The Waiting Room

Finally I have a little time to tell you about my trip. I’ll start with where we stayed, because it was where the magic began.

The Waiting Room is a holiday cottage that used to be a station waiting room, built in the 1850s.

It was very cosy and comfortable inside, with a lovely fire to warm us up. When we arrived there was a tray set out in the kitchen with home made scones, gingerbread, and eggs laid by the hens outside!

In the corner of the station house, facing away from the road, there is a Royal Mail postbox that no one knows about:

The house really is in the middle of nowhere so it’s only used by the owners and anyone using the holiday cottage. It’s cleared twice a day and was painted just before I took this photo. The Royal Mail take their Universal Service Obligation seriously!

As you can see the station platform is still there, but the tracks are gone. I did get woken up in the mornings by a busy woodpecker though! The wildlife in the area was incredible, we saw huge tawny owls, pheasants, grouse, quail, mice, fat glossy rabbits and hares, and some mystery mammal scurrying across the road one night with a slightly fluffy tail that wasn’t a ferret, stoat, or squirrel. I’d love to think it was a pine marten as they are extremely rare but I don’t think it was. We didn’t see any red squirrels, sadly.

Our hosts were lovely and full of suggestions of things to do and places to go in the area. They were very supportive of local, independent businesses. It was on their recommendation that on our final night there, we went to the local pub, the Crown in Catton. It was hands down the best pub I have ever been to. We happened to go on “Music and Pie night”. The pub was split into three rooms – the big(ish – it was a small pub) room with the bar, and two smaller rooms off to the side. One of these rooms was packed to the gills with musicians who entertained us with traditional Northumbrian music all evening.

The pies were all homemade, and I had a tomato and goats cheese pie that was delicious. The choice of drinks was also excellent – I started with a locally distilled sloe gin and tonic (incidentally Northumberland produces the best tonic in the world in the form of Fentimans), and moved onto one of the selection of locally brewed real ales from the Allendale Brewery. These were actually made by the barmaid’s brother! The staff offer generous tasters of every ale before you choose. I chose the ironically-named “Indecision” ale, which was fantastic.

Dessert could not have been more local – apple crumble made from apples from a tree 50 yards down the road! And delicious too, although we suffered from eyes bigger than our stomachs and could have done with sharing a portion.

The pub had a great welcoming feel to it and was clearly well-supported by locals. They do Indian Curry Nights, Scrabble and Games nights, and all sorts of other events. There were community notices up on the walls. If only every pub was like that.

Big ol’ foody catchup

I arrived back from Vindolanda nearly a week ago now, and have been dying to blog about all of my adventures. But disaster struck, and the gods of BT have decided we need to go through the Labours of Hercules in order to get our internet back and running again. Combine this with the kind of carnage that ensues after being away from work during the final stages of a major project, and you get the picture…

So let’s rewind, and catch up on a few of the things I got up to before I went away.

On a baking hot Sunday (pun intended) I went down to City Hall to see Sarah Kemp from Wild Card PR, who was selling some of the baked goods she had made with the help of a very shiny red Kitchenaid. I tried a tasty Earl Grey lemon cake.

Sarah was selling these at KioskKiosk, a sort of travelling stall set up and run by her boyfriend, Jack Hemingway. It small creative businesses the opportunity to sell their creations rent-free. I resolved to tell all of my designer friends about it. And now I have (are you reading this, Kalman? Orli?).

Children playing in the fountain.

The kiosk. Shiiiiny Kitchenaid.

The recipes for all of the cakes Sarah made are in the Kitchenaid 90th anniversary cookbook, and Sarah kindly gave me a copy. I flicked through it eagerly on the Tube on the way home, it is a beautiful book and the recipes look delicious – this was confirmed by the couple craning to read it over my shoulder!

A couple of days later I went out for dinner with Kavey of Kaveyeats and Su-Lin of Tamarind and Thyme at Ten Ten Tei, a Japanese restaurant in Soho. This was the first time I had met either of them, despite earlier attempts to meet up, and they were both lovely. We ordered what seemed like everything on the menu – the grilled mackerel, grilled aubergine with bean sauce, tofu steak, crispy salmon skin were all delicious. When a visiting friend asked me to take her to a Japanese restaurant, I had no hesitation in going back there.

I met Kavey again at the UKFBA stall at Covent Garden, where she was selling a range of sweet treats and jars of goodies from her mum’s recipe site, Mamta’s Kitchen. I bought the Spicy Tomato Ketchup, which disappeared fairly quickly so now I will be consulting the recipe to make some more.

In final foodie news, in a shock internet/real life crossover I teamed up with bloggers BiggestJim and MsMarmitelover to do Allegra McEvedy’s cookalong on the Guardian’s Word of Mouth blog. Usually Jim and I read about each other’s cookalong trials and tribulations in the blog comments, and this was the first time we had done the cookalong in the same kitchen. Underground restaurateur and woman of mystery MsMarmitelover (y’know, if you’re going to have a secret identity I really think it should be “Marmite Woman”) was a cookalong virgin, so it was a real shame for her that unfortunately the Guardian folk were having severe technical difficulties. We really appreciated Suse’s efforts in getting Allegra’s instructions up, and we still had a lot of fun making Allegra’s fritto misto.

And that’s it for my internet time today. I’m off to meet my dear friend Marissa and then work all weekend. Normal systems (according to BT, but they’ve been wrong before…) should resume on Monday!

Vindolanda

I have lots to blog about, but I’m about to head up to the north of England to be a volunteer digger at Vindolanda for a couple of weeks.

This is a picture I took when I visited last year. There will be plenty more to come! I will try and keep my blog updated while I’m gone but I’m not sure how much internet access I’ll have yet. Wish me luck!

Yoyos

In Australia and New Zealand, it is traditional to have a meal between breakfast and lunch called morning tea. It is very common to stop work at 10:30 or 11 to have a cup of tea and a snack, usually a cake or a biscuit of some kind.

There are a lot of biscuits that are unique to New Zealand and Australia:

• Afghan biscuits, which you may think would come from Afghanistan but they don’t. They are a chocolate- and cornflake-based confection with chocolate icing and half a walnut on top
• Belgium biscuits, which don’t come from Belgium but are two cinnamon-flavoured biscuits with jam sandwiched between them and pink icing
• Shrewsbury biscuits, can you guess where they are from?  That’s right, nowhere near Shrewsbury.  They are different from the British biscuits of the same name, instead they are two biscuits with jam sandwiched between them and a hole in the top one so you can see the jam.
• Anzac biscuits, which are based on oats, coconut, and golden syrup
• Ginger kisses, two soft ginger-flavoured biscuits with a cream filling

As for cakes and slices, we have:

• Lamingtons (I freely admit these are Australian in origin, but widely available in New Zealand tearooms) – a square of sponge, dipped in raspberry jelly or chocolate icing and then coconut
• Apple slice, two squares of shortbread with a stewed apple filling
• Ginger crunch, with a ginger-flavoured biscuit-y base and thick ginger icing topping
• Custard squares, two slices of mille-feuille pastry with a thick layer of custard in between, and coconut icing
• Tan squares, a biscuit base topped with caramel and then a layer of crumbled base on top
• Chocolate caramel slice, a biscuit base topped with caramel with a layer of chocolate on top

Really, the list goes on and on, so if I’ve forgotten anything please someone jog my memory. Yesterday I went round to Vixie and John’s place with my Edmond’s cookbook (the one cookbook no New Zealander has been without for the past 100 years), to make yoyos.

Yoyos possibly have the coolest name of all New Zealand/Australian biscuits. They are formed of two thick buttery biscuits with a butter/custard filling in the middle. When I left yesterday I managed to smuggle a couple out with me, and have them for morning tea this morning:

Yoyos

175 g softened butter
1/4 cup icing sugar
vanilla essence
1 1/2 cups plain flour
1/4 cup custard powder

Filling:
50g softened butter
1/2 cup icing sugar
2 tablespoons custard powder

Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Mix all of the ingredients together, then roll teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls. Place these on a baking sheet and flatten with a fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes.

While they are baking, mix all the filling ingredients together. Once the cooked biscuits have cooled, fill with the butter filling.

Soooo rich but so good. Enjoy!

