Blaeberry and elderflower cheesecake, muffins and moorland virtues

Blaeberries are currently at their seasonal best here in the Outer Hebrides and are perfectly ripe for foraging. Following my recent good fortune to stumble across a dense patch, I gathered enough for a trio of recipes: cheesecake, muffins and jam. I feature blaeberry and elderflower cheesecake and blaeberry muffins here and will reserve (or should that be preserve) the jam for a future ‘jam and scone’ post.

The busy time of summer has limited my capacity to blog over the last month and my planned output has slipped, while my draft seasonal posts grow in number. A combination of work trips away, visitors, outdoor tasks and a sudden garden glut have kept me from the computer.  I hope I can get these posts out while they are still relevant.  Meantime, apologies for the lack of interaction fellow bloggers, this exacerbated by the untimely demise of my new phone while trying to install the latest Android Jellybean upgrade. I have been unable to read and comment on the go, so was relieved to get the phone back last week.

This is a long post, so if you want to cut to the chase, the recipes are at the bottom as usual. Back to blaeberries.

Blaeberries (Vaccinium myrtillus), also known variously as blueberry, bilberry or whinberry, depending on where you grew up, are superabundant in many parts of Scotland just now, on moorland and under deciduous and coniferous woodland canopies.  Alas, on North Uist, their distribution is at best described as patchy or sparse, but exploring the vast interior of the island’s moorland can yield enough for a few tasty berry treats.

Without taking significant time to explore the literature, I can only postulate why this might be. I surmise that lack of tree cover (they like shady canopies), significant areas of habitat too wet to support the species and grazing, particularly by red deer and also sheep are likely contributing factors. Although blaeberries can survive grazing, the plants are reduced to a close-cropped sward and its ability to flower and fruit are then substantially curtailed. In my experience, blaeberries are more abundant where they are less convenient for deer to browse e.g. on islands.  Yes, red deer can swim out to islands, and I have seen them do this many times, but where these patches are small, it may be a case of diminishing returns for the deer.

Island blaeberry patch

Being no bigger on average than a petit pois, a significant haul of blaeberries can take several hours to pick but these luscious wild fruits are a must for foragers and are well worth the effort. I can’t be the only person who finds the intensity of picking these tiny berries therapeutic and very satisfying.

Moorland – the beauty within

Most visitors to the Uists spend most time on the west side of the islands.  This is where most of the population live and most holiday homes, rental cottages, etc are located, predominantly close to the extensive and largely empty sandy beaches and the beautiful machair grassland and dunes. Before we came to reside here. this was where we would invariably spend most of our leisure time too, with the occasional foray into the east side to hill walk.  However, since living here, I have come to appreciate the rugged and desolate moorland more, indeed I prefer it to the accessible and more popular beach and machair.

Walking on moorland here can be very tough.  There are very few tracks and paths, unless you are lucky to happen upon a deer track. Deep tussocky heather tufts and quaking bog make the whole experience that bit more challenging. This acidic land is patterned with a mosaic of lochs which make it impossible to walk to a defined route as the crow flies and you must pick your way over the undulating terrain along a meandering path between numerous tiny lochans and around some substantial lochs.

Without good map reading skills (and a GPS these days, although forget a phone signal – you won’t get one across most areas) and some acquired local knowledge, one could easily get disorientated or find a deviation back to a road takes several hours – unless you may be willing to swim across a loch, as the deer do. For an island of a relatively small size, isolation and wilderness can be reached very quickly and you are unlikely to see another person until you return to a tarmac road.

The rewards of a moorland visit are spectacular. Fly fishing in the plethora of lochs is the best truly wild brown trout angling that can be experienced in the UK. Many lochs are rarely, if ever, fished and any may provide the surprise of turning a fish. Small lochs require care on approach in the bird breeding season as the edges of some, not much bigger than puddles, are favoured nesting spots of red-throated divers.  A few of the larger lochs hold pairs of black-throated divers.  The calls of both can be heard during any moorland walk in the summer.

Other breeding birds include numerous raptors; both golden and sea eagles, hen harriers, peregrine falcon, merlin, and kestrel as well as short-eared owls.  Waders encountered breeding occasionally include golden plover, greenshank and this year, unusually, whimbrel, normally only seen on passage.  Red grouse occasionally explode from the heather at your feet.

Although there are few large mammals on these islands, otters are ubiquitous, both along the coast and inland. I find otter signs on every fishing outing, and have discovered some huge natal (breeding) holt complexes, associated couches, slides and tracks. In the autumn, we have had the privilege of watching red deer stags roar, parallel walk and spar, antlers locked, males intent on their harem prize and therefore oblivious to our presence.

The north end of Loch Hunder, only 40 minutes walk from the road.

Oban nam Fiadh – another of my favourite fishing lochs.

Peat cutting – Ethics, sustainability and reality

Moorland found here is also described as peatland. Peatlands are not only important for a unique combination of flora and fauna, but have their own intrinsic value as habitats. Blanket bog, a type of peatland that predominates here, is globally rare and is maintained by our cool, wet oceanic climate.

Peatlands are important for people too, not just for recreation but also flood management, grazing and perhaps most controversially, as a harvestable resource.  I say controversially because prior to moving here, I was very much suspicious of any exploitation of a peat resource. This stemmed from knowing that commercial extraction of peat, including for garden compost, has denuded the UK and Ireland of vast swathes of lowland raised bog. As a gardener, I avoid peat-based compost and am lucky to be able to make enough of my own compost to meet my gardening needs.

Fuel, however, is an entirely different matter and an ongoing issue that made me wrestle with my conscience for some time. Cutting peat for fuel was, until very recently, an absolute necessity to provide fuel for domestic heating and cooking where alternatives such as wood or coal were scarce and/or expensive. To many people, it is still necessary to cut peat for fuel to avoid or reduce fuel poverty.

Owning an old croft house that has never had anything but rudimentary and certainly not central heating has made us face the reality of our necessity to cut peat.  The house had an old oil-fueled Raeburn stove and a three bar electric fire covering the open fire when we moved in.  We exposed the open-hearth and burned coal that first winter and tolerated the Raeburn which was extremely inefficient and guzzled oil at an alarming rate. Our previous house was well insulated with gas central heating, good glazing and a living flame gas fire, producing clean heat at the press of a button, so the whole concept of keeping warm could no longer be taken for granted and it came as a bit of a shock, quite frankly.

The old Raeburn as it was when we viewed the house

Due to a rusting water heating system and exorbitant costs of fueling the Raeburn, it had to go and as an interim measure, we replaced the open fire with a more efficient multifuel stove while we decided how and when we would renovate the house. With no heating and a draughty uninsulated house, we had to burn fuel of some sort or face very miserable winters.  Imported and very expensive coal was not considered an option. When the stove drew strongly during winter gales, we would easily go through a bag of coal a day (each at £8-9 a bag).  

Reluctantly, and pragmatically, we decided we should cut peat in the meantime.  Although there was some evidence of a decades old peat stack in the garden, like most households, no peat had been burned at this house for some time therefore no one locally seemed to know where the peat bank that would have originally been associated with the house was.  We approached the estate and secured a peat bank that had not been used for some decades along the road to Lochmaddy for an annual rent of £10.

Old peat banks are a common anthropogenic feature of the moorland landscape here, though many are now heavily vegetated and obscured by heather. Although a few banks are still cut in the traditional way by hand, most peat banks are now redundant and have been for sometime. When we first moved here, there was very little evidence of significant amounts of peat cutting, however, as a result of escalating fuel prices and with the introduction of mechanized cutting using tractor-drawn auger machines, there has been a resurgence in peat cutting. This mechanised cutting accounts for most of the new extractions and is fairly extensive across some areas where hand cut banks would have been the tradition.The proportion of hand cut banks remains relatively low.

Mechanised cutting is not without problems and can adversely affect the water balance and surface vegetation of peatlands. Where extensively applied, as has been the case in Northern Ireland, the Environment and Heritage Service cite various issues arising from research. Drainage leads to changes outside of the area being cut, caused by drying out the peat and altering the vegetation it supports. The channels left by machine cutting also act as drains, further increasing water removal from the ecosystem. Repeated cuts with vehicles destroy the surface vegetation and this can erode and de-stabilise the surface of the bog. Research has shown that machine cutting decreases the height and biomass of the vegetation and rapidly reduces the invertebrate populations, thereby having bottom-up effects on the food chain.

It would be easy but short sighted to level criticism at people for having peat machine cut, and to do so would ignore the complexities associated with that choice. Cutting here is almost exclusively for domestic use and on a smaller scale than in Northern Ireland.

Hand cutting is time consuming and back-breaking. Traditionally, families and extended families, friends and neighbours would help each other out to get the job done as a requirement of part of the year’s work. Today, not everyone has the luxury of help, time nor the physical capability to cut peat in this way and it is no longer the only option. We are in the position to choose not to have our peat machine cut and I avoid this method because it does potentially cause more damage to these fragile habitats than hand cutting.  If I had a young family that needed to be kept warm through winter and machine cut peat was my only option, I am sure my view would be required to change.

The other downside with machine cut peat is although you pay for the pleasure and the physical process of cutting is removed, the peat must still be turned, stacked and removed from the moor by hand.

Machine cut peat showing the trench or drain left by extraction of the ‘sausages’ or ‘bricks’

As anyone who has cut peat by hand will know, the concept of free fuel is a complete misnomer. It is anything but, and requires several pounds of flesh. We have occasionally had ‘help’ from friends for whom peat cutting appears to be perceived as a quaint romanticised novelty. Oddly enough, after an hour or two of repetitive slog, the mystery and fascination wanes…

As incomers, we had no clue how to go about cutting, or quite what it would involve. Our neighbour came out to the bank and showed us the basics of how to cut peat by hand using a specifically designed tool, a peat iron or tairsgear with a long wooden handle and an angled blade on one end. We have been learning ever since and think after a few years of trial and error, we do OK.  Some locals are real experts, producing impressively even sized peats built into neat stacks that have an aesthetic, almost architectural quality.

We have a retired neighbour, a crofter who single-handedly cuts various banks, about 200m long in total each year – about 20 tractor trailer loads. He needs the fuel for his fire and peat-fired Raeburn. We did earn some kudos when he found out we cut by hand and he kindly offered hundreds of sheep feed bags for bagging the peat to get it home.  When we went round to collect them, he was in his shed (barn) on his own, shearing sheep number 16 of 100 with traditional (not electric) hand clippers.  I can’t fail to be impressed by his output, work ethic and stamina.

Making the cut – a novices guide

The hand cutting process is very physical and time consuming.  Our bank is approximately 80m long and is split into two sections.  First the peat is turfed, sods of overlying moorland turf removed to expose the peat below. Timing is important and this should be done early in the spring while the turf is damp and pliable, before a crust forms later. My job is to cut the clods with a spade and The Man Named Sous levers them out with a spade, placing each in front of the bank, laying the turf to restore the habitat as much as possible.

Turf removal

Turf removed, rectangular peat slices are cut using the tairsgear (my job, demonstrated here).  While I cut, he grabs each peat and throws it up onto the bank in neat lines (hopefully). Throwing straight requires technique and strength which I don’t have. This is completed 2 or 3 layers deep, depending on peat depth and quality. Yellow steel toe-capped wellies are optional.

Half of the bank is cut

Now, we are at the mercy of the weather as the peats are left to dry for a few weeks before we return to turn and stack them in groups of 4-5 peats so these dry completely before bagging. Each shrinks significantly as it dries.

The other half cut

Stacked, dried and ready to bag

We do not have a quad or tractor, so our peat has to be bagged and each bag (about 160 in total, 15-20kg each) carried by us to the car and trailer at the roadside, about 100 m away over wet and uneven bog.  This is the toughest job and takes us about 4 hours.  I bag, but must be careful not to make each too heavy or I can’t lift them!

Peat can get waterlogged in the bags, so when we get it home, it is unbagged and stacked on platforms we have built for this purpose where it will remain relatively dry over winter as we use it. It is not the most elegant stack, but we are glad to see the work finished. We completed this last night.  The whole process took us about three days in total working flat out over numerous evenings, but we have secured our fuel for the winter.  No small feat, job done!

With house renovations pending, we hope to move to greener heating in the future by fitting an air source heat pump and with underfloor heating, we will no longer require to cut peat.  We are grateful however to have had this peat resource to heat our house through a few winters, but as it was the case here historically, peat cutting has been a time-consuming necessity. I will not miss it when we no longer need to cut it, although the views from the peat bank are not so bad:

Blaeberry and elderflower cheesecake

So, at last I am back to blaeberries et al.  I wanted to couple the blaeberries with my recently made elderflower cordial.  The most frequently cited recipe for this refreshing drink can be found here. This is a very reliable Pam Corbin recipe from the River Cottage handbook, ‘Preserves’. I have made about 10 litres of cordial from gifts of elderflowers brought to me and I will be planting some bushes in the garden soon to complement my growing meadowsweet patch (also makes very good cordial).

One thing about the recipe is that you must not omit the citric acid, it enhances the distinctive aromatic flavour of the flowers and prevents the cordial from tasting overpoweringly sweet, as well as helping with preservation.  Fortunately, we have a big tub of it that we use to clean our espresso machine.

This no-bake cheesecake recipe is very simple and makes 4 individual cheesecakes for loose-based tartlet tins about 8 cm in diameter.  Plain round tins would be nicer than the more retro fluted ones I have, but I don’t have any.

Ingredients

20 ml elderflower cordial

180g blaeberries

40g butter, melted

100g digestive biscuits, crushed

200g cream cheese

30g icing sugar

300ml double cream, whipped

Method

• Melt the butter in a pan together with the crushed digestives, mixing well until the biscuits have absorbed the butter.
• Press the biscuit mixture into each loose-based tartlet tin. Allow this to chill in the fridge for an hour or so.
• Beat the cream cheese lightly, add the icing sugar and elderflower cordial.  Whip the cream, although not too stiffly and fold into the cheese with the blaeberries, gently crushing a few so the colour marbles through the mixture  Spread across the biscuit base and allow a few hours to set.

Blaeberry muffins

The wild alternative to the blueberry muffin and a veritable classic, all the better for the simplicity of muffin-making. I tend to use the same basic muffin recipe template and ring the changes with the ingredients.  I added Ottolenghi crumble that I keep stashed in the freezer to add a hint of sweetness on top as these muffins contain very little sugar. This recipe makes 24 mini muffins.  I don’t make big muffins as I can’t eat a whole one.  I know. Lightweight.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C

Ingredients

150g blaeberries (or blueberries)

350g plain flour

100g caster sugar

pinch of salt

2 medium eggs

1 level tbsp baking powder

280 ml milk

100 ml sunflower oil, or melted butter

1 tsp vanilla essence

Method

• Sift the dry ingredients (except berries) and mix.
• Whisk the eggs and add to the dry ingredients together with the other wet ingredients and mix until just combined. Some lumps are fine.
• Fold in the berries and spoon the mixture into cases/muffin trays until each is 3/4 full.
• Sprinkle with crumble and bake for 20-25 minutes.

Crumble recipe

300g plain flour

100g caster sugar

200g cold unsalted butter cut into small cubes

Method

Fling the ingredients into a food processor and pulse until it forms a breadcrumb consistency, or mix using your hands. If you use a processor, make sure it just turns to breadcrumbs and no more, or you will have cookie dough.

Put the excess in the freezer to use another time.

Summer garden soup with lemon basil and pistachio pesto

This light soup features the freshest vegetables currently available from the garden. It is designed to be served à la minute, the vegetables barely being cooked to capture and retain the essence of the quintessential flavours of summer, with freshly picked home-grown vegetables and herbs from garden to plate in under 30 minutes.

Why are you posting about soup in the middle of summer you may ask? As a typical Brit, I am unnecessarily preoccupied with the weather. The UK mainland is currently experiencing an enviable heatwave and the hottest July since 2006.  Here in the Outer Hebrides, it is the antithesis: low cloud, rain / smir, mist / fog and wind.  Visibility is currently about 300m. I was supposed to be in Orkney for work this week, but this has not been an option due to the fog causing flight cancellations. We have also now had no mail for 3 days as the mail plane is also cancelled.

I’m not prepared to put a gloss on life here by suggesting the weather (and life here generally for that matter) is always amazing but I do usually resent leaving the island during the summer as there is no place better to be – when we have the weather that is. Once again, I feel so sorry for visitors that arrived in the last week as we have seen the sun for only about 1 hour since we returned from our mainland trip one week ago. In fact, we are trying not to feel sorry for ourselves as radio commentators talk about how glorious the weather is (almost) everywhere and how hot it is while I walk the dogs in the usual fleece and waterproof jacket. I am glad that we will not have more visitors until the weekend and hope the improving forecast is accurate.

