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Spring Time Chicken and Mint Salad

by | Sep 28, 2020 | Elle Armon-Jones, recipes, Vegetable Garden, Vineyard Cottges

Orange Sour Cream Cake

Chicken and Mint Salad

 

I’ve got a garden full of mint which for some people is a curse, but for us, it is definitely a blessing. I love fresh mint tea, we use mint in all our water bottles for events, mint syrups, mint in hot chocolate, mint in cooking, you name it, if I can use it, I do. There is also always a roast chicken cooked in the house once a week. When there are a number of mouths to feed around the table and sandwiches that need filling, cooked chicken is quick and easy. Nothing gets wasted. The bones are made into stock with any vegetable peelings and the animals get all the stock scraps once it is cooked. In fact I think Archie’s favourite thing in the world is a carrot from the stock pot! This is a great throw together salad where you can add and take away any flavours you want apart from the mint and chicken. If you have tahini in the fridge it’s the perfect dressing.

 Ingredients.

    • 200g Roast chicken
    • 1/2 cup washed mint finally chopped
    • 1/2 cup chopped parsley
    • 1 cup chopped cucumber
    • 1 cup shredded lettuce
    • 2 raddishes finely sliced
    • 1 spring onion finely chopped
    • handful toasted nuts or seeds – I love toasted hazlenuts and pumpkin seeds. 

Wash all the fresh salad ingredients, dry and add to your salad bowl. Top with the chicken and toasted nuts and seeds. Mix with Tahini dressing.

If you want to go one step further with this add it to a pita pocket as an easy chicken salad lunch. 

Tahini dressing is one of these really easy sauces you can add onto anything. There are varying ways of making a tahini sauce but mine is simply

  • 1–2 garlic cloves
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 3/4 cup tahini past
  • 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lime or lemon juice
  • 1/4 cup cold water, more if needed
  • 1 cup fresh chopped parsley leaves

Blitz it all together in a blender or pestle and mortar. Will keep for up to 5 days in the fridge. 

 

Orange Sour Cream Cake

Orange Sour Cream Cake

by | Jul 7, 2020 | Elle Armon-Jones, Local Producers, recipes, Vineyard Cottges

Orange Sour Cream Cake

Orange Sour Cream Cake

 

With theglut of oranges we have at VC during the winter, finding the right recipes and not just making marmalade is vital. Our oranges are wonderfully sour, so perfect for desserts, juice and marinades. The dehydrator is full of finely sliced fruit which has crisped up and is a delicious snack or addition to a dish. This sour cream cake is dense and decadent. We added some rosemary flowers for additional aroma.

Of course you could try this with lemons, lime and grapefruit too. Finish off with a great dollop of yoghurt for a pud or afternoon tea. 

 

Ingredients.

  • 125g softened butter
  • 2tsp grated orange rind
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 3 eggs
  • 1 cup standard flour (or substitute gluten free plain flour)
  • 1tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 cup sour cream
  • sugar for the tin
  • grease for the tin

    Preheat the oven to 160 C.

    Throughly grease the tin. We used a bundt tin sprayed with bake oil and sprinkled with sugar. 

    Beat the butter, rinds, sugar and eggs together until light and fluffy. 

    Sift together the flour and baking powder and fold into the egg mix, alternating with the sour cream.

    Make sure it is mixed together evenly all the way through but be delicate.

    Pour into the tin

    Bake for 45 mins or until the cake springs back when lightly touched. 

    Leave to cool for at least 10 mins before turning onto a rack. 

    Lock Down at Vineyard Cottages

    Lock Down at Vineyard Cottages

    by | Apr 1, 2020 | Elle Armon-Jones, recipes, Uncategorized, Vineyard Cottges

    If anyone had said to me on Jan 1st this year that New Zealand would be on lock down by 26th March, I would have laughed and then maybe thought very differently about buying a minibus for our tour company.

