No omelettes allowed: my five favourite recipes to use up lots of eggs

Posted by louisa on Friday 1 April 2011 in chickens, cooking, preserving | 16 comments

According to our all knowing spreadsheet, we had 200 eggs from our hens last month. 200 eggs!

Those two hundred eggs equal an average 6.45 eggs a day from the seven girls – not enough to bother selling them at the garden gate but more than enough to keep us going! Our friends and family rarely leave without a box in their hand but we still have a good amount to get through ourselves.

John has scrambled eggs for breakfast roughly every other day, we have egg mayo lunches quite frequently and omelettes (usually either Spanish tortilla or frittatas) feature on our meal plans at least once a week – but we like to use them up in more creative, less obviously eggy ways too.

Here are my five favourite ways to use up a lot of eggs for when you’re bored of omelettes :)

1) Fresh egg pasta – one to two eggs per serving
Despite having a pasta machine for a few years now (a re-gift from John’s mum), we only made pasta for the first time last autumn – it was a lot of fun though and we didn’t know why we’d waited so long! The egg gives the pasta a lovely richness so it only needs the lightest dressing – no heavy ragus need apply. It’s perfect for having with mushrooms sautéed with garlic & chilli, with a little grated parmasan/pecorino & pepper on top. At this time of year, tangles of tagiatelle and ribbons of very lightly cooked wild garlic would toss together beautifully — mmm, am feeling hungry at the thought of it!

2) Chocolate-mocha mousse – an egg per serving
I wrote up this recipe a few weeks ago because I *had* to share. It’s possibly the richest dessert I’ve ever eaten and, trust me, I’ve eaten plenty of rich desserts in my time. Starting with chocolate is a bit of a cheat but makes it really easy to make – about ten minutes melting, whisking and folding in, then a couple of hours to chill in the fridge. As I say in the recipe, if I was served this at a restaurant with a biscotti and a sprinkling of icing sugar, I’d expect to pay a fiver for it.

3) Flourless chocolate tart – an egg per serving
Ok, so this is pretty much the same as the last one, just baked but when things are this yummy, pedantry shouldn’t enter into it. It was apparently one of the hottest desserts around a few years ago, when everyone was obsessed about cutting back on their wheat, so there are lots of recipes around for it – from the very simple to more flavoured ones with almonds, coffee or alcohol – or all three. I like this recipe for the same reason as I like the mousse – it’s a fantastic, luxurious dessert made some simple, basic ingredients – stuff we’re likely to have in.

(And while I was looking for different recipes for it, I found this equally egg heavy recipe for a chocolate cake that uses BEANS instead of flour. Apparently that too is delicious so it’ll go on my to try list…)

4) Lemon curd – 5 eggs to 2.5lbs-3lbs of finished curd
Another one that is surprisingly easy to make. It took me longer to squeeze & zest the lemons than it did to make the rest of the curd – it’s ten minutes on the stove, max and it’s LOVELY.

5) Pickled eggs – 8-12 eggs — as many as you can fit in your jar
I’m not interested in freezing eggs at the moment because we’ve got such a steady supply of fresh that we’d never use the frozen ones – but pickled ones are a different thing entirely. It’s not that we’re pickling them to preserve them as regular eggs – we’re transforming them into a whole new thing. A lovely, sharp tasty thing. By the end of the jar, they’re almost eye-wateringly sharp but we had some with cheese and our sourdough bread for lunch yesterday and the chunks were a lovely, tangy highlight.

If you’ve got chickens, what do you do with all the eggs? Anyone got any favourite egg recipes I should try?

Sourdough breadmaking course with the Handmade Bakery

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 March 2011 in cooking | 0 comments

Yesterday John and I went on a baking course run by the Handmade Bakery.

We met Dan & Johanna, who run the bakery and the course, on a wild food walk in May last year. At the end of the walk, we ate their bread alongside the crayfish we’d caught, our foraged greens & battered sweet cicely dusted with icing sugar. Next to the river at Barden, just north of Bolton Abbey, in the glorious sunshine, the meal was a delight. It was also the first time we’d tried any type of proper slow fermented bread and it’s what inspired us to make our own slow rise bread. Before and since then though, I’d failed to manage to maintain a sourdough starter so I saw the benefit of doing a course with them to learn more about that sort of thing so in July last year, I booked us on the next available sourdough course (their “rising ambition” course – now seems to have been replaced by a “wild yeast” one) – yesterday. It was well worth the wait.

We arrived to tea, coffee & delicious pulla, specifically cinnamon rolls called korvapuusti. But we didn’t get to sit around for too long – not when there was baking to be done!

