Swedish Summer Cake

She wiped the cream from the spatula, smearing it luxuriously on the sponge, and languorously placed the strawberries onto the vanilla-flavoured confection.Viewed from above, it would be all innocent, all strawberries and cream, but she knew that in truth, this only concealed something altogether more grown up, a custard that tasted like ambrosia but paved the way to darker, more dangerous places, oozing over the fruit, this time sprinkled in sugar so that juices had started to run. Would he be tempted? Could she take him to a place he had never been before. She knew he was watching her. She smoothed down her apron and ran her fingers through her hair. As if in anticipation of what was to come, she moved more slowly. She turned to reveal what she knew he was waiting for - had been waiting for - for so long...

"It's ready, darling" she murmured huskily....

To me, this is cake porn at its finest. The Goddess tries to dress it up as a wholesome and homely summer treat, but it's from Scandanavia, and it's nothing of the sort. True, we had it for pudding on Sunday lunchtime, but it could just as well grace the dessert table of some more decadent feast.

This cake has been whispering to me ever since I got my hands on Kitchen. Every time I looked at the book, I could hear it. Baaaaake me! Eeeeeeeat me! Every time I got the book down from the shelf, it somehow ended up open on that page. This happens to me alot.

I couldn't bear it any longer, and having won the delicious Forman and Field box of goodies last week, I knew that if we were having a celebration meal, this would have to be the pudding.

It’s called Swedish Summer Cake.


I can’t find the recipe on line, so I can’t put a link in. To be honest, even if you didn’t go a bundle on the family food sections (I do - you can't beat her recipes), it would be worth buying Kitchen just for this cake. (She’s not paying me, by the way).

It’s 3 layers of light sponge  sandwiched to gether with a custard cream and strawberries and topped with whipped cream and more fruit.

I think ‘whisked sponge’ might be the technical term for the cake – there is no fat (yes, girls, this could be a slimming aid...or maybe not) in the sponge mixture. You whisk the eggs and sugar together to be a light, moussey texture then add in some hot water as you carry on whisking - I did all this in my trusty Kenwood. Finally, you whisk in flour and baking powder and bake for half an hour or so.

a bit wonky, but hey - did it matter?

There’s proper custard involved:

I know I have eulogised about the properties of Birds Custard before, but I felt that there was no adulterating this recipe. I had to follow it down the line. It was fairly quick and easy to be honest. It did end up a little runny, and a quick consultation of Nigella.com after the event, suggests that I didn’t leave it to thicken up for quite long enough, but to be honest, I’m, not complaining.

You have to split the sponge into 3 discs. I love the way Nigella instructs you to “courageously, slice the cake horizontally into 3 layers...” I sliced courageously and made a bit of a pigs ear of it to be honest. However, I was heartened by her earlier words of encouragement “...any clumsiness is either easily concealed or adds to the homespun charm of it all...” There you see – it was fine that my top layer looked like this after cutting.

To sandwich together you whisk a huge amount of cream with some vanilla extract, and then fold a third of the cream into your custard. You macerate strawberries with some caster sugar, and layer sponge, the custard cream and fruit up, then top with the rest of the vanilla cream and strawbs.

Did you want a reminder of what it looked like?

It is divine.

I'm linking up with Forever Nigella again. The July event is hosted by Amy at Cooking, Cakes andChildren for Sarah from Maison Cupcake

The theme is 'sizzling summer' . If I had to justify the entry of this cake in that category, it is Swedish Summer Cake. Then I can attest to the fact that we ate it for lunch  al fresco on Sunday, hot on the heals of a lovely chicken chasseur.  With a lovely glass of chilled white wine. And if you were focussing on the 'sizzle' part of the category, well, returning to my earlier theme, despite it's innocent looks, I do believe that this is a 'hot' cake...

Not Quite Veg Every day - but Trying: Cheesy Bean Burgers

A very quick post, but I was very pleased with how supper turned out this evening and I thought I would share because it was mostly made out of stuff in the cupboards (or could very easily be), and it turned out to be tastier than I was anticipating. I forgot to take any pics either, because we were very hungry, but here's the picture from the Good Food website, which I hope they don't mind me using here:

I'd been flicking through back issues of Good Food when I was meal planning for July the other week, and came across this. Now I haven't been blogging much about my campaign from earlier in the year to get us as a family to eat less meat, but it's still there in the background, and overall, I'd say we are eating less meat. We have veg coming in the garden now too, and the chickens are laying well despite the distinct lack of sunshine, so there's lots of opportunity for good salads and stuff. There are the favourites taken from Veg Everyday, that I've morphed into our regular diet, I've also picked up a few good recipes from Good Food. Remind me to tell you about cheese and marmite pasties one day.

