Flying

What if the car breaks down? What if a deluge of snow blocks Telegraph Hill? What if a car transporter tips over and blocks all carriageways at Exeter? What if all traffic is halted because someone is threatening to jump from a footbridge over the M5? So, taking into account all my ‘what ifs?’, we arrive at the airport with 3 hours to spare.

A couple of rounds of sandwiches and drinks cost us £30.

Having taken all these precautions how do we still end up being the last on the plane?

Choosing the fastest queue through security, we make good progress, or so it seemed. Then everything grinds to a halt with the chap in front.

He has waited in the queue blithely ignoring the huge posters and looping video on big screens telling us about all the prohibited items. He’s got the lot. Scissors in his hand baggage, that has to be indecorously unpacked (I hope he’s on the return journey. Either that or he habitually dresses like Worzel Gummidge.) Then he’s got a studded belt that has to come off with great difficulty. Great laced boots that take an age to unravel and heave off. Large bottles of liquids and gels that all have to be argued about and confiscated…

By the time we get through, a lady with a clipboard is calling for the last two passengers for the flight. That’s us. We are escorted rapidly across the tarmac. I glance at the pilots in the cockpit, angrily tapping their watches, and rush up the steps into the plane, now full of angry holidaymakers, all tapping their watches in unison. (OK, I made all the watch tapping bit up. No one really noticed. It’s just how I felt.)

At least the incident made me feel better about our previous trip. We had been on a plane since 9/11 so I thought we were up-to-date with airport security, but we had missed the extra ramping up of measures after the bloke with the exploding trainers. Unlike our heedless friend on this flight, I had noticed all the signs and videos, and spent my queuing time repacking. Nearly everything was wrong and had to be confiscated or bagged up.

Blooming nuisance, that man with the exploding trainers.

 

Orange pumpkin cake

I was trying to make cakes for my art group that reflected the subject each session. After a good start of pairing painting pumpkin still lifes with pumpkin jam-filled Ensaimada, and apple cake with drawing apples, things went a bit off track.

This week we did ‘light and shade’, and I realised afterwards I’d accidentally followed the theme with ‘dark’ chocolate beetroot cake and ‘light’ Orange pumpkin cake, my recipe. Here’s my recipe:

200g sugar
200g butter (or marge)
200g self raising flour
4 eggs
1 orange, grated rind and juice

Topping:
100g butter
3 tbsps icing sugar
2 tbsps pumpkin jam

1. Butter 2 sandwich tins. Cut a circle of baking parchment for each and place in the tins, then butter this, too.
2. Cream butter and sugar, beat in orange rind.
3. Add eggs one at a time, and beat thoroughly.
4. Stir in flour and orange juice. This makes a loose, dropping constancy, and makes the cake nice and moist.
5. Bake for 20-25 minutes at C180°.
6. Turn out and cool on a wire rack.
7. Cut each cake in half, horizontally, and sandwich together with generous amounts of pumpkin jam.
8. Beat butter, sugar and jam together to make a butter icing, and apply to the top of the cake. (The pumpkin jam gives the icing a lovely orange colour). Make swirly patterns with a fork.

Sausages!

I’ve just received my ‘Designasausage’ kit. It was the prize for December’s ‘Cultivate, Cook and Click’ by ‘We Grow our own’. Sadly, I won by default as I was the only entrant. Still, that’s marginally better than hubby getting second prize in Brixham Horticultural Society’s Autumn Show for his carrots, even though his was the only entry.

I’m excited about using the kit! The filling process looks like a two-person job. I’ve got the Lincolnshire flavouring mix. I might add some finely minced brandy-soaked dried apricots to the mix, just to make it my own.

I’ll put a picture on here when I’ve sausaged.

In the meantime, here’s the daughter’s dog with a cake on her head…

I’ve changed my theme again

Despite the lovely pics and colour-theming of ‘Duotone’, I was dismayed that I’d lost my ‘blogroll’ of links, so here’s another one. Easier to read, I think.

