Guest ready...
on a winter's morn...
Bake a cake, set a fire, pick leaves of lemon balm, thyme and a fresh-petalled calendula. Put the kettle on…there are hugs, a meeting of like-minds, conversation and planning ahead. What could make for a more perfect beginning to a sun-filled, though freezing winter’s day?
As there was rather a lot of gardening talk last week and I’ve had many requests for the Sticky Ginger Syrup Cake recipe since posting this pic on insta yesterday…let’s start here for those who are keen to have this naughty cake on standby for the weekend (no…it is not a healthy cake but it sure is a delicious one!).
It’s a cake I make when there aren’t a cast of thousands about to descend and I don’t want too much left over. Larry would beg to differ on this point!
I originally found this recipe in a Weekend Australian Magazine in May 2009, written up by James Halliday and have been making it ever since. Why not? When you’re onto a good thing, as the saying goes, stick to it!
Sticky Ginger Syrup Cake
Ingredients
Cake
60g unsalted butter
1/2 cup golden syrup
3/4 cup plain flour
1/4 cup self raising flour (although these days I tend to use 1 cup spelt flour and add 1/2 tspn baking powder instead of the plain and self raising)
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 heaped teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon mixed spice
pinch salt
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup milk
1 egg, beaten
Syrup
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
Method
Grease a 23cm x 12cm loaf tin and line with baking paper
Pre-heat oven to 170C
Sift both flours into a bowl then add bicarb soda, spices, sugar and a pinch of salt. Use a balloon whisk to gently combine
Add milk and egg and mix ‘til smooth
In the meantime, place butter and golden syrup into a small saucepan over a low heat, stirring occasionally ‘til the butter melts
Gradually stir the butter/syrup mix into the batter, stirring until well incorporated
Pour batter into prepared cake tin and bake 50 - 55 minutes, or until risen and a skewer comes out clean (mine often sinks in the middle…don’t worry if it does, it will still taste delish!)
Just before the cake is ready, make syrup by combining sugar, ginger and 1/2 cup water in a small saucepan. Bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes
When the cake is ready, turn out onto a wire rack. Place rack over a dish to catch any syrup that is bound to trickle over…then spoon over the hot ginger syrup
The original recipe called for a dusting of icing sugar…but yikes…I think it’s already sweet enough!
At last, the Chinese Tallow Triadica sebifera up on the Persimmon Lawn is beginning to turn. Its leaves are always the very last to colour and the yellowing is but the beginning of the burnished red and orange tones to follow. At about thirty or so years old, it’s a fairly substantial tree by now. For most of the year it’s fairly unremarkable, but now as its leaves flutter in the brisk breeze and with little else to vie for attention, it’s time for it to glow.
I’m not sure how well this little tangent will translate to you by image…but it’s the kind of thing that truly tickles me - not just because in real life betwixt inside and out, over the short distance involved the colour mimicry is so clear and obvious; but because there’s a case too, of serendipity at play. I’m only ever truly happy with the placement of an object, when something unplanned and unexpected too, enters the picture, to make a connection, to bring a memory to the fore and even then, one that’s likely to lead one down a path of thought. In this case it’s a string of memories that happily hop and skip over each other!
The relationship (which I had no idea would occur at the time of planting) between the Chinese Tallow, string of jade beads and chinoiserie mirror on my dressing table is a case in point! I’m reminded of it now, at this particular moment in the year, because I simply cannot help but notice, on opening the curtains, how the leaf colours all a-flutter and attention-seeking in the early morning sun reflect the colours, history and culture, represented on my table. Their narrative and connection, is something that has evolved over time. (In fact I was only joking with someone yesterday that as a decorator, I’ve never been one to do a complete ‘install’…and I’d make for a useless stylist…because everything I do seems to evolve over a period of years, if not a lifetime! It’s an approach that has always made me think I’m really not very good at what I do, and is because my own personal belief system doesn’t sit well with going out and buying everything to create something instant or fashionable. I like our surroundings to grow, instinctively, intuitively…as we do. As we age, the story evolves and perhaps along with it, we gain some wisdom too.
