yes, yes- let's talk about the weather

We're a hard bunch to please, aren't we? Five months ago, we were lamenting the coldest spring in history. Geese were migrating, it snowed in May, and we all began to wonder if the world was coming to an end. A great deal of us seriously considered moving hemisphere... a lot of us actually did (a worrying chunk of my newsfeed is now a constant stream of photos depicting an Instagramed Sydney Opera House, Bondi Beach and kangaroos). A month later, and we were smug, sunburnt, and yet again wondering if the world was indeed coming to an end, albeit less in a 'Day After Tomorrow' way, more just an 'Actual Global Warming'  fashion. Which is arguably the better way to go, anyway. The delicate constitution of the average Brit simply wasn't designed to endure such scorching climes. We'd forgotten how to dress ourselves properly (if at all), and as a nation, our conversational prowess- already questionable- had all but disappeared. All we seemed able to do was feverishly spout Europe-wide weather comparisons: 'Did you hear? We're hotter than Alicante! ALICANTE!' We were whingeing* about air-con. We were whingeing about lack of air-con. And instead of whingeing about  lack of employment, we had a whinge about having to work in 27 degree heat. Put simply, we're never bloody happy.

Tan lines

Well, I was. My house plants may have died,and my skin might have spent most of the summer bearing more resemblance to a corpulent whisky fiend , but I can honestly say that I loved it. All of it- the sweaty, sleepless nights, the long, hot days, and finally! The idea that, for once, we'd experienced a season easily discernible as summer. So when the colder, darker, altogether more miserable days start to draw in, I get a bit grumpy. Don't get me wrong- I bloody love Christmas. If it weren't for my infinitely more practical (read: spoilsport) husband, I'd have the tree up by mid-November. It's just the awkward, in-betweeny period I detest, where you're not sure whether tights are OK, and after ten minutes on the tube in a coat you feel just about ready to die. In fact, the only thing that really cheers me up is the food. Now there's a surprise ;)

The heavy stews, the richer soups, and the gnarly vegetables all make me think that autumn probably does serve a purpose after all. And my favourite of the bunch? Blackberries.They bridge the gap between summer days, and the first festive frosts of November (after which point I stop feeling miserable, because I'm in full Christmas swing... the cat's been forced into Yuletide head gear, and I'm wearing ridiculous knitwear again). Nothing really beats the unadulterated purity of a naked berry, but when you spend four months gorging on the things, it's nice to do something a bit more interesting with them eventually. Like this:

Blackberry, Cardamom & Tequila Panna Cottas

(You can make these as seasonal as you like by swapping the fruit, and trading the alcohol with whatever comes to hand. You could leave it out entirely, but where's the fun in that...?)

What You Need:

• 325ml full-fat milk
• 400ml double cream
• 75g caster sugar
• 2 vanilla pods, or good quality vanilla bean paste, which can be more economical given that vanilla pods seem to be astronomical these days. I use Taylor and Colledge, where one teaspoon of the paste is one whole vanilla bean. I daresay other products vary.
• 10g of leaf gelatine (approximately 6 sheets)
• 25ml decent quality white tequila. Not because it matters especially, just because life's too short to drink bad tequila- and there will be an awful lot left to drink.
• 250g Blackberries. I think it goes without saying that they should be British ones.
• 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed.

What You Do:

1. Grab a medium-sized heavy-based pan, and pour in the milk, double cream, 50g of the caster sugar and your vanilla seeds (scraped from the pods) or paste. Place on a medium to high heat until JUST before it reaches boiling point, then turn off. Do not get distracted by your husband asking where his football kit is hiding, wander off for a few minutes and return to a half empty pan and a hob covered in burnt milk. Just saying.

I'm cream. I'm a bastard to get off a hob.

2. Soften your gelatine leaves in cold water for about five minutes, unsticking them from one another if need be. Squeeze out the water, and stir into your cream mixture.

Dinky

3. Fill a large mixing bowl with iced water, and transfer your cream into something that will sit comfortably in it without a) filling with aforementioned iced water, or b) floating on to its side and spilling everything. A jug with a handle that can hook over the edge is ideal, but just improvise. Cool your liquid for about an hour, stirring occasionally.

