Mulled things

I had meant to write about Wilkie Collins 'Miss or Mrs' but am putting it aside again in favour of a general ramble and a sort of recipe. The day the clocks go back is easily one of my favourite in the year. It marks the beginning of winter in my head and that's a season I get on with. Autumn brings me down with it's general sense of things ending, my inability to find clothes which don't leave me either to hot or to cold, and all those particularly fat and gruesome looking spiders which infest the garden. Winter on the other hand is a chance to wear all my beloved woolly items, see sunrises at a time of day when I'm likely to be up anyway, and to plan new beginnings.

 

Even spending the day nursing an impressive bruise and sore arms hasn't taken the shine off that extra hour in bed. Yesterday we went for a shooting lesson (D thinks it's something nice we can do together - apparently nothing says romance like a shotgun, and who's to say he's wrong). I was reasonably confidant that I'd enjoy myself but was surprised at how much fun it was despite being really not very good at it and managing at some point to hold the gun low enough to get that bruise - even so I hit a couple of clays (very satisfying) I would say it was by accident but as I was certainly meant to be aiming at them I'm counting those hits as a real success. 

Other sure signs that winter is on the way are the panic stories about weather, in this case Very Strong Winds heading for England, Shetland friends are dismissive of these winds feeling that gusts of up to 80mph merely constitute a strong breeze but they don't have trees to contend with and I feel that makes a difference. There also seems to be a lot of mulled stuff around. Of all the mulled things I can think of mulled oranges are my current favourite. When I was staying with dad a few weeks ago I had one of those 'help I unexpectedly have to make a pudding for 10 people out of store cupboard ingredients' moments that a certain sort of cookbook insists that you are always likely to have but I find has happened to me in 39 years of real life only twice. Both times they got oranges.

 

The credit for Mulled wine oranges goes to Hugh F-W in a Guardian column (see here) and now also in 'River Cottage Fruit' it had stuck in the back of my mind and I don't think really needs a recipe. Mine had red wine, port that needed using, rum because I found some, cinnamon, sugar, a star anise that was hanging around, and cloves, all simmered into a slight syrup and then poured over sliced oranges (just over half an orange for each person if you're interested) and left to sit for a couple of hours. It was quick, easy, a pleasingly light finish to a meal, and generally popular so is set to become a staple in my house - had there been left overs I bet it would have been even better the next day.  

River Cottage Fruit Every Day - Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

There are many I things I have a weakness for - chocolate eclairs, pearls, tweed, gin (the list goes on and on...) but somewhere near the top of it lie River Cottage cook books. Each time I see one in the offing I think about resisting (resistance is futile) partly because it seems inevitable that eventually there will be a duff one and every time I give in within moments of seeing the thing buying it from whatever retailer I happen to be in at the time (luckily for me it was WH Smiths this time who have some terrific bargains when it comes to cookbooks). The timing with 'Fruit' was particularly fortuitous because my damson contacts had come good with a vengeance and in the end I had something like 14 kilos of them to do something with before they went off. I made as much jam as I could find sugar and jars for, there are another 5 kilos in the freezer which will probably be jelly when I can get more jars and sugar, a liqueur is brewing (a rag tag mix of gin and vodka dregs which hopefully will be pleasingly mellow and not annoyingly bland and sweet), and finally some damson puree to make Hugh's damson ice-cream from the new book.

I've only had 'Fruit' for a day or two so I've not really had a proper look at it yet but have already managed to tag a number of recipes. there is a terrific looking apple and marmalade cake which I can't wait to make. It promises a slightly lighter take on a traditional fruit cake and boasts whisky soaked sultanas along with marmalade and chunky slices of apple and lots of brown sugar (more things I have a weakness for). I also like the sound of a blackberry syrup cake where a magnificently purple blackberry syrup stains the sponge in a pleasingly dramatic sort of a way. Sloe syrup looks good too - I've only ever used sloes for gin but syrup sounds like a much more versatile option, apparently it's good on pancakes and can be used for mixing in drinks, I think it'll be well worth experimenting with. There are also plenty of salads, savory dishes, and unexpected things to do with strawberries (pizza) which look to be very much my cup of tea.

Given that this 'Fruit' has more than a bit in common with Jane Grigson's 'Fruit Book' (which I consider to be one of the best cookbooks ever to cross my path and quite likely one of the best ever without any sort of qualification) it's no surprise I'm taken with it. In fact the only quibble I have with the River Cottage 'Fruit' is one of lay out. One of the things I really like about Grigson's fruit and veg books is that she arranged them by fruit (or vegetable) alphabetically so when you have a glut of anything it's a very simple matter to flip to the relevant section and find a whole host of suggestions, here the fruits are divided into categories (stone fruits, summer berries and currants, pears and quinces etc) which for damsons (yes it's an obsession) I spent a lot of time consulting the index because however they're classified the recipes do not fall especially close together. However that's a small quibble for what's clearly destined to be a useful and inspiring cookbook.

