Miss Foodwise | Celebrating British food and culture

About my work: Hemelse soepen, the Magic soup book in Dutch // and I'm giving away a copy!

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 04 Oct 2015 13:25:00 +0000

The Dutch version of the book MAGIC SOUP I photographed last year has been published! And... the Belgian publisher Luster has kindly given me a nice parcel to give away to one of you lovely lot!
Just leave a comment below and tell me what your all time favourite soup is! The winner will be pulled out of a funny hat!

Hemelse Soepen is available in The Netherlands and Belgium in Dutch and other than a different cover and language, the book is completely the same as the English version. Full of wholesome and flavoursome soups which are not reduced to a starter but are more the star of the meal.

Over a period of 3 weeks during a hot summer a year ago in London, I photographed 'Magic Soup'. Magic Soup is written by Ottolenghi's former head chef Nicole Pisani and author Kate Adams. The two ladies have come up with a fun and nutritious set of soup recipes for all different occasions, some are to impress your guests with, some will give you strength and will feel like an immense hug when you're feeling unwell, some look dainty, others look robust and down to earth. There is a soup for everyone in this book. I might be biased but I think this book is great and it places soups back on a higher shelve.

Not only does the book tell you how to make a good stock, it teaches you how to make your own Kimchi, scallop ceviche and cured salmon. Exciting much? Soups range from a fertility soup, pickled soup, nettle soup with flowers, beetroot and burrata, Ramen, Miso to a good old watercress soup with crab toasts. I tasted most of these dishes during our delicious lunches, they are good.

The giveaway closes 15th of october! To win, just leave a comment below and tell me about your all time favourite soup! The winner will be notified on this page so check back to contact me with your address so the book can be sent to you. The book comes with a wooden spoon, an orange tea towel - seen in the picture - and two packs of spices! Please note the book I'm giving away is in Dutch not in English.

Disclaimer // This is in no way sponsored content.
Please note the book I'm giving away is in Dutch not in English. Giveaway only open to people from Holland and Belgium (because book is Dutch)
Regula

The perfect scone is a joyeus thing

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 13:52:00 +0000

While I am wondering where summing is hiding, and rain is dripping down on my evergreen garden, it feels like the perfect time to start baking scones for tea. How else will you lock out the dreariness that comes with the looming end of joyeus long days, summer dresses and dainty shoes. There has to be tea, and something to go with it.

Tea was introduced to England by Catherine of Braganza, the Portuguese wife of Charles II, in the mid 1600s. Her dowry included a chest of tea.

It isn't certain when exactly the afternoon tea ritual was introduced. The most popular tale is that the 7th Duchess of Bedford had invented it in the 1840’s to fight a ‘sinking feeling’ during the late afternoon. Knowing that in the 18th century people had to wait for dinner until eight o’ clock after having breakfast, I would have had many sinking feelings in the afternoon as well.

The Duchess would have had a tray with tea, bread and butter in her room in the afternoon and soon she started to invite friends to have tea and refreshments with her as well.

By the 1880’s it became a social event and soon the etiquette surrounding a proper teatime occasion was born.

There should be fresh water in the teapot at all times, and loose-leaf tea is believed to be best. The tea caddy should always be placed closest to the host to show that she or he is in charge. On the tea tray should be the teapot, a sugar bowl with sugar tongs or a spoon if cubes aren't used, a milk jug, a tea strainer, a bowl for the used tea leaves, a dish with lemon wedges, a lemon fork and a pitcher of hot water to dilute the tea if a guest would require it. On the tea table: teacups and saucers, forks and spoons, small cake plates, napkins - preferably linen. A plate filled with sandwiches, warm scones and small cakes. A pot of the best jam, double cream or clotted cream each with a spoon.

Then there's that other thing, 'the cream or jam first' debate, that Devon and Cornwall have been fighting over for decades. I guess it is no longer about what's proper but how one likes his scone. I like to break my scone in pieces bit by bit, then I spread on a layer of jam (and when that jam is home-made raspberry jam it can be some kind of heaven) then spoon on a generous dollop of clotted cream.

I believe a scone shouldn't be too sweet, that way you can generously spread it with cream and jam without feeling too guilty or going into a sugar coma after 1 scone.

The secret to the best risen scone is not to overwork the dough and not to turn the cutter while cutting out your scones.

This is my perfect scone recipe, I like them rough instead of soft, with a crumbly outside and a soft inside. Just like I remember my first scone and the scones I enjoy most at my favourite tea-room.

Makes 10-12 scones

450g self raising flour

150 g unsalted butter - room temperature

40 g sugar

2 medium eggs, beaten

a tiny pinch of salt

6-8 tablespoons of milk

1 egg, for egg washing

Preheat the oven to 220°C/425°F/gas mark 7

Line two baking trays with baking parchment.

1. Put the flour into a bowl and add the butter and rub it in until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

2. Stir in the sugar.

3. Add the egg and gradually add the milk stirring it in until you have a soft, slightly sticky dough.

4. Turn the dough out on to a generously floured working surface and gently knead it for a minute until it ceases to be sticky but still soft.

5. Now flatten it to a thickness of 2cm. It is better to do this with your hands as opposed to a rolling pin, this will help the scones rise better.

6. Use a 5cm (or use a larger one for larger scones) cookie cutter to stamp out the scones by pushing it straight down into the dough without turning it, then lift it straight out. This will provide a better and more even rise as well.

7. Push the leftover dough together and knead lightly, add currants if you like and flatten again and cut out more scones.

8. Arrange the scones on your prepared baking tray and brush the tops with beaten egg.

9. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes in the middle of your oven until risen and golden.

10. When ready transfer to a wire rack to cool. When cooled, cover them with a tea towel to keep them nice and moist.

Serve warm, reheated in a warm oven, or cold, with clotted cream or whipped double cream and the best raspberry jam you can find or freshly crushed raspberries ...

You can freeze scones perfectly, just defrost the evening before in the fridge and warm as suggested above before serving.

Part of this article first appeared on the Denby UK Blog 10/08/15

Enjoy!

You might also like

Cornish splits

A perfectly simple white loaf

Hot Cross Buns

How free range is your bacon?

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 10:07:00 +0000

kisses on the free range fields

It came as a bit of a surprise to me that less than 3% of the pork in the UK is actually truly 'free range'. You think if you choose for the 'freedom foods' or 'red tractor' label, you're sorted, but no, that doesn't mean your bacon is free range at all.
To learn more, I ventured out to sunny Suffolk to meet up with second generation pig farmer Alastair Butler on their family farm Blythburgh Free Range Pork.
As it turnes out, a lot of the pork we think to be free-range, has actually not had a better life than a pig in an intensive farm. We assume when we spot the label 'outdoor bred' or 'outdoor reared' that it is free-range, only it isn't.

First we have to understand how pig farming works.
There are two stages or herds, the 'breeding herd' - these are the sows and the newly born piglets, and the 'finishing herd' where the piglets go after they are weaned which is after about four weeks of age.
In the majority of the higher welfare farms, the high welfare terminology only applies to the first herd, the sows and their babies.

Outdoor bred and outdoor reared is NOT free range pork.
Outdoor bred: this means the breeding herd is kept free range but the after the piglets are weaned, they are moved indoors to the finishing herd where they are intensively reared. The pork from these pigs will not be any different from your average intensive farm.

Outdoor reared: here the breeding herd is free range too, and the finishing herd is kept in a semi outdoor arrangement of tents or huts. The pigs do not have free access to the outside, and are confined to these huts and tents at all times. Alastair refers to this arrangement as ‘intensively reared outdoors.’

Free range: here the breeding herd is free range, and the finishing herd is kept in an even larger free range space. This is the only true higher welfare farming system.

Blythburgh is one of the largest free range farms in the UK, this means that the pigs have an incredibly large amount of land to roam freely. The animals grow slower, which means the fat has been around the muscle for longer and therefore delivers more flavour.
But for Alastair the welfare of the pigs is what's most important, he steps into the field with his dad and nearly all of the pigs in the field come storming towards him to see what is going on and have a sniff on the farmers leg and shoes. "This is what it's all about" he says "pigs showing their natural behaviour which is that they are incredibly curious and clever animals".
I asked him if he is still smitten with the breeding herd after years of seeing piglets being born, and he tells me that he still loves everything about the breeding herd, but the fact that they have to keep the sows on a more confined paddock means he prefers to visit the finishing herd which looks to me like a gang of friends having a nice play in the sand rather than a bunch of farm animals being finished for slaughter.

The natural behaviour of a pig is to root in the soil and eat the mud, they love a good dust bath or wallow in the muddy pools and enjoy a good run. Imagine if you would place an animal like this on a concrete floor, with no light apart from a couple of industrial lights if they are lucky. No fresh air, nothing. Farrowing crates contain the sows, they are so tight that they can not turn, they can not stand, they just have to lie there. Piglets are taken from these animals after birth, while pigs are known for being good mothers, imagine what the animal must be feeling. And that is what is important, we can't ignore that animals have feelings. Farm animals are no different from pets. It is important to take a stand against intensive farming, and eat less meat, but choose to buy high welfare meat.
Ask your butcher where the meat comes from, investigate by looking up the farms website to see that you are getting your money's worth in free range meat.

There is no room in this day and age for animal abuse, so find a free range source for your meat.

From farm to plate

The breeding herd

A happy mama and her babies fighting over the best teat

And suddenly another mama started farrowing, she covered her piglets in straw to keep warm

Alastair Butler and his piglets. I got to hold her too, she fell asleep on me.

A curious bunch - the finishing herd.

Didn't I say they love a good run?

And that they love to eat and root around the mud?

Are you looking at me? Well you're looking at us human!

Slaughtered and butchered by Gerard King.

The mark, so you know what you get.

The final stage - the table.

Thank you very much for inviting me to your family farm Alastair, and for the beautiful pulled pork lunch your mother made us. Thanks Gerard King from craft butcher Salter and King for a butchery demonstration to round up the day and the process from birth to slaughter. Good meat can't be taken for granted, it has to be respected.
Recipe for the roast coming soon.

My views are my own.

Cherry tart and prostitution

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Tue, 14 Jul 2015 16:24:00 +0000

When I was a little girl my parents and I used to travel around Hungary in the summer. I can still remember the warm climate, and the little dresses I wore, many of which I have in a shoe box upstairs. What I also remember is the Bed and Breakfast, back then called 'Zimmer frei' in Hungary, which was run by an old couple. The woman looked a lot like my aunt and the man I can't remember much. Their house was large for Hungary and by a main road, not far from a little restaurant by the river Danube where I always ate a very good omelette for supper.

Our time with the old couple was like staying with your grandparents, sure communication was complicated, they spoke a little German, so did my parents, and I as a four year old strangely enough spoke a good word of German too. They were loving people and love can be shown without the language barrier. Each day we entered our room, the old lady surprised us with a large stone bowl of the most plump cherries I have ever seen. As a child, and a picky eater, those cherries were some kind of heaven. Food I knew, and was so expensive at home that I could never really eat so many that my fingers would be stained in cherry juice.
And every day a bowl appeared, and every day we were greeted by the most loving smiles and gestures by these two wonderful people.

Two years after our last visit to the old couple's Zimmer Frei we decided to do a detour and stay with them for a couple of nights. I requested it especially because I was eager to see my Hungarian grandparents as they had become to be for me. My parents too had never encountered such kindness and were eager to stay there again too.

So we drove to the rather large Hungarian house and as we parked the car I ran towards the door where the old lady - she must have been in her early seventies - was sitting in her chair.
But while I was running towards her the first thing I noticed was the anxious look in her eyes, and then the dress that she wore. As before she always wore granny clothes, now she was wearing a black embroidered dress with a deep decollete and very large earrings.

Anxious as she was, but really happy to see us, she told my parents that she would love it if we would stay but that she was no longer a Zimmer Frei since her husband had died the year before.
I wondered what the young girls were doing there if she wasn't offering lodgings anymore, and somehow, while she was showing us to our room and I saw how the house had changed and lost all its granny appeal, I knew. I knew without without having the knowledge of years.
Heartbroken and realising that there might not be a bowl of cherries in our room each day, and hurt by the uncomfortable anxious look in my Hungarian grandma's eyes we said we'd go for dinner and then come back to decide if we would stay.

The granny had tears in her eyes, and I felt like she was holding on to the summers and the bowls of cherries as much as I was doing. But those times were gone. The light had gone out in the rather large Hungarian house. It was replaced by sorrow, regret, and a need for survival.

So we ate an omelette at the restaurant by the river, and my parents gave me the choice on whether to stay at the granny's house. Too young to understand what was happening at the house, but old enough to feel there was something wrong, I told them that I felt that it wasn't right for us to stay there.

So we drove back to the granny's house, and said our goodbyes, granny still trying to convince us we were so very welcome. But I was feeling so very sad. I could not understand what had happened and somehow I knew that by staying we would not only make her happy, we would also maker her very sad.

She had made her choice, and there would be no more bowls of cherries.

I hope she was at peace at the end of her life, so very long ago.

In her memory I have prepared this cherry tart, inspired by 18th century tarts, some of which you'll find in my upcoming book. It's a perfect tart to make when you have leftover sponge cake, that way you don't need to bake a cake especially. The tart has a pleasant texture, though not like the tarts you are probably used to. Let me know if you've tried it!

x R

Cherry tart with curstard and sponge cake

What you need

Shortcrust pastry

180 g white flour
100g cold butter
20 g icing sugar
tiny pinch salt
1 egg yolk
1 tbsp of cold water

Custard

250 ml cream
3 egg yolks
a blade of mace
a stick of cinnamon
1tbsp of raw cane sugar

Filling

Sponge cake, preferably stale
2 tbsp of brandy (optional)
a punnet of cherries
2 tbsp of unsalted butter - or bone marrow
22-24 sized pie pan or plate

Method

For the pastry

Take your butter and cut it into small pieces.

Put your flour into a food processor and add the butter and sugar.

Pulse for 8 seconds until your mixture has a bread crumb consistency.

To do this by hand, just use a blunt knife, cutting the knife through the butter and flour to work them together to a bread crumb consistency.

Add the water and egg yolk and pulse until you get big lumps, then turn out your pastry and knead briefly until smooth.

Now pack the pastry in cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Preheat your oven to 180-190C

Make the custard by bringing the cream to a gentle simmer with the sugar and spices. In a bowl beat the egg yolks, pour a small amount of warm cream into your egg yolks and whisk thoroughly. This prepares your yolks for the hot liquid and will prevent it from curdling. Now start adding the rest of the cream, whisking until it is all incorporated. Allow to cool, then strain out the spices.

Cut your stale sponge cake in small dice and drizzle over the brandy.

Blind bake your pastry case in the middle of your oven for 25 minutes, allow to cool.

Now arrange your cherries and cake into the tart casing, placing a piece of cake in between each cherry. You can stone your cherries, or not, I left the stones and stalks on this time, but you can remove them if you are going to serve children, the tart eats easier of course without the stones.

When your tast casing is filled with cherries and cake, arrange little knobs of butter randomly in between your cherries and cake.

Now carefully pour in your custard, making sure it is evenly spread.

Place the tart in the middle of your oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until nicely golden brown.

Dust with icing sugar, serve cold or lukewarm.

You might also enjoy these:

Kentish Cobnut and apple tart >

Tudor prune tarts >

Treacle tarts and Treacle miners
Cherry brandy >

Summer reading 2015

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 12 Jul 2015 11:35:00 +0000

I know, summer has started two weeks ago, but to be fair I have a valid excuse for being late with my 'summer reading' post... I needed to finish my own book!
Anyway we are in the editing and layout fase in English and Flemish so the book isn't completely finished yet, but it has been written and I have made all the photographs so that part is done.

The past months there were quite a few interesting books coming out, but I have chosen just four of them, because these are the ones I would buy or have bought. These are four different books, so I am confident that there will be a book for all of you in this list.

Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England
Swallow This, Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets
Homemade Memories
Mamushka

Exploring a new cuisine:
Mamushka by Olia Hercules
I was eagerly waiting to get my hands on this book because the author Olia and I have known each other for over 3 years now on instagram and I watched her going from chef to food stylist, and from food stylist to the Observers 'rising star'. Olia Hercules, who doesn't only have the most wicked name, is also a very warm and generous person. It shows in her book where she shares the food of Ukraine and beyond, teaching us about a cuisine that hasn't really been explored yet in books.
I can't wait to try the Ukrainian 'narcotics', and Tartar lamb turnovers. And the Poppy seed roll brings up memories of my childhood travels around the Czech republic and Hungary where this dish is also a favourite. The watermelon skin jam is just intriguing as are the fermented tomatoes. The Moldovan giant cheese twist calls for a theatrical way of stretching a super thin dough, but Olia assures us we can do it and tells us we should attempt it when in a playful mood.
Other than providing us with many new and exciting traditional soviet dishes to have a play with, we also catch a glimpse of her family as the book travels to Ukraine and visits her home turf. The photographer of this book Kris Kirkham captured the mood of Olia's life perfectly and adds to the storytelling as photography should do.

Why buy? It's a whole different and exciting cuisine to explore, and the book is aesthetically beautiful and more importantly, it's very real and not at all staged like so many books are these days.

Childhood nostalgia:
Homemade memories by Kate Doran
I don't know about you but when I saw the cover of this book I was sold. I have a weakness for Jaffa Cakes and as Kate, the author explains, the passion for many of these childhood favourites kinda cools when you look on the back of the pack and read about all the stuff they put in there.
But I'd never considered making my own Jaffa cakes, fearing it would be a right faff and wouldn't taste the same as the 'real deal' or rather the 'shop bought'.
Most of the recipes don't conjure up childhood memories for me as they are mostly British treats, but then the book reads like a childhood memory and Kate's short stories with each chapter and recipe surely add to the story of this book. You know I wish these were my childhood treats! What an array of gorgeous things. I can't wait to start baking from this book when I finally have some time to bake things that aren't related to my book anymore.

Why Buy? Firstly I would say Jaffa Cakes, but that's just me. The book is beautiful and I believe it would bring lots of joy to families with children and to grown up children too. We all need a Caterpillar cake or Jammie Dodgers in our life. And did I mention Battenberg cake? Oh yes that too.

The truth is out there:
Swallow This, Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets
by Joanna Blythman
I met Joanna Blythman two weeks ago on the Great Taste Award judging where we always meet, she asked me if I was enjoying her book. I said to her 'It's awful! I mean, not your writing, but it's just awful and it smacks me in the face'. Joanna smiled and understood what I was trying to say. 'Yes - she said - it is awful and you would probably have to put it down at times'. And she was right. Swallow This is a book which is really hard to swallow because in it Joanna goes undercover in the food industry and uncovers that even the most basic of products have been adulterated. Butter flavour, strawberry flavour, and vanilla that hasn't even a drop of the original in its ingredients list. And then there is the ludicrous way in which a basic frozen pizza is created, the base is made in x country and frozen, then shipped to x country for tomato sauce to be added and then another location adds vegetables and cheese. When your frozen pizza is ready and boxed, it can have travelled more than you have in two years time. Do we really want that? In a time when food miles are on every food conscious person's mind? What you are thinking when you picture processed food is only the tip of the mountain. The valley goes deep and dark and Joanna shows us the truth, and although we want to run and hide and never hear these awful stories again... We can't ignore what is in this book, and we have to think twice about buying that healthy looking fruit salad that has been sprayed to stay 'fresh' for days, or those Feta, with Glucono-Delta-Lactone which will never go off. Food has become science, and we're two seconds away from eating flavoured plastic and artificial meat. This book reads like a horror movie, but sadly this isn't fiction.
For an extract of the book published in The Guardian follow this link >

Why buy? Don't you want to know how you can avoid consuming adulterated food? Don't you want to know what is in your food? This book is an eye opener and goes much further than Michael Pollan has ever done.

Everything you ever wanted to know about the food in this period:
Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England by Peter Brears
Peter Brears' new book was highly anticipated by me for a while, it was due publication last year but came out in februari this year. If you just gaze upon this magnificent and especially huge tome of Brears you understand why the book was late. Brears spent ten years writing this book, so a few months later wasn't going to make a difference, except for those people like me constantly checking the Prospect books site to see if it has come out. Imagine my delight when Tom Jaine from Prospect emailed me to say it was finally available to buy. This is the follow-up to Brears' volume about food in the Middle Ages, a book I mentioned in my 'Best food books' list (find it here >). The period covered in this book is a time when new foods from the New World were starting to influence English food. The book starts with the reign of Henry VII and covers dining and practical arrangements and techniques in the kitchen and dining hall up until Charles I. If you are a geek like I am, this book is for you. The words in the book are illustrated with illustrations made by Brears himself and explain us the system of The Counting House to the Buttery and the Pantry.

Why Buy? If you want to learn about Tudor and Early Stuart cooking of course. And also if you are eager to reproduce recipes from this period. This book is an absolute delight and a bible full of knowledge about food of times gone by. Although for me this book makes excellent bedtime reading, it is a huge and heavy volume so make a cup of tea and enjoy it in the comfort of your favourite comfortable chair... maybe with a cushion to support it.

The end

This is it for this years summer reading, these are only four of many great books out there. Rachel Roddy's Five Quarters: Recipes and Notes from a Kitchen in Rome just came out and is also still on my list to buy and Zinziber, sauces from Poitou is another title from Prospect books which I have been waiting for for some time now. Let me know if I missed some great books!

* I received a review copy from 'Swallow This' and 'Homemade Memories'. The other two books were ordered and payed for by me. All views are my own.

Further reading: 'Best food books' list (find it here >)

A surcharge on sugary drinks versus IKEA fruit water

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 14 Jun 2015 09:59:00 +0000

Ikea, making us believe that their new fruit waters are healthier than their sugary fizzy drinks, because they contain 50% less sugar.
Meanwhile across the channel, a chef has had enough and is campaigning for a tax on sugary drinks - all sugary drinks, even the ones with 50% less sugar.

I thought the press might be all over this, I thought it would explode on health blogs and yet... all remained quiet. As I am getting ready to attend a food symposium in the UK with the theme 'Food and Communication' I found it fitting to have a rant about how this communication by IKEA* is misleading us all.

From september 2015 they will ban all sugary fizzy drinks from their restaurants. That's the headline and that's the lie. Proudly they are replacing their imitation Pepsi and 7up with more healthy fruit waters which contain only half the sugar. Half the sugar. That's still too much sugar.

The World health organisation (WHO) say that we ideally should be consuming no more than 6 teaspoons of sugar a day. **Regular fizzy drinks contain up to 6 teaspoons per 330ml serving. That's your daily sugar intake in one glass of sweet drink. That is bad.

So if IKEA's fruit water contains 'only' half the amount of sugar of your average fizzy drink - it still contains about a whopping **3 teaspoons of sugar.
When having one glass of IKEA fruit water means you have consumed half the daily recommended amount of sugar. And you know what? They offer FREE REFILLS! So you can have more!

"Ikea schrapt frisdrank van het menu"

(Ikea bans sugary fizzy drinks from menu)

The communication to the world is that IKEA is trying to get a more healthy reputation... I think they are misleading the consumer with it.
Firstly their fruit waters aren't healthy, nor are they more healthy because they contain 'only' 50% the amount of a regular pop per serving. Secondly they are motivating people to refill their cup at self service machines, so people can have another 3 teaspoons of sugar diluted in water with natural flavourings.

My advise to IKEA.
Serve water with real fruit, just fruit - no added sugar, no added colourings.

How do you do this?
Fill a jug or a barrel with water, just water, and just toss in sliced cucumbers, apples, strawberries or whatever fruit. Then and only then you have FRUIT WATER, and not fizzy drink with natural fruit flavours and only half the sugar.

I understand that this would make your system of free refills at a machine impossible, but I think we are outgrowing the machines and are yearning for human contact again. Then and only then will you be making the change you are shouting about right now. Then and only then will you be truthful with your customers. Right now, you are contributing to a world-wide problem of children and adults being overweight due to an extreme sugar intake. All because people buy foods and drinks which are low in sugar, to then consume double.

A surcharge or tax on sugary drinks
The contrast with another news item this month is stark.
Jamie Oliver is making good of his crusade to tax sugary drinks and is putting a surcharge on sugary drinks in his restaurants. The money from the surcharge will go to a charity that supports children's health across Britain.

Jamie Oliver says that he expects the surcharge to raise £80,000 over the next year. He will donate the money to Sustain, a charity that "support's children's health food initiatives across Britain.

He told the Sunday Times: 'I was born into the restaurant industry and I truly believe that by joining together on this issue we not only send a powerful and strong message to government but we also have the potential to make a longlasting legacy that could ripple across the world.
'I've seen first-hand the heartbreaking effects that poor diet and too much sugar is having on our children's health and futures. Young children are needing multiple teeth pulled out under general anaesthetic and one in three kids [is] now leaving primary school overweight or obese.
'Soft drinks are the biggest single source of sugar among school-age kids and teenagers and so we have to start here.' The chef said an explanation of the sugary drink levy will be printed on all his menus and waiting staff will be able to offer alternative healthy drinks for children.'

Quite a different story from, we're cutting down on sugar but you can still go for a refill so you can have all the sugar you want.

What Jamie Oliver is doing is being honest about the fact that the sugary drinks on his menu aren't healthy. And by adding an explanation to why he is adding the surcharge he is educating people rather than trying to ban the sugary drinks all at once. Banning something will only make people want it more, but telling them about the dangers of excess sugar intake will maybe make people want to give up, or reduce their consumption of sugary drinks. What Ikea does is claiming their sugary drinks are healthy, and that is where they go wrong.

Further reading/watching
The Truth about Sugar BBC 2015 >
How much sugar is in your fizzy drink >
World Health Organisation recommends adults should have no more than 6 tsp of sugar a day >
Tax on sugary drinks to reduce obesity a study says - The Independent >

In Flemish
Ikea schrapt fristdrank van het menu (en vervangt het met fruitwater met 50% minder suiker) De Standaard >
Jamie Oliver heft belastingen op frisdrank - De Standaard >

Sources: Sunday Times, The Independent, Eater, De Standaard, BBC, WHO, press release IKEA

*This post is about IKEA BELGIUM, I have no idea what the situation is in other countries.
** I do not know how many teaspoons of sugar their fizzy drinks contained so used an average quantity. I will of course alter the numbers if they become known to me.

Apologies to my readers for going off-topic on this blog, but I truly believe you can't be a foodie without being a food activist.

18th century Sweet Lamb Pie

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Tue, 19 May 2015 23:18:00 +0000

When I tell people about my passion for historical dishes, there are always those who look at me with disbelief and some amusement. They claim those ancient dishes were made of rotting meat masked with an abundant use of spices, or stodgy pottage, all eaten with the hands like barbaric creatures. It can't be good, it can't be imaginative, it just can't be ...

The theory that food in the Middle Ages was highly spiced to mask the flavour of rotting meat has been discarded as pure nonsense in the last ten years. Those who were served spiced dishes were privileged, those cooking with it were the master cooks to kings and queens. People of status that not only could afford this immense luxury, but also had a good supply of fresh meat and fish from their estates and beyond.

Our ancestors - of the elite - had a good understanding about spices, and how to combine them. Those flavour combinations would often taste peculiar to us. Not at all in a wrong way, but in a way that you realise it is a flavour sensation you have never tasted before.

This brings me to how tastes have changed.
Today everything is usually either sweet, salty or spicy. Bitter is making a modest comeback and sour too, but these flavours are seldom combined in our 'modern' European cuisine. It is even so that a lot of our foods are processed in factories which add flavour essences to make the food taste the same every time you prepare it. Of course this doesn't happen when you cook from scratch, but it is an unfortunate fact that people in the UK buy a lot of ready meals. It is a trend that has luckily not taken off in Belgium, but it is very possible we're not far behind. Joanna Blytham recently published a book about these practices in food processing factories, and she rings an alarm bell and employs you to smell your food, to taste, and realise the smells and tastes are not from natural ingredients. This is an evolution, when more people eat processed food, they get an idea about how tomato tastes, and how a beef stew should taste. It goes so far that when those people taste the real thing, they can't take the sourness of a real tomato, the texture of the skin, and they find their own beef stew too bland and wonder where the flavour of the ready meal comes from. It's not tomato, and it's not beef. Butter in buttery pastry is not butter but other fats, with added butter flavour. It might taste like butter, but it might not completely and it might even change your taste and idea of how it should taste all together. I will go into Joanna's eye-opening book in another posting but you get the idea for now. Today many of the people taste food, but don't really taste the produce. Their tastes change. A very simple example is when I give someone a glass of raw milk to drink, I am used to it and drink it all the time, but my guests often can't finish another sip because they find the flavour too 'animal-like'. Most milk you buy in the supermarket to me tastes like white water, but this is how the people think milk tastes like these days.

Eliza Smith's Sweet Lamb pie from 1727 is one of those dishes that really show off the old way of spicing food. The flavours come through in layers if you get what I mean. It is not really sweet, but the spices that are used, nutmeg, mace and cloves were considered sweet spices and used as a sweetener. Sugar is added too, but used rather like a spice. In addition to these spices, currants and candied peel are added to bring extra sweetness. Then also sweet potato is added, and artichoke hearts. The 1727 book also mentions that when artichokes aren't in season, one can use grapes too.

The pie is built with pieces of diced lamb, dusted in the spices, and meatballs made with lamb meat, suet, currants and the same sweet spices with the addition of fresh parsley.
Layers are constructed of lamb, lamb meat balls, sweet potato and artichoke.
When your pot or pie is full, a blade of mace is added and the pie is placed in the oven for just over an hour. Just when you're ready to serve, a 'Caudle' is made, this is a sauce which is added to the pie by pouring it in when you are ready to serve. It is usually there to lift the flavours of the dish. In this case the caudle is made with white wine, lemon juice, a little sugar and a couple of egg yolks.
This sauce gives the dish a little acidic kick and will guaranty you to want to empty the saucepan until the very last drop.

The pie can either be made in a free-standing pie crust like you see in the pictures I took when I was at Food Historian Ivan Day's house, for a weekend of Georgian cooking last year. A hotpot is however another way of making this pie, this is a closed casserole dish used in the North of England, or you can use a deep oven dish and add a pastry lid, which is what I did the last time I made the pie, and what you can see in the first pictures here.

I made this Sweet Lamb pie not too long ago when we had two chefs coming for dinner, I did not know how they were going to react to the flavours of this dish.
Fortunately my friends are all about good, honest and natural food so they were eager to try. And they enjoyed it, one of the duo even asked me if it was okay to lick his plate and clean out the saucepan of caudle.

I say that's mission accomplished, don't you think?

The pie is incredibly flavoursome and eats just wonderful with the different vegetables and meat; the addition of a piece of salty pie pastry is a bonus but not a must if you aren't up to making your pastry, but please don't use shop bought pastry... that is just plain evil and doesn't even contain butter!

I made the pie you see in the pictures above with pastry I had leftover from my recent pastry project... You might have spotted it on instagram.

18th century Sweet Lamb Pie

Serves 4

250 g lamb meat from the leg
250 g lamb mince (if you buy a leg, you can use the leftover leg to mince)
2 large sweet potatoes, parboiled, cut in dice
4 small or 2 large artichoke hearts, parboiled, cut in dice
or when you don't have artichokes, use a handful of grapes, blanched.
1 tsp of ground mace
1 tsp of ground nutmeg
4 cloves, beaten
2 blades of mace
a generous pinch of good black pepper - or 3 pieces of long pepper, beaten
1 tsp each of candied lemon and orange peel, in small cubes
50 g of shredded suet
fresh parsley cut finely, about 1 tbsp
currants 50 g

For the Caudle

The juice of 1 lemon
The same quantity of white wine
1 tsp of sugar
1 egg yolk
a little knob of butter

Preheat your oven to 160° C

Beat your spices, but leave the two blades of mace whole.
Dust the meat with half the spices, add the other half to the minced meat.
Make your minced meat balls with the spices, suet, parsley and 2 tbsp of currants.
Have all your components of the dish ready so you can start making the layers.
Place some meat, meatballs, sweet potato and artichoke into your dish or pastry and strew over some currants and candied peel, continue until the pie is full.
Close the pie with pastry, making a hole for steam, or put the lid on and pop in the middle of your oven for 1 hour to 1hr and 15 minutes. This could be longer, it depends on the quality of your meat, decent meat needs less cooking. So try and taste, when you have a pastry cover, user a skewer to prick to see if the meat is tender.

When ready, take out of the oven and make your Caudle.
Bring your wine and lemon juice to a simmer with the sugar, in a separate bowl, have the yolk ready and add the warm caudle like you would for a custard. Finish with a little knob of butter and warm again over the fire.

Pour the caudle into the pie, and serve. The caudle will mix with your pie juices and create a sauce.

If you're making pastry, this is an easy recipe to try

For the pastry

300g plain white flour
100g unsalted butter
100g shredded suet
a generous pinch of salt
125 ml ice cold water
1 egg, beaten

Combine the flour, butter, suet and salt in a large mixing bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Keep on doing this until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Pour in the water and start pressing the liquid into the breadcrumb-like mixture. Be gentle as you must be careful not to overwork the dough.
When you have created a rough dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or more. You can prepare the pastry the day before if you're feeling organised.
Use the beaten egg to eggwash the edges of the piedish.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface. Now roll out the pastry about 1 cm thick and make sure it's larger than your pie dish.
Now carefully pick up the pastry and place it over the pie dish. Trim off the edges of the pastry so you get a nice lid. Now crimp the edges by using your thumb or a fork so the pastry lid is closed tightly. Make a hole in the middle so steam can escape.
Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.

Serve with green asparagus if you have them, or green beans, or just as it is.

The pictures below were taken at Ivan Day's Georgian cooking weekend in the Lake District

Food Revolution Day - Food education back on the menu

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Thu, 14 May 2015 21:44:00 +0000

Sign the petition www.change.org/jamieoliver

Today is Food Revolution Day, the day on which we come together from all over the world to pull on the same end of the rope. A better future for our children is what is aimed at here, and better food education will bring that.
At a time when 42 million children under the age of five alone are overweight, we need to take action against this enormous epidemic.

In the olden days when the girls were supposed to marry to spend their lives cooking and cleaning for their husbands, girls were taught their skills in school and from their mothers. Today luckily us ladies aren't chained to the stove and washing basket anymore, but with our emancipation, slowly domestic housekeeping lessons disappeared from the schools.

So many people don't know how to cook from scratch because they weren't taught the basic skills to make a meal. It is of vital importance that cooking skills, and even growing food is put back on the schools learning plans. With a growing world population, we need to reduce food waste, and to do this, we need to cook more and learn how to deal with leftovers. It might seem so straight forward to you, whipping up an easy dinner after work, but for so many people out there it is a daily struggle. Those trying to survive on a tight budget have it even worse when they don't know how to cook.

I can always make a meal, it might be a strange dish sometimes, but it is always tasty. You tend to take that skill for granted. I know I did, it is only when you talk to someone who really can't cook that you understand that cooking is often a talent you're born with but others need to learn it. I learned from Jamie's Naked Chef Series because my mum wasn't really the type to teach you how to cook, she had a tendency to overcook things, or downright burn them to their second death.
My husband can't cook either. When we were 'courting' he made me a pasta dish with grated carrots which he had heated up in yoghurt. Not the luscious thick strained Greek style yoghurt, natural sour pungent yoghurt. It was one of the most vile things I've ever had to swallow. He thought so too and luckily I didn't have to finish the plate to be polite but how the hell could he have cooked that? Well, he followed a recipe. He doesn't use it intuitive nature because he doesn't know what he is doing. If he would have cooked from his heart, he would have made an entirely different dish. Like his eggs, he can cook a mean egg.

