A wintry walk in the forest

Yes the pretty snow has gone for the moment and the winter sun only came out as we rumbled over the last cattle grid and left the forest but much of winter here is about grey and sombre and overcast and muddy so that is what I captured on today's journey through the New Forest.

We had an errand to run in Lymington so I picked up my 'point and shoot' camera as I left the house in the hope that somewhere en route there might be a chance to take pictures. One of my little intentions for 2013 centres on photography and I figure the best way to improve is to do what photographers do and be prepared to take pictures whenever I can. Having a camera to hand keeps the photographer's eye in and there's no regretful thinking afterwards "If only I had a camera.." (There might be other regrets like "If only I had wellies I could have moved to better vantage points.." or "If only I had a hat, my hair would not have been whipping over the lens all the time..." but those are lessons for another day.)

When I first came to the UK from Australia I was under the impression that the term forest denoted woodland and dense plantings of trees. I was unprepared, on my early visits to the New Forest and the Forest of Bere to see open tracts of heathland with scarcely any vegetation taller than a gorse bush. I have since learned that the original term forest is derived from a word denoting land outside the boundaries of settlement - the uncultivated 'no man's land' and is not really a description of the vegetation at all. The fact that many forests did consist of dense woodland led to its use for such places I suppose. Please feel free to correct me on this or expand on it as I am fascinated by the  derivation and meaning of words.

The New Forest has a wide range of habitats and landscapes. Both its natural and human histories are intriguing. Today I confined myself to capturing the atmosphere of a tiny part of it.

Although, I couldn't resist another shot near Beaulieu. I'll call this one the postcard shot - what else could it be with a pony and a thatched cottage?

So nice to see too, on returning home that the sun was highlighting something enchanting right outside my own front door. I just had to pick a handful and bring them indoors.

A Bibliophile in the Kitchen

One of the blessings of living in a much extended house is that  little nooks get created  and one of these in the kitchen is the right size for a book case. When eventually a bookcase was going spare and I can't imagine how that happened, I decided to collect up all the books we had on food or recipes, naturally doing a cull and consigning some to Oxfam, and then setting all the remainder along with folders of clippings from magazines and appliance leaflets on the shelves - organised and all in one place.

Like many collectors of cookery books, I found that for many of the books I had, there would be only one or two recipes that I had tried and used again and would want to keep.There were some I had never made anything from and felt now it was unlikely I ever would and there were others that may have had a place in our culinary lives at one time but no longer did. But it was looking through all of these that I realised how much recipe books encapsulate domestic history even over the few decades that I have been collecting them.When you look beyond the element of instructions for how to make stuff, you find all kinds of indications of the era in which they were written; everything from the amount and style of illustration - or lack of it - the layout of the text, the selection of dishes and ingredients and utensils, and finally, on reflection what is absent that would be taken for granted in a contemporary book.

Looking along the cookery book shelves in any bookshop high street or online,  most of the recent releases are either related to a television series, a celebrity cook/chef/restaurant, a new diet, a kitchen gadget or else is limited to a particular course or fad. (Who, apart from a professional confectioner,  could possibly need 50 recipes for macaroons let alone 500 for cupcakes?) My collection began in South Australia with a book that had all the weight and almost the scope of an encyclopedia. It took me from a flat-sharing singleton to a young wife, supporting me with recipes for casseroles and desserts to Christmas cake and a wonderful flour-less Chocolate Almond Torte that certainly helped establish my culinary credibility both with my  younger cousins in-law and in my own confidence.

I thought it would be interesting to step back a generation and get Mum's experiences with cookbooks.  She reminded me that she had a recipe drawer and besides an exercise book with recipes she had written down and envelopes of newspaper and magazine clippings ( just like me!) she had the classics of her time and location; the Green and Gold Cook book - now 90 years old, and the Barossa Cookery Book (oh, I remember that cover picture!) first published in 1917 and still available! Both of these books had obviously been around for sometime when Mum set up home but may be fads and fashions didn't fly past so quickly then. Will Nigelissima still be available (apart from in charity shops) even in in five years' time, I wonder? Follow the link and check out the chapters in the Green and gold book - Invalid Cookery and Laundry tips and you will see what I mean about encapsulating domestic history. It is interesting to note that both of these books were compiled as fund raisers and the recipes submitted by home cooks. Both were hugely popular and widely referred to. Mum and I also talked about the kinds of recipes she had collected and she said that she was always interested in new recipes for cakes, biscuits and desserts. Home baking featured much more in her culinary life - we rarely had store bought cake,  there were always home-made biscuits (not "cookies") in the tin.  There were more occasions out of the home where it was required to produce something home-made - cake stalls and plates of afternoon tea or supper. At a time when marriage marked the point when most young women left their family home, they learned the basics of putting meat and two veg on the table from their mothers rather than from books. We expect a wider range of offerings for our main meals I think. I was struck by Mum's remark that you wouldn't have had a whole book devoted to Salads. Salads were simply something on the side and the scope for ingredients much more limited.

