Tag Archives: Devon

Just stop it

20 Sunday Feb 2022

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I’ve been making stew. It’s hard to fathom why in the almost ten years since I started writing this blog I have not written about stew before. Stewed prunes don’t count. Also, pressure cooked stews don’t really count either, because you don’t have anything to do once it’s on the hob. And I have too many memories of holding the screaming pot under a cold tap, the way it all suddenly went wrong, the lid clamped shut, steam billowing into my face. I can’t do pressure cookers.

This is a French stew, one where you need to stand over it or nearby. I watched my friend Pippa (above) make it, in her kitchen the other day, under a low ceiling, in the Teign Valley, in Devon, on the western edge of Dartmoor. I could give you the postcode, but it wouldn’t conjure up the feeling. And what was that feeling? The feeling of slowness, of the juice of meat, of onions. Of chats, of being away for the first time in two years, properly away, no internet signal, no service on my phone, with friends. Friends! We didn’t watch that show, but we did watch Frasier in the mornings, as a kind of primer for the day. It made me think of Cheers, and also how sexy chinos are on a woman, particularly on Roz in Frasier, who wore them high and belted. I have forgotten to watch comedy, and it is a good idea, during these weird times to do that, and in the morning.

I grew up in Devon. East Devon; Ottery St. Mary, then Exeter. I lived in this county almost from birth until I was sixteen years old. I had an Exeter accent, which is not cute and cuddly, but rather flat and know-it-all, but also lovely in its way. You need to speak as if you are world weary, your arms crossed under a plinth-like bosom, eyes closing against the injustices of the world. I did this at 13. Where’s it to? instead of Where is it? And Bugger me, dun’ee fret? Instead of, Gosh, you’re a worrier, aren’t you?

Because stress is sort of alien here, not in Exeter so much, but out in the country, with the dense folds of trees, sessile oak mainly, and the swooping valley that opens out in front of you, and the red earth, red sand, the burbling of the river Teign and its mineral coldness, its red funghi and green coverings, the moss, the sharp stones under bare feet. No one is on time, strictly speaking. My last morning there was spent looking out over the great swathes of trees in February sunshine, and listening to Mark the builder’s radio – Aerosmith pounding into the clean high-up air, and none of it mattered. I didn’t sit there thinking, oh, if only it was still and quiet. I sat thinking, it is perfect, like this. A person nearby fixing something and me with a cup of tea not thinking about the train I was about to catch.

Lastly, Pippa told me about a woman at a recent festival who sat on a chair up on a hill and listened to people’s problems. She was not professionally trained, but she was a good enough listener. People came to her with a problem and she listened and then delivered her verdict. She called it Just Stop It. The queues for this were round the block, apparently. So just stop it, stop the worrying. Start watching comedy in the morning, drinking cider, seeing people, at a distance if necessary. But go. Stop it and go. And maybe cut down on the peanut butter.

A simple stew

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Tender Volume 1 – and with inspiration taken from Pippa and Ralph.

I used cider instead of beer – which is what NS calls for here and Trappist beer at that – but it worked well. I added shredded Brussel sprouts too. NS recommends as the ideal accompaniment, ‘boiled potatoes as big as your fist, their edges bruised and floury.’ The inclusion of apple sauce is optional, but it works well together: ‘the point where the sharp apple sauce oozes into the onion gravy‘.

Butter, a thick slice

Stewing beef – approx 750g

Large onions – 2

Thyme – a few sprigs

Plain flour – 2 tbs (you could use cornstarch if you’re GF)

Beer or cider – 2 bottles (500ml approx)

Bay leaves – 2 or 3, torn

Redcurrant or apple jelly – 2 tbs

Apple sauce (optional)

Apples 5 or 6, the sharper the better

Butter, a walnut-sized knob

Sugar, a little to taste

Ground cinnamon, a knifepoint

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C/Gas 4. Melt the butter in a large casserole to which you have a lid. The heat should be ‘quite sprightly’. Cut the beef into four pieces, each nicely seasoned with salt and black pepper, then introduce to the sizzling butter. Let the meat colour on one side, then turn it over. Peel, halve, and thinly slice the onions while the meat browns. Once coloured, remove the meat to a plate and turn down the heat. Add the onions to the pan, with the thyme sprigs, and cook over low to medium heat until the onions are soft and golden. Stir in the flour and cook until it is the palest gold colour, then pour in the beer/cider and add the torn bay leaves. Once the sizzling has subsided and it is approaching the boiling point, return the beef and its juices to the pan and turn down the heat. Season with salt and black pepper, cover with a lid, and place in the oven. Bake for a good hour to an hour and a half. Check it once or twice.

Apple sauce, if using: Peel the apples, core them, and cut into coarse chunks. Put them into a pan with a little water and the butter and bring to a boil. Decrease the heat, cover with a lid, and let cook to a sloppy mess. However, this will only happen with cooking apples. Eating apples will retain their shape. Sweeten with a little sugar and ground cinnamon, then beat with a fork or wooden spoon until smooth (for cookers). Once the stew is done, lift the lid from the stew-pot and stir in the jelly. Check the seasoning, adding salt, pepper, and jelly as you go. Serve with the apple sauce.

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Stew is unphotographable. This is the best I could do.

If you are interested, Oliver Burkeman’s bi-monthly newsletter, The Imperfectionist is really helpful for sorting stuff out. His most recent one is here.

