0 Cooking with Herbs - June 2014

We are really excited to be hosting Cooking with Herbs this month for June 2014, as you may know this is one of my favourite blog challenges and is probably the one I join in with most. 

Created by the lovely Karen across at Lavender and Lovage this challenge is all about cooking with herbs in their many forms. I really love herbs and have a beautiful raised herb garden surrounding my patio where I can easily get to from the kitchen to snip seasonal herbs and to add a final flourish to a dish.

I don't really have a favourite herb as they are all have their unique characteristics which make them invaluable in the kitchen, I am also fascinated with their medicinal properties as well.

Cooking with Herbs (which used to be known as Herbs on Saturday) is a Recipe Sharing Blog Challenge……a simple and easy way to share recipes throughout the month and also a chance to learn new ways to cook with herbs, as well as discover new blogs and blogger chums!

All you have to do to enter is add your ANY recipe that you have made throughout the week, or indeed the month, to the linky below, its really that simple.

Copy this code to add the Badge

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/herbs-on-saturday" title="Cooking with Herbs Lavender and Lovage"><img src="http://www.lavenderandlovage.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/lavenderandlovage_cooking2.png" alt="Cooking with Herbs Lavender and Lovage" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

Guidelines how to enter:

1. Post your recipe url to the Linky at the bottom of the appropriate month’s challenge, including your email and the title of your recipe or post.

2. Display the Cooking with Herbs badge (as shown above and below) to the relevant recipe post, with a link back to the monthly challenge post.

3. Add as many recipe links as you like, there is NO limit!

4. If you tweet your post, please mention #cookingwithherbs and @KarenBurnsBooth @LancashireFood in your tweet – we will retweet all that we see.

5. The recipe can be one of your own or one you’ve seen elsewhere. You are welcome to republish old recipes/posts but please add the information about this challenge as listed above with the Cooking with Herbs badge.

6. If using a recipe from another person, book, website, chef or blog, you must link back to the original recipe and not reproduce the recipe in full in your post. You must also use your OWN images for the recipe and not the original images, unless you have permission to do so, with appropriate links and any other information requested by the photo’s owner added to the image.

The challenge opens on the 4th June and the round up from last month will be on Lavender and Lovage shortly. 

Detail: Cooking with Herbs - June 2014

0 Chive flower vinegar

At this time of year the garden is bountiful, full of promise and flowering its heart out. I have always had a passion for herbs considering them some of the most useful plants in the garden, as they combine culinary and medicinal uses with great texture and form and in the case of chives stunning flowers too.

Chives, spikey pinky purple flowers erupt from the top of the plant, they are attractive to insects and attractive to me. The flowerheads are a great addition to a salad, but to capture their lovely sweet spicy oniony essence for a little longer you need to make chive flower vinegar. This lovely light vinegar is ideal in salad dressings, with fish or just to ring the changes and its such a gorgeous colour.

All you need to do is collect enough chive flowers to lightly pack your chosen jar and then select your vinegar, white wine or champagne vinegar works well as it allows the lovely flower colour to be extracted to create a pinky hue to the condiment. You leave the flowers steeping until the vinegar is your desired hue and has the required level of chive flavour. You could also make this with wild garlic or garlic chives but the resultant vinegar wouldn't be such a beautiful colour.

I am also adding this to the lovely Lavender and Lovage's Cooking with Herbs challenge 

                                          

Detail: Chive flower vinegar

0 First Garden salad, hot smoked salmon and jersey royals and rabbit proof fence

Over the last few days we have been busy in the vegetable garden, sowing, planting and fencing (to keep pesky Peter Rabbit away from the vegetables, just hope it works), I noticed that finally we have enough rocket, sorrel , flat leaf parsley, early lettuce and salad burnet to have a green salad from the garden for lunch.

Supplemented by some left over jersey royal potatoes (which incidentally you can serve hot or cold, I like both ways ) and some hot smoked salmon (the best comes from DelishFish their honey roast is awesome), I quickly whipped up a light complementary dressing using about a tablespoon on EVOO ( extra virgin olive oil), a little lemon juice, a 1/2 tsp dijon mustard, a few drops of honey and some fresh or dried dill. Whisk it all up and taste for seasoning and balance. Oh and I snipped over some chives too.

There you have a great easy lunch, very healthy and tasty too ! 


                                               

This post fits perfectly with the brief for Herbs on Saturday a great blog campaign run by the lovely Karen at Lavender and Lovage and this month hosted by Anneli at Delicieux

 

Detail: First Garden salad, hot smoked salmon and jersey royals and rabbit proof fence

0 Leek, Potato and thyme Soup

This is my standby soup recipe, deliciously warming and comforting and a great anecdote to when you need the equivalent of a hug in a bowl. Outside its been bashing down with rain and even when it stops raining its raining leaves as autumn is well and truly well under way. Leeks are fairly easy to grow in the garden and even if your yield is disappointing you normally can rescue enough leeks for soup.

Ingredients

• 3 large potatoes - peeled and chopped in to chunky cubes
• 3 leeks, cleaned and chopped into rings
• Vegetable stock about 500ml
• Thyme - dried or fresh
• Salt and Pepper
• Butter

Method

• Melt the butter in a large saucepan
• Add the leeks and chopped potato and cook gently until slightly softened
• Add the thyme and enough vegetable stock to cover
• Bring to a gentle simmer, cover and cook until the vegetables are tender
• Now liquidise half the soup ( I use a stick blender), by doing it this way you still retain texture
• Add more water / stock if too thick and bring back to a simmer
• Taste and season
• Delicious served with homemade bread

I am entering this into the Simple and Seasonal challenge hosted this month by franglaiskitchen for Fabulicious Food

And also in Herbs on Saturday October hosted over at Lavender and Lovage 

Detail: Leek, Potato and thyme Soup