British food

Hot Cross Buns through Paganism, Christianity and Superstition.

25th March 2013 by Regula 22 Comments

The tradition of baking bread marked with a cross is linked to paganism as well as Christianity. The pagan Saxons would bake cross buns at the beginning of spring in honour of the goddess Eostre – most likely being the origin of the name Easter. The cross represented the rebirth of the world after winter and the four quarters of the moon, as well as the four seasons and the wheel of life.

The Christians saw the Crucifixion in the cross bun and, as with many other pre-Christian traditions, replaced their pagan meaning with a Christian one – the resurrection of Christ at Easter.

According to Elizabeth David, it wasn’t until Tudor times that it was permanently linked to Christian celebrations. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the London Clerk of Markets issued a decree forbidding the sale of spiced buns except at burials, at Christmas or on Good Friday.

The first recorded reference to ‘hot’ cross buns was in ‘Poor Robin’s Almanac’ in the early 1700s:
‘Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.’

This satirical rhyme was also probably the inspiration of the commonly known street vendors cry:

‘Hot cross buns, hot cross buns!
One ha’penny, two ha’penny, hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters, give them to your sons,
One ha’penny, two ha’penny, hot cross buns!’

The Widows Son. Copyright Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archive – posted with permission

A century later the belief behind the hot cross bun starts to get a superstitious rather than a religious meaning.
In London’s East End you can find a pub called The Widows Son, named after a widow who lived in a cottage at the site in the 1820s. The widow baked hot cross buns for her sailor son who was supposed to come home from the sea on Good Friday. He must have died at sea as he never returned home, but the widow refused to give up hope for his return and continued to bake a hot cross bun for him every year, hanging it in her kitchen with the buns from previous years.

When the widow died, the buns were found hanging from a beam in the cottage and the story has been kept alive by the pub landlords ever since a pub was built on the site in 1848.

To this day, every Good Friday, the ceremony of the Widow’s Bun is celebrated and members of the Royal Navy come to The Widows Son pub to place a new hot cross bun into a net hung above the bar. Legend has it that the buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil.

For whatever reason or belief you choose to bake a batch of hot cross buns on this Good Friday, it will most likely be to enjoy them with your loved ones. May it be for Eostre, Easter, the beginning of a much awaited spring or as a superstitious amulet for when you set sail, bake them with love!

If you want to bake ahead, you can easily bake these buns in advance and freeze them. Slowly defrost in a teatowel and then place in a hot oven for 5-10 minutes with a small ramekin of water to give some moisture to the warm air in the oven.
And finally … you can also find my story about Hot Cross Buns in the latest edition of Pretty Nostalgic Magazine!
If you don’t know the magazine, it’s fairly new and all about British Nostalgia, love for all things Vintage and quirky.

Poverty and oysters … Beef, stout and oyster pie

4th March 2013 by Regula 10 Comments

As Dickens’ Sam Weller remarks in the Pickwick papers:

‘Poverty and oysters always seem to go together’.

Oysters have been savoured in Britain since Roman times. Shells have been found at many archaeological sites, with the Roman fort and Amphitheatre in Richborough as the most symbolically important one, and stretching as far north as Hadrian’s and the Antonine walls. Before the Romans came, the Britons regarded shellfish as something to eat when there was no fish or meat to be had. The little molluscs weren’t sought after until the Romans started to farm them and even export them live to Rome, where they were considered a delicacy.

When the Romans withdrew and the Saxons invaded in the 5th century, so a rich culinary culture disappeared, which included the oyster farming. It would take centuries for the oyster to become popular again and the first recorded appearance is to be found in a 14th century cookery manuscript by the Master Chef of King Richard II.

Throughout
the Medieval period the church imposed a number of days where one
should eat fish rather than meat. In fact, for a third of the year,
eating meat was forbidden. Therefore the mixing of fish and meat in
dishes only became popular later in the 16th century and an early 17th
century cookbook gives the recipe for roasting mutton with oysters.

By the end of the 18th century the industry had become highly regulated and although oysters had been the delight of the rich for a very long time, industrialisation cheapened them, making oysters one of the staples of the diet of the poor.

Beef
and oyster pie is a classic Victorian dish; it was the food of the
poor, and the poorer you were the more oysters you would put in your
pie. Oysters were plenty, the smaller ones sold as fast food on the
streets of London or pickled to keep, while the bigger ones were put in
stews and pies to make up for the deficiency of meat. It was a cheap
source of protein.

