Brixton beach

June 3, 2009

Gracie says the air smells like a greenhouse after the cloud burst today. The garden steams and drips, soaked in earth, grass, and sweet petal scents. Heads bowed and blousey, in a riot of pinks , the roses are heavenly. The Constance Sprys are doing the best ever: huge pink fluffy musky scented flowers, named after the Fifties’ kitchen goddess, whose resourcefulness brought the nation ‘Coronation chicken’ and the mantra that you can be ‘a millionaire for a few pence’ with a packet of seeds. A spirit after my own heart, but thankfully eating habits have come a long way from the curried mainstay of buffets and wedding breakfasts.
Talking of resourcefulness, have a look at the latest You Tube video where I have a go at revamping a junk shop dress. Ever since I double rolled the waist of a sensible school skirt to make it look more Mary Quant mini, I have been lopping off hems to give my wardrobe a new lease of life.

I don’t know about you, but I feel an attachment to the flowers and plants in the garden, not as strong as that for my children, or the dog, or the cat even, but an attachment nevertheless. Don’t send for the white coats yet (Prince Charles talks to his plants). I heard a PHD student on radio 4 discussing a series of case studies which examine the emotional bonds that people have with plants. It makes sense to connect with a living thing that you’ve nurtured and laboured over.

Then there is the sense of continuity that growing can bring. When my mum died, I dug up some of her peonies, and planted them here in the garden. Each summer the plants are bigger and put out an even more gorgeous show. Increasing natural beauty with nothing but a spade is one of the most satisfying things in life. The frilly drooping lipstick pink blooms remind me of a hot day at home and ‘ninety nine ‘ flake cornets from the ding dong ice cream van.

Notes from the vegetable patch:

I have resorted to pellets to protect the courgettes from snails’ fangs. The rocket is taking off and even the little basil plants are filling well - in pots. The basil planted in the ground was a dead loss. It is a such a tender little thing and I put the seedlings in too early. Shallots, garlic, potatoes, and chard all doing nicely. And I’m just about to plant out the seedlings from last year’s beans - a success rate of maybe 30%. Not so bad, but I will need a few more plants to top up. Pulled some radishes, which looked as if they’d been dipped in a wash of deep water colour - so pretty, but maybe a bit woody. Should have eaten when younger, but delicious enough with sea salt and pepper. Next to be potted is the tray of white nicotiana plants, grown from seed, which promise heady scent later in the summer.

I set myself a deadline of midday to write this, because the sun is now blazing and the glorious Brockwell Park lido beckons, where even the most sensitive creature will want to do a bit of swimming and frolicking in the shimmering blue cool water. How wonderful to be at the ‘Brixton Beach’ where only in February, there were 3metre high snow balls, tobogganists on For Sale signs, and an artist painting in a blizzard!

Tulips and wild garlic

May 7, 2009

Horrors. Some beastly person took a chance in our side passage and nicked my bike. Simple. I had neglected to lock it. I take a walk outside and let the beauty of the curled and furled parrot tulips take the edge off my frustration. The feathered buds seem to have been dipped in blueberry juice, clasped together like the furled wings of some exotic bird. In fact, more birdlike, than the the parrots’ beaks they’re named after. Soon they will unfold in a riot of undulating and frilly petals. Some will be white, others blue (actually a fuschia pink) and black ( not black, black, but more a deep burgundy black).

I’ve got to get replacement wheels, immediately. Not a pretty sentiment for someone who’s always banging on about the evils of self gratification, but the cycle bug has bitten and I’m fretting that I can’t hook the dog’s lead over the handlebars and let her take me at a cracking pace to the park, or nip to the Turkish shop for a bundle of early mint.

