Category: Food & Cooking

The World Jam Festival

I bet you didn’t know this. Yesterday, the World Jam Festival was held for the fifth time. It was at its new home, Newby Hall in Yorkshire. Somehow, about a month ago, I heard about it. I thought I had nothing to lose by entering. Sure, I had to pay a modest amount to do so, but set that against free entry yesterday to Newby Hall and Gardens for me, and half price entry for Malcolm.

So a couple of weeks ago I entered pots in two categories: Homegrown or Foraged Jam (I entered foraged Mirabelle Jam); and Marmalade (I entered Seville Orange Marmalade). And pretty much forgot about it.

Until yesterday. Because that was the day that the entries would be displayed to a waiting world, and the winners announced. I knew I wasn’t in the running and felt quite relaxed about it all. Just a bit of fun.

When we arrived, I soon got chatting to one of the organisers. There were entries from Australia (yes, really!), the Netherlands, Poland and a few other countries. And far from English entries coming strictly from North Yorkshire, I spotted pots from Somerset, Sussex, East Anglia and all points north. AND an entry from the dreadful Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm (small producers were encouraged to enter). It got nowhere, because it was visibly mouldy. Very mouldy indeed. As was instantly apparent.

There’s my failed Mirabelle Jam, in the centre.

We peered about, looking at all the entries in turn. My jam was not a lucky winner. No surprise there. But look! There among the winning marmalades was mine! I had won … second prize!

We went and had a stroll round the gardens, to calm down. They’re past their best at the fag-end of the season, but it was pleasant anyway, especially the apple orchard where we ended up.

And that was that. For my prize, I had a splendid bouquet of roses (I’m rather hoping none of those Australians won: their flowers could have arrived worse for wear. Oh, wait. Interflora.

Will you enter next year? Please do!

P.S. We’re off for a break till mid month. I have a post scheduled, but beyond that, no blogging from me apart from the odd Virtual Postcard. And I may be slow in responding to comments.

P.P.S. The automatic tagging suggestions I got today, courtesy of AI, were: food; baking; chocolate; cookies; pizza.’

Au Cas Où

I mentioned the other day our habit of having with us at all times an au cas où bag, foraging for the use of. At this time of year, this bag is a completely necessary accessory. Here’s my haul from last Thursday.

Here we are. Crab apples; cooking apples; windfall pears; red mirabelles. These have become crab apple and chilli jelly; cooked down with previously foraged then frozen blackberries; scrumped; mirabelle frangipane with a good number of them, then … not sure yet. We’ve made quite enough mirabelle jam, thank you.

This is the time of year for mushrooming, but we haven’t been lucky yet. Apart from the obvious field mushrooms (no pictures!) I’m only confident to look for football sized puffballs (which make, apart from other dishes, excellent steak substitutes) …

… and shaggy inkcaps, which need to come home quickly before they deliquesce into inky pools.

Here are some of the other regular finds: crab apples in the feature photo; mirabelles both yellow and red; blackberries; apples of all kinds.

Here’s some of the kitchen activity: Weighing, then straining the juices from simmered-down fruits.

… and some of the results:

In this case, the only photo I had to hand was of jars of marmalade (I even forage Seville oranges when we’re in Spain in winter), and gin which I have made in Seville orange, mulberry, sloe, and mirabelle varieties at different times.

Foraging is some of the best fun to be had in autumn. Just don’t forget your au cas où bag.

For Leanne’s Monochrome Madness.

India Friday: Moving on to Cicada Kabini

I rather enjoyed re-visiting India via my blog the other week. So I went and dug out the diary I faithfully kept. The events it describes have never yet seen the light of day. For the first ten days I was with the group of people my ex-brother-in-law had put together, to explore aspects of rural Indian life, focussing on small producers working in traditional and organic ways. We had no internet access during that period.

I’ve decided to share my diary with you. This will take several Fridays. I’m pleased that I kept such a detailed record of a piece of personal history, and of a country I’d never visited. I wonder how dated this account would seem to the current traveller?

Moving on to Cicada Kabini

Saturday 17 th November.

Early to rise.  I’m on the water tower, where I’ve been watching the sun rise from 5.45 a.m. I even heard the whistling thrush.

By the way, they eat so well here, and nobody is overweight.

From 6.30 a.m.: coffee and tea, and bananas and fruit to ‘put you on’ if you need it.

10.00 a.m.: cooked breakfast.

1.00 p.m.: ‘light lunch’ (cooked)

5.30 p.m.: tea – masses of fruit and a few snacks – biscuits and savouries like Bombay mix.

