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Trust your mother

14 Sep

You should always trust your mother; she knows best.

I know this to be true. It’s always been thus.

So why did I ignore her advice a couple of weeks ago?

We had gone home for a day at the end of August – it was a couple of days after my birthday, and I always want to see my parents around then. As a bonus it was the Gatehouse Flower Show. We used to enter flowers, and plants, and vegetables, and preserves and homebaking, and in the old kitchen at 29 Fleet Street we had a large display of winners tickets pinned to the wooden beam, proof of our successes. I haven’t even attended the Flower Show for too many years, most recently because working at Edinburgh summer Festivals meant I didn’t have the time off, and before that I was living in London and had too much of a London-head on me to make the effort. Shame on me!

And this year although we were attending, we didn’t enter anything. As Mum says, “That means we can confidently go around and say, Oh I could have won a prize in that category, without the contrary evidence of the judges’ decisions”.

I’m confident I would have won a prize in the wholemeal bread category (there were only 2 entries) and also the cheese scone category (my scones are exceptionally good). But I’m not allowed to enter all the categories – only people living locally are allowed to enter most categories, except for some random things like lemon curd (which I’m quite good at) and three hen’s eggs.  Or it might be three hens’ eggs, who knows? And I suspect the judges would never know either.

Anyway, while I was home I was telling Mum about the great apple harvest we were looking forward to this year. Mum bought me two apple trees three years ago: a Galloway Pippin and a Cambusnethan Pippin. The first year they didn’t really fruit, of course. Last year we had a couple off each tree. And this year we have an enormous harvest – the poor wee trees are quite laden down with the weight of the crop.

And here comes the advice bit.

Mum recommended I pick some of the fruit off the heaviest branches straight away, or the branches may break with the weight of fruit.

I didn’t.

The next day a wind whipped up, after weeks of relatively balmy and calm weather. The inevitable happened and the wind ripped a branch from the tree. A branch with over 30 apples on it.

We now have many jars of apple chutney, and there will be cinnamon apple jelly by the end of the weekend. They are also deliciously good with a chunk of mature cheddar.

Recipes and pictures will follow.

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Scotch Eggs

18 May

Not all eggs are equal. Mabel can lay an occasional Frankenegg, while Betty's are always small and white

Not all eggs are equal. Mabel can lay an occasional Frankenegg, while Betty’s are always small and white

I keep hens. So I have a plentiful supply of fresh eggs.

I am Scottish and live in Scotland.

So the only surprise is that it’s taken this long to write about Scotch Eggs.

Chooks having an afternoon nap

Chooks having an afternoon nap

Firstly a word or two about fresh eggs. The very freshest of fresh eggs are not the eggs you want to hard boil. When eggs are straight out of the hen, the membrane between the egg white and the shell is tight up next to the shell, making them difficult to peel. As the days go by, air will permeate through the egg shell, creating a teeny tiny space between shell and membrane and the bubble space you will sometimes find when you have hard boiled an egg.

Do yourself a favour, poach or fry those extra fresh eggs, they’ll be much nicer.

But back to the Scotch Eggs. I haven’t identified precise quantities here. Eggs are different sizes and some will need more sausage to cover them than others. Oh, and you might want a really thick coating of sausage. Or not.

  • eggs
  • some flour
  • some getting on for stale bread (or use up those posh japanese panko breadcrumbs you were persuaded to buy and still have hanging around in your cupboard)
  • sausage meat (about 1 1/2 sausages per egg)
  • black pudding (about a quarter of a slice per egg)
  • herbs, spices, salt and pepper
  1. Hard boil your eggs – ideally so they have a slightly squishy bit in the middle of the yolk. You may have your own fool proof method, but if not, try my method at the bottom of this blog.
  2. While the eggs are boiling, make your crunchy breadcrumbs. Cut some bread into wee cubes, about 1cm across. Place the cubes onto a baking tray and put them in a low oven to dry out and crisp up a bit. Once they are dried, smash them up – I do this by putting them in a high sided bowl and bashing them with the end of a rolling pin. You might prefer to put them in a plastic bag and pretend they are a disliked work colleague.
  3. Break an extra egg into a soup bowl and lightly beat it with a fork. Leave the beaten egg in this bowl
  4. Pour some flour into another soup bowl
  5. Place the breadcrumbs into a soup bowl too. you don’t have to use soup bowls of course, but I find a wide based bowl is easier than anything else.
  6. If you are using sausages, unpeel them into a bowl and add whatever herbs and spices you want to use (I added some smoked paprika and ground black pepper). Then chop up the black pudding nice and fine and using your hands, smoosh the black pudding and the sausage meat together
  7. Take big chunks of the sausagey mixture and pat it out till it forms a sausage meat blanket, about 1/2cm thick
  8. Now peel your eggs, then one by one make your scotch eggs
  9. Dip the egg in the beaten egg
  10. Roll the egg in flour
  11. Place the egg on a sausage blanket and wrap it up in, squooshing it together so there are no gaps
  12. Dip the sausage eggy ball in more beaten egg
  13. Roll the egg in breadcrumbs
  14. Place the breadcrumb coated sausagey eggy ball on a baking tray
  15. Repeat till you’ve run out eggs or sausage or the will to live
  16. Bake in a medium – hot oven (about GM5 or 6) for about 20 – 30 mins, or until they look and sound cooked
  17. Serve warm, or cold, with salad. Yes, salad. Don’t be a salad dodger!