Justification swims around in my head for quietly siphoning off the family’s holiday money to fund the purchase, from petrol saving, to the health benefits that will stave off some horrendously expensive operation in my old age. I will make it up to them, I think , feeling like a wife who plays bingo with the housekeeping, on my way to Recycling at Elephant and Castle . And thank goodness, that in the third bike crammed aisle is a reconditioned classic sit up and beg, Raleigh, with my name on it. After a short test cycle under the grimy railway arches of one of London’s most gruesome interchanges (although developers have grand plans for it) the deal is done. Not the bargain rate I got in the wilds of Norfolk, but not a bad one either.

I”m back in business,and doing more making up to the family, by tearing up leaves of Jonny’s father’s wild garlic to strew in a gorgeous soup made with leek and potato. This is the season for wild garlic, ‘Allium ursinum’ or ransoms, and you can find it in any damp, shady woodland, or even a suburban garden, which is where mine came from. The flowers taste delicious, like garlic, too, and you can toss them in salads along with the leaves.

Living with all this white, is great because the location shoots that come to the house want a space that is light and airy, which is just the kind of feeling exuded by a white painted room. It doesn’t have to be a very specially mixed kind of white either, just a qood quality paint, in white. Dulux brilliant white matt emulsion is always reliable.

I can’t resist new colour though, and have taken the opportunity to spruce up the wood panelled attic, now my son is at university, with Paw Print’ a lovely muted stone shade from the environmentally friendly paint range by Earthborn.

petals for pudding

April 15, 2009

Pedalling past marzipan scented broom and blazing white magnolias in Battersea Park each morning put my head in the right place, for 4 days hard study at the botannical painting course I attended last week. The freesia is not my first choice to put in water on the table (maybe because the modern hybrids are too uniform in shape) but I began to appreciate its structure and complexity as our teacher Elaine Searle calmly guided the group of aspiring plant painters to observe, sketch, and watercolour the specimens.

The final painting now stuck up on my noticeboard, is far from brilliant but I’m pleased with my efforts. What’s best is that I’ve been given the tools to be more confident at painting herbs from the garden, the best escape from a dismal tasks like appealing against parking tickets. NB I must return the magnifying glass,needed for the course, and on loan from the local newsagent whose heavenly home cooked lunch time curries waft comfortingly around his shop. I’m so enthused by my nascent painterly skills I shall go out and buy my own lens  even if it does make you look slightly odd peering intently at a lone tomato.

The sprouting seed nursery in the office is getting under my feet as the fledging plants make their break towards the light. I have transplanted the zinnias into peat pots, which can go straight into the ground later on, as I they don’t do well with too much handling of the roots. I have a passion for the riotous pinks and purples of this frilly late summer flower, which looks so colourful in the border and as decoration.

The basil is brimming nicely and that will be next in line to pot on. I might even put the sweet peas outside next week, covering them with a bit of fleece to be on the safe side. CH Middleton an old school BBC garden expert from the thirties whose book An Outline of a Small Garden, I picked up for 3.00 from a junk shop suggests that the best way to get fine big flowers , is put them at least six inches apart in a deeply-dug and well manured soil, and give each one a good long cane or stick to support it; then as they grow, nip out all the the little side shoots as soon as they appear, leaving the one stem to each plant. In this way you will get very tall plants and extra fine flowers.
I am also really hoping that the sprouting leaves of night scented stock will be successful. You hardly notice it during the day, but on a summer evening it entices you outside with its powerful scent. I shall grow it in pots near the garden table so we can enjoy its scent on one of those calm balmy nights which are possible in this country if the isobars on the weather map are wide enough apart.

Out digging in more manure, and weeding last weekend, I noticed a garden regular, the blackbird with an albino patch, having a feast on unfortunate worms revealed by the earthworks. And sometime later the cat struck lucky with a mouse that she laid separated from its head at the bottom of the stairs…… to greet me first thing Monday morning. (Wild)life is tough on the flowerbeds in suburbia.