Oysters were also a typical food to be found
in public houses, where they were most commonly served with a pint of
stout. Stout beers were popular because of their strong flavour, higher
alcohol content, longer shelf life and because they were cheaper than
other beers. The claims of Stout being a nutritious drink made the
pairing with oysters the perfect cheap meal for the working class on
their way home with their wages.

Demand for oysters was high,
with as many as 80 million oysters a year being transported from
Whitstable’s nutrient-rich waters to London’s Billingsgate Market alone.
In the middle of the 19th century the natural oyster beds became
exhausted in England. As the oyster beds further declined, what had
previously been the food of the poor became a delicacy for the upper
classes once again.

This pie is wonderfully succulent; once a poor man’s dinner, it now graces our tables with elegance. The beef, oyster and stout or porter beer are a perfect pairing together with a rich suet crust – just like your nan used to make but let’s kick it up a notch and put some effort into the decoration of the pie! It’s fun to let your children have a go with the leftover pastry; you will have leftover with this recipe. Keep in the freezer until needed, defrost the evening before in your fridge.
This recipe works just as good as a stew, feeding 4 hungry mouths.

What do you need
For the stew

1 large carrot, quartered and cut into 2 cm long pieces
3 medium onions
500 g chuck of beef, diced
flour to dust the meat
1 pint of stout, Guinness or porter beer
1 teaspoon of mushroom ketchup (if you don’t have it, leave it out or use 1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar)
2 bay leaf
thyme
pepper and salt to season
water
6 oysters, cleaned.

For the pastry

300g plain white flour
100g unsalted butter
100g Atora shredded suet
a generous pinch of salt
125 ml icecold water
1 egg, beaten

Method
for the stew – filling

Preheat your oven to 160C
Add the carrots and onion to a cast iron casserole and color them over a medium fire.
Dust the meat with the flour and add it to the vegetables.
Immediately pour in the stout, mushroom vinegar and herbs.
If the meat isn’t completely covered in liquid, add some water or extra stout until it’s just covered.
Bring to the boil without putting on the lid.
When boiling, put on the lid and place in a lower part of the oven for 3-3,5 hours.
It depends on the animal used, the quality of the meat and how lean it is to know when the meat will be done. Check on it regularly so you don’t end up with dry meat. The meat is done when it is about to fall apart.

for the pastry lid
Combine the flour, butter, suet and salt in a large mixing bowl and use your fingers to rub the butter into the flour. Keep on doing this until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
Pour in the water and start pressing the liquid into the breadcrumb-like mixture. Be gentle as you must be careful not to overwork the dough.
When you have created a rough dough, wrap it in cling film and let it rest in the fridge for an hour or more. You can prepare the pastry the day before if you’re feeling organized.
Preheat your oven to 180C
Ladle the stew into your shallow pie dish and place the oysters neatly so everyone will find some in his plate.
Use the beaten egg to eggwash the edges of the piedish.
Take your pastry out of the fridge and place it on a floured work surface. Now roll out the pastry about 1 cm thick and make sure it’s larger than your pie dish.
Now carefully pick up the pastry and place it over the pie dish. Trim off the edges of the pastry so you get a nice lid. Now crimp the edges by using your thumb or a fork so the pastry lid is closed tightly.
Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.
The pie should be nice and golden after 40-45 minutes.Serve with peas and carrots because you got to have peas and carrots with pie …

You might also like
Sussex stewed steak >
Jo’s Hotpot >
Chicken & taragon pie >

Sussex Stewed Steak on a wet winters day

13th January 2013 by Regula 24 Comments

Eight in the morning, a wet winters day in the Sussex countryside. The sun is rising over the marshes and fields but the pink glow is quickly washed away by grey clouds of rain …
I walk trough a typical crooked path where the tops of the ancient trees lean towards each other creating an archway over the road, nature’s chapel.
Blissfully relaxed I listen to the bustling sound of busy birds in the hedges. Holding my breath, counting robins, coal tits and wrens. They don’t even seem to notice or care that I’m standing there.
Then it quiets down, the moment has passed and I walk on.

When I am at home but I have lots and lots to do during the day and not enough time to prepare a lovely meal, a Sussex Stewed steak is my dish of choice.
It really is the easiest dish you can imagine and it comes out of the oven as a warming meal with elegant flavors to enjoy with guests or just for your own family with plenty of leftovers for the next day. The Stout, port and mushroom sauce used, create a mahogany sauce with a deep flavour sometimes – depending on which Stout you use- you find some chocolate notes, and however a humble dish it turns out to be a feast for the palate every time.

