Cornflower

Persephone books and cakes - 6

    As you might expect in what is a family's 'moving story' - and Lynne will tell you all about it - there's not a huge emphasis on food in Lettice Cooper's The New House. Various people have odd cups of tea, bread and butter and the like, but it's a comparatively cake-free book. There is, however, a strong visual sense evident throughout, so for instance Delia imagines her flat decorated with "plain, pale wood, with bowls of jade and orange, or great heaps of cushions, raspberry red, silver green and the deep blue-purple of anemones", and Rhoda picks from the garden "a dark red rose, the scarlet flowers of a geum, a handful of flame and gold nasturtiums...".

   With this in mind I thought a cake with some colour to it might be the thing for this month's Persephone tea, and as The New House is set in Yorkshire, I popped across to the famous Betty's of Harrogate for inspiration and I found it in the form of Yorkshire Rhubarb Cake.

 

    Casting around for a recipe I was taken by the one in this article (scroll down) which uses spelt flour, so with a bag of Mr. Mulberry's finest (and he must be a good man as he rears Manx rare breed sheep on his farm - blankets, anyone?) I set to work. The rhubarb is trimmed to the length of the cake tin and packed in tightly on top of the mixture before baking; this resulted in some 'sinkage', shall we say, which means I don't measure up to Evelyn in the book: "What she did, she did well. She did not ... bake a lop-sided cake that was sad in the middle, and offer it, laughing and apologetic, to her guests."

     Oh well, that's me told. If we concentrate on taste and texture instead of looks, you'll find it's quite dense and fudgy, studded with pieces of ginger and brushed with ginger syrup, the rhubarb prettily pink and lending its own distinctive tang, so it's actually quite scrumptious!

If I were to say ...

... white chocolate and cardamom rosewater sponge

... very lemony crunch cake

... pistachio and orange blossom cake

... whisky, date and walnut cake,

and sticky toffee cupcakes with salted caramel buttercream,

... would I be tempting you?

Suffice to say that I'm sold, for apart from all of the above, when I saw that Fiona Cairns puts cornflowers on her cakes, I had to get her book.

In the kitchen

    The baking goes on apace, here. I'm just about to mix up batch number five of Matt's terrific bread - we've had two all-white loaves and two which combined wholemeal flour, seeds and grains in different proportions. We've had it by itself (because it's so good it needs nothing besides), with butter (because, like A. A. Milne's King, Mr. C. does like a little bit of butter to his bread), with goats' cheese, with a rustic vegetable soup, and for breakfast, toasted.

   Now I'm off to order another book on baking, though this one - you'll be glad to hear - has nothing to do with bread.

Just what The Doctor ordered

    Doctor Who wears Harris Tweed!

More tweediness here and here, and in quilt form, here.

Matt's bread - live - 3

    It's wonderful! Absolutely superb!

 

    I was worried that it might stick to the casserole, despite the sprinkling of wheat bran in the bottom, or burn or dry out as it baked for its forty five minutes, but no - it's perfect.

 

    I can see why Matt says that after making this you may never buy bread again, and unless I'm pushed for time I shall use this recipe in preference to my old one because the result has such taste, texture and character, and the process couldn't be simpler!

You'll find the recipe here.

Matt's bread - live - 2

     Looking good! You bake the bread in a pre-heated Le Creuset casserole in a very hot oven, and here it is after thirty minutes when you remove the lid. Fifteen minutes to go .....

Matt's bread - live

    I make bread often, usually variations on a plain and simple recipe which produces loaves I can have on the table about two hours after getting started, but I also love to experiment and when I saw the instructions for "Jim Lahey's Astonishing Bread" in Matt McAllester's Bittersweet: Lessons From My Mother's Kitchen (read all about the book here) I had to try it.

   This is a no-knead bread, one which takes around a day to make, and it's baked in an unconventional way, too - more of that anon - but it could hardly be easier, so yesterday I put flour, salt, yeast and water into a bowl and gave it all a mix with a wooden spoon.

 

    You then cover the bowl with clingfilm and leave it in a warm place for eighteen to twenty four hours. I've been watching its progress on and off, seeing the bubbles and general gloopiness develop and anticipating the results.

Here's the dough this morning, still not much to look at, but Matt says (and it's his version I'm using - even more uncomplicated than the original) this is the one recipe in the world he feels "limitlessly evangelical" about, so it must be good!

    I'm going to bake it around midday and then eat it for lunch, and pictures will be posted here, so please come back later and see how I get on. Fingers crossed....

Quilted - 2

     We had a brief glimpse the other day of Quilts 1700-2010: Hidden Histories, Untold Stories edited by Sue Prichard, but I've read the book now and found it not just a rich, visual feast but a fascinating and often surprising study of a subject I knew little about.

     "Quilts stimulate memories of warmth, security and comfort", and "... stitching provided a refuge from the day-to-day operation of the household, a momentary pause for quiet reflection and rare seclusion", but the book shows that the making of quilts represents more than simply cosy artistry. Illustrated with paintings from the period showing the textiles in mainly but not exclusively domestic settings and the quilts themselves from the V&A's and others' collections, the book goes into the development of the craft from economic necessity and form of re-cycling to expression of creativity, status symbol and accepted art-form.

     We are shown wholecloth, pieced, embroidered and appliquéd examples, quilts as celebration and commemoration, quilts made by the military and those confined in jail, superior products for glamorous Art Deco interiors and the stitching of scraps for homely projects big and small. There are pieces which, through what they depict, bring the wider world and important events into a domestic setting, and others which speak of the purely personal and the experience of their maker alone.

