Monthly Archives: October 2012

Fruit tea loaf

29 Monday Oct 2012

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This is good hibernating food, inclement weather or no, but bad weather definitely helps. When the sun is shining, I have always felt intense pressure to go out, to embrace the rays. Years of watching our little black and white TV in a darkened room while my mother stood in the doorway yelling “Turn that man off!” has complicated my relationship to daylight.

This was generally followed by her pulling back the curtains, flinging open the windows and shouting “Look! It’s a beautiful day outside!” The defense was nearly always the same: that this was our ‘favourite programme.’ But pretty much every TV show fulfilled this criteria – Charlie’s Angels, Swap Shop, Doctor Who, Dallas, Crown Court, Bagpuss, Juliet Bravo. However wonderful it was to play outside in the garden, or speed up and down the hills on our bikes, sadly nothing was as compelling as staring morosely at a screen eating crumpets.

I have had to fight this urge since returning to LA. It is October, the nights here are thankfully chilly, and there has been a bracing wind that makes everything rustle and bend. There is drama outside and this is a welcome distraction; it calls for a deep drift of blankets, and the roasting of root vegetables. It gets complicated during the day, when it is perfect. Warm, sunny, happy, solid, blank. I am back in a David Hockney painting. Tough little colours fight it out. I sit and watch, like a parade. Even the ladies’ swimming caps have a Kodachrome quality to them. I looked down at the pool today and watched this hot pink flower slicing through the water.

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But I’m still clinging to afternoon tea and this is also when the sun dips behind the hill, ushering in coolness and flapping leaves. People crane to get the last few minutes of sun and heat here; towels are still draped at 4pm, chairs re-maneuvered every ten minutes. And so it seems perverse – even ungrateful – to say it, and it feels a guilty thing to want to admit to, but the dark is still my favourite time of day.

David Hockney, John St. Clair Swimming, 1972

You can simply stop at the tea-soaked dried fruit stage if you like and omit the sugar. After you’ve let it macerate overnight, drain off the liquid into a pan and boil until it’s reduced by half, then pour this syrup back over the fruit. In this state (see top picture), it is lovely added to a ricotta cheesecake or served on its own with a dollop of mascarpone. Or with Greek yoghurt for breakfast. It gets plumper and more syrupy the longer you leave it too. This is inspired by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s apricot and tea recipe from Three Good Things on a Plate.

Fruit tea loaf

Adapted from Jane Grigson, English Food

375g (12 oz) mixed dried fruit (I used only apricots and raisins)

125g (4 oz) dark brown sugar

250ml – 300ml (½ pint) strained, hot and strong Earl Grey tea

250g (8 oz) plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

pinch of ground cloves and cinnamon

zest of 1 lemon

Stir together the dried fruit, lemon zest, sugar and hot tea. Leave overnight to macerate. The next day, beat in the dry ingredients, followed by the lightly beaten egg. Scrape the stiff batter into a lined and buttered 1lb loaf tin at 325F or 180C for about 1 hour, or until the loaf is firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Serve thinly sliced (possibly toasted) with butter and a pot of tea. For the best flavour, keep the loaf airtight for two to three days. It gets better.

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An Autumn Jelly

21 Sunday Oct 2012

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I was torn between jelly and chutney. I was eventually won over by the jelly’s limpid beauty, the slow drip through muslin, the wobble. Chutney tends to be quite polarising, I find. I’m never entirely sure what to do with it, what to eat it with and who to give it to if I make it. And the flavours can be aggressive, sour, bullying. I’m obviously not doing it right. About jelly, there is something of autumn, distilled. A jar of pale amber or wine-red brings to mind rosehips and crab apples, sloes, rowan berries and warming spices. And stained glass windows.

To clarify, I am talking about jelly as a preserve rather than, say, jelly and ice cream. This version is lovely with roast meat or with a sharp, dry cheese. There is also nothing to stop you melting it over a crumpet for breakfast. Think deep, rather than sweet. Because many of the hedgerow fruits are low in pectin, it makes sense to combine them with apples. There are no hard and fast rules about what to use in these so-called ‘bramble’ jellies, except that apples will help them gel. And always go for something bittersweet and a bit tannic. Windfalls with all the bad bits cut out would do just fine.

I am now in LA where there are no hedgerows. We have a nectarine tree ravaged by squirrels and some small but softening lemons on the tree. The sky feels very low and close. There is not much air. I am somewhat jellied myself, having been hauled off for questioning at immigration control on my arrival at LAX airport. I swayed and an angry man jabbed questions at me. They were all simple questions, laced with the playful acid of too many long and boring hours spent in an airless room. What do I do? Why was I in England? Why did I come back? Where do I live? Tell me again – you do what? At the best of times, I find these questions hard to answer, but after an eleven hour flight, they become truly existential. This man was like Kierkegaard with a shaved head. If the circumstances had been different I might have opened up a bit.

So, I hope you will forgive me for harping on about hedgerows and hawthorns. And apples. I still can’t get over this apple tree I found while out on a walk, en route to Alfriston. These apples had the hulking shoulders of the Bramley, but they were rosy, tawny, not green. I later juiced them and they were sharp but honeyed, creamy like Guinness with a pinky-red colour under the froth.

There may well be lovely apples here and I will enjoy discovering more about them over the coming weeks. But after a month of riding my brake-less bike through wind tunnels, gorging myself on autumn and being inside such a tactile landscape again, I suspect it may take me a while to land.

Autumn jelly

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Wild Bunch, The Guardian

1kg tart apples, washed and cut into chunks (don’t peel or core them)

1kg blackberries, rosehips, haws, sloes, elderberries, or rowan berries

(if these are hard to come by, you could try blueberries or cranberries)

Granulated sugar

Herbs (mint, thyme or rosemary work well)

Fills 4-5 small jars

Method

Put the apples and berries in a preserving pan (or heavy-bottomed pan). You will need to roughly chop the rosehips beforehand, if you’re including them. Add enough water almost to cover the fruit. Tuck in the herbs, if using, and bring to a simmer. Leave to cook gently until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Tip into a jelly bag or into a sieve lined with muslin (cheesecloth) and leave overnight to drip. Don’t squeeze it if you want your jelly to be clear.

Prepare your jars by washing them in hot, soapy water, then put them in a low oven to dry out and heat up. Put a saucer in the fridge or freezer. Measure the juice and transfer to the clean pan. For every 600ml of juice, add 450g of sugar. Bring slowly to the boil to ensure the sugar properly dissolves, then boil hard for eight minutes. To test for a set, turn the heat off and drip a little jelly on the now-cold saucer. Push the jelly with your finger. If there is a ‘skin’ that wrinkles, then it’s reached setting point. Don’t be overly concerned with this; you don’t want totally solid jelly. A bit of sway is nice. Pot into hot jars and seal immediately. Leave to cool, label and store in a dark place. Use within a year and put in the fridge once opened.

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Toffee apples

11 Thursday Oct 2012

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This is what I will miss: bonfire night and toffee apples. Bonfire night, toffee apples and funfares, to be precise. Specifically, the moment when the glassy seal of toffee is broken, and soft splinters fall onto the tongue, followed by the sharp, merciless crunch of sweet apple – what a heady combination that is. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

We would eat them with the searing heat of the bonfire reddening our hands and face, while leaving the rest of us frozen. There were fireworks too, and sparklers, but I’m probably getting all my Pagan festivals mixed up. We didn’t really have Halloween back then, it being essentially an American import that took off in the 80s. What we had instead was the Tar Barrel tradition. This was peculiar to our town Ottery St. Mary, in Devon, where we lived. Men would run down the main street on November 5th – bonfire night, to celebrate the burning of Guy Faulks – carrying a barrel of tar on their backs that had been set alight. I remember the flames pouring out from behind them as they ran, their hugely mittened hands blackened and charred, and the screams as they collided with onlookers. One man ran into the wall next to us and the barrel exploded with sparks and detritus. There was a maniacal glee about the proceedings, an undercurrent of bravado and violence.

I won’t miss that especially, but there are other things impossible to carry with me on the plane – the chill in the air, and coming in from the cold, the train, being a passenger again, crispy leaves, conkers on the ground, always a glossy chestnut-brown, round and firm like a horse’s rump. Shelves and shelves of chocolate. My first wet walnuts. Salt and vinegar crisps. Views of hugeness from small bays and ports. I will miss my DNA.

And apples. I can’t get enough of them, though so far I have been largely enamoured with the tart and sour varieties – ‘cookers,’ such as the Bramley. The sweeter, gentler, dessert apples work better here, like Early Windsor, Falstaff and Discovery.  So, apples, I will miss you. Wet and windswept, rough-cheeked, and a bit the worse for wear, peppered with holes where small things have burrowed. Hope to see you next year.

Be prepared for a puddle or two when making the toffee apples (see top picture). The homemade version lacks the thick umber coating and square ‘seat’ at the base that you get with the commercial ones. You will also need to prise the toffee from any surface it has been in contact with – the upside is that it’s a bit like sucking a Werther’s Original from the odds and ends bin. The photo of the shelled wet walnuts, above, is not quite as random as it seems. I think they go well with a smattering of toffee apple.

Toffee apples

Adapted from Abel & Cole, http://www.abelandcole.co.uk

4 dessert apples

225g demerara sugar (or any soft, brown sugar)

110ml water

2cm slice of peeled ginger (optional)

1 cinnamon stick (optional)

3 cloves (optional)

1 tsp cider vinegar

25g butter

4 wooden skewers

Line a tray with greaseproof paper. Skewer the apples until it reaches half way down (remove the stem beforehand). Place a pan over a high heat. Add the sugar, water and spices. Simmer until the sugar has fully dissolved. Add the vinegar and butter and cook for 7-10 minutes. The toffee will start to bubble and thicken and darken a bit, which is what you want. Stir constantly. Check the toffee is ready by adding a trickle of it to water. If it firms up immediately, it’s done. Coat apples generously, swirling them through the mixture. Place them on the lined tray. The toffee will go everywhere. Leave them to set. To store, wrap loosely in lightly oiled greaseproof paper and tie with string.

