Seasonal Soup

Almost any hot soup would be welcome as the days grow colder and greyer but with the preparation for Halloween and bonfire night in full swing then Pumpkin Soup seems to be the soup of the day.

And it is here that I have to confess that the soup that my family and friends have been sipping for years as Pumpkin Soup has not actually had pumpkin in it, rather the principal ingredient has been squash, either butternut or the lovely silver grey Crown Prince when I can find it in the shops. I find the flavour, colour and texture of those squashes much richer than any vegetable sold as pumpkin here. As for the recipe, I always seem to need to have the NMAA Cooks - Recipes for Busy Mothers open at recipe 213 to make this soup.

It is one of those pages whose ripples and splash marks bear testimony to a much-made recipe and pencil notes in the margin reflect the fact that the making of it is evolving. Quite why I need the book open at that page is a mystery to me now, I seem to have diverged from the original. It reminds me of the anecdote about the family who pleaded with one member to reveal the recipe for a much loved cake. Eventually at a family gathering the aunt whose specialty this cake was, produced a fragile, yellowed and obviously aged newspaper cutting. The bickering over who should have first chance to copy the recipe was stopped when the aunt said " Well yes, that's the recipe, but it is not how I make it."
So it is with my soup recipe. I seem to need the original to hand to remind me how I have adjusted it over the years.

Autumn Squash Soup

 Ingredients:

• 500g prepared butternut squash, peeled, de-seeded and chopped
• one leek
• 2 cloves garlic
• 40g butter 
• half teaspoon ground cloves
• tabasco sauce
• 250 ml vegetable or chicken stock
• 400 ml milk.
• Juice of half a lemon

 You need to:

1.  In a large saucepan melt the butter gently.
2. Wash and slice the leek, crush the garlic and add to the butter. Stir for a couple of minutes then add the prepared squash. Stir well then pop the lid on the pan and let the vegetables, sweat in the butter to soften for five  minutes. 
3. Add the cloves and some drops of Tabasco sauce, along with salt and pepper.
4. Add the stock. It could be made with a stock cube or as I often do, bouillon powder but it would also be a good way to use any good chicken or vegetable stock you may have to hand. Stir and cover again, then let it simmer gently until the vegetables are soft. Should the pan start to dry out, you can top up with some of the milk.
5. Once the squash is soft, puree the mixture. It just so happens I have a liquidiser and use it as it gives the smoothest results but any blitzing gadget or even a sieve would be fine for this.
6. You should now have a pretty thick puree, so rinse the pan and pour the soup back in. You will now adjust the thickness and seasoning. 
7.  Gradually add milk and stir gently over a low heat until you have the thickness you prefer. 
8. Add the juice of half a lemon. Taste and adjust the seasoning and 'heat' adding more Tabasco to taste.
9. Serve garnished with whatever appeals; a swirl of creme fraiche, finely chopped chilli or coriander, croutons, perhaps.

This soup is just as good being sipped around the dinner table or served in mugs around a bonfire. There is also something, maybe in the cloves, the garlic or the Tabasco that has a somewhat restoring quality, useful when that tickle in the throat hints that you may be succumbing to a winter virus. 

A Walk in the Garden - September

September is often the time when, in between picking fruit and trimming back shrubs, I think that I really should plan to have more flowering plants for this time of year. I love the delicate scent of the magnolias and the roses that put on a flourish now but before the leaves start to turn colour there is rather a lot of green and welcome though it is, there is not a lot else. It was a surprise then that walking along a path, I noticed something that I nearly skipped with delight to see.

A friend had given me some of these cyclamen coum from his garden in late spring. As I love these tiny, reflexed flowers, I planted them out with great hope, only to watch them fade and disappear. I thought perhaps that it had not been their favourite time of the year to be transplanted and that it might be best to try again in the autumn. So to see these two flowers and the cluster of buds still to come nestling at their feet was a delight. Obviously I had been so busy 'doing' that I hadn't been 'looking' enough. Time to set aside the secateurs and weeding fork and walk around the garden with camera in hand.

If you have read my post on The Improvised Garden, you will know that I like to re-use and up-cycle materials in the garden.

A few careful taps with a mallet should level out the roof tile edging and make it a little harder for the grass to colonise the border, still giving me the curved corner I want.

When we moved here, I was so pleased to see that there was a wisteria in the garden and when two years later a winter storm flattened the rustic pergola which supported it, we built another stronger one. It has lasted far longer than we thought it would. It is too much to expect thanks from a plant no matter how large it is, but you don't expect either that it would eventually twist,  wrench, strangle and dismantle the support you provide for it.

Further along, a variegated ivy in the same time period, has gracefully embraced its support in a far less destructive way. It has a elegant quirkiness, which makes me think of Arthur Rackham illustrations.

Last November, when it was time to bring the tender perennials under cover for the winter, I overlooked a pot of scented geranium. Fortunately I had taken cuttings because the winter was too severe for the plant to survive. Over the summer Mother Nature decided that the neglected pot of compost was ideal for alpine strawberries and planted some.

Thank you Ma'am. I couldn't agree more.

Sometimes the most interesting things are the least obvious and all the more wonderful for being so.
 

Apple Cake, anyone?

Our apple crop is far from spectacular this year, so we will just have to make the most of those few we do have. No frozen juice or gleaming jars of chutney this year. I began collecting apple recipes ever since our first autumn here when I realised our four trees would present us with a harvest far beyond the scope of the tabletop fruit bowl. Some English counties seem to each have their own apple cake recipe but so far a Hampshire recipe has not come my way so I am going to presume the title for my cake, as it was made in Hampshire from apples which, so far as I know, may well be unique to this county. (see below)

Hampshire Apple Cake.

You will need:

• About 250g of dessert apples
• 125g unsalted butter
• 150g caster sugar (plus extra for the topping)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 lemon
• 3 medium eggs
• 1 rounded teaspoon baking powder
• 3 tablespoons milk
• ground cinnamon

(Please note that if, like me, you use the ingredients shot as a visual larder checklist that the lemon, baking powder, and milk are not included in this shot!)

Tin Size: 23cm     Oven Temperature: 180C, gas mark 4.

What you need to do:

1. Preheat the oven.
2. Prepare the tin and plan the cake's escape route. Cakes with a baked on topping are best lifted out of the tin rather than turned out. Either use a spring-form tin or else put a band of folded baking parchment across the base leaving long enough ends to be able to lift the cake out. Either way grease the tin and dust lightly with plain flour.
3. Zest and juice the lemon.
4. Cream the butter and the 150g castor sugar. Add the vanilla and lemon zest.
5. Reserve about half of one of the egg whites in a dish at this stage, and beat in the rest of the eggs.
6. Sift the flour and baking powder together and fold into the mixture. Then add the milk. Mix completely and set aside for ten minutes while you attend to the topping.
7. Peel, core and slice the apples. Sprinkle with a little lemon juice to stop browning and set aside.
8. Lightly whisk the reserved egg white. 
9. On a plate, mix together approx 50g caster sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon. I also add a little extra vanilla kick here with some powdered vanilla I found in an Asian supermarket but it is not essential.
10. Spoon the batter into the prepared tin. Then dunk the apple slices in the egg white, then in the spiced sugar and arrange them overlapping on the top of the cake. The egg white helps the sugar stick to the apple and adds a little crispness to the topping.
11. Bake on the middle shelf for 50-60 minutes, until firm to the touch. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before lifting it out of the tin to cool on a rack.

Anyone who has been in a kitchen where apples are being cooked with cinnamon will know the smell is wonderful; layer in the elements of vanilla and lemon zest and it becomes heavenly. If you are  making this for guests, bake it just before they arrive. It would almost be mean, wouldn't it,  not to share the full olfactory experience and like most apple cakes it is so good served warm. Should you feel that some dairy unctuousness would not go amiss then by all means slip some creme fraiche or vanilla ice-cream on the side.

This is a good accompaniment to tea or coffee. It gives a good cake to fruit ratio. It is not however, one of those currently fashionable high-rise multilayer cakes, so tall that "if you slice me, I will have to lie down on the plate" but, to my mind, that is not necessarily a bad thing.