Thinking about the most delicious things I’ve eaten in the last 48 hours, the lemon cake was good, after our trip to Tate Modern to see Roni Horn’s exhibition, but not as good as the fork biscuits, made by my friend, Fiona .The recipe involves little more than flour, butter, sugar, lemon zest, and a fork for making ridged patterns on each round biscuit shape. I think they’ll be good for tea on Easter Sunday, and less sickly than all the chocolate that will be scattered about. I like to decorate eggs, and am excited with the acrylic colours I found in Green & Stone , one of the most fabulous art shops in London. See how easy it is to do on my Youtube Make and Do series.

Sowing seeds

March 24, 2009

It’s been snowing blossom. Our suburban streets have been turned into bridal avenues of trees laden with white and pink scented petals. Even the faceless housing estates look more inviting with clumps of daffodils and flowering cherries planted in the communal spaces.

Yesterday I was up early and staggering outside with a weighty bag of seed compost to get on with sowing. I tend to pick up seed packets on a whim rather than on a preordained expedition. I know more or less what I want, but like to gather together elements of my summer garden bit by bit. It gives me breathing space to mull over ideas. It’s not that I’m a procrastinator, rather that I enjoy the adventure of coming across surprises, like the chilli seeds raised by Latin American chilli lovers at the local community allotments.

When I was visiting my father in Somerset a couple of weeks ago, I wandered into a typical country high street hardware shop brimming with tools, and, inspired by the equally well stocked racks of seeds ,bought packets of zinnias the colours were so irresistible. And summer visions of salads tumbled with leaves aromatic basil, meant that there was no alternative but to ditch smelly cheese, for two varieties of basil from the artfully packed range of Italian Franchi seeds at the local deli cum cafe cum veg shop.

So back to the garden, and a balmy Sunday morning filling plastic trays with handfuls of compost and various seeds from little black specks of nicotiana ( heavenly scent on a summer evening) to peppercorn sized sweet peas. I soaked the seven year old sunflower seeds in water, gathered from our garden in Andalucia , and prized open the tough striped casings to remove the seeds. They look healthy enough, but I’ll know in the next 10 days or so, whether there’s still potential in them.

The trays are lined up, like cots in a nursery, in my office by the window on layers of newspaper and an old door so when I water them it will not soak the floor. I sit writing, glancing maternally at the potential garden offspring beside me.

I like a bit of architecture in my garden. Not waterfalls, giant urns or grand gazebos, but wigwams. Wigams of willow sticks , that is, and I’m very excited to have discovered the English Hurdle company on the net, who swiftly dispatched two bundles of willow sticks which I have bashed into the earth with a mallet and tied together at the top with all purpose hairy garden string. These twiggy structures are placed at the four corners of the flower and vegetable patch (my informal version of a traditional potager) and will support the climbing beans and nasturtiums. Until this year I’ve used cane pea sticks for my wigwams, but the willow looks more earthy and organic, and although its more expensive, will last longer than the canes.

My son is back for Easter and wants to know where to take his girl friend for lunch. Somewhere suave, mum, he says. How did I raise a boy with such expensive taste? Maybe he’s winding me up but then, he is a child of the boom time when expectations were high. Without extending his student overdraft even further , I think there may be a solution more in keeping with these straitened times. Ok, Brixton market, might not be the capital’s most romantic spot, but at franca manca wedged between stalls selling yams and Rastafarian bonnets, there’s the romance of eating the most heavenly sourdough pizzas baked in a special Naplese wood fired oven. And it won’t cost them more than £20.00 to eat sumptuously, in the word’s of one reviewer ‘the best place to eat pizza in the UK’

Spring has sprung with many of the season’s new frocks decorated with pretty florals. I have always fallen for buds and blooms and they needn’t look girly if you mix them with blocks of colour. And just as you don’t want to look like a flower border so you should also use florals in moderation around the home - as accents rather than all over floralness. Sprigged prints on lampshades are a good starting point if you want to introduce some simple country style in a plainly decorated room.

