Food, like music, is something that can instantly transport me to a time or place, intricately associated with feelings - usually happy ones, I have to say - I don't have many bad memories associated with food (apart from tripe).
My memories of 2 trips to the States, for example, are chiefly those of the $10 lobster dinners, corn dogs, and frozen margaritas the Husband and I enjoyed on our first proper holiday together to New Orleans, and of a fabulous salad with deliciously cold white wine my friends and I ate on a roof top garden in Manhattan - very Sex and the City, although we were none of us searching for love, only enjoying each others company for a long weekend...
France is enmeshed with a series of memories for me - lusciously ripe peaches and tomatoes purchased from road side stalls on the south west Mediterranean coast, the freshest tower of fruits de mer eaten in a restaurant on a harbour wall somewhere on the Cherbourg peninsula - the crabs being fished to order out of the sea, snails eaten in various guises, the first - and only - meat fondue I've ever had, at the age of 16, the day after I arrived for an exchange visit with a family that I am still in touch with nearly 30 years later... And salmon, nailed to a board and cooked over a fire, Finnish style, when I was an au pair in my late teens, early 20s.
The salmon always fascinated me. The family I was helping out had moved to an old farmhouse that was being renovated. The kitchen was out of action and we were BBQ-ing most days. The father of the family, Bruno, would appear home from work with various delicacies, and one evening, announced we would be having saumon Finlandais. I can't remember what it tasted like (unusual) but the mere fact that it was cooked in such an unconventional manner and was edible, amazed me. At that point, I hadn't done much in the way of camping...
So it's always been on my mind to recreate this, and it turns out the Husband wanted to try it too, and eager to create some memories (not necessarily food-related) for the kids, we headed down to our local beach, Mwnt, for some late afternoon bodyboarding and a cookout on the beach. I'd like to say we caught our fish but we didn't, but you can't have everything, can you...
And literally, all you do is get a decent piece of wood - we had some oak board, nail your piece of salmon to it,
and wedge it next to your fire while it cooks.
You can always cook some sausages while you're waiting...
I'd love to be able to include beautiful shots here of the food on the beach, perfectly styled, but this is what really happened, - beach food, that we ate...
And another food memory - 6 months pregnant with Blue, in Winchester with the Husband's amazing Great Aunt visiting from Australia, eating juicy cherries in the Cathedral grounds on a blazing hot day. Every time I've eaten cherries since, I've thought of that moment. But we had cherries this evening, after the salmon, bought from a local market garden, Glebelands, this morning. We ate them as the sun finally dropped behind the 'mwnt' itself...
I think perhaps cherries will trigger a new memory from now on.
I keep thinking that I've reached a point in my life where I no longer think about Blue being ill very much, and then something happens to make it all come rushing back like a steam train.
I certainly don't think about it every day any more, and it's not the first thing (nay, the only thing) that I'll talk about any more. Chances are, if I met you for the first time in person, these days, it would take a good few conversations before it actually came out that he'd been ill at all. There was a time when it was literally all I could talk about.
Fortunately, even the 'steam train' moments are becoming less and less frequent, and usually triggered by something other than a panic that he's relapsed - which was what usually used to make me think about it when he first came off his chemo. The lovely nurse who cared for Blue on his first terrible night in hospital - when we really thought he was dying before our eyes - lives in the same village as us. I see her often these days - she has 2 adorable girls now herself, and I can actually talk to her in the street without crying. I have come a long way.
I gave blood earlier in the week. This always reminds me of the bad times, but more so than ever this time, when I realised that I'd donated my 8th pint - equivalent to all the blood
transfusions that Blue had during his treatment. I came over a bit funny and had to have an extra long lie down, and a bag of
crisps as well as a pack of fruit shortcake biscuits and 2 glasses of
the rather lurid lemon squash they hand out before I felt strong enough to wander home.
Fortunately, tea was pretty much already organised - one of our freezers gave up the ghost at the weekend, leading to a frantic reassessment of
what we could chuck and what we could redistribute amongst the 2 other
smaller freezers that we have, already pretty full. Bear in mind that we
didn't have the option of cooking and re-freezing anything: if it
couldn't be eaten then or in the next couple of days, or rehoused, it
would have to go. Out went the swede soup dated 2010 and various small
pots of unidentifiable stuff that had been in there so long the hastily
scrawled labels had worn off... It's always slightly embarrassing, being
presented so starkly with one's hoarding tendencies, but I've decided
to rise above it. On the plus side, we've eaten the lamb shanks, some of the more identifiable soup, and lots of rhubarb. Blood donation evening, there was more identifiable soup and a fish pie. When Blue was ill, I had to cook fresh for him every day, regardless of how tired I was. I'd never have been able to feed him fish pie from the freezer.
