(I hope you are feeling hungry again!)

The next sandwich is a taste sensation I experienced at lunchtime at school one day. After years of suffering terrible school lunches I was able to take a packed lunch when I moved up to the sixth form. Our lovely comprehensive school had extensive playing fields so, in the summer, we used to eat our sandwiches outside sitting on the grass. One sunny morning I spread my sandwich bread with rhubarb sauce (see the recipe in my previous blog on our Mrs Beeton title) and put slices of liver sausage on top. At lunchtime I strolled down the playing field to find a quiet spot to eat lunch (well away from the smokers hiding in the hedge and the snoggers also hiding in the hedge further along). This was the first time I had tried the liver sausage and rhubarb sauce combination and it was a revelation – the sweet spicy, slightly acidic, sauce complimented the strong taste of the liver sausage perfectly. I will never forget it. Rhubarb sauce is also fantastic in a BLT by the way. Soft and mild bread balances these strong flavours best so I prefer white bread.

Another sandwich and school-related memory that has stayed with me is the tale of the boarders’ packed lunch and a trip to Stratford to see Othello. Although our school was a state comprehensive it did have a few pupils who boarded, mostly because their parents were in the forces serving overseas. In the sixth form we made several trips to see performances of the plays that were set texts for A Level. One summer’s day the English class was travelling in a minibus to Stratford. We brought our packed lunches with us and the boarders had been given a packed lunch by their boarding house. They opened their pack of sandwiches and looked at the filling. It was blue cheese and pickle. Some of the boys were disgusted by this offering and decided to throw the packs of sandwiches out of the minibus window. Unfortunately (for the driver) the car travelling behind our minibus on the motorway was an open-topped sports car. The packs of blue cheese and pickle sandwiches exploded on the windscreen and sprayed their contents all over the car and driver. The inhabitants of the minibus were hysterical at this sight and the teacher driving the minibus, needless to say, decided to put his foot down and leave the scene at speed. We didn’t see what happened but can only assume the driver of the sports car had to pull in at the next service station and hose himself down.

After A Levels I left Dorset for Scotland and university. One thing I missed terribly was my Mum’s home-grown beetroot sandwiches. For me, beetroots can only be eaten freshly dug from Mum’s garden and boiled. It is a sin and a shame to adulterate a lovely beetroot with vinegar, which renders them inedible as far as I am concerned. Beetroot sandwiches are a wonderful thing – white bread (which the beetroot stains pink) and some mayonnaise are all that is required for a memorable taste experience. I was very homesick in my first term at university so my Mum parcelled up a beetroot sandwich and sent it to me in the post. The envelope arrived covered in red stains so I can only imagine what the postmen thought was contained inside – a kidnapper’s ransom note accompanied by a severed finger perhaps? However, it was delivered and the sandwich was a great cure for homesickness.

This blog post is now far too long so I will finish with a final couple of sandwich memories, the first from my university days. My hall of residence provided breakfast and an evening meal but we had to fend for ourselves at lunchtime. Being extremely cold most of the time in Scotland I often felt the need for a hot lunch. I had brought with me an ancient sandwich toaster. We weren’t allowed electrical cooking/heating appliances in our rooms so the sandwich toaster lived on the landing outside my door. I experimented with various fillings for toasted sandwiches (paté and pickle was a favourite) and the toaster would often be sizzling and spitting when our cleaner arrived. She had a dim view of my toastie experiments and was terrified of the toaster, always skirting round it to get into my room. Her lovely Fife accent became incomprehensible when she was expressing her fear and outrage at my dangerous sandwich-making equipment!

The very last memory is from a couple of hours ago – my lunch. My favourite lunchtime sandwich is a pitta bread filled with tinned mackerel fillets, potato salad, cucumber, tomatoes, spring onions, lettuce and some beetroot if I can squeeze it in. This way I get my five-a-day and some oily fish for brain health all in one go! The potato salad is naughty but it smooths off the edges of the mackerel nicely and means I don’t need to add mayonnaise as well. Delicious and it keeps me going ‘til dinner time.

