St Piran's Day (again)

Couldn't resist taking and showing you the pictures of St Piran's Parade this morning

24, 26,27 February: Ember Days

‘To everything - turn, turn, turn
There is a season - turn, turn, turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven’

Pete Seeger 1959

Ember Days, which come round four times a year, have nothing to do with embers. So when my food obsession caused me to stray to visions of juicy steaks on glowing coals, I was immediately hauled back on discovering these are quarterly fast days.

The Romans observed regular fasts, and it may be that Ember Days carry some vestigial memory of their practices. The Old English for Ember Day is ’ymbrendaeg’ and ‘Ember’ comes from the word ‘ymbre’ meaning recurring or around. Three Ember Days occur in Lent, then again after Whitsuntide, in September and in Advent, so they come around once every season and are only observed in the Western Churches.

I’m intrigued by the regularity of Ember Days, there does seem to me to be a hint of the pre-Christian calendar in such a seasonal cycle, and they correspond closely to seed times, harvest and the wine vintage. They were also traditional times for women to pray for children and safe deliveries; giving the hint of a connection between the fruitfulness of women and of the land. Country lore also says that the weather on of each of the three Ember days foretells the weather of the next three months.

The Pete Seeger song quoted above and mostly remembered in The Byrd’s version in 1965 is a direct lift from Ecclesiastes 3.18, a beautiful and poetic passage in the King James Bible about the cycle of the seasons and of life. Ember Days were finally removed from the Catholic Calendar in 1966 not long after The Byrds had their hit. I’m tempted to say ‘the times they were a’changin’. Seeger also recorded ‘Turn Turn’ on his album ‘The Bitter and the Sweet’ which rather matches the recipe below.

Observance of the spring Ember Days required a severely restricted diet and additional prayer on the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday after the first Sunday of Lent. The fasting rules being the mother of invention, there are several versions of Ember Tart, which is an egg and vegetable pie – a sort of Collop Pie ‘maigre’ but with the addition of spices. It’s the spices which lift this pie from the bland to the delectable. The earliest version exists in the mediaeval recipe collection called ‘The Forme of Curye’ compiled about 1390.

'Tart in embre day: take and parboile onynons; presse out the water & hewe hem smale;take brede & bray it in a mortar,and temper it up with ayren; do perto butter, safron, spice and salt and corans & a ltel sugar with powdor douce, and bake it in a trap,& serve it forth.'

Ember Tart

12oz shortcrust pastry
4 leeks finely shredded
1 oz butter
2oz sultanas
4 large eggs
I tbsp crème fraiche
Parsley
Ground coriander, mace and nutmeg
Milk

I made this with my Mum who firstly made 12 oz of shortcrust pastry. She lined an 8” cake tin with the pastry and trimmed the edges very roughly. It was about twice as deep as your average quiche. Whilst she was doing that, I shredded 4 leeks and sweated them in about 1oz of butter until soft but still bright green, then added 2oz of sultanas. I made a custard mix with 4 large eggs, a big tablespoon of crème fraiche and then made it up to ¾ pint of liquid with milk. I added ¼ teaspoon each of mace and ground coriander, then salt and pepper.

We put the leeks and sultanas into the pastry case and sprinkled generously with parsley and a few grinds of fresh nutmeg. Then we put the tart onto a solid tray, put it in the oven and only then poured in the egg mixture and gently closed the door. We baked the tart for 40 minutes at 180c. It turned out of the tin perfectly when it was cool enough to handle. We ate the tart whilst it was lukewarm with new potatoes and salad and there were six generous portions. It was distinctly different from a quiche with a sweet edge and a slightly spiced after taste.

‘A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak’

Pete Seeger donated 45% of the royalties of the song to help Palestinian families displaced by Israeli house building. Good for him.

16 February: Shrove Tuesday

I thought Shrove Tuesday was just about pancakes – a way of eating up leftovers before the start of the Lenten fast. However Miss Courtney in ‘Cornish Feasts and Folk Lore’ published nearly 100 years ago, tells us that there were lots of other goings on today. This what she says about Penzance;

’ …large quantities of limpets and periwinkles are gathered in the afternoon by the poor people to be cooked for their supper. This is called ‘going a-trigging.’

In East Yorkshire the church warden rang the pancake bell at 11.00 am to signify the start of the holiday for workers and school children and the time to start making the pancakes – pancake makers obviously didn’t get holidays. My friend Alex told me recently of the tradition of feeding the last pancake to the family cockerel. This had to be done by the daughter of the house. The number of hens who ran over to get a piece of the action – or pancake, signified the number of years before she would get married! This would seem to be particularly rough if you have a large flock of chickens…twenty five years, thirty years?? Don’t do it.

I’ve never been very keen on savoury pancakes; I’ve always found the combination of pancake and thick sauce too rich and starchy. However I’m going to combine the two traditions and make light seafood pancakes. This recipe has a number of stages, but it’s easy to do over the course of the day and the sauce freezes well.

We’ll start with a green pancake mix. Make this as thin as you dare.

Penzance Seafood Pancakes

For the pancakes:

4oz flour

pinch salt
2 eggs
2 oz melted butter Milk to mix.
Handful of wild garlic leaves or chives, parsley, French tarragon, dill, fennel – whatever soft green herbs are available. I used wild garlic to maintain the ‘gathered’ food theme and parsley.
Butter for frying – clarified butter is best. (Melt some butter and skin off the milky solids)

Make the batter in the usual way, (I put all the basic ingredients into my liquidiser and zapped them) pour the batter into a jug and add a generous handful of very finely chopped fresh herbs. Let stand for at least 30 minutes.

For the filling:
2 cloves of garlic
2 tbsp olive oil
A 2” long piece of orange rind
2 bay leaves
I tsp dried thyme
1small glass white wine
1 tin crushed tomatoes – usual size
½ pint fish stock (I used a fish stock cube)

handful of button mushrooms - chunked (optional)
For the fish I used 8oz of mixed cooked seafood – scallops, prawns, mussels and squid and I didn’t go down to the beach for them. You can use chunks of raw fish and just cook it a little longer.

Finely chop the garlic and sauté in the oil with the orange peel and herbs. Add the wine and boil to reduce for a couple of minutes. Add the tomatoes and the stock and the mushrooms. Simmer in an open pan until the sauce is thick and chunky. You can leave it at this stage. When you’re ready, add the cooked seafood.

Make the pancakes and layer between baking paper whilst you use all the batter up. When the pancakes are cool, put a couple of tablespoons of the seafood and sauce on each one and roll up. Place side by side in a buttered gratin dish. Cover with foil and bake at 180c for about half an hour. You could grate cheese over – I didn’t.

This cries out for a big glass of fruity white wine with it.

NB:I actually used a dessertspoon of dried orange peel. I make a batch of this every Christmas by using up the peel of the oranges with which I make caramel oranges. Put the peel in a very low oven on the open shelves. When it’s really dry (it takes hours) I blitz it in my food processor until it’s a fine powder, then store it in a jar with my other herbs and spices. It’s brilliant for putting in cakes and stews.

We often have this as a seafood stew without the pancakes and with a bowl of white rice – it’s very comforting. I make it with whatever fish seems good on the day.

Don’t forget the hens.

15 February: Collop Monday

In the early sixteenth century the Mayor and Corporation of Kingston upon Hull paid for extra wine and cakes on Collop Monday which is the day before Shrove Tuesday, the start of the Lenten fast. Presumably they were going to have one last blow out before the enforced abstinence of the season; I’m tempted to say that our masters don’t change much.

If Shrove Tuesday was the day you finished off the eggs in the house then Collop Monday was the day you finished the remaining bits of meat. The word itself comes from the old Scandinavian. The OED says – ‘Collop: 1. an egg fried on a slice of bacon 2. a slice of meat, 3. a piece of flesh, 4. a thick fold of fat on the body’ – I always wondered what that was called.

In 1571 William Kethe a Protestant preacher in Blandford Forum preached a sermon against the ‘great gluttony, surfeiting and drunkenness’ of the last few days before Lent, and in 1621 John Taylor of London said ‘they do ballast their bellies with meat for a voyage to Constantinople’. This all reminds me of the one attempt I had to lose weight through Weight Watchers. I ate my way through the kitchen cupboards the week before my first meeting, no doubt increasing the size of my collops considerably.

I’ve been wondering when the great quiche invasion of Britain took place. I thought it must have been between 1965 and1970 but the OED has it entering the English lexicon in 1960. My copy of ‘Poor Cook’ by Susan Campbell and Caroline Conran which I bought in 1972 has the first recipe for quiche I ever used. I also remember a quiche being served up as a starter at the first posh ‘grown up’ dinner party I went to in early 1974; obviously still regarded as unusual and classy enough to serve at such on occasion.

Before the advent of the invasive and pervasive French quiche there was the English Collop Pie. We ate this at home often and I clearly remember my mother pouring the egg mixture through a hole in the uncooked pastry top. I thought that was how you did it, but when I asked her last week she says sometimes she forgot to put the egg in before she put the lid on! Mum's pie had to be eaten with copious amounts of tomato ketchup because it had a horrible tendency to stick with dry clagginess to the roof of your mouth. She made it with short crust pastry, I’ve used puff.

Bacon and Egg or Collop Pie

An 8” ovenproof plate, preferably a battered old enamel one for that authentic 1950s look.
10oz puff pastry
6oz of cold ham or cooked bacon, I used bits from a bacon shank which my deli sells cheap – chunky bits are better than slices.
2 tablespoons finely chopped parsley
3 large eggs
Black pepper.

Put the plate on a solid baking tray.
Roll out two circles of pastry to fit your plate. Line the plate with one pastry circle. Scatter the bacon bits evenly over the pastry then sprinkle on the parsley and a couple of turns of black pepper (no salt). Beat the eggs and pour most of the liquid gently onto the bacon. Lay the other pastry circle over and seal the edges. Make a pretty pattern round the edge with a fork.

Decorate the top with pastry leaves and make a hole for steam to escape. Brush with the left over egg. Lift the tray carefully into the oven. Bake for about 45 minutes until golden. You can check if it’s done by putting a knife blade in the centre. Remember it will also set as it cools. Serve warm.

Mum says that as a child she sometimes saw this pie made with whole eggs. The bacon was put on the pastry, then the eggs broken directly on top, so that when the pie was served each wedge had an egg in it. This sounds like a good idea to me, and a handy way to use small eggs. She also said you can cut the pastry from almost the centre to almost the edge at intervals around the pie to mark the portions and so you can see the inside when it’s cooked. I didn’t dare.

I think you need coleslaw, waldorf salad or celeriac remoulade with this and a green salad.

Don’t forget the ketchup.

14 February: St Valentine's Day

‘..The phrophecys of coming joys to hark
Of wandering lovers stealing thro’ the dark
Dropping their valentines at beauty’s door
With hearts and darts and love knots littered oe’r...'

From John Clare ‘Valentine Eve’

I have a special affinity with St Valentine because it’s my birthday. It was fun as a teenager to go to school and say blithely I had received 15 cards that morning!

Saint Valentine was a priest in Rome who was condemned to death on February 14th 269 A.D. for helping Christians and secretly marrying couples according to Christian ritual. As so often however, the church calendar follows an earlier pagan one and February 14th was the eve of the Roman Feast of Lupercalia, when the names of girls were written on slips of paper and placed into a jar. Young men would draw out the name for their partner for the festival and maybe love would follow….

The custom of sending Valentines is very ancient. The Paston letters which give a fascinating insight into the world of a 15th century Norfolk family, include a reference in 1479 to ‘my right wele-beloved Valuntyne John Paston,' and even earlier, Chaucer writes in 'The Parlement of Foules' published around 1382 '... seynt valentynes day, whan every foul (fowl)cometh there to chese his mate'. Poor St Valentine was removed from the Roman Catholic Calendar of Saints 1969, on the grounds of dubious authenticity, but it matters not, he lives on.

I’m going to be with my family on Yorkshire for my birthday this year and someone else will be making my birthday cake. However here are some heart-shaped macaroons to make and give to your loved one. It’s an adaptation of an Alistair Hendy recipe

Macaroon Hearts
300g ground almonds
350g caster or vanilla sugar
Grated zest of one lemon
1 tsp almond essence
2 egg whites beaten until just foamy
1 tablespoon clear honey
Icing sugar

Thoroughly mix the ground almonds with the sugar, then mix in the lemon zest, vanilla, egg whites and honey to form a dough. This is easy to do with your hands. Dust the worktop with icing sugar and roll out the dough until 2cm thick. I covered the dough with cling film and rolled on top of it, so it didn’t stick to my rolling pin. Cut into heart shapes.

Line a tray with rice paper. Place the hearts on top, sugar side up and bake at 180c for 20 minutes on the lower shelf. Do not brown – and they should still be a bit soft inside. My fan oven is quite fierce and they came out browner than I would have liked after 15 minutes. Put on a wire tray and dredge with more icing sugar when cool, then break off the rice paper round the edges. These are lovely freshly baked but I like them when they are a chewy two or three days old...

‘Familiar acts are beautiful through love….’

Percy Bysshe Shelley from 'Prometheus Unbound'