Preserved Clementines

Our visitors on Christmas Eve brought us a beautiful mini-crate of clementines - with a wealth of citrus fruit already we wondered what to do with them. So whilst out at the supermarket we had a leaf through Arabesque and found a recipe for stewed oranges. Trying hard to memorize the recipe we bought the extra ingrdients and went home to tailor it to our clementines. So here is our version, served with Gran Marnier scented cream - though yoghurt might have been less rich.

2kg clementines, sliced (skin on)
800g granulated sugar

Place the fruit slices and sugar in layers in a large pan, then add enough water to just about cover the fruit. Simmer gently for a couple of hours with the lid on. Then remove the fruit and rapidly boil the liquid to reduce by half. Add the fruit back in - it should be all soft and squidgy and simmer for a couple of minutes. Then bottle in sterilized jars.

Boxing day ramble: Windsor to Cookham

After a fabulously indulgent day yesterday, we all decided that the little stroll through the village last night was not enough and we had to experience a little more exertion. So this morning we donned our walking shoes and headed for Windsor to start the next leg of the Thames path - Mum and Dad have been beetling their way along this 180-odd mile pathway that goes from the Thames barrier to the source of the river in Wiltshire (or more conventionally the other way around). We fair zoomed down the flat riverside path, and there was I thinking 12miles was a long way having been used to such distances last on the Pennine Way with back pack, tent and all. We made it to Maidenhead by 12.30 and chanced upon the Blue River Cafe which was open and serving lunch. By then we had been rained on several times and feeling a little chilled huddled in the dining room while our wraps and soup arrived. The mushroom soup was scrumptious and there were equal peels of delight over the duck, crab or tandoori wraps. But, as per usual, the pudding was la piece de la résistance - sticky toffee pudding with caramel ice cream - yummy!!!! The ultimate three miles peeled away and soon we were back at the car - once again drenched to the skin.



Back at the house, hot baths later Dougal was rummaging through boxes in the loft and came across a bottle of champers he'd been given for his 18th, which we were all sure had already been drunk - now 20years old (no D is not that old...yet) we were some what surprised, and even more so when it was found on sale on the internet at a considerable sum! Not that that is what is pictured above - this is Jurançon - with a nicely saucy name - that Dad found at Oddbins (not that I really want to tell you as I would quite happily never tell anyone so that we could buy it all - manic laughter in the background ....) "It is deliciously sweet wine for slurping... though you can have it with foie gras.... but slurping is good as it washes over you" says Dad. I couldn't sum it up better - delicious - go and buy it and slurp!!! (And if for some terrible reason you don't like it give it to me.....with the spiral eyes of hissing Sid..... (she's lost her marbles again)).

Cracker critters

Here are a couple of cracker jokes (from pre-Christmas day crackers) that I thought should be shared!

One:
What's white and fluffy and swings through the cake shop?

A merignue-utang


Two:
How do snails keep their shells shiny?

They use snail varnish

Merry Christmas!

A day in the big smoke

A surfeit of food bloggers

On Saturday for the first time I met a host of fellow food bloggers! My day started fairly early picking up Sabine of A Lot on My Plate, as it turns out she lives just around the corner from me! What a coincidence! We travelled down to London, via Wampe's, to visit Johanna the passionate cook. We were joined by Jeanne, Jenni, Celia, Joanna and Martina for a fabulous afternoon of chatter and food - what else!! Johanna got us warmed up with sausages & sauerkraut and then a cheese fondue - all exceedingly delicious. So much so that I forgot that I was having dinner with Mum and Dad and some how had to find room for an equally delicious duck and fig noodly number when I got home!

Above is my little contribution to the afternoon - we all made cookies (and of many varieties). Mine were adapted again from an Ocean Spray recipe - substituting dried blueberries for dried cranberries in a shortbread recipe. Next time I'll try the cranberries as the bluberries tasted rather like raisins and didn't turn the dough a lovely purple colour as I had anticipated.

Chinese Printmaking

Yesterday I evetually got round to visiting the Waterhall, part of Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery in the city centre, to see the woodblock printing exhibition of a selection of Chinese artists. The prints on display were produced between 1980 and 2000 and are representative of the more free approach to art in the post-Moa era. This is art for artsake and not for 'the people'. Particularly striking is the lead image, from the Muban Foundation collection, by Xiang Silou entitled Mother. Several of the prints eminate from the Heilongjiang province or the great northen wastes and these are particularly stunning images of great open landscapes. The exhibition runs until the 8th January.