wet dog - off on his hols

Anyway, tonight's recipe appeared in July 2010 Good Food as cheesy bean burgers. I was going to have to double the original recipe anyway, and when I read it again today, I thought it needed a little pimping up. In fact, it was my mum who ended up making them. She's here to collect Fred the dog who is going to stay with her for most of the holidays. It's a long story which I won't go into here, but it will make my life, and our holiday arrangements much easier. I took the opportunity to run Blue into town after school to get his glasses tightened up, and left her with the recipe and some extra instructions that I gabbled at her as we went out of the door. It worked though, so here's my recipe, to make 10 good size burgers:

Cheesy Corny Bean Burgers

Ingredients: 2 x 400g tins of butter beans, 1 x 340g (285g drained weight) can of sweetcorn, 1 onion, 2 cloves of garlic, handful of basil leaves (or rosemary would be nice too I think), 150 g cheese (the original specifies wensleydale, which I used, but a mature cheddar would be nice), olive oil, 2tbsp plain flour, 2 eggs, 100g fresh breadcrumbs

Method: Pre-heat the oven to 2000. Drain & rinse the butter beans, then mash in a bowl with a fork to make a rough puree. Finely chop the onion and garlic, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan, add the onions & garlic and fry for 3-4 minutes.Grate/crumble the cheese, and finely shred the basil (or chop finely if using rosemary). Drain the sweetcorn and stir into the puree along with the onion mixture, the cheese, the basil and freshly ground salt and pepper. Shape the mixture into 10 patties, cover and chill for 10 mins in the fridge (or until ready to cook).

Get out 3 plates, put the flour on one, then the eggs, beaten in the next, and finally, the breadcrumbs on the third plate. Get the patties out of the fridge and roll first in the flour then the egg, then the breadcrumbs.

Lightly oil a baking tray, transfer the bread crumbed patties on to the tray and into the oven. They will need 25-30 mins in the oven, turning at least once to get them brown all over.

We ate them with potato wedges also cooked in the oven (the method I use is here, accompanying another (meaty) burger recipe) and green salad from the garden. Delicious.

Winning things

Did I mention that I have won a few things recently? Until the last couple of months, the only ‘competition’ type thing that I can remember ever winning was one that I entered from an ‘in train’ magazine, travelling back to London from an Employment Tribunal hearing in Newcastle. It was a long journey and I was completely fried from the Tribunal hearing. I idly flicked through the magazine, and came across a competition where the answers were blindingly obvious. I filled in the form and a few days later, when I was emptying out my briefcase, I found the form and posted it. Imagine my surprise to find that I had won. Not only that, but I think I must have been the only person who entered. In my memory, there were a number of different prizes, including tickets to see ‘Stomp’ (a kind of crazy human percussion show) and bottles of gin for the runners up. I gave my work address for the delivery of the prize, and having already been surprised to have won, imagine my even greater surprise to receive not only tickets to see Stomp, but also 12 bottles (yes, 12) of Gordons...

Anyway, that was back in the mists of time, and I haven’t won anything since, until recently.  My winning streak started a couple of months ago when I ‘won’ £25 worth of Amazon vouchers for simply leaving a comment about my favourite book on another blog. True, in order to actually get my mitts on the vouchers, I had to write a post about the books I would buy first, but it counted as winning to me. If you’re interested my idealo summer reads are here.

Then, I won a Patrick Gale book and 2 bars of Green & Blacks for leaving a comment on the lovely Crafts on Sea blog. Hardly a chore, given that I very much enjoy this blog anyway, but a very nice surprise.

And then, last week, well, what can I say. I won a fabulous box of goodies from Forman & Field, for leaving a chicken-related comment on Crumbs - Feed Your Family’s Facebook page.

It included everything I needed to make ‘Marco (as in Pierre-White)’s Chicken Chasseur’: a plumptious looking organic chicken, shallots, mushrooms, tomatoes, tomato juice, herbs – everything I could need. Including a bottle of delicious looking white wine, and a little tub which turned out to be the optional 50ml of brandy.

yes folks, even the brandy!



I'll leave you to speculate furiously as to which of
these fine gentlement is 'the Husband'. Answers on
 a postcard please...

It all arrived on Friday, but then I had a huge dilemma. Much as I wanted to get cooking and serve up the delicious feast that night, we had the wheelbarrow race – the start of the Sheep Fair which is a 2 day street festival that happens in our village every 4 years. If it had just been a question of spectating, I might have gone ahead, but the Husband was on manoeuvres that night with the Desert Rat Ar*ed tank regiment, so a leisurely evening’s cooking, eating and lingering over a bottle of wine wasn’t going to be on the cards. Actually, as it happens, the lads won 'best dressed' entry - all 18 of them...

Yesterday was the first full day of the fair, and despite a huge and torrential downpour at 10, the weather stayed just about OK and we spent most of the day out and about in the village enjoying the sights and street entertainers. The these was 1942-1952 An Era of Change, and there was much post war merriment to be had, including an appearance by Sir Winston Churchill himself to open proceedings.

A good time was pretty much had by all. I especially enjoyed the free shots of ‘Bombay Collins’ (Bombay Sapphire gin, lemon, elderflower cordial and a dash of soda) from the Bombay Sapphire PR peeps, obviously trying ingratiate themselves with us locals as they are moving their new corporate HQ into an old Victorian mill just down the road. We could definitely do with more convincing along the same lines....  My father in law was staying and he offered a night of babysitting for Saturday day evening, and on the basis that this was an offer too good to refuse, we took it. So once again, the chicken stayed in the fridge.

I have to say, though that by now, I was feeling fairly edgy. All these delicious ingredients begging to be turned into something delicious. When was it going to happen? Well, friends, it happened today. For lunch on an almost glorious Sunday, we had Marco’s Chicken Chasseur,eaten al fresco, and blimmin lovely it was too.

I followed the recipe exactly as it had been provided (the link to the Knorr web page is here) . A bit of a fiddle, as I must admit to being fairly slap dash with my prep normally.  I had to joint the chicken which is not something I think I’ve done before. If I get chicken these days, it tends to be a whole one which I roast and use up the leftovers, but with the help of St Hugh, and the instructions he gives in his Meat book, I managed to turn the bird into 8 pieces, with the rib cage for the stock pot.

I even peeled the tomatoes – and the mushrooms - as required. By the way, the trick to peeling tomatoes, if you were wondering, is to pour boiling water over them.

Once all the faffing was done, though, it was very easy to cook. We ate it with new potatoes and broad beans from the garden.

 

The wine, which was from Biddenden Vineyards – their Ortega 2011, I have learned from the website, has won some awards.

I know not much about wine apart from if I like it or not, and I liked this a LOT.

Because it was lunchtime, and the kids were taking part in the closing parade, we didn’t quite finish the wine. There’s a glass or 2 left waiting in the fridge, for us to drink with the remains of the pudding...

oh yeah baby. A glass of wine and a slice of this fine cake please.

And as a pleasing p.s., as I was typing this, we found at that the kids had won best dressed boy and girl at the sheep fair for their evacuee costumes. I have one thing to say about this: It's amazing what you can find on ebay.

Soup for a miserable summer day

Today, according to the meal plan, supper was to be pea and watercress pasta, a lovely summery type dish (I hoped) much in the vein of St Hugh's macaroni peas, but frankly, for reasons that will become apparent, I've now officially had enough of trying to pretend that the rain hasn't really been raining pretty much every day since - well - since I can remember. I mean I know I've been all happy happy about going away camping and making the most of it, snatching those sparkling moments on the beach to store up for less cheery days; and I know that I have had some sunshine (a teeny bit) this year, but frankly, now I. have. had. enough.


The children's school has an open air swimming pool attached to it, and today was the day for the gala. KS2 this morning, and the Husband attended to support Blue. The sun shone and the children were happy. My turn this afternoon, for KS1. As I left the house, the sky had already clouded over - not quite 'fine at 7, rain by 11', but it was definitely spitting. It didn't take long for the heavens to open and it basically rained for the hour of the gala. Pink was in the first 'race'. Afterwards, she got changed and then sat on the poolside, in the rain (with her dressing gown on) for the rest of the hour. By the end, the kids were cold and wet, but there was still half an hour of school to go.

Now, I am going to try really hard not to rant about my kids' school and their totally erratic behaviour in situations such as this. If it had suited the school, we would have been encouraged to take our children home early. But today, clearly, it did not suit, so we were not allowed to liberate our soggy children (I would have had to wait for Blue anyway, but that's not the point here). Not only that, but with 30 mins to go, there was really no sensible option but to wait around. In the rain. Offered refuge in a friend's car, I gratefully accepted, and also accepted the offer of a lift back down the hill - it's only a 15-20 minute walk home but really, I was wet, Pink was wet, and I knew that Blue would be knackered from his efforts this morning. And frankly, as the car was already at school and was going to be going back down the hill, it was going to make no difference to the environment.

Pink was due to be going to Rainbows later on but she was cold and tired so I put her straight in the bath and had a rethink about supper. What they needed was not pea and watercress pasta. Oh no. What they needed was soup. In July.

I cannot believe that I was cooking up the sort of chunky soup that I'd normally serve up on an autumn/winter weekend, but I did. And I commend it to you for all those wet and miserable days to come. Bah humbug.

Warming and chunky soup for a miserable summer day

Ingredients: 1 onion, 1 clove of garlic, 2 carrots, 1 red pepper, 1 can of chopped tomatoes, 2 tsp vegetable stock powder, 125g cooking chorizo,  ground coriander and smoked paprika, large handful of small pasta - I had some orzo (left over from St Hugh's mushroom risoniotto) and some conchiglietti in the cupboard.

Method: Put the kettle on. Finely chop the onion and garlic, heat a splash of olive oil in a large pan, and add the onion and garlic and fry gently for a few minutes, stirring occasionally. Peel and dice the carrots, halve the pepper, remove the seeds and dice, then chuck the carrot and pepper in with the onion and stir for a couple of minutes. Chop the chorizo into similar size chunks as the carrots & peppers, add to the pan, stir in and cook for a couple more minutes. Sprinkle in a sprinkle (literally, just a sprinkle) of the paprika and coriander and tip in the tin of tomatoes. Add the stock powder to the empty tomato tin and fill with boiling water. Add the stock to the pan, then a scond tin's worth of hot water. Bring to the boil chuck in the pasta and leave to cook until the veg & pasta is cooked - it'll take about 15 minutes.

Serve with garlic bread

Sort of summery meatballs - or how a slow cooker saved my life

Today, I have mostly won.

First thing, it had been lovely and sunny. I had a load of bedding that I had washed yesterday, sitting, damp, in the laundry basket. I went outside. I looked to all points of the compass. Not one single menacing dark cloud. Anywhere. I hung the washing out.

Later on, I had a hilarious conversation with a South African friend as we walked our dogs through the fields - hers taking every opportunity to sit in the muddiest of muddy puddles, mine buggering off into the wheat as soon as I stopped concentrating.

By the time we were half way across the fields, the clouds were gathering in again. I started my "Typical, just when I'd got the washing out" speech and she creased up. "You know, you are just so BRITISH" she roared with laughter. "I have sworn never to fall into this WAR with the weather that you have going on here. hang it up, take it in, always watching for the rain. Did you know my mother in law RINGS ME UP to tell me she got the washing dry outside?!?" I had to laugh, but there it is. That's me all over.

It's not just the washing - although that has been a particular issue recently. I mean, I don't want to go on about the weather, but it has been foul and we don't have a tumble dryer. So a day when it might not rain just galvanises me into action. "What can I wash?" I think. And on the touch and go days, I suffer angst about whether to put the washing out or not. Lucky that is all I have to suffer angst about these days, I know...

Anyway, I digress. I was talking about being at war - on the domestic front. May be 'war' is a strong word, but as the end of term approaches, I feel like every morning, I have to arm myself more carefully to face the day and the various challenges it is likely to offer.

I was feeling very pleased with myself last week having sorted out a mega-meal plan to get me through the rest of the month, part of my armour. It covers the end of term, and through to when we get back from Scout Camp. I finished it, posted it up on a linky, and felt organised. So short sighted.

check out the veg - all from the garden

 Last night, having served up a salad which, I am proud to say,  was almost exclusively from the garden (lettuce, spring onions, new potatoes, broad beans and eggs), I checked the menu plan for the meal for this evening. Meatballs. This would have been fine, but when I did the meal plan, it had been my intention to make them last night. However, at that point, when I consulted said plan, the meat was still in the freezer. I retrieved it anyway and started pondering how to make it work in the grand scheme of today which involved my usual working day, followed by picking the kids up at 4.30 and going straight to Pink's end of term 'ballet show' (something straight out of Joyce Grenfell, believe me!), not due to finish till 7, while the Husband would be back
and needing something to eat before heading off to Scouts
- at around 7. The timing was not looking good.