Another blog

I’ve changed my theme! I love the way this one makes the pics really big, and colour-schemes them according to the pic.

The words are from Francis Lyte's 'Abide with me', written in Brixham. This monument is on Berry Head.

This post is also to announce my new blog about my 2012 quest to self-publish. The journey had only just begun, so there’s not much in it at present!

I’m going to document things that work, and things that don’t, and hopefully build up a resource for other writers wanting to do the same thing.

http://selfpublishingbeyond.wordpress.com/

Recipe-go-round

I’m old enough to remember the traditional British menu plan. Roast on Sunday, cold meat and fried potatoes on Monday, cottage pie on Tuesday…etc, etc… fish on Friday.

Try as I might to avoid this myself, I find, from time to time, my menu plan centrifuges down to a woefully small number of dishes. When I find we’re getting round to spaghetti Bolognese every five days I try to take action and spread my wings a bit. This week I decided it was time to try some new flavours.

I have special difficulty thinking about British recipes. I get stuck with a traditional Sunday roast, which really isn’t one of my favourite meals. I was impressed with the Hairy Bikers’ Scotch broth, and decided to try it out. It was delicious. The thyme and bay leaf gave it a really rich scent which permeated the whole house, and the lamby soaked pearl barley was sticky and gorgeous.

The lamb was soft and moist, and there was plenty left over to make some minty rissoles which I tried to give a real Mediterranean kick by serving with Couscous and my own version of hummus.

Then I blasted the tastebuds with a completely different set of flavours from Japan, with my Lottie Sushi, followed by the Hairy Bikers’ Poppy Seed Tempura with Soba noodles and dipping sauce. It was lovely – really different flavours! I particularly enjoyed making some ‘shichimi’ (ground chilli, schechuan peppercorns, sesame seeds and orange peel) for sprinkling on the noodles. Wow! The Japanese like their heat in a truly original way – in hot pockets in amongst lots of bland rice! It’s a digital approach to spicing – either on or off!

Tonight we’re having Tuscan bean and squash soup with Cornbread. I’ve never made Cornbread before, so that should be interesting.

I thought I would get this lot blogged for the next time I get stuck in a three recipe rotation. Life’s too short to be bored.

Twenty-twenty foresight

I’ve been doing far too many recipes recently, and not enough musing on life, and getting older. So, here’s something non-food-related…

Twenty-twenty foresight

When I was young I looked forward to being older, and gaining wisdom. I imagined myself in the future, side-stepping problems and overcoming all obstacles with a serene calm. I would know how things went wrong, so I could engineer ways to avoid catastrophe and disappointment. Life would be a smooth voyage of satisfaction and success.

Decades later I find myself suffering as many glitches as ever. Knowing what causes things to go wrong, and how they go wrong, doesn’t stop them from going wrong. You simply have longer to agonise over them. At your leisure you can watch situations slip into the same abysses for which they were always bound.

We moved into our first modern house in the November. With superb insulation, double-glazing throughout and modern gas central heating, we looked forward to our first Christmas. We were going to be so warm and toasty throughout the festivities.

All that glowing anticipation evaporated a couple of weeks before Christmas when our boiler broke down. After a few cold days, our system was expensively fixed and we were back in the warm glow of our first exciting Christmas in our new home. We took out a maintenance contract so that we wouldn’t be at risk of a ruined Christmas again.

The next year, as winter began to bite, the gas engineer turned up at our door and we welcomed him in. Just a quick check, we thought, and he’ll be on his way, leaving us with a nice warm home for our second Christmas there.

We led him to the boiler in the kitchen and left him to it.

First there was an urgent banging as he tried to remove the front of the boiler.

Bang, bang! BANG! BANG!

Then silence, as he worked out that the cover needed delicately removing and then gently twisting out through the housing.

Work commenced in earnest, and several minutes later, pop! The main fuse blew and we were plunged into darkness.

‘It weren’t me!’ claimed the gasman.

‘Trouble is,’ he said, a few minutes later ‘it’s an electrical fault, and I don’t know anything about electrics. I can’t get the boiler going again. I’ll have to get the supervisor to come. It’ll be a few days…’

We saw him out. Several very cold days later we welcomed the supervisor. He was a tall, cheerful, capable fellow with dark, curly hair. He had the system up and running in a short time, and was on his way.

A year later…

Bang, bang! BANG! BANG!

A few minutes work, then Pop! The main fuse blew and we were plunged into darkness.

‘It weren’t me!’ claimed the gasman.

‘Trouble is,’ he said, a few minutes later ‘it’s an electrical fault, and I don’t know anything about electrics. I can’t get the boiler going again. I’ll have to get the supervisor to come. It’ll be a few days…’

Again, the curly-haired supervisor came to our rescue, and restored heating for the big Christmas break.

Moving on a further year, we were telephoned by the Gas company to make our annual maintenance appointment.

‘Look’ I snipped, ‘instead of sending the first man who always breaks the system, can you send the supervisor first off? Cut out the middleman, so to speak?’

‘I’m sorry,’ crooned the administrator, ‘we have to follow procedure.’

Our welcome was somewhat jaded for the gasman this particular year. We directed him to the boiler and left him to it.

Bang, bang! BANG! BANG!

We eyed each other dolefully, and, with a deep sigh of exasperation, hubby wearily walked across the room, knelt down and zipped his head into his sports bag.

A picture of exasperation.

Pop! The main fuse blew.

The gasman popped his head round the door and cheerily stated ‘It weren’t me!’

‘Trouble is, I don’t know anything about electrics…’ His voice tailed off as he absorbed the strange tableau before him. There was a man kneeling on the floor with his head zipped into a sports bag, and the lady of the house looking like Whistler’s mother.

‘Erm… I’ll get the supervisor to come round. I’ll see myself out…’ he said, reversing out of the room. He quietly gathered his tools and slipped out of the house.

Another year passed and the boiler maintenance appointment was duly made. We had resigned ourselves to the usual fiasco.

At the knock, I wearily opened the door. My face broke into a smile as I saw a cheery face, topped with a head full of dark curly hair.

‘Hello! I don’t think our engineer has been round yet, has he? Must have been some mistake. Never mind, I’ll check your system while I’m here…’

That’s what makes life worth living, isn’t it? Twenty-twenty foresight isn’t always correct. Only most of the time.

Pizza Brixhamara

The best of life in Brixham!

This is my kind of meal! Everything fresh, grown, recycled, found or gifted!

At this time of year, sprats are fished in the area. The seagulls know what time the boat is coming back in (how do they know?) and go out to meet it, so I was ready with my camera when I saw them flocking out to sea. Sure enough, within a few minutes, the sprat boat hove into view, complete with every seagull in Brixham in tow.

Actually, if the sea were warmer, I would be following the boat too, like a large seal!

We’ve been lucky and have occasionally been given a mixed bag of sprats, anchovies and herrings. And when I say ‘bag’, I mean shopping bag held under the boat hopper and filled with about 20 pounds of quivering silver beauties!

This time the herring were full of roe and I was able to have a delicious fried roes on toast for lunch, as well as a freezer full of fish.

Anyway, back to ‘Pizza Brixhamara’, which is more of an idea than a recipe.

My greenhouse tomatoes are still ripening – amazing when it’s nearly December! I had about a kilo, which I chopped and sweated with a couple of cloves of garlic and olive oil until they were well broken down (about 20 minutes). I pushed this mixture through a sieve. That’s essential at this time of year because the tomato skins are very tough, and if not removed they roll up and stab your throat like pine needles. Not nice.

I returned the ‘passata’ to the pan, added a splash of Balsamic and a teaspoon of brown sugar, and simmered until reduced down to a thick sauce.

