Christmas Eve

In my kitchen, defrosting on a plate, is an Oakham Chicken, guaranteed succulent. British seasonsed chipolata sausages and red cabbage with red onion and redcurrant jelly. There is bread sauce in the fridge and potatoes in the cupboard ready to be roasted in olive oil, pillow cases on the children's doors and presents ready to go under the tree.

On Boxing day there will be ham in Norfolk and stuffing, apricot and rosemary. My parents house will be laden down with food like a merchants ship, stored in cupboards, upstairs drawers and in the conservatory, which doubles like a large kitchen at this time of year. Every turn to the end of the year will be marked by food as part of the voyage that is my family. I choose which parts of the voyage to take myself. A deep hearted mince pie, sherry and warm fire Happy Christmas to you.

Sherry Trifle

I put my grandparents Good Housekeeping book in the kitchen and opened it out at Sherry Trifle, I poured the caramel coloured Bristol Cream Sherry into a glass and put it to my nose. The ancient smell of the sherry hit me.

In my mind I saw grandad H, wearing a knitted waistcoat and smart trousers, shuffling around his musty home, making sherry trifle, which would sit on his pristine white table cloth. It would be decorated with gooey glace cherries. You could see the layers of sponge, fruit, custard and cream through the clear glass bowl and feel the mixture of layers in your mouth when you ate it. The sweetness of the yellow custard against the grown up alcohol soaked into the sweet trifle sponges, the fruit drunk on the sherry swelled to twice its size. I would sit next to the trifle bowl which was on the table between me and the adults in my life as a child and I was always told, never put jelly in trifle.

Last Friday I made desserts for a Christmas meal with my friends. I knew I would make sherry Trifle. I stood in my kitchen, in pink Crocs, whacking the sherry onto trifle sponges stuffed with Jam, this is the way I cook, throw it in. Then I put in the custard and realised that it wasn't going to set enough for the jelly, that I wanted to put in because who says you can't have jelly in custard? So, I had to leave it out, this time. Instead, I put the cream on the custard and then decorated it with glace cherries, hundreds and thousands and silver balls and took it to the party. Even though I followed an old recipe, the trifle was as flambuoyant as possible and it still tasted like it use to.

Sinterklaas

The Dutch Father Christmas has been to England and left behind pepernooten, small ginger tasting biscuits and sweet goodies for the kids, who left out a shoe for him to fill with things and a parsnip for the white horse (schimmel). Then a large parcel arrived from Holland with presents in it from B's parents, the kids of course, think this is Sinterklaas himself who has brought the presents. Food bits in the parcel included: Dutch cheese, that says on the front of the packet, Stuk Kaas, Speculaas biscuits, which have a kind of cinnamon smell to them, Dropjes, better known to you and I as liquorice, B's favourite and my favourie nut, borrel nootjes, which are peanuts in a crispy, spicy shell. Sinterklaas is a big time for kids in Holland, it's like Father Christmas coming early with his helper Zwarte Piet.

Just time to mention that I will be making trifle like my Grandad H use to make, at the end of this week for a party on Friday night, only I'm going to go my own way and stick jelly in it as well as custard.

Advent

Saturday night, first day of advent, after playing the role of the innkeepers wife in the church Nativity, I tucked into dinner at Deasons with family and friends. I had hot roast William Pear, stuffed with stilton, serrano ham, port glaze and candied walnuts. Hot pear that, as you cut into it the stilton came flowing out and mixed over the hot fruit. For a main I had field mushroom and shallot comfit nut pudding and curry parsnip emulsion and picked cauliflower. The pickled cauliflower provided sharpness agains the the sweet taste of the field mushroom and shallot pudding. Afterwards I had chocolate brownie, which was cooked on the outside and like chocolate mousse on the inside.




I had a gin and tonic to start and then a glass of large red wine with my dad, whose appetite for alcohol has come back since his heart operation. Although he looked smaller than he use too, I think it is the combination of slouching and shrinking as you get older, his colour was so good, like his full bodied red wine. He wore a dark blazer, dark shirt, dark tie with light pattern on it which seemed to give him distinction.



