Spiced prunes

23 Sunday Dec 2012

Tags

Christmas, Elizabeth David, Food, Ingredients, Italy, Pudding, Recipes, Spices, Winter

This is not so much a recipe as a throwing together of ingredients and leaving them to do their work for a day or so on their own. I know that Christmas day is upon us and this dish can work both as a side with meat, as a compote for cheese, as a pudding and as a sweetmeat with coffee, which is handy. I’m not suggesting that this is all you have, but it frees you up to enjoy the festivities.

We found Yuzu lemons outside a sushi restaurant, where the tree was shedding its fruit. “They smell like aftershave,” said Joe, meaning in a good way. They do have an intensely aromatic zing. Almost but not quite overpowering. And contrary to reports, they gave up quite a bit of juice. This recipe, by Elizabeth David, asks for whole spices where possible. There is no added sugar, the prune having quite a bit of its own, and it’s rich enough without needing any accompaniment, though I have a penchant (as you’ve probably noticed) for crème fraîche.

Yuzu lemon

I’m surprised it’s taken me this long to get to Elizabeth David because she was the first food writer I ever read with any real attention. And she is forever associated in my mind with Italy where I first learned to cook. Her book on Italian food was the only one I brought with me to Venice, where I lived and worked for a count and countess, and it proved useful because the dishes I needed to make were rarely complicated. It was always more an assembly of ingredients, and as such utterly exposing in the way that all very simple dishes are. Tomatoes sliced with some ripped mozzarella and some shredded (never cut) basil. Lemon chicken. Asiago and a ripe pear, sliced and eaten off the knife like a circus trick. Peaches, prosciutto, ice cream, a slug of espresso.

Everything was singular. The smell of one thing, its perfume, its downy skin, the rind of this or that cheese. Men carved away at artichokes on the quayside until all that was left was the furry heart. They floated them in buckets of acidulated water and Donatella taught me what to do when I got them home.

Donatella was the housekeeper, though she was also the unofficial stewer and broth maker. She was the one who made stock with a carcass, a few whole carrots, some bay leaves and an onion. She told me how to make sugo for pasta. She was small and round and young, and I think secretly wanted to learn English. Sometimes as we bent over the pots and pans I would translate for her and she would find it very funny. I was 19 and she couldn’t have been much older but she was married with kids. Eventually, she left me to my own devices. I had a small but effective repertoire by the time I left, but I never made pudding. Nobody made pudding, from what I could gather. Ice cream was eaten in the street, and anything sweet was bought in and consumed at breakfast.

I think Donatella would have approved of this dish. When I threw in the bay leaves and lemon rind I thought of her. It takes a certain amount of confidence to leave things be and she was nothing if not self-possessed. I think that’s what I learnt most from her – that the best cooks do less. I hope she would be proud.

Blades of mace

Blades of mace sounds like a song by Motorhead. Actually, it’s the lacy covering of the nutmeg, technically speaking the dried aril. It can be used interchangeably with freshly grated nutmeg, added to clear soups and sauces as well as cakes and bread, though it is subtler and more delicate. It is marketed in pieces called blades and has a lovely orange hue reminiscent of saffron. This recipe asks for two blades, but be as free as you dare.

Ceylon cinnamon

These quills of Ceylon cinnamon are quite different to the tougher Cassia bark we are all used to. They are crumbly and parchment-like and break apart like decaying cigars. They smell noticeably of lemon, are subtler than your average and are very different to the spicy, dry ‘hit’ of cinnamon powder. The only drawback is the bits of wood get everywhere and you end up spitting them out in a rather uncouth way.

Spiced prunes with lemon and bay

Adapted from Elizabeth David’s Christmas, edited by Jill Norman

500g/1lb large prunes (preferably unpitted)

2 5cm/2ins pieces of cinnamon

2 level teaspoons of coriander seeds

2 blades of mace

4 whole cloves

Rind of one lemon (and add the peeled lemon too)

2-3 torn bay leaves

Put the prunes, spices, bay leaves and lemon in a bowl or earthenware casserole dish. Just cover them with cold water. Leave overnight. The next day, cook the prunes in an uncovered casserole in a low oven, or in a pan over a very low direct heat until swollen but not mushy. About half the cooking water will have evaporated. Take out the fruit and remove the stones. Heat up the remaining juice with all the spices, until it is syrupy. Pour it through a strainer over the prunes. Eat cold.

