The British Larder Inspirational recipe diary

Lemon meringue pie is quite possibly one of Mr.P’s most favourite desserts. I remember making it for him shortly after we had met, I’m sure it must have sealed the deal for life!

These small individual lemon meringue pies not only look great but we have the advantage of being able to serve them in the restaurant. We prepare them to the pastry and lemon filling stage and then on the day, when needed we then top them up with the meringue topping and bake them before each service. It keeps them fresh and easy to manage, as well as reducing wastage.

They are also perfect for our bar counter; they look great on a glass stand with a big glass dome lid perfect for that Sunday afternoon cup of tea and the taste of something sweet.

We have a perfect location for walking, especially dog walking. There are several

This exceptionally good looking fish with its shiny blue and silver skin is classed as a humble creature from the sea. It’s not only sustainable but this oily fish is packed with nutrients, iron and is rich in omega 3.

Mackerel is delicious and versatile and can be served hot or cold, smoked, raw or cooked. Due to the rich oily flesh mackerel works best with strong acid flavours such as saffron, lemons, limes, tomatoes, orange, fennel, chilli, ginger and wasabi. The skin of mackerel is thin and therefore crisps up easily and tastes equally delicious. My philosophy about mackerel is to keep it simple; it’s a humble fish, and over-complicating a recipe incorporating mackerel is doing no one any flavours! The combination of using fresh and smoked mackerel adds a different dimension to the dish.

I usually associate tomatoes with mackerel, it might be from the days when my

Cod cheeks; what an incredibly interesting and intriguing ingredient! Seen as a waste product by fishermen and a a little gem for a chef. They are literally the cheeks of a cods head. It sounds gross, but think about it, they are perfectly good to eat and as they are perfect bite size muscles they are boneless and very meaty indeed. Easy to prepare and as they are already small they require very little faffing with.

I came up with two recipes for the use of our assignment of cod’s cheeks. One is a “cheeky sandwich” and the other is ”crispy cod’s cheek nugget salad”. The salad and vegetables are from Maple Farm, an organic farm a few miles from the British Larder that produces the most amazing ingredients with a very diverse range.

For both these recipes the cod’s cheeks were coated in either a batter or a crust

It’s Farm Animal Welfare Week 2011 and what better way to celebrate than commissioning two local artists to paint a pig sty?! Well that is exactly what Mark Hayward from Dingley Dell did. Mark has teamed up with Joel Millerchip and Simon Wild to “graffiti” these happy pig’s homes. Ever since we know Mark he’s always been talking about getting the pig homes painted in “graffiti”. It’s a great idea, not only will they look great in the field; but having this kind of reason to do it is even better.

We hand on heart support the Farm Animal Welfare Week. It’s important that we offer high welfare food items on our menus and tell everyone that we genuinely do what we say we do, and to highlight this, we have joined the Simply Ask Campaign.

The Freedom Food Food Simply Ask campaign is a unique UK assurance scheme