Becky Bakes…

Here we are, more than 6 months in, with 28 videos uploaded and we’ve decided to take a break. Not for long – just a breather so the tech team can fully recover from their dreadful colds. The sneezing and coughing need to disappear completely before we can think about recording anything else or there will be some unpleasant “noises off”. Over the next couple of weeks we are going to start thinking about Christmas for when we come back, so look out for some more useful, reliable recipes…winter warmers and comfort food too. In the meantime I’ll continue with my Saturday blog and, heads up…the website wizard is going to take the opportunity to reorganise the recipe section to make it easier to navigate. Bx

Our fine crop of tomatoes – I hesitate to call it a surplus, never mind a glut – seldom causes a problem. We can always give some away as well as eating them with most meals. Usually I put some in the freezer then add them to casseroles in the winter and they’re a great addition to bolognaise or anything where I’m using ragu-style sauces. This year we’ve had so many Marmandes which have a lot of flesh and very few seeds, so chutney became the solution, thanks to a timely reminder from a friend who’d done the same with her green tomatoes. This takes me back to a Friday afternoon when my group of international students wanted to make traditional jams, lemon curd and chutney to take home at Christmas. The jam and lemon curd were fine, making the whole building smell wonderful. But the chutney? That didn’t go down too well with The Boss as he had a group of prospective parents to impress. He later put his head round the door and asked if we could leave that recipe out in future…? It was the one and only time he didn’t appreciate our endeavours – usually he relished any tasters that came his way, looking forward particularly to bread making and, of course chocolate cake. Happy days !

Those were the words of an ex-pupil when his mother showed him one of my videos. I’m hoping it was said with a wistful sigh rather than a grumpy frown, but I consider him to be one of the lucky ones. Many of the young people I meet have had little or no proper introduction to cooking and the value of food for which I blame the introduction of the National Curriculum. One of the first modules I taught under the then-new guidelines was called “Airline Catering”. Packaging materials were smuggled off planes by jet-setting husbands and menus were kindly sent to us by airlines. The pupils had to think about dietary requirements, but we weren’t supposed to actually teach them about it, the plan was that they’d find out for themselves- “research”. It was all a bit thin. So at the end of that term what had they cooked? Nothing. Not a single thing. They were expected to draw pictures of food or cut them out of magazines. What a waste of time. So you can understand my disappointment that we had lost control of our ability to teach what we thought was necessary and important. Many years later I was confronted by a Head who spoke about the “nominal GCSE in cake decorating”, considering food studies trivial and unimportant because “we all know how to eat”. But do we? So, for anyone who didn’t experience the delight of proudly taking home a magnificent bake – these videos are for you. For anyone who has become jaded and a bit fed up with the dishes you’ ve been making for many years- these videos are for you. For anyone who still wants to learn just a bit more- these videos are for you. Forgive me if it’s like being back at school, but I can’t do it any other way…once a teacher always a teacher! xx

This is a phrase I’ve often used over the years and have, in the past, created a rainbow poster from tiny magazine fruit and vegs pictures and even a massive version, on a sheet spread over the school hall floor, with the real thing! But we found it increasingly difficult to eat our rainbow during lockdown. Richard took on the role of “hunter-gatherer” for us and a neighbour but struggled with the sheer volume when required to put all the goods on the belt before the nice lady could begin to scan all the shopping. My solution was to take on the acquisition of our fruit & vegs. We are lucky to have 2 greengrocers in the town so I went to the larger one first. The variety on offer was enormous – they even had the elusive lemon curd as well as eggs, milk and flour. But as all their goods are in full sun for most of the day my choices quickly deteriorated and I felt I needed to make two visits each week . So I tried the smaller shop and sadly that wasn’t much better, not least because of the pigeons wandering round eating the spilled seed. The final solution was for Richard to shop twice a week until restrictions were eased and our neighbour felt ready to enjoy the delights of impulse buys and her own choices. Thankfully our garden began to produce lovely lettuces and pea shoots as well as asparagus, potatoes and lots more. Richard is still doing our shopping and this week I found I had an accidental surplus of peppers so dug deeply to find an obscure dish from the past – pepperonata. So here’s a bonus recipe for you; slice and gently fry an onion with 2 crushed garlic cloves ,in olive oil and butter until soft, add 4 or 5 sliced deseeded peppers, red, orange and/or yellow and cook them gently for 10 minutes. Add 5 tomatoes, cut in half. Put a lid on and simmer for 20 mins, remove tomato skins as they start to peel off. Salt and pepper, taste and your done. Great served hot, but I like it better cold. Keeps in the fridge for several days (unless you do a “Nigella” and steal spoons of the stuff when you open the fridge anytime!) Helps with your rainbow…….let me know if you try this one xx

It came as quite a surprise to find that the video for Soda bread had only been uploaded for 5 minutes when already quite a number of people had watched it. Then, quick as a flash, a photo of a lovely one made by a friend appeared in my instant message box. Wow, I commented, that was quick! In a couple of minutes there was another one and, checking the statistics, I discovered the video watching was increasing faster than most. After only 4 days it’s already more popular than one or two of the others and I ask myself why? So, dear reader, is it because it’s a savoury dish? Are you looking for more of those? Interestingly the most popular recipes to date have been Fork biscuits and Victoria Sandwich. VS was our first one, so maybe that had the novelty value and FB’s were so quick and easy – I’d imagined Brownie would be up there too, but no! So, now that we’re almost 6 months in, we are going to enter a new phase and introduce more savoury dishes if that’s what you’d like. You can send me a message if you have an opinion!

