A Tall Poppy?

I went out into the garden yesterday to take a couple of photos of the very pregnant lady who is living in the next field..

Lovely isn't she? She isn't mine but I go out to take her carrots and apples every morning, and yesterday, as I had my camera, I looked around to see if there was anything else worth photographing. In the next field, which is an arable field, was this

A Poppy. Nothing unusual in that you might say. Well first of all it's November and there are very few poppies  in flower in November in Wiltshire. Secondly, it's in a field of cereals where you never see wild flowers at all because they are sprayed into oblivion unless they're organic and this one isn't. And thirdly it was the only one in the whole field and you could see this one tiny flower from hundreds of yards away.

So I took these photos and went back indoors because it was starting to rain again. I turned on the tv  - it was 11am, the Remembrance Day service was on and the two minutes silence just starting.

How strange was that!

The Three Tenors

Of the thirteen Hubbard chickens that I am raising for the table, there are I think four or five cockerels, which isn't a problem, until they grow up - and start to crow. These three are the biggest of the bunch  and have clearly decided to embark on a competition to decide who can sing loudest.

Only one has what you could call a proper crow as yet, the others are still working on the Strangulated Cat variation. I had expected to have them all in the freezer by now, but Sid my friendly chicken expert and butcher has advised me to fatten them up a bit more. They don't seem to be fighting, which can also be a problem with cockerels, so I will leave them all together for the time being. I think it helps that they have plenty of room, so aren't under so much pressure to compete with each other. Except on the singing front. Every now and then they take up their positions, and in a very orderly fashion take it in turns to perform, it's a bit like X Factor for Chickens. The other hens stand around like admiring groupies. Me, I'm just Simon Cowell. Pass the earplugs.

Pheasant Visitor

This handsome chap has visited the garden several times recently, he strolls about in a rather vague way as though he's looking for something - maybe another pheasant - the chickens don't seem to take any notice of him.

And if he's worried about blokes with guns at all you'd never guess.

Of course the cook in me can't help thinking he'd make a lovely roast dinner, but since I've got a dozen chickens fattening up, I think I can afford to let him continue to stroll decoratively around the place.

Christmas preparations

Well it's November now, so I can start Christmas preparations without too much apology.  In fact  I usually do these dried fruit items in October, but I've been away so much of the last few weeks that there hasn't been time. Until now. So it's Christmas Cake, Christmas pudding, and Mincemeat. Now I realise Dried Fruit Phobics may think of all three of these as being essentially the same thing in a different shape, so I've tried this year, to ensure that all three, despite including vine fruits, are completely different in taste and in texture. Two points - if you have access to a good supply of superior vine fruits from a Turkish shop in Stoke Newington, take advantage of it, but even if you have to use Tesco's it's always worth soaking the fruit in liquid, preferably alcoholic, to plump it up and ensure moistness in the finished item. And if you only use sweet spices like cinnamon at Christmas it's worth buying in new stock because last year's will be dry as dust and about as tasty.So for all that soaking you'll be needing some of this

and some of this

and probably some of this

Don't spend a fortune on alcohol for cooking, it's a waste of money, I don't care what Heston Blumenthall says...

The pudding is the one I've always made, rich dark and traditional. Note I avoided the obvious joke about boyfriends.

The mincemeat is very citrussy, and so much better than anything you can buy in the shops it's well worth the small effort of making. You used to be able to buy a halfway decent mincemeat and just jazz it up with a bit of brandy but all the ones I see nowadays (I hate using that word) but nowadays, they all seem to be made with mouth puckering artificial flavours and some kind of gluey stuff to thicken it up. Yuk.

And my cake this year is a bit Brazilian in theme, (did I mention I went to Brazil...)Not that I imagine they have anything like English Christmas cake in Brazil, but whilst I was there I picked up some of this in the market..

Its a Brazilian sweet which is basically a solidified chunk of sugar cane. It has a lovely rich treacly flavour so I thought I would incorporate some of it into my Christmas cake. If you don't happen to have any Rapadura Caipira on hand you can use Billington's unrefined dark brown sugar, or Muscovado.

