Jamjamjam

"Over the centuries, wizards and alchemists have used all the power and magic they could muster to try and catch rainbows, spin straw into gold, and even bring the dead back to life. They've failed of course. Yet all the while, humble peasants and ordinary housewives have go on with the simple business of bottling sunshine, so that it may spread a little joy in the leaner seasons...They call it jam."  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Ok, so yesterday I had a go at making jam. It's always seemed a bit daunting for some reason, the boiling, the sugar, making sure everything is sterile. It always seems to need a lot of stuff like special pans, muslin and stuff. But it turns out you don't really need all that.

At the end of my drive is a massive plum bush. It doesn't really belong to anyone, both me and my neighbour rent and I can't imagine the landlords caring who picks what fruit. Normally the fruit is left to the birds and just falls off but that's just a waste and I wanted to do more.

I was given the River Cottage handbook "Preserves", by Pam 'the Jam' Corbin, last year, and it made me want to give it a go. It's a really good book, written by someone who knows her stuff and wants you to know it too, from jams and chutneys to pickles, leathers and alcohol. It covers the basics 'how to', has some standard, and not so standard, recipes and gives you the rules so that you can move yourself beyond the included recipes. I've really enjoyed just reading this book, and have lined up a 'to-do' list of recipes I want to try other than jam.

Now, not owning a 9 litre muslin pan (and at the cost of them I probably won't anytime soon) I wasn't going to make the full recipe. I also don't need 8 jars of jam lurking in the cupboard. So using the plum jam recipe I divided everything by 3 to fit in my smaller saucepan.

But, first things first, you must clean. I feel like I spent my entire weekend cleaning the kitchen (cleaned, made pasta, cleaned, made jam, cleaned, made curry...) but it's essential. Bacteria and fungi that lurk in kitchens could so easily spoil a batch of jam and that would a waste of time, sugar and fruit.

 

Plum jam

1.5 kg plums
1.25 kg granulated sugar

Plums. I used the wild ones by my house, but any plums can be used. Give 'em a rinse and cut them in half. The problem with wild plums is that they can be a bit...wild. from my 500g I had about 5 plums with maggots in. Totally gross. Luckily I had a few I'd picked but were going to go spare that I could make up the weight with. The original recipe says the to get the kernels out of the stones, boil and scrub them and add to the jam because they give it an almondy hint, but I didn't want to piss about with that.

Sterilise jam jars. Easy to do, wash in hot water then put in a low oven to dry off. I did it right right before I started so that they'd be dry by the time I needed them, but not sitting about so long they'd contaminated.

So into the saucepan goes the halved plums and 400ml water (or in my case a third of that) and let it simmer to soften the skin. I gave mine 25 minutes before deciding they were soft enough, this varies between varieties of plum. I also added in 1/2ish tsp of vanilla paste to make up for the lack of almond flavour. As the plums boil they smell amazing. I was taken back to when I was little, having been sent up some rickety old ladder by my nan to pick the ripe plums and green gages that grew in her massive, but mostly overgrown, garden. I never saw her make jam, but she used to stew the plums and we'd have it for pudding. She'd also put some in an ice cube tray so we could have them as a cold desert another time.

Add the sugar and give it a good stir to dissolve the sugar. This is when I put the thermometer in. I know there are other ways of checking if jam has reached setting point, but when something has "jam" written on it, it seems overly complicated to do anything else.

Once setting point has been reached, check the fruit isn't floating, apparently the sugar stays towards the bottom of the pan and needs to cook into the fruit for it to set.  Once the fruit is no longer floating, fill the jam jars while still hot.

And in theory that's it! My jams are in the cupboard, I'll give them a few weeks before breaking into one. Still seems a bit gloopy so I don't know if they'll set more or if my plums didn't have enough pectin and I should buy some proper jam sugar if I try again. As it is though I'd love to make some blackberry jam, there's so many hedges full of berries waiting to ripen, hopefully they'll be ready before I go on holiday!

The Breakfast pie.

This is not a pie for breakfast.*

I just want to make this clear. Pie for breakfast is a Bad Idea. This is a pie that contains breakfast. The idea for it started a year ago when I had friends down and I made them this pie. Between discussions about the pie and what we were having for breakfast someone referred to the pie as breakfast pie, and so as a surprise on their visit this year I made this for him.

Breakfast Pie

• 1 pack puff pastry
• 8 sausages, skin removed (I used Sainsburys Linconshire ones because they're a bit herby)
• streaky bacon
• mushrooms, chopped (I used one portabello and it was a bit much)
• whole grain mustard
• soft boiled eggs, peeled.

