Cornflower

Pie chart

   

    Chicken and vegetable pie.

    Recipe by Tamasin Day-Lewis.

    Chicken left over from the 'forty cloves of garlic' method by Lindsey Bareham.

    Photography - leaving something to be desired - by me.

    Finished dish, regardless of looks: "awesome".

    The sum of the parts: definitely worth trying!

Snake-in-the-grass ...

... or tropaeolum-in-the-ilex!

Leafing through

     A brisk walk in the Botanics yesterday yielded quite a few photographs, and sorting through them presented me with potentially hundreds of ways of grouping or displaying them. Ah, the tyranny of choice! I've drafted and deleted several posts and have finally come to rest on something simple - the leaves of this Aesculus just catching the light.

Starbursts

The fireworks concert which marked the end of the Edinburgh International Festival, 2009.

The last of my flowers!

Books and cakes - 21

     "Blanche Silcox did not show any mortification at [Evelyn's] cavalier reception of a dish which, on another occasion he would have enthusiastically welcomed. But nor had she shown any obvious gratification when he praised the duck and the mulberry pudding. In their deep domestic intimacy silence before other people was the appropriate thing."

     Mulberry pudding was what was called for by the book, but getting hold of mulberries was impossible, and even mulberry conserve proved beyond the scope of local shops. What I had in mind was Sarah Raven's recipe for Mulberry Bakewell Tart, but lacking the crucial ingredient I decided to substitute blackberries. 

I tried the suggested method of grating the pastry into the tin and that does appear to have given a good result (I've tasted just a mouthful of the finished tart so far so I shall have to do a proper consumer test at supper!). I omitted the lemon and added instead a good measure of Crème de Mûres, and having no time to go and forage for blackberries I used some from the supermarket to supplement what we have in the garden !

The man who has eaten a slice says it is very good.

With a twist

     A cabled sock; a pepper going its own sweet way!

    (Yarn; basic pattern; vegetable).

Cake crumbs

    There's nothing left to show you of the cake I made for Simon, but it has appeared here before (so feast your eyes there if you will).

Yes, it's the blackcurrant and almond cake from Sarah Raven's Garden Cookbook, and I keep on returning to it as it is so good.

Lilly asked recently for the recipe, and here it is:

Preheat the oven to 180/gas 4. Grease and line a 25cm loose-bottomed tin.

Cream together 200g. butter and 200g. caster sugar. Add 3 large eggs, beating well, and fold in ground almonds (200g.) and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Put the mixture in the tin and scatter over 200g, blackcurrants, topped and tailed, or a punnet of frozen summer fruits.

Bake for 30-40 minutes until just firm and golden. Dust with icing sugar before serving warm or cold. Enjoy - with or without bookish chat!

Hugh's brownies are ...

  

    ... scrumptious!

    I've been faithful to my Rosemary Moon brownie recipe for many years, but I've tried Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's version (from River Cottage Everyday) and it is utterly delicious!  

    Similar quantities of butter and chocolate, a little more sugar (the RM one uses golden syrup too), self-raising flour, vanilla extract as before, and baking them until they are only just done for that extra-squidgy texture. I could have added ground almonds but went by the letter this time, and here is the delicious result.

Can you see 'the dark side' (bottom right)? That rich, black interior, luscious molten chocolate just escaping from its barely set, delicate crust?

Am I tempting you?

A conversation in photos

    Anyone who has visited 3191 will be familiar with the eloquence of the photograph. Well, Mary and Lisa who work for the charity SOS Children's Villages have had the good idea of using a diptych - similar to the 3191 girls' style - to illustrate a daily post about their work. You can visit them at Two Talk and enjoy their 'conversation in photos'.

Just acquired - 1

   

    A new and exciting addition to the cookery book collection, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Everyday is full of promise. I've been having fun looking through this - for instance, I like his attitude to breakfast (while he wouldn't actually bake a cake for the first meal of the day, if there happens to be one around the place, then ...) and his food philosophy in general is based on good sense and an eye to the wider issues.

