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Staal Smoked Salmon Sandwich

Just popped into Haley and Clifford’s in Leeds to see what goodies they had. Amongst many treats the thing that caught my eye was the Staal smoked Salmon. I love a bit of smoked fish (and i was fighting off the urge to have fish and chips for lunch). I was seduced by the Scandinavian sounding name, it was made in Yorkshire and Haley and Clifford’s have a strong Jewish following and therefore they would only stock the very best smoked salmon.

staal smoked salmon

At home I quickly rustled up a fantastic sandwich with what I had in the fridge.

I used quark, freshly ground black pepper, smoked salmon, cucumber and a tiny squeeze of lemon juice it was delicious. The smoked salmon was very good and I will be definitely buying more. On reflection if i made the sandwich again i would add a sprig of dill but maybe that would be gilding the lilly?! I particularly like that Staal smokehouse are a Yorkshire company based in Beverley in East Yorkshire.

sandwich being made

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Seville Orange Recipes

The best thing about January in the UK is the arrival of the Seville Orange from Spain, the second best thing is Yorkshire forced rhubarb but I haven’t seen any in the shops yet. Seville oranges are the ugly orange of the family and are very sour, you do not want to eat them but they have a great strong taste for cooking. Every year I make Seville orange marmalade, you can even enter the The world’s original marmalade awards! but what else can you do with Seville Oranges? I had to investigate.

Seville Orange Curd (in a pressure cooker)

Seville Orange curd on Yoghurt

I have a new pressure cooker (present for Christmas used to have a very old Prestige domed Aluminium one which I bought from a charity shop for a fiver, but I was never sure about when it was at full pressure, any way I digress). In one of my cookbooks I had a recipe for making curd in the pressure cooker. I have made lemon curd before and although not difficult it is slow and takes a lot of stirring and attention so making it in 10 minutes in the pressure cooker appealed. If you don’t have a pressure cooker the method is the same but just place the bowl over a pan of simmering water and stir for 30 minutes until it has thickened (don’t worry if it takes 40 minutes this is a slow thing to make)

4 eggs free range large

450g caster sugar

grated zest of 2 Seville oranges

100ml Seville orange juice

50ml Lemon juice

75g butter

Seville Orange curd ingredients

Beat the eggs together in a pyrex bowl, add the sugar and mix thoroughly. Add the other ingredients and stir. Cover the bowl with greaseproof paper and balance it on the trivet inside the pressure cooker, make a foil handle for easy removal. pour water into the pressure cooker making sure it doesn’t reach the bowl (1.5cm should be fine). Close the lid and bring to high pressure. cook for 10 minutes and release naturally (i.e wait till the pressure has naturally dropped before opening)

you may find a layer of butter has formed on top – stir vigorously and if you want push through a sieve . Decant into sterilised jars and store in the fridge.

Delicious spread on toast or used to fill a cake (see previous post for lemon curd cake)

Pomander Gin – Seville Orange and Clove Gin

Seville Orange Pomander Gin

Pomander is the name for those oranges studded with cloves that you hang up at Christmas to make the house smell nice. I found a great recipe in a cook book my mum picked up in a second hand bookshop for Pomander gin using Seville oranges. I love making fruit liqueurs including sloe gin, blackberry gin and raspberry vodka. I think they make great Christmas presents and create beautiful cocktails. I am always looking for new inspiration. This is simple but requires patience

1 bottle of gin (75cl)

Seville orange

12 cloves

4 oz caster sugar

Decant the gin into a wide mouthed kilner jar. Pierce the orange with the 12 cloves, to create your pomander. Put your pomander in the gin with the sugar. Seal and give it a good shake. Leave in a dark cupboard for 3 months! after which time the gin will have taken on the delicious perfume of the orange and cloves tasting like christmas, strain and decant into sterilised bottles. I enjoy this over ice but also delicious as a Gin and Tonic