For this dish you should use the chuck of beef, an economical cut of meat that has a deep flavour after slowly cooking it for a few hours. It is one of my favourite cuts of meat, it doesn’t cost the earth so I go for the best quality meat I can find. I buy grass fed Black Angus but I would love to try it with Sussex Longhorn beef one day. I suspect the Sussex Longhorn or the Sussex Red, will have been the kind of breed used for this dish decades ago.

I couldn’t find when the recipe first came to be but it is has been cooked in Sussex and beyond by generations of women. The most famous of women connected to this dish must be Elizabeth David who featured her recipe for the Sussex Stewed steak in her book Spices, Salt and Aromatics in the English Kitchen.
All the recipes I found were all very similar, did they all originate from David’s recipe or is this a far older recipe. Why is it called Sussex Stewed Steak? Is it because David gave the dish its name while she was living is Sussex? Or is it named after the breed used to cook this dish, the Sussex Longhorn or Red … Jane Grigson features her version of the dish in her book ‘English food‘, although similar it explains more how to prepare this recipe.
I cooked four different -although all very similar- recipes over the months, and this is the one I feel is the best, adapted from David’s and Grigson’s recipe.

David as well as Grigson suggests to serve the Sussex stewed steak with mashed potatoes and large field mushrooms. After trying a few other vegetable sides and potatoes, I agree the ladies are of course right.
The Sussex Stewed steak indeed pairs wonderfully with creamy mashed potatoes and sauteed mushrooms.

Sussex stewed steak

What do you need

1 kg of chuck steak in one piece
Flour to dust the meat with
1 large onion, sliced in rings
half a cup of stout
half a cup of port
2 tablespoons of mushroom ketchup*
freshly ground black pepper

To serve
Mashed potatoes, nice and creamy
sauteed mushrooms, a large variety.

* You can buy Mushroom Ketchup from Budgens, if you can’t find it you can substitute it with red wine vinegar.

Method

Preheat your oven to 160° celsius
Dust the meat with the flour and place in a baking dish that is just a little larger than the meat. If your meat has some fat, place in the dish with the fatty side down.
Place the onion rings around the meat and a few on top.
Pour in the Stout, port and mushroom ketchup, you might think it is not enough liquid but don’t add any more than instructed. Trust me.
Season with freshly ground pepper
Cover the dish with tin foil
Put in the lower part of the oven for 3 hours then take off the tin foil leaving just a bit behind to only cover the top part of the meat. If your meat had a fatty side, turn it around now with the fat facing up this keeps the meat from drying out.
Let simmer in the oven for another hour, this gives the sauce a chance of thickening slightly as you will see it is very runny, it will also color the onions.

Enjoy with a good pint of Stout, Porter or Ale!

You might also like:
Jo’s Lamb Hotpot >

Jo’s Hotpot – British family recipes

12th November 2012 by Regula 20 Comments

I think she didn’t realize how much she filled my heart with joy when she handed me a jar of pickled red cabbage to go with a Lancashire hotpot she cooked for me to take home. Insecure about what I was going to think of her dish, she provided me with the instructions for heating the hotpot at home.
Joanne, a bridal gown designer originally from Lancashire, moved to Birmingham a few years ago to open her fabulous bridal studio in the old Custard factory. She cooks this hotpot a lot for her family and I was lucky enough to have a taste myself.

The Lancashire hotpot is the most famous dish to come from the county of Lancashire. Traditionally it is made from mutton, topped with sliced potatoes. It’s a quick and simple dish to prepare with long slow cooking, the tale goes that the women who worked at the cotton mills prepared this dish in the morning and placed the Hotpot in the oven to simmer. Hours later when the family returned home, they would have a warming dish to enjoy. This is an economical dish, making the most out of cheap cuts of meat. Nowadays lamb is mostly used but in the old days cheap cuts of mutton were used as they have a strong flavour and therefore little would go a long way.

Jo’s Hotpot is made with a pastry lid instead of being topped with sliced potatoes on top. The pastry gives some extra texture to the dish that I quite like!
I’m sure this dish will be a favourite in our house like it is at Jo’s. Thanks so much for sharing Jo, you are amazing!