As for the apples I have used, we call them Our Own apples, not that the fruit from the Katy, James Grieves and Cox's Orange Pippin trees in our back garden has been scrumped, you understand; we simply haven't been able to work out just what variety they are. The tree was well established here when we moved in, leaning companionably over the front fence. Since there had been an apple orchard on the land across the road it could well be  a seedling. It has a pretty, flecked reddish skin with a fine russet overlay. The flesh is firm, white and juicy with a deliciously distinctive flavour. It is very early, usually ready to drop from the tree during the third week of August and like most early apples doesn't keep for very long. They make the most refreshing juice and most people who have tasted them are very enthusiastic. A great accompaniment to cheese.
Trying to work out just what they might be, I have gone to various Apple Day events but have tasted none quite like these. I started with Blackmoor Open Day. Later I tried the Apple Affair event at West Dean and then visited Brogdale Hall and RHS Wisley. All of them are well worth a visit if you are considering growing apples or even if you simply like eating them - lots of great advice and fantastic tasting opportunities and recipes. The apple identifying experts I asked suggested either Ross Non-pareil  but that is a later variety, or St Edmund's Russet which comes closest but the flavour isn't quite the same. Perhaps it has St Edmund's Russet in its parentage.
Not knowing what I would replace the tree with should disaster strike, I decided that propagating 'an heir and a spare' might be a good idea. I don't have the grafting skills for this but in early 2000 I found someone who did, Mr House at Family Trees Nursery. I  took him some pencil-thick wood and he grafted two onto dwarf root stocks which are now well on their way to being good producers - weather and my rather suspect pruning skills permitting.
So my visits didn't come up with a convincing answer but I am grateful for the quest.  I would thoroughly recommend going to any of the heritage orchards and places I have mentioned and checking out local Apple Day events. Consider growing something you will never find in a supermarket. Having the chance to pick and eat even a few apples from your own tub-grown tree is enough to bring out the Eve in all of us. 
I have reined in my quest to know just exactly what they are now; in truth I would rather think that they are indeed simply Our Own.

A Passport to the Past

On a rather dreary Sunday afternoon when the weather is promising both intermittent sunshine and steady showers, where do you go that can offer fascinating outdoors and interesting interiors? Back in time? Is that possible? Well, yes - in a manner of speaking.

Ever since I had first visited Little Woodham with a group of school children on an educational field trip, I had been meaning to return so that I could chat leisurely with the villagers and stand and watch as they re-enacted the activities of life in the seventeenth century. I wanted to be able to take it at my own pace without worrying about whether all thirty four of my charges were staying in their groups, being on their best behaviour and above all  being engrossed in learning about seventeenth century life. (They were!)

Increasing housing development in the area made it harder to find but once there, the re-created village nestles into beautiful oak woodland which screens out the 21st century quite effectively.

There is so much that is impressive here. The buildings, the collection of period tools and artifacts, the costumes, the atmosphere but above all the enthusiasm and dedication of the inhabitants. It is this that drives the research to enable them to create the authenticity of the place, the stories they tell and the crafts and occupations they enact. The details were fascinating.

Dorset buttons and braid making.

Weaving using thread spun and dyed with plants in the village.

A porringer and chafing dish among the work of the potter.

The surgeon's tool kit - anyone for a little cupping or blood-letting?

Apothecary herbs in a cottager's garden

I was intrigued by this little rack of wooden spoons in the alehouse, in spite of the fact that behind me the local surgeon was trouncing HeWhoHadNeverPlayedBefore in a game of Nine Mens Morris.

In two hours we had seen and learned so much but left feeling we had probably only skimmed the surface of what the villagers could have told us.

An afternoon spent in 1642.

Rag Weaving

I have been struggling to decide what to do with the leftovers from a couple of crafty endeavors that I completed sometime ago. Even though Rag Baskets and Patriotic Patchwork re-used some fabrics, the problem was that they hadn't used it all up, and there were these scraps, you see, that might still be just the thing for something else.

I came up with an idea for using fabric strips to weave into a  crocheted mesh to make a mat or a rug and  to use string or twine of some sort to make the mesh as it might be firmer than using yarn. When I found a pack of parcel string in  the stationery section of a pound shop, I felt it had to be worth a try. Just where the idea came from I haven't a clue. After years of reading craft magazines, watching craft on television, internet browsing and lately, Pinterest, I can concede that it is highly unlikely to be utterly original. I'm with Mark Twain when he talks about all ideas being substantially secondhand. All I can say is that so far as I know, I can't cite a specific source - that's why I had to make copious notes as I worked so that I was able to record something like a pattern for my own future reference.

The string I had bought gave four wraps per centimeter. I chose a size 3 crochet hook.

As I wanted to make a sample before embarking on something huge, I made up a small square of mesh as follows. Please note that I work in UK crochet terms. A neat little conversion chart is here if you want to work in US terms.

To Make a Square (approximately 16cm x 16cm ) Foundation Mesh.

Using a Size 3 crochet hook make a foundation row of 30 chain. Turn.
Row 1: Chain 2, work 1 double crochet into the 2nd chain from the hook. Work 1 dc in each remaining foundation chain. Turn. Chain 4.
Row 2:  Skip 1 dc in previous row and work 1 treble into the next dc. 1 chain. Repeat across the row. This should create a row of 15 holes by the time you work the last treble into the last dc of the previous row. Turn. Chain 4.
Row 3:  Work 1 treble into the second treble of the previous row, chain 1. Repeat to end of row. Turn. Chain 4.
Repeat Row 3 ten times ( or until the length required), at the end of the final repeat Chain 2 instead of 4.
Last Row: Work 1 dc in first chain of previous row and then work 1 dc in each remaining treble and chain.
Fasten off.
This should give a grid of 15 holes by 12 holes.

About halfway through this, I began to wonder if the mesh I was making was too dense, whether the holes should be bigger to allow the rag strips to be more visibly dominant after the weaving. It's an experiment, a trial, right? Just carry on and see how it works out.  Starting with a row of double crochet to helped it keep shape and  provided an easy edge to secure the rag strips.

To Weave in the fabric strips.

I cut strips on the bias, 2.5 cm wide and 20 cm long. At first I thought these might need to be folded but I found that it worked just fine without that. The strips just folded or bunched up as they were threaded through.

TIPS:

• Start weaving each strip from the centre and work out to one side and then the other. This means there is less pulling through to do than if you work across from one side to the other. Not so important for a little project like this but time-saving for much longer rows.
• Allow for slack as you pull the fabric through the mesh. Keep checking to see that the work will lay flat and not pull up at the edges.

Work weaving the strips with a simple over, under on one row and an under, over on the next. I worked with the strips running from top to bottom so that the loose ends lay across the double crochet rows.

To Finish:
Weave in the string ends at the start and ending of the crochet.
Carefully straighten  and flatten out the loose ends of fabric on both sides of the mat.
Using a zigzag stitch, machine along the edges to secure the fabric strips in place.

Then cut the excess ends to make a little ruffle along each side.
That's it - you're done.

In the end I think the visible balance between the fabric and the string mesh is fine. It works well with the colours and the size of mat. The overall texture is good too. For a bigger item like a floor rug, I would use wider strips and use double trebles for the crochet and make 2 chain spaces - it all seems worth further exploring as a technique. It could be good for place-mats, table runners, floor rugs. There may well be a reprise post on this - but may be not really soon. I have some worn bed linen and old curtains to make a floor mat. A much bigger project.

Advice: I doubt that wash-ability is a feature of string design and construction, so be warned that if you want to create something that will need to be laundered often you might like to crochet up a small sample of the string or twine you intend to use and see if it bleeds dye, shrinks, stretches or just plain disintegrates when exposed to warm soapy water and a little agitation. I have yet to explore this property of my pound shop parcel string!

Ever find that when you solve one problem you find that you may have created another? So now I have used up some of my scrap stash but I am so pleased with the result that I want to use it for something and not merely file it as a sample. Even though it has been decades since I made one for her, I am fairly sure my mother doesn't need another pot-holder. Actually in those colours,  I think it would be good as an outside patch pocket on a denim or calico bag.

Jam Jar Posies

In another career, in what seems like another life, I often received end of year thank you bouquets.Very welcome but no big surprise for a primary school teacher.

There could be several kinds of bouquets ranging from forecourt carnations in cellophane to elaborate florist's arrangements but the ones I found most beguiling were the bunches presented with shy pride, a home-made card and the comment "Nanna said I could pick some flowers for you from her garden."

Typically the flowers would be wrapped in newspaper or cooking foil and would be a brightly coloured miscellany of whatever  is in bloom at the end of July. At the centre would be a rose or a small sunflower surrounded by a spike or two of lavender, a head of geranium or hydrangea, a cluster of daisies or marigolds and a branch of a flowering shrub all gracefully presided over by a nodding raceme of buddleia. A little of everything that had caught the child's eye. I was always so touched by these gifts.