Toasted Ginger Cake

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Baking, Cake, Cookbook, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Spices, Stories

Something dark is needed, and I feel it can’t be chocolate. Something dense, oblong and with ginger nubbins. Some sort of nub is required. I have spent the whole week researching chocolate pecan torte. I still know nothing about tortes. And I realize this is not the time for light and airy cakes with a dusting of something smokily ethereal. If ever there was a time for density it is now. And the heart wants what it wants, as Emily Dickinson once wrote.

I don’t know why this has to be toasted, but it does. I first tried it about two years ago in a cafe in Sussex. I asked if I could get the recipe and the cook refused. He didn’t refuse to my face, which was in some ways more embarrassing because he was about a yard away from me in his open kitchen, and the rejection was delivered via a waitress. I don’t know whether I was being a bit pushy, presumptuous in asking. I thought it was the best ginger cake ever, and was sending my compliments along with the question. I didn’t want a print-out or anything. Just the basics. Anyway, two years on and many ginger cake recipes later, and by George I think I’ve got it.

I always think of this time of year as a period in which chocolate is passed over in favour of nuts and spices. We are entering the season of thin, biscuity pastry, lemony innards, honeyed syrup, stewed fruit, toasted nuts. The Elizabethan sweetmeat reigns. I am gearing up for mince pies. I feel I’ve thrown everything into this cake. Because it’s such a straightforward recipe, I felt it could be fattened up a bit. I wanted peel so I threw in some of my thick-cut marmalade. I had maple syrup so in it went. I also tried maple sugar, because I like its darker ‘dried toffee’ taste. But most importantly, I candied some ginger. This took a while, but the results were far more interesting than the stuff you buy. The syrup alone is worth the effort; peppery and pungent and a deep thick amber. It keeps for months.

To return to the source of the wound for a moment, the cake whose recipe I coveted was a ginger parkin, a staple from the northeast of England. ‘Fresh’ parkin is frowned upon; a slightly aged parkin is the acceptable form, so try to withstand the temptation to eat it straight away. It improves if you leave it at least a couple of days. On its own, unadorned, the cake is lovely with a cup of tea. The toffee sauce takes it to an almost obscene level of indulgence; we are now in pudding territory. Eat it on Boxing day watching a crap film.

Toasted Ginger Cake

Adapted from Andrew Pern, Black Pudding and Foie Gras

100g self-raising flour (or use plain flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder)

75g oatmeal (or porridge oats whizzed in a blender)

A pinch of sea salt

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 heaped tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg

2 tbs shred from marmalade (optional)

2 heaped tbs preserved/candied ginger, finely diced

175g golden syrup* (utilize some of the ginger syrup if you have it)

50g black treacle*

100g butter

100g soft brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

2 heaped tbs milk

For the toffee sauce

115g unsalted butter

115g light brown sugar

140ml double/heavy cream

Sea salt

Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/gas mark 1. Sieve the flour, bicarb, salt, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon into a bowl, then stir in the oatmeal and the candied ginger and peel (if using). Gently melt down the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar, keeping it just below a simmer – do not let it boil. Stir in the dry mix until amalgamated, then add the egg and milk, so it’s a soft, semi-pouring consistency. Pour into a greased, 20cm square cake tin and bake for an hour and a half, or until firm in the centre. Leave to stand for half an hour, then turn out. The parkin’s now ready to be served. Like good wine, it improves with age; store in an airtight container. For the best flavour, keep for three weeks.

Make the sauce by putting all the ingredients into a pan. Heat slowly until the butter has melted, then turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Boil for about 3 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you want a more gutsy flavour (and you don’t want insipid toffee sauce) go until the colour has deepened slightly to a warm nut-brown. Poke some holes in the cake and slather the sauce over the top, letting it drip down the sides. Toast under the grill before serving. This recipe is based on the same principle as the Sticky Toffee Pudding.

* In the US, use corn syrup in place of golden syrup if you can’t find it, and molasses in place of black treacle. I went to India Sweets and Spices here in LA where they have a British section.