Over the course of the day, we made four loaves each – a round boule & baguette from a slow fermented wheat dough (pain de campagne) they’d mixed the day before (for us to learn about shaping), a sourdough baton made from a build (a thick starter), and a free-standing 100% rye sourdough with figs & aniseed.

The pain de campagne allowed us to learn different shaping techniques – demystifying baguettes, although I’m going to French breadmaking hell because I did nine gashes on my baguette rather than seven. John & I both went for cross-shaped slashes on the top of our boules (John’s is the one in focus below – he didn’t slash deeply enough at first) but other people went for two straight slashes and another four small ones around the edges — they all looked very pretty and we’ll definitely try some variations in the future.

The sourdough from a build allowed us to practise mixing & kneading without having to wait 12 hours – they mixed up the build, using a rye starter, the previous day. After sufficient rising, most people folded in additional flavourings – either olive, lemon & thyme or walnut & raisin – but I left my plain so we could see the contrast. Presumably because it didn’t have the extra bits in it weighing it down, mine rose beautifully.

Shaping them for the baton (proving in an oblong proving bowl then baked free-standing) was another good skill to learn – especially as we bought an oblong proving bowl to use at home.

After making a 100% wheat bread using a wheat starter (the pain de campagne) and a wheat bread with a rye starter (the sourdough from a rye build), we then made a 100% rye bread from a rye starter. It felt a lot more akin to making a cake or soda bread as it wasn’t kneaded – more mixed together and shaped like soggy clay – but it was left to rise in the same was as normal. It was baked free-standing and ended up a lot flatter than the boule, even though they’d been shaped in the same round proving bowls — this is apparently expected and not us being rubbish :)

We haven’t tried the 100% rye loaves yet – we were advised to leave them overnight before trying them as the close crumb can be “gummy” on the first day – but we’ve tried the pain de campagne and John’s had his sourdough with raisin & walnuts. The slow fermented pain de campagne is much more noticeably sour compared to the one made from build. Both are quite chewy with tough crusts – not disagreeably so but certainly not the fluffy barely-there bread that passes for “artisan” bread in supermarkets. In fact, we found both facets reassuring as our slow rise bread has similar qualities and now we know that’s not a sign that we’re doing something wrong.

In addition to the eight (!) loaves we brought home between us (two were very quickly gifted to John’s mum & dad, who had Lily sat during the day), we were also given portions of starter so we can make our own sourdough. The wheat leaven, which is apparently a little harder to maintain so we’re not sure we’ll be able to keep ours going, was started in River Cottage in 2005 but the rye leaven came to the Handmade Bakery via the Phoenix Bakery in Weymouth but apparently originated in Russia in the 1970s so is older than we are :)

All in all, the day wasn’t cheap but was well worth it in our opinion – we learnt new skills and gained so much bready knowledge – Dan & Johanna are very knowledgeable and very keen to share. They also provided a lovely lunch – an Iranian minestrone soup with local cheese and their bread (naturally), followed by chocolate cake made from waste sourdough leaven. We’d heartily recommend it.

Weekly meal planning: preparing for chaos

Posted by louisa on Monday 28 March 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Every now and then I refer to being busy with drama or rehearsals but I’m not sure I’ve explained it – I help teach drama to teenagers at a local theatre one evening a week and am involved in other productions there from time to time too. Around Easter each year, the two drama classes (for 12-15 year olds & 16-18 year olds) come together for a big production – which means lots of extra rehearsals and running around. This year’s production runs for three nights the weekend after next with lots of dress/tech rehearsals during that week beforehand – meaning I’ll be out every evening from next Sunday to the following Saturday inclusive. This is going to get in the way of dinners somewhat – I’m going to try to get a good leftover buffer set up this week to cater for next week.

Sunday lunch – provided as part of the breadmaking course we were on (more on that later!)
Sunday dinner – bread from the breadmaking course with cheese & chutneys

Monday lunch – bread & cheese
Monday dinner – (after rehearsal) burgers with salad

Tuesday lunch – bread & egg mayo and salad
Tuesday dinner – beany enchiladas (with leftovers for the freezer)

Wednesday lunch – jacket potato with tuna
Wednesday dinner – some sort of curry cooked by John (probably keema & channa achar), with leftovers for the freezer

Thursday lunch – bread & eggs (we have a lot of bread from the course!)
Thursday dinner – pasta with chorizo, olives & wild garlic (has to be a quick one as John’s out)

Friday lunch – samosas and salad
Friday dinner – sausage & lentil casserole (with leftovers for the freezer)

I’m hoping to get John to make a big vat of his slow cooked pasta sauce on Sunday which should provide us for with at least two dinners, so that’s another couple of nights sorted too. Hopefully all these ready meals will make good eating next week as easy as possible :)

This week’s meal plan: the coming-and-going one

Posted by louisa on Monday 21 March 2011 in weekly meal plans | 2 comments

We stuck to the plan much better last week than the week before – not perfectly but much better.

