Michaelmas 2006

Michaelmas is the Christian Feast of Saints Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, Archangels. The cult of St. Michael began in the Eastern Church in the 4th century and spread to Western Christianity by the 5th century; the date of May 8 commemorates the dedication of a sanctuary to St. Michael at Monte Gargano in Italy in the 6th century. The archangel Michael is traditionally seen as the leader of the heavenly armies, and veneration of all angels was eventually incorporated. During the Middle Ages, Michaelmas was a great religious feast and many popular traditions grew up around the day, which coincided with the harvest in much of western Europe. In England it was the custom to eat a goose on Michaelmas, which was supposed to protect against financial need for the next year. In Ireland, finding a ring hidden in a Michaelmas pie meant that one would soon be married.

Remember the Canada goose of earlier posts? I'm quite good at p&d this large game bird now, but actually prefer to lift a piece of breast near the crop, slice slowly and carefully a litle slit and gently widen, and begin to separate with my fingers the skin and feathers from the muscle beneath. Cut carefully down the breast and pull off to shoulders and webbed feet. Release the game bird from its wings and feet at these points, taking the skin off in one flourish. I dont think I shall bother plucking goose again, its really too much bother, a double pluck really...

Either roast off as before and eat; or allow cooked bird to cool then strip meat from bones, mince and throw into freezer until you need to make a particularly flavoursome,autumnal lasagne. Or, after skinning slice off the breasts and follow the instructions below. Joint up the remaining carcass and freeze for a particularly fine game stock base.

Michalemas Goose Breasts with Pineapple, Chilli and Soy (merci beaucoup, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

1 fine goose breast

half a large pineapple

3 tbspn soy sauce

heaped tsp brown sugar

3 garlic cloves, chopped

inch of ginger, grated

1 red chilli, seeds removed and sliced finely

2 scallions, finely sliced

Peel the pineapple and cut two slices about an inch thick. Cut out the core and chop into rough chunks. Chop up rest of pineapple and squeeze to a pulp between your hands, saving the juice for the marinade. Eat the pulp and savour the rich exotic scents filling your kitchen as the juice runs down your hands to your elbows. Mix the remaining ingredients (bar the scallions) into a marinade and soak the goose, slashed across the skin (if using) or the meat about 7 or 8 times. Leave for 10 minutes orf later if you forget it's there.

Wipe off the marinade then sear in very hot pan until crisp and sizzling. If using skin-on breast meat, turn skin upwards in pan, then remove to ovenproof dish covered with scallions. Pour over the marinade, and poach in a hot oven for about 15 minutes at 220c. (I can't bear rare game birds). The meat should be well browned and just a bit pink in the middle. Remove to a warm plate, then get on with the pineapple chunks.

Fry off the pineapple chunks in a very lightly oiled pan, dusting with a little caster sugar as you go. They will brown and caramalise. Pour in the scallions and cooking liquor from the meat, and sizzle until reduced to a syrup - take care not to burn the sauce here. Add the breasts to pan, and turn until well coated in the outrageously fragrant sauce.

Eat, sliced into pretty slices if you can bear to wait that long, and serve over a large mound of my favourite pak choy stir fried to perfection. Because food this good really is food fit for the Archangels.

I decided to cook my Michaelmas goose this way yesterday, wandering round Chesterfield market. Thursday is the flea market, with only a few fruit and veg stalls. The foghorn call of the fruit stall man at the top corner could be heard all over the market, "Four pand a pand. Four pand apples pears bananas a pand. Four pand a pand." The richly scented perfectly ripe pineapples drew me closer in spite of the foghorn, and this feast was born.

Saturday Morning in Sunny Derbyshire, and a fine Pumpkin Soup with English Bloaters and Limes from the Axis of Evil...

Knock on bedroom door announces beloved first-born with cup of tea. I have learned over the years that this occasionally heralds an experiment on me. He used to bring me a cup of tea whilst I was working at the pc, or in the garden, and chat to me for a while until I'd had a few sips. "Now, did you notice anything unusual about that tea?" he'd ask.

Lolling across the foot of the bed beloved first-born asks, "Shall we nip to Sainsbury's and get some stewing beef? You haven't taught me how to make beef stew yet, and this is your last chance." Much laughter. Later we watch Saturday Kitchen together, and they show an old episode of Rick Stein making a lot of fuss about pumpkin soup.