The next day we had a roast dinner and drank a sweet dessert wine called, "Chateau Tillac 2003", although food can be used in my family to avoid difficult situations, feelings this weekend it felt like a return to normality enjoying food and wine, something my father hadn't really had the stomach for over the last few months. Outloud and in my head, I toasted the doctor whose young hands had carried out my dad's procedure and whose approachable nature had calmed the waters. We then talked about what kind of stuffing to make for Christmas...to be continued

Space Dust

I don't know what exactly happens when you put this stuff in your mouth. I don't know what causes the crackle but it's fab. I dare you to take a packet into an important meeting and pour some into your mouth, when there is a moment of quiet. Then slightly open your mouth and listen to the crackling, happening independently of anything you are doing. I could do this for hours on end, just crackling.

As a kid I would have 10pence a week for sweet money, which I would mostly spend on 1 pence chews, but sometimes I would blow 5 pence alone on a packet of space dust, now called Fizz Wizz. Then get home to the chair in front of the TV and sit crackling to Tom and Jerry, Top Cat, Blue Peter, Rhubarb and Custard or whatever happened to be on.

Beef and Bacon Casserole

On Saturday we went to London for my nephew’s birthday/firework party. We left late and just made it in time for the birthday party where Chuckles, the entertainer, stayed for an hour and then left saying, "I'm getting too old for this." Then the kids had mini muffin cakes, which were iced with a pink glaze and had hundreds and thousands on them and Pringles/dips and sandwiches. One little girl was rooted to the birthday tea table; it reminded me of myself as a kid. I once embarrassed my parents by following a hostess trolley, full of cakes, around a room in the 70's, refusing to let go of the side of it. My small hand had to be prized off.

Then my nephew's birthday cake arrived at the table with a five on it, which was an indoor sparkler. As he blew it out I wished him all the best in his life, with every bone and sinew in my body. My daughter ate the birthday cake and did an excellent job of taking off all the icing. Then there was a small lull before the fireworks party started at 5pm and B’s Chinese friend turned up to serve us fried food.

First, she cooked loads of prawn crackers and then deep fried fish, spring rolls and sesame toast. I tried them all, dipping my crackers in sweet chilli sauce and then went outside to sit on the bench and watch the fireworks and the roaring bonfire at the end of my brother's garden. I was doing all my favourite things. My son appeared, his face covered in chocolate and mud he was doing all his favourite things. B came out and we sat on the bench and watched people, through the French windows, approaching the chocolate fountain we had brought from Bristol. They held their skewers, with marshmallows on, in the flow of chocolate, before eating them and leaving the inevitable drip of chocolate down the chin, which after the third or fourth go no one bothered wiping away. Fab!!


The morning after, I woke with a deep fried fish hangover and after coming round we left to go to Norfolk, to be with my dad before his operation. This was going to be a different space.

We arrived in time for dad's home made tomato soup which my son lapped up. My mum had made an evening meal of Spaghetti Bolognese, interrupted only by the vicar coming round to pray for dad. Prayer, the holder of glistening tears. We are the bread broken.

We finished and eat ice-cream and then had tea and coffee and Waitrose stem ginger.

I went to bed knowing we were all dealing with Dad’s operation in our own ways and felt alone.

The next morning I wasn’t well enough to be with my dad in hospital, my glands were up. My dad and I spoke with space between us. I couldn’t hug him goodbye or go with him because I don't want him to catch my bug. Just before he left, coat on, we talked about dinner later, even though he wouldn’t be there, he came with me to the chest freezer in the garage, and got out,' Beef and Bacon Casserole,' which my dad tells me his is favourite dish, his signature dish. He took 2 of them out for tea. He knows it is my husband's favourite.

The casserole, packed in old ice-cream cartons, sat defrosting on a tray in the dining room, as the car backed out of the drive and took dad to hospital.

