Garden firsts and squidgy cakes

Coral spot.

Life as an apprentice gardener is full of little firsts. Having 10 out of 10 peas germinate in my growhouse is the sort of first that leaves you bursting with pride (albeit having done little more than offer nature a helping hand).

Correctly diagnosing a garden problem, followed by taking appropriate action, leaves an entirely different feeling.

There have been three bushes of pyracantha in the garden for years and, when we finally got around to having the entire area paved a year last November, these were cut back and the slabs arranged around them.

The amount they grew last year was just one of a series of lessons in how resilient plants are. You may think that you, the snails or the weather have killed something off, but give it time and there is every chance that it will come back.

Last year alone we seemed to witness more revivals than Billy Graham.

But back to the pyracantha – or firethorn as it sometimes known. It was one of the first things we planted, years ago when we moved in and the garden was just a few flags in a square outside the door, and a small ‘L’ of rather poor and uneven grass with a plain, light wood fence to keep the rest of the world out.

It was one of the first things into our small patch after an early attempted break in at the back. The flats were new and, in an area that still had some years to go before the trendiness only then starting to Hoxton would move further east, must have looked pretty damned posh, even though it was a housing association build.

It provides all-year-round greenery – and wonderfully sharp thorns.

There are nice berries for the birds in the autumn and winter – although our three bushes, theoretically producing different colours, only ever actually seem to manage red.

However, one of the bushes, after serious cutting back, has seen one thick trunk die off. And that, together with a little of the joined trunk, had pinky orange spots on it.

Anyway, that’s why there’s a Royal Horticultural Society book on Pests and Diseases on the shelf, for precisely such cases.

It turned out to be a case of coral spot – nectria cinnabarina – which can infect parts of dead trees and shrubs.

Treatment is pruning carefully and possible wound sealant to stop the infection getting in again.

Down on Columbia Road, Les explained that such sealants are usually bitumen-based. But my idea of using melted wax met with approval.

Here’s a thing: you don’t get to go to B&Q and get this sort of conversation. Don’t just cultivate your garden, but your local suppliers too, wherever possible.

Back at the ranch, The Other Half removed the infected parts and then dripped wax over the fresh-cut wood, as a hint of sleet filled the air.

Hopefully, that will do the job.

Not that it was all that needed doing this morning. I’d dug more of the compost in yesterday, finally seeing something that looks like a much more mixed, lighter soil.

But while I’d been doing that, I’d noticed just how many weeds were showing their faces in the rest of the patch that is marked out for communal decking.

If I don’t do anything, they’ll be in my bit before you can say Charlie Dimmock.

Once I was out there with the Dutch hoe, in community-minded mode, I gave Michael’s bare bed a few minutes of attention too, as there were weeds sprouting where he’d cleared away another dying bush, ready to take flowers this year.

So far this year, I’m the only one doing any actual gardening, but I suspect that won’t last, once the weather is a little more consistently warmer and brighter. If …

After that, my hands – even having worn gloves – were frozen. The wind was biting.

And so to the remains of yesterday’s Westmorland farmhouse pie – topped with freshly-rolled pastry from the leftover dough.

Perfect fodder for such a day.

One of the joys of having cupboards that seem to be bursting at the seams is that on the sort of day when it’s cold and grim outside, and you suddenly fancy a cake, it’s not usually too difficult to find enough ingredients in the kitchen.

Having spent such a busy morning, I fancied dipping once more into Recipes of Lakeland as the day got progressively colder and greyer.

There are cakes and fruit breads and biscuits galore in its pages – the only shame being that all those readers who contributed recipes are not themselves credited.

Not very elegant, but plenty of taste.

In his thoroughly enjoyable Eating for England, Nigel Slater notes the extraordinary regional variety of such cakes and observes that, although English cakes lack the elegance and finesse of a Madeleine, they have “a certain wobbly charm to them” and a “lick-your-fingers stickiness”.

Dalton gingerbread seemed likely to fall into exactly that category.

Three cups plain flour,” says the recipe, to be rubbed into “¼lb lard”. This is the juncture at which I admit southern jessiedom.

