Autumnal cooking - a Bonfire night classic

Sticky ginger cake

 A nostalgic favourite, updated.

Misty mornings, dark, chilly evenings, the turning of leaves from green to red, gold, copper and bronze and  and Bonfire Night.

All Hallow's day, 1st November,  marks what we think of as the start of autumn, banishes the bad spirits of Hallowe'en, anticipates the spectacle of Bonfire Night and is, commercial nightmare such as Black Friday notwithstanding, probably the start of many folks' countdown to Christmas.

It also signals a change in our cooking, more soups and stews, spiked with spices, rather than the vibrant verdancy of summer herbs and salads; warming the body and the soul.

These squashes grew from seeds, carelessly tossed in to the compost heap and will be used for a number of dishes over the coming weeks.

But today is all about a variation on a family favourite, a wistful reminder of the Bonfire parties of our youth.  

What do you remember  - I can recall potatoes baked in the embers of the fire, fat sausages, home made toffee and sticky Parkin.  Mulled wine and spiced, warmed apple juice were always on hand when our children were small, although the hot chocolate we had as kids ourselves is just as welcome.

This recipe is a sticky ginger loaf, dotted with ginger tea soaked raisins and is as tasty standing round the fire, as it is served up as dessert with poached pears and ginger Chantilly cream.

Tonight I plan to serve it with Andrew Dargue's marzipan custard. 

Soak 100g sultanas in 150ml ginger tea for half an hour.

Pre-heat the oven to 165ºC

Grease a 2lb loaf tin 

120g butter

120g black treacle

180g soft brown sugar

2 eggs

240g plain flour

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tblsp ground ginger

2 tsp mixed spice

125ml hot ginger tea - I used an infusion of Saco ginger flakes, gifted to me at Ginger and Spice Fest

Place the butter, sugar and treacle in a pan, I used our copper milk pan, and warm gently until the butter has melted and all three ingredients have melded together.

Tip the dry ingredients in to a large mixing bowl and stir well to distribute the spices and bicarboanate of soda.

Strain the raisins and add to the bowl.  Beat the eggs lightly and add those along with the melted butter mix.  Stir well, then beat in the hot tea.

Puir into the prepared loaf tin and pop into the oven.

Cook for around 40 minutes, until it passes the skewer test.

Allow to cool for 15 minutes in the tin.

then carefully turn out onto a cooling tray.

Serve around the bonfire in thick slices, perhaps accompanied with a classic Whisky Mac

Or serve as a delicious dessert, with poached pears and a Chantilly cream made with some syrup from a jar of stem ginger.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

From the Oven to the Table by Diana Henry

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”, so wrote Mark Twain and it is true that it often harder to say what you mean in a few words.

The art of concise, clear writing is equally applicable to food and the art of cooking can similarly be described.  Elizabeth David wrote eloquently and elegantly about an omelette and a glass of wine, waxing lyrical about ingredients, method, outcome, woven into essays on place, time and mood.  But whilst it is great, and rarely easy, to do the apparently simple sublimely well, there is more to life.  

Our shorthand cooking, like scribbled notes, is so often tried, tested and repeated staples.  There is nothing wrong with these reliable and beloved dishes, but the magic ingredient missing from these is neither time nor money, but imagination.  They are recreated, without the need to think, on a wet Wednesday after work and fill our bellies, but do not enliven an otherwise uneventful evening.

This book changes all of that, turns simplicity upside down and demonstrates how simple cooking can create deep, complex, layered flavours to enliven a weekday supper or wow a weekend supper party!

From a self confessed "bung  it in the oven" kind of cook, Diana Henry's From the Oven to the Table is the book we all need.  She has rigorously applied an editor's blue pencil to the four page, 28 ingredient dishes we can never face attempting and given us straightforward recipes that you will not think twice about making, but which will delight and amaze you.  Diana has done most of the hard work for us and your oven will finish the job.

There are combinations of ingredients that I can guarantee you would never have dreamt of yourself.  Take the recipe on page 66.  

How many of you have ever thought about cooking aubergines with butter?  You there, at the back with your hand up - really?  No, I thought not.  Then add saffron, garlic, ground ginger (a sadly neglected spice, reserved for biscuits and usurped in our culinary affections by the fresh root version), black cardamom and dates.

The result, I have to tell you, is beyond the descriptive powers of this writer, but licked plates were perhaps the best testament to the joy of this dish.

I could go on and on, I wont, I don't want to bore you.  I just want to say that you should buy this book because you will enjoy reading it, there is always more than recipes to Diana's book, and you will definitely cook from it time and time again.

Yes, that is a 12" prospector pan on the front cover - buy one of those too!

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Copper pudding pot

Autumn; bronze, gold and copper are the colours we most associate with this time of year.
A nip in the air, the turning of the leaves, darker evenings, dewy mornings, harvest moon and harvest festivals, mists and mellow fruitfulness, all the clichés and all the symbols of the change in seasons.  Get your sweaters and warm socks out, the temperature is falling and we are heading into the kitchen for some comfort cooking.

Can you imagine yourself in the Downton Abbey kitchen, making dinner for royalty? If so, you would most certainly want one of these beauties.
Designed in collaboration with Regula Ysewijn, renowned for her books on baking and puddings, this is our traditional tin lined, solid copper pudding pot.  Perfect for sweet and savoury puddings, particularly a traditional steamed pudding.
It even has 4 notches on the rim for your string handle to pull it out of its steamy bath!

