Tere

Well, other half has requested chocolate fondants, so I think I am going for a Heston Blumenthal themed dinner: I am going to refine down the crab on toast recipe from here, since it's still available and looks easy to gussy up into micro portions (not that there's anything wrong with the original, it's food volume I am thinking, and hoping leftover crab will make an excellent pasta sauce / risotto ingredient later: http://www.insearchofheston.com/2015/07/hestons-crab-on-toast-recipe-how-to-make-a-hinds-head-classic/ Then I am going to do a classic steak and triple cooked chips with Heston bearnaise on the side. I don't know whether to do a sous vide cook off against this recipe or if that's too much faff: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/how-to-cook-like-heston/articles/all/hestons-perfect-steak-recipe I will probably use Tom Kerridge's trick of using an apple corer for round chips but apart from that follow this: http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/10/how-to-make-heston-blumenthals-triple-cooked-chips-recipe-a-definitive-step-by-step-guide/ And bearnaise from here: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2003/jul/12/weekend.hestonblumenthal Finally I'm gonna try the chocolate fondant recipe from here - I have the relevant cookbook: http://www.insearchofheston.com/2013/04/heston-vs-gordon-chocolate-fondant-recipe/ Served with homemade blackcurrant ice cream (that already exists) plus a micro drizzle of pomegranate molasses perhaps? I have never pickled anything deep fried anything made bearnaise made a chocolate fondant (or indeed ganache). Wish me luck! (At least I have a willing sous chef )

My go to in ice cube form is the fat from the Christmas goose

Could you freeze cider in ice cube trays if you like cooking with it? I don't see why not?

Shabu-shabu on Sunday night prepped up and ready to go. Kombu fish stock (came in a teabag because of course it did). Chestnut mushrooms, eringi, oyster and the er, little ones. Rocket in place of mizuna. Silken tofu, udon and worms of beef escalopes, plus masses of ponzu and sesame dipping sauces that will be repurposed into salad dressing (I forgot the daikon for the ponzu). Sake was a gift from someone. Tried our new sake set out, worked very well as it keeps it nicely cold Apologies for the upside down rabbits!

Bumping to motivate myself to plan what we are going to cook. We always eat in and do something a little more fancy and cook together so it's a spend time together event. We are eating out at a little local pop up restaurant on the Friday too. I have two beautiful organic Hereford sirloins from the farm next door so I was thinking sous vide for those with Heston triple cooked chips and a tasty sauce. The rest? Really not sure. I had an amazing dessert at Koffman's last year that involved prunes in Armagnac, ice cream and chocolate sauce but have realised that prunes in Armagnac takes time I don't have ( should start some for next year though! ). I do have some very nice black currant ice cream as well as good old vanilla so hopefully a plan cam come together

Love the panzanella - so simple and looks so delicious!

Love this. .I might do a chunky soup like this next Sunday after the Valentine's cook fest

I read this thread and I keep thinking of what Steirereck in Vienna did when we visited a few years ago https://www.steirereck.at/en/restaurant/. With each dish a little card came talking about the food provenance and inspiration. It also had a number which related to when the dish was created which I wouldn't think you would need. It was a bit over the size of a business card but definitely added something to that experience. I wouldn't think you would want to overwhelm people with information (if they are truly interested they can internet) but a starting point might be good? I also recommend the food blogs, that's a really good suggestion.

Oh hai, I am Tere and my food photography skills are minimal Picnic lunch today. Carved Serrano ham from Aldi, toasted walnut bread, lemon marinated green olives, walnuts, Snowdonia Company Black Bomber cheese, a red Shropshire cheese of uncertain provenance, butter and my home made wild damson cheese (the almost black stuff on the cheese plate). Plus pate that I forgot to photograph. Has Bean coffee on left for me with Believe kanji, Rave decaf on right for hubby (with Fun kanji). Hooray for leftovers!

There's basically two sorts of Hogweed in the UK, Giant, which is bad juju and you stay far far away from, and Common, which is the edible sort. This blog post explains it very well I think http://monicawilde.com/eating-cooking-common-hogweed/ and is one of the sources that got me curious. I've spent a couple of years staring at what's on my land and it's definitely the Common variety. You can collect the seeds and use as spice too. I have some dried seeds at the moment - they are bitter and quite peppery. I could imagine them being used as a spice when spices were hard to come by. You have to take care when picking it though. I wear gloves when handling it. Good site about it here: http://www.gallowaywildfoods.com/?page_id=948

I used the very very simple recipe from here: https://www.rivercottage.net/recipes/blackberry-whisky. I've just bottled it after a year and it's very nice already. Will see how it is once it's matured a bit I guess! The qualifications I did were in English so it's not as impressive as it sounds WSET have an office in Tokyo and there's a huge amount of interested wine lovers out there so although most of the courses were in Japanese they had one set aside for English speakers. I have drunk Japanese wine and the wine I think is most successful is made from the ancient grape koshu (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koshu_(grape)) but it is very light and delicate, almost too delicate for me. It's a good pairing for Japanese food though. There's plenty of other things out there to try but the reds in particular can be a bit jammy. I think Japan is probably a hard country to make wine in because of the high humidity levels. I've had a decent icewine or two though. I think the domestic market pretty much drinks it all up. Japanese whisky, of course, can be excellent. One of my favourite restaurants in Tokyo (we make sure to book when we go) had an all Japanese wine pairing which was pretty decent when we tried it. Not sure it was all Japanese the last time we went though. Here's what looks to be a decent blog post about the restaurant http://www.tinyurbankitchen.com/aronia-de-takazawa/ . Such pretty food, and Takazawa-sensei and Akiko-san are both adorable.

