Miss Foodwise

Celebrating British food and Culture

sweet pie

Cherry tart and prostitution

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When I was a little girl my parents and I used to travel around Hungary in the summer. I can still remember the warm climate, and the little dresses I wore, many of which I have in a shoe box upstairs. What I also remember is the Bed and Breakfast, back then called ‘Zimmer frei’ in Hungary, which was run by an old couple. The woman looked a lot like my aunt and the man I can’t remember much. Their house was large for Hungary and by a main road, not far from a little restaurant by the river Danube where I always ate a very good omelette for supper.

Our time with the old couple was like staying with your grandparents, sure communication was complicated, they spoke a little German, so did my parents, and I as a four year old strangely enough spoke a good word of German too. They were loving people and love can be shown without the language barrier. Each day we entered our room, the old lady surprised us with a large stone bowl of the most plump cherries I have ever seen. As a child, and a picky eater, those cherries were some kind of heaven. Food I knew, and was so expensive at home that I could never really eat so many that my fingers would be stained in cherry juice.
And every day a bowl appeared, and every day we were greeted by the most loving smiles and gestures by these two wonderful people.

Two years after our last visit to the old couple’s Zimmer Frei we decided to do a detour and stay with them for a couple of nights. I requested it especially because I was eager to see my Hungarian grandparents as they had become to be for me. My parents too had never encountered such kindness and were eager to stay there again too.

So we drove to the rather large Hungarian house and as we parked the car I ran towards the door where the old lady – she must have been in her early seventies – was sitting in her chair.
But while I was running towards her the first thing I noticed was the anxious look in her eyes, and then the dress that she wore. As before she always wore granny clothes, now she was wearing a black embroidered dress with a deep decollete and very large earrings.

Anxious as she was, but really happy to see us, she told my parents that she would love it if we would stay but that she was no longer a Zimmer Frei since her husband had died the year before.
I wondered what the young girls were doing there if she wasn’t offering lodgings anymore, and somehow, while she was showing us to our room and I saw how the house had changed and lost all its granny appeal, I knew. I knew without without having the knowledge of years.
Heartbroken and realising that there might not be a bowl of cherries in our room each day, and hurt by the uncomfortable anxious look in my Hungarian grandma’s eyes we said we’d go for dinner and then come back to decide if we would stay.

The granny had tears in her eyes, and I felt like she was holding on to the summers and the bowls of cherries as much as I was doing. But those times were gone. The light had gone out in the rather large Hungarian house. It was replaced by sorrow, regret, and a need for survival.

So we ate an omelette at the restaurant by the river, and my parents gave me the choice on whether to stay at the granny’s house. Too young to understand what was happening at the house, but old enough to feel there was something wrong, I told them that I felt that it wasn’t right for us to stay there.

So we drove back to the granny’s house, and said our goodbyes, granny still trying to convince us we were so very welcome. But I was feeling so very sad. I could not understand what had happened and somehow I knew that by staying we would not only make her happy, we would also maker her very sad.

She had made her choice, and there would be no more bowls of cherries.

I hope she was at peace at the end of her life, so very long ago.

In her memory I have prepared this cherry tart, inspired by 18th century tarts, some of which you’ll find in my upcoming book. It’s a perfect tart to make when you have leftover sponge cake, that way you don’t need to bake a cake especially. The tart has a pleasant texture, though not like the tarts you are probably used to. Let me know if you’ve tried it!

x R



Cherry tart with curstard and sponge cake


What you need

Shortcrust pastry

 

  • 180 g white flour
  • 100g cold butter
  • 20 g icing sugar
  • tiny pinch salt
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 1 tbsp of cold water

Custard

  • 250 ml cream
  • 3 egg yolks
  • a blade of mace
  • a stick of cinnamon
  • 1tbsp of raw cane sugar

