Dear Nigel,
I want to tell you the story of a ring; at least not the ring itself but what it means to me. It is a flat-set emerald and diamond ring that once belonged to my great aunt who died fairly recently, and given to me. Although she married at the end of the second world war, this ring is from an earlier era - perhaps 1920's. I have no way of knowing now whether it was bought secondhand or handed down but the production of engagement rings would not have been exactly a priority in wartime Britain.
For me this ring is not about itself but is about the way we protect the fragile members of our family and friends. It is of my great aunt but also about her brothers and sister and how they always took care of her. Every family has a few skeletons hanging in their cupboards - and mine is no exception. It is these stories that give life to an earlier generation, to old photographs and treasured trinkets. Stories to be handed down, embellished or degraded as history sees fit, which show deep down that we are all human - that nothing changes over time.
My great grandmother had three boys and a girl - my granny Burn - at the beginning of the last century. Like most families, it seems, she saw her husband off to the first world war, never to return. To help make ends meet she took in a lodger, and later my great aunt was born. Like all good chaps at the time he wanted to marry her, but she would have none of it as it meant losing her widow's pension. For me, the sad part of all this is the legacy of shame that followed round thereafter. My granny was sent to the grammar school but my great aunt went to the secondary modern because they didn't require a birth certificate to be produced like they did at the grammar school. Things that wouldn't turn a hair these days were part of a culture of shame back then. To me, this ring is about the link of family and of the protection it offers to those who need its sanctuary.
If I ever needed a lesson in how to barbecue properly, I was given one the other night. Going round to my Japanese friend Yuri's for a party, I noticed that not just one but three barbecues were lined up and set ready with whitened coals. There was more meat than anyone could hope to finish - each one marinaded or skewered to a different recipe. Yuri had tried to temper this meat-fest with a choice of salads including one of finely-sliced Japanese radish; not as peppery as I at first imagined.
The wind had blown in an Italian-Indian Summer who talked of life and the deeper things as clouds sent veils floating across the silver moon in a starless sky. The fire pit kept us warm well into the tender hours as we stared out across the valley beyond the ford, watching the moon play tricks on the landscape, shaping creatures of the night galloping across the meadows.
You are making a 'warm jam of gooseberries and strawberries' - page 255 (which will please a friend of mine who can't get enough gooseberries into a summer). The jam is much less sweet and more runny than normal because it is for immediate consumption - or at least in the next few days. This works well on homemade scones or dribbled into yoghurt, meaning a fresher flavour all round. As an alternative, you suggest adding it to whipped cream and crumbled meringue as a kind of Eton mess. I think this seems a really good idea for a quick-to-serve pud.
One of my all time favourite comfort foods - at any time of the year - is a properly made risotto. The one you are making today is using pearled spelt which has 'a nubbly quality ...(and is) extraordinary comforting.' It handles 'vegetable stock more successfully than rice does, restoring some of the silky texture that is often missing in a traditional risotto when made with vegetable stock.' Interestingly, you are growing your own pea shoots for this recipe on trays of shallow compost. They are also easily available in the supermarkets at this time of year, and, although I was persuaded to add them to a salad the other day, I do prefer them slightly cooked, or wilted, as in this recipe. As with any risotto, the most important ingredient of all is the quality of the stock you use. I shall look forward to making this recipe once I have searched out some pearled spelt.
Martha
Sunday, 23 June 2013
Monday, 17 June 2013
June 15th - Not just roses, and Sweet sensations
Dear Nigel,
Sometimes, when the countryside looks so idyllic, the flowers are out and the sun is shining, it feels that nothing could go wrong in the world - everything is 'perfick'. Reality soon intervenes. There is a downside to living in fresh air, well away from roads and towns, in a mobile phone black spot, inaccessible at times in the winter. That downside is time- the time it takes for an ambulance on blue light to get here. Almost ten minutes. Too long. An unconscious person would be beyond resuscitation. That's why we have a voluntary system of first responders - with collecting boxes in most pubs and post offices in the area - and unpicturesque custard yellow boxes going up on quaint cottages with defibrillators inside. This week I joined a sizeable proportion of people in my village on a course to know how to access and use the defibrillator, should the need ever arise. The box is fixed to the wall of Bagshaws the Butchers (- unfortunate symbolism). There is another at nearby Alstonefield.
If you ever find yourself out in the countryside and a situation occurs, the system is designed so that any member of the public ringing 999 will be given the location and code to the nearest box. Inside the box is another carry-out box. When opened, it automatically talks you through the procedure in such a way that anyone could administer the electric shock needed to save a life. CPR (manual chest compression) helps, but time is of the essence - and ten minutes is too long. It is a sobering thought as you take a gentle stroll up that hill, place a picnic by that stream, enjoy a moment of peace and tranquillity.
Talking of Bagshaws the Butcher's; I was up there earlier picking up the most succulent lamb chops to marinade for the barbecue. I'm quite getting the hang of my new toy and find the best part of the procedure is just standing out there on your own with a pair of tongues, sipping a half of cider and listening to the evening chorus - if there is such a thing. The sun sliding down the hillside, insects beginning to stir and sharpen their biting parts; and the stillness of a moment that is purely your own before the masses descend with the carnivorous instinct of an impending famine-alert, and the outdoor air making everyone eat super-size portions of food
You are busy in your vegetable patch tying in sweet peas and purple climbing beans. I was also tying in sweet peas yesterday. For a change I bought a perennial one in pink and white (not the 'original', best-scented of all, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.) Along with the new garden is an ugly shed which I would like to disguise. It has its uses for storing bikes and the lawnmower so it will have to stay.
You say,'No job in the vegetable patch feels quite so nurturing as tying the delicate stem of a plant to a stick.'
