Dear Nigel,
Autumn is here, thick and heavy, alternating between those bright and sunny windswept days when the changing leaves glow, and dark, wet and muddy days when venturing out is done under protest. I am waiting for my log store to arrive so i can lay in supplies for the winter. The dark days make us like squirrels tucking things away in the freezer, making jam for buttered crumpets in front of the tele and bottling the last of the summer.
The produce at the Harvest auction showed likewise. There were plenty of jars of homemade lemon curd and pickled onions, jams and chutneys. You could almost picture which villager brought which item. There was a whole swathe of gladioli in vibrant shades, and two onions and a sweetcorn which was slightly less funny when the second one appeared, although one raucous laugh from the back obviously didn't think so.
It was bring-your-own-drinks and a choice of pud. The Pie itself was first class, which rather suprised me, although maybe it shouldn't. Maybe we have all got used to eating and expecting better quality food these days, from pubs, restaurants (naturally), school dinners, hospitals and even village hall get-togethers. The event was a sell-out and a good mix of young and old. It was good to feel part of a community and made welcome.
And then the bidding started in earnest. The vicar (who Dawn French must surely have based her character on in 'The Vicar of Dibley') seemed to be bidding against herself in an urge to up the proceedings, and the profits. Sophie had great fun bidding wildly for a packet of chocolate fingers, which ended up costing me about £6 for the privilege.
Red is everywhere,quickening the heart. The Robin is back perched high on Archie. There are Rose hips in the hedgerows and deep pink sedum blossoms covered in the last bumblebees of summer; and the giant heads of fading hydrangeas, like ladies in swimming hats, nodding over the paths. I buy chilli plants for the house and a bowl of tiny kir-like damsons to make into compote. The shops are full of fresh Turkish figs and pomegranates to pick at and sprinkle on puddings.(I'm never quite happy with that word 'desert' - pudding sounds just so much better, like something you're going to eat rather than just look at on a trolley.)
You make a Courgette and Lancashire cheese crumble and apologise for its 70's nut-cutlet image. But don't. I make a similar Cauliflower crumble that i love (but have been banned for making it by the kids since leaving Cornwall, where i bought cauliflowers from little tables at field edges for 20p each, and it became our weekly frugal staple).Your crumble is fragrant with flecks of chopped Rosemary and walnut pieces. The toasting of the cheese in the crumble mixture on top is what gives it its satisfying and moreish qualities.
'There is a chill to the house and sweaters all round. Supper is risotto, the first of the season.' If ever there were a single comfort food to welcome you home on a cold, dark night, it is a well-made risotto.You make yours simply today with just onion, rice, stock and Gorgonzola. I realise the dark is so intense here, the light-pollution so completely absent, that unless i remember to put on the house light i am left fumbling my way in the dark with a torch to locate the back door.
Come and join us round the fire for hot chocolate with marshmallows this windy night,
Martha
Sunday, 30 September 2012
Monday, 17 September 2012
September 16th - Blackberries, Rosehips and a Harvest Supper
Dear Nigel,
After last year's complete failure to find any Blackberries, suddenly this year I'm having no trouble at all. The wonderful wet Summer has done wonders for these little midnight berries and even the wild hedgerow ones are juicy and plump.Such is their enthusiasm that their long spiny tentacles bridge over the little stream and meander through the fence to find us.
Like every child since year dot, mine are transfixed with their bountiful juiciness and that they can be had for free. It is harder persuading a little one to watch and wait until the colour has turned completely black and daily inspections are being made to check on the progress.Scraped arms are a right of passage and distant memories of the taste are as much bound up with the pain of foraging, the stained purple hands and the smell of musty Autumn heavy in the air.
Autumn has arrived for you, too: 'A fine autumn day has turned to a chill evening where the dry leaves are being blown against the windows, whirling and crackling in sudden gusts.' You opt for comfort food in the guise of mushroom pappardelle - a pasta dish made with chestnut mushrooms (which taste so much better than the ordinary closed cap cousins), with a 'lovely autumnal flavour...if you let the mushrooms cook until they are nut brown and stickily tender'.It's a very simple dish (pg 283) with plenty of parsley and grated Parmesan added, but tasty. Like you, i also think that 'much modern cooking is so exquisitely contrived that the chunky, rustic-looking dish, inelegant and apparently thrown together, is something of a rare treat.'I thoroughly enjoyed this simple supper dish and its comforting heaviness banished the Autumn chill that had set in.
Against my kitchen window is a fine wild rose bush with jewel-like hips in abundance. I tentatively think about making some rose hip syrup, but change my mind: I will leave them for the birds so we can enjoy their feasting in the depths of winter and a little colour against the blank white canvas of snow.
The village newsletter makes its rounds - not quite on par with the evening standard, but probably more avidly read. Ours is an amalgamation with several other small villages around us, each with their own page. Highlight of this month's calendar is the Harvest Festival and its associated pagan charity auction and a Pea and Pie supper. It's a school night, but opportunities here are few and far between, and the chance to bid £11 for a loaf of bread seem too good to miss. My friend June is making pickles as there are a great many cake bakers in the village, as the Jubilee tea was able to testify.
There has been a great deal of action here in the last few weeks. The tide may have turned now but the balmy Indian Summer weather of the past couple of weeks brought all the tractors and combines out in a flurry to bring in the last of the hay. Little old tractors, modern monster-sized vehicles, and all hands on deck. One balmy evening i set off to walk the dog through the meadows beside our house. Two little pairs of feet too awake to sleep appeared behind me in nightgowns and wellies. We walked on through the last golden rays of sunset watching the haymaking on the other side of the hill. Our friends Jane and Kevin were baling the rows of dried hay. Terry was helping out, and little Liam and Jessie were running along behind a trailer stacked with bales, laughing and calling out. We waved back: A timeless scene of country life, like a richly-oiled Turner.
Martha
After last year's complete failure to find any Blackberries, suddenly this year I'm having no trouble at all. The wonderful wet Summer has done wonders for these little midnight berries and even the wild hedgerow ones are juicy and plump.Such is their enthusiasm that their long spiny tentacles bridge over the little stream and meander through the fence to find us.