You need hard boiled eggs

You need hard boiled eggs

Make your own scrunchy breadcrumbs

Make your own scrunchy breadcrumbs

Beaten up eggy for dipping to make the flour and breadcrumbs stick

Beaten up eggy for dipping to make the flour and breadcrumbs stick

Make blankets of sausage meat mixture to wrap your eggs

Make blankets of sausage meat mixture to wrap your eggs

Scotch eggs, ready for the oven

I'm so proud of my ladies, laying me such tasty treats!

I’m so proud of my ladies, laying me such tasty treats!

How to boil an egg

  1. Keep your eggs at room temperature (I don’t think they need to be kept in a fridge, unless you have an outrageously warm kitchen)
  2. Put enough water in a pan so that the eggs you want to boil will be covered with water (and about 1cm more). The water should be about room temperature too.
  3. Place the eggs into the pan of water
  4. Put the water and eggs onto a hotplate, and bring to the boil
  5. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down slightly so that it continues to boil, but doesn’t splutter everywhere
  6. Set the timer to 4 minutes
  7. Use your 4 minutes wisely – put ice and water into a bowl, big enough that your eggs will fit in it
  8. When the timer goes off, lift each egg out and pop it into the cold icy water

Eggs in icy water

Eggs in icy water

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Poached eggs

9 Feb

Ages ago I promised to tell you how to make the perfect poached egg.

Well, it looks like I’ll be having a few more poached eggs soon, as we have just got another two chickens. I thought they might be called Charles Darwin and Jane Austen (after significant authors in our collections at the National Library of Scotland where I work)… but now that they’re home, I’m not so sure. Pictures will of course follow but it’s such a dreich dull day that I can’t bear to take pics yet. They are both Wyandottes: one white and the other blue. The white girl is big and bumptious, and blue is petite and very shy. And neither can be seduced by food – I gave them a scattering of warm sweetcorn, which my other girls would hoover up in the space of seconds.. and the new girls weren’t really interested.

Anyway, there will no doubt be further news of my family of chooks, but for now, let me tell you how I make the perfect poached egg.

Poached egg

Get the freshest eggs you can get.

You do know how to tell if they are fresh or not? You pop them in water and see if they float or not. If they sink to the bottom then they are oh so fresh; if they float to the top I’m not sure I’d eat them. Somewhere in the middle is probably ok.

And the reason this happens is that there is a membrane inside the egg, and over time the gap between the membrane and the eggshell fills with air to make a wee air pocket, hence the egg floats.

OK, so now you’ve got your eggs, you’re ready to make the poached eggs.

  • Boil a kettle full of water
  • Pour the hot water into a wide pan (possibly a deep sided frying pan type thing)
  • Add a pinch of salt and about 1/2 tsp white wine vinegar (don’t add more, you don’t want your eggs to taste of the vinegar – it’s just added to help the egg whites stay together and not stray all over the pan)
  • Put the pan on a REALLY low heat – you hardly want the water to bubble at all
  • Break your egg into a tea cup
  • Lower the tea cup with the egg in it towards the water, at a 45 degree angle, then slowly and gently tip the tea cup and slip the egg into the water
  • Repeat for as many eggs as you have (but don’t overcrowd the pan)
  • Now, let them just sit there in the almost boiling water for about 3-5 minutes, depending how fresh the eggs were and how soft you like them
  • Remove them from the water with a slotted spoon (which was always called a holey willie when I was a child and I still find it hard to resist calling it that!)

Serve on fresh buttered toast. Of course. Preferably with a sprinkling of freshly ground black pepper.