There has been rain these last few days, and in your garden too, though you appear to be enjoying it just a little bit too much, if I might say:
After 'the second driest spring since 1910...the last few days' steady rain...(makes me want)..to run naked into the garden and stand in the blissful rain, arms held up in thanks.'
So this is what is going on in some parts of London, then.
The French Tarragon seems to have survived our appalling winter when by rights it should have curled up and died at the first heavy frost ( the French being much less hardier than the Russian - but then we are both in agreement as to which has the superior flavour). It is for you 'one of the essential scents of summer'. And me. The necessary trim to your Tarragon allows you to make 'Chicken tarragon mayonnaise' (page 246) This is essentially grilled chicken rolled in cucumber and tarragon mayonnaise and eaten with a handful of pea shoots as a side salad. Being the thoughtful sort of cook you are - and appreciating that not everyone has the time or the inclination to spend too long in the kitchen - you suggest that 'If you don't fancy making your mayonnaise, use a mild proprietary brand.' And why not. Too many chefs in fancy trousers trying to make a good thing hard, I think.
I was chopping up summer rhubarb today trying to decide what to do with it. My thoughts on crumble were 'better in the chilly Autumn days', so I decided to freeze it as there is so much summer fruit in the house at present. Fruits like nectarines have a habit of ripening, over-ripening, and going mouldy all in the same afternoon, it seems.
By the way I found some of your truly fragrant apricots the other day. These ones were black and like nothing I'd ever tried before. Apparently they are some kind of cross between an apricot and a plum... but they never made it to the chicken with apricots and coconut milk recipe, I have to say.
You, however, have been making a crumble. It is a 'Cherry almond crumble' ( page 249) and I think I am going to try making it before the cherry season ends. Partly because you are adding ground and flaked almonds to the crumble topping and I want to see how this tastes, and partly because you are cooking cherries and, like you, 'it is not often I cook a cherry.' Having sampled a few great french cakes and puddings of late with both ground almonds and cooked cherries, I am intrigued to see how well this combination will adapt to our English crumble. And crumbles are a cinch to make and a joy to eat.
I took the girls to the little estate village of Tissington, just a few miles away, at the weekend to visit the plant nursery. I was very impressed by the diligent workers there picking off slugs from the surrounding gravel and then waddling off back to their duckpond just beyond the car park. These are the sort of places where 'old treasures' can be found and varieties that you only see in old cottage gardens that have been there decades.
Past the imposing Hall and the church and the farm cottages; round the corner, down a tiny lane, is a tiny, immaculate and beautiful vintage sweetshop selling jars of fizzy sours and strawberry laces on high shelves and mingled with push-along toys and '50's kitsch. It's a perfect place to take the kids - big ones or small ones - though heaven knows how they manage to make a go of it. Perhaps it's the online business. Either way 'Homes and Antiques' magazine just gave it one of their top three of vintage shops 2013. It's called 'Edward and Vintage' and you can tuck in online.
Mr. Edward, I presume, with his floppy old-fashioned haircut, was a dab-hand at dealing with indecisive children, making up a pound's worth with a couple of this, a handful of that, until clammy little hands could grab the candystripe paper bags and run laughing out of the shop to sit on the drystone wall and suck.I think we all have a favourite sweetshop from our childhood where memories are stronger than any lesson we ever learnt at school - the spangles that cut your tongue in two, the apple bombs that smelt of compost, the butter cushions that had a sheen like spun silk. We all remember those times.
Martha
Sometimes, when the countryside looks so idyllic, the flowers are out and the sun is shining, it feels that nothing could go wrong in the world - everything is 'perfick'. Reality soon intervenes. There is a downside to living in fresh air, well away from roads and towns, in a mobile phone black spot, inaccessible at times in the winter. That downside is time- the time it takes for an ambulance on blue light to get here. Almost ten minutes. Too long. An unconscious person would be beyond resuscitation. That's why we have a voluntary system of first responders - with collecting boxes in most pubs and post offices in the area - and unpicturesque custard yellow boxes going up on quaint cottages with defibrillators inside. This week I joined a sizeable proportion of people in my village on a course to know how to access and use the defibrillator, should the need ever arise. The box is fixed to the wall of Bagshaws the Butchers (- unfortunate symbolism). There is another at nearby Alstonefield.
If you ever find yourself out in the countryside and a situation occurs, the system is designed so that any member of the public ringing 999 will be given the location and code to the nearest box. Inside the box is another carry-out box. When opened, it automatically talks you through the procedure in such a way that anyone could administer the electric shock needed to save a life. CPR (manual chest compression) helps, but time is of the essence - and ten minutes is too long. It is a sobering thought as you take a gentle stroll up that hill, place a picnic by that stream, enjoy a moment of peace and tranquillity.
Talking of Bagshaws the Butcher's; I was up there earlier picking up the most succulent lamb chops to marinade for the barbecue. I'm quite getting the hang of my new toy and find the best part of the procedure is just standing out there on your own with a pair of tongues, sipping a half of cider and listening to the evening chorus - if there is such a thing. The sun sliding down the hillside, insects beginning to stir and sharpen their biting parts; and the stillness of a moment that is purely your own before the masses descend with the carnivorous instinct of an impending famine-alert, and the outdoor air making everyone eat super-size portions of food
You are busy in your vegetable patch tying in sweet peas and purple climbing beans. I was also tying in sweet peas yesterday. For a change I bought a perennial one in pink and white (not the 'original', best-scented of all, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway.) Along with the new garden is an ugly shed which I would like to disguise. It has its uses for storing bikes and the lawnmower so it will have to stay.
You say,'No job in the vegetable patch feels quite so nurturing as tying the delicate stem of a plant to a stick.'
There has been rain these last few days, and in your garden too, though you appear to be enjoying it just a little bit too much, if I might say:
After 'the second driest spring since 1910...the last few days' steady rain...(makes me want)..to run naked into the garden and stand in the blissful rain, arms held up in thanks.'