Always winter

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

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Perhaps it’s because I have been spending a lot of time in the mud, but I’m drawn very much to muscovado sugar. Dark as earth, moist, crumbly and rich with minerals, it has sizeable heft. It is always winter with muscovado. And it reminds me of the eternal cold of Devon, before central heating, and the way our small fingers stuck to the inside of the windows and having to get dressed with our foggy breath snorting out of our mouths like buffalo.

As children we only ever had muscovado and we put it in our tea, which was like drinking turf. We sprinkled it over our porridge in the mornings and the strong malt-like aniseed depth of it was not always easy to take, though it helped if there was a moat of cold milk which the muscovado sweetened to butterscotch. If muscovado is turf then molasses is tar. It was sometimes given to us ‘for nerves’ in the same way that cod liver oil was administered ‘for bones’. And I can still remember the thick gluey strings of molasses making my jaw ache, the smell strangely reminiscent of tobacco and the colour which was like Victorian yacht varnish.

I was aware that other households didn’t have such things. My school friends had white sugar that was often mistaken for salt, and a wet dab of the finger was needed to ascertain which was which. I also remember that theirs were houses filled with neatness and pullovers and tank tops knitted in luminous artificial colours.

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My friends didn’t have to be wrapped in sheets stiff with heat from the storage heater just before bedtime. They didn’t know what they were missing, because being swaddled like this so you could barely move and feeling the starchy steam rise into the room was actually very satisfying. And then we were lowered into our beds like mummies. But apart from this one thing, I really wanted to be banal and suburban and have nothing unique about me at all.

This might be why I called myself Marian, which I did for a while, thinking it was a nice, quiet name. But the black sugar was too much of a give away. It marked us out as odd and therefore vulnerable to attack. And it wasn’t used for things people understood, like chutneys, marinades and fruit cake. It spoke of the chaos underpinning everything, that we used muscovado outside of its real purpose, that we didn’t differentiate. Eventually we left, dad to Exmouth and the rest of us to Exeter and later onwards to London. It has left me with a lifelong nervousness of parochial life, of so-called ‘country living’. Those small places can be tough. But muscovado put iron in the soul and molasses helped to calm our fraying nerves.

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The lowdown on muscovado

Muscovado (from the Portuguese açúcar mascavado meaning ‘separated sugar’) is also known as Barbados sugar, and is made differently to other brown sugars: instead of being white sugar to which molasses is added, it is boiled down from sugar cane juice, purified with lime juice, but then not refined any further. Muscovado is made in Barbados, in Mauritius, and in the Antique province in the Philippines, where it was one of the most prominent export commodities, from the 19th century until the late 1970s. It is nutritionally richer than other brown sugars, and retains most of the natural minerals – such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and iron – inherent in sugarcane juice.

Muscovado brownies with almonds

Adapted from Claire Thomson, The Guardian, Cook, 13/2/2016

You can use whatever nut takes your fancy, but almonds always work with this recipe and you can keep the skins on. Walnuts are also lovely as are prunes. This is on the ‘weeping’ end of the brownie spectrum – crisp on the outside and damp within. My earlier brownie recipe is even more luxe. I’m terrified now looking back at those ingredients; you will probably need a defibrillator standing by, just in case. This recipe is a bit more demure. Make it gluten-free by using rice flour or a gluten-free mix instead of the standard plain. You can go the whole hog here and only use dark muscovado or light muscovado if you want to forgo the caster sugar. 

125g almonds (or walnuts/softened prunes, drained and roughly chopped)

150g dark cooking chocolate (60-70% cocoa solids)

150g unsalted butter

3 eggs

100g dark muscovado sugar

100g caster sugar

100g plain flour

15g cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt (plus a pinch to sprinkle over the baked brownie)

Lightly grease a non-stick baking tin 6 x 10 inch (15 x 24 cm) and line with baking parchment. Allow the paper to come 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the tin. Heat the oven to 350F/180C, then chop the almonds roughly, put them on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 5-8 minutes, keeping an eye on them as they burn easily. Use skin-on or blanched, both are fine.

While the almonds are doing their work, put chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl fitted over a pan of barely simmering water. Allow the chocolate to melt without stirring it, then remove from the heat and gently stir to smoothness.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugars together until the mixture is creamy and thick. Mix the melted chocolate and butter into the egg and sugar mixture.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder and salt into the chocolate mixture. Beat together until smooth. Fold in the almonds.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake on the centre shelf for 20 -25 minutes. Don’t overcook the brownie – you want it to be just firm to the touch (not scorched at all) and still gooey inside. Leave to cool for ten minutes, and then put on a sheet of parchment on a wire rack. Cut squint, so you can eat the stray bits while no one’s looking.

Yoghurt, a love story

21 Sunday Apr 2013

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When I was growing up, we had goats. Their names were Caramel and Honeybun. They had two kids, but I can’t remember what we called them – I think they were also named after dessert. The goats produced milk, which my mum turned into yoghurt. The yoghurt didn’t set awfully well – there were cracks in it filled with whey. There was often more whey than anything else.