    I’ll be the first to admit I have struggled massively with the enormous change of life that has happened over the past two months. The Big Foody Food Tours started to see it towards the end of February when guests started cancelling their tours but there was no way to realise by the beginning of March every single tour would be cancelled until October. After seven days of feeling increasingly sorry for myself (I celebrated my 40th with a glass of champagne and went to bed early in a right old huff) it was time to pull the big girl pants on and look to the future.

    It’s hard to feel claustrophobic when we’re surrounded by glorious settings as we are here at VC. It’s a bit weird having the gate closed and suppliers beeping to get into the driveway. Our lovely postie Keith has taken to driving up the lane and depositing boxes over the fence knowing the dogs will bark to let me know he’s here

    We’re trying to make the best of the situation getting the jobs done that we would normally do over the winter and keeping everyone who is here upbeat. There are 7 of us here at the moment. Team France is wood chopping, cottage sanding, wood shed building and generally being brilliant. Team USA and I are doing marketing and social media planning all while gazing into a very cloudy crystal ball. Team UK (aka my parents – now here for the foreseeable future while the UK is in shut down) have appointed themselves head gardener and chief dead-header and are keeping themselves well and truely occupied.

    The nets came off the vines last week and the birds and bees are just loving all the sweet grapes. Autumn leaves are brightening the place up, filling it with rustic colours and without all the road noise the birdsong is just delightful. A couple of cottages have had their fires on already. We don’t usually say yes until May, but it’s all about comfort at the moment and I’ve put mine on in the office.

    I’ve got time to bake, which I never usually do, so there won’t be any weight loss as we’re about to start testing some new cookie recipes for the cottages – pumpkin spiced oat and apple cookies anyone? In amongst our marketing Brittany is on cocktail duty creating some refreshing and warming beverages to see us through the autumn months. We’ll of course be posting the recipes after thorough research! ‘hic’

    Stay well, stay safe and we look forward to seeing you soon

    Elle

    Getting in the Spring of it

    Getting in the Spring of it

    by | Oct 12, 2019 | Elle Armon-Jones, Planting, Vegetable Garden, Vineyard Cottges, Wellness

    It’s been a lovely spring so far. The blossoms are absolutely magnificent and the grounds have burst back into life in all different shades of bright green. I was away on food tours around the country for most of last week and when I came back there were leaves on all the grape vines and the maples have burst back into life. 

    Of course there are aways a few little jobs you look at and think “Damn, should have pruned that over winter!” but all in all we’re looking forward to a pumper crop of everything this year! The weekend weather has bee very kind to us and our German and American teams have been busy in the garden. The compost turned from useful to inhabited over winter. Endless weedy climbers took hold and the team ripped them all away this morning to find some gorgeous rich fertile soils to use underneath. We’re planting out the little vegetable garden. For a small space, it feeds us and the cottages well throughout the summer and autumn. I’m a huge companion and square foot gardener. If there is something growing down, we’ll have something growing up as well. Years ago, some food tour guests introduced this method to me. They were from Canada where the seasons were brutal and short and there little 3x3m garden was packed full of all kinds of vegetables. It was one of those Big Foody tours where I probably learnt more on the day than they did and I’ll be forever grateful they introduced me to this concentrated gardening method.

    Today we’re prepping all the beds, digging in the compost, ash, coffee grinds and worm farm juice. Then we’ll pack the beds with veggies growing down and finish off with the veggies growing up. For example radishes grow down and peas grow up, so we’ll plant the radishes beneath the peas usually with some lettuces in there for good measure too. This works well with really good nourishing soil which we are so lucky to have in this area. The comfrey leaves are about to be wilted, chopped and dug deep into the soil beneath the tomatoes. The potassium in the herb is great for the big feeders like tomatoes. 

    With a house full during the summer we eat lots of salad so making sure we have great lettuces, rocket, kale, radishes and herbs is vital We plant a dozen lettuce to begin and add more and more every month as we get busier. I love the radish leaves with french dressing so there are always lots of those! 

    The dogs are never happier than when they are with people in the garden and in Nora’s case, helping digging holes!

    Come and stay soon!

    Elle