Foraged Fungi Rice served with Local Rose Veal Schnitzels

  Happiness in early autumn has always been a long walk with good company on a sunny day, munching on blackberries and the occasional plum as we talk about nothing in particular. Finding the occasional Chanterelle, Cep or field mushroom along the way to pop into a backpack.
  Perfect specimens of young Ceps should be dipped in egg and then fine breadcrumbs and fried in a light oil. Not the healthiest of dishes but very tasty and you will have burned off plenty of calories finding the fungi earlier in the day.
   Mostly, however, they are larger, older fungi when they are found, and Chanterelles are often so scarce as to only find a tiny handful, so adding them to rice is the perfect solution.
  Schnitzels are a simple Austrian dish and can be made with Rose Veal, pork fillet or turkey breast.It uses bread crumbs so you can use up any bread that has gone stale, Simply break it up into smaller pieces and using the blunt end of a rolling pin pound it away to crumbs and roughly sieve it so you have fine crumbs. Great way to get rid of pent up aggression too!

For the Rice
A tablespoon of light oil
A small onion (or half a medium sized one) diced
selection of fungi also diced (you'll only need a handful or two of fungi)
Uncooked Rice (enough for the number of people you are feeding)

Fry the diced onion in oil in a large frying pan that you have a lid for.
When the onion is glossy and translucent add the fungi and fry until they are well sweated and about half the size.
Turn down the heat and add the rice and enough boiling water to cook it in. Stir once.
Cover and cook on low heat until the rice is ready.
Serve.


Rose Veal Schnitzels

Rose Veal Escalope (Westons Farm in Bampton sell fabulous quality veal) you can use turkey breast or pork  fillet
plain flour
2 eggs, well beaten
breadcrumbs.
Light oil for shallow frying

  Find 3 shallow but roomy plastic boxes or metal trays. one each for the flour, eggs and breadcrumbs.
Firstly you need to beat your meat. Place it on a thick chopping board and beat it either with the blunt end of rolling pin or a proper meat beating mallet. don't do it too much so that you end up with holes in it, but it does need to be quite thin so it cooks quickly.
  Take your first piece of beaten meat. drop it into the tray of flour and shake the tray back and forth till it's well coated with flour.
   Take your meat out of the flour tray and drop it in the egg tray. using a fork, turn the meat over so that both sides are coated with egg. take meat out of egg using the fork and let the excess drip off, back into the eggy tray.
  Now drop your meat into the breadcrumb tray and shake well so it's thoroughly coated. put on a plate till you are ready to cook it and repeat the process with each piece of meat.
  Heat up a frying pan with about 1cm of light oil.
  Cook your Schnitzels in batches, frying one side then the other till your schnitzel is golden brown. Put on a sheet of kitchen roll or napkin so the excess oil is absorbed into the paper. If you have lots of them to cook place the done ones in a warmed oven.
  Once all are cooked, serve with rice, salad or green beans.

Home Grown Upside down plum cake

 Well the weather is awful and it certainly doesn't make you feel good. As a special treat to remind you of the fleeting summer this is the perfect cake to warm your heart up.
 
you will need:

20cm round cake tin, with a loose bottom, well greased.
Oven heated to 180 degrees C

For the syrup
30g soft butter
30g demerara sugar
2tbsp of jam

450g plums halved and stones removed

For the cake
100g soft butter
100g caster sugar
3 eggs
100g self raising flour
baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
2tbsp milk if needed

Make the syrup by beating together the softened butter, demerara sugar and jam and spread this over the base of the cake tin.
arrange your plums over the syrup with the cut sides down.
To make the cake, mix butter and sugar till light and fluffy, add eggs a little at a time, beating well. sift in flour and half a teaspoon of baking powder, and the cinnamon, and fold in well. if it's a little stiff add the milk.
 spoon over the plums and level. bake in the oven for 40-50 mins, checking after about 28mins, when ready the cake will be well risen and golden. press lightly with finger to see if it bounces back to make sure it's ready.
Allow to cool and loosen the edges, turn over and serve on it's own, with cream or yogurt, or on a cold day...with hot custard.

September 2011

Well September has hit with a flurry of preserving. We have invested in a slow cooker to render down all the excess fruit so we can bottle it as is and make jam and other things at more leisurely times of year. Things have been too hectic to do more than that.
  Forage wise the blackberries are ripening slowly, the elderberries are out, the sloes are coming on nicely and rosehips are ready. Fungi are springing up around us, Devil's Boletus (poisonous) always arrives earlier than the main crop of Boletus Edulis (good to eat) so as the Devil's Boletus are up already....next weekend may be a good time to forage. Field Mushrooms are about and lovely if you get to them before the grubs.
   The gardens are still providing nicely, hopefully our butternut squashes and aubergines will be ripe before the weather turns! The little pumpkins we've been growing are doing really well, and we've already had a few roasted with sunday lunch. They are a perfect size to be used without leaving waste and have thin skins so after a scrub they can be cooked and skin and all can be eaten. This certainly cuts down the preparation time.
  I think our careful planning and good use of freezer space and preserving jars will keep us from resorting to imported veg again this winter, even with the less than ideal growing conditions. We have sorted out a hopefully frost free space for the squashes and pumpkins as last year they got frozen and the results were...well...mushy and difficult to clean up!
   Apple storage space that is free from mice or birds is proving difficult though. It's all very well wrapping the apples in nettle leaves and tucking them in for winter, but if they become winter stores for our little furry neighbours.....perhaps an extention to the pantry might get planning permission?
   Another exciting but not food related happening is the possible arriving of Solar Panels this month. Another major step towards self sufficiency.