Filling

  • Sponge cake, preferably stale
  • 2 tbsp of brandy (optional)
  • a punnet of cherries
  • 2 tbsp of unsalted butter – or bone marrow
  • 22-24 sized pie pan or plate
Method
For the pastry
Take your butter and cut it into small pieces.
Put your flour into a food processor and add the butter and sugar.
Pulse for 8 seconds until your mixture has a bread crumb consistency.
To do this by hand, just use a blunt knife, cutting the knife through the butter and flour to work them together to a bread crumb consistency.
Add the water and egg yolk and pulse until you get big lumps, then turn out your pastry and knead briefly until smooth.
Now pack the pastry in cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 minutes.
Preheat your oven to 180-190C
Make the custard by bringing the cream to a gentle simmer with the sugar and spices.  In a bowl beat the egg yolks, pour a small amount of warm cream into your egg yolks and whisk thoroughly. This prepares your yolks for the hot liquid and will prevent it from curdling. Now start adding the rest of the cream, whisking until it is all incorporated. Allow to cool, then strain out the spices.
Cut your stale sponge cake in small dice and drizzle over the brandy.
Blind bake your pastry case in the middle of your oven for 25 minutes, allow to cool.
Now arrange your cherries and cake into the tart casing, placing a piece of cake in between each cherry. You can stone your cherries, or not, I left the stones and stalks on this time, but you can remove them if you are going to serve children, the tart eats easier of course without the stones.
When your tast casing is filled with cherries and cake, arrange little knobs of butter randomly in between your cherries and cake.
Now carefully pour in your custard, making sure it is evenly spread.
Place the tart in the middle of your oven and bake for 30-40 minutes or until nicely golden brown.
Dust with icing sugar, serve cold or lukewarm.

 

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Kentish Cobnut and apple tart >
Tudor prune tarts >
Treacle tarts and Treacle miners
Cherry brandy >

18th century Sweet Lamb Pie

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When I tell people about my passion for historical dishes, there are always those who look at me with disbelief and some amusement. They claim those ancient dishes were made of rotting meat masked with an abundant use of spices, or stodgy pottage, all eaten with the hands like barbaric creatures. It can’t be good, it can’t be imaginative, it just can’t be …

The theory that food in the Middle Ages was highly spiced to mask the flavour of rotting meat has been discarded as pure nonsense in the last ten years. Those who were served spiced dishes were privileged, those cooking with it were the master cooks to kings and queens. People of status that not only could afford this immense luxury, but also had a good supply of fresh meat and fish from their estates and beyond.

Our ancestors – of the elite – had a good understanding about spices, and how to combine them. Those flavour combinations would often taste peculiar to us. Not at all in a wrong way, but in a way that you realise it is a flavour sensation you have never tasted before.

This brings me to how tastes have changed.
Today everything is usually either sweet, salty or spicy. Bitter is making a modest comeback and sour too, but these flavours are seldom combined in our ‘modern’ European cuisine. It is even so that a lot of our foods are processed in factories which add flavour essences to make the food taste the same every time you prepare it. Of course this doesn’t happen when you cook from scratch, but it is an unfortunate fact that people in the UK buy a lot of ready meals. It is a trend that has luckily not taken off in Belgium, but it is very possible we’re not far behind. Joanna Blytham recently published a book about these practices in food processing factories, and she rings an alarm bell and employs you to smell your food, to taste, and realise the smells and tastes are not from natural ingredients. This is an evolution, when more people eat processed food, they get an idea about how tomato tastes, and how a beef stew should taste. It goes so far that when those people taste the real thing, they can’t take the sourness of a real tomato, the texture of the skin, and they find their own beef stew too bland and wonder where the flavour of the ready meal comes from. It’s not tomato, and it’s not beef. Butter in buttery pastry is not butter but other fats, with added butter flavour. It might taste like butter, but it might not completely and it might even change your taste and idea of how it should taste all together. I will go into Joanna’s eye-opening book in another posting but you get the idea for now. Today many of the people taste food, but don’t really taste the produce. Their tastes change. A very simple example is when I give someone a glass of raw milk to drink, I am used to it and drink it all the time, but my guests often can’t finish another sip because they find the flavour too ‘animal-like’. Most milk you buy in the supermarket to me tastes like white water, but this is how the people think milk tastes like these days.

Eliza Smith’s Sweet Lamb pie from 1727 is one of those dishes that really show off the old way of spicing food. The flavours come through in layers if you get what I mean. It is not really sweet, but the spices that are used, nutmeg, mace and cloves were considered sweet spices and used as a sweetener. Sugar is added too, but used rather like a spice. In addition to these spices, currants and candied peel are added to bring extra sweetness. Then also sweet potato is added, and artichoke hearts. The 1727 book also mentions that when artichokes aren’t in season, one can use grapes too.