So this is what is going on in some parts of London, then.
The French Tarragon seems to have survived our appalling winter when by rights it should have curled up and died at the first heavy frost ( the French being much less hardier than the Russian - but then we are both in agreement as to which has the superior flavour). It is for you 'one of the essential scents of summer'. And me. The necessary trim to your Tarragon allows you to make 'Chicken tarragon mayonnaise' (page 246) This is essentially grilled chicken rolled in cucumber and tarragon mayonnaise and eaten with a handful of pea shoots as a side salad. Being the thoughtful sort of cook you are - and appreciating that not everyone has the time or the inclination to spend too long in the kitchen - you suggest that 'If you don't fancy making your mayonnaise, use a mild proprietary brand.' And why not. Too many chefs in fancy trousers trying to make a good thing hard, I think.
I was chopping up summer rhubarb today trying to decide what to do with it. My thoughts on crumble were 'better in the chilly Autumn days', so I decided to freeze it as there is so much summer fruit in the house at present. Fruits like nectarines have a habit of ripening, over-ripening, and going mouldy all in the same afternoon, it seems.
By the way I found some of your truly fragrant apricots the other day. These ones were black and like nothing I'd ever tried before. Apparently they are some kind of cross between an apricot and a plum... but they never made it to the chicken with apricots and coconut milk recipe, I have to say.
You, however, have been making a crumble. It is a 'Cherry almond crumble' ( page 249) and I think I am going to try making it before the cherry season ends. Partly because you are adding ground and flaked almonds to the crumble topping and I want to see how this tastes, and partly because you are cooking cherries and, like you, 'it is not often I cook a cherry.' Having sampled a few great french cakes and puddings of late with both ground almonds and cooked cherries, I am intrigued to see how well this combination will adapt to our English crumble. And crumbles are a cinch to make and a joy to eat.
I took the girls to the little estate village of Tissington, just a few miles away, at the weekend to visit the plant nursery. I was very impressed by the diligent workers there picking off slugs from the surrounding gravel and then waddling off back to their duckpond just beyond the car park. These are the sort of places where 'old treasures' can be found and varieties that you only see in old cottage gardens that have been there decades.
Past the imposing Hall and the church and the farm cottages; round the corner, down a tiny lane, is a tiny, immaculate and beautiful vintage sweetshop selling jars of fizzy sours and strawberry laces on high shelves and mingled with push-along toys and '50's kitsch. It's a perfect place to take the kids - big ones or small ones - though heaven knows how they manage to make a go of it. Perhaps it's the online business. Either way 'Homes and Antiques' magazine just gave it one of their top three of vintage shops 2013. It's called 'Edward and Vintage' and you can tuck in online.
Mr. Edward, I presume, with his floppy old-fashioned haircut, was a dab-hand at dealing with indecisive children, making up a pound's worth with a couple of this, a handful of that, until clammy little hands could grab the candystripe paper bags and run laughing out of the shop to sit on the drystone wall and suck.I think we all have a favourite sweetshop from our childhood where memories are stronger than any lesson we ever learnt at school - the spangles that cut your tongue in two, the apple bombs that smelt of compost, the butter cushions that had a sheen like spun silk. We all remember those times.
Martha
Sunday, 9 June 2013
June 8th - Guerilla gardening and Barbecue Summers
I have been doing a spot of guerrilla gardening - of a sort. There's been a barn restoration going on beside my cottage which is nearly finished now. Lately, I've sat and watched a couple of swallows sitting on the telephone wire joining the cottage to the barn, swooping in and out to their nest by a little red tractor with flat tyres (like an old dinky toy with sad eyes). Beside the barn is a small piece of land bound by railings just above the woodshed. I've been looking longingly at said bit of land for a while. The garden here is tiny - too tiny for a proper vegetable garden - but I miss my rows of perpetual spinach and rhubarb chard and the cut-and-come-again salad crops that are such a joy to harvest with scissors, straight into the salad bowl.
So it occurred to me that nobody might really want said bit of land and it would be perfect for a small veg patch. I tentatively asked if I could grow a few herbs around the edges - although by 'herbs' I obviously meant a couple of rows of Raspberry canes, rhubarb, leeks and some red cabbages. John ( my landlord) thought it would make his life easier if I keep it tidy for him. A few days later a load of top soil appeared from nowhere, and a few evenings after that a man with a rotavator turned up and spent all evening working, all for the price of a cup of tea.
So off I tripped off to the nursery with ideas for a few plants, and found myself at the till with half of Mr MacGregor's garden.
'I think I spend more on plants than I do on the kids,' I idly quipped.
Silence.
I see the headlines now: 'Children neglected as (single mum) indulges in tray of cabbage plug plants.' Shock. Horror. Close up of Pak choi.
The Summer is at last with us and it is wonderful to be able to eat in the garden and sip wine late into the evening. Will and I have been tackling the new barbecue; trying to eradicate all previous memories of appalling barbecue sessions by learning how to use it properly and what interesting things we can find to cook on it. We spend a lovely evening with marinated steaks and lamb and mint burgers and Hannah declares it 'the best barbecue ever'. (Praise indeed as Hannah is not prone to compliments, at least where I'm concerned). I feel we are conquering another bit of territory and it is losing its awe.
I am reading your recipe for 'Gooseberry crumble cake' (page 238). I seem to have had a few of these kind of cakes with a crumble topping lately and am very taken by them. The gooseberry bushes in the garden are far from fruiting so I may have to visit the freezer department of my local supermarket. I never seem to see them for sale in the fresh fruit department, although perhaps a good pick-your-own might be a good place to start a little later in the summer.
