Spring at last.

It's been a long hard winter, and it seemed like it was never going to end. The first daffodil in our front garden finally bloomed on March 10th, several weeks later than usual, and it was so cold they kept going until about the 23rd of April, by which time the tulips were nearly ready. The cherry plums that normal bloom in early to mid-February were at least a month later this year.

But over the last 3 weeks or so, the daytime temperatures finally climbed above 10 degrees celsius, and we've also had several sunny days, and nature has fast-forwarded. The lilies of the valley were barely breaking through the ground a few weeks ago, but they've nearly got to full-size, although this year they weren't in bloom on May 1st, the flower buds aren't ready to open yet.

But the red camellia across the street suddenly put on a spectacular display, with all the flowers opening at once. The magnolias flowered, and all of the ornamental cherries. Today I noticed that the cherries with the  large pompon-like pink flowers are in full bloom. Our Morello cherry is also in full bloom.

Our rhubarb, which I usually reckon is big enough to eat around Easter, is nearly there, and I'm planning to cook some of it over the weekend.

And so we have fast-forwarded to the first bank holiday of the summer. It's been obvious that we're marching towards summer since the days are much longer and the sunlight wakes me at 5 am,
but since it's been so cold and gray, and all the spring flowers were behind schedule, it was difficult not to feel that it was still winter.

Old World Rye Bread

D has been on a bread-baking kick the last few weeks, since he discovered that Sainsbury's no longer seemed to be selling the organic wholemeal loaf that he likes.

I thought I would take advantage of his current enthusiasm for bread making and get him to bake a bread recipe that I had bookmarked a while ago but not got around to baking yet. This was the Old World Rye Bread recipe from Dolores Casella's A World of Breads, which I came across on Natalia's blog
Gatti, Fili e Farina. The recipe was also blogged about on the One Perfect Bite blog.

In the photos the bread looked like a lovely black loaf, similar to the Pumpernickel Bread from The Good Cook: Breads which I had made years ago, but without the fuss of having to boil potatoes and prepare polenta.

We made a few minor changes to the recipe:

D used 2 teaspoons of active dried yeast intead of 2 Tablespoons,
1 Tablespoon of caraway seeds instead of 2 Tablespoons,
Just slightly more than 1 teaspoon of salt instead of 2 teaspoons,
and white bread flour.

He used American Grandma's molasses because we happened to have some on hand. In the absence of American molasses I would probably use a 50:50 mixture of black treacle and golden syrup.

The result was a loaf with a wonderful rich dark brown color and a great flavour, which we will definitely make again.

May Bank Holiday Weekend 2012

Bank holiday weekends have a reputation for being washouts over here. We get few enough sunny days, but it's almost like you can bet that the weather isn't going to cooperate when you have a long weekend.

This one is no exception, but not only is it grey, it's freezing cold, with a maximum around 9, and the weather forecasters yesterday saying that it had been warmer on Christmas Day!

I told people last week that we were planning to have our bank holiday picnic/barbecue indoors. I have been trying to conjure up the image of blue skies and warmer climes by playing my Compagnie Creole tape that I bought when I was in Paris in the '80s.

Sour 'Green Apple'

I bought this sour green fruit in the Whitechapel Market several weeks ago. I don't know what it is, but it looks like a large green apple with a thick stem, and has a very sour lemony taste when cooked.

From left: Sicilian blood orange, small green citron, unidentified sour green fruit.

Indian Sweets from Brick Lane

Clockwise from top left: almond barfi, plain laddoo, chumchum.

Glorious Spring Sunshine

Came out of yoga class this morning to find that there was this glorious spring sunshine and blue skies. Need to 'carpe diem', get out there and take advantage of the sunshine while it lasts.

By the way, today is the Ides of March.

Life is a bowl of cherries...

Well, this afternoon was, anyway. We went to the Cherry Festival at Brogdale Farm in Kent. Although it has been raining a lot on and off recently, this afternoon while we were having our tour of the fruit orchards it was warm and sunny, so we couldn't have asked for better weather. We got to see and sample lots of different types of cherries (they have nearly 300 different varieties), all of them lovely and ripe and juicy and just picked from the tree, so that even the commercial varieties we tasted were wonderful and sweet. There were small cherries and large cherries, dark ones that were very nearly black, pale red ones and white cherries (the ones with yellow flesh and yellow and red skins, and even one variety that had a purely yellow skin, something that I had never seen before), sour cherries and not so sour (Dukes) which are good for cooking. I had read about Dukes, Montmorency and Bigarreau cherries in cookery books (Jane Grigson's Fruit book one of the main ones), but never actually seen or tasted any apart from the Morello cherries we have grown ourselves recently. Some of my favourites were Turkish Black, a small black variety (this particular one tasted better than some of the other small black varieties I tasted, I'm not sure if it's because some of the others were perhaps a bit overripe and not so sweet because of it), Napoleons (a sweet 'white' cherry), Donnisen's Gelbe, a variety with pure yellow skin, and I loved all of the three commercial varieties that I tasted - Stella, Lapins and Hertford. I think I had a slight preference for the Stella over the Lapins. We bought a punnet of Hertfords to take home. They had several varieties of cherries for sale, but the Hertfords were the only ones of those available that I had tasted on our orchard tour.


Varieties seen and/or tasted:

1. Durona di Vignola - dark red, didn't like this so much
2. di Pistoia - dark red, medium size, tough skin, didn't like this so much
3. Florence - light red with just a bit of yellow, hard skin, not really sweet or sour
4. Techlovicka - small, black, very soft and juicy
5. Donnisens Gelbe KnorpelKirsche - yellow skin, very nice, a favourite X
6. Strawberry Heart - small, light red, pointy end, very nice
7. Badacsonyi Orias - large, hard skin, but juicy and sweet
8. Wellingtons - medium size, dark red, very juicy
9. Magyar Pork - large, medium red color, quite nice
10. Vosenka - small, black, very soft and juicy
11. Alma - small, black, tough skin, I didn't like these
12. Early Buckenhays - very small, very shiny black, looks like a berry, very nice X
13. Pivka - old Czech variety, tasted possibly over-ripe
14. Mai Bigarreau - pale red or red/yellow skin, pale yellow flesh, juicy, not at all sour, one of my favourites, and D's also X
15. Sweetheart - red and yellow skin, small to medium size
16. Hoskin - looks like the major commercial varieities, size a bit smaller
17. Montmorency - small, light red, look like Morellos, maybe not quite as sour
18. Grosse Schwarze Knorpel - did not quite live up to its name; medium size, dark red
19. Techlovicka - medium size, nearly black
20. Centennial - small, red/yellow skin, D loved these, he thought they had loads of flavour X
21. Mramorovona - medium size, very black, possibly overripe but still sweet
22. Mary Jane - medium to large size, looks like the commercial varieties, not too sweet
23. Polstead Black - small and very dark
24. Olympus - large, medium red
25. Norwegian - small to medium size, red/yellow skin
26. Vic - looks like the main commercial varieties
27. Vega - pale red
28. Van - a main commercial variety, large, dark red
29. Amber - red/yellow skin
30. Pointed Black
31. Ironsides - from Midlands, red/yellow skin, not so sweet, but not so sour as Wesson Unknown
32. Mansfield Black - small, black, D liked these, but the one I tasted was too soft and not so tasty X
33. Inspector Lohnes - small, dark, pointy shape, nice, very soft and juicy
34. Black Glory - Kent, heart-shaped, quite dark
35. Wesson Unknown - yellow skin with some red, slightly sour
36. Hooker's Black - small, very dark red, nice flavour
37. Stella - a main commercial variety, self-fertile, large, dark red, dark flesh, juicy, one of my favourites X
38. Lapins - also a commercial variety, not quite as dark as Stella, I thought they weren't quite as sweet, and had a slight preference for Stella over Lapins; these ripened on the tree so probably taste better than ones we may have bought in the supemarkets X
39. Hertford - also a commercial variety, dark red, maybe a bit smaller than Stella and Lapins, maybe a bit darker skin, also juicy and delicious X
40. Napoleon (clone V1009) - red/yellow skin, yellow flesh, quite sweet, both D and I loved these X
41. Turkey Heart - small, black, ripe, not sweet (possibly overripe), tough skin
42. Turkish Black - very small, very black, nice, one of my favourites X
43. Kentish Morello - similar size and colour to the ones from our tree, sour
44. Kent Bigarreau - small, red/yellow skin, not so tasty
45. May Duke - not so dark red, a bit sharp
46. Schattenmorelle - small and light red, like ours were before they were fully ripe (our tree is apparently a Rhenish Schattenmorelle)
47. Morello (EMLA) - similar to the other Morellos, quite acid
48. 2002-143 - small, very black, not sweet, possibly overripe
49. Holovouska - medium size, black, tough skin
50. Werdersche Braune - black color, nice but possibly overripe


After tasting so many different varieties I think we were all cherried out, our taste buds were saturated, and it was hard to tell which variety we preferred over which other any more. We thoroughly enjoyed our day out and look forward to going back again next year. Pictures coming hopefully soon.
29/07/2011 Photos added.