Crystallised/candied ginger

Adapted from David Lebovitz, Ready for Dessert

1 pound (500g) fresh ginger, peeled

4 cups (800g) sugar, plus additional sugar for coating the ginger slices, if desired

4 cups (1l) water

Pinch of salt

Slice the ginger as thinly as possible. It can’t be too thin, so use a sharp knife. Get the youngest ginger you can find, as it’ll be less fibrous. Put the ginger slices in a non-reactive saucepan, add enough water to cover the ginger, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let the ginger simmer for ten minutes. Drain, and repeat, simmering the ginger slices one more time. Mix the sugar and 4 cups (1l) water in the pan, along with a generous pinch of sea salt and the ginger slices, and cook until the temperature reaches 225F (106C.) If you don’t have a candy thermometer, the consistency will be similar to runny honey. It will have reduced quite considerably, and will leave a generous coating on the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and let stand for at least an hour – overnight is ideal. Or if you want to coat the slices with sugar, drain very well while the ginger is hot and toss the slices in granulated sugar. Shake off the excess and spread the ginger slices on a cooling rack overnight, until they are tacky-dry. Alternatively, the ginger, packed in its syrup, can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one year. If tossed in sugar, the pieces can be stored at room temperature for a few months.

Salad of pears

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Cookbook, Food, Ingredients, London, Nonfiction, Recipes, Salad, Stories

My first salad. Not the first salad I’ve ever eaten – that would be a bit perverse – but the first one I’ve written about here. The blue cheese is not essential; it is the pear and watercress that makes the dish, but a nice Stilton or Roquefort lends a lactic headiness to proceedings. This crosses the border between indulgence and virtue. Yes, it has a lot of fresh, raw greenery, but that mustn’t deter us. And it is a meal in itself. Have some hot crusty bread, a jug of dressing to mop up, and nothing else is required.

Pears are one of my favourite things. They are tricky, temperamental. The moment between just ripe – your thumb making the slightest depression in the skin, the juice ready to spill – and pear-rot is a hair’s breadth. They are peaceful to look at, a still-life, long and sloping, the Modigliani of fruit. I love Conference* pears the best – their mottled, taupe skin, slightly rough to the touch. They ooze and fall into your mouth, but never collapse. It’s good to eat them from the point down. In fact they fit in the palm perfectly.

This recipe – minus the blue cheese – came by way of my Australian aunt Cynthia and when we took it on, perhaps unconsciously, we would always serve it in an Aboriginal bowl made of wood. It was a strange shape, like an opened clam, and on the outside there were black inked carvings. You weren’t supposed to wash it, but we did, and it withstood this neglect and abuse for years. It still exists now as a receptacle for other things, looking terminally dusty. But we used it in London mainly, in Redcliffe Square, and I sometimes sat and ate this salad and watched Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley leave their flat from the house opposite. Sometimes, I would see them through the glass getting ready for things. I once inadvertently walked past his door when he was coming down the steps to be ‘caught’ by a paparazzo. Afterwards, he and the photographer stood around and chatted.

This was around the time when strange pairings were encouraged generally. It was as if we had woken from our Eighties torpor, ready to push the boat out. There was lamb and pears, for example. The macrobiotic diet was doing the rounds and there was talk of yin and yang. Things that were acidic needed to be mixed with things that were alkaline. Even the area was mixed: rent-controlled apartments such as ours existed alongside celebrities and landed gentry. Earls Court, although at that time largely Arabic, still had the residue of transplanted Aussies, like my mum, who had arrived in the late Fifties and stuck around.

Strangely, this recipe hasn’t dated, nor is it ubiquitous. It has survived the fashions and vagaries of the time. It reminds me of interesting couplings. Of rubbing along. I think it might be worth a revisit.

Pears, watercress and blue cheese

Adapted from Ruth Watson, The Really Helpful Cookbook

Serves 4

2 large handfuls of watercress

2 or 3 ripe-but-firm pears

100g Roquefort (or other blue cheese) – you can improvise with the amount

For the dressing

1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

4-5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbs honey

1 tbs Dijon mustard

Pinch of sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Make the dressing: dissolve the sea salt with the balsamic vinegar by giving it a good swirl, then add the mustard and stir throughly to combine. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until it’s all mixed. Add the honey and stir. Put to one side.