In fairness, we had amazing summer last year while the rest of the UK was deluged with rain and floods.  Unfortunately, the relocation of the jet stream to its more usual position further south this summer means the weather is perhaps much more as we should expect it to be here.  That said, it is probably, on balance the worst summer we have had (in terms of sunshine and warmth at least) since we moved here.

Instead of wallowing in self pity (or vacating the island until the murk lifts – not that I can get off by plane!), I decided to celebrate the garden successes I am having with a summery soup and accompanying fragrant pesto. The success of some crops is surprising given the weather, but welcome and the harvest looks and tastes like summer, even if the sky and temperature indicate otherwise. I really enjoy cold soups, but given our current temperatures, a warm soup seems more appropriate.

Summer garden soup

The vegetables were freshly picked, cleaned and prepared and given the gentlest possible cooking.  I used whatever was in prime condition for picking: chard, garlic, spring onions, chervil and parsley from outside, courgettes and flowers (I know, technically a fruit) and very tasty fine beans from the tunnel.

Ingredients

A splash of olive oil

2 garlic cloves, crushed

1 onion, finely sliced

3 small courgettes (and flowers if available)

a handful of fine beans

a big bunch of chard (about 250g)

4 spring onions

a bunch of chervil

a bunch of flat leaf parsley

1 litre of vegetable stock

salt and pepper

Method

• Wash, clean and roughly chop the veg (except the onion, finely chop it).
• Add the oil to a large pan, then the onion and cook gently for a few minutes until translucent then add the crushed garlic and cook for another minute before adding the fine beans, courgette (not flowers), thicker chard stems and stock.
• Simmer gently for about 5 minutes, add the chard leaves and cook for a further minute before stirring in the spring onions, herbs and flowers. Season to taste and top with some pesto.

Lemon basil and pistachio pesto

One thing that has been a raging success this year is my basil.  I am growing 5 different varieties (Mrs Burns, Cinnamon, Red Rubin, Sweet Genovese and Italian Giant) and all have been producing well.  I therefore have been spoilt for choice and wanted to make a pesto with a distinctive tang.

Basil – Mrs Burns

Basil – Cinnamon

Basil – Giant Italian

Although I used 3 types of basil in this recipe, the variety Mrs Burns is extremely refreshing and lemony and I wanted the citrus zing of this variety to predominate, with cinnamon (more almost anise-like) and Italian Giant adding depth and complexity to the flavour of the pesto, each complementing the vibrant pistachio nuts included. This pesto also works really well with fish and we enjoyed it with baked brown trout.

Ingredients

50g Mrs Burns or lemon basil leaves

10g cinnamon basil leaves

10g Giant Italian basil leaves

50g fresh grated parmesan

50g pistachio nuts

2 cloves garlic, peeled

200 ml good quality extra virgin olive oil

1 tsp salt

a few turns of pepper

Method

• Put all ingredients in a food processor, pulse then blitz for a minute or so, until smooth.
• Store in a jar in the fridge, keeps for about a week.

Strawberry swan song: Hazelnut shortcakes and coulis with a hint of wild mint

Wimbledon is underway, even if summer isn’t and suddenly everything has turned strawberry, the number of strawberry-related posts popping up on my reader reaching a seasonal crescendo.  Here in North Uist, my strawberry crop is coming to an end, the glut has passed and just as I posted at the start of our strawberry season, here I celebrate the end with this more or less traditional (retro even) shortcake, crème patissière and strawberry coulis recipe, the coulis with the added dimension of pomegranate molasses and wild water mint (Mentha aquatica).

The strawberry season is all too short, but I feel satiated given our substantial crop this year.  I will be content to leave the joy of indulging in the heady sweetness of home-grown strawberries until next spring. I don’t grow enough to make jam and although I will not be tempted to eat the generally insipid supermarket strawberries fresh (even if they are British), I could be lured to make some jam if I have the chance to pick my own at a mainland farm or acquire a bumper bargain of British strawberries. Truth be told, I don’t much care for strawberry jam, but would make it for The Man Named Sous who does.  The one exception is wild strawberry conserve.  I had some delicious home made conserve when I was in Bulgaria a couple of years ago and no strawberry jam I have tasted can come close to that.

My strawberry crop has only been so good because it has been tucked up safe and warm in my small but productive tunnel.  The tomatoes, tomatillos, courgettes, cucumbers, dwarf beans and chillies are all looking very happy, flowering profusely indoors.  I keep my fingers crossed that there will be enough sun for equally copious fruiting.

We appear to have had our summer of a few erratic days of sunshine, with the long-term forecast now showing a familiar pattern of seasonally unsettled weather from gales (30-40 mph on Sunday past) to sideways smir and proper rain.  On the occasional still day a grey blanket of cloud envelopes the islands and the midges descend to devour us as we try to work outdoors.

Meanwhile, the low temperatures and frequent northerlies mean the outdoor vegetables are growing at an imperceptibly slow rate, about the speed of tectonic plates. Even our fly fishing outings have been dour, the trout sulking at the bottom of the lochs, rarely being tempted by the flies cast. All that said, there is at least the perception that it is summer if you are eating strawberries.

My micro veg

The first nasturtium bravely sticks its head above the parapet

Beautiful Loch Bhrusda, Berneray

We did have a fantastic fly fishing outing to Loch Bhrusda on the island of Berneray, the most northern of the islands in the Uist island chain, now connected to North Uist by a causeway. Our fishing club visits this catch and release machair loch once a year. The loch holds some +6lb fish that put up an impressive fight, more like sea trout than brown trout, so it is usually a popular outing.

Fishing was slow and I was the lucky one who caught a lovely silvery 2 1/2 lb brown trout. Sometimes the fishing is secondary when you can enjoy such beautiful surroundings on a stunning day.  Of course, bright conditions are not good for fly fishing and the fish were lurking at the bottom.  I caught the fish along the deep north west shore, a place where I have had success in the past.

Bhruda’s deep north west shore

The loch is interesting because has a clear demarcation from shallow to deep running longitudinally along the loch.  The transition gradient can clearly be seen in the photos and anglers usually wade out and cast over the shallow lip (about 1m deep) into deeper water where it is perceived most of the fish are.  While fishing along this edge, a startled trout of several pounds darted around my legs into the shallow area where I was standing! Interestingly, I have never caught a fish from this favoured area.

Transition from shallow to deep at Loch Bhrusda

The Man Named Sous casts into the abyss

Wading back towards the south east shore

Although the late spring has meant the vegetation has been slow to get going, the Berneray machair looked spectacular on this visit.  After 3 1/2 hours without a bite, I decided to spend the last half hour of the outing wandering around the machair to look for bumblebees and hoverflies. The succession of machair flowers was still in quite an early phase with birdsfoot trefoil (Lotus corniculatus) dominating the grassland surrounding the loch. There were plenty of the rare moss carder bees (Bombus muscorum), but it was still too early for the much rarer great yellow bumblebee (Bombus distinguendus) to be found.

Strawberries with hazelnut shortbread

This is a nice nostalgic dessert that provides sufficient decadence to be a fitting strawberry swan song. The hazelnut shortbread recipe is courtesy of Delia Smith and these are not at all sweet so the deliciously distinctive hazelnut flavour shines through, the ground rice ensuring crispness and a change from using semolina or polenta.  I found the dough a bit soft, even after resting, I would add a bit more flour (170g as opposed to150g) to provide a better dough texture that was less fragile but still nice and short

The crème patissière recipe is not my usual favoured Michel Roux recipe.  I decided to try Paul Hollywood’s version from his ‘How to Bake’ book. It was certainly easy to make but perhaps a bit on the soft side if the crème pat is to be used in dishes requiring a firm custard e.g. for making beignets.

The stock syrup included in the strawberry coulis was infused with a sprig of water mint.  This is superabundant in the marshy areas around the house just now.  A small amount of pomegranate molasses was added to give a different flavour dimension.

Hazelnut Shortbread biscuits

Preheat the oven to 180C

Ingredients

110g hazelnuts

150g butter

60g icing sugar

60g ground rice

170g plain flour

Method

• Roast the nuts on an oven tray for 5 minutes, allow to cool and then blitz until fine in a food processor.
• Cream the icing sugar and butter together until light and fluffy, gradually add the sifted flours, then the ground hazelnuts. rest in the fridge for several hours.
• Roll out to about 5mm, cut rounds using a scone cutter (I used 8 cm) and place on a baking sheet.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, allow to cool slightly before moving them onto a wire rack.