As for style, isn't it enchanting when the text reads like someone standing next to you telling you what to do? Something like "Boil three pounds of potatoes, bruise and work them with two ounces of butter and as much milk as will make them pass through a colander." I have to say though that in practical terms the current style of setting out a list of ingredients followed by the numbered steps is much easier to work from. When I am writing down a recipe of my own in my notebook I list the ingredients down the left side of the page in the order in which they are used and simply bracket any together like 'sugar' and 'butter' in many cakes and put the instruction for then on the right -'cream'. This keeps writing  to a minimum but is not so easy to replicate digitally.

So should flames or flood waters come lapping and I had the luxury of saving just one handful what would they be? It would have to be my three red books; the little binder of family recipes my mother compiled for me when I got married, my own notebook in which I have pasted tried and tested recipes clipped from magazines and written down some of my own successes and recipes from borrowed books and finally the cookbook which I have used the most, the NMAA Cooks.

This is also a book compiled of recipes from home cooks as a fund raiser. Originally published in the mid-70s the range of recipes reflects a population of established Australians and  post-war European migrants with little of the Asian influence that was just beginning. It comprehensively covered a range of things the editors thought young families would find useful. No invalid cookery this time but a brilliant recipe for playdough and details for how Dad could produce the Sunday roast.The spiral bound format that means open pages stay flat is so practical - if only I had established the habit of slipping the open book inside a plastic bag while cooking, right from the start.

What coincidence brought a blog post entitled the Just One Cookbook Project into my Reader on the morning I wanted to complete this post? Oh dear! The binder and my notebook wouldn't really count, would they? I mean they are really just a binder and an exercise book that have recipes in them, aren't they? Besides cutting back so drastically might just be the excuse to start over with a new collection. I am a self-confessed bibliophile after all.

Little Intentions for the new year.

The end of one year and beginning of another. What better time to reflect on what things in life are over and best consigned to the past, what things are at their best right now and what is yet to come.

I know it is the custom to draw up a list of New Year's resolutions but I know too that it takes more than hanging up a new calendar to inspire me to make changes in my life. I just don't think it is the right time of year. For a start too many of these resolutions are a rueful attempt to correct the excesses and indulgence of the last month or so, perhaps it would be better to draw up a list and file it to be considered next October or November. And here in the UK with the short days and cold, gloomy weather it is no time for any kind of self-reproach or resolving to do anything which entails going outdoors. Far better to leave all that for a few weeks, perhaps until the first crocus appears when Mother Nature is burgeoning with  renewal and the atmosphere breathes optimism and self-belief.

Perhaps you are one of those who choose a word to be a focus for the year or to epitomise a theme to inspire them. I find this is far more appealing. I may well do that for 2013. But I also like to take time to think about all the times I have started sentences with "One of these days....." and think about the actions and activities that have followed on. I don't mean the ones that have "I should", "I had better" or "I really ought to" - I only have to open almost any cupboard in the house to be reminded of at least one of those. And I'm not saying that life wouldn't be better if I didn't get stuck in and achieve them all. It's just that I feel that now is a good time to plan something interesting, enjoyable, fun even, so I want to think of all the times I have said "One of these days I'd really like to..."  and choose some of those for the year ahead. For me, in 2013, I am not looking for grand bucket list items that involve being somewhere or with someone or on a day in particular, I already have a notebook with some of those in. I just want some things I can largely do here at home, by myself, when I can.

So here it is, my list of 'little intentions' for 2013.

• Make sour dough bread
• Knit a pair of socks with properly turned heels and grafted toes
• Handcraft a book
• Complete a 30 day photo challenge

 Yes, I will no doubt be baking, knitting, crafting and taking photos anyway but each of these intentions represents something I haven't tried before. And for none of them will there come the day when I leap from my bed (oh, for the chance!) and achieve it before sundown. There will be preparation, a revisiting of existing skills and knowledge, reseach, learning and practice so each of them presents a journey. Maybe none of them will be my greatest achievement for the year but it is time they were no longer consigned to that indefinite time frame "one of these days."