Hedgerow crumble

03 Wednesday Oct 2012

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I’m in England and it’s autumn, my favourite time of year. September in particular is lovely in Sussex; soft air and bursts of sunshine (everyone is wearing sunglasses in brief interludes) in between the torrential downpours and foggy breath. Cobwebs stretch for miles it seems – it’s like being surrounded by endless pairs of gossamer tights.

On my walks so far I have seen crab apples, rose hips, elderberries, haws from the hawthorn bush, the first blackberries and what looked like small, blushing quinces. The last time I was here there was a fox lying in the brambles nearby. It was a beautiful orangey-red with streaks of black. Apparently it had signed up with the local vet and was receiving regular meals from neighbours. Every time I passed by that spot, it was there.

This time it was gone. But there are cats everywhere, large and languid, stalking their way through the golf course. The sea is one big, frothy grey drink. People stare at it through their windscreens and eat sandwiches. It reminds me of Victoria Wood’s story about the English couple who visited the Taj Mahal and said, “It’s nice, but I think it would look better with a tax disc and some windscreen wipers.” I am craving a Yorkie bar. I am also thinking about pork pies.

Whenever I come back from LA, I am amazed by how easy it is to walk to the shops and buy things. How small and green it is here, how different. The space we occupy involves other people who you must always take into account. When you walk, you may be barring someone else. This happened as I was looking for the right luggage carousel at Heathrow and I heard my first muttered “tsk”. Not yet through Nothing to Declare and I had already got in the way. I think he also rolled his eyes as he overtook me and then stood waiting for his suitcase, which failed to arrive. I left first.

Next to all these small places and quiet maneuverings, LA feels like a giant’s enclosure. Everyone seems very big over there now – too tall for proper eye contact. Maybe it’s the cars and the wide, scary freeways. I feel like a Lilliputian among my own people again.

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Apples have been a worry in England. Too much rain has soaked the orchards and they have been slow to appear. But our local greengrocer has some fine-looking varieties. The tart and chunky Bramley, the ruddy Cox, and Russets, grey-green and alabaster smooth. For all the concern about the tardiness of this year’s crop, in almost every garden I passed I saw a tree laden with apples. Nice for me at least.

Crumble is such an English staple that I thought it was the obvious choice: it’s warming, beautifully simple and not too sweet. I have used blackberries my mum and I picked while out on a walk and a mixture of apples I ‘scrumped’ (stole). Quinces, if you had them, would need to be pre-cooked. Damsons are the ultimate in hedgerow treasure. They are a relation to the garden plum, wild, dark and dusky and brilliant in crumbles and cobblers. They also make a phenomenal jam. Spit the stones out.

Hedgerow crumble: blackberry and apple

Inspired by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, All Change, The Guardian

Serves 8-10

6-8 tart apples (around 750g)

35g butter

2 tbs soft brown sugar

225g blackberries

For the sweet shortcrust pastry (this is optional, but dresses it up a bit)

200g icing/powdered sugar

Pinch of salt

125g cold, unsalted butter, cubed

1 large egg yolk

50-75ml cold wtaer (or milk)

For the crumble (not optional)

100g plain flour

75g unsalted butter

50g light brown sugar

50g ground hazelnuts or almonds

To make the pastry, put the flour, sugar and salt in a food processor and blitz to combine. Add the butter and blitz again (or rub in with your fingertips) until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk and enough milk or water to bring the mixture into clumps. Knead this into a ball and wrap in clingfilm/plastic wrap and chill for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 190C/375F. Roll out the pastry quite thinly, to fit a 24cm tart tin. Prick all over with a fork and chill for 10 minutes, then line the pastry with greaseproof paper or foil and baking beans, or rice, and bake blind for ten minutes. Remove the beans/rice and paper, and cook for about 10 more minutes, until lightly browned. Trim the edges if need be.

Quarter and core the apples, then slice thickly. Heat the butter in a large pan until foaming, then add the apples. Fry gently for five minutes, tossing them about until they start to soften. Sprinkle over the sugar and stir so it dissolves into the apples and the juices. Spread this mixture over the baked pastry case, and scatter over the blackberries.

For the crumble, sift the flour into a bowl and rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and ground nuts, squeeze into lumps and then scatter over the tart to give it a rough topping. You can improvise here and add spices such as cinnamon or grated nutmeg and even finely chopped rosemary to the crumble topping. Bake the lot for 30 minutes until golden brown and bubbling. Serve warm with cream or ice cream.