A Jammy Cow in Normandy

We took the girls on their first foreign holiday this weekend, with a Friday to Monday visit to Normandy, France. I spent 3 weeks of every summer holiday from the year I was born until I was 15 on the continent in a tent visiting beaches and famous landmarks but it had been 22 years since I last went to France.

When people go on a foreign holiday they adopt one of two attitudes towards food. Some like to seek out familiar foods and try to eat as close to home-cuisine as possible. Others embrace the opportunity to try something new and lap up the culture by eating the native food. I am very much in the second of these groups and really wanted to enjoy something a bit different. With 22 years of holidaying in the UK, it has been very hard to experience anything out of the ordinary when it comes to food. No matter where you go in the UK you can always find a Tesco supermarket and a McDonalds. You can, of course, find the odd local items if you try - some local jam maybe or some freshly landed seafood - but on the whole we have turned our entire country into an homogeneous market. Even some of things that are marketed as local souvenirs are made in a factory and distributed nationally or, worse still, are imported but just have local packaging. Sigh.

It was therefore refreshing to enter a different country with a completely different attitude towards food and shopping. Normandy in particular is proud of its cows and associated dairy-products and we were in the Calvados area around Caen. Now, I remember from when I was kid that there are huge hypermarkets in France. They used to be Mammoth when I was child and sold so much more than just food at a time when supermarkets in this country were in town, small and just sold food and household essentials. But this time we managed to travel hundreds of miles and only saw two large supermarkets. Instead, the food shopping we did was in the high street.

In a time when the British high street seems on the verge of collapse, the French high street is still very much alive. I laughed when I realised that my school French lessons about the bolongerie, boucherie, passterie etc. was actually what it is like in France. You really can walk down any French high street and shop in all these little shops, one next to the other. That is, unless you happen to be in the high street at lunchtime when all the shops will be shut. Yes, shut for lunch! And forget shopping on Sundays - shut again. Oddly, the small convenience stores open from 7am until 9am only on a Sunday - presumably so you can buy your baguettes and pain au chocolat for breakfast. And then the bolongeries open again late Sunday evening for a couple of hours so people can stock up again on bakery products - presumably to enjoy some cheese and/or pate with slices of baguette with their wine after dinner. Yes, the whole shopping culture in France seems to revolve around food. Good for them, I say!

On our trip we popped into a local market and some of these classic little shops and dredged up our school French, added a smattering of hand gestures and a bit of Fronglaise and successfully bought local food with very little trouble. Normandy strawberries, Normandy cheese, Normandy butter, French jam, Houlgate pate, Port Salut cheese, Calvados cider and freshly baked baguette and croissants. It was a delight to enjoy these local foods but quite honestly, it would have been positively difficult to buy anything that wasn't at least French, if not made within Normandy. For this I think the French should be admired.

So this morning, having arrived back from France late last night, my girls ate French croissants with Jammy Cow jam for breakfast and Steve went to work with a French rosette (salami) and Jammy Cow chutney sandwich. Hmmm... an odd mix of "local" foods but perhaps appropriate in this day an age when it is possible to travel hundreds of miles in a few hours.

Diamond Jubilee Celebrations

So the special long weekend of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is finally here. I hope everyone is looking forward to it. You don't have to be patriotic to enjoy a 4 day weekend but it is an excellent time to celebrate. I think it is important for nations to have a sense of pride and it is a good opportunity to be proud of being British, whatever that may mean to you.

Today I took my picnic blanket down to my daughters' school at lunchtime to join them for a Jubilee Picnic. It was a very simple idea but it worked very well and was well attended by parents. All the children were dressed up in red, white and blue and they had made bunting and paper crowns. Lovely.  Tomorrow I think we shall be having a barbecue, followed by the classic British dessert - a trifle.

After that I'm not sure what we will do so I've been reading the local paper to see what's on in Milton Keynes over the weekend. There are various events including Big Lunches, the Bletchley carnival, fun run in Stony Stratford and garden parties. No excuse for sitting around twiddling our thumbs!

The event that caught my eye was the Parks Trust Garden Party on Tuesday which amongst other things includes old fashioned competitions such as the biggest vegetable and flower arranging. But more up my street is the best batch of scones and best Victoria sandwich cake competition. Now there's a challenge. Of course, should you decide to enter these I would strongly advise a stop by my house first to pick up a jar of Jammy Cow Raspberry Jam. A seedless, fruity jam like that is bound to make your baked goods a winner! Good luck!


