Travelling beef sandwich

Here's a treat for a travelling picnic - I posted it last year, now I've improved it ... Alfred and I wolfed it down on the way up to Durham, where he's doing a hockey course and I'm doing some family history research. We stopped on the way at Conisbrough Castle, a Norman ruin.


















This sandwich is very simple, and one of it's best virtues is that you make it the night before you travel, so that in the morning all you have to do is grab it out of the fridge. And it's quick to make. There's no need for butter or any other fat, and you can size it according to the number of people: I used a small ciabatta and a slightly smaller sized steak. A flattish bread works best, together with an ordinary steak. This version was much better and much more manageable than my first effort last year (although that was VERY popular, despite it's rather peculiar appearance).

What do you make for a healthy picnic? Heart of the Matter is looking for picnic ideas .... details on taking part are at the bottom of the post.

One sirloin or rump steak
One ciabatta loaf
some field mushrooms, stalks removed

Cook the steak according to your usual method. Cook the mushrooms whole. Slice through the ciabatta so that it opens out like a book. Put the cooked steak on one half, and pour on the juices. Arrange the cooked mushrooms on top, then fold down the top. Wrap tightly in foil, then put in the fridge with a weight on top. This needs to be made a few hours in advance so that there's time for the sandwich to be pressed.

To serve, cut into finger slices.


































As you see, Alfred enjoyed himself - we were lucky that the sun was shining; I've got soaked twice today in Durham, once outside the Durham Light Infantry Museum (REALLY worth a visit, even if you aren't related to anyone who served in the DLI, as my grandfather did in WW1), and once on the way to the Durham Heritage Centre.






We'd love to hear your heart-healthy picnic ideas ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes.

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Monday 25th August (a Bank Holiday in the UK) , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up on the Thursday or Friday on both sites.

Related links

A fabulous spot for a picnic in the south of England
A place in our garden for a picnic

A Mitford Mess

I'm reading the letters of the Mitford sisters at the moment (slightly tiresome, but I'm only as far as the 1930s at the moment, with all the ghastliness of Diana Mosley's and Unity's Nazism), and was amused to come across this from 17-year-old Debo (later Duchess of Devonshire):

We arrived here (The Mill Cottage, Swinbrook) yesterday for the first time and it is really very nice if very cold. The fishing is terrific, we caught five trout last night. As Muv and Farve are always going on about how they love housework I leave it all to them to serve them right. All I have done so far is to make a Mitford Mess - tomatoes and potatoes fried in oil - which is the only thing I can cook and it is delicious.

No mention of a Mitford Mess or anything like it in the Chatsworth Cookery Book, published about five years ago under the Duchess of Devonshire's name "with the help of the chefs at Chatsworth" ... although to give her her due, she does start by saying: I haven't cooked since the war. I hoped this would be the title of this book but it was not well looked on by others. However, it is true and I am all for truth.

Now, of course, I've been browsing through the book, and found this:

Bread was a passion of my mother and her siblings. In Mrs Alhusen's book there is a long receipt for bread made of English stoneground wholemeal flour, including detailed descriptions of the utensils to be used. My interest quickened when I turned the page and saw the name of the contributor - Mr Geoffrey Bowles.

He was my uncle and a true eccentric if ever there was one. He never married and lived alone in one of those delectable houses in Catherine Street, Westminster. Visitors were not allowed. Should you be bold enough to ring the bell, he opened a flap in the door to tell you to go away. His sister, my aunt, lived near by. When they were old and she hadn't seen him for a long time, she thought she would like to do so and wrote to suggest that they should meet. 'But we have met,' he replied. For years Uncle Geoff lived on nothing but chocolate, which he bought at Fortnum & Mason, and bread, which he made himself. 'The perfect diet,' he said.


Whatever, I quite like the sound of a Mitford Mess for supper, with the addition of a little onion. And there's a very good recipe for water biscuits which I'll try just as soon as I've got a moment.

