Cooking

Diane Wells has contributed 4 sets of Winter Recipes.

1. 4 Soups
   
2. Quince Dishes - One sweet and one savoury
   
3. Drawing on Stores
   
4. Food Memory from Hamburg - 4 Vegetables
   

This is an excerpt about sausage making from our DVD Quince, Venison and Peas.

The full DVD is still available, see publications.

Diane Wells has contributed some delicious Recipes for Late Summer. These include Rhubarb Chutney, Apple and Orange Chutney, Plum/Damson/Greengage Chutney and Damson Tarts.

Roman OvenSpelt Flat BreadFood Frome members helped to construct a Roman-style bread oven from local stone and clay at the Bath and Camerton Archaeological Society Open Day on 5th September. We then cooked some spelt flat bread in the oven. Considering the oven was built very quickly it worked surprisingly well.Oven Temperature

FennelOur fennel has grown well this year - it must like rain!

1 medium onion, chopped
2 medium heads of fennel, chopped
glass of white wine or cider
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1 1/2 pints stock, kept near boiling point
1 small mug risotto rice or spelt
1 cup parmesan cheese
chopped parsley
salt
black pepper

Apple ChutneyThis is my recipe for apple chutney, it is based on a recipe in "The Perfect Pickle Book" by David Mabey and David Collinson.

4lb cooking apples
2lb onions
2pt cider vinegar
2lb sultanas
2oz whole pickling spice (peppercorns, chillis, allspice, yellow mustard seeds, coriander seeds)
3tsp ground allspice
3tsp ground ginger
1tsp salt
1lb white sugar
1lb dark brown sugar

Can we reduce the amount of sugar we use when cooking rhubarb? Well, we can try adding an orange. But oranges come from Spain if not further afield. How do we know where sugar comes from, I mean whether it's cane sugar from the tropics or sugar beet from East Anglia? We are also trying adding small quantities of a herb called Sweet Ciceley which we have growing on the allotments at Orchard Street. But how many spoonfuls of Sweet Ciceley equals one spoonful of sugar? Ah, so much we don't know about the food we eat.

Squash

We grow a lot of squash, and have experimented with many varieties, but have decided now to stick with butternuts, for their good yield of orange flesh and ease of preparation. They, along with most of the winter squash family are usually good keepers, but this year we have lost quite a few and have resorted to freezing some which is pre-prepared.

We have found several recipes that make delicious use of this vegetable or maybe it's a fruit?