Hens, glorious hens

My family are now the proud owner of 14 extra fabulous, glorious ex-battery hens - slightly bald in places (oven ready as some people indelicately describe them), but wonderful none the less! We've had them for almost 2 weeks and they started laying from day 1. At the moment they seem to be taking it in turns so that we're not oversupplied but I know that given a few degrees increase in temperature, some blue skies and more daylight they'll all begin to lay with gusto!

The growing season is here!

Those of you who are gardeners as well as cooks will share my frustration in the weather I'm sure! I've managed to get out and plant a few seeds in my poly tunnels and the veggie beds are starting to spring into life, but it's so chilly at the moment that the last place I want to be is outside! We are still harvesting vegetables from last year though, by some miracle my chard seems to have come through the winter and the purple sprouting broccoli has been saved again from the pigeons. I bought some patriotic bunting from our local Co-op which is now adorning the brasicca cage!!They're a bit clever our local pigeons, they'd worked out that when the netting was lower they could sit on it and happily tuck in to the delicious young broccoli. I wish my teenagers were quite so keen on it...

I'm also taking advantage of a delicious glut of rhubarb in my veggie plot, and i made a delicious (even though I do say so myself) rhubarb and ginger cheesecake - very simple but really yummy.

4oz ginger-nuts, crushed
4oz digestive biscuits, crushed
4oz melted butter

1lb stewed rhubarb (cooked and cooled in its own juices with a good helping of caster sugar)
250g creamed cheese
8fl oz double cream
2 tbsp sweet ginger sauce
3oz caster sugar

First of all, make the base by melting the butter and mixing in the crushed biscuit crumbs. Press down firmly in to a flan tin and pop in to the fridge to set.

Then whisk the double cream until soft peaks from and beat in the cream cheese (you can keep whisking if you want). Mix in the sugar, ginger sauce and the stewed rhubarb - I always mix in the rhubarb a couple of tablespoons at a time and taste as I go. You want to get a good hit of that rhubarb tanginess but with a hint of ginger and its heat coming through.

If you have any rhubarb left over you can always sieve it and make it into a sauce to serve with the cheesecake or just spoon it over as it is.

Hope you're all enjoying the spring weather and I'm sure like us you can't wait for the summer to arrive!

Happy cooking

The w4s team

I know, I know - it's been an age since I last posted and I did say that one of my New Year's resolutions would be to blog more frequently...... whoops, failed at that one!
We have been pretty busy with various things, not least getting all our Spring recipes up....Yay...and that coupled with the fact I personally turn in to a bit of a prickly hedgehog in Winter and like to hibernate has meant the blog hasn't got the attention it deserved!! Sorry.
I was wondering, however, last night as I whizzed up some breadcrumbs from some stale bread that perhaps that is how people with too much time on their hands could be defined; they make their own breadcrumbs - I never feel as if I have too much time on my hands, in fact the opposite seems to be the case but somehow I found the time to make breadcrumbs! They were to coat some salmon fishcakes that I'd made - using some hot smoked salmon I'd bought in error and some ready cooked salmon fillets that were coming to the end of their life, so to speak (because technically the salmon had already reached the end of its life, although in its filleted and cooked state it was just about to. Does that make sense? Maybe I can blame my rambling on Spring fever, which I'm convincing myself has surely got to be just around the corner. Along with simnel cake (which I love but have taken the decision not to make this year - the first time in a few years - as a) we've literally only just finished the Christmas cake, which was only iced on January 2nd and b)my thighs need a break from all that fruit cake and marzipan).
Annette and I were having one of our lovely food chats today, which invariably involves lots of laughter and decisions to try x,y and z recipes (mine was the mackerel with soy and lime dressing from Raymond Blanc)- I've got to watch last weeks for the chocolate cup apparently. Raymond Blanc's programme is wonderful; he makes his food look gorgeous, and simple to prepare and that coupled with his French accent and his cheeky sense of humour makes it a little bit of TV heaven!
Until next time, Happy Cooking and I promise not to leave it so long......