Marmellata d'arance

My dear Nanna G made the best apricot jam ever. She would get a new jar out specially for us three city girls when we came to visit the farm - and there wasn't much left after we were done! So I've been making jam. I've done a few batches now, so thought I was ready to branch out and try orange marmalade.

I'm not a marmalade fan... but my baby sister, D, LOVES marmalade - even though she thinks it makes you old (read her hilarious blog post here). It was slightly different from making jam, you don't add any water cause the oranges are juicy enough.

So here goes...

Peeling all the oranges... and I only did half quantity!

All sliced and ready to cook

Not sure my peel was 'finely sliced' but I gave it a good go!

Foamy

After sterilizing, I was ready to put the marmalade into jars

Looking good

The finished prouduct

I delivered a jar to D - so perhaps she could give a verdict below in the comments?

And when apricot season comes around, I will do a comparison between Nanna G's jam... and the Silver Spoon's version... anyone know when apricot season is in the UK? Let me know!

"These are a few of my favourite things"

• My gorgeous kitsch tray is a souvenir from our last snowboarding trip to Chamonix, where we found the cutest restaurant/cafe/bar called The Kitsch Inn when I asked if I could buy the tray our breakfast was served on, they sent us to Bungalow Graphics 
• Wooden chopping board is from Habitat and they have a really similar one here 
• Floral tea towel is from H&M a few years ago - but they have gorgeous styles all the time

And finally, thanks to D for all her jar collecting!
 

Salsa olandese

Yesterday was our 10 year wedding anniversary... so I wanted to cook L his favourite ever breakfast, eggs benedict. Then I thought I really need to do a blog post, so thought I'd make my hollandaise sauce (instead of buying it from M&S!)
 
I was very slack with these pics, so apologies! But also it's not a really exciting recipe (but never fear... I've got another post to come!)

This recipe uses butter instead of oil - I'm sure I've cooked hollandaise before, so the butter threw me a bit. But it's super easy and I think it doesn't split as easily as the oil version does. Lemon is added at the end to zest it up a bit (I also added salt). It's sooooo creamy and rich, and was gorgeous with the salty ham and fresh eggs.

whisking in little cubes of butter

Bottled ready to reheat for later

With muffins, eggs and fresh ham from our local butcher

Verdict: awesome! But pity the bubbly we had with breakfast (hey, it was a special occasion!) wasn't up to scratch! 

Find me on twitter @jeni_willis and also find my butcher on there too @ManorMeats

Mini supplî di riso con mozzarella

Cheesy croquettes... not such a healthy start to 2013 also not something I'd normally  cook. But when the book opened to it, and I had all the ingredients, I figured why not put off my diet another day!

So, mini rice croquettes with mozzarella, not as hard as I thought - ha! They started out easy enough but then I wondered if 250g of uncooked rice could possibly be a bit too much (think the recipe might have meant 250g cooked rice). Then onced mixed the assembly was very messy, and I ended up only rolling half (still a dinner plate full), and just cooking these. 

In the end - yummy! Not sure I'd rush to do them again - but they were tasty and I can imagine with half the rice, would be a bit easier to handle.

Ingredients ready to go... so far so good

Getting messy...

Frying...

Ready to eat

Ossibuchi con piselli

So I planned to do an amazing barbecue this weekend for my dear friend who was flying in from Oz... the weather was meant to be sunny and 24. But this is England, and it wasn't sunny, and it wasn't 24.

Instead, in summer, I resorted to a wintery stew. Only in England.

On the plus side, we have an amazing new butcher (find them on twitter https://twitter.com/ManorMeats) who gave me some great ideas for non-barbecue related dinners. 

So here is my slightly altered Silver Spoon recipe of Osso Buco with peas. Slightly altered being: I used beef, instead of veal, red, instead of white wine, frozen instead of fresh peas and added a random yellow thing (which I think was zuccini/courgette), just to use it up!

Recipe ingredients used differ slightly from the ingredients stated in the recipe...

After eight hours slow cooking (well I did go to the hairdressers, then the pub!)

No complaints, it went down very well.

Ciambella alle carote

When my sister and I agreed to do a baking stall for my local fair I thought I'd delve into the Silver Spoon for a recipe to attempt! Carrot cake it was and it went down a treat - it sold out!

You can read more about our baking havoc here on my other blog!

But for now, here's my attempt at carrot cake - the green rabbit was just a silly addition to the pics, but then he came with us to the stall and quite a few people wanted to buy him!

Clockwise from top left: Recipe found; ingredients and bunny; bunny eyeing off the mixture; the stall - carrot cake on right; and stirring in the mountains of carrot

Biscotti alla cannella

We've had a busy few months and my poor Silver Spoon blog has taken a little bit of a back seat to our flat renovations (see them here). But in the midst of the reno's I did manage a very quick afternoon of baking... an attempt to entice my builder away from rich tea's to biscotti alla campella or cinnamon biscuits.

These are made with oil, not butter

Really difficult to mix together - I added more oil than the recipe said

Sprinkle sprinkle

And they're done

After putting the biscuits out, next to the tea, they remained untouched - ahh well, rich tea's won over in the end! But L and I managed to devour them though - they were awesome!

But success a few weeks later, I made banana bread, which won over the rich tea's!

Torta al cioccalato

So I have to confess... I've cooked this one before. It's the only recipe I'd ever cooked out of this book before I started this blog! It's tried, and tested and it's really yummy.

I cheated cause I needed a cake... and fast! My lovely friend and very talented hairdresser, was coming over, to work on my garden on his birthday! So of course I had to make him a gorgeous cake! My Friday evening on which I had planned to bake an extravagant, multi-layered cake, had been spent at the hardware store (excitement plus!) shopping for reno materials (see more details here if you want to see...)

So in between meeting someone about some freelance work, and climbing up into our disgustingly dusty loft, I whipped up this old faithful chocolate cake (sans dust I promise!) - which never fails to disappoint!

Ready to go... please excuse the dead plant!

Stirring out the lumps...

The best bit!

Cooling... almost ready for eating!