If you're going to do all three, I think the most sensible way to go about it is to do all of them together, spread over a couple of days as they all involve soaking fruit in various alcoholic liquids to swell them up and ensure a moist, flavourfull result. A slight side effect of this is that your kitchen smells like a distillery with great vats of alcoholic dried fruit macerating in various bowls, which I rather like. So anyway you will need three large bowls.

Bowl 1 Christmas Pudding

The pudding is essentially the same incendiary device that I've made for years, you either love it or hate it, but it's dark, traditional and spicy, and for many years when my children were young I made it and brought it out only to set it on fire for the sake of tradition, and return it to the kitchen untouched, except by me. I detect a slightly more enthusiastic audience for it these days, and anyway I still love it, with a big blob of clotted cream gently melting over it. I can hardly wait.

Ingredients
1 lb of mixed dried fruit, about half of it currants, a small amount of dried peel, (about an ounce) and the rest sultanas and raisins.
zest and juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon
1 teaspoon mixed spice
half a teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
half a teaspoon ground cinnamon
6 oz soft dark brown sugar
1 tablespoon black treacle or molasses
a glug of rum
2 oz ground almonds
4 oz fresh white breadcrumbs
2 oz  flour
4 oz shredded suet
half a pint of barley wine or stout or Old Peculiar
2 egggs
a 2 pint/1 litre pudding bowl - if you use a plastic one with a lid you can dispense with the greaseproof covering in the picture providing you don't lose the lid, like some people.

Take large bowl number one and put in the dried fruit, citrus, spices, sugar, treacle and rum. Stir.

Add everything else and stir well. Make sure everyone in the house gets to stir and make a wish, then leave the bowl until the next day, when you turn it into a 2 pint pudding basin, insert silver treasure items (I do have some small American coins which look prettier, but you have to take account of visiting family members, either very old or very young who may break dentures or choke on small bits of metal in the pudding, so I go for big pound coins, which are easy to spot, soaked overnight in vinegar to clean them)

then cover and steam for hours.

And hours.
Eight hours will be needed to get the dark rich colour of the traditional pudding. If you use a pressure cooker you can steam it for half an hour and then pressure cook for 3 hours. But apart from ensuring that it doesn't boil dry you can ignore it. Allow it to cool and store in a cool cupboard until Christmas. You can reheat it in minutes on the day if you have a microwave oven, otherwise steam for another hour or so before serving. Turn out the lights, warm your brandy or rum and set it alight before pouring over the pudding and bringing triumphantly to the table in the traditional manner. Don't forget the clotted cream. Try not to set the house on fire.

In bowl number 2 Mincemeat
I make a lot of mincemeat, because I need a lot of mince pies for one reason or another, we just get through loads of them. I always like to have some to offer people around Christmas and New Year, I expect people get fed up of them, but it's Christmas, you have to have mince pies, it's the law.

2 lbs of mixed dried fruit, this time you need predominantly raisins about half, and the rest currants and sultanas and a small amount of dried candied peel.
8 oz shredded suet
12 oz granulated sugar
2 tablespoons molasses or black treacle
zest and juice of 2 oranges and 3 lemons depending on size
4 teaspoons mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
half teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
half a teaspoon ground cloves
1 lb peeled and grated bramley apples
2 oz chopped glace cherries
large glug of rum

Put everything except the rum into bowl 2 and stir. Leave overnight. You can put it into jars straight away, but the problem with mincemeat with a high fruit content is that it tends to ferment, which can be very annoying, and can even lead to exploding jars. The Jackson Pollock Mincemeat Effect is not a good look even in the contemporary kitchen. To avoid this I now use Delia's method of heating the mixture in a warm oven for an hour or two until it's heated through and the suet melted. Leave it to cool and stir occasionally, to distribute the fat evenly thoughout.

 Add the rum and stir in. Keep in sterilized jars, in a cool larder. It doesn't look as pretty after being heated but it doesn't harm the flavour, and it does help prevent the fermentation problem.

