Long-range planning

In late January/early February 2016 I took two weeks off work and spent one of them renting a cottage in the Norfolk seaside town of Sheringham.

It was a marvellous week: I read a stack of books, took walks along the storm-ravaged coast, and watched a sufficiency of day-time TV. 

The BBC2 mid-afternoon staple filler at the time (or at least for that week) was called something or other like Best of British and consisted entirely of clips from cookery programmes jammed together by a voiceover. Or maybe not even a voiceover.

Anyway, it had some good things in it, and like someone from c.1986, I grabbed pen and paper to note a few of them down. Hugh F-W's 'three ingredient' (if you discount the oil, salt, garlic, cream and parmesan...) pasta-with-courgette-and-mozarella was immediately adopted into rotation (it's great for Courgette Glut Season). A Mary Berry lemon layer cake was noted with interest, although no real intention of implementation. And a Hairy Bikers (yes! really!) crab and leek tart lodged itself in my brain.

It's a quiche, really: wilted leeks are surrounded with white crab meat, and an egg/crème fraîche/brown crab meat mixture poured over the top. And topped with cheddar cheese (because Hairy Bikers). Despite having finally decided this is the week for it, I haven't really provisioned quite well enough: we have only brown crab (because skinflints), and dairy-wise only yoghurt (because even after all these years I somehow consider crème fraîche impossibly exotic and never buy it). 

Seeing as I'm furloughed on Fridays, I don't mind a bit of faff, so I made the half'n'half plain/wholemeal flour pastry myself. It contains an egg -- to richen it up, or to help the wholemeal hold together? -- and having read that far I stopped paying attention and just made pastry and bunged it into the fridge to chill. When I got it out again it was rock solid, and sure enough the actual recipe says to roll it out and shape it into your pie dish as soon as it's made, and then chill it like that. But no matter, I managed to thaw it enough to get into a tin and blind bake.

The filling is a doddle to make: sweat your leeks, mix the rest together, dollop into your pie crust, add cheese. Bake until 'nearly set'. The result is a resounding success. If I think too hard about combining crab and egg it seems a Bit Weird, but this definitely works.

Because Fridays are for faffing, I also made a chilled soup to start. I don't only cook beetroot soups, but I think they might be the only ones I ever write up. This was made with just the leaves from the beetroot tops, added to some softened onion, celery and garlic, briefly boiled in chicken stock, and then joined with a generous handful of chopped chervil. 

Total experiment this: would the flavours work? Would one overpower the other? It's my first ever go with chervil, and a sensible person would have definitely started with An Actual Recipe. But beginner's luck has struck, and this was a definite success. Cooled, blended, and served with a squoze of lemon and a splodge of sharp yoghurt, it was very pleasing indeed. The chap declared it 'good enough to serve to guests' (though you'd need two (2) bunches of beetroot to get enough leaves). So watch out, should dinner parties ever return!

And by way of a sombre note, today would have been Liz's birthday, and 'her' tulips are putting on a good show for it.