Victoria Sandwich Cake

225g (8oz) butter
225g (8oz) caster sugar
4 medium eggs
225g (8oz) self-raising flour
110g (4oz) butter
225g (8oz) icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
110g (4oz) raspberry jam

Preheat oven to 180°C, gas 4 and grease and line sandwich tins. Place the butter into a large bowl and if it is straight out of the fridge heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds. Add the sugar and cream together. Add the eggs one at a time, stirring in between additions. Sift in the flour and stir well to combine. Spoon equally into the two sandwich tins then bake for 25 minutes until springy to the touch. Leave to cool in the tin for 5 minutes before turning out to cool completely on a wire rack. In the meantime, mix together the butter, icing sugar and vanilla to make the butter icing. Once the cakes are cool, spread one half with the butter icing and one half with the jam then sandwich the two fillings together.

Shelf Life

The shelf life of a batch of jam or chutney is generally about 2 years before opening. After this time the contents of the jar are not likely to give you food poisoning but they will be "past their best". That's to say, the colour, flavour and/or texture of the preserve will not be as it should be. You could if you wanted still use it up, although probably best in cooking rather than on your toast or on the side of your plate.

Of course, the very point of jams and chutneys is to preserve the ingredients so it hardly surprising they have such long shelf-lives. They are after all, full of sugar and vinegar in the case of chutney, both of which are natural preservatives. They are also cooked at a high temperature and bottled whilst still hot into sterilised jars. The lids too can be steriled in the oven or sterilised by turning the jam/chutney upsidedown to rest on the lid whilst still boiling hot.

Some people comment to me that they sometimes find that their jam goes mouldy after opening. This shouldn't really happen but it does sometimes. There are always mould spores in the air and these can get into the jars whilst the lids are off or from the knives and spoons poked into it. One of the worst things to do is to push your knife into the jam after you have spread butter or margarine on your bread as the breadcrumbs and butter are a lovely starting point for mould. Generally however, jam should be fine to store at room temperature after opening but eat it up within a  few weeks of opening. Jammy Cow jams are perfect for this because they come in small jars.

At this time of year I like to make Elderflower Cordial but in the past I have been limited to the number of bottles I could fit in my fridge as they tend to go mouldy in the bottle at room temperature. The problem with Elderflower cordial is that it is left out (covered of course) for a day or so for the flavours to infuse and it is bottled cold. Not deterred, I did a bit of research and found out how to pasteurise it so that it could be stored at room temperature until the bottle is opened. This turned out not to be too tricky so now I can make lots more bottles and offer them to the public for sale.

The cordial is poured into sterilised bottles to within about a centimetre of the top. The bottles without lids on are stood in the preserving pan and packed out with empty jam jars so that they are held tight and are not at risk of falling over. It then takes 3 kettle fulls of boiling water to fill the preserving pan. This is then heated on a fairly gentle heat until the cordial temperature reaches 70°C. The heat is reduced and the temperature is maintained for 20 minutes, in which time the cordial expands in the bottle to fill it completely. After that the tamper-proof lids are applied and secured and then the bottle inverted to sterilise the lids. The cordial remains sterile then until opened, after which it needs to be refrigerated and used up within about a month.

I'm pleased to have cracked this technique and increased the shelf-life of this lovely product and I think I shall be experimenting more during the summer to pasteurise our other family favourites such as Blackcurrant & Lemongrass cordial and raspberry and strawberry syrups which are great for flavouring milkshakes, yoghurts and pouring on ice-cream sundaes.

Spring clean your food cupboard

May is an obvious time to spring clean. Maybe it has something to do with the bright sunshine coming in through the windows, highlighting the layer of dust or maybe it is something more primeval - similar to whatever it is that drives the birds to build nests. Whatever the reason, I always feel like having a good sort out at this time of year and I make the most of that feeling because it doesn't last long! In the kitchen it is the perfect time to sort out your food stores. The old season is over now and the new harvest is just about to begin. By next month there will be the first glut of the year and it will be handy to have somewhere to put it.

I'm in a fortunate position of having two freezers - one just for fruit and vegetables for my preserves and one for family food. At this time of year the fruit and veg freezer is very nearly empty so it is the perfect time to defrost it, temporarily moving the remaining fruit into the family freezer. Once that is done, I move everything from the family freezer into the fruit freezer, defrost that and return it. However, this time not everything makes it back into the freezer because it has been in storage for just too long and needs throwing away. I hate food waste but sometimes it is necessary. It is weird when this job is done to be in the unusual position of knowing the entire contents of my freezer. However, I take advantage of this and write down a meal plan for the next week or so, using up things in the freezer that need to be eaten soon.