Regula is one of the most multi talented people we have ever met - a graphic designer, beer sommelier (well, she is Belgian!) food writer, food historian, TV presenter, as well as being a judge on Belgian Bake off, she has also appeared on Inside the Factory here in the UK, talking about the history of the Bakewell tart.  Her first book, Pride and Puddings, has pride of place on our kitchen book shelf and more than a couple of pudding mix splodges on the pages.

We've been trying ours out with some new recipes, including this light as air, yogurt and plum pudding, using some delicious desert plums, foraged from a tree near the workshops.

120g Greek yogurt
120g sugar
2 eggs
120g self raising flour
250g poached, sweetened plums

Whisk the yogurt, sugar and eggs together.  Fold in the flour.
Grease the pudding pot and put half of the mixture in.  Carefully lay the plums on top of the mix

And then cover with the remaining batter.

Place a sheet of greaseproof paper or foil over the top of the pot and secure with string.
There are lots of handy hints about how to make a string handle, which will make it easier to take your cooked pudding out of the cooking pot.

Sit the pot on a saucer or trivet in a deep saucepan and add enough water to come half way up the pot.
Cover with a lid and bring the water to the boil.  Steam the pudding in the pan for 1¼ hours.
Carefully remove the pot from the pan, take off the paper or foil covering and invert the pudding on to a serving plate.
Serve warm with extra yogurt or double cream.

Time to start thinking of the Christmas puds!

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Billy goats gruff

I'm a troll, fol de rol - who recalls the story of the Three Billy Goats Gruff?
Well the fact of the matter is that until recently, billy kids born to dairy herd mothers would never have made it as far as the bridge, not had to face down a troll. A worse and more precipitous fate befell them; euthanised at birth, the carcasses disposed of unceremoniously and wastefully.

And this where our friend James Whetlor comes in. With a background as a chef in London, who moved to River Cottage, whose philosophy reinforced his own ethical beliefs, his chance encounter with goat farming practices, shocked him sufficiently to make him do something about it; something real, something positive.  Words backed up with actions, actions supported by words.  Not a campaign of rhetoric and hand wringing, but a contribution to a growing international movement, which originated in New York of all places back in 2011.
He now sources and sells kid goat meat and retired dairy goat meat.  This is an extract from his website - 
"All Cabrito kids are a by-product of the dairy industry and would have in the past been euthanized shortly after birth. In a world of dwindling resources and rising food prices Cabrito believe this cannot be justified. They now have a network of farms producing high quality meat from a previously wasted resource."

So far, so good, but where do we fit into all of this?
Well James has long been a fan of a Netherton pan and photos of the prospector pan can be found between the covers of his luscious book of recipes, GOAT. 
And this summer, we had a fantastic day out with James, cooking goat dishes with Netherton cookware on Lyme Regis beach in the summer, with photos shot by ace photographer, Neil White
This is definitely the kind of collaboration we love - like minded people, sharing a passion for and working to promote our own and each others' crafts, skills and products. With a picnic on the beach! What's not to like?

Here are just a few of the photos, highlighting Neil's and James's skills, our cookware and the glorious setting of the Dorset coast.

And here is a little more from the official Goatober website, explaining the history and aims of the initiative.

Please check out and join in some of the exciting Goatober events, wherever you are.  And if you can't make it to any of these, head over to the Cabrito website, order yourself some meat and celebrate at home.

About Goatober

Goatober originated in New York in 2011 and has grown in eight years to have events and participants all around the world, from London to Melbourne, from Amsterdam to Trinidad and Tobago. What started as a small campaign to prolong the lives of billy goats and to put a delicious, ethical meat on the menu has grown into an international campaign bringing together dairies, farmers, NGOs and individuals who are passionate about ending food waste in the goat dairy system.

Goatober, aka No Goat Left Behind, was the brainchild of former Heritage Radio Network Executive Director, Erin Fairbanks and renowned New York cheesemonger, Anne Saxelby. They launched the initiative together with Heritage Foods to address the growing problem facing New England goat dairies - namely, what to do with male goats? Male offspring create a dilemma for dairy farmers - they obviously don’t produce cheese, and unfortunately, there is no established humanely sourced market for American goat meat. From this senseless waste Goatober was created and with it a month-long celebration of putting goat meat on the menu of New York’s best restaurants. The campaign had quick success and now there are over 100 restaurants involved in Goatober from New York to Los Angeles and San Francisco. Heritage Foods, who The New York Times called “… the company at the forefront of the nonindustrial meat movement” is the largest distributor of rare and heritage breed meats in the USA. They are dedicated to supporting a network of over 50 family farmers who raise their livestock humanely, outdoors, on pasture and never with antibiotics or growth hormones. Its founder, Patrick Martins is also the founder of Slow Food USA and Heritage Radio Network.

Goatober was introduced into the UK in 2016 by James Whetlor from Cabrito Goat Meat and into mainland Europe in the following year. There are vibrant dairy industries across the UK and Europe who want to change the practice of euthanising and Goatober is part of the solution. The campaign aims to put a goat dish on restaurant menus and to encourage people to try cooking goat at home themselves, for all or part of October.

All photo copyrights belong to Neil A White ©

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk