Halloween the British way

English Heritage carved turnips at Dover Castle last year

Pumpkin Day was trending on Twitter in the UK yesterday and ever more shops are selling them for carving. Indeed, on Broadway Market in Hackney – the epitome of trendy hipsterdom these days – an empty restaurant had been turned over to the sale of pumpkins and pumpkins alone last weekend.

People all over the world have long carved vegetables for all sorts of reasons, but there is evidence that the custom of carving jack-o’-lanterns at this time of year originated in Ireland and, by the 19^th century, turnips and mangel wurzels were being used to create grotesque lanterns at Halloween in both Ireland and the Scottish Highlights, where Halloween was also the festival of Samhain.

Jack-o’-lanterns also cropped up in Somerset on Punkie Night, which is possibly linked to Halloween – ‘punkie’ is an old English name for a lantern.

In Cornwall, Allantide was celebrated on 31 October – although it has also been called Allan Day as part of attempts to claim it as being connected with a little-known Cornish saint, Allen or Arlan, rather than anything older and pre-Christian.

Allantide involves giving large, polished red apples as gifts – and sometimes, carving turnip head lanterns, plus the lighting of ‘Tindle Fires’ – the latter being in common with the traditions of other Celtic peoples.

Whatever the origins, there’s no history of carving pumpkins in the UK. It always comes back to turnips and swedes.

For instance, there’s evidence that turnips were used to carve a ‘Hoberdy’s Lantern’ in Worcestershire in the 18^th century.

Jabez Allies – one of the earliest English writers on folklore – said that, “in my juvenile days I remember to have seen peasant boys make, what they called a ‘Hoberdy’s Lantern,’ by hollowing out a turnip, and cutting eyes, nose, and mouth therein, in the true moon-like style; and having lighted it up by inserting the stump of a candle, they used to place it upon a hedge to frighten unwary travellers in the night.”

In an article titled Halloween Sports and Customs, penned for the American magazine, Harper’s Young People, in 1885, Agnes Carr Sage clarified the trans-Atlantic differences: “It is an ancient British custom to light great bonfires (Bone-fire to clear before Winter froze the ground) on Hallowe’en, and carry blazing fagots about on long poles; but in place of this, American boys delight in the funny grinning jack-o’-lanterns made of huge yellow pumpkins with a candle inside.”

So, if you feel tempted to buy and carve a pumpkin – thing again and get yourself a turnip or a swede for the job.

And lest we forget, trick or treating is NOT a British tradition either: instead, we have Mischief Night, a pranking holiday that usually takes place the night before Halloween itself.

Like so many traditions, the exact roots of it are unclear, but it’s thought to date from the 18^th century, when a custom of Lawless Hours or Days still existed.

It only appears on record as Mischief Night in the 1830s, when it took place on 30 April. Indeed, in Germany, Mischief Night is still celebrated on 1 May.

There seems no certainty about why it moved or how – or even when it takes place. Some say it’s on 4 November – some, the night before Halloween, although this confusion may be linked to the country’s shift from Julian to Gregorian calendar in 1752, meaning that 11 days were ‘lost’.

But while we have Halloween, Bonfire Night and Mischief Night at different times, but they all originate from the same festival.

“These were times when normal laws were suspended and tricks could be played ranging from throwing cabbage stalks at people, to the swapping of shopkeeper’s signs and gates, Simon Costin, the director of the Museum of British Folklore, told the BBC in 2009.

So if your gate is taken off its hinges on Sunday night – just remember: that’s a proper British tradition.

Discover London – before it's too late

Leadenhall Market

Some years ago, just as I was getting interested in photography, I took to going on Sunday morning photo safaris around London.

Some were to the more salubrious areas, some to where visitors mass and others still to streets and alleys that will not be likely to find themselves on the tourist trail.

Quite a few of these came as a result of an informal online photographic project: each week, the person organising it would set a place as a subject and those who wanted to participate would go, snap away and then share their efforts.

It was interesting to see how different people saw and approached the same subject, and it also provided an opportunity to discover parts of the city one might not otherwise ever come across.

I hadn’t thought about this for some time, but was reminded of it this morning by seeing #DiscoverLondon trending on Twitter.

