Our Camelia bush is already in bloom. It seems really early this year, but I saw daffodils blooming this morning and there are buds all over our bushes. The greening of England is about to begin and Spring really is just around the corner.  I look forward to Spring every year, but it also heralds the end of Comfort Food Season which I mourn just a tiny bit . . .  okay, MORE than a tiny bit. I am a comfort food lover at heart. I thought that it would be fun today to share ten of my favourite Home Style Comfort Dishes. Oh, to be sure we will have a lot more blustery days before Spring finally lands, but its definitely time to get in your last tastes of your comfort foods before its too late. Every single dish I am sharing here today is one that we love.

 

Stewed Brisket & Potatoes.   Crusty, buttery little drop biscuits . . .  tender in the middle and going oh-so-well with that beautiful rich gravy, potatoes and those tender chunks of meat!  

Macaroni Shepherd's Pie.  Shepherd's pie with the delicious twist of a layer of macaroni and cheese on top instead of the usual potatoes! Scrumdiddlyumptious!

 

Beef Casserole with Horseradish Dumplings.  Hearty and delicious! My own oven stew recipe with a lovely dumpling recipe borrowed from Mary Berry, and adapted to my own needs.  

 

French Onion Chicken.  All the flavours of your favourite soup  baked into a deliciously saucy chicken casserole beneath golden cheesy croutons. What's not to like!

 

Irish Stew.  Tender lamb and vegetables beneath a thatch of potato cobbles, in a flavour filled broth. Simplicity at its best.  

 

Chicken Savoyarde.  Tender pieces of cooked chicken beneath a rich and creamy taragon sauce, topped with crisp bread crumbs.  Delicious!

 

Beef, Ale & Parsnip Pudding. Kind of like a steamed meat pie, filled with lovely flavours.  Beef, parsnips in a lush ale gravy, served with cabbage and boiled potatoes. 

 

Chicken Rarebits with Melted Leeks.   A deliciously rich and indulgent chicken dish, which is simple to make and uses simple ingredients.   

 

Stuffed Cabbage Trou Style.  Layers of cabbage and the sausage meat create a magical taste combination that is unbeatable . . . the long slow cooking breaks the cabbage down until it is almost buttery . . . the juices of the cabbage and sausage melding together into a melting deliciousness that is just the best flavour in the world. 

 

Cottage Pie with Potato Cobbles.  This may be the most delicious Cottage Pie you've ever eaten and I don't make that claim lightly!  A really tasty meaty base topped with sliced rounds of potato and a layer of cheese baked until the potato cobbles are golden brown and everything is bubbling up nicely. 

Oh, I could have easily done 20 or more of my favourites.  This really is just the tip of the iceberg! 

 

I have a real fondness for the traditional recipes of this country I have come to love and adopt as my homeland. As a child in Canada I often repeated the rhyme taught to me from my nursery rhyme book about riding a horse to Banbury Cross and seeing a lady on a white horse, with bells on her fingers and rings on her toes.   

 

Banbury is a real place here in the UK, and the home of these delicious cakes I am sharing with you today. 

The recipe is one I have adapted from one of my favourite little baking books, Meg Rivers Home Baking. Published in 2012 it is filled with lovely recipes.  

 

Every one I have ever baked has turned out wonderfully perfect and she does give measurements in both linear and metric.  I trust it and recommend this book highly.

  

Banbury cakes are like a round flakey puff pastry turnover, filled with dried fruits, butter spices and sugar.  Very similar I think to Eccles Cakes.  

 

So they are not cakes in the "Cake" sense of the word, but rather small flaky sweet pies. 

 

The recipe is said to date back to the thirteenth century when crusaders brought dried fruit and exotic spices back with them from their travels in the Crusades.  

 

Banbury Cakes are thought to be one of the oldest cake recipes  in Britain.  They are sweet, spicy, flakey and incredibly moreish when enjoyed straight from the oven. (Although I would let them cool a bit as the sugar is quite hot.)

 

They are also very easy to make. You simply make a filling of dried currants, raisins, chopped peel, butter, demerera sugar, butter, nutmeg and mixed spice.  

 

This gets place in the centre of squares of puff pastry and then folded and pressed above as explained in the recipe below.

 

If you read the recipe and then look at the photograph it will make perfect sense.

 

I like to use all butter puff pastry, which I rolled out to a 15 inch square. You don't want it to be much more than 1/8 of an inch thick as it would puff up too much in baking.  

 

The pastry then gets cut into 9 squares.

 

I like to cut my own peel for this. I buy it online, usually around Christmas time when I am making my Christmas Cake.  Usually it will arrive with an assortment of whole preserved and dried citrus peels.  

 

Lemon, orange, grapefruit, pomelo  . . .  I used one each of three different peels which I chopped into small bits.

 

I used sultana raisins, which are also known as golden raisins, and dried black Zante currants.  I would suggest if you cannot get dried currants, then you use dark raisins in their place, but do use currants if you can.

 

For years the growth and importation of black currants was banned in many places in the United States, but they are now making a comeback and are now grown in a few areas. 

 

I was able to find a source where you can buy them HERE.

 

You can also get them on Amazon, but I thought they were a bit pricier than my other source.  Of course here in the UK, they are readily available.  

 

In Canada you can get them at Bulk Barn, Walmart and I found another source here.

 

So now you have no excuse not to make these deliciously historic cakes/bakes with black currants!  You will find that they come in handy for all sorts.  

 

Lovely in cakes and bakes and cookies, salads, etc. and they are filled with goodness.

 

They actually contain more vitamin C than oranges, which I was surprised to learn. I always thought that oranges were the best source!  It seems I was wrong.

 

In any case you are going to love these beautiful pastry/cakes.  They are delicious!

  

Best eaten warm on the day, but meh . . .  nothing has ever stopped me from eating and enjoying a bake again on the second or the third day.  I am a pastry lover through and through.

 

Delicious warm, delicious cold, delicious even three days old.  I'm a poet! LOL  Seriously though, I really love these old, traditional and historic recipes.

 

One of the things that I love to do from time to time is to review cookbooks.  Its one of my perks as a food blogger, and one that I really enjoy!  I was recently sent this book, "The Food Bible, by Judith Wills.  Its already an International Best seller, having been originally published in 1998, but it has been comletely revised and updated! 

 

 

This latest edition comtains the most up-to-date research and information from the world's top authorities on every aspect of food and diet.  It is destined to become an indispensable reference book in any cookbook collection, covering such topics and important food issues from the "vegan versus meat" debate to modernn food farming and processing.  High carb, low carb.  What is the best oil to use for health protection? 

 

Six wonderfully written and in-depth chapters help to guide the reader through the minefield of contradictory dietary advice which we are bombarbed with on almost daily basis by giving clean nutritional information, beginning with an explanation of the basic elements which make up food, ie. proteins, fats, carbohydrates, fibre vitamins, minerals and the "new" non-nutrient elements such as pro-biotics.  If you have ever wondered how to combine it all for balanced healthy eating, all the information you need it in this book. 

 

This valuable book also takes an in-depth look at all the common ailments and health problems, with advice on which foods to avoid and which can help to prevent or allieviate them. 

There is a chapter containing a wealthy of information on the kinds of foods you need to be eating from childhood right on up to your golden years, along with a fabulous chapter on weight control, with many questions being answered and lots of advice on retraining yourself. 

There are helpful diet plans, and wonderfully tempting healthy recipes for every meal and occasion as well as an invaluable  detailed analysis of over 300 every day foods. 

As a person who has diabetes, and high cholesterol, along with high blood pressure and a desire to want to eat healthier and to help cope with such dietary challenges I feel that this book is a wonderful reference book to add to my library.  It is filled with amazing advice and wonderful bright and colourful photography.

 

I've already tried a few recipes from the book, all very good, but one of my favourites is the guacamole recipe.  It didn't require anything out of the ordinary, and uses things I pretty much always have on hand.  Ripe avocado, red onion, ripe tomato. coriander leaf, lime and green chili. 

 

It was quick and easy to make.  As simple as a bit of chopping and mashing.   I also created my own baked tortilla crisps to enjoy along with it. 

 

They were easy to make. I just cut some small flour tortillas into wedges and then spritzed them with low fat cooking spray, sprinkled the with some herbs and spices and baked them in a hot oven for a few minutes until crisp.  Easy peasy. 

 

A nice and moreish healthy snack, but also a great dip for with raw crudites, or as a spread in a chicken or vegetable wrap. 

  

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to be more knowledgeable about the foods they eat and who is looking for a healthier diet. Delicious recipes and eating plans for all occasions and a comprehesive guide to the nutrients in over 200 foods.

The Food Bible, by Judith Wells

 Pages: 336
Illustrations: 150
ISBN: 9781526761224
Published: 13th January 2020

Published by Pen and Sword Books 

 

 

I like to pull the stops out a bit at the weekend and bake my husband something special to enjoy. 

It was something I always did when my children were growing up, and something which continued once my birds left the next and something which I continue to do today.

 

Weekends are for enjoying things that you don't get to enjoy during the week, and that applies whether you are retired or not!  

Those be my house rules.  This helps to make our weekends feel special even though we no longer work.

 

I'll never forget something which happened when I was working at the big house.  

The housekeeper and I were helping the Mrs sort out some of her bazillions of pounds worth of shoes and the housekeeper made some remark about a holidays she and her husband were planning.  

The Mrs looked at us both and said "I've never had a holiday."  Of course the housekeeper and I gave each other a "look" that only we could understand.

 

From where we were situated to us it looked as if every day was a holiday for the Mrs. Just 365 days every year filled with whatever she wanted to do, trips here and there, and however much she wanted to spend, forever and forever and on and on.

 

It wasn't until later on when I was home and in my thinking spot that it dawned on me that actually what the Mrs had said was true. 

If every day is a holiday to you and without true meaning . . .  holidays/breaks/getaways lose their meaning.  There really is no such thing as a holiday or a weekend, or a break.  Just never ending sameness.

 

That's when I vowed that when we retired our weekends would always be marked as being special in some way, so that they didn't get drowned in the never-ending sameness of every day living. 

  

And so that is why I keep to my weekend treats and activities.  If we entertain, more often than not it will be at the weekend.  

We get to go to church on Sundays which are special, and I always, always bake my  husband or us a special meal/treat!

 

A weekend or a holiday is truly what you make of it and I want ours to always be special and meaningful.

 

These Butter Rum & Raisin Hot Rolls are truly special and really delicious!  

Did I mention that I am also rather lazy at times and more than a bit impatient when it comes to certain things.  So these, as well as being tasty, are really quick and easy to make!

 

Soft and fluffy buttery scone dough, patted out and spread with butter, brown sugar and raisins before rolling . . .

 

Cut into thick slices and baked in a really lush rum flavoured butter and cream sauce . . .  oh my goodness  . . .

 

Did I ever tell you that my favourite Lifesaver flavour (a North American candy) was Rum & Butter?  Well . . .  I am telling you now.

 

I don't drink alcohol because I am a Latter  Day Saint, but I do love the flavour of rum and butter.  I use rum extract for these. ( I suppose if you really wanted to get into it you could soak the raisins in some warm rum before using them, but I didn't choose to do that.)

 

I was ever so pleased with how these turned out.  I had been thinking about making something like this for a while. I wanted something similar to a cinnamon roll, but not a cinnamon roll . . .

 

I was REALLY pleased with how these turned out!  Over the moon in fact!

  

These were light and fluffy,  beautifully flavoured and sauced and absolutely perfect served warm with a hot drink.

 

I told myself I was only going to have a little nibble of one to see what they tasted like  . . .

 

😏  You can all see how that went!  

PS - I included measurements so that you can only make four  if you want, or eight if you have more people around.