Preheat oven to 190C/170C fan. The original Picnic Pie recipe this is based on says to cut a third off the pastry and roll the larger part our to line a 20cm round tin. I can't get it to line a 20cm tin so I use an 18cm one. Mix the mushrooms and sausages before putting a layer in the bottom of the pie. Make indents to put the eggs in and gently place them in the pie. I boiled six eggs but only managed to get 4 into the pie because they're very difficult to peel. I can't offer tips here, they were a bloody pain in the arse and I had to put one in that was split otherwise there wouldn't have been enough.

Once the eggs are in, gently put a small amount of the sausage meat to cover the top of them. Put in a layer of streaky bacon and cover with some mustard. Top this with the rest of the sausage/mushroom mix.

Roll out the left over third of pastry for the top, decorate and wash with egg. Put in oven and cook for 50 mins or until a skewer comes out clean. Let it cool in the tin.

This was pretty good not long out of the oven but it was even better the next day cold. I've wondered how this could have been more breakfasty, tomatoes? Black pudding? Beans? The problem with tomatoes would have been too much fluid, the portabello I put in released a fair amount of water and tomatoes would have the same problem, and would result in the dreaded "soggy bottom". Black pudding would be ok, as long as everyone liked it, although I think it might over load the pie with meat (yes, I think you can have too much meat in a pie). And beans? Again a fluid issue, and it might make it too sweet.

Anyway, it made someone make this face, which makes me happy.

*Ok, if you want to eat it for breakfast that's fine. I've seen a lot worse things that people have for breakfast.

By the power of Thor!

Every month, thanks to my mother-in-law, I get a copy of +BBC Good Food though the door. It's great, generally comes as a surprise because I'm not paying attention to the date and I get to spend the evening planning new foods to try. But very occasionally, three times in fact, I've bought Delicious. I've not made anything from them, but they seem very well put together and have some interesting features, one of which is "save our heritage" recipes that are at risk of dying out because they are no longer fashionable. Interesting idea, and the recipe in the issue I bought was Singing Hinny's (very much like a drop scone, or welsh piklet). At the bottom of the page though was the advert for the following issue: Thor cake.

Now, I love the Norse gods as much as the next person (ok, probably a bit more than the next person) but I wasn't going to buy another issue of quite an expensive magazine just for one recipe, not when there is the whole of the internet to provide me with what I want. So here it is.

Thor Cake

225g porridge oats (or oatmeal)
225g self-raising flour
225g brown sugar (bit vague, I used dark brown sugar)
½ tsp baking powder
½ tsp ground ginger
½ tsp salt
½ tsp ground allspice
50g candied peel
225g butter
175g black treacle

I was a bit worried when I saw all spice, I had bought some a while ago (can't remember for what) but I'd never gotten around to using it. I did wonder if this had been a mix up and it was mixed spice that was actually required, but I stuck it in and it really does smell right (my house currently smells amazing).

Also, a note on measuring the treacle. I can't remember where I read about this but it's always good to share tips. My treacle came in a tin, cute, oldy-worldy but a pain in the arse to measure. So what I do is put the open tin on my scales (this will only work for digital scales), set it to zero and then started removing spoonfuls of treacle. As the tin gets lighter, it reads the weight you've removed in minus grams! Amazing.

In my usual "just chuck it in" kind of way of doing things, I didn't have candied peel. What I did have though was about 30g of mixed dried fruit and some raisins, which I decided would do instead.

So Step 1 Mix all the dried ingredients. Easy peasy. Also preheat oven to 190C.  And grease/line a loaf tin.

Step 2 Over a low heat melt butter and treacle in a saucepan.

Step 3 Mix butter/treacle into dry ingredients. Mix like crazy. The recipe I followed said "Now stir with all your might with a wooden spoon until you get a thick, loose dough-like mixture." Now, I thought that might mean 'loose' as in fluid, but having mixed, probably means 'loose' like 'not tightly packed'.

 Tip this mix into the loaf tin and cook for 40-45 minutes, use your judgement, mine's been cooking for 50 minutes but at 180C (I thought I might need to reduce for a fan oven, I don't think I needed to) and it's a bit wobbly still so is staying put.

Right, so it's finally out of the oven, possibly slightly burnt on the top, but I think that's my own fault for messing up the oven temperature. I've left it to cool for a bit before cutting a slice, it smells really good and couldn't help myself.

It's such an odd cake, not really a cake, more a beefed up flapjack. The allspice is amazing, definitely have to use it for more things. The sugar/treacle combo give it a really nice toffee flavour as well. Can't wait to try this cold tomorrow, I imagine it's going to become really chewy.