The damson ice cream is custard based so I cheated a bit and bought ready made custard from M&S (you need the extra thick luxury stuff and a spoon, and that's another thing to add to my list of weaknesses). This is partly because I've never been a huge fan of custard based ice-creams, I like custard but have always found the eggy flavour gets in the way of whatever else is in the ice-cream and that's never been what I wanted, also custard is a little bit of a hassle to make in that you can't take your eye off it - not something to be combined with jam making, a tub seemed much more practical. The damson bit was a puree of 500g of fruit simmered with a couple of tablespoons of water and 50g of sugar until it's all soft and ready to be pushed through a sieve. After that it needs to be chilled before churning. Eventually mix with cold custard and churn in an ice cream maker (or freeze and stir every half hour or so until it's suitably soft set) and then finish off in the freezer. It's quite a grown up flavour (and you can taste the custard in it) with a definite tang of tannin (which manifests itself as a slightly smokey tea like flavour) and quite rich with a lovely velvety texture, a little goes a long way.      

 

      

Damson Thursday and a couple of links

Yesterday when I was all energetic after a half day at work and with the prospect of a whole day off today I dragged one friend out to the country after a hard day at the office to evict another friend from the place on the sofa she'd earned after a whole days teaching so that we could go and bother her father who has a damson tree in his garden... I love damsons, I love them more than enough to impose on the good will of anyone who has access to them, and I even love them enough to be sanguine about the fact that I came home with something like 10 kilos of them which turns out to be 5 kilos more than I know what to do with tonight especially know I've run out of jam jars. 

After an exhaustive search of the county revealed that jam jars are apparently more precious than gold (when did it become acceptable to charge £2 or more for an empty jar? I could buy crappy jam and throw it away for less) I was more than grateful to discover that WH Smiths have 'River Cottage Fruit Every Day' in stock (I think this is early) even better they have it quite keenly priced so I didn't feel at all guilty about not being Salt Sugar Smoke' for Damson and Gin jam, this is the perfect jam if, like me, you prefer sweet things with a tart edge and believe that gin is A Very Good Thing (in moderation).

able to come home without a copy. I love River Cottage books almost as much as I love damsons, a River Cottage book with a good selection of recipes for damsons... Well you can imagine how happy I am (there will be ice-cream, for which there is a recipe). Meanwhile it was back to Diana Henry's brilliant '

Out in the wider world Thomas at My Porch has compiled a list of his top 80 most enjoyable novels by women. It's a great list with links to other lists and is an excellent reminder of just how many great books there are out there (by both men and women). I really like that Thomas had a list of 80 books that had scored more than 8 out of 10 on his personal rating system - somehow a satisfactory sort of number. I see too that Lyn at I Prefer Reading has been reading Georgette Heyer... And not just any Heyer but 'Sylvester' which judging from the comments is everybody's favourite (mine as well). 

Capsule Cookbooks – part 2

So much for the cookbooks that I could at a push do without – though they give me a lot of pleasure and almost as much inspiration... What’s on the shelf that’s indispensable? (Indispensable being a loose term here obviously because really all these books are a lovely luxury.)

Ever since I got it last summer I’ve been devoted to Niki Segnit’s ‘The Flavour Thesaurus’. It’s become a key to all my other cookbooks; take one ingredient, look for combinations, find a recipe in one of those many contenders – but better than that (and it would be pretty good if that was all it did) it’s also a great read, lovely to look at, and contains a few good recipes as well. It’s the perfect book for the semi confident cook like me; I like a bit of direction and Segnit does it so well – I’m maybe such a fan because her two key flavours approach is particularly friendly to wine matching and that makes things easier for me too.

Another newish book is ‘River Cottage Every Day’ which was a Christmas present from my sister a year ago. So far it’s been all about the baking, but there’s a lot of good stuff in there. Ideologically the River Cottage way (and sometimes it does feel a little like a cult – but I mean that nicely) is one that appeals to me. Fresh, seasonal, home grown or sustainably sourced – basically food with thought behind it, and all very makeable as well – nothing that the harassed wine merchant/book blogger can’t deal with at the end of the day as long as she’s prepared to get her hands dirty from time to time.

