All posts by amerrierworld

Dumfries and Galloway

We’ve just returned from a family holiday in Kirkcudbright, a vibrant harbour town in the South West of Scotland (pronounced ‘cur-coo-bree’). We arrived towards the end of the annual summer festivities and enjoyed an evening of pipe bands and Scottish country dancing, followed by an excellent ‘Haggis Supper’ at Polarbites in Harbour Square (sorry, no recipe here for haggis!).

I wish that I’d discovered this Savour the Flavours website before we left Devon for Scotland … although I doubt that we’d have been able to savour much more than we actually did as our holiday time was largely accounted for by visiting beaches and castles with the children. If you ever find yourself in the region however, I can thoroughly recommend a visit to the Cream o Galloway at Rainton Farm. Their produce (ice-cream, yummm) is prolific. It seems as though every newsagent, corner-shop and hotel in Dumfries and Galloway stocks at least a mini-tub or two of ‘Cream o Galloway’ ice-cream. As we discovered on our guided tour (complete with tasting opportunities), the ice-cream dairy uses organic milk produced by Ayrshire cows on Rainton Farm. The milk and cream from these cows is responsible for the beautiful creamy richness that is characteristic of the ‘Cream o Galloway’ ice-cream we sampled.

I’m now left hankering after an ice-cream maker … gingerbread ice-cream, here I come! (Watch this space …).

2 Comments

by amerrierworld on September 1, 2007 • Permalink

Posted in out and about

Posted by amerrierworld on September 1, 2007

https://amerrierworld.com/2007/09/01/dumfries-and-galloway/

Devon Flats

For so long, I’ve watched from the sidelines and devoured the recipes of others taking part in various food blogging events. Now that I’ve taken the plunge and my own nascent blog is nearly a week old, am I really entitled – or even qualified – to participate in these??

I certainly didn’t feel either ready or capable of doing so … until, that is, I read about the latest theme for Sugar High Friday, an international event involving the creation of a favourite dessert based on a different theme each month. This month’s host, Johanna of The Passionate Cook, announced a round-up of local and regional specialities in her choice of theme, Going Local!

How could I sit back? Here in Devon we have such a feast of local produce from clotted cream to cider, fresh strawberries and raspberries to Plymouth gin and farmhouse cheeses. The climate and geography combine to create a fertile, productive farmland that is host to an ever-thriving local food culture. As insecure as I may feel about my blogging and baking abilities, I am at least confident to shout loudly about the abundance of local and regional specialities the South West of England has to offer!

Goosey Fair toffee apples, Devonshire splits, rice pudding with Plymouth gin, junket made with Devonshire clotted cream, cider sorbet, saffron cake, apple cake …

Perhaps luckily for me (too much choice could have paralyzed me into inaction!), I’m in the throes of packing for my sister’s wedding this coming weekend and our holiday the week after. Combined with looking after my 3 young children (the eldest of whom currently has chicken pox, just in time to be a spotty bridesmaid) and trying to prepare the house for significant building work next week, I didn’t have a great amount of time to ponder if I wanted to catch the deadline of Monday, 27 August. I decided therefore to keep things simple and to offer a batch of Devon Flats and Raspberries made from fresh, locally-sourced ingredients.

Devon Flats are sweet biscuits that put me in mind of afternoon village cricket teas and Women’s Institute stands at church summer fêtes. They are made with clotted cream rather than butter and have a delicious, light, creamy taste.

This is a true West Country and Devonshire offering with clotted cream and milk from West Hill Farm, flour from FWP Matthews, an egg from my neighbours’ chickens, raspberries grown by John Lake in Ebford (near Topsham) and raspberry lemonade from Luscombe Farm.

Devon Flats
Adapted from a recipe by Margaret Wilson from Tinhay Mill

225g/8 oz clotted cream
450g/1 lb plain/all-purpose flour
1 egg
225g/8 oz caster sugar
milk

Rub the cream into the flour with your fingertips. Add the sugar. Beat the egg and stir into the mixture. Add a little milk if necessary to form a soft, smooth dough. Place on a lightly floured surface and roll out thinly. Cut into 7-8 cm (3″) circles.

Place on an ungreased baking tray (this may be easier said than done! I reshaped most of my circles once they were on the baking tray) and sprinkle the tops with a little sugar.

Bake at 375 degrees F/190 degrees C for 10 to 15 minutes until the flats are golden. Leave for a couple of minutes to become firm before transferring the flats to a wire rack to cool.

3 Comments

by amerrierworld on August 14, 2007 • Permalink

Posted in biscuits and cookies

Posted by amerrierworld on August 14, 2007

https://amerrierworld.com/2007/08/14/devon-flats/

Peck is the Brownie Queen

I was looking forward to trying Paula Peck’s recipe for chocolate brownies, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed. Delicious and moist with a thin, crisp, shining crust, these are the brownies I’ve been searching for.

