Beach BBQ Worthing style

I could not resist the temptation of posting this blog picture in black and white.  I did so because the setting is so reminiscent of small black and white images of my childhood.  sitting on the same pebble beach a few miles up the coast in Hove.  My grandmother, clad in thick coats and scarfs whatever the weather,  my brother and I running in and out of the sea, whatever the weather.   Last weekend our friends took us down to the beach.   Yes, it rained, yes, it was occasionally windy but, as is so often the case in England, we stuck it out.  The sun emerged, the children swam and we ate Asian inspired BBQ.    Delicious fish on skewers, steamed asparagus marinated in olive oil, fish and soy sauce, but the squid deserves special comment.  Again steamed in foil parcels, the squid had been marinated in a little oil, chilli, fish sauce and soy sauce, with the addition of spinach.  Chris steamed these over the BBQ for no more than five minutes.  We could have been on a beach in Indonesia... well almost.

Dom's number one chicken

Two or three warm sunny days in a row and I start to believe its summer.  With both boys home on a Friday night, Dom decided to barbeque a chicken.  He learnt the skill of butterflying a chicken a few years ago by looking up instructions on the internet.  It really is the best way to cook chicken on an open fire.  Nicely flattened, a bit like a cartoon victim of  hit and run, the chicken cooks evenly with lovely crispy skin. 

Today's offering has been marinating in olive oil and lime juice with mustard seeds, garlic, chilli, cumin and fenugreek all afternoon.  It was cooked for about 45 minutes over coals and served with a couscous salad.    Best of all enjoying a beer at the end of the garden while it cooks.

Scorpion pasta

I have been making this for about 20 years and is a regular fall back when everyone is hungry and starting to prowl around the kitchen looking hopefully into an apparently empty fridge.    I suspect most families have a variation of this.  You need:

• streaky bacon
• a pack of uncooked or cooked prawns.  I like the large ones but any size will do.
• about 2cm of root ginger sliced into thin match sticks
• three cloves of garlic thinly sliced
• olive oil
• crème fresh
• grated parmesan.
• some cooked peas
• For the pasta, I think this works best with tagliatelle.

While the pasta is cooking, thinly slice your bacon and cook it in a little olive oil, after a few minutes add the ginger and garlic and cook for just a couple of minutes.  Add the prawns and peas and coat in the olive oil.  Once the pasta is cooked drain it, leaving just a little cooking water in the bottom of the pan.  Add the bacon and prawn mixture, a good dollop of  crème fresh and a handful of grated parmesan.  stir it all up, season with salt and pepper and serve it steaming hot.

Why scorpion pasta?  It's what Rowan used to call it when he was little.  I loved his sense of the exotic, not least because I am pretty sure he had never seen a scorpion, while prawns were regularly on the menu!

Stretching for the Elderflower

After a month or two break, I have found that I have a backlog of recipes that I want to post.  I am going to start with something that I have never made until about two weeks ago.  Which is somewhat contrary to my stated aim for this blog of posting family favourites.  But I think I should be forgiven when it comes to elderflower cordial.

As with all good recipes, first collect your elderflowers. At this time of year they hang tauntingly over pretty much ever fence and hedgerow. In our south London suburb they all seemed to be just out of my reach. So the task of collecting around 25 large heads of elderflower, mainly in flower or in bud but not yellowing, involved me going out  on a sunny morning, putting the roof down on my car, parking under a suitable tree and standing on tiptoes on the back of the car then hooking down the best looking flower heads.  It was subsequently pointed out to me that my cool, urban women about town reputation was destroyed as various neighbours drove past as I was doing this.

I read about six different recipes  for elder flower cordial and was amazed by the different amounts of sugar they suggested. From 250 grams to 2 kilos for basically the same amount of flowers and water. I suspect the difference in the end result is largely the thickness of the concentrate but I used 250 grams and I wouldn't want it any sweeter.

 

Strip the flowers from the storks and carefully removed any insects.  Next pour about 2 litres of just boiled water over the flower heads and leave it overnight.  The next day I used muslin to filter the liquid from the flowers, added the juice of two lemons and 250 grams of  caster sugar and boiled for a couple of minutes, before allowing it to cool and bottling the cordial.  

 

It was as easy as that and resulted in a cordial that everyone loves.  It will keep for a few weeks but also freezes well.