I think this recipe would work with frozen fruit though as gooseberries hold their shape well. You use a mixture of golden caster sugar and light muscovado with ground almonds folded into the mix a bit later. The fruit is simply top and tailed, scattered on top of the cake and the crumble topping added. I like the fact that the fruit is left whole and not sweetened as is usually the case with gooseberries. There is plenty of toffee sweetness in the cake and crumble and a layer of tartness is welcome.
Apricots are temperamental little fruits. It is impossible to judge without tasting whether they will be worth the effort or not. Often, you choose to bake the fruit with honey or poach with plenty of sugar and perhaps some vanilla or orange zest or even elderflower cordial (which I have noticed turning up in quite a few recipes of late, where once it was only a midsummer drink with ice and mint).
Today's apricots, though beautiful to look at 'flushed with vermilion and freckled with deepest ruby', are a disappointment. You take them to the kitchen and add them to the chicken curry that you are making. Like you, I have previously only added the dried variety (or semi-dried ready-to-eat, whatever that really means) to savoury dishes, mainly Moroccan. You are very pleased with the result for 'Chicken with apricots and coconut milk' (page 241): 'Rather than the sweetness overkill I feared, the apricots bring a welcome tang to the coconut-scented sauce and produce a partnership with the chicken that deserves investigating further.'
Summer fruit is so wonderful to look at piled up in all its vibrant hues or nestled into tiny baskets in the greengrocer's that, like you, I am a kid in a sweetshop wanting to bring everything home - far more than we can possibly consume - because it all just looks so good. Summer has arrived and we must savour every last bit of juice trickling down our chins. It is the only way that we can make the summer appear longer - those endless summer days of childhood that we had thought were all but gone; of bicycles and the wind in our hair, scraped knees and grass stains on our clothes.
Martha
Saturday, 1 June 2013
May 31st - Fitting pieces of sky and the Rendezvous Cafe
Dear Nigel,
A couple of years ago I happened to go into a tiny shop in Grasmere in the Lake District to find myself surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of boxes of jigsaws. I was amazed to find that people are still inflicting these objects of torture on their nearest and dearest and those already in enough pain in hospital wards. My Dad always accompanied Holidays and Christmases with a table containing a swathe of unfinished sky and some other object (- a boat, thatched cottage, buxom wench in mop cap and lupins etc.....who on earth commissions such naff paintings?). These unfinished jigsaws were the bane of my life as a child - untidy, unfinished, completely pointless and irritatingly controlling. Especially the sky.
Today I fitted a bit more sky into the picture. Today I finished a bit of unfinished.
All my life we had been visiting my Grandparents by the sea for our holidays; coming from a tiny village in the Lake District to the seaside town of Whitley Bay, near the mouth of the Tyne. And every time we would walk over the causeway to St. Mary's island and the lighthouse to fish in the rock pools.
'One day I'll take you up the lighthouse, just you and me,'my Grandpa would say, patting my hand. He'd been there many times over the years with my mum and her brother and sister but during my childhood it remained resolutely closed...always just one day... And then one day in my late teens it opened up again for folk to visit. But by then, of course, he was too old to climb the winding spiral staircase to the top. And then, of course, he died. So we never went, my Grandpa and me.
Time went by, as it does, and the promise always hung there in the air...one day...And so today, more than twenty five years later, I took Will, Sophie and Molly and my mum for a trip down the coast and a climb up the lighthouse to look out over the Northumbrian coastline and down towards the white dome of the Spanish city in the distance; and fitted yet one more piece of sky into the jigsaw that is my life.
A bit of a nostalgia trip coming back here after so many years. I also wanted to see if the Rendezvous Cafe was still there on the promenade where we had queued so many, many times over the years, to buy slippy, silky 'venetian' ice creams in sugar cones with chocolate flakes if we'd been good. And a ride on a braided donkey or the swing boats on the sand.
Built in the 1930's when my Grandparents were moving into their newly built home up the road, I remembered it from my 60's/70's childhood, still a beacon of shiny Formica and chrome with huge arched metal-framed windows. I wanted to see if it still existed, and if it did, whether the fact that it had remained so untouched for so long, might mean that it had resisted the 'improvements' that were the fate of most such coffee bars. It was pleasingly retro before retro was invented and I loved it even then.
I was not disappointed. And the beautiful acrylic paintings by Emma Holliday and a poem by the late Julia Darling showed I was not alone in appreciating the 'tacky' (in the best sense of the word) Formica world. A chance to gaze over the pink and yellow chequered promenade at the rolling waves from a mug of frothy coffee whilst the winds seeped through the single-glazed metal frames and large letters spelling 'ICES' on the outside wall drew people to the arched windows down one side. The acrylics seemed just the right medium to capture the brash and vibrant retro environment, still drawing the crowds, yet comfortingly not over-restored. Forward thinking, perhaps, or just a true sense of style.
So what have you been up to whilst we have been away for a half-term break? Work, work, work, it seems:
'I spend pretty much the whole day writing and recipe testing. There is no particular place reserved for this, and today I am holed up in the basement at the kitchen table...As the evening draws in, I put a match to the lanterns in the fireplace and write by their flickering amber light.' And for supper? 'a treat to eat something made by someone else' (for a change) - a simple sandwich of sourdough bread piled with fried mushrooms and grated cheese which James 'cooks in a shallow pan, the crusts turning crisp and deep gold, the cheese between oozing and peeping at the edges...A perfect thing.' There is a time, a stillness, a paring back of life when the simplest thing is the perfect thing. It arrives on a small wooden board and sliced into six fingers.
I saw the photograph of your cupboard of bowls the other day which you had rearranged, probably for the umpteenth time, to help you clear your mind for writing. You would understand the messiness of jigsaws, I feel.When I come home and the place is in disorder I can't begin to think once more until I have tidied up and made space for my mind to just be. There is a jangling with clutter, like nails scraped down a wall, that unnerves me and will not let me rest. I will come and sit by your flickering amber light and listen to the silence of your thoughts instead.
