Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

 

There's something about rhubarb, I can't deny that the pink draws me in, but it's more than that.  It now seems very British, grown in the Yorkshire triangle, it must be native as we have so readily adopted this the strange sour vegetable...but is very much an exotic intruder, originally from China.  The history of rhubarb is twisted and peppered with adventure, drug wars and distant shores.

Unlike other fruits and vegetables that we have come to rely on and unfortunately continue to import all year round, rhubarb is still more seasonally governed, available from April-September or 'forced' rhubarb from December - March.  We love it, but only at the right time, we gorge on it for a few months but then we happily forget about it for months more.  It is such an odd shape, such an odd flavour.  I love the taste but I could never describe it to someone, it slips through words.

Rhubarb 'compote' 

400g rhubarb (washed, then cut into equal sized pieces, I like them cut on an angle about 2 inches/5cm long).

Sugar, 2 tablespoons unrefined golden caster sugar/Demerera, depending on how sweet you like it.

Place in a heavy bottomed pan, large enough for the rhubarb to be in one layer, just cover with water. This time I added a vanilla pod, two seeds of cardamom and piece of orange peel but any of the below could work:

• Vanilla pod split open
• Cardamom seed pods
• Fresh ginger
• Orange peel
• Star anise

Simmer VERY GENTLY for about 7 minutes, or until they are just soft.  Let it cool and serve with whipped cream/yogurt/mascarpone...

*If you accidentally overcook the rhubarb and it disintegrates into a mush... you can strain it and whizz up the pulp (or use a fork until combined and broken down) and using about 50/50 whipped cream to pulp make into a fool... also nice with a bit of lemon zest...

Rhubarb'ade'

A very happy accident!  I had strained and kept the delicious juice from the last lot of rhubarb compote I had made and then came back to it just over a week later and found that it had started to ferment and fizz, I made my own rhubarb-ade...

Serve with mint, orange and ice... (I recommend Vodka too...)

Tea Dance & Scones

Definitely time for tea.  Dancing and tea are a great combination...

I'll have Rooibos Earl Grey or Lapsang Souchong with a slice of lemon, in a dainty Grafton tea cup from the late 1930's. 

Scones, such a classic, actually quite hard to get right... I've adapted a recipe from the Rose Bakery Breakfast Lunch Tea book that had too much baking powder (I could taste it when they were cooked, not nice), I've also added a more wholemeal flour option and an egg...

When they're done, I like to literally slab butter on, I particularly like The Lincolnshire Poacher's salted butter, preferably some home made jam, citrus curd (The Ludlow Jam Pan, now available in Selfridges) or a fruit compote...  

 

 
Scones

Makes 16 smaller, 12 medium scones

500g plain flour, extra for dusting (Can use 250 plain, 250 wholemeal)

2 handfuls of wholemeal/wheatgerm flour (optional)

1 very heaped tablespoon baking powder

2 heaped tablespoons caster sugar

100g raisins/sultanas

1 teaspoon salt

110g unsalted butter, cut into pieces. extra for greasing

1 egg and milk to make up 300ml liquid

1 egg for eggwash & granulated sugar

Preheat oven to 200C

Sprinkle a baking tray with flour.

Sift the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt together, add the wholemeal/wheatgerm if using.  Rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs (works fine in the magimix). Now add the raisins, if using.

Place in a large bowl, make a well in the centre of the dried ingredients and pour in the 300ml liquid, combine quickly with a fork.  Finish by hand but don’t overwork the mix, bring together into a soft, but firm dough.  It should not be sticky at all, add more flour if necessary.

On a lightly floured surface, pat/roll the dough to about 3cm think and cut out with a 5cm cutter or cut into 5cm squares with a sharp knife.  Brush the tops with eggwash and sprinkle with granulated sugar.

Place the rounds on the baking sheet, fairly close and bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden.  If they stick together take them apart gently when they have cooled.

(If you have the choice bake in a conventional oven on one tray, rather than in a fan, it dries them out...) 

 

Evacuate 2010, back to 1940...

News Flash:
Evacuate 2010, let’s go back to 1940, just for a moment.
Cook for victory and dig for your dinner!

