Main recipes for cooking fresh farm produce

After all the hard work of growing your own vegetables and producing your own meats you get to reap the rewards at the dinner table but it can all be a bit overwhelming!

For example if you have just brought in your first vegetable harvest you may be in need of a few hints likewise, if you have just had your first pig back from the butchers you may need a few suggestions as to what to do with all that meat.

Whether you choose to sell some, eat some, cure some or freeze some here are a few things we like to do.

Cooking is without a doubt one of my favourite pastimes and nothing gives me a bigger buzz than cooking from home. A slap up meal for friends and family from home grown, organic produce from right here at the farm is second to none.

Anyone who has raised there own animals or grown their on vegetables will tell you the same thing; they feel better, they look and smell better and they certainly taste better than any of the ingredients you can buy.

Nothing gives me more satisfaction than cooking a dish made entirely from the food we have produced here at loose farm, whether it is a chicken which we have raised, stuffed with our own pork meat stuffing and served with roast potatoes and vegetables from the garden or a freshly hung prosciutto and tomato salad there really is no feeling like it.

Everyone has their own styles of cooking and we are all influenced by different things around us, places we have been and meals we have eaten. Perhaps the biggest influence to how one cooks is who they  learnt from. I like thousands of others learnt to cook from my mother Jeannie.

My mother gave me the grounding every young cook needs to produce good food. She taught me to always use quality ingredients (home grown where possible,) to take care and time to prepare and not to rush, to respect your ingredients and get the most out of them, not to cut corners and most importantly of all how to enjoy cooking. From this knowledge I have put together a collection on my favourite fresh farm easy recipes.

Curing meat has been a much more recent revelation and one I have my dad Tony to thank for, a lover of the continental life style and all things sausage related he has been the one to really open up a new avenue for us where home meat production is concerned.

Already a master of producing fresh sausages he started to produce his own prosciutto, pancetta and salami. With no past experience and a bit of endeavour he has shown us that the results if not instantaneous are incredibly rewarding indeed.

All of the recipes and methods we have put together are genuine recipes from loose farm, some are mine, some are Jeannie’s and some are Tony’s. They are all recipes that incorporate the foods we produce, and epitomise the idea behind the good life online which is to inspire others to start producing their own organic delicious food.