Cornflower

American pie

    

 

     "The feast was a noble feast, as has already been said. There was an elegant ingenuity displayed in the form of the pies which delighted my heart. Once acknowledge that an American pie is far to be preferred to its humble ancestor, the English tart, and it is joyful to be reassured at a Bowden reunion that invention has not yet failed."

Wait a minute! What about this particular American pie? Alright, on we go:

   "Beside a delightful variety of material, the decorations went beyond all my former experience; dates and names were wrought in lines of pastry and frosting on the tops. There was even more elaborate reading matter on an excellent earlyapple pie which we began to share and eat, precept upon precept. Mrs. Todd helped me generously to the whole word BOWDEN, and consumed REUNION herself, save an undecipherable fragment, but the most renowned essay in cookery on the tables was a model of the old Bowden house made of durable gingerbread, with all the windows and doors in the right places, and sprigs of genuine lilac set at the front."

    I couldn't resist quoting that passage from Sarah Orne Jewett's The Country of the Pointed Firs, and there's more on the book here (but I can't leave the subject without a word in praise of the great British tart - such as this one!).

Coco in Scotland

    Cross Art Deco chic with Scots Baronial grandeur and you get the perfect place in which to talk about the iconic Coco Chanel, a woman who perhaps surprisingly had strong and enduring connections with Scotland.

    Last night I was at the launch of Justine Picardie's biography Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life at the Balmoral Hotel (pictured above) here in Edinburgh, and first a word on the surroundings which I noted as I sipped my champagne - the room we were in had parquet flooring, acid-etched mirrors, purple velvet banquettes, that pared down elegance complemented by homely tweed cushions and antlers on the wall. That combination turned out to be very apt, as in her illustrated talk Justine concentrated on Gabrielle Chanel's Scottish connections: as the mistress of the Duke of Westminster, she spent many summers on his vast estate in Sutherland where she turned out to be a dab hand with a fishing rod. Up at Stack Lodge and Lochmore, the soignée designer borrowed her lover's tweeds, donned a Fair Isle sweater and spent her days on the water - and with considerable success as the Lochmore game book (in which she appears next to the Rt. Hon. W. Churchill) testifies. But Scotland gave her more than just congenial company and an absorbing pastime, for as Justine explained, it was in Sutherland that Chanel came to love Scottish tweed and cashmere, both materials she featured in her designs and which are still used by the House of Chanel today.

     I happen to have stayed on the Westminster estate (though in a house somewhat more spartan than those in which Chanel was entertained) and I have fished Loch Stack on a wild, wet day and drawn a blank, but things were different in the 1920s! However, knowing that bleak but beautiful landscape, I can imagine the smart Parisienne - albeit out of 'uniform' - relaxed and at leisure there, and the book, which is beautifully illustrated, includes many previously unseen photographs from that period, found in private collections and now made public to offer a glimpse of another part of that famous life and complex personality.

       Last night's event was a fascinating and very enjoyable introduction to the biography which I'm now reading with great interest, imagining Chanel in the duke's private train travelling through Waverley Station - in the lea of the Balmoral Hotel - on her way north to the relative freedom of her "Highland sanctuary, hidden by ramparts of cliffs and sheer granite crags, beyond the reach of fashionable chatter or couture collections", and off to the river again.

Knit your own dog

     Just arrived, a rather fun knitting book - Best in Show by Sally Muir and Joanna Osborne. I'm afraid my reluctant 'model' wouldn't co-operate for the picture and insisted on sitting where the light was poor, but maybe she was put out at being upstaged by the Westie on the cover.

    The book includes patterns for 25 breeds, arranged - as in a dog show - according to group, so there are hounds, terriers, gun dogs, and so on. I've put a few here (click to enlarge) including a very lifelike Border Collie, a Portuguese Water Dog whose markings are based on Bo Obama's, and an Old English Sheepdog for which "you need to perfect your loopy stitch technique". The Labrador in the book is a chocolate one and - though of course I am biased - not as handsome as Mollie, though it is noted as one of the simpler dogs to knit, so perhaps I'll have a go; Moll might be miffed if I made some rival breed....