There is such an appealing immediacy, isn't there, in the idea of making something of whatever is close to hand; neither depending on someone else going to the shops nor  restrained by sophisticated notions of style or "what goes together". There was always the confidence that whatever was gathered together would be wonderful and gratefully received. These bunches inevitably stirred happy memories of being allowed to pick flowers as a child.

This idea of  cutting flowers for the house using whatever is in season and informally arranging them in everyday containers, jars and bottles crops up in lifestyle magazines like Country Living and blogs like The Quince Tree. I've always been drawn to these bunches of seasonal garden and hedgerow flowers combined with flowering herbs and grasses.
There'll be other times to bring out the vases I have collected over the years. For now I want to follow the irresistible urge to wander around the garden and gather whatever takes my fancy and display them indoors in simple glass jars. Oh yes, nostalgia is at play here; forget words like "vintage" or "retro", at heart I'm simply an old-fashioned girl.

Some jewel-bright colours for my kitchen windowsill.

Easy Jam

It looks like being a funny old summer for fruit. We could blame the weird weather, I guess or we can be thankful for what little there is and make jam.

Yesterday, while hacking back the shrubbery, I noticed that the blueberry did have some fruit that the birds hadn't noticed so after all the shredding and sweeping up was finished, I fetched a bowl from the kitchen to see what berries I could harvest.

I came back to the kitchen with around 300g of blackcurrants, blueberries, raspberries, and a couple of alpine strawberries. (Had it all been raspberries, I admit they probably wouldn't have made it as far as the back porch.)

Time to make some jam.  This method is so quick that taking step by step photos would have more than doubled the effort. What follows is not so much a recipe but more like guidelines for quick, simple and delicious jam - ideal if:

• you have never made jam before
• you only have a small quantity of fruit or it doesn't match up with any recipe you have
• you haven't got a lot of jars
• you don't have a preserving pan - or can't be bothered hauling it out of the back of the cupboard
• you don't eat a lot of jam 
• you want some special jam for a special afternoon tea.

You will need some berry fruit and some sugar. I used jam sugar because I had some lurking in the larder and with the extra pectin in it, I could expect it to set firmly, but you could use ordinary granulated sugar.

 What you need to do 

1. Pop 2 or 3 teaspoons in the freezer. These come in handy to test to see if the jam will set later on.
2. Wash the fruit in a colander or sieve and gently shake the excess water away. Pick it over to remove anything you wouldn't want to eat - stalks, stems, leaves, damaged fruit.
3. Weigh the fruit at this stage.
4. Place the fruit in a saucepan over a gentle heat and let it simmer, stirring occasionally until it is soft. This will take five to ten minutes depending on how much fruit you have.
5. Weigh off the sugar - an amount equal to the weight of the fruit.
6. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the sugar until it is all dissloved.
7. Put the pan back on the heat and turn it up higher to bring the jam to the boil. Keep stirring it - unless, of course, you want it to boil over and make a sticky mess!
8. After a couple of minutes of boiling, start testing it to see if it will set. Take one of the teaspoons from the freezer and dip it into the jam to coat the spoon. Push your finger through the jam, along the bowl of the spoon. If the mixture wrinkles up in front of your finger and you find it leaves a clear trail behind it, then your jam is ready. If it is still too runny to do this then boil it a minute or two longer and try the cold spoon test again. (It is a good idea to take the pan off the heat while you do this, partly to stop it overcooking but mainly because your attention will be elsewhere for a few seconds and boiling jam has a habit of doing undesirable things if it is not watched.)
9. If you have jars and a lot of jam then bottle it up making sure the jars have been sterilized and heated before ladling in the jam - but this method is about small quantities so most of the time I just spoon it into a pretty jar or bowl to put on the tea table. Give it time to cool and set and then tuck in. It tastes so much better than all but the most expensive shop bought jam that I have never had to worry about its keeping qualities.

Should you find that it hasn't set particularly well, use it as a topping for icecream or pancakes; it will still taste delicious. Small quantities like this are also a good way to experiment with added flavours. Adding shreds of dark red rose petals (minus the little bitter white bit at the base) to raspberry jam and star anise or a piece of cinnamon stick to blackcurrant jam (remove these spices after the simmer stage just before the sugar goes in) have been very worthwhile. Have fun and make some wonderful 'artisan' jam.

Meanwhile I am off to make scones to go with my jam - before it all disappears. After all, it looks like summer is here.