Real bread and an illicit stash of gravadlax

Yesterday was my favourite local farmers market at Abbey Leys so it was a great chance to stock up some lovely food.  On top of this, I braved the icy cold with the other stall holders to promote a website I’ve set up to promote local, seasonal food in my community.  It was so blinking cold in the barn, and although I was so pleased with my display of seasonal vegetables and old-fashioned seed packets on stick, a number of people did mistake me for a grower.  Oh well.

But enough of that and back to the real bread.  For a while now, a fantastic bread lady (officially known at Jane’s Handmade Bread) has been coming to the market.  She makes heavenly real bread.  My favourite is her Miracle Bread which is stuffed full of all kinds of seeds and has a lovely golden brown colour to it.  She never arrives before 10.30am, having been up since 3am baking, but everyone waits and queues for ages just to get their hands on some of her beautiful breads.

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Lagging behind and a dinner of roasted summer vegetables

I’m not doing very well at keeping up with … well … updating!  There’s so much I want to share and yet I must find more time!  And so many promised posts and recipes … I haven’t even finished off my food memories of Italy (part 1 and 2), and that was last September!

Note to self: must try harder.

On a jollier note, we had a scrumptious and so SO simple tea of roasted summer vegetables.  This is my idea of cooking, of eating, of tasting.  And what a Nigel Slater way to eat dinner – just a plate of roasted vegetables and some hunks of good bread to mop up the juices.

In my pan of delicious roasted vegetables were the following: baby orange peppers, red pepper, yellow cherry tomatoes, red baby plum tomatoes and homegrown yellow courgette.  All cut into similar sized chunks, drizzled with good olive oil and roasted. 

The added extra that make this dish really simple were liberal dollops of sundried tomato paste, hunks of buffalo mozzarella, finely chopped garlic, a sprinkling of dried herbs, and some good old fashioned seasoning (salt and pepper). 

I also whizzed up lots of fresh basil, extra virgin olive oil, and a good handful of grated Parmesan which was drizzled over everything towards the end of the cooking, and extra served fresh.

All this was munched up with gorgeous foccacia bread from Jane’s Handmade Bread – bought that morning at Abbey Leys Farmer’s Market.

You can’t get better than that!

Wintery weekend soul food: French onion soup with bread and butter

Soul food for wintery weekends – a bowl of homemade French onion soup and chunky slices of bread smeared thickly with butter.  We ate Miracle Bread from Jane’s Handmade Bread bought at Abbey Ley’s farmers market spread with white goat’s butter.

A delicious pie from The Great North Pie Company

I thought it was about time I shared with you a fabulous new local food business who produce fantastic pies. 

I first met Neil from The Great North Pie Company at a farmer’s market at Abbey Ley’s last summer when I had a stall to advertise the local food awards I was running as a volunteer for CPRE Cheshire.  A relatively new business on the local Cheshire food scene, Neil and his family set up in 2008 baking delicious pies using quality local produce.

The Great North Pie Company were a runner-up in our CPRE Cheshire ‘Buy Local’ Food Awardsand were a winner of the far more prestigious NW Fine Foods awards.  On Sunday I bought a delicious beef and potato pie (with truffle oil!! a little non-local luxury we’re all allowed to indulge in!) for N and I to share for lunch.

We devoured the pie, with its melt-in-the-mouth beef that flakes apart into tender strands, along with hunks of Miracle Bread, also bought from the farmer’s market from Jane’s Handmade Bread, smeared with milky white goat’s butter.  A truly scrumptious local meal.