This is the first of hopefully many recipes sent to me by readers, friends of readers, mums and aunties for my British family recipe challenge. Do you have a family recipe for Huffkins, puffkins, pudding or any other traditional recipe?
Something you mum made a bit differently because her mum told her to?

Submit your recipe and I will cook the dish and post it here on the blog!
Do
let me know where you got the recipe from, it could be your grandmother
or even your grandmother’s grandmother! And tell me the story behind
the dish if you like!
Can’t wait to read all about it!

More in info here >
You can send you recipe to: recipe@missfoodwise.com Cheers x

Jo’s Hotpot

What do you need
2 tsp of olive oil
500g of minced lamb, or lamb cut into small pieces
2 medium onions, chopped
1-2 garlic cloves (optional) chopped
2 large carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 kg Potatoes, sliced 0.5cm thick
2 pinches of salt
200 ml Lamb or beef stock
1- 1 1/2 level tsp of ground black pepper
2 bay leaves
Shortcrust pastry to go on top
1 egg for eggwashing the pastry

Method

Peel and slice the potatoes in 0.5cm thick discs, Par boil in water with 2 pinches of salt
Whilst potatoes are boiling: lightly fry the garlic in the oil with half the pepper in a large stew pan.
Add the lamb and brown
Add the onions and fry until they soften
Add the carrots
Add 200 ml of stock
Add the rest of the pepper and the bay leaves
bring to the boil then simmer for about 10 minutes
preheat the oven 160°
Check potatoes after 10 minutes and as they are starting to go soft at the edges, add them along with some of the water they are cooking in, the water level should cover the food just.
Cook for a further 10 minutes to allow the flavours to blend
Thicken the juice with corn flour or some other thickening agent, it should still be runny liquid and not too stodgy/glupey (I didn’t need to do this, as I cooked it a further 10 minutes to thicken the sauce)
Transfer to a casserole type dish and the add shortcrust rolled pastry to edges, seal edges of pastry to side of dish, glaze with milk/egg and prick with a fork
Put in the lower part of the oven and cook for 40 -50 minutes until the pastry is golden on top

Serve with Pickled red cabbage, mushy peas and crusty buttered bread

Jo tells me black pepper is the key to this dish, and I agree so give it a good dose!

Enjoy

Kentish Cobnut cake with apple compote – a marriage made in autumn

24th September 2012 by Regula 23 Comments

It seems like in a weeks time the days have started to get more chilly and shorter. The trees are starting to shake off their leaves and we are greeted by cobnuts, apples and plums. Autumn is definitely upon us.

Last week I walked in a sunny meadow in Kent wearing a summer dress and red dancing shoes, today I’m packing a warm cardigan for London where I will stay with friends for a few days to attend this years food blogger conference. This time away from the hectic magazine deadlines and the company of like-minded food lovers from all over the globe will warm me with a fire of creativity.

In Kent, my mission was to find the ‘Kentish cob‘ which is a type of hazelnut that has been grown in England since Tudor times and perhaps even earlier. The Victorians considered the Kentish cobnuts to be a delicacy and therefore are responsible for planting 7000 acres of cobnut orchard or ‘plats’.
Like the cherry orchards, after first world war the amount of cobnut plats in Kent was drastically decreased to no more than 730 acres with a further decline to 250 acres today.
Unlike most hazelnuts, cobnuts are sold fresh and not dried. They are in season from the end of august through october.
At the beginning of the season the husks are green and the kernels very juicy, further into the season when the nuts have ripened the husks and shells are brown and the flavour has developed further to the hazelnut taste that we are used too.

This cake has a wonderful nutty flavour, together with the apple compote the flavours are a marriage made in autumn. Just glorious cake.

Kentish cobnut cake
traditional Kentish recipe adapted from English Teatime Recipes

preheat the oven to 160C

To roast the cobnuts
Remove the shells and place them in an oven at 160C for 45 minutes

For the cobnut cake
• 225 g self-raising flour
• 110 unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 110 g light soft brown sugar
• 3 free-range eggs, beaten
• 50 g (1 cup) cobnuts, shells removed, roasted and finely chopped

Method
For the cobnut cake, preheat the oven to 160C°.
Line you cake tin with baking paper.Add the butter to the flour and mix until it resembles breadcrumbs
Add the sugar and eggs and beat until well combined.
Stir in the chopped cobnuts until well combined.
Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin, gently spreading the batter into all the corners.
Put the cake in to the oven and bake for 1h 20 min, or until the cake has risen and is lovely golden-brown, when a skewer is inserted into the centre of the cake it has to come out clean.
Set the cake aside to cool slightly in the tin.