4.Pour into six fancy glasses. I like the dinky little Duralex affairs, personally. Leave a gap at the top (about two centimetres), and stick in the fridge to set. Overnight is ideal, but I've been known to finish these off in a blind panic at 3pm, in time for a dinner evening for 16 at 7.30. If they were shit, then everyone was polite enough not to mention it to me. But either way, leave a few hours- 5-6 at the least.

Pipe and cigar not required

5.Place your blackberries into a pan with the tequila, cardamom pods and last of the caster sugar. On a very low heat, poach the fruit until softened (but still a loose blackberry shape), and taste. It should be tart enough to cut through the richness of the cream, but not stroke-inducing. Cool in the fridge for an hour or so.

To serve, spoon your fruit mixture haphazardly over the set panna cottas. Try to remove the cardamom pods beforehand, though. They're not great for chewing on. If you have time, knock up a few shortbread thins on the side. If you don't, then just have them alone- they taste good enough.

Happy tequila-drinking,

mrs hunt.x

the fortune-telling asparagus (with a bit of béarnaise to boot)

There are some things, like strawberries, that I can't stand the thought of eating out of season. I allow myself the occasional slip up where things like courgette and French beans are concerned, but the idea of eating pale, tasteless Guatemalan strawberries or worse- Peruvian asparagus, in the depths of December, makes me sad.

So, I wait.

I bide my time.

I save myself, just for asparagus.

London friends: this is a farm.

...
Which is more than I can say for my prom night. So when that happy time of year rolls around (asparagus season, not prom season), I like to indulge in some sense of ceremony. Not of the odd sacrificial variety, or even a party (though I have made a mental note to book tickets to this next year). I just thought I'd pick it myself this May. Asparagus is not a pretty grower, and it makes for a less than artistic set of photographs (though I've tried my best to Instagram-them to death, as you can see). There are plenty of Pick Your Own joints around in this neck of the woods (I'm finding an increasing number of perks to not living in central London- just let me revel in them, please...), but there's also one in Croydon, too. That is, I suppose, technically still London. It's also worth mentioning to Londoners that you probably won't spontaneously combust if you venture outside of the M25 in search of real farms. Give it a try.

The only way I could inject some colour into
a photograph of an otherwise brown asparagus
 field was to wear a pair of ridiculous wellies.

But what to do with your first-of-the-season, freshly picked, still muddy bunch of asparagus? Well, I quickly realised I wasn't going to be able to do a kilo of the stuff justice (it's easy to get carried away when left to your own devices in a field), so after palming two-thirds of it off on my mother and in-laws, I decided I'd stick it with a slab of bloody meat, and a jug of homemade béarnaise.

Any occasional readers of my blog might now have grasped that I don't really 'do' recipes. The idea of having to follow cooking instructions (or any other instructions, for that matter) to the letter makes me want to do something radical to a recipe that could result in a discovery of culinary genius. Or it could just really bugger it up. But you don't know until you try. It probably goes some way to explaining why my own recipes are so frustratingly vague- sorry. Anyway, there are some times where you really do have to put your own inspired whims to one side, and just pay attention. Béarnaise (alongside all other classic, egg or roux-based sauces) is one of those occasions.

I've seen hollandaise (the base recipe for a béarnaise) fiddled about with numerous times. Some variations call for olive oil, others for créme fraíche. Both, in my eyes, are sacrilege. The whole point of a hollandaise is that it's a simple sauce of egg and butter, cut with lemon juice. Start fucking with it, and it stops being hollandaise. So, for a change, it's not my own recipe I'm using, it's Julia Child's. I could have gone down the Escoffier route (a man toted in France as 'the King of chefs, and the chef of Kings,'), but I rather liked the idea of taking heed from some 'crass' Yank who didn't learn to cook until she was 32. Besides which, I own several Julia Child books, and as yet, not one Escoffier one- so not only did this seem like a suitable compromise, it was far easier.

Julia Child's Béarnaise Sauce with One or Two Enlightening (and Superfluous) Comments from Me.

What You Need:

• 1/8th pint of wine vinegar (or 71ml. Or, even easier, 7 tablespoons). And I used cider vinegar, because it was closer to hand than the white wine vinegar. I told you I was crap at following recipes).
• 1/8th pint (see above...) of dry white vermouth. You can use dry white wine, but I happened to be making a wet gin martini at the time. Two birds...
• 1 tbsp chopped shallots (about 2-3 whole ones)
• 3 tbsp chopped, fresh tarragon- 1 tbsp for the 'essence' part, the rest to be stirred in at the end.
• 3-4 whole peppercorns, or lashings of freshly ground black pepper.
• 3 egg yolks from happy chickens. Use the whites to make a gin fizz, or very small meringues.
• 1oz of cold butter, diced.
• 4-5oz melted butter.
• Salt, and more pepper- to taste.
• Lemon, to taste.

Another photo of eggs. And I have plenty more in stock.

What You Do:

1.Boil your vinegar, shallots, vermouth (or white wine), one third of your tarragon, the peppercorns and a pinch of salt to create the 'essence.' Reduce until it's just over two tablespoons in volume, and then stick it in the fridge to chill it (if, like me, you are incredibly impatient. If you're not, and happy to potter around doing other things while it cools slowly, then please, by all means- do).

2. Beat your egg yolks for a couple of minutes with a handheld whisk until they've thickened slightly. Strain in your cooled vinegar mix (if it's still hot, it will scramble your egg yolks beyond repair) using a sieve and a spatula to force out the liquid, and beat. 

Whisk

3. Add half of your cold butter cubes, and transfer your mixture into a small, thick bottomed saucepan. Thicken the sauce over an impossibly low heat, whisking gently. Beat in the other half of the cold butter.

4. Do NOT decide that you probably know better than Julia Child, crank the heat up a smidgeon, and allow yourself to be distracted by the cat for five seconds.

Julia Child. With some large poultry.

5. If you do, add a tablespoon or so of cold water, turn the heat down again (to where it should have been),and whisk furiously to try and salvage your béarnaise. Nine times out of ten, this will work- at any stage of the process after the butter cubes have been added. Thank God.

6.Beat in the melted butter, drop by drop. There is a limit to the amount of butter a single egg yolk can physically absorb (Child advises something around the 3oz mark per yolk). If you add too much, your sauce will curdle, so err on the side of caution and do it all very gradually.

Unless your egg yolks are quite sizeable, you're unlikely to need all of your melted butter. But trust your own judgement, and don't forget you can fix your sauce with a little water (or a swift squeeze of lemon juice) if you need to. This is best avoided, as it will thin it out eventually.

This is as photogenic
as it gets.

7. Check your seasoning (feel free to add a small squeeze of lemon juice if the wine isn't quite bringing the acidity you'd like), and stir through your chopped tarragon.

Allow the mixture to cool slightly before you serve it. Hollandaise, béarnaise and other such sauces should be served warm, not hot. If they become overheated, they'll split, thus taking on the appearance of oily, congealed snot. Escoffier will be turning in his grave (though Julia probably won't care much- she seemed a laid back enough character... it's the French you've got to worry about). If you want to make it in advance (and who would blame you? It's terrifying the first time you make it...), then just reheat it very, very gently.

Steak.

While it's cooling, stick your asparagus on a smoking hot griddle (or under a grill, or even better- on a barbecue), naked, with no adornements. You can start fussing with it later in the season, when you've nearly had your fill of the stuff. Cook until it's charred, but still firm. Throw a well-seasoned, oiled steak into a hot pan. Maybe make some chips- but it's worth planning these in advance. I'd casually committed to Heston's triple cooked-affairs, and then realised there was a three-and-a-half hour cooking time involved. So we got double-and-a-half-cooked chips instead.

And if you don't fancy eating your asparagus? Then just take a leaf out of this lady's book, and learn to predict the future with it. 

Happy fortune telling,

mrs hunt.x