I love this quick to make wholewheat muffin recipe. The muffins freeze well and are great to eat alongside a cup of coffee or tea. The original recipe is from Lagom by Steffi Knowles - Dellner but I have tweaked the recipe and added some chopped dates and walnuts which I think go really well with the texture of the wholewheat flour.
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Kombucha
Kombucha is a deliciously cool, slightly fizzy, ginger flavoured, hardly sweet drink. It is my ‘go to’ non alcoholic drink. This is the low down on how to make kombucha at home.
Stage one
You need to buy something called a SCOBY (or symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts). A SCOBY looks like a pale rubber disc and is home to the bacteria and yeasts that ferment the cold black teas which forms the basis of kombucha. The SCOBY arrives in a sealed plastic bag immersed in liquid.
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Baked rhubarb with cardamom and lemon
Young rhubarb growing in the garden is at its best early in the year. As the stalks get exposed to increasing amounts of light, they toughen. So cut them in the spring and make the most of them. Baked rhubarb is a quick pudding for me and if I haven’t time to make a crumble I serve it with granola and a dollop of thick Greek yogurt. To make it special you can flavour the syrup in different ways. I love to use lemon zest and crushed cardamom seeds but you can use ginger (either grated root or powdered), cinnamon, cloves, star anise and orange. It is worth experimenting with. Any left over baked rhubarb stores well in the fridge and is lovely served with breakfast cereals and porridge.
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Wild garlic soup
It is now the end of March and a profusion of young, wild garlic leaves cover shaded river banks and woodland floors.
We are approaching the third week of COVID 19 ‘Lockdown’. I set off for my daily walk along the banks of the River Wharfe at Ilkley, to Addingham.
I spotted Sarah Walker, picking wild garlic leaves and stuffing them into a tote bag. It was a beautiful scene as she sat quietly among the garlic with trees to one side, warm sunlight shining gently on her face and beautiful Yorkshire landscape beyond.
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Carpathia. Food from the heart of Romania by Irina Georgescu
Carpathia. Food from the heart of Romania by Irina Georgescu
Published by Frances Lincoln 17th March 2020
When you open this book you are greeted with beautiful photographs of the deep, wooded valleys of the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, the colourful facades of houses in ancient Romanian towns and market stalls weighed down with fresh produce. You are introduced to a fascinating part of the world that has been occupied through the ages by many rulers all of which have left their mark, not least on the exceptional food found in Romania.
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