We could call this cheat’s consommé, if you prefer.

I adore smoked haddock, but then again I quite enjoy smoked foods in general. It’s the depth of flavour, the intriguing method of how the flavour is achieved and simply the fact that with wood and good-quality ingredients, the character and flavour of the food can be manipulated to achieve something rather remarkable.

I could smoke the haddock myself, but we do have a good supplier which means I can concentrate on cold-smoking my venison, lamb and other meat joints. In all fairness, I do not have that much experience in cold smoking fish.

I tend to hot-smoke fish and meat using a method that I concocted called the ‘quick smoking method’. I refer to this in my cookbook The British Larder A Cookbook for All Seasons. I hope you are intrigued enough to go and have a look!

I add a touch of creamed horseradish to this recipe, which I use as a seasoning to accentuate the freshness of the cucumber. If you have fresh horseradish to hand, then use double the amount for a good flavour.

I absolutely adore fresh herbs and they are such integral and important ingredients in my cooking. The use of herbs can change the taste of a dish instantly and in this recipe the combination of oregano, tarragon and dill is wonderful.

I used one of my favourite kitchen gadgets to make the cucumber spaghetti garnish for this soup. This Japanese Vegetable Spiralizer is great fun to have in your kitchen cupboard as the results are stunning and your friends will think you have gone to a lot of trouble and effort to make something rather special. I would definitely recommend giving it a go!

I think this soup should be made in bucket loads; it should be on tap in the fridge and be served at least twice a day! It’s not only packed with natural goodness, it’s filling, thirst-quenching and tasty, and simply just good for the soul.

This recipe shouts holiday in the sun to me. Sun-ripened tomatoes (especially the heirloom ones that come in all colours) and fresh buffalo mozzarella both contribute to this wonderful recipe, but the true stars are the sautéed red peppers. The sautéing brings out their sweetness and provides real depth of flavour to an otherwise potentially boring old gazpacho recipe.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do!

We buy kilos of smoked prawns each week that are served as part of a large sharing platter. We peel the prawns and then turn the smoked prawns into a delicious prawn cocktail, so we are usually left with a heap of shells. The shells are then used to make this delicious bisque that could either be served as a soup for a starter or light lunch, or reduced and served as a sauce to go with a delicious piece of pan-fried hake.

Either way it’s proven to hit the spot with the British Larder customers and is hugely popular. The smoky taste is not overpowering and it’s quite subtle, but the smokiness gives the bisque a rounded and more in-depth flavour, with a rather mysterious deliciousness to it.

As asparagus is plentiful and in season, I simply garnish this bisque with tempura asparagus and whole prawns, which are easy to prepare and give the dish an interesting texture.

I find growing beetroot is very easy. I use deep terracotta pots and place them in a sunny spot on the terrace. Planting two crops per season is easily achieved if you keep them well watered. However, too much water will encourage leaf growth and the actual beetroots themselves will remain small, so the advice is to let them go dry a bit as the goodness will then be stored in the edible roots rather than in the leaves. The smaller leaves are perfect for use in a garden salad and the larger leaves can be cooked like spinach, if you like.

This beetroot soup is delicious served either hot or chilled. I like serving horseradish cream as a garnish, but crumbled goat’s cheese or crème fraîche will be just as delicious.

The friendly lanky farm manager Thomas delivers crates of Bromeswell glory to our gate every week. While the rest of the country is struggling to get Broccoli we have a regular and steady supply. I do feel spoiled!

We do on the odd occasion go to people’s homes to pick mulberries, wild plums and watercress; this is not random, this is per invite just in case you got a bit worried! This shows our pure dedication to enjoy the season to the maximum, along with anyone who is prepared to come along for the fantastic seasonal produce ride.

This soup is tasty and the colour is pretty vibrant too. The biscuits are tasty too, using Hawkstone, a local Suffolk hard cheese – if you cannot find this cheese substitute for either Parmesan or a hard mature cheddar.

