bag will be half the amount you fold up now. Fold back over the other way as well.

Open out and fold 'flaps' thus formed into centre and stick down.

Fold flaps in half again and stick down again – tada!

If you wanted you can pop a strip of tape on the bottom for extra safety. Then punch holes in top – add ribbon handles / tags &c &c.

A forage on the riverbank

Another sunny day on Sunday took us for a ramble down the estuary with this time plenty of bags and id books. We didn't really spot any mushrooms on this trip other than a couple of diddy generic brown ones that we didn't touch but we did get a bunch of edible free food - always good. We took my pocket gem version of the Mabey classic 'Food for Free' which I urge you to get if you have the slightest interest in this sort of thing. It has recipes as well as the expected photos and line drawings and it's compact size fitted in my jeans pocket.

We got blackberries [also multiple nettle stings, scratched arms and thorns in sides], a few apples [before backing slowly away when the bloke nearly stepped in a wasps nest], some rowanberries [watching where we were jumping in between the cowpats], a small handful of chestnuts [prickled fingers] and sloes. Lots of sloes. Even better the only bad thing that happened when we gathered sloes was that the bush swallowed my sunnies; literally, without a trace. It was like a blackthorn magic trick, they were there one minute and gone the next. Oh well. [I am the opposite of a black hole when it comes to sunnies - I repel them it seems. These were my 5th pair this year...]

Sloe gin it's going to be then so I've popped the sloes in the freezer for now. This I've made before and very good it is too, my only advice is don't take a whole batch home with you at xmas and expect to bring any back even when only staying for 2 days. No chance!

The weekend also brought the arrival of an enormous carrier bag full of cooking apples from the bloke so I'll be doing something with those over the next few days as well. Got a few recipes from the t'internet to try so should keep me busy as I've taken the next 2 days off - uses up some lieu time and tomorrow (21st) is an important day to me where I'd rather not be at work so I think a bit of home concocting / preserving and reflection time is just the thing. I have a preserving pan [ebay earlier this year] but have yet to christen it so fingers crossed some of it works!

Shroom saturday

Given the beautiful weekend weather we decided to go for a trip to Fernworthy Reservoir on Dartmoor for a walk in the sun. Lovely spot this. As it happened though, we ended up spending rather more time looking at the floor rather than around us due to the abundance of fungi we spotted. Had we brought a single id guide with us though? No, of course we hadn't! *facepalm*
Anyway - some pics of the various examples - I'm afraid the quality is variable being a) taken on my phone and b) often in lowlight under the tree canopy. If I knew categorically if any are safe for eating I'd head up there again soon!

The first - spotted before we even got out of the van!

Above - impressively yellow

Left - impressively shaggy

This was a purplish capped one and the undersides of an already broken off one. There were a lot of these.

More delicately purple these - maybe Amethyst Deceiver on the right?

Another impressively ruffled one on the left and the red one above was the last 'spot' of the day.
We saw others but the pics are too poor I'm afraid.
We didn't eat any!
I'm afraid Blogger rearranges my pics so what looks like a nice layout in preview is in fact annoyingly staggered. Soz - nowt I can do 'bout that.

Beer Bread #3 - the remake

To conclude my comparison of the SR Flour v' Plain Flour beer bread debate this is the plain with Baking Powder version.

Beer Bread #3

3 cups plain flour

1tbsp Baking Powder (+ 1tsp)

1tbsp golden sugar

1tsp salt

300ml lager

5 heaped tbsps seeds (pine nuts, sunflower and pumpkin seeds)

Little melted butter for greasing

Make same as last time - preheat oven to Gas 5.

Sift flour and BP into bowl. Realise BP went out of date in Nov '09 hence adding the extra tsp. [I know Bicarb of Soda is unforgiving when out of date, and indeed if not fresh, but wasn't sure about BP as some of it's constituents are the same.]

Add sugar, salt and seeds. Mix in.

Add lager and mis well, trying to ensure seeds spread fairly equally throughout mix.

Grease foils / muffin tray etc and dollop mix in.

Bake 55 mins or until skewer comes out clean.

Let cool few mins in tins then turn out onto cooling rack.

The verdict - even at the mixing stage the mix seemed 'bigger'. The resultant rolls seemed a little lighter once cooked. It's not a big difference though so I'd just use whatever flour you have in the cupboard.

On a personal level I loved it with the seeds in; especially the pumpkin seeds, so I get the feeling this is going to be my default recipe from now on.