The pie is built with pieces of diced lamb, dusted in the spices, and meatballs made with lamb meat, suet, currants and the same sweet spices with the addition of fresh parsley.
Layers are constructed of lamb, lamb meat balls, sweet potato and artichoke.
When your pot or pie is full, a blade of mace is added and the pie is placed in the oven for just over an hour. Just when you’re ready to serve, a ‘Caudle’ is made, this is a sauce which is added to the pie by pouring it in when you are ready to serve. It is usually there to lift the flavours of the dish. In this case the caudle is made with white wine, lemon juice, a little sugar and a couple of egg yolks.
This sauce gives the dish a little acidic kick and will guaranty you to want to empty the saucepan until the very last drop.

The pie can either be made in a free-standing pie crust like you see in the pictures I took when I was at Food Historian Ivan Day’s house, for a weekend of Georgian cooking last year. A hotpot is however another way of making this pie, this is a closed casserole dish used in the North of England, or you can use a deep oven dish and add a pastry lid, which is what I did the last time I made the pie, and what you can see in the first pictures here.

I made this Sweet Lamb pie not too long ago when we had two chefs coming for dinner, I did not know how they were going to react to the flavours of this dish.
Fortunately my friends are all about good, honest and natural food so they were eager to try. And they enjoyed it, one of the duo even asked me if it was okay to lick his plate and clean out the saucepan of caudle.

I say that’s mission accomplished, don’t you think?

The pie is incredibly flavoursome and eats just wonderful with the different vegetables and meat; the addition of a piece of salty pie pastry is a bonus but not a must if you aren’t up to making your pastry, but please don’t use shop bought pastry… that is just plain evil and doesn’t even contain butter!

I made the pie you see in the pictures above with pastry I had leftover from my recent pastry project… You might have spotted it on instagram.

 

18th century Sweet Lamb Pie


Serves 4

 

  • 250 g lamb meat from the leg
  • 250 g lamb mince (if you buy a leg, you can use the leftover leg to mince)
  • 2 large sweet potatoes, parboiled, cut in dice
  • 4 small or 2 large artichoke hearts, parboiled, cut in dice
  • or when you don’t have artichokes, use a handful of grapes, blanched.
  • 1 tsp of ground mace
  • 1 tsp of ground nutmeg
  • 4 cloves, beaten
  • 2 blades of mace
  • a generous pinch of good black pepper – or 3 pieces of long pepper, beaten
  • 1 tsp each of candied lemon and orange peel, in small cubes
  • 50 g of shredded suet
  • fresh parsley cut finely, about 1 tbsp
  • currants 50 g

For the Caudle

 

  • The juice of 1 lemon
  • The same quantity of white wine
  • 1 tsp of sugar
  • 1 egg yolk
  • a little knob of butter

Preheat your oven to 160° C

Beat your spices, but leave the two blades of mace whole.
Dust the meat with half the spices, add the other half to the minced meat.
Make your minced meat balls with the spices, suet, parsley and 2 tbsp of currants.
Have all your components of the dish ready so you can start making the layers.
Place some meat, meatballs, sweet potato and artichoke into your dish or pastry and strew over some currants and candied peel, continue until the pie is full.
Close the pie with pastry, making a hole for steam, or put the lid on and pop in the middle of your oven for 1 hour to 1hr and 15 minutes. This could be longer, it depends on the quality of your meat, decent meat needs less cooking. So try and taste, when you have a pastry cover, user a skewer to prick to see if the meat is tender.

When ready, take out of the oven and make your Caudle.
Bring your wine and lemon juice to a simmer with the sugar, in a separate bowl, have the yolk ready and add the warm caudle like you would for a custard. Finish with a little knob of butter and warm again over the fire.

Pour the caudle into the pie, and serve. The caudle will mix with your pie juices and create a sauce.

If you’re making pastry, this is an easy recipe to try

For the pastry

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

 

  • 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 organised.
  • 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. Make a hole in the middle so steam can escape.
  • Decorate the pie lid if you like and eggwash generously before putting into the oven on one of the lower parts.

Serve with green asparagus if you have them, or green beans, or just as it is.