Pumpkin, smoked haddock & lime soup (thank you Sophie Grigson)

Ingredients
1lb 2oz peeled and deseeded pumpkin, roughly chopped
1 onion, chopped
1 bouquet garni
12oz undyed, smoked haddock fillet (or a pair of bloaters!)
8 fl oz milk
Juice of 2 limes
Finely grated zest 1 lime or 2 preserved limes

Method
1. Mix the pumpkin, onion and bouquet garni and sweat in olive oil, over gentle heat for 10 minutes. Mash to pulp.
2. Place haddock in dish and cover with boiling water. If using preserved limes, add with the water now. Leave for 5 minutes. Flake haddock and keep water, making up if necessary to ¾ pt, or 450ml.
3. Add the haddock to the pumpkin, together with the water, seasoning well. Bring to boil, reduce heat then simmer 10 minutes. Add the milk, and bring back to a simmer, if using fresh lime juice add now. Serve sprinkled with lime zest.

I bought a huge bag of preserved limes in Damascus a year or few back. I finally found a use for the damned things.

New term, new intake

Don't you just love September? The return to school after the long summer break, the new intake of Year 7s (that's 11-year olds for our continental and colonial readers.) Picture the scene at Blockbuster tonight. A gaggle of Year 7s, clearly arranging the entertainment for their "grown-up sleepover"; well they are at BIG school now, you know!

"Let's watch Hallowe'en, its really scary, oh and lets have Scary Movie 4."

"No we cant watch that: Rhiannah watched Scary Movie 1, 2 and 3 and her mum said it was so scary she wasn't allowed to watch any of the other ones."

"Let's get all the Michael Myers movies out and watch them all in one go."

"Look. Here's Alien2, my brother says its better than Aliens1."

Dad is standing to one side, dazed and bemused as his daughter and her new friends from her new school rampage around the store, as a little hand reaches up for "Hostel."

Nicole Richie Stole My Shower Curtain

This blog really makes me larf.

http://notorious-fag.blogspot.com/

Hairy Bikers teach teen to cook

Beloved first-born awakes on Saturday morning, and having been surgically removed from PC slumps on sofa to watch "Saturday Kitchen". Watches an episode of the "Hairy Bikers" from Mexico. Mentions in passing the great looking pork and chilli meal they cook, recounting how one of the hirsute duo had been unable to grind the dried corn for the pot. Enter stage left a 90-something female dwarf, on sticks, who promptly takes over the grind stone and starts to power her way through a mountain of cobs, much to the hysterics of the film crew, and said beloved first-born. I'm half-way up the M1 this morning when the call comes in. "Mum, I can't get the pumpkin seeds to shell properly, I'm just going to grind them shells and all. Does this sound ok?" Speechless.......... The most exotic thing he's cooked to date is spag bol.

"This is our take on a very traditional Mayan dish, from before the Spanish Conquest. Traditionally it was made with rabbit, but we have found it excellent with pork. The soaked chickpeas, although not authentic, do work well..." The Hairy Bikers.

Ingredients

For the pork

1kg/2¼lb pork shoulder

1.75 litres/3 pints water or light chicken stock

1 medium onion, sliced

1 head garlic, chopped

5 bay leaves

salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the tomato and chilli sauce

4 chilcostle rojo chillies

4 guajillo chillies

290ml/½ pint hot water

500g/1lb 2oz plum tomatoes

4 cloves garlic

2 cloves

4 black peppercorns

250g/9oz pumpkin seeds

250g/9oz dried corn (or substitute 300g/10½oz dried chickpeas, soaked overnight)

sunflower oil

2 yerba santa leaves or 1 tsp ground fennel seeds

Method

1. Put the pork, water or stock, onion, garlic, bay leaves and seasoning in a large pot and bring to the boil. Simmer for about an hour or until the pork is falling apart.

2. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6.

3. Meanwhile for the tomato and chilli sauce, toast the chillies on both sides in a dry frying pan until blistered. Be careful as the fumes that are given off are an irritant, so make sure the kitchen is well ventilated.

4. Place the chillies in a bowl with the hot water to soften. Soak for 20 minutes.

5. Place the tomatoes and the garlic in a roasting tray and roast in the oven until soft. Set aside.

6. Toast the cloves and peppercorns in a dry frying pan and set aside.

7. Place the chillies, tomatoes, garlic and spices and a little of the chilli soaking water in a blender and blend until it is the consistency of brown sauce. Pass through a sieve using a wooden spoon.

8. For the pork, toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry frying pan, then place in a food processor and grind to a powder.

9. If using dried corn, toast in the same way until the kernels start to go brown. Set aside to cool, then coarsely grind in a food processor. If using chickpeas, see step 11.

10. Heat the sunflower oil in a frying pan and fry the tomato and chilli mixture for about 15 minutes.

11. Add the tomato and chilli mixture to the stew, then stir in the toasted corn or the soaked chickpeas, along with the ground pumpkin seeds. Add the yerba santa or ground fennel seeds and the pork. Cook until thickened and reduced, about 45 minutes. Add salt to taste.

12. Serve with tortillas, green rice and a spicy cooked salsa.

An early autumn day off and lunch in the garden.