But it isn't simple, not for everyone.
So teaching children to cook, teaching them about how food production - farming - works and maybe even re-introducing school gardens, might just save out future generations.
The fact that so many children don't know their onions from their tomatoes is downright shameful and unnatural. We are not surprised that children don't want to eat the pink slime they call meat in processed food when they see it in their raw state, but as soon as it is turned into chicken dips by Jamie in his School dinners show, the kids all go crazy for it, even knowing that minutes before it was just pink slime...

Education, education, education. It is the answer to everything.
So if you have a minute sign the petition to put food education back 'on the menu' in schools, and do it here www.change.org/jamieoliver

“By educating children about food in a practical, fun and engaging way, we can provide them with the knowledge and skills they so urgently need to lead healthier, happier lives. We need to make practical food education a compulsory part of every school curriculum across the world, and that’s why I’ve launched a petition calling on all G20 countries to action this. With enough support from millions of people around the world, I truly believe that we can create a movement that’s powerful enough to make governments take action.” Jamie Oliver

Sadly I didn't host my Food Revolution Event this year, life just was a little too hectic at the moment and I am seriously gutted about it but I can't make myself ill while trying. I'm in the final stages of photographing my book and testing recipes again, and I'm a one lady team here so I'm up to my ears in work. It's great, I'm super happy, but to organise an event this year, I couldn't do it alone, I would have needed a couple of people to help while I remain indoors like a hermit only going out when I need eggs and cream. :)
Next year will be double cool I promise, and if you like to volunteer to give a hand, always welcome, just drop me a line or a tweet or shout at me in the street! :)

Take care for now, and think about your food consumption today, learn someone something about food, think of where your meat comes from, your fish, your poultry, your eggs, ... Think about it, share your thoughts, get conversations going.

x

Regula

Enjoy some pictures of my past Food Revolution Events!

"The future for me starts with food education"
Jamie Oliver

Making pizza in a woodfired oven

Squeezing the whey out of the cheese

creative with toppings

You might also enjoy:
Mussels and fries for Food Revolution Day >

Smithfield Meat Market - a history and a nomination for the Pink Lady Food photography award!

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Fri, 10 Apr 2015 10:21:00 +0000

Dear readers, the above image from Smithfield market has been shortlisted in the prestigious Pink Lady Food Photography Awards in the category 'Food For Sale' for the People's choice award. If you like my work, I would be super grateful if you would vote for my photograph!

You can vote HERE > and scroll down to 'Food for sale'

Thanks so much xx

Smithfield Market, 865 years of notorious history of meat, bloodshed, crime and uprising.

Turning down Sun Street and Crown Street, and crossing Finsbury square, Mr. Sikes struck, by way of Chiswell Street, into Barbican: thence into Long Lane, and so into Smithfield; from which latter place arose a tumult of discordant sounds that filled Oliver Twist with amazement. It was market-morning. The ground was covered, nearly ankle-deep, with filth and mire; a thick steam, perpetually rising from the reeking bodies of the cattle, and mingling with the fog, which seemd to rest upon the chimney-tops, hung heavily above. All the pens in the centre of the large area, and as many temporary pens as could be crowded into the vacant space, were filled with sheep; tied up to posts by the gutter side were long lines of beasts and oxen, three or four deep. Countrymen, butchers, drovers, hawkers, boys, thieves, idlers, and vagabonds of every low grade, were mingled together in a mass; the whistling of drovers, the barking dogs, the bellowing and plunging of the oxen, the bleating of sheep, the grunting and squeaking of pigs, the cries of hawkers, the shouts, oaths, and quarrelling on all sides; the ringing of bells and roar of voices, that issued from every public-house; the crowding, pushing, driving, beating, whooping and yelling; the hideous and discordant dim that resounded from every corner of the market; and the unwashed, unshaven, squalid, and dirty figues constantly running to and fro, and bursting in and out of the throng; rendered it a stunning and bewildering scene, which quite confounded the senses.
Charles Dickens - Oliver Twist, 1838

And so were the words of Charles Dickens about Smithfield meat market in his marvellous work Oliver Twist.
England has always been famed for the outstanding quality of its meat. In the 19th century, Smithfield meat market was notorious for its wild cattle that was hazardously driven through the streets of London. The drovers and butchers were apparently as savage as their cattle and murder and rape were no exceptions in these quarters.
Reports of cattle stirred up by drunk herdsmen killing men, woman and children on their way were frequent. Cattle was slaughtered at the site and the streets coloured red with blood.

Surrounded by dirty streets, lanes, courts, and alleys, the haunts of poverty and crime, Smithfield is infested not only with fierce and savage cattle, but also with the still fiercer and more savage tribes of drivers and butchers. On market-days the passengers are in danger of being run over, trampled down, or tossed up by the drivers or “beasts”; at night, rapine and murder prowl in the lanes and alleys in the vicinity; and the police have more trouble with this part of the town than with the whole of Brompton, Kensington, and Bayswater. The crowding of cattle in the centre of the town is an inexhaustible source of accidents.Max Schlesinger, Saunterings in and about London, 1853

From 1150,

Smithfield has been used as a market for live stock. It was a large open space on the outskirts of town, it had small open spaces and wooden pens and a broad open street market.

In 1174 Smithfield was described by William Fitzstephen, clerk to Thomas à Becket in his 'Description of London', one of my favourite works to learn about Ancient London and its people.

'In a suburb immediately outside one of the gates there is a field that is smooth, both in name and in fact. Every Friday (unless it is an important holy day requiring solemnity) crowds are drawn to the show and sale of fine horses. This attracts the earls, barons and knights who are then in the city, along with many citizens, whether to buy or just to watch.'
A description of London, ca.1174/1183, translated from Latin.

The ancient map of London 'Civitas Londinum' dated to 1561, shows large open fields and cattle pens. The market area is now called 'Schmyt Fyeld'. During that time the market area had access to the river Fleet so cattle had water to drink and grass to feed on.

Because Smithfield was an open space which was so close to the city centre, it was also used for public executions. William Wallace - known to most as Braveheart after the film - was executed there in 1305. It was also the meeting place to gather for the Peasant's Revolt in 1381. Executions continued well into the 16th century with Henry VIII murdering Catholics and his daughter 'Bloody Mary' burning in excess of 200 protestants. During the 17th century the site became a popular place for duelling and later it turned into a prime spot to pick up a prostitute for the night.

The structure of the market would remain largely the same as in the Middle Ages until a building was erected designed by Victorian architect Sir Horace Jones in 1868. By then the market was in the centre of London instead of in the outskirts, adjoining fields.

We can still see that majestic market building today, and some of its additions from later in that century, but sadly a part of it has been derelict for many decades now.

When I visited the market I was warned by Londoners that some of the butchers were still cheeky buggers and they weren't kidding. On my short walk around I got talking to one of them, I took his picture, asked him if I could use the image, and he gave me his phone number and told me to call him some time.

The market was at its end of trading that day when I visited, meat was being packed up and carted away in supermarket trolleys, leaving it to look nearly as rough and dirty as it must have looked centuries ago.

It is a historic place, there has been a cattle market here for 865 years, and I hope it will remain here for centuries to come. It's extraordinary that after the relocation of Billingsgate Fish market, Covent Garden and Spitalfields market, Smithfield market is still holding strong.

It is a heritage site, and with so many historical important places being demolished in London today - think the London Wool and fruit exchange in Shoreditch - we have to hang on to this one while we can.

Looking up in the meat market building

Supermarket carts are used to move the meat and are scattered around everywhere

though crumbling, still a special place

Butchers chatting during the clean-up of todays market day

One of the loading gates

Lorries are driving on and off with loads of meat

The butchers don't mind posing a little for my camera

Part of the market in its derelict state, still waiting to be renovated and repurposed

Do leave a comment, I love hearing from you!

The Irish Midlands

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 05 Apr 2015 15:28:00 +0000

Leap Castle, Ireland's most haunted castle

Last week Bruno and I were invited by Mid-Ireland tourism to come over for a weekend to explore what the Irish Midlands has to offer. It was going to be our first visit to Ireland and we were looking forward to it for a month. We both had one of the busiest times since a very long time, for me it was finishing the English manuscript of my book, for him it were hundred and one things.
It was a relief to step on that airplane - though with the disaster of the German plane crash from a week earlier in the back of our heads - knowing that we were able to take these four days away from our work. We came back revived and full of creative energy. Let me share our highlights with you.

Bellefield Gardens

The first day of our trip we visited the Birr Theatre where regular plays are offered but also workshops for kids, when we were there to assemble for tea, kids were learning to do stop-motion films. So great to get the kids to do creative things.

Home away from home

We then drove off to go and see the beautiful gardens by Garden designer Angela Jupe at Bellefield Gardens. Angela is a garden designer after my own heart. The gardens look very rustic and not at all staged. She works with salvaged materials and creates new things with it. She restored the farmhouse and all the cottages surrounding its courtyard. You can hire them, they each have a cosy log burner, a kitchen and a private little garden. A real treat if you want to get away from the rat race and spend some time walking around the beautiful surroundings and cooking up amazing food to enjoy by the fireplace. I wish I had just 1% of Angela Jupe's gardening talent. The whole estate is truly enchanting.

Fairytale garden

Back in the buss we went to see Fancroft Mill just over the border in Tipperary. The owners bought this derelict mill, garden and millhouse from Angela Jupe who had designed the garden and then sold it because the derelict mill was an enormous project to take on. The new owners restored the watermill, which is housed in a very tall building than can be seen from a distance in the rolling countryside. They accidentally became millers with it. The gardens are - like Bellefield Gardens - immaculately rustic and the little tower makes it look like a fairytale setting. I could sit in this garden for hours, and in fact the owners tell me that that is what they tell visitors, to take their time exploring and sitting in the garden.

Haunted as hell

The next stop is Ireland's most haunted castle - a real treat for Bruno who is a fan of horror movies and other gothic things. Leap Castle is a ruin, but it is lived in by Sean Ryan and his family. It must have looked imposing in its heyday, and scary too because if you committed a crime on these lands, which could have been poaching a rabbit, you were read your last prayer on the top floor of the castle where the 'Bloody chapel' is - or was - and then thrown into a hole which was lined with spikes on the bottom - yikes.
The castle was built in the 1500's and originally named 'Leim Ui Bhanain' meaning ’Leap of the O’Bannons’. The O’Carrolls, the clan who owned the castle, were a fierce and brutal people. They were known for their cruel tactics, killing those that came on their path. The 'Bloody chapel' has an 'oubliette', a narrow room, more like a hole where people where in the 1930's three cartloads of human bones were removed. The grandfather of our bus driver was one of the workmen on the job. Sean, the owner of the castle told us about the spirits in his home but ensures us they are not evil, but that they are there. Constant murdering had been going on in the castle up until the 18th century. And at one time one of the owners was so involved with the occult that she summoned a dark spirit that thankfully has remained quiet but is still in the castle. Leap castle was looted and burnt by IRA militants in 1922 during an uprising when it was owned by English aristocracy. Stories say that the villagers from the surroundings stood there laughing when the castle went up in flames. But they did spare the life of the caretaker and his wife and child. The English family who owned was not present when the castle got reduced to the ruin it is today. Did I see a ghost? No, but I can't help but wander what I felt as you go into the cold castle knowing it is haunted, and aware of all the monstrous murders that have happened there.

Lough Boora Parkland was next on our trip but required more time than we had. This is a location to spend a day or an afternoon walking, riding bikes and eating cake at the end of the day. Its surroundings are impressive with ancient bog- and wetland. There is also a nice collection of fauna and flora to admire as well as artwork which is placed in the park without disturbing it.

Birr Castle was the end to our first day and is an impressive castle and estate, it houses a Science museum, Telescope and some fun for the kids too. Mind you I would have gone on the jumping air bed if it wasn't for the rain! For those who are as geeky as I, the grounds of the estate also have an ice house. But you have to ask where it is. We were treated to a tour of the castle itself which is still a private home. It was a privilege to be shown around there and to see an actual living home rather than a museum. The castle has a couple of secret passageways which we explored and I could already imagine the fun you could have as a child growing up in such a place. Allow at least half a day here as there is lots to be seen.

Birr Castle, sadly no pictures from the inside as it is a private home.

Spinners hotel and restaurant - right opposite Birr Castle

The next day were invited for tea, scones and cakes at Memory Antiques who were very excited to show us all their auction room and bits and bobs. It is conveniently located opposite the entrance of Birr Castle and just round the corner of our hotel. Full with tea and divine lemon syrup cake, off we went for a little cruise on the river Shannon with Silver line cruisers. When we arrived Dublin we carpooled in our taxi with a German family on their way to hire a boat there for two weeks. Apparently the river Shannon is full of fish and therefore people love to boat around and fish for their supper. The surroundings of the river Shannon were tranquil with some rough landscape. Nice to see only nature and an occasional house or ruined barn.

Tea and cakes for us at Memory Antiques. Lots of Guinness stuff, sadly sold!

Sadly they were sold, I'd been looking out for a vintage Guinness poster, especially the one with the bird!

Silver line cruise on the river Shannon

Alfie from Mid Ireland Tourism - also pig farmer at Olde Farm

We only had two days in the Midlands but you could spread this to a week and thoroughly explore. I would go back for a walk around Leap Castle, and another visit to the castle itself. I would also like to stay at Bellefield Gardens to cook with the local produce and enjoy the little garden that comes with each little cottage. Birr castle is a day trip, rounded off with a visit to memory antiques and a dinner at Spinners. And Lough Boora parkland is definitely the place for a day of walking. It was a real treat to get a taster of Irish culture, which is similar to the English but oh so very different as well. I definitely want to explore more of Ireland! Thank you Alfie from Mid Ireland Tourism and Margaret from Olde Farm, this husband and wife team, who I have known for a couple of years now, have done a fabulous job organising this trip. Thank you so much! x

Food and lodgings

Spinners on Castle Street, Birr
We flew to Dublin and from there it was about one hour and forty-five minutes to drive to Birr, a small town in the Midlands. Margaret, the fire behind this trip had booked us into Spinners in Birr, a beautiful old stone building opposite Birr Castle. Spinners is a place with a big potential to become a foodie destination in the Midlands. Its location is central, its surroundings are beautiful, the food is the best we have tasted in the Midlands and Birr is apparently one of the favourite towns in the area.
Jordan who owns Spinners is very passionate about his business and I hope his hotel and restaurant will thrive. The Irish breakfast was fantastic, with tasty bacon and one of the best bangers I've ever tasted. The next day he had gone out for the best local black pudding, and I have to agree, it was very good indeed. We had dinner there on the first evening of our stay and the place was packed, so it was on the next day. It looks like Spinners is no longer a secret!

Olde Farm
Margaret and Alfie have an Air Bnb room in their lovely pig farm just outside Birr. If you prefer to stay at a B&B this is your thing. You will get a brekkie cooked with home reared produce and a nice chat. Margaret and Alfie know heaps about these surroundings so can point you to the best places to go.

Bellefield Gardens, the home of Angela Jupe. "In 1987 she established and ran the first specialist garden shop in Ireland – "The Garden Furnishing Co." and set up the Traditional Gardening Co. which specialised in garden design and construction."
She now lives at Bellefield Gardens, where she lovingly looks after her garden and holiday cottages. She is passionate about Irish snowdrops and has a wide variety of them in her grounds.

Mossfield Organic farm cheese
The organic shop, Mainstreet, Birr
This shop sells Mossfield organic farm cheese, truly wonderful cheeses from the Slieve Bloom Mountains.

Killeen farmhouse cheese
A very creamy parmesan style hard goats cheese, available in some shops

Bo Bristle brewery
Absolutely loved the IPA, a very easy drinker and lovely with food

To see and do in the Midlands

Gardens - Houses

Bellefield Gardens
Gardens designed by Angela Jupe, hope of the Irish snowdrops

Leap Castle, north of Roscrea on the R421
Open to visitors but you have to contact the owner Sean Ryan first. Entry fee goes to restoring the castle

Birr Castle, Birr, Castle street
An impressive castle and estate, a Science museum, Telescope and some fun for the kids too. For those who are as geeky as I, the grounds of the estate also have an ice house. But you have to ask where it is.

Fancroft Mill
Gardens designed by Angela Jupe and an impressive water mill.
Tea and cakes can be enjoyed in the café

Walking - Biking - boating

Lough Boora Parkland
An ancient Bog land with tranquil nature to walk or ride a bike in. A café is there for necessary cups of tea and cake after outdoor exercise

Silver Line Cruisers
Boat hire on the River Shannon, you can get off and pick-nick in the beautiful countryside.

Culture

Birr Theatre
for plays, exhibitions and workshops

Antiques

Memory Lane
antiques and auctions, opposite the entrance of Birr Castle, Birr

Birr Theatre - moody skies

I was invited by my Mid Ireland Tourism, my views are my own. I was not payed to write a review, I blog whatever I want so you know that when you read something here, it is always coming from me and me alone.

Alexis Soyer's Oxtail Soup with simple suet dumplings

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 09:26:00 +0000

19th century Victorian England saw a rapid growth of population and urbanisation stimulated by the Industrial Revolution. The elite became more wealthy and the poor became poorer. Eliza Acton noted in her book published in 1845, that soups or pottage was hardly eaten by the English. The poor didn’t have means to heat up the dish that had sustained them for centuries, and often they didn’t even have access to the ingredients to make a soup. This was an era of slum housing, starvation and disease.

Alexis Soyer, who was chef at the prestigious Reform Club and regarded by many as Britain’s first celebrity chef, saw the horrendous poverty of the lower class and took it upon him to do something about it. He invented a soup kitchen and went to Ireland to give out his ‘famine soup’ during the Great Irish Famine in 1847. During his time in Ireland he wrote ‘Soyer’s Charitable Cookery’ and gave the proceeds of the book to various charities.

His book, ‘A Shilling Cookery for the People’ was a recipe book for ordinary people who could not afford the modern kitchen utensils or large amounts of ingredients.

In it he writes about how he goes around London and sees the poor attempt to cook but can’t quite manage because of a lack of knowledge. He takes it upon him to teach an old lady to cook an ox cheek in her one precious pot, over a coal fire. The old lady learns and is surprised to find out that the ox cheek is tender and that there is even enough liquid to make a soup from it. After tasting it and approving it, she said she would teach her neighbours how to do it. Soyer, possibly very pleased about this, said to her that if she would do that, he would sent more recipes for her to learn and teach to her neighbours.

Of course the old lady was illiterate and Soyer realising that he might have sent a useless bit of paper to her, went to see her and found ‘six elderly matrons and an old man holding council together’, trying to make out Soyer’s writings. He then read the recipes to them.

Of soup he says that he finds it is no wonder that people have abandoned this dish as the recipes in most cookery books are complicated and expensive. Many contemporary cookery writers like Mrs Beeton made notes on how to cook economically but showed their ignorance by not grasping the fact that most lower class families were lucky to have some kind of roof over their heads, so a kitchen or fire would most probably been a luxury they could only dream of.

Soyer saw that knowledge was the next big in the poor being able to feed themselves and had the dream of opening a school to teach the poor how to cook. On this notion he remarked “Some of the money spent on our new palace prisons would be much better employed for this purpose.”

As my local farm doesn't offer ox cheek - although they probably would if I asked - I made Soyer's oxtail soup instead. I had been saving these oxtails - which are always sold out at the farm so quite precious - for a special occasion. Since I finished the first part of my book, I thought, let's get out the Oxtail! That's how it is with meat you buy straight from the farm, you treat it with the utmost respect and it becomes so much more valuable.

I had Soyer on my mind, because this week there is a fabulous lecture about him at the Guildhall Library in London. Sadly because of the book deadline I couldn't spear a day to head over to London to attend this lecture, but at least I have now eaten his oxtail soup.

To make this into a main dish for your supper, you can add dumplings, I give you here the recipes as adapted from Soyer's book The Modern Housewife or Menagerie.

Oxtail soup with dumplings

Some might find this soup bland, this might be so for our modern palate, this dish is not laden with salt - sweet - spicy like we are so used to today. Give it a go, and try to taste. It really is lovely to have these pure flavours. And then after you've tasted it, make it again and use white wine instead of water.

1 oxtail
1 carrot
1 turnip
3 medium sized onions
1 stalk of celery
2 bay leaf
a few sprigs of thyme
a few sprigs of parsley
600ml water
1tsp of peppercorns, or about 15 corns
1tsp salt

Preheat your oven to 140°C

Cut up your vegetables in dice of around the same size; no smaller than 0,5 cm.

Add a generous know of butter to a cast iron pan and melt.

Add the vegetables, and glaze for flavour, then take them out

Add another knob of butter, wait until it is melted and gently brown the two sides of the oxtail, when the juices are starting to stick to the pan, add the vegetables and then add about 600 ml water to deglaze the pan and drown the oxtail. Make sure the meat is completely covered in water.

Now add the pepper, salt and herbs and bring to a boil, uncovered.

When the water boils, put on the lid and place in the oven for 3-4 hours, or until the meat falls from the bone and the fat is nearly all melted away.

When ready to eat, strain the soup, pull the meat off the bone and keep aside.

Now make your garnish for the soup, or use the soup as it is, without straining it - I prefer this as I like to just use the soup as it is with flavoursome mushy veg. I don't like to throw this away.

Garnish (optional)

1 carrot
1 stalk of celery
1 leek
1 turnip

Cut all these vegetables in small dice of about 0,5 cm.

Put them in a pot and pour over the strained soup, simmer for as long as it takes to cook the vegetables but make sure you don't reduce them to a mush.

Just before serving:

Place your pulled oxtail meat in a saucepan, add some of the soup and heat up.

Serve your soup with some of the pulled oxtail in each plate.

To make this a main meal

Plain Suet Dumplings (makes 8-10)

220 g plain white flour
110 g shredded suet
0,5 tsp salt, the same of pepper
150-180 ml water
optional: a tsp of thyme leaves or parsley cut finely

Combine the flour, the suet and the salt and pepper - and herbs if you are using them - in a bowl.

Make a well and start adding the water in small portions to make sure you don't use too much and the dough gets sticky. You might need all the water, you might need less than the 18ml

Use a blunt knife to do this so your hands don't get covered in sticky dough.

When the dough comes together you can use your hands to knead it into a stiff paste.

Roll into ping-pong ball sized dumplings and place on a tray.

When your meat is at its last 45 minutes of stewing, add the dumplings and allow them to stew together with the meat.

Serve together.

Enjoy

Rich Tea Biscuits - proven the best dunker

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 22:35:00 +0000

The question is… are you a Digestive or Rich Tea kind of person.

Anyone who loves to dunk a biscuit in their hot drink will have an answer for you straight away. Tea and biscuits are as essential to Britain's cultural history as the Queen, the moody skies of Turner, pudding and queuing.

FOOD52 asked me to investigate the Rich Tea biscuit, and to provide you with the recipe to enjoy this quintessentially biscuit at home.

Britain is a tea drinking nation and has been since tea was introduced in the 17th century during the reign of Charles II. Naturally biscuits would soon be dunked in the delicate porcelain teacups which were produced for those who could afford this absolute luxury.

Rich Tea's have a plain flavour which makes them ideal for dunking and getting the flavour of your hot drink soaked into the biscuit. Scientists also proved in may last year that Rich Tea biscuits are in fact the superior dunker. This because of its close texture and lower fat and sugar content. The Digestive crumbles whilst the Rich Tea snaps, and it is that snap a lot of people enjoy as part of their dunking ritual. Research showed that while the Digestive takes five second until it starts to wobble, the Rich Tea can stay in shape for a whopping 20 seconds.

Both these biscuits have a long history. The Digestive is said to have been developed by Scottish doctors in 1839 and a patent was granted in 1890, while the Rich Tea is believed to date back to 17th century Yorkshire. What they have in common is its use, not just as dunkers, they were both served in the afternoon as a sweet, yet slightly savoury biscuit to get through the last few hours until dinner.

Another pointer for the Rich Tea team came when Prince William requested a Rick Tea biscuit cake for his grooms cake at the royal wedding. 1,700 biscuits and 40 pounds of chocolate were used to create this fridge cake which is reported to be a favourite tea-time treat of the Queen herself too.

With the royals and nearly half of the British population approving them we need to give home made Rich Tea biscuits a go. They are definitely more rustic than the smooth Rich Tea's by the favoured iconic British biscuit brands, but all the same they dunk just as well. My advise is to dunk long and enjoy the soaked biscuit to the full.

What do you need

makes 22-24 6cm wide biscuits

280 g plain white flour

1tbsp - 20 gr of baking powder

0,5 tsp - 5gr seasalt

3 tsp - 30 gr cane sugar

65 g butter

150 ml cold milk

Method

For the method, check out my recipe on FOOD52

In the meantime...

Boil fresh water, place tea bag in your cup, pour hot water over it. Wait. Now break a Rich Tea biscuit in two, enjoy the snap, and dunk.

Enjoy.

What is your favourite tea biscuit?

About my work: Magic Soup - Book Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Tue, 10 Feb 2015 08:34:00 +0000

Over a period of 3 weeks during a hot summer in London, I photographed the newly published book 'Magic Soup'. Magic Soup is written by Ottolenghi's former head chef Nicole Pisani and author Kate Adams. The two ladies have come up with a fun and nutritious set of soup recipes for all different occasions, some are to impress your guests with, some will give you strength and will feel like an immense hug when you're feeling unwell, some look dainty, others look robust and down to earth. There is a soup for everyone in this book. I might be biased but I think this book is great and it places soups back on a higher shelve.

Shooting this book was so much fun I really wanted to share it with you, here are some pictures from the book, but also some 'making of' pics and incidentals.

Many thanks to the lovely ladies over at Orion Publishing, Nicole and Kate, the authors and inspiring chefs, Tamzin the prop stylist extraordinaire and Caroline who did everyone's work justice with her design of the book. We were a great team.

I'm giving away a book

Finally, I have one book to give away. I'm not asked to do this by anyone, I just want to spread the soup love. So to win this book, just like my facebook page, twitter if you're on twitter, and instagram (if you already are, superb!) and let me know if you've done it in the comments below, also tell me what your favourite soup is, just for the fun of it. Straightforward. Then I'll just stick your names in a hat and pick one out. No fancy systems, just old school.

Magic Soup was published in February 2015 by Orion/Hachette.

The book is for sale at most book stores and online.

Happy New Year Ozoni

Pea and mountain ham - right: curry leaves

French onion soup - Lime & Lentil soup with marinated feta

Tomatoes and a pretty blue dress

Lamb shank left: Magic Soup

Kate Adams and venison meat balls

Nicole Pisani

My setup at Fist Option Studio Shoreditch - the many props

Nicole and her pretty blouse

Don't forget to leave a comment in order to win a copy of this book!

The Competition is now closed and has been won by Sally! Thank you everyone for entering, how amazing!! Again I am sending this book at my own expense as a gift to one of you.

Treacle tarts and Treacle Miners

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Mon, 19 Jan 2015 10:26:00 +0000

I've been wanting to investigate and especially photograph the infamous Treacle mines of England for some time now. But as it happens, it's England's best kept secret. So why is it out in the open? Google Treacle Mines and you'll get numerous stories, one even crazier than the other.

Well... the best way to protect a secret is to convince people that it doesn't exist. And that is what the clever people from these small mining villages have done.

The 'Treacle Mine Preservation Pact' was made and stories were brought to light which would confuse even the smartest on a good day. To protect the whereabouts of the real Treacle mines, a few other locations of mines were invented and after a while only the names of the imaginary Treacle Mines were remembered. The clever scheme mentioned the "The Tovil Treacle Mines" in Maidstone, another two in Kent: Tudeley and Frittenden, a mine around the village of Sabden in Lancashire. But also Somerset and Devon are said to have numerous Treacle mines, as well as the Northern Cumbria.

There is a The Treacle Mine public house in Grays, Essex and a pub named Treacle Mine in Polegate, East Sussex. Local newspapers have reported on Treacle Mine issues and even a Treacle Mine Union was set up to protect the miners interests.

But where are these Treacle Mines?

I found some answers on an evening in a Peak District pub towards closing time. I overheard an older man talking to another old man about a Treacle vein. Forgotten and discarded as pure fiction, I hadn't thought about Treacle Mines for a long time so when I picked up on the word from their conversation, I couldn't help but listen in while quietly sipping my local ale. The oldest of the two - and admittedly the most boozed up of the two - was trying to convince the other one of the truth in Treacle mining.

The Treacle source was discovered by a 13 year old boy in the 18th century. The boy, son of a miner, was eager to find lead in a part of a Tor not investigated before. He spent 3 years creating an entrance into the rocks of the Treak Cliff, and another two fruitless years attempting to discover a vein of some sorts. But after those 5 years of hard graft without any penny to his name, he stumbled upon a dark sticky mess he first mistakenly assumed was oil. Not surprisingly he was very excited and left the cave to get more candles so he could take a better look and dig out the well.

Secrets are kept...

... in these hills

When he got home he told his father about the discovery and they both set out to see their money ticket. They lit up the cave with as much candles they were able to afford and started to free the well from its stone tomb. But as the sticky black mess bubbled the boy's father put in his finger, trying to smell and inspect this thick black matter and concluding it must be something else than oil. Confused and disappointed the boy also dipped his finger in the black bubbling well, smelled it and hit my its sweet but rather unfamiliar scent, he licked the thick black substance from his finger. The boys silence troubled his old father, but after a little while he was able to speak... This sweetness will be sought after and more dangerous than lead, tin or oil.

The next day, the boy, his father and 4 other men of his village set out to mine the Treak Cliff syrup and brought out 6 barrels. They drove up to the city with horse and cart in order to find a buyer for this sweet sticky mess. On the way they sold one barrel so that they could eat and sleep at the coaching Inn as they had far to go and not two pennies to pay for a crust of bread. When after 3 days, they finally arrived at a potential buyer he asked what the name of their product was, the boy replied, "Treacle from Treak Cliff, dear sir, and plenty more where that came from". The barrels were sold, and an order was placed for 100 barrels by the end of the month.

The buyer of the first barrels of Treacle was a little more clever than the boy and his old father though, and as the boy only could come up with the name Treacle, from the Treak Cliff, he had also given away the location of this precious find. For sweetness was desired and people dealing in it are treacherous, he had opened himself to danger. The buyer knew that little would go a long way and that it could be sold as it is, without further processing and added to bakes and other otherwise sweetened delights.

When the 100 barrels were nearly filled, word came from the buyer that he wanted to visit the mine with his investors. The boy who had kept the mine a secret thus far, was visiting his landlord of which he leased the bit of hill, to pay his debts and was told by the rather snarky man that the debts had been payed and an offer was put in by a man from the big city to buy the whole cave and mine.

Savvy enough to know what was happening, the boy rushed over to the mine and told the news to his family and fellow villagers who were all hands on deck to mine the 100 barrels in time. A decision was made to protect the mine from further development and the well was filled in with rubble and dirt. When the city men arrived, they told them the 80 of the desired 100 barrels had completely drained the well, and a collapse in the cave made it impossible to dig it out further. The fact is that Treacle became so precious and the city folk so greedy, that the mine needed to be protected.

The mine was closed, deemed useless, and sold to the boy who purchased it with the money of the 80 barrels of Treacle. He continued to mine, in order to keep up appearances, but then stumbled upon a blue mineral vein. Treak Cliff cave became famous for Blue John Stone and the Treacle well remained a closely guarded secret. The buyer from the big city managed to create a thick uncrystallized syrup made during the refining of sugar that closely resembled the taste of Treacle. As the name was never protected, he kept it but left out the cave name to prevent embarrassment, as by then, the stories about Treak cliff Treacle were all forgotten.

Treacle tart is made, not with Treacle but with Golden Syrup. I have added black Treacle however, for flavour. Old recipes state using Treacle, but Golden Syrup was in the past known as Golden Treacle, or light Treacle. This tart is not for people sensitive to sugar, in fact, I can't manage to eat a whole piece despite the flavour being nice. It is remembered by many in England as a School dinner pudding and those who loved it then, love it still. So here it is, especially for the sweet tooth!

Brown bread Treacle Tart

Filling

150 gr fresh brow bread crumbs

380 gr 'golden syrup'

20 gr 'Treacle syrup' or Molasse

50 gr unsalted butter

juice of half a lemon

2 tbs currants

1 egg yolk

Pastry

250 gr plain white flour

125 g unsalted butter, cold

60 gr cane sugar, blitzed fine

3 egg yolks

Method

Pastry

Sift your flour onto a working surface or into a large bowl, make a well in the middle and add the egg yolks and sugar.

Take your butter from the fridge and and bash it a couple of times with a rolling pin to make it more pliable. Now cut the butter into small cubes and add to the rest of your pastry mixture.

Take a blunt knife and start cutting the knife through the ingredients to work them together. You can use your fingers at this point but using a knife will keep the butter cold.

When all is combined you will have a coase mixture, now squeeze the ingredients together using just one hand, with your fingertips. When your mixture comes together, spread the pastry on a board or working surface and knead and spread until the board is completely clean and not showing any remnants of pastry anymore.

The pastry should have the soft consistency of butter but shouldn’t be sticky to the touch.

Now pack the pastry in cling film and leave in the fridge for a minimum of 30 minutes or overnight.

Filling

Cut up the bread in small chunks, as small as you can manage.

In a pan, heat up the syrups, butter and lemon juice but do not let it boil!

Now add the bread and stir, turn down the fire and let rest while you prepare your pastry base

When you are ready to use the pastry, preheat your oven to 190°.

Roll out your pastry on a floured working surface as thin as you can manage.

Have a tart pan ready and place your pastry on your rolling pin to ditribute it onto your tart pan.

Let the pastry sink into the tart pan with a little help from your fingers or a ball of extra dough (this damages the pastry less than using fingers). Trim off any excess pastry by rolling over the top of the pan with a rolling pin. Use a 'pastry docker' or fork to prick the pastry, without piercing through to the pan.

Make a cartouche of baking paper and place it into the pastry case, then fill with dried beans or rice and bake blind for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, remove the cartouche and bake for a further 5 minutes. Keep an eye on your pastry and remove when it starts to colour too much.

Now to finish the tart. Stir your filling and add the currants and egg yolk, pour into your tart pastry and even out the surface.

Place in the middle of the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes.

Serve with Clotted Cream and a nice strong cup of tea

We shall drink Lambswool on the Twelfth Night

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Mon, 05 Jan 2015 07:43:00 +0000

Although I was brought up with a lot of Pagan traditions, living in the city of Antwerp meant that some customs were harder to follow than others. As city dwellers far removed from any orchard or field, we were ignorant to the traditional rites surrounding harvest and sowing time. If there is no nature to honour, no field to gather around the cleansing fire, the feasting quickly becomes part of the past and forgotten.

Industrialisation has brought us wealth and the choice of matching shoes with handbags on a regular tuesday morning. It has brought the technical bits and bobs we all love and loathe. The big world has become smaller and the challenges bigger. The lucky few still live outside of the ever growing concrete cities. We follow their lives on Instagram with a sense of nostalgia, as if we have ever experienced living surrounded by trees and liberating fields and forests, and then tragically lost it.

But that is what it is, we have lost something, and most of us can feel it. There have never been more depressed people, nor have there ever been more people who are unhealthy because of their eating habits, eating too much rather than starving, but malnourished nonetheless. Our daily bread is soiled with adulteration, slowly making us ill. Animals are kept away from fields and live their ever shortening lives on the concrete floors of factory farms to keep the cost of your daily need low, fruit is left on the trees to rot because farmers can't afford to harvest it, the price a farmer gets for his milk hasn't gone up in 20 years (based on Belgian farms) so milk is being sprayed onto the soil of the farmland where the cows can no longer roam freely because of bureaucratic nonsense about fertilizer. Small scale generation long fishermen turn their boats into flower beds because the fishing quotas set out to protect fish stocks have made it so that only the big destructive factory fishing vessels can make a living, scooping up the fish only for part of it to be actually consumed and the rest turned into animal feed because their nets just catch too much for it all to be sold and cooked by us humans. The fisherman that could have made his day by catching one Dover Sole, now has to trow it back, while the big monsters take and take and kill the sustainable fishing industry.