Like every child since year dot, mine are transfixed with their bountiful juiciness and that they can be had for free. It is harder persuading a little one to watch and wait until the colour has turned completely black and daily inspections are being made to check on the progress.Scraped arms are a right of passage and distant memories of the taste are as much bound up with the pain of foraging, the stained purple hands and the smell of musty Autumn heavy in the air.
Autumn has arrived for you, too: 'A fine autumn day has turned to a chill evening where the dry leaves are being blown against the windows, whirling and crackling in sudden gusts.' You opt for comfort food in the guise of mushroom pappardelle - a pasta dish made with chestnut mushrooms (which taste so much better than the ordinary closed cap cousins), with a 'lovely autumnal flavour...if you let the mushrooms cook until they are nut brown and stickily tender'.It's a very simple dish (pg 283) with plenty of parsley and grated Parmesan added, but tasty. Like you, i also think that 'much modern cooking is so exquisitely contrived that the chunky, rustic-looking dish, inelegant and apparently thrown together, is something of a rare treat.'I thoroughly enjoyed this simple supper dish and its comforting heaviness banished the Autumn chill that had set in.
Against my kitchen window is a fine wild rose bush with jewel-like hips in abundance. I tentatively think about making some rose hip syrup, but change my mind: I will leave them for the birds so we can enjoy their feasting in the depths of winter and a little colour against the blank white canvas of snow.
The village newsletter makes its rounds - not quite on par with the evening standard, but probably more avidly read. Ours is an amalgamation with several other small villages around us, each with their own page. Highlight of this month's calendar is the Harvest Festival and its associated pagan charity auction and a Pea and Pie supper. It's a school night, but opportunities here are few and far between, and the chance to bid £11 for a loaf of bread seem too good to miss. My friend June is making pickles as there are a great many cake bakers in the village, as the Jubilee tea was able to testify.
There has been a great deal of action here in the last few weeks. The tide may have turned now but the balmy Indian Summer weather of the past couple of weeks brought all the tractors and combines out in a flurry to bring in the last of the hay. Little old tractors, modern monster-sized vehicles, and all hands on deck. One balmy evening i set off to walk the dog through the meadows beside our house. Two little pairs of feet too awake to sleep appeared behind me in nightgowns and wellies. We walked on through the last golden rays of sunset watching the haymaking on the other side of the hill. Our friends Jane and Kevin were baling the rows of dried hay. Terry was helping out, and little Liam and Jessie were running along behind a trailer stacked with bales, laughing and calling out. We waved back: A timeless scene of country life, like a richly-oiled Turner.
Martha
Friday, 31 August 2012
August 31st - Camp Cooking, Summer Living
Dear Nigel,
We've just been away camping in the wilds of North Wales, far away from any form of communication, digital or electrical device.
There is a kind of quietness, of stillness, that comes to rest on you in a place where there are no televisions or music blaring; no news broadcasts, no newspapers, no mobile phones, telephones or computers. Where all you have to rely on for entertainment are your imagination, a good book to read and casual conversation with a medley of assorted individuals - camping encourages people from all points on the social spectrum, like no other.
So we return with wind-blasted tans from a week of uncharacteristically favourable weather and over-indulgence in the culinary department: One of the most fundamental things about camping is, quite naturally, the food. Whether a tin of soup, or out of a tin of home-baked goodies, the food you eat camping takes on an almost religious significance.
Remembering back fondly to last year's fortnight of galeforce storms in the sand dunes of Shell Island, i exerted myself the week before in a baking frenzy. There's nothing more comforting when the rain is drumming on the canvas and you've just been banging in 14 inch stormpegs than to sit with a tin mug of hot chocolate and something homemade and gooey and baked especially for you.
Each child had their favourite, made and stored and jelousely coveted, - not a great deal of swapping and trading went on. For Sophie it was chewy flapjacks, for Hannah (newly returned from living in Spain) it was chocolate biscuit and raisin cake, and for Molly, a Honey and Ginger cake.
There are many good camping cookbooks - most of whom seem to offer the same selection in various forms, to eachother - but good, basic, well tried-and-tested stuff. Ordinary cookbooks just don't seem to do it in extreme circumstances. The ginger cake NEEDS to be stickier, the flapjack heavier and more substantial than normal.
One of the best people i know who can pull this all together - because she ACTUALLY GOES camping herself - is Annie Bell. A woman after my own heart in many respects, and the only person to have solved my quest for a folding breadknife. (If you throw things together for an impromptu picnic - bread, cheese, fruit, wine - then surely you need a folding breadknife to prevent your nearest and dearest impaling themselves whilst you're spreading the blanket? So why does no one seem to make them).
The ginger cake recipe comes from Annie Bell's 'The Camping Cookbook' and Molly gives it ten out of ten. Her 'Delicious Chewy flapjacks' are also on pg 69 and the wonderful idea that 'this has two lives, one for tea (great for the journey), and at a later date it will stand in as a crumble topping for whatever soft fruits you're warming on the grill.'
Much of our camp cooking was done on the portable barbeque. There's nothing finer than sitting by a smoking hot barbeque, a glass of chilled cider in your hand, watching the evening sun changing the hue of the sea and rolling hilltops.
Annie Bell suggest taking a basic camping marinade with you based on lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and salt in a watertight lock-n-lock box, and a few spice blends (of which she gives recipes for a middle eastern, a moroccan and jerk seasoning). From these basics she demonstrates how simple it is to create barbeque diversity without any fuss. Her 'Grilled Pork Chops with Aiole' use the basic camping marinade and middle eastern spice blend together as a marinade. There is even a convenient website - Seasoned Pioneers, who specialise in replicating traditional spice blends and make 'Annie's Camping Kit' which contains small resealable packets of all five spice blends which she uses in her book.
The morning ritual had to start with a whistling kettle and bacon frying in the morning air. It's no use being in the tent nextdoor with your Rice Krispies when the scent of sizzling bacon is wafting your way. Odd really, because a cooked breakfast isn't one i would normally choose to cook or eat at home. But camping does something to highten your taste buds and sense of smell, - in fact all your senses.