For the apple compôte
• 3 apples, peeled, cores removed, finely chopped
• 2-3 tbsp cane sugar
• 2 tbsp water

Heat the water in a frying pan over a medium heat.
Add the sugar and let it dissolve
Add the apples and stir well
Cook until the apples have broken down slightly and the mixture has thickened.

Serve the slices of cake with a spoonful of warm or cold apple compôte.

Enjoy!

For more information about Kentish Cobnuts visit this website: www.kentishcobnutsassociation.org.uk

Want to know where to find Cobnuts? Check out this page here
or visit www.farnellfarm.co.uk

You might also like
Elisabeth sandwich cake
Chestnut cake
Parsnip and apple cake
Vegan beetroot and chocolate birthday cake

Fool

7th September 2012 by Regula 22 Comments

I started my second year in Culinary school this week. It’s going to be tough again combining this with my day job as a graphic designer. It always seems that the one day I can’t seem to get away from the office in time is the evening I have Culinary school to rush over to. I love the experience, the knowledge passed on to us by the chefs. I’m the student with the questions, the never ending enthusiasm, with the jokes and the loud giggles. Lessons always end with dinner, bottles of wine are opened and if we’re lucky a fellow student Jean, otherwise known as ‘the butcher’ has brought some of his home made port. We have a good time, have a laugh, a taste and a discussion about food. Our class is always the last to remain in the building and we leave the school grounds with rosy cheeks and a little bit pie-eyed.

The weekend has started and it’s time to enjoy the last of the summer weather. I found some fleshy raspberries and strawberries at a carboot sale in Kent and I decided to prepare a ‘Fool’. When researching this dish I wanted to find out about the origin of the term ‘Fool’. A fool, is a dessert made by blending pureed tarty fruits – most commonly Gooseberries – with sweetened cream but it seems the exact origin of the name of this dish is lost in time.

A lot of modern recipes for Fruit Fools state the dish dates back as far as the 16th century. There is a recipe for Trifle in ‘The Good Huswifes Jewel’ by Thomas Dawson written in 1596. The recipe goes as follows:

Take a pint of thick cream, and season it with sugar and ginger, and
rose water. So stir it as you would then have it make it luke warm in a
dish on a chafing dish and coals. And after put it into a silver piece
or a bowl, and so serve it to the board.
Many historians including me have the theory that this early trifle recipe might have been where the Fool was born. However, this recipe does not contain any kind of fruit so maybe the first fool, wasn’t with fruit at all.

I have found a recipe for a ‘Gooseberry foole’ in ‘The Compleat Cook‘ by WM from 1658

Take your Gooseberries, and put them in a Silver or Earthen Pot, and set it in a Skillet of boyling Water, and when they are coddled enough strain them, then make them hot again, when they are scalding hot, beat them very well with a good piece of fresh butter, Rose-water and Sugar, and put in the yolke of two or three Eggs; you may put Rose-water into them, and so stir it altogether, and serve it to the Table when it is cold.

In this later recipe where indeed is spoken of a Fool there is no mention of cream, in fact many early Fool recipes use an egg mixture rather than just cream.
Gervase Markham as well as Robert May, have recipes for Norfolk Fools, they all have an egg mixture rather than cream. Does this mean Thomas Dawson’s recipe was actually an early Trifle after all?

Then I came across a recipe for a Strawberry or Raspberry Fool in ‘The Compleat Housewife: or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion’ by Eliza Smith written in 1739. This appears to be one of the first recipes of a fool like we know it today. The fruit is squeezed and orange flower water is added, then cream.

Why the word ‘Fool’ is used is not entirely clear, some claim it’s derived from the French verb fouler which is used in the context of pressing grapes for wine with one’s feet.

For this Raspberry and Strawberry Fool I started out from a recipe dated 1823, I found in ‘Good things in England’ by Florence White. This is one of the recipes sent to White when she had called upon the people to send in their British family recipes.
The original recipes states you should pass the fruit trough a hair sieve but I didn’t as I think the interplay of textures is quite lovely.

You can use any fruit for this dessert but it works best with tart fruit, the most popular being gooseberries, however these should be stewed until they are soft enough.