Working on the principle if you want to learn about something, read a book, I gathered up the books I could find in the house that might prove most useful. I can see trips to the library are in order and recourse to the internet.

"When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears." 

So right, I am ready to be pointed in the right direction(s). If you know of any brillant books or websites that would help, I would love you to list them in Comments.

What would be your Little Intentions for the year ahead?

Something savoury

The whole idea of tradition runs rife at Christmas, don't you think? Most families have their own little celebrations to be replicated but for us the last few years have seen a run of 'one-off' Christmases with a departure from anything we had seen and done before. While learning from this that what matters is what happens, whether or not it has happened many times before, and to make the most of each moment and those you spend it with, I found myself nostalgically turning to the recipe folder my mother had compiled for me when I first set up home. I knew that in there I would find some of my childhood seasonal favourites and sure enough there were some of the biscuits and slices she used to bake in large quantities. What caught my eye though was a recipe, tucked away at the back under 'Sundries.' Flippies! How could I have forgotten about flippies for so long; it must be years since I made them.

Growing up in a time and place where there were no supermarkets let alone aisles of packs of salty snacks in all manner of flavours and the only flavour of cracker biscuits stocked by the grocer was 'plain',  I loved these cheese flavoured  little biscuits. They were quite popular in the family as it wasn't only my mother who made them. It is quite a retro recipe but I couldn't resist having a go and decided to stick as close to the original as I could even though little tweaks and updates kept springing to mind. If you have access to those supermarket aisles and all the flavours, shapes and constituents why should you bother? Allow me to suggest:

• you have some leftover cheese that will only lurk in the back of the fridge forgotten, especially once the Christmas cheeseboard is unwrapped.
• you have read the ingredients list on the back of some of those supermarket packs and are none too impressed by all the things you'd never really thought of as food before.
• with school closed for the winter break, you have some extra hands to help with cutting out but you just can't face the thought of another batch of sugar-laden cookies.
• stacked into an airtight jar, they make a good 'home-made' gift.
• the smell as they come out of the oven beats opening any packet

Convinced? Here's the recipe in modern metric terms.

Flippies

You will need:

• 20g butter
• 330g flour
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne*
• 75g cheese**

Oven Temperature 220° C
Cookie sheets

You need to:

1. Make up the dough before you switch the oven on to heat.
2. Place the butter in a measuring jug and top up with enough boiling water to make 220ml.
3. Mix together the flour, salt and cayenne in a large bowl.
4. Grate the cheese and mix into the dry ingredients. Make a well in the centre and pour in the melted butter and hot water.
5. Mix just enough to make a smooth  ball of dough then cover with a sprinkling of flour and set aside to cool.
6. Once the dough is cool and workable, preheat the oven to 220° C, lightly grease some cookie slides and flour the work top.
7. Roll the dough out very thinly. The original recipe says wafer thin but I think our modern familiarity with filo pastry might have hiked up our notion of wafer-thin. Slightly less than the thickness of a 5 pence piece will do.
8. Cut out the biscuits using the very smallest round cutter or cocktail cutters if you have them. There is quite a lot of dough to cut out and I can see why the cutting utensil of choice in the family became a knife to simply cut the dough into squares or diamonds. This is not a television bake-off so they don't all have to be the same size or shape. Aiming for the hand-crafted look, you can even cook the larger edge pieces as tasters' perks.
9. Place the shapes on the greased cookie sheet and bake in the oven for 5-7 minutes. 
10. Loosen the biscuits on the tray as soon as you take them out and leave them to cool. They keep well in an airtight tine or jar. Serve them as nibbles with drinks, slightly larger ones can be served with dips.  

* Pairing cheese with cayenne seemed almost obligatory back when this recipe was written. It is not a spice that seems much in use now so you could substitute a mild chilli powder or  paprika if you have either of those to hand and adjust the quantity accordingly.
** I used a tangy cheddar but any cheeses hard enough to grate would probably work well. I was tempted to put in some Parmesan but that wasn't around when I first fell for these and I was out to feast on nostalgia!

Sometimes these puff up in the oven in some wonder of culinary magic science which I  clearly can't replicate on demand. I wonder if that is how they came by their name.

Festive Friands

And for those of you not familiar with these little cakes that is not a typo!

