Marzipan and Cherry Cake

The last slice of Christmas cake went at the weekend and as I'd got into the habit of tea and cake (and have been desperate to use my Kitchen Aid) it seemed only reasonable to bake something by way of a replacement. Ages ago I saw a recipe in Susannah Blake's 'Afternoon Tea Parties' which looked like it would fit the bill. It seemed perfect because it uses marzipan, glacé cherries, and ground almonds all of which I had bits of hanging around after Christmas baking. I was half tempted to use apricots instead of cherries as I had some of those hanging round as well but on reflection cherries were the right way to go. 

The marzipan in this cake is brilliant, it managed to recall the eaten cake whilst being totally different (much lighter and therefore much easier to eat a big slice of) and the whole almond and cherry thing is always a winner. I'm showing a picture of what the cake would have looked like if it hadn't not been ready when the rest of dinner came out the oven and more than ready when dinner was finished and I remembered it again (oops) it still tasted great* - especially with a cup of tea. The recipe also came with a brilliant tip, my oven is old and it seems likely the thermostat is a bit off. Long story short the tops of slow baked cakes are generally a little on the crispy side by the time the cake comes out and somehow it had never occurred to me to put a bit of tin foil on top of them for the last 20 minutes of cooking time. It works however and it's something I'll remember.

Marzipan and Cherry Loaf

175g butter (room temp)

175g caster Sugar

3 eggs

175g self raising flour

85g ground almonds

175g glacé cherries

75g (chilled) marzipan grated.

 A 2lb loaf tin lined, and oven at 180/gas 5

Mix the butter and sugar until light and creamy before adding the eggs one at a time and then the flour and almonds. Stir in the cherries. Put half the mix in the tin, sprinkle the marzipan on and top with the other half of the mix. Bake for about 45 mins then put a bit of foil on top and finish off for another 25 mins. Cool and eat. 

*The cherries aren't burned/caramelised, they're posh Waitrose ones that come in an upmarket dark cherry colour. Honest.  

Rachel Ray and why Trollope sometimes annoys me.

I love Trollope; I really do, but not blindly. The first of his books I read was ‘Cousin Henry’, I had mixed feelings about it but realise now that it couldn’t have been a better introduction because like ‘Rachel Ray’ it shows both the best and worst of him as a writer. The biggest problem I have with Trollope is his habit of repetition, for example;

 “She thought only of him, how beautiful he was, how grand, - and how dangerous; of him and his words, how beautiful they were, how grand, and how terribly dangerous! She knew that it was very late and she hurried her steps, She knew that her mother must be appeased and her sister opposed,- but neither to her mother nor her sister was given the depth of her thoughts. She was still thinking of him, and of the man’s arm in the clouds, when she opened the door of the cottage at Bragg’s End.

Rachel was still thinking of Luke Rowan and of the man’s arm when she opened the cottage door...”

Trollope uses this trick all the time and on occasion it works really well underlining a point, it’s also a useful tool in making the details of the plot stick in the readers memory – something I suppose was especially helpful if you’re reading a chapter a week (that quote is the end of one chapter and the beginning of another). However in ‘Rachel Ray’ – as in other places – it’s a device that he employs far too often, it becomes (to me) an annoying distraction from the plot which I just want to unfold. ‘Rachel Ray’ is 400 pages in my edition, if it was 300 pages long it would be a far better book.

I haven’t yet read Trollope’s autobiography but have read about it a few times – it seems that it did his reputation no end of damage partly because he advocated approaching writing as a job to be done rather than waiting for inspiration to strike. Apparently it was his habit to sit down each morning before work at the post office commenced and bang out a prescribed number of pages. On the whole I’m sympathetic to this approach but here it feels like nothing has been discarded and that when in doubt he’s simply rehashed points he’s already made. If Luke Rowan is referred to as a potential wolf in sheep’s clothing once it’s a question that’s asked twenty times. The reader knows he isn’t but has understood the doubts of Rachel’s family long before Trollope has tired of reminding us.