The spring this year was baking hot and we longed for rain. Now that summer is here the skies are overcast with heavy grey clouds and I’m tempted to turn the central heating on. It’s crazy!

The brightness and beauty of this soup is perfect for any occasion; it definately brightens up my day. If grey and cold serve it hot with a large chunk of freshly baked bread or if it’s hot and sunny serve the soup chilled along with a chilled glass of pinot gris.

The best chef’s tip for how to keep a green soup green is to ensure that the cooking time for the greens are as limited as possible and that the soup is chilled, preferably over ice, as quickly as possible. This will ensure a deliciously bright green soup. I also recommended making this soup in small batches, to ensure the bright green colour.

What is buckler leaf sorrel? The buckler leaf sorrel is a hardy perennial herb producing small insignificant green flowers in the summer and has shield shaped green leaves that taste as similarly tart as Granny Smith apples and kiwi fruits. Like common sorrel, buckle leaf sorrel has a sharp citric irony taste. Buckler leaf sorrel is also known as French sorrel and is native to the mountains of southern and central Europe and southwest Asia. This sorrel variety is more succulent and acidic than those of the common garden sorrel. In traditional folk medicine buckler leaf sorrel was used as an antiseptic because of its high vitamin C content and was believed to prevent scurvy. In addition to being rich in vitamin C it is also high in vitamin A and is a good source of iron.

With more snow on its way we are trying to be positive. Snow means that the British Larder is quiet, but as the saying goes, it’s onwards and upwards. So we are making the most of the quiet time by scraping the car park and clearing up the snow so that our customers can park and still visit, stoking the roaring wood burning fire, and finally, cooking up a storm in the kitchen.

This Iron Bark Pumpkin and Chestnut Soup is the perfect remedy for frosty hands and rosy cold cheeks.

David the Village Veg man brought these Iron Bark Pumpkins during November and the beginning of December, and we have been saving them to ripen.

Well we must have had the feeling that they would come in handy when it gets really cold. Pumpkins and most squashes are good for storing, as when stored, they become riper and ultimately sweeter in taste. We try to use the whole pumpkin including the seeds and skin if it’s thin and tender enough, but if it’s a bit tough it usually requires peeling. The seeds make a lovely crisp and nutritious garnish.

The chestnuts came from the nearby Rendelsham Forest. We picked them up from the forest floor, roasted and peeled them and the fresh nuts were frozen for a rainy …well… snowy day!

We arrived at  1am and with only 1 1/2 hours sleep we were both slightly delirious, it was a bitterly cold morning and one found it rather difficult to believe it was spring. As you can see  some of my photos were slightly shaky, I’m not one hundred percent sure if that is down to me shivering due to the cold or the lack of sleep or  too much coffee, it could be  a combination of all three.

Anyhow we had fun and that was the main aim, we cooked three delicious recipes and it was a sheer joy to watch the “locals”, market stall holders and customers tucking in. It was convincing enough and our tactics worked as some customers were inspired to go and buy boxes of asparagus.

The arrival of the British asparagus season is a joyous one as it’s almost an indication that summer is on it’s way. British Asparagus is classed as the best in the world and is corroborated by our national consumption figures, which shows that we have a healthy appetite for these delicate stems. Most people still class asparagus as a delicacy and when the British season starts it features with pride on most restaurant menus. The season normally runs from May till June, but with the very cold winter and a chilly and slow start to the spring the British asparagus season has suffered slightly.

There are many classic asparagus recipes and a few ingredients that are synonymous pairing with asparagus and just to mention a few :-  egg, mayonnaise  and Parma ham. Asparagus requires care and attention when cooking, it needs to be quick to prevent over cooking, which will spoil the taste and cause discolouration.

I have recreated the asparagus soup that I cooked for the NCGM event in May. The method is straight forward as I cook the soup base with plenty of onions, sliced potatoes, white wine and stock. Once the soup base is ready I pan fry the asparagus stalks and heads quickly in olive oil and blend it all together with a dash of double cream. I use as much of the asparagus spear as possible, the only part that is not edible is the very tip of the stalk which is  woody and tough.