    From the use of the word 'patchwork' as a negative metaphor in the eighteenth century to the ingenious wartime utilisation of blackout material and parachute silk, the book sets quilts and their making in context and provides a great deal of inspiration for anyone wishing to practise the art today.

Flowers and food

 

 

  This is just a cheery bunch of supermarket flowers to brighten up the house, but does it have a deeper meaning? If you're in or near London from next Tuesday (30th. March) you might find out by visiting the exhibition A Garden within Doors: Plants and Flowers in the Home which is on at the Geffrye Museum.

  As to the emotional significance of food, you could do no better than read this excellent book. 

Instant gratification

     I'm knitting two things just now which will take forever to complete, so it's nice to put them aside for a minute and make something from start to finish in just a few hours. This is yet another Airy Scarf from Last Minute Knitted Gifts, and like all the others I've made (this is number eight) it is indeed a last-minute knitted gift - maybe I'll make one for myself sometime!

    I dashed to the nearest shop to get some Kidsilk Haze, but the colours they had were no use for the intended recipient so I went for Kidsilk Aura instead, shade 763 'Loganberry'.

If anyone finds KSH just a bit too fine and finicky to work with, its slightly more substantial sister, Aura, might be the answer - BUT - don't make the mistake I did and forget to check the yardage, assuming there'd be miles per ball as with the Haze; you get only 75m/82 yds. with this which meant I was short and had to make another dash into town to buy more.

    However, despite my oversight it was made in no time. The colour is beautiful (the last picture is the most accurate), and the scarf is light and soft and lovely. If you feel like some instant gratification, this might be it.

Bandstand

   We had a quick walk through St. Andrews on Saturday (here's the bookshop). It's a place I love to visit as there's so much to take in; more sights later, but for now here's the Trumpton-esque bandstand (do you remember the tune?).

This looks to be in pretty good repair, though there's a bit of the lovely ironwork missing there.

More bandstands here and here.

Books and cakes - 27

    The Painter of Signs lacks direct inspiration for a cakes post. Early in their relationship, Daisy serves Raman with a cup of tea and some salt biscuits, but given her ascetic lifestyle he was hardly going to do much better than that at any time. Raman's aunt seems to subsist on a few grains of rice and the odd vegetable - not enough to keep the Cornflower readership's body and soul together, I feel - and I'm not about to suggest we sample the "sweet edible dolls" sold on Ellaman Street, either.

 

    There may be a dearth of baked goods in Narayan's Malgudi, but Madhur Jaffrey has come to the rescue! I remembered trying her Indian carrot cake ages ago after seeing her make it on television, so I found the recipe and have made it again.

    Notes and modifications: I used sunflower oil instead of ghee and I ground the pistachios and almonds to cater for those who don't care for obvious pieces of nuts. 1/4 teaspoon of ground cardamom seeds equals the contents of roughly seven pods, and four decent-sized carrots makes the required amount grated.

 

    I had none of the specified silver foil with which to decorate it, but it's quite good enough unadorned.

Life's rich tapestry

      Reading the V&A's Quilts book I'm struck by just how personal (more than in the obvious sense) many needlework projects are - they often relate to and reflect aspects of their makers' lives as well as being something beautiful and useful.

     A book which takes that to another level is The Girl on the Wall by Jean Baggott. You can see a short but moving clip of Jean talking about the extraordinary tapestry which represents her life and times, and which forms the background to her book, but I'm really looking forward to reading her story as well as enjoying it through her meticulous stitching - the narrative is in an entertaining, conversational style and sections of the tapestry form the illustrations which accompany the text..

 

   Seventy three interlocking circles worked over sixteen months record much of twentieth century history as well as times - both momentous and commonplace - in the life of a woman, a far from ordinary woman, it must be said, who now in her early seventies is in the final year of a degree in History at the University of Warwick.

Spring, clean

    I'm spring-cleaning this week and have begun with washing the woodwork (some of us live only for pleasure ...).

I was doing skirting boards and window sills and shutters,

and then I came to the doors - all twenty-five of them.

 

If I'd counted before I began I wouldn't have started.

Enjoy the tulips while I get back to work!

Spot the difference, mark 2

     I've made another batch of the oatmeal and chocolate chip muffins I tried recently, but this time, to make them into a muffin version of these excellent biscuits, I added peanut butter (sorry, Lindsay): one heaped and one level tablespoon of the crunchy stuff, though smooth would be fine too. This is enhancement, people! They are very, very good.

 

   When I made the first lot, the issue of  'the taxonomy of baked goods' arose in the comments, so just to throw in my two penn'orth, the muffins we always used to eat in Britain - and we still do, but confusingly we have this sort now as well - were yeasted, and were usually toasted and spread with butter, honey, etc. My mother has a muffin dish (much like these) which would keep the contents warm at table by virtue of the hot water compartment beneath.

   The type pictured here are often called American muffins, but perhaps our US readers don't claim them as their own? The mixture contains sunflower oil instead of butter, and the resulting taste and texture differ from the sponge cake persona of fairy cakes/cupcakes.

    Buns are different again, also yeasted, and of various shapes and sizes, fruited, spiced or plain, - remember the iced ones we did for The Solitude of Thomas Cave?

   Crumpets we had last week, but I didn't know they have been made here since as long ago as Anglo-Saxon times (see Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun) - did our ancestors buy bronze crumpet rings at John Lewis? They enjoyed honey dumplings as well, all this baking recorded in 'vocabularies' such as the one written by Aelfric, Archbishop of Canterbury, in colloquy form to teach monastic novices to read Latin.

   Gosh! What started as a simple bit of muffin-making has taken us back a long way.