Related posts

Mount Athos potato and artichoke
Onion bacon and potato hotpot
Savoury chicken with roasted onion and potato
Potato gratin with thyme and tomato AKA duck and delicious potatoes

Flowers from the garden

I picked these flowers at random from my garden early this morning. The pompom dahlia is Baby Moon, which I planted last year but which only produced a couple of flowers. This morning it was covered with flowers - 30 or 40 on a plant about three feet tall. And I love those scruffy daisies. If you look carefully at the photograph below, you can see TimTim, our gigantic ginger tom, in the background. The dark rose is Tess of the d'Urbervilles, a David Austen rose planted on our trellis by Alfred at Easter: it's the first flower, precious moment.























Links to related posts

Planting roses on our pergola
Rosewater yoghurt cake

A gibbous moon

I'm not sure what a gibbous moon actually is, but my Google phases of the moon widget tells me that this moon is gibbous. Until a few moments ago, I thought that any full red moon was a harvest moon, but Wikipaedia tells me that a harvest moon occurs only in September.

Whatever, it's utterly beautiful, the wonderful red colour I associate with lunar eclipse .. it stopped me dead in my tracks last night as I was about to go to bed. I just wish I was a better photographer.

Bread knots

These are my current favourites when I'm making bread rolls ... easy-peasy, let the yeast do the work. The inspiration came from Tanna's post about Soft Garlic Knots ... I haven't actually followed her recipe, but it set me thinking that you could use any dough to make a simple knotted roll: since then, I've made them several times, using a simple knot and various different doughs: white, wholemeal, or - these - using onion flour.

Make your usual bread dough. Cut it into pieces (these were about 75-80g each), roll them out into snakes, then tie a simple knot. Put them on a baking sheet with plenty of room for expansion, cover loosely with a tea towel, let them prove. Bake in a hot oven for 12-15 minutes. What could be simpler? Or more delicious?

Thanks, Tanna ...

Stewed broad beans

I've been podding broad beans at least twice a week for a couple of months now - and then boiling them and eating them plain. Love them. Last night, we had visitors, and plain broad beans suddenly seemed too plain. This Patience Gray recipe could be a meal in itself. Delicious and quick - if you don't count the time you spend podding the beans and then double podding the huge ones.

Fabulous. I used a red onion, paper-thin Parma ham, forgot to add any herbs. Still really delicious. Five minutes' cooking time. (Much longer podding time, but that was sociable.) This will be my summer staple. From Apulia.


Fave fresche in stufa When the beans are larger (older), husk them and pinch off their outer skins, no longer green but creamy white. Slice up a sweet white onion, put the slices in an earthenware pot (or enamelled pan) in a little olive oil, and, before they begin to brown, put in some strips neatly cut from a slice of prosciutto crudo (not paper thin), or, failing that, pancetta (salt belly of pork), both fat and lean, and brown them. Add the washed beans, salt and pepper, and some chopped mint or coriander leaves or fronds of dill. If the beans seem to be drying before they are tender, add a very little chicken stock. (A fresh green chilli pepper, seeded, is sometimes sliced and simmered in the oil with the sliced onion.)

from Patience Gray's Honey from a Weed

Local lamb

From this week's Spectator

Esse Ironheart

We're just back from Bromyard in Herefordshire, where we ordered an Esse Ironheart woodburning cooker from a fantastic family firm, B & M Johnson, father and son.

As soon as we got home, Lucius began work on the installation. I went out to buy potatoes, and when I got home, this is what I saw. Scary, or what?








































PS this is what the stove looks like ... one large oven, two burners, and a glass door to see the fire burning ... perfect: we've got endless amounts of wood to burn, and we'll be able to remove the enormous and hideous oil tank ...

Which are your favourite British cookery books?