Crème patissière

Ingredients

100g caster sugar

4 medium eggs

40g cornflour

500 ml full fat milk

2 vanilla pods

40g butter

Method

• Whisk the sugar, egg yolks and corn flour in a bowl until smooth.
• In a pan, scrape out the vanilla pods and add them and their contents to the milk.  Bring the milk to the boil and remove from the heat.
• Pour about a quarter of the milk over the yolk/flour mixture and scrape everything back into the pan.
• Heat gently until the mixture thickens then remove from the heat.
• Pass through a sieve into a bowl and stir in the butter.
• Place some greaseproof paper directly over the crème as it cools to stop a skin forming (the butter helps too).  Cool and chill until required.

Strawberry, water mint and pomegranate molasses coulis

Begin by making a stock syrup simply by boiling 150g caster sugar and 120 ml water together with a sprig of water mint (or other mint species available) for 3 minutes. Leave this to cool with the mint infusing in it and remove sprig just before using.

Ingredients

50ml stock syrup

200g hulled strawberries

1 tbsp. pomegranate molasses

2 water mint leaves

juice of 1/4 lemon

Method

• Simply blitz all the ingredients in a food processor and pass through a fine sieve.

Assembling the dish

This is straightforward piling of strawberries on a biscuit, followed by a generous dollop of crème pat and coulis, topped with another biscuit, more crème and a whole fresh strawberry.

And finally…

No summer barbecue would be complete without the classic strawberry tart, made with pâte sucrée case lined with dark chocolate, filled with crème pat, a layer of passion fruit curd and topped with apricot jam-glazed strawberries and blueberries.  Adios amigos, until next year…

A close call as Hector moves in for the kill…

First taste of summer – Strawberry and lemon spelt sablée mignardises

Describing these treats as mignardises is a tad pretentious, but seems more appropriate than calling them petit fours as in the traditional sense, since they don’t conform to the typical descriptions being neither glacé nor sec. In fact, they are an altogether more rustic, less refined affair than the delicate one bite offerings one may anticipate at the close of a fine dining experience.

Whatever one might call them, be it mignardises, mignonardise, petit fours, amuse-bouches sucrés or friandise, it’s all a bit irrelevant, it’s how they taste that matters – and everyone knows how incredible the first home-grown strawberry of summer tastes. The scent and sweet flavour explosion are imprinted on the memory from first experience. This year, as ever, the sensation has not disappointed.

My strawberries are grown in planters in the polytunnel and started producing ripe fruit about 10 days ago, first in ones and twos which, of course, did not make it out of the tunnel as I munched them as soon as they were ready, revelling in their luscious warm ripeness. Now, the plants are more prolific and I have allowed a punnet to survive long enough to get to the house.

My first strawberry of 2013 – Marshmellow

I wanted to celebrate the deliciousness of my first strawberries of the season without smothering or overwhelming them with cream, glaze or meringue, so I delicately nestled them on a cushion of cool vanilla crème Chantilly, with a smidgen of passion fruit curd in the hulled strawberry top, all resting on a lemon spelt sablée biscuit. A summer flavour explosion ensued.

Lemon spelt sablée biscuits

I chose these delicately short and light biscuits from Annie Bell’s baking bible.  The recipe suggests refined spelt, but I used wholegrain for a deeper colour and flavour. The recipe is very simple and quick to make and the dough logs are rolled in a thin coating of Demerara sugar which gives them a shimmering, jewel-encrusted edge. The biscuits are not too sweet which is important as the strawberries don’t need shedloads of additional sugar – they are already exceptionally sweet.

Ingredients

115g lightly salted butter

50g caster sugar

150g wholegrain spelt flour

60g ground almonds

finely grated zest of 2 lemons

a sprinkle of Demerara sugar

Preheat the oven to 160C

Method

• Put all the ingredients into a food processor, blitz until a soft ball of dough forms.
• Divide the mix into 3 and roll into logs about 3 – 4 cm in diameter. Roll the logs in some Demerara sugar sprinkled on the surface, wrap each in clingfilm and place in the fridge overnight.
• Slice the logs to form biscuits each about 1 cm thick, place on a baking sheet, spaced out a bit then place in the oven for 30 minutes until colouring slightly.
• When out of the oven, loosen each biscuit with a palate knife and leave them to cool.

Passion fruit curd

I happened to have made a jar of this curd a couple of weeks ago when we were still in the depths of winter (there was no spring this year that I noticed) and I needed a ray of culinary sunshine and a reminder of how summer tastes courtesy of one of my favourite fruits.  The curd is very soft set.  For a firmer set, reduce the volume of passion fruit to about 150 ml.

Ingredients

200 ml passion fruit contents (about 9 fruit)

3 large egg yolks

70g caster sugar

60g unsalted butter, softened

Method

• Blitz the passion fruit contents in a blender to break down the seeds then sieve to extract maximum flavour.
• Place the strained passion fruits, egg yolks and sugar in a bain marie over barely simmering water. Stir continuously until thickened, about 10 minutes.
• Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter.
• Place in a sterilised jar.
• For the mignardises, place a small amount of curd in the space where the strawberry was hulled:

Vanilla crème Chantilly

This is simply whipping cream (1 large tub , 300ml), whipped with the contents of one vanilla pod and with a sprinkle of sieved icing sugar gently folded in, to taste.  I purposefully did not add very much sugar (about 2 tsp) as I did not want the crème to have any more than a hint of sweetness. The cream should be lightly whipped, just holding its shape and not quite be able to bear the weight of the strawberry.

Strawberry and lemon spelt sablée mignardises

To assemble, place a teaspoon of crème Chantilly on the biscuit, place a small blob of curd inside the hulled strawberry and sit the strawberry on the crème cushion. Eat immediately as the curd starts to ooze out over the crème.  It is over in one (large) mouthful, but oh so very much worth the effort.

All to be enjoyed with tonight’s sunset, one of many spectacular sunsets we have enjoyed in the last week. The view of the bay, this time with the tide out, taken from the bottom of the garden at 2215 hours.

Biscuits with Bartok 7 – Breton Prune Far (again)

Apologies for those that may have recently received this post, as Stefan’s Gourmet Blog recently recounted, I too have had problems with this specific post showing up in the Reader, though it has gone out to Facebook and Twitter. Please bear with me while I make a test of this as a scheduled post.  I know tag no’s are not the problem, and suspect it is a random issue with the platform! Thanks for your patience.

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As an appropriate welcome to the French horn to accompany the string section this week, I introduce the Breton Prune Far.  This delicious custardy pudding cake, similar to a clafoutis but with a dense, smooth, flan-like texture is best eaten cold. The recipe is a very quick and easy way to indulge in a refined ‘cake’ incorporating this most delicious of dried fruit. In fact, the French horn is really just an excuse to post about the Far, which I actually made for the musicians several weeks ago – and it is now Mozart, with cake.  I really need to change the title….

I know there are many prune dissenters out there, but I will not have a bad word said about my number 1 dried fruit. I eat it as a snack while out fishing or hill walking, add it to my breakfast muesli, or have gently stewed prunes for breakfast or as a treat with home made vanilla ice cream. So many people still recoil in horror at the thought of eating prunes. So bad is this stigma that in California, one of the key areas of production, they are alternatively called dried plums, which of course they are, but this is used to dispel the nursery food associations.

The extent of the animosity and occasional revulsion directed at the poor maligned prune seems surprisingly unjustified. I too have been scarred by the affront to prunes – embedded in lumpy, thick-skinned luminescent school custard. However, it seems a travesty not to savour the prune, resplendent in the savoury richness of aromatic lamb tagines and delicious with slow cooked braised pork belly.  Not forgetting the delights of prunes in the darkest of dark chocolate cakes, the fruit first being soaked overnight in amaretto or rum, plump and ready to bring an extra special dimension and indulgence to the cake.

Musical interlude: Mastertapes – Wilko Johnson

I’m writing this while listening to the great Wilko Johnson on Radio 4.  The new series of Mastertapes starts with tales from this great Canvey Island guitar hero. Wilko is naturally witty, warm and straight-talking and is discussing the first Dr Feelgood album, 1974’s classic ‘Down by the Jetty’, as well as his terminal illness and current musical projects. It is highly entertaining, although slightly distracting!

This is a great concept for a music series where John Wilson talks to leading performers and songwriters about the album that made them or changed them. It is recorded live and comes in 2 parts, an A-side where the performer is quizzed by interviewer John Wilson then a second programme, the B-side where the audience get to ask questions.  I recommend catching up with it online if you miss out on this first episode.

