Black and blue

30 Saturday Aug 2014

Tags

Afternoon tea, Autumn, Cafes, England, Ingredients, Jam, Jane Grigson, Recipe, Sussex

Yesterday we went walking and found these blackberries, the red picked as an enticement to the black ones to gel. I made a rather flouncy-sounding mûrée with them – a kind of jam but without the staggering amount of sugar. ‘Serve it tepid with a grainy cake,’ is Jane Grigson’s rather dowdy instruction, though I found the marriage of mûrée and yoghurt far more appealing. You can keep the jam in the fridge and be none the wiser. There are umpteen blackberry recipes around, and so it is easy to feel overpowered and then give up, eat them in a desultory way and stain your breathable ‘windproof’ pockets into the bargain. Your hands will also look as if they have been attacked by a feral dog.

But this, I have discovered, is part of the joy. Because there are also windfall apples to be scooped up. And elderberries and rosehips in the hedges, and some sweet little weedy chamomile that we picked and a couple of plump and bruised-looking figs. All foraged or nicked depending on who you ask.

This is what happens when you leave the Metropolis; things can get a bit wild. On Sunday, we took a path that was familiar to us, walking from Berwick church, in East Sussex, stopping to admire the clear windows and the stillness inside and the murals by Vanessa Bell, the sculptural bird bath, and then into fields of corn, the wind looping around us and whipping the trees into a frenzy (‘I hate trees. They’re so noisy!’ I once heard a woman say to her friend on the bus). This bit we knew, but then the trail we normally took was overgrown, with watery mud underfoot and a dead crow, and then a scratchy tunnel of blackberries. We picked the purple bulbous ones and tied them up handkerchief-style in the left over clingfilm from mum’s sandwich. The rest were burrowed deep into pockets, leeching out like blood onto our hands.

And then suddenly there was no more trail and no stile. It was odd, as if it had just disappeared or we had remembered it wrongly, which we hadn’t. And then came the rain, big splodges of it, and we stood there with instant wet feet, socks like sopping flannels and wondered what to do, repeatedly going up to the barbed wire fence as if it would become something else. Finally we climbed over it, our trousers and socks snagging on the wires, sparking rivulets of blood and a torrent of swearing, and then we traipsed over the Downs to Alfriston to a warm and steamy tea room, and I felt like a character in a Barbara Pym novel – Connie Aspinal to my mother’s Edith Liversidge on our way to bag a curate – our wet things hurled in front of the cake counter so that the nice young waitress had a job getting to the Millionaire’s shortbread.

Then as we went from oolong to rooibos back to English breakfast, from two scones to one and then realised we couldn’t actually pay because we had brought the wrong debit card, the nice young waitress gave up trying to haul us in, became herself, and told us about her horrible time at school, her love of drama and English literature, being bullied for years and now being friends with her tormentors. And then we paid with something (my Oyster card) and ran headlong into the bus that had already left its stop but was the very last one and if we missed it I think we would have drowned each other. I didn’t have my ticket because it had disintegrated in the rain but the driver simply nodded me to a seat and we trundled over the Downs back to Seaford completely exhausted. And people think LA is wild.

La Mûrée

Adapted from Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book

I can imagine this swirled through Bircher muesli. It is delicious with cream as a kind of fool or as the fruit component in a crostata. Honestly, I never measure anything but throw it all in and hope for the best, but the measurements are here for safety (and because sometimes mine tastes like papier mache if I’m a bit free form with the flour)

1 lb (½ kg) of blackberries
Sugar to taste (Jane Grigson uses 250g/1 cup)
Juice of half a lemon
25g flour (¼ cup)

Rinse the blackberries if necessary. Put them in a pan with the sugar, the juice of the lemon and the flour. Stir for a few minutes until cooked, over a slow heat. The juices will start to run and the fruit will cook down, though it’s nice if the berries retain some of their shape. Leave to cool and then store in the fridge.

One jar only

15 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Christmas, England, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Jam, London, Poetry, Recipes, Stories

Horseradish and mustard seed. Apples and quinces. A dollop of something that smarts and sears is what is required now. I found the last quinces of the season where I am staying, tiny little gnarled things covered in crystalline cobwebs. Yellow turning to black and as small as tomatoes. And I found some Granny Smith apples that were bunched on a tree in someone’s front lawn. Green, luminous and numerous and unpicked. The rest of the garden was bare and suburban. But the apples were a cartoon green. Perfect and unmarked, with an almost waxy sheen.

“Excuse me, can I help you?” the voice behind us was arch and querulous. I quickly retreated my camera. We turned on our best smiles. “We were just admiring your lovely apples” I said. “Well, come on then, I’ll give you a tour. You can have some if you want.” I promised her a jar of spiced apple jam in return and she perked up. We followed her round her plot and listened to the story of how they bought the house, 40 years ago, and how before that the actress Dame Sybil Thorndike would sit in the conservatory and ‘be round the bend.’