We got lost as humans, because we lost part of our human nature.

Let today be an Epiphany.

The Epiphany is the Christian feast that concludes the twelve days of Christmas. In Pre-Christian pagan traditions this marks the time for Wassail. The practice of 'wassailing' meant singing and drinking in the apple orchards on the Twelfth Night to awaken the trees, to warn of the evil spirits and pray for a good harvest in the autumn. It could be that the feast of Wassail comes from the Celtic festival called 'La Mas Ubhail', the Feast of the Apple. Wassail comes from 'waes hael' meaning ‘be thou healthy’ or 'be whole', a salutation in Old English. During the feast these words would be addressed to each other and to the oldest apple tree in the orchard.
A drink traditional to Wassail is called 'Lambswool' and it is very possible that 'La Mas Ubhail' got phonetically Anglicised, to 'Lamasool' and later 'Lambswool'. In historical books we often see that a lot of words were written down phonetically, resulting in a number of different ways to note down one single word.

Robert Herrick, a mid 17th century poet mentioned the custom of Wassailing and Lambswool in his poem about about Twelfth Night, we also get an idea of the recipe too:

Next crown the bowl full With gentle lamb's wool Add sugar, nutmeg and ginger, With store of ale too; And thus ye must do To make a wassail a swinger

Give then to the king And queen wassailing : And though with ale ye be whet here, Yet part from hence As free from offence As when ye innocent met here.

The drink Lambswool is a mulled ale, poured over hot apple puree, although some people swear by whole apples, or apple pieces cooked in spiced cider or ale. However, as far as a drink goes, you can't swallow a whole apple, nor can you swallow apple pieces so it is most probable that the recipe containing whole apples is just derived from the recipe made with apple puree. It is possible that the soft puree resembled a lambs fleece to people in the old days, resulting in giving it the name of what they associated it with, lambs wool.
Another reason for thinking that an apple puree was used it that this is the end of the season, so the apples which are left in times before refrigeration and fancy techniques to keep fruit from ripening, would not have been the prettiest of the bunch. An hot and spiced apple puree fortified with ale would be warming on a january evening, and would allow people to prepare it in a kettle rather than an oven which is used for the recipe with whole apples. Remember this is a country dish and ovens were a privilege for the well-to-do. But the sugar in the dish also tells us this wasn't a drink for the poor, it could have been a special treat from the lord of the manor, or from the farmer to his farm labourers.

Last year I spoke to you about the intriguing Twelfth Cake, a fruit cake elaborately decorated with sugar or wax figurines which was also a privilege for the well-to-do. This cake, which is also mentioned by Herrick in his poem also started of as a humble 'plum cake' for the feast of Wassail. City folk picked up on it and adjusted the cake to their festive needs, making it the centrepiece of the table and causing queues in front of bakeries. Because it became popular in the city and with the wealthy, we get our first recipe for it in a 1803 book. A recipe for Lambswool is more difficult to find, as the drink remained in the countryside. So judging from the poem of Robert Herrick, I came up with this recipe for you.

Lambswool

serves 6-8

What do you need

Bramley or Cox stewing apples, 500 gr (peeled and cored about 300 gr)
water, 100 ml
sugar 100 gr
freshly grated nutmeg, 1 teaspoon
ginger powder, 1 teaspoon
a good ale, 750 ml

Method
Peel and cut your apples in small pieces and place in a pot along with 100 ml of water and the sugar and spices. Stew until soft and puree so there are no bits left.
When ready to serve, heat up the apple puree and add the ale while whisking. You should get a nice froth while doing so. Serve at ones.

Are you celebrating the Twelfth Night? Or are you having a slice of King cake, galette Du Roi or Driekoningen taart? Or are you wassailing and drinking Lambswool?

Ancient apple trees in Sussex

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The last of the herring men

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 16:59:00 +0000

Herring means Christmas to me

Fishing in a traditional and sustainable way, is decaying and it is becoming increasingly harder to make a living from a small fishing boat.
In November I visited my friend Stephen Perham, the last of the Clovelly Herring men.
Also the Clovelly Harbourmaster, he is the only fisherman still living in the village and the only one who sells his catch. One of the very few others is Tommy who is Stephen’s brother, but he doesn't live in the village anymore.

Stephen lives with his betrothed Joy in his grandmother's house, she's a singer in the Fishwives Choir, lifeboat volunteer, and trainee doctor. His sister Rachel lives next door, in the house their father and mother lived and died in, like many before them. These houses are full of stories and ghosts of the past. His family is with us when we sit around the table in his kitchen, drinking port by the warming old Rayburn that's drying tea towels and three beloved soggy dogs.

Pictures of his ancestors and other long lost locals are found everywhere in his fisherman's cottage and I’m told there are many more, as the old folk of the village have often left their old family photos to him when they died. Joy, very much amused, pointed towards a Clovelly souvenir plaque in their kitchen, showing a small lad on the cobbled street. "Guess who the little boy is?"
He is the last of the herring men of Clovelly, the last link between the old and the new; he is the one who keeps all those long lost souls alive, the keeper of hundreds of years of memories.

Even when visiting the local pub in Clovelly, we find a lingering echo of Stephen and Tommy's ancestors. The pictures on the wall of the snug bar tell the story of a Clovelly long gone, of fishermen gathering around the table smoking pipes and pictures of the most beloved wooden boats, of which only a few still remain in the harbour. These boats are unique to Clovelly and built to get out to sea faster than the larger boats when the herring arrives.

Stephen in his Picarooner, a wooden boat unique to Clovelly

The harbour at dawn

Traditional sustainable fishing methods that haven't changed for centuries

Clovelly as a community, like many other similar coastal villages, once depended on the herring trade. Records show that two hundred years ago there were a hundred herring boats in the harbour with amounts around nine thousand herrings or ‘Silver Darlings’ brought in from sea. The days of the large herring fleet are long gone and today there are just a few fishermen who still go out for the herring, using sustainable fishing methods with drift nets.

Meeting Stephen, you immediately understand why the town's herring festival each november isn’t just another food festival - it is a celebration of tradition and heritage, his heritage. Stephen is a 6th generation Clovelly herring fisherman, and with him and his brother, sadly, the line is very likely to end.

This proud and gentle-natured fisherman is the essence of this little village; he and his family represent the past and the future. He knows all the stories - where which boat got shipwrecked and who survived or was lost to the sea. He can read the waves, the sky and the sound that the rain makes when it hits the water. Fishing is in his blood, and fishing for herring is his passion as it has been associated with his family and this little village for centuries. As harbourmaster and the last full-time fisherman in the village, he knows where every boat is at any given moment and, although it is hard to sell herring these days -it is now a fish which is unjustifiably out of fashion- he continues to go out for herring because it is what he genuinely loves to do.

The fish he doesn’t sell, or eat himself, he salts down in barrels to use as bait. In the summer months he goes out to sea for lobster and crabs. To do this he needs bait, and the herring provides that. He needs a dozen barrels to get through the summer and with the number of herring being so plentiful, he usually only goes out for herring once or twice a week to fulfil orders after the herring festival ends.

Life by the sea was so different in the old days; nearly all the men in the village were employed in herring fishing up until the 20th century. In the past, fishermen had to move away from their beloved little coastal town with its steep hills and cobbled lanes during the summer when there was no herring to be caught. They would work on the Royal Yachts further away but by the time the herring returned to these pebbled shores they would be home. The season of the Silver Darling runs from Michaelmas to Christmas and that’s why for Stephen “herring means Christmas”. It’s the build-up to Christmas, his favourite time of the year. He says once you get to Christmas it is all about the food, the puddings and the cakes. This fisherman loves to cook.

Right: Stephen and Tommy's ancestors on the wall of the village pub

Stephen looking out over the harbour from his kitchen, nothing happens without him knowing about it

Left: The large herring fleet of the past. Right: One of the last of the fleet today.

His passion for herring and the traditional methods of catching them made him think about how he could try and put herring back on the map. The Clovelly Herring Festival was originally the brainchild of Stephen, Bob Rouse and Sue Haworth, who both work for Clovelly Estate, and the author of the well acclaimed book about the history of herring fishing, Mike Smylie. Smylie, as a maritime historian, has done a great deal for the fishing industry, and the herring industry in particular, trying to record the traditions of a dying industry that for years had fed the nation. He and Stephen met when BBC Radio 4 introduced the two in a program about Smylie's herring book and they have been friends ever since.

Mike Smylie comes down to the Herring Festival each year with his self-made herring smoker, which looks like an old outdoor loo. He believes that people went off smoked herring due to the usage of artificial dyes to speed up the smoking process of kippers during WW2. It is also a rather sad fact that people have become so used to buying ready filleted fish that they have lost the knowledge of either boning a fish or even just eating it straight from a hot pan from the bone. Herring contains a larger bone and tiny little long bones which you can actually just eat. These little harmless bones had provided the people with much needed extra calcium in the past.

Joy goes out to sea with Stephen whenever she can.

Herring was plentiful until stocks collapsed in the 1970s. Smoking herring into kippers or salting it down in barrels, either for bait or consumption, had always been the most common way the herring was processed. That way it could be kept for longer and transported further inland. As herring was a main food source it became a staple during the war. The ‘herring ban’ in 1976 caused the closure of the Celtic and the North Sea fisheries and it lasted until 1983.

Stephen Perham and his brother Tommy were growing up during the herring ban and his father taught them the ropes of the trade by drawing diagrams in the salt of the windows of his house. Unfortunately their father died a year before the ban was lifted, but Stephen has been fishing for herring ever since.

The extraordinary thing about Stephen's method of fishing is that it hasn’t changed one bit from how his ancestors did it. The boat is still the same type of small 16 ft wooden ’Picarooner’ his forebears used, nicely painted white every year and finished off with a pretty red rim. The nets are also still the same design, although they are now made of nylon rather than cotton. The only thing that has really changed is the demand for this beautiful silver fish. The big markets like Brixham and Plymouth just aren’t interested in herring any more.

A lonely 'Picarooner', a wooden herring boat unique to Clovelly

It's not difficult to see why these shiny fish are nicknamed 'The Silver Darling'

Stephen shows me that the herring scales are everywhere. The boat looks like it is embellished.

Luckily a food festival, like the Herring Festival in Clovelly, puts a healthy, oily fish like herring back in the spotlight and onto the menu. Not only does the food festival offer a number of stalls selling herring delights traditional and more exotic, there is fresh herring to take home, and there are also several stalls selling other local produce. I was on hand this year to help Stephen and Joy sell their lobster rolls, which we lovingly prepared that morning. Perham herring, which is how Stephen and Tommy call their beloved fish, was celebrated and enjoyed by many for this one whole day. But it should be on our plates more often.

Rick Stein and Marco Pierre White have both come down to Clovelly in recent years to fight the corner of the herring. And it deserves saving. Clearly herring is a versatile fish; it is gorgeous fresh, but just as good smoked into kippers, simply baked in plenty of butter or cured into rollmops. A fish abundant and healthy, we should eat it more to support small scale fishermen who catch these little fish in a sustainable way and support carefully managed fishing. But, foremost, we should eat this fish because it is good for us.

If there is one thing I've learnt on my few days with Stephen and Joy, it is the importance of heritage. Traditional sustainable herring fishing is under threat to be lost. Fishermen have difficulties to sell their catch so have to try and find other ways to sustain themselves and their families, or move away from their villages and learn a different trade. Their quaint fishermen's cottages are turned into holiday homes and their boats into flower beds. But Stephen is sure he isn't the only one who's at the end of a line of fishermen, there are other fishermen in other coastal villages who are also trying to hang on to a small scale sustainable method of fishing. His dream is to take to sea with the small wooden boat, he lovingly named 'Little Lilly' and visit those other fishermen, and write down their stories like I am writing down his today. For Stephen it is important that these old traditional methods, and the names of those who keep it alive, are noted down somewhere, so that they aren't forgotten and lost. So that their heritage doesn't rot away, like the old boats do on the beaches all round the British coast.

I hope that Stephen can sell enough of his catch to go on his trip. Because it is an important work to write, and one I would love to read.

Joy and Stephen when I first met them two years ago in the summer, with their catch of mackerel

When I was visiting them my friend Sassy and I also shot a little video when we went fishing for herring with them. I hope you'll like it!
I've uploaded it to my new Youtube Channel, don't forget to subscribe :)

The Herring Festival takes place on the second Sunday of November each year, and is organised by the private owners of Clovelly village, the Clovelly Estate Company.

Medieval Chicken Compost

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 22:10:00 +0000

Many people ask me if I come across weird and unappetising dishes in those old British cookery books I collect and devour.

Of course there are always recipes in historical cookery books which might seem odd to us today, but I am quite sure if someone from the 18th century would come and visit us today, he would go home with as much stories about strange foods to tell his contemporaries.
It's all a difference in how we look at food, and how we approach it. For example, most of us only ever see meat, packed in plastic, neatly arranged in the supermarket shelves. Small independent butchers are disappearing on our streets and so is our connection to the animal that provides us with our much savoured sausage. Only last year a butcher shop in Suffolk was asked to remove his elaborate game displays from the window so children wouldn't be upset by the sight of dead animals. Man has become disconnected and doesn't think past the plastic surrounding the factory farmed meat.

I don't find eating the head of a pig weird at all, people in the past would have been happy to have it. But today it is seen as 'medieval' and not very appetising. I must confess I do not have a desire to eat a pigs head any time soon, but many have told me it is exquisite.

I am talking about a Medieval dish with a name that might sound strange to us today, but only because we have given a different explanation to the word, or the word as evolved. Medieval dishes have always delighted me in their inventiveness, and elegance. A pure kind of cooking, with herbs and spices that give your tastebuds a whole other experience.

In the 14th and 15th century the dish with the name 'compost' has been the term for any stewed mixture. A 'composition' of ingredients. This could have been meat, vegetables or fruit. The French term 'compote' very likely derives from the English 'compost' which later only meant stewed fruits. The name 'Compost' for a recipe can also be found in Flemish Medieval cookery books.
To anyone, this dish must sound intriguing, especially as one would immediately think this was a recipe for creating the best compost to fertilise your veggie patch with.

But no, the etymology of the word might be obscure, we are not making any kind of compost for the garden today.
This recipe for 'compost' I am bringing to you today is made with chicken and green herbs, and spices. Another contemporary recipe is made with chickens and some of its offal. Herbs vary in recipes and another 'compost' is made exclusively from root vegetables, dried fruits and spices. They are all very clean and pure dishes.

Chicken was always a noble type of meat on a banquet. It was considered more economical if a chicken was kept for her eggs. Killing off a chicken meant killing of your egg factory so chicken would be on the tables of those who could miss a bird, the elite.
This dish is fantastic, it is so pure and simple, it is the kind of dish that just makes my heart skip a beat when I first have a little taste. The dish eats like a soup, and I like to add a nice slice of stale sourdough bread as a 'sup' - which was in the past frequently added to thicken the soup and give more substance. This 'sup' is also what gave us the term 'supper' later on in history. A 'sup' could also have been a piece of cake soaked in booze or sauce, the Italian word for trifle 'Zuppa Inglese' still gives shows us the link with the 'sup'.
To make it into an evening meal I added some new potatoes. This of course not ver Medieval as the potato was not known in the Middle Ages, but it is a lovely addition to this dish.

New potatoes are a lovely addition to make it into a main dish, but not very Medieval.

Original recipe from A Noble Boke off Cookry (England, 1468)

To mak composte tak chekins and halve them then tak saige parsly lekes and other good erbes and chop them small then tak a pint of hony and som of the erbes and lay in the botom of the pot and som of the chekyn then tak lard of pork smale mynced and lay it on and cast ther to pouder of guingere and canelle and boille it and serue it.

I brown my chicken before stewing, this isn't done in the original Medieval recipe, but I find it improves the flavour and the look of the dish, I leave my chicken whole, but you can cut it in half if you prefer.
It might be so that the Medieval cook also browned the chicken, but recipes of that period weren't complete as they were more often just aide-memoirs rather than clear instructions.

What do you need - serves 4 or 2 very hungry people with leftovers, it is very good the next day.

1 large hen, free range (please, if you can)
1 stalk of leek, chopped
a bunch of parsley
a bunch of sage
a teaspoon of cinnamon, and one of ginger
two large tablespoons of honey
optional, some pieces of bacon fat, for flavour
optional, stale bread, only decent sourdough or other artisan bread

Method

Preheat your oven to 160°C, you can do this just on the hob too, I just prefer to use the oven.

Have a big pot ready, large enough so you can cover the whole chicken with water, but small enough so it fits snugly.

In a frying pan, melt a generous knob of butter and brown your chicken slightly on each side. You just want some color, no crust or full browning. A medium flame on the hob is fine for this.

Place half the herbs and leek on the base of your pot, place your chicken on top and add the rest of the herbs.

Smear your chicken with the honey, doesn't have to be neat.
Fill the pot with water so the chicken is completely covered, add the spices and give it a stir.

Bring to the boil and let it boil for 5-10 minutes without the lid.

Close the lid and transfer to the oven (or leave on the hob on a small flame) for 45 minutes - 1 hour. Cooking time depends on the size of your chicken, and the quality, a free range slowly grown bird cooks faster than a factory farmed chick. The meat should just not be falling of the bone, so keep an eye on it on those last 15 minutes.

Strain your broth using a colander or something similar, and take out your herbs and veg.
Then, take the meat of the bones and place in the broth. Place some or all of the herbs and veg back into the broth if you like, I do, as I like to eat the whole thing.

Have warmed soup plates ready and place a piece of bread in each of them, pour over the broth and give everyone some meat from the breast and some from the legs.

Serving tip: some nice cooked new potatoes work well to make this a main dish. It is very strengthening and ideal for winter, or on chilly summer evenings. It is also very nurturing when you are unwell.

You might also enjoy
Medieval mulled wine - Ypocras >
The poor man's bread >
Sussex stewed Steak >

The Best Books on Food

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 07 Dec 2014 17:16:00 +0000

Books, the treasure that is bound pieces of paper.
I've been planning this post for over a year now, but never really had the time because I was busy, reading books ;) Seriously, it's just one of those things you can never seem to finalise because there will always be other and more exciting books to buy.
Of course this list is quite personal, but if you like this blog, I think you will find it useful. Especially with the time to buy presents near, here is what I had on my list and what you will find in my book case. A book is always such a treasure, and as a book buying addict myself, mostly antiquarian, I know how handy a list can be.

First up: Books for food geeks

Prospect Books hardly ever publish a title I wouldn't buy. These are the books for geeks, for those who wonder how the food was prepared centuries ago on an open fire, on the first range in the 18th century and the Victorian stoves. For those who wonder how to build a wood fired oven, how to cook in it and how to treasure it. For those interested in Medieval British or Arab food, Catalan, Ancient Greek or Roman food.
Prospect has books on cookery, food history and the ethnology of food. They are one of the very few to specialise in this field of food geek books Any book by Prospect would make me happy, though the books in this picture are but a few of the titles I have. Prospect Books was founded in 1979 by the late Alan Davidson - who wrote the Oxford Companion to food - and his wife Jane Davidson.

Must buys as gifts? Quinces: Growing & Cooking, Apicius, Honey from a Weed, Medieval Arab Cookery, Alan Davidson's Mediterranean Seafood, Roman Food Poems, Sugar-plums and Sherbert The Prehistory of Sweets, The Book of Marmalade, The Centaur’s Kitchen and many, many more...

Cooking & Dining in Tudor & Early Stuart England by Peter Brears (Prospect)
Peter Brears' new book was highly anticipated by me for a while, it was due publication last year but came out in februari this year. If you just gaze upon this magnificent and especially huge tome of Brears you understand why the book was late. Brears spent ten years writing this book, so a few months later wasn't going to make a difference, except for those people like me constantly checking the Prospect books site to see if it has come out. Imagine my delight when Tom Jaine from Prospect emailed me to say it was finally available to buy. This is the follow-up to Brears' volume about food in the Middle Ages, a book I mentioned in my 'Best food books' list (find it here >). The period covered in this book is a time when new foods from the New World were starting to influence English food. The book starts with the reign of Henry VII and covers dining and practical arrangements and techniques in the kitchen and dining hall up until Charles I. If you are a geek like I am, this book is for you. The words in the book are illustrated with illustrations made by Brears himself and explain us the system of The Counting House to the Buttery and the Pantry.

Other publishers of very interesting and geeky books on food history are The British Museum who published 'The Curious Cookbook' recently, and the Oxford University Press. I was just given 'Movable Feasts' published by them. Also Grub Street publishes books about interesting subjects, like ice creams (historic) and British food in general.

Vintage Books

Vintage books are always a nice gift for the hard core food lover, and especially the hard core food lover who also loves hoarding books. I always have a look in charity shops, but for many decent antiquarian books you really need to see a specialised dealer. A book can cost as little as 50 £ but prices can also go up to 20 000 or more!
Building a relationship with a seller is always a good idea.

Books about British food

If you want to learn about British food then these books are a good way to start.
There are a few missing from this picture, like Dorothy Hartley's 'Food in England' and Elizabeth David's 'Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen'. The only reason being that I forgot to put them on the pile.
'Food Britania' by Andrew Webb is the most recent of the bunch but nonetheless a delightful book on regional British food and produce. Eliza Acton, is often referred to as the 'real Mrs Beaton' and her book is an extraordinary account on British food of that period. Even then she touches on some food issues which are still very relevant today.
Florence White's books were written with the help of the members of the 'English Folk Cookery Association' she founded. A lot of the recipes in her books may have been lost if she hadn't recorded them. Her 'Good things in England' (1932) is easy to get online or with the publisher, the 'Good English Food' (1952) you also see here is very rare but it never hurts to google it. 'Cooking in Europe, 1650-1850' was written by food historian extraordinaire Ivan Day, and of course very interesting indeed. It is fairly hard to get in the UK, but easier to acquire in the US and Canada. Jane Grigson's English food is as important as Dorothy Hartley's 'Food in England' and used as a reference work by many. For those who wish to learn how British food evolved over the centuries, then let C. Anne Wilson take you on a trip through history in her 'Food & Drink in Britain'.
Of course there are more books like this, but some of them printed in such a small number that finding them can be very hard and very frustrating.

Books by Agnes B Marshall, the very first female celebrity chef of Victorian England, touring the country giving cookery demonstrations, and teaching in her cookery school. She also invented one of the first ice cream machines and ice caves, and sold cookery utensils from her store. She died and was forgotten and fell into the shadow of Mrs Beeton, who is no match for Mrs Marshall. She was nicknamed the Queen of ices and her book on ice cream was republished last year. Here you see my original books, with the post-its in it, showing that they are loved and used in my home.

Books for people who like to investigate

'The book of Eels' by Tom Ford and 'Herring, a history of the silver darlings' by Mike Smylie, are both very interesting reads if you like to know more about the history of both these fish and how they are caught. It is delightful to see these two men write so passionately about these little sea creatures. I can't recommend these books enough.

The truth is out there:
Swallow This, Serving Up the Food Industry's Darkest Secrets
by Joanna Blythman
I met Joanna Blythman two weeks ago on the Great Taste Award judging where we always meet, she asked me if I was enjoying her book. I said to her 'It's awful! I mean, not your writing, but it's just awful and it smacks me in the face'. Joanna smiled and understood what I was trying to say. 'Yes - she said - it is awful and you would probably have to put it down at times'. And she was right. Swallow This is a book which is really hard to swallow because in it Joanna goes undercover in the food industry and uncovers that even the most basic of products have been adulterated. Butter flavour, strawberry flavour, and vanilla that hasn't even a drop of the original in its ingredients list. And then there is the ludicrous way in which a basic frozen pizza is created, the base is made in x country and frozen, then shipped to x country for tomato sauce to be added and then another location adds vegetables and cheese. When your frozen pizza is ready and boxed, it can have travelled more than you have in two years time. Do we really want that? In a time when food miles are on every food conscious person's mind? What you are thinking when you picture processed food is only the tip of the mountain. The valley goes deep and dark and Joanna shows us the truth, and although we want to run and hide and never hear these awful stories again... We can't ignore what is in this book, and we have to think twice about buying that healthy looking fruit salad that has been sprayed to stay 'fresh' for days, or those Feta, with Glucono-Delta-Lactone which will never go off. Food has become science, and we're two seconds away from eating flavoured plastic and artificial meat. This book reads like a horror movie, but sadly this isn't fiction.
For an extract of the book published in The Guardian follow this link

If there is one book to buy

If there is one book to buy, it should be Alan Davidson's 'The Oxford Companion to Food'. Davidson spent 20 years of his life writing and researching this book. In a time before the internet, he create a massive library of reference books which are unique but sadly split up and sold after his death in 2003. 'The Oxford Companion to Food' lists all the food you can think of and gives an explanation which often almost gives you an entire idea of the place where it came from and how it was grown. His writing style make it a book worth reading, and worth cherishing. The new and revised version was just published, edited by Tom Jaine, his life-long friend, who also took over Prospect Books from him. There really couldn't have been a better person to oversee this new edition Davidson's work.

Books for food activists

Any Michael Pollan book should be on your list. In fact, I believe that it should be read in high schools so young people can start their lives knowing what they can do to eat well, and most importantly knowing what is in their often preferred processed food fad. Pollan's books aren't lectures, they are fun to read, sometimes even funny but mostly very informative. You WANT to know what is written in these pages people, you NEED to know.

“The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.”
Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food

Books for hard core bread bakers...
and those who want to take it a step further, learn about fermentation, wild bread yeasts for sourdough and other useful tricks

Elizabeth David's 'English Bread and Yeast Cookery' is probably my all time favourite book when it comes to bread books. She teaches you in her unique voice all you never knew about bread and regional bread varieties. This rare first edition is very precious, but a modern edition is available from your regular bookstore.
'The Art of Fermentation' is written by Sandor Ellix Katz, aka Sandorkraut. It is a do-it-yourself home fermentation guide. Katz, like Pollan, believes whe should eat more fermented foods like we have done for centuries. There are many health benefits. It is a very interesting read if you are interested in healthy eating, and using food to cure ailments.
The two 'Tartine' books by Chad Robertson are an epic guide to making the perfect sourdough breads. I had the pleasure of learning his technique from one of his students and it really makes a difference. No endless kneading here, just very tasty and healthy sourdough bread.

The best books on Italian food culture

These are again, books for hard core food lovers who are hungry for knowledge.

Bartolomeo Scappi's book from c. 1500-1577 is named the most famous chef of the Italian Renaissance. He oversaw the preparation of meals for several Cardinals and was such a master that he became the personal cook for two Popes. He compiled the largest cookery treatise of the period. His recipes inherit medieval culinary customs, but also show the start of modern Italian cookery.

Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well by Pellegrino Artusi. Although he found it difficult to find someone who wanted to print his book, the book has consistently remained in print since it was first published in 1891. The book is dressed with witty anecdotes and observations of the author which make you relate to him even easier. The book was written for housewives and their domestic helpers rather than the court kitchens which makes it unique in its time.

I don't think Elizabeth David's 'Italian Food' needs much explaining in this list. It is a classic, published way back in 1954, and one that might be more likely to be in your book collection already. This book was an inspiration to British cooks when it was first published - a time when people - including David, were tired of everything they already knew. They wanted a taste of foreign cuisine, to travel by reading a book and recreating the dishes.

The best books on Tuscan food

Okay, I must admit I know both of these authors. It is no secret that Giulia is one of my dearest friends and you can read a review of her 'I love Toscana' here on this blog.
The fact is that 'I love Toscana' is a book that oozes Tuscany for me. It's the colors, the dishes, and it is all very easy to cook so a perfect gift for that person who loves Italian food. Giulia also gives Tuscan cookery classes in the season, from her home in the most stunning surroundings of Sienna.
I know I gave you books on Italian food culture before, but Italian food doesn't exist. Italian food is made out of different regional specialities and produce and can't be named under the one heading Italian food.
Even in Tuscan food there are regional varieties, this can be because you are from the coast, or more South. In any case, these are two books which I recommend.
Sarah Fioroni writes about her family farm and the stories and recipes. The book is full of lovely images of the land she and here family work on for wine, saffron, olive oil and grazing. The great thing is that you can also stay at the farm and taste the food, bring some wine home and experience the whole thing.

Perfect books to give to any food lover

When you're giving books you don't really know 100% sure if the receiver is going to be happy with it. Books are personal! But these books I will show you here are winners every time!

'Around the World in 80 dishes' was published a little while back but still a fabulous book to give as a gift to any food lover. It features 80 dishes from around the world, like the title says, but not just that, the photography is stunning, and how could it be anything less if you know that this is the book of David Loftus, the world's most famous photographer who photographs all Jamie's books. The recipes are all donated by the chefs he has met over the years, and gives you a divers selection to choose from.

Jamie has a new book out!
And Jamie's books never fail. I have ALL his books and love every single one of them. Again with stunning photography by David Loftus, these two are on fire in the book. I'm sure any Jamie book would be a great gift, he's got a book on Italian food, on American food, British food, Spanish, easy to prepare food, quick to prepare food, and now Comfort food. The thing I love the most is that Jamie's recipes are solid, they never ever fail. It's always tasty and always fun to eat.

Dinner's On!
Barry Lewis is nicknamed the new 'Naked chef'. Some time ago he couldn't even bake an egg, and now he has a book out. He has a very fun youtube channel and cooks up the most crazy and monstrously large things. His book has easy to follow recipes for the home and I feel it's a perfect book for a dad who wants to get into cooking for his family. It's a bit bloky - if that is even a word. It is fun and will get anyone cooking for sure.

Perfect books to give to borderline food geeks

Again not a new release but Tim Hayward's book 'Food DIY' is just a great book to give to the enthusiastic home cook. Also a perfect bloky book but just as good for a cool lady! To make your owns sausages, smoke your own salmon. A hands-on book.

Diana Henry's book 'Salt Sugar Smoke' is a delightful book on preserving, salting and curing. I have made her beetroot cured salmon so many times I can now say I have my own variation of it. All of Diana's books are very good books to give to a borderline food geek, just like the new book 'Bitter' by Jennifer Mclagan which is devoted to, you'll never guess: bitter foods. It's refreshing to see a book on bitter foods as it is a flavour we are often not very fond about. If you love endive, stout beer and radicchio, you will love this book.

Middle Eastern Food

'The Jewelled Kitchen' is a book about Lebanese, Moroccan and Persian recipes, I have reviewed it on my blog here. It is my go-to book when I want to cook something Arabic and Bethany Kehdy's recipes are of course her adaptations but still very authentic to her roots. The book also benefits from very pretty images by my mate Sarka Babicka.

Persiana by Sabrina Ghayour
Intriguing and colourful.

Ukrainian food
Mamushka by Olia Hercules
Olia Hercules, who doesn't only have the most wicked name, is also a very warm and generous person. It shows in her book where she shares the food of Ukraine and beyond, teaching us about a cuisine that hasn't really been explored yet in books. I can't wait to try the Ukrainian 'narcotics', and Tartar lamb turnovers. And the Poppy seed roll brings up memories of my childhood travels around the Czech republic and Hungary where this dish is also a favourite. The watermelon skin jam is just intriguing as are the fermented tomatoes. The Moldovan giant cheese twist calls for a theatrical way of stretching a super thin dough, but Olia assures us we can do it and tells us we should attempt it when in a playful mood.
Other than providing us with many new and exciting traditional soviet dishes to have a play with, we also catch a glimpse of her family as the book travels to Ukraine and visits her home turf. The photographer of this book Kris Kirkham captured the mood of Olia's life perfectly and adds to the storytelling as photography should do.

Baking books

Kerstin Rodgers has a new book out called 'Ms Marmite Lover's secret tea party', it's the follow-up on her 'Supperclub' book in which she explains how to start your own supperclub. Kerstin is a lovely lady her books are as edgy as she is, a bit bad-ass in a fascinator. I'm still waiting for my copy of her recent book, it seems there was a delay with the bookstore posting it. I know one recipe in there at least, Kerstin asked me if she could include my recipe for Cornish Splits. I'm sure the Secret Tea Party will be worth the wait.

Homemade memories by Kate Doran
I don't know about you but when I saw the cover of this book I was sold. I have a weakness for Jaffa Cakes and as Kate, the author explains, the passion for many of these childhood favourites kinda cools when you look on the back of the pack and read about all the stuff they put in there.
But I'd never considered making my own Jaffa cakes, fearing it would be a right faff and wouldn't taste the same as the 'real deal' or rather the 'shop bought'.
Most of the recipes don't conjure up childhood memories for me as they are mostly British treats, but then the book reads like a childhood memory and Kate's short stories with each chapter and recipe surely add to the story of this book. You know I wish these were my childhood treats! What an array of gorgeous things. I can't wait to start baking from this book when I finally have some time to bake things that aren't related to my book anymore.

A book for experienced cake makers

Charlotte White has her own company, creating special occasion cakes in the most crazy and elaborate shapes you can imagine. In her first book she shows us how to decorate and create burlesque style cakes that would make any host proud to serve the guests.

Books for food writers
There are so many books I haven't mentioned here, like Elizabeth David's 'An Omelette and a glass of wine' a book that is frequently found on my bedside table, and 'The Art of Eating' by M.F.K. Y Fisher. I assume these works are known, and if not, look them up and read them, you will not regret it and they will probably never leave your bedside table too.

Also take a look on my Books link, with a couple of other books, like The Taste of Belgium I shot the photos for over the summer

The end for now ...

I will keep adding books and post the updates when I've made them.
All views are my own. I was not payed in any way whatsoever to mention these books.
Of 'A Royal Cookbook' and 'Diner's on' I received a review copy.

Any books not on here you are crazy about? Let me know!

About my work: The Taste of Belgium - Book Photography

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Wed, 26 Nov 2014 07:08:00 +0000

Hi guys, I wanted to share this project with you. In september I went to London to do the photography for the new book by indie publisher Grub Street. The funny thing is, it's a book about Belgian food, by a Belgian author Ruth Van Waerebeek, in English but hopefully soon also in Dutch. The book was originally published many years ago under the name, 'Everybody Eats Well in Belgium'.

It's always such a treat when a publisher books you for your photography style and therefore I also get really attached to the book as it is my baby in the end as well.

Of course for this particular project I could bring more to the table as I am of course a Belgian lady and finding 'Belgian style props' only required me to open my cupboards or a short trip to the nearest charity shop for vintage beer glasses.

As soon as I had met with the people from Grub Street I had a vision on where I wanted to take the photography of this book. My Belgian, and Flemish roots in particular drove me to include the dark and moody photography I enjoy to do most, inspired by the Dutch/Flemish masters of the renaissance. The publisher allowed me to be creative in suggesting images and styles. It was a pleasure working with Grub Street Publishing, we got along like a house on fire. They even wrote a little something about little old me on the jacket of the book. Truly honoured.

I am very proud of this book, I hope you will like it as much as I do.

It's full of Belgian classics, not very difficult and very tasty! There is a whole chapter dedicated to cooking with beer, what more do you want! Recipes for Belgian waffles maybe? The perfect Belgian frites? This is a book you can enjoy, there's plenty to read.

To whet your appetite, here a few pictures and a recipe at the end.
The book is for sale on Amazon here > for £20 instead of £ 25!
*** I am not earning anything from the sales of the book. Just so you know :) ***

Jacket text:

Ruth Van Waerebeek is an adventurous traveller, international chef and cookbook author from Belgium. She was born and raised in the medieval town of Ghent where she learned to cook at the side of her mother, grandmother and her great-grandmother. She was a chef in two leading restaurants in Ghent before she set off travelling round the world. In the 1990s she worked in full time teaching at a school of culinary arts in New York. Since 2000 she has been the brand ambassador and the house chef of Chile’s most important winery Concha y Toro. She travels regularly to the company’s major events in Europe, Russia, USA, Latin America and Asia. She now runs the Mapuyampay Hostal Gastronómico and Cooking School in the heart of Chile’s wine country. Her cooking classes have been profiled in Gourmet Magazine as one of the 50 best cooking vacations in the world.

Regula Ysewijn was the photographer on this book. A former graphic designer, she was born and raised in Antwerp, Belgium where she went to art school and taught herself to cook. In her photography she is inspired by Dutch and Flemish Renaissance paintings, one of which she grew up with hanging in her parents’ dining room. She travels Europe and Britain in particular for her photography assignments and she is also busy working on her first book. When she is not photographing, she is giving workshops and lectures on topics of food photography, cooking and graphic design.

Flemish waffles

15g/. ounce fresh cake yeast or 1
package active dry yeast
480ml/2 cups milk or 420ml/1. cups
milk and 4 tablespoons/. cup water, warmed to 38ÅãC/100ÅãF
250g/2. cups plain (all-purpose) flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
3 large egg yolks
100g/7 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled to lukewarm
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons cognac or brandy
3 large egg whites, beaten to soft peaks
For serving: Icing/confectioners’ sugarUnsalted butter, at room temperature, or whipped cream

Makes about 12 waffles

In a small bowl, dissolve the yeast in 60ml/. cup of the lukewarm milk.

Set aside until the mixture is bubbling and foamy, about 5 minutes.

Sift the flour together with the salt into a large mixing bowl. Make a

well in the centre and add the whole egg, the yeast mixture, and the

sugar. Mix well with a wooden spoon. Add the remaining milk and the

egg yolks, one at a time, stirring with the wooden spoon until smooth.

Add the melted butter, vanilla, and cognac. Stir to just combine.

Fold the egg whites into the batter. Cover with a clean towel and let rise

for 1 hour in a warm spot (see Note, page 262).

Stir the batter and bake 120ml/. cup at a time in a hot waffle iron.

Serve immediately with icing/confectioners’ sugar and butter or

whipped cream.

Bonfire, bangers and riots

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 09:46:00 +0000

Two ways with sausages for Bonfire night: Jacket potato bangers and Toad in the hole

Last year on this day I wrote about Guy Fawkes and his connection to the Gunpowder Plot (see Gunpowder, treason and Bonfire Parkin here) and how it came to be that such plot was, well... plotted. I went back to nearly a hundred years before the plot, to see where that seed was sown.
Today I look at the customs that resulted from this failed plot and how it influenced the way we riot and react today to show our dismay, disappointment and disgust for politics and religion.

The trial of the eight surviving conspirators of the Gunpowder Plot was held on januari 27 1606 in Westminster Hall which would have destroyed had their plot been successful. A statute was passed, declaring that deliverance from Gunpowder treason should be remembered every year. From then on each 5th of november there would be a church service at which attendance was compulsory if you were loyal to the King, or at least wanted to pretend to be loyal. It became an annual ceremony to keep the memory of the failed Gunpowder Plot alive. It continued until it was taken out of the prayerbook two centuries later in 1859. But although it was erased from the prayerbook, it was by now rooted into the culture.

In a way the customs of the 5th of november provided a replacement to the pre-reformation holy days of All Saints and All Souls on the 1st and 2nd of November. On these days the churches would be lit with candles, and torches marking the start of winter and darkness. This catholic tradition in its own right had replaced the old pagan rites of Samhain, which celebrated the end of harvest and the beginning of winter. It literally means 'summer's end' and is the primary festival marking the end and the beginning of the year.

When the christians needed to convert the pagans, they gave them the 1st of November, a day on which they could light candles and make lanterns in hollowed turnips, just as they had been doing for generations before christianity spread. The reformation to Protestantism left the people with an empty gap where their 1st of November celebrations used to be, so naturally they embraced the new bonfire tradition after the Gunpowder Plot failed in the first years of the 1600's.

Conveniently to the Protestants, the 5th of november could be used as a celebration of the conservation of Protestantism, a date to mark in the calendar alongside the early death of Queen Mary (a Catholic), the long reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Protestant) and the defeat of the Spanish Armada (to warn off the Spanish Catholics).  

When Charles I married the Catholic princes of France, people showed their disapproval of the Catholic queen by burning effigies of the Pope and the devil on the 5th of November. We are now situated 20 years after the Gunpowder Plot and the only effigies that were burnt were that of the pope and the devil, not of Guy Fawkes.
In 1647 was described how bonfires went from simply great fires to spectacles with fireworks and explosives including fireballs. And in 1657 Samuel Clarke's 'England Remembrancer invoked the happenings of the plot.

After Charles II Restoration in 1660, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary "This 5th of November is observed exceeding well in the City; and at night great bonfires and fireworks." The next years up until the year of the Great Fire in 1666 (which was for a short time also blamed on the catholics) he also mentioned Bonfires and festivities which shows us the normality of these celebrations by this time. On one occasion he is driving home with his wife after going to see Macbeth "forced to go round by London-Wall home because of the bonefires."

Celebrations of the 5th became larger and intense rather than festive after the brother of Charles II Duke of York publicly declared to be a Catholic. This was followed by the Exclusion Crisis to exclude the him from the throne because he was Roman Catholic. When the Tory's started to declare being agains the Exclusion, this created probably one of the first bonfire night riots. In 1682 the 5th fell on a sunday so celebrations started on monday the 6th. Reputedly crowds of people took to the streets attacking Tories and shouting their support for the King's bastard son, the Duke of Monmouth, who was Protestant. This Bonfire night, it was not a celebration of the failed Gunpowder Plot, it was a warning and objection against the possibility of being ruled by a Catholic king.

The next year on the 5th, bonfires and fireworks were banned to keep the calm. But you know what, two years later James did succeed Charles and England had a Catholic King... Needless to say that the Bonfire night celebrations were forbidden although the 'Gunpowder Treason-Day' church service remained.

Under the rule of James' daughter Mary Stuart and her Protestant husband William of Orange, the celebrations of the 5th commenced and got entwined with the restoration of the Protestant religion in England by William of Orange. That double meaning didn't stick though and years after this, it was forgotten and the 5th was yet again a celebration of the failing of the Gunpowder Plot.
Gunpowder Treason-Day' church sermons changed each year, always highlighting another political event. Leaving the people a reason to take to the streets each year.

By the 18th century the festivities on the 'fifth' became less and less fuelled by hatred against Catholics and more about other political issues. The Catholic Relief Acts of 1778 and 1791 made life easier for Catholics, granting them the same rights as Protestants. Of course this sparked resistance leading to a week of rioting in 1780. But eventually the Catholics emancipated, helped by the Irish situation, with Catholic Irish members of Parliament. Of course in Ireland the troubles between the Irish Catholics and English Protestants remained.

Another change happened to the Bonfire night celebrations when anti-catholicism became less acceptable. By the early 19th century effigies of the pope were no longer burnt and the crowds needed another figure to 'blame'. Strangely enough that figure became Guy Fawkes, the person who was least named in contemporary writings about the Treason and Plot. Although Guy Fawkes is mostly remembered on Bonfire night today, it was Robert Catesby who was chief instigator of the Gunpowder Plot (read my previous post to learn more of the plot).

So why did our Guy Fawkes become the figure of Bonfire Night? We can of course not say for certain why, but in 1793 just before the turn of the century, a play was performed at the Royal Haymarket Theatre. The prelude in one act was entitled: Guy Fawkes or The Fifth of November. In 1835 a comic pantomime called Harlequin and Guy Fawkes: or the 5th of November was performed in London's Covent Garden. Many different stories about the Gunpowder Plot were told in plays after that, maybe the truth drifted away and the name Guy Fawkes just sounded best in playwright, maybe it was because he was discovered with the gunpowder...

But now Guy Fawkes has become the Gunpowder Plot, and the night of the fifth got often referred to as 'Guy Fawkes night'. He became the new face of the tradition, the scapegoat of the Plot, the symbol of opposition and disapproval.

Our story takes more turns in the 19th century with Bonfire night celebrations turning violent and dark. Victorian times saw the coming of a different sort of celebration, a night of rioting and criminal behaviour. A night when the honest should stay indoors and the dangerous ruled the streets.
The processions of 'the night of the fifth' would be fired with local social issues of politics and religion. They became manifestations, uprise agains local authorities and they became so dangerous and organised that they needed another organised organisation to contain them. So the police force grew to counter the protesters.

Today we live in a time with organised demonstrations, approved by the local authorities and contained for the safety of the protesters as well as the opponents and those who have nothing to do with it. But when the demonstrations do get ugly today, we see Guy Fawkes appear in the crowds...

Much like in the early 19th century plays about the Gunpowder Plot, a movie was made from a 1980's graphic novel in 2005. 'V for Vendetta' is set in a near-future dystopian society in England, with the main character being 'V' a man wearing a Guy Fawkes mask, who wants to destroy the corrupt fascist regime and its leaders. One of the authors of the graphic novel commented that "The Guy Fawkes mask has now become a common brand and a convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny – and I'm happy with people using it, it seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way." By many political groups the film was seen as an allegory of oppression by government. Anarchists, libertarians and activists of any kind have used the Guy Fawkes mask in their demonstrations after the movie came out. It has been seen in demonstrations agains the G8 summit and in other economical and political protest. It has become the emblem of anonymity and dissent.

The 'Guy' has gained another face, 400 years after he was just one pawn of the Gunpowder Plot. He has now become the face of disappointed people, the face disapproval in modern times. The face saying, we have had enough... For now at least.

On to the food part of this post. Bonfire societies organise the Bonfire parades now in a safe and family friendly manner. The streets of Lewes particularly are the place to be for elaborate bonfire displays. People watch the parade and the fireworks and look forward to warming their hands on hot food and drink.
For this years bonfire night I give you two ways with bangers which are perfect for bonfire night celebrations at home. Toad in the hole is a traditional meat & batter pudding dish that evolved from the Yorkshire pudding-type puddings and other types of fired pudding.
It is bound to be a success with the little ones as who doesn't love a good old proper sausage. The other dish is a banger jacket potato, an easy dish that even the most inexperienced cook could make. The potato just needs time to cook in the oven so do that in advance. It's a perfect little bomb of warmth when you are planning to do some bonfiring of your own in the garden!

Toad in the hole

good quality sausages, 3 or 4
a few sprigs of rosemary (optional)

For the batter

280 ml milk
110 g plain flour
a pinch of salt
3 medium eggs

preheat your oven to max 250° C
Fry your sausages in sunflower oil in a pan until nearly done
Pour 1 cm of sunflower oil into a baking stray or cake tin and place in the middle of the hot oven.
Place a larger tray underneath in case the oil drips over, you don't want extra cleaning afterwards
Make your batter in the manner of making pancake batter
When your oil is hot, you will see as it will be spitting, arrange your sausages into place along with the oil you still have in your pan from frying your bangers
Carefully but swiftly pour the batter into the hot oil, stick in the rosemary sprigs and close the oven door. Bake for 20-25 minutes until puffed up and nicely colored.

Serve with mustard, braised red cabbage, jacked potato or mashed potato and caramelised onions if you like

To braise red cabbage

red Cabbage
a cooking apple, cubed ( for a football size cabbage you need 1 large cooking apple)
a teaspoon of cinnamon

Cut your cabbage very finely, and heat some butter in a pan.
Add your cabbage and apple and braise, adding a little water when needed.
When soft, spice with a little honey and cinnamon
Serve warm, o so good with sausages

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jacket potato bangers

For the potato

1 potato per person You need a floury kind like a Maris Piper, King Edward, or for Belgians 'Bintje frietaardappel'
+- 20g coarse sea salt
good quality sausages
3 onions, braised and caramelised

Wash the potatoes and let them dry
Preheat your oven to 220° C
Put your salt in a tray and roll each potato in the salt and rub it in
Prick your potato with a toothpick a few times to prevent them bursting
Place the potatoes straight on the rack in the middle of the oven
Bake for 1 hour, then squeeze the potato slightly to see if it appears soft inside, if that doesn't appear so, place back in the oven for another 15-30 minutes.
When the potatoes are nearly ready or when you are about to have dinner caramelise some onions, add one teaspoon of pomegranate molasse of balsamic vinegar, whatever you prefer and let it become nice and sticky. You could do this in advance too and just cook the sausages when you need them.
Finally fry your sausages in oil or butter, I prefer butter and oil in this case. Finish them off with 10 min in the oven along with your potatoes to heat them up again or on their final bake.
Then cut into the potato, add some of that caramelised onion, add a banger and serve!
Also very good with braised red cabbage.

Pudding!
Last years Bonfire parkin might take your fancy, find the recipe here >

Bonfire Parkin

What are you doing for bonfire night?

Weekend Blogawards in Belgium

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Thu, 09 Oct 2014 09:21:00 +0000

Miss Foodwise has been nominated for an award in my home country Belgium!
How about that, very exciting!

Of course I would love to receive this award here on home turf so if you have a minute, please vote! I thank all of you for your support, not only in voting, but over the 3 years I have been blogging and photographing. It has been amazing, I have met brilliantly talented people, been to amazing places and am now writing like a madwoman on my first book which will be published with Davidsfonds next year!

Voting can be done here >

Thank you, thank you!!!!!!

Workshop 'Krachtvoer' in Antwerp

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 30 Sep 2014 06:56:00 +0000

On sunday 19/10 my friend Loes and I will be teaching a food workshop for children again. We were asked by the Belgian food festival 'Krachtvoer' to come and teach a workshop like the one we did for Food Revolution Day back in may. The theme is 'scarcity and abundance' and we will be showing the kids how you can create some mean flatbreads using up all kinds of leftover fruit, veg, meat and cheese from your fridge. I will be showing them how they can make cheese and Loes will take care of the flatbread dough part.

To register for this workshop, go to the 'Krachtvoer' website here for more information

When

Sunday 19/10 at 14h

Where

Antwerp

Who

children from the age of 9

Spaces are very limited.

The white loaf that will make you proud

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Sun, 21 Sep 2014 14:04:00 +0000

The power of an image.
I posted a picture on Instagram and Facebook of two loaves of bread I baked on wednesday. I was proud of them, they were beautiful, they were utterly perfect to me.
I had scored the bread this time with little hesitation and fear it would ruin my loaf, and while it was baking in the oven, I watched trough the oven window in true British Bake Off style how my score cracked open and baked into my most proud bake in my life.
Slightly embarrassed by my pride and joy I mentioned that to you the bread might seem plain, but to me they were special. The answer came in the form of that image becoming the most ever likes picture on my facebook and my instagram feed. You loved it too.
So much that you emailed me for the recipe, to go home and bake these loaves yourself, to see it rise, and bake and fill the house with the smell only bread is capable to induce...
Utter joy.

Bread has been a staple since the beginning of time, it evolved from a flat, dense gritty loaf to the small bun sized wheat loaves of the Saxon monks. Wheat and bread was so valuable that often food rents consisted partly of loaves or grain. Wheat and barley would be planted together so if one harvest failed, the barley which was a hardier grain would survive and save the people from the starvation that was luring behind every tree and every sheaf of corn. But harvest failed plenty of times and so bread was made from dried peas and beans. This must have been an very heavy and unpleasant bread but it would provide plenty of nutrition during shortages. Windmills and communal bread ovens can be found in the Domesday book but as they were owned by the manor or monastery, they were not free to use. A portion of the grain or bread dough had to be payed for the use of the mill and oven, therefore the peasants continued to mill the grain themselves using a hand quern that must have taken many long hours of hard labour to end up with a small portion of flour.
People must have suffered from acute toothache with the amount of grit in the bread. Even the upper classes preferred to soak their bread in their all important sauce and have their meat so succulent that it fell of the bone. Chewing would have been difficult if you would have lost most your teeth in your early adulthood.

Bread remains a staple food in the centuries following the Norman conquest and the Middle Ages, but recipes for breadmaking remain unknown from that period except for a mention of the process of bread making in a poem.

Although today bread still remains the most popular base of our diet, it has also become a source of worry with gluten and wheat intolerances becoming nearly as frequent as famine was in ancient times. Although bread has been a staple food for centuries, in the early years it was labour intensive to mill the grain by hand so bread would not have been the thing to fill up the bellies of the poor. They would have had a modest piece of bread, with their pottage, or a piece of cheese but not as plenty as we often have it today.
Wheat has also been modified to an extent that it is easier to harvest, but the quality is less. The need to have everything fast and plenty changed the way we create bread, with added chemicals to make is rise in a fraction of the time if would actually need to break down the enzymes in the grain which make it harder to digest. There is talk of a modern day 'bread belly' with people suffering from the effects from fast factory made bread which has little resemblance to the real bread of our ancestors. In my opinion the modern everlasting, spongy bread, sometimes dyed with malts or molasses to make it appear as a wholewheat loaf while it is not, is a new kind of poverty, the poverty of quality of the most basic of foods. Our daily bread.

So here is my recipe, which I just in true honesty came up with by winging it. It's quite the recipe for a plain white loaf, but strangely enough it came out differently than before. I added a spoon of my precious 1 year old organic wholemeal spelt sourdough starter, and a drizzle of good English rapeseed oil. Other than that of course, (I always use) Cornish sea salt, organic strong white bread flour and water which I first boiled and let cool to tepid before adding organic dried yeast.

To make two 700-800 g loaves

What do you need

1 kg of organic strong bread flour, stone ground if you can obtain it, is the best
700 ml of tepid water
2 heaped tsp of dried yeast
20 g of seasalt flakes, not the over processed, white powder kind please
1 generous tablespoon of sourdough starter if you have some
1 teaspoon of rapeseed oil, or olive oil

Method
Turn on your oven on the lowest setting to just make it nice and warm, then turn off.
Boil water and let it cool until blood heat (tepid is fine) before adding the yeast
In a large bowl or soup pot add the flour and make a well.
Drizzle in your oil, salt and sourdough on the edges without letting them touch eachother.
When you have mixed your yeast with your water start adding it to the well and make a turning movement with a couple of fingers or the back of a wooden spoon to gradually mix the flour with the water and yeast.