When cold, the yoghurt was fine, but served at room temperature it was as if you were eating the goat’s soul. Warm, bloodless goat, white and liquid and slopping about in the bowl. I believe there was the odd hair. I loved the goats, but they were difficult. They were friendly in an aggressively needy way, a bit like an elderly neighbour who berates you for never visiting. They’d often head-butt us with their knotty foreheads and bleat their metallic tuneless song whenever we approached. I loved their oddly smashed pupils.

In the Seventies in Devon, there were two choices: you grew your own food or you lived on Ski yoghurts, angel cake, Wagon Wheels and frozen carrots. We grew our own things, made our own yoghurt, and accepted it was on another planet to the stuff you could buy. One of the few concessions to the mainstream was an occasional chocolate yoghurt bought from the bakery opposite my school. It was tangy yet sweet and there was a thin layer of darkness where the chocolate had started to solidify. It was magic. This almost made up for the fact that my mother refused to paint her toenails.

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Somewhere around this time, we went to Crete on holiday. There is a photo of my dad with long hair standing by a racing bike and a man who looked like Thelma from Scooby Doo, who no one could ever name. A man in the local corner shop raised his hand to a shelf and brought down a Milky Bar whenever I entered, and a wizened old woman peeled cucumbers into the fire. This had something to do with sex.

There was yoghurt here too. I’m fairly certain it was sheep’s yoghurt and it was white, like snow, and came to us in deep drifts in bowls with honey on top. I ate snails, pulling them from their shells with a special prong. There is a smell, a Greek smell, that I very occasionally get a memory of. There is the sea and then the dried and peeling stucco paint from houses, the smell of heat and sand and oregano. Can you smell colour? If so, it is a pale blue and white side by side.

Then I got ill. This is much later. I was in my mid twenties and living and teaching in London. The goats had been sent to the farmyard equivalent of a nursing home. I was in Earls Court and getting progressively worse day by day, teaching in windowless rooms with a fan to recycle the air, my life an endless round of marking and preparing.

Eventually, Crohn’s disease was diagnosed, an inflammatory bowel condition. I entered a world of herbal tea and rice cakes. apple puree and endless discussions about wheat. I was re-introduced to goat’s milk, now an elixir. Baguettes were out, plus fun.

It took me a long time to get well. I accept it will always be a part of my life, that it is here to stay. I cannot be an evangelist for a certain kind of Crohn’s diet. But I’m careful when I need to be; I pare things back, I cut out sugar.

The only thing that has survived it all is the yoghurt. I love the alchemy that takes place under a bare light-bulb in the oven. The taste is unique, and nothing whatsoever like shop-bought. A clean swathe of white brightness – it makes me happy to create it.

Homemade Yoghurt

The basic process is very simple – all you need is a big pot or bowl and a warm place to produce the yoghurt. A candy thermometer here really helps – there are people who do this entirely by feel; I haven’t yet joined their ranks. In a nutshell, you sterilize the milk by heating it, in order to kill the existing bacteria and so it can be fermented by the ‘starter’ yoghurt (Total Greek Yoghurt is good here). Then you have to keep it warm for at least 8 hours so that the culture multiplies and consumes the milk, creating your own yoghurt.

Adapted from Elaine Gottschall, Breaking the Vicious Cycle

Inspired by Claudia Roden, A Book of Middle Eastern Food

2 litres/quarts full fat milk & 125g/1/2 cup plain live yoghurt

1. First, bring the live yoghurt to room temperature. Put the milk into a clean pot, heat it and watch it as it starts to rise, and then simmer for 2 minutes.* The purpose in heating the milk is to kill any bacteria that might be present and interfere with the yoghurt making culture.

*Milk must be heated past 180F (82C) in order to sterilize it, but cow’s milk can tolerate temperatures of up to 212F (100C) while goat’s milk is more delicate and shouldn’t go beyond 185F (85C). This is where a thermometer is helpful.

2. Turn the heat off and allow the milk to cool to between 108F (42C) to 112F (45C) or until you are just about able to stick your finger in the milk and count to ten. Stir well before determining the final temperature. If the milk is too hot when the live yoghurt culture is added, the bacteria may be killed.

3. Beat the yoghurt so that it loosens and looks quite liquid. Pour a little of the milk into the yoghurt and mix thoroughly. Add this slowly to the rest of the milk and mix. Either cover the pot with clingfilm/plastic wrap or its own lid. Now gently place it somewhere warm for 24 hours* (or at least overnight). The airing cupboard is good, or an oven with the light on inside. A heating pad is helpful if you don’t want to give up the oven for that long. You will soon have a lovely softly-set creation; put the pot of yoghurt in the fridge where it will keep for about a week. After the yoghurt has chilled, you can strain it through muslin or cheesecloth to create more of a set, or go further and create yoghurt cheese – otherwise known as Labneh. Don’t throw away the whey; it can be used in soups or baking, and is rich in minerals.

*After 24 hours, the sugar in the milk has been eaten by the bacteria.

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Yoghurt, garlic and mint dip

There are endless variations on this theme. It goes well with so many things; mashed into baked aubergine, poured over the top of French beans, and scooped up and dipped into, as the name suggests. You could experiment with other herbs, such as chives, coriander/cilantro or parsley, or add spices such as paprika and cumin.

200g yoghurt (strained, if you like a thicker texture) 1 garlic clove, smashed and finely chopped, 1/2 teaspoon salt, zest of half a lemon and juice to taste, a handful of chopped mint, with some leaves left whole if you like, olive oil. Mix all the ingredients together until well-combined. Dribble with olive oil. Good with flatbread, aubergine and roast lamb.

Small Crumbs of Comfort

17 Sunday Mar 2013

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This is my version of the ‘cream tea’. A faint echo, at least. The English cream tea consists of warmed scones (and in our family it was always ‘scon’ and not ‘scoan’, but each to their ‘oan’), a tranche of clotted cream, yellowing and puffy in its ramekin with the merest hint of a crust, and an avalanche of strawberry jam (does it have to be strawberry? I think it does). There was always a debate about whether it should be scone/cream/jam or scone/jam/cream. I believed in the former because I didn’t want the cream to be too sullied.

Cream tea was always some sort of reward, recompense for having waited hours for the wrong bus, or walked too many miles in the wrong direction. Then spying a tea room, we would go in. And they were always remarkably similar: too small with little dolls’ chairs and spindly tables and one harried, red-faced waitress in a tabard that could best be described as ‘snug’.

And despite the heat, the sun that shines merrily on high and the hummingbirds that drill their way through our garden like tiny helicopters, this is more comforting than ice cream, or a cooling fruit salad. Scones it must be, with a dollop of tangy cream and some syrupy, balsamic strawberry jam. I need some Englishness, some rural Devon and Cornwall. My family lost someone very special this week, a Cornish rose. This is all I can do, where I am; bake something comforting and sit and think of her. And they better have a bloody good cream tea where she’s going, or there’ll be questions asked.

The scone

There are debates about the perfect scone that I have neither the time nor the inclination to go into here. Obviously height is always nice because you want everything to look as if it’s just toppling over and the only way to save it is to cram it into your mouth in one go. To achieve this billowing effect, a combination of raising agents is needed (bicarb and cream of tartar) and an extra-fine flour, such as Italian 00, if you can get your hands on it. And work the mixture as little as possible; the more you knead, the denser and flatter the results. Once baked, the light and fluffy interior should act as a delightful contrast to the crunchy shell.

And it really needs to be eaten straight from the oven, so that the cold cream clashes with the warmth of the scone and the jam starts to liquefy. Some people like butter and jam here and not cream. But my belief is, given that you’ll only eat this once or twice a year at the most, you might as well go the whole hog.

A scone for a cream tea

Adapted from Rachel Allen, Bake

500g (1lb 2 oz) light Italian 00 flour or plain flour

1 rounded tsp bicarbonate of soda/baking soda

2 rounded tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp sea salt

125g (4½ oz) unsalted butter, cubed

25g (1 oz) caster/superfine sugar)

1 egg, beaten

275ml (9 fl oz) buttermilk or milk, plus extra for egg wash

To make buttermilk, add 1 tbs lemon juice to the milk and let it sit for 5 minutes

100g (3½ oz) sultanas or raisins (optional)

6cm (2½ in) cutter

Preheat the oven to 220C/425F. Sift the flour, bicarb, cream of tartar and salt into a large bowl. Using your fingers, rub in the butter until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and raisins/sultanas (if using) and mix well. Set aside about a third of the beaten egg and combine the rest with the buttermilk, then add to the flour mixture and mix very briefly to combine. It will be a very moist dough.

Place on a lightly floured surface and knead ever so slightly to bring together, then press or roll out to a thickness of 2cm (3/4 in). Using the cutter, cut out approximately 12 scones and put them on a floury baking tray. Add about a teaspoon or so of buttermilk to the remainder of the beaten egg to make an egg wash. Brush the scones with the egg wash and bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes or until golden brown on top. Eat as soon as possible. These also freeze well, and can be eaten within the month.

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Clotted cream

I didn’t make my own clotted cream (!!!?) which is the richest and most luxurious cream of all. Made originally from Jersey milk (the Jersey breed, from the Channel islands, is known for the high butterfat content of its milk), it cooks in a basin in a shallow pan of water, simmering for a few hours, until the cream rises to the top and forms a bubbly crust – the so-called clots. If you can’t get hold if it, crème fraîche works very well and brings a pleasing sourness. I love what Nigel Slater has to say about cream in its various incarnations. Read on at your peril.

The Jam

This jam might be the best way of using up the ‘monster’ strawberries currently doing the rounds here. Year-round strawbs have long been emblematic of LA farmers’ markets, which can be off-putting, particularly when you see miles and miles of them, big as tomatoes and hollow as a drum. But March and April in our area is on average the closest the berries get to peaking. Gaviota are lovely but incredibly sweet and best eaten straight from the punnet. Seascape have more acidity and complexity and make a more interesting jam. Recipe to follow.

Apple fritters

11 Sunday Nov 2012

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What a thing of beauty is batter. The crisp dense doughnut, its hole of silken jam revealed through the dough like a gun-shot wound. Sausages in batter, a Seventies masterpiece. Churros, those Spanish curly wurlies of ridged, hot, sugary rope. And gribbles. Gribbles were bits of batter, scrag ends you could get at the fish and chip shop for free. They would be scooped up, grudgingly, if you asked for them, and given to you in a cone made out of newspaper.