And whilst I’m on the subject of River Cottage there are the handbooks. I love this series and actually think they’re all indispensable. It’s not just food it’s an entire way of life from foraging to fishing via baking and preserving with a bit of gardening. If I was going to be stranded on an island these are the books I’d be hoping would wash up in a packing case and happily if I was going to limit myself to only ten cook books (hell will freeze over first) I could totally cheat the odds with these because so far all but two arguably fall into different categories. Pam Corbin’s ‘Preserves’ and Daniel Stevens ‘Bread’ are the two which are absolutely cookbooks, and I love both of them. ‘Preserves’ has made my kitchen far, far, stickier and jam making has become a bit of a passion, although that’s just the tip of the iceberg. ‘Bread’ isn’t the first bread book I’ve bought (I also have a Ballymaloe version, and actually other books about preserving) but what both of these books have in spades are good clear instructions, and good clear explanations of why you do what they ask. It’s an approach that appeals to my pragmatic learning style, the results have been excellent and they’re not going to be easy books to supersede.

I can’t imagine my kitchen without Nigella Lawson (I’m a child of my times) but though I have all her books – because basically I just can’t help myself – the one that I use more than any other is ‘How To Be A Domestic Goddess’. Hardly surprising given that I’m no stranger to the dark art of baking. There’s something about the philosophy behind this particular book, as well as the absolute reliability of the recipes that makes me think this will always be a great fall back book. It’s certainly been upping my calorie count for the last decade.

I’ve had ‘The Art of the Tart’ (Tamasin Day–Lewis) for almost as long and despite not having a good hand for pastry it’s been responsible for some great tart’s and some awful jokes. I have lots, though not all, of Tamasin Day-Lewis’ books but seldom have the time to use them properly; her thing seems to be food that demands a certain amount of time and pottering, perfect if you have a weekend to spend gossiping in the kitchen whilst giving something the odd stir before unveiling an amazing meal for 8. Not so good when you’re at work till 9pm and back for 9am. Still I can dream/hope and there’s something pleasingly grown up about these books, also once you’ve created your tart it’s very friendly to the work late start early cycle that I can’t seem to escape.

Claudia Roden is another food writer who’s left her mark on me. ‘A New Book of Middle Eastern Food’ (another Christmas present from my sister who’s getting good at this) is a classic that’s not especially pretty to look at but is packed full of not just food but history and culture. For my cooking life Mediterranean food with an emphasis on Italian has been in the ascendancy. It’s all balsamic this and a pinch of fresh basil that, which at one time must have been a nice change from French cuisine but is now so bloody ubiquitous that discovering first middle eastern food and then a whole lot of other culinary cultures (including French) was a real revelation. And delicious.

Better even than Claudia Roden however is Jane Grigson, all her books are fantastic but the ‘Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book’ and ‘Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book’ are hard to beat. Arranged (just in case anyone’s missed out on these) alphabetically by fruit etc each chapter does sweet, savoury, and history. These are books which absolutely fire the imagination with the romance and promise of mulberries, damsons, pomegranates, carrots...

Which would leave me one book left and I think it’s got to be another newish one Susannah Blake’s ‘Afternoon Tea Parties’ because right now this is very much the kind of thing I love; home grown, a little bit vintage, not to formal, fun, decorative – basically indulgent.

Hugh’s Fish Fight

Three words that are dominating my facebook account at the moment, and certainly dominated my television time last week. The issue's are ones that I feel reasonably strongly about and not unusually the more I hear about it the more interested I become. Briefly for anyone who’s missed this it’s a campaign to bring attention to the problems of fishing to quota, (specifically the discard problem where perfectly good and commercially valuable fish is thrown back dead because quotas are filled and it can’t legally be landed, or perfectly good fish is thrown back because we don’t generally eat it so it has no commercial value) and of relying too heavily on 3 key species – cod, tuna, and salmon. I’m hazy about the details of tuna fishing but know plenty about salmon farming and the environmental problems it raises.

Anyway it’s been an interesting if emotive series of programmes, I signed up to the petition and have been unable to avoid more press coverage which brings me to the point where I’ve started to become radicalised... The moment of whole hearted conversion to the cause of Hugh came courtesy of a slightly disparaging Guardian article (no link because for some reason they always seem to break) which asked what a win for the fish fight would look like. Comments were mixed though mostly critical the most constructive pointing out that this campaign isn’t offering many answers to the problems in the fishing industry that it’s highlighting.