Break up the watercress and remove the stems. Artfully arrange onto plates. Peel, core and cut the pears into sixths (or quarters if they’re quite small). Do this at the last moment to prevent the pears from browning, or slather in lemon juice and put to one side. Leave on some of the skin if you like a bit of texture. Tuck the pears into the watercress and season with some black pepper. Crumble some blue cheese over each plate. Drizzle with the dressing and some extra honey if you like. Serve immediately. Likes hot bread.

*Bosc pears are a good substitute in the US. In fact, they are plumper and juicier.

Upland cress

Warm cherry & chocolate cakes

20 Tuesday Nov 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Baking, Cake, Dessert, Food, Fruit, Homesickness, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories

Cherries in November, I hear you ask? No, I have only the dried versions – wizened little blisters plumped up by liquor – but I love the look of these deep, dark orbs. And oddly they seem more suited to winter in my mind. This story is a pulling together of the different threads of my England trip, and the genus comes from a visit to Brighton, the streets slaked that day with dirty rain. It was also cold and people were standing in doorways looking out, not at anyone in particular, but simply looking on with flattened, peeved expressions. My mum and I had the idea to see the Biba exhibition at the Brighton museum, but instead went to Primark. The rain washed away any ingenuity that day, but at least I came away with a good packet of pants.

We ran out of the rain into a cafe. It was warm inside and there were some lovely looking cakes on the counter, although with my mother the assumption is always that we will have soup. Soup and tea. The girl behind the counter was bewitchingly friendly. She was Polish, and it was her mother, Ella, who did all the baking. Her mother was downstairs. There was a Black Forest cake, with all its turrets and glossy layers, a plum crumble tart, and whirling pastries. We ordered soup, which was beef and leek – delicate and creamy. My mum ate the plum crumble tart. A chocolate cake arrived, carried by Ella.

By this point, I knew that my mum would be engaging in conversation with Ella, and that this would happen as soon as the cake was released. It began as it always does – with a few compliments, and a request for ingredients. A slow and delicate deconstruction of the soup followed, and then onto the plum crumble tart. Without this dandling, this gentle back and forth, I know Ella would not have brought out a jar of her homemade black cherry jam for us.

When it came to packing for the return trip to LA, I decided to leave the jar of jam behind. It was too heavy, and it was glass. Besides, my mum would enjoy it. I put it in the cupboard but it found its way back into my bag. I returned it, hid it behind some tea, but there it was again, sitting at a jaunty angle in amongst my clothes. It eventually stayed with her. I assumed you could get black cherry jam in LA. I was being rather cavalier about it; it was fine, it was only jam, she should have it. But on my return here, it gnawed at me. I missed it. I thought often of the contents, and the patterned lid, and the way Ella had presented it, her face flushed with promise and oven heat. It’s funny the things we regret.

I would like to think these cakes are based on the Ischler torte, the Viennese chocolate cake with cherry and almond filling, and not the smothering Black Forest. But ultimately, there is something very British about these little chocolate fondants. We are so in love with the oozing and glaucous pudding, with dark and brooding chocolate. And cream, of course. If you can’t find dried cherries, you could try prunes soaked in brandy, raisins soaked in whisky or dried cranberries in vodka. And, of course, if you have some homemade cherry jam, use that.

Warm cherry and chocolate cakes

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Three Good Things on a Plate

Makes 6

100g dried cherries

40ml Calvados

A little cocoa powder for dusting

150g dark chocolate, broken into small pieces

150g unsalted butter, diced, plus extra for greasing

3 large eggs

75g caster/superfine sugar

35g plain flour

Soak the cherries in the Calvados in a small bowl for at least 2 hours (or overnight), to absorb most of the liquid.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F and put a baking tray inside to heat up. Butter 6 dariole moulds or ramekins well and dust with the cocoa. Melt the chocolate and butter in a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Stir gently at the end to blend and leave to cool a little. Beat the eggs and sugar together for a good 5 minutes until the mixture is thick and creamy and ‘holds a trail’ (when a little is dropped from the whisk it sits on the top of the mixture before slowly sinking back in).

Fold the melted chocolate and butter lightly into the egg mousse. Sift the flour over the mixture, then fold it in carefully. It should be throughly incorporated, but don’t overwork the mixture. Fold in the cherries and Calvados.