Other things to have with a poached egg on toast

  • Black pudding – classic and delicious, needs nothing else
  • But if you’re being fancy, add some scallops (and perhaps swap the toast for some spinach)
  • Bacon
  • Ham with or without hollandaise sauce
  • Marmite – trust me, it works
  • Smoked salmon

 

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Autumn days

22 Oct

Yesterday was a beautiful autumnal day today. The sun shone all day long, and my wee chickens scrubbled about out in their yard chuntering away to one another. I discovered that my few remaining plants in the greenhouse were all beginning to get covered and smothered in greenfly, so I took a couple of pots of greenfly-ridden chilli plants out to the chooks for them to nibble at. Minutes later the leaves were stripped off and gobbled up by my happy girls.

So, with chooks happy in the garden, it seemed like a good day to spend in the kitchen, preparing this and that to make the meals easier through the week when I get home from work each night.

So meatballs are cooked and in the freezer, with a tomatoey sauce in a separate pot.

making meatballs

shaping meatballs

There’s a big old pot of lentil soup for lunches, made with a smoked ham hock and a wee smidgin of curry spices.

There is of course a lovely sourdough loaf (wholemeal) and the bread machine also made a half and half (granary/white) loaf. The meat from the ham hock has been cut up into wee cubes to be added to a frittata or omelette later in the week.

I made a big tub of granola with nuts and oats and fruit – mixed with apple juice, a wee bit of syrup and some ginger and cinnamon.

In between times I made some delicious cinnamon squirlies. I blame delicious magazine – they featured them on their facebook page and I just caved and had to make them. They were totally worth it, really easy to make and absolutely scrumptious, especially warm with icecream.

cinnamon squirlie dough

cinnamon squirlies – just pull apart and eat

And as if that wasn’t enough, I had already decided that for supper we were having roast pork with all the trimmings. The trimmings on this occasion included roasted apples, curly kale, a beetroot and potato gratin and roasted beetroots and caramelised onions, all brought together with a jus made with juices from the roast pork dish and apple juice reduced down till it was concentrated flavoursome perfection.

Autumnal roast pork

I don’t cook roasts too often, but after this success I may do it more often. And there were delicious leftovers for through the week: we’ll have sliced pork and chutney sandwiches for lunch and this evening we had the rest of the beetroot and potato gratin, served with spicy roast butternut squash and chicken wrapped in smoky bacon.

I think my focus in the next few weeks will be on how to make really good meals quickly on weekday evenings – some will be from scratch, others will involve some prep the weekend before. Watch this space.

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August in our Festival city

31 Aug

 

August is traditionally quite a month for me. It’s my birthday at the end of the month. I remember as a child my parents always used to take us to the Tattoo (now the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo) and there was a part of me that believed them when they told me it was put on specially for me, for my birthday.

Then when I was slightly older I had a memorable birthday night lying on a picnic blanket in Princes Street Gardens sooking champagne through a straw out of a bottle placed beside my head, and gazing up in wonder at the incredible fireworks – the fireworks concert at the end of the Edinburgh International Festival is something quite spectacular.

In the last few years all I’ve wanted to do on my birthday is sleep. Or eat broccoli. You see my birthday comes at the end of a month of pretty intense festival time in Edinburgh. And since 2006 my job has been working for one of those festivals: initially at the Book Festival, and now at the Festival Fringe, the largest open-access arts festival in the world. And when we say largest we’re not kidding – it is way bigger than anything else, with 2,695 shows in 25 days and nights (with over 40,000 performances of those shows) and over 21,000 performers taking part. That’s almost twice as many performers as there were athletes at the Olympics. And we do that every year. In Edinburgh. In August.

Sometimes I wonder why I would ever want to live anywhere else. But in a weeks time I’ll be leaving Edinburgh, to live in the country, in the Clyde Valley. Currently it’s my weekend home, but soon it will be my forever home and I’ really VERY excited. Of course I’m not really leaving Edinburgh forever, as I’ll still be working there. But it will all be very very different.