     I like Hugh's style (and was pleased to hear from someone who had cooked for him recently just how pleasant and helpful a guest he was) and I shall be trying my first recipe of his tonight.

       And then - roll of drums - because Natalie mentioned sourdough bread the other day and I've never made it, and as Hugh gives what look to be pretty comprehensive instructions, I shall be having a go soon!

(Just acquired - 2 is here, by the way).

The full Monty

  

     For all you Monty Don fans, here he is from the back of the book!

     But this is just an excuse to quote a passage from his diaries - which I am so enjoying. Not of the season, I grant you, but I loved this piece from May 1998 on 'Umbellifers', so here is an extract:

     "Sometimes England strikes you round the head like a cheap religious experience or a jolt of lust. Just now the cow parsley spins and spills along these border lanes under the shade of the May blossom like a good dream and I am riding it with the careless rapture of the dreamer. These greedy eyes that cannot look enough are me as a child wading chest high in cow parsley and calling out in joy, the feathery leaves delicately brushing my lips and eyelids and white coronets of tiny flowers smelling mustily familiar of something much older than me. Colour is reduced to just white clouds held by the hawthorn branches and a million white flowers gathered in one glance along a line of cow parsley with everything else in this piece of world a hundred tones of damp, glowing green. I do not believe there is a more beautiful sight on the planet. But only a ghost of this can be stored, which is why every spring these moments expand so astonishingly, catch our knowing weariness so completely by surprise."

Warmth

     With the weather turning perceptibly cooler, our inclinations are making subtle seasonal adjustments, too. Log fires will feature here before long, I'm planning a very slow-cooked casserole of beef in Guinness for supper tonight (so I'd better get a move on), and cosy sweaters have come out of the drawer.

     There will be soon, but variously, special hot chocolate, crumpets toasted on the fire, and - if I get my way in the face of strong opposition - cauliflower cheese with plenty of mashed potato!

    What are you looking forward to?

He's back!

   

     Freddie has returned! Read all about it here.

The quiet kitchen

 

    I love the kitchen when we're all together in it - cooking, eating, doing homework at the table, reading the papers or just passing through. But I also love it when it is absolutely still and quiet and there's only me there with, perhaps, a sleeping dog or two.

    With Mr. C. away on business and children getting up later than me, I've been having breakfast with Monty Don - or with his latest book, to be exact. Twenty minutes or so spent sitting in the warm, toast and coffee to wake me up, and Monty's stimulating prose to do likewise, makes for an excellent start to the day.

  

     Then there's later on before the rush to put supper on the table. The only light is the low afternoon sun giving everything a homely glow, and I can take my time with the preparations.

During the colder months the kitchen is usually the warmest place in the house, so I'll often sit there to read - in an Orkney chair hard by the Aga. As workplaces go, it's a pretty good one and I'm very glad to have it.

Happy feet

     I was taking stock of my 'wips' today and was fairly pleased that there were only four of them (other knitters - who shall be nameless - have typically rather more than that, it seems).

    But a few crafty rows or rounds this afternoon has produced a finished pair of socks, so we are now down to three! Not that they have taken me any time at all - the first sock appeared here no longer ago than the 25th. of March 2008! Its pair was cast on a week or so later, but blame the thin mountain air of Switzerland for I got no further than the cuff on a week's holiday in Zermatt (and I was not skiing) and for no particular reason, progress since then has been slow.

   I had already made two of these socks (the prototype and the first in the yarn proper) so when I posted the pattern it did represent a pair, albeit made with different materials. But now the second blue one is done and I tried them on yesterday afternoon and didn't want to take them off as they fit so well (I am a size 4, but it's quite easy to make them bigger) and they are very comfy.

   Click on that link above and you'll find all the details, should you wish them, and if you make the socks yourself, I hope your feet will be very happy in them!