The next job is the fridge. I admit that I clean the fridge about once a month so I never get too ghastly a surprise but I usually stumble across something like the soggy end of a piece of cucumber or similar that I have missed in the meantime. It is important to keep your fridge clean and I think in many kitchens it probably contains the least wiped down surfaces in the place. When I tackle the fridge cleaning I start at the top and work my way down, placing the contents of each shelf in turn on the worktop, removing the shelf, cleaning it, drying it and returning it before replacing all the food that is still edible.

Finally the food cupboard. I tackle this probably twice a year, again working from shelf to shelf, top to bottom. Out of date food is thrown away, the shelves are wiped down and things are returned in a lovely ordered arrangement. Oh how I wish my cupboard always looked like this. It is worth reviewing your herbs and spices at least once a year because they do lose their flavour with time. Although they won't go mouldy and need throwing away they may be so old that they are not worth using anymore. On the note of herbs, now is a good time to buy some growing herbs from the supermarket to put on your window sill. They should do very nicely there for a few weeks or even longer if you pot them on or plant them out come June and are nicer than dried herbs.

When deciding what food to throw away and what to keep, bear in mind that if it is past its "use by" date it could potentially cause food poisoning. However, a best before day just means it was probably better before that date. It is "stale" rather than "off" and you can use your own judgement as to whether it should be thrown away or if you can still use it up. If you are throwing food away, think about the container it is in and whether it can be re-used. Certainly, if it came in a glass jar then wash it out, stick in a cupboard and refill it with homemade preserves in a month or so.

Here's one of my favourite recipe for using up stale food cupboard ingredients. For this use stale biscuits and the remaining bag of mixed dried fruit left over from mince pie or Christmas cake making in December. Then when you are all done with the spring cleaning, make yourself a cup of tea, put your feet up and reward yourself with a slice of tiffin!

Tiffin

8 oz (225g) stale biscuits
4 oz (110g) butter
1 good tablespoon golden syrup
8 oz (225g) mixed dried fruit
2 oz (55g) glacé cherries, chopped
7 oz (200g) milk chocolate

Place the biscuits in a bag and bash with a rolling pin until crumbed. Melt together the butter and syrup in a pan over a low heat. Combine the biscuit, butter mix and fruit and stir well. Grease a suitable tin and press the mixture into it and level. Refrigerate for at least half an hour until solid. Melt the chocolate over a pan of hot water then spread over the biscuit base, level out and return to the fridge. Once solid, cut the tiffin into small squares and transfer to an airtight container. Keeps well.

Easy Peasy Jammy Biscuits

Thumbing my way through a back issue of Good Food magazine from March 2006 that I'd obtained via Freecyle, I came across a recipe for some simple looking jam biscuits. Having made a fresh batch of raspberry jam yesterday I decided to give the biscuits a go today. Goodness me they were easy and made a batch of biscuits as pretty as a posy of poppies. Took me about 10 minutes to whip them up and 15 minutes to cook. Mind you, they were even quicker to eat!

Easy Jammy Biscuits (makes 12)

4oz (110g) butter
8oz (225g) self-raising flour
Pinch of salt
4oz (110g) caster sugar
A little milk
Jam (flavour of your choosing)

Preheat the oven to 190°C (gas 5) and grease a large baking tray. Chop the butter and place in a bowl. Sift in the flour and salt then rub the fat into the flour until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Stir in the caster sugar. Splash in a little milk until it is moist enough to bind into a dough. Use hands to roll the dough into a large sausage shape about 5cm in diameter. Cut the sausage into slices about 2cm thick and put the slices well spaced out onto the baking tray. Use the end of a wooden spoon to make an indentation in the centre of each biscuit. Spoon about half a teaspoon full of jam into each indentation (don't worry if it overflows the hole). Bake the biscuits for 15 minutes until golden then cool on a rack.

Easter Treats

Only a few days to go until the long Easter weekend. Did you know that it is traditional to plant your seed potatoes on Good Friday? Actually, I think this is a historical event because it was one of the only days off that workers used to get so they would make the most of it and plant their potatoes. As it happens, I have planted all my potatoes already - I think I got carried away by the glorious weather we've just had but that's probably a good thing as the weather for the weekend isn't looking too great. Having said that, the garden is certainly in need of a good watering so rain is welcome (just not too keen on sleat and snow and I don't want my fruit blossom to get frosted!).

So what are your plans for your Easter feast? Will you go for the traditional roast lamb? How about a lovely garlic and rosemary lamb leg? Before you put the lamb in the oven, stab it several times with a sharp knife and poke slices of garlic and sprigs of rosemary into the holes. We still have some garlic left in store from last year, although it is starting to sprout now, and the rosemary plant is just putting out new growth and is soft and fresh. You could smear the joint all over with Garlic and Ale Mustard too. If you haven't got a jar of Jammy Cow mustard to hand then you can quickly whip up a similar mustard yourself. Mix a little mustard powder with a dash of real ale (I would recommend Concrete Cow Brewery ale, obviously!) instead of water to form a paste then stir in some crushed garlic. Of course, Jammy Cow mustard is matured for 6 weeks before going on sale to let the flavours develop but letting the mustard mixture stand for an hour before use does the world of good. Once cooked, allow the meat to rest for 10 minutes before carving then serve with roast potatoes and seasonal vegetables. At Easter that means purple sprouting broccoli, leeks and asparagus.

But what about dessert? After a big roast dinner I like to have something sweet to finish the meal but not so huge I feel bloated. Now, here's an idea that is stupidly simple to make and just great to do with your kids. Mini chocolate Easter cheesecakes. Ever since their first visit to Red Hot World Buffet my girls have loved diddy little desserts, where they can happily be allowed seconds (or thirds) so I bought some suitable containers and have invented a few dishes of my own. This one is probably the easiest yet, thanks to the take-over of Cadburys by Kraft Foods in 2010 which suddenly made the amalgamation of Cadburys chocolate and Philadelphia Cream Cheese a possibility!

Mini Chocolate Easter Cheesecakes

4 digestive biscuits
25g (1oz) melted butter
1 tub of Chocolate Philadelphia Cream Cheese
Cadburys Mini Eggs

Blitz the biscuits in a food processor to reduce to crumbs then mix with the melted butter. Divide the biscuit mix equally between 10 to 12 mini contains (foil tart cases or plastic shot glasses work well). Put these into the fridge to harden for a few minutes then dollop 2 teaspoons of chocolate cheese on top of the biscuit base and top with a Mini Egg. Serve chilled.

Mothers Day Treat

It's Mothers Day next Sunday so now is the time to think about how you will give your mum a treat. There are, of course, lots of possible special gestures to choose from but in my mind, breakfast in bed is a lovely way to start a day of pampering.

They say it is the thought that counts and when it comes to saying "I love you", nothing does it better than something that both shows thought and is made by your fair hand. So put a little thought into this breakfast in bed and make it yourself if you can. I'm sure a full English breakfast, followed by toast and tea would be much appreciated if your mother likes that and your skills can handle it. Or you could go with something a little simpler such as some homemade granola, followed by toast and jam.


Granola

Ingredients
350g oats
1 handful wheat germ
40g sunflower seeds
30g dessicated coconut
30g sesame seeds
2 tablespoons sunflower or corn oil
2 tablespoons runny honey

Preheat oven to 180°C. Mix all the dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Add the oil and the honey and combine well. Spread the mixture over one large or small smaller baking trays to form a thick layer. Bake for 10 to 20 minutes depending on how well you like it toasted. Allow the granola to cool then transfer into an airtight container to store. Serve the granola with milk and dried fruit such as raisins, sultanas, cranberries and apricots.



And as this is a special breakfast, why not try a different beverage too. Maybe some lovely freshly squeezed orange juice or a different brand of tea or coffee.

Jo from Yenna Bean, is passionate about tea and says, "I would recommend something like a spiced chai. It is a blend of tea leaves and spices such as ginger root, cinnamon bark and cardamom seeds. It is different but very invigorating and delicious. We stock some at the shop if you'd like to try it." Should you find yourself there, stop for a slice of her homemade Victoria sandwich cake, featuring Jammy Cow seedless raspberry jam, or take your mother for one of her afternoon teas and enjoy our raspberry jam in a diddy little jar.

If coffee is your mother's preferred morning wake up drink then Eric from Coffee Cavern has a suggestion for you. He says, "A lovely coffee like El Obraje, Colombia. Maybe with marmalade or a citrus jam of some sort."

Of course, you may not be able to be there in person to present these delights to your mother so why not package up a bag of your handmade granola with a jar of jam and a special selection of tea and coffee and pop it in the post as a do-it-yourself Mothers Day breakfast? It may not be ideal but if it really is the thought that counts it should be well received.