Gardens Open

It is the season for summer fetes, village carnivals and open gardens. Of course the National Trust gardens and the listings in the NGS Yellow book are interesting, impressive, perhaps both but some little gems can be discovered by following the arrows directing you from a main road to a village where several residents have agreed to let curious passers-by wander around their gardens for a modest donation to a good cause. You park on the edge of the field designated as a temporary car park. You locate the first garden where someone gives you a copy of a hand-drawn map of the village and some friendly guidance. Then off you go, wandering along little lanes, drifting around gardens, bumping into fellow wanderers and somewhere along the way there may well be a plant stall or two and somewhere to have a cream tea. If the weather stays dry, it can be such a pleasant way to spend an afternoon. I am drawn by the chance to find what lies over the garden wall, especially if the wall happens to be mellow flint and brick, bounded by hollyhocks.

On Saturday I visited the gardens in Exton. There were roses. Purple ones.

And a lovely single red one.

In a tiny village nestling in a picturesque river valley, the gardens were set against stunning country side views.

But for all the harmonious planting schemes and meticulous grooming of the lawns and beds, the sight that stopped me in my tracks was a little meadow of ox-eye daisies by the river.

Just a bowl of cherries

According to an old song and an even older saying, that is what life is - just a bowl of cherries. At the moment  it  could well represent the amount of fruit that  the birds in our garden have been foiled from gobbling before it is properly ripe.

 

The cherries are a variety called Stella, a lusciously large, dark and juicy variety; at their sweetest and most delicious when picked fully ripe from the the tree. Well, that's how I like them. The pigeons are quite happy to harvest them when they are tiny, rock hard and bright green and the blackbirds only wait for the first hint of red. With the tree having the botanical name, Prunus Avium (translates from Latin as bird cherry) I suppose they feel entitled. As the person who carefully selected, planted and nurtured the tree, I feel entitled too. It is now too tall to net and the birds around here seem  as happy when surrounded by old CDs as any nineties DJ, so in order to salvage some fruit for us, I have resorted to covering some of the clusters with the legs of old tights as soon as the cherries start to turn colour. For several weeks it looks hideous on a tree that is almost in the middle of the garden but with even only a dozen or so branches weirdly clad in hosiery, we at least get some fruit to harvest. In fairness, more than the bowl above but not really enough to consider making jam. Just enough to enjoy fresh with a few to enjoy later. Making some tarts for the freezer seems a good idea. During the days when we used to be able to 'pick your own' in the cherry orchard up the road,  I copied out a recipe for a pudding that I have made and modified several times.  Never mind the posh name it had for the original recipe, it is really a Cherry and Almond Tart. If you don't care for the flavour of almonds then it can be adapted. See the notes below. Here then is its current incarnation.

Cherry and Almond Tart

You will need:

 For the pastry:

230g plain flour

half teaspoon salt

half teaspoon caster sugar

100g cold  unsalted butter cut into small pieces

45g lard or vegetable shortening

 50 ml (approx) of ice cold water.

For the filling:

250 g cherries

120g butter 

120g caster sugar 

120g ground almonds

2 tablespoons plain flour

2 eggs 

a few drops almond essence or almond liqueur (optional)

For the glaze:

120g icing sugar

2 teaspoons of water.

You will need to:

Make up the pastry by putting the flour ( mixed with the salt and sugar), butter and lard or shortening in a food processor and whizz till the mix resembles bread crumbs. No food processor? Then put the flour and fats into a large bowl and rub the mix between your thumbs and fingertips until it is thoroughly mixed and again, it looks like breadcrumbs when this has happened. Try to keep the mixture away from the warmth of the palms of your hands as much as possible. Now add the chilled water a small amount at time until there is just enough to hold the mix together. With a food processor, you can trickle the water in through the lid as the blade is running and you can see and switch off as soon as it makes one large lump. Without the processor you can use a table knife to cut the water little by little into the mix. Either way, quickly pat the finished dough into a thick circle, place in a bowl, cover with a damp cloth and pop it into the fridge for an hour. 