Of course the other item that you simply must take is an unbreakable cafetiere and some good coffee. There was a wonderful moment last year when we were doing some late Summer camping near Hathersage here in the Peak District. We met a lovely family of 'Glampers' with their canvas Bell tent and their VW Campervan all decked out in bunting. 'Daisy' was their summer vehicle ( - of Mr and Mrs my-winter-car's-a-Range-Rover ). Mister, having made a great play of frying up some bacon in his shorts and shiny new walking boots, then sat taking in the sun with his wife. I, meanwhile, had moved on to brewing up fresh coffee and a good book. I glanced over to see real envy on their faces. The moment was priceless. Of course i then made them a pot of coffee - but some things are worth savouring, just a little, and that moment was one of them.
I look through to see what you've been cooking lately and see the ease of Summer Living has worked into your bones too. This is not the time for fuss and bother. I pause momentarily past the tele where my older daughter is watching 'Come dine with me': All that pomp and pretence and effort - it's like watching animals in the zoo perform.
You have an outside grill and over the past couple of weeks it's been in almost constant use. Garlic prawns (pg 272), grilled zucchini with basil and lemon (pg 259), grilled chicken with lemon and couscous (pg 258). You say 'it is not unusual for the little stone terrace outside my kitchen doors to have a pall of smoke over it at suppertime...smoke imbued with thyme, garlic and rosemary that wafts around the ripening tomato plants and pots of geraniums.'
There is a recipe for four fat poussin sitting on a grill - or 'grilled chicken with garlic and lemon butter' - which i think i'm going to make. You suggest having the butcher spatchcock the chickens for you, splitting them down the middle and flattening them 'so that they resemble road-kill. Butchered this way they can be grilled rather than roasted.' In much the same way as Annie Bell's camping recipes, the poussins are marinaded in olive oil, lemon juice, chilli and garlic.
'Pudding' is Italian peaches sliced with a little lemon juice. What could be more sublime?
Martha
We've just been away camping in the wilds of North Wales, far away from any form of communication, digital or electrical device.
There is a kind of quietness, of stillness, that comes to rest on you in a place where there are no televisions or music blaring; no news broadcasts, no newspapers, no mobile phones, telephones or computers. Where all you have to rely on for entertainment are your imagination, a good book to read and casual conversation with a medley of assorted individuals - camping encourages people from all points on the social spectrum, like no other.
So we return with wind-blasted tans from a week of uncharacteristically favourable weather and over-indulgence in the culinary department: One of the most fundamental things about camping is, quite naturally, the food. Whether a tin of soup, or out of a tin of home-baked goodies, the food you eat camping takes on an almost religious significance.
Remembering back fondly to last year's fortnight of galeforce storms in the sand dunes of Shell Island, i exerted myself the week before in a baking frenzy. There's nothing more comforting when the rain is drumming on the canvas and you've just been banging in 14 inch stormpegs than to sit with a tin mug of hot chocolate and something homemade and gooey and baked especially for you.
Each child had their favourite, made and stored and jelousely coveted, - not a great deal of swapping and trading went on. For Sophie it was chewy flapjacks, for Hannah (newly returned from living in Spain) it was chocolate biscuit and raisin cake, and for Molly, a Honey and Ginger cake.
There are many good camping cookbooks - most of whom seem to offer the same selection in various forms, to eachother - but good, basic, well tried-and-tested stuff. Ordinary cookbooks just don't seem to do it in extreme circumstances. The ginger cake NEEDS to be stickier, the flapjack heavier and more substantial than normal.
One of the best people i know who can pull this all together - because she ACTUALLY GOES camping herself - is Annie Bell. A woman after my own heart in many respects, and the only person to have solved my quest for a folding breadknife. (If you throw things together for an impromptu picnic - bread, cheese, fruit, wine - then surely you need a folding breadknife to prevent your nearest and dearest impaling themselves whilst you're spreading the blanket? So why does no one seem to make them).
The ginger cake recipe comes from Annie Bell's 'The Camping Cookbook' and Molly gives it ten out of ten. Her 'Delicious Chewy flapjacks' are also on pg 69 and the wonderful idea that 'this has two lives, one for tea (great for the journey), and at a later date it will stand in as a crumble topping for whatever soft fruits you're warming on the grill.'
Much of our camp cooking was done on the portable barbeque. There's nothing finer than sitting by a smoking hot barbeque, a glass of chilled cider in your hand, watching the evening sun changing the hue of the sea and rolling hilltops.
Annie Bell suggest taking a basic camping marinade with you based on lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and salt in a watertight lock-n-lock box, and a few spice blends (of which she gives recipes for a middle eastern, a moroccan and jerk seasoning). From these basics she demonstrates how simple it is to create barbeque diversity without any fuss. Her 'Grilled Pork Chops with Aiole' use the basic camping marinade and middle eastern spice blend together as a marinade. There is even a convenient website - Seasoned Pioneers, who specialise in replicating traditional spice blends and make 'Annie's Camping Kit' which contains small resealable packets of all five spice blends which she uses in her book.
The morning ritual had to start with a whistling kettle and bacon frying in the morning air. It's no use being in the tent nextdoor with your Rice Krispies when the scent of sizzling bacon is wafting your way. Odd really, because a cooked breakfast isn't one i would normally choose to cook or eat at home. But camping does something to highten your taste buds and sense of smell, - in fact all your senses.
Of course the other item that you simply must take is an unbreakable cafetiere and some good coffee. There was a wonderful moment last year when we were doing some late Summer camping near Hathersage here in the Peak District. We met a lovely family of 'Glampers' with their canvas Bell tent and their VW Campervan all decked out in bunting. 'Daisy' was their summer vehicle ( - of Mr and Mrs my-winter-car's-a-Range-Rover ). Mister, having made a great play of frying up some bacon in his shorts and shiny new walking boots, then sat taking in the sun with his wife. I, meanwhile, had moved on to brewing up fresh coffee and a good book. I glanced over to see real envy on their faces. The moment was priceless. Of course i then made them a pot of coffee - but some things are worth savouring, just a little, and that moment was one of them.