The fish and chip shop, Capel’s, was opposite the swimming pool on Heavitree road in Exeter, where I had my weekly swimming class with a monster called Miss Diamond. She made me cry underwater. I also had to tie knots in my trousers, blow them into a balloon and wait to be ‘rescued.’ These were public baths and always full to bursting on a Wednesday night, with kids having fun after school. Trying to get from one end of the pool to another was a challenge. Trying to do it fully clothed in order to save someone who was pretending to drown was a joke. Miss Diamond bellowed instructions at us or blew on her whistle to get above the racket. Never has the term ‘treading water’ felt so apposite, as I waited for the tyranny to end.

After swimming I would have hunger pangs but no money. I remember standing in the chippy with wet hair, watching golden hunks of fish being laid to rest in glass cabinets on the counter. But it was the batter I was after. Sometimes there was a landslide of gribbles, and you could even direct the server to which bits you wanted. Other times, strangely there was nothing. If I was ravenous, I would challenge them weakly. Were they sure? Absolutely nothing? And then the hill-climb home seemed particularly hard.

Still life with gribbles

Peppery, puffy batter shrouds these sweet apple slices, which are ever so slightly cooked while remaining al dente. A pinch of saffron, steeped in a couple of tablespoons of boiling water and then strained into the mixture, will turn the batter a lovely crocus-yellow. Alternatively, you can add sparkling water, cider or beer. You must eat these quickly, even standing over the still-smouldering pan of oil. I can imagine they would work well on a lazy Sunday morning – you can prepare the batter the night before and keep it in the fridge (give it a quick whisk). Do not omit the pepper.

Apple Fritters

Inspired by Emma Gardner, Poires au Chocolat

Adapted from a recipe from Jane Grigson, English Food

6 eating apples

125g (4 oz) flour

2 medium eggs

1 tablespoon of butter

Up to 300ml (1/2 pint) milk

Freshly ground black pepper

Pinch of sea salt

Pinch of saffron (optional)

2-3 tablespoons of sparkling water, cider, beer (tap water is fine)

Caster sugar (superfine), to toss

Cinnamon for the sugar (optional)

Oil to fry – sunflower, canola, peanut, coconut

In a small pan, melt the butter. You can take this to the browning stage for a nuttier flavour, if you like. Leave to cool. Beat the eggs in a bowl, then add the flour, and the water/cider/beer/saffron juice (delete as applicable), and sea salt. Gradually beat in half the milk and whisk until smooth. If the batter is too thick for your taste, add more. It should be thick enough to coat the apples well, and more or less stay put in the pan. Add the cooled butter. Grind the pepper two or three times over the basin and stir it in.

Peel the apples, then use a corer to take out the centre. Cut into 1cm thick slices (but again this is up to you). Prepare two plates: one with kitchen roll and another with a generous layer of sugar, mixed with a sprinkling of cinnamon if you like. Pour about 2cm of oil in a heavy-bottomed pan and heat over a medium high heat until just starting to smoke. Let a drip of batter fall into the oil – that will give you an idea of whether it’s ready.

Dip the slices of apple into the batter and fry until golden brown on both sides. Transfer to the kitchen roll plate for a minute to soak up any excess oil, then move to the sugar plate and toss. Enjoy now.

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.

Apple and sultana cake

18 Tuesday Sep 2012

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And now back to cake. This recipe belongs to my cousin, Lucas Hollweg, and you can find it in his book Good Things to Eat, which I think should be re-titled Fricken Amazin Things to Eat. Buttery and brisk, this cake is, and full of sharp and sweet delights. The apples are soft and fluffy and there is a lovely lemony sourness running throughout. The spices and sultanas make me think of Christmas and long, cold nights. Lucas calls the flavours “strudelish,” which I tried out on our recent German guests. Thinking they wouldn’t understand the “ish” I simply said “strudel” and spent the rest of the conversation backtracking. “It’s cake!” I said, finally, and we were all happy with that.

So to apples. My very first apple I do remember, because my dad knocked it out of the tree with a hoe. I think I told people we had “an orchard,” when actually it was two trees in the corner of our garden. It was also around this time that I invented a sister called Melanie which, you can imagine, took a lot more effort to conceal. Melanie was away a lot. Or she was sleeping. Then she died, which was a relief. But my love of apples only increased.

This first apple was my downfall. It was pale green, almost dun in appearance, and smooth and dry to the touch. This was what made the biting of it so exciting, because inside, once my teeth pierced the skin and those first droplets formed on my lips, was the sweet ivory flesh, full of crunch and juice. The bitter mahogany pips, the toughened core was something to work around, gnaw at until almost nothing remained; a little twig dangling from my stubby fingers. I discovered apple shampoo while on a French campsite a year or two later, and I marvelled at how they could have captured the fragrance so perfectly. There was probably not a single natural ingredient in the bottle, but to me it was like having a frothing orchard in my hair. So, apples remind me of being young, and of ‘firsts.’ And how I launched myself at things like a missile.

This cake takes me back to that first, and best ever, apple. It’s incredibly easy to make, yet rich and plump and gorgeous. It’s a happy cake. I left it out for the German girls for breakfast and asked afterwards if they liked it. One nodded a lot, and made a gasping sound. Her eyes also widened, which I took to be a good sign. The other one spoke for her. “We’re in heaven,” she said.

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Just so you know, I have also made this cake with quince compote, left over from the quince paste I made, and it was wonderfully aromatic. I have also used plumped-up (soaked) raisins in place of sultanas, which are trickier to find in LA. As to Bramleys – there is no real substitute. Look for sour and tart apples that cook down well.