Use a good sweet shortcrust recipe for your mince pies see this post for a recipe. Keep a cooked supply of mince pies in the freezer ready to be whipped out and warmed in the oven at  a moment's notice, until your friends and neighbours are too scared to come round any more.

Bowl 3 Christmas cake
 As I'm trying out a slightly different recipe this year I will report back after it's done, and let you know if it's ok or whether you might be better off going to someone else's house for Christmas Tea.

Pears

Have you ever seen Eddie Izzard talking about pears? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh5a0ucs8kQ
He's so right - you do the test squeezy squeezy thing, and they sit there in the bowl hard as rocks, waiting conspiratorially for you to go out of the room for five minutes, and when you come back in they're black mush.

Pears are the last fruit to ripen in our garden, and I've just picked a large basket full.  This year's crop is good but not overwhelming, but as they simply don't keep in the way that apples do, the pear recipes will have to be rehearsed pretty quick.  They are the one fruit you must pick slightly underripe. If you leave them to ripen on the tree they will go "sleepy"  and before you can say Jack Robinson you will be sitting in a pool of pear puree.

 My tree is a Conference, which in my opinion is much better than its reputation, and is always delicious when home grown and ripened. Pick them all when the tree begins to drop a few windfalls, usually at the end of September or beginning of October depending on the weather. Keep the majority in a cool garage, and bring a supply into the kitchen in dribs and drabs, and they will ripen beautifully. But they won't last indefinately, and you may well need to give some away, or use them us in other ways.  You can make jam with them but I don't care for it much - it can take on a grainy texture if you're not careful. They do bottle very well in a light syrup though if you have some Kilner jars. If you're really snowed under you could incorporate them into a chutney, but I'd have to be very inundated, pear-wise to consider wasting their charms on chutney.

There really is little to beat the joy of eating a ripe pear, with the juice running down your chin.

Pear and Almond Flan

My daughter and I have been making this nice almondy flan topped with plums all through August and September but now we're out of plums I thought  I would see how it does with pears and it's pretty good. You can serve it cold as cake with coffee, but it's much nicer just warm, with thick cream as pudding. Sarah uses ready made shortcrust which is excellent, especially if you're a VBP (Very Busy Person, which she is), but I have time to make my own and this is my usual recipe for sweet shortcrust.

Ingredients

1 pack of butter (8ounces) cold from the fridge
1 pound plain flour

4 oz caster sugar

2 egg yolks

2 eggs

10" metal flan tin

Whizz the butter, flour and sugar in a processor to breadcrumb stage. Add egg and whizz briefly, just enough to combine. You may find it best to tip it into a large bowl to press together with your hands. Don't handle it more than you have to though. Roll it out on a very floury surface, and use to line a metal flan tin. I never rest it or bake it blind, and I don't suffer from either shrinkage or  flabby bottoms. It will only shrink if you over handle and stretch it, and I don't find I  need to bake blind if I use a  loose based metal flan tin, which will conduct the heat evenly and ensure a firm, crispy bottom, which is what we all want. This pastry is good for all sweet flans, custards, lemon tarts and mince pies (there I go again, talking about Christmas in October)..You will only need about half of this amount for the flan but it's a good idea to make extra and freeze it in a slab ready for the the next tart or mince pie session. I always make a good quantity so that I have some in, should an unexpected pastry emergency arise.

Filling

1 pack butter (8 oz) at room temperature

6 ounces caster sugar

8oz ground almonds

few drops of almond essence

2 oz plain flour
2 eggs
2 large conference pears reasonably ripe

Peel and scoop out the core from the pears, and slice.
Whisk together the butter and sugar until pale and light, ( I use a Kitchenaid table mixer), beat in the eggs, add the ground almonds, essence, and flour and briefly combine. Pour into your prepared flan case. Top the flan with the fruit slices, and press gently  in. Bake in a medium  Gas 3 150C oven for about 40-50 minutes. Serve warm with clotted cream.

Do try this with plums or apricots when in season as well.