Unusually I had a day off today. I woke up at the usual time, a nano second before the alarm brought me to consciousness with the Today programme, then remembered, "I have a day off today." Heavenly. Went downstairs and made a cup of tea, then hopped back to bed with my trusty field guide to trees. I'm trying to learn the difference between the Acers ... that's Maples ... or Sycamores to you and I. This is a long and not uninteresting process. Rather like making a quick lunch in the wok.

Cut some shoots of calabrese, that you harvested a last month and let the stalk grow onto these little side shoots. Cut some new short leaves from the chard "Bright Lights" that you cut last month and again, have allowed to sprout. Wash well, as the calabrese shoots especially will be home to whitefly, and shake dry. Pour a bit of your favourite oil into the wok and heat with a few chopped cloves of garlic, a red chilli sliced and an inch of grated ginger. Inhale scent of these volatile oils. Throw washed and still a bit wet greens into your wok. Leaving a bit of water on the leaves adds to that magnificent sizzle and spit as the shoots hit the hot oil. Stir around the wok for a minute or two, then upend onto your favourite plate and take into the garden to eat on the terrace at midday.

Because sometimes life really is too short to spend your day off away from your garden.

Note to self: This would be great with a bit of pineapple and some oyster sauce. Yum yum.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/wildbritain/field_guides/tree_id.shtml

Angel Decoys, & Angels & Airways

Military cargo plane (Air Force C-130) deploys "angel decoys" to defend against heat-seeking missiles. The pattern formed by the flares is how they got their name.

http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/angel-decoys-p1.php


"If only you'll hold on, just hold on
I'm here and I'm with you
I'm here too, I feel you
We'll get through
I know this, I've seen it
A hundred times, a thousand times
Just one more time
With you and I, I'll pull you close
And then we'll say good bye."

Valkyrie Missile

http://www.myspace.com/angelsandairwaves

Monty Don's tomato sauce

The following excerpt taken from an article written by Monty Don in the Observer, 24 August 2003

In winter I make tomato sauces that are thick and jammy and packed with onion, garlic, thyme, oregano and parsley. Often they are best the next day, eaten standing up from the pan with scoops of bread. It is my eldest son's favourite breakfast. But in summer I like sauces that are really little more than the fruits boiled in their juices with a fresh garlic and olive oil. This year I am growing 'Beefsteak', 'Gardener's Delight', 'Costoluto Fiorentino' and 'Cuor di Bue' (often sold as 'Oxheart'). The last of these has large, heart-shaped fruits that are very pink and fleshy and is the best of the bunch for this summer sauce. The garlic was easy as I had harvested my 'Printenor' a month ago.

Tomato Trials

As global warming results in warmer, drier summers and milder, wetter winters, we may be looking at the end of glass house grown tomatoes. Hurray for field grown toms, more flavoursome and a lot less bother, and less prone to insect infestation. Of course rabbits eat tomatoes if allowed to develop the taste for them...

This summer I grew 7 named varieties, and unnamed others. The 7 named were all started off from seed into fairly bog standard potting compost under glass 12 April; pricked out and potted on into six-division plastic trays. I then dropped into a busy hole, and pretty much left them to it, although I hardened them off by leaving the glass house doors open most of May. Then over the week between bank holiday Monday 29 May, to the following Sunday 4 June, I planted the majority of each into the garden; two inches deeper than in their pots, 2' apart over four rows 15 plants to a row, spaced 2' apart. I like tomatoes... No liquid feed used, as I relied on the fertility of the soil. I like to run Jack Russells lean, and grow my food crops hard. All cropped well, although the Romas (plum) and Costoluto Fiorentinos (beefsteak), faired better under glass. Here's the laundry list;

Black Prince - very strange appearance, like a darkly rotting tomato, but very delicious
Aurora - large yellow fruits perfectly ripe, my personal favourite
Golden Sunrise - lovely bitesize yellow fruits
Moneymaker - standard "supermarket" tomato regular shape and flavour
Ailsa Craig - I cant remember much about this one, perhaps therein lies the clue
Roma - Italian variety, lovely little plum and huge cropper
Costoluto Fiorentino - huge misshapen beefsteak with great flavour and eye appeal

Some time in April, I bought a box of heritage Italian tomatoes from Sainsbury's, and thought I'd experiment with growing some on from the seeds. To do this, simply cut a tomato in half, squeeze out the seeds onto potting compost and off you go! Of these unusual tomatoes, the green tiger-striped did best, bitesize and full with flavour. Others included yellow plums and a very peculiar looking red cherry shaped like a pinched log (merci beaucoup enfant deux). At last, Jamie Oliver's tomato salad using nothing but varied tomatoes and a good dressing becomes a reality!

