March 7th: Holi

Your veil of the saffron colour

makes my eyes drunk.

The jasmine wreath you wove me

thrills to my heart like praise.

From ‘The Gardener' by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

Today is the Hindu spring festival of 'Holi' which is celebrated on the last full moon day of the lunar month Phalguna. You might have seen the pictures of people in India throwing brightly coloured powders over each other to celebrate the feast.

Although Holi has a religious connection it’s really about celebrating the return of colour after the dark and monochrome winter season. The first literary reference is in the Sanskrit drama ‘Ratnavali’ written in the seventh century but Holi is older than that, probably originating way back in the Vedic beginnings of Hinduism in the Indian Iron Age. There are variations in the way Holi is celebrated across India but bonfires are popular and cleaning your house for spring is recommended! In some areas music plays an important part but everywhere it is colour that is the main characteristic of the festivities.

And there’s a reason for all those colours. Traditional Āyurvedic belief is that in spring when the weather is changeable, people are particularly vulnerable to illness. (That made me think of ‘Ne’er cast a clout ‘til May be out’ I never knew whether that meant the month or the blossom, I only knew that I would have to carry on wearing my hateful liberty bodice for a few more weeks.) In India the throwing of coloured powders over your friends and neighbours has a prophylactic significance, the colours being traditionally made from the medicinal herbs prescribed by Āyurvedic practitioners.

There is a special drink for Holi called thandai, which contains almonds, pistachios, rose petals or rosewater and traditionally, bhang – that’s cannabis to you and me. For coloured water, palash flowers are boiled and soaked over night to produced yellow water, which also had medicinal properties. Palash blossom thought of in the same way as snowdrops – both a herald and a celebration of spring.

The excitement of spring means that Holi festivities are marked by a relaxation of the norms of polite behaviour, strangers celebrate together regardless of caste, age and gender and I guess all that thandai helps too.

One of the main colours at Holi is of course saffron - and for throwing, its cheaper substitutes - turmeric and safflower. I love saffron - everything about it, its history, cultivation and folklore. I went to school with someone called Susan Croker – a croker being an ancient cultivator of saffron which is supposed to have been smuggled into Britain in the hollowed out staff of a mediaeval pilgrim.  It’s still commonly used in Cornwall where saffron loaf and saffron buns are sold in every bakery and it's worth buying the very best, the Spanish sort in little perspex boxes is the one I buy when I can find it.

Saffron has been used in Āyurvedic medicine since the very earliest time – an early treatise of 500BC mentions it and recent research reinforces its utility as an anti depressant. Nicholas Culpeper in his herbal of 1653 recommends that you do not eat too much saffron least you die of ‘immoderate laughter’. That seems to me like quite a good way to go.

So let’s make something that spreads a little sunshine.

Shrikand is brilliant desert after a searing curry and violets are one of the joys of spring in Cornwall. I bought two bunches of Parma violets today and they are smiling at me as I write. This is a Madhur Jaffrey recipe, as ever I've tinkered a bit.

Shrikand with crystallised violets

(for 2-3)

450g carton full fat yoghurt

1/4 tsp saffron filaments + 2 tsp warm milk

2 desertspoons of icing sugar

1 cardamom pod

Shelled crushed pistachio nuts (unsalted)

Crystallised violets - see below.

Strain the yoghurt through a j-cloth or muslin for 3 hours. Soak the saffron in the milk for one hour. Combine the yoghurt and saffron milk ( keep the filaments in) and add the sugar to taste.

Crush the cardamom seeds as fine as you can and add them to the yoghurt. Taste and add more cardamom or more sugar as you wish. Chill then decorate with the pistachios and violets.

One of the most useful things in my kitchen drawer is a fine paint brush. Whisk an egg white until just broken up but not all froth. Take the green sepals off the violets and paint the petals back and front with egg white then sprinkle with caster sugar. Leave in a dry place to harden. Totally edible and delicious.

