My favourite food at my favourite vegetarian eating place in London is quiche, so I attempted a version of one from their cookbook, using some of Farmer Dan’s purple cauliflower. Looks like food for the colour blind, doesn’t it? (It looked – and tasted – just fine after I finished filling it)
Followed by the apricot and almond cake from Nigel Slater‘s book Appetite…
Had a great visit on Wednesday to Fruit Trees and More, having a tour of the demonstration orchard with Bob Duncan. He has been growing oranges, lemons, limes, olives, figs, pomegranates, persimmons, medlars,
tea
and lots of other things. His orange trees are in an unheated greenhouse, but everything else is outside. The lemons and a few other things are growing against a south-facing wall with a short glass roof to protect them from rain, and strings of old fashioned Christmas lights rigged to a thermostat set to kick in if the weather goes much below freezing.
He’s testing the avocado tree to see if he can get fruit from it as he doesn’t want to sell anything until he’s proven to himself it will produce.
Afterwards it was lunch at The Roost, where we had some sweet potato/yam soup which tasted of honey, and vegetable wraps, with more sweet potato/yam inside.
Then I wandered into town to see the Village Butcher. When I looked in the phone book I counted a total of 6 independent butchers listed for Victoria and area, which says a lot about how dependent we are on supermarkets for our meat. No wonder we are out of touch with the source of our meat and the cuts that might exist beyond what supermarkets sell to us. The Village Butcher knows the source of all the meat on sale and specialises in free-range and naturally raised products. They sell a selection of frozen game and will do specialty cuts on request. And they make their own sausages (including Merguez, which excited me).