“Won’t you come in? You haven’t eaten? You must be hollow.”

We walked into the house. It too had been untouched. Simple and spartan and her husband Colin was also both these things. Small, white-haired and dainty. He was writing Christmas cards but when we came in he looked up as if he’d been expecting us and started talking as if it was a continuation of an earlier conversation. Our hostess went off to make coffee and came back with a cafetière. She was unsure what was in it; tea or coffee. “Perhaps it’s the most revolting thing you’ve ever drunk?” She enquired smiling and I ate a soft biscuit. The songbook of the musical Cats sat on a side table.

We talked about Cornwall – they had just sold a holiday home in Looe. Very pleasant, pronounced Colin. I had spent some time in Cornwall as a child when my dad moved there. “You probably won’t have heard of the place,” I said, “because it was a tiny hamlet on the edge of Bodmin Moor called Henwood. It had a riding school.” “Oh, we know it well,” cried Colin, in his soft burr. “Do you know Ted and Mary?”

“Now tell me again – where do you live?”

Joe and I paused. He was sitting in a too-small green chair drinking tea-coffee. What do we say? Los Angeles? But we’re English, it was all too complicated. “Ormond Drive” said Joe, where we’ve been for exactly two days, house-sitting. Free-basing, I suppose you could call it, in Hampton, suburb of London, green and leafy, not really a town. A town lite, heavy with history. Colin got out his Cats songbook, and started to read from Growltiger’s Last Stand.*

His bucko mate, Grumbuskin, long since had disappeared,
For to the Bell at Hampton he had gone to wet his beard;
And his bosun, Tumblebrutus, he too had stol’n away-
In the yard behind the Lion he was prowling for his prey.

“We should really push off now. We haven’t done any shopping”, Joe said. “Oh, yes of course. We’ve ruined your morning”.

“And the apples?” Joe asked, as we stood on the threshold. We put on our winning smiles again. Colin gave us an apple each. I was expecting more of a flurry, and two seemed a paltry sum. It was enough for one jar only, which I had promised them. And they had asked us in, they knew Ted and Mary. It was Christmas. Colin had read us poetry. Time to be kind.

Spiced quince, apple and mustard jam

Adapted from Felicity Cloake, The Guardian

Like its cousin, the apple, quince makes a wonderful pairing with pork (think Christmas ham), but is good with any fatty meat. The sweet spices, and the warm hit, make this jam an especially good partner for cheddar or other hard cheese. English quinces are now all but over, unless you can find a few malingerers as I have here, but Cypriot and Turkish grocers, and Middle Eastern shops will have their luscious and bulbous imports, so there’s no excuse. Ginger can be used here instead of horseradish, or as well as.

500g ripe quinces (or a mixture of quinces and apples)

1 shallot, finely chopped

100ml cider vinegar

175g light muscovado sugar

5cm horseradish, peeled and finely grated (or ginger)

½ tsp cinnamon

1 tsp mustard seeds

2 tsp mustard powder

Peel the quinces, cut them into sixes, remove the cores, then roughly chop the flesh. Put the fruit in a pan and cover with cold water. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat to a simmer, and leave to cook for half an hour until soft. Drain, then mash or blitz to a pulp in a blender.

Put the quince back in the pan with the remaining ingredients, except for the mustard seeds and powder. Cook for about 20 minutes, until thick, then take off the heat and leave to cool. Stir in the seeds and mustard powder. Decant into a sterilised jar (washed with soapy water, rinsed and then put in a hot oven for ten minutes) and refrigerate.

* Originally from Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S Eliot

Jammy

29 Friday Mar 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Afternoon tea, Cookbook, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Jam, Lucas Hollweg, Recipes, Strawberries

I feel not particularly enamoured of jam and I’m not much of a jam maker as a result. Perhaps it is because of the often unrelenting sweetness. And the strawberries I had to hand were already sweet, so adding sugar and watching the whole thing boil volcanically in a pot seemed far too one-dimensional for my tastes; a cascade of red, sugary lava. But enter lemon juice and the jam became richer, tarter and more interesting. The strawberries became altogether more themselves. I upped the ante with the lemon juice because I wanted my jam with a bit of spine. However, balsamic vinegar is also an option; according to Nigella Lawson, they make the strawberries “strawberrier.” I believe her. If you can preserve some of the berries in their whole state, this would lend the jam a jewel-like aspect, I should imagine. Mine fell apart, a quivering mess.

Felicity Cloake’s recipe was the one I plumped for. She advocates the juice of two lemons and I went for three, but other than that, I followed her to the letter. She did all the homework, testing and tasting, and I just did what I was told. Sometimes I like that about recipes.