Much as I have learned, in the last couple of years, to love lard – and dripping – using it in a cake is a step too far. So, butter instead.

And to translate everything into modern money, that’s 450g plain flour and 225g butter.

Once you’ve beaten those together – in a mixer in my case: all the bodybuilding of my younger years still hasn’t equipped me with a country housewife’s forearms – before adding 150g sugar (I used a soft demerara) a pinch of salt, two teaspoons of ground ginger and last, one and a half teaspoons of baking powder.

Into that, mix 150g of melted dark treacle: for some reason or other, lost in the mists of time, there was a jar of organic stuff in the cupboard, unopened.

Then, dissolve a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda into 150g of boiling water – and stir that into the mixture.

Decant everything into “a deep roasting tin” and bake in a moderate oven for half an hour.

The tin in my case was my largest enamel pie dish, buttered. The oven was set at 150˚C (fan).

I tested with a skewer after 30 minutes – and gave it another 10.

This is not a thing of beauty. It is not elegant. It lacks any finesse; although it came clean away from the dish easily, it crumbles even more easily.

But it is crisp on the outside, squidgy and sticky inside; dense and rich and yet not heavy; gloriously aromatic and, tasted together with a bit of Stilton (Lancashire or Cheshire would also work well) it is a thing of warming, comforting pleasure.

A perfect winter's day?

Winter sky over Hackney.

After a 12-day stint of work, with those trips to Sheffield and Scunthorpe forming part of that, this weekend could hardly have been  more welcome.

And what better way to start things off, after a long, restful sleep, than to find blue skies above and actual sun visible in the firmament.

It was, indeed, the sort of weather that made you feel that spring is not too far away – and to put a spring into your step.

Broadway Market was its usual self by the time I arrived, bustle beginning to build to the levels we've come to expect, but everyone seemed to be feeling the benefit of gloom lifted.

The now-regulation Saturday breakfast of a sausage roll from one of the stalls – a Cumberland sausage in real pastry – was enjoyed standing to one side, a confetti of crumbs tumbling to the ground.

Chats with Matthew and Trevor were appreciated during the shopping, and another at La Bouche with Arno, who was sporting a rather magnificent beret.

Shopping done and packed away, a stroll through the park followed, newly-planted trees bearing evidence to the belief of the council gardeners that the season is changing. There was even some warmth from the sun.

Winter jasmine.

Back at home, The Other Half was deliberating hanging a wash outside for a while, while the cats were begging to get out too, insisting that we had no decent excuses, because they could quite clearly see that it wasn’t wet or grey or snowy any more.

While they patrolled their territory, I went looking around mine.

The damp and gloom had halted my autumnal gardening exploits, yet the patch of soil that I had already sifted, in a bed that's part of the car park, has seen less weeds growing than that I hadn’t got to.

A valuable little lesson – quite obvious when you think about it, but also an indicator of just how unnaturally mild this winter has been.

Winter jasmine offered seasonal colour, while a neat, pale pink rose on a bush growing out of one of the other flats' gardens offered a rather more unseasonal sight.

The pyracantha shows new growth. The chives and garlic are reviving, as too are the sorrel and mint.

Crocuses and other bulbs are well on the way. The only bulbs that seem reticent are the snowdrops.

Back inside and time to use up a celeriac that’s been sitting around for a fortnight.

Two small onions were peeled, sliced and softened in butter, joined by a sliced stick of celery and then the drained celeriac, which had been cut up and was resting in a bowl of acidulated water.

To that was added some stock: when I need a stock cube, I use Kallo’s Just Bouillon – a rare one, in that it doesn’t include palm oil, the harvesting of which is damaging orangutan habitats.

And then it was left to simmer away while I watched the first half of Manchester City’s FA Cup fourth-round tie at Stoke.

At the break, it was given a bit of a blitzing with the hand blender, before having a little cream added to finish it.

And then it was served with plenty of black pepper and a grating of nutmeg.

And jolly pleasing it was too: soothing and warming and gentle: perfect for such an afternoon.

The invigorated mood was not harmed when City went through, thanks to a late goal from the wonderful Pablo Zabaleta; goodness, how many right-backs could have finished so well? Zabman is total class.