I'm just mad about Saffron.

And Saffron's mad about me.

I'm just mad about Saffron.

She's just mad about me.

They call me Mellow Yellow,

Quite rightly.

They call me Mellow Yellow,

Quite rightly.

They call me Mellow Yellow.

From ‘Mellow Yellow’ (1966) by Donovan Philips Leitch (b 1946)

5 March St Piran (again)

I like to refresh the look of the blog every season, so I hope you like the new header photos of St Michael's Mount which is in the bay about half a mile from my house. My grumble is that blogger won't let me make the header stretch across the page, without stretching the text of the blog post too, which makes it difficult to read. So sorry about the white space on the left. I'll keep working on it!

It's a lovely St Piran's Day here in Cornwall, children marching, bands playing, flags waving.

Here's my previous post on St Piran. Have a lovely day.

'The fairest flowers, the richest veins of ore,

The brightest gems, the costliest specimens,

The grandest, greatest, meekest, noblest minds,

Are often shining in this darksome world’

John Harris (1820-1884) ‘A Story of Carn Brea’

We’re a bit over-sainted this week, but I couldn’t miss out St Piran. His life, as with so many Celtic saints, is a mixture of hazy memory, dubious fact and active imagination. Whether St Piran was also St Ciaran of Ireland we really don’t know, their two lives may have been conflated by numerous faux historians in the past. What we do know is that the cult of St Piran began in Perranzabuloe in the 10th century and the early St Piran’s chapel, now buried in Perran Sands, dates from that time. St Piran is also the saint of the parish churches of Perranworthal and Perranuthnoe where there was a guild of St Piran in 1457.

St Piran is the patron saint of tin miners and John Harris the poet quoted above, was a miner before he became both a poet and a preacher. Parades by tinners showing off the saint’s relics may have lead to this connection and his feast day was a traditional holiday for Cornish miners. The cost book of Great Work Mine near Breage says that in the mid 18c there was an‘allowance for Perrantide’ for every man and boy working there. St Piran’s flag, the standard of Cornwall shows a white cross on a black background, symbolising the triumph of good over evil and the tin metal trapped in the ore. As Catherine John says in her book ‘The Saints of Cornwall’ such connections may have developed later but are nevertheless not without value. (See also: ‘The Saints of Cornwall’ by Nicholas Orme OUP 2000)

So there is no alternative then for today, it has to be a pasty. I’ve managed to live in Cornwall for eleven years without actually making one, partly because meat with pastry is not my favourite combination and you can buy a very decent pasty in every town in Cornwall. Pasties are nonetheless still made in many Cornish kitchens very regularly, and quite right too.

Let’s deal with all the pasty myths first. The Cornish pasty developed as portable, hot and sustaining food for a tin miner. Made in the morning (or more likely baked overnight in the bread oven) its pastry case would keep the contents warm until the lunch break and the disposable pastry crimp round the edge meant a man could eat it with dirty hands. It did nothave apple at one end and meat at the other. Its filling is beef – usually skirt, with potato, onion and swede, butter and lots of seasoning – nothing else. And never, never, is the beef cooked before it is put into the case. Do you hear that Nigella?

The identification of each pasty by marking it with initials is traditional. The initials can either be pricked in the pastry with a skewer or made from the scraps of paste left over and stuck on. This even happens for pasties made at home – each then can be tailored to the taste of different members of the family. ‘Crimp at the top’ or ‘crimp at the side’ is the big decision. Crimp at the side is the West Cornwall way, so that’s good enough for me – and it’s easier to eat.

Cornish Pasties (makes 5)

Shortcrust pastry – I made this with 4oz butter, 5oz lard and 1lb plain flour (and water and salt)
3/4lb swede
2 medium potatoes
2 onions
1lb beef skirt
Salt and black pepper
Knob butter for each pasty
Egg to seal and glaze

I blitzed the onion in my food processor until it was fingernail sized bits, and then I sliced the swede and the potato very thinly. I put all of these into three separate bowls (I covered the potato with water to stop it going black), and then I chopped the meat into small pieces across the grain (very important) and put it into a fourth bowl. So now I could get a production line going. I rolled out my pastry and cut circles with a small plate. I put a good pile of onion, swede, meat and potato (in that order) onto each pastry circle and seasoned well, then I dropped a knob of butter on the top. Remember the contents will shrink as the pasty cooks, so fill it well.

Then I folded the pastry over from front to back and sealed the edge. I tried to make sure it wouldn’t leak by turning and twisting the seam – my crimping skills are not up to scratch I fear – they did leak a bit. I made a small hole on the top for the steam to escape. Then I brushed the pasties with egg, put them on a baking tray and baked them at 200c for 25 minutes then reduced the heat to 170c for another 40 minutes. Eat with your fingers and a cup of sweet tea.

NB I did have some filling left over; enough to simmer gently in beef stock with a few chilli flakes to make a wonderfully warming pasty flavoured soup!

A big thanks to my lovely friends at the Morrab Library for all their good advice about pasty making and their help with the photos (and thanks also to the checkout lady at Morrisons for advice about the thin slicing of the vegetables)

‘Now telle on Roger, looke that it be good
For many a pastee hastow laten bled’

Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400) From the prologue to The Cook’s Tale.

1 March: St David's Day

'Nothing I cared for, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand
In the moon that is always rising…'

Dylan Thomas (1914 -1953) ‘Fern Hill’

Happy Birthday to my friend Aldyth, this one's for you.

Dewi Sant to give him his Welsh title, unlike many of the Saints whom I’ve been learning about since I started this project, turns out to have been an historical figure about whom we know quite a lot. He was born in the 6th century the son of a noble house in Ceredigion in West Wales. His father was a local chief and his mother, who reputedly gave birth to him on a cliff top during a storm, was called ‘Non’; meaning she either was or became a nun. The marks her fingers made during her labour are said to show on the rocks at Capel Non.

St David founded his monastery sometime in the mid 500s. His order was very strict and their diet was said to consist solely of bread, herbs and water – early teetotal vegans in fact. He died in 589 and his biographer Rhigyfarch records his last words as 'Gwnewch y pethau bychain' –‘Do the little things’. He was buried where the Cathedral of St. David now stands and the celebration of his feast day dates back to 1 March 1120, when he was canonised. The origin of the connection between St David, Wales and leeks is obscure. The Salisbury Primer of 1533 recognises the leek as St David’s symbol and Shakespeare says the custom of wearing a leek is an ‘ancient tradition’. Henry V tells Fluellen that he is wearing a leek ‘for I am Welsh, you know, good countryman’.

For years the observance of St David’s Day was more ‘practised’ in England than in Wales. The day gave the typically xenophobic English yob an excuse to beat up his local Welshman or at the very least make fun of him. A Dutch visitor to London in March 1662 noted that ‘…all kinds of riffraff and layabouts wear (a leek) in their hats…. they call after them - Taffey, Taffey or David, David’

I’m going to make Cawl Cennin. This simply means leek soup or broth in Welsh and could have been made with any meat or none, but a piece of sweet Welsh lamb gives depth and fragrance and the leeks are of course essential on St David’s Day.

Here’s the recipe. Like most stews it’s probably best made one day and eaten the next. Cawl is not a thick brown stew, but something more like the French ‘pot au feu’, an un-thickened broth with the meat flavouring it. It’s a complete meal but I sometimes like a bowl of buttered cabbage on the side.

Cawl Cennin

2lb neck fillet of lamb – chopped it into large pieces.
3-4 carrots cut lengthways
2-3 sticks of celery chopped coarsely
1lb potatoes – small waxy ones are best
2 -3 leeks chopped into chunks

1lb waxy potatoes
Butter or oil
A little faggot of herbs – I used parsley, thyme, rosemary and bay.
2 pints stock – I used chicken, simply because I had some fresh, vegetable stock is fine.

Sweat the carrots, celery and the white part of the leeks (keep the best green bits) in a casserole until very lightly coloured. Remove, then add the lamb and brown it lightly. Return the vegetables and add the stock and herbs and simmer very gently for 2 hours. I cooled the cawl at this stage and then skimmed off the fat. Add the potatoes and simmer until soft. Before serving taste and season well then add the very finely shredded green bits of leek and lots of fresh parsley. You can eat the broth first and then the meat and vegetables, or have it all together.

The Welsh say ‘Cystal yfed o'r cawl â bwyta's cig’ – ‘It is as good to drink the broth as to eat the meat’. Tradition also dictates that cawl is eaten from wooden bowls with wooden spoons so that the diners don’t burn their mouths. I think that’s more to do with showing off the exquisite standards of Welsh wood turning.

I lived in Wales for all my teenage years. It’s where I first fell in love and where I learned to be myself. It has my heart.

'Gwnewch y pethau bychain'

29 February: A few thoughts on calendars

Who noticed the Sun rise in winter between the Wolf's Teeth

And thought to measure the summer's trajectory?

Who measured the shadow?

Who sank the great pits for the calendar stones?

Who kept in mind an ancient calculation

And served his tribe for a memory?

From 'Cosmology: A Prologue' by James Fenton (b 1949)

I suppose it really only became necessary to have a means of numbering the years when history needed to be written down accurately. Before that past events were dated by their coincidence with notable occurrences such as floods, eclipses or famines, and the past could be referred to as ‘in our grandfathers’ time’ or even further back by counting generations as in ‘Abraham begat Isaac’.

Lunar Calendar in the Lascaux Caves about 15,000 years old

In pre-history the seasons rolled by in the same way every year, some fat some lean, but the lengthening and shortening of the days was a constant, and there was of course always the moon to count by. The lunar calendar is still used in some cultures, notably the Islamic calendar which is twelve lunar months and so falls out of line with the solar year by eleven days every cycle, which is why Ramadan shifts dates every year.

To make matters more complicated some calendars like the Chinese one are lunisolar, i.e. they fix the start of the year in relation to the winter solstice but count the length of the year by the moon.

The Romans used the Julian calendar, which was reformed by Julius Caesar in 46BC and it was this calendar that added an extra day once every four years to compensate for the fact that the earth orbits around the sun in a bit more than 365 days.

L'atmosphère: météorologie populaire by Camille Flammarion (1888)

However even this extra day is insufficient to compensate for the period of the earth’s orbit and by the sixteenth century the seasons and the counting were out getting of sync. It is at this point my brain starts to hurt, but if we think about it in relation to the spring equinox it starts to make sense. Twice a year the earth reaches a point in its orbit where its tilt is such that day and night have equal length. That is a constant. In spring in the northern hemisphere that now occurs on 21 March (as Caesar set it) but by 1582 it had drifted back to March 11th.

The Gregorian reform was introduced by the Papacy so that the spring equinox would always be on 21 March and this was done by missing out ten days and going straight from the 11th to the 21st March and also by amending the number of leap years so there isn’t one on the turn of the century. (There are some exceptions but let’s not go there). With me so far?

(A Book of Hours in the Bibliotheque National de France)

The Protestant British thought this reform was a nasty Catholic plot, so the Gregorian calendar was not introduced to Britain until 1752 when we had to omit the days between the 2nd September and the 14th September to correct the drift. The Orthodox Churches still keep to a revised version of the Julian calendar, which is why Orthodox Church festivals do not coincide with those of the western churches.

Lecture over. I’ve been meaning to work that out in my own mind since I started this blog, because so often I look something up and I’m told that it’s a different date in the Orthodox calendar. Now I know why.

So why are girls allowed to propose on 29th February? I like the legend of how it began particularly because it concerns a conversation between St Bridget and St Patrick both of whom have appeared on this blog before. Walking together on the edge of Lough Neagh, St. Bridget complained to St. Patrick that women always had to wait for men to propose. After a bit of negotiation St. Patrick agreed that girls could propose just once every four years on Leap Year day.

The practice is first recorded in 1288, when Queen Margaret of Scotland passed a law that allowed women to propose in a leap year. Any man churlish enough to refuse his sweetheart’s proposal paid a fine ranging from a kiss to a silk dress or a pair of gloves. The girl apparently should wear a red petticoat to boost her chances – so all those red scanties we see on Valentine’s day go back a long long way…….!

So what would you cook for your sweetheart on the night you decided to pop the question? I’ve been thinking about this. It definitely needs to be something you both eat out of the same dish - so you can spoon together and segue naturally into your proposal. I'm thinking fondue...hearty, easy and ever-so-retro.

Actually I love fondue, which is really only Welsh Rarebit for toffs. I've made a Cornish version with Menallack cheese from Penryn. Menallack is a single herd cows' milk cheese made similarly to Cheshire cheese, it's nutty and delicious. I got it from the Newlyn Cheese shop (@newlyncheese) and I used Helford Cider.

Menallack and cider fondue

200ml local cider 150g Menallack or other hard cheese grated. 2 tsp cornflour 1 tbsp cold water, fresh thyme leaves.

Pour the cider into a pan (or heavy fondue dish) and simmer until reduced by a third. Stir in the grated cheese and stir over a gentle heat until completely melted. (Don't do it too fast or it will be grainy not smooth)

Mix the cornflour with the cold water into a paste and pour into the cider and cheese mixture. Cook for another five minutes or so, stirring all the time. Stir in the fresh thyme leaves just before serving.

Serve with crusty bread and more cider. Good Luck!!

Thirty days hath September,

April, June and November;

All the rest have thirty-one,

Excepting February alone

Twenty-eight is all its score

And on each Leap Year one day more

Traditional Rhyme

February 21st: The Ashbourne Royal Shrovetide Football Match

'Running lightly over spongy ground

Past the pasture of flat stones,

The three elms.

The sheep strewn on a field...'

From: 'Running lightly over spongy ground' by Theodore Roethke (1908-1963)

As you may have guessed by now, I am not a sporty person. Anything that means I have to run round in my knickers, or get hot, sweaty or wet has never been my idea of fun. I spent miserable hours at school on the wing of hockey pitches never touching the ball. I quite liked tennis, mostly because of the flattering kit and I didn’t mind fielding at cricket or even better watching it. Eventually when I asked to do extra French lessons in order to get out of games my erstwhile teammates were delighted.

However when I was researching the hurling tradition in Cornwall I found there were strong similarities between hurling, which involves chasing a small silver ball over hill and down dale, and an early variation of football called ‘mob football’ which similarly ranged freely over the countryside.

Mob football games took place between teams of young men from neighbouring parishes and like Cornish hurling matches were often played on Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday festivities began with the tolling of the ‘Pancake Bell’ at 12 noon signalling the start of the half-holiday, everyone stopped work, the football games began and they eventually ended at dusk with a prolonged visit to the local inn.

Mob Football dates back to before the 12th century and was played virtually without rules, you weren’t allowed to actually maim members of the other team but almost anything else was tolerated. It was very rough and very disruptive and eventually it was forbidden within town walls.

King Edward II issued a decree on 13 April 1314;

For as much as there is a great noise in the city caused by hustling over large balls, from which many evils may arrice, what God forbid, we can command and forbid on behalf of the King, on pain of imprisonment, such games to be used in the city in future.

Such football games did continue though, and Shakespeare mentions them in ‘The Comedy of Errors’

‘Am I so round with you, as you with me, that like a foot-ball you doe spurne me thus: you spurne me hence, and he will spurne me hither, if I last in this service, you must case me in leather.’

