Pear Salad

Yes the sun is out and the birds are singing again and we are tempted to eat out in the garden for the first time this year! Spring is definitely here at last and we have been busy in the garden rotating the soil and adding lots of yummie home made compost.

Today we are planning a nice crunchy pear salad a personal variation of a Waldorf salad which is particularly good with our very own home grown walnuts!
Preparation time only 25 minutes so very quick too! Serves 4. Calories 171 per portion.

Ingredients

1 Lettuce shredded (I prefer little gems)
2 sticks celery chopped
1 red pepper cored and sliced
25g of walnut halves
75g of green grapes halved, seeded and peeled
1 dessert pear, peeled, cored and sliced
225g smoked chicken, skinned and boned

For the dressing

2 table spoons plain yogurt
2 tablespoons mayonnaise
2 tablespoons of grated cucumber
1 teaspoon of grated onion
1 teaspoon of chopped fresh tarragon

For the garnish

1 dessert pear, cored and sliced
2 sprigs of fresh tarragon

Method

Mix the lettuce with the celery, red pepper, walnuts, grapes, pear and smoked chicken. To make the dressing, mix the yogurt with the mayonnaise, add the remaining ingredients and blend well. Just before serving, spoon the dressing over the salad and toss well to mix. Garnish with slices of pear and a few twigs of fresh tarragon.

Brittany from the eyes of James Martin

http://www.rte.ie/player/#v=1070033

Hope you can download this wonderful piece of film from the RTE series:
James Martin's Brittany. He has those hairy bikers from Northern Britain with him and they suffer the delights of Briton seafood and pork with cider!

The vegetable garden gets ploughed

It took Marcel only 30 minutes to completely transform our overgrown vegetable garden. What a difference a tractor in the hands of a skilled farmer can make! Marcel had to deal with numerous obstacles including uneven slopes, overhanging tree branches and recalcitrant tree roots! Thank you Marcel again for being so very supportive to the cooking school. We hope to plant potatoes and French beans again as they were such a great success last time. Also salads galore so that we can supply our diners with home grown produce throughout the summer.

Poul, our chef, demands vast quantities of fresh herbs every day. This alone can keep a gardener fully occupied. One of the surprising things I learned recently is that the moon has an incredible impact on garden produce. Timing is everything. One must wait till after the full moon before planting potatoes otherwise they will grow sideways!! Now that is something you won't get from the textbooks - it is knowledge direct from the memory and consciousness of farming folk with thousands of years experience behind them and their feet firmly on the ground when not doing acrobatics with a tractor.

Warm goats cheese with walnut and pear salad

We love warm goat's cheese and have our own walnut trees in the garden so this is a dish we love to make when something simple, quick and delicious is required!

Ingredients

150g goat cheese log cut into 4 slices
60g walnuts (cut in half)
6 slices of home made walnut bread
1tbsp lemon juice
1 tbsp of local honey
3tbsp of walnut oil/olive oil
1 red and 1 white chicory
30g lambs lettuce
1 ripe pear (cored and cut into wedges)
sprinkle of chili

Method:

Preheat grill to medium. Sprinkle the walnut bread with a little olive oil and toast under the grill until golden brown. Dress each cheese slice with walnuts and place on top of each slice of toasted walnut bread. Place on a baking tray, sprinkle with olive oil and toast again under the grill until the cheese is warm and the walnuts are toasted. Sprinkle a little bit of chili on top before serving.
For the dressing mix the honey, lemon juice and walnut oil together and season to taste. Toss the lettuce and the chicory leaves together with the dressing.


Serve all on one large platter with remaining pear wedges and walnuts scattered around the toasted goat cheese slices.

Serve with a nice glass of red

Raise funds for Haiti

From Luisa Welch Restaurant Guru blog:

FOOD LOVERS FUNDRAISER FOR HAITI
Sabrina Ghayour, who writes up the fab recipes for www.foodepedia.co.uk, has come come up with the idea of a fundraiser for Haiti. Within 48 hours, she got the venue (Le Bouchon Breton, Old Spitalfields Market, E1), two well known chefs already, and lots of people who have pledged to donate food for the six course banquet, wines, big prizes to auction and prizes for the raffle. She aims to raise as much money as quickly as possible to get more help to those affected. Please help her if you can. you can contact her on sabrina@foodepedia.co.uk Dont be shy!


