March recipe: Bakewell tart

Bakewell tart

Bakewell tart is a jam- or fruit-filled almond tart. It may be derived from the Bakewell pudding, a sort of almond custard pudding traditionally considered to have been invented by mistake in the early nineteenth century at a hotel in Bakewell*, Derbyshire.

There are many variations of Bakewell tart. Some recipes use puff pastry for the base, some insist on a specific type of jam for the filling, some use fruit instead of jam, some use breadcrumbs instead of flour in the almond sponge. The version I make uses shortcrust pastry and whatever jam I have to hand, which in turn usually depends on what soft fruit was most abundant the previous summer. The tart in the photograph is filled with blackcurrant jam. Here’s the recipe.

Bakewell tart

Pastry

4 oz (approx 100 g) plain flour

1 oz (approx 25 g) lard

1 oz (approx 25 g) butter

Filling

Approximately 3 generous Tablespoons (3 x 15 ml spoons) jam of your choice

2 oz (approx 50 g) butter

2 oz (approx 50 g) light brown soft sugar

2 eggs

2 oz (approx 50 g) plain flour

2 oz (approx 50 g) ground almonds

First make the pastry. Rub the butter and lard into the flour until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Mix with a little cold water to a soft dough. If it is flaky, add a little more water; if it is sticky add a little more flour.

Or you could use ready-made shortcrust pastry if you prefer.

Roll out the pastry on a floured work surface and use it to line a shallow tart dish about 7” (approx 18 cm) diameter.

Spread the jam over the pastry in an even layer.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.

Beat in the egg.

Stir in the flour and ground almonds.

Spread the mixture evenly over the jam and level the surface.

Bake the tart in a hot oven at approximately 200 C for about 25 - 30 minutes, until the filling is set and pale golden.

Serve warm or cold, with pouring cream, whipped cream or ice cream.

I expect to get about 6 slices out of a tart this size, but that depends on how large a slice you like.

The tart will keep in an airtight tin for several days, or can be frozen.

*Bakewell is a pretty small town in the beautiful Peak District National Park, and probably makes an appearance as Lambton in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice

March recipe: Tomato and bean soup

This filling soup is simple to make, inexpensive and uses mainly store-cupboard ingredients (a welcome feature if it’s too cold to go to the shop, or if you’re snowed in).  Its bright colour and mildly spicy flavour make it a cheerful and comforting dish on a cold day.  

It works equally well with haricot beans, butter beans or cannellini beans, so you can choose whichever you prefer or happen to have to hand. If using dried beans, remember to put them in to soak the night before.

This recipe serves two as a main meal with bread, or four as a first course.  It freezes well, so you can make double the quantity and freeze half to use later.

Tomato and bean soup

4 oz (approx 125 g) dried haricot beans, butter beans or cannellini beans

1 onion

0.5 oz (approx 15 g) butter

Approximately 7 oz (approx 200 g) tinned chopped tomatoes

1 bay leaf (or 1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried mixed herbs)

0.5 teaspoon (1 x 2.5 ml spoon) demerara sugar

0.75 pint (approx 425 ml) water or vegetable stock

Soak the dried beans in cold water for 4-6 hours or overnight.

Rinse the soaked beans two or three times in cold water.

Put the beans in a saucepan with plenty of cold water, bring to the boil, then simmer over a low heat until the beans are cooked (about 1 to 1.25 hours).

Peel and chop the onion.

Melt the butter in a large saucepan, and fry the chopped onion gently in the butter over a low heat until the onion is softened and starting to colour.

Stir in the tinned chopped tomatoes, cooked beans , bay leaf (or dried mixed herbs), sugar and water or stock.  Season with salt and black pepper.

Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for about 30 minutes.

Remove the bay leaf (if using).  Serve hot with bread.

Can be frozen.

March recipe: Cherry cake

This is a simple and delicious cake. It’s one of the many variations of pound cake, so called because it was traditionally made with one pound each of flour, sugar, butter and eggs. That sort of quantity is rather large for most households (unless you’re feeding a family gathering or a church fete), so this version uses a quarter-pound of each of the basic ingredients. It uses glace cherries, so can be made at any time of year. I think it suits the spring, when lengthening days and rising temperatures call for something slightly lighter than the dense fruit cakes that suit winter.

Here’s the recipe.

Cherry cake

4 oz (approx 100 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) sugar. I use golden caster sugar or light brown soft sugar
2 eggs
4 oz (approx 100 g) self-raising flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) glace cherries

Halve the glace cherries.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.

Beat the eggs and stir into the creamed mixture.