Breton Prune Far

It may be very simple to make, but it is delicious and has a sophisticated, grown-up flavour ‘far’ removed from the nursery or indeed nursing home image the prune conjures up for many and is a patisserie cake in Brittany and Normandy.

I found this particular recipe in Annie Bell’s Baking Bible.  It is the last one in the book. I changed the rum in the original recipe for amaretto. The Far was particularly good with a strong high quality espresso, in this case, a single origin Columbian Bucaramanga which is full flavoured and complex.

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter, melted

125g golden caster sugar

2 medium eggs

500ml whole milk

1 tbsp. amaretto

1 tsp vanilla extract

125g plain flour

125g ready soaked prunes

Preheat fan oven to 180C

Method

• Brush a 23cm square cake tin (4cm deep) with butter and dust with caster sugar.
• Blitz all the ingredients except the prunes in a liquidiser.
• Pour the batter into the tin and scatter the prunes evenly over the surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden.
• Let it cool – it will sink slightly. Dust with icing sugar and cut into squares.

Biscuits with Bartok 7 – Breton Prune Far

As an appropriate welcome to the French horn to accompany the string section this week, I introduce the Breton Prune Far.  This delicious custardy pudding cake, similar to a clafoutis but with a dense, smooth, flan-like texture is best eaten cold. The recipe is a very quick and easy way to indulge in a refined ‘cake’ incorporating this most delicious of dried fruit. In fact, the French horn is really just an excuse to post about the Far, which I actually made for the musicians several weeks ago – and it is now Mozart, with cake.  I really need to change the title….

I know there are many prune dissenters out there, but I will not have a bad word said about my number 1 dried fruit. I eat it as a snack while out fishing or hill walking, add it to my breakfast muesli, or have gently stewed prunes for breakfast or as a treat with home made vanilla ice cream. So many people still recoil in horror at the thought of eating prunes. So bad is this stigma that in California, one of the key areas of production, they are alternatively called dried plums, which of course they are, but this is used to dispel the nursery food associations.

The extent of the animosity and occasional revulsion directed at the poor maligned prune seems surprisingly unjustified. I too have been scarred by the affront to prunes – embedded in lumpy, thick-skinned luminescent school custard. However, it seems a travesty not to savour the prune, resplendent in the savoury richness of aromatic lamb tagines and delicious with slow cooked braised pork belly.  Not forgetting the delights of prunes in the darkest of dark chocolate cakes, the fruit first being soaked overnight in amaretto or rum, plump and ready to bring an extra special dimension and indulgence to the cake.

Musical interlude: Mastertapes – Wilko Johnson

I’m writing this while listening to the great Wilko Johnson on Radio 4.  The new series of Mastertapes starts with tales from this great Canvey Island guitar hero. Wilko is naturally witty, warm and straight-talking and is discussing the first Dr Feelgood album, 1974’s classic ‘Down by the Jetty’, as well as his terminal illness and current musical projects. It is highly entertaining, although slightly distracting!

This is a great concept for a music series where John Wilson talks to leading performers and songwriters about the album that made them or changed them. It is recorded live and comes in 2 parts, an A-side where the performer is quizzed by interviewer John Wilson then a second programme, the B-side where the audience get to ask questions.  I recommend catching up with it online if you miss out on this first episode.

Breton Prune Far

It may be very simple to make, but it is delicious and has a sophisticated, grown-up flavour ‘far’ removed from the nursery or indeed nursing home image the prune conjures up for many and is a patisserie cake in Brittany and Normandy.

I found this particular recipe in Annie Bell’s Baking Bible.  It is the last one in the book. I changed the rum in the original recipe for amaretto. The Far was particularly good with a strong high quality espresso, in this case, a single origin Columbian Bucaramanga which is full flavoured and complex.

Ingredients

50g unsalted butter, melted

125g golden caster sugar

2 medium eggs

500ml whole milk

1 tbsp. amaretto

1 tsp vanilla extract

125g plain flour

125g ready soaked prunes

Preheat fan oven to 180C

Method

• Brush a 23cm square cake tin (4cm deep) with butter and dust with caster sugar.
• Blitz all the ingredients except the prunes in a liquidiser.
• Pour the batter into the tin and scatter the prunes evenly over the surface. Bake for 35-40 minutes until golden.
• Let it cool – it will sink slightly. Dust with icing sugar and cut into squares.

Gloucester Old Spot pork scaloppine with nettle pappardelle

With most of the vegetables in the garden yet to surface, it seems wholly appropriate to utilise our currently most successful garden edible, nettles, and combine these in a meal with some of our local Old Spot pork.

Nettles (Urtica dioica) really is a great plant species, and not just for eating. Don’t be put off by online diatribes about nettles being ‘unpalatable, disgusting or only survival food’, or statements such as ‘nettle recipes exist for the sake of eating an ingredient because you can’, etc, etc. The secret is in understanding when to pick them (young, early season tips only) and how to prepare them to really get the best from them.

Also, I don’t buy the argument that they are a hassle to prepare.  They are most certainly less hassle to clean and prepare than some other veg we grow and prize e.g. globe artichokes. OK, an extreme example perhaps, but comparable with spinach, for sure.

Yes, nettles can be invasive in a garden, but if you have space for a patch they grow (too?) unabated, demand no attention and offer up a welcome lush green and nutritious crop during the hungry gap (our’s at least – it is longer than most). Later on, they are fabulous refuges and food for insects (and corncrake refuges here too), make superb nitrogen-rich liquid plant food and can help activate your compost heap. For all these reasons, I love my garden nettle patches. Of course, you don’t need to have them in the garden, there’s plenty to forage from urban wasteland, woods and meadows.

You might think that living where I do that a crop of pristine unpolluted nettles should be easy to forage.  Well, it is true that we have significant nettle patches in the garden but nightly visits from deer, the dogs cheerfully marking their territory (including the nettles) and most recently, a wily sheep in occupation, make most of our nettles effectively unpalatable.

Even if I wanted to run the ‘urine gauntlet’, I’m reluctant to take an early crop of young nettle tops from our biggest patches. On occasional years, corncrakes arriving from their long migration take a welcome break in this early cover in our garden, especially if the irises have yet to get going, as is the case this year.

The rasping call of the males resonates for a few nights before they move on to more productive machair areas to establish breeding territories. I was optimistic that a corncrake may visit and benefit from our nettles as cover, but our very late i.e. non-existent spring means there was no cover to attract the first arrivals this year.  They must have felt very exposed on arrival.

I shouldn’t exaggerate about our non-existent spring.  It did occur on Sunday past after all, which was glorious and confusing all at the same time.  I was fly fishing on Saturday wearing 3 layers of fleece, couldn’t feel my fingers and abandoned the outing.  On Sunday, we were bewildered by the novelty of stunning sunshine, but not just that – warmth and managed  t-shirts all day and a swim (for the dogs anyway, I’m not quite that hardy). Monday, same old, same old northerly wind, rain and low cloud.  Where art though spring?  Or please can we cut to the chase of summer?

Spring wildlife spectacular

Despite the less than ideal conditions, the wildlife is undeterred and the breeding season is in full swing.  Lapwings and redshanks show their irritation as I pass by their breeding territories on my local run.  I know exactly when and where to expect the next irate protective parent to rise from the vegetation to give me an earful as I pass by.

I watch the oystercatchers nesting round the bay having their frequent and noisy altercations with a pair of local ravens.  Gregarious eiders also nest around the bay, the gentle and soothing call of displaying males resonates on (rare) still nights.  Females will soon form crèches with their broods to help protect the vulnerable ducklings from predation.

The spring migration is ongoing and we currently have reasonable numbers of whimbrels on passage north, stopping at the bay at the bottom of the garden on their way to breeding grounds from Greenland across to Central Siberia. Male cuckoos make their presence heard and wheatears dart around the garden, a flash of white on the rump making them stand out against the grassy backdrop.

We have had spectacular views of a pair of hen harriers and short-eared owls hunting daily across the garden, often flying within a couple of metres of my office window.  This is very distracting while I am working!  Many parts of our garden have remained largely ungrazed for years and the sward is longer than the surrounding common grazing vegetation, so we have a genuine vole hotspot that is proving very fruitful for the local short-eared owls.

I have seen them hunt successfully on a number of occasions, once taking a short-tailed field vole literally from under the kitchen window.  I never tire of watching their graceful billowing flight.  One owl has regularly taken to saving energy by scanning the grass in the garden while perching on a favoured fence post.

