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Sometimes it takes the simplest of meals to remind you what real, good food actually is. I had this revelation last night as I tucked into my dinner for one of scrambled eggs on toast.
Mr Rigg was away for the night and my dinner choice was based on the fact that I really couldn’t be arsed to make anything more just for myself. We have a lovely farm up the road who produce organic eggs, so I always have a large tray of their eggs on hand for quick meals.
This time I had treated myself to some of their white Leghorn eggs, which I scrambled in my own sweet fashion – melt a healthy amount of raw butter in a saucepan, crack the eggs directly into the hot butter without whisking prior (I had two whole eggs and an extra yolk). Next I turn the heat down and let the eggs cook a little in the butter without touching them, then I use a spoon to break them up. This way you end up a mixture of quite distinct ‘white’ and ‘yolk’ but also some standard pale yellow scramble as well.
I considered skimming some cream off the top of our raw milk to add to the pan of eggs, cream in scrambled eggs is divine – don’t bother with milk! Anyway, that seemed like too much effort, so I just seasoned with salt and pepper and added generous amounts of snipped mint and chives from the garden, plus some pretty purple chive flowers.
So this is the first of my Food Finds posts, the one that inspired me to start them. I will try and post one every Monday along with a fabulous recipe from the blog of choice.
On my search for strawberry jam recipes I came across a lovely blog called Nami-Nami. It’s written by Estonian and there are some delightful recipes that I’ve just never come across or heard of before. I love discovering food and dishes that are particular to a specific place or town or region or country.
It was a recipe posted here for Danish buttermilk soup that inspired me to start sharing my food finds.
To me that picture just makes me want to eat it all up, without even really knowing what’s in it. I might try it with some of my homemade granola. If like me, you’d like to ‘eat it all up’ and want to know how to make it, the recipe is here.
Image: Nami-Nami
So my afternoon at the local food event was good. It’s always lovely to meet other people who are running similar projects, be inspired by others and generally network. I would prefer more ‘doing’ at these events and less listening – I come home feeling inspired by what I’ve heard, but I would have liked to do more group problem-solving.
The lunch I must tell you, was really miserable. Perhaps my work running community events and conferences makes me hyper-critical, but I would have thought that an event on local food should have a vibrant, seasonal lunch of local produce. The only obvious local produce was the apple juice (from Eddisbury Fruit Farm), but otherwise it was miserable beige food (read: soggy garlic bread with cold melted cheese) and a few token carrot sticks.
But enough of that, tonight I made up a delicious pesto using some slightly-too-old peas and a bag of sugar snap peas that were in desperate need of being eaten. I was also in real need of green, vibrant vegetables for tea.
Homemade pea and sugar snap pesto
So I quickly cooked the sugar snap peas and ordinary peas (that I’d podded first – possibly one of my favourite jobs ever) in boiling water. I allowed the sugar snap peas a few minutes longer, but really only let them turn a bright green before draining them and cooling quickly in iced water.
I popped them into my handy small blender, along with some walnut oil (thought I’d try something different), sliced mint from the garden, grated Parmesan, salt and pepper. I whizzed it all up, added some more oil to loosen it, adjusted the seasonings to taste and hey pesto (sorry…it was too irresistable!) my pea pesto was finished!
After cooking the pasta, I added the pesto along with a splash of the pasta water and mixed it in. For an extra dash of colour, and in the spirit of using as much of my edible garden as possible, I added a few lilac mint flowers to finish it off.
This is not a powerful, punchy pesto like the basil version. It is subtle, with the sweetness of pea, the earthy nuttiness of the oil, and the savoury-salty flavour of Parmesan. Lovely, seasonal, and a great way to use up forgotten vegetables.
The other night Mr Rigg made us a delicious dinner of asparagus, mint and lemon risotto. He found this great sounding recipe of Jamie Oliver’s, and although we did deviate from the recipe Jamie is always full of inspiration.
What did we do differently?
- Well, we cooked our asparagus in the oven like we did here.
- We cooked the risotto the way we normally do risotto, rather than learning a slightly different way.
- We added lemon zest as we were adding stock.
- We stirred the sliced cooked asparagus and sliced mint into the risotto at the end.
- And only added a spritz of lemon juice at the end to taste.
However, without Jamie’s recipe as a starting point I’d have never thought to combine asparagus, mint and lemon together in a risotto. And you should – it’s divine!
Dinner last night – scrambled eggs my way with a generous amount of garden grown herbs (chives, mint, parsley, oregano, and chive flowers) on a fresh bagel with lettuce, homegrown rainbow radishes and a mustard vinaigrette.
Bliss.
A beautifully delicate and fragrant dish for a Friday night. Last night we made this yummy fish dish, which is so so quick and so so easy. I realised it would be a great meal to make for friends, as it doesn’t involve slaving away for hours and doesn’t require you to spend time when your guests are with you beavering away in the kitchen.
The mint and spring onions for the dressing came from our garden, and the mackerel from Out of the Blue fishmongers in Chorlton.
Grilled mackerel with a lemon and mint dressing
Feeds 2 hungry people
4 mackerel fillets (ask your fishmonger to fillet two whole mackerel for you)
4 spring onions, roughly chopped
1 tbsp capers (drained and rinsed if salted)
small clove of garlic
handful of mint
1 lemon (zest and juice from half)
Lots of extra virgin olive oil
Salt and pepper
Turn your grill on high. Cover a baking tray or grill pan with foil and pop on the mackerel fillets skin-side up. Season with salt and pepper and bung under the grill for about 3 minutes on each side.
Whilst the mackerel is cooking, prepare your dressing. Bung into a food processor the spring onions, capers, garlic, mint, lemon zest and lemon juice. Blitz until finely chopped. Taste and season with little salt. Pour in enough extra virgin olive oil to make it a thick dressing consistency and stir well.
Serve the grilled mackerel drizzled with the lemon and mint dressing, and a pile of buttery crushed potatoes.
Eat the Earth 
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