I look through to see what you've been cooking lately and see the ease of Summer Living has worked into your bones too. This is not the time for fuss and bother. I pause momentarily past the tele where my older daughter is watching 'Come dine with me': All that pomp and pretence and effort - it's like watching animals in the zoo perform.
You have an outside grill and over the past couple of weeks it's been in almost constant use. Garlic prawns (pg 272), grilled zucchini with basil and lemon (pg 259), grilled chicken with lemon and couscous (pg 258). You say 'it is not unusual for the little stone terrace outside my kitchen doors to have a pall of smoke over it at suppertime...smoke imbued with thyme, garlic and rosemary that wafts around the ripening tomato plants and pots of geraniums.'
There is a recipe for four fat poussin sitting on a grill - or 'grilled chicken with garlic and lemon butter' - which i think i'm going to make. You suggest having the butcher spatchcock the chickens for you, splitting them down the middle and flattening them 'so that they resemble road-kill. Butchered this way they can be grilled rather than roasted.' In much the same way as Annie Bell's camping recipes, the poussins are marinaded in olive oil, lemon juice, chilli and garlic.
'Pudding' is Italian peaches sliced with a little lemon juice. What could be more sublime?
Martha
Sunday, 12 August 2012
August 11th - Sean Bean's arms and a Manifold Valley Turnout
Dear Nigel,
Many years ago i can remember slobbering over Sean Bean on the tele - usually a Romantic hero in some historic drama-piece or other. And then on camera would come this hazy blue bruise-thing on his naked arm. Of course we all knew this was an out-of-focus cover-up for a tattoo (in a time when tattoos were a good deal less common). I spent many an evening trying to work out what it read - and then, eventually: '100% Beef '.
This was what was on my mind as i watched the children's sports at our Jubilee celebrations outside the village hall. Only in a small village could small weedy four year olds be pitted against large strapping ten year olds in the same race. And 100% Beef. My friend June commented, 'Farmers sons'. I knew just what she meant.
These children weren't fat or obese in any way. These were tomorrow's entrants for the tractor - pulling competition: They are built, not grown; and they are 100% Beef. Their hands are large, their necks are thicker, their whole frames are broad and solid and they glow with rude health and sunshine.
The Beef in question comes from Bagshaws farm shop, almost certainly. Half the village are related in some way, Bagshaws is the main farming enterprise, and so dinner must follow.
The village shop has long since bit the dust it seems, though the Post Office lingers on three days a week. But we do have a superb butchers - and outlet for a local farm which takes animals from the surrounding area. They are closed on Mondays as this is when they do their killing, but open the rest of the week.
A door at the back shows through to an enormous butchery area. A shop like this only exists because the main concern is butchery for Restaurants and pubs in the surrounding valleys. When we ate at 'The Greyhound' in Warslow last week, the menu said steaks from Bagshaws. And what a superb and tender steak it was. Like the nursery rhyme Jack Sprat (...could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean...) i couldn't decide which was tastier the steak itself or the amazingly flavoursome fat...so licked the platter clean.
We are spoilt for choice at the Butchers and so close that they can almost tell you the exact farm each animal comes from. That's zero miles for you. Naturally. The nice lady from the kids club pops up again to serve us in the Butchers. I say the kids will be there that evening as it seems to be the highlight of their week. She smiles. Everyone makes us welcome here. It's nice. I've lived in small places before where incomers are incomers until they go away again, but not here. I pull the kids along in their waggon. There is a flash flood on the way back and the road becomes a lake and their waggon a boat, and i wade home in my wellies.
It is a warm, hazy Summer Day today and most of the farmers are itching to get back to their haymaking. But today is Manifold Show - one of the few that wasn't cancelled because of the weather this year - and half the valley has turned out to show their cattle, polish their vintage tractors into spluttering life, and come to the show. I see almost everyone I've met since I've been here.
Anne Peach is here with first prize for her gigantic cabbage - about 5ft. in diameter, and close to having its leaves pulled off (to be used as fans) by my little darlings last week at her open farm and farm bakery day.
A farming family from Sheen take nearly all the prizes for their Belgian Blue and British Blue cattle. I feel a bit sorry for the other farmers leading their animals around the ring. The British Blue cow is something else. Like those old posters in Butchers shops with a cow covered in lines showing the different joints of meat, this animal seems to come with its own joints delineated on its coat. Every muscle seems to almost explode from the surface - the equivalent of a bovine bodybuilder, to be sure.
Over by the hog roast the last bones are being picked over. There are almost more dogs than people here. A man in the ring is calling 'come by' to a young collie pup who is chasing a group of ducks around a course. The show jumpers are preparing to come into the ring - so beautifully attired they put us all to shame.
But for me, the stars of the show are the huge graceful Shire Horses with their prinked-up, pastry-edge manes and their glossy flanks. There is something truly magnificent about these gentle giants and they are bewitching on the eye.
It has been a good day in the Manifold Valley. I trundle home in Archie, joining the queue for the exit. There are more Landrovers than cars, in all states of repair - a good thing, as Archie's hanging on with one door falling off and gaping at the top edge awaiting hinges from the garage. I make my Mum sit in the back - just in case we lose her when we go round a corner.
You are cooking good meat simply, for a hot day, too. It is Lamb chops with oregano and tsatziki, the oregano in full bloom right now in your garden. I will have to wait for next year for flowers on mine as they are young plants. The tsatziki is kept cool till the last minute and the lamb chops rubbed in a mixture of olive oil, oregano and seasoning and sizzled over a hot grill. Summer cooking at its simplest and most flavoursome. Perhaps you should try some of our chops from Bagshaws on your grill? They melt with that almost-muttony older lamb flavour i so love.
I drive down the valley past Longnor and gaze on green fields: The brighter green of the lower valley where nitrogen-throwing tractors have grown lush pasture for the cattle, and the higher fields - a different shade entirely, where sheep graze and pick their way around the rocks.