The pictures below were taken at Ivan Day’s Georgian cooking weekend in the Lake District

 

The Prune Tarts at Tudor Court

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In 1615 English poet Gervase Markham mentioned ‘a prune tart’ in his book “The English Huswife, Containing the Inward and Outward Virtues Which Ought to Be in a Complete Woman“.
In his beautiful way of writing he states:
“Take of the fairest damask prunes you can get, and put them in a clean pipkin with fair water, sugar, unbruised cinnamon, and a branch or two of rosemary; and if you have bread to bake, stew them in the oven with your bread…”

He goes on to explain in detail how to finish the prune puree and how to assemble the little tarts he likes to shape into little birds and flowers by first cutting out a pattern in paper to trace on the pastry. The tart cases or ‘coffins’ as they were called in times gone by, were raised by hand.
During Tudor times pastry had evolved from the Medieval inedible crust -that was there only to hold a filling- to sweet and savoury pastry to enjoy as a part of a dish. Eggs and butter or suet were beginning to be used making the pastry more refined and giving the cook the opportunity to be inventive with fillings as well as with decoration. If you look at Renaissance paintings especially by the Flemish and Dutch masters, you will notice the pies who are depicted on the tables as dramatic centerpieces, sometimes wildly decorated with stuffed swans or geese resting on top.

 

But it isn’t the only change, the Tudor court wanted to show their worldliness employing Florentine sculptors and painters for great artistic commissions, decorating royal palaces and most likely even influencing the kitchen. I can’t but help to see the striking recemblance between an Italian ‘Crostata di marmellata‘. In 1570 Bartolomeo Scappi, an Italian cook mentioned the different recipes for pastry in his book, it would take 30 years before a guide like that was published in Britain. ‘Delightes for Ladies‘ was published in 1602 but Gervase Markham’s book a decade later would provide a much easier to follow set of recipes.
It always pleases me to find links between Italian and British cookery, these are my two favourite cuisines and I feel there are a lot of things linking the two together, not only in dishes but also in philosophy.

Prune tarts bring back memories of my childhood. Normally only eaten on Ash Wednesday in my home town Antwerp, prune tart would be on our sunday breakfast table quite regularly. Our local bakery used to have the best prune tarts in sizes big and small and my mother used to buy a small one for me because she knew it is one of the few sweet things I truly enjoy.

For these prune tarts I tried to recreate a tart I had tasted years ago. As it is my favourite of tarts I can be very specific in how it should taste, the pastry can’t be too sweet and has to be very thin making the prunes the star of the show filling your mouth with a soft puree full of subtle almondy flavour and coloring your tongue black. The pastry would merely be there to encase the prune puree and to give an extra texture and buttery bite to the tart but it is very important to get it right. You can’t have the prune puree without the crust, they are entwined.

I called upon an old friend I used to visit in her bakery when I should be out partying. Now living a sunny life in Thailand running her own shop in baking equipment she gave me her recipe for the pastry, remembering her prune tart I gave it a go.
Although I prefer Gervase Markham’s method of slowly cooking the prunes in the oven while you are baking a bread or stewing a tough cut of meat, one can easily -like he states as in his book – cook them on a moderate fire. However when stewed slowly in the oven, you do get a more intense flavour so next time you are cooking a Sussex Stewed steak, pop some prunes in the oven as well.

What do you need (makes 4, 15 cm wide tarts)

For the pastry (I halved the recipe, for 1kg of flour use 5 eggs)

  • 500g organic plain white flour
  • 250g raw cane sugar
  • 250 g cold butter, unsalted and cubed
  • 3 organic eggs
  • vanilla, half a teaspoon
  • 1g baking powder

For the filling

  • 750 g dried prunes
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons of Muscovado sugar or Molasses

Equipment

  • 4, 15 cm tart tins
  • rolling pin
  • greaseproof paper

Method

  • Combine the butter and the sugars using a wooden spatula or spoon until the butter is covered in sugar
  • Now start to add the flour cup by cup carefully combining the mixture with a blunt knife, cutting the butter into smaller bits to combine. The mixture looks like breadcrumbs now.
  • Add the eggs and the baking powder, and use one of your hands to work it in. At this point it is easy to turn the dough out on a clean working surface.
  • Knead until you get a smooth dough, but be careful not to overwork the dough so as soon as all combined well shape it into a brick and wrap it it cling film.
  • Chill the pastry overnight
  • Soak the prunes overnight in water, just covering them

The next day…

  • If your prunes have stones, remove them and try to remove some of the kernels using a nut cracker. The stones are hard to crack so never mind if you can’t get them out. It doesn’t make the tart any less delicious.
  • If you do get a couple (4 or 5) out, add them to the prunes to stew, they will give a wonderful almond flavour.
  • Bring the prunes to the boil with the soaking water, the two tablespoons of muscovado or molasse sugar, the lemon juice and let simmer for about 30 minutes or until the water is reduced on a medium flame.
  • Discart the water, let it cool, remove the kernels if you had them, and when cooled puree with a blender.
  • If the puree is too runny at this point, put it back on the hob to reduce a bit further. If you had to do this, let it cool again before further use. It will become more solid when cooled.

When the prunes have cooled

  • Butter your tart tins and dust with flour
  • Cut of a piece of your cold pastry, roughly the size of your tart tin. It will be very solid so start by pressing it down with a rolling pin on a generously floured work surface.
  • Transfer your pastry to a piece of greaseproof paper
  • Sprinkle some flour over the pastry and start rolling it until it is about 3 mm thick, when the pastry sticks to the rolling pin, add flour, keep adding it so the pastry stays dry.
  • Check if your pastry isn’t sticking to your greaseproof paper, cut off the extra pastry so you remain with a circle that is just a few cm larger than your tart tin.
  • Gently turn the pastry over the tart tin and let it sink into the shape.
  • Now use your fingers to set the pastry into the tart tin and crimp the edges.
  • Don’t overwork the pastry as it should remain cool.
  • Transfer the tart pastry to the fridge while you do the other 3

Preheat your oven to 160° C

For the lattice top*

  • Roll out your pastry to 3 mm as stated above
  • Cut 1 cm wide strips, dust them well with flour.
  • On a sheet of greaseproof paper -dusted with flour- create the lattice as shown below
  • Fill your pastry with the prune filling
  • Gently but quickly turn over the lattice top to fit on top of the tart
  • Now you will most likely need to adjust the straps of pastry so it is straight. Don’t worry, if it is your first time it will either look horrible or you will be in luck and it will be quite straight from the first attempt.
  • Crimp the edges of the straps, cool in the fridge and proceed the same way with the other 3 tarts
  • Put in the middle of the preheated oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes, or until nicely brown, no less than an hour for sure.
  • Leave the tarts to cool in their tins completely before serving

* If creating the strapwork seems daunting, why not cut out shapes with a cookie cutter to place on top of the prune puree, it can look just as nice!

You will most likely have leftover pastry, wrap it in clingfilm, bag it and freeze it for when you need it. Always keep prunes in your larder for when you are using your oven for a long time, you can bake the tarts at the same time and get more out of your energy usage.

Enjoy!


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Cobnut and apple tart
Blaeberry pie

Cranberry and Apple Spelt Crumble – a review of the new Falcon enamelware

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Those blue rimmed pie dishes, plates and mugs are something I’ve always associated with Britain …
Imagine a rustic wooden table in a ‘chocolate box cottage’ kitchen, I’m sure you can see the white enamelware stacked somewhere in easy reach. Because these are practical utensils, durable and -yes in my opinion- pretty to look at. They are the essential oven to table ware, the perfect picnic crockery and the last thing we like to see when finishing a delicious blueberry pie.
Falcon enamelware seems to have always been there on your kitchen shelve, like the color blue in the sky and the smell of freshly mowed grass in the air. A thing your kitchen needs, a thing that will age with you and even outlive you.

I love these simple and timeless objects. Yes, I find happiness in the little things …

I would hope for my future children to cherish my old enamelware and have memories of me serving him or her a cranberry and apple crumble in them. I would give them a set of their own when they marry, to keep in arms reach in a cupboard in their kitchen too. More on the origins of the humble crumble later on…

The  people at *Falcon asked me to test their bake set and I love it.
They have re-launched their line of enamelware and now have a few new vibrant and attractive looking colored rims and they are even more durable as some of the items are fitted with a much heavier gauge. This makes them a bit more expensive than the old range but you do get a better product.
I’m blown away by the red ones… if you know me … well … red is my color!
Apart from new colors the design mostly stayed the same, thank god for that.
I am missing the round pie dishes though, but perhaps they will be re-launched eventually as well.
The sets come in great looking boxes, the graphic designer in me approves.
I will most likely keep the box as well …

The first thing I baked was a Cranberry and Apple Crumble.

The apple crumble became part of British traditions during World
War II. History says that  the Apple Crumble was invented due to strict food rationing,
to replace the apple pie which contained too much quantities of flour compared to the crumble. A simple mixture of flour, bread crumbs, margarine (during the war there was a shortage of real butter) and sugar created a pastry lid over stewed fruit.

Cranberry and Apple Crumble

What do you need

  • 650 g cranberries
  • 2 Bramley or any other cooking apple diced
  • 100 g soft raw cane sugar

For the crumble

  • 100 g wholemeal spelt flour
  • 50 g raw cane sugar
  • 60 g rolled oats (I sometimes use muesli)
  • 100 g cold unsalted butter
  • 0,5 cup of shaved almonds     

Method

  • Braise the fruit in a pan, with sugar over medium heat.
  • Leave the fruit whole, it should not me reduced to jam

For the crumble

  • Mix flour, sugar and oats.
  • Rub the butter into the mixture, I like to use a knife to do this at first, this way the butters stays cold.
  • Add the shaved almonds.
  • Now use your fingers to bring the dough together leaving it rough and crumbly. 
  • Put the mixture into the fridge for about an hour.

Preheat the oven to 160° celsius

  • Place the fruit in the baking tray
  • Arrange the crumble on top, divide evenly  
  • Put in the top side of the oven and bake for 30 to 40 minutes

Serve with Clotted cream or vanilla ice cream.
Enjoy!

*I received this bake set from Falcon, other than the set I didn’t receive any payment.

You might also like
Bramley apple and blackberry pie > 

I love reading your comments and will reply as soon as possible.

Cobnut and apple tart

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I’m very happy to announce, I’ve been asked to write for Great British Chefs
Here I am, a Belgian girl writing about Britain and British food and I am really proud that they have taken me under the Great British Chefs’ wing.

I didn’t have to think twice when I was asked to write about something for a mostly British audience, recently I’ve been quite obsessed with Kentish cobnuts and I have many more recipes up my sleeve.

When
I think of my beloved Kent, apples, cobnuts, cherries and hops are the
four things that define this county for me. They have moulded the
landscape with their orchards and plats and have influenced the kitchens
and culture.

I
discovered Kentish cobnuts on a late summers day when they are sold
fresh in their green husks. The kernels are then juicy and resemble a
chestnut flavour, yet more delicate. When autumn arrives the cobnuts are
ripened, the husks, then turned brown, are removed and they look more
like the hazelnut we generally know. Now they are dried and referred to
as Golden Cobnuts. The flavour of the nut has developed while ripening,
and has gone from fresh and juicy to an intense nutty flavour. When
stored dry they keep till christmas. The Kentish cobnut is larger and
more ovoid shaped than a hazelnut and also has a different and slightly
more intense flavour.

Cobnuts
generally grow in Kent, where the variety the ‘Kentish Cob’ was planted
in the 19th century by a Mr Lambert of Goudhurst.
They
have however been around since Tudor times and were but revived by the
Victorians who considered them to be a delicacy. There are more
varieties of cobnuts but as Kent has historically been the main county
producing cobnuts, the term Kentish cob is often used generally for
every variety of cobnut grown in Britain.
Cobnut
orchards are known as ‘plats’ and the nuts are harvested by hand by
workmen called ‘nutters’. In the old days cobnuts were also sometimes
picked by hop pickers coming down from London as cobnuts and hops both
ripen at the same time. The disappearance of the Hop pickers roughly
corresponds with the decline of the cobnut plats.

The
last few years there’s been a revival in cobnut growing as well as in
hop growing as many people are opting to buy British and the growing
amount of micro breweries are showing interest in Kentish hops again.
Cherry orchards are being planted once more and apples are still plenty
and taking over the British greengrocers.
I
had Kent on my mind when my sack of golden cobnuts arrived and I was
also in need of a cake or tart that is not only comforting and cosy on a
dreary autumn day but also a bit more nutritious than your average
tart.
This
cobnut and apple tart is something between a cake and a tart, I am
using spelt flour and lots of cobnuts and apples so this tart will not
only give you your dose of sweets but also energy.

For the recipe head over to the website of Great British Chefs here >

Special thanks to Farnell Farm for the cobnuts! www.farnellfarm.co.uk/

Bramley apple and Blackberry pie

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Today is apple day.

In 1809 a young girl, Mary Ann Brailsford, planted a few pips in her garden in Southwell. Those pips grew into the apple tree that is responsible for one of Britains most beloved fruit.
Forty years later a local butcher bought Mary Ann’s cottage and garden, after a decade of enjoying the trees fruits a nurseryman from the area asked him if he could sell some of the apples from the tree in his garden. The butcher agreed but wanted the apples to bear his name… Bramley.