As waiting lists for allotments in London continue to grow and ‘forgotten cuts’ of meat are back on the hob, The Ministry of Food exhibition at The Imperial War Museum is a timely and relevant exhibition about how the people of Britain coped with the challenges of rations and putting food on the table during World War 2. Today we are increasingly concerned about obesity and our lazy lifestyles; seventy years ago, blockaded by Hitler, it was another story. However, the current recession and a renewed interest in growing and cooking your own, makes a great alliance.

The visitors are transported back to Second World War England, the exhibition is packed with authentic, graphic posters, audio listening posts with original radio broadcasts and personal accounts as well as films of both propaganda and news material, highlighting the challenges facing The Home Front and more specifically, The Kitchen Front. A time when queuing, rationing and recycling were paramount to daily life and every inch of land that could be farmed was ploughed over to the War effort.

After eating a delicious 1940’s wartime ‘Woolton Pie’, in the canteen; I finally, stumble into The Ministry of Food shop. What a lot of things I could really do without: vintage teacups made into candles, aprons and tea towels, but the graphics are so wonderful and the message so clear.  The Ministry of Food cook book by Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall (Hugh's Mum) has fabulous pictures and recipes now trendy with the likes of St John parading real food for everyone.  Luckily as it’s peacetime, I don’t have to queue and end up spending a fortune. I wonder where I will ‘guerrilla’ plant my Ministry of Food “DIG FOR VICTORY” spinach seeds and who on earth will eat my home made carrot fudge?

Ministry of Food Exhibition 
The Imperial War Museum,

Daily 10am-6pm, until January 2011.

CARROT FUDGE

30 carrots, finely grated

3  oranges, zest of 

3 gelatine leaves

Boil the finely grated carrots in a little water until soft, add the orange zest.

Melt the gelatine leaves in water for 4 minutes, add to the carrots and stir well.  Cool quickly in a bowl with another underneath filled with ice, stirring constantly.

Spoon into preferred dish, leave to set, cut into cubes.

Funny but not that yummy.  
On the radio: Ration Blues, Louis Jordan

Dirty Martini

It has to be great Vodka, others will swear Gin, personally if it's going to be a 'Dirty' Martini then I prefer Vodka.

Sacred Spirits do a really great Vodka (and Gin incidentally), I know this because I accidentally had the opportunity of drinking far too much of it one evening. I'm not a big drinker but a third of a bottle is a lot for me. I know it was AMAZING vodka because apart from tasting so smooth and pure, I didn't get a hangover.

Sacred is distilled in HIGHGATE, London so ticks all my locally sourced boxes, is owned by a dedicated couple: Ian and Hilary Hart.  The Harts have also brought out an inspiring range of Distillates: juniper, citrus, coriander seed, oddly there's a new feel to these very specific, almost eccentric flavours.
http://www.sacredspiritscompany.com/botanical-distillates/
I hope you get to try it some time soon!

http://www.sacredspiritscompany.com/

Sacred Dirty Martini

Ingredients
6 fl oz vodka (or gin) (chilled)
1 dash dry vermouth
1 slosh of brine from a good jar of olives
Ice, cracked (broken up a bit)
3 stuffed green olives on a stick (like the moon...)

How to...

• Ideally chill the vodka and cocktail glasses ahead

• Combine the vodka, dry vermouth, brine and cracked ice in a cocktail shaker. Pour into the chilled glasses.

• Add the olives on a stick.

• Sip voraciously, I mean, graciously...

Flapjacks for all

Ginger & Lemon Flapjacks
Flapjacks have a special place in my kitchen, they are the first thing that I ever made.  I'm sure that I had the oven on for hours before I eventually got them in... but nowadays they are one of the quickest things I bake.  I also like them because they are something very British and something that's stood the test of time.  The name goes back far as the 17th century, it's certainly something you see a lot of, unfortunately a lot of the bought varieties are packed with nasties... making it at home means you know what is in it, not a diet snack but great for dancing!  The oats give long term energy release and the sugar, an immediate boost.  Get back on the dance floor!

I love all the variations, this recipe has a ginger and lemon 'twist' but the basic recipe can be followed without these additions and pretty much anything you like can be added: maybe ground cardamom, toasted nuts and seeds, dried fruit... the list is endless!

