Cakes & Bakes: Goats cheese and nettle scones

I’ve made a few different things in the past with stinging nettles; pesto, soup and bread. This week, I made some goats cheese and nettle scones.

I’ve been eyeing up all the nettle patches in our garden and around the village here where we live. I’ve made a point of not clearing it from around the garden because I know I was going to put it to good use.

In the past week, much of it is just about to come into flower, so time is running out for foraging the tasty stinging tips. I donned a pair of gardening gloves and, with a zip-lock bag at the ready, got to work picking off the young, hairy green leaves.

If you set off on a wild nettle hunt, remember, only pick the leaves that are over two feet high; dogs passing by enjoy cocking their leg and giving them a shower! Pick them like you’d pick tea leaves, only the growing tip and top pair of leaves… and don’t forget your gloves! When you get them home, put them in a colander and give them a quick rinse under a cold tap, tossing every couple of seconds.

The only pair of kitchen gloves I have are covered in shoe polish – I didn’t want to use them to bring the scone dough together. I had to handle the stinging nettle with a couple of dough scrapers… not ideal!

If you don’t have goats cheese, most hard cheeses make good alternatives; cheddar, red Leicester, Parmesan etc. Similarly, if you don’t have any natural yoghurt, you can use buttermilk or sour cream. The recipe is very flexible.

They were really delicious; the flavours of the goats cheese and nettle work really well together. Slice in half while still warm and give each side a generous swipe of butter… lovely!

Like my recipe? Click here to save it to Pinterest!

Goats cheese and nettle scones

Print recipe Pin recipe

Cook Time 15

Course Snack

Cuisine British

Ingredients

500 g self-raising flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp cream of tartar
50 g cold butter cubed
300 ml natural yoghurt
125 g goats cheese cut into ½cm cubes
20 g nettle tips chopped
1 egg beaten

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 220ºC/425ºF/Gas mark 7
Grease or line a baking sheet with baking/parchment paper
In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, salt and cream of tartar
Add the butter and rub together using your fingertips until you get a fine breadcrumb consistency
Stir in the cubed goats cheese and chopped nettles
Make a well in the centre and pour in the yoghurt
Bring the dough together with your (gloved) hands, being careful not to knead or the dough will become tough
Dust a work surface with flour and press the dough out to the thickness of about 2cm/1in
Cut out the scones using a circular cutter and place onto the prepared tray
Bring the offcuts together gently, again being careful not to knead and cut out as many circles as possible until there's no dough remaining
Brush the tops with the beaten egg and bake for 15-20 minutes until the tops are golden and well risen
Allow to cool for a few minutes on a wire rack

Goat's cheese and nettle scones ingredients

Keyword goats cheese, nettles, pastry, scones

Christmas wreath making

This is the first year that I can remember us not having a tree up for Christmas. All the rooms in our cottage are in various states of unfinishedness (I think I just made that word up!). We wanted some sort of festiveness, so decided to adorn the finished front doors. Yes, as our house was formerly two tiny cottages, we have two front doors. Rather than buy them, we downed decorating tools and picked up Christmas wreath making ones instead.

Our village is surrounded by mixed coniferous forest, so we didn’t need to venture far to forage for Christmas wreath raw materials. And, thanks to lots of very windy weather recently, it didn’t take us long to find lots of different kinds of fir, larch, spruce and pine fronds on the ground. Saying that, holly with its berries still intact was pretty scarce; I think the local and winter-visiting birds have been feasting on them.

I found it harder to do than I thought it would; Justin’s attempt was far superior in my opinion. He has a natural talent for flower & foliage arranging!

I tried to improve mine by embellishing it with a big, gold ribbon. What do you think?

Now that we have a pair of wire wreath frames, I think we’ll be making them every year – practice makes perfect!

Simple sloe gin recipe

The first frosts hit this part of the country this week, I’ve been eagerly awaiting them. No, I’m not a great fan of chilly weather, I’ve just had my eye on a few little blackthorn bushes that grow along our lane.

Blackthorn berries (prunus spinosa) – better known as sloes – are the important ingredient in that Christmastime favourite, sloe gin. Back to those frosts… it’s recommended that you pick them after a spell of freezing temperatures, as this swells the berries and makes their skin split. If you don’t want to wait, you’ll need to prick each berry with a pin or skewer before steeping them in the gin. Letting the cold weather do the hard work is my preferred method!

