A Tale of 2 Traybakes - or more things to do with apples.

If you've read this relatively frequently over the last few weeks, you'll have noticed that I'm quite preoccupied with the contents of the veg patch, the apple trees and all the free food that's around this time of year. Not that I'm not grateful, but it happens all at once, and then there's a mad panic to get things harvested and preserved for the colder months to come. I love it, I really do, but sometimes I think I am secretly a squirrel...

The other thing that has happened is that the Husband had to have an operation last Tuesday. It was unscheduled, although not life threatening - I'll let him tell you all about it over a beer sometime - and suffice to say, our pace of life has slowed down considerably. It's been LOVELY.

For example. Instead of whizzing round in 45 minutes flat, I spent nearly 2 hours out with the dog yesterday morning, ostensibly giving him a really good walk, but actually collecting blackberries and generally enjoying all that early autumn has to offer in the way of nature. If you've been paying attention, you'll remember that the dog is too badly behaved to be off the lead when I'm not concentrating on him, so he spent most of the time with a look of quiet indignation on his face, while I scratched and stung myself to blackberry heaven and made a mental note of where the really good sloes are this year.

 

Back home with about 1.5 kilos of blackberries, I wasn't really sure what to do with them because I already had pudding covered for Sunday, and I couldn't face jam, so hit upon the idea of making up bags of blackberry and apple mix to freeze and then whip out at a moment's notice for almost instant crumbles. I didn't make up the whole thing because I don't have enough dishes to consign too many to the freezer, so I used my usual crumble dish, filled it up with sliced apple and blackerries, a sprinkle of sugar, and then bagged it up accordingly. My dish takes 500g sliced apple, 250g blackberries and 40g demerara if you're interested.  I tossed the apple slices in lemon juice too, to stop them going brown. You can freeze crumble topping too, but I didn't go that far yesterday.

The other thing I did this weekend is have the opportunity for a really good cook up - fish pies (Friday night's dinner and also 2 in the freezer), a lovely casserole for supper using up some celeriac from the allotment, and not one, but 2 tray bakes to take some of the apples off my hands. Both were from the Good Food website, and both are worth a share, although one more so than the other. 

It's also a been a good exercise in what they think the cake should look like as opposed to what it turmed out like...

So first up is Toffee Apple Squares.  These are calorific and delicious, but I think probably take rather more effort than they have to. I say this mostly because you could manage the topping with a can of caramel rather than boiling up the condensed milk with sugar and butter (and also because I wasn't concentrating and burnt the sugar the sugar in my pan caught and added a rather interesting - but not entirely unpleasant -  'cinder' flavour to mine...). Also, I think the quantity of sauce is probably far too much. I mean, I have a pretty sweet tooth, but I used about half the resultant fudgy caramel sauce (we ate the rest on ice cream - mmm) and it was just right. 

I also signficantly reduced the amount of nuts in the topping, limiting it to a sprinkle of flaked almonds. A lovely treat, nonetheless.

The second is this Apple and Date Squares recipe. This is absolutely what you want to make for your kids to take to school and feel smugly virtuous. Apple, dates, oats - and utterly delicious too. It was really quick to make, although my apples took longer to mush down than the recipe suggested, but definitely one to make again. Pink raved about it after school today too - "Mummy I really LOVED the flapjack". 

Bask.

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Foraged mushrooms - deadly or delicious?

So I've been back out running. It's surprised me as much as you, believe me. 

After the Great South Run in 2010, I honestly thought I would never run again. I tried a few times, but no. I was completely all out of run.

Then, earlier in the summer, a thought came over me that it might be worth having another try, so I did, and what do you know, I've got my 'run' back. I've been taking it very slowly, but yesterday was a great day - I crossed the 5 mile threshold. I'm unlikely to ever run much further in one go - the 10 mile Great South was too far for someone like me, who, let's face it is built for comfort rather than speed or distance. If I'm honest, I knew it while I was training, but running with a group of friends, I kind of got carried along with it all. Anyway, that's beside the point The point of all this is that at the end of my very slow 5 miles yesterday morning, I came across some mushrooms.



Now the Husband and I have spent more than a little time collecting mushrooms in our life together. We've always been ultra cautious, and up until last year, the usual outcome of such foraging expeditions was that we chucked every single fungus we had collected into the bin, and put it down to experience. You see, mushrooms really is something you can't be too careful about. Get it wrong, and you're talking serious problems, if not actual death.

I had a close encounter with the possibility that wild mushrooms can kill you a few years ago. Until recently, I used to get my haircut by a friend who had a one chair salon in a very smart shed in her back garden. One day, during school holidays, I had no option but to take the kids with me. It was a nice day. I thought they could play in the garden. Nicky had just started cutting - my hair was wet and clipped up in the way that it is, when the kids came bursting in: "We've been eating mushrooms" they proudly exclaimed.

I established that they had been eating mushrooms that had grown up in my hairdresser's grass.

I was seized with a kind of paralysis. I was of course extremely cross that they had eaten mushrooms, and also that this was likely to interrupt a longed for hair appointment (I know, I know - but bear in mind that this was just after Blue had finished his chemo, and I was a lot angrier about EVERYTHING then). I was also very worried, but my anger took over and I sat back down in the chair and said to Nicky that she should carry on cutting my hair and I'd take the kids to the doctors afterwards. 

I sat there for about 3 minutes before exasperation, frustration and everything else consumed me, and I stood up, hair dripping, clipped up and a little bit cut, gown and all, and frogmarched the kids all 2 minutes down the hill to the doctors, where we spent a happy hour establishing that the mushrooms were not toxic and they would be fine. Fortunately, Nicky wasn't expecting her next client for a few more minutes, so I even had time to get back up the hill and finish off the haircut, so it all worked out fine in the end.

I suppose I had always thought we had impressed on the kids how important it was to check with an adult before eating something wild, and this made it clear to me that we hadn't been clear enough, and I suppose it's something that I'd like to pass on.

(Also, if you're in the Chester area, Nicky's just moved and is open for business up there. I'd thoroughly recommend her!)

Near misses aside, last year,  we seemed to cross some kind of mushroom identification rubicon - well the Husband did. Thanks  to the River Cottage Mushroom Handbook, a Field Guide to Mushrooms and a website called foragingguide.com, last year, he bagged a fantastic haul of edible mushroms which made some very delicious soup. Just to stress how careful we are about this, he does use at least 2 books to identify his finds. It really is something not to be blase about - after all, I'd rather not suffer agonising kidney failure and death, and I'm sure you'd rather not too.

Anyway, the mushrooms I found looked and smelt like field mushrooms, so I took one home and the Husband thought I was probably right, so we went off with the kids and foraged away.

A basket or so later - probably about 1.5 kilos worth, mainly field mushrooms and a few puff balls, we decided to head back. It looks like it's going to be a bumper mushroom year, and there are certainly loads of promising fairy ring marks around the fields, so we decided there would probably more to gather over the next few days.

Just in case you're wondering, he then checked each mushroom individually. I'm not going to even start to give you advice here about how to check them - you need to consult the experts - but having put aside 500g worth for soup, we decided that the decent thing to do was mushrooms on toast for lunch.

Mushrooms on toast is such a simple and yet totally delicious meal, especially with beautifully fresh mushrooms - but if you can't forage for them, try and get them as fresh as possible from the shops. 

Heat some butter and oil in a pan - you want to get it good and hot so the mushrooms fry and don't boil in the juice they release. Try and resist the temptation to cook them all at once - again you want to make sure they fry. A crushed clove of garlic, a sprinkle of thyme leaves and some reasonably decent bread, toasted how you like it is all you need. Believe me, this is not the moment for some pappy sliced loaf.




Pile the mushrooms up on your chosen toast (butter it first if you're feeling extra decadent), grind over some salt and pepper, and consume. 

Enjoy - and then try not to spend the next few days worrying about whether you're going to die a horrible and painful death...

The thyme really brought out the flavours of the mushrooms, so I'm linking up to Cooking with Herbs hosted by Karen on Lavender and Lovage 

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Pets, Vets & Unexpected cherries

So I know I shouldn't let him, but the dog really loves running through the wheat. And he seems to merely pass through it rather than crashing it all down. The only evidence he is there is a ripple passing over the top as he choffles through at speed, nose down hot on the scent - any scent. The problem with stopping him will be forgoing the look of utter joy that is a springer spaniel 'wheat sharking'. But there we go. I know I shouldn't be letting him do it.

My internal tussle came to a head yesterday after I spent time I didn't have and £50 (ditto) at the vets having a rather viscious spike of grass removed from the dog's ear, so this morning, we avoided the wheat and headed up to a gorgeous little plantation of trees that sits up on the Downs to the north of the village.

Well, it's beautiful up there, shady, cool, green. I go up there in all seasons and it's wonderful at any time, but seemed particularly lush this morning, not least because I stumbled upon cherries. Now, I know that there are cherry trees up there - crab apples too - but usually I see them in the early stages of fruiting, and then they are all gone - the birds have them. I reckon the birds must have sunstroke this year, because there were hundreds - ripe and luscious. Far too good to pass up.

I might not have had a conventional picking receptacle, but being the good, responsible dog owner that I am, I had dog poo bags (unused), and while the dog took advantage of the shade, I picked. I only stopped because I thought I'd better save one bag, you know, just in case...


So 1.5 kilos later, and I am a happy Recipe Junkie. My head is reeling with the thrill of the forage, and the prospect of what I might make with my pickings - and of course, I will need to go back and try and get some more later on.

I'm thinking jam, clafoutis, cherry bakewells, cherry vodka - so much choice...

What should I make?

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