rose petal jam

ching ching ching!

I love Christmas. Scrap that. I ADORE Christmas. What's not to love? I am totally bound up in the rituals of it all and am currently tracking down the perfect advent calendar for me. (For some lovely advent ideas have a look here). I don't like the chocolate filled ones, they are just not right, neither are the ones with branded characters, cartoons etc. I like a cardboard one with a beautiful festive scene and lovely little illustrations underneath every window, preferably of candy canes, puddings and angels. My all time favourite one was a Woodmansterne one with beautiful angels flying in a night sky. My personal all time low was one Dominic bought me in sheer desperation from a religious book shop, one with a nativity scene. The illustrations were really rubbish (the donkey looked demented) and behind each window was a pointer to a bit of the bible to read. I know Christmas is about Christ, the clue is in the title, but I am not especially religious and like to see it more as a yuletide celebration, a sort of shining beacon in the darkness and chill of deep winter. I realise the fact that my favourite one featured angels is a massive contradiction to what I have just said, but there you go. I am quite a contrary girl. And anges are pretty in a way that demented donkeys and sinister looking magi are not.

Anyway! The best bit of Christmas is of course the food. Food to me sums it all up, its about bounty, sharing, pleasure, decadence and comfort. A Christmas without Christmassy food is not worth considering. I am not one of those people who wants to go abroad somewhere hot for Christmas and eat Thai curry instead of a plump bird with all the trimmings. That would not do at all. I might consider Christmas in a colder-than-ours European country, perhaps somewhere like Sweden or Switzerland, where I am betting they do Christmas really, really well on the culinary front.

There is a little part of my brain permanently dedicated to Christmas food planning, but the planning really starts in earnest about now with the Christmas editions of all the food magazines that I buy.

The picture which opens this post is of my December food magazine file. In a way that is very uncharacteristically organised of me, I do keep my food magazines in files according to the month of the year so they can easily be referenced in future years. The Christmas one is full to the brim and I think I need to either get rid of some of the older ones (like the ones from the 90s maybe!) and make room for the new ones, or start another folder!

One Christmas magazine that I will never get rid of though is this one.

I bought this about 4 years ago, and now I drag it down from the box every year and spend a good hour re reading the wisom of Saint Delia. It is a classic and has some fab recipes in, including one that I have adapted into my own Christmas chutney 9recipe coming soon). I love the way that she says it goes well with 'assertive cheeses'. Everytime I read it I imagine chunks of stilton marching across the table and demanding to be accompanied!

I know people think Delia is perhaps a little dull, and certainly some of her programmes would suggest that a charisma bypass has infact been performed, but for simple, no nonsense and traditional recipes that don't fail, she cannot be beaten. Anyway, she has her wild side as can be seen here when after too many sherrys she gloriously abandoned her bland image and came over all firey - come on Delia!

So, here you have it

this years magazines, a glass of rioja and candlelight. Looks like I am in for a festive evening...

strange fruit

When it's cold and wet outside, there is something very cheering about unusual and tropical fruit. I think it was Nigel Slater who said that he can't have Christmas without a pineapple. Anyway, the weather has been really cold here oop north (and elsewhere I imagine!) and yesterday I felt miserable as at no point did my feet ever feel warm which always makes me a bit cross and whingey. But look what we found in Tescos! Instant cheer!

Custard apples! (otherwise known as Cherimoya).

I hope that you have had one of these, they are gorgeous. The inside flesh is all custardy and sweet and sticky and as you can see they are very beautiful to look at too. If not, grab yourself one and find out for yourself. We generally find them in asian foodmarkets and the like but supermarkets do get them in sometimes. Like all of the fruit sold in supermarkets, they aren't ripe yet and if you also find one in Tesco, chances are it will be rock hard (or total mush - nothing in between is allowed it seems!). Wait until it yields slightly to a gentle squeeze, rather like you do with an avocado. Actually, the flesh texture is not disimilar to avocado, it has a similar butteriness going on, but is stickier and more silky textured. They have a very slight cheesiness to them too which sounds weird but trust me, is not.

I have no recipe for them for the simple fact that I cannot see any better way to serve than with a knife for opening, a spoon for scooping and a bowl for spitting all of the glossy black pips into.

Enjoy!

For Janice

This is for Janice who read my facebook status the other day when I made this and requested it for the blog.

Cauliflower Cheese Soup

I know that this soup doesn't LOOK exciting, but it really does taste great! Anyhow, I am a fan of 'white' food, pasta, mashed potato, risotto, need I say more? Colour in food is all well and good, but pale and soothing food can be wonderful.

Cauliflower cheese is lovely but I am trying to shift a few pounds, pre Christmas so that I can wear this dress and look super girly lovely! So, I have invented this soup that has all of the taste and a fraction of the fat and calories. Losing weight was never so much fun!

Serves 4

One medium cauliflower cut into florets
Two shallots, chopped fairly small
About a litre or so of vegetable stock
Two medium potatoes, diced into chunks
A matchbox sized piece of parmesan, finely grated

Put shallots into a pan and add enough stock to cover. Simmer for 10 mins until softened
Add the potatoes and add enough stock to cover. Cook for 8 mins
Then add the florets of cauliflower and more stock and cook for a further 6 mins.
Remove from heat and blitz with a handblender so that soup is a fairly liquidised but still has texture
Stir in the grated cheese.

If the soup is too thick for your taste, just thin out with more hot stock.

Lovely with some granary bread and a feeling of smug virtuosity :-)

'like the sea'

The subject of this post is what I say to anyone who asks me what an oyster tastes like. Isn't that true? I have tried really hard but I can't come up with a better description. They taste like the sea! I introduced Mum and Maggie to them recently when I ordered them for lunch when we were all in Edinburgh and they agreed. They do. (BTW we ate in The Ship in Leith which doesn't appear to have a website but is very very good and if you are ever in the area do pop in as the food was really memorable).

Anyway, this isn't a recipe, just some nice pictures of oysters and my favourite place to get them! We are going to the cottage this weekend and I will be nipping into Whitby to visit this wee stall.

What's that? You can't see the seafood? Oh Ok then...

Not that much better but they were busy and whilst happy to be photographed by their greediest customers (we go a lot) we didn't want to interupt their busy trade.

However we did buy these...

Aren't they GORGEOUS?

Now it is of course lovely to eat Oysters in slingbacks with a glass of champagne at the ready. But there is something unbeatable about eating them, with a squeeze of lemon, sat on Whitby Pier with the wind in your hair and the sound of seagulls in your ears, watching the boats go by.

Sit. Slurp. Sigh.

So if you are ever in Whitby, walk down the harbour on the side opposite the Church and Abbey, past Woolworths, towards the pier. Next to a Gyspy fortune telling caravan with a mysterious scarved lady you will find Nobles and three freshly shucked osyters for £2.

slice o' cake an' a cup o' tea*

Do you rememberWorzel Gummidge*? He was a big fan of cake and tea and I seem to remember that if formed quite an integral part of each episode. I always found the head swapping that went on a bit freaky and his nose a little too warty but would gladly have put up with all that for a slice of the delicious fruitcake he always seemed to have! There were four cakes which dominated my childhood, a particularly delicious caraway seed cake, a chocolate cake with chocolate icing, lovely rich Christmas cake (all home made by Maggie) and shop bought battenburg cake, eaten at my grandma's house. And whatever Worzel was eating on a Sunday afternoon.

I love all kinds of cake and am planning to make some butterfly cakes soon, inspired by Jane at Yarnstorm. Being a girly girl, I love cupcakes and french fancies and the like in pretty pastel colours, with sugar roses, silver balls and other tiny offerings, but there is still a place in my heart for a good old fashioned loaf cake, the kind that goes so well with a cup of tea, particularly on a chilly autumn day. This one scores a little on the 'not too bad for you' scale too as it contains bananas and prunes - pottasi-yummy! Still, it has a fair whack of butter and sugar too so maybe just two slices...

Banana, Prune and Walnut Cake

225g self raising flour
1 tsp mixed spice
100g salted butter
125g dark muscovado sugar
450g very ripe bananas
2 medium sized organic free range eggs
50g walnuts (or whatever nut you like)
75g prunes, snipped into little chunks

Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease and baseline a 2lb loaf tin (ingredients may have gone metric but cake tins stay firmly imperial!).

Sift the flour and spice into a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter and sugar in a pan.

Peel and mash the bananas and then stir into the butter/ sugar mixture. Mix into the flour with the eggs, walnuts and prunes. You should have a slushy looking mixture with a lovely treacly, banana smell. Pour into the cake tin.

Bake in the oven for about 1 and 1/4 hours but possibly a bit longer, until a skewer or fork comes out clean. The length of baking depends on how sloppy the bananas became when you mashed them. The riper the banana the better the taste but the slower the bake if you see what I mean.

Cool a little then turn out and place on a wire rack to cool completely (if you have the willpower and if you do can you send me some please, thank you). Serve in generous slices with tea, candles and the rain lashing against the window.