Multi-tasking

    Do you know what Elizabeth Zimmermann says about knitting and reading at the same time? I've learned to do it! I put the Kindle on the book chair - so it's held in place and all you need do to turn a page is press the button on the side - and with scarcely a glance down at my work but instead feeling my stitches, I'm making great strides on the very long moss stitch section of the Bohus scarf. (Having relatively few words to a 'page' seems to help, too, as if I do look away I can find my place again easily).

   This is a revelation to me!

A very desirable residence

    This lovely house is for sale - let's all empty our piggy banks!

Books and cakes - 33

 

     The food at the Majestic is not exactly five star; there is the fleeting appearance of some toasted scones and a "desirable" seed cake, though the range of baked goods sent down on the train from Dublin to feed the piglets is quite tempting. On the occasion of the ball, though, all the stops are pulled out and the board is fairly groaning, but the average daily fare for the characters of J.G. Farrell's novel Troubles is pretty short commons.

      Our two books and cakes series have already featured scones and seed cake, so I've gone for one of the piglets' delicacies, barm brack. I've used this recipe from Darina Allen (scroll down a bit) and as instructed soaked the fruit in the tea overnight.

    I'm not serving this at a table with a revolver at every place, nor is my sugar bowl full of bullets (you'll have to read the book to find out what that's all about!), but this has turned out a lusciously fruit-studded accompaniment to a cup of tea (or for the hapless Majestic residents, Murphy's foul coffee).

Eating my words

 

     A few months ago, before I entered the 21st. century and became the Gadget Girl I am now (and does that not impress my children?) I was scathing dubious about using a mobile phone for meal inspiration and recipe information. Well, the Nigella Quick Collection 'App.' is on special offer just now, so at Harriet's persuading I got it and we have tried it out.

    We made Totally Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies, the recipe arranged in easy to read 'pages' on the phone, but - here's the clever bit - you need not touch the gadget with your sticky fingers when you want to turn to the next page, it incorporates voice-activated controls, so all you have to do is say "forwards" or "backwards", and your page is turned for as you instruct!

    There are 70 recipes on the app., videos, too, and a shopping list function; handy to have in the bag while you're in the supermarket and trying to think what to cook, and fun to play with in the kitchen, this won't replace a cookery book, but I can see myself consulting it when I'm planning a week's suppers and my mind's gone blank.

The cookies, by the way, were very scrumptious!

Good things come in small packages

     They say good things come in small packages - and that's certainly true of the parcel I got yesterday - but look at what arrived in a compact padded envelope today: stitchmarkers made specially for me by the very kind Darlene.

    Until today I've had only a couple of proper stitchmarkers to my name, so while making a complicated Fair Isle scarf I've been supplementing them with, of all things, plastic paper clips.

    In contrast, these are just lovely, and I shall take pleasure in using them. Thankyou so much, Darlene! 

Smart phone

    At last, some finished knitting! Here's a cover for a mobile phone which takes no time at all to make and which will hopefully keep it scratch-free in pocket or bag. Here's how I made it:

I used Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk, shade (25011) because I happened to have it and it's chunky enough to knit up fast, and 3mm dpns to give a dense fabric and a nicely snug fit for the phone - which measures approx. 11.5 x 5.5 cm.

Cast on 28 stitches, divide among three needles and join for working in the round. Work 10 rounds of k1, p1 rib, then work the spiral rib pattern as follows:

Rounds 1-4: k2, p2...

Rounds 5-8: p1, k2, p2 ... k2, p1

Rounds 9-12: p2, k2...

Rounds 13-16: k1, p2, k2 ... p2, k1

Repeat rounds 1-12 (or the full 16 if you'd prefer it a bit longer).

You could finish off with a three needle bind-off, or graft the seam, as I did.

    My plan is to make something a bit more sophisticated for the phone soon, but this one will do the job perfectly well for now, I think.

Carried away

      Don't worry, I don't intend to post all the Impressionist garden pictures currently on show in Edinburgh, but I couldn't resist this one, Renoir's Woman with a Parasol in a Garden (1875-6). This is thought to be the semi-wild garden of a studio in Montmartre, its poppies, convolvulus, iris and cornflowers "reflecting Renoir's innate sense of the decorative".

    The catalogue notes that "as the flowers cascade towards us, we are reminded of Renoir's evocative comment that a picture should 'seize you, enfold you, carry you away' " - it does that to me!

