Treat your Mothering
Finely dice the carrot, celery, shallot and garlic, mix all together in a bowl. Finely chop all the herbs and mix together in separate bowl.
When ready to serve, in a small pan crush a few of the potatoes with a fork, add a small knob of butter and a generous pinch of the herbs, gently heat through.
In another small pan with a little oil, sweat off a large spoonful of the diced vegetables for one minute, then add the vegetable stock, bring to the boil then simmer for a minute, add the peas and beans and keep warm while you cook the fish.
In a non-stick pan, heat a little oil then add the seasoned fish, skin-side down, and, depending on size, cook for around two minutes on the skin, then add a knob of butter to the pan, let the butter foam then flip the fish and turn down the heat to let it cook all the way through.
Add a good pinch of the chopped herbs to the broth and stir in.
Place a small pile of the potatoes into the middle of a bowl, spoon the broth around the edge, then place the fish on top of the potatoes and garnish with the pea shoots.
MothErINg Sunday falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent and, this year, that means March 27. originally the fourth Sunday in Lent was the day people returned to their “mother church” for a special service. In the Western Christian liturgical calendar, this Sunday was seen as a day of celebration within the austere period of Lent.
In roman Catholicism, it’s known as Laetare Sunday and the Church’s sacred ministers traditionally wore pink.
The fourth Sunday in Lent consequently became something of a holiday, with domestic servants being given the day off, so that they could also visit their families. over the years it evolved to become more specifically connected to visiting mum and the tradition of bringing gifts – often of freshly-picked early wildflowers – took root.
Incidentally, simnel cakes were also traditionally baked for the fourth Sunday in Lent – although we now think of the simnel cake as an exclusively Easter offering. This light fruitcake would have made a welcome break from the sober reflective 40-day period of Lent and the self-denial associated with it.
Nowadays, we have yet another take on Mothering Sunday – it’s one of the few days in the year when mum can be looked after rather than vice versa. restaurants, pubs and cafes will be crammed to capacity with people taking their mothers out for a celebratory lunch.
If you would prefer to avoid the crowds – why not cook her a scrumptious feast at home?
PeaCh Melba CheeseCake
From Angela Gray’s Summer Recipes (published by Graffeg, pictures by Huw Jones)
Ingredients
200g amaretti biscuits, crushed
75g unsalted butter, melted
125g caster sugar, plus extra 2 tablespoons 650g ricotta
1 tablespoon cornflour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 medium free-range eggs, separated 150ml sour cream
4 large peaches, halved, stones removed 2 tablespoons soft brown sugar 2 tablespoons peach schnapps 200g raspberries
200ml raspberry sauce
100g redcurrants
Fresh mint sprigs
Method
Preheat the oven to 200°C/Fan 180°C/Gas 6. First, prepare the peaches – place in a roasting tin lined with parchment paper. Sprinkle over the soft brown sugar, drizzle with the peach schnapps and roast for 20-30 minutes. The peaches should be soft and there should be juices, pour the juice over the raspberries and leave to cool.
Next, make the cheesecake – grease and line the base of a 23cm spring form cake tin. Crush the biscuits in a food processor, then add the butter and the extra two tablespoons of caster sugar and mix to combine. Press into prepared pan.
Beat together the ricotta, 125g of the caster sugar, the cornflour, vanilla, egg yolks and sour cream. Pour over the base and bake for 50-60 minutes at 180°C/ Fan 160°C/Gas 4 until pale golden and just set. Leave to cool completely and then chill for a couple of hours.
To assemble, put the cake onto a serving plate. Arrange the peaches on top, spoon over the raspberries, drizzle with the juices, raspberry sauce and garnish with redcurrants and mint.
Raspberry sauce
150g fresh or frozen raspberries and one tablespoon of caster sugar boiled together for five minutes and passed through a sieve to form a smooth, seedless sauce.
get people emotionally invested in his journey, it also made David accountable to himself.
“I often joke that I was always quite an inherently lazy person. However, I’m also really stubborn. So I was able to leverage my stubbornness over any laziness and part of that was making it tangible by telling the world I was going to open a tea room.
“My plan was to open a little place somewhere like Wellfield Road, not 110 covers in Bute Park that was open seven days a week. I had five days a week in mind, but it became much bigger.”
Located in Bute Park’s Victorian West Lodge, a building which was originally used to accommodate Cardiff Castle’s employees, Pettigrew Tea Rooms opened its doors in March 2012. It has become a Cardiff institution known for its excellent homemade cakes and afternoon teas.
“The biggest shock was that it was busy and popular. And then it was kind of relentless because it was seven days a week, managing every aspect of the business.
“That was quite an amazing journey to go on. It felt great.”
It was the success of the tea room that spurred David on to open his next business venture, Pettigrew Bakeries.
“Very early on in the tea rooms we had ambitions to bake more. I always wanted to make our own rolls or cobs to serve with soup and the logistics of the West Lodge meant that was impossible.
“What we already do in that tiny building is massively beyond the realms of what most people would do in such a small space. That and the fact that we couldn’t source any bread locally from a wholesale point of view.
“So all of those things were kind of whirring around in my mind, wanting to do something different.”
Opening the bakery was to prove even more of a challenge for David than the tea rooms: “The tea rooms gave me the confidence, probably in retrospect quite a lot of overconfidence, that I