Bramley’s seedling were an important source of food during the First World War as during the 1900s the trees were extensively planted and the crop plenty.
Every single Bramley apple tree has come from the tree planted in that cottage garden in Nottinghamshire.

The tree was almost lost forever when in 1900 a destructive storm knocked it over, leaving it wounded on the grounds of the garden where he had grown and grown for nearly a hundred years. But from the old wood of the tree emerged a new one and it grew to be the monument we can see today.
The Bramley apple tree in Southwell has become the towns treasure and they host many celebrations of the Bramley Apple, there even is ‘The Bramley apple Inn’ which is located just a few doors away from where the original Bramley apple tree still grows his apples to this day.

The lady who lives in the cottage now, acquired the house from Mr Bramley 50 years ago and has cared for the tree ever since.

Bramley apples are gorgeous in pies, tarts and traditional British puddings, simply covered in shortcrust pastry or with custard. Bramleys are also good to use in cakes, chutneys, jams, compote, orchard sauce to accompany pork and for cider making.
For this pie I chose for the classic apple and blackberry combination. The blackberries are added at the end so they give texture and color to the dish. 

Do you want to know more?
Why not pay a visit to Brogdale farm in Kent, home to the ‘National fruit collection’.
They
host an Apple festival and a Cider festival every year. If you have an
apple tree in your garden and you think this might be a very old
variety, you can send in a sample and they will investigate the fruit.
www.brogdalecollections.co.uk

Bramley apple and Blackberry pie
 
Sweet Shortcrust pastry

What do you need:
500 g plain flour
100 g icing sugar
250 g cold butter cut into small cubes
half a teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large free-range eggs
1 teaspoon milk

  • Sieve the flour and icing sugar on to a work surface or into a large bowl.
  • Throw the cubes of butter into the flour and using a knife start cutting them into even smaller pieces mixing it with the flour and sugar. This is a trick I use to keep the butter as cold as possible, if you touch the butter it melts quicker.
  • To create good Shortcrust pastry your butter should be kept cold and your dough shouldn’t be over worked as this will activate the gluten.
  • When you have a crumbly texture start using your hands to rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles bread crumbs.
  • At this point ad the vanilla
  • Ad the eggs one by one, and the milk, using a knife or fork to work it together.
  • When the mixture is crumbly again use your hands to work the mixture until you have a ball of dough.
  • Remember don’t work the pastry too much as it will leave you with a whole other texture.
  • Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill for at least 30 minutes.


Preheat your oven to 180° gas

Prepare the filling while the pastry is chilling

What do you need:
5 Brambley apples, cored, peeled and cut into halved wedges
100 g Blackberries
50 g butter
80 g light brown sugar
1 egg beaten
a sprinkle of caster sugar
20 cm shallow pie dish

  • Put the butter into a saucepan and melt over a low fire
  • Ad the sugar
  • Ad the apples and slowly cook for 10 minutes
  • Ad the blackberries and stir briefly and some of the berries release their juice
  • Let it cool slightly
  • Tip the fruit into a sieve and keep the juices and fruit aside
  • Take your pasty out of the fridge
  • Cut the dough in half and put the second piece back into the fridge
  • Roll out the dough until it’s about 5 mm thick
  • Butter your pie dish
  • Line the pie dish with the pastry
  • Trim off the excess pastry around the sides with a sharp knife
  • Put the fruit into the lined pie dish so you have a little mount in the middle
  • Use a spoon to add a bit of the juice, not all of it or it will get too wet.
  • Take the rest of the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out like you did before
  • Lay the pastry over the pie
  • Trim off the excess pastry around the sides and crimp the edges of the pastry together with the back of a fork or your fingers.
  • Decorate your pie if you like, cut an opening in the pastry so the steam can escape
  • Brush the pastry with the beaten egg and sprinkle over some caster or cane sugar

* if you have leftover pastry why not make some shortbread!

Place the pie on the bottom of the preheated oven for 50 minutes to an hour.
The top should be golden and crisp.

Serve with a dollop of clotted cream or double cream.
Enjoy

You might also like
Blaeberry pie 
Kentish Cobnut cake 

Blaeberry pie – Going back in time

by 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

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Victoria sandwich cake for Queenie