What I did yesterday

Yesterday, at Ham House, all the cool kids gathered for fun and drink and food so that we could show off the garden produce. The chef for the evening, Susie, basically did everything but I’m going to ride on her coattails and claim some of the amazingness that comes from being associated with it.

Unfortunately, I was busy faffing around with vegetables and presenting the dishes so I didn’t get photos of everything. I can talk you through it though.

It started with bubbly and the canapes – mini bruschetta topped with onion marmalade and goat’s cheese and also spinach blinis topped with beetroot chutney and sour cream.

Then the guests were taken on a garden tour in the beautiful fading light.

When they came back and were seated, we started with the kale and spinach soup.

The bits and peices on the top were fried onions, roast root veg and pitta bread croutons. It was accompanied by homemade rosemary foccaccia bread.

Next up was the gnocchi…

(I don’t have a photo of it before it went to the table, sorry!)

…accompanied by pretty garden leaf salad.

The gnocchi was a big hit with the guests.

Next up, the mains were a venison stew with redcurrants and red wine and some garden veg. I don’t have a photo but you must trust me that it was so so tasty! The gravy was amazing. I tried to stop dipping the foccaccia bread into it and eating it but I couldn’t!

Also up were green beans in tarragon butter, roasted root vegetables and apples, a pumpkin and marrow gratin, a beetroot, courgette and mozzarella salad and – the only one I photographed – a caramelized elephant garlic, pumpkin and goat’s cheese tart.

Loads of people raved about this and wanted some to take home with them.

Next, we gave them a few minutes to rest their stomachs before starting on dessert which was apple dumplings (these took me hours and hours to make!) baked in a caramel sauce. We served it with a fig and cinnamon swirl semifreddo, which was very well received.

After the overwhelming food onslaught, we were all made to come out of the kitchen and be applauded (like on Masterchef), the cafe manager did a little thank you, then a guest also said thank you from the guests and I stood patiently, wondering which of them was going to make the announcement that I was finally going to get my Michelin star….

I can only conclude that they didn’t want to do it in front of everyone else. Maybe it’s a more private affair, getting given your Michelin star. I’m sure they’ll be in touch.

Anyway, we retired back into the kitchen and sent out the little after-dinner nibbles, fresh raspberries and quince jellies.

Everything that was made yesterday (apart from the obvious stuff like the meat and cheese), came from the kitchen garden and had been picked that day. There really is nothing like working with garden fresh produce.

I think it’s safe to say that a good evening was had by all and it was a lovely thing to be part of. Keep your eyes peeled for the next Supper Club. And if you’re in/near London, totally come to the next one.

Borage, borage, borage

In light of my new foraging fun (I now forage at least once a week to make soup for Danda and I), I have got a book called Food For Free by Richard Mabey and am looking into things like edible flowers. I saw some beautiful photographs of borage and realised I’d seen it around quite a bit but not realised what I was looking at nor that I could eat it. And it looks beautiful on a plate of light summery fun, a salmon fillet perhaps and some greens. With some beautiful borage on the top.

In honour of this new discovery, I have composed some poetry. I would describe my style as philosophical and thought-provoking.

Borage, borage, borage

There’s a garden down the road with some borage,
I wish I had some borage,
I’d eat that borage with my porridge,
I’d have a breakfast of borage porridge.

I’d like to forage that borage,
I wish I had borage like that borage,
I think it’s my favourite borage,
And boy, do I like to forage!?
I’d like to forage that borage.
For my porridge.

Forage, borage, porridge.

Things I learned at Waltham Place (Part 2)

1. The way to cut an onion without all the tears is to first half it, then peel each half, then slice it, leaving you with the two ends. The chemicals that make you cry are released when you cut the end off which has the roots so if you cut that off first, all the chemicals will be released, hence all the sobbing while chopping.

2. Sorrel is way tasty!

3. Nettle soup is surprisingly bright green.

4. Cows will let you know if they like you or not. If you put your hand out low, they will come over and smell it, rather like a dog. If they lick, then you’re in there. If they lick your face, then you’ve really pulled. If, however, they shake their horns at you, it means they definitely do not like you.

5. Chickens have a self programmed ‘bedtime’. Without any prompting, at the bedtime, all the chickens, on cue, will run to the coop together and go inside to bed.