Unable to visit dad I returned home and spoke to him on the phone later, after his operation. I tell him,’ the casserole is great’ and he says,’ I should have sent you back with more.’ The funny thing is, although it’s not my favourite, I wish he had.

Dad's recipe:

Sherbert

I have an obsession at the moment with all things sherbert related. I was preparing recently for a writing exercise, thinking of all the sweets I use to love to eat as a kid and one of the first things that came into my mind was Sherbert Fountains.


They catapult me back into the chair in my parents’ front room. I would pack myself tightly in it, like the sherbert in the yellow packet with the red lettering on the front and black liquorice, just visible at the top of the tube. It would take me hours to eat it.

First, I would pull out the liquorice, long black and dusted in sherbert and bite the top off and let the bitter sweet taste like sweet, black tar fill my mouth. Then I would put the moistened liquorice into the sherbert and dip, pinching the side of the packet to loosen the lumps of powder. The full blown sweetness of the sherbert off setting the more bitter liquorice. Like a sweet and sour Chinese. After getting bored with trying to pick up the sherbert with the liquorice stick, I would eat it in one go by pouring the sherbert full on into my mouth like a shot of vodka. I would feel the full force of it down my throat, up my nose. I could feel a hot prickly feeling on my face. Afterwards I would come to a sherbert full stop with the soggy packaging in my hand.


I always seemed to be alone when eating the Sherbert Fountain, the door between the kitchen, where my mum was making tea and the sitting room where I ate my sweets, firmly closed.


Now, I don't quite have the patience or dedication for Sherbert Fountains so I’ve been getting my kicks, over the last few weeks, from sherbert lemons. These can be enjoyed on the run, tossed around a few times in the mouth before the sherbert seeps out of the grooves inside the sweet. I know the anatomy of a sherbert lemon really well from crunching too early and still being able to feel, with my tongue, the sherbert lying inside, waiting to be released from its lemon trench.


Space Dust..Coming Soon..

Worstebroodjes (Dutch sausage rolls)

Early in the morning on a Saturday, in a quiet kitchen, you pick up Pavarotti and put on Nessun dorma, then I know you will cry, always with the same intensity, as you remember Josephus, he makes his way into the kitchen and I tell you it's alright and hold you and wander what it's like to cry for someone that you love. The singing ends and the audience clap loudly as you remember this life lived, your grandfather, the baker, the opera singer who wanted to go to the Dutch "conservatorium", who you remember in worstebroodjes.

I have asked my husband to write the next bit:

My Grandad died in 1987 and with him the tradition of frenetic baking around Christmas time. After his retirement my granddad baked for the love of it, always together with his love of singing. For the last 15 years his children, my dad, his brother and two sisters, have kept alive my grandad's tradition of baking worstebroodjes through meeting up every year on the Saturday nearest to the 15th of December, for a session of baking and remembrance. This activity has now become a family tradition itself, which now has its own rules and customs.

This year I asked my dad if he could come from Holland to the UK to make worstebroodjes with me, like I use to with my grandad when I was little and plant a seed to enable this tradition to flourish in the UK. He gladly accepted and travelled, equipped with the recipe and the secret meat spices (a white powder, sealed in a non-labelled plastic bag that he bravely took through customs...).

The current family tradition of making worstebroodjes pivots around three important family customs. Firstly, the day starts with a "discussion" between the siblings, during which they establish the correct recipe that my grandad used. Secondly, the whole affair has to take place with constant accompaniment of opera music, to the extent that you don't know left from right by the end of the day. And thirdly, there is the question, 'who is in charge in the kitchen?' There can only be one boss and that can only be my dad, or atleast that's what he thinks. Two out of these three customs were taken to the UK when my dad made worstebroodjes with me as he had already had the "discussion" with his brother about the recipe and written it down for me (and changed it slightly during the day after two phone calls). I was happy to follow the custom of letting my dad think he could rule my kitchen whilst enjoying Pavarotti.