Fecking rabbits... and a Friday night lasagne

As predicted, very busy week. Mind you, the M1 was a relative breeze, and I finally swung into the drive feeling ready for the weekend. And what should be lying across my garden table, just waiting for me to come home? 6 rabbits. Their eyes bright, their fur fresh, their fat little tummies full with my vegetables. Yummy yummy, in my tummy.

Don't you just love having farming neighbours?

Skinned and gutted, I roasted off the carcasses on a bed of garden herbs, then stripped the meat. Splashed some olive oil into a pan, fried off a couple of shallots and some frozen garlic (see earlier posts!). As the heavenly scent began to fill the kitchen, I picked some very peculiarly shaped peppers from the glass house and washed and chopped them into the pan. Add half a dozen mixed tomatoes (more about them over the weekend), some salt and finely chopped herbs then let the whole lot cook off. Added the meat and simmered off to a thickish sauce, made a bog standard white sauce and assembled the lasagne. Threw in the oven for 90 minutes with a dish of dauphinois potatoes. Settled down to watch Gardener's World with a glass of chardonnay, and the world doesn't seem too bad after all.

First weekend of Autumn

Tired. Not surprising, as it's a little after midnight on Sunday night.

Shooting Friday morning over in Nottinghamshire and brought home a Canada goose. Busy week ahead, so likely to forget about said goose hanging in outhouse, and decided to p&d on Saturday. Roasted as per thingy's instruction in his "Meat" cookbook. Picked last of sweet corn "Sundance"cobs, cabbage and several onions.

On Sunday morning woke with the rain on windows and made cup of tea, to drink in bed reading Frances Mayes. Flash of inspiration. I know, I shall make a wild boar ragu, but use minced goose in place of wild boar..

Garden windswept, apples falling everywhere, beans harvesting well, "Jubilee" sweet corn rather disappointing, winter squash looking rather good, finally got the crab apples organised for jelly, cut herbs for drying in the hotpress, cut Eglantine roses for bedside vase, relined blazer in scarlet silk (I know), and watched a bit of telly. Knackered. And the crab apple mash drips its soft pink juice into the basin in the pantry and I shall finish here and take Pablo to bed with me.

Autumn Harvest: Blackberry Jelly, Crabapple Jelly

Anne Scott-James is right about wanting a terrace life in August. One needs to gather one's strength for the great autumn harvest.

Blackberry Jelly

Pick as many beautifully ripe blackberries as you can. When you get back home, weigh them and for each kilo / 2lb add one lemon's juice and a roughly chopped apple, skin and core included. Tip into your preserving pan, or any heavy based pan, and add enough water to cover. Bring to the boil, then turn down heat and simmer for about half an hour until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Mash to extract as much juice as possible. Allow to cool slightly, then pass through a jelly bag, overnight if necessary. DO NOT mash the fruit once in the jelly bag, or you will force tiny bits of pulp through the jelly bag causing the jelly to cloud - we are aiming for a clear, jewel-bright jelly.

Measure the juice collected, and 750g sugar to each 1l - 1lb sugar to each 1 pint for those of us working to old money. Return to the pan over a low heat and gently stir to dissolve sugar. Bring to a rolling boil. Skim any scum. Boil hard until setting temperature is reached (105 C) – or until a little of the mixture, dropped onto a chilled plate, sets with a slight wrinkle. Pour whilst hot into sterilised jars. Allow to cool slightly then screw on the lid.

Spiced Crabapple Jelly:

Proceed exactly as above really. Collect as many crabapples as you can, wash and coarsely chop, maybe just chop in half. The Good Housekeeping Institute doesn't bother cutting out the blossom ends, and neither should we. Throw apples into your preserving pan and cover with about an inch of water - we are not bobbing for apples here. Add spices as set out below if you wish. I've made all three versions, and they are equally good. Bring carefully to the boil, then turn heat down and simmer for 90 minutes, stirring occasionally to prevent sticking and boiling over. Don't stray too far from the pan whilst simmering, as the fruit does mash rapidly and can form a thick crust that bubbles up and all over the hob. Allow to cool slightly then pass through a jelly bag for 24hrs.

Return to pan and measure juice; for each 1 pint add 1lb sugar. Bring gently to the boil, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then boil rapidly for 10 minutes until setting point is reached. Pour whilst hot into sterilised jars, cool slightly then seal. Makes a lovely amber-glowing jelly, so place on your kitchen window sill over next couple of days to enjoy the sun reflecting through your stash! Gastronomic stained glass windows...

Spiced Crabapple Jelly 1.

Add a teaspoon of whole cloves with the water. Proceed as above.

Spiced Crabapple Jelly 2.

Tie 2 broken cinnamon sticks, 1 tablespoon cloves and 1 teaspoon allspice into a square of muslin and add to the apples. Remove the spice bag after apples have boiled for 5 minutes. Proceed as above.