The final death knell however came in 1835 when Highways Act prohibited ‘the playing of football on public highways, (shall incur) a maximum penalty of forty shillings’

Amazingly there are one or two places where mob football is still played; at Christmas in the Orkney Islands and on Shrove Tuesday at Purbeck and the Royal Shrovetide Football Match at Ashbourne in Derbyshire. The game has been played here for nearly a thousand years with barely a break. It’s called the ‘Royal Football Match’ because the future King Edward the Eighth played it in 1928 and in 2003 Prince Charles was the ‘turner-up’ who starts the game off.

There is no pitch, there are an unlimited number of players and the goals are three miles apart. The ball is filled with cork so that it will float in the river and it can be carried, kicked or stuffed up your jumper. The game lasts all afternoon and evening but must end by 10pm when all concerned repair to The Green Man’ for speeches and celebrations.

About ten years after the Highways Act of 1835, the rules of football began to evolve; local variants were ironed out and the beautiful game eventually developed into the one we watch today, but Mob Football is where it all started. Now you know.

My husband (who doesn’t get much of a look in on this blog – although he eats what I make) tells me that meat pies are the traditional food at football matches. Here’s a traditional pie, sometimes known as a Drovers Pie that can be eaten without benefit of cutlery. Mutton is traditional in Derbyshire as are oats; this pie combines both ingredients.

Derbyshire Drovers’ Pies

300g minced lamb

1 onion chopped into fingernail sized pieces

1/2 pint lamb stock (a cube is fine)

A pinch of thyme

Oil or lard

Fry the onion in the fat until nicely golden then add the mince and brown it. Add the lamb stock and herbs and simmer for 30-40 minutes until the liquid has all but disappeared, taste and season well. Allow to cool completely.

Make yeast dough with 8oz strong white flour, 4oz wholemeal and 4oz oatmeal, 1 tps salt, ½ sachet instant dried yeast and 2 tablespoons melted lard or oil and ½ pint water. Add all the ingredients together and knead until an elastic dough is reached (a dough hook makes this very easy).

Leave to rise for an hour in a warm place. Knock the dough back and roll out as you would pastry and to about 1/2 cm thick. It's quite resilient and less likely to leak than shortcrust so don't worry.

Cut out a number of rectangles about 3”x 5” and wet the dough round the edges. Lay your cold lamb mixture down the middle and roll up like a sausage roll, pinching the ends to seal. Brush the rolls with egg and lay on a baking sheet. Leave in a cool place for another 30minutes then bake at 200c for about 30minutes.

I think you are supposed to eat this accompanied by a mug of Bovril, but strong tea would do me..

There's a town still plays this glorious game


Tho' tis but a little spot.


And year by year the contest's fought


From the field that's called Shaw Croft.


Then friend meets friend in friendly strife


The leather for to gain,


'And they play the game right manfully,


In snow, sunshine or rain.

From : The Ashbourne Football Song, composed 1891 (anon)

14 February: The Food of Love…

‘Cookery means the knowledge of Medea and of Circe, and of Calypso of Helen and of Rebeckah and of the Queen of Sheba…’

John Ruskin (1819-1900) from a talk to the girls of Winnington Hall School, later published in 1865 as part VII "Home Virtues" of "The Ethics of the Dust".

Right then. Let’s get one thing clear at the start, this has been academic research in the interests of leaving no stone unturned for you my blog friends. Nothing has been tested in the field, or anywhere else for that matter.

There is a long history – going back to the Romans at least, that certain foods may increase your desire, your potency or your performance. So just for you, I have been reading up on the history of these things in connection with the Feast of St Valentine, Patron Saint of lovers.

Unfortunately, Alan Davidson (my hero – he should be canonised) says that across the world most foods have been regarded as aphrodisiacs at one time or another and that there’s no point in going any further, it’s all a fallacy.