And then a feeling that I wanted to bake. But what? I’d made no plans.

However, there was enough in the cupboards to make a version of my mother’s ginger sponge.

The recipe is in an old notebook, precisely copied down some 30 years ago, in imperial measurements.

I have made one or two adjustments over the years – not least substituting butter for the marg my mother used: I remember the pale yellow and white stripes of Stork packets.

Given what else was available, I also took a piece of stem ginger and chopped it finely, adding it at the end of mixing.

My mother also used to add 75ml of milk, but I don’t think it needs it. She also just used ordinary sugar.

It’s not a light sponge, like a Victoria – but with all the Golden Syrup used, it never could be. What it has is density and bags of flavour.

Make sure you use a good-quality ground ginger. The stem ginger really gives it an extra kick.

So, melt 200g Golden Syrup, 75g of unsalted butter and 50g of unrefined demerara and melt gently together.

In the meantime, sift 200g of self-raising flour, add a pinch of salt and two heaped teaspoons of ground ginger.

Into this, add one beaten egg, and then add the melted syrup/sugar/butter and beat in.

This was where I added the stem ginger, before decanting the lot into a lined baking tin.

And then bake for 45 minutes at 150˚C (fan).

To check it’s cooked, press a skewer into the centre and, if it comes away clean, the cake is done.

Remove from your tin onto a rack and allow to cool.

Maybe it isn’t the most sophisticated piece of baking, but it was readily doable from what I had in and, in that, answered a need.

That there’s less than half left attests to it packing a punch of warming ginger.

And then a Poirot stack on the TV, followed by haggis from Andy, with tatties and, if not neeps, then crushed swede, carrot and parsnip, before top-notch animation in Robots – imagine, a Hollywood film that, in effect, is damning of the beauty/cosmetic surgery industry!

All in all, was that perhaps close to being a perfect day?

A cake yule never forget

There’s an alchemy to what goes on in the kitchen; a mystery that is perhaps particularly relevant at this time of year.

Take egg whites.

Transparent and slippery when they slide from a cracked shell; opaque and white, stiff and yet airy after being whipped. Such a transformation.

The day before Christmas Eve, my cold in full flow after having returned with a vengeance, it was time to finally roll up sleeves and get going with the Yule log I’d long promised The Other Half, since he doesn’t like any cake containing dried fruit.

There’s been a vast Swiss roll tin in the cupboard for a couple of years now, but procrastination is an effective shield against new culinary challenges.

So, after having found flu drugs in the medicine cabinet and with Annie Lennox singing carols in the background, I sat down with caffeine and the recipes and notes I'd printed out last week.

First, there was the Nigella version.

“I can’t promise it’s a doddle,” she had written – words that, in my mind’s eye, I could see being delivered to the accompaniment of a certain look to camera, “but it works easily”.

And it certainly looked far from difficult. Indeed, the main question seems to be the rolling bit.

While searching for general advice, I’d come across Felicity Cloake’s recent article in her Guardian ‘how to make the perfect’ series, where she tests a number of recipes and then comes up with a perfect one.

The key here was the rolling question.

Nigella – like Delia – let’s the cake cool before rolling. Research suggested that this was not best, and Cloake's own tests backed this up.

In the event, I used Nigella’s recipe – with a tweak or two. Besides, her amounts were more realistic for the tin I have than any that Cloake used.

You start by separating half a dozen medium eggs, then whisking those whites until they peak, before adding 50g of caster sugar and mixing a little more. Then a teaspoon of vanilla extract goes in, along with 50g of sifted cocoa powder.

In another bowl, the yolks are whisked up with 100g caster sugar, until they’re the texture of a mousse and a lovely, pale yellow.

A couple of “dollops” of the white mix are added and beaten in, before the rest of the egg white mixture is carefully folded in.

Everything goes into your carefully-lined Swiss roll tin and is popped into an oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

Once removed, it gets a moment or two to rest – and then comes the bit everyone dreads.

Turn it out onto more baking paper and gently roll up, before leaving to cool.

There are mentions of clean tea towels and dustings of icing sugar. I managed thus: a little icing sugar was sprinkled on the sponge, then it was covered with another large sheet of baking paper.