Apple and Sultana Cake

Lucas Hollweg, Good Things to Eat

For 4-6

125g (4½ oz) butter, plus extra for greasing

125g (4½ oz) light brown or light muscovado sugar

125g (4½ oz) self-raising flour

1 medium egg

200g (7 oz) Bramley apples (1-2 depending on size)

2 handfuls of sultanas

Finely grated zest of 1 small lemon

½ tsp ground cinnamon

Fresh nutmeg

A handful of flaked almonds

“Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas Mark 4. Grease an 18cm (7in) cake tin and line the bottom with a circle of baking parchment. Put the butter and 100g (3½ oz) sugar in a saucepan and stir over a gentle heat until the butter has melted and the sugar dissolved. Quickly stir in the flour and beat in the egg. You’ll end up with something that looks like what it is – flour mixed with melted butter – rather than normal cake mixture. Don’t worry, it’s meant to look like that.

Spread half the mixture over the bottom of the cake tin, then arrange the apple slices on top. Scatter with 3 tablespoons sugar, then add the sultanas, lemon zest and spices (you want to grate in about one-eighth of a whole nutmeg). Spread the remaining cake mixture over the top, smoothing it out as best you can. Scatter with the flaked almonds and put the tin in the oven for 35-40 minutes, or until it’s a deep gold and firm to the touch.

Have a look after 30 minutes and cover the top with a bit of foil if it’s browning too quickly. Remove from the oven, and leave to stand in the tin for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool on a rack for at least quarter of an hour. It’s best while still just warm.”

 

Walnut bread

18 Wednesday Jul 2012

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God, I miss bread. I don’t eat it much anymore. Maybe it’s because so much of it is that pre-sliced, flaccid, crustless variety sweating into its plastic bag. But the real thing is always worth it no matter how much you long for sleep afterwards, your legs leaden and your eyes drooping like a bloodhound. We don’t eat as much bread as we once did, perhaps because we’re not going down the pit anymore, or walking up mountains on a regular basis. So we forget what sustenance it provides. And good bread is real food, a meal in itself.

I have a memory of bread, toasted. It was homemade. It came in a mound, brown and slightly dusty. It filled the room with the most extraordinary fragrance. The bread belonged to our new neighbours in Exeter. They were a family of five: two boys and a girl. She was my age. The fact they lived next door meant there was some sort of unspoken rule that their daughter should accompany me to school. I was about seven and I was new to the area, my parents freshly divorced. So I would hover in the doorway to the kitchen while they finished up their breakfast. And what a breakfast! I was still digesting my porridge, but I could have sat down and started all over again in this new place.

The smell of hot, cakey bread, the dark husks still evident on their plates, and jellied spoonfuls of the bitterest marmalade sliding over the top of creamy, salted butter – the combination almost brought me to my knees. It still does.

Freya – for that was her name –  was given the task of ‘walking me’ (like a dog) along the back lanes to school. She lasted all of a day doing this. But still she went through the charade of leaving the house with me, walking to the end of the street and then when the coast was clear leaving me there. Every day at the allotted time though, I hovered and inhaled. I think there were seeds in the bread; it smelled nutty. A kind of charcoal splendour drifted daily from the toaster. I felt weak with longing.

They had a cat called Orlando who was an orange ball of hatred and bile. Like the rest of the family he carried about him an unmistakable aura of status. Our cat, Smudge, never stood a chance. They fought daily, one paw resting on the fence for balance, the other taking slightly camp swipes at the other’s face. It was obvious who would win.

Freya when the time came went on to her posh, all-girls school and I went to the local comprehensive. I never saw her again. Not properly. We did occasionally bump into the family. Freya’s mum did contemporary dance as a hobby (her dance group were on the local news!). Freya’s dad – an orthodontist – fitted me and my brother with braces. What a start though every day to eat homemade bread, toasted and smothered in some gorgeous preserve. The five of them sat there like warriors. How could you ever be miserable when you had a family like that?

Walnut Bread

Adapted from Rick Stein’s Food Heroes

1 tbs dried yeast

1 tbs dark soft brown sugar

450 ml (15 fl oz) lukewarm water

600g (1 lb 6 oz) wholemeal/whole wheat stone-ground flour

2 teaspoons of salt

20 g (¾ oz) butter, melted

40 g (1½ oz) walnut pieces

2 tsp sesame seeds or sunflower seeds

1 egg, beaten

To make a ferment or ‘sponge’, whisk the yeast and 1 teaspoon of sugar in 150 ml (5 fl oz) of the lukewarm water. The temperature is important; too hot and it will kill the yeast, but too cold and the yeast won’t activate. It needs to be ‘finger hot.’ The best way to achieve this is to measure two-thirds cold tap water, pour into a jug and top up with one-third boiling water.

Leave the yeast to bubble in a warm place until the surface has about 2 cm (¾ in) of froth on it. It will take about 15 minutes. It should begin bubbling after about 5 minutes – if it doesn’t, the chances are the yeast won’t work. Put the flour, remaining sugar and salt in a large bowl. Pour on the yeast ferment, the remaining water and the melted butter, and mix together until you have a soft, sloppy dough. Knead for about 5 minutes, adding the walnuts right at the end. You can toast the walnuts lightly in a dry pan beforehand if you would like to accentuate their richness in the bread, and also throw in a few more if you like abundance.