I turn the page of your diary to June and there exploding from the front of the page is a geisha of a peony unfurling its deep pink silk gown against the dark green leaves. Mine are still like the heads of knitting needles jutting from balls of rampant wool. I wonder if a few days sun will be enough to bring things on enough or whether it will just be an apology for a summer this year.
I catch you in the act of preparing cupcakes - something you have sworn blind to avoid at all cost. But no, there is a twist - not sugar frosting and heart-shaped confetti for you, but 'Cheese, ham and apple muffins' (page 222) to make a little piece of sublime cheese go a long way. The cheese in question is 'a small lump of Anne Wigmore's Spenwood, a firm ewe's milk cheese...It has something of an aged pecorino about it.' It is matched with some ham 'from the sort of well-cared-for pig that probably had a Christian name.' The muffins will need eating on the same day but I don't foresee that being much of a problem in this house. Used to knocking out cheese scones by the dozen, I haven't often had my muffin tins out of the cupboard. The sweet muffins are often larger than either I or the little ones want to eat, and a cake that won't keep a couple of days seems too much faff. But savoury is a different matter. You choose to eat these still warm from the oven with the scent of baked cheese wafting through the kitchen. Who could refuse?
Martha
Saturday, 25 May 2013
May 22nd - Rhubarb rhubarb and Life's too short to stuff a sardine
Dear Nigel,
The cool, damp weather has ran amok in the garden and meadows behind the cottage. The wild flowers - so Laura Ingalls Wilder circa. 1970's TV- which stole our hearts in the meadows last year, have yet to materialise (if they're going to bother at all this year). The Peonies refuse to flower; only the Rhubarb is flourishing and needs picking.
You are making a wonderful recipe for 'Rhubarb with butterscotch sauce' ( page 206), working on making a sauce 'to sweeten poached or baked rhubarb that doesn't involve making custard yet retains something of its nannying vanilla sweetness'. The rhubarb is simmered gently before the residue heated with light muscovado sugar, double cream and vanilla extract to make the sauce. 'It results in a sauce whose first notes are of butterscotch with an underlying one of rhubarb....A recipe of certain harmony.' I will have to have a go at this one because my repertoire in the rhubarb department is fairly limited, at best.
My favourite recipe of yours at the moment is your 'Aubergine, thyme and feta tart' (page 212) made with a sheet of bought puff pastry. I find the blocks of frozen puff pastry in the supermarket one of the most useful standbys to have in my freezer at home. Things always seem to look more impressive. The lovely thing about this dish is that the tart covers the whole baking sheet and feeds six easily. The salting of Aubergines is, thankfully, a thing of the past ( along with stuffing mushrooms, according to Shirley Conran) as ' most aubergines we buy have had that bitterness bred out of them.' And I'm with you on the olive oil front: 'Without olive oil, an aubergine has little to say.' The creamed aubergine is a nice base for the tart, giving a bit more substance to the lovely topping of feta, thyme and aubergine slices.
There is more of a summer feeling going on in your garden and you eat it at the garden table with a tomato salad dressed in olive oil and basil leaves. Lucky you. We are simply waiting for Summer to arrive. I am looking hopefully at barbecues and wondering whether I can be a woman in a man's world. (Seems crazy to have got to this age and hardly ever been allowed to get within three feet of one.) I am enticed by a man with a Landrover and a 30ft Airstream conversion, and the hard-sell is winning me over...
Life may be too short to stuff a mushroom, but it is also too short to stuff a sardine according to you: 'There is a well-known stir-up of breadcrumbs and aromatics traditionally used by Sicilians as a stuffing for sardines called beccafico...As much as the filling appeals in theory, I am not the sort of cook to stuff a sardine.' The combination of ingredients, though - olive oil, raisins, crisp crumbs, finely chopped parsley and anchovies - has other possibilities; and today it is scattered over lamb cutlets - a kind of upmarket chicken dipper? if you will. Served with a simple salad of lettuce hearts and green olives in their oil.
I am grilling slices of Halloumi cheese dusted in the Moroccan spice mix Ras El Hanout which, I have to admit, came in a little jar from Waitrose. It contains all the usual suspects - coriander, cinnamon, ginger, cardamon - but also lavender flowers, rose petals and mace ( which is the outside of the nutmeg). And I am contemplating fasting. Not on religious grounds, mind. I have been reading Dr Michel Mosley's book on 'The fast diet', about the current fad for 5:2 intermittent fasting. Only it seems to make sense where other diets don't.
We all want something that works - and this diet seems to be something that the medical profession have taken to heart and implemented on a very person level - but that also doesn't take the enjoyment out of food and eating. Traditional diets seem to change the whole way we view food and make the undesirable more desirable than ever. As Michael Mosley says,'(with fasting) the psychological impact of not being denied is huge; it frustrates what's known as the "disinhibition effect" - a paradox in which designating certain foods "off limits" makes us likely to eat more of them.'
I suspect that your relationship with food is on a more even keel than mine. I'm still learning that less is more. And I wouldn't contemplate buying low calorie, or fat-free, or sugar-free anything because I want to use real ingredients and would rather eat less of them instead. Preparing good food with love and care seems to help enormously in this respect.
Martha
The cool, damp weather has ran amok in the garden and meadows behind the cottage. The wild flowers - so Laura Ingalls Wilder circa. 1970's TV- which stole our hearts in the meadows last year, have yet to materialise (if they're going to bother at all this year). The Peonies refuse to flower; only the Rhubarb is flourishing and needs picking.
You are making a wonderful recipe for 'Rhubarb with butterscotch sauce' ( page 206), working on making a sauce 'to sweeten poached or baked rhubarb that doesn't involve making custard yet retains something of its nannying vanilla sweetness'. The rhubarb is simmered gently before the residue heated with light muscovado sugar, double cream and vanilla extract to make the sauce. 'It results in a sauce whose first notes are of butterscotch with an underlying one of rhubarb....A recipe of certain harmony.' I will have to have a go at this one because my repertoire in the rhubarb department is fairly limited, at best.