Flavours are as evocative as scents, probably because the two are inextricably linked. But also, these sandwich memories are tied up with people and places from my early life, summoning up images of events fondly remembered and family and friends loved and missed.

Recipes for apple chutney, a wide range of pickles and for various types of marmalade can be found in our new publication, Mrs Beeton’s Jam-Making and Preserves.

Share your own sandwich-based memories with us by adding a comment or by posting on Facebook. We would love to hear from you.

Photo of a BLT: By jeffreyw [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The 2014 apple season is almost here and it will be interesting once again to see if the major supermarkets offer some or any home-grown British apples. Like it or not these supermarkets buy and supply the majority of the apples and fruit that we consume.

A quick look at what is being offered by the major supermarkets right now shows about 14 different types of eating apples and just one cooker, the ubiquitous Bramley. Among the eaters, the same half-dozen varieties predominate – Royal Gala, Granny Smith, Golden Delicious, Jazz, Pink Lady and Braeburn. Most of these, given that our season is only about to start, are imported too, clocking up significant air miles.

According to the National Fruit Collection (www.nationalfruitcollection.org) there are over 2,000 different types of apple, and they have living examples of them all at their grounds near Faversham in Kent. In recent years there has been an increased interest in heritage apples and the recording, preservation and propagation of old apple trees across the country. This is to be applauded as it maintains a vigorous, diverse gene pool and offers the opportunity to provide an apple to match the most particular palate. Sadly many cultivars have been lost, almost imperceptibly, as they are often extremely localised to a particular area, farm or orchard. The National Fruit Collection has attempted to record all the varieties and they will even identify your apple for you.

Our Vintage Words to the Wise title The Cottage Farm dates from 1912 and celebrates the smallholding of author F.E. Green month-by-month through the year. In September he describes the apples coming into season and what a selection he had in his small orchard – Beauty of Bath, Bismarck, Cox's Orange Pippin, King of the Pippins, Lady Sudeley, Lane's Prince Albert, Pott's Seedling, Wellington and Worcester Pearmain. Most of us will recognize the Cox and can expect to see that in the shops and hopefully supermarkets soon, but the others are less familiar. Four of the nine are cooking apples, providing a healthy alternative to the Bramley.

Most of these cultivars date from the first half of the nineteenth century and they are all represented in the National Collection.

National Apple Day is towards the end of October and there will be many events around the country in orchards, on farms, at apple growers and cider-makers. It is worth finding out if there is an event near you and celebrating our diversity of apples. They say variety is the spice of life so, having explored this rich heritage of British apples, why not badger your local supermarket or greengrocer to provide some alternatives to the standardized, imported varieties? It will help preserve some of these older cultivars for the future, support smallholders and farmers – and tickle your taste buds too!

Our friend Jeremy Hobson has kindly reviewed our Poultry-keeping title for Your Chickens magazine and he has tweeted about The Cottage Farm too, for which we are most grateful.  Jeremy has been around poultry and livestock all his life. Throughout the years, he has created a career and lifestyle whereby he has been fortunate enough to be able to indulge in all his chosen hobbies and pastimes and has, since 1976, when his first article was published, written regularly for many country-orientated newspapers and magazines. His published book titles number over 30 and range from chicken-keeping to chutney-making – and from running a smallholding to running a shoot. Nowadays, a professional freelance writer and author (a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a member of the Guild of Agricultural Journalists) Jeremy spends a third of his year in Hampshire and two-thirds in rural France.

I strongly recommend Jeremy’s book Success with Chickens as the ideal modern guide to keeping chickens. Buy this alongside our Poultry-keeping book and you will be supplied with chicken wisdom past and present. Visit our ‘Self-sufficiency and Keeping Chickens’ board on Pinterest for some lovely vintage illustrations of apples, some photographs of the most beautiful chickens and some charming illustrations from our Poultry-keeping title.

Coming soon – a blog post on cider-making and a recipe for Dorset Apple Cake. 

