Re new media section

An update

If you want to see a sample of my freelance journalism pieces, plus the odd piece on me, I've put a selection in the new media section of this blog. Also, book number one is being edited for re-release at the moment and I  have just finished book number two. Volumes one (Spring and Summer) and two (Autumn and Winter), then, of My Mother's Kitchen, my Father's Garden, based on this blog with additional text. Perhaps a publisher would like to take on one or both -- in two volumes or one big fat one? The first book sold well with just yours truly as its publisher and promoter! Don't forget, if you are a business and reading this, that I also handle press releases and publicity!

Photo by Giles Turnbull of jugs on my kitchen window ledge: most of them from skips. Treasure.

Gleanings: a chapter from A handful of Broken Biscuits

Again, this is a chapter from my late father's book, which I have latterly been editing. If you buy my next book (out at the beginning of May -- I will pass on info about stockists for this and my previous book, which is curently being reprinted, nearer the time), you will find this extract where it should be -- with Autumn! But enjoy it here, now. 

The sections of the book which intercut my writing are all about the getting, giving and making of food -- memories of a childhood in the 1930s, which my father felt abrupted by the beginning of war. The text is set in and around Burrington Combe and Langford, in Somerset on the edge of the Mendips. My father is characterised as 'John'; my grandmother as Beth and grandfather as Ed. Here we have walnuts, blackberries, hazelnuts and mushrooms.

There was always someone ready to collect whatever bounty the countryside offered and there were particular places where each windfall fell thickest. In early September walnuts bounced and split open under the big tree on Havyatt Green or the one leaning across the hedge that bounded Hillier's orchard. Since the throwing of sticks was vital in bringing down a shower of the finer, more elusive nuts, the boys of the village were always happy to be of help.

Blackberries ripened in every hedgerow, on waste ground or around the ponds, but they grew in greatest profusion in the wild, tangled triangle of open scrubland immediately below Mendip Lodge and alongside the old driveway. The bushes rambled freely, and the big, glistening, darkening fruit gave off a sweet, distinctive perfume after the smell of late summer. The gleaners, wearing their oldest clothes, moved methodically  from patch to patch, rolling the sweet luscious fruit into their baskets, fingers staining ever-deeper-red-purple as they picked. They reached with crooked stick, drawing the furthermost branches to them: picking or rejecting with smooth, deft and unhurried movements. An afternoon's basket of six or eight pounds would provide pies and blackberry and apple jam in plenty.

As the Autumn days became misty and the leaves began to change colour, the long tall hazel hedges in the deep lane at Bourne clustered thickly with nuts. It was essential for the timing to be right. Go a few days too early and the nuts were not ripe enough; shaking or whacking the bushes with sticks would not bring many down. Go a few days too late and many would have fallen into the undergrowth to be nibbled or gobbled by mice and squirrels. But arrive on those few crucial days and the nuts came down like hail -- a harvest that meant a hoard of nuts to be put aside for Christmas.

Pearly-necklaces, low-slung cobwebs, a thin mist on the field, and a warm humid morning were the sings that mushroom picking time had arrived: the feel of the air was just right. Up with the first light of dawn, on with the wellingtons, a two pound basket on the arm. Then a steady, methodical travrsing of the field, moving the sheep along as you went. Folding sheep on the land encouraged the growth and spread of mushrooms, it was said, but John didn't know the truth or otherwise of that lore. yet he was prepared to believe it as he walked in a line gfive yards parallel to his father. The darker grass circles and crescents were the give-away signs of mushroom presence and suddenly he would find a patch of three or four, of fresh grey-white with a  scattering of small buttons.

Each time he found and picked he was conscious of the beauty of the early morning. There was a hush, a newly-washed innocence all around. The wild creatures that crawled, scampered or flew were up and doing, but doing it quietly. They wanted time and the world to themselves and had no wish to rouse the lie-abeds. John smelt the pleasant,  faint fungoid smell and touched the beautiful pink-brown suffusion of the newly opening gills. It required an effort of will to be up so early to join Ed in these forays, but it was worth the quiet, calm sensuous pleasure he enjoyed. By half past seven Ed and John were back in the house and soon the delicious smells of frying mushrooms and streaky bacon signified a satisfying early morning journey.

A Handful of Broken Biscuits

Intercutting the prose of my last book are excerpts from the book my father wrote when he was dying. My mother helped with the editing; his devoted former school secretary typed up the entire text. I am continuing with this work now and hope to have it published by the autumn of this year, with beautiful woodcut illustrations by a local artist. Watch this space.