Cut the dough in half and form 2 fat sausage shapes. Put them into 2 buttered 450 g (1 lb) loaf tins. Cover each with cling film/plastic wrap or put in a large plastic bag and leave in a warm place for about 45 minutes, until the dough has risen to the top.

Preheat the oven to 230C/450F. Wash the tops of the loaves gently with egg (the dough can easily deflate) and sprinkle with the seeds. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes. Remove the loaves from their tins and return them to the oven for a further 5 minutes to crisp up. Leave to cool on a wire rack. Wrap in cling film/plastic wrap and freeze if you are not going to eat them right away.

Walnuts and flour

Walnuts admittedly belong to the quieter, fall months. I hope you will forgive this seasonal lapse – I wrote this during a white-hot, muggy spell in LA when it felt as if the earth would crack and we would be showered with all our possessions. The smell of autumn – hot bread, wet grass and cool cheeks – seemed preferable.

Now to flour – I know it seems obvious, but you can’t make good bread with the substandard stuff. Fresh, stone-ground whole wheat flour will transform a loaf from okay to unforgettable. Because stones grind the flour more finely than metal cylinders, there are more bran particles in the bread, which gives it a more pronounced flavour and texture (that lovely crunch). The germ is also more present, enhancing the flour’s nutritional value. The bread doesn’t last as long, though, because of the high oil content, so you have to eat it quickly (shame).

Floury fingers – in memory of cake

03 Tuesday Jul 2012

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I recently read about a three year old French child who bakes her own cupcakes. I imagine she needs help putting them in the oven, but apart from that she’s her own pastry chef. Much has been written recently about the difference between French and American children, and the way the French like to ignore their offspring.

I remember teaching English to a Parisian lady (and mother) who told me outright that she found ‘pre-language’ children uninteresting. They were simply beneath her until they could find the right words to keep her in the room. So the idea of a small child not just able to feed herself, but preparing baked goods was interesting to me. The French idea is that children should learn to be self-sufficient from a young age, resourceful and able to deal with periods of boredom and frustration – periods of aloneness, without setting fire to themselves or the house.

I too have memories of long, starchy afternoons, when time would linger and there was nothing much to do and no one around. This was before the days of constant adult supervision –  or in the words of the late, great Nora Ephron, before parenting became “a participle.” My refuge was reading, and making concoctions from scrag ends of food and my mother’s baking chocolate, which was like snacking on tar. It wasn’t just unsweet, but rock hard, greasy and impossible to either bite into or break off. I think she got it from a wholesaler called Norman’s in Budleigh Salterton. I don’t remember it ever being employed in a cake, but perversely for something inedible, she always hid it so it could only ever be accessed by balancing on a stool, hoisting myself up onto the counter and rummaging through packets of dessicated coconut and paprika until my hand landed on a wrapped lump the texture and weight of a horse-shoe. I cut my gums on it.

My nana from Australia sent me my first cook books. Floury Fingers by Celia Hinde did interesting things with fondant, but left me with a lifelong suspicion of cup sizes. The second book, though, became my friend, babysitter and an endless source of material both for my cooking life and beyond.

It was called the Kids’ Own Book of Stories and Things to Do. It was an absolute treasure trove. I think it was seasonal because one section was all about ice lollies and then another one had pictures of snow and mittens. There were stories of betrayal, wallabies, children of different ethnic backgrounds, slides, kites and all sorts. I loved the recipes the best and returned year after year to try them out. I rarely had the right ingredients. Sugar was banned in our house, except for muscovado that turned tea to treacle, though it was nice on porridge. We kept goats, whose warm (and occasionally hairy) milk softened our cornflakes in a way that I can only describe as off-putting. Raspberries were picked fresh from the bush for breakfast. There was ratatoullie and lambs’ brains. I wasn’t particularly appreciative.

What I wanted was cake. Preferably with thick slopes of icing and cut into giant-sized wedges. I do remember being terribly sick but still managing to swallow a few slabs of chocolate cake at another child’s birthday party, the sweat beading across my brow, twin flares of fiery red on each cheek. So slabs it must be here – as an homage to what I would have baked had I had the requisite ingredients. I did my best. I made chocolate logs that my dad said looked like dog turds, and rock cakes that lived up to their name. Had I not had huge swathes of time to explore, I probably would not have made them at all, so I’m grateful I was allowed to get on with the business of childhood without too many interruptions.

I am still in search of the perfect cake, even now. Something you can eat for breakfast (toasted, with butter), for elevenses, or brunch, for afternoon tea, and of course, for pudding. Beginning with this cherry-almond loaf cake, the cataloguing has officially begun.

Now’s the time for cherries – the Bing variety has that deep, glossy coat, almost mahogany in hue, but any cherry can be made into a decent compote. The trick is no water, only a little sugar and a splash of balsamic vinegar. The cherries should keep their shape and not be overcooked. If you already have a jar of such things, or you have some (preferably undyed) glacé cherries, you can skip this bit.