‘Yes,’ I thought: ‘discover London before it’s too late.’

Falkirk Street, Hackney

There’s not been a time since I moved to London in 1988 that there hasn’t been construction work going on somewhere. But in recent years, in almost every direction, the skyline has become a forest of cranes as development and redevelopment have surged ahead.

Now I want to be clear that I have no aversion to modern architecture per se – I’ve enjoyed quite a few rambles with the camera amid the steel and glass, but what’s happening now is not the stuff of good or interesting new building.

Crypt window, Christ Church Spitalfields

This blog has previously touched on the boom in high-rise towers that are soaring above us. Some of them are interesting buildings. Some – and I am thinking particularly about the ‘Walkie Talkie’ – are simply hideous.

But even that is not the point. The gentrification of London – and it’s happening elsewhere too – is getting dangerously out of hand.

There’s a human cost to this: it’s a form of social ‘cleansing’ that has been discussed far and wide. The cost of housing long since became ridiculous – it’s now a question of

St George's Garden

needing to find over £400k for a home in the capital.

In September last year, it was reported that the average cost of a home in London was £515k. It’s £272k in the rest of Britain, which is hardly cheap.

Wages have not risen to the extent that most people can get a mortgage for three times their annual income that will buy them such a home. How mortgage lenders are, therefore, getting around this, I do not know, but it can hardly be sensible and sustainable.

Off Middlesex Street

There’s another aspect to the gentrification, though: it’s producing a city where character is disappearing as fast as the developers move in.

Denmark Street – our Tin Pan Alley – is earmarked for replacement with the anodyne. Norton Folgate, in the City, is under serious threat too. Soho is having its soul stripped out.

Many other areas are going the same way.

In Brixton just this last weekend, there was a demonstration against what’s happening there, with communities feeling that they’re being forced out by redevelopment and rising prices.

Change Alley

The situation is, however, complicated by

certain factors.

Broadway Market, just around the corner from me, has undergone a revolution in the last 12 years or so.

Moving into the area two decades ago, it was three quarters derelict, usually with hardly a soul around and not enough shops to buy the ingredients for a meaningful meal.

As illustrated previously, in a lengthy interview with one of the very few traders who had survived those desolate years, the growth of supermarkets had been a factor in that decay.

Pearly king at Covent Garden

A piece of local graffiti was memorable because it was accurate: “Broadway Market,” it declared: “not so much a sinking ship as a submarine.”

As the street started to revive, some locals complained. Yet apart from some dastardly dealings by local developer Roger Wratten by name rat by nature, it’s not been a case of losing much.

The street is always busy now – which also means it’s a bigger employer – is a darned sight more pleasant (even with the hipsters and more wheelie toys than Hamleys on a Saturday), and has enough of a range of independent shops that you can actually do most of your shopping there.

No, they’re not the same sort of shops, but since the majority of those who had abandoned the street for Tesco all those years ago had shown no sign of coming back, the shops are catering to a different, more middle-class market because that’s how they’ll survive as businesses.

Princelet Street

Those who complained that there shouldn’t have been any market on Saturdays, on the grounds of gentrification, never had any alternative plans to revitalise the street.

Similarly, you see something similar when dozens of people suddenly turn up to protest against a local pub shutting, having not bothered to give it any custom for years, if ever.

In other words, the issue is neither entirely straightforward nor bad per se.

But the problems don’t stop with regeneration. As has been seen across London, rising rents then further push the small independents out, to be replaced by franchises and chains.

Coronet Street

Think Leadenhall Market – a glorious building, tragically sanitised as hiked rents drove out the

likes of a fabulous fishmonger, a poulterer and a butcher.

Think Borough Market – revived to foodie heaven, but now becoming ever more a vastly over-priced stop on the tourist trail.

London is in danger of becoming simply a sort of theme park for those passing through.

So do #DiscoverLondon: look up above street level when you’re on foot: even Oxford Street is interesting when you gaze above the shop fronts. Look at the street art too – some of it can be fascinating and adds to some otherwise dour areas.

Postman's Park

Find out about some of the places where the photographs here were taken. Maybe even go and have a look at some of places they were taken in.

We have a fascinating city. So take a little time to discover beyond the bland and the corporate and the soulless.

And take any opportunity to look a little deeper, if you discover that an area is being scheduled for redevelopment.

Let’s all attempt to ensure that London – and all our cities and towns – are not rendered devoid

of any character by those who have no interest in them other than as money machines.

Look before it's all gone

And don’t forget that local businesses will only survive if we use them. Don’t go crying outside that pub or that butcher or that library when its shutters go up for the last time if you’ve never crossed the threshold in the past decade.

All photographs copyright.

• You can follow @londonerwalking, @SpitalfieldsT and @createstreets on Twitter to find out more about the city, its history, regeneration and development.

Christmas fodder – with last year's lessons learned

Pheasant two ways, with sauce, leeks and redcurrants

Last year, Christmas Day proved to be – in culinary terms at least – something of a catalogue of errors.

Over ambition led to The Other Half spending a ludicrously long time sitting on his own at the dining table as I stressed out in the kitchen between every course, trying to produce dishes that, if not beyond my skill level, were far too ambitious in terms of planning.

And of course, needless to say, my own enjoyment of the meal – and of the day as a whole, and of the days, given my frenetic running up to the main day itself – were all affected negatively.

So how did I avoid that, without compromising on quality and taste?

The big thing to learn is planning.

This year, I started from a point of Christmas Day’s main course as being a chicken, roasted for three and a half hours, as per the River Café and as I’ve done many time previously.

Okay, I changed the stuffing from a Mediterranean-style one to pre-cooked chestnuts, masses of sage and a chopped onion, but the method was one I knew well.

The Other Half had been angling for me to try a chocolate fondant as dessert: we’ll return to that later.

For a starter – well, I wasn’t even sure about doing one, until very late in the piece (the Saturday before Christmas) when I happened on some London gin-cured duck charcuterie on Broadway Market from the London Charcutier (find out more via@LDNCharcutier on Twitter).

No, it wasn’t cheap, but it screamed an easy, high-quality starter. I already had a load of pickles in the cupboard and I could instantly envisage serving it on my oblong slates. All it would need besides was bread.

Now for me, Christmas Eve screams game. The weekend before, since they had no breasts, I’d picked up a whole pheasant from the new Broadway Market game stall (glory hallelujah!).

Now it’s a nightmare trying to roast such a bird whole because of the different cooking needs of different parts of the bird – which is why chefs do different bits separately – so I quickly came to the conclusion that I could do the breasts in butter (as I’ve done many times now) and the legs as a confit.

Bt this still left me with the interesting challenge of butchering the bird.

I swotted via the internet: most was simple, but I discovered that one of the reasons the legs can be so difficult is that the muscles in them make them tough.

You can, though, remove the muscles – and I have the Wüsthof cooking tweezers for the job. It was fiddly – yet oddly fascinating: how many of us know what muscles look like?

The upper leg bones were snipped out and they rest was salted for half an hour.

That was then brushed off and the legs were simmered in duck fat for two hours. Easy. To serve, they were simply heated in a medium oven for 20 minutes.

On the side, were leeks, a sprig of redcurrants and a red wine and redcurrant sauce.

But what I also set out to do on Christmas Eve was try fondants.

Duck charcuterie and pickles

I have recipes by Michel Roux Snr and Raymond Blanc.

The former – which demands vast amounts of eggs – gives no help on how to time it in terms of a wider meal.

Blanc, however, does precisely that, providing a method of mixing that allows you to then chill the mixture for up to 24 hours or cook within a couple.

This won out. I made the mix according to Blanc – it requires far fewer eggs, but does need arrowroot – and then divided it between four rings: two for that night and two for Christmas Day itself.

After a required chilling of at least 30 minutes, the first pair were cooked at 190˚C (fan) for five minutes and then cooled and chilled, before being cooked again for eight minutes at 170˚C (fan) when we needed them.

They collapsed slowly when the rings were lifted away after the first cook, and were not actually liquid in the middle, but they were were thoroughly tasty.

Lesson learned though: the initial cooking needed to be at a higher temperature – since there were no notes on the recipe I used (an online version of a slightly more complex one in a book on the shelf) I had assumed that the temperatures for the cooking were for an ordinary oven.