Just as a side note, having become a bit calorie obsessed recently I thought I'd work out how much damage this cake does. The answer: a lot. If this serves 10, then each slice will contain around 470 calories, sending me from doing 'ok' to 'shit, I'm over my daily count by a third'. Nevermind, cake is cake, and although this is much more an autumnal cake than a spring cake, it still goes down very well.

Cake!

I love baking but I've been trying to cut down on making cakes, mainly because cakes = fatsy Emma. But every now and again I get to make one that won't be sat around for me to eat. Today was one of those times. For the retirement of one of my husband's co-workers he needed a cake, and this one I'd seen recently on the cover of GoodFood. I like using this sort of occasion to try new stuff, last time I made cake for his office it was chocolate raspberry brownies. So this time it was sticky ginger lemon drizzle cake.

Cake

• 140g butter , cut into cubes, plus extra for greasing
• 300g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 4 tsp ground ginger
• 2 tsp mixed spice
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 140g dark muscovado sugar
• 140g black treacle
• 140g golden syrup
• 300ml whole milk
• 1 large egg 

 Rub flour, spices, and butter to bread crumbs. In a saucepan put the sugar, treacle, syrup and milk and slowly warm until everything is dissolved. When everything is dissolved heat it until nearly boiling. Beat into the flour mix (maybe do this slowly so it mixes properly) and then mix in the egg.

Pour into a greased and lined 20cm tin and cook for 50 minutes-1 hour at 160C/140C fan/gas 3.  Checked its done with a skewer and leave to cool completely in the tin. It's a good idea to leave it to mature for a few days in grease-proof paper wrapped in tin foil.

Lemony drizzle

• zest and juice 1 lemon
• 50g granulated sugar
• 50g preserving sugar or crushed sugar cubes

Lemon curd

• about ½ jar good lemon curd
• 2 balls stem ginger , diced

Ginger cream

• 4 tbsp syrup from the stem ginger jar
• 100g soft cheese
• 200ml double cream
• 3 tbsp icing sugar , sieved

When you're ready, cut the cake in half. For the drizzle, mix lemon juice, zest, and sugars and pour straight over the top half (I pierced it all over with the skewer first).

Mix the lemon curd and diced stem ginger and spread over the bottom half of the cake. To make the cream, whip the ginger syrup, cream, cheese and icing sugar until it holds its shape then put on top of the curd. Put the top layer on and then you have cake!

Mine was made in a 18cm tin because I don't seem to have a 20cm one, even though it seems to be the most common one used. I also only had one day to let it mature, I'd definitely do a couple of days next time, not that mine was bland, but I'd love to see how the flavour developed. As it was, it's like a really moist McVitie's Jamaican ginger cake. It seems quite dense (maybe because I used a smaller tin) but it didn't feel dense. And ginger and lemon, I'm sure it's a really common combination but I think this was the first time I'd tried it and it's *amazing*. I was stood eating some of the cream and curd I had spare in the kitchen (see, baking = fatsy Emma).  The sponge alone is freezable too, so this could be lurking ready made until you need it (although probably won't stay there for very long).

And, apart from my constant worry about heating sugar, it was really easy to put together, lemon and ginger well balanced (and I'm not a fan of too much ginger) and the drizzle makes it look really good without having to do too much work!

Tiny Hats!

I'm sure you've seen them in Sainsbury's, but just in case you haven't then these little guys won't make much sense. For the last couple of years Innocent Smoothies have asked members of the public to knit hats for their smoothie bottles and for every hat they receive they donate money to Age UK or Age Action. Now, I wasn't as organised as I would have liked to have been, and when the UK deadline came around I only have a couple of hats and didn't in fact have the time to post them, so this morning I sent his little lot off to Dublin.

I think it's really good for Innocent to help raise awareness for Age UK and Age Concern, charities that help the elderly, especially over winter where thousands suffer in the cold because they can't afford the heating bills, or even die because of it.  And in an ageing society I think it's important that we have these people to support and help. We can all do our little bit too, even if it's nothing more than checking on elderly neighbours.

Crabs

The kind you find in the sea, obviously. I know I've not written anything for ages, but I was on holiday, and I'm a very busy person. But through this I have come up with a seriously quick dinner, if it's not in one of Jamie Oliver's speed cooking books, it should be. But before that: sea food.

I love sea food, I love really nicely done fish, I like prawns, lobster and my favourite childhood sandwich filling was crab paste.

But I do have issues with cooking it. I'm so worried about ruining fish, or doing it badly so that it puts me off trying again. While on holiday my husband and I tried chowder, we both had the same and I thought it was lovely, but something in it upset my husbands stomach and from now I know he'll be reluctant to try it again.