Of this collection on the dressing table, the mirror came first, but with purpose: when we eventually added our little bedroom pavilion to the house (when Bonnie was about three) I decided early on to hang a collection of faded botanical watercolours that had belonged to Larry’s mother on the wall adjacent to our bed. When his mama was just thirteen years old, in the 1920’s, she accompanied her mother on an adventurous journey to Shanghai! Can you imagine? We have a handful of objects his ma and her mother collected on that trip - some dear little marquetry puzzle boxes, a few illustrations in ink and a huge blue chrysanthemum plate (it lives in the kitchen on full view…you will have seen it in an earlier post - the one about the orchid). So ever since I met Larry, tales of his mother’s exotic visit to China have been a learned memory, carried over time by a handful of objects.
I think I mentioned a number of posts ago, how in the year up to our marriage, I was lucky to live with the mother of one of Larry’s old school friends, in her beautiful London basement flat with its glorious garden. Kisty had a lovely chinoiserie easel mirror on her own dressing table, and of all the beautiful things in her flat, it’s the object that most sank into my memory of her and her enormous kindness to me. How I wish, when years later, it came up at auction, I’d been able to buy it! But at the time of bringing our bedroom together here, I was aware of a London company that had introduced a very similar, if new, chinoiserie-style mirror. I thought what a lovely link…an homage to that time I lived with Kisty, tying together with Larry’s mama’s botanical watercolours.
It was in April 2009, that Larry took me and our girls to meet with other close members of his family who like us, had travelled to China to commemorate the 60th anniversary of one of his pa’s most memorable exploits: his involvement in the Yangtze Incident. It’s really not my story to tell and as I wouldn’t do it justice, I’ll leave that heroic story for Larry’s telling one day. But as a result, we made what is likely to be my one and only visit to that nation. It was a memorable week of exploration and discovery, of architecture and ornamental detail of landscapes and gardens and myriad wonders, from Shanghai to Nanjing…
The string of jade beads came from a dusty old shop in a bustling marketplace filled with tiny, treasure-filled shops on our visit to Shanghai. Larry has had reason to revisit that city on several occasions since and I believe that ramshackle collection of buildings have been replaced by a stampede of high-rise development. I’m so glad we visited when we did…when although China’s great growth spurt was already well entrenched, some dusty pockets were still cast in a time-warp.
It’s in this way that the annual, early winter colouring of the Chinese Tallow causes my eyes to hover just a moment longer than usual, over the beads, the painted detail and style of the mirror, to think on young Elizabeth Aitken’s travels (with her stoic French-born mother who much later was decorated with the Croix de Guerre for her participation in the French resistance); alongside reflections on Larry’s pa whose wry and self-deprecating sense of humour accompanied him to the end. And then too, me as a young woman, absorbing all these stories of times gone by, merging them into my own to carry forward. Sadly I never met Larry’s ma…she died the year before we met. Give or take some months, she’d have been the age I’m at now…far too young.
So many threads upon which to reflect, prompted by a fluttering of leaves: stories of bravery intermixed and mingled with adventure and romance but also raising myriad questions…as the older we get and more we learn, perhaps the less we know.
There are other things on the dressing table…but we can visit those another time!
It truly is the time now for all things Citrus. The Seville oranges are still on their journey, heavy now in their flat-bottomed form but still tinged with green. The Lisbon lemons too are on their way in, not yet quite ripe and juicy; so we’re making our way with steady progress through the Meyer lemons; in the same way the Valencia oranges are a very long way off eating, which is just fine because we have months’ worth of Navel-juicing to do!
