To Autumn

Autumn has arrived promptly this year, bringing chillier mornings and darker evenings.
Autumn raids the cliché cupboard every year and there can scarcely be any adult who has not, at some time or another, uttered at least the first line of Keats' famous poem, To Autumn,

"Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness"

It is a season that assails our senses; there are the scents of bonfires, quinces and damp leaves; the sounds of apples thudding to the ground in the wind, dry leaves kicked by small children and, buried in the memory, the clash of conker on conker; then there is the nip in the air, tingling the fingertips and beginning to numb the toes.
And the sheer glory of the colours; glorious shades of orange, red, yellow - I was astonished to look out of the kitchen window and see the extraordinary yellow hue of the damson tree leaves, which seemed to have received word overnight that the seasons had officially crossed the line.
An aside, while we are on the subject of colour.  Do you know what season you are?  Doing some research before I embarked on this post, I was astonished to discover that Colour Me Beautiful is still a "thing".  Carole Jackson wrote the book that launched the company over 35 years ago, but is no longer involved. You can read more in this article by Hannah Marriott. I had assumed, cynic that I am, that it was a relic of the power suited, excess fuelled 80's when money was no object and for some it took more than American footballer sized shoulder pads and a can of hairspray to give them the confidence to join the swaggering class.
Cynicism aside, there is a warmth to the hues of this season that softens, yet intensifies the light of the shortening days.

My favourite lines from Keats' poem are:

"To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, 

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core."

There is an abundance of ripe, seasonal produce of every shade in Autumn, after all, every church in the land is preparing for Harvest Festival; orange squashes, red and green apples, pears, yellow quinces, late summer and green tomatoes - the ones you know will rot before they ripen, but are too good to waste - white, green and purple brassicas, brown nuts and the last of the purple finger staining damsons, blackberries and elderberries.

Now is the time for the warm spices; cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice; for dried fruits and citrus.
There is already a number of autumnal recipes if you scroll through the appropriate months, but I make no apologies for adding another.  You can make this one all year round, by substituting the fresh corn for tinned.

This recipe brings together the colours I have already mentioned, with some of those warm spices.  I cannot claim credit for its origin, nor trace its provenance back to the ultimate source, but I can acknowledge two steps along its evolutionary journey.  I took my inspiration from a piece by Simon Hopkinson - a yellowing, desiccating cutting from the Independent Saturday Magazine, a throwback to the sadly lamented glory days of the broadsheet format print editions. He, in turn, based his recipe on a tomato curry prepared by the Thanki family at the Kastoori Indian restaurant in Tooting, south London, equally sadly, now closed.

Tomato, egg and sweetcorn curry

2 eggs, boiled for 4 minutes and cooled under cold running water.
2 corn on the cob, kernels stripped
8 medium sized tomatoes, halved
50g butter
2 cloves garlic
4 tsp ground ginger
2tsp cumin seed and 1tsp cloves
½ tsp fennel seeds
5 green cardamom pods
1 dried red chilli
50g creamed coconut
200ml water
2 tsp salt
Juice of half a lemon

Toast the cumin and fennel seeds and cloves in a dry pan, until the aroma rises and inveigles its way into your nostrils.  A blini pan is ideal for this.  Remove from the heat and grind finely in a spice grinder or with a pestle and mortar.
Place a large frying pan or prospector casserole over a medium heat and melt the butter.
Add the garlic and cook until just turning golden.  Stir in the spices and cook for another 2 minutes.
Put the tomatoes, sweetcorn coconut and water into the pan. Stir and then leave to simmer until the coconut dissolves into the water and tomato juices.
Cover with a lid and simmer for 20 minutes. 
Meanwhile, peel and halve the eggs.
Take off the pan lid, remove the chilli and the cardamom pods, season to taste with salt and add the lemon juice.
Sit the eggs on top and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.
Serve with plain boiled basmati rice or chapatis.

                                        © Netherton Foundry 2017     
                                       www.netherton-foundry.co.uk            

Weekend breakfasts

To be brutally honest, weekday breakfasts are normally just fuel for the day ahead. Never rubbish, but washed down by coffee that is always too hot or too cold and slotted in between all the pre-work chores, it's generally a rushed affair.
It's a far cry from the primary school days when I got up at stupid o'clock, made the kids' packed lunches, checked the homework, packed the PE kit, signed the reading record and then sat down en famille for bowls of cereal.  Even when they moved up to secondary school, there were still lunches to be packed, but these days the only one taking lunch with them is Neil.
Weekends on the other hand are a different thing altogether; a time for treats and, more often than not, experimentation.  There are all the usual suspects, served up in succession; pancakes, waffles, muffins, a fry up, omelettes and then there are the experiments.  These are generally variations of baked goods, adding new flavours and textures to family favourites and classics.
Unusually for me, I have had a bread free week, so by Friday night the cravings had set in and in anticipation of a leisurely Saturday morning breakfast, I got to work.
September is upon us and with it the first whiff of Autumn, so the first things that came to mind were fruit and spice, both wonderfully evocative of the coming season.  Close your eyes and you can almost smell the apple and clove crumble, Christmas cake, chutneys, bramble vinegar and damson gin.  There will be apple recipes coming up shortly, so I have opted for something a little more exotic. This is a light, almost cakey (is that a word?  If not it should be) loaf, subtly flavoured with cardamom and orange. 

375g bread flour

125g rice flour

1 egg

60g butter

100g Orange sugar (grate the zest of 2 oranges or 4 mandarins, add to a kilo of sugar and store in an airtight jar)

Zest of 1 orange

The seeds from 3 cardamom pods

250ml milk

1 tsp dried yeast

1 tsp salt

1 tblsp marmalade, warmed

Make sure all the ingredients are at room temperature and put them all, except the marmalade, into a food processor or use a food mixer fitted with a dough hook.

Beat thoroughly, it should be smooth and rather sticky.

Cover and leave to prove for at least an hour, I left mine overnight.

Pre-heat the oven to 190ºC

Generously grease a 1lb loaf tin and pour in the dough.

Place in the oven - no, I haven't missed anything out, I didn't give it a second proving - and bake for 30 minutes.  Remove from the oven, turn down the temperature to 175ºC and brush the top of the loaf  with the warmed marmalade.  Return the tin to the oven for another 20 minutes.

Carefully take the loaf out of the tin - you should be able to lift it out quite easily, but it will be HOT - and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Serve warm, not hot, with lashings of butter.  I found a 2 year old jar of peach and rose jam in the cupboard, which added to the doughy, buttery joy.

                                      © Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk