Frannie covered in flour - again!

I'm beginning to think I should change the name of the blog!!

But I did spend quite a bit of the weekend covered in flour.  And there is still flour all over the kitchen floor - I ran out of time to sweep it up :-S

It was all inspired by this recipe in the July edition of the BBC's Good food magazine.  I saw it when I was reading the magazine on the train last week and thought it would make a rather nice weekday lunch addition.

So when we were at Chatsworth on Saturday I bought two pork boneless shoulder chops.  They had a bit of fat on them, enough to make juicy sausage meat, but not so much that I would end up thinking that they were simply too fatty.  I put the chops, chopped into pieces, through my mincer (this activity vastly intrigued the cat!!), and then put a couple of chunks of bread through the mincer to push the last of the pork out and to provide breadcrumbs for the sausage meat.  I diced half a bramley apple and finely sliced several fresh sage leaves, then I mooshed it all together with a little real apple cider to form a proper sausage meat.

I had intended to use shortcrust pastry for the base of the pie but simply couldn't be bothered making it by hand (my food processor has upped and died on me, you may remember). So I lined my springed cake tin with ready-made puff pastry.  I lined that with slices of boiled ham, put in half the sausage meat, topped that with more boiled ham then finished off with the rest of the sausage meat and a puff pastry lid.  And cooked it at 150d for around an hour.  It is extremely delicious.


I was thinking that next time I might add hard boiled eggs or maybe dried apricots, just as a variation.  The possibilities are pretty much endless :-)

Picnic Pie, as inspired by Good food

I used the left over puff pastry to make pasties.  These are not austerity pasties.  I used rib-eye steak :-S  But only a small piece and the potatoes, carrots and onions were much more plentiful and also much, much cheaper!  The pasties are in the freezer, ready for lunches and picnics.

I made this year's batch of elderflower fizz too.  And we broached a bottle of last year's.  It was EXTREMELY lively and fizzed everywhere when I opened the bottle.  But it was also extremely delicious and has the extra advantage of being alcohol free.  So we could have some mid-morning with the first of the raspberries from the allotment