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

Girls just wanna have fun

We have always operated an open house policy for our children's friends and with the elder rapidly approaching his 20th birthday, we have experienced a generation of sleepovers.

These have, without exception, been a pleasure and on occasion particularly memorable.

Of course, food, and latterly booze, have played their part and it has been a joy serving up home made treats to all of their friends.  It has also been a revelation and an education, producing interesting reactions and a response to strawberry ice cream for a very small boy that is remembered by his father over 16 years later!

Most recently, Netherton's daughter proposed a "gathering" for some of her college friends simply to celebrate the joy of summer.  Of course,as the kids have got bigger, the house has felt smaller, and so whenever possible, these get-togethers have taken place in the garden, affording both them and us a sense of space.

What was once a pond, totally unsuccessful as a garden feature, has been long filled in and has created the perfect fire pit area.  This makes it the ideal location for setting up the chapa griddle.
The girls gathered around this long into the evening, chatting, drinking, eating and creating memories that they will take away with them to their various destinations as they embark on the stage of their academic lives.
I was warned by my daughter that Lyd only drinks water or Malibu - of all the options, how did she choose Malibu? - and only likes plain food, nor does she eat burgers.  My idea of outside cooking was somewhat kiboshed by this and I was prepared to offer sausages and, well more sausages.

However, culinary negotiations within the gang ensued and it seemed that Lyd was feeling daring; she was going to try my marinaded chicken.
This has been a mainstay of many a barbecue and is so easy to prepare.
The girls gathered, the fire was lit, the sun set and the chicken was cooked................. and the verdict?
Delicious!!   And as no Malibu had been imbibed,  think we can safely say that this was a success.

So, here for Lyd and the rest of you is my simple and straightforward marinade for barbecued chicken.

This is sufficient for around 6 - 8 chicken thighs.
2 tablespoons of tomato puree
2 tablespoons brown sugar or honey
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon smoked paprika.

Mix all the ingredients together in a large mixing bowl.
Chuck in the chicken thighs and, using your hands, thoroughly coat them in the tomato mix.
Cover the bowl and leave for around 2 hours.
Cook on a barbecue, or better still a chapa griddle until the juice run clear and the meat is cooked through to the bone

(Alternatively, throw them on to a baking tray and cook in the oven for around 30 minutes at 180ºC)

Eat with your fingers and wash them down with the beverage of your choice - Malibu is not compulsory.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Baking, a recipe for coconut and raspberry cake

I have been agonising, well umming and aahing, about how to start this write up for the best part of 2 weeks.
I had a mind map the size of a continent, but no starting point.  I could have wandered who knows where, which is always an adventure, but before you set off, it's generally a good idea to know where you want to return to eventually.

Baking was once an activity to do with the children on a cold, wet afternoon; the first foray into cooking in Domestic Science classes at secondary school - I could get sidetracked about the inadequacies of cooking in schools, but that will have to wait for another day and I have already had a bit of a rant here  -  and something my mother always did on a Sunday afternoon for my Dad's packed lunches during the week.

But BAKING has had a makeover.

Film stars and rock stars, look to your laurels, the new kids on the block are the bakers!
From the terrifyingly qualified and exacting Cherish Finden, whose jawdropping creations are miniature works of art, to the homeliness and failsafe recipe of the Queen of baking, Mary Berry, Lorraine Pascale's straightforward, yet impressive approach often offering a "lighter" version of classic bakes,  to the truly gifted amateurs who have stepped out of their kitchens and into the spotlight that is (was?  let's see what the new C4 version brings) The Great British Bake Off.

We have been lucky enough to meet both Luis Troyano and Val Stones.  Despite his new found status as a celeb, Luis was down to earth and and friendly and, at the time, still genuinely bemused by his new status.  Val is an absolute darling, thoroughly enjoying her new found fame.  And, she makes the best cheese scones I have ever tasted.

There is no longer any excuse not to have a go at baking.
It was at the Shrewsbury Flower Show, however, that the distillation of what baking is all about struck home and kicked me into writing a simple blog, rather than ruminating on the fads and fashions of baking, getting sidetracked by regional variations (for which see my take on a Yorkshire curd tart.) and creating a piece as insubstantial as a baked alaska on a summer's day.