I used leftover mashed potato to make two bases. I added 1 egg, then self-raising flour until I achieved a pastry-like consistency. This was the pushed and patted into pizza bases and cooked in a hot oven for 10 minutes. I then spread the tomato paste on the bases. I had way too much, so I put half of it on, then gave it a blast in the oven for 5 minutes, took it out, added the rest of the sauce and blasted it again for a further five minutes. These little miracles are VERY tomatoey!

Pizza base, topped with tomato that has been reduced and double baked to make it even MORE tomatoey!

At this point I cooled one of the bases down and froze it for future use. To the other I added sliced mozzarella, fileted fresh anchovies and capers*, then drizzled it with some anchovy paste which I’d loosened with some olive oil. Whack it in the oven for a further 15 minutes, and serve. It’s a perfect mix of crisp, sweet, salty, and creamy, with a taste of the ocean. I always think I’m only going to eat half of it, but I usually go back for seconds and end up eating it all.

* Actually, my capers were pickled nasturtium seeds that I’d rescued from my hanging baskets. They’re not entirely successful this year, having a great flavour but being a bit crunchy!

So, a real taste of Brixham, which only cost me the price of the mozzarella (Sainsbury’s Basics, 41p). That titillates my tightwad taste buds!

‘Artisan’ bread – and other clichés

I saw on TV how they make those little textured patterns on posh breads – they use a basket!

I chucked the two-year-old pot pourri out of a suitable looking basket in our house, gave it a bit of a wash, and here is the result:

Could have been rounder!

The bread is 1 sachet yeast, 100g Canadian extra strong white flour, 150g wholegrain flour, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp honey, a splash of olive oil, 180ml water, on the ‘pizza dough’ setting on my bread machine. Then I knocked the dough back, modelled it into a round, and put it onto the basket to rise after VERY HEAVILY flouring the domed surface that was going to be in contact with the basket. (I wonder if I should have oiled the basket as well?) Let it rise for 45 mins, then turn onto an oiled baking sheet and bake in a hot oven (220°C) for 30 minutes.

I’ll be a bit more careful with the transfer to the baking sheet next time, as the loaf isn’t particularly circular.

This set me to musing about the trend for food clichés. ‘Artisan bread’. What’s that all about? I suppose you can also have ‘artisan cheese’, but you never hear the word attached to other products. ‘Artisan Jams’? ‘Artisan Digestive Biscuits’?

Another one I find amusing is ‘rustic’. You only have to see a TV chef starting to knock up a lumpy pie, or be generally making a mess on a plate to know that you are going to hear the word ‘rustic’ very shortly.

Finally, can anyone ever use pomegranate seeds in anything without it being ‘bejewelled’?

Anyway, I’m having my ‘artisan’ bread with my ‘slow roasted’, ‘rustic’ tomato and basil soup, which will likely be ‘bejewelled’ with little blobs of olive oil. So there.

Pumpkin dumplings

Another way with pumpkin!

Pumpkin needs to be roasted to caramelise the sugars in it and give of depth of flavour. This week I roasted a whole tray full of pumpkin chunks with olive oil, then pureed the lot. I made these dumplings two days running. Day one I used them to top a beef in beer stew, day two I had them like pasta, with a sauce made of garlic, bacon and blue cheese. Great both ways!

0.5 pint of pumpkin puree
1 egg
plain flour
salt, pepper and nutmeg

1. Season the puree well. Break and egg into it, mix thoroughly, then add enough plain flour to make a soft, dropping consistency.
2. Fill a large pan with salted water and bring to the boil. When there is good rolling boil, drop dessertspoonfuls of the mixture in, in batches (don’t let them touch and stick together).
3. They are done when they rise to the top, after a minute or so. Remove with a slotted spoon, then drain.
4. Fry the dumplings in a little olive oil, then either add to the top of a stew and bake in the oven for a further 20 minutes, or whip up a quick, cheesy pasta sauce to douse them with, with a good scraping of parmesan.

TIP: Pumpkin, as a savoury dish, goes brilliantly with nutmeg, sage, bacon, garlic and cheese, in any combination!