October: dahlias and pumpkins

Hello there! I hope everyone is well. We are keeping busy, trying to distract ourselves from the political chaos and generally depressing state of affairs here in the UK. Just trying to keep our heads down and avoid switching on the heating until absolutely necessary. Fortunately distractions come in the form of work and a half term break, which we've just finished, and it's been so warm that we haven't needed the heating on yet anyway.

October started off extremely well with a weekend trip up to Leeds to see friends. One of my best friends, who moved to Australia round about the time we moved down here, was visiting and we had a little reunion. We went for a big lunch and a little walk in the dales, at Malham Cove, then spent the evening drinking wine and chatting about life. On Sunday we caught up with other friends, drank coffee, chatted. We met when our babies were born, through the NCT, and now we are all navigating the teenage years together.

Yorkshire was as stunning as ever, even under grey skies, and it was so good to be back and see much loved faces. 

I drove up on Friday night and back on Sunday afternoon. It was a lot of driving but I had The Thursday Murder Club on Audible to listen to in the car (which I highly recommend). 

Work has been particularly busy this half term so I have tried to spend the weekends doing simple, enjoyable things. 

I got myself ready for autumn. I packed away all my summer clothes and brought back out the autumn and winter things. I had a good sort out while I was at it, filled a bag with things for the charity shop.

I chose autumnal shades for my nails.

I gave corners of the house a little spring clean and re-fresh, changing displays to make them more seasonal.

I don't consider jobs like this housework. Rather, little tasks like this, with the radio or an audiobook on in the background, are incredibly relaxing and enjoyable.

There have been many walks, as always, some longer than others. The landscape is slowly losing it's colour and the quality and colour of the light is changing, even if the temperatures stay resolutely mild.

The dahlias have been a joy in the garden this autumn, They only really got going in September and I have picked so many. 

Some of them can hardly hold their weight up, so many blooms do they have.

I have been picking them and bringing them indoors as often as I can.

This little bunch, below, I picked just a couple of days ago. As you can see they are starting to look a little rain-battered and rough around the edges, but they last for a couple of days and are so pretty. 

Reading continues to be a great pleasure. These two books are Book Club choices for November and December. The Crossroads is a huge book, I'm going to have to download that on audible too if I want to stand a chance of finishing it.

My Boston fern is looking absolutely beautiful at the moment. That is nothing to do with autumn, I  know, but it was looking quite poorly a couple of months ago with many brown fronds. I cut them all off and moved it from our bedroom to the bathroom, definitely the coolest and dampest room in the house, and it is thriving,

Mushrooms are growing on the lawn, always a sign of the changing seasons. I spent many hours in the garden yesterday, tidying up, cutting back and planting bulbs for the spring. Soon I will lift my dahlias, trim any greenery and store the tubers in mesh bags somewhere cool and dry, ready to replant next spring.

We lit our first and, so far, only fire of the autumn. Although not cold, it was a rainy day and it felt cosy. 

I got the crochet pumpkins out....

and bought some in the supermarket to decorate the table. In a couple of weeks they will all be roasted and thrown into soups.

Continuing with the pumpkin theme, Bella and I made gingerbread with our new cookie cutter.

We had lots of fun covering them with fondant icing and making them look pretty.

As well as all this happy pottering at home, we have recently returned from a short break to Dorset. It was beautiful and I have lots of photos which I'll save for another post. 

Wishing you all a good week. 

Cookery book: Home Cookery Year

I have recently been cooking my way through a wonderful book called Home Cookery Year by Claire Thomson. I discovered her on Instagram (where she posts under the name 5oclockapron) and her account is one of my favourites for food and recipes. I had been eyeing up her books online for some time, but wanted to browse the recipes (impossible to do on a website), and the perfect opportunity presented itself last Easter when we were on holiday in London. While in the Piccadilly branch of Waterstones I gathered an armful of cookery books and sat myself down on the sofa in the cookery section and ignored the rest of my family.  I came away with this hefty tome, bursting with seasonal ideas and recipes.

The book is arranged by the seasons, and within each contains recipes for midweek dinners, budget and larder dishes, salads/sides, "treat yourself" (expensive or indulgent recipes), weekend cooking and finally "celebration feasts" - ideas for great big meals that might contain five or six different elements. Recipes for cakes and desserts and scattered within these sections. I really liked the layout, the way it spoke to different needs and moods depending on time and budget, and it is driven by a commitment to shopping seasonally and thriftily. Many recipes are vegetarian, with meat often saved for the weekend feasts, and there are  suggestions for leftovers. It is most definitely a book aimed at family cooking. 

Thomson is a professionally trained chef and this comes across in her recipes. Some are challenging, complicated even, but well explained and absolutely worth it. Sometimes it's nice to be a bit ambitious in the kitchen, other times I just want someone to talk me through something step by step. Like I said, different needs for different reasons to be in the kitchen.

Although this book covers four seasons, I just cooked from the Spring and Summer sections. We tried some different lunches, such as Buttermilk, Sweetcorn and Jalapeno Polenta Fritters, which were substantial enough to be a dinner too. They did need the sour cream or yogurt on the side so that they weren't too dry, but they were really good all full of flavour. They reminded me of the sweetcorn fritters my mum used to make when we were little, which we'd eat dipped in ketchup.

Some of the recipes are more a suggestion for ways of combining ingredients than anything else, but no worse for it. This was excellent: toasted sourdough topped with tuna, roasted red peppers (from a jar) and chermoula (a sort of North-African pesto). Such a change from tuna mayonnaise. I ate this for a few days in a row.

As always, I am on the lookout for new ideas for weeknight or weekend dinners - always the time of day when I least want to cook. This roasted lamb topped with a dressing of chopped green olives, lemon juice and parsley was delicious, the fresh flavours complimenting the gamey flavour of the meat. 

We served it with salad, tzatziki and flat breads. Lamb is a treat, of course, and something we eat rarely, but this joint went a really long way, providing enough for a meal for four and lots of leftovers eaten for lunch for a few days afterwards.

This was my first time making flatbreads but it was fun. You make the bread dough then, when proved, divide it into smaller pieces which you pat into a flattened shape then griddle (or barbecue) for a couple of minutes each side until they puff up. We ate the lamb and salad piled on top of the flatbreads like a kind of really deluxe open sandwich.

Another delicious dinner was Caramelised Coconut Port Fillet with Roasted Cabbage and Peanuts, a dish which is much quicker than the lengthy title would suggest. You make a delicious sauce from coconut milk, fish sauce and kecap manis, half of which you pour over the browned pork before putting it in the oven. 

With it, you roast cabbage, spring onions and peppers for ten minutes, then serve the pork on top of the roasted vegetables. You drizzle the whole thing with the rest of the sauce and chopped peanuts before serving.

The sauce is incredible, it makes the whole dish just sing (even with my slightly overdone pork) and it was delicious with rice to soak up the juices. 

The pudding and cake recipes in this book are really good and the absolute standout winner for me is this Cherry Bakewell Oven-baked Pudding. So easy, one of those desserts that is more than the sum of their parts. 

Two tins of cherries are drained and thrown into an oven dish before being topped with a sponge-cake mixture of butter, sugar, eggs and ground almonds instead of flour. That's it.

It is light but satisfying, and just the right amount of sweet with the almonds complimenting the cherries beautifully. It kept and re-heated beautifully, the sponge staying so light and moist despite days in the fridge and being blasted in the microwave.

I tried Peach and Dulce de Leche cake because I love peaches and every summer I see recipes for them everywhere on social media. Fresh peaches are expensive and often disappointing in the UK so I used tinned ones. 

You smear the bottom of the tin with the dulce de leche (it's like a caramel made from milk, like a sweeter condensed milk) and sliced peaches before covering with the sponge mixture and baking. 

You upend it when you want to serve it. Now, I don't know what I did, but this cake was a massive anti-climax. I think I overbaked it, but there just wasn't the intense flavour I was hoping for and it was a little dry. Maybe  I should have used fresh peaches after all? And I still have half a tin of dulce de leche in the fridge to use up....

 

Along similar lines but much, much more successful, was the Caramel Apple Cake. In the same way, you put butter and sugar into the bottom of the tin to melt into caramel, before lining with sliced apples. The difference here is that the cake mixture contains more apple, grated, which keeps it wonderfully moist. It was heaven. The caramel top is thick and cracks when you slice it (reminding me of the "lardy cake" we used to eat when I was little) and it is full of all the gently-spiced autumnal flavours you want at this time of year. 

This recipe was actually from the autumn section of the book, but I wanted to tell you all about it because it was so good and I will definitely bake it again. Should you use Instagram, the author shares many of her recipes for free and I think the posted the recipe for this cake quite recently, certainly in the last couple of months.

I have already leafed through the Autumn and Winter chapters of this book and stuck about twenty post-it notes on various recipes. There are recipes with sausage, kale, polenta and greens, stews and bakes and soups. I am excited to cook.