Prepare the filling. Mix together the butter and castor sugar until light and fluffy. Beat and add the eggs and almond essence. Mix well. Gradually add the flour and ground almonds. Set this batter aside and then wash, halve and stone the cherries.

Assemble the tart(s). Prehat the oven to 200 deg C. Put cookie sheets into heat as well.  Roll out the pastry to about half a cm thick. I had enough pastry and filling to make one 22cm tart and four smaller ones about 10 cm for which I used a Yorkshire pudding tray. Line the flan tins or pie plates with the pastry and let it rest for ten minutes. Then place the cherries cut side down over the base of the tarts. Pour the filling batter over the fruit and tap the tins sharply to encourage it to level out.  Place them on the heated cookie sheets in the oven. This helps the base to crisp. Bake for approx 30 minutes - slightly less for smaller tarts - until the filling has risen slightly and browned and the pastry is cooked. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack. 

 To glaze: Sift the icing sugar and mix with the water to make a stiff paste. Spoon onto the tart while it is still hot from the oven and gently swirl with the back of the spoon or a pallette knife so that the icing spreads evenly over the top of the filling. Allow to set and cool. Enjoy!

 Freezer notes; Any surplus pastry dough will freeze well. I find it best to roll and cut out useful sized circles before freezing. Not only can you take out just what you need, but it thaws much faster and saves all the hassle of rolling and clearing up yet another time. 

 The baked tarts also freeze well but leave the glazing off  as it tends to go soggy when thawing and you loose the crisp sweet bite.  You could use boiling water to make the glaze to put on the thawed tarts. I like to freeze the 10cm size as they are ideal for a 'lazy' dessert and it is a comforting thought to have something reasonably impressive and practically table-ready for pudding. 

Don't like almond flavours? Well you can always leave out the essence or liqueur and substitute dessicated coconut for the ground almonds. Any devotee of the Cherry Ripe bar (and these head my Most Missed Oz Food list now that Vegemite is readily available here) will tell you that cherries and coconut are an inspired combination. And with that in mind you will probably want to figure a way to add an element of dark chocolate to the dessert. Perhaps an artistic drizzle of chocolate sauce, chocolate pastry base or some chocolate dipped cherries on the side.

Does this dessert deserve to be entitled Flan Danois? Mm, possibly.

Cookies - Something old, Something new

 Here at The Hebe Bee, this is post number 50. 

Surely that is a milestone worth celebrating with a little treat. Let me share one with you. For very little effort you could make up a batch of Cranberry cookies and fill your kitchen with the most heavenly smell which is nearly (but not quite) as good as the taste.   As they cool and set, make a pot of your favourite brew - tea, coffee, hot chocolate, the choice is yours - and find someone to share a delicious moment.

As a child I never had 'cookies'. Absolutely true. Treats like these were called biscuits and most often they were home-made.  Do you find that nothing quite nourishes the inner child like something your mum used to make? I'll admit I'm not averse to shop bought cookies, but making my own means I can hit the ideal medium between the chewy texture of the five-in-a-bag cookie and the crisp crunch of the ones that my mother used to make.

The Something New in the post title refers to Flora Cuisine, the oil component in the following recipe. ( No, I am not being sponsored!) Some weeks back it was being promoted in a local supermarket and I was handed a sample to try. A little later, a recipe for cinnamon and raisin cookies appeared in an advertisement in another store's freebie magazine. This recipe is my tweak on that one. The Something Old is the  flavour combination of cranberries, cinnamon and orange which is a particular favourite of mine.