Stir in the flour.

Stir in the chopped cherries and mix thoroughly.

Spread in a greased shallow baking tin, about 7” (approx 18 cm) square, and level the top.

Bake in a moderate oven, about 170 C, for about 30 minutes. It’s done when the sponge springs back if pressed lightly with a finger, and has shrunk slightly away from the edges of the tin.

Cut into pieces, lift the pieces out of the tin and cool on a wire rack. I usually cut 12 pieces.

Keeps about a week in an airtight tin, or can be frozen.

March recipe: Dal

This is a warming lentil and vegetable curry, spicy without being too hot. It’s fairly quick to cook after a long day at work, and satisfying without being too heavy. You can vary the vegetables according to the season; in March I usually make it with cooking apples, leeks and celery. It happens to be a vegan dish. You can also vary the spices according to taste, or substitute the equivalent amount of curry powder if you don’t want to use separate spices.

Dal

Serves 2

4oz (approx 120g) split red lentils
8 fl. oz. (approx 200 ml) water
Half an onion
Half a green pepper
4 oz (approx 120g) chopped tomatoes, fresh or tinned
8 oz (approx 250g) any combination of: cooking apple, celery, courgette, leek, squash
1 clove garlic
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground ginger
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground cumin
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground coriander
0.5 tsp (0.5 x 5 ml spoon) ground turmeric

Put the red lentils and water in a saucepan, cover, and bring slowly to the boil. Simmer on a low heat for 15-20 minutes, stirring from time to time to prevent sticking, until the lentils have absorbed all the water and cooked to a soft yellow mass. If the lentils boil dry before they are cooked, add a little more water, but only add small amounts at a time.

While the lentils are cooking, peel and chop the onion, chop the green pepper, peel and crush the garlic.

Prepare the other vegetables. Wash and slice celery and leeks. Peel, core and dice the cooking apple. Wash and dice courgettes. Peel and dice squash.

Fry the onion in vegetable oil over a medium heat until soft and beginning to colour.

Add the garlic, green pepper, and other vegetables except the tomatoes. Fry a few more minutes until the other vegetables are beginning to colour.

Stir in the spices.

Add the chopped tomatoes. Season with salt and black pepper and mix well. Simmer 5-10 minutes.

Stir in the cooked lentils, mix well, and simmer a minute or two to heat through.

Serve with rice and mango chutney.

March recipe: Chelsea buns

There’s something very satisfying about home-baked bread. Yeast cookery in general has a faint hint of alchemy about it – bubbling potions, dough that doubles in size all by itself – and there are endless variations, both sweet and savoury. Chelsea buns are among my favourites of the sweet variations. They consist of a sweet bread dough rolled with fruit and brown sugar, and are completely impossible to eat without getting your fingers sticky.



Chelsea buns (makes 6-8)

4 Tablespoons (approx 60 ml) warm water
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) sugar
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried yeast

8 oz (approx 250 g) strong white bread flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) butter
1 oz (approx 25 g) sugar, preferably light brown soft sugar or similar
1 egg

Filling:
2 oz mixed dried fruit
1 oz brown sugar
1 oz butter

Dissolve the teaspoon of sugar in the warm water, and sprinkle the dried yeast on top. Leave in a warm place for 20 minutes or so until frothy.

Rub the 2 oz of butter into the flour.

Mix in the sugar and make a well in the centre.

Pour in the yeast liquid, followed by the beaten egg.

Mix to a soft dough, adding more water if necessary. If it is too sticky, add a little more flour.

Turn onto a floured work surface and knead for a minute or two until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Return the dough to the mixing bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour. It should roughly double in size.

Knead again, and roll out to about 1 cm (less than 0.5 inch) thick, in a roughly rectangular shape.

Dot the 1 oz of butter evenly over the rectangle of dough, and sprinkle with the brown sugar and dried fruit.

Starting from one of the short sides, roll up the rectangle like a Swiss roll.

Cut the roll into thick slices (about 1 inch, approx 2.5 cm, thick).

Put the slices cut side down onto a greased baking sheet, so they almost touch each other. Cover with a damp cloth and leave to rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes. The buns should expand to touch each other.

Bake in a hot oven, about 220 C, for about 20 minutes until firm and golden.

Remove from the tray and cool on a wire rack.

If liked, you can brush them with a sugar glaze, but I prefer them without.

Best eaten within a day or two. I expect they would freeze, but I’ve never tried.