Anyway, the pheasant was good and the fondant, although floppy, was very morish.

Christmas Day itself was the easiest it’s been in years.

Christmas roast – with neatly turned carrots!

We had a proper breakfast this time – I didn’t need to occupy the entire kitchen for the entire day – and having two ovens and a separate grill was also a help.

The bird was the expected doddle. On the side we had spuds roasted in a little duck fat with a few leaves of sage to continue flavour themes.

Sprouts had been done in the morning à la Joël Robuchon: soak for two minutes in water with a glug of malt vinegar; drain and rinse, then blanch for a minute in boiling salted water.

Refresh and stop the cooking by plunging them into iced water, then cook for 20 minutes in fresh boiling, salted water, just allowing the water to bubble.

Plunge once more into iced water and then drain and gently dry. Robuchon says that this method improves the ‘digestibility’ of the sprouts, Or the fart factor, as we might less politely refer to it.

It does – but it’s also a very good cheffy trick for being able to cut down work later on. Come the time, just heat some butter and sauté the little emerald gems – as I did, with some sliced pancetta and more chopped chestnuts.

The only other thing I added was a portion of carrots, which I prepped early, actually managing to turn them, and then cooked very gently, with water to cover, a knob of butter, a pinch of salt and a pinch of sugar, for 30 minutes while we ate our starter and I finished the rest of the main.

Collapsed – but still tasty. The fondant

That starter was easy: slice some bread, put some of the charcuterie on a slate with some pickled beetroot, cornichons, tiny onions and some very nice fig, apple and Balsamic chutney, and it was done.

Before doing the roast potatoes, I’d given the fondants their first cook, which then allowed them the minimum chill between sojourns in the oven.

They still collapsed when I was actually trying to serve them, but did have a liquid centre. More arrowroot may be required. We had cape gooseberries, redcurrants and a small amount of top-quality vanilla ice cream on the side.

And on Boxing Day, the usual boiled ham with a sour brown shallot sauce, which was hardly onerous, and which was served this year with plain boiled spuds and sauerkraut on the side.

So, that was the Christmas food: lessons learned, ambitions tempered – and results just as good (if not better) and certainly more enjoyable for all.

It can be done!

Tranquil views of the London landscape

Barge and Leaves

Exhibitions: you wait for months and then several come along, one after the other.

It certainly felt a little like that last week: just two days after attending the launch of the excellent A London Eye: here Artists Look at the Leyden Gallery in E1, another invite popped up for another opening that, in a happy coincidence, followed on really rather well from that.

Regent’s Canal: Reflections on Urban Water is a very small exhibition of paintings by Valerie Irving that is now on at the Broadway Bookshop on Broadway Market in Hackney.

Don’t expect a lot of paintings – this is a small space that is, as you might gather, first and foremost a bookshop.

But the canvases that are displayed here all bring something different to the wider idea of how we see our surroundings in urban environments in general and specifically, in London.



This is a case where the exhibition title does the job of telling the audience exactly what they’re going to see.

Irving’s works are focused on the canal that runs just a few metres away, with hints of the industrial landscape of the area reflected in the grey-blue water, and occasional suggestions of a barge or building in the corner of a work.

Reflected Buildings

It’s a landscape that is part of the legacy of the Industrial Revolution, but these paintings create a near-abstract world that softens the hard industrial architecture into kinder colours and contours.

And all this is seen through the artificially-created ‘nature’ of the canal, giving it a pleasing circularity.

Blues and greys dominate the works, although the reds in Barge and Leaves help to create great depth.

This canvas – together with Large Reflection Grey – conveys a great sense of light.

The composition is superb and the ripples on the water beautifully captured.

But it is that light that makes these two the stand-outs of the collection.

Ultimately, this small selection conveys an unexpected sense of calm and serenity: they soothe, and act as a fascinating counterpoint to those on display at the Leyden.

Regent’s Canal: Reflections on Urban Water will run until December 24, so if you’re in the area, it’s well worth popping in.

Small the exhibition may be, but you get to visit a rather lovely wonderful bookshop too.