Please help Sabrina raise essential funds for the victims of Haiti. Contact her on sabrina@foodepedia.co.uk. All help very much appreciated. Thank you.

A Trip to Gibralter

Gibraltar is only a short drive south from Malaga and although the highway is good there are no road signs to identify the State until you actually get there! The immigration routines were friendly informal and quick! As we drove into Gibralter we were required to drive across the State runway! Fortunately this road closes whenever a plane is about to land!




Gibraltar has a number of beaches where sun worshippers may enjoy themselves when not availing of the very attractive prices in local bars and restaurants.
We decided to drive up the rock as high as possible given the wonderful views one has from there both of Spain and Morocco! The monkeys are of course a big attraction in their own right. They are clever little thieves as I witnessed when one fellow made a quick entry through a rear car window, snatched a 10 pack of twix from a little girl and make his escape all under 5 seconds! He then proceeded to eat each twix in turn without sharing any with his own family!



The rock is very well organised for tourists with various stop off points to visit once you have paid your entry fee to the park/rock (£42 for a family of 3).




Our first stop was the old gun battery where we parked our vehicle now the gun was gone. From here one can look right across the mouth of the Mediterranean and one sees immediately why this was (and remains) such a strategic site for UK security purposes. Only 14 miles of sea separates Africa from Europe at this point and I understand it is possible to swim across if you are fit enough! The British and Spanish navies are kept busy keeping their respective bits of sea territory sacrosanct. Our next point of interest was the tunnels which played such an important role in the numerous sieges of the Rock but this was a little unpleasant as the rain kept dripping down the back of my neck owing to the previous 4 days of monsoon now seeping deep into the tunnels!




What was amazing despite the flooding was the cave which has an auditorium bigger than the Cottesloe Theatre London. With amazing formations of stalagmites and stalactites all lit up with colourful lighting, it must be a spectacular background for any performance. The cave was critically important to the local citizens during various sieges as a place to store reserves as well as withstand bombardment from land and sea.





Gibraltar has been a military base for the greater part of its history. This has given a military air to the town but there are major changes evident. There has been a significant increase in capital investment over the past ten years which has seen new luxury holiday apartments being developed in the dockland area with new shops and additional facilities for tourists. The old military barracks have been turned into an enormous Italian plaza where one can sit outside amid many restaurants and bars under the palm trees and enjoy the sunshine.




There is a new marine and restaurant area with delightful walks along seafront decking which reminded me of Sydney. The glorious warm sunshine enticed us out for a midwinter evening stroll. We soon came across an Irish Bar called very appropriately O'Reilly's where the staff were exceedingly friendly and courteous. We eat well there and I can recommend the Beef & Guinness ale pie (£7) On learning that I was one of the Clan, the Manager immediately offered me a free pint of Guinness! A nice personal gesture and one which surely bodes well for Gibraltar and its developing tourist industry.

Malaga Cathedral

Malaga´s cathedral was built between 1530 and 1780 on or near the site of a former mosque. While original plans had allowed for two towers, lack of funds resulted in the completion of only one, giving rise to the name by which the cathedral is affectionately referred to, La Manquita, loosely interpreted as "one armed woman"

We tried to visit this lady on Christmas Day having celebrated our feast the evening before as is the continental way! We left the car behind and took the very efficient train service from Fuengirola to Malaga. It was without exaggeration the wettest day I ever witnessed and we got soaked to the skin! What was worse was that the centre of Malaga was deserted and the Cathedral was all locked up! We could not even purchase an umbrella! We tried to take shelter in the lovely little street of the old town but the roofs, without gutters, poured torrential torrents of water down upon us! There was no escape until we found a single solitary taxi driver who took us directly back to the railway station and we headed home to Fuengirola as fast as we could! A Christmas Day I won't forget in a long time. A Danish punch was required to recover from the ordeal and we decided to take the car out on all future exploratory visits! This picture was taken a few days later inside the Cathedral which unless your attending a Mass, you must pay to gain entry. It is worth every euro to see inside this amazing Cathedral/Mosque.