Farmers' Markets, Happiness, Summer Salads and Apple Peach Mojitos

This is the story of how I woke up this morning, went out to buy milk, and accidentally stumbled on a farmers' market, where I bought ALL THE THINGS. And then I turned them into apple juice and peach mojitos, and an elaborate salad, and enjoyed pure bliss on a sunny evening.

Clockwise: I got a giant loaf of sourdough from De Gustibus, a mango and lime cupcake and an apple and blackberry loaf slice from Barefoot Kitchen, the world's largest avocado, a dozen doughnut peaches, a black sesame seed macaron and an orange, chocolate and ginger macaron from SaraO Macarons, and half a clochette of goats cheese from the Oxford Cheese Company. Aka happiness.



To make the peach mojito, you'll need:

• Peaches (I used three of the doughnut peaches)
• 1 lime
• Some fresh mint leaves
• Sparkling or soda water
• Apple juice
• Dark rum
• A couple of teaspoons of demerara sugar
• Ice 

I mashed the peaches with a fork, squeezed in the lime, shredded in the mint, sprinkled in the sugar and muddled it all together, then threw in the ice cubes before topping up the jug with equal parts sparkling water and apple juice, and stirring. I used four shots of rum - you could vary this drastically. It was still delicious with no rum, and will get you summer day drunk excellently fast if you put in lots of rum. Adjust the levels of lime, mint, sugar etc to taste. I got four glassfuls from this jug, but I drank them all myself.

I had it with this miraculous avocado, goats cheese, chorizo, peach and rocket salad, alongside a healthy (read: monstrous) hunk of sourdough. 

Peach or chorizo would probably have been sufficient, but I don't regret it. I enjoyed the combination, and I never promised you restraint.

I was ALL ABOUT this black sesame macaron. Beautiful. The nice lady from SaraO let me try a lot of samples.

Barefoot Kitchen makes undoubtedly the best brownies I've ever had. This mango cupcake was also good,  but I won't be choosing it over their salted caramel squishy rectangles of brownie perfection anytime soon. 

I am happy to report that the North Parade Farmers' Market, Oxford, where all of these goodies fell like delicious rainbows from the sky into brown paper bags in my hands before I even knew what was happening, is now going to be on every two weeks! This was the first mid-month market, which was why it was an unexpected delight on my morning milk run. The next one will be on Saturday July 26th.

Christmas Cooking: Brown Sugar Meringues with Chocolate and Cranberries

What could be more Christmassy than a party treat which combines brown sugar, chocolate, cranberries and nuts, right!? These sweet, chewy, tiny meringues look super pretty piled on a plate, and you could top them with a whole range of things.

Christmas Cooking: The Cranberry Sauce Has Real Cranberries!

Christmas time means you get to eat everything! And before you can eat everything you get to cook it all! My favourite things.

This cranberry sauce is deep and spiced and orangey and sharp and beautifully red. It's adapted from Delia Smith, but I am a fiddler and a throw-everything-in-er, so I did what I do.

You will need:

300g cranberries
Juice and zest of 1 orange
3-4 tablespoons white wine
75g soft brown sugar (you could also use caster, but I always think soft gives a richer flavour)
1 teaspoon fresh ginger (I used the crushed frozen cubes) or 1/2 tsp ground
1 cinnamon stick, broken in halves
2 or 3 bay leaves
1 whole star anise
3 whole cloves

The World's Easiest Strawberry Ice Cream

Okay, well that might be a teeny tiny untruth, because really the recipe that I adapted this from is the easiest recipe in the world. But I fiddled with it a little bit, because I am a fiddler, and also in honour of it being Julia Child's 100th birthday (thanks, Google!), to make it a bit more exciting, but still ridiculously easy. The original recipe is here if you really want it. You definitely want A recipe, because not only is this ice cream

from Good Housekeeping

the easiest ice cream in the world, it's also delicious AND you don't need an ice cream maker. It's like, 75% pure fruit so it's also (relatively) healthy (for ice cream).Trust me. Scroll down to see what you'll end up with, then go hull some strawberries.


You'll need:

• 400g strawberries, hulled
• 100g raspberries or other soft fruit or berries. I used 50g raspberries and 50g peach. You could just use 500g of strawberries if you want to.
• A handful of extra berries (optional)
• 75g icing sugar
• 125ml double cream
• 1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract or seeds
• 1 sprig roughly chopped fresh mint leaves (optional)

• More fresh berries, to serve

Now let's dick around with nature's perfection.

Cut up your strawberries and other fruit into small pieces (remembering to keep back the extra handful). Put them into the freezer until frozen; it's probably easiest to flash freeze them spread on a baking tray, because you don't want to end up with one big solid lump of frozen berries.