Rhubarb Rhubarb

March 3, 2009

Against the park’s winter wreckage, tiny citrus-scented white and pink flowers on the witchhazel are optimistic signs of spring where only four weeks ago children whooped and played in the extraordinary snow. I marvel at how the bulbs push up new centimetres of green. We have had a few good days feeling the sun’s weak rays. After months of nature’s inertia, suddenly everything seems possible and there’s a sense of urgency to get out and start planting. But late February and March can be a dangerous and deceiving time, taunting us with false starts.

Regardless, I have been wielding the fork and spade to prepare my vegetable patch. One irritating aspect is that the cat and dog think that it’s for their benefit, a new and soft litter tray. My deterrent against the pets, and the squirrels is some fine netting. I really felt like an old time gardener as I dug in bucketfuls of our home grown kitchen compost. It’s not all perfectly rotted, but eggshells help drainage and any alien bodies, like the knife I lost last summer, and mouldy oranges which shouldn’t have been put in the compost anyway, I put aside.
In a few weeks I’ll plant out my ‘chitted’ potatoes having left them in a cool light room. Warmth and dark will only encourage your seed potatoes to start towards the light, and you want the ‘eyes’ to be firm and holding the nutrients before they go into the ground. I’ve also got some garlic and shallots which are an experiment this year.

It’s gratifying to use last summer’s French bean seeds. I collected the dessicated pods dangling from the last trailings around the cane wigwams and stored them in plates on the old kitchen dresser. I plan to germinate them on the window sills in old eggshell trays filled with compost. I shall also see what comes of my own heirloom sunflower seeds which I collected five years ago from the farm where we lived in Andalucia. The important thing will be not let the seedlings get too leggy which is what they will do if exposed too long to the light and heat.

Do you know north Norfolk? If it’s not on your agenda, then add this eastern English rural backwater to experience space: wide open skies and flat fields spreading and fanning in the distance. As the light fades, the vast horizons here glow spectacularly in the last blasts of sunset and the huge sands by the sea at Holkham will revive most spirits.

North Norfolk remains a back of beyond place where old men in caps dig bean trenches in cottage gardens, and you can walk in solitude for ages with only blackbird song or the sudden flexing of a deer as it bounds through a hedge. I have often come back loaded up with herby lavenders, which do so well in this dryer part of the country or utilitarian country things like a traditional pestle and mortar or old folding card table from one of the unassuming secondhand shops in the small towns.

Last week I was there visiting friends, and on their advice, looking for a cheap bicycle. It is so much more scenic than looking for bikes, probably nicked, in a Brixton back alley. We drove past fields where white barn owls skimmed the hedge tops, and mounds of knobbly sugar beets were piled in thick sucking mud.

At Pode’s, a cluster of wooden sheds stuffed with old bikes and unrelated parts, a woman came out of a caravan on bricks and pointed us towards the possibilities. And there it was, a burgundy Raleigh Cameo (checking the online Raleigh Fans Forum I discover it is an eighties’ model) in good shape with two new wheels. After a quick wobble around I put my money on the counter including £1.49 for a bell. Back home at the local accessories shop what savings I’d made on the bike were soon swallowed up in lights, lock, helmet and so on. But I’m happy enough with the deal.

WORTH A VIST

Out and about, in between meetings, and gasping for a caffeine hit, I came across Tea’s me around the corner from Ladbroke Grove tube. This teapot-sized boudoir-style cafe with big print wallpaper, tinkly chandelier and one informal table to sit around is a joy. There are elegant white cakes stands of gingerbread men, wobbly scones and flapjacks. The espresso here is exactly strong enough.

This is the season for rhubarb and so here’s my recipe for a crumble. I add orange and lemon for some interesting flavour.