Salvation came in the form of the slow cooker - in fact, The Ultimate Slow Cooker which is a book I bought on the off chance through one of those Book People type things when Pink was at Playgroup. I'd been flicking through it the other day to work out how to do some gammon in the slow cooker, and I remembered that I'd seen a meatball recipe in there. Just the job. One of the things I love about slow cooking is that 'Everything is done" feeling, and today was a day where I needed that. That's not to say that you don't have to do all the prep etc, but it's done far enough away from the time you eat it that when you finally sit down to eat, you can forget that you were trying to make meatballs and packed lunches at the same time as listen to reading, take on board the Husband's schedule for the day and worry about whether anyone needed swimming kit....


Anyway, I made the meatballs up themselves this morning, and left them in the fridge while I took reckless pleasure in hanging out washing, putting a second load on (I know how to live dangerously), getting the kids to school, walking the dog and finally getting down to work. Then while I was grabbing a sandwich at lunchtime, I fried off the meatballs, made the sauce and put everything in the slow cooker to do their thang. Once we got in, it was a moment's work to cook some pasta, and bingo. Dinner.


I was particularly pleased with this meatball recipe that I made up (I used the book for sauce volume and cooking times). When I was chopping up the spring onions from the garden yesterday, I decided, on the back of the success of my garlic scape risotto, that I would use the spring onion tops instead of onion in the meatball recipe.




They took a bit of chopping up because they are kind of 'hollow', so when you slice you get a little green circle, and it needs to be quite small to go in the meatballs, but I treated them a little like herbs and used a mezza luna (one of those semi circular knives with a handles at each end that Nigella uses). 






Sort of Summery Meatballs

Ingredients:

For the meatballs - 400g lamb mince, a handful of spring onion tops - or a red onion, finely chopped, 1 clove of garlic, crushed, a slice of bread - a day or 2 old is good, a medium egg, salt and pepper, finely grated zest of a lemon

For the sauce - olive oil, 1 onion, finely chopped, 2 cloves of garlic, crushed, 1 can of chopped tomatoes, 200ml veg stock, salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar.

Method: to make the meatballs, put all the ingredients in a bowl, mash together with a fork until well combined and the bread is broken into crumbs throughout the mixture. You could make the bread into crumbs first in a food processor but I was short on time. Make into between 16 and 20 meatballs depending on the size you like them. I divided the mixture into 4 then into 4 again, then rolled each portion into a ball (with apologies for stating the obvious).

Set the slow cooker to heat up, splash some oil into a frying pan (I used a dessert spoon's worth), and brown the meatballs on quite a high heat. Set aside on kitchen paper, and then in the same pan, fry the onion & garlic till it is starting to soften, pour in the stock and tomatoes, scraping up all the good stuff from the bottom of the pan, add freshly ground salt and pepper and the sugar. Bring to the boil. While the sauce is coming to the boil, pop the meatballs in the slow cooker, then once the sauce is bubbling, pour it on top and replace the lid of the cooker. Cook on 'low' for 6-8 hours, and then serve with pasta - or rice or couscous...

Gooseberry and Orange Drizzle cake

Gooseberry and Orange Drizzle cake.

There is not much I can say about this cake. Delicious light orange flavoured sponge with hidden gooseberries, and a crunchy orange sugar topping. As long as you like gooseberries this is a total winner.

If I had had some available, I might have added some elderflower cordial somewhere into the mix – perhaps in the drizzle on the top, but I haven’t had time to make anything elderflower this year (much to my disappointment) and I didn’t have shop bought in, so I just stuck to the recipe, which had caught my eye in a Good Food mag (June 2012 if you’re interested) and I had mentally bookmarked for when the gooseberry bushes in the garden got their act together.

It's basically an orange sponge mix using 4 large eggs, and the zest of an orange, into which you fold your lovely gooseberries.

Once it's out of the oven, you drizzle over a mixture of the orange juice and granulated sugar

and serve - we had it with creme fraiche as a pudding on Sunday but it tastes great on its own just as cake.

The rest of it has been sliced up, individually wrapped and frozen for school lunches otherwise I think I would have eaten the lot, it was so delicious.

I’m thinking that if there are some blackcurrants around next weekend, I may revisit the recipe but as Blackcurrant and lemon drizzle. I think it would also be good with raspberries and lemon. What do you reckon?

Pork Burgers with herby wedges (the potato ones)

My turn to host the after-school hordes today (it seems to come round very quickly), made even more logistically tricky because the girls don’t have choir at the moment, but the boys still have football, so I need to do a double run up to school at 3.30 then 4.30. I was already in a rush because I’d been working at a friend’s house due to lack of internet chez Recipe Junkie and had stopped in at home on the way up to school to dump my laptop and collect all the stuff that needed to go to the charity shop after my clear out on Saturday. 

