Shopping at Lidls can be an interesting challenge, finding little gems amongst the shelf loads of run-of-the-mill cheap produce with hardly a recognisable brand in sight to help you get your bearings. You definitely need glasses handy to check the multi-lingual lists of ingredients.
But sometimes special things are right under your nose. They are currently selling these dinky little shopkeeper’s crates of clementines which are sweet enough to use as part of your Christmas decorations. If you have any fruits left, Nigella does a squidgy clementine cake here which is worth a go and I have heard glowing reports about it.

I had my house for some years before coming to live here and last Christmas was my first residing here full-time. I discovered a bottle of sloe gin tucked at the back of a cupboard. The pricked sloes had been left to steep in gin 6 or 7 years before and not being a great drinker I had forgotten the bottle was there. After pouring it through a coffee filter and rebottling, the liquid positively glistened and the taste was sublime. So this year I made a special effort to make some more but using damsons instead of sloes. Getting round to these things might be difficult at the time but the pay off later is certainly worth it.

So now here we are with Christmas only weeks away, the damson gin is nearly ready and the Christmas cake, made a few weeks ago, is calling out to be plied with brandy. I’ve completely forgotten the stress of getting these jobs done and now only have the promise of the results to look forward too.

I decided to get ahead this year and make a Christmas cake. This is good going for me as I don’t make this cake every year. The first thing to do of course is putting the dried fruit to soak in brandy. The next job is the ceremonious lining of the baking tin. I really love this part of the job, there aren’t many traditions that I embrace, but in this instance measuring and cutting the greaseproof paper, snipping along the bottom edges so they make 90 degree turns and pushing the bottom circle into place to neaten the whole thing off, is very satisfying. The very best part has to be wrapping the outside of the tin with brown parcel paper and tying it in place with string.
As I hadn’t made a cake last year and have moved house in the interim I had to find the right cake tin. Using the same tin is also an important part of the tradition so I had to rummage around in 2 cupboards and the shed to find the loose bottomed tin, totally backened from years of use and looking like something you wouldn’t dream of buying at a car boot sale because other peoples accumulated yuk is vile but when it is your own it is fine.
Whilst searching for THE tin I came across lots of other tins that I have collected over the years. Gathering them together has been rather shocking, like having to own up to alcoholism after being confronted with your stash of empties. Why is it that so often you don’t have the right tin for the job. That’s it, I’m not going to buy another baking tin ever (one day at a time).

The other day I saw a programme on TV called ‘Brat Camp’ where unruly, out of control teenagers are sent away to live rough for a week in an attempt to make them into human beings. Swear words streamed from the mouth of one young girl and left me thinking, what will she think when she sees herself in years to come, captured on film for all the world to see. The next day I saw Gordon Ramsay on TV and there seemed to be an uncanny resemblance. Is he really like that or is it just a TV persona. If he stops swearing will Channel 4 drop him?

I’ve decided to start the ‘Stop Swearing Gordon’ campaign. Don’t get me wrong, I like a bit of swearing and my reasons don’t spring from a prudish standpoint. A good swear word used at the right moment can be very effective. Someone needs to explain to him that the whole point of swearing is to add emphasis to conversation. The campaign starts here – next step, lapel badges!

STOP SWEARING GORDON – UPEND THE CLICHE.

Last week I found some locally grown quinces for sale at the organic deli down the road and just had to buy some. They have a wonderful scent and the lady who runs the shop says that when she arrives in the morning one basket of this fruit fills the whole shop with their perfume. They look a bit like pears but have a strange downy covering on their skins. I plan to make some membrillo, quince paste that you serve in slices with cheese, preferably a nice mature Manchego which luckily for me they sell at the same shop.
Apparently in times gone by, quinces were sometimes placed in linen cupboards to scent linens with their heady fragrance so I’ll try placing a couple in my airing cupboard as well and see what happens. Just so long as I remember they are there and remove them before they start to decompose.

