Food & Drink Round-Up March 2020

In this post, I share some of my food and drink from last month, bringing together a selection from the blog and my social media during March 2020.

March was a strange month. It started off relatively normal, albeit with fears about just how bad the coronavirus pandemic might get. This was coupled with a sort of blitz spirit of make do and mend and just getting on with things.

But as the month wore on, with the death toll starting to sharply rise and cracks in our food system beginning to show, stoicism turned to anxiety and my focus switched to the relative safety of home.

OLD FAVOURITES

I’ve been making a Vegetable Slaw with Orange, Honey & Mustard Dressing for yonks so, at the beginning of March, thought it was about time I put it on the blog.

It’s one of those recipes adaptable to whatever you happen to have in the fridge and is a colourful, crunchy, vitamin-packed side dish that’s made in minutes.

With more people cooking at home due COVID-19, I decided to start putting more of my old but simple favourites on the blog.

These included Microwave Sponge Pudding, Coconut Oil Popcorn and Chicken with Peppers, a lovely old Italian dish.

What all these recipes have in common is a short list of usually readily available ingredients, a simple cooking method and good, satisfying flavour.

NEW OLD FAVOURITES?

During March I also created a couple of dishes that I think might just become my new ‘old favourites’.

First off was a warm salad of carrots and parsnips which I’d roasted in olive oil with a bit of maple syrup.

For the final few minutes of roasting I added some cooked lentils, just until they’d warmed through. To serve, I dressed it all with Balsamic vinaigrette, herbs and toasted seeds. It was lovely with a leek and feta omelette.

The second contender for a future old favourite was a chicken, leek and bacon cottage pie.

I’ve no idea why I’ve only ever made beef cottage pie or lamb shepherd’s pie before, because the chicken version was gorgeous!

I made the sauce with half milk/half homemade chicken stock thickened with a little flour.

I topped it with buttery, cheesy, spring onion mash, but forgot to take any more photos, I’m afraid.

SOURDOUGH DISCARD EXPERIMENTS

In March, I continued my experiments to use up excess sourdough starter rather than throwing it away.

In February, I’d loved Sourdough Pancakes and wanted to find something as good as those.

In March, I tried a sourdough chocolate cake and sourdough crackers. I wasn’t overly keen on the cake, although it might work with more chocolate.

But I loved the sourdough crackers. These had a wonderful flavour so I’ll be writing up the recipe for the blog once perfected.

Update: get my Sourdough Crackers recipe here

STAFFORDSHIRE CHEESE COMPANY

My visit to local artisan cheesemakers, the Staffordshire Cheese Company, had been planned for a while.

But as COVID-19 started to take hold in Britain, I wondered whether it was going to happen.

Thankfully, I managed to do it before the lockdown finally came a week later.

You can read all about my wonderful day with Mary and her team here: The Staffordshire Cheese Company.

I guess many people, faced with supermarket shelves stripped bare by panic buyers, are only now discovering local produce and independent suppliers.

I just hope that, when this is all over, they’ll continue to support those farmers, butchers, dairies, greengrocers, bakers and cheesemakers who have fed them.

PERFECT YORKSHIRE PUDDING STILL ELUSIVE

Although toad-in-the-hole is a great comfort food, I rarely make it. Probably because my electric fan oven, which doesn’t have a ‘no fan’ option 🙄, is rubbish for Yorkshire pudding.

But the one I made in March was the best I’ve made in the seven years since I left my gas cooker behind when we moved here.

Despite following all the usual tips (make sure the fat is very hot etc.), it still wasn’t as risen as I’d like. The sausages were overcooked too.

But we still ate it all up with buttery spring onion mash, onion gravy and lots of veg.

MY FIRST PAVLOVA & CURD

Why had I never made pavlova before? I loved it when I finally got around to it in March, inspired by a recipe in Delicious magazine.

Over the crunchy meringue base, instead of the usual whipped cream, I spread some of my homemade Greek style yogurt and a fab orange curd.

I’d never made curd before either and was surprised how quick and easy it was.

Over the top, I spooned mixed fruit from the freezer, defrosted in the microwave with a little bit of sugar stirred through.

THINGS CHANGE QUICKLY: MY LAST MEAL OUT FOR A WHILE

No, what follows isn’t the same photo from last month’s round-up.

Just two days before the lockdown was announced, we went back to Cafe Apollonia in Leek for another great All Day Breakfast.

After lockdown began, like many other cafes and restaurants who were no longer allowed offer sit down eating, Cafe Apollonia started a takeaway service.

So, a week later, we were back again for a fab sausage sandwich.

However, just a couple of days later, the Cafe announced that they couldn’t continue and would close for the duration.

Sadly, I saw the same happen at some other food and drink businesses and I can only image how worrying it must be for them.

PAPDI CHAAT

WILD GARLIC SEASON

We ate the pizza-style garlic bread alongside the Chicken with Peppers I mentioned above.

Due to some unseasonably warm weather in March, I fancied sipping a gazpacho smoothie in the garden.