The original recipe (as do many – another debate entirely) calls for chopped walnuts, but I haven’t included nuts in any of the recipes I’ve tested. It isn’t that I object or have a strong opinion on whether or not a ‘true brownie’ should be anything more than just chocolatey. It’s just that my two chief tasters (L, soon to be 5 years old and M, who has just celebrated her second birthday) think nuts in brownies are “Yuk”. Who am I to argue?

Paula Peck’s Chocolate Brownies
Adapted from The Art of Fine Baking

6oz plain/bittersweet chocolate
6oz butter
6 eggs
3 cups caster sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups plain/all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Grease and line the bottom of an 11″x16″ cake pan.

Melt the chocolate and butter in a double boiler or bowl set over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Set aside to cool slightly.

Whisk the eggs and sugar together until fluffy. Don’t overbeat the mixture as this will cause the brownies to be dry and crumbly. Add the vanilla, then stir in the melted butter and chocolate.

Fold the flour and salt gently into the mixture until combined.

Pour into the prepared pan and bake for about 25 minutes, or until the top looks dry.

Cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting into squares or bars.

1 Comment

by amerrierworld on August 13, 2007 • Permalink

Posted in chocolate, traybakes and slices

Posted by amerrierworld on August 13, 2007

https://amerrierworld.com/2007/08/13/peck-is-the-brownie-queen/

Brownies in Budleigh

It seems to be high summer for the moment here in Devon. Yesterday, I walked with the children along the seafront at Budleigh Salterton, stopping for an ice-cream and a brief visit to a charity shop. There, on the shelves among the usual collection of weight-loss and “how to” guides, I found an old copy of The Art of Fine Baking by Paula Peck. Originally published in 1961, this copy (soon to become ‘my’ edition) dates from 1966. I have to confess that I’d never heard of Paula Peck before then – I was simply attracted by the book’s wide range of recipes for all kinds of cakes, pastries, cookies, breads, frostings and petits fours secs … including a recipe for Chocolate Brownies.

An article by Mark Bittman in the NY Times extols the virtues of this recipe for “a true and beautiful brownie”. On the subject of Paula Peck herself however, I can find surprisingly little.

Others before me have struggled to find out about Paula Peck. Cookie Jill describes her search for information after finding her copy of the book at a local library sale. She at least appears to have had the advantage of a book flap, where James Beard has written:

“Her enthusiam for the work table and range is refreshing. Her way to combat fatigue and worry is to get into the kitchen and turn out a hundred or so croissants or two or three batches of puff paste with all embellisments. She is an outstanding juggler with rolling pin and mixing bowl, and the magic results fill her larder and freezer to overflowing. Her home is an oasis for hungry traveleers and guests, for there is always enough delectable food in her kitchen to serve a good-sized party.”

I certainly like Paula Peck’s philosophy!

Helen McLoughlin, a contemporary and apparent neighbour, confirms James Beard’s glowing recommendation in an endnote to My Nameday: Come for Dessert, a curious book written in 1962 on the celebration of namedays:

“This recipe is from our favorite cookbook, “The Art of Fine Baking (pub. by Simon and Schuster) by Paula Peck, who has contributed recipes to, and has had her pastries photographed for “The New York Times” and “Life,” and has taught at the James Beard Cooking School. Her kitchen next door fills us with joy at the whiff of the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread, and makes us nostalgic for the magic days of childhood when mother or grandmother made wonderful cake at home.”

Now I’m expecting great things from Peck’s brownie recipe. It must come close to being an original …

2 Comments

by amerrierworld on August 11, 2007 • Permalink

Posted in cookbooks

Posted by amerrierworld on August 11, 2007

https://amerrierworld.com/2007/08/11/brownies-in-budleigh/

Spinach Cannelloni

With some leftover bolognaise sauce and a bunch of fresh spinach growing in the garden, cannelloni seemed to be the obvious choice for last night’s dinner. It would be quite a marathon to produce this meal from scratch, but it’s the sort of thing that’s easy to assemble in stages.

I made the pasta in the morning and left it to rest in the fridge while I filled the paddling pool for the girls. In between mopping up their dripping footsteps on the kitchen floor and handing out cups of apple juice, I managed to mix the filling for the cannelloni – finely chopped fresh spinach, a tub of ricotta, freshly ground black pepper, a teaspoon each of dried parsley, basil and oregano, a handful of grated Parmesan, a dash of grated nutmeg and an egg to bind it all together. This too went to ‘rest’ in the fridge beside the pasta dough.

All I needed to do later once the girls were asleep was to make a bechamel sauce, roll out the pasta and put the bits together. The one part I missed out was pre-cooking the lasagne sheets. Having visions of a sticky, gooey mess, I’ve avoided this so far when making my own fresh pasta for lasagnes – and, so far, I seem to have managed to get away with it. Last night however, I really should have given the cannelloni tubes a bit of a head start. Next time …

Here then was the finished assembly…

… a small amount of bolognaise sauce covering the bottom of the dish, eight cannelloni tubes of freshly-made pasta filled with spinach and ricotta nestling together, a pouring of bechamel sauce, a cover of large, homegrown spinach leaves, the remaining bolognaise sauce spooned over the top and a final sprinkling of grated mozzarella.