He’s also been accused of anti-Semitism and this is the first time in his novels that I’ve seen where that comes from. There is an election during the novel; the two opposing candidates are Mr Butler Cornbury – squire’s son representing the landed Tory element, and Mr Hart – Liberal Jewish tailor down from London and Not A Gentleman. On the whole I’m indifferent to racial attitudes in older fiction – it’s easy enough to overlook casually mentioned prejudices and assume that in more enlightened times the author would most likely share my own views. Here however there is an argument (repeated) that a Jew shouldn’t be allowed to stand for parliament in a Christian country, Mr Hart’s supporters are the more villainous of the books characters and naturally it bothers me that an authorial voice I’ve come to consider friendly suddenly comes out with opinions I can’t feel comfortable with.

In fairness it’s just as likely that Trollope was making up his daily word count when he kept returning to the question of whether Jews (and Catholics) ought to be accorded the same parliamentary rights as Protestants and he doesn’t do a bad job of giving both sides of the argument but his Conservatism (never much in doubt) is very much to the fore.

None of this makes me want to give up on Trollope, or make me think less of him as a writer (or a person) but it does make it clearer to me why he isn’t as well known as Dickens. With better editing (I’m back to the repetition) Trollope’s reputation would stand much higher but as it is his shortcomings are too obvious to always ignore, happily he has the talent to more than compensate for the bad and overall I think it makes for a richer reading relationship.

Rachel Ray and what I love about Trollope.

Catherine Pope at Victorian Geek (who has read her way through all of Trollope’s considerable oeuvre – which I think is more than I will ever do) has recently done a couple of posts on her top ten, and ten terrible Trollope’s. I’ve read eight of his forty seven novels so far, none of them obscure titles and am beginning to know what to expect – when he’s good he’s the best thing since Jane Austen, the rest of the time he’s nowhere close. Catherine has Rachel Ray in her top ten and I can see why, but for me it’s the perfect example of everything I love about Trollope and everything I really don’t.

The plot of ‘Rachel Ray’ is a simple enough boy meets girl affair – Rachel lives with her widowed mother and widowed sister in genteel poverty on the outskirts of Baslehurst. Mrs Ray is a woman in need of a husband support if ever there was one with the result that she leans rather heavily on her eldest daughter Dorothea Prime. Dorothea has a tragic sort of past – married in her teens to a young curate who survives a mere 6 months before Dorothea is left to go home with only £200 a year, a taste for low church preaching, and a penchant for good works to sustain her. She’s a woman who’s inclined to see the worst in people and find sin everywhere. 

Between these two Rachel’s life has been extraordinarily sheltered – hot buttered toast and cream for tea is the height of debauchery and aside from country walks with the local brewer’s daughters she sees nothing of society. The boy is Luke Rowan who’s come into a share of the brewery much to the dismay of his partner Mr Tappitt who had come to consider the concern all his own. Luke is a coming young man determined to have everything all his own way and with all sort of new fangled ideas about brewing decent beer (Tappitt doesn’t), he’s also new to the area. Luke and Rachel fall in love in quick order and despite Mrs Ray’s fears that he may be a wolf in sheep’s clothing come after her lamb, and Mrs Prime’s conviction that he’s the worst type of godless fiend, it’s eventually decided that he probably isn’t that bad and is allowed to pay his addresses to Rachel. She accepts him and all looks set to be happy ever after when sundry complications ensue.

Mrs Tappitt had designs on Luke for one of her own daughters and isn’t prepared to let Rachel walk off with the prize without a fight, Mr Tappitt also wants a fight, he’s convinced that brewing good beer will be the ruin of them all and isn’t prepared to be taught his business by a boy half his age. Mrs Rowan senior isn’t happy either, she wants her son to make a more advantageous match and is quite happy to let the Ray’s know it. Mrs Prime is determined to put a spanner in the works whilst at the same time juggling a proposal from Mr Prong (her preacher) who seems as interested in the lady’s money as the lady, and finally Mrs Ray is bought to such a state of doubt that she forces Rachel to break with Luke. How will it all end happily?

The best of Trollope is that his villains are rarely too villainous, or his heroes to heroic – they are all eminently human and in this case it’s very easy to sympathise with the Tappitt’s as well as wondering if Luke really as a steady enough character to be suitable for Rachel. There’s nothing sensational about the plot but it’s a definite page turner, there are times when it seems quite doubtful that there can be a happy ending (though of course we still know there will be). 

Trollope is also excellent on the nuances of class and social position which is particularly fascinating here where he deals almost exclusively with the bourgeoisie and their politics as they relate to the everyday workings of a small rural town. Broadly speaking nothing much has changed in the way these places work in the last 150 years and I do think that it’s his eye for these details that are a great source of Trollope’s strength as a writer. The love story is nothing special, his empathy for his characters is and raises this quite above the ordinary.  

