Confit Duck Potato Cakes

Now that summer has slipped through our fingers it’s time to line up a few comforting autumnal recipes. These confit duck potato cakes can be made small enough to serve as a starter or big enough to enjoy as a main course.

I wanted to eat them with my plum and ginger chutney so the spicing is Chinese-influenced, but frankly you could make them plainer and slap a fried egg on top and they’d still be good. Continue reading

Blackberry Spice Cake

It’s that time of year when all the early autumn fruit is ripening, a sort of bonus gift from nature to apologise for the end of summer and the imminence of winter. I’ve been pickling and preserving like my life depended on it, which historically would probably have been all too true.

Happily most of us no longer have to endure a subsistence lifestyle but while the blackberries are fat and juicy, you might like to do a bit of foraging and make this fruity, gently spiced cake. Continue reading

Medlar Tart

“Take medlars that are rotten, strain them, and set them on a chaffing dish of coals, season them with sugar, cinamon, and ginger, put some yolks of eggs to them, let it boil a little, and lay it in a cut tart. Being baked, scrape on sugar.” The Accomplisht Cook, Robert May, 1660/1665.  Continue reading

Suffolk Pork Chops with Apple Juice

Image of pigs looking through a gate

Marinaded on the trotter – the pigs beg for apples

Him Outdoors remarked the other day that the tagline on this blog is “A Suffolk Aga Saga” and maybe I should be reflecting that a bit more in my recipes.

So this dish is made with hand-reared Suffolk pork from our friends Karon and Simon and Chatburn Farm apple juice made by another friend, Jamie. Thanks chaps. Let’s have a rousing cheer for all small-scale local producers. Continue reading