I’m not sure what it is about strawberries I don’t trust. Perhaps it’s that they no longer taste as they once did, or look neat or darkly red enough. Small lobes of crimson was what I remember, studded with yellowing seeds. And the taste was concentrated, sturdy, and there was juice, goddamit. I doubt what passes for cream nowadays is really the strawberry’s natural mate (what is?). Perhaps leave the cream for the raspberries to come, and simply macerate the strawbs’ – mashed up a bit – in some sugar. There’s something lovely about watching them leach their winey juice. Anyway, the jam was very good – a soft set, but definitely jam as opposed to strawberry sauce.

It is good spooned straight from the jar, Pooh-style. A warm, buttered scone is lovely, with the requisite pot of tea alongside. Here you have cold jam caving into a yellow pat of butter, and of course there are dancing crumbs to lick. But honestly, if you have some homemade strawberry jam, try it with some fresh cream cheese – a version of coeur à la crème. The plainness is the thing, substantial and not overly sweet, lemon-flecked, but not trying to compete. And if you have some good strawberries to hand, by which I mean on the small side, uniformly red, no whiteness within and definitely not hollow, then resist the temptation to cook them at all. No cobblers, pies or tarts, no jam, no heat, no flame. Let them rest. They’ve been through enough.

Coeur à la crème

This is a standard French country dish to serve with soft fruit and to showcase preserves in the winter months such as apricot and strawberry. It’s made using fromage frais – fresh curd cheese – and either crème fraîche or double cream. Yogurt cheese or cream cheese, such as mascarpone, can be used instead of the fromage frais. If you want to set it in a heart-shaped mould, which is traditional, then the cheese and cream need to be drained through muslin overnight. The heart-shaped mould will have holes in it, so you will have, quite literally, a bleeding heart (whey, in this case, not blood though). If you don’t drain the cream cheese mixture, it will be a bit swimmy, but no one has complained so far.

Lucas advocates serving these with some strawberries soaked in red wine and basil leaves, which is also lovely. Or do both – jam and wine-soaked berries. Although it sounds it, it isn’t overkill. Think ‘islands in the stream’ (that is what we are etc).

Inspired by and adapted from Lucas Hollweg, Good Things to Eat

½ a vanilla pod, split lengthways, or a few drops of natural vanilla extract

250g (9 oz) cream cheese*

250ml (9fl oz) double/heavy cream

2 tbs caster/superfine sugar

Zest of ½ a lemon

Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod and whisk into the cream cheese (or add a few drops of vanilla extract). Pour in the cream, sugar and lemon zest and whisk everything together until well combined.

As you can see, I used a cookie cutter here to get some sort of shape. I put the moulds in the fridge to set; this is where you might want to drain off any liquid that has collected before serving.

*Interesting cream cheeses

I used a goat’s cream cheese here from the Meyenberg company, in Central California, but there are other lovely ones to try. Neufchâtel (from which American cream cheese is derived) is one. Cowgirl Creamery does fromage blanc (though I’ve yet to try it) and Creole cream cheese, listed in the Ark of Taste, and championed by Deborah Madison, was made originally by French settlers in New Orleans and is making a comeback. So if you’re down that way, nab some; apparently, it works very well in coeur à la crème. Failing that, Philadelphia is not to be sniffed at; go for the full-fat version.

Strawberry jam

Adapted from Felicity Cloake, Word of Mouth, The Guardian

Makes 4 x 200ml jars

2kg ripe strawberries
1.7kg jam or preserving sugar
Juice of 2-3 lemons

Wash (if necessary, and if not, simply rub off any dirt or dust) and then hull (cut the tops off) the strawberries and discard any rotten ones. If you wash them after you’ve pulled the little ‘plug’ of leaves, the strawberries will become waterlogged, and in the words of Jane Grigson: “A strawberry that has become acquainted with water loses its virtue.” Pat dry very quickly. Set aside about 10 of the smallest berries, and then mash the rest up into a rough pulp. Put into a wide, thick-bottomed pan, add the sugar and the lemon juice, and bring slowly to the boil. Add the remaining strawberries to the pan, and put a saucer in the freezer.

Boil the jam for about 15 minutes, stirring regularly checking the setting point every minute or so during the last 5 minutes. To do this, take the cold saucer out of the freezer, put a little jam on it, and put it back in to cool for a minute. If it wrinkles when you push it with your finger, then it’s done. Strawberry jam is unlikely to set very solid though, so don’t expect the same results as you would with a marmalade. Take off the heat and skim off any scum. Pour into sterilized jars and cover with a disc of wax paper. Seal and store.

Addendum posted April 3rd

If you want good strawberries and you live in the Los Angeles area, visit McGrath Family Farms. Jam-makers and strawberry lovers swear by them.

Small Crumbs of Comfort

17 Sunday Mar 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Cornwall, Cream, Cream tea, Dessert, Devon, Food, Homesickness, Ingredients, Jam, Recipe

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.

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.