Tanqueray's Bloomsbury Gin with Charles Dickens

I don't think I discovered Tanqueray gin until I found myself working for Oddbins (17 years ago today, it was a blessed escape from working with a crazy woman in a bookshop, she tried - honest to god - to curse me, it seemed to be a constant disappointment to her that I never got hit by a bus or similar. It was not a happy working environment) but it's the gin that made me passionate about gin.

Straight Tanqueray remains a favourite, and should probably be the one I wrote about tonight, but I've chosen their limited edition 'Bloomsbury' because I had such a good time buying it.

The Tanqueray available almost everywhere is now bottled at 43.7% abv, it used to be a generous 47.3% and if you ever see a bottle of that, get it, and if what I read is true they're still using the same basic recipe they came up with in around 1830. It's a very juniper forward, dry, gin and I love it.

'Bloomsbury' is a recreation of a recipe from the 1880's, so technically it's a bit late for Dickens, but the original distillery was in Bloomsbury (it got bombed out in the Second World War) and it seems likely that Dickens could have bought the local product. His characters are certainly no stranger to gin, or its evils.

It's perfectly easy to find 'Bloomsbury' online, but I got my bottles first from the famous Gerry's on Old Compton Street in Soho, and secondly from Beervana in Lerwick (Shetland, where I was surprised and delighted to find it). Spending quite a lot of money (around £50 for a litre bottle) for something to turn up in the post lacks a certain romance compared to the thrill of a hunt around Soho, or the serendipitous find in a tiny Scottish town. The day I bought that first bottle in London I also managed to bump into the distiller (Tom Nichol, now sort of retired, responsible for some great gins) in a bar/shop. It was a memorable day out, armchair click to collecting is dull by comparison.

It's a traditional juniper led gin, very smooth - so perfect for a martini, and it would also be a great background for a hot gin punch - something like These  (I see no reason to use Hendrick's). It also makes a brilliant G&T.

I admit a hot punch isn't the most summery of drinks, but then depending on where you are in the UK August isn't always as summery as one might hope for, and it's always something to look forward to for winter. Meanwhile Dickens is the sort of author who seems ideally suited to being accompanied by some sort of beverage. Something to drown the sorrows of the sad bits, to raise appreciatively when he's more convivial, and truly - the whiff of gin does pervade his books.

Herbs - Nikki Duffy

A river cottage handbook. About Herbs. By Nikki Duffy - whose 'Source It' column was my favourite thing about 'The Guardian'. That's the sort of hat trick that makes the pile of other books about herbs I've got quite irrelevant. Happily the River Cottage Handbooks always have something new to add (I've been comparing with  Jekka's Herb Cookbook). I've been a fan from the beginning of this series, it's full of unexpected joys and really excellent writing. The strength of the whole River Cottage thing is in its community approach, because whilst I'm a fan of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall it's in a mild sort of way and definitely enhanced by his ability to find really good people to collaborate with (John Wright's contributions have been my high points but they're all good).

I made grand plans after reading the veg patch and fruit books (Mark Diacono) but I only have access to my partners garden and I'm not there enough to make large schemes practical (he doesn't like to water, and last year hired a mini digger when my back was turned - both to the detriment of the roses). I might still get my way regarding a Quince tree (or possibly a damson...) but the great thing about herbs is that a) they're growable on my windowsill, b) plenty of them positively like dry and arid conditions, though probably not mini diggers, c) the results are pretty much instant, and d) the plants are generally cheap to buy - roughly the same for a plant or seeds as a packet of cut herbs which is quite satisfactory really. 

I'm a little bit evangelical about fresh herbs, they were my gateway plants into gardening, are my concession to the good life, and are useful, and beautiful, both to me and bees. I bought a myrtle last year which has spent the last few months sitting on a windowsill all but ignored (it seems happy though) reading about it made me go and crush a leaf - the smell was as good as it was unexpected. I could have looked it up elsewhere but the joy of a new book like this is in how it makes familiar and overlooked things suddenly fresh and obvious. I can't tell you how excited I am by this book. 

I can tell you that it's nicely laid out - the information is useful but concise, isn't overly preachy, feels good to hold (Bloomsbury's design team nailed it with these books) and read, and has lots of good advice with regard to both growing and using. The recipes are imaginative (white chocolate and basil truffles) but not to challenging for those who look askance at a few petals scattered in a salad - I plan to insert the thin end of the wedge into that particular prejudice by introducing lamb loin with lavender. This is a really good book.

Just a couple more books...

Book buying has been a bit of a theme over the last few weeks, and something of an obsession over the last few days. The blonde took me up to her ancestral home in the very lovely peak district, we basically trawled the local book and charity shops in the manner of women on a mission (which we were) and came home with roughly 10 books apiece. Long story (involving charity shops, amazon, Waterstones 3 for 2, some very kind publishers, and a few independents) short I’ve managed to acquire a slightly daunting 40 odd new books in the last month. Some of them are real doorstoppers as well.

Just to be clear (mum and dad) I can still pay the mortgage, Derbyshire seems to be the home of the book bargain and I haven’t actually been all that extravagant, quite extravagant, but manageably so, at least in terms of money spent. I think I might have been very extravagant indeed in terms of the sheer amount of text I can reasonably expect to read (The Count of Monte Christo – I’m looking at you...) before the next very exciting crop of books start whispering to me. But then there’s nothing new about that.

There are a couple of books I want to keep quiet about until I’ve read, and some I got because they caught my eye, or because they were too good to leave behind but know I won’t read for a long time (again ‘The Count of Monte Christo’), so I won’t exhaustively describe every book I’ve acquired right now (although it’s tempting, but I think I’m the only one that would find it really interesting). However there are a few I’m just too excited about not to share!

From amazon there’s John Wright’s ‘Hedgerow’ – I’ve been so excited about this book coming out, it really is my most looked forward to title of the year and it hasn’t disappointed me, (there will be more to come about this one). For reasons I can’t fathom it’s proved impossible to buy on the high street, but anticipation only made its eventual arrival more exciting and my reluctance to be parted with it in the last week has become a bit of a running joke with the blonde.

Also via amazon E F Benson’s ‘Mrs Ames’, again no sign of this in any actual bookshops which is a shame because it’s a terrific book, and Ali Smith’s ‘Girl Meets Boy’. These are both books that have been hovering on my wish list for a while and I’m very pleased to have them. I’m also very pleased to have Nancy Mitford’s ‘Highland Fling’ which I’ve patiently waited for Capuchin to publish since 2007, ordered from amazon but actually spotted in The Bakewell Bookshop. (This is a fantastic bookshop – easily one of the best I’ve ever found anywhere, ever!)

Oxford World Classics very kindly sent me Wilkie Collins ‘The Dead Secret’ and ‘Man and Wife’ – I’m really looking forward to these and wondering about the wisdom of drawing up a reading timetable in the manner of those revision timetables which I ignored at school. Hmmm. Some organisation is clearly called for, any suggestions?

‘Mildred Pierce’ and ‘In Tearing Haste’ came from Brierlow Bar (another excellent bookshop, this time the bargain sort) I love the film and the book was recommended to me here a couple of weeks ago. My brand spanking new copy was half the price a used amazon one threatened to be, so yet again I’m very happy with this. ‘In Tearing Haste’ is one of those books that I’ve fancied for a while and which became irresistible at £3.99. It seemed possible that it might just join the rest of my collection of unread Mitford letters, but I’ve been reading bits of it and I’m finding it compulsive.

I collect Virago modern classics in a mild way (as does the blonde). It’s not a really dedicated collection - I only get ones that specifically appeal, but I’m getting tantalisingly close to the 200 mark. Nice green copies are getting increasingly hard to find (I’m up to date with the new covers/titles) so there’s always the thrill of the hunt involved in hitting on something new, or something that either of us have been after for a while. Edith Bagnold’s ‘The Loved and Envied’ was new to me and Mae West’s ‘She Done Him Wrong’ is one I’ve wanted for ages...

So – I’m not planning on buying anything for a while, and I think I’ll be staying in a lot to catch up on some reading over the next few months anyway – which will take the sting out of the lousy weather. But should the sun shine I’ll be out complete with my ‘Hedgerow’ book on a foraging mission, though I know the squirrels have already beaten me to every hazelnut within the city limits.

Sarah Raven's Food for Friends and Family

It has been an unremittingly grey and gloomy day – not the thing at all for the 1st of June and the sort of day that calls for something cheering at the end of it. My quest for cheeriness took me straight to Sarah Raven’s new book –‘Food for Friends and Family’, published by Bloomsbury just (I like to think) to help me through days like today. (As a bit of an aside I’m carrying something of a torch for Bloomsbury at the moment, I love this book and I am unbelievably excited about the upcoming ‘Hedgerow’ river cottage handbook – and that’s only the tip of the books to daydream over iceberg.)

And talking of daydreams – how much do I want Sarah Raven’s lifestyle? Well quite a lot really which is probably pretty clear to anyone who follows this blog. Not just a gardener, but a gardener with a sitting tenancy of Sissinghurst, a place I find unbelievably magical (and I have just a little crush on Vita Sackville-West). Her husband owns a handful of Scottish Islands (I like those too) and she’s an inspirational sort of cook. (Even my blonde friend felt inspired and she hates cooking.)

