I've got a glut of lemons, so - at long last - I'm going to preserve a jar or two. And now I need a little advice from those of you who have done this. It comes from too much reading and not enough doing: does it really matter if you top up the jar with water as well as lemon juice? Or should it be only lemon juice? Paula Wolfert is stern: no water, just the juice of lemons you have squeezed yourself. But Pam Corbin, the author of the River Cottage handbook on Preserves, says you can top up with a little water.
I'll give both the methods (principally so that I can find them easily when we get back from a lunch party) ... but I'd really like some advice from anyone who's done this.
Paula Wolfert's preserved lemons
5 lemons 70g (or more) salt freshly squeezed lemon juice if necessary
+ optional Safi mixture:
1 cinnamon stick 3 cloves 5-6 coriander seeds 3-4 black peppercorns 1 bay leaf
Quarter the lemons from the top to within a centimetre of the bottom; sprinkle salt on the exposed surfaces; reshape fruit.
Put one tablespoon of salt in the bottom of a Le Parfait jar. Pack in the lemons, squashing them down, adding more salt, and the spices if you're using them. Press the lemons to release juice, and add more if necessary until the fruit is covered. Seal.
Keep in a warm place for 30 days, shaking daily.
Pam Corbin's preserved lemons
for two 450g jars
1kg small lemons 150g sea salt 1 tsp pink or black peppercorns 3-4 bay leaves 1 tsp coriander seeds (optional)
Set aside 3-4 lemons for juice.
Partially quarter the others by slicing lengthwise but keeping them intact at the bottom. Rub a teaspoon of salt into the cut surfaces of each lemon. Pack into the jars, sprinkling with salt and spices. Cover the lemons with juice. Top up the jars with a little water if necessary. Seal. Leave for four weeks.
Okay, this post is not for the squeamish. But it IS for anyone who likes complex flavours in their food, for anyone who hates waste, and for anyone who has access to a butcher's shop. Emphatically not supermarket food.
For once, I'm following a recipe to the letter. Next time I won't be so literal ... I won't put in as much Madeira, because the result is very sweet. It's not exactly a waste of good Madeira, because the taste shines through, but in this house I think we'd probably rather drink it than use it quite so liberally in the cooking.
The recipe comes from Fergus Henderson's book Beyond Nose to Tail Eating. It's the sequel to Nose to Tail Eating, a book which I have not yet read, although I ordered both at the same time. The recipe for this wondrous stock - which Henderson calls Trotter Gear - has been several years in the making, and therefore does not appear in the first book. But loads of the dishes Henderson makes with it are in both books, and I will definitely be making them.
Trotter gear
6 pig's trotters (I used four) 2 onions (peeled) 2 carrots 2 sticks of celery 2 leeks 1 head of garlic thyme a handful of peppercorns 1/2 bottle of Madeira enough chicken stock to cover the trotters
Get the butcher to split the trotters. Put them in a large casserole, cover with water and boil for five minutes. Drain and rinse off the scum. Put back into the rinsed casserole with all the other ingredients. Bring to a simmer, then put in a low oven for three hours or more - until the meat is falling off the bone.
When the trotters are cool enough to handle, strip off the flesh. Shred it, and put into a Le Parfait jar. Strain the stock over it. Seal, and keep in the fridge. Do this while everything is still warm, because it's much harder when the meat is cold.
If you are a little squeamish but have managed so far, you could just strain the stock off, and not worry about using the meat. I might do this next time, because my dogs were keen as mustard to get hold of the trotters, and they'd be a fabulous treat for two Jack Russells.
Either way, the meaty basis of this nectar cost £1. Jellied stock, sitting in my fridge. Five minutes' work. So many possibilities.
These celebration pastries are achievable by cooks at any level, and easy for experienced bakers. The basis is a white dough, enriched with sugar, eggs and butter. This is then smeared with more butter, and topped with a sugar and cinnamon mix, then rolled and cut. Not for dieters, obviously.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of making the rolls, then use the enriched dough as it is to make brioche.
If you're an incorrigible tinkerer with recipes, you could enrich your own favourite dough. It's what I did.
This is enough to fill one pan (mine's approx 30x25 cm). Or you could make it in 2 medium foil dishes so that you could freeze half for another day. Don't be tempted to use the small size, because it doesn't work (I used the not-very-good result to make a delicious bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding*).
It sounds like a lot of trouble, but the work, such as it is, breaks down into three distinct parts, each of which takes only a few minutes. This is good make-ahead celebration food, whether you use the fridge or the freezer.
Brioche dough
5g instant yeast (or a sachet) 450g strong white bread flour good pinch of salt 1 tbsp sugar (I used vanilla sugar) 125g melted butter, cooled 4 eggs warm water
I mix this in my bread machine, but it works just as well if you stir everything together in a bowl and knead/stretch til smooth.