9.00 p.m.: dinner: big cooked meal.

Breakfast and lunch is served to 40 – 50 people, dinner to the core ‘family’ and whoever is staying.  Unsurprisingly, there is a team of women cooking all day.

And then – what a morning! We left before breakfast of course, so we had that en route.  Parathas, roti, all kinds of puffed breads served with various dishes of vegetables.  Great stuff!

Then Prince, under instructions from Supi took us to a textile shop so I could choose several plain lunghis to be made up by a tailor in Mysore into salwar kameez.  Ch and C joined in the fun.

Then the journey!  Wow! Even 4 x 4s might find it a challenge in what passes for roads in the National Park.  We could perhaps have walked more smoothly.  But it was fun, even though we didn’t see all the wildlife we hoped for,  Two wild peacocks, spotted deer, two elephants – not wild.

Elephant spotted on the way to Kabini

Checking into Cicada Kabini was a rude culture shock: a sort of Centre Parcs for the Indian middle classes.  Staff all in Securicor type uniform, & individual chalets all around the stunningly beautiful River Kabini,  which looks like a lake  at this point, it is so wide.  But eco it isn’t.  Nescafe in all the rooms, jacuzzis and all the trimmings we had become unused to.

Outside our bungalow

The afternoon though brought with it a boat safari.  We nearly all went, with a few other guests, and we set off in the noisiest motor boat ever, frightening off any wildlife for miles.  But the bird life was stunning! From things we all knew about already, such as cormorants, to the gorgeous Brahminy kite (brilliant glossy chestnut apart from a pure white head, and five – FIVE – kingfishers, some of them Indian varieties.

Many of the birds roosted, hunted or nested in the skeletal dead trees in the water: lots of ‘Kodak moments’, as M would put it (on the whole, my camera wasn’t up to the job).

Not so many animals though. An elephant silhouette distantly glimpsed drinking on the shore, some wild boar, spotted deer, and positively no crocodiles, as virtually promised.  Coming home, a truly wonderful sunset.

Then dinner (the food is very good here) and an early night all round.  I decided, as did most of the others, not to do the Jeep safari early next morning, with a wake up call at 5.45….

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread & Voilà! Revisited

Here’s a post which I wrote fifteen years ago, when we lived in France. At the time, it pointed up the difference between bread-buying in England, where bread had too often become an industrial product, and the more home-spun approach we appreciated in our small French town. Now however, artisan bakers in England are two a penny. Their stuff is good, but when we want to frighten ourselves to death, we comment to eack other ‘What WOULD our mothers have said at handing over just shy of £5 for a loaf of bread?’ That’s was Malcolm’s dad’s entire weekly earnings. No wonder I’ve taken to making my own.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread

25th February 2010

How could they?  I mean, what ARE they playing at?  All last week, and most of this, the baker’s shop down the road has been closed.  Instead of rising at 2.00 a.m. to get busy making baguettes, flutes, ficelles, baguettes a l’ancienne, flutes tradition, pain noir, chocolatines, croissants and so on and so on, our bakers have chosen to lie in till – ooh, 7 o’clock perhaps – and then spend the day catching up with their families – the children are on half term.

It’s a family business, our baker’s shop.  M & Mme Fonquernie owned it, and now, although officially they’ve retired, they help out all the time. M. Fonquernie is the one who drives his little white van round the local villages which have no shops, delivering bread. Their two sons have now taken over the day-to-day baking.  One is responsible for all those loaves, while the other specialises in patisserie.  Their wives divide the work of running the shop between them with Mme Fonquernie Senior’s help.

Mme. Fonquernie presides over the shop on most days.

So our morning routine has been disrupted.  First thing each day, one of us usually walks down the road to get our favourite pain noir, hot and crisp still from the oven.  The other day, the baker forgot the salt.  The bread wasn’t half so nice, but I rather liked this very human error.  It proved that our loaves are still ‘artisanale’, rather than being churned out by some computer-assisted machine.  There’s generally someone in the shop to chat to, or to walk back along the street with, and so neither of us looks on getting the bread in as a chore.

We’re lucky, I suppose, that there are three bakers in town.  Last week, we went to the shops at Castellanes to the baker there.  No pain noir at this shop, so we chose their unbleached white.  The small one’s a slender baguette shape – an Ariegeoise (female) – but buy the larger butch version, and you must ask for an Ariegeois (male).