The inverted cooling rack went on top and then it was quite easy to turn over. The tray came away easily and it was only a matter of taking my time to ease the bottom layer of baking paper away.

It doesn’t matter if you tear or lose a bit of cake – you’re going to cover those.

Using the baking paper that’s now beneath your sponge, you slowly roll the thing away from you. The paper is a great help, because you can use that rather than putting pressure on the warm sponge.

Slip the paper out from underneath and leave on the cooling rack.

Later, it was a case of bashing up 175g of 70% cocoa solids chocolate as the sound of Bing Crosby singing that song drifted through the flat, before melting gently over a pan of hot water.

Butter and icing sugar was beaten together, before the melted chocolate joined them, once it had cooled a little.

Now at this juncture, Nigella calls for another teaspoon of vanilla essence to be added to the mix, but I decided to take a leaf out of Cloake’s book experiments.

I split approximately a third of the mixture into another bowl and added a substantial squeeze of chestnut purée, then spread that over the unrolled cake.

By this time, we’d hit Jingle Bells – in French – on The Other Half’s Christmas playlist. And people imagine he’s all ‘bah humbug’ at this time of year.

Once the filled sponge was rolled back up, I cut off a piece from each end and placed them alongside it, at angles, on a silver cake board.

Then it was a question of plastering over the chocolate buttercream mix – with vanilla now added. There was a massive amount of the mixture and it wasn’t quite as easy as you might imagine, because the sponge is really quite delicate.

Next, take a skewer and try to make it look like a log. A line here; a whorl there. I realised that it’s a long time since I drew cartoon logs, but it sort of came back to me.

Then dust with sieved icing sugar and decorate with whatever you’ve got available. I’d managed, only a few days ago, to get my hands on some sugar flowers, a little Christmas tree and a robin, so on they went (the tree on a sugar-dusted ‘hump’ of extra buttercream to one side of the cake itself.

And there it was – my first Yule log. Looking suitably Yuleish. Even by my standards, this is not health food – but it is Christmas, after all!

Then onto the day’s next task – making orange dust and lemon dust. There was to be no repeat of last year’s debacle, when I misread the temperature as centigrade when it was actually fahrenheit.

A small orange and a lemon were sliced as thinly as possible – oh, the value of a new, really, really sharp Zwilling Henckels paring knife – and went on to a lined baking tray, to spend the hours n the oven at 100˚C (fan).

They’re then blitzed (separately), each with a pinch of sugar and a touch of salt, before being sieved into small containers, where they keep very nicely for some time.

And that was entirely enough prep for one day: there’s still Christmas Eve to go, and plenty more to do. But that can wait.

Forget the canapés – try northern nostalgia

Trying to look glam – with oven gloves and a very large pie.

If you have any parties planned for the festive period, and are contemplating what food to serve, then TV ads for such entertaining are probably best avoided.

There is, of course, the usual Iceland ‘prawn ring’, which this year, you could follow with ‘lasagne bites’, before tucking into a cake filled with Bailey’s profiteroles.

If the cake sounds overly sweet, just turn your mind back to the pasta.

The mere idea sends shivers down the spine the moment you find yourself wondering how they do it.

How do you make a lasagne – with a real ragu and a real béchamel – but that comes in tiny portions that hold together enough to be finger food.

Yes. Exactly.

Not that such dismal ideas are the preserve of Iceland. M&S are currently bigging up their ‘prawn balls covered in croutons’. Now I like prawns and I like croutons, but this sounds like an idea created by some sort of malfunctioning random generator.

And on the basis of the TV advert – where they’ll inevitably be seen at their best – they look about as enticing as a snowball covered in stones.

So when it came to deciding what I was going to serve at a small and dreadfully select 50th birthday bash on Saturday evening, such finger food was the last thing on my mind.

Instead, with a lurch of northern sentiment, I opted for meat and potato pie à la the Hairy Bikers – before realising I hadn’t got a big enough pie tin.

That was easily solved. But the outstanding question was still what to serve for afters.

I had been iffing and umming for weeks. But with the autumn having proved a busy one, plans had gone onto the back burner, along with pretty much the whole of Christmas, where they both barely raised a simmer.

