In the kitchen with Aarod

Day 247 The Hunt for Butter

For a couple of weeks we have had no butter, as the Paris Creek dairy has run out, and I have tried all of the local supermarkets. I was excited to find another butter from the Fleurieu, and goats milk haloumi, and yoghurt; at Goodies and Grains at the central market.  Hindmarsh Valley dairy in Victor Harbor as far as I know, is the only other brand of local butter available (apart from Paris Creek) all other commercially available butter comes from interstate!

Teenager in the kitchen

 

Aarod 

 cooking onions - he is home from school for the day and is still complaining of "boring lunches and no food in the house" He tries to persuade me to buy him something from the Willunga bakery while I am there. So I bring him home some mince and chopped steak from the butcher, and teach him how to cook pies and pasties. It is a miserable wintery, overcast, windy, day, we spend the whole afternoon with the oven on, in the kitchen, creating. He actually enjoys himself, we keep the house warm, and use up all of the butter!

Aarod's almond biscuits

Pies and Cornish pasties

Cutting out my pastry

Cornish Pasty filling - Farmer's Market root vegetables, celery from my garden, mince from Willunga butcher.

cornish pasties into the oven

Meat pies with potato mash topping

and grated Paris Creek cheese ontop

pies and pasties cooling

more pies ready to be filled

 home made lemon curd

My sister Lisa and Aarod's friend Lilly, provided us with lots of  lovely lemons, so we set about making everything we could think of, made from lemons. Here my trusty Farm House Cook Book came in very handy.

The rest of the lemon curd, made with 5 eggs, 225g of butter, 450g of honey, juice and lemon zest of 4 lemons. Warm in a bowl, over boiling water then add eggs and gently cook stirring until the mixture thickens. then jar up into hot jars.

juicing lemons - much easier in the juicer attachment of my pood processor.

frozen lemons - the recipie suggested freezing the lemons overnight to soften the skins.

lemons and salt, the lemons need to be packed in tight, with no air gaps, covered with salt and lemon juice. I put them into jars heated in the oven, they should keep this way for a few months, and longer in the fridge.

preserved lemons

lemonade with the left-over lemon juice I did not have all of the ingredients (Tartaric acid or citric acid) so I just added honey (instead of sugar)  lemon zest, hot water, and poured it into hot bottles.

Capping the beer bottle with this great bottle capper that I picked up at the Willunga Lions Auction last week.

Lemonade -actually more like lemon cordial. Note when heating up the bottles - don't do what I did - I did not think that the cap on the larger bottle was plastic! I melted it in the oven.

 

melted plastic cap - what is left of it! - just as well i had a few spare bottles, and I could remove the cap to replace it.

 

plastic on bottom of oven....oops! - luckily it came off easily...phew!

A well earned lunch! Including home made sauce and greens from the Farmer's Market.