That said, the myths continue and food aphrodisiacs seem to fall into different categories. There are those that resemble what my Dad used to call ‘your bits and pieces’ such as asparagus, raspberries or figs, or food that by its sensual nature might put you in the right mood, like the icy oyster which M.F.K. Fisher called ‘a lusty bit of nourishment’. Finally there are those fruits like the pomegranate which symbolise fecundity and which I mentioned last April in connection with the Roman Feast 'Cerealia'.

Films have found food as a good metaphor for the other thing too..... there's Juliette Binoche seducing a whole town with 'Chocolat', Joan Greenwood and Albert Finney in 'Tom Jones' and remember the fig reference in ‘Women in Love’? and the woman in the diner in 'When Harry Met Sally' then there's 'Babette's Feast' and 'Delicatessen'....

So food as sex is everywhere, as Frieda Kahlo knew...

Two cookery books on my shelves might help us. The first is ‘The Gentle Art of Cookery’ written in 1925 by Mrs Leyel and Miss Olga Hartley. There is a chapter called ‘Dishes from the Arabian Nights’, which starts with a quote from one of the tales;

‘She took spices and milk and onions and with little fish from the brooks, limes for sherbets, quails of the pit, then chicken livers upon a skewer with sliced ginger between. ‘I have seen something of the world’ she said ‘and there are but two sorts of women in it – those that take the strength out of a man and those who put it back.’

The chapter includes recipes such as imam bayildi, which is one of my favourite dishes, sesame cakes, Bulgarian Cream flavoured with rose water and cold chicken stuffed with pistachios. I like the sound of that.

Then I have an esoteric little number published in 1971, which is a reprint of Norman Douglas’s (good writer, nasty man) book called ‘Venus in the Kitchen’ first published in 1952 with a later forward by Graham Greene.

Douglas introduces the book by saying the recipes were collected slowly ‘for the private use and benefit of a small group of friends…’

He goes on to say ‘Not many years ago I met in the South of France, a Mr D.H. Lawrence, an English painter(sic) whom I interested in this subject and who certainly looked as if his own health would have been improved by a course of such recipes as I have gathered together’

Shades of Lady Chatterly there surely?

So ‘What’s in it?’ I hear you say tetchily –‘Get to the point woman!’

Here are a few recipes from Douglas’s ‘private collection’.

Almond soup, eel soup, hare soup, black risotto, crayfish a la sybarite, potted lobster, stewed crabs, turbot with champagne, oyster cocktail, caviar omelette, fried brains, lambs testicles, baked truffles, chicken breasts with truffles, paprika chicken, pork chops with fennel seeds, artichoke bottoms, celery a la Popoff, giant stuffed peppers, Pontiff sauce, elderflower fritters, pistachio cream and quince jelly.

I think Douglas is having a bit of a laugh at his friends' (and our) expense and given the richness of the dishes, expense is the operative word. However I like chicken paprika, I’ve made it for years, this is Douglas’s way, which is new to me.

Chicken Paprika a la Norman Douglas

Cut a young chicken into joints, fry in butter with one onion cut in rings. When browned remove the chicken, put it in a casserole and add a cup of good broth and a pinch of salt.

Let it simmer gently for half an hour. Dissolve a dessertspoonful of paprika in a quarter of a pint of milk in which you also put an equal amount of cream, and add to the chicken. Let it cook for another half hour.

So there we have ‘spices and milk and onions’ again …

I leave you with the immortal words of Ogden Nash.

‘Candy

Is dandy

But liquor

Is quicker…’

Happy Valentine’s Day.

6th February 1685: 'Let not poor Nelly starve....'

In good King Charles's golden days,


When Loyalty no harm meant;


A Zealous High-Church man I was,


And so I gain'd Preferment.

From ‘The Vicar of Bray’ Anonymous late 17th century satirical song

After the grey years of the Commonwealth, the restoration of the monarchy in 1660 must have lightened the heart of feast and festival lovers across the land. King Charles II returned from exile and many people tried to put the previous twenty or so years behind them. Old scores were undoubtedly settled and the King did grant numerous pensions to his loyal followers, but there was a realization that reconciliation was necessary in order for the country to move on and this was enshrined in the wonderfully named ‘Indemnity and Oblivion Act’ of 1660.

