Ginger Tablet

Elderberry Cordial and Probable Sloe Gin and Other Lessons I Have Learned

2009-10-14T14:19:42+01:00

1. Spiders really like to live on elderberry clusters. But they can be easily removed from your harvest by just throwing them and their sprig right out the window. Of course they'll survive the fall. Plus this way, you may have elders in your garden next year.

2. Maneuvering litres of hot boiled elderberry juice is a tricky activity. If you need to strain it from one massive pot to another container wait until you have a friend around who can offer a hand or yell at you when you start to spill. I did this alone. I am still finding purple drops on many surfaces of my kitchen.

3. It is difficult to know exactly what to do with four litres of elderberry cordial(made by reducing the boiled juice with 2 kilos of sugar and flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg). Possibly pour it on ice cream, use it to poach pears, add a splash to white wine or a glug to mulled wine. Definitely add it to cloudy apple juice. Not only will it make the drink purple, it will make it taste just like pressed apple cider. If you live in a place where this is commonly purchased, then that's wonderful for you. If you live in Scotland, then this is your ticket. This is what my past four autumns have been missing. Probably nice warm as well.

4. Sloes grow on the banks of Loch Lomond, close to campsites!

5. If you buy 4 litres of gin and a bag of sugar on a Tuesday morning when you're off work, the cashier will not bat a single lash. Glasgow is brilliant.

6. Sloes are not the only fruit.After you freeze the sloes overnight and then spend a hour or so pricking them and dropping them into gin and topping everything with about 500 grams of sugar. You may do some internet research that will convince you that you have instead picked plums. Tiny ones that look just like sloes. In fact, sloes are a kind of ancient plum and sometimes it's really hard to tell the difference. You can obsess about this for hours! In the end you can decide that wild plum gin doesn't sound too bad either. Meh.

7. "Sloe" gin changes colour over night! And glass demijohns are so cute.

8. The apple butter recipes that pop up first in a search do not yield anything like the stuff you grew up with. There should not be vinegar, so much sugar or any spices. Just a velvety, sugar assault. The vinegar taste doesn't go away; the sugar makes it jammy. You'll end up with 1.5 jars of disappointment.

9. If you wash out pickled onion jars and boil them for, like a good 15 minutes, and then wash them out again, they will still sort of smell like pickled onion. It imbues the glass. This does not improve the already vinegary and weird apple butter.

11. The Amish/Mennonites should have settled in Glasgow. There's no apple butter and I can't make it right and I wish I could just buy it. Plus *all* of the dolls here have faces.

10. Masterchef: The Professionals makes baked desserts very, very appealing.

11. Tarte Tatin is really hardly any more work at all that an apple crumble (the easiest dessert). Given the amount of butter and sugar involved, this is a devastatingly dangerous realisation.

12. It might not be worth it to slow roast a pineapple with caramel and rum. It's pretty good, but possibly not better than regular pineapple served on ice cream with a bit of rum splashed on top. The debate rages.

13. If you are making a rum caramel for a slow roasted pineapple and after you pour the caramel over the fruit, you scrap the bottom of the pan with a spoon to get the very sticky golden bits, you end up with a rum-flavoured caramel pop, a delicious treat that's possibly better than the end result and that you do not need to advertise to your dining companions. It can be your little secret.

14. Pork and Lamb Shoulders!This has been one of the most valuable lessons I have learned this year. Tasty, tasty shoulder. Meat that loves you right back. The lamb can be thrown in a pot with an inexact amount of garlic, olive oil and rosemary. While it should feed you for days, it will be so delicious, you'll just kind of gorge yourself and there will be barely enough left for a snack. It is therefore another dangerous realisation. For the pork, you can make a spicy rub and slow cook it for three hours or so with a bit of water. You can then eat it in fajitas, throw it into pea soup, or make a vegetable gravy sauce, add the leftover meat as well as some sausages (just to feed your impromptu guests). Serve it on mashed potatoes with a side of cabbage with bacon. You will then not care that the days are alarmingly short and your winter coat is starting to seem like a sensible option. Whatever. Pigs and Lambs have shoulders. And you can eat them.

A Large Le Creuset Pot

2009-09-23T06:49:04+01:00

I squealed like a small child or a tiny pig as I tore into the weighty birthday package from my parents:

"Jason! This means we never have to get married!"

And later, quietly cradling it's huge, huge cherry red girth:

"This pot is our Sunday nights from now on."

And so it will. And so it has.

Greengage and Damson Jam

2009-08-22T18:26:53+01:00

The damsons were the size of rotund grapes. So small, they certainly didn't look like plums. And when you bit into them, there was a pucker and a wince. Their bright yellow flesh sour and bitter.

