I was thinking how nice it would be if we swapped recipes so has anyone got a good recipe they would like to share? Maybe you have a recipe your mother or grandmother used and you would like to share it? Please do. I love cooking and I'm always looking for something new to cook for lunch or dinner.

Tomorrow I'll post my recipe for Turkish Lamb that I learned to cook when I worked for a Turkish family many years ago. And I'll let you know what I serve it with.

doreen said:

One of my favourite dishes is Curried Cashew Nuts given to me from a Sri Lanka visitor.

The curry of course made, and not bought,  nuts well cooked, and served with rice.

My problem is that I have never cooked in England and don't know the names of ingredients in English.

That recipe sounds lovely. I like a good curry. I'm still writing out the Turkish lamb recipe. I didn't realise it would be so difficult explaining how to prepare and cook it. I'm just so used to doing it automatically

Try it ?????

I could eat the glass dish empty…or did Gerald do that.???

When we were at our local farm shop on Saturday they had gooseberries for sale. I decided to get some and make a pie or something. I made a gooseberry crumble. It was delish.

I used Jamie Oliver's crumble mix and I have to say it was the best crumble I've ever made. You were meant to make it in a electric mixer but my mixer is packed so I had to do it the old fashion way by hand. I stewed the gooseberries (a pound in weight) in 3 tablespoons of sugar and a little fresh orange juice. You can add as much sugar as you need. The crumble mix – 100g (3.5oz) soft brown sugar, 100g (3.5oz) plain flour, 100g (3.5oz) cold butter, 100g (3.5oz) oats. I put the sugar, flour and butter in a dish and rubbed together with my fingers until the mix looked like fine breadcrumbs and then I added the oats and rubbed them in. I sprinkled the crumble over the gooseberries and baked for about 40 minutes until the crumble was golden. I put the oven on 180c. I saved half the mix and made another crumble the next day. And I made a blueberry crumble which my husband absolutely loved. Now he says he needs to go on a diet because he's put on too much weight!

Your reference to lamb as opposed to mutton brings to mind when I was shepherding in 1968-70. Our boss always said 'if we can't eat the best- no one should!' We killed our own of course, but occasionally we would get lamb from the works rejected for export. It would usually be something cosmetic but if it didn't look pretty it wasn't exported, so we had the option of eating “rejects”. Nobody was ever very keen and usually they went to a 'townie' friend.  Our preferred option was always a “two tooth”. Lamb =first year; Hogget=second year then Two tooth. They tasted better, not so mild as lamb but not tough either. I was the junior when I first arrived at St Lawrence Station , so part of my job was killing for table but also for 'dog tucker'. I worked out once that I must have killed over 300 sheep and every one got a verse from 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran.

By the same power that slays you, I too, am slain; and I too shall be consumed.

For the law that delivered you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.

Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven.

Oddly enough, years later, when we had the last property, when we had a sheep to be killed, an 'on farm kill' butcher did the job and processed the patties and sausages better than I could have done. A Maori guy came out to us with a ute and trailer to do the job. I noticed one day that before he killed there was a small hesitation and he murmured something in Maori to the sheep. I asked him what he said and he told me somewhat 'sheepishly'. It was almost the same as Kahlil's verse.

If I was asked to put down an animal, I too would pray: that my aim was true and I didn't miss.

On a farm environment it is usual for sheep to be culled with a knife, and that was something I simply couldn't do, I always used my .22 rifle. I'm afraid I would never have made a very good shepherd, too soft hearted by far.

When we first arrived in NZ, when I was 13, the navy put us in a hotel for a couple of weeks until dad had organised a house for us to rent. On the dinner menu was “Colonial Goose” and “Hogget”.  We thought, of course, that goose was goose and the other was pork. Nope! Both were methods of treating mutton, except that 'hogget' is the name for sheep the year after lamb.