PUMPKIN PIE AND GINGER CREAM

A couple of days ago Maddy, the little girl from next door, brought me a bowl of pumpkin flesh, dug out of a large pumpkin she was carving for halloween. Here is a slice of the pie I made with it following a recipe I always use and that never fails to go down well. This pie only gets made once a year and some years I don’t get around to it at all.

Preheat the oven to 180 C / gas mark 4
Make shortcrust pastry to line a 23cm loose-bottomed flan tin: 160g plain flour, 80g unsalted butter, 1 – 2 dessert spoons caster sugar, zest of half a lemon (optional), 1 egg yolk, a drop of milk or water as required.
Rub the butter into the flour, add some sugar and lemon zest if you like then bind together quickly using the beaten egg yolk, adding some milk or water to bring the mixture together and gather it into a ball. Leave to rest for half an hour in the fridge, wrapped in cling film.
Roll out the pastry and line the buttered flan tin. Prick the bottom with a fork and place a piece of greaseproof paper and baking beans over the base. Bake for 25 minutes then take out the oven, remove the beans and paper and leave to cool.
Cook 600g of pumpkin flesh in a pan for approximately 15 mins with just a splash of water; as it cooks it will make its own juice so you don’t want it too watery. Put the cooked flesh into a food processor (or use a hand blender). Add to it, 125g soft brown sugar, half a teaspoon each of nutmeg, ground ginger and ground cinnamon, 1 tablespoon honey, grated zest from each of 1 lemon and 1 orange and the juice from half of each. Process until smooth. Add 3 beaten eggs and blend together then pour into the pastry case and bake for 50-60 minutes until the centre is set.
Allow to cool then serve dusted with icing sugar and accompanied by whipped cream slightly sweetened with some of the syrup from a jar of stem ginger.

Calling a blog ‘laundryetc’ I suppose there is a danger that readers will expect laundry tips and advice. That is not in fact my intention (though ‘never say never’ in case some uplifting snippet of household lore comes my way). I feel that cliched path is already well trodden. ‘Laundry’ for me is not so literal, it is more about what is blowing in the breeze than what is requiring attention in the utility room. Those house cleaning programmes on TV fronted by bossy matriarchs are not for me.

Since moving to the country last year after many years living in London some very fundamental things have changed in my life. I’m less likely to eat out and more likely to cook something fresh and seasonal. I’ve rediscovered and am reusing kitchen gadgets and machinery that I had forgotten I had. I’ve always loved baking but had got out of the habit. Preserving things in season has become a consuming passion. I have intensive sourdough bread weeks trying to achieve results similar to the artisan breads sold in the smart London delis I was used to frequenting. Of course I can buy posh loaves just down the road from here, you don’t have to live in London for such things (though when you live in SW2 you don’t realise that) but now I have the incentive to take the good life to another level because I’ve always been interested in making things and at the end of the day it is just so satisfying.

My old solid-fuel Rayburn is not the most glamorous example around but it came free from an old lady in the village who had reluctantly decided that her coal lugging days were over. The enamel is chipped and a little bit more falls off every time the door bangs shut, the flue snakes across the wall as the oven is on the wrong side for the position of the chimney and it is simple boring white not a fabulous colour like the newer models, but who cares, it is wonderful all the same. Concerned that burning solid fuel makes a carbon footprint the size of elephants feet I am trying to use every scrap of energy it generates to heat the water, heat the house, dry my laundry and slow cook casseroles.

I started my vegetable garden last spring so that is relatively new beginnings as I am only one season in. The plan is to build a brick oven out there as well to cook my sourdough bread in as well as the produce from the garden. I hope to show how these plans progress.
So what will this blog be about? Well all of the above really. I love things and ideas that upend the cliche, the colourful and unusual as well as being a research obsessive.

Anyhow, let’s see how things develop……

ROLAND – ONE OF THE LAUNDRY CATS