Contrary to the signals your brain was firing, the atomic pulp of the greengages was nothing but sweetness. Already jammy before it went in the pot.

There is nothing to making these jams. I bought approximately a pound and a half (600 g) of each kind and stood at the counter, slowly pitting them. First the damsons went in the copper pot with a tiny bit of water and a good amount of sugar. As the juices released and the fruit started to bubble slowly, more sugar was added to taste. Judged by dipping a small parade of teaspoons in the hot syrup until the sweetness balanced out the tart bitterness of the fruit. After adding almost as much sugar as fruit, I let the jam simmer until it clung to the spoon, no longer threatening to slip off.

Old jars were sterilised in boiling water and lined up on a clean tea towel and I decanted the royal purple jam, trying to be careful, trying not to spill, almost succeeding. The colour is surprising. With their yellow interiors you never suspect that the resulting jam will be such a uniform and profound hue.

Lids go on, and the jars are turned upside down to create a seal.

And then the procedure repeats for the greengages, but as they are already quite sweet, just a fraction of the sugar is required. Sugar is surreptitiously bulky and adding less gives a smalled yield and a runnier texture. Once again it cooks slowly until the plums lose their shape and become a puddle of thick, sticky liquid. Once again, the hot green jam is carefully spooned into jars.

Despite these rituals, I have no faith in my processes. So I make a small amount and keep it all in the fridge.

It doesn't matter. Jam is an embellishment. There is none of the pressure of dinner, the expectations of a cake. If, somehow, it doesn't work, no one will notice. It won't be missed. If it does, it's an unexpected joy. A tiny gift.

Samphire and Crab Linguine

2009-08-11T22:30:09+01:00

We've spent the last two weekends running away, first to the east coast and then to the west, staying just one night each time, getting covered in sand and midgie bites and learning the peculiarities of our new tent. These were not culinary journeys, although there were some delicious moments. Like the roasted sausage and pepper sandwiches I made over the campfire with the help of my trusty stick. See the raw materials below:

Waking up far earlier than necessary the next morning, I went for a walk through my hangover and down the length of the estuary on the way to the beach. The tide was low, the river just skimming over the sand and trickling down to the sea, leaving a vast, flat, sandy moonscape stretched out until the grasses and dunes in the distance. It's the expanse behind the sausages in the picture above. You can't tell that the sea lies beyond, but it does, the brave among us swam in it later on. In the estuary, though, was the second delicious treat. The sole vegetation; colonies of micro cacti, hundreds of small samphire plants breaking up the endless sand. I grabbed a few sprigs on my way back to the tents.

Samphire is often called sea asparagus, and I suppose that's apt in some ways. It's long and green, for example. But I belong to the tiny minority that finds asparagus terribly dull. So boring. It tastes like stringy grass unless it is thoroughly roasted with strong aromatics. Now and then I'll buy some out of an obscure sense of duty and add them to a risotto or pasta, but it's just wasted on me.

And that's absolutely fine as no one ever forces me to eat asparagus anymore. But I resent the association with samphire. They do not taste the same. First of all, samphire absorbs all of the salt in its environment, making it an already seasoned vegetable. A truly rare beast. As the levels of salinity are just shy of aggressive, you don't need very much in any dish. Also, it's a member of the succulent family. It's closer to aloe than asparagus. So it has a pleasantly satisfying cruchy/snapping/jelly texture. And its flavour, underneath the saltiness, is subtly floral and alien, almost peppery. It's a green curiosity. Something that would be difficult to grow bored of and it makes asparagus seem pretty darn plain.

Samphire grows in exactly the kind of environment in which I found it; river beds near the sea. The best way to collect is by cutting a few sprigs off and leaving the base intact. You can eat it raw, or lightly cooked alongside of fish and seafood. It would probably be nice with eggs or in a seaweed salad as well. I can't imagine it would hold up to long cooking times, but perhaps I'm underestimating it. We had it first panfried with butter, a fat piece of salmon on top and mashed potatoes underneath. Next I made this pasta and it was delicious. How could roasted tomatoes, cream and crab not be? If you haven't been to the seaside recently, you could easily make it without the samphire. You could even throw some asparagus in if it was in season and you were a pedestrian sicko.

Roasted Tomato, Samphire and Crab Linguine

Given the amounts, this probably should feed 3-4, but we are greedy and it just fed two of us.

