Becky Bakes…

Our short trip to France has reawakened my French vocabulary! Having tried to tidy my equipment cupboards and subsequently made the Sponge Flan video, I’ve been considering the pieces of “kit” that I could dispose of. Much more difficult than I thought, to be honest. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m not going to stop using Le Creuset casseroles, they are very heavy but because of the well-fitting lids there’s very little evaporation . Brilliant. Then, this week in particular, the mesh food covers have been pressed into use. Some people have umbrella-style ones, but ours are rigid, circular and in various sizes which nest perfectly. Admittedly two are bright pink, but they create a bowl with a lid – ingenious. Then of course the flan tin…even though it’s been redundant for years it’s perfect for a light summer dessert, so that’s staying. What have I managed to get rid of? Nothing !! What can’t you bear to part with ? 😉

What a week this has been – we were hot in France last weekend but the heat here has become more intense as the days have gone by. There has been a slight breeze in the garden so it’s been pleasant to sit out under a garden umbrella, usually accompanied by the cat, who’s finding this very tough. What has been lovely though is hearing the laughter of the children on the beach, with just the occasional jet-ski passing by. Hot to cook, for sure, but this afternoon I made some Strawberry and Almond Tarts. I find that strawberries get a bit boring as the season goes on so using them in this way is just more interesting. They can sit on top of Little Lemon Cups too. There are more hot days to come, but no doubt we’ll get the rain that’s been forecast – let’s hope it happens at night 😉

… is a favourite phrase of mine. This time we’ve just got home from a long weekend in France with some of our favourite young people. I firmly believe that you really don’t have to travel very far to be able to immerse yourself in the food and culture of the country, so we went to Boulogne. Many continental school school trips were endured in my working life, sometimes with hubby for the extra adult support we needed, so I know this place quite well but there’s always something new to discover, not least on the market. We came across a chap selling nectar collected from his own bees and of course I had to ask more. It seems that it can help with the absorption of medication, as well as various other benefits, but he wasn’t a doctor so I’m slightly wary of amateur advice like that 😉 Anyway, we saw lots of ancient buildings, ate lots of delicious food and even paddled in the sea. It was jolly hot and is going to get even hotter so we’re happy to be home again. When’s our next trip….?

Our weather has been crazy this week. It started off so cold that the central heating came on, a friend resorted to a hot water bottle to stay warm and we’ve had so much rain that our “butts”/barrels were overflowing. The hail stones were huge and the strong winds have ruined my peonies…. In spite of all this we have been able to enjoy cucumbers from the greenhouse and plenty of salad leaves too. We have a mixture of rocket, pea shoots and several types of lettuce. Sometimes I add cooked and chilled asparagus to our bowl of greenery. On Fridays it often accompanies our steaks – we are lucky to have an excellent butcher nearby and always choose fillets – “Filet Friday”. I’m looking forward to adding our own tomatoes and peppers in due course. How’s your garden doing? x

How refreshing to hear Gareth Southgate talking to Amol Rajan this morning. He was saying what many of us have known for the longest time – that not every young person needs to go to University (and leave with massive debts), that boys need to be taught differently from girls, that the curriculum of today doesn’t offer enough to the less academic pupils and that so many young men don’t have good role models. So much common sense in that interview. Many years ago I taught one young man who became a chef – Food Tech, taught by a specialist, was crucial to him. I had several boys in my Child Development group, one of whom became a paediatric nurse. We had girl engineers who had flourished in Technical drawing classes, woodwork and metalwork. So let’s hope that Mr. Southgate can rock the education boat and we see some changes!

That’s a phrase I’ve often used when in the classroom, in the hope that it sticks in the minds of my young pupils. In the present day it seems that whilst many people are watching cooking videos on many platforms, I’m not sure that they are actually making any of the dishes themselves. Our viewing figures are rising steadily which is reassuring, with over 66,000 views of the 103 videos we have on YouTube. But why is it that we see so many deliveries of fast food every day, at all times of the day. Obesity is on the rise with many using varied methods of losing weight to compensate for their unhealthy diets. If we spent more time thinking, planning and actually cooking, I’m sure we’d be healthier. There’s a lot to be said in favour of the humble roast chicken which will result in leftovers to be used creatively over the next couple of days 😉

As we’ve got older our family has decided that we don’t need any more “stuff” for birthdays and Christmas. Instead they have been giving us “experiences” – lunch at The Ritz, afternoon tea at Marco Pierre White’s Hotel Coco and the trip we took yesterday on the Poppy Line in North Norfolk. We’ve been on that train journey many times in the past enjoying the beautiful scenery as well as the smell of the smoke from the a number of different steam engines. This time was different though as we had dinner on the way to Holt, where the little red tank engine, called “Newstead” was uncoupled and shunted to the other end of the carriages. We’d eaten sausages and mash with green vegetables and gravy by then (with a glass of wine), all cooked and served by the lovely volunteers. Dessert on the return leg was locally made ice cream – “always for me it is the strawberry” 😉

We’ve always had a soft spot for Italy, after living there for four years, many years ago. I’m still a fan of Italian design as well as the culture and food. Some years later, whilst enjoying a holiday near Parma, renowned for its’ cheese and ham, I booked an afternoon cooking with a lady called Giovanna, in her outdoor kitchen. We made tagliatelle and ravioli (delicious) as well as a type of gnocchi using stale breadcrumbs – they weren’t great so I haven’t made those again. The one recipe I’ve consistently recreated is her version of Ragu – a meat sauce usually known as Bolognaise sauce in this country although it has nothing to do with Bologna 😉 The recipe on my website uses minced beef and pork, Giovanna added minced veal too which I’ve left out. I have made a slight change recently by substituting sausages instead of the pork, snipping them into small pieces with scissors . They break down easily and add flavour to the sauce, especially if I choose one of our butchers specialities, like basil and sundried tomato or garlic and fennel…perfect to add depth of flavour to the Ragu!

The weather has been pretty good this week which means that the tomato plants are growing nicely in the greenhouse. We’ve got successional plantings of salad leaves too which are a bonus. I prefer not to buy bags of lettuce – the ones washed in spring water have to be used within just a couple of days and that’s not always convenient. So, even during the winter, we’ve had bowls of leaves growing – not always in the greenhouse but sometimes on a bathroom window sill. Not quite what guests expect, but when they enjoy homegrown salads they can see the sense. At this time of year I have been known to cook asparagus to chop up and add to the leafage too. Our favourite young people have all been busy too and were all in London on Wednesday, for different reasons. One was being interviewed about air travel, another was working at the Albert Hall and one was being entertained by the King at Buckingham Palace. I have to say that the food choices offered by the Palace kitchens looked very interesting, on rectangular plates with a recess for the cup. Perfectly sized so they had to limit how much would fit on the plate. Clever!

That certainly seems to be true about our latest video… we uploaded Rock Cakes on Monday with the associated paperwork. Perhaps I should clarify…it is hubby who does all the tech stuff from filming and editing to typing the recipes and updating the website, so I can’t claim any credit for all that. However, I had found my old recipe books from secondary school in Wellingborough and the centre page of one of the books fell out. It was the page with the Rock Cake recipe we’d used in September 1969. Serendipity perhaps? Anyway I decided to try it out again and felt it needed to have a couple of tweaks, like adding lemon zest to lift the flavour. We filmed it with the improved recipe and after a few days it went “live”. Some videos get small numbers of views, like the Stuffed Peppers and Mincemeat, but this one climbed rapidly from Monday and now has been watched nearly two hundred times. Not quite the giddy heights of Leek and Potato soup, mind you. I put the popularity of that one down to post-Christmas economic struggles and just the simplicity of it. So I’ve been going back to my trusty old exercise book to see what else might tickle your palates ! 😉 x