March recipe: Bean and vegetable pie

This is a good recipe for those in-between spring days, when the weather isn’t cold enough to feel like beef casserole and dumplings but is sufficiently chilly that you want something hot and satisfying. It’s a very flexible recipe, so you can chop and change the vegetables according to taste and availability – a great user-up of the odds and ends in the bottom of the fridge. And it happens to be vegetarian (vegan if you use only vegetable shortening in the pastry), so it rather suits Lent.

If using dried beans, remember to soak them overnight.




Bean and vegetable pie (serves 2)

Shortcrust pastry
3 oz (approx 80 g) plain flour
1.5 ox (approx 40 g) fat (half butter and half lard, or all butter, or vegetable shortening, according to taste)

Filling
3 oz (approx 80 g) dried butter beans, haricot beans or canellini beans
Half an onion
4 oz (approx 120 g) carrots
4 oz (approx 120 g) mushrooms
4 oz (approx 120 g) leeks
Stick of celery
4 oz (approx 120 g) tinned chopped tomatoes (or fresh chopped tomatoes if preferred)
Butter or cooking oil for frying
1 Tablespoon (1 x 15 ml spoon) flour
0.25 pint (approx 150 ml) stock, water, or the water the beans were cooked in
1 teaspoon (1 x 5 ml spoon) dried mixed herbs

Rub the fat into the flour until it resembles fine breadcrumbs.
Add a little cold water and mix, adding more water if necessary until the mixture forms a soft dough. (If it is still floury and flaky you need to add a few drops more water; if it is sticky you’ve added too much water and need to add some more flour).
Or you can buy ready-made shortcrust pastry if you prefer.
If you prefer a different sort of pastry, e.g. flaky pastry or puff pastry, feel free to use it instead.

Soak the dried beans overnight in cold water, or cover with boiling water and leave to soak for 1-2 hours.
Rinse two or three times, then put the soaked beans in a saucepan with plenty of cold water, bring to the boil, then simmer for an hour or so until the beans are cooked, topping up the water if necessary. Dried beans vary in their cooking times, so check the instructions on the packet. Beans are cooked when they are soft all the way through.
If you prefer, you can use tinned beans, in which case you’ll need about twice as much weight as for dried beans. Tinned beans are usually also already cooked, but check the label.
Peel and chop the onion.
Peel and dice the carrots.
Peel and slice the mushrooms and leeks.
Wash and slice the celery.
Heat butter or cooking oil in a frying pan and gently fry the onion and other vegetables until beginning to soften and colour.
Stir in the tablespoon of flour, mixing well so that it coats the vegetables.
Pour in the stock or water.
Bring to the boil, stirring until thickened. Add the chopped tomatoes and herbs, and season with salt and black pepper.
Stir in the cooked beans.
Pour the filling mixture into a greased ovenproof pie dish.
Roll out the pastry to make a lid, and put this on top of the pie filling. Trim the pastry edges. If feeling so inclined, roll out the pastry scraps to make decorations, e.g. leaves, and arrange these on top of the pie.
Brush with milk.
Bake in a hot oven (200 C) for 30-40 minutes until the pie crust is golden brown.
Serve with roast potatoes (which need the same cooking temperature and so can share the oven with the pie), and vegetables or salad of your choice.

You can make a double quantity of the pie filling and freeze half for later use.

The vegetables are a matter of personal choice, so if you don’t like one of the vegetables I suggest, just replace it with something you do like, or miss it out and use more of one of the others.

Snowy Easter Sunday

According to the Met Office, it's statistically more likely to snow at Easter than at Christmas in Britain, and this year that's exactly what happened. After a warm February bringing the flowers out early, we got freezing winds and snow in late March. Hretha was definitely a goddess of winter this year.



Snow-covered stile and footpath





















Weeping willow. The golden colour on the branches is the spring shoots appearing.











Snowy footpath in the woods. Just look at the bush leaning over the stile and waiting to drop its load down your neck as you brush past.

















Brantham church and churchyard.











Snow-laden daffodils at the church

March recipe: Apricot and almond cake

Dried apricots and ground almonds are available all the year round, thanks to international transport, so this cake can be made at any time of year. March is as good a time as any, and it seems to suit the brighter days of spring.