Thus I found myself sitting in bed on Saturday morning, a tisane by my side and the iPad in my lap, praying for answers from the Great God Google.

When one arose, it came with the heady aroma of nostalgia – and delivered by the most perfect vehicle of precisely that: Nigel Slater.

The answer was a coffee walnut cake.

Now I like baking, but I don’t actually do avery much of it.

Slater’s recipe, though, looked a doddle and, he said, only took an hour from start to finish.

As soon as I got back from the Saturday shopping, it was straight into the kitchen.

First up, the sponge cake. At this juncture it became clear that while I have three cake tins, they are all of slightly different sizes. In the case of two of them, the difference is only very, VERY slight.

What to do? Use the two and hope to sketch lightly over the slight difference with the aid of plenty of buttercream?

Or make one deeper sponge, hope the timings still work the same – and then cut it in half?

I opted for the former. Followed by a brief bit of hair tearing on seeing the words: ‘Line two cake tins’, only to nearly collapse with relief when I read the recipe properly and found that only the bases needed lining.

The next discovery concerned the sugar. I had a bag of unrefined light brown sugar in the cupboard and, having not been completely thorough in my reading of the recipe, had thought that that would do. In fact, the order of the day was “unrefined golden caster sugar”.

Drat and double drat.

I decided to go with what was in the cupboard. This was creamed with butter before three eggs were gradually added to it in the mixer.

Goodness – how wonderful is the smell of creamed butter and sugar?

Then the flour and baking powder are gently mixed in, followed by chopped walnuts and a teaspoon of coffee. Slater advises using instant – while he’s used espresso, he has “come to the conclusion that the latter gives a richer, more rounded flavour.”

The next comment is an illustration of why he’s such a joy to read.

“The only bore is having to go out and buy the stuff. And if anyone looks as if they are about to get snooty with you, just remind them that Elizabeth David apparently drank instant coffee by the mugful.”

Once in the tins – and once I’d remembered to put the oven on as well as set the temperature – it was easy.

They cooked in just over 25 minutes – I remembered the skewer test – and then it was simply a question of beating butter and icing sugar together, and adding more coffee.

I really couldn’t be arsed with buying instant coffee, so had made a small pot of strong espresso on the hob.

The buttercream was supposed to include more chopped walnuts, but I skipped that too, and went simply for the nuts to decorate the top.

Spreading the cream mix was enormous fun and it all looked reasonable by the time I’d finished.

And so to the pie. Well, I’d bought 1.1kg of mince, which led to the discovery that I needed to cook the filling in two pans, given that there were also carrots, onions and celery involved – and that was before the potato.

And wow – that’s the most pastry I’ve ever mixed up – and the largest single piece of pastry I’ve ever rolled out.

It took the entire afternoon and left me with only an hour to get myself ready before the hour chimed. I really don’t know how professional cooks and chefs do it.

But get done it did. One of my guests, who is a food tech (domestic science) teacher later observed: “You couldn’t have got more lard in this pastry!” In other words, it was well and truly short.

And she also commented that for all it was very down to earth, it was also sophisticated, simply by being done properly.

Most to the point, there was none left. And the cake was just as well received.

Now that’s what I call party food.

* Nigel Slater’s full article and recipe on coffee walnut cake is here.

Well that takes the biscuit

It was a back-to-normal Broadway Market today, with no crime scenes to disturb anything. Well okay – perhaps "normal" is overdoing it a tad when you look at some of the characters that materialise at the weekend.

And then, quite apart from anything else, is there another market anywhere that is always so rammed not simply with shoppers, but also with a plethora of bikes and buggies, dogs, small children and the widest range of wheeled toys to be found outside Hamleys in the run up to Christmas?

Which is why I try to get up there as early as possible on a Saturday. Today I was a little tardy after sleeping longer than usual, so it was busy by the time I arrived.

Fortunately, as I still had game on my mind, Andy was back - and I was tempted by the opportunity to try wild duck breast for a change, thinking it couldn't be much different from the farmed variety that I'm used to.

My next piece of luck was in spotting that Mark's organic stall had the first quinces of the season. Two are now sitting in the kitchen, hopefully to ripen a little in the coming days.

The third good break came when I found, with unexpected ease, rice flour.

My mind had turned shortbread on my most recent train trip, where I'd been served a small packet with a cup of tea.

As has become habit, I casually cast a glance at the wrapper. Perhaps rather perversely for a shortbread made in Scotland, it was branded under the name Brönte and included clotted cream among the ingredients. More disturbing, though, was the mention of additional 'flavourings'.

Now what on Earth does that mean?

Unless it's a particularly exotic specimen, with vanilla or even chocolate involved, then what other flavouring are required in addition to butter and sugar?

And then, I had been inspired by the nostalgia of Nigel Slater's Eating for England and decided to try my hand at baking some.

I have tried it before, but it was in the dim and distant past and I have no particular memories of it being a great success - which is probably why I haven't made any since: until today.

Felicity Cloake writes a series of articles for the Guardian where she examines 'how to make perfect' versions of some classic culinary confection or other. Surfing for shortbread recipes, I found her take on the matter.

Not only did it have some interesting facts about the history of this queen amongst biscuits, but she had also road-tested a number of different recipes to see which was best.

And that was how I discovered that ground rice or rice flour, used with plain flour, is the great cook's secret ingredient to help give shortbread that slightly gritty quality.

The other main pointer that I discovered was not to roll the bread out with a pin - it makes it too dense - but to pat gently with you hands, trying to keep them as cool as possible.

There's nothing difficult about Cloake's eventual recipe - it's nice and easy to follow.

Cream the butter - and make it really good butter - and then beat in a pinch of salt an some caster sugar, before sifting the flours over and mixing thoroughly.

But I did have to add more butter to get the mix to hold together at all.

It's a deceptive matter. I emptied the crumbly mixture into a lined and greased baking tray, and patted away as delicately as possible. I wasn't sure whether it would actually hold together. But after the required 15 minutes in the fridge, it went into an oven heated to 150˚C for around an hour.

My fan oven being legendarily bloody minded, it took longer. But the result, when it emerged, was pleasingly golden and had smoothed out in the process of cooking.

I sprinkled some demerara sugar over and then left it for a couple of minutes, before transferring to a rack. Remarkably, it held together, although it was clearly fragile.

The smell was divine – and it wasn't long before temptation became too much. A very pleasing effort: crumbly and richly buttery, with the right sort of graininess that I mentioned early, and nicely light.

So pleasing, in fact, that there isn't much left.

I'm curious as to how people make shortbread that doesn't crumble quite as quickly – but then that would hardly be a commercial proposition.

Presumably, for mass production purposes, the lightness has to be compromised in order to get a great tightness that makes it possible to pack and then sell.

I'll be making more – quite possibly tomorrow. It's insanely easy and utterly delicious. And who needs extra 'flavourings'?

What's really British?

With British Food Fortnight now over for 2011, it seems the ideal time to consider just what British food really is.

It's fair to say that, in restaurant terms, it's probably never been better. The influence of the Roux brothers and Raymond Blanc in particular has had a massive impact - not simply in terms of record levels of Michelin stars held by establishments on this side of the Channel, but in an approach to cooking that has spread considerably beyond the upper reaches of eating out.

The ideas of seasonality and regional ingredients have become a mantra in the restaurant - and in the home.

But it is not something that has spread to every corner of Britain's food.

Nigel Slater's Eating for England is a collection of pithy essayettes on the cuisine of these islands.

Slater increasingly seems to be to food writing what Alan Bennett is to literature and the stage, with a sense of Englishness at it's most poignant as well as it's most ridiculous, and an understanding of memory and time and place that, in his case, can make you yearn less for a madeleine and more for a custard cream.

Like his volume of autobiography, Toast, much of this book is filled with a sense of nostalgia for the quirkily British foods that we remember from childhood: rice pudding to Murray Mints; the best biscuits for dunking and the sheer regional variety and creativity of the British when it comes to cakes.

But don't get too cosy, basking in the warm glow of nostalgia, because Slater peppers the book with withering comments on the other side of British food; the perennially grey stew; the stock cube that works against the taste of the meat; the high street butchers that are a dying breed because we shop online from our sofas ...