Crumble:
300g plain flour,
175g unrefined brown sugar
200g unsalted butter, cubed at room temperature
Filling:
500g rhubarb cut into small chunks
150g brown sugar
juice and rind of l small orange
juice and rind of 1 lemon

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
2. Mix the flour and sugar in a large bowl then rub in the butter, a few cubes at a time, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
2. Place the rhubarb, sugar, orange and lemon juice and zest in a 24cm ovenproof dish
3. Spoon over the crumble mix
4. Bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes until the crumble is browned and the fruit mixture bubbling
5. Serve with cream, icecream, fromage frais and maybe, if its the weekend or you want to be more decadent a glass of sweet moscatel wine

Snowfall

February 9, 2009

Last week a white ‘Narnia’ descended upon London and suspended the daily grind. Snow! The headlines said ‘’-5C and we’re all going snowwhere”. I pulled on the layers and walked through mounds of fluffy powder. Our road had become a heavenly avenue with snowladen branches bejewelling my steps. That sound snow makes as it packs under your boots! The velvety swish of car tyres on untreated streets!
And instead of fussing about interest rates we found ourselves asking how do you roll a snowman, what have you done with the sledge, can I build an igloo in the garden?

At the park I heard whoops and cheers, as if it were a blazing day at the beach. Monday had been cancelled along with school and all of London’s buses. The entire city surrendered to delight. It’s a scene one barely witnesses in London, one of innocence, of snow in a city that doesn’t do extremes of weather. Families were out in force with young children and dogs. People slithered downhill on anything from professional snowboarding kit to an estate agent’s For Sale board (very apt in the property downturn don’t you think?). A modern day Bruegel had happened before my eyes.

It  wasn’t a day for bicycles either.  On the subject, this weekend I’m visiting a man in Norfolk, who, according to my friend Fiona, has a shed of  secondhand models going for reasonable sums. Exciting. Maybe this time next week I’ll be pitching up at the post office and getting the thighs in trim on my own pair of wheels.

Thankfully the ice didn’t deter the shoots. Stylists, photographers and set builders are a hardy crew: one poor boy spent the morning getting bluer and bluer sawing chipboard amongst the drifts in the back garden, and the heavily laden props’ van negociated the Alpine conditions of Tulse Hill with aplomb. The Earthborn paint gang arrived with beautiful environmentally friendly rich chalky colours. I have my eyes on a soft mint green that would suit the garden shed which is need of a tart up for spring.

Good news. Garden experts predict the freezing weather will encourage an explosion of colour as the blanket of snow has put back the flowering of daffodils, crocuses, and snowdrops. For the past decade, spring flowers have come up early meaning the impact of the traditional spring bloom has been barely noticeable. Particularly pleasing to know, is that garden pests like aphids and white fly which survived the milder winters of the past few years are also expected to have been decimated in greater numbers.

Log fires, thermal leggings, and ginger and lemon tea are keeping me warm, plus the blue and white check blankets I bought over a decade ago from Welsh manufacturer Melin Tregwynt. Lux soap flakes and a quick spin on the wool cycle have maintained their fluffiness. It is also of no little importance, too, that the blankets are of top notch quality.

When fingers are swollen, after throwing snowballs while wearing under-performing woolly gloves, it’s time for tomato soup.

1litre stock ( I use a cube of dried organic vegetable stock if there’s no chicken stock in freezer or fridge)
2x 500g cans tinned tomatoes
l tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 onions
4 cloves garlic
4 teaspoons of dried oregano or
three or four sprigs of fresh and chopped
salt and pepper to taste
crème fraiche to stir in

Peel and chop the onions and garlic and sweat for 10 minutes or so in pan with the olive oil and oregano,
Add the tinned tomatoes, puree ,and stock and simmer gently for 15 minutes,
Pulverise in a mixer or with a hand blender.
Add salt and pepper.
Serves 4-6

Going south

January 26, 2009

The bedding is airing under a sheet of blue sky and I have flung open every door and window to blow away three months of fustiness.
Olhao is in quiet winter mode. It is bliss to bask in radiator sunshine and sip meit de lait coffee by a limpid sea. There are a few weathered fisherman in thick socks and wellingtons, the odd back-packer clasping a beer, and small children dressed in sensible woolly hats and gloves, like children used to be. Fashion backwater this is, there are headturning sights: finely figured gypsy men and women in black suits and swirling skirts from head to toe, could have stepped from a boho peasant advertising shoot. In the unseasonal cold, dark glasses and heirloom furs hauled out of the wardrobe for the aged devotees of Sunday mass look very la dolce vita or whatever the Portuguese equivalent would be.