The result was 36 beautiful worstebroodjes, a lot of fun and the odd tear. My dad rates them 7 out of 10, but I have not tasted one for 3 years and thought that they should be given 9 out of 10 for taste and 10 out of 10 for effort. This seemed more appropriate to me. But most importantly of all, my daughter made her first worstebroodje, the tradition is safe!

Coffee Rum

It finally happened I have made the signature dish of my blog, my mother's 'coffee rum gateau.'
I made the cake, creaming together butter and sugar, beating in the eggs and then folding in the flour. I was doing the dish I had so often watched my mother make. I then put it in the oven and watched it rise. Then, when it had finished cooking, I took it out and put it on the cooling rack but this wasn't the end. The bit that follows, the pouring of the coffee rum through the holes you make in the cake, is the bit I watched as a child so often.

I made the coffee syrup, while the cake was still hot, by dissolving sugar in water, over heat and then adding brandy and 2 heaped teaspoons of instant coffee granules. As a child I use to think that brandy was the height of adult sophistication, the smell of it evaporating in the hot sugar water reminded me of some of the faces I would see at my parents dinner parties; my next door neighbours, quite posh, the enigmatic and slightly troubled looking neighbour from across the road and my warm and kind hearted primary school supply teacher with her soft cheeks. There were also work colleagues from my dads hospital and as hospitals slightly scared me, so they scared me too, but when the Coffee Rum Gateau was served to them it would cover all ills, all troubles, the barrier of sweet against the world.

After making the syrup I then pricked the top of the cooling cake all over with a skewer. I poured the syrup through all the holes I had made, the brandy floating upwards, the liquid soaking into the cake. Pouring the liquid over and over until it was gone and the cake was drenched. The next day I whipped the cream, spread it over the cake and then took 2 Cadbury flakes, out of the yellow wrappers, put them in my hand and crumbled them over the top of the cake, pushing my palms against the chocolate flake strands. I made my mother's cake but somehow it looked so different from hers. (my mum replaced the walnuts on top of the gateau with cadbury flake and renamed it gateau instead of cake)

I made it for my friends leaving party. She has gone to Belethem with her husband. I knew this cake was one I could proudly take out to a party. I wrote at the time of making it "I'm making this recipe for J who is leaving, a gift to her from my cupboard." I also choose to make the coffee rum gateau on the weekend when I had been concerned about my father's health. I wrote:

"It helps to be in the kitchen, making a family favourite from the seventies

when you were another dad from another time,

sealed forever in your brown seventies suit,

smiling from your stripy deckchair

and I was just a girl watching you

cooking, serving,

answering the door,

choosing the wine, from your cupboard under the stairs.

This was another dad who ate the coffee rum gateau

with the different faces round your table

in their suits, their long flowing shawls

their smiles.

Now the door bell is silent,

the wine still in boxes under the stairs (it doesn't agree with you so much now).

and I am grown still watching you.

Picking Pears

Autumn approaches, there was just enough sun to be warm in a t shirt. I went outside in my flip flops and came across the familiar black wheelbarrow that lives in my parents garden. My dad use to wheel it around, lost in the vegetable garden.

I saw it full of runner beans that were finished and had been taken down. It is the end of a season. My son (4) proud of a job well done with Grannie was making his own entertainment by running soil through his hands and throwing it in the direction of family members.

My mother had mentioned to me that the pears needed picking. I suggested we could help her. I don't think she knew how to ask me outright. Just below my dad's bedroom window the pear tree grows against the wall, which, over the years, he has nurtured up the brickwork. The pears have a hard green skin I picked them and placed them in the fruit box to be packed away. My husband picked the ones we couldn't reach and pruned the branches that dad would normally have done. My daughter watched.

Later in the week I spoke to dad, he'd been pickling the pears ready for Christmas, reducing juniper berries as part of the recipe. It warmed my heart to think of him in his kitchen preparing food which he knows we will eat. My mum says the kitchen stank of cooked vinegar for days.