But before I forget it all I thought I’d summarise what I saw this year at the Festivals: a total of 22 shows over three different festivals, and covering a few different genres, although mostly (and unashamedly) theatre. In sort of chronological order…

  • Appointment with the Wicker Man
  • Letter of Last Resort & Good with People
  • The Daniel Kitson show at the Traverse
  • Two Worlds of Charlie F
  • Das Vegas Night
  • Magic Faraway Cabaret
  • I, Tommy
  • Anne Enright (Book Festival)
  • Jeanette Winterson (Book Festival)
  • Razing Eddie
  • Macbeth on Inchcolm Island
  • The Red Hourglass
  • Re-thinking Food Debate (Book Festival)
  • The Kitchen Cabinet (BBC Radio4 recording)
  • And No More Shall We Part
  • Dream Plays (Scenes from a play I’ll never write) by Tobias Manderson-Galvin
  • One Hour Only
  • The Rape of Lucrece (Edinburgh International Festival)
  • Wonderland (Edinburgh International Festival)
  • The List
  • (remor)
  • Leo
  • Translunar Paradise

My favourite show is impossible to call – there were several truly great shows, and particularly some stunning performances. However, Two Worlds of Charlie F and And No More Shall We Part were both incredibly moving (yes, I shed a tear or two) and deserve special mention. Leo was gravity defying – clever and funny and quite incredible to watch. And (remor) was ridiculously intense, not to mention hot and sweaty – a dance/physical theatre piece performed in a prison cell with 15 audience members crammed in watching (and sweating). In fact I think it’s safe to say that my Fringe this year has been intense.

 

 

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Pomegranate – middle eastern street food

18 Jul

I like eating out. In fact I love eating out. OK, I just love eating. But there’s something really great about eating something that someone else has made for you. And if you’re going to eat out, you might as well eat something you wouldn’t be likely to eat at home.

And of course, as I work in the Arts, I’m generally looking for somewhere that is reasonably priced, and if it’s BYO with no corkage even better.

So, when Pomegranate opened recently it was only a matter of time before I sampled what it has to offer.

And what an offering!

We opted for the Mezze Special – your choice of 6 different mezze dishes and naan for £27.

Deciding on only 6 dishes was the challenge, but we went for:

Baba Ganoush: smooth and smoky smooshed up aubergine, with tahini and garlic. Perfect for dipping scraps of naan into.

Green Olive Salad: more perfect flavour combinations – green olives cut up fine, with a few wee nibs of walnut and lots of garlicky olive oil

Fatoush: I’m really fond of this fresh flavoursome salad. I used to make it with great big chunks of pitta bread, but this was a much more delicate affair – the usual lettuce, tomato and cucumber, but with teeny cubes of pitta croutons and the zingiest lemony dressing

Baly Merishke: Barbecued chicken wings sprinkled with a spicy, zesty mix. Perfect finger food

Bayengaan: baby aubergines, baked and stuffed with spiced rice. All soft and unctuous and meltingly sweet

Halloumi: Grilled squeaky cheese on a salad of lettuce, tomato and olives. Those flavours were no surprise, but the fresh minty dressing wasn’t expected, but will be copied at home now I’ve tried it.

And a basket of naan. But not naan like I know them, they were light crispy flatbreads, which were far more than simply a method of delivering the baba ganoush and green olive salad.

This array of textures and flavours should be enough to tempt you. But if not, think about a relaxed restaurant with fresh modern decor, friendly, efficient staff and your choice of wine. You can bring your own bottle, and you won’t be charged corkage. We had a fruity granache, which held its own with the strong middle eastern flavours.

 

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23 Jun

I love Sara’s thoughts and observations, and am delighted to call her a friend. I too was enchanted by the recent Love In a Library in Edinburgh, our festival city. But she says it so much better…

smgrady's avatarQue Sera Sara?

Lots of people aren’t into Opera.

I get it. I do.

The endlessly long running times. The ridiculous daytime-tv-worthy plots. The repetitive subtitles.

There is a lot to put a gal off.

BUT, hear me out.

 

Imagine you are sitting in a sunny library. A quiet space full of potential.

A kind-eyed librarian gently bustles about

… until a young man literally bursts into song,unable to contain his passion-from-afar any longer.

A sweet half hour commences where the two chase each other around your local library, conversing through alternating songs – declaring, questioning, and affirming their tentative love.

Cheesy? Maybe. Adorable? Definitely.

With Love in a Library, it’s  opera-lite. Short and sweet; simple and (partially) in English, with lyrics and translations for each song in your lap for easy browsing.

The song selection with which they build this romantic narrative ranges from Wagner to Gershwin (by way of…

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Not a restaurant review

14 Jun

So I went out for lunch with a colleague today. We have lunch together every couple of weeks or so and this week we were tempted by an offer at a new restaurant, a sister restaurant to a favourite cafe near our work. And their deal was ‘Pay What You Think It’s Worth’. I liked this idea.

The menu was considerably more expensive than we would usually spend on lunch. But then we normally go to local caffs, or other cheapish eateries. It’s not over the top, but when I want a light lunch, I don’t usually spend about £6 on a starter and then £15 on a main course. But in my head it was ‘Pay What You Want’ (as opposed to what it’s worth).

The food was good, slightly richer than I would normally choose, but good, and an interesting Scottish/Nordic menu, with ham hock, veal, skirt steak, duck eggs, kidney, catfish and other lovely seasonal and local produce. Perhaps it’s that I’ve been eating healthily the past few weeks, but I felt slightly as though I had a layer of fat coating my mouth afterwards – the potatoes were swimming in butter, the sauce was buttery, there was a very rich and cheesy-creamy seasonal vegetable gratin. And my colleague’s chips were cooked in dripping. It was tasty tasty creamy-butteriness, but nevertheless much fattier than I am currently used to.

The restaurant was virtually empty and the waiting staff were perhaps slightly over-attentive, interrupting conversations and generally asking us if everything was ok more often than felt necessary. And, it’s perhaps worth noting that if someone interrupts a conversation to ask if everything’s ok, the likely response is ‘yes thanks’ just to get rid of the interruption and get on with the conversation, not because it actually is ok.

Anyway, our total bill would have come to £44 or thereabouts and we decided to pay £20 each. And give a £4 tip.

So, then came the moment of actually paying the bill. The waiter brought the bill, with all items marked £0, and also brought a copy of the original menu, with the usual prices.

On his return we gave him the cash and the tip, explaining which was which.

And we felt slightly uncomfortable; he seemed slightly disappointed. And we made a hasty retreat. It felt awkward. I feel mean giving less than they would normally charge, even though it was only slightly less but now I’m not sure that I would return in the near future.

So, that sounds like it’s a failed promotion!

We discussed this afterwards, and talked about how it’s not very British to haggle, and that this promotion had almost set itself up to create that awkward moment at the end of the meal. Of course some people might wish to pay more than the menu price, but that, I guess, isn’t what the promotion sets out to do – it is trying to lure us in by making us think we can get a bargain. But the reality is that we will only get a bargain if we are ok about disappointing the staff. So perhaps it’s only a good promotion for hard hearted folk.

What would be a more effective promotion? Well, for a start, it would make sense if they had made any effort at all to get us to return – either by taking our contact details to send us an email to invite us back, or by giving us a voucher which entitled us to some one-off deal in the future, eg a free dessert if we have a starter and main in the evening, or 10% off the bill.

 

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Making things

14 May

Some weather is designed for making things. Today is a blustery May day, with the wind blowing around the house, and the rain battering at the windows. And then 10 minutes later the rain stops, until the wind blows some more in. So, it’s not a day for gardening, although the garden would love me to spend some more time in it, getting rid of some of those pesky weeds.

It’s a day for making things.

So, my man is in the shed doing joinery. Every few minutes I hear the whine of the saw, and so I know something is being created.

I like power tools. I have a bit of power tool envy really, I like the way they are good and solid in your hand and can make short work of heavy jobs.

I guess I have a few power tool equivalents in the kitchen: my electric beaters, my zizzer, my liquidiser, a food processor, and my vintage Kenwood Chef mixer. How I love that mixer, and wish I could move it to my place in the country instead of my wee flat in the city.

But today I’m using an altogether different power tool: my Bernina sewing machine. It’s a beautiful thing: solid and heavy, but graceful and elegant. And with the loveliest wee hummm you ever did hear. It’s almost as relaxing as the purrrr of my purrdy cat, when she lies on me in bed.

Bernina and I are making a skirt, in dark brown tweed with a turquoise lining. I’d never done the lining thing till I went to dressmaking classes for a season and was persuaded of the sense (and beauty) of a quality lining. Now I love that swishy sound of a good lining, and the slinky ease of pulling on a lined skirt. But I just can’t seem to do a matching lining, and so everything I make ends up with a serious clash.

My next skirt is probably a dark turquoise/teal  wool crepe … and the only lining I have in my stash is what I like to call greige – a deliciously minky sort of grey beige. It feels slightly too dowdy for this fabric though, and I feel I might have to nip up to Edinburgh Fabrics this week and get something in lime green, or a jewel purple or hot pink.

OK, the sun has come back out and the garden room (which doubles as my sewing room) is flooded with light, so time to do the hems and get this skirt finished. I might even wear it tomorrow.

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Pink buttons and purple lace

20 Feb

I live in Central Scotland and it’s rarely exactly warm.

So, it’s just as well that I find knitting a therapeutic almost meditative activity of an evening, almost as good as baking. And it keeps me supplied with warm things to keep the cold at bay.

My latest is another cowl.

Pink buttons and purple lace

Pink buttons and purple lace

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