Wooden it be nice?

Nature's own sculpture

Not only do I not fly very often (thankfully), but it seems to have been a very long time since I sat next to an airplane window, in daylight, on a clear day.

But that happened when we flew back to the UK from Germany last week. And as we headed north west, the world below offered further evidence of something I’ve been aware of for a few years now: German towns and villages are never far from woods and forests.

Not only are forests at the heart of the German psyche, but it’s also reflected in the country’s love of wood as a material – and in particular, as a vehicle for art.

My maternal grandparents visited the Alpine region in the years after WWII and brought back a few small pieces, which my mother still has. So I’ve been familiar for years with the angular planes of wood on a carved mountain goat.

In 2000, my own parents went to Germany – the trip was my father’s retirement gift from his parishioners, and included tickets for the Oberammergau Passion Play.

They brought me back a pair of carved edelweiss flowers and a man with lantern and donkey, which owes something to the sentimental style of porcelain Hummel figures (if memory serves, my mother has a couple of those stashed somewhere too).

The central part of the Holy Blood altarpiece

When we headed into Bavaria for the first time last year, I expected to see plenty of wood carving, but in the event, the only obvious thing to be seen was cuckoo clocks.

This was not a trip where we were able to spend any time wandering in woods, but one of the specific things that we had penned in to do was to visit the Jakobskirche for some rather more polished wood.

The city’s main church, it’s Lutheran, although part of the many official pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.

Built between 1311 and 1484, in 1525, the church saw the peasant leader Florian Geyer (a Franconian noble) read aloud the articles of the revolting peasants during the German Peasant’s War.

But if you climb up the stairs to a gallery behind the vast organ, you’ll find a Holy Blood altarpiece, carved by Tilman Riemenschneider between 1500-1505.

The raw material

Riemenschneider has been dubbed ‘Germany’s Michelangelo’ and his work is always worth seeing. This is one of his seminal pieces – Andrew Graham-Dixon goes into some detail about in in his TV series, The Art of Germany. The artist’s ability to create highly realistic faces that seemed to have an inner life puts him head and shoulders above many others.

The church is also home to a high altar created in 1466 by Friedrich Herlin, a pupil of Rogier van der Weyden, but the Riemenschneider is the undoubted star here.

Flanked by two relief panels showing scenes from the Easter story, the central section of the altarpiece is a vast, 3D representation of the Last Supper. But what lends this version so much power is the figure of a disciple looking away from Christ and down toward us. As Graham-Dixon explained, it is a direct challenge to anyone looking at it.

Art historian Kenneth Clark considered that Riemenschneider’s works showed an idea of German piety in the 15th century and were harbingers of the coming Reformation.

Wooden woodsman and mushroom

The challenge created by the disciple breaking through the fourth wall (in effect) is a personal one that can be seen as indicative of the ideas of a personal relationship with God that would develop.

Away from religion, we did spot one or two wood carvings – although one small shop was still closed for the winter.

But I did find a small woodsman, which has now safely made the journey back to London, where he’s joined by a small wooden mushroom, which I was charged just €1 for, after the woman in the shop we were in was so delighted by The Other Half making a substantial Christmas decoration purchase.

However, aside from wooden Christmas decorations that were purchased away from Käthe Wohlfahrt, Germany’s biggest Christmas decoration manufacturer, which has its headquarters in Rothenburg, together with a number of shops and a Christmas museum.

One visit convinced us that it is grossly overpriced and nowhere near the best quality around. Indeed, the owner of one independent shop told us that the company, via marriage, was effectively in Japanese hands and that Japanese tourists expect things to be expensive as a guarantee of quality.

Nature and time, wrought in wood

What we did come away with – well, what I insisted on coming away with – was a cuckoo clock: a genuine, hand-made one from the Black Forest (which isn’t that far away).

I picked the smallest one I could find; not one made to look like a chalet; with no painting on it. Not only is it made from wood – the traditional design reflects the woods and forests.

Back in London, I took my time getting it out of the box and mounting it on the wall. There is something ridiculously fascinating, in these technological times, in having something that requires no batteries or plugs – it’s almost a revelation that leaves you wondering how anything can work without that confounded electrickery.

It delights me that it’s properly hand made; that when you open the back, the inside reveals once more how it not mass produced. It is, then, thus evidence that real craftsmanship has not been lost.

It’s hardly a Riemenschneider, but it is an authentic piece of Germany in its own way, and in an era of  smart this and smart that, it’s a real pleasure to have.