Mix the dry ingredients together. Add the cooled butter. Break the eggs into a measuring jug, and make up the volume with warm water to 100ml. Add to the bowl. Once the dough is smooth, leave it to double. (This will take about an hour in a warm room. Or you could put the dough into the fridge overnight and take it out for two hours in the morning.) Cinnamon rolls for 16
Glaze: 250g icing sugar mixed with 5-6 tbsp water (sieve the sugar, or you'll end up with little lumps, like those pictured)
On a lightly floured surface, pat the dough into a rectangle 30x45cm. Smear on the melted butter, then add the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Use your fingers to get this mess right to the edges - it's just like playing mud pies, so this is a good place to get young children involved.
When the dough is completely covered, roll it up along the long edge. Then cut the rolls and arrange in your tin/s. Leave in a warm place while you heat up the oven, to 190C.
Bake for 25 minutes, but start checking after 20. As soon as you get them out of the oven, pour on the glaze, making sure you cover them well.
Mmmm ... these are Lettice's new favourite breakfast-on-the-move when she's up and out of the house early. Better than a bought croissant, any day. Cheaper, too.
*PS bread-and-no-need-for-butter pudding: slice brioche into a buttered dish, pour on a custard mix made with 3/4 pint of milk and two eggs, a little sugar (you'd need more if this was for plain bread), and a drop of vanilla essence. Leave this to soak for half an hour or more, then cook in a low oven for about an hour. Cover with greaseproof paper if it looks like burning.
This time last year: we were at Eleanor's graduation ceremony and making parsnip puree. In 2006 I was making a spicy squid stew with chorizo - easy and memorable.
I've made all the bread we've eaten in this house this year. Occasionally there's a crisis when I forget, or when appetites are larger than I think they will be. Those days, I either make soda bread, or this frying pan bread. It's not perfect, but it's better than going out shopping. Shamingly, I've had to make it this morning (absent-mindedness last night).
Emergency frying pan bread
Mix a soft dough from self-raising flour and water, with a little salt. You can use plain flour, or strong bread flour, but I find you get a slightly lighter result with self-raising. Flatten into a round and fry lightly on both sides in a little oil.
It's not perfect, but it's what we do. Does anyone have a better "instant bread" recipe?
We ate our flatbread with a stew made from a tiny bit of leftover tomato salad and a small box of mushrooms simmered for a few minutes until everything was cooked through. Much nicer than plain mushrooms, and a good use for the spoonful or so left in the bottom of a bowl overnight. A very good breakfast, even though you can't make toast.
Incidentally, I blitzed the leftover wedge with a handful of parsley, some mushroom stalks, a couple of anchovies and some lemon juice. I put this into an ovenproof dish, and it's going to be a stuffing / forcemeat to go with a very small joint of lamb which has suddenly had to stretch to feed to extra mouths. (Delicious: the lemon juice made it; some zest would have been even better.)
The frugal kitchen produces delicious food, full of different tastes.
The other day, Lettice was moaning about the lack of salad at this time of year: I HATE winter ... she's missing soft salad already, but we really are committed to not buying leaves which are flown in from abroad. This red cabbage salad was my response, we've eaten loads of variations.
Finely chop as much red cabbage as you need. Grate some orange zest onto it. Squeeze the juice from the orange, add a little salt, some oil. Chop parsley, perhaps some leeks too; grate carrot. Mix everything together. You could add caraway if you've got some.
I've made it with clementines (as you see): great, but they're hard to zest - and the zest really does add zing, so I'd be loathe to leave it out.
I've posted at least a couple of Waldorf-ish salads over the years, and here's another one. I love celery.
Apples, chopped; celery; a few sunflower seeds; a splash of red wine vinegar; a slightly bigger splash of olive oil; coarsely ground black pepper. Mix in the serving bowl.
Two ingredients worth mentioning here: the apples were russets, something you never used to see in a supermarket, and with much thinner skins than when I was a child. And - star of the show - Fenland winter celery, bang in the middle of its short season in England right now ... really delicious & worth the premium: it's lovely and pale, it's not stringy, it's got a nutty taste, and I'm confident that it will convert my celery-hating husband. (You have to wash it carefully, as the whiteness is achieved the traditional way, by banking up the plants with earth, to stop the light getting in.)
Here's a quick tip for sprucing up fish or chicken cooked in egg and breadcrumbs/flour. Add a few poppy seeds and some sunflower seeds to the flour or breadcrumbs ... delicious.
I shamelessly pinched this idea from Marks and Spencer, who sell fillet of cod lightly dusted in seasoned flour with sunflower millet and poppy seeds. I just don't keep millet seeds in the larder - can anyone tell me if they're worth seeking out?