A couple of weeks ago my sister - who has lived in the US for the best part of 20 years - asked me about British cookery writers. I mumbled a bit, and the conversation moved on. But her question has got me thinking: I'd like to buy her a couple of British cookery books to thank her for having my son to stay (our house has been very quiet, hers probably hasn't) ... and I can't decide which.

So ... which would you recommend? Nigel? Nigella? Moro? River Café? Yotam Ottolenghi? Hugh FW? And then there's Skye Gyngell's lovely book, Tamasin Day-Lewis, Diana Henry - and Sarah Raven's lovely Garden Cookbook. I'm aware that this list is not exhaustive, and does not include a number of my favourite writers (Geraldene Holt, Claudia Roden, Patience Gray, etc etc). Quite a lot of these people have written several books, in which case, which to choose?

Which books do you think represent the best of British cookery at the moment?

Related links

Nigel Slater's top-10 recipes
Honey from a Weed
Ann and Franco Taruschio's Leaves from the Walnut Tree

HotM: picnics - and a rosewater yoghurt cake

The theme for Heart of the Matter for July and August is PICNICS ... whether you're travelling, on the beach, in the garden, going for a walk, rambling up a mountain, going for a bicycle ride - you'll need something to eat, and we'd like to know what it is. Every kind of picnic, from the elaborately pleasurable to the purely functional: what heart-healthy foods do you take with you?

Here it's been raining, so not really picnic weather. But I did make a lovely yoghurt cake soaked in rosewater syrup, and we did manage to eat it outside in between the showers. Not quite a picnic, but the next best thing.

This yoghurt cake is simplicity itself, pretty robust, and infinitely adaptable: you could flavour the syrup with all kinds of other tastes - orange springs easily to mind. And if you're not taking it out and about, you could serve it as a pud with some lovely bright berries simmered in a little water or wine.




Yoghurt cake

200g self-raising flour
110g ground almonds
150g caster sugar
1 tsp baking powder
2 eggs
250g yoghurt
150ml sunflower oil
zest of a lemon

Measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl. Add everything else and stir with a wooden spoon. You really do not need to use a mixer for this. Pour into an oiled 20xm springform tin. Bake at 180C for 30-40 minutes. Leave for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a plate. Pierce all over and pour in rosewater syrup. Allow the cake to cool and the flavours to mingle before serving.

Rosewater syrup

275 ml water
175 sugar
juice of a lemon
2 tbsp rosewater

Measure everything except the rosewater into a small saucepan. Dissolve the sugar, then bring to the boil. Simmer for seven minutes, leave to cool, then add the rosewater.

As usual, I've been inspired by Diana Henry's piece in the Sunday Telegraph magazine. Her cake looked lovely, covered in rose petals.


We'd love to hear your heart-healthy picnic ideas ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes.

The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Monday 25th August (a Bank Holiday in the UK) , linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up on the Thursday or Friday on both sites.

Related links

A fabulous spot for a picnic in the south of England
A travelling beef sandwich (mark two coming up later this month)
A place in our garden for a picnic

Links: diet, spam, and the Roman Invasion

I subscribe to a BBC news roundup email, giving headlines in particular areas that interest me. There were four stories I want share - and I'll start with two interesting stories from the health section:

The first is a report on an eight year study of the Mediterranean diet, which shows that very small changes to the diet (a little more olive oil, OR perhaps a little less red meat) give protection from certain types of cancers. It sounds like stuff we already know, but here we have some proof.

The second is about the effect of junk food eaten by pregnant rats on their offspring. Predictably terrifying.

The computer security firm McAfee ran an experiment to see what happened when fifty people around the world surfed for a month without any sort of protection for their computer. Doesn't bear thinking about. BUT ... fascinating national differences.

Finally - well I'm a historian, so please forgive me. The headline said there was doubt over the date of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain. Not 55BC??? Actually, it turns out that we are talking about whether it was the beginning or the end of one week in August 55BC. Wonderful stuff.


PS if you get to the fourth link, you'll see that my photo of the White Cliffs of Dover is courtesy of the BBC