Fold in the Flour ...

  One of my all time favourite desserts is Lemon Tart (or Tarte au Citron when I'm feeling posh). So when I was looking for a suitable Nigel Slater recipe for Dish of the Month, and I found Lime Tart amid the January recipes in Kitchen Diaries I, I knew I had found my bake.     Dish of the Month is a new blogging challenge organised by Janice at Farmers Girl Kitchen and Sue at Heaven on a Plate . The aim is to prepare a Nigel Slater recipe every month and share your post via a linky. It's inspired by a love of Nigel's writing and recipes in the Kitchen Diaries II , but you don't need to confine yourself to that particular book. I must admit that while Kitchen Diaries I and II is fairly regular bed time reading for me, I haven't tried many of the recipes. But ever since buying Appetite when it was published, I love how Nigel writes, and when he writes about, for example, the perfect knife, melded into his hand with just the right weight, I get it....

Growing up, one of my family's Christmas traditions was making sausage rolls and mince pies every Christmas Eve. It was really the one and only time I ever saw my mum do any baking, and truth be told, she hated it. My nan was the real baker in our house, but on Christmas Eve my mum would put her foot down and would have her time in the kitchen. In a way, it enhanced her feeling of martyrdom, as she would often be up until the wee small hours, making just one more batch of mince pies. I would have been in bed ages before, trying to sleep but starry-eyed with excitement as this ritual of baking truly marked that it was Christmas Eve, and I knew it would not be long before Santa was on on his way. As I grew older, I was able to join in, and so with two of us in the kitchen, the ritual was completed by a respectable time. You could almost hear my mum's sigh of relief. Gradually, each year, I got to take on more and more of the process. Until eventually, around the age of 1...

Over the years, Mike and the boys have got used to my obsession with cookery and all things related. They don't sigh anymore when they ask what I would like for Christmas/Birthday etc, and simply go to my Amazon wishlist, where I have usually bookmarked books, bakeware or some other thing for later consideration and possibly purchase. This Christmas however, they surprised me with a gift voucher for the cookery school at Eckington Manor. As our kitchen is currently out of action due to building work - and I was suffering baking withdrawal symptoms - it seemed like a good time to use this for the weekend and get away from the general chaos and mess that has descended. Lower End House Accommodation I'd never heard of Eckington Manor before. It's a 260 acre working farm in the Worcestershire countryside, now owned by Judy Gardner, who has also created a fantastic cookery school and luxurious, 5 star B and B accommodation. When I first looked at the details of the cook...