What’s you favourite Fool?

What do you need (for 2)

a punnet of raspberries
a punnet of strawberries

(or another tart fruit like gooseberries which you stew first and then let cool)
500 ml double cream
1 teaspoon orange flower water (optional, used in traditional recipe)
1 teaspoon sugar (optional, used in traditional recipe)

Method
Divide your cream into two equal parts
Bruise 2/3 of the raspberries and all the strawberries with a fork, leave some bits in for texture, you can even add some whole raspberries at the end
Mix them with the orange flower water and sugar (optional, used in traditional recipe)
Stir one part of the cream in the fruit so you get a nice pink color
Now layer the plain cream with the fruit cream you created into the jars or glasses of your choice)
Decorate with some leftover fruits.
Enjoy!

* Why not substitute half of the cream with thick yoghurt for a lighter version of this dish!

Join me next time for some home made Raspberry Vinegar!

The Goods Shed farmers market – Canterbury

26th August 2012 by Regula 15 Comments

Food with flavour.

You take it for granted -flavour- but the truth is that retaining the taste of each ingredient in your dish is actually pretty hard.

This is what makes a good dish for me.

Not how it looks, or how expensive or exclusive it is.

Getting your timing right and capturing flavour of every single item on the plate is what makes a good chef.

A chef who works with the best locally sourced produce takes pride in his work. This is what makes the difference between a chef by passion and a chef by profession.

Not often a dish sings to me but yesterday a The Goods Shed in Canterbury, it certainly did.

It was the hottest day of the year in England and although we were hungry, we didn’t really have an appetite due to the heat.

The Goods shed is a covered farmers market with restaurant serving British food prepared with fresh local ingredients from its own market.

Ten years ago a lady bought this derelict building and transformed it into a place where farmers, butchers and fishermen can sell their produce. Over the years the profit went up and down but after a decade they are still standing and enjoying todays ‘real food’ revival.

The owner wants to give the people of Canterbury and beyond a place where they can buy locally produced food and they want to be a fierce competition to Supermarkets.

In the food hall the first thing you notice is the huge blackboard comparing prices of the meat from The Goods Shed to that of Sainsbury’s which is situated in the same street.

With those prices black on white -or white on black in this case- why would you shop at a superstore? Here at The Goods Shed the prices are cheaper, the produce better and the whole shopping experience much more enjoyable.

You get a wide selection of foods here, a butcher, baker, grocer, cheese monger, fish monger, local beers, wines and much more.

After a browse at the market we made our way up to the restaurant.

We were lucky to have a table as they are usually fully booked every weekend.

After we drank a much needed bottle of (local)water to cool off we ordered our food.

Just main courses today, it was just too hot to eat a lot.

Hake with crab and summer vegetables for me, Sirloin steak with Stilton for B.

We were the first guests at the restaurant and we could smell the lovely scents of our dishes being prepared in the kitchen. We started to get an appetite and began to look forward to eating, I think at this point it must have been 30 degrees outside.

The food is served on vintage British crockery and although B really doesn’t like those plates he said it fitted nicely in with the concept. Really, those plain white plates everywhere are so boring don’t you think?

My dish looked inviting and fresh, the fish was cooked just how I like it. Nothing worse than dry overcooked fish! The vegetables were a pleasure to eat, something that too often tastes bland but not here. Perfect seasoning. The steak, although a very plain and simple dish it stood out because of its freshness and flavour. A very good meal, British cooking at its best.

I will most definitely return for another dinner, breakfast or lunch as this is to my humble opinion the best place to eat and shop in Canterbury.

The Goods Shed is situated just 5 minutes of the High Street, next to Canterbury West Railway station. It’s also situated on the Crab & Winkle Way route which is a lovely bike route running all the way up to Whitstable. You can read a little something about this journey on the lovely Urvashi’s blog here

I ate at this restaurant at my own expense.

The Good Shed Farmers market and Restaurant

Station Road West
Canterbury, CT2 8AN

T: +44 (0) 1227 459 153

www.thegoodsshed.co.uk

What’s your favourite farmers market?

You might also like:

The chocolate festival

Blaeberry pie – Going back in time

29th July 2012 by Regula 24 Comments

The first time I baked this pie it felt like magic when I took it out of the oven.
Not only has this dish been around for centuries, I got to taste a bit of Britain’s beautiful food heritage. There are quite a few cookery books around that were written more than hundreds of years ago and are still influencing cooks today.
Like in politics, we are supposed to learn from our history. So whenever I am cooking a dish I research it to find out how it was prepared by the Elizabethans, Victorians, Edwardians and learn about how tastes changed and some things just stayed the same.