6. Commercially produced bread is full of additives, one of which is put in to delay the arrival of mould when it is getting old. Yet it will start to grow mould after just a few days. Homemade bread, however, has no additives and, so far, I have had it for five days and there isn’t even a suggestion of mould.

7. Adrian, the chef at Waltham Place, spent six months working at the Savoy. There were 65 chefs working in the kitchen there and all the cooking terms were in French. You either picked up French very quickly or you got bollocked for doing everything wrong!

P.S. Part 1 can be found here.

Sorrel soup, rye bread and bluebells (or: Back to my spiritual home)

“Every day is like a day on the farm. Every meal is a feast. That’s a day in the Marine Corps.”

Well, not the Marine Corps at all. My favourite farm.

What’s that you say? You don’t have a favourite farm? Pffft. All the cool kids have a favourite farm. And mine is Waltham Place.

I went there in March on a fruit preserving course and had been itching to get back. Since getting my groceries from Abel and Cole, I am totally on the soup scene, for using up the leftover vegetables the day before my new delivery. So when I saw the soup and bread course, I booked myself in straight away!

After my last traumatic journey to the farm, this time around was relatively easy. In fact, on the bus to the farm, I saw the exact same two ladies who had rescued me last time and went and thanked them again.

Arriving at the farm, I saw the familiar faces of Nikki and Adrian, who run the courses. You feel you are in safe hands as they gently take control, ensuring everyone has tea and biscuits and helping the group of strangers to gel.

We got straight into some chat about what makes good or bad bread, the fact that bread has been around for thousands of years and about mixing your dough with the end of the wooden spoon.

Apparently that’s how the Italian grandmothers in Tuscany do things!

I mixed and kneaded and shaped and then left it to prove in the warm kitchen….

…before starting on some sorrel soup.

I’ve not eaten – and certainly never cooked with – sorrel so I was a little nervous but Adrian ripped off a leaf tip and got munching, encouraging me to do the same. And it was surprisingly tasty – lemony but not sharp. More like a salad dressing which had been made with lemon. It was bursting with flavour. I couldn’t believe I’d never eaten it.

After making and straining the soup…

…the bread was also finished proving and baking. Mine was a rye bread made with a sourdough starter Adrian had been brewing up for five days.

We each then quickly threw together another loaf. I did a plaited white loaf next (which I got started on before I could photograph it, sorry!).

Then we had a fabulous lunch of our own soups and a previously baked loaf for dipping. It was so good. Sorrel soup, people! It’s the way of the future! Lemony but savoury. It didn’t need any seasoning as it has such a rich rounded flavour of its own.

Then we went for a lovely walk around the estate, which was much greener than my last visit…

The chickens!

One of the cows! (Danda says I can have a cow, although it’s still a no on the chicken.)

Any day now, this place will be head height with long grasses and colour!

The Japanese garden will soon be looking lovely too.

The lime tree lined walk.

The blanket of bluebells starting to cover the forest floor.

We returned to the centre, oversaw the baking of our second breads (one person had decided to mark his with what can only be described as a nipple, a bread nipple, if you will….)

…and sat down for some well earned tea and cake…

A coffee cake on the left and a fruity tray bake on the right. Both were delicious, obviously.

A lift back to the station from a fellow course student would have finished the day off nicely, apart from the 3.5 hour journey home because of train delays. But even that couldn’t ruin the loveliness of the day 🙂

A day at Waltham Place (or: I want to live on a farm too!)

Yesterday, I had the most fabulous day out. Someone had got me an early birthday present, which was a place on a course about preserving fruit. The course was on a farm called Waltham Place just outside Maidenhead.

The journey there was quite eventful, after coming out of the station, seeing a bus already at the bus stop, leaping on and being what I can only describe as ‘adopted’ by two ladies on the bus. After I had asked if the bus went in the direction I needed, the ladies said it didn’t but I could get off near an airfield and take a short walk to get to the farm. I got out my purse to pay and the driver reminded me I needed the exact money. After scraping around among my change, the ladies almost got into a fight offering me the 20p that I was short of!

The journey to the farm then was smooth, after another man getting off at the same stop, pointed me down the right road. As I approached the main entrance, there didn’t seem to be any signs of where I should be…

I was once again thrust on the mercy of the locals as I helplessly ran after a man I saw in the distance and asked where the course was being held. He pointed me up the road to the Ormandy Centre which, of course, I now remembered reading about in my notes before coming.

I found the centre eventually and was greeted by Adrian, the chef, and Nicki, his ‘gopher’ (her own words) and three of the other women on the course, for of course it was all women! The other women arrived and we started the day with chitchat, tea and biscuits.

Everything they gave us was made (and often grown too) on the farm. Adrian does all the cooking there. And that means everything. Absolutely everything. No help. He’s surprisingly calm and good-natured for a man who’s responsible for the feeding of a family and entire staff of such a big estate.

So our teas and coffees contained milk from the cows in the next door fields and the only non-farm ingredient in our macaroons and Viennese whirls was the sugar. The flour is milled on the farm, the milk from the cows is turned into cream, butter and cheese, and the eggs are harvested daily from the chickens who live in the next field to the cows. It was like taking a trip into the past, all the things we were offered to eat were homemade with produce from the surrounding fields. I started planning what my own small garden might be capable of and, so long as I don’t mind living on tomatoes, chillis and herbs, I could totally do this self-sufficient thing too. Maybe.

After tea and biscuits, we got stuck into a bit of teaching. Adrian gave us notes and talked us through the process of jam-making, the essential components and what does and doesn’t work. It wasn’t quite as ordered as that though. There were regular delightful tangents off into the obscure – long discussions about what goes into commercially produced jam, whether to keep one’s jam in the fridge, what fruits work and how long to keep jam for (a jar of Adrian’s, made in 1996, is still going strong today).

We were then given aprons and invited into the kitchen. We approached cautiously and told that this morning, the jam tasks were: raspberry jam, three fruit marmalade, lemon curd and blackcurrant jam.

The other women piped up, excited about one of the other of the jams. They were paired up and given lemon curd, marmalade and raspberry jam. Finally there was just me and the blackcurrant, which Adrian said he’d help me with.

I was presented with a pot of blackcurrants which I went off to a corner with and put on a hob to heat.

I heated my blackcurrants for quite a long time as they needed to reduce down by quite a lot before I could add the sugar. While the others were lemon zesting, butter melting or draining their fruit out….

… I stood next to my blackcurrant pan and watched. I started to feel like the slow kid at the back of the class, still trying to work out times tables while the others progressed onto long division….

It boiled for quite a while before Adrian gave me the ok to add the sugar and mash the blackcurrants a little bit. By the time I was pouring out my jam, even the slower lemon curd lot were long finished and on their second round of tea and biscuits. They do say, though, that good things come to those who wait, and my pot of blackcurrants yielded the most jars. Check out my harvest!

We then stopped and had lunch, made by Adrian, of course. It was leek and potato soup and bread, fresh from the oven, spread with tasty yellow butter from the farm.

After a long chat about recycling with the other ladies and me digging in to the bread, again and again, Nicki finally cleared away lunch, thank goodness, and Adrian talked us through different ways to preserve fruit.

So the afternoon tasks were ketchup, tomato chutney and bottled fruit. I ended up on the bottled fruit but had someone with me this time. We chopped and peeled the fruit and packed it into the jars to wait for our syrup, which was just a basic mixture of sugar and water. This we poured over the plums and rhubarbs. For the pears, though, we did white wine, sugar and cinnamon. Once all the fruit and syrups were in the jars, we put the lids on loosely and baked them on a very low heat for an hour.

In this hour, we all donned wellies and coats for a walk around the farm. We saw the chickens who provide the eggs…

…the cows who’s milk was in our tea….

…and the gardens which are beautiful and colourful in summer…

By the time we got back to the kitchen, our fruit was ready, the chutney was thick enough to go in jars and our day’s work was put on the table for admiring.

By this time, there was nothing else to do but to have another round of tea, accompanied by two gorgeous homemade cakes (a tea brack and a Victoria sponge)….

….and to chatter about what a brilliant day it had been and what other courses were they running and could we come on all of them please and how I wish I could become a lady of leisure and just spend all day homemaking everything I wanted to eat and not have any processed food in the house and o, if only! If only! Get thee behind me, Heinz, for I shall consume only homemade ketchup from this day forth!… Maybe… If I get the time to make some tomorrow after work… If I’m not busy practising piano and trying to become a world famous concert pianist.

A lovely Irish lady who was rushing off a little early to pick up her son from school had heard the story of my arrival and offered me a lift to the station. So all of sudden, in a bit of a rush, I was accepting her kind offer, grabbing my bag and running off. The journey home was fuss free and Danda looked very pleased when I arrived home with my crop from the day….

We then spend an evening, nibbling some of each, especially the beautiful beautiful lemon curd, which is thick and spreadable and divine on bread.

I honestly can’t think of anything about this day that I didn’t enjoy. If you are anywhere near Waltham Place Farm, I can fully recommend their day courses, for the experience itself, even if you’re not actually going to become the best jam maker the world has ever seen!

Pre-Christmas lunching

Yesterday, Danda and I decided we would have fancy lunch as a kind of pre-Christmas lunchy thing. It was amazing, obviously. I was also trying out the dress I had bought for Christmas day, to see if it was possibly too outrageous as it has bright pink on it. The weather was quite grubby but we had a nice view of the river….

…and the Festive Lunch menu promised to be fantastic…

I chose the other option to Danda on each course so we had one of everything. A sore throat threatened to ruin the occasion so I got a fresh mint tea, which helped things.

It was also very pretty to look at, so I was happy.

Before starting, we were brought some freshly baked bread and butter and a small thingy in a glass that was parmesan custard, butternut mousse and pine nut sprinkles….

My starter was the mackerel tartare and fresh mackerel with cucumber and apple which was surprisingly light. Mackerel is usually quite a strong flavour, I guess because it is often smoked. But this was quite mild and didn’t drown out the other tastes at all.

Danda’s starter was a chestnut soup with a warm duck’s egg and glazed wild mushrooms. The duck’s egg had a lovely rich flavour, far stronger than a hen’s egg.

My main was a risotto with parmesan mousse, mushrooms and garlic crisps which, by the way, were amazing. The whole thing had hints of sweetness throughout, which surprised me, as I’m not big on sweet tastes in a savoury meal but this was lovely.

Danda’s main was pheasant with mashed potato, baby carrots and a crostini with pig’s trotter. The crostini was so tasty, despite its rather unattractive description.

By the time we got to dessert, I was on the wrong side of stuffed but soldiered through, ordering the trifle with vanilla biscuits…

….while Danda ordered the warm eccles cake with cheese, walnuts and chicory on the side

Post-lunch, we had espressos…

…and were brought a dish of sweeties…

The macaroon was vanilla and mince pie flavour! It was fabulous. All in all, it was a lovely getting-ready-for-Christmas lunch. It was also my last day off until Christmas Day so it was nice to dress up and pretend to be a laaaaady for a while.

Later in the evening, a neighbour had invited everyone over for mulled wine and mince pies so I ended the evening nibbling my way through the offerings and discussing whether the world would end the following day. Which, by the way, is today. I hope I live to write another post!

A few follow ups and a ladle of soup

A little while ago, I wrote a post called Sometimes I Think Too Much about a girl who was new in the area and had asked me to go for a drink, in a best-friend-date type of way. Some of you asked about how it had gone.

So here’s the story. The next time she came in, she mentioned needing a job, I said we had one. Two and two were put together and they equalled my new potential best friend and I working together. It was all ok for a few weeks. Then she got another job and left. And that was that really. Done.

Clearly I gave it way more thought than it warranted when she asked me out for a drink.

The second thing is that the local drunk who featured in “Are these donuts?” recently took a picture to a gallery nearby to have it reframed. It has been reframed now and, as the owner of the gallery is a friend and has a bad shoulder at the moment, he has asked me to help him go to Mr Red Wine’s flat and help him reframe it.

That’s right. I get to go INSIDE Mr Red Wine’s flat! I am beyond excited. I imagine it’ll be like one of those programmes called Grime Fighters or something, where cleaning companies go into old flats which are full of crap and pizza boxes with mould growing on them and rats running around.

My gallery owner friend has pre warned me that we will have to stand on Mr Red Wine’s bed to hang the picture and that it is alive with bed bugs. He also said I shouldn’t worry about just standing on stuff as I walk in the flat as there is no free floor space anyway.

It is going to be mental, I can tell.

Also, a few days ago, whilst at work, I was leaning over a bowl of soup to get something and there was a ladle in it with a hook on the end, for hanging it up with. Somehow the ladle hook caught on my apron and as I stood back up, I pulled the ladle with me, which was full of soup, and scooped it onto myself. It went all down my front and onto my Crocs and in the little holes and into my feet. Niiiiice.

I just thought you might like that little story.