Foodie Round-up: Seasonal Food For Winter

You might think Mother Nature would be in the process of shutting up shop at the moment, but even in the depths of winter she is busy churning out Seasonal goodness to fill both your plates and your bellies.  Here are some blogs that make good use of all the amazing ingredients that are at their very best right now.

Apples are up first, and they just happen to be great for conjuring up lots of winter warmers.  I love Broccoli and Rice Cake’s unconventional use of rose hips in their Baked Apple with Rose Hips and Pecans, and Hertfordshire Mummy has a really lovely Slow Cooked Apples with Gingerbread Crumble just waiting to be made…

Moving away from Apples, and giving Cranberries a dressed rehearsal before Thanksgiving and Christmas, The English Kitchen pimps the usual Bread and Butter pudd, and has come up with a gorgeous looking Cranberry and White Chocolate Waffle version.

Another dessert, but this time making good use of one of the best flavour combinations ever – Pig in the Kitchen’s Pear and Ginger Upside Down Cake… This is also lactose, egg and gluten free.

Beetroot – is a bit of an underrated veg, but it’s perfect roasted with sea salt.  If you fancy doing something a little different with it however, how about Feeling Food’s Chocolate and Beetroot Cake?    But if you must stick to the traditional, then The View From the Table features a hearty Borscht, which sounds good, and is the most amazing colour…

Also making great use of seasonal root veg is Tickle My Senses – a really interesting blog with its roots in Indian Cookery. I don’t think I have ever craved Oven Roasted Swede before reading this…

Soup’s not only good for the soul, but what better way to central heat yourself on a cold day?  I think Celeriac was possibly created for soup purposes, and Food Wanderings features a prime example with a Potato, Cauliflower and Celeriac version.

Next up in the seasonal charts – Chestnuts! Life on La Lune has a bit of a Chestnut Master Class on her blog, and I particularly like the Gâteau à la Châtaigne, which the author thinks might be a little too heavy to serve after dinner… If it were up to me – that would be the dinner!

I also spy a couple of Hazlenut cakey things on my horizon, thanks to Life at the Zoo’s gorgeous looking Chocolate Hazlenut Torte, and Recipe Junkie’s Rum and Hazelnut Brownies!

Next up is a seasonal veg packed to the brim with vitamin C – Kellies Food to Glow gives Kale pride of place with a Kale and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Pistaschio, and Tinned Tomatoes has a mouthwatering Kale and Cheddar Bubble and Squeak… Perhaps you could stick one of James Ramsden’s Truffled Eggs on the top -British truffles are also first class right now.

One of the nicest dishes I have had so far this year was a butternut squash cannelloni, and thankfully Plus 2 Point 4 has a great Slow Cooker Parsnip and Butternut squash version so I can make it to my hearts content. Speaking of gourds, unsurprisingly there have been lots of great recipes recently, and two of my favourites happen to come from the very same blog – How to Cook Good Food – with a Thai Inspired Squash, Noodle and Spinach Soup and a Spiced Pumpkin, Rum and Chocolate Chip Loaf…

Lavendar and Lovage kills two seasonal birds with one stone, with a beautiful sounding Aromatic Beef and Quince Tagine with Pomegrante…

Seafood next – with British Mussels at their finest right now, Cooking with Jasmine (a great blog from my old neck of the woods) shows us how to make one of the best Mussel dishes ever - Moules Frites…    The Moving Foodie Blog has a variation on the usual pan fried Scallop dishes – Scallops with Smoked Sausage, Fennel and Mustard Cream Sauce…   And My Little Expat Kitchen has the perfect recipe for delicatePanfried Seabass Fillets with Vanilla Butter…

It’s the best time of year for Game too obviously, and Farmer’s Girl has a hearty looking Venison in Ciderrecipe.   Wild Duck is also at it’s prime, and the intriguingly named The Grubworm dishes up a lovely sounding Roast Mallard with Pancetta and Peaches.

And that’s your lot for this month!  I hope you’ve found a little seasonal inspiration in the brilliant food blogs featured. Next month (as you might expect) will be about everything Christmas… Come on, show us how it’s done in your kitchen!

About Emma Raphael

Emma Raphael left the UK for Copenhagen in 2009, with her ever-patient husband and two small children. Having enjoyed a couple of years in Scandinavia, Emma and her family found they enjoyed Expat life so much that they now reside in Munich – where the pace of life is relaxed, her language skills are small, and the mountains and bier halls are very large. Being one half of a self-proclaimed foodie couple, Emma enjoys the new produce and restaurants in each new country she resides in, and has made it her mission to convince people that English food no longer deserves the bad rap it once had. She can be found in the kitchen when she’s feeling homesick, trying to recreate comfort food from home. She also has huge passions for travel, photography, art, wine, gardening (although according to her Bavarian neighbours, she’s not much good at that!) and her family (of course)!

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