Eating Fido

I read an article the other day from my other home country, New Zealand. The article was full of outrage at a Tongan man who had attempted to eat his dog Ripper. The dog, a pitbull-terrier cross, had been given to him by a family member. But as the dog had a nasty habit of biting any visitors to the house, he decided to hit Ripper on the head (thus knocking him unconscious), slit Ripper’s throat, and then put him in an umu (a fire pit) to cook.

He had just done this when the SPCA turned up and stopped him. According to the SPCA, it’s totally unacceptable to eat dog in New Zealand, although it may be normal practice in the islands. They think the law should be changed so it is illegal for people to cook and eat dogs.

HANG ON, thought I. What authority did the SPCA have to stop this man? By the SPCA’s admission the dog was killed humanely. It wasn’t against the law. So what right did they have to march onto this man’s property and ruin his barbecue?

The whole tone of the article disturbed me. It came across as hypocritical and, frankly, racist. The suggestion was that we should be educating these island savages not to eat their pets, because that’s just not done in New Zealand.

Which of course is crazy, because white people in New Zealand have been eating their pets since they settled there. In Spring, plenty of children hand-rear pet lambs (often known by names such as “Mint Sauce” and “Gravy”) that later end up on the Christmas dinner table. No one has a problem with that. Why this special status for dogs?

Although I don’t eat any meat I don’t really see the difference between eating dog and eating any other animal, provided the animal is not endangered of course. In fact, dogs are probably one of the most sustainable animals I can think of. Once the Christmas lambs are gone, you could go down to the SPCA and select one of the hundreds of puppies that are abandoned after the festive season. These puppies often end up being euthanized if there is no one to claim them. What a waste! Why not take them home, fatten them up, and pop them on the barbie? According to our Tongan friends they are very good eating!

In fact, I would be happier to eat a dog that had had a pleasant life with a family that had played with it, fed it well, and given it a good life, than for example a pig that had been stuffed into a crate too small for it to even turn around. Bacon is pretty much the national food of New Zealand. You can’t order a salad, soup or sandwich without it being full of the stuff. So the national demand for cheap pig meat has led to these poor animals (which are more intelligent and sensitive than dogs) being kept in horrific conditions. Ok, some people have a problem with this, but is bacon off the menu? If it’s not bacon then it’s chickens packed in tiny cages, debeaked and featherless. It seems the message is that animals raised in suffering are ok to eat, but happy animals raised with love are a no-go.

I wonder if the real reason the country has reacted so violently to this issue is that the entire economy of New Zealand is built upon the raising and slaughter of animals. I suspect no one wants to think about that too hard, or examine their own personal guilt. So draw an arbitrary line, animals on one side of the line are perfectly ok to kill and eat, animals on the other side are not ok and if you eat them you are an uncultured savage. How does that make sense?

Today the media seems to have realised that perhaps it was a tiny bit hypocritical and one-sided in that last article, and have finally presented the other side of the story:

Cultural experts in New Zealand have spoken out against a proposed ban on the eating of dog meat, saying to do so would be culturally insensitive and deprive people of a viable food source in tough economic times.
…
Euroasia director Kenneth Leong, whose company specialises in cultural consultancy, said the uproar was “a demonstration of cultural insensitivity bordering on ignorance and hypocrisy”.

So, what do you think? Would you eat dog (or have you eaten dog)? Would you stop someone else from eating it?

Hidden Gardens

Last week I decided to do something a little different. I’ve recently joined “Mrs Coots’ Quirky Outings”, a meetup group dedicated to doing things that are, well, a little different.

On Wednesday I turned up at Moorgate Station ready for my first outing: the Hidden Garden city tour. I love the City for all of its strange juxtapositions. The City is a place where history, mystery, high finance, and religion all seem to ooze out of its pores. Echoes of Roman and Medieval London exist next to concrete and glass office towers, and although the City is only a square mile there is a high potential for getting lost in its twisty-turny maze of streets, alleyways, highwalks, and pedestrian subways. Some of its mysteries will always remain closed to me, so I jump at any offer to learn more.

We started the tour with a not-so-hidden garden but one that was new to me – Finsbury Circus, which has a bowling green in the middle. Our guide explained how the bowling green is very hard to play on as it is slightly undulating due to the Tube line running under it.