If only the Sulphur Crested Cockatoos would leave us alone! Here I was, happily tapping last week’s post out to you, when out the corner of my eye I could see a great deal of swooping going on and oh that dreadful, cacophonous sound was resonating all around. I truly loathe the screeching sound of those vexatious birds, unlike their black-feathered cousins, whose prehistoric call is utterly captivating. Anyway, things went quiet…then Thalia came to tell me she’d seen off no less than ten of those wretched white birds in my best Navel orange tree and to expect to see a scene of devastation. Well…it could have been worse but honestly! Grrrrrr….it looked like someone had spilled a packet of orange size Jaffas - the ground was simply littered with fruit. Thankfully, only a portion had been pecked. Those birds are well known for pure destruction, just for the sake of it. One almost wouldn’t mind so much if they ate the fruit they destroy, but they never do. It’s such a waste. Anyway, Thalia went home with many, many more oranges than she’d hoped for (all the good ones)! And I took an enforced break from tapping away in order to put nets on those trees with her in the kitchen garden.
Thus far, those birds had not yet shown interest this year in the trees outside the kitchen window, but on Saturday morning as I chopped my way through a batch of (sadly bought!) quinces, what did I see? One huge bird land fair and square in the middle of the Meyer lemon (which is not a large tree!).
Honestly, I hate netting anything, as you well know by now. But what to do? I’d run out of the finely woven white insect net which I’m always loathe to use anyway, but as a temporary measure there’s little choice (please don’t ever use it where bees may gain access to pollinate…they seem unable to find their way out and die in the process). One thing in its favour is that it rests lightly on the branches which are unlikely to pierce its weave.
I had no choice…the old black nets outside the kitchen it must be. They have a very open, true net-like weave. For many years I’ve favoured it over the white (though many say we shouldn’t use it but in all these years I have never entrapped any creature in it at all). The reason I don’t like tossing it over the citrus though, is that for the length of time its likely to be in place, those trees will put on new growth and those new shoots are bound to grow through the gaps in the net, causing a problem when comes the time to take it off. In its favour however, is the fact that the lemons are already in some early blossom which will become next year’s fruit: if I were to drape the white net over the trees, bees would not be able to pollinate the blossom, whereas they can freely visit through the black net. What a conundrum!
As for the look of it? Well…at least I got to enjoy the fruit-laden trees free of encumbrance for several weeks and this, unfortunately, is just the way it has to be. The look of it is one thing, our precious fruit is another entirely!
It’s been a week of some bounty, with lovely full baskets coming into the kitchen. Larry asked one day last week if we could please have spinach on our plates! I’m inclined to put spinach into almost everything we eat…I don’t think there’s a day that goes by without a good dozen or so leaves wilted into something…but for some reason I rarely mound it up on its own! So I did…I washed a mountain of it, cut off its stems and wilted it down in a good splodge of olive oil with oven-baked garlic (I’m very nearly out of last year’s crop now…I have just the tiniest of the fiddly, tiddly ones left!) a good pinch of sea salt, several twists of black pepper and a good squeeze of lemon juice.
Cavolo nero, Tuscan black kale found its way into numerous dishes…from pasta to Shepherd’s Pie (which I always make up as I go…probably more Cottage than Shepherd’s Pie as I fill it with a lot of veg…carrots, parsnip, as well as the wilted greens, onion, garlic and tomatoes). And with a friend to dinner, a big haul of rhubarb made another crumble.
Still, there are tomatoes accumulating on the kitchen bench! More small than large, none are worth wasting…so in a higgledy-piggledy manner, in batches as they ripen, into the oven they go, and then to the freezer to use in dishes in the coming months when a little hint of tomato seems like just the thing required.
This is a timely reminder though, that tomatoes are on their last legs and I’m being careful to save the seeds of those varieties I’m yet to collect. With the little Glenmore Black Cherry (one that seemed to grow more plump than expected last year and that I grew on with some success this year!) and seeds too, of that sturdy San Marzano both now safely packed away, I have just one more variety to save and must be very sure not to swallow the seeds of that one!
It’s hard to believe but…it will very soon be time to sow these seeds into punnets for the year ahead!
The coriander is simply jumping out of the ground now! So vibrant, it almost has a glossy sheen to it. These stems are from the first sowings I made in the autumn and I’m so thrilled to have it tantalising our tastebuds once again - I do miss it through the summer months, though those long hot weeks are for the basil to reign. Coriander is always best sown from seed - rather than planted as a seedling, when it seems to have a shorter lifespan. I find we get the best results sown in the autumn rotation and I have high hopes for that whole row I sowed a few weeks ago, which will, all being well, supersede the clumps we’re eating now.