Another rare and spectacular wildlife watching experience happened this week.  For the first time since we have lived in this house, we had a visit from an otter in the bay at the bottom of the garden.  It is not at all rare to spot otters here and we have had many very close encounters, but our bay is unlikely to form the core part of an otter territory due to the large component of the day when the tide is some distance out of the bay.

However, this young otter appeared to be exploring the area with a view to establishing a territory.  It ran up and down the grassy slopes at the bottom of the garden, methodically exploring overhanging rocks some distance from the shore, before returning periodically to play and feed in the seaweed on the rising tide. It was delightful and a privilege to have such prolonged views of this secretive mammal from our window.

Nettles: weeding and feeding

My pristine young nettle tops were picked from my raspberry beds where no marauding beasts have access.  This served to let the new rasp shoots have more space and light to grow. I find this to be the only downside to applying old manure (pig in our case) to permanent beds – weed seeds proliferate.  The nettles are small beer though – I’ve got my hands full with the chickweed later in the season.

I have a pretty extreme reaction to nettle stings, so I harvest using heavy-duty rubber gloves – gardening gloves are not robust enough and I learned my lesson the hard way when I was stung through them.

Although sensitivity to stinging nettles does vary between individuals, my sensitivity has very much increased as I have got older.  I remember, like most children, running through nettle patches and coming out with the familiar white blotches and associated red rash, but it never really hurt as much as just irritated slightly. I would just grab a dock leaf (Rumex spp.), rub it vigorously over the affected area, usually my knees, until my skin turned green from the dock and then continue on my merry way.

Now, even the slightest brush against the youngest stem covered in the small silky irritant hairs, which contain histamine, serotonin and formic acid among other things, is to be avoided. These hairs generate the familiar rash but this is coupled with considerable pain.  Although the rash looks the same, the pain stays and I can feel the effects for up to 2 weeks after being stung and the area of skin remains tingly and sensitive, which is a bit disconcerting. I wonder how common increased sensitivity is with age and expect it isn’t unusual, just unpleasant!

Preparing your nettles

I wanted to incorporate the nettles into pasta.  The best way to deal with them for this is to blanch the young tips, plunge them into boiling water for 3 – 4 minutes, then refresh in ice cold water to retain the vibrant colour.  The stings are now gone and the nettles can be handled.

All stems should be removed and the leaves squeezed lightly before blitzing in a food processor to a fine texture.  The nettles then need to be squeezed hard to remove as much moisture as possible as this will impact on the texture of the pasta.

Nettle pappardelle

I wanted to make a rustic hearty pasta to accompany the pork and thought pappardelle would be a fitting choice for the nettle and to complement the gutsy flavour of the pork scaloppine. I have used the same pasta recipe for about 20 years as it has never let me down.  It is from Nick Nairn’s first book ‘Wild Harvest’. The standard recipe calls for 150g of flour (plain, but I use ’00’).  For this recipe I used 180g to offset the additional moisture the nettle brings to the mix.  I got away with it.  Just.

Ingredients

180g flour, ’00’ or plain

1 whole egg, medium

1 egg yolk, medium

80g of fresh young nettle tips, rinsed, blanched and refreshed, trimmed and blitzed

Method

• Combine the flour, eggs, blitzed and squeezed nettles together in a food processor for 2 – 3 minutes. The mix should resemble fine breadcrumbs, not be gooey.  Add a bit more flour if it is.
• Tip out the dough and knead briskly for 1 minute.  Wrap in cling film and place in the fridge to rest for an hour.
• Cut the dough into 2 pieces, flatten each with a rolling pin to 5 mm thick then roll and refold the dough 7 times until you have rectangles about 8 x 18 cm.  This is important to work the gluten to get a shiny dough and gives the correct al dente texture after cooking.
• Using a pasta machine, set the rollers at the widest setting, pass through the dough and repeat, reducing the roller setting with each pass until the penultimate setting.  Pass through at this setting again and hang up to dry for at least 5 minutes.
• Lay the pasta sheet out on a lightly floured surface and roll before slicing about 2 cm wide to produce rustic pappardelle ribbons. Hang them up again until you are ready to use them.
• To cook, place in salted boiling water, bring back to the boil and cook for 2 – 3 minutes.  Check the texture as you cook.

Pork scaloppine with prosciutto, capers and balsamic vinegar – a fitting accompaniment

Ever since I got a hold of our local Old Spot pork, one particular recipe has been pouting at me and I knew it would work very well with this nettle pasta.  I saw this recipe on the The Garum Factory blog pages.  The pork is sumptuously blanketed in prosciutto with pungent sage delicately folded within which also shines enticingly through the prosciutto. The sauce is perfect with the pork – and the nettle pappardelle.

Jody and Ken are not just accomplished chefs, but Ken is also a superb photographer.  His images capture the essence of this recipe and my photos would simply not hold up to their exquisite gallery of images that accompany the recipe. I do not reproduce the recipe, but it can be found here.  Thank you Jody and Ken.  It was really delicious!

My pork scaloppine and nettle pappardelle

Hebridean carrageen pudding with rose water and cardamom

I have recently been busy processing seaweed to make the traditional Hebridean carrageen pudding, with an aromatic twist.  I was very lucky to receive a gift of this red seaweed (Chondrus crispus) freshly picked on South Uist by our very own resident Hebridean professional forager, Fiona Bird. I have been trying to write this post for some 2 weeks, but due to a work trip away and other commitments, I am only just getting round to it now.

I met Fiona a few weeks ago at a soirée on South Uist to celebrate the publication of her new book dedicated to foraging, ‘The Forager’s Kitchen’. Suitably impressed by the diversity of recipes within and some of the delightful nibbles on offer incorporating foraged produce, I ordered a copy which I received last week.

Fiona gave me some wild garlic that evening, foraged in Angus.  Unfortunately, despite being pretty much ubiquitous throughout most of the UK,  it is more challenging to find  on the Uists and I am not inclined to collect it unless it is super-abundant as it is elsewhere. The wild garlic was hence a rare treat which I cooked as a purée with venison.  More on that recipe another time.

The Forager’s Kitchen – a  book recommendation

If you have an interest in foraging in any way, this book is a must to add to your culinary collection. While it is true that foraging is currently in vogue, in reality this is not a passing fad and it has always been there as an underlying component of our food heritage.

Many high end fine dining restaurants currently feature foraged items within dishes on their menus. This book is therefore a timely reminder that making food with foraged ingredients need not be exclusive, complex or challenging but is an accessible and health-giving addition to the cooking experience.

Fiona’s infectious enthusiasm and knowledge for her subject couldn’t but help but make any reader want to have an excuse to get outdoors and see what bounty is on the doorstep. What better encouragement does one need than free food and a comprehensive compilation of recipes to assist the cook to develop new recipe ideas?

Fiona, as well as being an experienced cook and forager (she was a Masterchef finalist) is also clearly passionate about food and its associations with family. Her personal anecdotes within the book and warm and engaging writing style help to bring the foraging experience alive.

The introduction provides essential and sensible guidance about where, when and how to forage, words of wisdom about misidentification and associated risks and a useful kit list for aspiring foragers.

The book is separated logically into 5 chapters covering flowers and blossom, woodland and hedgerow, fruits and berries, herbs and sea / seashore. No matter where you live, there is a chapter that will capture the habitats around you and help you seek out the free bounty within.

There is more than adequate background information on species and where to find them, how to forage for and use them.  There are interesting snippets of folklore associated with many of the species, notably plants. It was lovely to be reminded of the Scottish name for rosehips, ‘itchy coos’. As children, I remember we would tear the hips open and squeeze the seeds down the backs of each other’s school shirts, a prank guaranteed to make anyone itch all afternoon.

The additional ‘Wild Notes’ dispersed throughout the book are a lovely touch, providing the reader with tips to help them develop different ways to expand use of foraged food and broaden their repertoire. Although the cover states there are over 100 recipes, these notes pack in many more recipe ideas.

The layout makes the book very visually appealing and there are many fantastic photos.  The outdoor images in particular cannot help but lure the reader outside to explore local woodland, or in my case, seashore.

There are a lot of excellent tips and ideas that I would not have thought of before as well as many ingredients I had not previously considered using e.g. Scotch quail eggs with sea lettuce – delicious idea. There are many intriguing and inventive uses for the natural sweetener, sweet cicely (Myrrhis odorata), from smoothies and sorbets to tempura.