We actually sell the grasskeep on the majority of land to two local farmers who run sheep on it. One always put the breeding ewes on it so we always have a supply of cute lambs without any effort on our part. Works very well We may get chickens at some point but don't right now. My avatar cat is actually an ex kitty but I do have two elderly barn cats, who are really basically furry slugs who sit in front of the Aga all day now that their mousing days are over

It's been an incredibly mild winter so far with very little snow, unlike when I got snowed in for a month 2 weeks after moving in because we weren't sure we needed a 4 by 4 so hadn't bought one. We had heavy snow a couple of years back in late March too, with devastating consequences for local farmers as they couldn't get to the sheep. But I guess a usual winter you might have a week or two. I'm 900 foot up though - you get more actually on the tops of the hills rather than the river valley where I am. Right now it's too wet and miserable most of the time to think about going out picking anything much. Late spring, I forage elderflowers for cordial, wine and liqueur (although actually I tend to attack the giant bush at the local train station to preserve mine for the berries), jack in the hedge (garlic mustard, http://www.naturessecretlarder.co.uk/wild-food-useful-plants/jack-by-the-hedge-alliaria-petiolata.htm) which I use to make flavoured oils, as a drizzle for fish, and last year it made a fine hedgerow pesto with some local cheese, localish rapeseed oil, and foraged hazelnuts. Dandelion season I often pick a bunch to cook down and use in tortellini fillings and so on - I have a lovely recipe from Antonio Carluccio that uses a nut sauce and then a dandelion egg and parmesan filling. I want to try the young shoots of common hogweed which are meant to be tasty but keep on not getting round to it. I debate fern fronds but ditto (and I need to do more research on the ones I have because not all of them are a great idea - however I happily ate sansai in Japan with no issues). A little bit of wild sorrel goes in salads occasionally. My next door neighbour has a wonderful field mushroom spot and doesn't like mushrooms so I get a bucket or two of those each year. I just have ink caps which are tasty but cook away to nothing so I don't bother. You also have to cook them right this instant! Autumn I forage blackberries, elderberries for sauces, rosehips, bullaces (little wild plums), crab apple and hazelnuts for the most part. There's a couple of sweet chestnuts on a neighbouring farmer's land we sometimes harvest with permission (we get just enough for the Christmas stuffing usually). We also have a couple of apple trees on the land. There's wild strawberries and raspberries but usually I don't get to them before the birds . There's whimberries (a small blueberry) locally on the hills but they are such a faff to pick I usually pick them up from the Ludlow food centre - a local lady makes excellent whimberry jam. Mostly I freeze things. I made blackberry whisky last year because they were so abundant. I always make bullace and sloe gins and love crab apple jelly. Apples get turned into puree, pie mix, and I press juice to make applejack. Rosehips get foraged because they are pretty but I've not found a spectacular use for them yet - I made apple and rosehip jelly last time which was meh. I might pick some hawthorn berries this year - we bought a spectacular hawthorn jelly in Stockholm to go with cheese this year. I made bullace cheese and that was very tasty so hoping it would be similar. I'm still a beginner at jams and the like though and tend to over cook so need to work on that one! Hazelnuts make noccello and also go in pestos and cakes - the yield can be pretty variable though!

Hi folks! Thought it best to introduce myself now I've got my feet wet and started to post I live on a 37 acre hill farm in a remote part of the Shropshire Hills, right on the border between England and Wales. Ludlow is my nearest foodie town 25 miles away, with an impressive array of independent food shops and a lovely award winning farm shop, although I will admit that most of my food comes from online supermarkets and is topped up by special trips there. Popping out for a forgotten basic item is a 12 mile round trip so I do a fair amount of planning ahead. My husband works in London in the weeks and I am really a grazer when he's not there, saving my weekends for major cooking efforts. I cook on a combo of a conventional oven and a coal fired Aga which we fire up at weekends, dragging out the sous vide occasionally (I really should cook with it more!). Style wise my cooking varies a lot - I always do some sort of roast dinner on Saturday evenings, but other than that it can be all sorts of cuisine, although I am partial to doing a long slow cook recipe on Sundays as the Aga is great for that. I'm on a curry kick at the moment and trying Lebanese food having been bought an enormous book for Christmas. This weekend we're having laksa, slow roast pork belly and shabu-shabu (we lived in Tokyo for several years and loved the food and the service culture over there). I bake my own bread sometimes and we are lucky enough to have an original 1840's bread oven that we've refurbished and are trying to figure out. We both love eating out and I come to London fairly regularly to try out new restaurants, as well as having a fair go at all the restaurants in a 20 mile radius. Wine wise we both did the WSET Advanced qualification when living in Japan and I am noodling about whether to take on the diploma. As a contrast I also enjoy making my own, often from ingredients that I've foraged (I'm a keen forager and have found plenty of good things to eat on the farm :D). Any questions, ask away

What a beautiful thing! Also I need to add sharpen knives to my to do list

Hi, Also hi eGullet, first time posting! I've completed the survey but there are two things I'd like to point out. 1. There doesn't seem to be any way to note locale. Are you assuming everyone is from the US? I am very much not! I might skew your data. There seems to be no way to note what your food culture is. Also food traditions and culture I am sure differ enormously within the US also :). Also, I was unclear what you meant in the question 6 about regular usage. I listed dry or tinned store cupboard stuff I use regularly but my fridge groans with additions I use that have long keep by dates e.g. anchoiade, miso, home made pesto, cheats garlic and chilli, ginger paste, galangal paste, lemon juice, lime juice, tahini etc. without getting into condiments you might blob in a meal just to finish it off. I'm not sure if that hurts your outcomes but I thought it fair to point it out.