For me this misses the point, whatever the answers are winning surely looks like making more of us think about the decisions we make – or even making us take more actual decisions. I’ve just counted – I have eight cookbooks which are specifically devoted to sea food. Eight. I don’t buy eight different types of fish, (I think it’s probably about 6) I don’t cook the ones I do buy in eight different ways, and yet I must have literally thousands of recipes spread across dozens of books (never mind those eight dedicated volumes). The more I think about it the more I feel at fault. I have no excuse not to be more adventurous in what I cook; I don’t have to cater for small children or other picky eaters, I love fish, I feel strongly about sustainable fishing, I enjoy cooking, and I’m always going on about how important it is to promote choice and now I’m going to do something about it. (Probably, I hope...)

Hopefully the other half million plus who have signed up to the petition will all be making the same resolutions – fish sales have gone up (evidence from my own work place – everything but salmon sold out) which is quite exciting. If I really think about the money I’m spending, if we all think about it, who knows what might be achievable? (And now I’ll admit that my imagination is drifting off to a halcyon vision of a reformed Waterstone’s...) Anyway I’ve thought about it, I’ve made a resolution, I’m talking about it – for me that constitutes a minor victory for the fish fight campaign.

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.

It’s all a bit River Cottage round here at the moment

Which could possibly double as code for ‘I’m procrastinating over housework in any way I can, and yet trying to look busy at the same time’. This is no slur on the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall way, I don’t need much encouragement when it comes to procrastination and the lure of the outdoors in the summer is hard to resist (though in all honesty a lot of my foraging takes place in Waitrose which isn’t exactly the same as a small holding or allotment whichever way I look at it).

As hoped and hinted for, though to be fair he didn’t need much encouragement, Dad took us fishing. The weather was amazing, the fish (on this occasion) were biting, and although I spent most of my time sitting back and watching, I did get slapped around a bit by a mackerel which I think counts as taking an active role in proceedings. Dad’s current boat is best described as a fixer upper and it’s perhaps fortunate that we only discovered that the steering was totally knackered after we got back to dry land – but it adds a certain frisson to the memory and we didn’t come to any harm. My father who is a wise and talented man (who reads this) can count cooking amongst his many accomplishments, so almost before I’d managed to extract myself from the boat (low tide, high pier) he had the fish cooking.

Mackerel caught cleaned and cooked within the hour have to be one of the best things you can ever eat (Dads mantra is ‘It’s just a drop of olive oil some salt and pepper’ which is true as far as it goes, but he has that just cooked thing going on which suits sea food so well, and which takes a fair bit of practice to do properly). As today has been a day off I’ve spent a good chunk of the afternoon perusing ‘Sea Fishing’ (River Cottage handbook 6) and reliving last week’s excitements. I’ve written about this book before and am unashamedly a fan of the whole series but ‘Sea Fishing’, ‘Edible Seashore’ and ‘Mushrooms’ (soon to be followed by ‘Hedgerow’ which I am ridiculously excited about) are particularly special. I’m almost inexpressibly impressed by the combination of practical information including countryside lore - and law, recipes, and foraging/fishing tips, personality, and personal convictions.

We caught some young cod which were sadly too badly damaged to throw back (leaving behind some hungry and disgruntled gulls) and delicious as they were cooked with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper (there was a theme), from a conservation point of view they should be left well alone. ‘Sea Fishing’ is commendably clear on this point. I have a few natural history titles – descendents I think of ‘Ring of Bright Water’- where earnest men go out and experience the wilds; they swim in lakes, sleep under stars, admire great flocks of birds wheeling against the twilight sky and write about it in increasingly irritating lyrical prose. There has been a definite fashion for this sort of writing over the last few years - the other end of the spectrum is Collins excellent New Naturalist series, which I will admit is generally a little too specialist for me to read with unalloyed pleasure.

The middle ground - and I hope the future of popular natural history is River Cottage handbook territory, or at least that’s how I feel every time I read, buy, recommend, and give these books. I also think it’s worth mentioning that it’s Bloomsbury who publish these titles because credit where credits due.

The looking busy part of today’s (by now I have to say entirely successful) bid to avoid the hoover took place in the Scottish one’s garden, half hearted weeding was replaced by whole hearted cherry picking. Last year we got 4 cherries off the tree, today I managed to get about half a kilo before sending him up a step ladder to make it a kilo which I think you’ll agree is a far more useful quantity. Tantalisingly plenty of cherries remain just out of reach but I value the Scottish one above jam (or maybe a pie, or perhaps ice cream...) so wouldn’t let him get the long ladder out. At least the blackbirds will be pleased some are left, and I get to indulge my River Cottage fantasies whilst I decide what to do with the crop I have got.