But then what happened?  A notice appeared in the shop: from Sunday, they too would be closed for a holiday. So for a few days this week, we have to patronise shop number three. Everybody moans ‘C’est pain industriel ça’.  It’s true. It comes all the way from Lavelanet, from a bakery which has three shops.  That’s mass production, and it shows.  Roll on Thursday, when the Fonquernie family re-opens its shop doors.

And here’s a short scene from the baker’s about 18 months later, exposing the use of the most useful word there is in French …

Voilà!

7th September 2011

Here’s what happened at the baker’s this morning.  Translations appear in brackets.

Me: Oh!  Isn’t the pain bio ready yet?

Madame: Voilà! (Nope.  Quite right)

Me: So if I call in after 9, you’ll have some?  Could you please save me a loaf?

Madame:  Voilà! (Yes, and yes).  Would you like to pay now, then it’ll be all done and dusted?

Me:  Voilà! (Makes sense.  I’ll do that)

By the way, I was all grottily dressed in my oldest paint-spattered, holes-in-the-knee-ready-to-face-a-morning’s-tiling gear.  This is Laroque after all: no shame in working clothes here.

Madame:  You’re looking very chic today, if I may say so.

Me:  Voilà!  (And don’t I know it).

Why bother to learn more French?  Voilà donc!

Only the photo of Mme Fonquernie is my own. The rest come courtesy of Unsplash, and are (reading from top to bottom) by Sergio Artze; Wesual and Markus Spiske.

Geometry at Espinaler

Here in Catalonia, the thing to do before a Sunday meal or when out meeting friends, is to visit a vermuteria, and sit down for a chat and a vermouth, negro o blanco. And if you’re on this part of the Maresme coast, you may very well choose to go to Espinaler in our next door town, Vilassar de Mar. It’s been part of the local scenery since 1896.

While it started as a simple bar, it’s gone on to bigger and better things: producing its own vermut; developing a piquant sauce, also called Espinaler that brings a little spice and je ne sais quoi to whatever you’re eating; preserving seafoods; and finally developing, in 2012, a  gourmet store-tavern-warehouse in Vilassar. That’s where Malcolm and I went today – to window-shop ahead of buying a few treats to take home with us. Here are a few of the things we spotted. Before of course sitting down for a vermut and a tapa or two.

You might notice they even have the odd item from England. I haven’t any photos from the appetising cheese and charcuterie counters, because – well – they weren’t very geometrically-packed products.

GeometricJanuary

Seven Shaggy Inkcaps

Out for a walk the other day without my camera, or even my phone, there, at the edge of the woods I spotted – a ring of shaggy inkcaps*. Some had ‘gone over’, but about seven were still young and begging to be picked for lunch. I hurried home with my bounty: inkcaps famously dequilesce into a horrid black inky mess if not cooked immediately.

I sauted a small onion in butter with garlic, added the chopped inkcaps, and – voilà – mushrooms on toast for our lunch. An unexpected treat.

* Coprinus Comatus: also known as Shaggy Mane or Lawyer’s Wig Mushroom.

For Becky’s Seven for September.

A Restorative Lunch

If you’re anything like me when you’re on holiday, buzzing with new sights, sounds, experiences – perhaps wrestling with the language – you need the break that a leisurely meal provides. It gives the chance to renew energy and to re-charge with the get-up-and-go needed for the rest of the day.

So let me take you to l’Albufera, near Valencia, home to the right kind of rice for paella. That’s a rice growing field – a little fallow in mid-winter – in the image above, and lunch in my all-important Square photo.

L’Albufera holds a special place in my heart, so tomorrow, for the last square of the month, I’ll take you there.

For Becky’s #SquaresRenew

A Happy Accident

I found some delicate pretty-in-pink forced rhubarb at the market the other day. Just the thing for a rhubarb cake.

I got my ingredients together: equal quantities of flour, ground almonds, butter and golden caster sugar (I cut down on this last, obviously). Then odds and ends like baking powder, additions of my own like ginger and cinnamon, and crushed walnuts as I had no flaked almonds. And of course the chopped rhubarb to go on top.

Then I mixed my ingredients together and popped them in the baking tin. It seemed a little smaller than I’d imagined, but never mind. Into the oven it went, looking good.

Just before it was due to come out, I noticed my scale pan …

Yes. There was the flour, with baking powder, ginger and cinnamon. Clearly, these ingredients had not been included in my cake.

Hmm. Nothing for it but to bash on and hope for the best.

Reader, it was delicious. Next time I use this recipe – and it’s a keeper – it still won’t have flour or baking powder. Though I might allow the spices in.