Enjoy 400 years of Christmas in Hackney

A hint of holly, 16th century style

The advent of Advent means that it’s just about decent to mention a certain winter festival – which also means that it’s the perfect time to recommend a visit to the Geffrye Museum to check out Christmas Past: 400 years of seasonal traditions in English homes.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with it, the Geffrye is a museum of the English domestic interior in Hackney.

First opened in 1914 and extended in 1998, the main body of the museum sits in the Grade 1-listed almshouses of the Ironmongers’ Company, which were built in 1714 thanks to a bequest from the eponymous Sir Robert Geffrye.

In these are recreations of rooms through the centuries – rooms of the urban ‘middling sort’, as an introduction explains.

It’s a fascinating museum at any time, but each year at this point in the year, the rooms are decked out in appropriate Christmas garb, providing a further educational aspect to a visit.

It’s intriguing to see how – in middle-class homes at least – Christmas faded rather over the centuries, with many old, pagan-based traditions dying out.

A recognisable Victorian Christmas

The early rooms, starting with the 17th century, see little in the way of decoration – a small sprig of holly here or there leaves you hunting to spot indications of the season.

What we recognise as Christmas only began in the 19th century, in the Victorian era, when the relevant room is decked out in a way that is instantly recognisable.

The notes point out that, although Prince Albert is often credited with introducing Christmas trees to Britain from Germany, this overstates the situation.

But his enthusiasm for the Tannenbaum was crucial in its developing popularity – not least give the swathes of the public who were caught up in the cult of the young royal family.

Unlike the festive tree, the Christmas card was an English invention – from Sir Henry Cole in 1843, although it was a couple of decades before it really took off, with the Post Office having to ask people to ‘post early’ by 1880 – although that only meant post by Christmas Eve!

Christmas in hip Shoreditch

Interestingly, the 19th century was also when there was a revival in some of the old traditions that had faded over the centuries: for instance, an old Twelfth Night game reappeared, but as something closer to charades.

There are a number of rooms covering the 20th century – there were many changes in design over that period – and all these reflect a world that we are more personally familiar with.

The exhibition takes us to ‘the present’, ending in a “converted industrial building or warehouse in the newly-fashionable area around Shoreditch”.

This year’s look at Christmas past is on at the Geffrye until 3 January. There are plenty of activities and events organised over that period too.

And a fine café and shopped absolutely packed with Christmas baubles and games gives visitors more to do.

If you can’t make it in the coming weeks, the Geffrye is a gem at any time of the year – and with the Hoxton overground station right behind it now, it’s even easier than before to reach.

Find out more at http://www.geffrye-museum.org.uk.

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!

The apotheosis of the idiocracy?

Is it just possible that we live in an age that is seeing the apotheosis of the idiocracy?

The last few weeks seem to have provided ample evidence of such a state of being.

First (for the sake of this post) there was the sheer obscenity of ‘Black Friday’.

People falling over themselves, fighting, screaming and altogether behaving like total cretins in order to get goods that they probably have no need for, which in many cases were being marketed as ‘cheap’ when the price before this sale madness had been hiked to enable that.

And don’t pretend that it was just the lumpen poor either, simply because TV cameras went to the shops where some of them would be congregated. The likes of John Lewis was advertising ‘Black Friday’ nonsense too.

But setting even that aside, let’s remember that this is not (yet) the US and we do not (yet) celebrate Thanksgiving.

So why the hell have this obscene nonsense?

Not that that is likely to stop anyone, as we increasingly see an Americanised Halloween merchandised and sold to the credulous as a major event, while an increasing number of schools have ‘proms’.

What was wrong with signing each other’s school blouses/shirts and, if you were so inclined, chucking some flour and a few eggs around?

Now, we have a situation where stupid parents are encouraged to behave ever more stupidly; encouraged to try to ensure that their brat has the most expensive outfit and arrives in the most stretched limo of any of their peers.

I absolutely shudder at the thought of being forced to go through all that. Thank god I grew up in saner times. Now, there’s even a rise in proms for ‘graduation’ from nursery school, as well as from primary school.

Only a generation and a half ago, most people would have seen through the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses cult for precisely that – and laughed at those who played that game.

Now, we’ve turned it something that’s so important that it’s central to the economic calculations (I use the word loosely) of the Chancellor, who is basing his predictions on households going ever deeper into debt.