And that is where I start to feel depressed about the state of British food.

Watching Stephen Fry's latest series on language, another thing hit me. He was showing how the words we use have a cultural significance, describing national or regional attitudes.

One of his illustrations of this was a visit to the Basque region of Spain, looking at it's vocabulary and its food. All well and good.

But there's an even better example. Look at all those French phrases about the love of food: bon vivant, bon viveur, gourmand, gourmet and so on. We know these words because we have adopted them.

Try to think of an Anglo-Saxon phrase that describes the same thing - in general, let alone with the different subtleties that the words and phrases convey. We don't have the concept, so we have had to import the words and phrases wholesale.

I'm stymied. 'Foodie' is very recent and, for many, slightly deprecating - which tells its own story.

And that, to me, is the problem. These islands produce some fantastic food, yet most people ignore that and go to the supermarket.

Today, I bought some gilt head bream that was brought ashore in Cornwall only yesterday. If you found anything comparable in a supermarket, it would have been at least a day or two later, given the nature of supermarkets' centralised systems of distribution.

I grilled the fish for around five minutes a side. And served it with some carrot and broccoli. Simples. And very nice.

In the meantime, most people on these islands will probably have pulled something from the freezer, bunged it into the microwave and then sat and eaten while watching the TV.

And that, for me, is always going to be disappointing.

But in the meantime, I continue to enjoy a Yorkshire tea loaf that I tried out on Sunday. Lovely, as it happened! Moist and fruity sweet. And very, very easy.

So here, as an homage to British food, is my recipe for a Yorkshire tea loaf.

Take 500g of mixed fruit and pop it in a bowl with 230g sugar.

Just cover with hot tea (I used three tea bags of Earl Gray) – this should be around 570ml.

Leave overnight.

The next day, heat up your oven to 180˚C (fan oven).

Sift 454g self raising flour into the fruit and tea, together with two eggs. Mix well.

Then share the mixture out between two loaf tins that you've greased, lined, and greased again.

Pop in the oven for five minutes and then turn down the temperature to 140˚C (fan oven).

Leave for an hour – and then test with a skewer. If the skewer doesn't come away clean, then give the loaf another 10-15 minutes.

When the skewer comes out clean, remove the tins and leave for five minutes before lifting the loaves onto a rack and leaving to cool. Then eat with good butter.

This, I promise you, is British food at its best. And I think that Mr Slater would agree.

Memories of things past

At just before 1pm this afternoon, as I was strolling back home from the market, bags over one shoulder and in both hands, a noise stopped me in my tracks.

Looking up, military helicopters flew low in formation overhead.

Ah yes – the Queen’s official birthday: Trooping the Colour and a flypast. I love the flypasts. They go right over our tiny garden, only moments from Buck House.

But while any tight formation flying is impressive – and the Red Arrows never cease to amaze – that’s not what I love seeing most.

Bags now on the floor, iPhone out, I waited. And then you hear it. Not like any of the other planes, but a different sound; less a roar, more a hum.

And coming into sight are the real stars: a Lancaster bomber, flanked by a Hurricane and a Spitfire.

They last flew in anger years before I was born. And yet it seems that I know that sound: that humming as the props whir makes my spine tingles.

It is, I think, a sort of inherited, collective memory.

And if anything about modern warfare could be called romantic, then those planes and the young men who flew them have something of that about them.

In our national memory, ‘The Few’ are still in those tin crates, flying by the seat of their pants; defying odds and performing heroics with an apparent lack of care.

Of course, patriotism, nationalism, the weight of history – and in the case of Britain’s history, the sense of having been on the side of the angels for once – can sometimes obscure a rather salient point: bravery is not the sole preserve of any one side in a conflict.

Brave young men died on both sides in WWII, as in any other war. That, of course, is its tragedy.

Today’s flypast was also a reminder that, yet again, we’re up to our necks in warfaring, still snared in the mess that is Afghanistan and now getting ourselves embroiled in Libya.

At least Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair waited a bit before going to war: on the basis of David Cameron’s excuses for this latest adventure, next stop Syria?

It’s amazing how prime ministers seem to be able to find the money for bombs.

