Happy New Year to all my customers, I hope you have had a wonderful few weeks of celebrating with friends and family. Now all the decorations have been taken down and cleared away, it is time for me to start planning some Springtime events and possible Summer and Autumn events too! – yes this early in the year, I have to be quick as they tend to fill up quickly.

With some colder weather forecast this month, my menu for the market will turn to comfort meals and desserts. Just like me, I know the last thing I need at the moment is a rich chocolatey creamy cake or choux pastry. After the Christmas season I do still crave a sweet treat now and again, however, I tend to go for something a little simpler and something I can reheat and serve it alongside some custard or have with my coffee in the afternoon. Biscuits are always in our tin at home and I still have flødebollers in the freezer, ready to have as a pick me up during the day or after dinner.

Let’s talk about comfort meals…

During the pandemic I started to sell comfort meals to go on my market stall in Haverfordwest. They went down very well with customers there so I have decided to bring them back, yay! These meals will be available to eat hot on the stall or through a comfort meal week menu for ordering and delivering. More information on weekly comfort meals coming soon..

Comfort meal ideas…

First up is a Norwegian soup which I have reworded as “The North’s orange and apple” soup. The North’s orange refers to the humble swede or rutabaga, they are grown in abundance in Scandinavia and contain a high amount of vitamin C, hence the name. This soup is smooth and creamy with a hint of sourness from the apples. The swede creates a wonderful colour and I top each portion with roughly chopped spiced almonds, pumpkin seeds and caramelised apple slices to add some texture. If reheating it up at home you could also add sauteed mushrooms or cured meats to add another level of flavour.

Next, is another soup inspired from an old housewife recipe from the 17th Century, Norway, traditionally called “hønsekjøttsuppe med boller” (hen soup with balls). The soup is traditionally made using a stewing hen which are hens that are no longer laying eggs as their meat has a richer flavour due to their size and age. My adaption however, is called “The hen of the woods soup with dumplings” and uses one of my favourite ingredients, the mushroom. This humble ingredient can create such a deep earthy flavour to stocks, sauces and soups when used correctly. I will be using a mixture of dried mushrooms for the base of the soup, along with beetroots, leeks, caramelised garlic and red onions. These are slowly roasted in the oven to extract as much flavour from them as I can, before combining them all together in my trusty old stock pot to create the broth for this dish. This earthy broth is then finished with a good helping of sautéed maitake mushrooms, or commonly known as Hen of the Woods, in brown butter and capers to round the soup off nicely. This soup is traditionally served with some herby dumplings that are cooked in the broth until pillowy soft.

If you are a lover of cauliflower (like me) then this one is for you. Based on the Swedish dish Jansson’s Temptation that consists of potato, cream and anchovies. My version replaces the potato with the cauliflower which is cooked in three different ways, all layered with a dairy free creamy mustard sauce and scattered with punchy caper berries (adding in the saltiness you would get from the anchovies) and topped with a rye sourdough crumble. Delicious on it’s own or pair it with some buttered greens or a vibrant pickled beetroot salad to make it more of a meal.

Well I hope these dishes have sparked an interest in my new comfort meals. I am looking forward to cooking them and seeing how they go down this time. Rocky Bees will be back at the Lampeter Saturday market at the end of January with one or two of my comfort dishes along with some sweet treats too, see you there!