Ingredients

1 kilo cherry tomatoes
garlic
a handful of crab meat (I used a tin and it was just fine)
another handful of chopped samphire (well rinsed)
olive oil, salt and pepper
cream
chopped parsley
something spicy: pepper sauce, chili flakes
linguine, enough for 2-3 people

Method

Dump the cherry tomatoes on a roasting pan with olive oil, salt and pepper and roast on a high heat, as high as your oven will go, for about 20 minutes.
Once they are juicy and broken and just a little bit black, remove them from the oven and start boiling the water for your pasta. Cook the pasta following your normal procedures and rituals.
Dump the tomatoes in a pan with the garlic. Then add the crab meat and the samphire.
Pour in some cream. As much as you can get away with. Ok, not so much that it will dull the acidity of the tomatoes, but enough that it feels like a small luxury.
Add your spicy poison of choice and the parsley, toss with the drained pasta.

Not a Success but Not a Failure: Sour Cherry Cardamom Biscuits

2009-07-29T22:54:01+01:00

It all started when the shop in the basement of my office building started selling individual slices of McVitie's Genoa Cake. Those slices of yellow cake riddled with glace cherries and raisins, sent me straight back to the fake wood panel sliding door of my Grandma Mary's biscuit cupboard. Inside biscuits were kept wrapped up with parchment and elastic bands, nestled in tupperware and tins. This (mysterious) lack of original packaging meant that opening one of these boxes was always a surprise. And more often than not, I wanted them to contain Garibaldi biscuits. Although I definitely didn't call them that. I probably called them "the cookies with the raisins in them" not even realizing that they were currants. That's because I was an ignorant child of the colonies. I was not educated in the multitude of ways that dried fruit can be incorporated into biscuits and cakes, an impulse that is so, so British. My grandmother was never a great cooking enthusiast, but she was a keen baker and when her arthritis made that too difficult, she kept a very sound collection of very British biscuits. It was one of the ways she seemed to harken back to her early years in Scotland. A rejection of Fudgee-Os and love of candied ginger and mixed peel.

I'm not sure she ever actually had Genoa cake, but that's not the point. The cake was just a trigger for the Garibaldi biscuits, a treat that it more about texture and sound than anything else. They come in strips that you have to satisfyingly snap apart. The cookie itself is basically a matzoh with currants squashed in the middle that are guaranteed to get stuck in your teeth; a deliriously banal mix of crisp and chewy. Totally boring and totally one of my favourites. Wikipedia says that they were named after and Italian general who sat on an eccles cake on an official trip to Wales. Sounds good. Let's believe them.

I wanted to make them, but to tart them up a bit with dried sour cherries instead of currants and a bit of cardamom in the dough. Grandma would not have approved; but we're going to have to differ here. The problem came in finding a base recipe to have my way with. No one wants to make Garibaldi biscuits at home because you can buy them in the shops for 74p. Accordingly, there aren't very many recipes for Garibaldi biscuits online, but I found one from Marcus Wareing and I wanted it to work. As he is reputable and unbelievably cocky on tv, I thought he would provide me with the answer. Not so much. The first annoying thing about this recipe is that all measurements are by weight. That's fine for flour, butter and sugar, but irritating when it comes to egg whites. The ratios also seemed to be a bit funny. Originally, you were supposed to use 200 g of currants. That's half a pound and twice as much as any other ingredient. I used less than half that amount of fruit and it was gloriously ample. Also, after mixing the butter, flour and sugar, my dough was quite soft and turned almost to batter with the addition of an egg white. I stopped at one egg and added more flour, but the consistency was very different from the description in the recipe.

I knew when I was making the dough that it wouldn't make a Garibaldi biscuit, not the crisp and pale treat that i wanted. It was too enriched, too buttery. It was more like a shortbread. But since the dough was made, it would have been stupid not to proceed. Besides, Once the cherries were swaddled into the soft dough and everything was rolled smooth, cut, pricked and baked, the biscuits were delicious. No, they were not Garibaldis. There was way too much crumble and not enough of a cracker crunch. But the flavour combination was lovely and there's something about a long, thin cookie that's perfect with tea. Lots of dunking potential.

It's actually almost time for an evening cup of tea now. Off to the pantry to raid one of my tins...

Cherry Cardamom Not-Garibaldi Biscuits

Adapted from Marcus Wareing

Makes approximately 6-7 long thin biscuits

Ingredients

100g butter

100g icing sugar

130g flour

1 separated egg

75g chopped dried sour cherries

3-4 pods cardamom, seeds removed from pods and crushed (I used the butt of my knife)

Method

1) Melt the butter in a large bowl

2) Add the flour and sugar and mix until smooth. Add one egg white and save the yolk.

3) Fold in the chopped cherries and the ground cardamom and form the dough into a ball.

4) Chill in the fridge for an hour and preheat your oven to 350/180.

5) Roll out the dough on a floured surface, shaping it into a rectangle. Cut the dough in strips and then brush with the reserved egg yolk and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

6) Bake for about 10 minutes until golden.

Warm Green Dinner and Gooseberry Crumble

2009-07-12T16:51:38+01:00

Without wanting to jinx anything, it looks like Glasgow might be the recipient of a summer this year. (knock, knock, knock on wood) Sure it won't be a endless string of crystal clear skies and steamy afternoons, but so far we've definitely seen the sun, our muscles relaxing into the rising heat.

Still these tentative summer days don't demand the same kind of food that's compulsory in a hotter climate; grilled meats and fresh salads, cold noodles and spicy chilies, endless fruit, infinite ice cubes. It's just not that warm. And even when it is, the day could turn back to cool and grey in a second. Just like it did yesterday. The morning and afternoon were brilliantly warm and sunny, enough to require extra water on our bike ride and to punish me for not wearing sunscreen with an attractive red burn across my back. But although we arrived home sweaty and hot, within an hour the sky had clouded over, the wind picked up and cardigans were once again being drawn across our shoulders.

This specific kind of summer demands its own kind of meal. One that makes use of all of the produce bursting forth, while still being comforting on a blustery evening. And the foods that seem to fit are the green ones. Beautiful green vegetables, gently cooked. And veiny green gooseberries, tart and hairy; how could you not want to bring them home?

The menu last night was whole steamed artichokes (bottom and tops chopped off, placed in a steamer for about 45 minutes over lemon water), served with a dipping sauce of melted butter, mustard and white wine vinegar. Next was an almost panzanella: leeks, fresh peas, yellow courgette, cherry tomatoes sauteed in butter and loads of chopped parsley, raw fennel added in right at the end. This was ladled into bowls and topped with chunky croutons, dripping in melted gruyere.

Then a gooseberry and elderflower crumble. This combination of hedgerow treats is a new one for me, but its so perfect for the season that I'm making it a mandatory summer flavour from now on. Sour, sweet and redolent of blossoms, this taste takes you outside into fields and meadows. This crumble is as easy as any other. Gooseberries are topped and tailed (a bit tedious, admittedly), placed in a dish, sprinkled with sugar and a swig of elderflower cordial. Then the topping. The crumbles of the UK tend to be pale and dusty, using a good deal of flour. I just don't think this is right. While I improvise my topping every time, I think it should be dark and chunky, using less flour, more sugar and a bunch of oats. Chopped nuts and cinnamon are encouraged. My method is to melt roughly 50g of butter and then mix in brown sugar until most of the butter is absorbed, next adding flour until the mixture isn't shiny anymore and enough oats that everything gets lumpy and well, crumbly. Spices and anything else can be added at this stage. I know it sounds vague, but it's a hard dessert to mess up. That's why they're always making it on Masterchef. Once the topping is on the fruit, it just goes in the oven at 350/180 for about 40 minutes.

And all of this was just right. Green and vibrant enough to make us feel July, warm and filling enough to keep out the wind.

Canada Day: Humidity and Maplemoon Ale

2009-07-02T20:29:09+01:00

Happy Belated Canada Day!

Admittedly I didn't do a lot to mark it, but Canada was with me yesterday. All hot, muggy day. As I remembered what it was like to sweat and pray for a thunderstorm to clear the air, just like during the long Canadian summers of my misspent youth, I missed cottages and lakes and popsicles and fans and air conditioning.

I did drink this beer though. Maplemoon is a dark ale brewed in Manchester by Joseph Holt with a "glimmer of" real Canadian maple syrup. The verdict was: pretty much a winter drink. The sweetness from the syrup tasted more like treacle or molasses and made me want to eat spice cake and pork belly. That's perfect for Glasgow's climate almost every other day of the year, but it just wasn't right yesterday. I needed a 50, or a properly mixed cocktail. You know, things you can get in Canada.

Garish Doily and a Virol Vase

2009-06-29T03:03:00+01:00

Now that I'm back on my feet, I'm back in the charity shops looking for more plates.

Yesterday I picked up this bright little doily for 50p. It's kind of hideous and crochet isn't really my thing, but it reminded my of my great aunt Lydia and I couldn't resist. Lydia was, from all accounts, a lightning bolt of a woman who in addition to running businesses and speaking 1.7 million languages was a demon with any kind of fabric, thread and yarn. I only met her once and she was very old and suffering with dementia, but I still remember the encounter. And I really remember her living room. Every single surface was covered with a ridiculously insane crocheted doily all in bright acidic colours and undulating, frilly three-dimensional patterns. Loads of spider plants as well to complete the look. When I saw this doily sitting in a pile of its bright brethren, I thought that maybe our flat needed just a tiny touch of Lydia. Although it's nothing compared to her creations.