But as I was musing on that idea of inherited memory, it struck me that another collective or inherited memory seems to have been lost.

This week, we learned that Chorleywood bread is 50 years old. The process that meant that factory bread could be churned out by the plastic-shrouded ton is something, according to Gordon Polson, of the British Federation of Bakers, that we “should be very proud of.”

“It is a process we invented … UK bread is around the cheapest in the world.”

Here we go again. The great cheapness-over-quality argument.

But there’s more to it than that, as Andrew Whitley explains in a somewhat disturbing article, What have they done to the grain?.

So why do we keep eating this stuff? It doesn’t seem that we really enjoy it.

According to the BBC article mentioned above, “almost a third of the bread bought in Britain – 680,000 tonnes a year – is thrown away.”

A wholemeal loaf in my local Percy Ingle is £1.57. But like sliced factory bread, it’s produced the Chorleywood way. Indeed, a Percy Ingle white loaf stay soft for days – which you instinctively know just ain’t right.

Brief research shows that a Waitrose own-brand 800g sliced wholemeal loaf is 69p. The majority of factory loaves are around the £1.30-£1.40 mark.

Yet if you factor in that stat on thrown-away bread, then the prices are, in effect, rather higher.

In which case, why don’t we pay a little more for something better in the first place, and then not waste it?

The factory stuff tastes of little and the texture is so dismal that it sticks to the roof of your mouth in a mush.

And I don’t buy that business about it making the best toast or the best sandwiches either.

Now at this point I need to ’fess up to my own laziness over bread. I eat little of the stuff and frequently give in to just picking up a factory loaf – because bread is one of those things that you have to ‘have in’. Like many others, they’re rarely used up: they’re mostly a desperation food.

It seems that we have come to use bread simply as the casing or surface for other things – sandwich fillings or a fried egg, for instance. We don’t expect it to actually be worth eating itself.

Yet any time on the Continent would tell you something quite different.

And so I decided to invest a bit more for a loaf of artisan bread this morning and picked up a six-day sour from one of the stalls for the first time. It was just under £3.

It is not, however, going to last long and certainly not going to go to waste, because it tastes wonderful. It has great texture, a good crust and a lovely, nutty flavour. You want to eat it.

The time has come to root out an email from George that includes an easy recipe for a spelt loaf that doesn’t need much proving. I’m going to try to stop being lazy and make bread in the middle of the week.

Once you have good bread, you can use it differently: to dip in good olive oil and Balsamico, for instance. As an alternative accompaniment to a main course, instead of potatoes – and think of the time that can save!

Indeed, I’m going to go and tear some off in a minute and scoop up some more ripe and runny Saint-Marcellin cheese.

But what fascinates me is how we seem to have lost the memory of just how good bread can be.

The Chorleywood method might have made it cheaper to produce bread on a massive scale, but it also put considerable numbers of real bakers out of business. It saw skills lost and taught us to accept an inferior product that’s crammed with stuff that really has no place in good bread.

A quick look at the ingredients of a typical factory loaf (soft, white, thick sliced Waitrose own brand) reveals that it contains the following:

Wheat Flour, Water, Yeast, Fermented Wheat Flour, Spirit Vinegar, Rapeseed Oil and Palm Oil, Salt, Soya Flour, Flour Treatment Agent Ascorbic Acid.

Which isn’t bad really, since a ‘Warburtons tasty white’ lists the following ingredients:

Wheat Flour, Water, Yeast, Vegetable Oil, Salt, Soya Flour, Emulsifiers E471, E481, Preservative Calcium Propionate (added to inhibit mould growth), Flavouring, Flour Treatment Agents Acorbic Acid (Vitamin C), E920.

And neither of those lists, as Mr Whitley explains, includes the ‘additives’ that don’t have to be listed because they’re only used to aid the manufacturing process and thus don’t count as ‘additives’.

Like so much else within our current food and retail cultures, we seem to have been taught to appreciate price over quality; to expect everything to be cheap.

It would be worth remembering why the French had a revolution over bread: because when it’s the real deal, it’s bloody brilliant. And let's face it, Chorleywood isn't about to produce any Proustian moments.