Cherry compote

Adapted from Lindsey Shere, Chez Panisse Desserts

1lb ripe cherries

2 tbs sugar

2 tsp balsamic vinegar

Method

Put the cherries, stems and all, in a colander, pick out any bad ones, rinse and pat dry. Put them in one layer in a pan. Sprinkle the fruit with sugar and shake over a medium high heat for about 5-10 minutes. The sugar will melt and the cherries will feel soft to the touch. Don’t go to mush.  Sprinkle with the balsamic vinegar, and shake for a minute or so more. Scrape the cherries, together with their juice, into a container and let them cool before chilling. You can serve them as they are (they love ice cream), or stone and stem them for use in the cake.

Cherry-almond loaf cake

Adapted from Nigella Lawson, How To Be a Domestic Goddess

Here, I’ve reverted to grams; going back to my roots.

200g cherries (stoned, stemmed and halved)

250g self-raising flour

(or add 1tsp of baking powder to every 125g/4oz of plain flour)

225g softened butter

175g cane sugar

3 large eggs, beaten

2-3 drops of almond extract

100g ground almonds

6tbs milk

9x5ins or 23x13x7cm loaf tin, lined and buttered

Method

Preheat the oven to 325F/170C. Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Gradually add the beaten eggs and almond extract, alternating with the flour and ground almonds until it’s all one. Fold in the cherries, and then the milk and spoon the thick mixture into the loaf tin. Bake for ¾ – 1 hour, or until a skewer comes out clean. Leave in the pan on a wire rack until completely cooled. Makes 8-10 slabs.

p.s I read about the cupcake-baking three year old in The New Yorker. Here’s the whole article if you want to read on.

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers

20 Friday Apr 2012

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I remember where I was: sitting at a round, wooden table opposite my mum’s friend Pat, and flanked by her three kids in a kitchen somewhere in the Devon countryside. She’d borrowed this place I seem to remember on a break from London and I don’t know where she got the eggs, but they came in an unmarked box. They were brown and small and there was a pile of wonky toast, which we slathered in butter. There was also Marmite.

But the thing I remember most was that first scoop of egg on my spoon. Up until that moment, my mum’s insistence on runny eggs had incensed my brother and I; we wanted them as hard as ping-pong balls, rubbery if possible. Absolutely nothing must be moving within. But this was different – there was a faint sweetness on the tongue that salt only seemed to intensify. The texture was soft and yielding with the merest bite to it. To my mind the yolk was (still is) unthinkable without the white. They belong together and here it proved most true. Toast was almost redundant; the white tenderly curled itself around each spoonful of plump, yellow yolk. Everyone was quiet for a time – there was only the sound of muffled cutlery, the crunch of crust and crackly shell.

So began my life-long attachment to the boiled egg, though nothing has ever come close to that moment of transcendence. Maybe it’s because it’s so easy to be distracted nowadays. The act of standing over a pan of gently bubbling water for precise minutes requires a presence of mind, a slower heartbeat perhaps. An over-boiled egg is rarely uneatable – even with grey yolk and a sulphurous ring of shame – but a runny egg, the white still translucent, the yolk thin and watery, is not simply a disappointment but a waste. Perhaps we have become too removed from what Henry James called the “bloom of punctuality.” We no longer have any concept of the laying season, where we must wait for the hen – everything is available so nothing really matters.

Soft-boiled egg and soldiers 

Get room temperature eggs and a small pan of water (so the eggs don’t go careering all over the place). Bring the water up to a simmer and gently lower the eggs into the pan using a spoon. Let them cook for exactly 1 minute. Remove the saucepan from the heat, cover and leave for 6 minutes. If you want a slightly firmer set, go to 7 minutes. Serve with soldiers. I would say that a little heap of sea salt and a grind of black pepper is essential.

As eggs are invariably stored in the fridge, you can bring them to room temperature by sitting them in a bowl of hot tap water for 10 minutes. Interestingly, our habit of refrigerating eggs is not necessarily good for them – they don’t like extremes of temperature (who does?) and prefer a cool environment to a cold one. The bottom of the fridge is the safest place or an unsunny countertop.

Soldiers and their substitutes 

A strip of toast – the ‘soldier’ of the title – dunked into an egg is a great stand-in for a spoon, and it’s fun watching the yolk cascade down the sides. Butter is poetry in itself, but a soft-boiled egg can take all sorts of aggressive interlopers. Aside from Marmite soldiers, anchovies flattened on toast adds salty drama, as does a smear of pesto. If you want to forego bread altogether, asparagus tips are fresh and spring-like. Here you want a runnier yolk, so cook the eggs for 6 minutes only. Shards of crisp bacon dipped into egg are lovely; both are salty sweet, but bacon brings the toast-like ballast you may have been missing. Finally, a little spear of parmesan is nice to go rooting around with; the combination of crumbly, salty creaminess has a natural affinity with eggs in any form.

Buying eggs

I know it probably goes without saying that the words ‘natural’ and ‘fresh’ mean nothing in the context of egg buying. I can’t remember the last time I bought some ‘stale and unnatural’ eggs. And just because hens are ‘free to roam’ doesn’t mean they will; their natural tendency is to stay close to the nesting area. The most we can hope for, at least in California, is to seek out the Certified Humane and Certified (by the USDA) Organic labels, where there is third-party verification that no pesticides or herbicides have been used, hens are able to spend their days outside, grazing in small flocks, scratching around and generally being themselves. Incidentally, the best way of telling if an egg really is ‘fresh’ is to put one in a bowl of cold water; if it rests on the bottom in a horizontal position, the egg is very fresh. If it tilts or becomes vertical it’s less so.