Having collected the girls, I had a couple of jobs to do in the village before coming home to start tea, and then head back out for the boys. The boys have Cubs at 6.30 so there is a certain time pressure on tea on these evenings.

As I turned the corner into our road, I saw someone loitering outside the house and clocked the BT van parked opposite. In the manner of some slow motion film character, desperate to prevent disaster happening, I started madly waving my arms and picked up speed, as the girls scattered behind me, all the while hoping that he would see me and would not just get in his van and drive off leaving me forlorn and desolate on the doorstep as the rain became heavier –you’ve seen the films.

Lady luck was clearly smiling on me and he waited. We exchanged pleasantries about 3 legged pets – his cat to my dog – and then he set about checking the main socket. Apparently the exchange fault had been fixed but a test showed something else was not right. 

There is probably a secret box on the fault report form that says “Stupid Woman”. I had plugged the router back in incorrectly after all my efforts to get online on Thursday. I am still consoling myself with the fact that there was a genuine exchange fault that hadn’t been fixed till this afternoon...

Anyway, having recovered my composure, I rounded the girls back up and we headed back up to school – this time in the camper van – to collect the boys. Back home and my initial euphoria with the return of the internet quickly wore thin when it appeared NOT to have been returned. For a short and critical period of time, I was trying to get the tea ready and work out why the hell the internet was not working again - majoring more, I must admit, on the internet.

Good job then that I’d already started the tea.

This is a fabulous and easy meal and I thoroughly recommend it. It could have gone either way and nearly did when Pink discovered her first wobbly tooth on biting into the sweetcorn “How exciting – a wobbly tooth!” (she’s been desperate for one for months) “But mmmmuuuummmyyyy (sob, sob) it huuurrrrttttss”. However, tooth drama aside, I’m pleased to report success.

The recipe is based on a Good Food one from July 2009 – the original recipe is here, but is adapted significantly to meet the criteria required for Blue’s homework this week to design a healthy but delicious meal. Don't you love it when they spring things like that one you? I think I he did very well. And all 4 of the kids wolfed these burgers down, no questions asked, along with the salad, then fruit and cranberry and white chocolate blondie (watch this space) for pud. All in time for Cubs.

Pork Burgers with herby wedges

Makes 6 decent sized burgers

Ingredients: 750g lean pork mince, 1 large egg, 4 cloves of garlic (3 for the burgers, 1 for the chips), 2 tsp smoked paprika (I just used bog-standard, but you could use hot if you were catering for more sophisticated palates than I was), 1 slice of bread, 6 burger rolls, 4 baking potatoes, fresh rosemary, 1 tablespoon olive oil.

To serve: mayonnaise, ketchup, lettuce, tomatoes, red peppers etc

Method: To make the burgers, put the mince, egg, 3 of the garlic cloves, crushed, the paprika and the bread into a bowl and mash together with a fork. You could make the bread into crumbs first, but if you mash it in to the rest of the ingredients, and then mix it up well, you get the same effect. If you already had bread crumbs, you could use those.

Once everything is well mixed, divide the mixture into 6 and form into burger patties. I made the burgers this morning - It took minutes - and left them covered, in the fridge.

About 45 minutes before you want to eat, heat the oven to 220⁰C, pour half the olive oil onto a baking sheet and put it in the oven. Slice the baking potatoes into wedges, finely chop the rosemary and mix together the potato wedges, chopped rosemary, remaining crushed clove of garlic and the rest of the olive oil. When the oven is at temperature, spread the wedges over the baking sheet, sprinkle with some sea salt if you have some, and return to the oven. I got the potatoes in before I had to go back up to school for the boys.

Check the wedges after about 20 minutes, and turn. They will need about 45 minutes in total.

Turn the grill on to high and when hot, start grilling the burgers. They will need a good 10 mins on each side – check if you’re not sure.

When the burgers are cooked through, serve in the buns dressed to taste (mayo or ketchup – or both, lettuce, sliced tomato) with the wedges on the side. 

check out the size of those leaves...

I made a tomato salad to go with ours to celebrate a particularly fine pot of basil that the Husband has nurtured for me (sliced 6 tomatoes, ripped up a handful of basil leaves, and drizzled over a little balsamic, and a grind of salt and pepper), some sliced red pepper and some corn on the cob that needed eating (not good for wobbly teeth).