Grains were the subject of this month's Heart of the Matter ... and here you'll find a small number of very good ideas from some of the best bloggers around. Cooking wholegrains always seems tricky to me: there's that whiff of 70s sandal-wearing earnest hippie-dom which is hard to shake off - boring brown food that tastes like horsefeed.
Not these days. The 21st century way with wholegrains is altogether tastier, somehow less earnest. I've been experimenting with the help of a highly recommended book, A Cook's Guide to Grains by Jenni Muir. Now I'm planning to add these dishes to my staple repertoire - these are all easily achievable, mostly quite quick, all of them the kind of recipes you can fiddle with to add your own stamp.
Labelga's quinoa flakes with spinach and red chilli is ready in 10 minutes, so there are no excuses for not giving this a go. It's one of Labelga's AAP dishes - another alternative to pizza! As you can see from the picture, the flakes are spread onto the plate, then topped with this fabulous spiced mixture. Find it at Leafy Cooking.
Christine at Kits Chow made vegetarian multigrain rice with vegetables, inspired by a Japanese rice dish, matsutake gohan (rice with mushrooms). This is something to get you experimenting - there are five grains: brown rice, black glutinous rice, buckwheat groats, oat groats and millet.
Bee and Jai have been doing some hard thinking about what they buy, cook and eat. Their post for Heart of the Matter is interesting and inspirational - they share their personal "rules", and finish with a versatile recipe for roti: this one is sourdough Swiss chard and cornmeal. You'll find it at Jugalbandi, always a good read.
I often think of cooking wholegrains as time-consuming, but here's another recipe that shows that wholegrains can be quick and easy. Michelle The Accidental Scientist, one of my co-hosts for HotM, makes this Mexican style rice when she's short of time, as an accompaniment to fish, tacos, beans - lots of links to these and other recipes.
Olive Oyl is a blogger without a blog, and she's sent me this variation on the traditional Greek dish spanakorizo (Spinach rice), another happy & easy meal:
Plenty for 2 hungry people, also good cold the next day
Chop an onion and gently fry in a biggish saucepan, in a good glug of olive oil. Rough chop around four heads of spinach, I often also add sorrel, baby nettles and cleavers, depending on what's growing, and add to the pan, cover and let sweat for five minutes. Next add 250gms of brown rice, 600ml of water and juice of a lemon. Bring to the boil, season,cover and turn the heat down. Check after about 20 minutes, stir, add water as needed and so on until cooked (usually around 50 minutes)you might also want to add at this point a good few fistfuls of herbs such as mint, parsley, celery leaves, dill. When cooked it has the consistency of risotto and is a beautiful emerald green. Be more or less heart healthy with a grating of cheese on top.
Nearly forgot: I blogged two grain dishes at Joanna's Food - Skirlie, a cheap and cheerful Scots dish made with oats, and these great six-seeded rolls.
Thanks to everyone for taking part, and watch out for the announcement for December's Heart of the Matter
Most inconveniently, I've fallen in love - preposterously, with a fridge. Not just any old fridge, either. I'm not much of a one for labels, so it was a coup de foudre. No, really, I don't even notice labels - yesterday, I told the man from Lavazza that I loved his coffee, only it turned out to be Illy's, and, moments later, I found myself telling the Dove miller that the flour my children liked best in the world was his Seed and Grain - only that turns out to be made by Allinson. Oh dear.
Anyway, back to the fridge. This is how it happened. We were in the huge theatre at the Good Food Show watching the pantomime dame that is James Martin spinning sugar out of a pan, his patter awash with doubles entendres, the audience screaming with delight - not the children, grown women (some of whom clearly thought they were about to see the Chippendales). Show over, our little group of bloggers was allowed up on the stage.
My plan was to take photos of the underside of the demonstration worktop - does that sink actually work? From the murky world of investigative blogging I can tell you definitively: no. There's a waste pipe poking down, but no bucket. Probably no water in the taps, either, but I didn't get the chance to try them.
On the way back down to earth, I passed the fridge. Being the sort of person I am, I opened it. Nothing in it. Nothing at all. Even so, the fridge beckoned: it's got more lights than the third runway at Heathrow, you'd never lose anything in there. I thought I'd take a photo, but someone from Gordon's team elbowed me out of the way, on an urgent mission to fill the fridge with everything he needed for the next show (a small plate of tuna steak). Actually, now I come to think of it, any photo of mine wouldn't have done justice to my new love, but it's okay, I'm not about to forget. (Also, it just occurs to me that there's probably a properly pornographic photo in the brochure I've got somewhere.)