That’s the good – next time I’ll tell you why Trollope is sometimes the most frustrating writer I think I’ve ever read.

A Dangerous Time of Year

Seville oranges have appeared at work and despite the fact that my freezer is still inconveniently full of last years haul (I thought I was on top of it until my mother came round with what feels like half a hundredweight more she'd been looking after for me) and I have many, many, jars of marmalade of increasingly unknown vintage hanging around the place I'm finding them hard to resist.

I came late to preserving - or perhaps it's not something one naturally turns to much before one's thirtieth year - but some time not long after then I started to develop an interest, by the time I was thirty five it was more like a passion, possibly when I hit forty it will be a full blown obsession. Meanwhile I'm still acquiring books on the subject, have taken to squirrelling away old jam jars (which friends and family now surrender as a matter of course), peruse the Lakeland Plastics catalogues with the same furtive enthusiasm that teenage boys (presumably still) hold for top shelf magazines, and am £50 away from a maslin pan to call my own.

The most recent book to join the fold is a reprint of what the cover assures me is Beryl Wood's classic 'Let's Preserve It'. It was a Christmas present from mum and I'm delighted with it; a proper A-Z of mostly jams, jellies, marmalades, and chutneys with side lines in the way of vinegars, pickled walnuts, and preserved lemons. So far I've only browsed so it may well be that there are all sorts of other good things in there. I'm strongly reminded of Niki Segnit's 'The Flavour Thesaurus' in the way that so many flavours are paired - it's an approach that I find endlessly beguiling and inspiring (although getting my friends to share my enthusiasm/eat the results of the more picturesque combinations can be an uphill struggle). 

I'm hoping I can resist the urge to buy more Sevilles, given that their season is a short one (only a few weeks) I may do all right and can concentrate on using up existing stores. Discovering a love of marmalade came about the same time as I discovered an enthusiasm for making it, both came like a bolt from the blue some time in 2006 - though even after my damascene moment there's only so much of it I can eat, mint and pineapple jelly however may be a different matter (quince and pumpkin jam however you can probably keep). This is a fascinating little book for the light it shines on previous generations of careful preservers (many of the recipes clearly have a venerable provenance) as well as for world of flavours it's suggesting to me. The instructions are brief to the point of economy so it's perhaps not the best book for a new initiate to the dark arts of preserving but otherwise it shows every sign of being indispensable. 

Private Eye - The First 50 Years an A-Z - Adam Macqueen

After my birthday, Christmas, sales, the generosity of Penguin (a huge parcel of Adrian Mole thank you very much) and others, as well as a general lack of self control I think the book situation is getting a bit out of hand. I've spent a good portion of this morning scooping up errant volumes from the floor (where many have been forming precarious towers - not I hope in some sort of escape bid) and piled them all in one place, there is a much smaller stack of books already read. Some of these books have already been mentioned in passing but all cry out for more attention here as well as a more permanent and ordered home on a shelf they can call their own so it looks like I've got my work cut out.

First off the pile is 'Private Eye - The First 50 Years an A-Z', I wanted this from the moment I saw it but held off for lack of funds (and in the hope that someone would give it to me, nobody did) so was delighted to find it half price in Waterstone's when I was uncharacteristically flush. Back in the day, though certainly not including the Al Fayed owned re-launch in the mid 90's, I was generally a fan of Punch - more cartoons less pointed satire. It's a sad admission but my grasp of current affairs isn't quite up to getting the best out of Private Eye, that and without finding it offensive I can't always summon up a sufficient sense of outrage against it's victims - though as I get older that's changing. 

I do however (and can't quite believe I'm admitting this here) have a bit of a crush on Ian Hislop and admire the Eye's publish and be damned attitude as well as the way that it's steered away from sex scandals (which on the whole are probably not in the public interest however amusing they might be from time to time). The more I read about the Eye though the more intrigued I am and each time I put this book down (which isn't easy, the last two nights I've still been flicking through it at 2am hours after picking it up for an intended 10 minutes) it's with an increased conviction that the stories behind and about the magazine are probably more interesting than anything I'll ever find inside it.  

