Adult Toffee Apple

My thanks to Hattie Ellis, a food writer I'd never come across previously but whose recipe in The Apple Source Book (my how we laughed) was a winner this weekend. It it rare to come across something new and different that is both easy, quick (relatively) and utterly delicious. Her apple toffee pudding is all of those. 

I was looking for ways to use our bumper cooking apple crop, and this one fitted the bill perfectly, needing three large specimens. They are peeled, cored and chopped, then cooked with a little water until starting to soften nicely. I did this in the microwave in the dish destined for the oven later, with clingfilm over so they steamed. In a pan heat about 8oz of golden syrup, just warming it, then stir in 150g of white breadcrumbs and the zest of a lemon (carefully washed and abraded with kitchen paper to remove wax). Spread the sticky crumbs over the softened apple - I didn't get an even layer, and there were gaps, but never mind, next time I'd use a narrower dish. Into the oven already on (this is pretty forgiving as the oven started on very high as I'd been crisping crackling, then turned down to 180 degrees for this) and cook until the top was showing signs of crisping, about 20 minutes. The lemon (you could doubtless do without the zest but it would be a less noble dish) somehow made it seem slightly gingery, but the whole thing was excellent with Cornish vanilla ice cream. The sharp soft apple contrasted with the crisping sweet topping, the hot pud with the cold ice cream.

That Apple Source Book was bought to satisfy my curiosity about using different varieties for specific dishes, a load of writers contributing their suggestions. It helps if you can identify what apples you have.

We have two cooker trees, one the ubiquitous Bramley, the other an unidentified type inherited on our allotment yielding smaller but richer-tasting apples. Two mature trees produce a lot of apples in autumn, so finding ways to use them without repetition (hesitation and deviation?) is at the front of the culinary bit of my brain at present. Apple sauce, apple pie, apple crumble, apple tart, salads various, apples in porky stews, apples in instant relish... It's the courgette thing all over again. 

The Publishing Run to Christmas - Unreal Christmas Cookbook I

After the interest in last year's series of intercepted letters from famous cooks to Santa the massive secret organisation that is The Austerity Cook (think underwater HQ, mini-sub on our nuclear powered yacht, not knowing Kerry Katona) has been able to obtain previews of Christmas books accepted and otherwise by some of the same star names, though with plenty more besides, to be released to the world drip by drip up to the big day.

Watch this space. Now that one. This one again.

The first, as the publisher's blurb makes clear, is not in any way an attempt to jump on a culinary band wagon. So Stephen Hawking's Big Book of Cup Cakes is apparently something the renowned physicist has been working on for years. Cup cakes in part explain the nature of the universe, interest in them constantly expanding for no comprehensible reason. The analogy is closer too as nobody in this universe has ever actually enjoyed eating a cupcake, thus proving the existence of alternative universes from which the cakes clearly arrive, that version of reality including people who have managed to find some flavour in one of the foul over-decorated things. The Cupcake Theory of Time chapter demonstrates that time is both circular - the cakes return however many the deluded buy - and with a sticky out bit made of orange peel, though nobody has read that far into the book to understand how this can be.

Reviews of the work include Professor Brian Cox's, who said it was: 'Amayyyzing.' And Stephen's friend Homer Simpson added: 'Mmmm, expanding cupcakes.'

Just Imagine - Meat Free Christmas?

I am working on an article for Lancashire Life about the vegetarian alternative at Christmas. Imagine the impact in most British homes of the suggestion that this was to be a meat free Christmas. My son would be devastated, my father (if, contrary to his habitual threats, he makes the trip up here again this year) would pack his bag and return to Norfolk. My wife, however, would probably welcome the change and the implicit health benefits of cutting down on animal fats. But then she also welcomes my plan to buy in a whole air-dried ham as part of our festive fare this year.

The imagination requested in the title means more than those reactions though. The two chefs interviewed thus far have offered some clever ideas, and not just theoretical ones but dishes they cooked last year or plan to cook this year. A raw pudding; Christmas (veggie) lasagne; a wild mushroom and Stilton strudel...

My conscience is regularly pricked by the knowledge that we here eat too much meat - in the West in general, and this household in particular. When I cook vegetarian or near vegetarian dishes we are no less satisfied, our systems don't collapse (far from it in terms of what euphemistically we'll call digestive health), and we enjoy them.

Last night the bulk of our main course came from a huge range of veg, home grown and bought in, this being a vegetable soup along minestrone lines (though the stock was chicken from the carcase of Sunday's roast bird). For the first time in weeks I made my own bread, so that accompaniment had flavour. It didn't have imagination though, something that I clearly need to work on if I am crowbar more vegetarian food into our diet.

To fire that imagination I'm going to have to buy some veggie cookbooks - though anything that features brown rice or wholewheat pasta is banned - and visit a veggie restaurant or two, something that apparently today will be less painful than the last time I did so. That was in Germany on business, so quite a while back. The menu was dismal, and the least offensive offering was pasta with pesto. The pasta was in that state of soggy rigor mortis that comes when it has been poorly drained and left at one side for five minutes before serving; the pesto had no zing to it (I suspect it was from a long-open jar not freshly made). I was dining there because a week of large lumps of boiled pig (roughly how I'd define Germany's national cuisine) with boiled spuds had fired me with a need for something else. The pasta and pesto inspired a return to boiled pig.

Specialist Subject - Courgettes

If I ever get to go on Mastermind (too scared to ever try sadly) I have a choice of specialist subjects: Maigret; Wodehouse especially the Blandings novels - I have on my LinkedIn profile that I am the founder and Life President of the Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe Society, something that is nearly true - John Buchan, and bloody courgettes.

The courgettes one is a bit narrow, as it concerns ways to cook them. I love their fecundity, a good healthy plant producing maybe 30 fruits in a season. Look away and a twee little tube the size of a pencil is suddenly a marrow, flavourless and to my mind almost useless in culinary terms, but keep an eye on them and you have lots of healthy and tasty material to work with in the kitchen.

This year I have done plenty of sweet and sour versions, both Sicilian and Chinese. Last night we had courgette and cheese quiche (actually cheese and courgette the way it worked out, went a bit bonkers with the grater). I get requests for 'courgette muck', the sliced fruits cooked down in olive oil till they are a mush, then loads of garlic added for a minute or so before the lot is served on thick toast. They go on pasta either as the aforementioned muck, or cooked with chopped toms from a tin. Courgette soup is easy. Little ones straight from the plant slice well raw for salads. I've made courgette and apple cake. Courgette omelette. Ratatouille. Steamed whole they make a good vegetable course with soy sauce and sesame oil as part of a Chinese meal. Cooked with chopped apple in apple jelly and cider vinegar with a tsp of sugar to make a rapidly prepared relish to go with sausages. If all else fails they can be simply fried in slices and served as a vegetable accompaniment to a lamb chop.

The point of this post, if there is one, is that with such plenty you need to use imagination (and some good cook books) to get the most from your glut without driving yourself and those eating with you mad. It has been such a good year for courgettes, however, that I'm now reasonably convinced I am Napoleon.

Autumn Plenty

Keeping my journal of costs of growing stuff against value of what is grown has opened my eyes a little to the plenty we enjoy at this time of year - early October that is. On Sunday we had a harvesting session at the allotment that yielded a load of cooking apples picked with our stick of ultimate power (a telescopic thing with grabby fingers and a bag beneath them for picking fruit from tall trees), beet, kohl rabi, parsley, beans various including a second flush of broad beans, destined for pretend hummus; loads of courgettes, two massive and as it turned out sweet parsnips (typically we are not sure which of the three types planted they are), Swiss chard and a real bonus, a small punnet of very ripe raspberries.

Those berries joined some apples in a pie that was a real treat. The beans and parsnips went with roast chicken, and the courgettes filled a quiche rich with cheese that we'll eat tonight with a sharp salad made from some of the other produce. Veg soup beckons too when the chicken carcase becomes stock.

For the value I tentatively put down £10 the lot, a bit on the conservative side. And I left out of my calculations a massive pumpkin (about 30lb I'd guess) that is now drying in the garden greenhouse, safe from - we hope - robbers and vagabonds. The latter had visited our allotment shed, and those of many neighbours, but only a hunting-style knife had gone from one of them as far as we know. Per the police they are looking for petrol driven tools and booze. Happily we had decided against keeping our fine wines in the allotment shed this year.

As similar gits nicked a friend's prize pumpkin a few years back we picked ours for safety. It will have a fitting end too, both decorative and culinary for our Halloween/Bonfire Night party. How many pumpkins here are just for show? A sad waste as the flesh bulks out stews sweetly, and makes a particularly thick custardy filling for pies. The little ones are best for cooking, but we'll do justice to the giant one when we feed friends at the firework gathering. Having seen Sainsbury's selling pumpkins a tenth the size for £3 I don't think £10 would be far off, though feeding friends is pretty much priceless.

Money for Nothing and Your Chick Peas for Free

Except we don't grow chick peas. No reason to spoil a good title for that though (it's a Dire Straits line).

This morning I started a project that will last a year, recording expenditure on growing food and the value of food grown. It seemed logical to start when I put in our annual seed order via our allotment association. We get 50 per cent discount from King's Seeds, but the food ones still cost just over £25.

Any editors out there wanting an article based on this, please get in touch!

That was done on Friday. On Sunday we spent two hours tidying up the plot, weeding and removing plants that are past it. But we still harvested a huge amount: 2 x giant parsnips; 2 turnips; 3 beetroot; a sugar-loaf chicory; about a dozen courgettes and patty pans; loads of runner and French beans; some apples; parsley; kale; a large kohl rabi. Enough for the veg for at least three days, though they'll be topped up with odd things from the garden - a few ripe tomatoes suddenly appeared this morning, and we have lots of small peppers left on one plant.

Also on Friday I did my regular run to the chicken man for a sack of layers' pellets and another of mixed seed to keep our two birds happy for five or six months, an outlay of £16.50. They provide on average 1.33 eggs per day through the year, which in Sainsbury's (medium sized organic eggs) are £1.90 for 6. So we get £150+ of eggs for £40 of feed and maybe £15 of bedding etc. A profit margin that I would have killed for in my industrial marketing days.

I was reminded of how good our eggs were when I bought a tray of 36 small ones for £1.50 from the chicken man (I wanted to do some baking and to go large on scrambled eggs at the weekend). His birds are kept in big sheds, free to run about but not as far as I can see to get out. The yolks are an insipid beigey-yellow. Our pair, frequently let out to eat grass, insect eggs, worms, dandelions, wood-lice, the occasional frog if we are not quick to intervene, and even once the decapitated body of a mouse left by the cat, give eggs with bright yellow to orange yolks. Even when we can't supervise them outside (we have foxes over the stream from us) they eat our leftover starches, veg peelings, and any fruit that has gone over. The chicken version of the good life/Good Life, as we on a small and partial scale enjoy the human equivalent.

Health Food

I find health food shops depressing, their gaunt and dull-eyed staff often an anti-advertisement for what they are selling. Mood and mindset are so important in health, and a diet of grey lentils, brown rice and beige beans is not going to lift the spirits. But I was reminded this morning as I scraped the honey jar to make a dressing for Ruth's lunch how often I use food to try to combat illness.

That honey jar was depleted because one of my cold-cures - the whisky-all-in - has been used several times of late. SC who hates the taste of alcohol had such a dose of his cold that he consented to try one (it's a small measure of whisky, a big tsp of honey, the juice of a whole lemon, and boiling water to fill a cup). Generously he passed his germs to Ruth, who in keeping with her trouser-wearing status in this house acts like a man when she has a cold - a near death experience for her and anyone crossing her while she ails - so she had several of these bedtime panaceas. 

The same epidemic (bit strong for the two of them I know) needed my other cure-all, hot soup. This is preferably chicken, but as I had a load of ham stock to use we had three soups based on that as well as a couple made from fresh chicken stock. Or to be more accurate as regards the ham versions we enjoyed one potage (veg cooked in the stock zapped to a gloopy thickness, then chunks of ham added), one simple soup, and one of the spicy Chinese noodle things that could be a soup or a stew.

It is probably the heat that makes you perk up with both of these, though the vitamin boost can't hurt and with the drink the sugar rush is another factor. But the sentimentalist in me likes to think that a demonstration of love, which is what taking the trouble to make these things surely is, doesn't hurt either. Say ahh, but not I hope to the doctor.