A couple of us stayed on to watch Gordon (first I'd heard the papers say he's been a bad man was from his own lips). While he was patronising us with something he called blotty soup, but which the rest of us might think of as minestrone with an awful lot of wind, I began to notice that both TV chefs had mentioned all their sponsors bar one (James Martin gleefully telling us that Waitrose is a better bet than the sponsoring supermarket). At first I thought it might be because they took for granted the presence of a hot oven in their kitchens. But gradually I realised it was because any fool can say Billington, Sainsbury, etc etc.
And then - forgive me - I began to feel smug. I'd taken the precaution, earlier in the day, of asking our host for definitive advice. Miele. Rhymes with dealer. I just wish I'd asked how much my fridge is going to cost.
PS the photograph (illicit, I'm afraid, but I was sitting in the back row and came over all naughty schoolgirl) is not so much a snap of Gordon as a picture of the perfect fridge (on the left, and in the background on the right)
Just back from a fabulous day out arranging flowers with Robbie Honey ... we made wreaths, table decorations, a hand-tied bunch ... we chatted, we laughed, we ate Anna's delicious food. All in the most beautiful conservatory at Ransoms Dock in Battersea.
I recently found myself promising to make a Christmas cake for the raffle at the cricket dinner. Fine, I'm good at making fruit cake (if I say so myself). But not so good at decorating them. So I took the easy way out, and studded it with almonds, as if it was a Dundee cake.
This is the extra fruity Christmas cake I made last year, after lots of help from readers. I made two. I'll make marzipan for ours - it's a doddle, and much much nicer than anything you can buy. In fact, if I didn't have time to make a cake, I'd buy one and STILL make the marzipan, it's that good.
Icing? Well, I aim to crack that this year ... in the past, I've either bought very nasty ready-rolled, or made rough icing that slid down the cake, onto the plate and off onto the worktop. Can anyone give me any good tips on making Christmas cake icing?
On a grey rainy day last week, I test drove a new-to-me car. I picked it up on another rainy day. The next morning, there was an inch of snow on it. None of this would matter, except that it's a convertible. Mad. I still haven't driven it with the roof down. And now we're into winter comfort food: lunch at the weekend was game stew and mash, just what was needed now the weather's closing in till spring.
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall found 11 things to add to mash this weekend ... on top of the 100g of butter and 200ml of hot milk he adds per kilo of potatoes (or 100ml each of cream and milk).
Here, mashing is both favourite and least favourite way to cook potatoes. Some people like them better than any; others say it's a waste of a good potato. Sometimes I find myself making two types of potatoes. Who says I'm not an indulgent wife and mother?
Here are 5 ways I make mash:
When I'm mashing potatoes, I routinely add milk, nearly always skimmed
Sometimes, I add a good dollop of grainy mustard; good with ham
A spoonful of grated horseradish (from a jar, as I don't grow it) is delicious with roast beef
Olive oil added to mash instead of milk is particularly good with fish, or if you're going to use the potato as a pie topping
Or you can use a little cheese (and something from the onion family finely chopped) to perk up a pie of leftovers
Here's a new way to drive up traffic / waste time ... Black Boxes (scroll down a bit). You have several either/or decisions to make, and at the end, you're sent to a blog which has made similar decisions. Just before you link off, though, be sure to add your own dilemma, otherwise the game has an awful lot of A/B choices, which aren't much fun. It's a bit like Stumble Upon, only more random.
You know the sort of thing ... bread or toast (this IS a food blog), tulips or dahlias (with added gardening), Tennyson or Betjemann (and the odd bit of poetry), birds or bees (the wildlife in our garden gives me as much pleasure as the plants), etc etc
I found Black Boxes on Veg Plotting, but it started in the world of creative writing blogs, so there's a bit of a glut of writers at the other end ... though I'm confident that there are enough time-wasting food bloggers out there to have changed all that by the end of the week ;)
Just a thought for a cold, grey, wet November morning.
I'm always a little surprised when I read that British bumblebees are in decline to the point of near-extinction, because there are so many in our garden. This morning I discovered the reason: I have the same taste in flowers as bumblebees.
Bumblebees are one of the early signs of spring in our garden: when the snowdrops are in full flower, there they are, bumbling about on the rosemary bush by the kitchen door. And I see them daily until the end of autumn. I thought that's how it was in all gardens, but apparently not.