Of course that opinion might change if I read 'Private Eye' more often - which I might; after 50 years it's enough of an institution to appeal to me and Adam Macqueen has done a brilliant job of portraying it as a brilliantly anarchic gang of talents committed to exposing hypocrisy, criminality, and foolishness in those who should know better. I watched an interview with Hislop once where he explained that as editor of the Eye he basically had to be whiter than white - you can't go slinging that much mud if you have skeletons in your own cupboard - and for all those who've complained about their treatment in the Eye it would be well worth remembering that if they'd behaved better in the first place they wouldn't have anything to fear.     

The G-String Murders - Gypsy Rose Lee

I truly hope tonight's browsing history doesn't lead to any particularly colourful spam (on the whole I can't recommend looking for images of vintage G-Strings) but I try to be thorough and some of the wardrobe descriptions in 'The G-String Murders' are rather outside my experience (which is mostly confined to M&S's finest). I have a few of the Femmes Fatales titles from the feminist press but this is one of my favourites (along with Vera Caspary's 'Bedelia') I bought it just before Christmas which looking at the prices now was clearly just in time. 

Given that burlesque has become so popular over the last few years (it's even reached Leicester) it surprises me that this book is all but out of print, it's also a damn good read - Gypsy rose Lee out quips Mae West which is quite impressive. The plot is a bit creaky but the atmosphere, slang, characterisation, and one liners are all brilliant, although I should warn anyone lucky enough to pick up this particular edition that there seems to be a lot of typesetting errors. Not enough to render the book unreadable but enough to be noticeable and annoying, however forewarned is forearmed and however niggly it became it's still such a good book that I didn't care in the end.

Gypsy Rose lee is the eponymous heroine of the book as well as our guide backstage in a burlesque theatre at the seedy end of 1940's New York. There are dancers - many past their best days and resorting to some desperate cosmetic measures, mobsters, impresarios, a lot of drinking, plenty of cat fights, some colourful language - basically you can pretty much smell the smoke and feel your feet sticking to the floor. Unfortunately all is not well at the old opera; Lolita La Verne (who nobody liked) has been found dead, strangled with a G-String, someone has tried to strangle Gypsy, and as if that wasn't enough the Princess Nirvena (blackmailer) also turns up dead in the Gazeeka box (no idea) anyone could be the culprit and it's a question as to whether the killer will be caught because the cops seem more interested in the chorus girls...

I know really pulpy Noir is my thing and not everybody feels the same - but honestly what sensible person could resist an opening like this:

"Finding dead bodies scattered all over a burlesque theatre isn't the sort of thing you're likely to forget. Not quickly, anyway. It's the little things, incidents that don't seem important when they happen, that slip your mind.

     With me, for instance. As long as I live, I'll remember seeing that bloated, bluish face, the twisted, naked body, and the glitter of a G string hanging like an earring from the swollen neck. Sometimes, even now, I wake up in a cold sweat with the sounds of a body squashing on the stage, and Dolly Baxter's screams in my ears."

Irresolutions

Well I'm back from my break albeit reluctantly and still have a few days off to sort myself out before it's back to work. It's odd to be home, my flat is taking a while to warm up and everywhere I look there are jobs to be done. The biggest and most intimidating of these is to sort out an incipient damp problem, my upstairs neighbour had a leaky pipe which has left my bathroom ceiling in a state - this is no worse now than when I went away so it looks like that problem is under control, unfortunately there seems to be another leak in the airing cupboard. It's going mouldy. I'm not happy.

Upstairs seem nice and will doubtless be helpful but I still foresee weeks if not months of chasing plumbers, house agents, insurance companies and all the other crap that goes along with these things. It's not the start to the New Year I would have chosen but is probably indicative of things to come - the best laid plans and all that. It's also another reason why I'm not making any resolutions this year, I tried last year and felt vaguely frustrated that all the good intentions, small as they were, kept being pushed aside by more insistent issues - this year I'm taking it as it comes, my resolutions will be made and carried out on a daily basis rather than grand ones where I will constantly let myself down by failing to be consistently better organised and such like.

Meanwhile the borders were as lovely as ever, my favourite bookshop (Main street books trading) came up trumps, I read some cracking good books, got disappointed at Glenkinchie distillery (closed due to wind damage) but happily missed the worst of the Scottish gales - although we still saw trees down everywhere - it really blew, froze looking at Melrose Abbey, ate my chocolate reindeer, and generally wish I’d never left.