Seville Orange Vodka

Seville Orange

Bottle vodka

4 oz caster sugar

Using a potato peeler remove the peel from the Seville orange making sure you don’t remove the pith only the zest. Now you can either remove some vodka or pour the vodka into a larger container (i prefer to do this) add the peel and the sugar and give it a good shake. Every week give it another good shake or I know some people who keep it in the boot of their car so it gets jiggled around . After 3 months the Vodka will be ready to drink mmmm

 Seville Orange Marmalade

Seville Orange marmalade

This is a touchy one as everyone likes their marmalade slightly different. I like a tangy, fresh, thin slice in a deep gold jelly. From inexperience, laziness and bad luck I have made chunky, heavy set, dark set and unset marmalade but have now settled on my preferred method. I always feel that maybe I could add other flavours like ginger,cardamom or whisky but I am too precious about my marmalade to change. I would never buy a Whisky Marmalade or a Ginger Marmalade so why would I make it?!

I have tried the quick method where you put soft boiled Seville oranges in the food processor and chop to a paste but i thought the resulting Marmalade missed that jewel like quality of Seville orange shreds set within a quivering jelly, instead it was one opaque colour. I have tried Delia’s method of boiling the Seville oranges then shredding but i found it too messy, but each to their own.

Top tips –  I have learnt along the way

Don’t add your sugar till the peel has softened as sugar halts this process.

Make sure you have reduced the liquid to a third of the original amount before adding sugar as this speeds up the setting process.

If you want a tawny or Oxford style Marmalade then replace half the sugar with demerrara and only reduce the liquid by half.

Don’t squeeze the pith and pip bag too hard as this is what makes your jelly cloudy.

Take your time this is a labour of love

Twice as much sugar as oranges and twice the amount of liquid as oranges before you add the sugar

So here is my recipe

1 kg Seville oranges

2 lemons

2kg granulated sugar

Cut the oranges and lemons in half and squeeze the juice into a bowl. with your fingers scrape out the remaining flesh and pips and put in a muslin bag and add to the juice take the left over skins and slice thinly (no thicker than a matchstick) and add to the juice. Pour in 2 litres of water to the juice and leave overnight for the skins to soften and the pectin to be released helping the marmalade set.

Next day tip everything into a large pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer for about 2hrs until the peel is translucent. Remove the bag of pips and pulp and measure the level of liquid left there should be about 1 litre if less add more water if more boil for longer. Add the sugar and wait for it to dissolve before stirring, then turn the heat up and bring to a boil. Boil hard for 15 minutes or until the temperature reaches 105c / 220f.

Allow to cool slightly and then ladle into sterilised jars

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Northumberland Coast – Where to go and what to do

The Northumberland Coast is only a few hours drive from where we live in Leeds. Recently we have begun quite a love affair with the Northumberland Coast having stayed there four times last year including our most recent New Years stay. The Northumberland Coast is beautiful with large expanses of beach which are almost empty apart from the odd dog walker, the skies go on forever and at night the sky is as black as ink (National Dark Sky Park)

A good base is Alnwick this enables you to be able to nip out to the beach but also enjoy the benefits of a market town, Alnwick was voted best place to live in the UK and I can understand why

Alnwick gardens

Barter books (the birthplace of the whole Keep Calm and Carry On phenomena)

Alnwick castle

The Treehouse restaurant

The Tanners arms pub

The cheese room (fantastic cheese shop selling some fantastic local cheese as well as all your favourites)

the farmers market

Harry Potter

When we have stayed in Alnwick we have opted for self catering so that the dog can come too. So from Alnwick if you drive south along the coast road for 9 miles (15 minutes) then you will come to Amble. This guide then works back along the coast route North from Amble

Amble is a true fishing village and has the best fish and chips i have ever had from the Quayside, but don’t fill up too much as there is an amazing little ice cream parlour/ coffee shop called spurelli who serve the best pistachio ice-cream. driving back towards Alnwick you will come to Warkworth a very pretty village with a great big imposing castle on a hill, it is full of gift shops and cute restaurants as well as a beach.

View of Warkworth Castle from Amble

Next stop is Alnmouth with its beautiful long stretch of beach (though it is where my dog found a dead seal carcass and decided to roll in it as he thought it was the best thing he had smelt ever)

Just after Alnmouth you come to the small village / hamlet of longhoughton and here is a fantastic beach called sugar sands (because the sand looks like sugar I guess!) you turn off at the village shop and follow the sign for Low Stead Farm, when you get to the farm go through the gates and park at the bottom – they do ask for a voluntary 50p donation for the church funds. This beach has great rock pools and is beautiful

Sugar sands Northumberland coast

Next is Craster, which I keep meaning to go to but I always run out of time but make sure you do go and get some of their famous kippers.

Embleton is next and this is my favourite beach parking at Dunstaburgh golf course and walking through the links to be greeted by a giant crescent of a beach with a castle on one end (Dunstaburgh) and the impossibly pretty village of Newton by the sea at the other. My top tip would be to walk along the beach to Low Newton  where you can enjoy a fantastic pub lunch of local crab sandwiches and real ale at the Ship Inn. If the weather is really foul then you can drive to  Newton By The Sea , if the ship is busy or you fancy something more substantial then head for the Joiners Arms which is fantastic.

Embleton Beach part of the Northumberland Heritage Coast

The next place we really love is Bamburgh with its magnificent Castle and views on the beach of not only the Farne islands but also Lindisfarne and the Castle

Northumberland Coast Farne Islands

  Bamburgh Beach Northumberland coast

What you need to know

Northumberland is cold, it is further North than you probably realise. It is in fact parallel with the Isle of Arran. Make sure you pack a good thick waterproof coat (check out John Lewis for some great North face coats), waterproof shoes (neoprene wellies are the best) hat and gloves, however don’t be surprised to see the locals walking about in shorts and tshirts they are a hardy lot. The beaches can be particularly bracing from Autumn to Spring

There are not many petrol stations so if you are venturing out remember to fill up before, the same goes for cash machines they can often be empty so make sure you have enough cash for fish and chips!

Don’t forget to go inland too. We love going over to Rothbury and Otterburn where the famous Cragside is and there are some great walks as well as it being part of the National Dark sky Park (night comes early in the middle of winter so bring a torch and some binoculars and wrap up warm.

We have stayed with coquet cottages because the places are all lovely 4 and 5 star and they allow dogs (they even give them their own welcome basket). We have also stayed in a yurt in the summer with the dog which was wonderful (see previous post). If I planned better I would also stay with National trust Cottages who have some lovely properties but they always seem to be booked up when I want to go.

So don’t worry about the time of year pack a bag and head of to the Northumberland coast it is wonderful. It is so good that I am going back next month with my mum and both our dogs !

If you have any top tips for places to go, see, shop or eat at let me know

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Yorkshire has been nominated not only as the top region in the UK but also as third best region in the world! Not surprised as it is stunning (I am prejudiced as I live there)

It’s only a matter of time before this rough-around-the-edges gentleman of the north gets the traveller attention it deserves. Yorkshire’s local athletes helped the county clock up more medals in the 2012 London Olympics than entire countries such as South Africa, Spain and even the 2016 hosts, Brazil. As if basking in Yorkshire’s glory, last year a poll revealed the North Yorkshire spa town of Harrogate was the happiest place in Britain. Bradford has become the world’s first Unesco City of Film, a new state-of-the-art gallery in Wakefield is giving London a run for its money, and Yorkshire now has more Michelin-starred restaurants than any other county outside London. In 2014, this welcoming region of rugged moorlands, heritage homes and cosy pubs will be able to hold its head even higher when the Tour de France begins its grand départ from Leeds.

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