Moving on, this Christmas – even before we had reached Advent – decorations were going up (and not just in the big stores), while stalls had set up selling Christmas trees. Who is stupid enough to buy one so early? It’ll be dried up before Christmas itself!

Indeed, why the creep of the start of Christmas ever earlier and earlier?

I know that, historically speaking, the long Christmas shopping season started in WWI when families in the US were sending presents and cards to their loved ones in the trenches.

But it has lengthened further for entirely commercial reasons in more recent years, and now Christmas seems to start as soon as the Halloween sales opportunity is done for another year.

Of course, it’ll only be a week or so before we see the first adverts for Easter eggs.

Like Christmas tree sales, decorations were going up at hotels and businesses, as well as in homes, before the start of December this time around.

Generally speaking, most people only decorated their homes a fortnight before Christmas Day itself, and the time to take them down is 5 January, the 12th Day of Christmas.

And what’s with the ‘buy a sweater for one day a year’ thing – never mind that being followed by: ‘pay £2 to wear it to work and that will go to charity’?

Instead of spending £15 on a sweater (probably made of crap acrylic, in a sweatshop somewhere), and then £2 on your charity giving, put a tenner in the collection box.

Still, if you live to shop, then it just gives you another excuse to … well, shop.

Not that this is just about Christmas and commercialism in general.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not against having fun, but when I see adults scooting past me on over-sized scooters of the sort that were designed with small children in mind, wearing wooly hats with animal ears on them, I wonder if we are also in an age of increasing infantilisation.

And then there’s the total logic deficit that we are increasingly witnessing in other walks of life.

Take the case of Russell Brand. Now I’m far from being a fan (and I think his opinions on voting are misguided at best and downright dangerous at worst), but in the present instance, with his involvement in the campaign to try to stop the tenants of the New Era estate in Hackney being evicted by a US business that will then hike the rents through the roof, he is most definitely on the side of the angels.

But what does he get accused of? Hypocrisy.

Now admittedly, this was from the Sun, with the Mail in hot pursuit, but the story seems to be that he rents – and not cheaply – and that his ultimate landlord is not the most ethical.

Now if Brand was calling on everyone to check the ethics of every individual or company that they do business with, while not doing the same himself, that would be hypocrisy.

But this really seems to come down to a view I’ve heard espoused from right-wing cretins more than once: that, if you are doing okay yourself, it is hypocritical to care about anyone who is not doing as well as you are.

Further, I’ve seen it suggested that, if you are in the above situation and you dare to think that people should be paid a living wage, for instance, then you should somehow use your wage to achieve that.

And then there’s the guff about how ‘socialists’ should not earn £X, because they should only ever be on low incomes.

‘Socialists’ has become a word used by the terminally (if only) imbecilic to damn anything they simply don’t like. Few have any concept of the actual economic philosophy behind it.

It’s reminiscent of the woman filmed calling Obama a ‘communist’ during the last US presidential election. When asked what she thought a communist was, she had to admit that she hadn’t a clue.

Of course it also means that we’ve moved so far to the right in UK politics that when someone says that people should be paid a living wage, it’s considered not as ‘fairness’, but as something to be slagged off, either bizarrely as ‘envy’ or as ‘socialism’!

To the dolts out there: if people cannot afford to live, how do you think that will impact on recruitment, retention, sickness rates and productivity?

And why do you think that the tax take has gone down even as the number of people in work has risen? That’s right: because we’re in the middle of a drive by business to a low-wage economy, with hundreds of thousands (about 1.4 million, to be accurate) on zero-hours contracts, many more in insecure jobs and yet more forced into ‘self-employment’ that gets them off the books, but can see them earning well below what is needed to live.

Mind, all this sees us looking at a media that is increasingly dumbed down, even in the supposed quality press, with increasing amounts of bias too and far less good-quality reportage.

What’s so depressing is the sheer number of people who appear to believe at face value anything they read in print.

You can bet that the same papers that are railing against Brand are not railing against the new owners of the New Era estate wanting to throw the residents onto the street.

And if this all sounds like a rant, that’s because it is. But honestly, look around you and at the things I’ve mentioned above and tell me that it doesn’t make you want to do a combination of ~head > desk~ and ~face palm~.

A rather chili picture of what we face

A ridiculous and unseasonally warm chili

If ever you wanted an illustration of how wrong some things are, it’s the chili pepper in the picture.

That rather unassuming picture of that rather unassuming fruit was taken last week – after the pepper in question had been picked from a plant in a pot in my garden.

Let’s just reiterate: that’s not a greenhouse, but a garden. It may be south facing, but it’s in England. And it’s the winter. There’s another one left on the plant too.

Nothing has stopped growing, because the weather is nowhere near as cold as it should be in this part of the world at this time of year.

And this is neither the first time, nor the only example of the climate having gone haywire.

Of course there were floods in the olden days. But they were not every year, several times a year, in several – if not many – places.

We might not have had many deaths from the ongoing stormy weather, and London has certainly not been battered, but yet again, people have been flooded out of their homes, left without power over Christmas and beyond – and still it comes.

That’s without considering the environmental impact – salt water washing away sea walls and swamping fresh water areas of great importance to animal, bird and plant life.

And government is hoping to further cut back the department in question – the department that, for instance, deals with flood defences.

The weather in this part of the world used to be essentially reliable. It no longer is. Depending on the time of year, you basically knew what would be coming.

Not any more.

Anyone who says that the climate isn’t changing is a idiot.

I’m not going to claim to know exactly what’s caused/causing it (I’m not remotely qualified to read, understand and comment on the science) but to be honest, I don’t think that what’s causing it matters.

It’s happening and anyone who doesn’t think that we should find ways to deal with it is also an idiot.

In the meantime, I’ve got chilis on a plant in London in January.

This one was sliced and used to flavour the mushroom ‘gravy’ that went with pan-fried tuna last weekend.

It’s a Rick Stein dish – and a very nice one at that.

Start by softening chopped/sliced onion or shallot, carrot and celery in a pan, then adding your chili, plus dried mushrooms. How many dried mushrooms? Try a shed load. Porcini provide a really big flavour hit.

Add some white wine and simmer to reduce, then add some vegetable stock and reduce again.

Strain everything and, depending on how much liquid you’ve got left and how many you’re feeding, you can reduce again.

At that stage, whisk in some buerre manie – that’s equal amounts of softened butter and plain flour, mixed together – until you have thickened it as much as you want.

Pour over your pan-fried tuna and consume with relish.

Stein serves it with mashed potato with garlic. I opted for crushed root veg: parsnip, swede and carrot. Tasty, comforting – and healthy.

Not that it was the only episode of smash and grab on the dried mushroom front over the holiday season.

We started this year’s Christmas dinner with a mushroom consommé that also required less a shed load and more a whole garage full.

Made from vegetable stock that was then reduced with the dried mushrooms in it, it was clarified with an egg white raft and then strained through muslin, to pack a massive flavour punch.

The rest of the dinner went okay, but realisation has dawned that a four-course meal for two is not actually massively practical, since the non-cooking diner has a lot of time to sit around waiting between courses.

It was a realisation that was increased by a rare episode of entertaining friends with a three-course meal that flowed perfectly naturally even though one ingredient (carrots in the boles de picolat, which The Other Half insisted should be included this time) was defiantly reluctant to actually be cooked through properly.

But with three people to sit around, wine in hand, and chat, it wasn’t an issue for me to give the dish extra time.

I’ll say this, though, Christmas Day’s mandarin sorbet was top notch.

The rest of the festive cooking was about as simple as can be, although having proven to myself that a set custard needn’t be such a risk – that three-course meal – I set out on New Year’s Day to prove it hadn’t been a fluke, rustling up little crème caramels.

Honestly – who found out that burning sugar could make something so utterly scrumdumptiously fabulous?

Our first course, incidentally, was steak, with sautéed leeks and little potatoes pan-cooked in duck fat.

On the subject of duck, I have, in the last couple of years, discovered Reflets de France tins of duck confit from the south west of France.

It’s not the cheapest fodder in the world, but contains exactly and only what confit should: duck legs, salt and duck fat.

Over the holiday, Ocado had run out, so they substituted me some Gressingham duck confit. This has an ingredient list of:

Duck Legs (85%), Orange Zest, Ginger Purée, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Black Pepper.

I have to say, the taste is okay, but The Other Half was not wrong when he pointed out that they’re rather tougher than the Reflets ones. And amazingly, they’re from the chiller cabinet, which seems rather to defeat the object of preserving the meat in, err duck fat and salt.

Christmas did produce one culinary first for me, though: after watching Nigel Slater’s excellent programme on biscuits, I finally pushed past my polite reservations – and dunked a biscuit!

So peeps, that in a nutshell is notes from the festive food front.

And so, with Christmas packed away once more, it’s back to what passes for normal.