Weekend food

This picture sums up our weekend's food - local, Kentish produce.

We had a delicious venison casserole last night with jacket potatoes and green beans. The venison and potatoes were from my parents' local farmers' market, the tomatoes used in the casserole were from their garden - I doubt the beans or red wine were local though. It was delicious - a lovely November meal - warming, filling, rich-tasting, and with beautifully tender meat. I'm afraid I haven't got a photo of the plate - I was too hungry to find my camera.


For pudding we had a quick version of tiramisu in individual pots. Sadly, again, I gobbled mine up before taking a photo, but it looked delicious, covered in freshly grated chocolate shavings.

And today is Sunday - so it's a big roast lunch for us, upping the red meat stakes in our diet a little further. I should really confess that the meal you see next to this was not actually my meal... I usually avoid gravy (it depends on what it's made of - red wine = good, bisto or boring flour and potato water = bad. Actually, it's mainly because I can't abide soggy potatoes, and if the meat's good and tender enough it's beautiful without gravy, which can often mask rather than enhance the flavour). I put up a photo of one of my family's meals because I know that with gravy it looks like a better meal - even I can see my plate looks like there's something missing.

We had wonderfully succulent roast beef from the village butcher with all the trimmings (crispy roasted potatoes and parsnips with carrots and cabbage), followed by pudding which, if we discount the sugar in the crumble, had virtually no food miles involved in its transport from plant to table.

The same can't be said for the wine, which was once kept on a boat and probably travelled most of the way around the world several times before reaching our table - I won't go into the story of why we were able to drink it, but safe to say we were privileged today to drink one of the best clarets in the world - a Chateau Mouton Rothschild 1970 Bordeaux - probably a rarer find in homes like ours than the pears we had for dessert.

They were from a tree planted against a wall in my mum and dad's garden. They estimate it was planted in about 1890 - the area was once an enormous fruit garden - and despite how the plant has been ignored for the past hundred years or so, it still produces the most amazing fruit. They are actually cooking pears - very unusual these days. We had the pears poached with quinces from a garden down the road (see photo of the fruits looking pretty in a basket at the top of this post) and quince and apple (from down the road too) crumble, with a bit of vanilla ice-cream. See my half-eaten pudding on the left too.

And now, in my usual Sunday afternoon fashion, I think I'm going to go for a nap - weekend naps cannot be beaten, especially after such a filling meal.