Keep on doing this until you get a well mixed dough, now either turn out the dough on a floured surface to knead or do as I do, leave in the bowl and use one hand to pull and twist and push your dough for about 15-20 minutes, constantly turning the dough so you have kneaded it well and the dough is nice and springy. It really is very important to work the dough well.
Now put a shower cap over the bowl to keep the dough from drying out.

Place in your warm oven - please make sure it is not too hot, just like a nice warm summers day - and leave your dough there for an hour or until doubled in size.
I feel my dough rises much better when I do this, I live in a very cool house which is never warm enough to give your dough that cosy feel it needs to feel happy and rise.

After your dough has risen for 30 min to 1 hour, take it out of the oven gently and turn it on to full heat. Mine is 250° C. Also place a baking tray in the oven to heat.

When your oven has preheated knock the dough back by simply removing it from the bowl onto the floured work surface where you can divide and shape it in two for two loaves, or in four long stretches to get a ciabatta style bread, by that I mean one that is perfect for dunking in soup, to serve with cured meats and cheese and so on.

Dust the tops of your loaves with flour and just before you place them on the heated baking tray, score the bread with a very, very sharp knife about 1 cm deep. A stanley style knife works best, other knives are often not sharp enough, and not thin enough to make that all important score.

Place in the middle of your oven, on the heated tray, and chuck a bit of cold water on the bottom of the oven to create steam
Bake for 10 min on full blast
After 10 min turn down to 220°C and leave for 20-25 minutes.

These loaves freeze perfectly, when you need them, defrost in a kitchen towel the evening before and preheat your oven to full blast, place a ramekin with water into the oven with the bread and bake for 5-10 minutes.
Fresh home made bread in 5-10 minutes, epic. Just think ahead and always make two loaves instead of one. 1 kg of flour is also easier to work with that 500 g of flour.

Enjoy and if you bake this bread, show me a pic! I love it when you send me your pictures of your creations!

You might also like
Soda bread, a loaf in 45 minutes

What's your favourite bread recipe?
Don't forget to leave a comment!

A Visit to the Peak District

noreply@blogger.com (Regula) — Wed, 30 Jul 2014 12:34:00 +0000

Normally for us a holiday starts early in the morning, after not nearly enough sleep. I will repack my clothes last minute and then we're off, to start a long long day.

But not this time, we were travelling with P&O's overnight ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull. We left the house at 4, which left me enough time to change my mind about my chosen wardrobe for our holiday and leave without the usual rush.

Our plan was to travel to the Peak District, a beautiful national park in the North of England. The ferryboat brought us conveniently to an hour away from where we needed to be and gave us ideas for other trips in the future. Last year we stood still fro 6 hours on our way to the West country, then again a six hour delay when we were heading to the Cotswolds and again when we drove back to Dover.

Needless to say, we were so looking for a way to avoid the dreadful M25, M4 and other M's that get major delays. The Ferry to Hull brings you not only to the gateway of the North and Scotland, it's great when you need to travel to Wales and even the Midland towns like Birmingham. Anything to avoid the traffic around London sounds like music to my ears.

My partner in crime

Our holiday well and truly started when we boarded the ferry and got us a nice spot on deck to watch the sunset while we were sipping a glass of wine and gazing over the wide and peaceful seascape.

When we retired to our hut we turned into our bunk beds and closed our eyes with the knowledge that we were being brought to England without having to drive, or take trains, in the morning after breakfast, we would just suddenly arrive where we needed to be. It was fantastic for B, who is stuck in traffic every day to get to the office, when you're on holiday, you really don't want to spend it driving for yours again.

After a hearty brekkie we left the Ferry and drove into the rainy North of England. We made a two hour stop in Sheffield as it was on the road and we needed a cup of tea and our English magazines. Then we drove on to our final destination, Castleton a quaint little village in the Hope Valley.

Castleton is an old mining village, first for lead an then when a young boy decided to go and search for lead in Treak Cliff hill, a new site in Castleton that he leased, he excavated an entrance for years but discovered not lead, but a vein of blue stone with yellow streaks. The stone was baptised Blue John, probably an interpretation in the local dialect from the French 'bleu et jaune'. The stone started to be mined and was even used in the first world war as a fuel for furnaces which unfortunately resulted in a lot of precious stone being lost forever.

In the 1940's a miner found a new vein of Blue John and hid it so only he could find it again, sadly he only got to tell a few people before he passed away suddenly.

Mining still happens in this cavern in january of each year, and the cavern, which you can visit, is still in the hands of the mining family which inherited it decades ago. The 'lost vein' as it was called became nothing more than a legend after a few decades but then last year, the current miners at Treak Cliff Cavern discovered it by accident when kicking some mud. The legend told the story of John Royce, the miner who hid the new - now lost - vein with some clay and blankets so when blankets were found underneath the clay, the miners were of course extremely excited by their discovery. There are a few caverns to visit in the village, most are lead mines but if you need to choose only one, I would choose Treak Cliff Cavern as it is the last working Blue John mine and a family business. I bought a huge nodule of the Lost vein because I was so intrigued by the cavern. In the cafe of the cavern you can also have a glass of the water they collect in the cavern, naturally filtered water!

The village of Castleton also has 6 pubs, a restaurant and a couple of cafe's. For a small village like that it is extraordinary, we were there when there weren't all that much tourists around but still at night the pubs and the local restaurant were packed. We tried a few places for dinner but we came to the conclusion that the Italian restaurant which was actually more a place serving modern British food and excellent and creative pizza's, was the very best of the bunch. Produce was fresh, well prepared, and dishes were wholesome and well priced. The drinks on offer are your traditional wine list, which I must say featured a British sparkling wine and a few options of local craft beer. A place where I gladly part with my cash.

Another site to see is Peverel's castle which is mentioned in the Domesday book in 1086. The ruins overlook Castleton village and after a short walk up the hill, you get a great view over the valley and surrounding hills. Our farmhouse B&B which could be spotted from the hilltop was situated in the most idillic place at the foot of Winnats Pass, a ravine of limestone hills which make you feel very small when you take a stroll trough the towering landscape. We walked there at 7 in the morning, after being woken up by the sun early and heading out quickly after being intrigued by the view from our bedroom window.

Winnats Pass

Derbyshire oatcake with local -devine- bacon, cooked by the farmer

Early mornings, or maybe even evenings are best to experience Winnats Pass, as during the day this National Trust owned estate is clouded by fast moving cars and busses of day-trippers. I also enjoy the quiet morning atmosphere, the chill in the air like the cold breath of nature breathing in your neck.

After our breakfast of traditional Derbishire Oatscakes, bacon and eggs we drove off into the unexpected sunny warm weather to discover another Peak district delight, the Bakewell tart.

Arriving in Bakewell I was a bit disappointed by the busy state of the main road, it made me feel quite nervous and I could not wait to discover a more quaint and quiet part of the village. Behind the corner of the Bakewell pudding shop is a narrow street where no cars were luckily allowed, there we discovered another two bake well pudding and tart shops and we decided to compare tarts. One was sweeter than the other and my personal taste is that less sugar is better and my preference went to Bloomers who's puddings and tarts were less sweet and didn't include preservatives. We washed it all down with ehm… beer, and drove further south for ten minutes or so to visit Haddon Hall.

Bakewell and bunting, I do like a town that has a bit of bunting

The Bakewell Pudding

Haddon Hall isn't just a beautiful fortified Tudor manor house, it is also the film location of one of my favourite movies: Jane Eyre with Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane and William Hurt as Mr Rochester. The recent version with Michael Fassbender also had some scenes filmed there but the older film I just mentioned, just is the better Charlotte Bronte translation onto silver screen.

Another place to visit if you have a taste for the Bronte sisters and Jane Eyre novels is of course Chatsworth house and Lyme park. Especially Lyme Park which is used for that epic BBC version of Pride and Prejudice from 1995 which has the one and only Mr Darcy: Colin Firth. Lyme Park shows the backdrop of that scene where Mr Darcy jumps into the water and afterwards meets Elisabeth Bennet soaking wet… Do I need to say more?

The scene of Jane Eyre... "Jane, You, you strange - you almost unearthly thing!" Mr Rochester

Haddon Hall, where parts of Jane Eyre were filmed

Hardwick Hall, although situated just outside the Peak District is well worth a visit. Hardwick old hall, a superb ruin which is situated right next to the 'new' hall looks like the roof and windows were removed last year and are impressive. The new hall was build by Bess of Hardwick, the second richest woman in England after Queen Elizabeth I and one of the first woman who wanted to applaud strong independent woman. It is a curious looking manor and the ruins of the old hall next to it make it quite an interesting place to have a walk around. When you get peckish, there is the National Trust Tearoom to get a sarnie or a slice of cake. Just off the estate is also a working mill where you can buy excellent flour.

Dovedale, a picturesque valley in south of the Peak District National park is a perfect place for a leisurely walk. We started early morning in a tiny village called Milldale, we had a cup of tea by the River Dove and were mugged by a dozen of ducks who were up to no good trying to steal our slice of lemon drizzle cake. Realising were were outnumbered by the ducks we followed the walking track next to the river Dove and followed it to Dovedale and the iconic 'stepping stones' bridge.

Allow plenty of time for this walk, it is really beautiful and you will want to stop for plenty of pictures and breaks. In the little tea and coffee shop in Milldale you can purchase a good map of the area which shows the different walks and how long they take.

On our way back from Dovedale to Castleton we stopped at Buxton, not the prettiest of towns but we did spot a place that sells filled Derbyshire oatcakes and other sarnies for on the go. Our last stop was Tideswell, the village who got some fame after the BBC lottery program, the village used the funds to start a cookery school and the Taste Tideswell scheme where village shops could participate to a foodie cooperative. It was 5 in the evening though, and the village was asleep like all shops have been closed for years instead of an hour or two. Go there before 4 in the afternoon!

Monsal head, nice walk down to the river

Back in Castleton we enjoyed many short evening strolls and our stay there ended with a visit to the tiny village shop, they sell breakfast options on the go, excellent cakes, oatcakes and bread, most of which is baked on site. I had them fill a box for us to take as a picnic and also had the choice between a variety of local cheeses and pork pies. I would be very happy with a store like that on my doorstep.

Our few days in the Peak District ended with the cruise on the P&O ferryboat back to Belgium, we had a good meal, a drink and turned in early after another lovely sunset over the sea.

Getting there
Ferry boat

If you're coming from the continent, the P&O ferry from Zeebrugge to Hull really is the ideal way to travel to the Peak District, (but also the Lake District, Scotland, Wales and the Midlands if you are planning a long holiday). It's relaxing and you awake to start your holiday with a freshly rested head.

Flying in

When coming from further afield, the airport of Manchester is the best airport to fly to and regular trains run to Buxton, Hope and Edale and busses get you further to other towns.
Train

Also if you are coming from London or further down, a train will bring you to Mancherster and regular trains run further to Buxton, Hope and Edale

Places to visit

Stately homes and ruins

Haddon Hall - if you love Jane Eyre, this is a must
Lyme Park - Go and see where some of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was filmed
Chatsworth house
Hardwick Hall and Old Hall
Peveril Castle

Walking and exploring

Treak cliff cavern in Castleton- for the Blue John stone
Several other caverns in Castleton
Castleton has several walks starting in the village
Winnats Pass, go early in the morning.
Mam Tor and Kinder Scout
Dovedale Valley, several walks starting from Dovedale or Milldale or other sites. Pick up one of the handy maps, they are also sold in the Milldale tea shop. Also this link may come in handy
Thorpe Cloud, a very steep hill overlooking Dovedale Valley. We climbed it, it was VERY steep but the view was worth it.
Solomon's Temple
Monsal head, walk down to the river and walk to the viaduct

Eating
We didn't want posh restaurants after walking all day so looked for quaint and cosy instead. These are the ones we tried. If you like a special meal, I've been recommended The Peacock

Castleton

1530
Italian restaurant which actually in my opinion Modern British

Excellent food for excellent value, we didn't want a fancy restaurant, just decent food and lovely service which is what you get here. Good veggie options, great imaginative pizza's and juicy lamb dishes. Excellent local beef as well. They serve ales from a local brewery. Highly recommended.

The Bulls Head

Great local beers, cozy pub and restaurant

Pub food, not excellent, not bad. They do pizza's too, but use way too much cheese to my liking.

The Castle Inn

Great outside garden for a pint, local beers and ciders.

It is a 'Vintage Inns' chain pub and I wish I had known before I ordered food as I have eaten at those Vintage Inns before and it was just as disappointing as on the other occasions. How hard is it to make a decent bowl of soup?
Peveril store
Lovely village shop with local cheeses, oatcakes and home baked breads and cakes.

Bakewell

Bloomers bakery
for Bakewell tarts, puddings and other sweets.
There are other bakeries for Bakewell tarts but I preferred this one and it was recommended by a local.

Milldale

Tiny little takeaway tea and coffee shop, you can't miss it as the village is super small.

They have home baked cakes, take one with you while walking.

I was a guest of P&O Ferries.

Thorpe Cloud - wear suitable footwear, this is steep.

Thank you for commenting!

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What to do with a glut of summer fruit

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 13:26:00 +0000

Hello you lovely lot, I am sorry for not posting as frequently as I did before. Life just has been terribly busy and choices have to be made. It is wonderful, it is glorious but I do need to find a balance so I can find the time again to share stories with you.
I had a lovely few weeks, I spoke at Europe's largest Food Blogger Conference, Food Blogger Connect in London and a week later I was the main speaker at a blogger event in Brussels, for those who I have met there, welcome to the blog!
I am getting ready to leave for London again, where I will be living out of my suitcase while shooting an exciting upcoming cookery book. (not mine, haven't had time for mine!) The week after that I am traveling to Dorset to be a judge in the Great Taste Awards again. Lots of beautiful food and drink to judge and after that some more lovely food at the glorious Great Taste dinner at Brett Sutton's new place.
After that, it is back to London for a week to shoot a book.
So it is fair to say, the next time you hear from me on here will be august... I hope!

To answer some questions I have had from you guys on social media and via email when I posted my cherry brandy picture on facebook, this is what you can do with your summer fruit! I like to preserve mine, to keep for the cold winter and autumn days, to bring a little sunshine on your table. It is sun in a jar, it is happiness. So when you have a glut of fruit, get your jars out and drain them in alcohol or sugar to keep them for when you most need it, when it is chilly and rainy. Here below are some of my recipes for preserves, and at the end I've added some links to other recipes on other websites. Enjoy the summer fruits!

My favourite: Drunken Cherries, or Cherry Brandy.
We call it Kriekenborrel in Belgium and I have been making it since I was a little girl. In fact my oldest jar is from 1998, which is when I started making them myself. I now have a jar most years, sometimes more than one to give as gifts for christmas (oh yes, I used the 'C' word in summer)
It's just a wonderful way to preserve a cherry, you can use them served with vanilla ice, baked in cakes or puddings and just as they are in tiny little delicate glasses.

Cherry Brandy Find the recipe here

Next up is Raspberry vinegar.
The colour of this vinegar stays lovely and red even a year later, it looks the part on your larder and even more pretty drizzled over a green salad.
The vinegar is also okay to drink, but only by the thimble full as it is quite strong and pungent. As you can guess, this is also a great gift to give someone who will appreciate it.

Raspberry Vinegar Find the recipe here
How about a use for those damsons who are ripening on the trees at the moment? I like to make a damson cheese, it keeps for long and becomes better with age. It is the kind of preserve you can enjoy with cheese, especially a blue veined one or a fresh goats cheese as well. Fruit cheeses have been made for centuries, they are excellent to preserve a summer haul of fruit and are wonderful to tuck into. Also lovely when you cut cubes from the cheese and dip them in fine sugar to serve as a home made sweet. These sweetmeats often contained a lot of spices to aid digestion during and after a meal.

Damson Cheese Find the recipe here

When august arrives, so do the Kentish cobnuts. They are a personal favourite of mine as well as of Victorian ladies who used to nibble them from delicate bonbon dishes.
I made a cobnut brandy, and the recipe is still experimental but maybe you'd like to join in on the experiment as it needs some ageing!

Cobnut Brandy Find the recipe here

End of summer is marked by the hop harvest and while hops are traditionally used for beer, they make a mean hop brandy as well. Pick them when they are green, or just dried so that they still have all the essential flavours for this drink. My teacher in beer sommelier school uses a Belgian alcohol called Jenever for this preserve but you can try to use any clear alcohol with a min of 40 % alcohol as well.
While you are working with the hop flowers, rub some between your hands and smell the hops, it made me appreciate hoppy beer better and now I enjoy the hoppier the better.

Hop Brandy Find the recipe here

When going into autumn you will, if you are lucky, start seeing small sloes growing on the whimsical trees. They say you need a first frost before you pick them, then they are ready to bottle, preserve and keep. The traditional way to preserve sloes is in gin, Sloe gin has been a favourite winter tipple for a very very long time and still very popular today. You can also make sloe cheese from the tart little things, just follow the recipe for damson cheese.

Sloe Gin Find the recipe here

This means the end of my preserves but do take a look at these recipes from other blogs:

Lemon and strawberry preserve by Juls Kitchen, I have a jar of that in my larder and can't wait to open it!
Mustard by Juls Kitchen, I tasted it on a sunny autumn day in Tuscany, it was great!
Apricot jam by Emiko Davies, just beautiful
Lemon marmelade by Emiko Davies, your larder needs it, your cakes too.
Rose petal jam by Emiko Davies, for the romantic
Seville Orange marmalade by The Wednesday Chef, better be prepared because it will take some months for them to arrive but you need this for your toast
Strawberry Jam by Jamie Oliver, can't go wrong, it's strawberry and it's Jamie Oliver.
Plum and peach jam by Ms Marmite Lover, love the lavender in the jam

I can go on for ages, maybe look into a book? I like Salt, Sugar, Smoke by Diana Henry.

This is it for now, hopefully I'll be back soon!