Divide the mixture between the ramekins. You can prepare these cakes ahead to this point, if you like, and refrigerate them for up to 2 hours. Bake the puds on the hot tray in the oven for 10-12 minutes. Turn out immediately into shallow bowls and serve with thin, chilled cream.

Apple fritters

11 Sunday Nov 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Childhood, Devon, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

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.

Fruit tea loaf

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Afternoon tea, Baking, David Hockney, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories

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.

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, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures, 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.

An Autumn Jelly

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Autumn, England, Food, Fruit, Homesickness, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Preserve, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

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.

Toffee apples

11 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Childhood, Dessert, Devon, Food, Fruit, Homesickness, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

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, crisp 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

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Baking, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

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.

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.

Roasted squash

24 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Recipes, Spices, Stories, Travel

I could live on this. I’m already perilously close to overkill. I have it for breakfast with an omelette, on its own at lunch. It slumps in a devil-may-care way next to all sorts of meat and fish. It’s so over me. I’m praying it goes out of season soon, or suddenly becomes unavailable, so I can kick the habit. The fact that butternut squash is good for you is all the more confusing. Sweet, plump, comforting and the kind of neon orange I haven’t seen since my 1976 flares took my parents’ breath away, it heralds the start of the cooler months, climaxing on Thanksgiving in November.

I don’t think I was properly aware of squash before I came to America, in the sense of the entire ‘family’ of vegetables. In England, we have courgettes and marrows, and of course pumpkins. But here in California there is summer squash and winter squash, and so many sub-genres in between I could really do with a manual. In a nutshell, summer squash has a thinner skin, is tender and glossy (think courgettes) and winter squash, the butternut for example, is firm with a thick, tough rind.

The thing butternut squash most loves is ham. Boiled, then roasted, basted and then glazed with a treacly syrup. Both are sweet and soft, rich and caramelized, chunky and substantial. Interestingly, squash is not particularly starchy, so though it eats like a sweet potato, it has none of the fibrous load.

On our first Thanksgiving* as a couple in LA, three years ago, we had somehow missed all the invitations to join in with other families celebrating, and found ourselves a deux. We bought a ham from Trader Joe’s and some squash, and proceeded to have ourselves a party. Not having this tradition in England, it was hard to tap into the spirit. My only previous Thanksgiving reference had been the movie Planes, Trains and Automobiles, where Steve Martin’s character struggles to get home in time, with podgy irritant John Candy tagging along. My favourite line is when the two of them are sharing a bed, and Steve Martin says: “Those aren’t pillows”. It is a funny film, tinged with sadness, and I loved John Candy’s shower curtain ring salesman. I can never remember if they do make it back in time, but I was left with a memory of those awful, corporate hotel rooms, piles of snow, and men screaming in car parks.

That ham gave me terrible wind. Afterwards, we went for a walk in Runyon Canyon and watched people working out. There were families – shoals of them – walking off their feast, laughing and shouting to one another. We sat on a bench and looked out at the sea of buildings below and beyond, everything indistinguishable. I think we realized then that it was tantamount to missing Christmas. The timing was off, but the squash was good. I am still giving thanks for it.

Roasted Squash

Adapted from Jamie Oliver, Jamie’s Italy

1 large butternut squash

1 dried red chilli

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

A large handful of sage leaves

1 stick of cinnamon

Olive oil

Preheat your oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4. Halve the butternut squash, remove and reserve the seeds, then cut the squash into slices or chunks with the skin left on. Using a pestle and mortar, or a metal bowl with a rolling-pin, bash up the dried red chilli with a good pinch of salt. Add the whole sage leaves, the cinnamon and enough olive oil to loosen the mixture, and rub the whole lot over the squash pieces, so they are well covered.

Place the squash in one layer (this is important) in a roasting tray and season lightly with salt and pepper. Sprinkle over the seeds, cover tightly with tin foil and bake for 30 minutes, or until the skin of the squash is soft, then remove the foil and cook for another 15 minutes until the squash is golden and crisp. Remove the cinnamon and tuck in.

*Thanksgiving takes place on the fourth Thursday of November in the US. You could say it’s the original harvest festival, started by the pilgrims and puritans emigrating from England in the early 17th century, and assisted by the Wampanoag Native Americans who provided seeds and fish.