The winter rains have tested my samples of limewash mixed with pig fat. The results are encouraging. Where I have patched up areas of faded limewash, the sticky animal cum mineral mixture has stuck well. A very effective defensive membrane against the elements, and the salt which weeps out of Olhao’s old walls. The recipe is mediaeval in composition: roughly 40kilos of lime to 3kg pig fat (buy from the butcher) for an oil drum load. The process involve gloves, and standing well clear when the the lime bubbles like a caustic boiling soup on contact with water. Left to mature, the mixture, soon ressembles soft ice cream, and the liquid it sits in is like the milk used by fresco painters

I had hoped the works for the room on top might have begun, but unsurprisingly the camara says that the entrance door must be moved because it is too close to my neighbour, even though the distance in question is a planning requirement for a house, not a room. The architect’s drawing make it clear that this 4 x 4 metre cube is hardly house or even flat sized, but together with a couple of other issues, it suggests that whoever has looked at the application has not attended to the detail. No matter, the revised application goes in next week. Meanwhile, more of the waiting, and because the euro is so strong against the pound I’m not exactly unhappy about holding onto funds.

It is Sunday afternoon. A flock of homing pigeons swoop and beat their silvered wings in fluttering unison. The house is breathing in fresh air and sunlight. I fill a bucket with hot water and clean the dust and dirt from windows and ledges. The streets are narrow here, and the close buildings create a comforting murmuuring resonance when you hear footsteps or passers by in conversation.

After the hard work it’s clams for supper. I buy them in net sacks from the market or one of the shellfish specialists on the seafront. Olhao is on the estuary of the Ria Formosa where 80 percent of Portugal’s clams are produced. They are therefore always fresh and sweet. I give the clams a wash and throw out any broken ones. I take down a flat pan and fry garlic in oil, add a splash of white wine, chuck in the clams and cook them for a few minutes until all the shells are open. Sitting under the stars in thick layers, a candle, and steaming plates of these fishy delicacies is my idea of heaven.

Iced gems

January 14, 2009

Just a few lines: I’ve been working on a presentation, tidying up after the teenage occupation over Christmas, and getting organised for a short trip to Olhao. In other words multi-tasking operations are in full swing. Not without rising levels of stress. I get so agitated when the server goes down or I can’t find my black felt tip.

A stint in the garden always clears the head, even if there are piles of dead matter that I didn’t quite get rid off before the big freeze began. Iced sugar plums come to mind as I cut the very last rose buds to put on the table. For the last month I have been delaying, but I must not put off the pruning any longer even for the sight of these pink gems.

It is grim to learn that Waterford Wedgwood has gone into administration - even though it looks as if there is a buyer for the 250 year old company. This isn’t just another casualty of the recession ( the long ailing Woolworths chain was hardly a great blow ) it is the erosion of a three hundred year old Potteries craft tradition. I have a great fondness for white Wedgwood porcelain plates, which not look beautiful but feel pleasing to handle. Let’s hope the new buyers can re-energise this great English name.

In anticipation of some grilled Olhao fishes I think I shall make some smoked salmon on bread. I could live on the combination of smoked salmon (try to use wild) cream cheese and a proper bread like sourdough. What makes it complete though is black pepper and good squeezes of lemon juice. This my family’s default treat for parties, picnics and weekend feasts.

Looking ahead

January 1, 2009

The new year feels like a fresh start as I walk through silvery streets in the early hours to meet daughter number two off the free New Year’s Eve night bus.

The garden is preserved in ice like frozen aspic. And the late rose I snip before breakfast, in thermal socks and clogs, is a frosted powder puff of petals. The earth is hard, but I’m not unhappy the squirrels find it challenging to dig up the tulip bulbs. I will be generous though and put out nuts and seeds for the undeserving beasts.