While the berries are in the freezer, if you're using the mint, pour about a third of the cream into a little bowl or cup and put in the mint leaves. Leave to infuse. Obviously the longer you leave them in and the more finely you've chopped the leaves, the stronger the mint flavour will become. I'd recommend letting it infuse for one to two hours for just a hint of flavour, or overnight if you want something a bit more noticeable.

Get the berries you held back and, using a sharp knife, slice them into thin, pretty cross-sections. I used the top, larger half of three strawberries and four raspberries and ended up with about twenty small pieces of fruit, which was perfect.

Poor quality iPhone pictures will certainly
convince you to try this recipe!

When your berries are frozen through, strain the mint cream to get the leaves out and put it, the rest of the cream, the sugar, vanilla and a third of the berries into the food processor. Pulse until the berries are broken down, then add the next third, and repeat until all the ingredients are in the processor. Then blitz until mostly smooth (no one will object to a couple of leftover lumps of berry). Taste at this point to see if you want to add more sugar or cream (which I didn't). When you're happy, gently stir in the slices of fruit.

If your mixture is still firm enough, you can have at it right away. If not, pop it in a freezer-safe plastic tub and put it back in the freezer until it's hardened up/ you're ready for it. 

If you're feeling fancy and want to impress, try some or all of these serving ideas: Scoop the ice cream onto a meringue nest and add whipped or double cream, a drizzle of dark chocolate sauce and handfuls of fresh berries. A garnish of tiny mint leaves will look elegant and sophisticated.

If you don't feel fancy, eat it straight out the tub. I won't judge you.

The original recipe says this will do for 6 - I would say 4-6, depending on your portion sizes.

These gorgeous blue bowls, which are new, were £3 in the charity shop for
5 small ones and one large one. I KNOW, RIGHT

UPDATE: I made this into a froyo by swapping out the cream for low-fat plain natural yoghurt. It's a lot sharper, but instead of upping the sugar I stirred in two crushed up meringue nests (about 25g of meringue). Eton Mess frozen yoghurt! Is that a thing? It needs to be a thing. It's probably a thing, I'm not cool enough to have invented it first. Anyway, my calculations indicate that if you get 6 portions out of 1 batch, every portion will have 88 calories. EIGHTY. EIGHT. Best ice cream ever? Probably.

Lemon Roast Vegetable Pasta

Or,

How to eat vegetables when you only really like carbs

I do not like vegetables. Like, at all. I don’t like tomatoes, I don’t like carrots, I don’t like courgettes, broccoli, cucumbers, artichokes, parsnips or green beans. (Please still like me.) When I moved away from home for uni and started feeding myself all the time, though, I realised that unless I was going to live off nothing but pasta, risotto, apples and ice cream (horror!), I was going to have to learn to eat vegetables voluntarily. Fast forward two years, and while I still don’t enjoy eating vegetables, I know a ton of easy, interesting meals which incorporate them into meals I do like, and I can proudly say that several times in the last year I’ve managed to take in the recommended five pieces of fruit and veg a day. Several times! This is a colourful, low-effort, summery pasta dish that you can make with whatever you happen to have in the fridge. Measurements are pretty approximate.

Per person, you will need:

• 75 - 100g pasta, dry. (Spiral shapes like fusilli work best for this. You can use less than you usually would because you’ll be adding bulk from the vegetables.)
• Juice and zest of ½ - 1 lemon, or to taste
• 1 sprig fresh rosemary (optional)
• 50-100g chopped vegetables, depending on your desired pasta:veg ratio. Any kind of mix will work; you could use red and yellow peppers, mushrooms, red onion, courgette, cherry tomatoes or aubergine.
• A handful of sugar snap pea pods (optional)
• 50 ml olive oil
• 1 tablespoon grated parmesan
• 1 tablespoon soft goats’ cheese, crumbled
• Rock salt
• Freshly ground black pepper
• Baby leaf salad (spinach, rocket, lettuce, etc)

Preheat your oven to 180C. Spread the vegetables on a baking tray with a lip and drizzle over half the olive oil. Sprinkle over the lemon zest, half a teaspoon of salt and pepper. Cut your lemon into quarters and squeeze on the juice, then toss the quarters in with the vegetables (you’ll get more juice from them when they’re cooked). Strip the leaves from the rosemary. Toss it all around and pop the tray in the oven for between 20 and 35 minutes, depending on if you’d prefer your vegetables still a little crunchy or cooked through.

Cook your pasta, strain it and toss it back in the saucepan. Take the vegetables out of the oven. Squeeze out the last of the juice from the lemon and throw the pieces away. Stir the rest of the vegetables into the pasta along with the parmesan and the rest of the oil. Taste and add extra seasoning. If it’s too sharp and lemony, try adding a little sugar or a spoonful of crème fraiche for a creamier taste. At the last minute before you serve the pasta into bowls, stir through the crumbled goats’ cheese, the pea pods and a handful of baby leaf salad.