No wild garlic to be found!

Monday April 15 th and I am on the hunt for wild garlic . Try as I might I have been unable to find any, even visiting  locations where I have seen it growing in previous years. I must blame this awful weather again and the very slw start to Spring.
I had to compromise and add garlic to the butter in this recipe rather than wrap leaves of the wild garlic around the lamb. Disappointing but will try this recipe - Roast lamb with garlic leaf butter - again when I find some wild garlic!
I roasted some potatoes in soe of the juices left from cooking the lamb as they smelt and tasted wonderful.
Mr Slater does not say how many this serves - we were 2 - and although we finished it ( greedy guts) I would say it will serve 4 people easily.
Very, very rich

Rabbit!!!!!!!

Gosh , when reading this chapter heading "A nettle rabbit"  I thought I was going to be eating rabbit - but it turns out to be " rarebit" - cheese on toast, thank goodness and a huge sigh of relief . This cheese on toast was a little different with the addition of nettle tops. Felt very strange to be picking nettles to cook but Mr Slater says "........ Treat nettles like spinach "
Boy were they hard to find, due to the horrendous weather we are having at the moment they've hardly grown!
Sorry, forgot to photograph this one before we had devoured the lot, but can highly recommend this for a scrummy lunch.

Quiche

Yesterday - April 9th the recipe was A goats cheese and onion tart.
I decided to make this in advance and serve at my book club meeting. A great fan of any quiche I was eager to try this out and use friends as guinea pigs in the tasting. A resounding success I think with most of us having a second slice.

The book was good too!!!!!!

Eating too much!!!!!!

April 7 th  starts the chapter where Mr Slater says that he regards the juices left in the pan or roasting dish " .......as nothing less than treasure"
This brings back memories of childhood, when awaiting Sunday roast lunch Mum would dip a wedge of bread into the juices around the meat " to put us on until dinner was ready" Divine!!!!!
Or the next day with the remaining juices set hard (dripping) spread on bread with a sprinkling of salt. I guess we are too health conscious for that sort of treat today.!!!!!
So yesterday's recipe was Chorizo, cabbage and crayfish tails.
This was a delicious stir fry sort of dish using the juices from the chorizo.

This was followed by Hot cross bread and butter pudding

I was not looking forward to this. I hated bread and butter pudding as a child, part of school dinners, it's edges dry and curled with currants as hard as bullets!!! Not surprisingly Mr Slater's was nothing like this but rather a delicious concoction of egg yolks, double cream and hot cross buns amongst other ingreds. So lovely was this desert that we both ate far too much and couldn't move for the rest of the evening!

Boudin Noir

Yesterday saw us tucking in to a very unusual sausage roll!
I adore black pudding in all its various sizes and shapes and textures. My favourite starter at one of our favourite restaurants - La Grillade - is " boudin noir served with apple", it's delicious.
Yesterday's recipe was Black pudding in pastry with mustard sauce"
A simple description would be a black pudding sausage roll - divine!!!!!
The mustard sauce could be good with other pastries too.

A difference of opinion.

Today's recipe was Savoury Apple Crumble ( actually it should be cooked tomorrow but we are going out)
Mr Slater says " .......controversial twist on a classic recipe...."  So it is actually a crumble to be served with meat - pork.
I think my favourite pudding has to be apple crumble with piping hot custard. So how would I like a savoury version to be eaten with a pork roast or sausages?
Well I loved it , we had it with some lovely Cumberland sausages from our local farm shop but I can imagine how well it would go with a roast joint of pork as an alternative to apple sauce and seasoning.
My husband however was not happy, he said it was like eating a pudding with main course and it was too dry so could I make some gravy !!!!!!!!!!! I suggested he made his own !

Which he did !

After a short break!

After a short break in the Kitchen Diaries we start a new Chapter in April. The first recipe for April is today's Chicken, olives and lemon.
As it is Easter we are away on a short break in our caravan, but not to be put off I took all the ingreds with me and cooked on site.
At the start of this chapter Mr Slater talks about olives. He says ".....the less someone has done to an olive, generally the more I appreciate it ........"
I rather like the olives stuffed with sundried tomatoes but otherwise have to agree. If I want anchovies, chillies or almonds I prefer not to have them stuffed in an olive!!!!!
In today's recipe olives are combined with garlic, lemon and chicken. All cooked in the one pot it was  ideal to cook in a small space and to make it even easier I served it with crusty bread to mop up the divine sauce. One drawback , the ground turmeric seems to have turned my finger nails yellow. Hope it wears off quickly!!!!!

Today's second recipe, I have to confess to making before we went away and taking them with us for a treat.  Dark chocolate discs with rosé petals.

I couldn't get any crystallised rose petals anywhere, most delis I visited had never heard of them so I had to miss these out. Further on in the book though ( June 21st) I notice there is a recipe for making your own - so come summer that is what I shall do and then have a good excuse for making these delicious treats again.

The recipe didn't say how many this made so I had to guess the size of disc to make and I managed ten. The combination of chocolate, nuts, candied peel and salt not only looked divine but tasted heavenly.