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Text of the page (random words):
reserves pam corbin it s that time of year again the blackberries are ripe in the hedges i m asking my friend l about the state of her father s plums although i m more interested in his damsons this time i m prepared to actually fight a squirrel for the chance of some nuts i will be paying for nuts again the squirrels always win they re leaner and meaner and today i made redcurrant jelly this is not before time the redcurrants have been in the freezer since this time last year and will hopefully be okay had i known how easy redcurrant jelly is i would have made it before of course i say that before i ve tried the results but by the time i ve written this post it should be cool enough to test so if you re reading this post the jelly was a success checking back i see that i ve mentioned preserves before but only in passing and as i m trying to scrape bits of jelly off it at the moment it seemed timely to write about it at more length preserves was my first river cottage handbook i got the first river cottage handbook mushrooms quite a bit later and only after i realised what a tremendous writer john wright is but that s another post it set me on the way and was all in all a bit of a revelation it came out about three years ago when i was all but jobless and so at perfect liberty to make jam whilst trying to stay calm through domestic and culinary achievement i had been after a book just like this for a while but had found nothing that felt quite right picking it up was a real eureka moment here was a book that laid out everything i wanted to know clearly and explicitly every stage documented emphasis on all the really important principles a reassuringly stern note regarding sterilisation and the four spoilers plenty of recipes to follow as well as those principles that allow for successful improvisation perfect since then preserves has become a particularly well thumbed volume it s taught me a lot without ever letting me down and yet i ve hardly scratched the surface when it comes to exploiting the possibilities within its covers good as the television and the heftier books are i can t help but feel that the best things to come out of the river cottage brand are these books there s a house style but each one also has a distinctive voice every time i pick up preserves i get a shadow of that first eureka moment and that rare feeling of thinking this book will never be bettered not in my eyes anyway and as redcurrants are around and frequently on some sort of offer at the moment and as redcurrant jelly is my go to secret ingredient for making things wonderful with it s getting late i might be getting overtired and carried away now here s how it s made i improvised a jelly bag from some muslin and an old embroidery hoop why this was to hand do not know because i don t really sew but i was very pleased with my ingenuity and then threw a kilo of redcurrants into a pan stalks and all with 400ml of water where they simmered away for about 45 minutes until the whole lot was just one big soft pulpy mass in a bath of glorious ruby juice with the power to stain everything it touched that all got tipped into the jelly bag with a nice big bowl underneath so the juices could filter through undisturbed overnight which left lots of time to sterilise some jars before this morning when it was measured back into a pan and bought to a simmer at which point 450g of sugar was added for every 600ml of water in my case 800ml s of fluid and so 600g of sugar which seems to have worked just as it should after that bring it all back to a rolling boil and after about 8 minutes check to see if setting point has been reached when it does that wrinkly thing on a cold saucer and any scum has been skimmed off the top it s ready to go into the warm sterile jars and that s it job done posted by desperate reader at 10 39 pm 2 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels pam corbin preserves river cottage handbooks monday august 15 2011 miss hope s chocolate box i ve been flirting with the idea of making my own chocolates since 2003 when chantal coady s real chocolate came out i didn t buy it and didn t start making my own but i browsed enough to realise that you need quite a lot of kit marble slab dipping forks chocolate scrappers moulds a thermometer and most likely a steady hand and lots of patience i did buy chocolate the definitive guide by sarah jayne stanes published by grub street which was inducement enough it has excellent truffle recipes and more instructions regarding kit i made the truffles but dipping them is tricky without the little fork things and messy so we ended up eating lots of truffle insides the procrastination continued but now hope and greenwood have released miss hope s chocolate box and i m determined that this will be the year i do it i really liked life is sweet and have very high hopes for this sequel there are a couple of disclaimers i sometimes find the jolly hockey sticks with extra camp approach a little distracting although more often than not it makes me laugh and heaven knows there are more than enough cook books out there that take themselves far to seriously and as already indicated there are a lot of things you need for some of these chocolates with couverture for making nice shiny chocolate shells which seems to be indispensable for the more advanced recipes it s also expensive and not the sort of thing you can buy just anywhere a degree of preparation is needed and in the last two weeks i have managed to spend quite a lot of time online looking at moulds and wondering if an ordinary thermometer is very different in its range from a chocolate one washed and scrubbed the dust off the marble slab that came from somewhere or other that i forget and has sat in the kitchen for the last six and a half years doing nothing got a bit carried away by the idea of edible floral transfers and bought precisely nothing although i m very close to some sea shell moulds i really am i think i might need some latex gloves too hobbies are expensive despite the threat of financial outlay including the very real likelihood that making chocolates will be considerably more expensive than buying even the very best handmade designer labelled offerings this is still something i really want to have a crack at if i had the patience and time the pear and chestnut truffles would be one of the first things on the list there are lots of fudges that i will make and an earl grey mousse that s a definite as well fig and cassis truffles look very do able and are probably a christmas present just waiting to happen the praline is another present begging to happen but the one i really really want to make salted caramel sea shells they sound amazing and if i can pull it off look amazing i would feel so clever i would look so clever people would be impressed and i would probably eat too many of them and feel a bit sick so you see i have to do it possibly just as soon as i get paid the list of stockists at the back is excellent and altogether this is a nice useful and above all inspiring book i know from life is sweet that the instructions are reliable and the results good so anyone with a birthday coming up can hope for the best posted by desperate reader at 10 30 pm 8 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels hope and greenwood life is sweet miss hopes chocolate box sunday august 14 2011 