However even thought I’m writing the book life goes on here at the British Larder Suffolk. The weather has been good to us during the high season in comparison to last year, the snow has now only arrived and frankly we can do without the snow. It’s pretty and makes me look at life, country and county with different eyes but for business it’s pretty rubbish. Today it’s snowing outside and we have lost 40% of our bookings for this evening, it’s upsetting but we shall take it in our stride and get on with it in a true British fashion.

This has sparked my thoughts to revamp one of our favourite classics the Kedgeree. This time of the year there is a natural lack of seasonal foods and there is not much available to be creative with, changing seasons is never easy. We turn to our larder and with the delicious smoked haddock from a local smokehouse and a packet of risotto rice this delicious take on a traditional classic has emerged.

Technically it’s not a traditional kedgeree as the rice is using risotto rice instead of long grain rice and they are turned into balls and then fried, unlike the tradition, however the flavours are there, presented in a slighting different way. We serve this dish here at the British Larder as a pretty lunchtime starter or you could make this recipe at home, making the rice balls slightly bigger and serve it as a hearty lunch for two.

This recipe is dedicated to two of our regular customers; Gloria and Denis Lee. When I first served arctic roll for Gloria the look and smile on her face is imprinted in my mind. I shall never forget that moment because of the sheer joy and happy memories this dish brought back to Gloria was a picture in itself. She did not have to say anything, her face painted the most wonderful picture and her smile spoke a million words.

I love strawberries, they’re perhaps one of the most fragrant fruits for me, and when I close my eyes and smell a sun ripened strawberry it brings back memories of my childhood and visits to the PYO farm with my family. Dad used to love eating strawberries with a sprinkling of sugar and lots of whipped Chantilly cream.

As I’m now writing this post I can smell the strawberry jam being cooked in the kitchen. We are jamming and bottling it to be sold from the bar. I hope the smell of the cooking jam will remain as a happy memory of summer at the British Larder.

The beauty of this recipe is that everything can be made in advance, at least three days when needed for a special event, and if you have a fantastic old fashioned dish it springs to life and sparks good conversation around the dinner table.

Moving to Suffolk always was and still is about the quality of ingredients on offer. We made it our business to move into a region unknown to us and to adapt, absorb and work with the local area. It’s not always been an easy ride however after 10 months we can safely say we still feel the same drive as when we first moved here. We have met some fantastic people along the way and Mark Hayward from Dingley Dell has taken us “under his wing” and supported and helped us along the way. He has also in an indirect way helped us firmly confirm our ethos and what the British Larder stands for.

Dingley Dell farm is no more 2.5 miles from us and and having this high quality ingredient so close provides that all important reassurance we require to ensure that we have made the right choice. We are continuously working with Mark either on new recipes or new concepts. Dingley Dell is a Freedoms Food approved farm and has consequently introduced us to the wonderful world of Freedom Foods. We are proud to say that we take part in the Freedoms Foods Simply Ask campaign and tick six boxes in the freedom food categories of high animal welfare! That is stupendously impressive. We are working hard to tick the final three.

I have a conscience and certainly do not want it to be a guilty one!

Well it all just simply makes sense. I would not serve yet alone work with ingredients where I know an animal might have suffered. Why should my customers have to eat it? I make it my business to know where our food comes from and I know that our customers trust that we take animal welfare and indeed customer welfare to heart. We are also serious about food miles; the closer and more local the better for us.

It’s not always easy as these ingredients sometimes cost more due to not being mass bread, as they are usually from small independent businesses. Ross and I made a promise to support small local producers, farmers and suppliers as we believe that our penny and pound spend  in the county we live in will boost the local economy and those farmers, producers and suppliers can become stronger, develop and consequently deliver better quality and standards for our customers to enjoy. It’s all one vicious circle and it’s hard to stay inside and do the hamster run with it, but most importantly we must not fall out, keep working at it and persevere. So no foie grass for us then!

These magical scotch eggs are perhaps the single most popular dish here at the British Larder. We have a scotch egg for every season. During the game season the Dingley dell smoked ham are substituted for either venison or pheasant scotch egg.

Our secret to the perfect scotch egg is simple:

1. Use free range organic eggs, large preferably

2. Cook the eggs for 7 minutes and dunk them immediately in ice water after 7 minutes

3. Make sure the sausage meat mixture on the outside is tasty, well seasoned and contains the best ingredients you can find.

Simple! The magical scotch egg…done!

There is a very true saying that all good things take time to create and nurture. Well these two recipes will certainly test your patience - and they did test mine! I’m a bit impatient and want everything to have happened yesterday. Well I had to wait two weeks for these pickled eggs to be pickled and the pork scratchings also need 5 days salting before anything else can be done with them.

To create and complete these two recipes required a lot of reading, testing and eating. The fact of the matter is that there’s not much written word about pickled eggs; hence us making up our own, whereas on the other hand pork scratchings had a lot of references. The panel of tasters, developers and testers consist of James who lead the project and did the most of the doing, Tall Dan (he boiled the eggs), Skinny Dan (mainly eating the pickled eggs), Steve, Ross and myself (the three wise ones). Actually I just do the delegating, talking and eating and the rest are doing the deed! Well I’m a girl who knows what I like so they had to do it until we liked it! Simples!

We tried and tested several versions of the scratchings - 8 month’s worth to be honest. However, finally the literary word that won the taste test was the incredibly well-written Pork Scratchings, A Version Of by Fergus Henderson & Justin Piers Gellatly from ‘Beyond Nose To Tail’. We did however put our own twist on this well created recipe as one does, but the principle of the recipe remains the same.

The pickled eggs are kept in a pickle laden with spice so the pork scratchings had to follow suit.

We highly recommend both these recipes and sell the dishes with pride at the British Larder, however it must come with a health warning. “Consume responsibly in small quantities as sensitive teeth might suffer and a slightly tired heart and well-lived body might feel the strain if consumed in large, lavish quantities.” Or if you have a life motto like mine, “eat and enjoy, you only live once!”

It’s not as simple as counting in the in-laws and hey presto cooking for a family of six, no, it’s a bit more complicated than that. It’s true as the expression “finger in the wind” guess work. I had to guess how many turkeys we will need. I have now finally made all the Christmas puddings. After a panic I baked a few more…. I now have 102 individual Christmas puddings soaking and 24 large ones for Christmas day itself! As for the mince pie mixture I made 40kg and I hope it’s going to be enough. I have now documented all of this information and hopefully next year the calculations will be easier….I hope!

I did contemplate for a while weather or not I should put Christmas puddings and mince pies on the Christmas menus at all. I decided at first to try and be different and not to, but now the big doubt is setting in and I made it after all. Making these one bite mince pies is very time consuming but when people eat them and you can see them enjoying them, you realise that the hard work was all in the name of ‘being festive’.

Along with the Warm Ginger Spiced Cider, these little mince pies will be served slightly warm with a jar of brandy cream from the beginning of December.

I so desperately tried to be different last year and made this delicious mince pie mixture into various other mince pie delights such as Festive Power Bars and Luxury Mincemeat Biscuits. They are all good but you simply cannot beat the good old classic mince pie. Saying that, if I do have plenty of the mixture left these recipes might just come in handy after all….

I came across this video of  USA baking legend Peter Reinhart and I must say he confirmed my feelings for baking bread. His passion together with his simplistic and humorous manner of explaining how to make the perfect dough, what happens during the “making” process and all things  technical  is just simply perfect!

If you have a  spare 16 minutes watch this video as it definitely clarified any remaining issues as to why I still sometimes bake bricks! Baking bread is the radical transformation of taking wheat or flour and making it into a tasty loaf, it’s a tricky process and the fate of your loaf lies in your hands. The baker makes the ultimate decisions on which flour or ingredients to use but a small fluctuation in temperature and timing  will effect the final outcome of your loaf.

In short you cannot fast track the process and without the true understanding and knowledge it’s a daunting task. Anyone can bake bread but armed with the knowledge and know how, it’s an even more interesting and exciting process.

Peter talks about the 12 stages of bread baking and explains the Bakers Mission of extracting flavour from wheat or flour:

1. Mis-en-place – weighing ingredients and getting everything ready
2. Mixing – developing the gluten to give the dough the strength to grow and activates the yeast
3. Fermentation – developing flavour – this is the stage  where the yeast ‘eats’ the sugars and starts to ferment by creating carbon dioxide and alcohol- in Peters words the yeast “burps” and “sweats”
4. Dividing – the dough into smaller pieces which makes it easier to handle
5. Shaping – Shape the dough into required shapes such as loaves, rolls, sticks etc..
6. Resting
7. Final Shaping
8. Panning – transferring the dough to suitable tins and baking vessel such as baskets, loaf tins or baking trays
9. Final Fermentation also known as proving stage
10. Baking – Three transformations take place: 1. the sugars caramelise and forms a crust; 2. proteins coagulate at 160°C, this forms the crumb of the loaf; 3. gelatinisation takes place when the dough reaches 180°C, all the moisture is absorbed and the yeast bubbles bursts and all the flavours are transferred to the bread
11. Cooling
12. Eating!

Click here to view the embedded video.

This lavish lobster macaroni is the exact dish that we have put on the menu for the opening and will enable me to produce proper costings  I thought it best if I cooked this dish to give all the British Larder readers a look test and once the doors are open you could happily tuck in on the taste test. It’s not going to be the cheapest dish on the menu as you can imagine but it surely will be lavish and cooked with a lot of love.

When I cooked this dish, I so enjoyed every moment as it took me right back to the years when I used to cook lobsters every day for the lobster raviolis on the exquisite  menu of the restaurant where I used to work . It was a daily task performed early in the morning and it was my job to cook the lobsters, pull them apart and prepare the meat for the raviolis. I have a mild allergy when I touch cooked lobsters, my fingers swell up and they itch fiercely. I remember how the boy’s used to call me a “pansy” for wearing the yellow marigolds, they thought I could not stand the pain  when the sharp bits of shell pierced my finger but it was due to the mild allergy. Boys!! I can eat it  which is a good thing because this is one of those dishes I would not miss for the world.

Lobster is still classed as a delicacy with its incredibly high prices. Lobster should not be taken for granted and for that reason I use the whole lobster to make this lavish dish. It takes the average lobster about eight years to reach maturity, hence the strict fishing regulations that ensure a caught lobster must measure at least 10cm from the eyes to where the tail is attached to the body. There are several groups of crustaceans known as lobsters. However, the most commonly known and used by chefs in the UK is the North American or European lobster, with its blue coloured armour. See the one in the picture above, it was brought in from the river Ore near Orford.

The inspiration for making this dish came from spending time out in my kitchen garden admiring the bees at work pollinating the raspberry bush. Last summer Mum visited and she gave Mr.P a small bee house as a birthday gift. We attached the bee house to the wall in between the raspberry and blackberry bushes. There were no occupants last year as we had only put it up at the end of the summer however this year we were delighted and very excited to see movement and very happy residents residing in the bee house.

They are fascinating little creatures buzzing away round the raspberry bush so I’m expecting a bumper harvest. This particular cane is the Tulameen variety  bearing plenty of large plump fruits and the fragrance is what I like the most, a true sweet raspberry perfume.

I thought I should keep the dish simple and simplicity is exactly the way to describe a classic cranachan. I dug out the bottle of good quality Scottish whisky that Mr.P got for Christmas and along with the jar of heather honey,  cranachan is the obvious choice.

I served them in these small glasses,however it’s the perfect dish to make in small kilner jars and to take along on a picnic. I would suggest however you bake a few shortbread instead of these fragile toasted oat wafers.

Cherry trees in Britain have been around for quite some time as they were introduced to us during the 1st century by the Romans. They thrived in our countryside and climate and became crucial for the survival of wild life. With the steep decline in the number of cherry trees due to the growth and expansion of our towns and cities it became apparent and important that we should protect our cherry orchards.

Food Lovers Britain established a Cherry Aid Campaign to save the British Cherry. This campaign highlights why we should buy British cherries in preference to imported ones and why it means so much to our heritage and wild life to save the humble cherry tree.

We met Sudi Pigott also known as The Better Foodie a while ago at a dinner party. It was a lovely evening, we enjoyed fantastic food, drink and great company followed by one of Sudi’s enjoyable and very interesting foodie quizzes and a few bars of Original Beans exquisite chocolate.

I must say when I first cast my eyes on a bar of this exquisite Original Beans chocolate I was bowled over! The packaging is absolutely beautiful and the story of conservation grabbed my attention. They had thought of absolutely everything!

Sudi made sure that we received a few bars, especially the 75% piura criollo from Peru, one of the rarest chocolates in the world. This particular Piura Criollo chocolate was subjected to the conching process for 72hrs to ensure an incredibly smooth chocolate that showcases the pure chocolate flavours. This chocolate has a wonderful lasting flavour, loads of black pepper and passion fruit. It’s perfect for the most indulgent dessert.

After a long time deliberating over what I should make with this wonderful treasure that Sudi had sent me, I realised that there is only one dessert that I possibly could make. This chocolate fudge cake with cherries in red wine is a near to death by chocolate dessert. It’s rich and very memorable if you use the right chocolate like the Original Beans you will never forget making nor eating it.

I baked the chocolate fudge cake in small individual cake tins as it’s rich and is served best in small portions. I finished the pure chocolate indulgence off with a small quenelle of Original Beans Chocolate Ganache and a spoon full of British cherries in red wine. Pure indulgence and deliciousness at it’s best!

As you know by now I’m not quite normal and find it hard to do things the standard way, there has to be a twist somewhere along the line. Perhaps I’m putting too much pressure on myself to be slightly different or perhaps it just comes naturally.

Mr.P and I enjoy eating a good chicken Caesar salad as it is satisfying and has lots of different textures and does not leave you feeling heavy and bloated.

I made this particular dish into a portion big enough for a main coarse but if you wish you can  make a smaller amount and serve  as a starter.

It’s not always about the gimmicks and twists  that make a great dish but it’s also about good quality ingredients that are to be enjoyed when in season. These baby gem lettuces are from my small kitchen garden and this year I had better success as I introduced kolhrabi, a member of the brassicas. This was planted next to the lettuces and this helped to minimise  the pest problems which allowed us to enjoy a lovely harvest of baby gems. The chicken is from a farm near Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, I go specially to the Snape farmers market to buy these chickens as they are plump and delicious.

These Sutton Hoo Chickens are very big, the average weight is 2kg. This is enough to make stock from the bones and at least two meals for the two of us from the legs and breast or alternatively its sufficient for four people. I roasted the legs, flaked the meat down and then made the small pots of chicken. It’s fun and adds that extra texture and enjoyment into eating the dish. The Caesar dressing and Parmesan cheese also found itself revamped into a mousse textured foam, I served that in a small glass jar on the plate.

It’s great fun, gets a wow at the dinner table and would also make a great dish to take along on a picnic.