I am eternally grateful to Florence White who wrote the book ‘Good things in England’. Born in 1863 she was the first ever freelance journalist specializing in food and English cooking in particular.
For the creation of the book she went out looking for traditional British recipes that were handed down in families for generations. Some of the regional recipes that she found or had been sent by her readers, dated back as far as the 14th century.
In 1931 she founded the ‘English Folk Cookery Association’ and later she set up a cookery and domestic training school in Fareham.

Another interesting read about English traditional cooking are the books from Jane Grigson, some of the recipes in her books are from or inspired by Isabella Beeton, the author of the book ‘Mrs Beetons’s Book of Household Management‘ in 1861.
Both White and Beeton’s books influenced the work of Elizabeth David and so do we go on to keep British food heritage alive.

This pie is inspired by Jane Grigson‘s Blaeberry pie from the 70s.
These days puff pastry is more popular for fruit pies but in the old days Shortcrust pastry would have been used.
I am not a big fan of puff pastry and when I read about Flaky Shortcrust pastry in Beeton’s book I thought I would give it a try. The recipe was very similar to my recipe for savoury pie pastry.
The pie worked best with the Flaky Shortcrust pastry, I added a pinch of sugar to the dough and used sparkling water instead of still water.

Blaeberries are known in England by various of local names, these include Bilberries, Wimberries and myrtle blueberries. In Ireland they are known as Fraughan and are traditionally picked on Fraughan sunday on the last sunday of july.
Bilberries were gathered by the Gaelic on the feast of Lughnasadh which is celebrated on the first of August. The Bilberries were gathered to bake pies and make wine.
Lughnasadh is a harvest celebration, a time when food is plenty and has to be preserved for the more lean days ahead in the year.
I am fascinated by these feasts which all celebrate food, fertility and life. Things were so simple and so straight forward. People were looking forward to the first berries and now we can buy them all year long. We are losing our connection with the seasons…

By chance while I write this, it’s the last sunday of July. So this pie is for the harvest and the start of a whole new chapter in my life… but more on that at a later date.

What do you need
a 22 cm pie dish, I used enamelware

For the pastry
this recipe is for a pie in a 22 cm pie dish, including the bottom part, I only use the top for this pie so you will have some leftover dough to freeze or make little pies with

• 250 g plain white flour
• 150 g cold butter
• 1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice
• 100ml ice cold sparklingwater
• pinch of sugar
• 1 egg white for egg washing the pastry

You can do this with a food processor, but I like to do it by hand.

Mix flour and sugar.
Finely slice half of the butter finely into the flour, shake the bowl so the butter is covered in flour.
Use a round knife to cut the butter into smaller pieces until the mixture resembles crumbs. You can also use a fork to do this.
Put in the fridge for 30 minutes
Now add the other half of the butter and do the same thing, cutting the butter into smaller pieces.
Add the lemon juice to the water
Start adding the water to the flour and butter, bring the dough together.
Make sure you don’t over handle the dough, when it gets sticky, refrigerate again.
The dough needs to stay cool.
When you’ve managed to bring the dough together into a large lump, wrap in clingfilm and refrigerate for 1 hour.
Now prepare your pie filling

For the filling

• 500 g blueberries
• 85 g cane sugar (you can add 100g if you like things very sweet)
• 1 level tablespoon of cornflour (cornstarch)

Mix the sugar with the cornflour
Add a layer of berries to the pie dish
Add a layer of sugar and cornflour mixture and keep on doing this until the pie dish is slightly heaped with fruit.

When the dough has rested enough.
Preheat your oven to 220°

Roll out your dough on a flowered surface.
It should be half a cm thick.
Line the pastry over the pie dish filled with fruit and trim the edges.
Give the pastry a generous egg wash
score the middle of the pastry with a sharp knife so the steam can get out.

Put the pie in the bottom part of the oven for 15 min at 220°
After 15 min reduce the heat to 180° and bake for 20-30 minutes

When ready, leave it to rest for 20 minutes so the fruit can set a bit.

Enjoy with a dollop of clotted cream, double cream or ice cream.