Here's the recipe for encouraging bumblebees into your garden:
make sure you have some early-flowering plants such as crocus, rosemary, clematis, fruit blossom - you will find these just as life-enhancing as the bumblebees, which come out earlier than other bees (the queens come out of hibernation in February)
in summer, give up bedding in favour of cottage garden flowers and native wildflowers. Sages, foxgloves, thymes, thistles of all sorts (including artichokes, if you can bear to let some of them flower)
in high summer leave at least some of your lawn uncut, so that bumblebees can feed on clover and birdsfoot trefoil
plant a wildflower meadow, however small - you can use seed saved from verges in your area if the price of a packet seems high
opt for single and semi-double flowers rather than doubles
plant a wide range of bumblebee-friendly plants, to encourage several of the 25 British species - three are already said to be nationally extinct. Bumblebees have different-lengthed tongues, so need different types of flower to get at the nectar
provide somewhere for bumblebees to overwinter. You can buy or make special nesters, but our garden is untidy enough for bumblebees to be left to their own devices
This is a seasonal list of bumblebee-friendly plants supplied by the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We have most of them in our garden (no heathers though - wrong soil):
February, March and April: apple, bluebell, broom, bugle, cherry, erica carnea (heather), flowering currant, lungwort (pulmonaria), pear, plum, pussy willow, red dead-nettle, rosemary, white dead-nettle
May and June: alliums, aquilegia, birdsfoot trefoil, bugle, campanula, ceanothus, chives, comfrey, cotoneaster, escallonia, everlasting sweet pea, everlasting wallflower, foxglove, geranium, honeysuckle, laburnum, lupin, meadow cranesbill, monkshood, poppies, raspberries, red campion, single roses, sage, salvia, thyme, vetch, white clover, wistaria, woundwort
July and August: borage, bramble, buddleia, cardoon, catmint, cornflower, delphinium, heathers, hollyhock, hyssop, knapweed, lavender, lesser burdock, marjoram, mint, penstemon, purple loosestrife, red clover, rock-rose, sainfoin, scabious, sea holly, snapdragons, St John's wort, sunflower, teasel, thistles, viper’s bugloss
I used Allinson's Seed and Grain Bread Flour for these fabulous rolls. The flour itself is white, but 20% of the mixture is made up of wheat and barley flakes, kibbled rye grains, sunflower seeds, linseed and millet. The people in this house who moan about wholemeal bread like this, and those of us that would always rather avoid white flour have something to get our teeth into.
I made the dough in the breadmaker, on the pizza setting, then rolled it into balls which I put into a cake tin. Easy - but not much more difficult to mix by hand (instructions at the bottom). This method gives the dough a great deal of oven spring, which means the rolls are light and airy ... invaluable for someone like me, who is apt to make rolls as heavy cannonballs. (Compare the two photographs, and you'll see what I mean - I put the dough straight into the oven after taking the picture.)
Seeded rolls for 6
1/2 tsp dried yeast 300g flour 170ml water a pinch of salt a dribble of olive oil
Put the ingredients into the breadmaker* (these are given in the right order for a Panasonic, but some machines would like you to use reverse order). Use the pizza setting (which takes 45 minutes).
When the dough is ready, roll it into a sausage and cut into six pieces. Roll these into a ball, tucking the untidy bits underneath. Place them in an 8-inch cake tin and leave to rise in a warm place. Bake in a hot oven. I left these to rise near the woodburner for nearly an hour, then baked them for 15 minutes in a hot oven. They would have been better with 3-4 minutes more.
* If you don't have a breadmaker: mix the ingredients together and knead until you have a dough (you don't have to use a bowl for this, you can make a circle of flour to surround the wet ingredients). When it is smooth, put in a lightly greased bowl and cover with a plate; leave in a warm place until doubled in size.
This post is an entry for this month's Heart of the Matter, the subject is grains ... we'd like to hear your heart-healthy ideas for cooking with wholegrains - not only breads. All the details can be found on the Heart of the Matter website. I'm hosting this month - the deadline is Thursday 27 November, round-up over the weekend.
For many people, the warm spices - cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, nutmeg, mace - are the smell of Christmas. They're also the typical contents of a jar of mixed spice. I've got two lots of mixed spice on the go at the moment: Bart's contains coriander, cinnamon, cassia, ginger, caraway, nutmeg and cloves; whereas the Spice Shop Christmas Pudding Mix contains cinnamon, mace, nutmeg, cloves, anise and cardamon. Either way, they can be substituted for individual spices when you're following a recipe - or you can make your own mixture with the flavours you like best.
This Christmas chutney is brilliant for people who've never made one, because it's made with dried fruit, which means you don't have to boil it for hours and hours while the moisture from fresh ingredients is driven off. It's also brilliant for people without much time, because you don't have to chop - you just pulse the cooked chutney in a food processor. And it's delicious.
Christmas chutney is good for presents, for eating with cold Christmas leftovers, and to perk up sauces and gravies. It takes half an hour of fuss-free cooking. If you make it now, it will be at it's best at Christmas, although it will keep for years.
Christmas chutney enough to fill three 0.5l Le Parfait jars
Put everything into a large stainless steel saucepan. Slowly bring to the boil, simmer for 20 minutes, loosely covered. Stir occasionally, to ensure everything is properly cooked through. Leave to cool for a while, then tip into your food processor to pulse. Three or four quick pulses is enough, as you want texture, not babyfood. Spoon into sterilised jars (ie, straight from the dishwasher cycle, or from 20 minutes in a low oven).
*Do not worry if you don't have all those spices - don't go out to buy allspice specially, just make up the amount with a mixture of the others. And if you don't use much spice, then mixed spice will do fine - look at the ingredients, and you'll see they are not much different.
** I had a little trouble finding dried pears (Cooks' Ingredients section of Waitrose). But dried apple slices would do just as well, and are more widely available.
This is adapted from Nigella's Christmas, a book I am much enjoying
Just having a bit of a spring clean of my computer, and found, hidden away, from long ago, a lovely award given to me by Top Veg, the Tree of Happiness.
You have to list six things that make you happy:
all my family sitting round the kitchen table eating a delicious dinner
tulips
reading - a good book, a poem, a recipe, the newspaper ... not too keen on the cereal packet unless there really isn't anything else
the warmth of the fire seen through the window of the woodburner, the smell of apple logs burning
a delivery of fresh organic vegetables and milk from Riverford ... seasonal, delicious, and no need to go to the supermarket
winter flowers - snowdrops, the scent of witch hazel, sarcococcus, iris reticulata ... all of them tiny, fleeting yet intense pleasures
And six blogs, new-ish to me, which make me happy, & which get my Tree of Happiness award:
Christmas presents are so much nicer when they're homemade: I treasure the chopping boards made by my children, the necklaces made of conkers, the jewelry cases made from old boxes decorated with beads, grandma's delicious marmalade and shortbread.
This is the work of moments, and I know it's going to be delicious. Lovely for dressing seasonal salads. And Christmas presents.
Fig vinegar for one litre
250g ready-to-eat dried figs 75g runny honey a sprig of thyme (or a teaspoon of dried) a pinch of peppercorns (I used multi-coloured) 1 litre white wine vinegar
Snip the figs fairly small into a two-litre Kilner or Le Parfait jar. Add all the other ingredients. Shake. Put in a cool dark place for a week, shaking occasionally as you remember. After a week, decant into 4 sterilised 250cl bottles, using a funnel and sieve.
Keep in a cool dark place until you're ready to use it or give it away.
My grandfather was born in 1899. Just right to serve in two world wars. He was a talented sportsman (played international rugger in the 1920s), and saw many of the best members of his school XV go straight from school into the army, and on to the endless casualty lists. When he left school in the summer of 1917, he went straight into the Durham Light Infantry, and by Armistice Day he was a German prisoner of war.
For years, I thought that the photograph above was taken when he was in his mid 20s. It is only very recently that I discovered he was 18 when it was taken; he had just left school, just swapped his Marlborough uniform for that of the Durham Light Infantry. My younger son goes to the same school, plays rugger on the same pitches, and is also a fly half. I cannot imagine - I have tried, but I cannot cannot - what it can have felt like to be at school, watching the older boys enlist and be killed, week by week, month by month, year by year, knowing that soon it would be your turn. One family lost three sons in quick succession; my grandfather played games in the same team as two of them - these were boys he knew well.
During the second world war, my grandfather joined the Royal Artillery, and just before Christmas 1941 died on active service in Wandsworth, where he ran a searchlight battery. Not very glamorous. This morning I visited his memorial at Mortlake Cemetery, where I was unexpectedly overcome with an intense feeling of grief for a man I've never met, but whose birthday I share.
This afternoon, I was at Twickenham, home of England rugby, and home of the Harlequins at the time my grandfather played for that great club. There I found a team photograph taken before my grandfather's first match for England, against Wales at Cardiff Arms Park in 1922. He looked strangely vulnerable - a mixture of apprehension and excitement. The photograph below was probably taken during that match. V.G. Davies - my grandfather - is on the left. Heaven knows what treatment the spongeman is giving his unfortunate team-mate!
These are the results of Sarah Raven's pumpkin trial, conducted this summer in the terrible conditions we had for squash. It was published in the Telegraph a few Saturdays ago - irritating, because who buys their seed now? But if I don't blog the results, the paper will float about the house for months, and I won't be able to find it when I need it. This post is all about striking a blow for tidiness.
I've grown some of these pumpkins, and completely agree with Sarah's findings, which is why I'm keen to keep hold of all this information for the moment when it's actually needed. And because not all of you may have a husband who is addicted to the Telegraph. The looks/longevity is for the florist in you; taste for your inner cook.
Crown of Thorns Ornamental; stringy Looks/longevity: 7/10 Taste: 2/10
Crown Prince The blue one. Good taste; excellent storer. Seeds "horrid" Looks/longevity: 10/10 Taste: 9/10
Giant Pink Banana Huge. Good for soup. Flavour ok (not outstanding). Seeds "like cardboard" Looks/longevity: 6/10 Taste: 7/10
Lumpy Good producer. Watery/bland. Only good for lanterns Looks/longevity: 6/10 Taste: 0/10
Zucca de Marmellata Size varies wildly. Used in Italy for jams and chutneys. Seeds ok. Favourite of whole trial Looks/longevity: 8/10 Taste: 9/10
Snowman Creamy green skin, creamy coloured flesh which is bright green at the seeds. Light cropping. Delicious, nutty flavour. Large tasty seeds. Will grow again Looks/longevity: 8/10 Taste: 8/10
Sweet Dumpling V dense dry flesh. Parsnip-like flavour. Good producer. Tiny tasty seeds. Good in small garden, can be trained up fence/trellis Looks/longevity: 8/10 Taste: 7/10
Turk's Turban Beautiful, ornamental only as stringy/watery/bland. Large tough tasty seeds. Only grow for ornament Looks/longevity: 9/10 Taste: 2/10
As I typed out these findings, I realised that the marks are not entirely consistent with the remarks - but this information is a good starting point for seed-buying decisions in the spring. I've grown three of these, and regularly eat two more, and agree with every word. Now I'm looking forward to growing Queensland Blue and Zucca de Marmellata. Any comments from any of you who have grown some of these? Or further recommendations?
This is an announcement for November's Heart of the Matter - we're looking for recipes using GRAINS ... all sorts of grains - wheat, farro, spelt, kamut, amaranth, buckwheat, barley, corn/maize, wild rice, millet, sorghum oats, rice, rye, triticale, quinoa. And if anyone can tell me where in Britain I can buy teff I will be eternally grateful.
That list: it's not exhaustive, and it contains grains I've never eaten, never mind cooked. But it also holds promise - of delicious, healthy, cheap meals. For these grains have been the staple food of mankind over centuries, ever since we stopped roaming, settled down and began to farm.
I have a tendency to think of grains as part of that worthy wholefood 70s thing, brown food that tasted like sawdust. Daft really, because looking through my blog, I find dozens of delicious family favourites made with grains (and I'm not just talking about bread). In the next few days, I'm going to posts lists in groups to make them easier to find - I don't know about you, but I have a lot of half-used packets in my larder, from when I've enthusiastically cooked something new just once.
I'm also going to recommend a really good book, one I found by accident about a year ago, and which is full of useful information about grains, as well as some excellent recipes. It's A Cook's Guide to Grains, by Jenni Muir. Here's an oat recipe adapted from it - too brown to photograph well, but utterly delicious, and cheap as chips (although much much healthier).
Skirlie for 4
Finely chop an onion and fry very gently in a solid saucepan using plenty of oil. When they're soft and golden mix in a cup (100g) of medium oatmeal and fry for a further 10 minutes or so. Stir frequently. When the mixture is nicely toasted, serve.
This is good instead of potatoes; it's also great with mashed potato. You can use it as a stuffing, either for a joint of lamb, or for a squash. It's a lovely savoury dish that would take well to being modernised with plenty of chopped herbs; it's filling, it's cheap, it's nourishing, it's heart-healthy. It just isn't particularly photogenic.
We'd love to read your heart-healthy grain recipes ... the Heart of the Matter website is a great place for ideas for heart-healthy recipes (something I wish had existed when we were changing our diet on doctor's orders after my husband's heart attack), and it only exists because so many bloggers have taken the time to share their recipes - and also because of the time given to it by my co-hosts Ilva at Lucullian Delights, and Michelle, The Accidental Scientist
The usual rules: If you’ve participated before, you already know the basics. If you haven’t, check here, here and here for ideas on what “heart-healthy” means, and we hope that you’ll join us! Again, we ask that this please be a single event entry (please don’t use your post for other events – that way we can keep things centred on healthy heart awareness). Just send your entry to joannacary AT ukonline DOT co DOT uk (could you use the title HotM, so they don't get lost) by midnight Thursday 27th November, linking to my site, Joanna's Food (and to the HotM blog if you’d like) and I’ll post the round-up during the last weekend of November.
PS I'll let you know soon why I'm so keen to track down the teff
According to the back of the tin of baked beans I've just eaten for breakfast, the British eat more baked beans than any other nation at an average of 15lb per head per year. And most of them, judging by supermarket shelf space, are either Heinz or own-brand. Both of which are, to my taste, too salty. Now, at 57p a can, I've discovered the most delicious alternative: open the can and you can smell the cinnamon, the cloves, the nutmeg - you don't get that with Heinz (65p).
Here's the complete list of ingredients for Whole Earth Organic Baked Beans:
PS re-reading this, I'm amazed at that average figure: I eat the most baked beans in this household, at about four tins a year - there must be people on a tin a day.
My father spent part of the second world war in the American desert, training pilots. He came home with a lifelong love of America and its people. He always used to say that Americans could be trusted to elect the right man (sorry, generational thing) for president. Actually, he didn't say it in 2004, and I didn't hear him say it this time round. I haven't thought it for a while, either. I should say that I do now.
This morning seems the moment for Maya Angelou's healing words: History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, and if faced with courage, need not be lived again.
Here she is reading the whole of The Pulse of Morning at Bill Clinton's inauguration, her hypnotic voice speaking equally for us all:
So much to think about this glad morning, here it is in full:
On the Pulse of Morning, by Maya Angelou
1
A Rock, A River, A Tree Hosts to species long since departed, Marked the mastodon, The dinosaur, who left dried tokens Of their sojourn here On our planet floor, Any broad alarm of their hastening doom Is lost in the gloom of dust and ages.
2
But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully, Come, you may stand upon my Back and face your distant destiny, But seek no haven in my shadow. I will give you no hiding place down here.
3
You, created only a little lower than The angels, have crouched too long in The bruising darkness Have lain too long Face down in ignorance. Your mouths spilling words
4
Armed for slaughter. The Rock cries out to us today, you may stand upon me, But do not hide your face.
5
Across the wall of the world, A River sings a beautiful song. It says, Come, rest here by my side.
6
Each of you, a bordered country, Delicate and strangely made proud, Yet thrusting perpetually under siege. Your armed struggles for profit Have left collars of waste upon My shore, currents of debris upon my breast. Yet today I call you to my riverside, If you will study war no more. Come, Clad in peace, and I will sing the songs The Creator gave to me when I and the Tree and the rock were one. Before cynicism was a bloody sear across your Brow and when you yet knew you still Knew nothing. The River sang and sings on.
7
There is a true yearning to respond to The singing River and the wise Rock. So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew The African, the Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheik, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear The speaking of the Tree.
8
They hear the first and last of every Tree Speak to humankind today. Come to me, here beside the River. Plant yourself beside the River.
9
Each of you, descendant of some passed On traveller, has been paid for. You, who gave me my first name, you, Pawnee, Apache, Seneca, you Cherokee Nation, who rested with me, then Forced on bloody feet, Left me to the employment of Other seekers -- desperate for gain, Starving for gold. You, the Turk, the Arab, the Swede, the German, the Eskimo, the Scot, You the Ashanti, the Yoruba, the Kru, bought, Sold, stolen, arriving on the nightmare Praying for a dream. Here, root yourselves beside me. I am that Tree planted by the River, Which will not be moved. I, the Rock, I the River, I the Tree I am yours -- your passages have been paid. Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need For this bright morning dawning for you. History, despite its wrenching pain Cannot be unlived, but if faced With courage, need not be lived again.
10
Lift up your eyes upon This day breaking for you. Give birth again To the dream.
11
Women, children, men, Take it into the palms of your hands, Mold it into the shape of your most Private need. Sculpt it into The image of your most public self. Lift up your hearts Each new hour holds new chances For a new beginning. Do not be wedded forever To fear, yoked eternally To brutishness.
12
The horizon leans forward, Offering you space to place new steps of change. Here, on the pulse of this fine day You may have the courage To look up and out and upon me, the Rock, the River, the Tree, your country. No less to Midas than the mendicant. No less to you now than the mastodon then.
13
Here, on the pulse of this new day You may have the grace to look up and out And into your sister's eyes, and into Your brother's face, your country And say simply Very simply With hope -- Good morning.
We live in the countryside near Henley on Thames in Oxfordshire. This blog describes the food I make for our family: I'm not an expert, but I do cook from scratch every day. It's partly a health thing (less salt and sugar, better quality ingredients), partly because I prefer to buy food as locally as possible (great butcher nearby, a lovely Italian deli, I belong to a food co-op, a weekly vegetable box, flour from local mills). I try not to use supermarkets much, but don't always succeed. Each year, I grow a little more of our food, mainly herbs and tomatoes; I'm far too idle to grow maincrop potatoes, but this year we're growing salads and many more vegetables. We keep hens; I plan to keep bees, which would make me a third generation beekeeper. I bake all our own bread, although my children would prefer to be allowed to eat sliced white in peace.
From the start in 2005, I have written this blog mostly for myself: to help me keep track of recipes and links. I'm not saying what I do is best (or even better); I'm just writing down what I do. It gives me huge pleasure that my children use this blog when they want a recipe; I am also proud of the number of cyberfriends I have made (and met) over the years.
If you want to contact me, this is where to start: joannacary AT gmail DOT com
I'm happy to publish comments so long as I know who they are from. I have comment moderation for older posts, to block irritating spam which appears daily from Japan on a couple of posts. I will always delete anonymous comments, however flattering.
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