Hubbard Table Chickens - Another Reprieve!

Oh dear, Sid called in to inspect the Hubbard table chickens, and has prounounced them still not fat enough!  So I have to keep feeding them as much as possible and he's coming back in another couple of weeks or so. They are certainly getting quite big, but in a rather leggy, rangy way and they need more flesh on them before they will make good roasters. Several of the cockerels are quite big and are trying to crow a bit, they will certainly have to go before too long, as cockerels together can sometimes fight for dominance.

Of course they are eating quite a lot now that they are fairly big, and it's costing extra to keep them.  At this rate they will turn out to be more expensive than the free range chickens that are sold at the farm shop for £15 each! Hopefully it won't turn out to be that bad, but even  if it did, I am looking on this as a learning experience, and you have to expect to pay for knowledge and experience, one way or another!  I've certainly learned a lot. There are a number of things I will do differently next time, that's assuming there will be a next time - if these birds turn out to be stringy and tough it might put me off trying again,  - there's only so much coq au vin and chicken soup a person can stomach,- but I hope they'll be better than that. Fingers crossed.

The last rose of summer

It was just going dark when I took this picture of a single remaining flower of Louise Odier, a lovely old bourbon rose, which flowers properly in midsummer, but I deadheaded it after it finished flowering, and she rewarded me with a few late blooms, and this is the last. There are still flowers on the ground cover roses that I grow under the trees, but I don't really count those, they are roses, but this is proper.

There are still quite a few sunflowers - I always grow Velvet Queen, which is still my favourite, but this one I tried for the first time this year, and it's a lovely dark chocolate colour.  It's called Black Magic, - it's an F1 hybrid though so you can't save the seed for next year.

I've been saving quite a bit of seed lately, it's well worth doing with the price of some flower seeds. Easy things like sunflowers, calendulas, poppies, nigellas, french marigolds, cosmeas, verbena bonariensis, and lots of others - you get so many seeds from just a few plants, you'll have enough to give away as presents to other gardeners. And there's good evidence to show that  when you save your own seed, the process of natural selection encourages the best varieties for your own particular soil and climate to be developed.  Just collect ripe seedheads, and store them in paper envelopes, in a cool dry place. After a few weeks when the drying process is complete, you can remove the seed pods and other chaff, and put the seeds away ready for next year. And a little collection of home saved seeds in decorated packets would be a welcome and meaningful gift for any gardener.( I didn't say anything about Christmas did I?)

Season of Mists

Suddenly it's autumn. Well of course it's not suddenly at all, but there's a day when you notice that it's turned really chilly, leaves are everywhere, and it's all downhill to Christmas. Sorry for mentioning the C word, and I'm the first to be annoyed by pre Christmas marketing and carols in October in Woollies,(not now they've gone bust!), but the fact remains that if you like a home made Christmas like I do, then you do have to start making preparations well in advance. I've already mentioned my intention to spray the seedheads of the Allium Schubertii, (try to keep calm) but the onset of the colder weather and appearance of dried leaves and seeds just make me think of decorations, and presents and cards and all that stuff. It's a nice occupation for autumn evenings, it's dark by 7 pm now, so plenty of time to get down to cutting, sticking, sewing, painting and all that stuff. Anyway more of that later, but for now there's the last of the autumn veg which is still in abundance,even if in my garden it's apparently not that easy to find....
When I got home at the weekend (did I mention I've been to Brazil) I asked my friend and garden/livestock sitter Alison if she had helped herself to any produce as I had instructed, and she told me she hadn't been able to find anything to pick! So just to prove that there actually is something in there amongst the undergrowth, here is what I picked today...(and I do realise that the chrysanthemums aren't edible!)

I think however that it must be more difficult to find stuff in the garden than I realised. I must either do some weeding or put up signposts and provide a guide.

Anyway for a quick autumnal supper, and a good way to use up the available produce try a mixed veg roast to go with a couple of pork chops, or chicken legs, or even just on it's own with some pasta. I'm fond of things you can assemble and then just bung in the oven and leave while you get on with something else  in your busy life, or have a glass of wine and a bath while you wait, as I do.

