To celebrate Great British Beef Week, 23rd – 30th April, the fabulously named ‘Ladies in Beef’ have come up with some great recipes to encourage us all to enjoy that most iconic of British meats.  Many of our farm shop customers, some of whom rear their own beef cattle, are taking part in the week’s promotions, Old Farm at Dorn and Foxbury Farm Shop to name a couple.

I have also devised a simple recipe to incorporate our newly launched Red Pepper and Chilli Relish in a beefburger.

Ingredients

500g minced British beef, one onion (finely chopped), a slice of few days old bread (crusts removed, soaked in a little milk to soften), one egg, 2 tablespoons of Kitchen Garden Red Pepper and Chilli Relish, 1 tablespoon of chopped fresh parsley, seasoned flour.

 Method

Mix all ingredients together – best done by mixing with your hands – messy but very effective! Shape the burgers and coat lightly with seasoned flour. Heat some olive oil in a frying pan and fry for about five minutes on each side, being careful to avoid burning them, and making sure that the middle is completely cooked.

These can also be cooked in the oven or on a barbeque.

 This is a very versatile recipe which can also be used to make a meat loaf. Put the beef mixture into a greased loaf tin, cook in a medium oven for around 30-40 minutes, slice and serve hot or cold.  The Red Pepper and Chilli Relish can also be substituted with other Kitchen Garden products – try Horseradish Sauce or any of our mustards (one tablespoon would probably be enough), and Organic Tomato Chutney would also work well.

Well – not exactly Easter Eggs, at least not the chocolate variety (sorry to disappoint), but good, wholesome free range hens eggs from which we make our gorgeous Lemon Curd.  Now for my sins, I’ve been a judge at the odd village show, and tasted Lemon Curds of many kinds from the thick, almost sliceable, bright yellow ones, to paler, lusciously creamy ones, those with grated lemon zest and some so lemony they make your lips pucker.  Our own Lemon Curd is made with butter (not margarine), free range eggs, lemon juice and a little drop of Sicilian lemon oil and we don’t add pectin or other kinds of thickeners.  We ask you to be the judge this time and let us know if it deserves  ‘best in show’!  Meanwhile, here is an indulgent recipe for Easter.

National Marmalade week -  25th February to 3rd March – is a celebration of one of this country’s favourite culinary traditions.  Making marmalade can be such a satisfying thing to do, and at this time of year citrus fruits and in particular the iconic seville orange, are plentiful. The kitchen fills with steam as the marmalade bubbles in the pan, releasing its delicious aromas, and then there’s the satisfaction of lining the jars up, filling them, sealing them and storing them for use throughout the year – or perhaps if you can bear to part with them, giving as presents to friends.  Marmalade can be made from any citrus fruit – seville oranges, sweet oranges, lemons, grapefruit, limes, tangerines, or a mixture.  The peel can be rough cut, fine cut or shredded.  And finally, if you want to add a little extra twist, splash in something boozy – brandy and whisky work well – or try flavouring with a little delicate lavender oil or throw in a handful of cranberries.

 There is of course little to rival hot buttered toast spread thickly with marmalade, but I also like to use it as an ingredient in traditional puddings.  I recently made a delicious Three Fruit Marmalade Pudding and we will be delighted to share the recipe with you if you order this, or any other of our marmalades, from our online shop.  You can also find this recipe, and others, at some of the many farm shop, delis and garden centres that we supply, so pick up a jar and a recipe card if you are passing.

If you have any favourite recipes using marmalade as an ingredient,  let us know, and we may print it on this blog or on our website.

Thanks to Mrs. B from Stonehouse for the winning name for our Valentine’s Jam Competition.  A case of Ma Cherie Amour – Cherry and Amaretto Jam – will be on its way to her shortly.

This lovely, deep red, gorgeous flavoured jam, the perfect gift for the one you adore, will be available at selected stockists and on our website from the middle of January.

We were delighted with the large response we had to our ‘name the  jam’ Valentine’s Competition.  The competition is  now closed and we will be announcing the winning name after Christmas.  Thanks to all those who took the time to enter. The jam will  be available through our online store and via selected stockists for a limited period leading up to Valentine’s Day.

We have also been busy conjuring up a lovely new jam with a real local feel to it.  Pear and Elderflower Jam will be made from the amazing, large, heritage pear variety ‘Catillac’ from The Rococo Gardens in Painswick, lightly flavoured with Elderflower Cordial from nearby Bottle Green Drinks.  This will be a ‘limited edition’ jam, available in a neat 227g jar from mid January.

One of the things I love about Christmas is the chance to try out our different chutneys with various cold meats and cheeses.  If our fridge and storecupboard are anything to go by there will be a couple of weeks when they are bulging with the foodie presents we have bought for each other (and ourselves!) not to mention the inevitable left-overs.  So here are a few suggestions:

Turn left over cold turkey into Coronation Turkey with our Apricot Chutney or Hot Mango Chutney, mixed with mayonnaise, tomato puree, curry powder and a sprinkling of slivered almonds. Oh, and don’t forget Cranberry Sauce – good with cold as well as hot turkey, and particularly delicious in turkey sandwiches.

So many chutneys go well with cold ham, but my particular favourite is Sweet Plum and Date,  served with a hot baked potato and salad.  If you prefer a chutney with a bit more bite, then Spiced Apricot and Orange also works really well.  And if you are cooking a gammon, warm up a little of our Port and Redcurrant Sauce to serve on the side – you will be loved for it!

Our recipe for Spiced Tomato and Apple Chutney was given to me by my grandmother and this is what she always served with cold roast beef.  And don’t forget the mustard and horseradish (which is also very good with smoked salmon).

For cheese accompaniments I would recommend the following:

Fig and Plum Relish with soft goats cheese, Red Onion Marmalade with blue cheeses, Ploughman’s Pickle or Old Spot Real Ale Chutney with a nice strong cheddar or double gloucester

Bon Appetit!

I know we haven’t even reached Christmas yet, but here in the world of food manufacturing we’re always looking ahead.  Which is why we are launching a competition to choose a name for a VALENTINE’S DAY jam.

If you think you can come up with the perfect name for a lovely red berry jam please email me

 barbara@kitchengardenpreserves.co.uk marking your email Valentine’s Competition

The winner will receive a case of six jars delivered in time for Valentine’s Day.

Here are some tasty serving suggestions for Bonfire Night:

Sausages with Thai Chilli Jam or Red Onion Marmalade. 

You can either coat the sausages halfway through cooking or for an easier life, put the Thai Chilli Jam or Red Onion Marmalade in a bowl on the side, put your sausages on sticks, and dip in.

Puff pastry squares with cheese and Fig and Plum Relish

Roll out some puff pastry, coat with a thin layer of Fig and Plum Relish and grate some cheese on top.  Place in a medium oven and cook until the pastry is puffed up and golden and the cheese has melted.  Remove from the oven and allow to cool a little before cutting into squares.

Jacket potatoes with cheese and mustard filling

Bake some jacket potatoes and when cooked, halve and gently scoop out the middle, leaving the skins.  Put the cooked potato into a bowl while still warm and mash with some grated cheese, a little butter or olive oil, and some mustard.  Taste as you go along and adjust quantities to suit.  Choose from Wholegrain, Coarse Grain with Honey, Wholegrain Real Ale or Tewkesbury Mustard.   Return the mixture to the potato skins, put back in the oven and cook until just browning on top.

At the recent Cheltenham Literature Festival we enjoyed listening to Clarissa Dickson-Wright talking about her new book ‘ A History of English Food’.  I find it fascinating the way that history changes what we eat and how food itself can change history.  She told a great anecdote about battles being lost because soldiers deserted their posts when their beer ration ran out, and a fascinating story of Eleanor of Aquitaine travelling on crusade with her ladies and bringing back new exotic spices from Jerusalem which dramatically changed the way food was seasoned.

In the world of preserving there are some interesting tales to tell too.  The origins of the word ‘marmalade‘ are often debated, but my favourite is the one about Mary Queen of Scots who was given preserved oranges to cure sea sickness – the word ‘marmalade’ coming from the French ‘Marie est malade’ (Mary is ill).  Chutney comes from the Indian word ‘chatni’.  Typically chatni was not cooked, but was a mix of fruits and spices left out in the sun to mature.  Chutney as we know it today was brought back by the British from India but given the poor chances of maturing outside in our chilly climate, was cooked instead with vinegar and sugar to help the preserving process. 

Mustard has been made in this country for many hundreds of years but not in a form that we would recognise today.  There was reportedly a ‘mustard house’ in Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire and from there came the famous Tewkesbury Mustard a version of which we make at Kitchen Garden.  Our Tewkesbury Mustard comes in a jar, but in those days you would have purchased your  mustard as a ball of mustard paste (the seeds having been ground in a stone mortar using a cannonball) which you would then reconsitute with vinegar or verjuice – a sour juice made from grapes or crab apples. It was not unknown for these paste balls to be coated in a thin layer of gold leaf for the more affluent customer.

Food, like language, changes and evolves at an ever increasing rate, as more of us travel and use the internet.  We are fortunate to have the opportunity to eat and cook with ingredients from around the world, blending them with our own indigeneous produce and giving us the chance to be endlessly creative.  Thanks in part to Eleanor of Aquitaine, we no longer need to go on Crusade to spice up our cuisine!