As I still had wild garlic, I thought I’d try adding some instead of my usual small clove of garlic.

I whizzed it up with red wine vinegar, olive oil, cucumber, tomatoes, red pepper, red onion, salt, pepper, chilli flakes and ice.

I have to say I much preferred this version, with the wild garlic giving a much more subtle, grassy garlic flavour.

With several months left of wild garlic season, I’ll be adding gazpacho smoothie to the blog soon.

Update: get my Gazpacho Smoothie recipe here.

ALTERNATIVES TO WHEAT FLOUR

With bags of wheat flour being snapped up in the shops as soon as the harried staff can put them out, I’ve been returning to my recipes which use other types of flour or even no flour at all.

Here were my two top favourites during March.

Socca Chickpea Flour Flatbreads which are so versatile.

Easy Seed Crackers which need no flour at all as the special properties of chia seeds hold them together.

BATCH COOKING

Not really knowing what was to come, and fearing both myself and ID might become too ill to shop or make meals, in March I decided to do a little batch cooking.

First off was a double batch of Beef & Bean Stew. Some we ate that night with suet dumplings plus cauliflower cheese with cabbage. The rest I portioned up for the freezer.

I prefer the stew with cannellini beans, as per the blog recipe. But with canned goods hard to come by now, I had to substitute chickpeas as that’s what I had in the cupboard.

Remembering how ill I’d been last Autumn, and how a simple chicken broth had comforted me, I made a batch of that for the freezer too.

Thinking it might be useful for others at this time, I finally got around to writing it up for the blog, coming up with the title Cheat’s Chicken Broth.

BAKING CRAZY

Like many people having to spend more time at home, I found myself doing more baking.

Having to use mainly what I already had in my cupboards, I was after simple baking recipes. And for that, I love my copy of The Dairy Book of Home Cookery, published by the Milk Marketing Board in 1978.

From that, I made Sugar & Spice Rings for the first time. Filled with currants and cinnamon, I thought they were great, even though mine aren’t very neat.

CRACKS BEGIN TO SHOW & MY ANGER GROWS

But there was another side to March that wasn’t all about people who were doing okay, having fun with a bit of extra baking, evoking the wartime spirit of ‘we’re all in it together’.

As a child in the late 1970s, at primary school I had free school meals for a time and loved them. Fresh, real food, all of it considerably better than the couple of white bread sandwiches I would’ve got at home.

So I was particularly angry when I saw a post on social media from a headteacher at a primary school in Bristol, showing what a growing child receiving free school meals is given for a week during the coronavirus crisis.

I have to say I cried, and still cry, when I look at this pile of largely junk food, including margarine meant for baking.

What a disgusting, shameful way to treat a child. And what a rip-off for taxpayers when schools are forced to pay a private contractor £11 for it!

As others have already pointed out, this crisis is showing the cracks in our food, health and social care systems that just cannot continue.

LEFTOVERS

One thing I have been glad about during the crisis is that, in our house, we already have some good habits when it comes to food.

Apart from cooking almost all our meals from scratch, we never throw leftovers away, either eating them the next day or put them in the freezer.

This noodle bowl, from the final days of March, is a good example of that.

I dug out two different lots of leftover pork from the freezer: diced belly pork in a Chinese five spice sauce, plus pressure cooked plain shoulder of pork. I drained most of the sauce from the belly, coated rice noodles in it and fried both meats until crispy.

This made a lovely dinner with roasted greens, home sprouted alfalfa, raw, crunchy veg dressed with homemade Thai pickled shallots and some of the pickling juice.

A FOOD OBSESSION

On the last day of March, apart from taking my bit of exercise walking the dog, I noted that almost everything I did that morning was food related.

Here’s what I listed on social media:

🌿 Spritzed my homegrown pea shoots which are coming up nicely + some broccoli microgreens planted yesterday.
🌱 Rinsed my sprouting seeds & drained them.
🥗 Rinsed & drained some finished radish sprouted seed & put in the fridge.
🍞 Fed my sourdough starter & put the discard in a jar in the fridge for making pancakes & crackers.
🥛 Strained some of the yogurt I made yesterday, put it and the unstrained yogurt in jars in the fridge. Put the whey drained off into another jar in the fridge for use in breadmaking.
🥕 Planted carrots, spring onions & lettuce.
🛒 Gone through fridge, cupboards etc. with other half to decide what we need when he goes shopping later.
🍵 Lunchtime! Made foo yung style omelette with cabbage & onion, eaten with cucumber, home pickled Thai shallots & some of the radish sprouts.

I really think I am food obsessed, and maybe this crisis is heightening it.

NEXT MONTH?

Looking back at how much has changed within just a month, I have to admit I’m feeling rather anxious about what’s to come.

From a food and drink perspective, I know I have the ability to make the most of what I have and am in a good position compared to many.

But I am concerned about what’s happening in our country, not least how our independent food and drink businesses will survive and come out the other side.

I hope you’ll join me in continuing to support them, and each other, however we can.

Follow me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to hear about my April food & drink.

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