The other issue I have with sea food is knowing what's ok to eat. I avoid Cod because it's decreasing in numbers, but I know that's only from one area and some is ok to eat. There are websites that can tell you what's good or not, but you can't really check this as you wander around the supermarket, although there is the Marine certified sustainable mark which is good to look out for. But what generally happens is I end up buying the same thing every week; battered pollock or occasionally basa (I love basa, but partly because there's no such thing, it's a PR name because no one wants to eat Vietnamese River Cobbler).

So, having found something sustainable and seasonal like crab, where the hell do you get it from, and what do you do with it? Well, catching crab is a fairly easy and cheap thing to do. This is me about 10 years ago crabbing off Padstow harbour wall in dire need of a shower. As it happens I didn't catch anything, but a couple of kids near us did. If you're really enthusiastic and live near the sea you can put out a pot, but I don't know much about them. Of course if you do actually catch something you have to kill it to eat it. As far as I'm aware there are two methods, the "stick it in cold water and slowly heat it up" way (which I don't think is as kind as advertised) and the "kill it quick by stabbing it" way described here.

There is of course another way, which is buying a crab. I was actually given mine, a nice dressed crab (all the gross bits like dead mans fingers, legs and lower carapace are removed). You can also buy the brown and white meat separately in a shop.

Anyway, having rambled on, Spicy crab linguine. Inspired by something I had on holiday last year but found so spicy I couldn't finish it. This takes as long as it takes the linguine takes to cook.

1 crab
1 chilli
2 cloves garlic
3 or 4 spring onions
3 or 4 tablespoons crème fraiche
spices like paprika, cayenne pepper and chilli flakes
enough linguine for two (I used my spaghetti measurer) 

• Put a sauce pan of water to boil (boiling it in the kettle first saves time waiting for it to heat up on the hob)
• Chuck in the linguine when the water is boiling, and put the spring onion, garlic and chilli on to fry.
• As the garlic colours add the brown crab meat. Fry for a minute or two and add the white meat.
• After another minute or two add the creme fraiche and what spices you want (mind the chilli flakes, they're spicier than you think).
• *Check the taste* If its a bit spicy you can add more creme fraiche, but best to add in small amounts because you can always add but it's difficult to take away.
• When pasta is cooked, drain it and add to crab mix. Give it a good stir and serve. It'll look about as appetising as the picture but tastes pretty good.

 So apart from obsessing about food, I've recently been knitting tiny things, some hats for the Innocent Big Knit (although I'm now sending them to Ireland so that's a post for a different day) and some mochimochi for a friends wedding. I made them for the fridge, they kindly put them on their wedding cake. 

I've also learnt my camera does some pretty good close ups, so maybe expect to see more pictures of bugs as you don't want to see them.

Hats and hats.

I have a bit of a thing for hats. I always have. I have quite a collection of hats; glastonbury hats (a type of brimmed hat), ski hats, even a rabbit head hat (it even has big floppy ears)(and isn't made of rabbit). One Christmas I heard on the radio about a company which made unique beanies, you went to their website, picked the colours you wanted your hat, and bam, one of their army of grannies made it for you. The thing is, the hats are very expensive. At about £30 a hat, that seemed a bit much to buy on a whim.

So this is where my urge to learn knitting came from. My nans always knitted, my mum can knit, and my Little Nan used to try and teach me when I was little, so I knew I could do it. So I bought a book and started with the basics. I've made a scarf, wrist warmers, socks with no toes, one regular sock (I will get around to doing the matching one soon), baby bits and then I got addicted to making tiny toys. So, nearly two years after learning to knit and a conversation with a friend, I remembered why I wanted to knit.

Hat 1 - Etta

This was a fairly easy hat, it's got a really nice lacy sort of pattern, which once blocked opens up and  looks really good. I was just going to do it in the red, but as I was using an open ball of wool I didn't think I would have enough to do the whole hat in the single colour, but I think the red looks better next to the orange, especially as the orange isn't exactly solid, it's slightly variegated. I had a bit of trouble when  I started it because I've never been bothered to make tension squares before, so after a telling off from a knitting friend, I upped the needle size and it started to be the right size.

Hat 2 - Star crossed beret

I'd had this hat on my 'to do' list for a long time. It's got cables working their way around it, which give it a really nice, natural, organic feel. I'd not made anything with cables before, and one of the reasons I wanted to make this hat was that so many people that had made it recommended for beginners. This was also the first time I'd knitted on a circular needle (needles connected with a wire) rather than working on 3-4 short needles in a circle. I think it went really well, I was a bit worried there were holes by the cables, but they seem to have sorted themselves out during blocking.

I'm very pleased with my hats, I picked slouchy ones thinking they might be a bit more forgiving if I made a mess, but also I don't have any hats like that. And as they say in "A song of Ice and Fire": Winter is coming. So hopefully I won't have to wait too long to wear them out.