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    Still on gardens, and a neighbouring one at that, but a sad story for once: I didn't know until today that in 1941 our part of Edinburgh was the site of a Spitfire collision. Given that both planes came down on open land in what is otherwise a residential area, one wonders whether that was mere chance, or brave action on the part of the pilots, who were perhaps trying to ensure that no buildings and crucially their occupants were hit.

Eat your greens - and your blues and pinks and purples

     This is A Cabbage Garden by Arthur Melville (1877), one of my favourites from the Impressionist Gardens exhibition (see below). Why, you may ask, from among the Renoirs and the Monets, the romantic, the pretty, the wistful, the fanciful, the smart and grand, the domestic and intimate, have I chosen, first of all, something as mundane and as humble as a plot of brassicas? Look at the colours of those leaves!

    This is very much a local work as it depicts drumhead cabbages in an East Lothian garden, and as the catalogue notes in the book explain: "Melville's picture does not show a timeless arcadia, like Corot's Souvenir d'Italie but it clearly celebrates a heritage and way of life which largely escaped the agricultural depression experienced at the period in many other parts of Scotland. In this sense, its garden is as much a place of harmony and well-being as those of Pissarro at Pontoise and Van Gogh at Arles."

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    Barbara remarked in her comment on the cost of entrance to the exhibition. If you're planning to go, be aware that your ticket will give you all-day access so that you can do as we did and look round in the morning, go off and have lunch then come back and re-visit some favourites in the afternoon. Ideally, go early and give yourself plenty of time and I should think you'll feel your £10 (or £7) has been well spent - and not just on cabbages!

Daisy, daisy

     This morning I've been at the Impressionist Gardens exhibition here in Edinburgh, viewing a marvellous collection of paintings hung behind the RSA's be-daisied exterior!

My head's too full of images and ideas to say any more about it just now so I shall come back to it soon, but go and see it for yourself if you can (it's on until 17th. October), and/or download the free app. or read the accompanying book.

Kitchenalia

     Nigella's new book Kitchen: Recipes from the Heart of the Home has, on first dipping into, given us a recipe to return to again and again. Supper last night was to be a simple one of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and I wanted some good but quick bread to go with it. Fitting the time available and the ingredients (most of them) to hand, I made the Irish Oaten Rolls but in single loaf form - for which instructions are given. This turned out to be the best soda bread I've ever eaten, not overly soda-y, as some can be, rough of texture and full of flavour.

    I tweaked things slightly: instead of the specified Guinness (300 ml) I used cider, and I replaced a small proportion of the oats with toasted oatmeal; having no buttermilk, I mixed runny yogurt and ordinary milk. As you see, the recipe is very forgiving, but the results are amazing!

    A couple of points worth noting: when you add the liquids to the dry ingredients, Nigella says the mixture will "become first moussy and then heavy like damp sand" - it is exactly that. Secondly, she suggests lining the tray with baking parchment or Bake-O-Glide; I used the latter (see picture left of centre) and it worked perfectly for the claggy dough. Lastly, the Domestic Goddess describes this bread as "imbuing my frenetic urban hub of a kitchen with all the reassuring warmth of the farmstead hearth of my yearning imagination." Quite so.

Checkmate

   To the National Museum of Scotland to see the exhibition The Lewis Chessmen: Unmasked. The thirteenth century pieces - ninety three of them - were discovered on this beach in 1831, but their origins and their history remain obscure. They are fascinating, nonetheless, and if you have a chance to see the exhibition anywhere on its travels, do go; there is also an accompanying book.

 

Birthday tea

       Among my many lovely birthday presents on Saturday (and I was given some books, after all) was a selection of teas from the Rare Tea Company. I first discovered "the tea lady", Henrietta Lovell, in the pages of Alexander McCall Smith's* Corduroy Mansions; she is a real person, and her company specialises in fine quality tea from small estates. Pictured here are the Oolong and the Jasmine Silver Tip but I also got some Cornish Earl Grey, which I've yet to try. The teas are delicious - pure in flavour but with a depth that sets them apart from the usual supermarket varieties, and their tins are most attractive, too!

*Each tin of Henrietta's Lost Malawi tea comes with one of a selection of short stories by AMcCS.