John Torode, yes, he of Masterchef fame, wowwed an enthralled audience by baking a cake.  Nothing overly elaborate or complicated, just delicious.  He was brought up by his grandmother, whose recipe he was using, after his mother died when he was only 4 years old.  He shared his abiding memory of there always being a cake in the house; something sweet to delight the children.  He told us, as he made the most basic of cake mixes, that because it makes him happy, he was baking to make us happy and that is my philosophy every time I switch on the oven.

By the way, he would like you all to know that the recipe for his grandmother's peach upside down cake can by found in his new book, My Kind of Food.

I was thrilled to see that he uses the same method for measuring out his sponge ingredients as I do - weigh your eggs, a small cake needs 2 eggs and then scale up from there, but the proportions are always the same.  However much your eggs weigh, then use the same weight of butter, sugar and self raising flour.  It's a simple as that - baking is not about absolutes, it's about ratios.  For example, when I make shortbread, I can use anything as a weight on my balance scales, because it's always 1 of sugar, 2 of butter and 3 of flour.  1,2,3 be they ounces, kilos or cans of beans!!

This cake is a wee bit different from a basic sponge, so I have included some (imperial) measurements for you.

Raspberry and coconut cake
For the cake
4 oz soft butter
4 oz sugar
Zest of 1 lime
1 egg yolk
2 egg whites
3 oz coconut yogurt
4 oz self raising flour
2 oz desiccated coconut
4 oz fresh or frozen raspberries
3 oz sugar
(You can substitute the fresh/frozen berry and sugar combination with a good quality raspberry jam if preferred)

For the icing
4 oz icing sugar
2 dessertspoons raspberry juice
Lime juice 
1 dessertspoon desiccated coconut (optional)

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC
Lightly grease a cake tin and dust with flour.  Tip out the excess flour ( you can use as part of the flour in the recipe) 
Put the raspberries and sugar in a saucepan and add about 50ml water. Put over a low heat and cook until the sugar has dissolved and the juice is starting to run out of the fruit.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  As Mr Torode pointed out the clue is in the word, "cream" - that's the colour you are aiming for.
Add the zest, coconut, yogurt and egg yolk and beat thoroughly.
Fold in the flour.
Whisk the egg whites to a stiff peak - you should be able to invert the bowl over your head without fear of a meringue headdress - and then fold into the cake mix.
Put half of the cake mixture into the prepared cake tin and spread evenly.
Using a slotted spoon, remove the raspberries from the cooking liquid and scatter across the cake mix.  Alternatively, stir some jam until soft and spreadable and put dollops of this over the cake base.

Put the rest of the cake mix on top and smooth over the raspberry layer.

Bake in the oven for approximately 25 minutes (you know your oven better than I do).
Allow the cake to cool for around 10 minutes, then run a palette knife around the sides and turn out onto a cooling tray.

To make the icing, tip the icing sugar in to a bowl with the coconut (if using) and use the lime zest and the juice form the raspberries to make a thick glace icing and drizzle across the top of the cake.  If you used jam rather than cooked raspberries, just use lime juice and a little hot water if necessary..... you can add a drop of food colouring if you want a pink topped cake.

This was served on one of our black serving and baking trays.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

The tyranny of Twitter

This is what I cooked for dessert last night, a bit of a treat after a busy, busy week.  Staff holidays and a full order book meant we all had to roll up our sleeves and get stuck in in the workshops.  A bit of baking was a great way to relax.

I was inordinately pleased with the result, this was some of the crispest, tastiest pastry I have ever made, so I could not resist posting a picture on our Twitter feed.
I am always (still) surprised and gratified by the response we get to our social media posts, after all, our food shots are quite simply what we eat at home.
The problem (ahem excuse me, don't pretend you're not flattered.  Oh, alright, the nice thing about this is....), is that when the photos turn out well, I frequently get asked for the recipe.
This is only a real problem when I have chucked together a few ingredients from the fridge or the cupboard, more in hope than expectation, and haven't measured anything.

However, this was based on classic recipes, so it's not too difficult to share with you, but I can claim no credit for originality.