Cranberry, Orange and Cinnamon Cookies

 You will need:

• 70g Flora Cuisine
• 55g castor sugar
• 100g soft brown sugar
• 175g Self-raising Flour 
• 1  medium egg
• grated zest of an orange
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence (or vanilla powder)
• 90g dried cranberries
• 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

What you need to do: 

1. Preheat the oven to 190 deg C. Lightly grease 2 cookie sheets. You could use the Flora Cuisine for this. 
2. Sift together the flour, cinnamon and bicarb into a large bowl.
3. Roughly chop about half the dried cranberries then add all 90g of them to the bowl.
4. Beat the egg and add it. Then add all the remaining ingredients. It doesn't really matter about the order just place all the ingredients into the bowl and start to mix.

At first it seems far too dry to make into cookie dough.

But keep mixing and eventually it all sticks together and a smoother, shinier dough studded with cranberries is ready to be dolloped onto the cookie sheets.

     5. Use a soup spoon to scoop the mixture into balls on the baking tray. This amount will make about 15 cookies of this size. You can make them smaller or larger of course. Set the mixture in balls or heaps on the tray and remember to allow for quite a lot of spreading, so not too near the edge or each other.

    6. Bake in the preheated oven for 10-15 minutes. Smaller ones will need less time, larger ones more of course. I think the ideal is a nicely browned edge so that the cookie is crisp at the edges but softer in the middle.

     7. Transfer them carefully onto a wire cooling rack to set and firm up. Once they are quite cool they can be stored in an airtight jar. Just how well they will keep will depend entirely on how many people can smell what's cooking and know where you keep the cookie jar.

The basic dough in this recipe could be the basis for all kinds of variations. I have tried chopped pecans and they worked well with wholemeal self-raising flour. Now I know,  whatever wholesome extras you tuck into a dough with this amount of sugar just won't produce healthy snack. Sometimes we need a treat, especially when there are endless days of rain when it is supposed to be summer. If you have read this far through a blog post with "Cookies" in the title, then I am sure you don't need me to suggest chocolate chips are worth considering. (By the way, I have given up my Web research into the ultimate choc chip cookie recipe  - I am just afraid I might find it!)

Whatever winning combination you come up with - remember it is good to share. Suggestions in the comments box please.

Sitting comfortably? A Chair Makeover

We have two chairs which we had given a home to when some office somewhere was closed or revamped. So long ago now neither of us is very sure about just where they came from.

Perfectly "serviceable",  quite comfortable for sitting at a desk, and now getting a bit shabby( but not in a chic way.)

 I happened to be standing next to one of them, waiting on the phone, when it occured to me to imagine the fabric covering the back and seat in something like a zany zebra print. It would work; give the chair a whole new personality. The black frame-work and polished wood arm rests are fairly classic office design. By the time all the continuing apologies for being kept waiting and further assurances that my call was valued and that my patience would soon be rewarded with the attention of an advisor, finally came to an end, I had worked out how to take off the seat and the backrest and how many pieces were sewn together to make up the upholstery.
 HeWhoUsesTheOtherChair seemed to have reservations about a zebra print but on a trip to the big blue store we agreed on one of their livelier prints. The least fun bit of the project was pulling out all the staples that held the fabric onto the seat and backrest. I needed those pieces to come off intact so that I could use them as patterns to cut out the new fabric. That done though, the rest was a breeze. Some work on the sewing machine to overcast the edges for the backrest and to sew the seam around the seat, then using the gun tacker to staple them onto the chair pieces and finally  reassembling the chair. Ta-dah!

One office chair with a little  pizzazz. So good, so easy and enough fabric left over we did the other one.

Not entirely a UseStuffIAlreadyHave project but for the cost of a metre of very inexpensive furnishing fabric we have 2 chairs with a new lease of life.
Do they match the decor in any of the rooms? Um, well not exactly - they are just fun pieces in their own right.

Summer Savouries

Summer is a good time to re-think our meal times. Longer evenings mean supper gets put back later and in order to keep going until then, tea-time needs upgrading from a basic cuppa and a biscuit affair. Of course the obvious refreshment for a summer afternoon outing is a cream tea but the idea of  weekend high tea with sandwiches and little savouries as well as scones and cakes is deliciously tempting. It  also can be handy to have some savoury pastries on hand ready for picnics. These could be scaled up to make large tarts but this size makes ideal finger food. What follows is not an exact recipe but more guidance on how to make these. There is something very satisfying about taking a recipe; tweaking and adapting to take into account what you have to hand and the tastes of those who you are cooking for, coming up with something that goes down a treat and  knowing you did it your way. Take these directions and make them your own - that it is just what I did. Having read so many recipes online and in magazines, it would be hard to pinpoint exactly where the idea(s) came from.

Patriotic Patchwork

Even after  three decades, nothing presents a more irresistible challenge than  having a child announce "My mum could make that!" ( I suppose I really mean 'one of the offspring' not 'a child' any more.) I find myself at least appraising the object of this pronouncement to consider how it could be done. I think it is safe to say that with further prompting I can be persuaded to see if I have the materials and means and from there it is a small step to actually embarking on the process. And so that is how I found myself making a Union Jack cushion cover, in spite of the shops being awash with them at the moment. Of course the one I made would have to be a little different, handcrafted -otherwise what would be the point. The other given is that it would be made on a UseStuffIAreadyHave basis sourced largely from my stash of sewing and craft materials so it would also further my aim to reduce said stash.
 Unlike most of my sewing, knitting and crochet projects lately I realised from the outset that I would not be able to just pick up some material and start working - I would have to measure lines and angles, draw out a pattern, calculate seam allowances and work accurately. Oh dear! Not my usual organic, let's see how it goes approach at all. I was sure I could do the background to start with and then put the stripes on later. 

 At this point I quite liked the arrangement of the blues - did it really need the stripes? Well yes. To cover up the inaccuracies in the centre of course. Eventually I came up with a combination of ribbons  that I liked. Just one foray into a store and one purchase for this stage. I couldn't resist the freshness of the checked ribbon when I saw it in the shop but I liked the vintage 'gravitas' and substance that grosgrain ribbons from my stash seemed to lend. All done and interfacing applied when a request for buttons came in so they got stitched on, the back was made up and the whole thing finally assembled.
So now dear offspring here it is, on its way from our shabby chic chair to yours with home-made love.

And if there are days when you feel a little less patriotic then the back has a more subtle style. 

But please, please use those magic words from the beginning of this post sparingly.

Summer begins

With the start of the summer season I guess we should expect to be surrounded by elegant ladies gracing  gardens and sitting rooms. Who could ignore their ruffled silk, their delicate blushes and intoxicating perfume?

 Princess Victoria Louise.

 Zephirine Drouhin

(New) Dawn

Felicity and Perpetua - (inseparable!)

 And from the theatre, Sarah Bernhardt

and Sweet Juliet

And you may have met Mrs Anthony Waterer and Cecile Brunner on other occasions recently.
Such elegance would not be out of place in the best establishments.

Perhaps the Savoy Hotel?

It is not hard to see why flowers like these have feminine names. Looking around the garden at the moment I realise I must still be going through that phase of loving pink that I thought I had out grown.  I hardly ever wear it any more. But seeing that, of all the flowers mentioned in this post, only New Dawn was here when we moved in, I obviously have a passion for pink when it comes to planting flowers. After all,  there are more that haven't been mentioned in this post,  like the Grootendorst rose which is  currently adorning the blog title.

They are all sumptuously gorgeous, especially this year. I know Savoy Hotel looks like a visit from the hotel inspector is overdue in this instance  -  it is a little wind damaged around the edges. The plant was a very thoughtful present last year but I had no chance to enjoy the flowers for the whole of the summer as the deer took every single bud just as it was about to  open.  I am just so thrilled to see it flower that I simply had to share it.  Meanwhile  'Felicity and Perpetua' is covered in masses of little buds to the extent that the pergola tasked with supporting it is groaning with the weight. It is one of those 'moment of glory' roses - it will be magnificent, absolutely magnificent but not for very long.

 Yes - it looks like being a good year for the roses - not to mention the poppies and the peonies.