Baking Day

What excitement there was on Saturday - I had a chap in my kitchen who wanted to learn how to make cookies! John started off with the gingerbread cookies that I made for IMBB not so long ago and then proceeded on to make my Mum's Nana's chocolate crispies (that would be my greatgrandmother's recipe!), which are incredibly easy to make and even easier to eat!! Then we had a go at a recipe from the chocolate book that Lilian sent me for EBBP - chocolate macaroons! Finally I adapted a cookie recipe from Ocean Spray - Cranberry Ginger Drop Cookies - I omitted the pecans and glaze, as I didn't have the ingredients in the cupboard. We split the spoils and he took most home to be sampled by his family!

Roman Sweets

On our last outing in Rome we popped down to Rosati's in Piazza del Popolo for a swift cappucino. On the way out I bought these two little packets of tasty treats - pure liquorice from Amarelli and aniseed digestives from Pastiglie Leone. Both are very good, though I have to admit that anything liquoricey or aniseedy is right up my street. The pure liquorice is quite astringent whereas the aniseed lozenges are sweet and crunchy.
I was intruiged to see that there is a liquorice museum on the Amarelli website - somewhere to put on my list of places to visit - I wonder if they have liquorice products from around the world, my house can currently claim to be harbouring liquorice sweets from Holland, Norway, Italy and England!
And on the Pastiglie Leone site I was very excited to see that they have made special editions for the upcoming XXth Winter Olympics . Now I wonder howe I can get my sticky mits on some of those to taste............

Helter Skelter

Carousel

Aubergine and Garlic Chutney

A picture of my lunch - thats not very exciting I hear you cry! But it is what is alongside the cottage cheese in my sarnie that I want to draw your attention to - aubergine and garlic chutney from Farm Chef. Mum bought a jar for me at a craft fair. And very delicious it is too - plenty of flavour and no harsh garlicy overtones - which is good as I share an office at my new job. Whats best is the inclusion of not only nutty seseme seeds but also onion seeds. Those are the tasty little black seeds which give naan bread its distinctive flavour!

Birmingham Christmas Markets

This year in the city centre, not only do we have the regular markets and the Frankfurt Christmas market (which must now be in its 4th or 5th year) but we also have a place for the local crafts traders down in St Martins Square! I popped into town for a little potter last Friday and bought some chocolate coated gingerbread - yummy, and later on found myself at the Gluwein stand in the rain - great stuff, though they were a bit heavy handed with the raspberry liquor! I am reliably informed that the crepes are good again this year. The very first year the German market came to Brum I remember driving home one night and seeing two halves of a giant Father Christmas proceeding down the road on a low loader. What could it be? It turned out to be the housing for the crepe stand!

A Very Roman Weekend

Last weekend saw Mum, Dad, Dougal and me trek off (at 5am no less) to Rome to celebate Mum's Birthday. Arriving around lunchtime we wandered through the streets and ate delicious proscuito and mozzarella or melazane and mozzarella sandwiches. The weather wasn't at its best but we ambled around various sites before getting to the Colloseum at dusk. Dinner on that first night (Friday) was at Giardino di Albino as recommended by Hotel Modigliani , where we were staying. The antipasti were totally breathtaking - there were more than twenty delicious nibbles - though we only sampled a few - such as the sausages, crustless quiche, sweet onions and fresh mozzarella. Dad chose a scrumptious bottle of Brunello to accompany our food. We all opted for the house special - roast suckiling pig with rosmary roast potatoes - exceedingly tasty and the portion was just the right size after gorging ourselves on the antipasti. Finally dessert - the boys couln't resist the tiramisu while the lasses ate almond cake, which was a light sponge covered in a thin layer of lightly toasted marzipan.



On Saturday we met for a tour of the sights of Rome used in the Dan Brown book Angels and Demons. Our guide gave us a quick run down of real and acknowledged events (which end in the 18th century) before showing us the Bernini statues in first the church of Santa Maria di Popolo before we progressed on to Piazza San Pietro (to see the West wind), the Pantheon via the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (where Gallileo was held for 18 days, which is not in the book), the fountain in Piazza Navonna and finally we walked across Angel's Bridge to Castel di Sant'Angelo. From here there is a 'secret' via duct to the popes rooms in the Vatican!


After a long day on the streets of Rome we headed for Federico Primo, a fantastic fish restaurant down by the column of Marcus Aurelius. Unfortunately the heavens opened once more and we were drenched on the walk down to the restaurant. However, it was well worth the effort. We all had pasta to start, I had spaghetti with lobster, which was lightly spiced with chilli. I then had the pan fried halibut - we all had a different fish, with Dad and Dougal trying out things we had never heard of! And finally an apple sorbet - which tasted so fresh I'm not sure they didn't churn it just for me! Dad came up trumps again with a beautiful bottle of Gavi.

Cookie Swap IMBB/SHF

What a fantastic idea from Jennifer of the Domestic Goddess and Alberto of Il Forno to host a Cookie swap! And what a great way to get back into cooking after my trip. At the edge of this festive time of year I have opted for gingerbread christmas tree decorations, which I make every year for hanging on the tree. Its a little early yet to put up a tree so that although I made these biscuits on Wednesday, I did make the full recipe below and put most of the uncooked dough into the freezer for later creations!! They're rather special biscuits because they come with their own music! They are made in my kitchen to the strains of 'Christmas Cookies and Holiday Hearts' by Teresa Brewer from a compliation CD called Christmas Time again, which is as old as the recipe, which I acquired from an old boyfriend - he had a use after all - though I modifed the recipe to include the sugar windows.

Gingerbread Christmas Trees

100g golden syrup
65g caster sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
a pinch of cinnamon
65g margarine
2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
275g plain flour
a pinch of salt
1 egg yolk

clear boiled sweets

First gently heat the syrup, sugar, the spices and margarine until the margarine has melted. Stirt in the bicarbonate of soda and leave to cool. (If its quite hot the bicarb will foam but this is fine). Sift the flour and salt into the syrup mixture and mix together, adding the egg yolk to make the dough. Gently kneed to a smooth dough with floured hands and then roll out thinly. Cut out shapes of your choice using a smaller cutter to cut out a window in each shape. I used Christmas trees but I also like using hearts or stars. Place the shape on a baking tray lined with non-stick greaseproof paper and place a small boiled sweet in the window. Whole sweets will melt though you can also crush them and put the powder in the middle, this way you can do mulit-coloured biscuits. Sugar-free sweets work just as well as full sugar ones. You may need to experiment a little with how much you put in the window depending on how thick your biscuits are, as the sugar when liquid can bubble out of the window. Bake the biscuits at 180°C for about 10-15min. As they come out of the oven use a wooden cocktail stick to make a hole in the top through which you can thread a thread to hang the biscuit. Cool slightly on the tray before lifting off and allowing to fully cool on a wire rack.

So today I have been back in Brum for a whole week!! And it has passed incredibly quickly. A week tomorrow I shall be starting my new job and all the 'lady of leisure' time will be over. Not that I mind particularly, but crikey its gone quickly. Apart from taking great delight in seeing all my friends over the past week I have also been to see the Bravery in concert, at the Academy. I thought they were an english band but it turns out they're actually from NY, jolly good nevertherless. Susan, Julian, Paul, Jenny, Alex, John and I spent a very merry few hours jumping up and down and singing along! So the plan for the immediate future is to head off to Rome en famile at the crack of dawn on Friday to celebrate Mum's birthday - Happy Birthday Mum!!

Teotihuacan

Wow what a day to round off my wee tour of Mexico! I took myself off to the ruined city of Teotihuacan today. Yesterday I got my achaeological juices flowing at the National Anthropology museum in Chapultepec, which was vast and without a guide was a bit like trying to visit the Kremlin museums without a guide! But I saw an awful lot of articles and managed to find the highlights! So today I took the bus and arrived about 10am at the biggest archaeological site I think I have ever been to. It was breath taking! I clambered up the citudela, the pyramides of the Sun and the Moon, upon which I ate my lunch (of cold pizza!). But the star of the show was as I wandered back to get my bus. On the west side of the avenue of the dead I saw the tell tale sign of some excavations and went to have a look. Here they had found under the 'newest' structure eight others and there was a walkway through the subterranean remnants. But these were fab - they still had the stucco on the walls and steps and there was a really feeling of how the place would have looked. In the picture, taken from atop the pyramid of the moon, you can see the avenue of the dead and the pyramid of the sun on the left, which would have been smooth and painted red!! How amazing!!