Conveniently, for this post, we had half a bottle of Hortus gin left over from those almost forgotten summer gin & tonics. That’s just the right amount for the number of sloes I was able to forage – about 150 grams.

You add half the weight of sloes in sugar; i.e. 75 grams of sugar to 150 grams of berries. The amount of gin you add is much more flexible. Countryfile Magazine recommends 500 grams of sloes to a 70cl bottle of gin, River Cottage say around 325 grams per bottle and The Guardian 350 grams. The ratio that I used was about 300 grams to a bottle.

My sloe gin may just about be ready to crack open at Christmas. Next Christmas – or even the Christmas after that – is optimal time for the fruit to infuse with the alcohol.

Click here to save this sloe gin recipe to Pinterest

Simple sloe gin

Print recipe Pin recipe

Course Drinks

Cuisine British

Ingredients

150 g sloes
75 g caster sugar
35 cl half a bottle London dry gin

Instructions

Sterilise a bottle or Kilner/Le Parfait preserving jar
Rinse, drain and pat dry the sloes
Add the sloes, sugar and gin. Seal the cork/cap/lid and swirl the contents together for 30 seconds or so. Set aside in a cool, dry, dark spot
Each day for about a week, swirl the contents together for 10 seconds or so. Once all the sugar has completely dissolved, you can strain to remove the fruit and store the sloe gin (for years... if you can resist the urge to crack it open!)

Keyword alcohol, forage, gin, sloes

Cakes & Bakes: Wild garlic sourdough focaccia

Wild garlic loves this damp, shady corner of our garden. We keep the majority of it contained within an old galvanised wash tub, but if you look closely, you can see that it’s managed to escape and grow in the cracks of the flags!

I harvested a few of the leaves to go in a wild garlic sourdough focaccia; wild garlic and wild yeast!

In less than a minute, I blitzed the leaves with some olive oil into a liquid about the consistency of a vinaigrette.

The dough took a little longer to be ready… about 12 hours in a cool cloakroom.

Depending on the size of your baking tray(s), the recipe makes 2 small or one large loaf. I used a large tray – 39cm x 27cm (15″ x 10½”).

It’s absolutely delicious – moist yet airy – and full of intense flavour. Perfect for accompanying pasta dishes, salads, antipasti and cheeses.

Click here to save my recipe to Pinterest for later

Wild garlic sourdough focaccia

2018-05-03 11:56:59

For the dough

190g/7⅔oz sourdough starter (100% hydration)
310g/11oz tepid water
2tbsp olive oil
1tsp runny honey
500g/17⅔oz 00 flour
4g/⅛oz salt

For the topping

6 leaves of wild garlic
5tbsp olive oil
1tbsp coarse salt crystals or flakes

Add ingredients to shopping list

If you don’t have Buy Me a Pie! app installed you’ll see the list with ingredients right after downloading it

Instructions

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the starter with the water, olive oil and honey
With the dough hook attached and on a low speed, slowly add the flour and knead for around 5 minutes or until the mixture begins to come away from the sides of the bowl. Leave to rest for 10 minutes
Add the salt, kneading until it's fully combined
Allow to prove until doubled in size (depending on the temperature, this could be anywhere from 2 hours in a warm kitchen to overnight in the fridge. Make it fit in with your plans and schedule)
Once sufficiently proved, preheat the oven to 200ºC/400ºF/Gas mark 6. If you have one, put your baking stone on a shelf in the bottom ⅓rd of your oven
Coat a baking tray(s) liberally with olive oil, making sure you include up the sides
Gently pour the dough into the centre of the oiled tray and carefully ease it towards the corners. You don't want to deflate the air pockets
Cover with greased clingfilm and allow to prove again in a warm place for about an hour
Make rows of indentations across and down into the dough, drizzle with more olive oil, sprinkle with the coarse salt and bake for 15 minutes
Remove from the oven and spread the wild garlic oil over the top.
Turn the tray 180º (to ensure even browning) and return it to the oven for a further 15 minutes or until the top becomes golden brown
Remove from the oven, take the loaf off the baking tray(s) and allow to cool on a wire rack for a couple of minutes
Slice and serve

Notes

This bread is perfect for mopping up tomatoey or cheesy pasta sauces!

H is for Home Harbinger https://hisforhomeblog.com/