I do sometimes chuckle to myself when I’m out there picking coriander. Many years ago, I remember a very dear friend asking if I liked the taste of it. The funny thing is, I used not to like it at all and recall saying as much. She once went to great lengths to make sure there was none on my plate when she gave a lovely long lunch on her verandah…although by then, my palate seemed to have changed dramatically! I think as we age…and particularly after childbirth, that’s often the case. It sure was in my case…fennel being another contender I used not much to like ; and you know how much fennel I consume in all its forms these days!
So…if you haven’t tried something for awhile, I urge you to try your older tastebuds out again…you might be surprised! Who ever would have thought I’d be trying to grow a whole row of coriander?
Do you recall there was one broad bean seed that failed to germinate in my long broad bean box on the traditional side of the garden? It was the one in pole position too - right at the very front! We all know it succeeded second- sowing-around (so did I forget to sow it in the original batch????!!!!) and this week I decided it was sturdy enough to remove its protective copper ring from its base.
I’ll have more news about the copper rings coming very soon and you can see here, why I wouldn’t be without them!
The broad beans have put on good growth this week…I can’t wait ‘til they reach above the third rung! And when they get there…you’ll learn why!
And there you go! This is an in-between moment in the garden. I think I mentioned it last week…too early yet to get really stuck in to the winter prune, and yet the knowledge that time is looming means this more quiet time must not be squandered. In the garden, Thalia has been doing some gentle, timely jobs. At my desk, I’m wading (alongside other things) through the mire that is the stuff of dress-orders - the trail that leads to a master list is lengthy and the process is well underway! So it’s been a desk-bound week, but not without highlights!
I hope your week has been productive too and send warm wishes for the days ahead.
Mickey x
Productive garden notes:
Eating from the garden:
Navel oranges, clementines, meyer lemons, rhubarb; tomato, aubergine, Jerusalem artichoke, parsnip, sweet potato. Leaves of all kinds - spinach, kale - cavolo nero (Red Russian is still growing on) lettuce, radicchio, rocket, red elk mustard leaf, warrigal greens. Cauliflower (new…in fact I just cooked one and a half into Belinda Jeffery’s gently spiced, roasted cauliflower soup - you can find the recipe in ‘A Year of Sundays’) broccoli, cima di rapa (rapini or broccoli rabe), fennel bulbs, fennel fronds, parsley, mint, rosemary, thyme, chives, coriander (new…have had some fine stems for weeks but now picking bunches) nasturtium and calendula petals, borage flowers.
Going / gone: aubergines, onions, garlic, lovage
Seed saving: tomatoes
Sowing: I have most seeds in but will continue to sow randomly here and there.
Planting: lettuce seedlings and leeks
Ornamental garden notes:
Picking for the house: random stems from the kitchen garden, a surprise winter rose here and there.
Perfumes and aromas: are quiet now, save for those in the evening pick - coriander is punchy and on a sun-warmed day, the scent of oranges can momentarily fill the air. As for those scant winter-flowering rose blooms…their perfume seems amplified.
Pruning and other: Thalia has re-potted some of the tropicals between the wings and upon discovering the caterpillar that causes strife in the cliveas and crinums, has sprayed both with Dipel. Otherwise she’s still working those circles around the tree trunks in the park. I did a lot of tweaking in the kitchen garden at the weekend, and a bit more chipping away at the Perovskia in the Barn Garden. Time to enjoy the slow weeks as the garden takes its time to shed.
Of course today is the Winter Solstice - the shortest day, marking a new beginning. As I went to close the back gates, what did I see? A huge, full solstice moon, a gigantic flat disc rising over the hill…what joy!
Lovely to hear from you Sally :)) The citrus sure are bountiful...I just took 3 dozen oranges and two dozen lemons to friends in Sydney - like you, they have lemon curd on their agenda (and our trees don't even look like I've made a dent! Glad you like the jade too :))
Try not to eat it all at once! X