As well as continuing DIY madness (which is proving to be more disruptive than we thought), John’s out at a conference for three days midweek (and we’ve got a friend staying over to go to it too) and I’m starting to be get into crunch mode for the play I’m working on so we’ll be coming and going a lot. I’d still like to have a plan to avoid slipping over to the easy junk food option but I have a lot less inclination to cook for myself though and I think this is reflected in the easy/less-than-varied choices.

Sunday dinner: pasta with herby sausages, peppers & olives

Monday lunch: curried egg mayo sandwiches
Monday dinner: chicken fried rice

Tuesday lunch: leftover fried rice (assuming there is some) or a toastie
Tuesday dinner: homemade pizza (since the friend is over and that was one of the things we swapped out last week) or possibly a curry with some more friends, as they’re in town for the film festival

Wednesday late-lunch: pasta with tuna & olives
Wednesday supper: (John out at the conference dinner, I’m rehearsing ’til 10) crackers & cheese

Thursday lunch: leftover tuna pasta
Thursday dinner: tortilla, with sweet potato, wild garlic & chorizo, with side salad

Friday lunch: samosas & salad
Friday dinner: company meal out (Little Tokyo in Leeds, mmm!)

Menu planning: the week we hope to actually stick to it

Posted by louisa on Monday 14 March 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 0 comments

Apologies for dropping off the radar for a couple of days – I wasn’t just recuperating from all those stairs ;) Our bathroom refit has had problem after problem, so is dragging on and on, and John’s dad was here finishing up some work in our storeroom – so we’ve been rather distracted. Then rather than doing anything constructive on Friday, I spent the whole day refreshing the Guardian’s earthquake feed page and watching devastating videos that left my heart in my mouth as the water rushed over farmland and through cities. Not a really good week by any means.

The household chaos of last week meant we veered off the meal plan to a ridiculous degree – we didn’t stick to anything past Tuesday afternoon and ate a lot of junk food. Sigh. We’re hoping that things will calm down this week (John’s dad has finished; the bathroom is, hopefully, through the worst) and we’ll be better behaved.

Sunday lunch – bacon & mozzarella butties
Sunday dinner – Cottage pie – with reduced-to-clear organic mince, lots of veggies and parmasan & garlic mash, yum!

Monday lunch – ham & cheese toasties
Monday dinner – date night dinner out, hurrah!

Tuesday lunch – fish and chips if we’re being naughty; sandwiches if we’re being good
Tuesday dinner – Leftover cottage pie

Wednesday lunch – sandwiches (meat/cheese/egg mayo)
Wednesday dinner – previously frozen keema & channa curry, with naan

Thursday lunch – samosas & salad
Thursday dinner – Tortilla/Spanish omelette with salad

Friday lunch – boiled eggs & soldiers
Friday dinner – homemade pizza

This week’s meal plans: enter the wild garlic

Posted by louisa on Sunday 6 March 2011 in cooking, weekly meal plans | 0 comments

We ended up with more leftovers last week than I though – we got two dinners out of the risotto and two & a half from the kedgeree, so ended up shuffling things to get those used up. Four portions of curry went in the freezer too – homemade ready meals for the future – but I struggled to fit them in because we have a lot of previously frozen dinners in there – need to start working our way through them to keep them well rotated.

I’m delighted that the wild garlic in the woods is getting big enough to pick now – I hope it’ll feature quite a bit in our diet over the next couple of months (in salads if nothing else).

Sunday lunch – leftover pizza, mmm pizza
Sunday dinner – pasta with chorizo, wild garlic & pine nuts, with salad

Monday lunch – tomato & basil soup with bread
Monday dinner – spicy sausages & lentil casserole (will make enough for two dinners – second lot to be frozen)

Tuesday lunch – fish and chips if Strowger comes around :)
Tuesday dinner – pork chops with creamy mustard leeks and baked sweet potato

Wednesday lunch – bread and cheese & meat
Wednesday dinner – previously frozen keema & channa curry, with naan

Thursday lunch – egg mayo ploughmans lunch type thing
Thursday dinner – jerk chicken with rice&peas (or chips, if we’re feeling lazy) and salad

Friday lunch – leftover chicken with salad
Friday dinner – frittata