I ate a Religieuse

Made of puff or pate chou pastry - really 2 cream puffs, one sitting on top of the other and filled with flavored pastry cream.The Religieuse got it's name from it's violet-colored icing matching the cardinal's robes.

I had time, as I said I would , to track down and eat a religieuse from a boulangerie in Chalais near where we stayed in the Charente region of France. I think it was the boulangerie in the supermarket but who cares it tasted fab. As I eat the religieuse I remembered all over again why I like them. The choux pastry holds the rich and thick chocolate filling and then there is the chocolate icing on top as well as sandwiched in between the pastry with cream, just when you feel that your mouth can't hold any more chocolate.

I made a cup of tea for everyone in the hot french sunshine, 30 degrees and we sat and eat the cakes. My brother said they really reminded him of holidays with our parents. We were partaking of a shared memory of a french patisserie, a full fat moment among other conversations we had about emptiness.

See link for more on the religieuse

http://www.laduree.fr/public_en/produits/patisseries/patisseries_religieuse.htm

Religeuse

The wind is blowing through the trees outside and it is peaceful after a busy hot day. It felt like holiday today , which is good because we are off to France tomorrow. Actually first we are going to London to have Dim Sun with my sister in law and then off to France on Friday.

I keep remembering all the food I've tasted in France over the years when I went on holiday there as a kid. I particularly remember being introduced to a pastry called a religeuse which is choux pastry and on the inside has a creamy custard style filling. It is iced with chocolate icing and has cream somewhere in it, I forget where just now!

A religeuse is made by putting a mini ball of choux pastry on top of a larger ball of choux pastry, a bit like a round pope with a hat on top. They make them in chocolate and coffee flavours, photos will follow after my holiday. For me a religeuse has a regal place in the French patisserie. Being introduced to one , by my mother, was part of my education into French society and as always with my family the food culture was an important part of this education. As if eating a religeuse was a rite of passage and gave me a distinguished air among the French that was on the outside. On the inside when I tasted the rich, thick, chocolate filling I felt as if a new world was opening up for me away from the emptiness.

A bientot

Caramel Shortbread

Been at H's today. Kids had a ball with her kids . I love the ease with which they all play with each other. Another one of those rich family days that makes me wander, that stops me in my tracks and lets me just be and then everything else just fits into place and I have no need of the things I thought I had need of. I use the word family because good friends is like family to me.


H gave us all lunch, the kids had a ham sandwich and we had brie with cranberry sauce on walnut and cranberry bread, toasted, lush. She had also made Caramel Shortbread for her daughter's birthday tomorrow. She saved me a little bit of the caramel sauce and gave it to me before lunch. I pause as I try to describe how it felt to eat it, it's a thick, chewy toffee, sort of golden brown in colour, made me want to sort of slip off the wagon, I'm trying to eat healthily at the moment! It had such a home made taste about it as well. The caramel is like a thick jacket on the shortbread with chocolate on top of that. In fact while I was there H melted Cadbury's chocolate in the microwave and then spread it on the top of the caramel. They always make this family recipe on Birthday's, her daughter's being tomorrow.



H told me that the recipe comes from a hotel in St Ives in Cornwall where she would go on holiday as a child. A nanny would look after them and they would have high tea with the caramel shortbread.



I've known H for 10 years, she once put me up for 2 weeks rent free when I lost my job but it turned into 2 years!! Her house was like the rolling Yorkshire Dales where she came from. She had a beautiful set of cream crockery which made a home long before she had a husband and children. We feasted on it and there is a story I O'h so want to tell you but I will have to ask her first!!



Recipe for caramel shortbread to follow.

Pizza

The kitchen smells of yeast, it feels like something is going to happen. Bastiaan makes pizza dough and says it reminds him of Josephus, his Dutch grandfather. He pulls bread, folds it and then bangs it down on the kitchen surface. I asked him how it feels to make dough like Josephus, “It feels good, connected. He use to do it on a table without a bowl. It was a big table with one of those truttig (meaning naff in Dutch) table cloths on it. He’d have a big pile of flour on it and he would make a hole in the middle and pour on the water, then he would start mixing and kneading it. He used to be quite a big man and I just remember his big arms going PHAM on the table just pounding the dough.