Now, the title of the book refers to early memories of my father, growing up first in Burrington Combe and then in Langford in Somerset, on the edge og the Mendip hills. His mother, so careful about housekeeping, would always order broken biscuits from the grocer. My father felt it was a way of life that was vanishing in this place. Of course, those excerpts I included in my own text were about food memories: they play an important part in the book, whether it be a description of a sweet shop, my paternal grandmother's exemplary food stores, or, as here, Christmas and the whortleberry harvest. Read on over the next few posts for these extracts. Should you read my next book, you will find that Christmas and harvest are, seasonably, in the right months of the text!

A Handful of Broken Biscuits

Chapter 13: Christmases gone.

The smell of hot cloth and spice,a seven year old face i, or a few well-sung bars of any of those old traditional carols have a strange and moving power. Again, Beth is boiling her cloth-capped basins of pudding in the scullery copper. Again, Ed is plucking the big savage , spurred cockerel that will be Christmas dinner. Again, Miss Constance, Elsie and Sally are standing by the tree, lapped in the lemon glow of the fairy lights. Back come visions of the once a year exotica, the dates and the coconut ice, the Brazil nuts and the figs, and for the adults the bottle of sherry which will last from Christmas to Christmas.

For Chris the butcher: steak and kidney pie.

Chris is a local butcher -- one of very few. So here is a recipe made with things I have just bought from him, with his recommended amounts -- judged by eye, you understand. I bought stewing steak and -- the proper stuff, as he says--  ox kidney for this. I may sound as though I eat a lot meat. I probably eat red meat at most once a week and usually chicken once or twice a week. When I do eat red meat, it needs to pack a punch. This pie does because it's solid and speaks of home and, when it's in the oven, the house smells wonderful. I must confess that my young children were not overly keen on the ox kidney, but did justice to the rest of the pie. And here it is, still warm.

A note of pastry. I think the stuff you can buy ready made is pretty good, but what I generally do is buy puff and filo pastry and make everything else.

Steak and kidney pie. Four 4 with possibly a few seconds. To serve with potatoes -- which could be new ones, now-- and some greens. This time of year, make it a British brassica.

500 g puff pastry, defrosted if frozen and rolled out to about 1cm thickness
1 egg for glazing the pie before it goes in the oven
3 large carrots, roughly chopped. Not traditional, but I like them
1 large onion, chopped into rings
1 wineglass of red wine. I happened to have some recently opened Cabernet Sauvignon
1 bay leaf, if you like
plain flour to hand
500g stewing steak
250g ox kidney, sliced or cut into cubes: generous ones; not dolly mixture size


First sweat the onion in a little sunflower oil in a large pan until the onion  is golden. Take it out and put it to one side. Now, brown all the meat. You may want to do this in a couple of batches, because you want it to seal and brown, not steam. Just brown it and let it catch here and there. Then add the onion to the pan, mixing well, plus the carrots cut into smallish chunks. Sprinkle on a tablespoon of plain flour and mix well. Then, pour on the wine plus enough water --or beef stock or vegetable stock if you have it-- and raise the heat until the liquid thickens. Cook gently for five minutes, then into your dish it goes. The choice of dish is up to you, of course. Today, I cooked this in a oven dish 15cm by 30cm. It might look jollier in a big round dish, perhaps?

Put your pastry on the top, allowing for shrinkage, so draping it over the edge and crimping it firmly against the dish. Neatness is not the name of the game here. I think it should look quite roughly done. Now, if you wanted, you could raise the centre with a little pie funnel or maybe an egg cup, but I don't mind if it sinks a bit, so I didn't bother, just cut a couple of slits in the middle of the pie, as was my mother's wont, and brushed it with beaten egg. Cook it it a hot oven --at 200, then, for 40-45 minutes, by which time, the meat should be tender and the pastry golden. If you want your stewing steak so soft that you could cut it with a spoon, cook it for longer before it goes into the pie dish, but add the kidneys just for the last few minutes because you don't want to overdo them.

And here are some tins I mentioned in some of my much earlier blog posts and in my book. These are tins from my paternal grandmother's kitchen. She might have added the contents of either to the gravy for such a pie. Later, they came to house shoe tacks and small nails. Now, they sit -- still full of shoe tacks: in his spare time, my grandfather used to mend people's shoes in his Mendip village-- in an alcove on our stairs.

As a postscript: I should say that my grandmother would have baulked at the use of puff pastry and not suet and as for the wine. Well...

Chicken for Kate.

K. is a little unsure about cooking chicken, so here is what I am going to show her in a little workshop a deux that her husband Giles has organised for her.

The ingredients that I have asked Kate to have ready:

1 large free range chicken

2 packs of chicken thighs, bone in -- assuming six in a pack.

The Roast chicken

There is plenty about this in my writing already, isn't there? Some further tips.

1. Make it a big free range chicken, organic if you choose but you'll have to pay the price. Note that freedom food isn't quite the same, so I urge you to do a little reaserch on labels and what these things actually mean. Your only guarantee, really, is that it explicitly says free range on the label. Or, of  course, if you saw the chicken. Now, I know I said big free range, but it doesn't necessarily have to be a fat one: a little scrawny chap may be very tasty and with plenty of flavour. Chickens may have slightly different builds or appetites, after all!

To begin cooking, bring the chicken to room temperature first and then cook it in a hot oven -- that's 200-- allowing 20 minutes for every 500g and then about 20 minutes more. In practice, you will probably cook most chicken for 1 and half hours. Your chicken is done when the juices run clear: test by inserting a skewer or sharp knife where the thickest part is -- where the side of the leg meets the breast. If you are in doubt, just use a meat thermometer and stick it in here and there -- including this thickest part.

It isn't essential, I suppose, but I cook my chickens upside down first. Which is to say, breast down. Turn it over after about 40 minutes. This is simply to allow the fat deposits, which are most plentiful in the back, to percolate down through the drier breast. So no stringy meat for you. Having said that, I don't mind a chicken I can get my teeth into. Never got the hots for capon for this reason. Don't get very excited about eating young lamb: rather chew on a hogget.

One last point. When the chicken comes out of the oven let it rest for ten minutes or so before carving it. That's to allow the meat to settle. If you go to straight away, lots of precious juices will escape: those would otherwise have been reabsorbed by the meat.

Variations:

1. For extra succour, put lots of garlic cloves, peeled or unpeeled, inside the cavity. Shove lots in the tin, too. I just pick them and eat them whole, skin and all. But you could squish that beautiful caramel-coloured garlic puree ont to your plate as you eat. You could also put half a lemon up the bottom of the chicken.

2.It can be nice to rub the chicken all over, inside and out, with olive oil (or a bland flavourless oil), sea salt and black pepper.

3. You might like to try making a spice paste and rubbing it into the chicken. Go Middle Eastern by trying this with sumac powder, salt and pepper; go Indian by doing the same with a mixture of cumin, coriander and, if yoiu like it, fennel. All of these ground or as powder. Or what about a mix of chilli flakes and Chinese five spice powder? Skin the chicken or not, as you please.

The chicken thighs: two suggestions.

1. Just chuck them in a roasting dish with thumbnail-sized pieces of peeled ginger root and lots of unpeeled garlic cloves. Add a few glugs of Kikoman soy sauce and a big fat pinch of red chilli flakes. Toss this around and put it in a hot oven for about 45 minutes.

OR

2. Do the same, but do not add the soy sauce, adding instead tablespoons of cumin and coriander powder, a fat pinch of asafoetida and a tablespon of nigella (otherwise known as kalonji and sometimes onion seed: both this and the asafoetida are easy to get in Asian markets or try the online supplier www.spicesofindia.com

3. Finally, using more South East Asian spices, keep the garlic and the ginger but tuck in four or five lime leaves,  a bashed and chopped up stalk of lemon grass, the juice of half a lemon and a good couple of glugs of Thai fish sauce. A teaspoon of sugar would be good to balance that addictive Thai mixture of sweet, sour, hot and salty.

The leftovers

1. That roast chicken would do a roast chicken dinner --all the trimmings or just roast potatoes and the juices! keep using the meat for a couple of days in a pilaf, a salad, soup, sandwiches.....Then make a rich stock by covering the carcass with water, add a few peppercorns, a stick of celery and a little onion, bring to the boil ann the simmer for slowly for about 1and a half hours. Season, strain and eat as a lovely broth with some tiny pasta, or freeze it and use in umpteen recipes or for soup.

2. Any leftover chicken thighs would make superlative sandwiches, if you pull the meat from the bones.

And for all these recipes, keep the juices and fat and use to roast some potatoes or winter root vegetables later in the week.

Feeling mnore confident?

xxx