The magic that is opening the lid of a pie and discovering color…

Please leave a comment, I enjoy reading them

You might also like:
Chicken and tarragon pie
Victoria sandwich cake for Queenie

Britannia sandwich cake – Best of British

3rd June 2012 by Regula 25 Comments

As the reign of Elizabeth I is referred to as ‘The Golden age’, I wonder what they will call the reign of her namesake Elizabeth II.
Elisabeth, born in 1533 was known as the ‘Virgin queen‘. She never married as she never wanted to be ruled by a man. She might be the first feminist in history. As the previous two queens in English history both failed and her reign was of such epic importance, the role of women changed quite a bit. It started with noble men who started to educate their daughters so they wouldn’t look ignorant in the presence of the highly educated queen. But in general, independent women were still being called spinsters, witches or prostitutes.
When her sister ‘Bloody Mary’ died, she inherited a bankrupt nation scattered into pieces due to religious conflict. She had to breathe new life into Britain.
With her came the flourishing of British drama, she was a great supporter of Shakespeare and Marlowe. How would the world have looked like without Macbeth, Hamlet and King Lear?
We wouldn’t suddenly shout “Romeo oh Romeo” when we found ourselves on a balcony, we would just look at the view. The English language wouldn’t be what it is today without Shakespeare as he invented nearly 1700 words for his plays, sonnets and poems. Words you wouldn’t expect like ‘frugal’, ‘gloomy’ and ‘monumental’ were all invented by the man himself.
It is fair to say Elizabeth I reshaped Britain, made it “British”, gave her name to an era and reigned supreme.

This weekend we are celebrating the current queen Elizabeth.
The Diamond jubilee is inspiring people to celebrate Brit style with street parties, cake contests and an explosion of Union Jack bunting everywhere.
If only Britain could look like this every day.
Shop windows competing for celebrating Britishness the best, biggest and most typical.
As an Anglophile, these are good times for me. I can buy Union Jack pajamas, purses and… shoes!
I finally have an excuse to decorate my cake with it, get out the bunting and watch the boats on the Thames while reading a British classic.
I celebrate, not my love for a monarch but for a land, its culture and its pride.

So this cake is for you, Britannia.
May the tea flow plenty in flowery teacups, the cakes be decorated with joy and the discussion scone-cream-jam versus scone-jam-cream go on until eternity.

‘Union Jack’ Britannia Sandwich cake.
I’ve tried a few Victoria sandwich recipes before I came to this one after testing.
This cake is slightly more solid than your average sponge cake.

What do you need

for the cake:
200g softened unsalted butter (I made butter recently, it’s so easy. Go to the tutorial >)
200 g golden caster sugar
200 g self raising flour
4 medium eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
1 teaspoon of milk.

for the filling:
500 g double cream
if you can’t get hold of double cream, you can use mascarpone
0,5 teaspoon of vanilla extract
Strawberry or raspberry jam
strawberries

decoration:
strawberries, tips for the top and slices for the filling
blueberries
or
go traditional with a icing sugar finish

Method
Preheat your oven to 180°
Line the bottom of two 20 cm cake tins with baking paper.

Put the butter and sugar into a bowl and whisk until creamy.
Add the eggs one by one, whisk well so the egg is completely mixed in before you add the next one.
Add the milk and vanilla.
Add the flour and fold it in gently.

Divide the dough over the two prepared tins and spread out well with a spatula.
If you only have 1 tin, bake one first and then the other.

*If you have smaller tins, you can make some little cakes too!

Put in the oven for 25 minutes, whatever you do do open the oven or the cake will collapse.

For the cream
Whisk the double cream with a hand mixer until you get a stiff mixture.
Add the vanilla

Decorating the cake
Put the cakes with their good side down on a tray.
Spread the jam on the cake for the bottom side, then add the strawberry slices
Spread half of the cream on the other side and then sandwich this side on top of the other, the cream side down.
Press down so they stick together.
Spread the rest of the cream on top of the cake.
Use the tips of the strawberries to create the St George’s cross and then next the other red cross for Northern Ireland.
Now fill up the gaps with the blueberries to create Scotland.

All done!

Now make a cup of tea!

Please feel free to leave a comment, I love reading them!

Other posts in the ‘Best of British’ category can be found here >

You might also like:
Parsnip and apple breakfast cake
Glutenfree Chestnut cake
Vegan chocolate beetroot and walnut cake

« Previous Page

British food

Footer

Connect