Pham…..Pham…….”

Croissants and balloon fiesta

Foggy, sun coming up, balloon fiesta in Bristol. Kids out of bed at 5.47am
I had packed the following: Waitrose 12 mini croissant, 4 pain au chocolat and 2 flasks, one with tea and one with rooibos. My neighbour had made lovely sickly sweet cocoa; we sat on a cow print blanket and had breakfast.


A cacophony of generators turning air into the balloons which rise with puffed out chests like opera singers. My favourite a posh old champagne balloon called Tattinger Reims. The hiss of the burners, the addictive aroma of propane gas and grilled bacon on Tesco barbies. The nasal breathing of the commentator, boobs bums and legs on the balloon advertising underwear. Looking up everyone’s noses as they watch the huge mammas rise. This was a good day, on a bad one, they would lie forlorn on the grass, waiting for a little bit of action.

Dad's birthday Party (74)

We ate spiced humous, from a deli in Norfolk. I washed the mud off celery sticks, chopped them up into Julienne and dipped them into the humous, catching as much of it in the groves of the celery as possible, letting it run down into my hungry mouth. Mum had also made Smoked Mackerel Pate with quark, a rougher texture than the creamy humous. My husband barbecued sausages and beefburgers with sundried tomatoes in then, lost in a cloud of smoke on the hottest day of the year. We then had Petillant De Syrah 2005, semi sparkling wine, which slipped perfectly into the blood stream. The wine was wrapped in a cooler, which looks like a blood pressure cuff, as it got hotter and hotter my sister took off the cooler and put it on her own arm to keep cool. We all creep closer under the umbrella. I had my eating head on and all restraint was gone as I piled up homegrown potatoes, salad, sausage, burger. Then we had homemade coconut and homemade raspberry icecream with kiddie chocolate sauce on top. The raspberry seeds twinkled back in the sunlight in my bowl. I let it slip down and felt the film of cream, always present in my dad’s homemade ice-cream, stick to the roof of my mouth. The ice-cream was made before my dad’s knee surgery. We ate provisions from his home made larder. A pink sparkling wine kind of birthday on a hot summer’s afternoon.

After we ate, dad had an afternoon nap and then he appeared for a piece of birthday cake, which we ate while still defrosting, my mum being a little too fond of the freezer. This chocolate button cake was made for my nephew’s birthday so we will have to make sure he gets one to replace it. Another birthday squeezed out of the toothpaste tube of time. Heat and homemade ice-cream and my dad, not busy with making food this time but with getting better.

Mid Summer Party

The sun was shining, it was a still summers morning and we had a party to go to at 09.30am!! Held by someone from Australia, where parties are early to avoid the heat of midday. My daughter brushed her hair in front of her mirror, which we have put down near the floor for her. She looked at herself in her party dress, twirling around. I said to myself, ‘this is where it starts….. feeling good about yourself.’

We left our house and walked across the fields to the party. My son, who used to be very small and is now very tall , strode ahead of us, clutching a packet of cup cakes decorated with smarties on top, my daughter held the birthday present.
The three wise men, bearers of cupcakes, presents and a pram with spare pants and some emergency nappies

We arrived and before really taking in the other mother’s I glanced at the party table. As normal eating rules do not apply at parties Boris had the following before 10.00am in the morning: 2 bags of crisps, a chocolate crispy cake and about 3 chocolate cup cakes with Smarties on top. I wanted to say to them, 'stop, you’ve had enough’ or ‘rest a little,’ and then I remembered myself at parties when I was a kid.

The best parties were excessive parties where there was too much food so you didn’t know what to eat first. Which sandwich to have first? There would be egg, mayo and cress, which was smooth and creamy, with blobs of white egg in it and green cress that would get stuck in your teeth. Then there was diarylea cheese spread sandwiches which would stick to the roof of your mouth. My little hand would clutch a hot sausage roll that would come out of the oven after the sandwiches were on the table. The pastry would be flaky and leave a film on my hands. If the sausage meat inside was hot I use to hop it around my mouth and, in dire circumstances only, would have to resort to spitting it out. After sandwiches there were crisps, so many different varieties. I would put hula’s on my fingers and thumbs, twiglets up my nose, if parents weren’t around and ready salted and salt and vinegar crisps would just go on my plate. I remember the pleasure I took in eating a supermarket own brand of crisps, which always seemed to me to have a stronger flavour than Walkers. The vinegar in salt and vinegar would make you want to weep as the flavour soared up my nose. Cheese and onion would repeat on you later on while playing musical chairs and ready salted would give you a thirst that you could only quench with lashings of birthday lemonade that made your teeth furry.

Then the cakes would come out, Butterfly ones, chocolate crispies, chocolate penguin bars and then just when you thought there was no room left the cake would appear with candles on top. The host would blow them out then the cake would be whisked away to be cut into slices and put in paper napkins to be taken home, along with the party bag. My mum always said that taking your cake home, was a crude American thing to do and she wouldn’t have anything to do with it at my party. But she had no control over other parents. As soon as I got in the door though she would have to prise the ‘going away’ cake out of my hands because, despite complaining that my stomach was aching, I would still try and eat the cake before bed. Instead it would be saved for the next day, when all the cake would be stuck on the party serviette but that wouldn’t deter me.

The picture is of me returning from Simon Harold’s party. In my right hand I am holding a box containing ‘going away’ cake. In my left hand is a balloon and on top of my head a home made red Indian that Simon’s mum made for every child. I think my mum felt a bit jealous or even inadequate about the homemade hat but she needn’t have worried because she made the best birthday cakes ever, something I will go into later on.


We left the little party and made our way home across the field with party bags. I put the buggy outside the house. My daughter took off her party dress, took to the sofa to look through her party bag and ate her sweets, leaving a trail of sticky chewy saliva on my chenille. It had been a good morning.

Summer Pudding the aftermath

July 31st

I checked the summer pudding the morning after I made it by putting a plate on top of the bowl and turning it upside down, as suggested in the cookbook but nothing happened. Feeling slightly panicked I gave up and put it back in the fridge thinking ‘never mind, we will just eat it like trifle and spoon it out.’ I came back a bit later and tried again, leaving it upside down this time on the plate. When I looked a few seconds later it had come out like an avalanche, like a sodden handkerchief, not pert like Nigel Slater’s on line summer pudding. It tasted great though. I had achieved the elimination of sharpness by using raspberries and blackberries instead of blackcurrants and sponge fingers instead of bread. Although, on reflection, I think the bread helps it to stand up. Note made of that for future, also don’t put too much juice in.

When I spooned it out it felt like a bowl of nostalgia, my past in summer fruits. Raspberry red was starkly contrasted with the whiteness of crème fraiche. I tasted the mushy raspberry drenched sponge which melted on contact lifting out the sweet dark blackcurrants, which had been hiding in the sponge, rolling them into my mouth. No sharp surprise.

Summer Pudding

It was Sunday afternoon, after church and I had just had lunch. I opened up Grandma's 1951 edition of the Good Housekeeping Home Encyclopaedia and decided to make a summer pudding, using the recipe I think she would have followed. I thought about them both as I took the musty smelling book into my kitchen and laid it on the surface. Grandma seemed so far away from me but then she did die when I was young. She seemed very austere when I was younger. I remember her with blonde/white hair tied up on her head, she seemed tall to me, even seated in her chair. She use to say to me, “you’re the one, you're the one." It was a joke and yet I knew not to mess with her and kept my distance. Somehow Summer pudding seemed to suit her, I thought as I took 2lbs of fruit out of the fridge ready to stew with caster sugar and water. As the fruit, in this case blackberries and raspberries, went into the pan the smell reminded me straight away of summer in my own mother’s kitchen. Me in strappy t shirt watching my mother concentrating on cooking, the dark pink raspberries and blackcurrants simmering.