We had a brief stop at the Draper’s Hall garden which sadly we did not have access to. It looked rather run down and uncared for with bits of construction debris around the place. This was all the more sad given that the garden contained mulberry trees laden with ripe mulberries that were left to fall on the purple-stained ground. I’d love to go back there with a ladder! The Hall belongs to the Worshipful Company of Drapers, which comes third in precedence among the Great Twelve City Livery Companies. We learned an interesting fact – the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners could never decide who should come sixth and seventh in the order of precedence, so every year they alternate. This is where we get the phrase “at sixes and sevens”.

I’ve seen a lot of debt clocks before so assumed this was another, but it is actually a death clock, counting how many deaths there have been in the world this year (about two per second).

A beautiful old church right next to the Gherkin.

Gherkin cake, anyone?

The highlight of the tour was seeing St Dunstan’s, a church that was burnt down in the Great Fire, rebuilt, rebuilt again in the 18th century, and then destroyed in the Blitz by an incendiary bomb. Instead of rebuilding it for the third time it has been turned into a public garden. The garden is quite stunning and seems to exist in a microclimate of its own where a banana palm and fig tree thrive.

It was lovely to take time out in the middle of a very busy week (I have a few projects afoot, of which more later) and discover some peace and tranquillity in the middle of the busiest part of London. I can thoroughly recommend the walk, especially given the modest £5 fee goes to charity.

Ghanaian dinner

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to a dinner for food bloggers by Cadbury’s PR, Lea Simpson. This was to celebrate Cadbury using fair trade Ghanaian cocoa in their Dairy Milk bars. I must admit, my first thought was “but I don’t actually like Dairy Milk”. It’s true. Give me white choc, give me 70% or higher single-origin dark choc, but don’t feed me anything in between.

However, I am a big fan of the fair trade cause and I put my money where my mouth is. I buy fair trade wherever possible, whether I’m buying food or clothing. I recently sewed myself a shirt using fair trade organic handwoven cotton, that’s how much of an earth-loving hippy fair trade evangelist I am. So what if I don’t actually like the chocolate? I can still tell you all to go out and buy it!

So on the appointed evening I turned up at the Underground Cookery School with a bunch of other food bloggers. Lea gave us a talk on what she’d learned about fair trade chocolate. There is a minimum price per tonne of cocoa which is set by an independent board. Cadbury cannot pay under this price for their cocoa. The market price is currently well above the minimum anyway. On top of this, there is also a premium paid. This premium is shared between all the farmers and can be used for development projects such as building schools.

The food for the evening was Ghanaian-themed. There were some delicious canapés to start off with like little deep-fried rice balls, and mackerel on slices of fried plantain. The wine flowed freely and it was good to meet some of the bloggers I hadn’t met before. Dinner consisted of zebra stew and jollof rice, a spicy tomato rice. Instead of the zebra stew I had more mackerel with my meal. The rice was delicious and luckily we were given the recipe by the catering company, Jollof Pot. I will definitely make it again.

We were all stuffed to bursting by then so it’s lucky dessert consisted of some chopped up fair trade chocolate. It tasted like Dairy Milk. Presumably Cadbury will eventually extend their range to include dark chocolate, and then I’ll be all over it. In the meantime my friends love me because I’ve been handing out the samples we got in our goody bags.

Lea’s currently in Ghana seeing where they produce the chocolate and blogging her adventures here. It sounds like she’s having an amazing time. It’s really great that a big corporate like Cadbury has made the decision to go fair trade. Here’s hoping it makes a big difference in the Ghanaian people’s lives.

Broad bean treats

I love broad beans. Back in New Zealand I grew a dwarf variety in my garden and took care to pick them when they were still small enough to eat raw, without peeling the skins off. This year, I’ve had them in my Riverford box a couple of times. The first time I made a pea and broad bean risotto. It was fairly simple with some shallots, celery, white wine, pureed peas, homemade vegetable stock, thyme, mint, parsley, and the blanched, peeled broad beans added at the end, with lots of parmesan and a fair amount of sharp, grassy Spanish olive oil, freshly ground black pepper, and Maldon salt.

The result was a revelation. I had honestly never tasted risotto so good.

This week, when broad beans appeared in the box again, I was tempted to make the risotto again, but had run out of stock and felt like trying something new.

I think I saw Nigella make something like this years ago, and when I had broad beans in my veg box again this week I dredged the partial memory up. It goes something like: pod broad beans, blanch them and then skin them. Mash together roughly with a chopped up garlic clove, grated lemon rind, lemon juice, olive oil, chopped parsley, salt and pepper. Serve on freshly toasted ciabatta bread and top with shaved Parmesan. It was absolutely delicious.

There are so many people out there who don’t like broad beans. I agree that they’re horrible bought frozen from the supermarket, and you can only get away with eating the young ones with their skin on. But if you can get hold of some freshly picked beans, either from your garden, veg box, or farmer’s market (by they time they make it to the supermarket they’re probably already too old) then they can taste amazing.

Stonehenge

Today I’m giving something back to my readers. I seem to have an awful lot of hits from people looking for “Stonehenge”, but you people don’t seem to find what you’re looking for. So here are a few photos I took when I was there in 2007.

Feel free to use these as long as you credit me.

AND as a special bonus photo, this is the Castlerigg stone circle up in the Lake District near Keswick.

(does not belong to me, so please do not use)

Camp Bestival

A few weeks ago Gerard from I Knit asked me to help out on the knitting tent at Camp Bestival. At first I was a little hesitant as I’m not really sure I’m the camping type. But I said yes, and it was the best decision I’ve ever made. I had an absolute ball.

I only took my little camera with me and it turns out I completely forgot about it most of the time, and didn’t take many photos at all.

The set-up was really quite beautiful so I wish I had taken more pictures.

On the first night we ate from disposable bbqs. I had some buy one get one free veggie alternatives from Morrisons. The sausages cooked over charcoal really did taste great, proper camping-style with 45p white toast bread and a generous squirt of tomato sauce. There is something immensely satisfying about cooking outdoors, that primitive “Make fire. Cook meat” impulse.

In terms of other festival food, I couldn’t wait to try the offerings over at the River Cottage Cafe. Hugh Fearnley-Whatsit wrote a piece in the festival programme about how often, the only vege alternative at festivals is veggie burgers. He would, however, be offering some kind of beetroot hoummous wrap thingy. Then on his website (I just checked) he mentions something about goat cheese. All very promising. But when I turned up to his stall, what were they cooking? Bloody vege burgers. Not actual burgers, mind, but a few bits of slimy roast vegetables in a bun. Apparently there was also supposed to be salad and a tsatsiki-style sauce in the bun as well, but they forgot to put mine in and I had to ask for it. It was bland and disappointing.

The best food I tried was from the Mash Shack, and I got quite addicted to their bubble and squeak with beans and vege bangers. Good hearty food to keep you going through a busy work day.

I somehow never got around to visiting Chocstar, where I later found out MsMarmitelover was working. It would have been good to say hello.

Speaking of work, we worked hard all weekend teaching people how to knit and finger knit. It is actually really intense work as you really have to focus hard all the time. But it was supremely rewarding to be able to pass on a new skill to people, and see the light in their eyes when they “got it”. We definitely created a few new addicts. There is a video of our fun here.

On the way home we stopped at the Popham Little Chef, the one transformed by Heston Blumenthal. At first we were slightly disappointed as they were out of the mixture to make scrambled eggs and omelette. They had a kitchen full of proper eggs but weren’t allowed to make us omelettes with them. Gerard and I ended up opting for the kippers instead, and all was forgiven as they were delicious. We also blagged extra toast to make up for it. I was a little outraged however when I ordered extra mushrooms for £1, and got one. measly. slow cooked. mushroom. £1! For a mushroom! The orange juice was slightly pricey too, but it was freshly squeezed and tasted amazing. Still can’t get over that £1 mushroom though. Ness ordered extra tomatoes too and only got one. (I just checked the menu and Ness’s meal – the Olympic Breakfast – was supposed to come with a tomato, yet she was charged extra for it. Sigh.)

I would go back to the Popham Little Chef. I’d just remember not to order any extras. And check the bill carefully.

We were given Jelly Belly sweets on our exit, which provided some fun in the car as I fed them to Gerard and he attempted to divine the flavours: “Definitely coconut. Yes. Or maybe cream soda. No, it’s coconut”.