Visiting New Covent Garden Market  brought back plenty of lovely memories of when I was a young chef working in London. I worked for a short while at a delicatessen where we used to go to the market early in the morning to buy our ingredients. We used to do that twice a week and for busy weekends when we had functions I made the odd third trip too. As a real girl liking all pretty things in life we used to stop every now and then at the flower market next door to indulge in the array and display of colour. The fruit and vegetable market was just as impressive as I remembered it with large piles of vegetables beautifully displayed.

The menu for the NCGM event was:

Cream of Asparagus Soup

Asparagus wrapped in Parma Ham with a wasabi dip

Bruchetta with Asparagus spears and Gribiche

Ruth Holbrook compiled a leaflet with asparagus fun facts, with her consent I thought that it would be good to share these fun facts with you:

• Purple asparagus is a different variety and it is sweeter and softer than green.
• Wild or Bath asparagus(also know as spiked star of Bethlehem) is a rare plant found mainly around the City of Bath.
• White asparagus is our green favourite which has been deprived of sunlight and is very popular in Europe where it’s know as “white gold”.
• The Asparagus season is closely guarded by growers, with the first outside crops in late April (weather permitting) to the last on the Summer solstice. Every spear harvested after that depletes the flavour of the next years crop, this might explain why other countries’ asparagus isn’t so tasty.
• The aphrodisiac quality of asparagus is much touted, it was claimed by herbalist Nicholas Culpepper in the 1600′s to ‘stir up lust in man and woman’, and has been used as such ever since.It is recommend to eat it for three consecutive days to maximize the libido-enhancing effect!
• Different areas of Britain have distinct asparagus-growing qualities over others – Isle of Wight asparagus gets above average light and warmth so the season comes in early. Norfolk asparagus grows slowly giving it an intense flavour.
• In wholesale markets asparagus is called “grass”. This does not refer to how it looks or is grown, but comes from the 17th century folk slang which altered the latin word ‘asparagus’ into the more Anglo-friendly ‘Sparrowgrass’ – the name has stuck.
• Asparagus is not really a vegetable, it is in fact a member of the Lilly family, along with tulips and hyacinths.

Joking aside; I finally had the courage and  was brave enough to make a very humble potato and leek soup. I have had the idea for quite some time but I never felt it was challenging enough to write a recipe. I love the simplicity of such a soup, but that would be before I really started thinking about it. The challenge was to make a soup that has a complex full body taste with multi layers of flavours and I think this is it!

The inspiration for this dish came when Mr.P and I were talking over dinner about the left over baked potatoes and what to do with them. The conversation then led onto this idea of a baked potato and leek soup. I happened to have two cooked chicken legs left from a roast chicken dinner so this recipe could easily be made up from all the leftovers.

The secret for the successful cooking of a tasty potato and leek soup is when you add the seasoning. I’m a bit pedantic about the acceptable levels of seasoning in food, so I would recommend that some seasoning is added from the start of the cooking process so that the soup can develop flavour. The mistake that most cooks make is not to season their food at all during the cooking process but to add a heap of “raw” salt to the food at the end. The problem is that you only have surface salt and you need to add so much to inject flavour that you end up using too much .

Pepper is perhaps an enemy of potato and leek soup. You will be surprised how obvious the taste of pepper is in potatoes. I learnt a very hard lesson once many moons ago when I was a commis chef.  We used ready milled pepper at that particular restaurant and I added too much pepper to my potato and leek soup. It tasted like a pot of pepper, potato and leek soup and I was gutted as the chef verbally abused me and I had to start all over again. Lesson learnt, take it easy on the pepper as you can always add extra but you cannot take it away. I know it sounds like a old cliche but it’s the honest truth.

The roasted chicken cigarillos add an extra touch and transform a humble dish into a filling and interesting meal.