Apricot and almond cake

4 oz (approx 100 g) butter
4 oz (approx 100 g) sugar. I use golden caster sugar or light brown soft sugar
2 eggs
Juice of half a lemon
1.5 oz (approx 30 g) ground almonds
2 oz (approx 50 g) plain flour
2 oz (approx 50 g) dried apricots

Chop the dried apricots into pieces the size you would like to find in your cake. I aim for pieces about the size of a raisin.
Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
Beat the eggs and stir into the creamed mixture.
Stir in the almonds and lemon juice.
Stir in the flour and apricots and mix thoroughly.
Spread in a greased shallow baking tin, about 7” (approx 18 cm) square, and level the top.
Bake in a moderate oven, about 170 C, for about 30 minutes. It’s done when the sponge springs back if pressed lightly with a finger, and has shrunk slightly away from the edges of the tin.
Cut into pieces, lift the pieces out of the tin and cool on a wire rack. I usually cut 12 pieces.
Keeps about a week in an airtight tin, or can be frozen.

Hrethmonath (March): the early English calendar

Before they converted to Christianity and adopted the Roman calendar, the early English (‘Anglo-Saxons’) reckoned time using a system of lunar months. They recognised two seasons, summer, when the days were longer than the nights, and winter, when the nights were longer than the days. The seasons were divided by the spring and autumn equinoxes, the points in each year when the night and day are of exactly equal length. (See my earlier post for a summary of the early English calendar.)

Each cycle of the moon, probably from full moon to full moon, was a month. The year began at the winter solstice, and the third month of the year, corresponding approximately to the Roman and modern month of March, was called Hrethmonath. Bede, writing in 725, tells us:

Hrethmonath is named for their goddess Hretha, to whom they sacrificed at this time.

--Bede, On the Reckoning of Time, Chapter 15. Translated by Faith Wallis.

Who was Hretha and what kind of goddess was she? As far as I know, this is the only surviving mention of her. So the short answer is that we don't know, but some inferences can be drawn from the name.

According to the online Old English dictionary, the Old English noun ‘hreth’ means ‘victory, glory’. The parallel with the Roman name of the month of March, dedicated to Mars the god of victory and war, is obvious.

Kathleen Herbert says the corresponding adjective, 'hrethe', means ‘fierce, cruel, rough’, and suggests that Hretha was a war goddess or a valkyrie (Herbert 1994).

March is the last month of winter and is quite capable of bringing destructive storms as well as warm sunshine – as the people picking up the pieces in southern and western England and Wales after yesterday's visit from Storm Johanna could testify. There is a traditional belief that the seas around Britain are especially prone to violent storms in March and September, hence the term “equinoctial gales” (The equinoxes are not really associated with storms, incidentally, but there is a grain of truth in the tradition, as the frequency of high winds rises sharply in late September and declines again around the end of March).

So March might well seem an appropriate month to dedicate to a violent goddess of battle, especially if she was also fickle. Perhaps the sacrifice, whatever it was, hoped to placate her and avert the worst of the equinoctial storms. Perhaps also to ask her favour in warfare for the forthcoming campaigning season. As usual, not proven, but an interesting possibility nonetheless.


References
Full-text sources available online are linked in the text.
Bede: The Reckoning of Time. Translated by Faith Wallis. Liverpool University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-85323-693-3.
Herbert, Kathleen. Looking for the Lost Gods of England. Anglo-Saxon Books, 1994. ISBN 1-898281-04-1.

March recipe: Baked bananas in rum

Early spring is traditionally known as the ‘hungry gap’, when produce stored for the winter would either be running low or starting to spoil and the new year’s crops would be nowhere near ready to eat. I rather wonder if Lent evolved the way it did to make a virtue out of necessity. The traditional solution is to eat nettles.

Living in our modern technological paradise of efficient food preservation and international transport, most of us probably no longer notice the ‘hungry gap’. I like seasonal cooking, and since there’s not a lot of home-grown produce around at this time of year, I find it a good time to eat tinned and imported foods that I can’t grow myself no matter what the season.

Bananas fit the bill nicely. Most are transported by ship rather than air freight, as they’ll obligingly ripen in the hold on the way, and the Fair Trade foundation promises to pay reasonable prices to the producers. Baked bananas in rum makes a delicious dessert to remind you of sunnier climes when it’s cold outside. It’s hot, sweet, not too heavy, and simplicity itself. Here’s the recipe.

Baked bananas in rum

Serves 2.

2 large ripe bananas
2 tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoon) demerara sugar
2 tablespoons (2 x 15 ml spoon) dark rum
About half an ounce (about 10 g) butter

Butter a shallow ovenproof dish.
Halve the bananas lengthwise and put in the dish, cut side up.
Sprinkle the sugar over the bananas. Pour the rum over.
Dot with butter.
Bake for 15-20 minutes in a hot oven (180 C, about 375 F) until the bananas are soft.
Serve hot with cream, whipped cream or vanilla ice cream.

If you don’t like rum, you can use the juice of half an orange instead.