A wintery blast!

Wow, what a cold, cold week we’ve had, I barely poked my nose out the door, so there was plenty of creative time in the kitchen to keep warm…

This week’s big hits were Duck and Quince Pies and Cream of Celeriac and Parsnip Soup…

The Duck and Quince Pies were made from leftover meat from the duck necks I’d been working with. Can you believe that from six duck necks, I used the skin as the casing for pork, garlic and red wine sausages, duck stock and duck ravioli as well as these delicious pies, not bad, hey!!!?

In the pantry I have jars of deep burgundy coloured quinces that I’d preserved and thought they would go amazingly with the duck. So got to it, making sure that I made note of everything I used and how much of each. The end result was amazing, we got two good sized individual pies together with quite a few cocktail sized pies which always come in handy, either as a canapé, or an addition to some duck dish, just to add a little interest, flavour and/or texture.

Then there was soup and sweet night… Don’t you love that. Nice warm soup and then later as we sat in front of the roaring open fire, delicious sweet treats for dessert. I had purchased a lovely celeriac to make a mash from, but with the weather so bleak and cold, we needed soup. I had plenty of parsnips in the fridge, so this soup, topped with parsnip crisps was perfect. I absolutely love parsnip crisps, so made sure I made extra as a cook’s treat.

Cream of Celeriac and Parsnip Soup…

As for the sweet treats,

Who could beat Chocolate Fondant!

With the weather on the improve, I finally got back into The Corner Patch and did a stocktake of what needs to be planted – there’s a lot of work to be done!!

And then escaped to the flower garden where I discovered a little bit of sunshine.