You finish with an orange yoghurt water ice to cleanse the palate and refresh in the stifling heat 'so hot i cannot cross the stone slabs of the terrace in bare feet'. I am watering next door's tomatoes as they are away but not a single one has ripened. It's really only been the last three weeks we've had any sun this Summer. I look at the grapevine that Terry is so proud of. It is almost a different creature to the one i remember.
I once bought a house for the sole reason that it had the most amazing grapevine in its greenhouse: Forty foot long with a trunk as thick as a man's leg. It came in from outside with water from a dripping gutter tending its roots and ran the entire length of the greenhouse. It must be about a hundred years old by now. I must not go back there. The past is a foreign land and a hundred years away. I must move on.
Martha
Many years ago i can remember slobbering over Sean Bean on the tele - usually a Romantic hero in some historic drama-piece or other. And then on camera would come this hazy blue bruise-thing on his naked arm. Of course we all knew this was an out-of-focus cover-up for a tattoo (in a time when tattoos were a good deal less common). I spent many an evening trying to work out what it read - and then, eventually: '100% Beef '.
This was what was on my mind as i watched the children's sports at our Jubilee celebrations outside the village hall. Only in a small village could small weedy four year olds be pitted against large strapping ten year olds in the same race. And 100% Beef. My friend June commented, 'Farmers sons'. I knew just what she meant.
These children weren't fat or obese in any way. These were tomorrow's entrants for the tractor - pulling competition: They are built, not grown; and they are 100% Beef. Their hands are large, their necks are thicker, their whole frames are broad and solid and they glow with rude health and sunshine.
The Beef in question comes from Bagshaws farm shop, almost certainly. Half the village are related in some way, Bagshaws is the main farming enterprise, and so dinner must follow.
The village shop has long since bit the dust it seems, though the Post Office lingers on three days a week. But we do have a superb butchers - and outlet for a local farm which takes animals from the surrounding area. They are closed on Mondays as this is when they do their killing, but open the rest of the week.
A door at the back shows through to an enormous butchery area. A shop like this only exists because the main concern is butchery for Restaurants and pubs in the surrounding valleys. When we ate at 'The Greyhound' in Warslow last week, the menu said steaks from Bagshaws. And what a superb and tender steak it was. Like the nursery rhyme Jack Sprat (...could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean...) i couldn't decide which was tastier the steak itself or the amazingly flavoursome fat...so licked the platter clean.
We are spoilt for choice at the Butchers and so close that they can almost tell you the exact farm each animal comes from. That's zero miles for you. Naturally. The nice lady from the kids club pops up again to serve us in the Butchers. I say the kids will be there that evening as it seems to be the highlight of their week. She smiles. Everyone makes us welcome here. It's nice. I've lived in small places before where incomers are incomers until they go away again, but not here. I pull the kids along in their waggon. There is a flash flood on the way back and the road becomes a lake and their waggon a boat, and i wade home in my wellies.
It is a warm, hazy Summer Day today and most of the farmers are itching to get back to their haymaking. But today is Manifold Show - one of the few that wasn't cancelled because of the weather this year - and half the valley has turned out to show their cattle, polish their vintage tractors into spluttering life, and come to the show. I see almost everyone I've met since I've been here.
Anne Peach is here with first prize for her gigantic cabbage - about 5ft. in diameter, and close to having its leaves pulled off (to be used as fans) by my little darlings last week at her open farm and farm bakery day.
A farming family from Sheen take nearly all the prizes for their Belgian Blue and British Blue cattle. I feel a bit sorry for the other farmers leading their animals around the ring. The British Blue cow is something else. Like those old posters in Butchers shops with a cow covered in lines showing the different joints of meat, this animal seems to come with its own joints delineated on its coat. Every muscle seems to almost explode from the surface - the equivalent of a bovine bodybuilder, to be sure.
Over by the hog roast the last bones are being picked over. There are almost more dogs than people here. A man in the ring is calling 'come by' to a young collie pup who is chasing a group of ducks around a course. The show jumpers are preparing to come into the ring - so beautifully attired they put us all to shame.
But for me, the stars of the show are the huge graceful Shire Horses with their prinked-up, pastry-edge manes and their glossy flanks. There is something truly magnificent about these gentle giants and they are bewitching on the eye.
It has been a good day in the Manifold Valley. I trundle home in Archie, joining the queue for the exit. There are more Landrovers than cars, in all states of repair - a good thing, as Archie's hanging on with one door falling off and gaping at the top edge awaiting hinges from the garage. I make my Mum sit in the back - just in case we lose her when we go round a corner.
You are cooking good meat simply, for a hot day, too. It is Lamb chops with oregano and tsatziki, the oregano in full bloom right now in your garden. I will have to wait for next year for flowers on mine as they are young plants. The tsatziki is kept cool till the last minute and the lamb chops rubbed in a mixture of olive oil, oregano and seasoning and sizzled over a hot grill. Summer cooking at its simplest and most flavoursome. Perhaps you should try some of our chops from Bagshaws on your grill? They melt with that almost-muttony older lamb flavour i so love.
I drive down the valley past Longnor and gaze on green fields: The brighter green of the lower valley where nitrogen-throwing tractors have grown lush pasture for the cattle, and the higher fields - a different shade entirely, where sheep graze and pick their way around the rocks.
You finish with an orange yoghurt water ice to cleanse the palate and refresh in the stifling heat 'so hot i cannot cross the stone slabs of the terrace in bare feet'. I am watering next door's tomatoes as they are away but not a single one has ripened. It's really only been the last three weeks we've had any sun this Summer. I look at the grapevine that Terry is so proud of. It is almost a different creature to the one i remember.
I once bought a house for the sole reason that it had the most amazing grapevine in its greenhouse: Forty foot long with a trunk as thick as a man's leg. It came in from outside with water from a dripping gutter tending its roots and ran the entire length of the greenhouse. It must be about a hundred years old by now. I must not go back there. The past is a foreign land and a hundred years away. I must move on.