What I really like about Fiona’s approach is that it is relaxed, unconstrained and encourages culinary creativity.  You can take her ideas and run with them to develop recipes and interpret the way nature’s larder can be used in your own way. That way, you will have the freedom to enjoy the outdoors while collecting some of your own food during which time you can contemplate what you might produce, inspired by the environment around you.

For me, foraging adds to what lies at the heart of everything that is great about food and cooking – it is a voyage of discovery, with twists and turns provided by intriguing ingredients that can be combined in infinite combination.   Foraging also helps me to get outside my culinary comfort zone and I enjoy nothing more than the revelations it may bring. Hence, this is an appropriate time to introduce my new friend Chondrus crispus.

‘The Forager’s Kitchen’ by Fiona Bird is published by Cico Books and can be ordered online via major internet booksellers.

Fiona also provides regular updates on her foraging activities on Facebook at The Forager’s Kitchen and Twitter (@TheForagersKitc).

I purchased this book and my review in entirely independent.

Carrageen – a very traditional pudding

If it wasn’t for Fiona’s generosity in providing me with freshly foraged carrageen, I’m ashamed to say it might have taken me a lot longer to get round to using this traditional Hebridean ingredient.

I should also thank one of her children who kindly left it at a drop off point i.e. the school in Benbecula.  Thankfully the receptionists didn’t take against keeping the well wrapped weed until I got there to collect it!

This attractive red seaweed, Chondrus crispus, called carrageen here in the Hebrides (also known as Irish Moss, pearl or jelly moss) grows on rocky coasts around the UK and Ireland and around the northern Atlantic. It is a small branched purplish-red seaweed that grows up to about 20 cm but its appearance can vary significantly in both colour and size, depending on levels of exposure to waves and turns quite green or yellow, being bleached in strong sunlight.

It grows in a wide range of habitats from exposed shores to sheltered estuaries. It is found lower down on the shore from the mid intertidal to sub tidal zone, so the best time to find it is at very low tide, or preferably on a spring tide. The Marine Life Information Network (MarLIN) is a tremendous resource for information on all aspects of the ecology of Chondrus crispus and other marine flora and fauna around the UK coasts.

Carrageen is part of the Gigartinaceae family of seaweeds, some species of which have been used historically as food additives all over the world for many hundreds of years. They are harvested commercially, notably in the Philippines most recently and have a multitude of applications in the food industry.  This is because seaweeds from this family have a high content of unique polysaccharides called carrageenans.

Carrageenans bind strongly to food proteins so are particularly useful as thickening or gelling agents to add viscosity to dairy products such as ice creams and desserts. They are added to processed meats as a stabiliser, help to clarify beer and are a vegetarian or vegan alternative to gelatine. They are also used in shampoos and toothpaste and have many other non-food related applications.

Traditional carrageen pudding

Carrageen pudding is still regularly offered as a local delicacy in the Outer Hebrides and in my experience tends to be served with a very soft jelly-like set, much softer than pannacotta.   The dried seaweed is traditionally soaked to soften it, then boiled in milk, strained and sugar is added, perhaps along with other flavours such as vanilla  or whisky.  I have also been served it with soft fruit added.

my dried carrageen

I have only ever used dried carrageen, however, being given fresh carrageen by Fiona was an exciting prospect.  I wanted to experiment with making a carrageen pudding using the fresh weed, but also to dry the rest for future use, much more the normal practice.  A small handful of dried weed (about 10g) is usually adequate to set a pudding with about 600 – 700 ml of milk.

Drying carrageen

Carrageen can be sun-dried, but with our wet weather, I opted to use the oven.  Fortunately, my oven can be set to pretty low temperatures. Here is how I dried the carrageen to preserve it for future use:

• Carefully rinse the carrageen in several changes of cold water to remove the salt (and the array of small creatures like shrimps and snails).
• Spin the seaweed in a salad dryer to remove as much moisture as possible, then rub it with a tea towel.
• Spread it out on a couple of wire racks and put the racks in a very low oven (60C) for about 7 hours.
• Store in an airtight container or plastic bag, ensuring the seaweed is totally desiccated before doing so.

Using fresh carrageen

Following a browse on the web and through a few seaweed-related books, I was quite surprised to find there is not a lot of information out there about using fresh carrageen for cooking.  A few tweets to Fiona and a bit more info from her gave me a bit of confidence to experiment with making a pudding using the fresh weed. I knew I would need a much larger amount when using fresh than dried to get a set.

I decided a 2 : 3 ratio of fresh weed to milk and added 100 ml of double cream to the strained mixture at the end, i.e. a 1 : 2 carrageen to milk/cream ratio for the finished pudding, along with flavourings and colour. I wrapped the seaweed in muslin and floated the bag in the milk as it warmed. This amount serves 4.

I wanted to add some of my favourite aromatic flavours: rose water and cardamom to the pudding as I have only experienced traditional flavourings. I am delighted to say the pudding set was quite firm, more akin to pannacotta and the texture smooth.  The rose water and cardamom worked very well with the silky textured pudding.

Ingredients

200g fresh carrageen, washed (or 10g dried)

300ml whole milk

100ml double cream

1/2 tsp rose water

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

40g caster sugar

optional extras:

a handful of brambles or other soft fruit

a few drops of natural red food dye

rose petals

a few chopped toasted almonds

Method

• Put the milk in a pan and add the muslin wrapped seaweed bag to the pan.
• Slowly bring to the boil and allow to simmer over a low heat for 30 minutes.
• Press down on the muslin bag frequently with a potato masher or similar to extrude as much of the carrageenan thickener from the seaweed as possible.
• Pour the mixture through a sieve, into another pan, again, squeezing muslin to extract as much carrageenan as possible.
• Add the double cream and sugar, heat gently until the sugar has dissolved.
• Remove from the heat and allow to cool a bit before adding the cardamom, rose water and red dye.
• Pour into ramekins and allow to cool slightly before putting in the fridge to set.

I topped the puddings with some defrosted brambles I picked last autumn but I think they did nothing to enhance the pudding’s flavour and only served to confuse the palate, so would leave off the unnecessary garnish next time – I can put my precious few remaining stocks to better use.  Similarly, the rose petals look pretty, but the aesthetics outweigh their enhancement of the dish – they are a bit dry and papery!  I topped with almonds, just as a change from my usual pistachio choice with this flavour combination, but pistachios would work even better.

Mission accomplished, I am now going to watch the second in the BBC wildlife series ‘Hebrides: Islands on the Edge’.  I’m disappointed to report this great series is only being broadcast in Scotland but hope some of you can pick it up on iPlayer or other web resources. It really is magnificent.

Biscuits with Bartok 6 – Ma’amul

The concept of the weekly provision of a sweet treat for the musicians continues, allowing me to move away from the typical biscuit or cookie to something a little more out of the ordinary, Ma’amul.  Indeed the title of this series of posts is increasingly becoming a misnomer.  Bartok has been superseded in recent weeks by Telemann, the prolific late Baroque German composer – and there are a growing number of musicians.

There is something delightful and unique about sitting at my desk, working, listening to  music ebb and flow against the backdrop of the outdoor sound scape of birds, waves and wind. I hope it will eventually get warm enough to open the door so I can hear the pieces more clearly. Eventually, but for now it is still very cold, the wind swinging indiscriminately from south west to north and maintaining defiant persistence over the last 3 weeks.

Few seeds are yet planted outside, the soil temperature has dropped from 12 to 8 C.  I did try to plant some parsnip seeds, but they kept blowing out of the narrow drill.  I resorted to sowing small sections a few centimetres at a time and quickly covering them to ensure they stayed in the ground.

Dining out on fishing

Despite having more time indoors than I would normally care for at this time of year, I have had very little time over the last week to manage even one small blog post. Not only that, unusually, we have been out for dinner twice over the weekend.  Often, eating out is at houses of friends, but this was real dining out, on Uist. Imagine!

The annual dinners of North Uist Angling Club and South Uist Angling Club always occur back to back in the same weekend.  Friday night, we enjoyed a very well executed meal at Langass Lodge; smoked haddock risotto with samphire, hand dived scallops with cauliflower puree and lemoncello parfait with berries.  It really was spot on for a set meal for 35 people.  As current Chair of NUAC, I had to deliver a short speech, which was no hardship, and being Chair afforded us an invitation to the South Uist Club dinner the next evening at Grogarry Lodge, South Uist.  A tasty and comforting meal of salmon pate, venison and vegetables (significant portion and seconds offered!) and cheesecake was enjoyed and we were made to feel very welcome by the members of the club.

