Winter Food
Hello everyone
It has been a long time since I posted about food. Don’t think for a moment that I have given up on sharing foodie thoughts, recipes and produce. Food still remains at the forefront of every day, including of course enjoying coffee and chocolatines from time to time!
The winter months have seen some unusual discoveries – not always of foods that I didn’t know but of new ways to cook some of the foods we love. Pink lemons and green tea cake were new experiences, roasted steaks of celeriac a new approach to a firm favourite.
Citrus fruit has of course been a focus during the cold winter months – the number of marmalade days has been reduced a little as I made so much last year and the larder shelf is still pretty full. This winter I have made pink lemon marmalade with the newly discovered pink lemons (citrons roses) and the usual Seville orange marmalade during their brief season but this time with pink grapefruit gin as an addition – very popular. I also made a very small batch of marmalade using the orange and lemon slices that had been infusing in the vin d’oranges liqueur I made in November. This turned out to be really delicious with hints of vanilla and cinnamon alongside the slightly alcoholic tasting fruit. I have just made a batch of clementine and blood orange marmalade – soft set this time for a change. The two fruits combine to make a beautifully coloured preserve and the citrusy aromas that filled the house yesterday were wonderful. I do find marmalade making very therapeutic, maybe the scent of the fruit contributes to this – a bit of aromatherapy, but also the end point where you have pots of produce for the coming months. We tried it out this morning on toast – it certainly passed the exacting standards of the inhabitants here. You can find my recipe in the post Citrus days are here again from January 2023.
On to more earthy produce – we love celeriac and often eat it mashed or roasted with other vegetables or as chunky oven chips, as well as celeriac remoulade, a firm favourite in France. This year I discovered a recipe to roast it as steaks, as you might cauliflower. The recipe comes from The Veg Space and was a great success – we all thoroughly enjoyed it. I highly recommend that you take a look at this recipe and others on this website – some fab vegan recipes that are all easy to make: https://www.thevegspace.co.uk/celeriac-steak/. You don’t have to be vegan to enjoy amazing vegan recipes!
A couple of weeks ago I was shopping at our local market, as I do every weekend, and spotted something I didn’t recognise at a wonderful stall where the producers grow organic produce using only horse power of the animal kind rather than of the gas guzzling kind! Their vegetables are full of flavour so we often buy from them. Their mesclun mix (mixed peppery salad leaves) is delicious in the winter months. This time they had a knobbly vegetable called chou-rave – not a name I recognised nor indeed the vegetable. The guy on the stall suggested eating it raw, grated or julienned just like celeriac. He also suggested roasting slices basted in a mustard and olive oil mix. This was similar to the celeriac recipe I mentioned and we were very pleasantly surprised with the result, so I bought a few ‘chou-rave’ to try out for our Sunday meal. Chou-rave turns out to be kohlrabi, so I did know the vegetable but usually with stalks attached. However I don’t think I have ever cooked it before now. Kohlrabi is a part of the cruciferous family (eg cabbage, cauliflower, kale) and a source of vitamin C, folate and potassium, a healthy addition to the menu. I followed the celeriac recipe, peeling and thickly slicing rounds of the kohlrabi but basted it with a lightly seasoned mixture of strong Dijon mustard and olive oil. The roasted slices were amazing, tender and delicious, slightly sweet but also not thanks to the kick of the mustard. Definitely worth trying this too if you can get hold of kohlrabi.
As winter nears its close, the markets will start shedding their winter apparel and different seasonal offerings will appear. I love this, along with trying new things you also get the best freshest local produce with very low food miles and so much flavour. The producers are passionate about their produce and often have suggestions for cooking and serving, keen to ensure that their produce gives the most pleasure.
Let me know what you think of the celeriac or kohlrabi steaks if you try them.
Happy cooking.
A bientôt
Ali xx