I need to add that summer pudding also use to bore me slightly as a kid because there was no bowl to lick out afterwards. The stewed fruit, though evocative of summer, was not enticing like my mother’s cake baking or her richer desserts. There was no butter cream involved.

I remember summer pudding had a sweetness about it; but then you would get hit with the sharpness of blackcurrants and need to retreat to cream to get yourself through the dish. My grandmother Elsie seemed to me to have a tartness about her like blackcurrants or redcurrants. She definitely wasn’t a treacle sponge pudding grannie. I do know that she was feisty, which kind of goes with this dish. My dad tells me that she wouldn’t be told what to do and had a very strong sense of right and wrong. So in my kitchen I stewed the fruit and took it off the ring and then lined a bowl with sponge fingers. I didn't want to use bread in the summer pudding. I wanted more sugar, more sweetness if I was going to make it. Separating out fruit and juice, I spooned the fruit on top of the boudoir biscuits and then put on another layer of biscuits and then fruit until I was at the top. I then put a blue denby plate on the top of the summer pudding and weighed it down with 5 cartons of Waitrose apple juice and stuck it in the fridge over night. I was worried, as usual, that it was not up to scratch but intrigued to see how it would turn out. Funny how the family script that all must be perfect, kicked in when making this dish.

Revisiting the dishes my grandparents have made is like exercising the ghosts within me that have got trapped in my make up. The ones that tell me I must be perfect at everything. So if my summer pudding looks like a blob on a plate tomorrow I will try really hard not to care, I thought.

I finished the pudding and looked around me my kitchen looked like a raspberry blood bath. I still have a red stain on the bread board.

Coffee Rum Gateau

I need to introduce myself as Coffee rum gateau. I am named after a dessert my mother use to make in the 70’s, which you can see in this faded 70’s picture from my mother’s cookbook. I remember the cake so well that it seems part of the landscape of my childhood. When I started to think about it again, some 20 or so years later, looking back in my mother’s cookbook I found it didn’t look like I remember. That’s because my mother had altered the recipe and shaped it into her own. First of all she called it gateau, rather than cake, because this was the seventies, the height of the dinner party and my mother wanted to impress, which she did with this cake. Also, rather than those rather poor looking walnuts on top of the gateau, which you see in the picture, my mother got a Cadbury’s flake, I still remember the fantastic seventies flake wrapper, and shred it all over the top of the coffee rum gateau, which would render me speechless with excitement and expectation about when I would get my choppers around a piece of it. When she used to make this cake I must have been around 7-8 years old. I would be drawn into the kitchen by the smell of my mums baking. I seem to remember I was always at her right hand side, not blocking the light coming in from the kitchen window, just watching, taking it all in, from the mixing together of the raw ingredients through to the cooking of the cake in the oven and the final stage of decoration prior to the doorbell ringing and friends of my parents coming round for dinner. If a cake like this formed a big part of my growing up that must mean there is some comfort in it for me. I guess this is true. It is also true because cooking formed a large part of my family life as I grew up and still does for my parents. The strange thing is that as I have started to write about my family and cooking I have started to cook myself. For years all cooking utensils have lain unused in my kitchen, waiting for the moment when I set them to use and now I have started cooking, I can’t stop. It’s like all those years I thought I was no good at baking I have realised that wasn’t true and I can do it. There has been an explosion in my kitchen and cakes and brownies and cookies are all floating down onto my kitchen work surfaces. I will fill you in with what I have been cooking as the days go by. First let me scan on the recipe for coffee rum gateau, which I will make for myself, for the first time over the next few weeks. I don’t think I will make it this week because the stomach needs a rest but you never know, I will keep you posted. This week I will be making summer pudding, one of the dishes my Grandma use to make.