More importantly than my inability to throw food away, do you remember all those delicious cherries I scrumped, back in the summer? I was so utterly delighted with the possibilities they presented, that while I was deliberating what to make, they pretty much all got eaten just like that from under my nose.
I managed to salvage some after a marathon stoning session (stoning the cherries - what did you think I meant?) and stashed about 800g away in the freezer for another day.
Well, 'another day' arrived - they were in the freezer that packed up, along with the fish pie and the lamb shanks...
I absolutely couldn't bring myself to chuck them out, despite the fact that they were scrumped as opposed to produced as a labour of love by the Husband in the garden - for start, they'd only been squirreled away for a matter of weeks - unlike the swede soup - and the stoning had taken a good couple of hours of my life, and given me black finger nails for a few days. On the other hand, as scrumped produce, they came lower down the priority rehoming list...
No longer luscious purple but rather duller, with much of the juice leached out of the fruit, although saved in the bowl they had defrosted in, they still tasted good. I thought pie, but couldn't face pastry. And anyway, to make a pastry worthy of my cherries, I needed an egg yolk, and as my chickens have completely given up laying, preferring to moult drastically and unattractively all over the garden, and I was feeling too weak after the blood donation to walk up to the butchers and buy some, I had to think again. I could have made jam but I wanted something lovely for pudding. Crumble was the obvious choice.
Comforting, homely, and in honour of Blue (who adores cherries and crumble) and all he went through in those dark days of leukaemia, and in recognition of the 8th pint, cherry and almond crumble it had to be.
Cherry & Almond Crumble
800g frozen cherries, defrosted, along with any juice that has leaked out
1.5tbsp cornflour
50g caster sugar
good pinch of cinammon
100g plain flour
80g porridge oats
40g ground almonds
100g demerara sugar
75g unsalted butter
Put the cherries and juice in a pan.
In a small bowl/cup/ramekin, mix the cornflour with some of the cherry juice, then tip pack in to the pan, along with the sugar and cinammon. Heat gently, stirring, till the juice all thickens up, simmer for a little, then scrape the cherries into your crumble dish and leave to cool.
Pre-heat the oven to 180C.
Make the topping by rubbing together all the ingredients into a rough, crumbley scrummy mess. Try not to eat it as it is - hard as it is to imagine, it WILL taste better baked.
Spread the topping evenly over the cherries then pop in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or so till the fruit is hot and bubbling and the crumble is golden brown.
Cherries and crumble both qualify, I'm sending this to this month's Alphabakes challenge hosted by Ros at More than the Occasional Baker and Caroline at Caroline Makes
So I know I shouldn't let him, but the dog really loves running through the wheat. And he seems to merely pass through it rather than crashing it all down. The only evidence he is there is a ripple passing over the top as he choffles through at speed, nose down hot on the scent - any scent. The problem with stopping him will be forgoing the look of utter joy that is a springer spaniel 'wheat sharking'. But there we go. I know I shouldn't be letting him do it.
My internal tussle came to a head yesterday after I spent time I didn't have and £50 (ditto) at the vets having a rather viscious spike of grass removed from the dog's ear, so this morning, we avoided the wheat and headed up to a gorgeous little plantation of trees that sits up on the Downs to the north of the village.
Well, it's beautiful up there, shady, cool, green. I go up there in all seasons and it's wonderful
at any time, but seemed particularly lush this morning, not least
because I stumbled upon cherries. Now, I know that there are cherry
trees up there - crab apples too - but usually I see them in the early
stages of fruiting, and then they are all gone - the birds have them. I
reckon the birds must have sunstroke this year, because there were
hundreds - ripe and luscious. Far too good to pass up.
I might not have had a conventional picking receptacle, but being the good, responsible dog owner that I am, I had dog poo bags (unused), and while the dog took advantage of the shade, I picked. I only stopped because I thought I'd better save one bag, you know, just in case...
So 1.5 kilos later, and I am a happy Recipe Junkie. My head is reeling with the thrill of the forage, and the prospect of what I might make with my pickings - and of course, I will need to go back and try and get some more later on.
I'm thinking jam, clafoutis, cherry bakewells, cherry vodka - so much choice...
What should I make?
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