My favourite recipe of yours at the moment is your 'Aubergine, thyme and feta tart' (page 212) made with a sheet of bought puff pastry. I find the blocks of frozen puff pastry in the supermarket one of the most useful standbys to have in my freezer at home. Things always seem to look more impressive. The lovely thing about this dish is that the tart covers the whole baking sheet and feeds six easily. The salting of Aubergines is, thankfully, a thing of the past ( along with stuffing mushrooms, according to Shirley Conran) as ' most aubergines we buy have had that bitterness bred out of them.' And I'm with you on the olive oil front: 'Without olive oil, an aubergine has little to say.' The creamed aubergine is a nice base for the tart, giving a bit more substance to the lovely topping of feta, thyme and aubergine slices.
There is more of a summer feeling going on in your garden and you eat it at the garden table with a tomato salad dressed in olive oil and basil leaves. Lucky you. We are simply waiting for Summer to arrive. I am looking hopefully at barbecues and wondering whether I can be a woman in a man's world. (Seems crazy to have got to this age and hardly ever been allowed to get within three feet of one.) I am enticed by a man with a Landrover and a 30ft Airstream conversion, and the hard-sell is winning me over...
Life may be too short to stuff a mushroom, but it is also too short to stuff a sardine according to you: 'There is a well-known stir-up of breadcrumbs and aromatics traditionally used by Sicilians as a stuffing for sardines called beccafico...As much as the filling appeals in theory, I am not the sort of cook to stuff a sardine.' The combination of ingredients, though - olive oil, raisins, crisp crumbs, finely chopped parsley and anchovies - has other possibilities; and today it is scattered over lamb cutlets - a kind of upmarket chicken dipper? if you will. Served with a simple salad of lettuce hearts and green olives in their oil.
I am grilling slices of Halloumi cheese dusted in the Moroccan spice mix Ras El Hanout which, I have to admit, came in a little jar from Waitrose. It contains all the usual suspects - coriander, cinnamon, ginger, cardamon - but also lavender flowers, rose petals and mace ( which is the outside of the nutmeg). And I am contemplating fasting. Not on religious grounds, mind. I have been reading Dr Michel Mosley's book on 'The fast diet', about the current fad for 5:2 intermittent fasting. Only it seems to make sense where other diets don't.
We all want something that works - and this diet seems to be something that the medical profession have taken to heart and implemented on a very person level - but that also doesn't take the enjoyment out of food and eating. Traditional diets seem to change the whole way we view food and make the undesirable more desirable than ever. As Michael Mosley says,'(with fasting) the psychological impact of not being denied is huge; it frustrates what's known as the "disinhibition effect" - a paradox in which designating certain foods "off limits" makes us likely to eat more of them.'
I suspect that your relationship with food is on a more even keel than mine. I'm still learning that less is more. And I wouldn't contemplate buying low calorie, or fat-free, or sugar-free anything because I want to use real ingredients and would rather eat less of them instead. Preparing good food with love and care seems to help enormously in this respect.
Martha
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
May 15th - The cost of cutting and Introverts taste more deeply. Apparently
Dear Nigel,
I've been trying to count the pennies here a bit lately. No. 1 measure involved two little girls standing in the bath complaining bitterly whilst I went for the home-haircut treatment and chopped them both off at waist level.(Something easier done with girls, I realise, remembering how with four little boys at home I didn't get much beyond cutting off a few baby curls - not being such a dab hand with the snippers). It's not quite 'Tony and Guy' but it'll do. At the minute it's still plaits and gappy teeth anyway, but I don't rate my chances once they're into bobs and hair straighteners - long may their childish childhoods remain.
Things in the garden are inevitably earlier in the city than here. You are picking the first of this year's tarragon and also parsley. The French tarragon (which has by far the better flavour) is not really hardy up here and I no longer have a glass house to overwinter it in, so will probably start from scratch again with a little pot from the nursery. I have tried growing the more hardy Russian tarragon but the flavour was quite poor.Tarragon is such a flavoursome herb that it's not worth growing anything less than the best.
You use your tarragon in a salad of cold salmon with tarragon and lemon mayonnaise (page 200), with the salmon rolled in herbs and oil and lime juice and cooked gently in a shallow, non-stick pan. This is because 'most of the early herbs are exceptionally tender, their leaves having had little sun, their flavours mild rather than full of the the pungency that can come from weeks in the scorching summer heat...If I cook with them at all, it is more a question of warming them briefly...or their delicate new growth risks being lost.'
At long last there is English asparagus in the shops. I have been waiting its arrival with anticipation. Each year I promise myself to invest in a proper asparagus steamer, and each year I fail to justify it to my pocket. I try numerous ways to steam it the right way up so that the finer tips are not obliterated by the time the thicker stalk end is cooked. I read somewhere that if you snap it with your fingers rather than cut it you'll find just the right place. But I wouldn't want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs - or even lemons in your case. Asparagus with lemon and herb sauce (page 202).
Like you, I have a particular penchant for lemon, that occasionally leads to complaints from my family who don't share my taste for sour. (Often, I am completely oblivious to its sourness altogether). You say, 'I use lemon too much. Its presence, a spritz of zest, a curl of peel or a squirt of juice, turns up in my cooking second only to salt. Some will see its over-appearance as a flaw, I simply see it as a signature. What garlic, cream or chilli does for others, the bright flash of citrus does for me.'
This reminds me of something I read the other day in a fascinating new book called 'Quiet' by Susan Cain. The book is all about us Introverts and how we actually rule the world, despite the loud clamour of our Extrovert politicians and business chiefs. (Well worth a read by any introvert who feels squashed by the outside world).
