FLOWER POT KITCHEN: EGGS EN COCOTTE WITH HOME CURED HAM AND CREAMY PARMESAN BUTTERED MUSHROOMS

4 Oct 2012

EGGS EN COCOTTE WITH HOME CURED HAM AND CREAMY PARMESAN BUTTERED MUSHROOMS

What a way to wake up and have a effortless but yet sumptuously rich buttery breakfast full of flavour from our girls gorgeous eggs,with our home baked honey ham and butter mushrooms, this is one of those simple small dishes that makes me gratefull for the love of food and family and for our girls (chickens) and for slow weekend mornings that we as a family all get to bunch back in bed and just wake up slowly talking, laughing with each other then running to the kitchen and all making breakfast together

Our ladies, very demanding girls and why not when we offer them the best we can, I love the fact that they have the whole garden and it is not enough for them so we turf their run every other week so that they have the very best of life we can give them, and that is because they give us the very very best and most beautiful and gorgeous eggs to eat and cook with

This is our Amber Bobilina and Brown Bobilina helping with the weeding

This is one of my most prized possessions, my gorgeous son Oscar decorated this fabulous egg holder at paint your own pottery and I love it, I try to keep it on show and almost unused as it is my reminder of how he loves his chickens and his egg suppers

Home honey boiled, baked and basted ham. I brine the ham for approx 20 days stored in the fridge or in winter I make use of the cold out house, then I simmer for 4hrs and then rub in my soft brown sugar, spices depending on the time of the year and lots of honey or molasses and bake and baste for a couple of hours until you are left with a gorgeous moist bake ham, this lasts us usually 3mths

INGREDIENTS
1 egg
100ml double cream
20g Parmesan cheese
2 mushrooms
1 tsp butter
1 tsp ooil
1 pinch grated nutmeg
Few chunks of honey roasted ham
Salt and pepper

Quick and simple to make, pre heat the oven to 180 degrees, then heat the ooil and butter in a pan and fry the mushrooms until soft. Take your ramekin and wipe generously with butter and season with salt and black pepper, place the mushrooms in the bottom and top with some torn ham, crack in your whole egg and then mix the Parmesan cheese with the cream and then pour over covering the egg and dust with the nutmeg. Place in a deep roasting dish 3/4 filled with boiling water and place in the oven for approx 15-20 minutes, serve immediately and enjoy.

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LIFE MY PASSION

Welcome to my daily life of cooking, one winters day many years ago my family and I were all inspired by a back to back rainy day of River Cottage this got us to stop talking about and start actually doing, suddenly three weeks later eight vegetable beds were dug, greenhouse erected and our first vegetables were propagating, this was the start to raising and growing our own food, our fabulous son Oscar changed our path in life which lead us to sell our small thriving restaurant of 10 yrs and to start our new life (Terrifying!) a life of the self sufficient in touch with nature and seasons, taking a step back and looking forward to a slower change of pace and making the most of every moment.

My passion for cooking was stronger than ever and having time at home with Oscar I found I had a new direction and I was no longer striving for perfection, I was suddenly very passionate for the enjoyment of the other side of food, something I had not realised, being the Chef/Cook and every other duty of your own small restaurant made me see that I never actually took time to cook what I wanted!

So there I was muddy boots and hands digging deep in more than one sense and I found myself transported back in time to where everyone grew some of their own food, it is a wonderful world with a real sense of achievement and loss, Slugs Snails and Caterpillars! But thats another story! Childhood memories of summers when I lived with my grand parents reminded me of so much that I had learnt about the make do and mend generation that I had forgotten.

Now as a family we love our free wild food days where we gather what nature has provided, have gone from being mini mini garden urban small holders, who did raised pigs at home because we could not wait to find land and supporting ourselves from our garden to now owning a very small farm that allows us to grow more vegetables for the whole of our family and neighbours, raise our own gorgeous Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, (Sausages!) and pets! Dorset Down sheep, chickens for eggs and pet goats! Suddenly having large quantities of produce started to wake up the Cook in me!

The Cook was awake that part of me that wants to cook for the masses and I found myself setting up Flowerpot Kitchen, a Farmers Market Stall, I wanted to use our honest raised meats and make old fashioned pork pies, rabbit pies and game pies from the local game keeper along with old fashioned techniques and the best hot water crust pastry. This in turn grew to a small cottage industry from home weekly supplying three farm shops and a deli along with also attending three farmers markets A few years later there came a time when my son Oscar's health changed and it was an easy decision to stop.

I still hold the occasional pop up 40 seater restaurant or gourmet lunch which we do for local charities for the love of sharing food and to remind that Cook in me why I love our go slower self sufficient life!

So here I am sitting amoung the vegetables watching the chickens loving that every season nature teaches me something new and that nature is in charge! She has taught me to just go with it and grow. Give it a try from a tray of salad on your windowsill to a few tomato plants it all counts.