The vase is an old Virol jar, a vitamin/yeast-extract supplement. A great shape and a perfect size for a few sprigs combined with a slightly creepy label. It's also the first thing I bought with J at a charity shop, long ago before we shacked up. Now, after living together for almost a year, we own many many many things together. Many many many. Thankfully we're about to extend the lease by another 12 months so I can pretend that we'll never need to move all of our junk for a few more months.

Arbroath Smokies

2009-06-26T20:37:33+01:00

A couple of weeks ago my friend came to visit from Arbroath, a town famous for its twinned, brown smoked haddock. These fish are tied in pairs and then hot smoked over oak or beech chips in small batches. They've been granted Protected Geographical Indication or PGI, so you can't smoke some haddock in your garden in Pollockshields and try to pass them off as the real thing. Or, I guess you could try, but it wouldn't be right.

I had never tried them before, and they were just incredible. I normally eat more commercially produced smoked fish so the flavour of the wood coming through the flesh was a miracle. You can't replicate that on a large scale. After splitting them open and removing all of the aggressive little bones, I fried them in a bit of butter. Served with boiled new potatoes and peas, this was one of the easiest and most delicious meals we had and nothing has been better than "easy and delicious" this past month.

Hospital Food in Glasgow

2009-06-16T23:50:13+01:00

So I was in the hospital for four days. Some of that time I was too drugged to eat, but I still had a few opportunities to sample the cuisine on offer. As I didn't bring a camera with me, I've made some illustrations to show you what I had:

Basically the food comprised of a heap of parboiled rice with a generous ladle of mystery meat poured over top. Lunch was a lamb curry, dinner a chili. Obviously.

Some thoughts:

- Worse than airplane food. Way, way worse.

- Although the tray had many compartments promising side dishes and dessert, they were always empty. I filled the gaps myself with my cup of tea and my painkillers. Pretty pink ones! I probably would not have eaten the side dishes or puddings, but boy did I want the option.

- No fruit or vegetables. Ok, one day I got some green beans and I think there was an apple somewhere, but it would have taken me a full week to get my five-a-day. This can't be good.

- At some point it occurred to me that there must be a dietitian on staff at the hospital. That someone must oversee this on some level and approve it. At least approve the catering company (who also took care of the restaurant and the shop - equally grim places). How does that person sleep? Are the decisions based solely on finances? I read a policy document recently that addressed the food situation in Glasgow hospitals and the need to completely overhaul everything, so I know that people know this isn't ok, but how did it get this bad?

- Breakfast was a white roll with butter and jam and a bowl of cornflakes. I felt fine about this. If you tell yourself it's "continental" it tastes more sophisticated.

Now, to be fair, we had choices in what we ate. There were always three or four different kinds of strange meat and one vegetarian option. I went with the meat because I didn't believe that their "egg and cheese souffle" would lift my spirits or make my taste buds dance a hot, hot dance of euphoria. And maybe had I required a diet low in sodium and saturated fat, something would have been arranged. I'm pretty sure they accommodated religious dietary requirements.

But really, while the unhealthy food bothered me in principle, in practice I was totally sorted. Not only was my appetite not that great (it's like the only time in my life where I took a bite of a chocolate and felt satisfied. Like "oooh, half a truffle, I'm soooo stuffed, I couldn't even have another lick"), but I also had J bringing me some pre-planned snacks and my lovely friends bringing me loads of treats. So I could genuinely approach the food with eager car-crash curiosity as I wasn't dependent on it for sustenance.

AND THE NURSES WERE ANGELS. AND EVERYTHING WAS REALLY CLEAN AND BRIGHT AND AIRY AND NOT OVERCROWDED AND I DIDN'T GET A SUPERBUG AND IT WASN'T REALLY THAT BAD AT ALL. Honestly, those nurses. So incredible and kind and patient. Like rescued me when I fainted in the shower and I had to pull the emergence cord because I couldn't move (I was sitting on one of those shower benches, just like a grandma, so didn't fall and drown. Phew). And the nurse totally came and revived me and didn't make me feel like a dick, and you think, of course she wouldn't make you feel like a dick in that situation, but think about how ridiculous I must have looked and how she must have to do this kind of thing all the time and how great it is that she didn't laugh and just mustered up caring. Yay NHS!

Anyway, this "food" is all behind me now. I've been back home for about a week and a half now and it's pretty much a land of milk and honey and ambrosia and nectar. I'm well on the road to recovery. I can totally eat a whole piece of chocolate now. It's important to get your strength back up.