Demonstrating how introverts and extroverts often need very different levels of stimulation to function at their best, Cain refers to a well-known experiment, dating back to 1967 and still a favourite demonstration in Psychology courses today, where 'Eysenck placed lemon juice on the tongues of adult introverts and extroverts to find out who salivated more. Sure enough, the introverts, being more easily aroused by sensory stimuli, were the ones with the watery mouths.' This would explain why you feel more at peace in 'introvert' nations, such as Finland, Norway and Japan, where you go to restore yourself; and why I am happier camping at the end of a peninsula than living it up in Ibiza.
Martha
I've been trying to count the pennies here a bit lately. No. 1 measure involved two little girls standing in the bath complaining bitterly whilst I went for the home-haircut treatment and chopped them both off at waist level.(Something easier done with girls, I realise, remembering how with four little boys at home I didn't get much beyond cutting off a few baby curls - not being such a dab hand with the snippers). It's not quite 'Tony and Guy' but it'll do. At the minute it's still plaits and gappy teeth anyway, but I don't rate my chances once they're into bobs and hair straighteners - long may their childish childhoods remain.
Things in the garden are inevitably earlier in the city than here. You are picking the first of this year's tarragon and also parsley. The French tarragon (which has by far the better flavour) is not really hardy up here and I no longer have a glass house to overwinter it in, so will probably start from scratch again with a little pot from the nursery. I have tried growing the more hardy Russian tarragon but the flavour was quite poor.Tarragon is such a flavoursome herb that it's not worth growing anything less than the best.
You use your tarragon in a salad of cold salmon with tarragon and lemon mayonnaise (page 200), with the salmon rolled in herbs and oil and lime juice and cooked gently in a shallow, non-stick pan. This is because 'most of the early herbs are exceptionally tender, their leaves having had little sun, their flavours mild rather than full of the the pungency that can come from weeks in the scorching summer heat...If I cook with them at all, it is more a question of warming them briefly...or their delicate new growth risks being lost.'
At long last there is English asparagus in the shops. I have been waiting its arrival with anticipation. Each year I promise myself to invest in a proper asparagus steamer, and each year I fail to justify it to my pocket. I try numerous ways to steam it the right way up so that the finer tips are not obliterated by the time the thicker stalk end is cooked. I read somewhere that if you snap it with your fingers rather than cut it you'll find just the right place. But I wouldn't want to teach my grandmother to suck eggs - or even lemons in your case. Asparagus with lemon and herb sauce (page 202).
Like you, I have a particular penchant for lemon, that occasionally leads to complaints from my family who don't share my taste for sour. (Often, I am completely oblivious to its sourness altogether). You say, 'I use lemon too much. Its presence, a spritz of zest, a curl of peel or a squirt of juice, turns up in my cooking second only to salt. Some will see its over-appearance as a flaw, I simply see it as a signature. What garlic, cream or chilli does for others, the bright flash of citrus does for me.'
This reminds me of something I read the other day in a fascinating new book called 'Quiet' by Susan Cain. The book is all about us Introverts and how we actually rule the world, despite the loud clamour of our Extrovert politicians and business chiefs. (Well worth a read by any introvert who feels squashed by the outside world).
Demonstrating how introverts and extroverts often need very different levels of stimulation to function at their best, Cain refers to a well-known experiment, dating back to 1967 and still a favourite demonstration in Psychology courses today, where 'Eysenck placed lemon juice on the tongues of adult introverts and extroverts to find out who salivated more. Sure enough, the introverts, being more easily aroused by sensory stimuli, were the ones with the watery mouths.' This would explain why you feel more at peace in 'introvert' nations, such as Finland, Norway and Japan, where you go to restore yourself; and why I am happier camping at the end of a peninsula than living it up in Ibiza.
Martha
Thursday, 9 May 2013
May 9th - First picnic of the year and A eureka moment with cauliflower
Dear Nigel,
There have been a few magical days of sunshine here and the whole world seems to have been out enjoying it. I am sewing name tags in gingham dresses and the bumblebees have been nosing in the planters. I drive through Hartington, hoping to stop at our village shop, and decide otherwise as cars are parked bumper-to-bumper throughout. Good for business, though, so I don't knock it. It's been a hard winter for many local businesses here who depend on tourism to survive. And providing homemade cakes and casseroles for the holiday cottagers keeps our village shop open for us locals, too.
I had decided on an impromptu picnic and hoped to stock up. So, returning home empty-handed, I decide to empty the contents of the fridge and go anyway. The best picnics I remember as a small child all seemed to involve my mother's vast collection of translucent blue Tupperware boxes with concentric circles on their lids (in various shapes and sizes) which were lifted out of an old laundry hamper. I grew up in a small village in West Cumberland (as it was then) on the edge of the Lake District, and weekends invariably involved a picnic in the Lakes. I don't really remember much of what we actually ate, but the joy of opening box after tiny box of delights as a hungry child remains with me still.
I empty the cupboard of all the tiny boxes I once used to freeze pureed mush for my open-mouthed babies, and build a small city of plastic on the table. The fridge appears empty at first, but once I start searching there are suddenly half a dozen sweet-tasting piccolo tomatoes, a jar of shiny purple Kalamata olives, a piece of Comte cheese hiding at the back of the fridge, a couple of cakes Hannah brought over the other day. Things mount up. It is almost lunch time before we are ready to leave as we are so late getting up. Luckily the ideal picnic spot is beside a winding riverbed just a couple of minutes down the road at Milldale - so we still get there in time for lunch. A throw-together salad lunch -it is the best picnic ever - which just goes to prove that the best ingredients are fresh air and sunshine...and the relief of uncurling after a long enforced hibernation.
If I had been better organised, of course, I could have made a thermos of your Cauliflower soup with toasted hazelnuts (page 194) that you have been labouring over to get right. But Summer came today and may be over tomorrow for all I know. Always a difficult vegetable to get right in a soup because its flavour is quite delicate, you say, 'the trick is, I suppose, to find a balance, where the flavour of the cauliflower is allowed to shine against a good, strong backbone of aromatics...but I do believe this time I have sussed it.' Starting with a base of fried bacon and onion, the florets of cauliflower are added with the stock. Your thoughts are that 'the problem all along has been cream...as soon as that is out of the equation , the little chou-fleur stands a chance.' With the thick, clagginess of the cream gone, there is suddenly more flavour to the soup. I like the sturdiness of the bacon and onion stopping any blandness appearing from the cauliflower. With cooler weather on the way I think a thermos of this on our walks may be just the thing.
Today you are making 'a warm tart of crab and tarragon' (page 195). Like me, you think the best and by far the easiest way to make pastry is in the food processor - it saves all those hot hands on the pastry. Made as quickly as possible and rested in the fridge it is simple - and always earns you lots of brownie points with your punters. Whether sophisticated dining set or hungry hoard of kids, few are prepared to turn down a good piece of pastry.
'Given the sort of glorious weather we have had this last couple of days, I use a tart such as this as the centre of a meal, offering a herb salad with matchsticks of cucumber in it on the side.' This would make a wonderful focus for a picnic, although just a table in the garden is such a treat at the moment when the sun is out. I am intrigued by your way of making a cylinder of pastry to slice into rounds and meld together in the tart tin. It certainly solves that unnecessary worry about carrying a sheet of rolled pastry over to the tin in one piece, and, as I've always thought, what goes on under the filling of a tart is nobody's business.
The filling is an unctuous custard, 'still very slightly wobbly in the centre', with tarragon, crab meat and french mustard, sprinkled with Parmesan. I am often at a slight loss as to what to do with crab meat. This is a tasty answer.
Here's to Summer - at last!
Martha
There have been a few magical days of sunshine here and the whole world seems to have been out enjoying it. I am sewing name tags in gingham dresses and the bumblebees have been nosing in the planters. I drive through Hartington, hoping to stop at our village shop, and decide otherwise as cars are parked bumper-to-bumper throughout. Good for business, though, so I don't knock it. It's been a hard winter for many local businesses here who depend on tourism to survive. And providing homemade cakes and casseroles for the holiday cottagers keeps our village shop open for us locals, too.
I had decided on an impromptu picnic and hoped to stock up. So, returning home empty-handed, I decide to empty the contents of the fridge and go anyway. The best picnics I remember as a small child all seemed to involve my mother's vast collection of translucent blue Tupperware boxes with concentric circles on their lids (in various shapes and sizes) which were lifted out of an old laundry hamper. I grew up in a small village in West Cumberland (as it was then) on the edge of the Lake District, and weekends invariably involved a picnic in the Lakes. I don't really remember much of what we actually ate, but the joy of opening box after tiny box of delights as a hungry child remains with me still.
I empty the cupboard of all the tiny boxes I once used to freeze pureed mush for my open-mouthed babies, and build a small city of plastic on the table. The fridge appears empty at first, but once I start searching there are suddenly half a dozen sweet-tasting piccolo tomatoes, a jar of shiny purple Kalamata olives, a piece of Comte cheese hiding at the back of the fridge, a couple of cakes Hannah brought over the other day. Things mount up. It is almost lunch time before we are ready to leave as we are so late getting up. Luckily the ideal picnic spot is beside a winding riverbed just a couple of minutes down the road at Milldale - so we still get there in time for lunch. A throw-together salad lunch -it is the best picnic ever - which just goes to prove that the best ingredients are fresh air and sunshine...and the relief of uncurling after a long enforced hibernation.
If I had been better organised, of course, I could have made a thermos of your Cauliflower soup with toasted hazelnuts (page 194) that you have been labouring over to get right. But Summer came today and may be over tomorrow for all I know. Always a difficult vegetable to get right in a soup because its flavour is quite delicate, you say, 'the trick is, I suppose, to find a balance, where the flavour of the cauliflower is allowed to shine against a good, strong backbone of aromatics...but I do believe this time I have sussed it.' Starting with a base of fried bacon and onion, the florets of cauliflower are added with the stock. Your thoughts are that 'the problem all along has been cream...as soon as that is out of the equation , the little chou-fleur stands a chance.' With the thick, clagginess of the cream gone, there is suddenly more flavour to the soup. I like the sturdiness of the bacon and onion stopping any blandness appearing from the cauliflower. With cooler weather on the way I think a thermos of this on our walks may be just the thing.
Today you are making 'a warm tart of crab and tarragon' (page 195). Like me, you think the best and by far the easiest way to make pastry is in the food processor - it saves all those hot hands on the pastry. Made as quickly as possible and rested in the fridge it is simple - and always earns you lots of brownie points with your punters. Whether sophisticated dining set or hungry hoard of kids, few are prepared to turn down a good piece of pastry.
'Given the sort of glorious weather we have had this last couple of days, I use a tart such as this as the centre of a meal, offering a herb salad with matchsticks of cucumber in it on the side.' This would make a wonderful focus for a picnic, although just a table in the garden is such a treat at the moment when the sun is out. I am intrigued by your way of making a cylinder of pastry to slice into rounds and meld together in the tart tin. It certainly solves that unnecessary worry about carrying a sheet of rolled pastry over to the tin in one piece, and, as I've always thought, what goes on under the filling of a tart is nobody's business.
The filling is an unctuous custard, 'still very slightly wobbly in the centre', with tarragon, crab meat and french mustard, sprinkled with Parmesan. I am often at a slight loss as to what to do with crab meat. This is a tasty answer.
Here's to Summer - at last!
Martha
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