Martha
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
July 24th - Trouble at the Peace Camp and Royal footsteps on the beach
Dear Nigel,
The summer holidays are upon us and its time to catch up with friends and family. We head north to Northumberland in search of a little warm beach weather. I'm so not optimistic that i barely pack any Summer clothes at all, just plenty of coats and jumpers. So, naturally the sun decides to make its entrance at last. I'm not disappointed, though - we've had quite enough winter weather lately. There is a simple delight in English bucket-and-spade holidays that other holidays simply cannot match. The less-is-more principle that egalitates us all and which will be eternally remembered as sunny, whatever the weather.
Evening draws in and i decide to visit the Peace Camp which has taken over at Dunstanburgh Castle. This is part of an artwork commissioned by the London 2012 Festival taking place simultaneously at eight of 'the most beautiful and remote locations around the UK', and just round the corner from here so it seems a pity to miss it. 2000 glowing dome tents are pitched for four days only at the eight sites and people are invited to visit during the night to eavesdrop on conversations within about love and recitations of love poems by both famous poets and ordinary folk.
The night i choose is Sunday, the last night, and as i pull into the car park in the tiny village of Craster a large flashing motorway sign declares the car park full and that high winds may cause the display to close. I am half-way to the castle, torch in hand, when we are turned back by men in fluorescent jackets. The Peace Camp has had to close because of the danger of having lots of people on the cliffs in the dark in high winds. There are grim faces around me. Some have come a long way for this. I will soon be back to my hot chocolate and bed: it is a mild disappointment. There is, i think, a kind of irony in a greater force defeating the Peace Camp. And the greatest force of all is not man-made (although i suppose we could argue forever and a day as to whether the recent weather is a spin off of man-caused global warming).
Today we are back on the beach at my favourite little pub at Low Newton, but it is closed. Prince Charles is visiting the area and has come to see the tiny micro-brewery on site next to the pub. Shame, I'm feeling quite parched. One of us will be imbibing a long cool drink anyway. The kids and i head off to the beach away from the throng of people. The sea is incredibly calm today, the waves barely lapping at the shoreline. Amid the castle building all heads turn as Prince Charles heads our way and walks along the beach to view the classic picture of Dunstanburgh Castle against a fading sky. As Head of the National Trust i'm sure he's seen THAT picture representing the Trust a hundred times so it was good to see him taking the effort to see it for himself. The Peace Camp has been dismantled and calm has returned. He doesn't come back and it's a fair way across the sands whichever way he goes: there'll be no getting the Royal car down there.
Sophie insists on telling everyone she has seen Prince Charming as we watch the fisherman row out to check his crab pots.I'm pleased to see that much of his visit has been based around the artisan food producers in this sparsely-populated area: Swallows smokery at Sea Houses, the Butcher at Bamburgh who makes the infamous Bamburgh Banger, the Microbrewery and a woman near Alnwick whose company 'Proof of the Pudding' has taken off with much acclaim lately.
The pub reopens for business and the crowds drift away. A few rowing boats and a couple of sailing boats dot the bay. The sea and sky are almost irridescent and the tones so similar it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The gentle lapping is hypnotic, appearing to come from the inside of a seashell or a distant dream. There are golden footprints in the sand.
Martha
The summer holidays are upon us and its time to catch up with friends and family. We head north to Northumberland in search of a little warm beach weather. I'm so not optimistic that i barely pack any Summer clothes at all, just plenty of coats and jumpers. So, naturally the sun decides to make its entrance at last. I'm not disappointed, though - we've had quite enough winter weather lately. There is a simple delight in English bucket-and-spade holidays that other holidays simply cannot match. The less-is-more principle that egalitates us all and which will be eternally remembered as sunny, whatever the weather.
Evening draws in and i decide to visit the Peace Camp which has taken over at Dunstanburgh Castle. This is part of an artwork commissioned by the London 2012 Festival taking place simultaneously at eight of 'the most beautiful and remote locations around the UK', and just round the corner from here so it seems a pity to miss it. 2000 glowing dome tents are pitched for four days only at the eight sites and people are invited to visit during the night to eavesdrop on conversations within about love and recitations of love poems by both famous poets and ordinary folk.
The night i choose is Sunday, the last night, and as i pull into the car park in the tiny village of Craster a large flashing motorway sign declares the car park full and that high winds may cause the display to close. I am half-way to the castle, torch in hand, when we are turned back by men in fluorescent jackets. The Peace Camp has had to close because of the danger of having lots of people on the cliffs in the dark in high winds. There are grim faces around me. Some have come a long way for this. I will soon be back to my hot chocolate and bed: it is a mild disappointment. There is, i think, a kind of irony in a greater force defeating the Peace Camp. And the greatest force of all is not man-made (although i suppose we could argue forever and a day as to whether the recent weather is a spin off of man-caused global warming).
Today we are back on the beach at my favourite little pub at Low Newton, but it is closed. Prince Charles is visiting the area and has come to see the tiny micro-brewery on site next to the pub. Shame, I'm feeling quite parched. One of us will be imbibing a long cool drink anyway. The kids and i head off to the beach away from the throng of people. The sea is incredibly calm today, the waves barely lapping at the shoreline. Amid the castle building all heads turn as Prince Charles heads our way and walks along the beach to view the classic picture of Dunstanburgh Castle against a fading sky. As Head of the National Trust i'm sure he's seen THAT picture representing the Trust a hundred times so it was good to see him taking the effort to see it for himself. The Peace Camp has been dismantled and calm has returned. He doesn't come back and it's a fair way across the sands whichever way he goes: there'll be no getting the Royal car down there.
Sophie insists on telling everyone she has seen Prince Charming as we watch the fisherman row out to check his crab pots.I'm pleased to see that much of his visit has been based around the artisan food producers in this sparsely-populated area: Swallows smokery at Sea Houses, the Butcher at Bamburgh who makes the infamous Bamburgh Banger, the Microbrewery and a woman near Alnwick whose company 'Proof of the Pudding' has taken off with much acclaim lately.