One of the deals that had been struck during the 'War of the Three Kingdoms' was between the Parliamentarians and the Scots. In exchange for military help, the Scots demanded further reform of the established Church. The radical Puritans then seized the initiative to ban many religious holidays – including Christmas! With the restoration of the monarchy, Christmas returned to the calendar but other religious feasts such as Candlemas did not.

The theatres had been closed for twenty years, so their re-opening in 1660 signaled a huge flowering of drama and poetry. Women started to take parts on the stage and in a reversal of the Elizabethan convention actresses often took breeches parts. The theatres were full of young women selling their wares and one of these young girls, an orange seller who then became an actress, caught the new King’s eye.

Ellen Gwyn became the King’s mistress in about 1667 and was much loved for her quick wits. Pepys called her ‘pretty witty Nell’. The story I like best about her is the one when an angry crowd mobbed the coach of a richly dressed young woman thinking she was the King's mistress, the Catholic Duchess of Portsmouth. Nell put her head out of the coach window, ‘Good people,' she said ‘you are mistaken, I am the Protestant whore!’

Nell kept meticulous household accounts and from them we get a glimpse of her lifestyle. She loved oysters, sometimes ordering three barrels a week (maybe they were for the King?), maintained a liking for ‘oringes (sic) and lemons’ and spent a fortune on tarts, cheesecake and sugar. She also paid the equivalent of £150,00 for a silver bed head.

By the mid 1680s good King Charles’s golden days had been in full swing for a quarter of a century, but there were still some dissident voices. The diarist John Evelyn was one. In the week of Charles’s death he commented on the scene at court:

'….the King sitting and toying with his concubines…..a French boy singing love-songs in that glorious gallery, whilst about twenty of the great courtiers and other dissolute persons were at basset, round a large table, a bank of at least £2000 in gold before them.'

A few days later on his deathbed and after his conversion to Catholicism, Charles uttered the famous last words that every schoolchild knows, 'do not let poor Nelly starve'. His successor, his brother James II, kept his promise and Nell retained her allowance and her house in Pall Mall until her own death only two years later. Her descendants by one of the two sons she bore the King are still with us.

Nell would have loved these.....

Little Orange Tarts (pun intended)

First make Seville orange curd the Hugh F-W way:

200ml Seville orange juice (about 5 oranges)

finely grated rind of an ordinary unwaxed orange

400g granulated sugar

125g unsalted butter

1 tsp orange flower water (my addition)

Melt the butter in a double saucepan over a low heat and add the rest of the above ingredients, stir until the sugar has dissolved and all is glossy.

Whisk 2 large eggs and 2 egg yolks is a separate bowl and then heave them into the orange mixture stirring briskly. Keep stirring over a low heat until the mixture coats the back of a spoon - at about 83c ( just showing off - I bought a digital thermometer as a Christmas present to myself). Pour into warm sterilised jars. It keeps for 3-4 weeks in the fridge.

Line some tartlets tins with pastry, I used sweet pastry but a good buttery shortcrust would do. Bake the tartlets blind until lightly golden. Spoon in your curd and top with a meringue made from the egg whites you have left over from the curd (4oz caster sugar to two egg whites, whisk in half, fold in half). Pop back into the oven for 15 minutes at 100c to slightly brown the meringue.

Incredibly scrummy.

‘We have a pretty witty king,

And whose word no man relies on,

He never said a foolish thing,

And never did a wise one.’

Description of Charles II By John Wilmot Earl of Rochester (1647-1680)

PS I drafted this post a couple of weeks ago and originally totally missed the fact that today is the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and therefore also the anniversary of the death of her father King George VI. How odd that there should have been two accessions to the British throne on the 6th February, two hundred and sixty seven years apart.