Sympathy for the Breville

Ruth! Don't quit, especially not after what I've just managed! And especially after all the hassle of making my own dough! There is so much to concentrate on for the unseasoned cook. Even when it's done, the madness doesn't stop. Cut to an inch? Well that's all very well if you don't have a ruler to hand, not forgetting a 'boy inch' is apparently different to the universal measurement.


Ok, I know I've been the world's worst pupil, and that I've gone seriously downhill on the cooking front, and that I've promised before to buck up my ideas...


So, despite having lost the will to get off the sofa after long trips away for work and a desire to just stop everything, I went out on a little bike ride with some of my rowing crew along the pathways to Clevedon.

And when out in the south west what better to do than forage? So, Mark, Fraser and I were on the look out for wild garlic.


I'll be honest, all I saw were stinging nettles! But when we got back to Mark's we found garlic growing wild in his back garden. I think that counts, and here it is - minus the leaves which I'd already picked:

So I managed to follow your recipe to the letter, and I have to say that even making scone dough is a bit tough on the old hands eh! I thought the breadcrumbs would never form. It is magic when it comes together though.

In they went and out they came, a success!

But, as you may have come to expect with me, cooking is never straightforward.

Oh yes, I followed your bacon and cheese scone to the letter, where of course the cheese was missing from the original recipe due to blog gremlins. So what you see above are simply not quite wild garlic scones. And, sadly, they were cooked on the outside but not on the inside. A failure.


Thankfully I picked enough wild garlic to make a second batch...


I hope this inspires you to keep posting your recipes.


Yours cheesily


Tom

Right, that's it, I quit!

Dear Tom

The school has gone from fast, to slow, to stopped!!! Where do we go from here? I am going to put up a few of the recipes I have come up with lately in a vain hope that I might actually be able to inspire you to get back into the kitchen, and if you are still alive out there somewhere let me know what you think...

The first has to be based on an easy recipe from a previous post, but adjusted because of some seasonal foraging. Here Tom is where we might differ, as you know, I love to pick form the hedgerows to cook, but you always seem to have that doubtful expression that many have.  If my children like it, it can't be that bad can it? Really? Picking things from the wild is less about saving the planet and hugging trees and more about free food, how can you ignore free food!!

So, wild garlic... Many uses, here's a picture of some I had earlier this week...

This is a new foragers dream really, tasty, seasonal and so useful

I used some of this bunch in a wild garlic and butternut squash risotto, and then some in Wild Garlic and Parmesan scones, lovely, just lovely.

Do you remember a bacon and cheese scone recipe form March? Well if you just look back ans swop the bacon for 4 finely chopped leaves of wild garlic and replace the Cheddar for Parmesan then just follow the recipe and method, you should end up with something like this...

If anyone reading this can't find wild garlic, you add a couple of tablesppons of finely choped chives instead

These were so tasty that I hope to go looking for more wild garlic thiis weekend just so that I can make some more.

I hope you are ok, and managing to feed yourself properly!!

Yours with only a slight hope

Ruth