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. 

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.