It's also the kind of thing that's useful if you get a veg box, as you can adapt it to almost any combination of seasonal veg, just make sure you adapt your chopping technique to accomodate different cooking times, so that your carrots for example will be cooked before your courgettes disintegrate.

Roasted Autumn Vegetables with or without Pork Chops

Ingredients
This is what I had on hand...
Half a small Pumpkin, seeded and sliced
1 Courgette, chunkily sliced
1 White turnip, chunked
1 Wierdly shaped Esther Rantzen style carrot
Garlic, about 4 large cloves peeled
1 Small aubergine chunky sliced
1 Onion, chunky sliced
A Selection of tomatoes roughly chopped
1 chilli, finely chopped
Large bunch of parsley, few sprigs of thyme
2  thick pork chops, or 2 chicken legs, or nothing at all if you fancy veggie.
Extra virgin olive oil
Half a teaspoon or so of smoked paprika
Good pinch of ground cumin
salt and pepper

Spread veg and herbs in roasting pan,

and nestle the chops or chicken in amongst, if you're using them. Drizzle with quite a bit of extra virgin olive oil, season generously with salt and black pepper, plus the smoked paprika and ground cumin.

Place in a hot oven for about 45 minutes or so, until the veg are softened and the meat is cooked through. You should have some concentrated  juice in the bottom of the tin, which you can pour over when you plate the dish.

Brazil

This is just a quick post, as I've just arrived back from a trip to Brazil, part business, and quite a lot fun. I think you're only allowed to have fun in Brazil, they probably stop you at the airport if you're looking a bit glum. So, much as I'm always banging on about local food, I've just spent the past week burning carbon like it's a new idea. But it's only for a week, and I learned lots, had a great time, and am therefore excusing myself the indulgence of it all.

The purpose of the trip was to see an Exhibition of local Arts and Crafts funded by the Brazilian government for trade purposes, but being me I love to see local food markets and botanical gardens, so we had a number of detours from the official schedule and although we may make some longer term business associations, we also saw lots of local colour, and ate and drank some fantastic stuff. And we certainly met some lovely people -  Marco our interpreter, who couldn't do enough for us, taking us round all the local markets, Edouardo our taxi driver/narrator, who showed us all we wanted to see in Rio and lots that we didn't,(they do football there you know), Roy the owner of a gallery the size of MOMA  from Michigan who talks for America, and made us laugh,  the utterly charming flower children from Colorado, Gunther and BJ who is obsessed with Quinoa, and does 5000 sit-ups a day, and many more.  And not forgetting of course the representative of the Brazilian Inland Revenue who gave a brief talk of not more than, oh three hours or so, on compliance issues in the business taxation and administration departments. Riveting.

 Here's a picture of me with a coconut. I hope you're  jealous.

Rose Hip Syrup

Baby boomers and other old dears may remember some of the earlier offerings of the National Health Service, such as National Orange Juice, National Dried Milk, and Delrosa Rose Hip Syrup. (Actually the last one wasn't on the NHS, but it seemed like it). My mother doled out spoonfuls of it daily, together with cod liver oil and malt extract, and some sinister beige stuff called Scott's Emulsion, but that was only for my brother to build him up because he was skinny. Most of these things were heavily sugared, and we loved them as a sweet treat even though they were supposed to be "medicine".

And although they are mostly now out of fashion, cod liver oil is still an excellent food supplement for most people, and rose hip syrup is said to contain twenty times more vitamin C than oranges as well as vitamins A, B1, 2 and 3, vitamin K, flavonoids, polyphenols, volatile oils and tannins (it says here)

Of course it's a bit more trouble to make than peeling an orange, but it also makes an excellent dessert sauce for pouring on pancakes, or ice cream so you could actually be having that portion of pudding purely for the benefit of your health, which sounds like a  plan to me. The flavour is fruity and sweet (much fruitier than the Delrosa I remember from my childhood) And once again, apart from the cost of a bit of sugar it's yours for the taking, free from your local hedgerow.

In case you have any confusion about what a rose hip is, or perhaps you don't know your hips from your haws, here's a rather blurry picture of some common hedgerow fruit for identification. Left to right, cultivated damsons from my garden, wild damsons, bullaces (wild plums), wild rose hips, and haws or hawthorn berries. I meant to get some sloes as well, for comparison, but I forgot, they would be similar to the wild damson in colour, but a bit smaller, and more oval shape, and a great deal more bitter.



Rose Hip Syrup
This is taken from the recipe issued by the Ministry of Food during the second world war. You will need about 2 lbs of rose hips (I suspect you can probably use hips from garden roses which are often much bigger, but the wartime recipe refers to wild rose hips- make sure that they are unsprayed and not near traffic pollution)

Whizz the hips in a food processor( the wartime recipe said mince, but the processor makes life easier)

 and tip into a pan with 3 pints of boiling water. Bring back to the boil and turn out the heat.

Leave for 15 minutes then strain through a jelly bag or muslin. Return the pulp to the pan, add another pint and a half of water, bring to the boil again and leave another 10 minutes before straining again. Make sure you strain out all the sharp little hairs in the seeds (which apparently make an excellent itching powder for little Beadle tricksters).

Put all your juice into a pan and boil down until you have about a pint and a half, and then add one and a half pounds of sugar. Boil for 5 minutes and then pour into sterilized bottles and cap. Keep in the fridge once opened.

You'll be needing something to pour your lovely syrup over....

American Style Pancakes
Back in the 80s we ran a village pub for a while, and one of the most popular desserts was American Style Pancakes with Maple Syrup, served I'm ashamed to say with great piles of whipped cream from an aerosol can. Well it was the 80s. Anyway the pancakes were and still are delicious and make an excellent vehicle for your stash of Rose Hip Syrup, and that pocketful of blackberries you picked while walking the dog this morning.

You will need

8 ounces plain flour
pinch salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon cider vinegar
half teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons caster sugar
1 egg
third of a pint milk

Tip everything into the food processor and blend only enough to make a thick smooth batter.







(You may have noticed from my other recipes that I don't make two steps where one can do. There's no need to make things more complicated than necessary. However, for the equipment-less, measure the dry ingredients into a bowl, make a well in the middle and stir in the liquids).

Grease a frying pan and drop large spoonfuls of the batter on to it. Cook over medium heat until little bubbles form on the surface, and then flip over with a spatula and cook the other side until golden and set. You are aiming for a big fat pancake, which at the same time is light and fluffy, not the anaemic  flabby examples offered in supermarkets. If you feel like it you can stir in a handful or two of any fresh berries, blackberries would be good just now, or serve them fresh with the pancakes after cooking.

Serve your hot pancakes drizzled with  your  lovely Rose Hip Syrup (or honey, or maple syrup) and top with good ice cream or a pile of softly whipped fresh cream, just as you fancy, but definately nothing from an aerosol.

Le Noeud de Viperes

David found a dead grass snake outside in the lane tonight. I wasn't sure what kind of snake it was so I brought the cadaver indoors and having photographed it and checked on the internet I found that the yellow and black collar apparently confirms it's a grass snake. They are the largest British reptile and can be up to five feet long, though this one is only about two feet long. They are not harmful or venomous, and like many other native wild animals are considerably endangered due to habitat loss.

Earlier in the year  I had unexpectedly come upon what seemed like a writhing mass under a pile of leaves and dead weeds in the garden. I was so surprised that I failed to look for proper identification marks and quickly replaced the leaf litter and went off the have a cup of tea to recover. It's not every day you come across a real Noeud de Viperes in the veg plot. It's a shame this young one was run over but  I'm glad they seem to have nested, as they are a threatened species and I'm hoping there will have been others that were more fortunate with the traffic. We certainly always seem to have a plentiful supply of small toads around during the summer, which I suppose make a tasty snack for a grass snake.  I wonder if I should put up a sign "Caution, Snakes Crossing" outside the gate?