I first encountered  friands while watching Better Homes and Gardens during a trip to Oz a few years ago and I have made them several times since.  I really hope they are not part of the  current wave of small cake trends; muffins, cupcakes, cake pops, whoopie pies, etc. With their light but moist consistency, ground nuts and fruit they deserve to be stalwarts of a baking repertoire. Typically they are not adorned with frosting - they don't need it- and although with their butter and sugar content, they, and any other cakes, are not going to appear on any healthy diet sheet, let's consider a little damage limitation here.

The classic shape is this rather elegant oval but lacking the moulds for that, I always used a muffin pan to bake them. Recently however, a silicone  friand pan arrived in the post as a surprise present so I was delighted to have the excuse to bake some.  The original recipe used blueberries and lemon zest and I have made them with blackcurrants and other berry fruits. I thought it was time to adapt the recipe to a more seasonal theme.

 Spiced Cranberry Friands

Ingredients:

• 180g unsalted butter
• 125 ground almonds
• 80g plain flour
• 250g icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons mixed spice
• 6 egg whites
• 100g dried cranberries
• juice of a clementine
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Tin: *12 small cake moulds, either a muffin pan, mini-loaf tins or mini-cake tins. Each should hold 1/2 cup (4fl.oz or approx 125 ml)
Oven temperature:190 deg C

You need to:

1. Butter the moulds well and set the oven to 190 deg to heat up.
2. Mix the cranberries with the clementine juice in a small bowl, microwave for 30 seconds and leave to cool and plump up. (If you are using fresh cranberries, you can skip this step and just increase the amount of berries to 140g.)
3. Melt the butter in a small saucepan over low heat. Let it bubble away for 5 minutes, keeping an eye on it. Resist the urge to be getting on with the rest of the preparation. This step somewhat clarifies the butter, driving out liquid. It will turn a deeper gold colour and also enriches the flavour of the friands.
4. Place the  ground almonds  in a large bowl and sift in the flour, icing sugar and spice. Mix well together. 
5. In another bowl whisk the egg whites until frothy - no need to go as far as soft peaks. Stir them into the almond, sugar, flour mixture. 
6. Stir in the butter and vanilla extract. Use a folding action and stir just enough to ensure all is combined.
7. Set aside a few of the berries to scatter on top of each friand and fold the rest into the mixture.
8. Fill each mould about 3/4 full with batter and place a few of the reserved berries on top of each cake.
9. Bake in the centre of the oven for 25-30 minutes. They should be slightly risen ( I know, no raising agent just whisked egg whites!) golden brown and spring back when lightly pressed.
10. Take them out and let them cool in the tins for 5-10 minutes before turning them out on a cake rack. 

Notes:
As I said before these don't need icing. If you are serving them as part of a festive feast and their unadorned tops seem to be rebuking you with "couldn't be bothered" negligence, then drift on a light sifting of icing sugar or the merest artistic drizzle of chocolate. 
You could also enhance the almond flavour with a few drops of almond essence or almond flavoured liqueur added with the vanilla.

*I have yet to see the oval moulds here in any cookware shop, but reasonably priced silicone moulds can be found on line here. 

And as for all those leftover egg yolks, now is a good time to have those because you could use them to:

• make enriched short crust pastry for mince pies
• glaze savoury pastries like sausage rolls
• make mayonnaise to use in turkey sandwiches or  to mix with chopped herbs as the basis for dips
• add an extra yolk to make scrambled eggs a little richer
• freeze them for later
• and if the thought of any more cooking has you feeling frazzled, search the internet for homemade hair conditioner recipes and treat yourself to a little pampering.

The last of the turning colour

It was late today by the time the forecast clear skies appeared. The sun was low and the colours seemed to have been leached by days of leaden clouds, wind and rain. Well, beggars can't be choosers, I told myself  as I tugged on wellies and picked up the camera.

The oak that frames our view of the field behind the house has turned dull brown, as usual the last and least vibrant of autumn colours but against the sky and the shadows across the recently turned earth of the field there is the pleasing subtlety of a Ravilious print.

Subtle too, the darker tones seemingly airbrushed onto the fading wiegela leaves.

Some brighter colour from the wild rose hips and beech leaves still clinging to the branches.
And finally a promise. What is that saying about gardening being an expression of faith in the future? At last I was able to plant out some Pheasant's Eye narcissus.

With a name like Poeticus Recurvus and the promise of fragrance they have to be something to look forward to don't they?

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.