San Angel & Coyoacan

I was up with the lark this morning to visit the Saturday markets over in San Angel and Coyoacan, my guide book said the opened at 8am! Luckily, with travelling on the metro and not feeling like rushing I didn't get to Plaza San Jacinto until 9.30 to find the stalls just being erected! So I found a cafe for a cup of tea (harder than it sounds!) and watched the plaza decorate itself magnificent works of art. All were rather too large for me to even think about trying to take home but I had a lot of fun wandering about. Then I took a stroll down many cobbled streets to Plaza Hidalgo at the centre of Coyoacan. The square was filled with stalls too selling knick-knacks and sweeties. I had read in my inflight magazine from Tijuana that the traditional stickies around there were meringues, but I only saw the one vendor, but I saw lots of chaps selling wibbly jellies that looked gem-like and freshly turned out. I took the metro back, which was packed, and there seemed to be a large portion of the 20 million inhabitants of the city milling in the streets - a bit like Oxford Street on a Saturday I am sure.

sunrise
the vulture vortex overhead signifies breakfast

midday
the crisp-crust-sand enforces shade spent time

sunset
the bounce-reverberating concrete lulls the replete sunworshipper

Templo Mayor

Since I last wrote I have been travelling from Baja California to Mexico City. I had to spend a night on the bus and then another in Tijuana, a city I wouldn´t recommend anyone to visit! Apparently the youth of America go there to party - not a pleasant thought. Yesterday I arrived in Mexico City around 4pm and went for a little explore and some dinner. The streets near my hotel are filled with stalls, selling all manner of things but heavily biased towards Christmas at the mo (which is surprising as I hadn´t seen a single Christmas decoration while in Baja).
This morning I have visited Templo Mayor, the temple ruins in the city centre, they were opened up in the 1980s and exploration still goes on. There seem to be extensive archeological sites under the whole area of the Zocalo and the Cathedral. Its amazing to see the consequtive buildings of the temples, which were litteraly encased around earlier temples so that it looks like a giant onion that has had the top sliced off, revealing all for us to see. The adjoining museum houses a vast treasure trove of objects found during excavation, including the skull wall above!

Cave paintings

Well its been a few days since my last blog..... (I have sinned). But its been a busy time. On Saturday I sorted out a hire car, well really pick up, and a guide (Juve) from Cormorant tours in Loreto. We set out at 8am, driving north towards Mulege but turning inland towards San Isidro on a dirt road. Soon we turned off down a really rough road, salsaing along as I alternately avoided the boulders, sandy patches and catci! After about an hours driving we pulled up in what looked like the middle of nowhere and walked for about 15min into the desert. We came to a dam front, though there was no water behind it. A little fruther along I spotted a boulder covered in petroglyphs of fish and just in front of this a canyon wall rose. Here were the cave paitings of Conipule, deer, fish, turtles, hands and various unattributed pictures (some looked like lots of ladybirds). There were more petroglyphs on rocks across the dry river bed. We sat in the shade of a mesquite tree and Juve told me various tales of the native peoples and settlers from the 18th century. My favourite was of the all knowing paper!!

Once the mission had been established in Loreto, the people in the mountains invited the father to visit them and establish a mission there (now San Javier). Once this was done and the first harvest yielded wheat, the new father made some bread and entrusted a native boy with the loaf and asked him to take it with a note to the father in Loreto. The lad set off and smelling the bread thought he'd try some.... and of course it all was eaten! He presented just the note to the father in Loreto, who said there is supposed to be a loaf too, as written on the paper. But the lad denied it and said the paper was lying. The next year the bread was made again and the father from San Javier entrusted it to the same lad but this time followed him a little way. He saw the boy hide the note and then eat the paper, as he thought that the paper could 'see' what he was doing and report later!!

We drove back towards Loreto and then went up into the mountains again to San Javier. The drive was amazing - we followed river bed (arroyo) past the four or five cave paintings closest to Loreto and then went up the winding road through the canyons. San Javier came as a bit of a surprise as the streets were cobbled and there were lots of bouganvilla plants! Very jolly!! The mission, which is the best preserved in Baja, was built in three stages over 50 years, and still has the original paintings in the roof recesses. Behind the church is a 300 year old twisted and gnarled olive tree, and then an orchard, where we illicitly picked guava and oranges!!

Yesterday I took the bus to Mulege and today I have been out with Salvador to see more cave paintings. We too started early and drove off into the desert to La Trinidad rancho. So called for the three pointed mountain behind the ranch. We walked down to an old dam as well but this time it was filled with (very cold) water, which we swam across! On the otherside it was a short walk to the Trinidad paintings, the most famous of which is the Trinidad deer, which is leaping across the cave wall. We walked and waded our way round to the San Patricio paintings too. This was great fun but without a guide I would never have known they were there. These featured more delicate paintings of fish, whales and turtles.