The pub reopens for business and the crowds drift away. A few rowing boats and a couple of sailing boats dot the bay. The sea and sky are almost irridescent and the tones so similar it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. The gentle lapping is hypnotic, appearing to come from the inside of a seashell or a distant dream. There are golden footprints in the sand.
Martha
Tuesday, 17 July 2012
July 16th - Legally poached carp and an authentic Staffordshire oatcake
Dear Nigel,
I'm pondering what to make for dinner the other day when my neighbour Terry leans over our adjoining fence and raps me on the knuckles with two wet fish. 'Try these,' he says, 'caught an hour ago.' I look to check they're dead (- carp are notorious for hanging on for hours, if not days) and then lower them so the children can run their fingers over their shiny backs and trace out their shapes.
'Where did you catch them?' I ask. Silly question. Obviously i'm no fisherman. Note to self: never ask a fisherman where he goes to catch his fish. Terry chuckles. He is doing some work for the National Trust, helping to reinstate a wildlife area in a river where the carp are taking over. So he has a licence to kill (like James Bond), if only to reduce the carp population a little. His wife is getting fed up with eating carp.
I turn to my copy of 'Fish' by William Black and Sophie Grigson. Black says '...meet the aquatic rabbit. Prodigious, hardy and fast growing, the carp family are giant minnows that have moved far and wide from their original home waters in China.' He also says that carp are 'highly rated in Chinese cooking...(and) a difficult fish to fillet when very fresh.' Too bloody right. Mine nearly shoot to the other end of the kitchen as i struggle to gut and fillet the little buggers; their slimy coating making them very difficult to handle.
Sophie Grigson gives a couple of great recipes for cooking carp. The first is carp with black sauce which involves plenty of brown ale and crumbled gingerbread would you believe. It seems an odd combination at first until you consider the chinese connection. I decide to use a Ken Hom recipe with fresh root ginger instead, as we are clean out of gingerbread as it happens. The village shop (three miles away) has Yorkshire Parkin but i doubt this would have the same effect.
Our nearest shopping town is Leek as we are this side of the Staffordshire border - the creative county, apparently (probably due to its William Morris connections). I love the run-down honesty of this little town with its ancient, semi-derelict buildings and shops selling 'Antiques' - or a load of old tat as my Mum would put it. Mismatched furniture, badly mended pieces and shabby chic bookcases abound (- in need of a good coat of paint, i hear her say).
Still, i love this town. And one shop i never fail to visit is the tiny Leek Oatcake Shop situated on a backroad and completely unmodified or changed in any way since it first opened in 1964. Like a slice from a living history museum the door of this little corner shop gives way to a huge heated open griddle where oatcakes are constantly cooking and served from early until one o'clock closing time. I buy lunch for four - six oatcakes for 90p.
You have been making Zucchini cakes with dill and feta (page 228). The recipe involves a mixture of grated zucchini (or little courgettes), salad onion and garlic stirred into flour and egg. Feta cheese and dill are then added and dollops of the mixture gently fried. I have not seen this recipe before and my mouth waters as i read. I sense a visit to the grocer coming on - this one is too good to miss.
Next year i too will have a couple of cougette plants in pots near the backdoor - the nearer to be on slug patrol. I haven't decided whether slugs can swim or not but i'm hoping that the flowing stream behind our house will take them somewhere further downstream where they can gorge to their hearts content on someone else's delphiniums.
Martha
I'm pondering what to make for dinner the other day when my neighbour Terry leans over our adjoining fence and raps me on the knuckles with two wet fish. 'Try these,' he says, 'caught an hour ago.' I look to check they're dead (- carp are notorious for hanging on for hours, if not days) and then lower them so the children can run their fingers over their shiny backs and trace out their shapes.
'Where did you catch them?' I ask. Silly question. Obviously i'm no fisherman. Note to self: never ask a fisherman where he goes to catch his fish. Terry chuckles. He is doing some work for the National Trust, helping to reinstate a wildlife area in a river where the carp are taking over. So he has a licence to kill (like James Bond), if only to reduce the carp population a little. His wife is getting fed up with eating carp.
I turn to my copy of 'Fish' by William Black and Sophie Grigson. Black says '...meet the aquatic rabbit. Prodigious, hardy and fast growing, the carp family are giant minnows that have moved far and wide from their original home waters in China.' He also says that carp are 'highly rated in Chinese cooking...(and) a difficult fish to fillet when very fresh.' Too bloody right. Mine nearly shoot to the other end of the kitchen as i struggle to gut and fillet the little buggers; their slimy coating making them very difficult to handle.
Sophie Grigson gives a couple of great recipes for cooking carp. The first is carp with black sauce which involves plenty of brown ale and crumbled gingerbread would you believe. It seems an odd combination at first until you consider the chinese connection. I decide to use a Ken Hom recipe with fresh root ginger instead, as we are clean out of gingerbread as it happens. The village shop (three miles away) has Yorkshire Parkin but i doubt this would have the same effect.
Our nearest shopping town is Leek as we are this side of the Staffordshire border - the creative county, apparently (probably due to its William Morris connections). I love the run-down honesty of this little town with its ancient, semi-derelict buildings and shops selling 'Antiques' - or a load of old tat as my Mum would put it. Mismatched furniture, badly mended pieces and shabby chic bookcases abound (- in need of a good coat of paint, i hear her say).
Still, i love this town. And one shop i never fail to visit is the tiny Leek Oatcake Shop situated on a backroad and completely unmodified or changed in any way since it first opened in 1964. Like a slice from a living history museum the door of this little corner shop gives way to a huge heated open griddle where oatcakes are constantly cooking and served from early until one o'clock closing time. I buy lunch for four - six oatcakes for 90p.
You have been making Zucchini cakes with dill and feta (page 228). The recipe involves a mixture of grated zucchini (or little courgettes), salad onion and garlic stirred into flour and egg. Feta cheese and dill are then added and dollops of the mixture gently fried. I have not seen this recipe before and my mouth waters as i read. I sense a visit to the grocer coming on - this one is too good to miss.
Next year i too will have a couple of cougette plants in pots near the backdoor - the nearer to be on slug patrol. I haven't decided whether slugs can swim or not but i'm hoping that the flowing stream behind our house will take them somewhere further downstream where they can gorge to their hearts content on someone else's delphiniums.
Martha
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
July 9th - Where have all the Blackberries gone?
Dear Nigel,
Yesterday i went to the garden nursery for some cottage garden plants and came back with some gooseberry bushes and two thornless blackberries. I've always rather pooh-poohed these as 'not being the real thing' (after all, blackberries are meant to be hard work to pick, aren't they?), but this time i was entranced by the delicate shape of their leaves, so different to their native cousins.
In the supermarket i am quite prepared to buy a punnet of large juicy blackberries to put on top of a pavlova, combining them with raspberries an perhaps a handful of blueberries. We are all so used to the small half-red bullets from childhood days in the hedgerows that these over-large specimens always seem to hold a certain 'wow' factor for us.
But when was the last time you went blackberry picking? And, more to the point, where exactly did you go? (we all want to know). I know i took my children picking a couple of years ago here in the Peak District, in order to make some blackberry jam; but could we find enough for even one small pot? We could not. We looked high and low in vain.
I have my suspicions that the countryside is being manicured to oblivion. Not content with their war on the ever-encroaching, out-of-control Victorian interloper - the Rhododendron - I suspect a general 'prettynization' of the countryside which involves hacking away at nature to conform to a certain ideal of what the countryside is meant to look like.
I know the National Trust and the National Park rangers here do an excellent job,....but i still wonder...Where have all the blackberries gone? As a child it was never a problem in late Summer to find a hedgerow laden with fruit (as long as you got there first). So where are they all?
You, too, are making the most of Summer's glut of ripe fruit. For lunch there is a sweet, orange-fleshed charentais melon with some salty air-cured French Bayonne ham. 'You should treat a charantais with the same tenderness you would a tiny baby, and with the same awe and wonder, too.' The simple paring of ham and fruit is 'a gift from the gods'.
The evening's dinner also ends with a pure white log of goat's cheese and a bowl of 'late season English cherries, their juices staining the white cheese as we eat.'
The main course is roast lamb with a rub of oregano and garlic. The oregano in your garden is 'in its third year and just about to come into flower'. This year, things here are taking a lot longer to flourish. The torrential rains and dark skies have knocked everything back. Last week we were stopped by floods and fire engines at nearby Glutton bridge (now there's a good name). We were OK to plough on through the waters but a whole army of little cars were turning back. Only the hostas and the weeds seem to love this year's weather.
Garlic is crushed with a little salt, chopped anchovies added, oregano, pepper and olive oil. The resulting rub gives 'a soft, aromatic note to the meat and in particular to its fat.' You eat it thinly sliced with a few salad leaves in soft rolls to mop up the juices. 'A semi-formal Sunday roast for us suddenly becomes an informal lunch, eaten outdoors.'
We eat outdoors as much as possible, plates at the ready, watching the heavy black clouds heading towards us with menace. We bob back and forward like the weather people and time and again we are lucky as the breaks are just long-enough for a meal or a quick game or a toast of sunburn.
The lettuces are still growing strong. And i still haven't had to water them,
Martha
Yesterday i went to the garden nursery for some cottage garden plants and came back with some gooseberry bushes and two thornless blackberries. I've always rather pooh-poohed these as 'not being the real thing' (after all, blackberries are meant to be hard work to pick, aren't they?), but this time i was entranced by the delicate shape of their leaves, so different to their native cousins.
In the supermarket i am quite prepared to buy a punnet of large juicy blackberries to put on top of a pavlova, combining them with raspberries an perhaps a handful of blueberries. We are all so used to the small half-red bullets from childhood days in the hedgerows that these over-large specimens always seem to hold a certain 'wow' factor for us.
But when was the last time you went blackberry picking? And, more to the point, where exactly did you go? (we all want to know). I know i took my children picking a couple of years ago here in the Peak District, in order to make some blackberry jam; but could we find enough for even one small pot? We could not. We looked high and low in vain.
I have my suspicions that the countryside is being manicured to oblivion. Not content with their war on the ever-encroaching, out-of-control Victorian interloper - the Rhododendron - I suspect a general 'prettynization' of the countryside which involves hacking away at nature to conform to a certain ideal of what the countryside is meant to look like.
I know the National Trust and the National Park rangers here do an excellent job,....but i still wonder...Where have all the blackberries gone? As a child it was never a problem in late Summer to find a hedgerow laden with fruit (as long as you got there first). So where are they all?
You, too, are making the most of Summer's glut of ripe fruit. For lunch there is a sweet, orange-fleshed charentais melon with some salty air-cured French Bayonne ham. 'You should treat a charantais with the same tenderness you would a tiny baby, and with the same awe and wonder, too.' The simple paring of ham and fruit is 'a gift from the gods'.
The evening's dinner also ends with a pure white log of goat's cheese and a bowl of 'late season English cherries, their juices staining the white cheese as we eat.'
The main course is roast lamb with a rub of oregano and garlic. The oregano in your garden is 'in its third year and just about to come into flower'. This year, things here are taking a lot longer to flourish. The torrential rains and dark skies have knocked everything back. Last week we were stopped by floods and fire engines at nearby Glutton bridge (now there's a good name). We were OK to plough on through the waters but a whole army of little cars were turning back. Only the hostas and the weeds seem to love this year's weather.
Garlic is crushed with a little salt, chopped anchovies added, oregano, pepper and olive oil. The resulting rub gives 'a soft, aromatic note to the meat and in particular to its fat.' You eat it thinly sliced with a few salad leaves in soft rolls to mop up the juices. 'A semi-formal Sunday roast for us suddenly becomes an informal lunch, eaten outdoors.'
We eat outdoors as much as possible, plates at the ready, watching the heavy black clouds heading towards us with menace. We bob back and forward like the weather people and time and again we are lucky as the breaks are just long-enough for a meal or a quick game or a toast of sunburn.
The lettuces are still growing strong. And i still haven't had to water them,
Martha
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