Welcome to another tour of my kitchen.  With the temperature dropping and the days becoming shorter there has never been a better time to be in the kitchen, wouldn’t you agree?

My love gave me this lavish book for Mother’s Day.  He was so enthusiastic about the recipes that he gave it to me a week early, bless him.  The Complete Middle Eastern Cookbook is the perfect book for our lifestyle.  There are plenty of lamb
recipes, all of the quantities are on the large side and almost all of the ingredients are available to us.  Already I have trialled several recipes.

This is the start of an experiment with dried limes or loomi from the book mentioned above.  These have taken some time to actually dry and when I have had residual heat in the wood oven I have put them inside it, sometimes overnight.  Does anyone have any experience with dried limes?

Eating sausages feels so much better when you know exactly what has gone into them.  Here the home butcher is skilfully tying off a string of homemade lamb sausages.  We kept this batch very plain which means the whole family can enjoy them and everyone can add their favourite condiments as they wish.

 

My young kitchen assistant recently helped me to bottle the remainder of our olive crop.  I had to smile at her unique, personalised labelling system.

A full trailer load of oranges equals a lot of orange juice and orange cake.  Nearby orchards have been giving away imperfect oranges that the major supermarkets will not accept.  I could probably write a whole blog about the average consumer being obsessed with perfect fruit or are the supermarkets obsessed?   I am not sure.  Anyway, after some oranges were shared among friends I made these delicious cakes using Sophie’s recipe.   The rest of the oranges were greatly appreciated by our sheep and cattle as supplementary feed.

This was my first attempt at wood fired sourdough focaccia using Celia’s recipe.  This bread contains a generous amount of olive oil and with plenty of our own oil on hand I know this is going to become a regular feature throughout the winter.

 

Please call into to Celia’s blog and take a tour of interesting kitchens all around the world.

I hope you are staying warm and baking or creating.  Lately at our place we simply cannot stop cooking!