the last chronicle of barset anthony trollope it s only two weeks since i finished this but it feels like a lifetime a lot s been happening since i got back and i have found myself longing to be in barsetshire i m flirting with can you forgive her but i want old friends and enemies and that s a good part of the appeal of trollope for me a complete little world full of incident and interest that welcomes and comforts the reader i read the last chronicle of barset in every spare moment that came my way over my two weeks of freedom including in the car outside a house which turned out to be called lily dale normally i take a pile of books away with me but there was something very appealing about really just having the one to be getting on with coupled by the time to do it justice it s the potential investment of time that held me back from reading the last chronicle for the best part of six months and which is making me think twice about throwing myself straight into the palliser series happily it will keep although oddly i didn t have a problem with working through mrs oliphant s carlingford chronicles one after the other so far the last chronicle of barset is the best trollope i ve read quite a lot happens he doesn t repeat himself as much as in some other books and mrs proudie gets her comeuppance the major plot strand concerns mr crawley the very poor perpetual curate at hogglestock he cashes a cheque made out in another man s name and then cannot account for how it came into his possession has it been stolen or is there an explanation the county is torn over the issue as is mr crawley who honestly doesn t know what s happened and who accordingly driven to the deepest of despair meanwhile mr crawley s daughter grace has caught the eye of major grantly and he determines that she will be his wife even if it s in the teeth of a scandal and at the risk of cutting himself off from his own family exciting stuff grace has her own ideas about sacrifice and honour which further complicate the path of true love other loose ends needing to be tied up include john eames and miss lily dale john is still pursuing lily and she s still having none of it although she weakens a little bit i think it s possible that even trollope got a bit fed up with lily as his last word on the subject appears to be that she s had her chance and blown it but before that happens she has a few painful realisations to make and in the process becomes a marginally more sympathetic character john still hasn t entirely learnt his lesson regarding dalliance with low females whilst declaring a true love for lily and gets himself into a mess with one madalina demolines these episodes border on farce and are just brilliant and then there is mrs proudie as the novel opens she s still an undefeated arch villainess but fate and the author are cruel to her mrs proudie s power over her husband is entirely and very effectively domestic in its nature all his comfort in life depends on her good will too maintain it all he needs to do is be compliant formidable as she is however the other men of the diocese do not have to acquiesce as the bishop does and when her interference in episcopal matters reaches a point they feel cannot be tolerated they simply ignore her silence defeats mrs proudie but it also destroys her marriage and then suddenly trollope simply strikes her dead and does what he s best at showing things in shades of grey rather than black or white for anyone else working their way through the series don t hold back this is a wonderful rich nuanced big splendid book and i loved every sentence of it posted by desperate reader at 10 11 pm 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels the last chronicle of barset trollope summer pudding inspired by my sister and the river cottage fruit book in almost equal measure but sister s summer pudding was quite remarkable so she s just got the edge on inspiration along with bread and butter pudding first tried when i was about 5 and then shunned for the next 20 years until an eventual rediscovery lead to an ongoing love affair summer pudding was one of the huge disappointments of child hood how could something that looked so invitingly pink and gorgeous turn out to be bread bread mark you and not cake which is just wrong when you re 5 and fruit tart fruit it took me a long time to get over that first experience but now some 30 years later i m ready to move on in my mind and i m sharing this thought at the risk of sounding odd summer pudding is a decidedly upper class sort of dessert i was subjected to it in a distinctly county setting and if you don t happen to work somewhere that gives you cheap access to fruit me or have a lovely big garden awash with redcurrants and raspberries other lucky people the ingredients aren t always cheap also although i ve come to love things with a tart fruity edge there s something of the pleasure pain principle about summer pudding that puts me in mind of game i ve not yet learnt to like it high and am not terribly keen to cultivate the taste and living in cold draughty houses with inadequate supplies of hot water and scratchy woollen blankets on the beds also leaky hot water bottles i ve known rich people and posh people but sadly for the latter the two have never really coincided the final thing about summer pudding is that you have to think ahead to make it it wants to hang around in the fridge for 24 hours and i rarely plan like that make in the morning eat in the evening is fine but a day or two ahead i really had to think about it on the plus side the fruit compote is brilliant takes minutes to throw together and would be great with any number of things anyway gather together about 850g of mixed red and black fruit blackberries raspberries redcurrants blackcurrants maybe a blueberry or a strawberry 200g of caster sugar and enough white bread with the crusts chopped off to line a pudding bowl that will hold roughly 850ml of liquid leaving no gaps line the bowl with clingfilm using enough to have plenty hanging over the sides of the bowl to cover the base and line with the bread no gaps gently heat the fruit and sugar until the sugar dissolves and the juices start to run but not until it s all one mushy mess drain off a cup of the juice to serve with the pudding and put the rest of the fruit in the bowl cover up with clingfilm and a plate and stick it in the fridge with a heavy weight on top to keep everything in place the next day it ll be ready and delicious some people use cassis which is something i need to investigate posted by desperate reader at 12 02 am 6 comments email this blogthis share to x share to facebook share to pinterest labels fruit river cottage handbooks summer pudding wednesday august 10 2011 friends and relations elizabeth bowen i had meant to post this on monday night but got transfixed by rioting first in london and then as it spread to birmingham and nottingham both a lot closer to home last night leicester got its share of violence i m not sure why but a pound stretcher was done over seems likely that the local ne er do wells haven t really worked out how this looting thing is meant to work tonight the police are letting the air out of the bike tyres of youths who are milling round the city centre i ve seen some derisive comments about this tactic on twitter but town is a lot quieter and so i m neither complaining nor mocking this whole chain of events seems to bring out a right wing mons...