Having grown up in a household where running out of anything was a minor disaster, it should come as no surprise that I have a well-stocked pantry. So when, in March, we began making videos I had plenty of my most useful ingredients. On the occasions that I needed flour it was available until, apparently “we all started baking”. (I’d never stopped) There were some weeks when the flour didn’t seem as plentiful in the supermarket and then it disappeared from the shelves altogether. There was no shortage – mills were working flat out – but it couldn’t be packaged quickly enough to keep up with demand. Oddly enough I’ve spotted massive sacks for sale in both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose in recent weeks – who can store one of those at home? Luckily for me, there is a lovely bespoke cake shop nearby and although closed, their deliveries were still being received so I was able to buy flour and other ingredients “loose” from there. (You may have noticed that sometimes my flour is in a glass storage jar). Normally I prefer to use Homepride which comes in a distinctive box and snappy lid, good for preventing flour mites getting in and they sit neatly on my shelf. Well – this week we heard that last Winter was too wet to plant the wheat, this Spring was too wet for it to grow and guess what? The Summer was too hot for it to ripen too. Result…poor harvest=higher prices+potential shortages (again). What am I going to do? Put it on the shopping list and get a good stock ready, just in case. Oh, and bread prices will probably go up too. I’ll be back to my alternative source no doubt – as she had bread flour and yeast as well!

An apple a day keeps the doctor away; an apple-pie bed; an apple for the teacher; up the apples and pears; in apple-pie order; apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze- that’s my favourite apple-related saying. Then there’s Johnny-appleseed and Appley-Dapply’s nursery rhymes. Where would we be without apples? The first recorded Bramley was in the garden of Mary Anne Brailsford who lived near Southwell, Nottinghamshire. As a child, in around 1812, she planted the pip from an apple her mother was using. This grew to a full sized tree and when the house and garden were sold to Matthew Bramley he formally named it and allowed cuttings to be produced in his name. The Bramley is considered ideal for cooking but unsuitable to be eaten as a dessert apple as it’s so sour. I’ve never been able to find them in any other country, although the U.S. has several equally tart varieties. We have many native sweet apples and often independent greengrocers and farm shops will have varieties such as Katy, Greensleeves, Saturn, Baldwin, Empire and of course Cox’s Orange Pippin, although I doubt you’ll find May Queen- a legend in our household. Any of these would make a change from Golden Delicious, Gala and even Braeburn but they have cornered the popular market by being pretty much the only varieties offered in supermarkets these days. High in vitamin C and in fibre apples are versatile and blend well with other flavours- so I make no apology for the number of videos of apple dishes coming up at the moment! x

Earlier this week, with the impending arrival of our favourite daughter, I made a batch of Brownie and posted a picture of it on Facebook along with a cryptic comment. Brownie has figured large in her years at University and was even requested for their wedding feast. Our younger nephew rarely posts on FB but is a connoisseur of chocolate cake, with his absolute fave being Granny Pat’s recipe (which I’m banned from sharing with you, sorry). It seems there has been little success on the brownie-front in their kitchen so I decided to send him a little cake parcel. Being totally fair and even-handed I then wrapped another box for his older brother. Happily both arrived the very next day. So more of the cake was consumed with coffee and as dessert with ice cream and another little box packed for the daughter to take home. That all left very little in the tin for the lovely ladies down the road to receive – but they won’t know what they missed this week. I better make some more 😉 The second curved ball came when, as an administrator of my website, I looked at my “stats” and could see how many people had visited the site each day. Noticing some small print, I then clicked on that and discovered I could see exactly which recipes had been downloaded and other areas that had been looked at. But there, lower down , was a map pf the world with countries coloured for their “visitors”. I’m sure you will have guessed that most were from UK, but if you know me well you’ll be expecting USA too. But what about China ? Ex-pupils perhaps…and Australia ? Parents of a friend maybe. Any ideas anyone ?

Way back in March we spent many moments listening to the experts who advised us about life during the pandemic. I felt so sorry for these people suddenly thrust into the public eye and trying to explain the science to us all. As the weeks went on my faith in them grew, especially when one in particular wouldn’t condone the actions of a certain senior advisor to the PM…..They often spoke about the “new normal” and we wondered how that would look. Well, after the words of Chris Witty – this is as good as it’s going to be for quite a while – I think we may have reached it. Yes, it’s difficult seeing friends and family in the way that we used to, but we need to make the best of this new normal. In order to catch up with friends who live in the frozen north (my words meant humorously) we all travelled to a half-way point, found by dubious map searching and the use of a ruler, where we had a lovely afternoon courtesy of the National Trust. The house was closed but the gardens were beautiful, including an ancient Lebanese cedar and a massive mulberry bush, then a picnic gave us the chance to set the world to rights. Any park or riverside would have been just as good to be honest. Whilst we still have such lovely weather let’s see where we can find chances and opportunities to meet and eat, chat, exchange long-overdue birthday gifts and the like, all socially distanced of course. Let’s embrace the new normal and those of us who are more mobile accept that “half way” might be that little bit further up the motorway and go the extra mile.

Teaching Food Tech to the under-11’s within the constraints of timetable blocks was quite a challenge. In addition to the practical activity there was always some science, often maths, invariably geography and history…..never mind the interruptions by visitors or just curious colleagues. Inevitably organisation was key. Planning ahead meant time spent before the lesson weighing out the ingredients each child would need and getting out all their equipment. This level of organisation is worthwhile out of the school environment as it can prevent errors and mishaps in our kitchens too. It’s always a good idea to check we have all our ingredients before we start, getting them weighed out saves time during the mixing process – and if the doorbell(or phone) rings you will immediately know if you added the sugar !