There is a particular satisfaction in being able to open a recipe book and think ‘yes, no problem – I can do that’, an even bigger satisfaction in not being able to resist starting on something straight away. The first recipe I’ve tried from ‘Food for Friends and Family’ had to wait 24 hours though – it was Strawberry and Basil ice cream and the ice cream maker had to go in the freezer first.

This ice cream recipe, ahh, it’s not just an ice cream recipe, it’s the one I’ve been waiting for, the one that’s made me think of Sarah Raven as my friend and ally in the kitchen, it’s also the recipe that’s stopped my ‘hmmph it’s okay for her attitude (envy – it’s not pretty, but it’s true). I love to cook, and once I’ve got something down pat I’ll experiment a bit with it, but I’m the sort of cook who needs instructions. I don’t in the least trust the ‘Oh I just chuck in a bit of this and a bit of that and never measure anything’ approach. When I cook like that everything tastes the same and it gets dull pretty quickly, plus I never learn anything. This is just one of the reasons for a medium large collection of cook books.

My issue with ice cream is that every recipe I’ve found up until now has involved eggs, specifically egg yolks, so every ice cream I’ve made has tasted like custard. I’m sure if I’d have looked properly I would have found one I liked earlier, but another of the pleasures in a new cookbook is that previously overlooked ideas suddenly jump out of a new format. This strawberry and Basil wonder is a very simple (and amazing coloured) mix of fruit, cream, basil and sugar. The Basil makes the Strawberry flavour really sing – I loved it, the blonde loved it, and the Scottish one – well he loved it till he noticed the green bits at which point he accused me of trying to poison him with mint (there was an incident with some new potato’s – he’s not allergic or anything but I now know he doesn’t like mint added to things. Oh how I know it.) Assurances that it wasn’t mint came too late and I ended up eating the rest myself.

Next I plan to introduce some Rosemary Cherry scones and see how those go down. The rosemary won’t be visible so I might just get away with it... and I have to get some rose geranium for jam making, and lemon curd cup cakes sound wonderful, oh and pea pesto – got to make that too, and well, you probably get the idea. This is a delightful book, times better than many I’ve seen come out this year and really, really, worth a look.

Loot

What with having to work for a living it’s been a while since I’ve had much success in tracking down a decent haul of second hand book treasure. It doesn’t help that most the second hand shops within walking distance are charity ones – I understand the policy of only taking nice new clean looking books but from my point of view it’s not making for the most interesting selection.

I did actually spend some time in an age concern shop on Saturday trying to work what the stunning number of Dan Brown’s on the shelf says about the city – undiscerning enough to buy the book (bad) or discerning enough to dispose of it forthwith (good). The other book that I find disconcertingly ubiquitous in charity shops is Elaine Dundy’s ‘The Old Man and Me’; last year it was Miles Franklin’s ‘My Brilliant Career’ (why when it’s a Virago book it’s never an unread Muriel Spark is one of life’s mysterious injustices), but really – why ‘The Old Man and Me’? Did everybody get it for Christmas having already bought a copy or what? It sometimes occurs to me to wonder what I might be doing now if I had given my career as much thought as I give things like this, possibly for example I would have had a career rather than jobs – but where would be the fun in that.

Today however has been a red letter day, thanks to all the travelling over the last few weeks I had a day off to take (bonus of a job over a career where I daresay days off are for wimps) and as the blond is on holiday we went off on a tour of the county’s booksellers. First stop was the town I went to school in. It acquired a Waitrose last week which is the only improvement it’s seen in the last twenty years, it’s sadly lost the very decent independent bookshop that once lived on a corner of the high street and now only has a couple of shelves in an age concern. With the lightening reflexes born of trying to stop wine bottles before they hit a stone floor I managed to grab the only interesting looking book in the place before the blond even noticed it. She says I reminded her of one of those frogs with the long sticky tongues when they’re catching flies. I got Sybille Bedford’s ‘Compass Error’ for £1 so am happy to rise above the allusion.

After that we moved on to a town I used to work in – it gave me a bit of an advantage because I know the book hotspots and she didn’t. Like the good friend I am I shamelessly took advantage of my knowledge to head straight for the best shelves and can report that it totally paid off. I managed to get a lovely copy of ‘Henrietta’s War’ by Joyce Dennys which I have wanted since Bloomsbury bought it out but have never felt I had the money for. Very pleased. I also found ‘The Camomile’ by Catherine Carswell, which sounds interesting but mostly I fell in love with the cover, and Sarah Scott’s ‘Millenium Hall’ which I’ve never heard of before, but which is apparently an important and visionary work about a utopian women’s commune written in 1762.

The blond didn’t buy any books and rightly treated me to the odd dark look until I introduced her to a purveyor of excellent sandwiches. Restored by food we called into a craft shop to find ourselves being harangued by a very racist man with a passion for cross stitch at which point it seemed like time to come home.