Ingredients:
170 g/ 6oz butter (I like salted)
170g/ 6oz Demerara sugar
2 tablespoons golden syrup
340g/ 12oz oats (mix whole and rolled for best result)
50g crystallized ginger in syrup, finely chopped
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2cm square fresh ginger grated on a microplane/small grater
zest of a lemon

Preheat the oven to 180°C

Grease a tin (24x18x4) with butter.

Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup in a heavy bottomed pan on a low heat until the sugar has nearly melted completely too. Take off the heat, add the ginger and lemon and stir well.

Add the oats and combine, spoon into the tin and compress with the back of a metal spoon until it is fairly solid. Place in the oven for 20-25 mins, depending how brown you like them…

Blues Dancing, love or hate.

Blues dancing is a bit like Marmite, you either love it or hate it, it’s not everyone’s cup of tea.  For most lindy hoppers ‘Blues’ dancing happens at the after party of a swing night.  Apart from carrying on dancing, (we never ever know when to stop), there’s an opportunity to relax with a drink, catch up with people and an excuse to flirt to the boys or girls that might have caught your eye and not stepped on your feet.  

I particularly like this definition from the St Louis Blues Exchange:

“Blues dance enables intense individuality in expressing the music. It really is all about communication, emphasizing that the music, not the dancer, leads the dance; we are simply the interpreters.”

http://www.bluesdance.org.uk/32161/index.html

The music is usually Afro-American ‘Blues’ but I’ve had all sorts come up, personally I’m not a traditionalist and I don’t mind.  The constant flow, our development and expression of these dances keeps them alive and relevant.  The best Blues dances are sensual, even erotic but mostly a great lead-follow communication, possible with trust.  I close my eyes and melt.  No thinking, just feeling the movement, weight changing from foot to foot, from note to beat.  

Some favourites... what's yours??
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9F1r4iBdyQ&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukP5FTR-GdY&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHIiWQLhfp4

The first time I dance ‘proper’ Blues, I’m in masked costume (see left) attending an evening put on by The Herrang Dance Camp, the lindy hoppers’ Mecca in Sweden.   About an hour’s drive from Stockholm in the small village of Herrang, dancers gather every year.  Herrang is an amazing trip into another world, one I will share on another post.  http://www.herrang.com/en/

My initiation to slow dancing in this other world is very different to my first school disco’s last, cheesiest, slowest dance.  I remember dancing very slowly with William, shuffle, shuffle, my first kiss followed.  This is different, having never danced serious Blues before I’m not sure I want to.  The idea of getting intimately close to guys I don’t know and I’m not sleeping with, doesn’t really appeal.  I wonder how I will dance the long, slow, song out with just one person and very few moves. 

However, there’s a beautiful, quite a bit younger, Blues enthusiast in my dance class that I have a big crush on.  His passion for Blues and the electric chemistry I feel between us while we dance, makes me realise that if I could ‘Blues Dance’ with anyone, he would be a good choice.

With my mask in place, there is something very Eyes Wide Shut about dancing intimately with men I don’t know and some whose faces I can’t see.  I have notions of being in a smoky 1930’s nightclub, where the odd sorts end up; peculiar, lonely misfits hang out and slow dance their troubled nights away to the crooning great Blues Daddy’s.  It is like Mulholland Drive or Blue Velvet and I’m caught in a scene.  I hide into the music and the moment, disappearing, unconscious of the sordid plot in which my active imagination gives me a part.  I stop off at the Bar before going to the dance floor, I have no idea how this evening will turn out, “he’s way too young” I repeat to myself. 

Some boys cleverly take liberties during a second dance, most behave.  There are  a few times when I've felt undressed by my partners and once I had to physically hold myself away from a suffocatingly close hold, but these have been rare occasions and usually make me laugh.  I have male friends that complain of over friendly followers, it seems we give as much as we get, I can't blame it on the boys...

The boy is gone, but the pre Blues-dancing drinking ritual is a permanent fixture, it get’s me into character, sipping from a tall, precarious glass, wearing the correct style of dress...  I now choose to be pretty tipsy before I get on the Blues dance floor… I know it’s not funny, not clever, but it IS the Blues honey, and for me, it works.