Pre heat the oven to 180ºc
Grease a 10" prospector pan or a 10" pie dish

For the pastry shell
4 oz plain flour

2 oz butter

Water

Cut the butter into small dice and toss into the flour.  Rub together until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add just enough water to bring it together into a stiff dough.

Roll out and carefully place into the prospector pan or pie dish, making sure there are no air bubbles trapped under the pastry.
I simply pricked it all over with a fork, but you can use baking beans if you prefer.
Pop into the oven for around 10 minutes, until it has dried out and is just turning colour.

Remove from the oven and lower the temperature to 150ºC

While the pastry cools, prepare the filling

10 fl oz single cream

2 eggs

3 dessertspoon sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract 

4 oz raspberries

Place the cream into a saucepan and heat gently, until just coming up to the boil.
Whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla extract together.
Pour the hot cream on to the egg mixture and continue whisking to dissolve the sugar.
Scatter the raspberries over the pastry base (it's OK to use frozen fruit and you do not need to thaw it first)
Pour over the custard and return to the oven for approx 25 minutes, until the custard is just set.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before serving.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Inspired by a bee

We have some rampant lavender bushes in the garden, planted alongside some beautiful David Austin roses.  Together with the jasmine, honeysuckle and dianthus, these scent the warm evening air to an intoxicating degree and provide us with a summer long supply of cut flowers for the kitchen table.

Whilst providing an olfactory overload for us humans, they also attract all manner of bees and the sound of them buzzing their busy way around the stems is mesmerising and soothing.  As long as I can hear the bees I feel that whatever else is going on around the globe, in this small corner at least, all is right with the world.  There may even be hope for the rest of it.
The bees were particularly active earlier this week, when the sun was warm and the air still and it took ages to capture one of the busy bees bumbling around the flowers.

But as I waited patiently for the moment to click, I pondered the combination of lavender and honey and, having captured this fat fellow's picture, headed back into the kitchen to experiment.

Coming up with the idea of a honey based, lavender scented syrup, I decided on a denser style of cake, which would be drenched in the syrup and served as a dessert.
This also happens to be gluten free and you could quite easily double up the quantities and make a thicker cake, if you wished..... just turn the oven down by 20ºC and cook for a further 15 minutes.

For the cake
120g butter

120g sugar

2 eggs

60g polenta

60g ground rice

2 dstsp creme fraiche

For the syrup

100ml water

3 dstsp honey

8 lavender heads

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC

Grease a cake tin and dust with polenta.  Tip out the excess (you can add this to the polenta you are weighing out for the cake mix).

Cream the butter and sugar vigorously, until very pale in colour.  Add the creme fraiche and beat again.

Add the eggs and mix thoroughly - don't worry too much if it separates.

Fold in the polenta and rice flour.

Spoon the batter into the cake tin and spread out evenly.

Place in the oven and cook for 20 - 25 minutes, until a skewer, inserted in the centre of the cake comes out clean.

While the cake is cooking prepare the syrup.

Put water, honey and lavender in a pan, (our milk pan or 6" saucepan is ideal) heat slowly until honey is fully dissolved.

Bring to the boil and reduce by half.

Strain and set aside.

When the cake is cooked, pierce it all over with a skewer or fork.

Pour over the honey syrup, while the cake is still hot.

I strewed the top of my cake with lavender petals, thyme and hyssop, but a plain top is perfectly acceptable.

When the cake has cooled, gently turn out of the tin onto a plate and then invert onto your serving dish.  This pretty plate is from 1265 degrees north and the flower petals are from our garden.

 

Serve with a generous spoonful of creme fraiche and I reckon a few raspberries wouldn't go amiss.

A note of caution; flower petals are a very simple way of making your dishes look pretty and summery, but please, please make sure that the ones you pick are edible!!  

© Netherton Foundry 2017 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

A weekend on camp

We are privileged to be part of the worldwide family of scouting.
As leaders we experience a huge sense of involvement and family, a fair degree of responsibility and frequent exasperations, as much with the parents as the kids.
The meetings are markers in the week, starting the week with the young Beavers on Mondays and heading towards the weekend with Scouts on Thursday.  Life's too short for me to fit in the pesky Cubs too.
I will readily admit that some nights it feels like a real chore to drag myself out of the house and propel myself to our scout hut, all of 400 yards away.  But almost always this reluctance dissipates when greeted by the enthusiasm and expectation of a group of youngsters.
They are not all angels, they are not all future leaders of Scouts, councils, political parties or even criminal gangs, but they all have some potential to unlock.
A child who fell out of tree on one of our camps is now following in his aunt's footsteps and training to be a stuntman - you never know what skills you might pick up along the way, even if it's how to fall over.
The highlight of our year is the annual group camp, where all sections gather for the weekend to have fun and sleep under canvas.

Naturally this involves some organisation, and a good deal of winging it.  Whilst we never compromise on safety, we do have to have the flexibility to adapt the programme depending on the weather and the behaviour and demeanour of the kids.   It's no good plodding on regardless if they are clearly not enjoying something; they will only play up and make trouble.  Equally if something is going better than we could have hoped, we let it run.

The role of camp cook and "camp mother", as one leader dubbed it, falls into my willing hands.
I relish the opportunity to cater for a lot of people in a field with limited facilities. Mad.
We have made massive changes to our kit over the years, but the camp kitchen, for cooking and eating is a glorious old canvas marquee.  
We have progressed to pop ups for the sleeping tents;  there are no brownie points, excuse the pun, for making life difficult.
My cooking facilities comprise 4 gas hobs, with 2 mini if I'm being generous, micro if I'm being truthful, ovens.  That's very small, not microwave..... we are powered entirely by gas.
I do have some extra portable stoves, but there's not really anywhere to put them.
We also have Fiery Fred, a truly terrifying piece of kit.  Fiery Fred has been with us as long as anyone can remember.  He is a bitumen burner, as once used by road menders, a powerful gas burner that sounds like a rocket launch and which can boil a massive pan of water in the time it takes to sing a round of Ging Gang Goolie. Scary, but invaluable.

Last weekend, I made 1½ gallons of hot chocolate on Friday night, then offered 45 hungry, early morning risers a choice of 3 cereals, apple and orange juice and a full English of 2 sausages, 2 rashers of bacon, scrambled egg and baked beans for Saturday breakfast at stupid o'clock in the morning.  The dawn chorus was not the  melodic lilt of blackbirds and song thrushes, but a 4:30am alarm call from a rook colony.
This is where our frying pans came into their own. 4 pans on the go, 2 cooking bacon and 2 cooking sausages.  No need to add oil, superb heat distribution and a cracking all round performance.  Once I'd finished, we lit Fiery Fred, boiled a pan of water, sluiced out the pans and they were clean and ready to go again.

We have replaced biscuits with big bowls of fruit, to which everyone can help themselves and this disappears like snow in summer. Even allegedly fruitophobes get stuck in when they don't have to ask and there is no alternative.
By Saturday tea time they are all ravenous, a combination of lack of sleep, excitement, fresh air and adventurous activities are great for building up an appetite.
Saturday night tea was a chicken casserole with peppers, sweetcorn, tomatoes and onions that I had prepared in our cast iron casseroles at home, topped with "SFC", Sue's Fried Chicken -  a riff on Southern fried chicken, prepared at home in a 13" wok and heated/ crisped up in the micro-ovens.

All this was accompanied by dumplings fried in butter in our Netherton frying pans, a first for many that had them coming back for seconds.
Sunday breakfast is a repeat of Saturday, pans working overtime again.
Sunday lunch was barbecued burgers and the (few) leftover sausage and bacon from breakfast. You've heard of the cheeseburger, we did those; you may have topped your burger with bacon, we did that too and we also created the sausage burger - burger plus sausage (with ketchup, naturally) in a bun, so the sausage burger is now officially  "a thing", at least on Scout camp. That said, the group next to us were snacking on water melon and fruit kebabs ......... and all their Scouts were as clean at the end of the weekend as they were when they arrived. #missingthepoint

Scouts is a terrific opportunity for boys and girls, but it is also enormous fun and provides endless satisfaction for the adults who volunteer as leaders and helpers.
If you are interested, contact your local group and find out what's on offer and what you can do to help.

© Netherton Foundry 2017

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk