Sundays

Sundays do tend to be about food round my way and today has been no exception. Yesterday the blonde and I headed out to the country to inspect the new house of a teacher friend and fellow Bridgewater fan (whatever else was moving chaos the tea was impeccably turned out) the house is great with a very promising garden, not however as promising as the teachers fathers garden... It has a lot of fruit trees – several kinds of apples, some really good plums, and a damson all gave up their best for us. So fecund were they that even the fact that I was wearing heals didn’t stop me getting bags of fruit. I’ve got some serious plans for all this fruit, now all I need to do is get organised before it goes over.

My last foraging expedition was a couple of Sundays ago when the Scottish one and I went out hunting for blackberries, I baked some into an apple and blackberry version of Apple pudding cake (I seem to remember we liked it!) but the majority went into blackberry whisky (one big jar half filled by 70cl of cheap whisky, 200g of sugar and as many blackberries as it took to fill the rest of the jar). The Scottish one tested it today and has declared it delicious (hopefully my turn soon) with no sign of secondary fermentation (the original Dom Perignon and I have both had problems with this – in my case with homemade mincemeat which is a bit less glamorous than his Champagne experiments) and so we’re hoping to find enough blackberries to make more, possibly using brown sugar which I hope will add another layer of complexity and general deliciousness to the overall flavour.

Today however is about cheesecake – made by request for lunch. I’ve not made a cheesecake for years and had vaguely remembered it being a slightly complicated process. It’s not. This is a version of a Nigella chocolate and lime cheesecake but mine is a lot smaller, lunch was only for 4 and there’s only so much left over cheesecake a person can eat without slipping into a larger dress size. I’m not sure how fashionable cheesecake is these days but it tastes as good as it ever did so here’s the recipe (for the original and probably best see ‘Nigella Bites’ or possibly her website)

1 packet of crunchy chocolate chip cookies – double choc chip won’t go amiss (150g)

40g of butter

100g caster sugar

2 whole eggs + 1 egg yolk

2 tubs (400g) cream cheese (might as well be the light version)

Juice of 2 ½ limes

1 small (17cm) springform cake tin needs to be made as waterproof as possible. It needs a sheet of tinfoil big enough to cover the base of the tin (Inside, and clipped into place by the sides) and to wrap up almost to the top of the outside of the tin. A second sheet of tinfoil wrapped around the outside of the tin should then do the trick.

Next the biscuits should be blitzed into a powder, then the butter added and the whole lot blitzed again into a buttery crumby ball. Spread this on the base of the prepared tin and put in the fridge to harden.

Set the oven to 180°, boil a kettle, and dig out a roasting tin big enough to fit the cake tin with room to spare round all the edges.

Whip the cream cheese until smooth, add the sugar and beat again, then add the eggs and lime juice, poor the gloopy limey mix into the prepared tin and place it in the roasting tin, half fill the tin with boiling water (and definitely below the level of the tinfoil!) put the whole lot – very carefully – into the oven and bake for about an hour. It should basically look set but with the hint of wobble to it.

Immediately remove as much foil as possible without undoing the sides and leave to cool on a rack – when it’s properly cool put in the fridge, still in the tin, for 2 or 3 hours (minimum) to make sure it’s well set and then eat.

Hedgerow – John Wright

This was another amazon purchase (and another source of high street frustration.) ‘Hedgerow’ should be easily available - it’s been well publicised, and yet I couldn’t get it in town at all. I know I keep coming back to this, but bear with me; for the last 2 years almost all my book shopping has been second hand, I’ve found brilliant books which I would never otherwise have had the pleasure of owning, reading, or even knowing about this way, but sometimes a book comes out that I’ve waited for, wanted, and scrimped to good effect over, and when this happens I want to walk into a shop (supporting the local economy) and walk out again with my purchase. It’s much more satisfying than waiting for, and then missing the post (unless someone’s sent me the book free, that’s a good feeling too).

‘Hedgerow’ is just such a book; I’ve been looking forward to its publication for months. I love John Wrights writing, it’s funny, warm, and informative, and although I’m not much more than an armchair forager every time I pick up one of these books ('Mushrooms', 'Edible Seashore', and now ‘Hedgerow’) I feel inspired and comforted in equal measure. In short ‘Hedgerow’ has more than lived up to my expectations, and now for the longer way of saying that...

The comfort comes in a few forms; not least being that the book is a delight to look at and handle, nice size, tactile cover, well illustrated, and an easy to use format (I think much of the credit for this belongs to the publisher, in this case Bloomsbury). I also find comfort in knowing what’s around me and what I can use it for – it leads to a very pleasant feeling of competency (doesn’t go amiss for small talk either). I love books that can be pulled out at will to be dipped into, and ‘Hedgerow’ is perfect for that, along with purely practical information there’s plenty of anecdote and folklore as well – it was my handbag book for my recent Derbyshire trip with the blonde. She laughed at me, but being in company there wasn’t much time for satisfactory novel reading, plenty of time to be absorbed by the history and mythology of the elder though (as well as edible things that can be made from it).

How inspiring I find this book (and indeed the whole series) is harder to put into words. I was bought up to take an interest in the countryside (still can’t whistle with a piece of grass though, despite my dad’s attempts to teach me) but it’s not nostalgia for a more innocent time – foraging is a competitive business (I’ve spent enough time in an English village to know better than to get between a WI member and a good blackberry at jam time), and of course if you forage the wrong thing you can do yourself some real harm. It’s not the idea of the good life either – not when even the things which are good for you can bite back (yes blackberries again).

I think what really inspires me in ‘Hedgerow’ is the sense of being rooted in a culture, a history, and in the seasons. The wild things you can eat or make use of, but not abuse (on Elder “There is one novice mistake that I must warn you about. Do not pick all the flowers from a tree, then go back expecting to find some berries. You won’t. Find any that is.”) are a rich part of our shared history, passing on that knowledge a fundamental part of country culture, as is teaching respect for the very things we hope to exploit.

One of the surprises about moving into a city was how much more in touch I got with the seasons again after a period of village life. Village life was generally about being on the bus to and from work, city life meant walking, and walking has meant being able to see, feel, and smell, what’s going on outside. It also provides reasonable foraging opportunities. Plenty of brambles, wild cherries, hazelnuts (though I’ve never beaten the squirrels to a nut, and if I did these are feral town squirrels who know no fear and are quite capable of retrieving nuts from me with extreme prejudice) mulberries – though ‘foraging’ for those was really a matter of outrageous flirting with the park gardener, and now I find there are a whole lot of other things that I had no idea were edible.

I might never make much practical use of some of this new found knowledge but I’m getting an increased appreciation of ‘weeds’, I’m inclined to look harder at what I see every day, and next time the Scottish one risks breaking his neck to gather me damsons I definitely won’t let them go mouldy before I do something with them (Gin not Jam I think). He’s well on the way to being as passionate about this book as I am – I suspect the joy of free food appeals to his thrifty Scottish soul, and deep down who ever grows out of a delight in the first blackberries of the season.