My drink of choice is a dirty martini.  No one knows where the ‘Martini’ came from for sure, Lord knows how it got dirty… but it’s my favourite, the dirtier the better.  In fact, I’m wondering if one day, I’ll just ask for the jar of olives, a double shot of vodka and a little dry vermouth.   Espresso Martinis, Manhattans and Cosmopolitans come next, but for blues dancing Dirty Martinis seem more appropriate.

Dancing and Driving...

Don’t DRINK and DANCE… unless it’s the Blues!

“Excuse me, would you like to dance?” Asks the nervous beginner.
I have been dancing for a couple of years now and would say that I am at an intermediate level, sometimes I will chance across a beginner on the dance floor.
“Yes of course” I reply.

You can’t tell just from looking at someone how they dance or how well. I like this about swing dancing; it means you never really know what kind of experience you’re going to get, it’s a lucky dip lottery. Even by looking at other people on the dance floor won’t necessarily get you closer to the truth about the best dancer in the room. Yes, you can tell that the couple that add Charleston and Balboa steps at double speed definitely know their stuff and certainly look the best, but would I enjoy dancing with him? There is a chemistry that exists between dancers, it’s about the ‘connection’ you have with the dance partner.

Truth is, it’s horses for courses, cars for customers, boys for girls and girls for boys. We all like something different.

As the music starts the dance begins too gently, too jerky, I’m either gripped painfully to his side, or it’s a Mr Burns handshake hold leading me dripping to the floor… it’s a lack of confidence and experience. As this isn’t the bedroom I feel I can tell him how to behave:

“Relax, pretend I’m like a car that you have to learn to drive, it’s a different language but it’s the same principle.”

Most guys smile and think: “she’s crazy”, however, by associating myself with an inanimate object I can take away all my obvious feminine attributes and help them relax, and hopefully, at the same time, be in for a smoother ride.

Perhaps you’d like to take one of these for a spin Sir?

No, thank you very much, this is more my style…

Dancing is probably one of the only areas of my life that I am really happy to let someone else take control, admittedly I like to add little bits and pieces here and there, a little step or a jump… but really, if I go too far ‘off piste’ it won’t be so much a shared dance experience as: two people ‘messing around’.  Messing around has it’s place at times, a friend tells me that all the little steps we do in between the bigger formulae of swing outs and lindy turns did, in fact, grow up from the times you accidentally loose your partner and try to make the reunion as smooth and shameless as possible, adding a few humorous moments of foot-tapping, arm-waving hilarity. I say shameless, invariably if a couple loose their grip it’s because they’ve got really sweaty and can’t hold on, or they’re over doing it and can’t keep the delicate tension balanced correctly.

I’ve also noticed that it happens when I misbehave and get carried away with the music, or IF I DRINK TOO MUCH…then I do tend to go ‘off piste’…off course, you name it, it can’t be that great to dance with me in that state. Luckily I’ve learnt that it doesn’t really work and so I don’t really drink and dance. That’s why clubs and venues hate swing dancers, we don’t pay our way except on the door; we’ll beg you for water before anything else.

Back to the car… I like this metaphor, although I’d never thought of calling myself a large, carefully constructed piece of engineering before. I like it because I have a small place for the romantic and out-dated vision that it’s nice when a guy takes care of a girl.

On the dance floor (race track), the follower (car) listens to the leader’s ‘driving’ and if she responds to the mutually agreed swing 'sign posts', and if he's any good, she can have a great ride. As I said, this is somewhere I’m happy to be told what to do, but there are some rules.

1. As a follower, don’t anticipate what the leader will do, even if you’ve danced together before, for one, it’s bad manners but also they might have learnt some new moves and you’ll get it in the neck!

2. Don’t drink too much; apart from being off balance, you won’t be able to follow (or even see) the subtle signs the leader is giving you. Basically it doesn’t matter if you do go off ‘pissed’, but you could be in for a fall, or literally, a crash…

However, I have to re-write the rulebook when it comes to
Blues dancing…

Apparently: “The wetter the better”
(Sorry, at least I didn't write 'moist' or 'well oiled')!