As Strong As Soup

The cuisine of Picardy is not the best-known or trendiest style of French cooking but I don’t care. I like it anyway. The dishes tend to be straightforward, made with familiar ingredients and are full of strong, comforting flavours. Admittedly, some of them can also be pretty rich and a stranger to the notion of portion control. Caghuse is one of the more restrained Picardy recipes. It’s often served cold in Picardy but, while there’s nothing wrong with that,  I think it’s nicest served hot on a cold day. There are different ways of spelling the name of this dish and there are many different ways to make it too. Essentially it’s a one pot dish of slow-cooked pork with onions and vinegar but there are plenty of possible variations along the way. I use chicken stock and cider but beef stock and beer can be used instead. You could also add some herbs to the dish, if you fancy – sage and thyme work well. Strictly speaking, the pork should be cut from the leg and should be on the bone...

It's probably just another one of my odd ideas, but gingerbread always seems to be the perfect thing to take on a country walk, especially in the autumn or winter. For some reason, though, it's something that I rarely bake. On this occasion I had no choice since it's the recipe that came up as my random selection for this month’s Random Recipe challenge hosted by Dom over at Belleau Kitchen . The book that I randomly selected this month is ‘Leith’s Book of Baking’ by Prue Leith and Caroline Waldegrave published back in the 1990s. I don’t think this book is in print any longer, but it consists of recipes taken from the Leith’s Cookery Bible, which is still available. I've rarely used this book, but I now realise that there’s no good reason for that. This turned out to be a lovely, moist gingerbread with the blackness coming from a healthy dose of treacle. You can find the recipe  here . The original recipe calls for 1½ hours baking time uncovered followed by 1 hour ...