I don’t compile lists of new year’s resolutions because there are too many elements of my life that could do with fine tuning and better application. I am going to settle for just one: a bicycle. It will keep me fit and get me from A to B in a slow and carbon friendly way.

The bike must be the sit up and beg variety, even though it’s more the maiden aunt going out for a sedate pedal-look, rather than the groovy young thing on fast and smart alloy wheels. I’m going the secondhand route, but if I had the funds, I’d be on a spanking new Pashley Princess, complete with gold lined mudguards, ding-dong bell, leather sprung saddle, skirt guards and a wicker basket.

Dodging the sales crowds, and ten deep queues outside Yves st Laurent, on a trip into town the other day, it seems that Londoners are heeding mayor Boris Johnson’s declaration that it is our patriotic duty to keep shopping throughout the recession. I’m not so sure if it means yet another designer handbag. Even if it’s 75% off, what’s the point when there are already three more clogging up the wardrobe?

I think it’s the small luxuries, that cheer you up in hard times. Indeed, recent sales figures from the world’s big cosmetic companies, L’oreal, Beiersdof and Shiseido, confirm the so-called lipstick effect has returned with consumers increasing their spending on cosmetics even while economising on everything else.

Barry M, No52, lip paint (shocking pink) and a good read are favourite pick-me-ups. I am gripped by Wendy Moore’s Wedlock an intricately researched tale about the terrible marriage made by the Countess of Strathmore. It lives up to the blurb on the jacket ‘how Georgian Britain’s worst husband met his match’ with bloody duels, great hairstyles, abduction, deception and betrayal in every paragraph.

The Maurice Sendak inspired drawing is fabulous in An Awesome Book by Dallas Clayton who encourages children and adults to follow their dreams of rocket powered unicorns, and magic watermelon boats rather than mobiles and matching sets of silverware.

There is pear and ginger cake for pudding:

CAKE
125g softened butter
125g caster sugar
125g self raising flour
2 large eggs
4 tbsps ginger syrup
4 knobs preserved ginger, chopped
9-16 inch cake tin

SYRUP
90g butter
90g sugar
2 tbsps ginger syrup
4 large pears
juice 1 lemon

1 Melt the butter in a saucepan and add the syrup and sugar. Beat until creamy and a pale toffee colour. Pour into the cake tin lined with grease proof paper.

2 Peel, core and slice the pears, turning them in the lemon juice. Arrange the slices around the base of the tin .

3 Pour all of the cake ingredients, except the ginger, into a mixer and whizz until smooth. Add the chopped ginger and spread the mixture over the pear slices.

4 Bake at 190C for 45 minutes (approximate, as this will depend upon your oven). If the top browns reduce the heat. A skewer plunged into the middle will emerge clean if the sponge is ready.

Remove from the heat and cool on a rack. Serve with lashings of cream , creme fraiche, or ice cream.

Simple details

December 18, 2008

It’s a week before the big day and there’s masses to do. I’m metaphorically chasing my tail. What a production it is: travel plans, the lemon and sage stuffing my dad likes, last minute shopping, and so on. But I treasure my Blue Peter moments, making a festive herb wreath , and painting simple designs for cards. Even though it requires time and effort, it’s a kind of Crafty stand off with all that is crass and commercial about christmas.

These are some of my favourite elements for a simple christmas: a blazing log fire; an aromatic Norwegian spruce tree, homemade heart or star shaped biscuits; white tissue, brown paper, and garden twine for wrapping presents; homemade cards with potato cuts or watercolours; as many flickering candles as I have holders for, plus jam jars for tea lights; bowls of hyacinths, amaryllis or white narcissi, natural scent and colour which lasts for ages; mounds of clementines,orbs of orange that taste as good as they look; and ice cold Spanish cava (Sainsbury’s vintage is on special offer) to kick start christmas morning.