Sandwiched in between these dinners was our annual pollack competition on Loch Strumore, North Uist  when we attempt to catch pollack on the fly.  Always a challenge, the potential for some monster fish and a huge fight.  Two years ago we had a bathful of fish to deal with as a result and the winning angler caught an 8 lb beast that shredded his hand.  Alas, no monsters this year.  The weather deteriorated over the course of the day to intolerably freezing. I came home with a fish, as did The Man Named Sous, the only two pollack caught all day.  Another fishing trophy for my Dearest then as his was slightly bigger than mine.

As ever, when late spring arrives (the weather is allegedly supposed to improve about now), we have started to see our first visitors, from near and far.  I don’t expect therefore that I will get a huge amount of time to blog over the coming week, although my draft posts will continue to pile up (I have been experimenting with seaweed too – more on that in the next post). Tomorrow, we have a Swiss friend coming for dinner, musicians and more visitors the day after, who knows who else by the weekend. I will seize the moment to discuss the delights of ma’amul.

Ma’amul

Ma’amul (various spellings, commonly also Ma’amoul) is an appropriately windswept and interesting (as Billy Connolly would say) sweet experience. The innocuous looking shortbread-type biscuit conceals the surprise of a crumbly and aromatic exterior, which then relinquishes a sumptuous, sticky dried fruit and nutty rose-scented interior.  A definite curveball if you have not tried these before.

This is one of the most popular Arab cookies, eaten across the Middle East, particularly during Ramadan. They are rolled and stuffed with varying ingredients, commonly walnuts and dates, but also pistachios, figs and almonds. Ma’amul can be hand-rolled or pressed into decorative wooden moulds.  This reminded me of pressing shortbread into a wooden mould depicting a thistle, which I remember doing as a child, although, I don’t actually have that mould, so hand formed my ma’amul.

Texturally, I was looking for something different and I knew the main constituent ingredient of semolina would deliver an unusual textural experience while the flavours satisfy my continued love of all things aromatic, with the addition of orange blossom water and rosewater. The textures also extends to preparation and making ma’amul is a very pleasant quite unique tactile experience. Here I use a variation of the recipe from Ottolenghi’s Jerusalem (I know, again, but I have been abstaining for a few weeks), altering the filling to include pistachios and figs instead of dates and replaced cinnamon with my preferred ground cardamom.

Ingredients

350g semolina

40g plain flour

pinch of salt

180g unsalted butter, cut into 3 cm cubes

2 tbsp orange blossom water

1 tbsp rose water

icing sugar for dusting

Fruit and nut filling:

150g pistachios

75g walnuts

45g dried figs

45g caster sugar

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 1/2 tsp rose water

1 tbsp orange blossom water

Preheat the oven to 190C

Method

• Put the semolina, flour, sugar and salt in a bowl and mix.  Add the butter and work it to the texture of breadcrumbs.
• Add the orange blossom and rose waters and 1/2 a tablespoon of water to bring the mixture together into a ball.
• Knead on the surface until completely smooth, about 5 minutes.  By now it will smell refreshing and aromatic and you will get the sense of the distinctive texture.
• Cover with a damp cloth and rest for about 30 minutes.

Now make the filling:

• Put the pistachios, walnuts, figs, sugar and cardamom in a food processor, pulse then process until finely chopped but not completely ground.
• Add the orange blossom and rose waters and pulse to produce a coarse paste.

Moulding your ma’amul

If uniformity of biscuits matters to you (as it does to me), it is always handy to have some very accurate scales to measure out each piece of dough before rolling the finished item.  I use jewellery scales. I know such scales are often associated with clandestine activities (I do not mean weighing jewellery-related items), but my original use for the scales was innocuous, albeit slightly obscure.

I bought these many years ago as a tool to weigh birds that I was ringing, unfortunately, I can no longer find the time to ring and the scales have been recycled into the kitchen.  These were ideal for accurately weighing small passerines such as goldcrests and wrens. Goldcrests weigh only 5 -7 grams, so 5 goldcrests are the same weight as the dough for just 1 biscuit, what a random fact!

Don’t be put off by the convoluted preparation description – the dough is easy to manipulate and reshape if you put your thumb through it the first time. Ma’amul can be decorated in many ways but I have opted for simply pressing across the tops with a fork.

Method

• Get a small bowl of water and keep you hands moist to stop the dough from cracking.
• Pick up a bit of dough about the size of a walnut, it should be about 25g, roll it into a ball between your damp palms.
• Cup the dough in the palm of one hand and press the centre with the thumb of your other hand to form an indentation.  This is similar to producing a clay thumb pot, forming a space in the centre of the dough for the stuffing.
• The sides of the ‘pot’ should be about 5mm thick and 2.5 cm high.
• Keep in your palm and grab about 20g of the filling and place it in the ‘pot’.  Pull up the dough around the filling to enclose it within the dough and roll gently into a ball again.

• At this stage, I rolled the balls into slightly tall cylinders so I could press them down with a fork on the baking sheet. Place each on a baking sheet lined with silicone sheet or parchment paper.
• Press down gently  on the top of the biscuit with a fork to create a pattern across the top of each biscuit.

• Bake for 12 – 14 minutes, until cooked, ensuring the biscuits take on no colour.
• Cool on a wire rack and sprinkle with icing sugar, if desired, before serving. Enjoy with a strong espresso.

Biscuits for Bartok 5 – Lunettes ( jammy dodgers?)

The ubiquitous and popular British biscuit the jammy dodger must surely have been inspired by the infinitely more decadent and elegant French ‘lunettes’. These traditionally oval-shaped sablé biscuits, two of which are sandwiched together, typically using raspberry jam, have with two distinctive jammy holes on top that give the traditional form its name. I read that these butter biscuits may originally date back to the Middle Ages in Italy where they were called ‘Milanais’

Despite my less traditional monocular jam aperture, round shape and un-fluted edge, these lunettes are a cut above the much-loved jammy dodger. The alluring sablé biscuit is similar to shortbread. The jam is ‘real’, although there appears to be some debate over whether seedless or seeded jams are preferable. I initially tried the recipe with seedless raspberry, but later used the same jam with seeds and found it to have much better depth of flavour and texture within – less runny too. Importantly for biscuit lovers, they are substantially bigger than our jammy dodgers, with a film of icing sugar dusted over to give their otherwise demure appearance an irresistible appeal (as if one would need much encouragement to eat these beauties).

Although I have got into the rhythm of ensuring the musicians are supplied with biscuits on a weekly basis, my offerings are lagging behind in posts due to my other commitments. I have actually made seven offerings in this series of 10 biscuit-making recipes, alas, my drafts continue to accumulate. These include my posts about the recent Old Spot butchery, sausage and bacon production and an associated new gadget purchase – all to be accompanied with my inevitable butchery musical sound track.  Hope to cover this soon for discerning carnivores (and any fans of extreme music…).

To add to the malaise, sadly, I have had some food photography disasters of late.  The quality of the photographs of some of the dishes has been so poor (even for me) that they did not do the food justice and I could not possibly include the images in posts.  Unfortunately, this included a pretty splendid vegetarian Mexican banquet and a colourful and enticing dish of home made tagliatelle with mussels, fennel and parmesan. Never mind, onwards and upwards, good tasting food is paramount!

Lunettes

This recipe is courtesy of Annie Bell. It makes about 14 lunettes. The biscuits can be made a few days in advance and sandwiched together with your jam of choice just before serving.  I prefer raspberry, The Man Named Sous, strawberry jam, but any jam could be used, depending on what floats your boat at the time – or what you have in the store cupboard.  I’m hopeful my raspberry crop will yield enough for my own jam this year.  Fingers crossed.

Ingredients

220g unsalted butter

120g icing sugar

zest of 1 lemon

2 medium egg yolks

300g plain flour

100g of jam of your choice

Method

• Cream the butter and sugar together in a food processor or food mixer, add the lemon zest, the egg yolks then flour to form a sticky dough.
• Wrap in cling film, flatten into a block and chill for a few hours or overnight.
• Preheat the oven to 160C and cover 2 baking sheets in silicone sheeting or parchment paper.
• Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a thickness of about 5 mm. Use an 8 cm cutter to make the biscuits and cut out a hole 2 cm wide with a cutter from the centre of half of them.
• Place on the baking sheets slightly apart and bake for 10-12 minutes until just starting to colour.
• Use a palette knife to loosen them, place on a baking tray and allow to cool.
• Dust the tops with the holes in icing sugar, spread about 3/4 teaspoon of jam in the centre of the bottom biscuit and place the sugar-coated half on top.