Happy New Year

I'm off to my (parents*) winter retreat for a few days (me, the Scottish one, my brother, my brother's rabbit, my father's dogs... and others) which I hope will be peaceful and idyllic - well there's nothing wrong with hoping. I have a suitcase full of Victorian novels and warm jumpers, a bottle of single malt waiting for me, and a chocolate reindeer for emergencies so think I have the basics covered. 

I hope that everyone reading this has something equally good to look forward to and that the New Year brings good things for all. 

*It's flats - we retreat to one small corner, but the picture has a pleasingly Mitford feel for someone who finished 'Christmas Pudding' on the bus home tonight

The Joy of Dictionaries

One day my friend the blonde will let me take pictures of her collection of dictionaries - I have never, even in a university library, seen so many or on so many different subjects. So far she's resisted my attempts to sneak in with a camera on the grounds that her house isn't tidy enough (tidier by far than mine though) but one day... My own collection of dictionaries and reference books is a small affair by any standards never mind hers but I still like to have books to hand.

True enough the internet is a wondrous and useful thing but sometimes it's hard to find what you want amongst all the other stuff on there, though more often my problem is that I only find what I want and not so much of the incidental stuff along the way (I know this isn't the usual problem - maybe it's my age). The great thing about something like 'The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations' is that I can browse in it for hours - or minutes as time allows. I spent a lot of Christmas and Boxing day flipping through my new copy and would keep it by my bed if I thought it wouldn't keep me awake for hours. It's the sheer variety of stuff in there (and the pretty blue and yellow ribbons - my old university colours which feels like a happy coincidence). I briefly entertained myself texting the blonde Goethe quotes in German which she understands, I don't though so when she replied in kind I came unstuck. I found some cracking stuff about sailing which I think I'll soon have cause to repeat, and swore yet again that I should actually read Dorothy Parker and not just her quotes.

It's not even as if I'm a crossword aficionado or need this sort of thing for essays or the like, I simply find myself really enjoying time in the company of a book like this. I look at it and it seems full of promise and possibility; sentences that could lead to entirely unexpected and new (to me) writers - because clearly I need more books in my life - oh yes, the dictionary is my favourite present of Christmas (excluding the half a kitchen aid which wasn't for my birthday).  

The Company She Keeps - Mary McCarthy

It feels like an age since I've finished a book (I read of others managing to get through 160 + a year with a slight feeling of envy - 60 is doing well for me) but now that work has calmed down, my stress levels have fallen, and I no longer want to crawl into bed the moment I get home it's time to tackle my to be read pile.

I started 'The Company She Keeps' weeks back and was, until yesterday, in two minds about it. I didn't love 'The Group' when Virago reissued it a couple of years ago but liked it enough to pick up 'A Charmed Life' when I saw it second hand which I found a much more satisfying read. 'The Company She Keeps' was McCarthy's first book and feels semi autobiographical, each chapter is a self contained story and all of them have Meg Sargent somewhere in them. Initially she's an unattractive character; shallow, self absorbed, promiscuous, and a snob, but slowly and without McCarthy noticeably making Meg more sympathetic I found myself warming to her. 

I think it's because there are no real excuses for her behaviour that it starts to become acceptable - in the final chapter Meg's seeing a decidedly second rate psycho analyst who assures her that it's all due to a repressive upbringing - she seems unconvinced: it's to easy. I can't quite imagine how this book would have read when it was first published in 1942 but it's fair to say that Meg is a woman we've all met - the difference being that it's no longer normal to marry at 20 and not unusual to have the sort of complicated sex life that Meg engages in  which takes away some of the shock value.

The pay off for me came in the final chapter when Meg/McCarthy takes a good look at what bothers her - a failure to be happily middle class, or a decent socialist, along with the realisation that the accessories of her New York liberal lifestyle all covered in there "own patina of social anxiety" fill her with disgust. McCarthy has also answered a long held question for me, for years I've wondered why so many of the husbands in the  books I read are architects - Meg's second husband is an architect "the perfect compromise candidate, something halfway between a businessman and an artist". In her case it's an admission of failure to be one thing or the other.

My over all impression of McCarthy is that she could be a bitch, when she turns that on other people as she does in 'The Group' I find it mildly repellent, when she takes that same view of herself it's really effective and totally compelling.