I was strolling around the Abbotsbury Sub-tropical Gardens in Dorset with Mum a couple of weeks ago (the gardens are beautiful – do visit if you are in the area). We found a five-star bench to sit on – in a shady glade, off the main drag so quiet, great view, comfortable and empty! – and ate hot smoked salmon and cucumber sandwiches. The salmon had been smoked locally and Mum grew the cucumbers in her greenhouse. With the addition of some salad cream, the sandwiches were delicious and all the better for being eaten outside on a five-star bench. My appreciation of the sandwiches led to reminiscences about other great sarnies I have enjoyed over the years, and this was the origin of this blog post ‘cereal’ (ho, ho!) – My Life in Sandwiches.

One of my earliest memories is of eating marmalade sandwiches on Charmouth beach. When we lived in Yeovil Mum would sometimes get us up very early on a sunny morning, make a packed breakfast (a flask of tea, hard boiled eggs and marmalade sandwiches) and we would drive to Charmouth for breakfast on the beach. Because it was so early we would have the beach to ourselves and plenty of time for pottering about in the rock pools (Charmouth has brilliant rock pools when the tide is out), paddling and building sandcastles – you have to go to Charmouth for really decent sand on the Jurassic coast. Paddington Bear would have been proud of us, but I think we would have received a hard stare if the marmalade sandwiches had contained real sand! I think I favour brown bread for a marmalade sandwich – something a bit gnarly like wholemeal to hang on to the marmalade.

Another early memory is of my conversion to tomato sandwiches. When I was very young I didn’t like tomato sandwiches. However, on a trip to the zoo with my grandparents, I discovered that I had been sitting on a packet of tomato sandwiches during the car journey. Because they had been compressed, the tomato juice had soaked into the white bread and they had become quite warm! I felt rather guilty for creating a bum-shaped impression in the sandwiches so I ate one. It was yummy! This led to my conversion and to my first two rules of sandwich-making 1) tomatoes are best when they are warm – take them out of the fridge for an hour or two before eating, 2) sandwiches need to be squashed down before slicing them – it helps the fillings combine and encourages tomato juice (if you have tomatoes in the sandwich) to soak into the bread. In this case I favour nice white bread – it seems more absorbent!

The next memory is of the Boxing Day egg sandwiches in front of the James Bond film on TV. Many years ago there was usually a Bond film on in the afternoon on Boxing Day. The family would gather around the TV, there would be a log fire burning in the grate and someone would be volunteered to make some ‘really disgusting’ egg sandwiches for tea. In our family parlance a ‘really disgusting’ sandwich means an untidy, even sloppy, filling packed between two slices of bread – difficult to eat but a taste sensation nonetheless. None of your dainty cucumber triangles here. No, our egg sandwiches were unctuous with salad cream. Third rule of sandwich-making – there should be more filling than bread. The eggs came from Mrs Egg Warren next door so they were fresh and laid locally, with lovely golden yolks. I always enjoyed going to buy eggs from Mrs Warren because I usually got a sweet as well. A buxom rustic wholemeal is good for egg sandwiches as you need a texture to compliment the slippery egg filling.

Of course Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the ‘really disgusting’ turkey sandwich that was eaten later in the day when we had recovered from Christmas lunch. When we were old enough to be allowed to wield the carving knife on our own we would attack the turkey carcass with glee. The best turkey sandwich includes all the gloopy bits of the turkey – jelly and juices, stuffing, odd bits of brown meat from underneath the bird, and, perhaps, some sausagemeat or a sliced chipolata. I like to spread French mustard on the bread but others prefer Mum’s apple chutney. Mayonnaise is also a must for me as I don’t share my parents’ love of salad cream anymore. Once the meat has been selected it is time to balance some salad ingredients on top – tomatoes, lettuce, spring onions, etc. – to give a vague nod towards healthy eating. Then the crucial bit – placing a slice of bread on top and squashing the whole lot down firmly. As described above, this allows the flavours to combine but also means you can fit the sandwich in your mouth! The turkey sandwich always reminds me of one of my favourite episodes of Friends – the one with Ross’s turkey sandwich (though I think it is a post-Thanksgiving sandwich rather than a post-Christmas sandwich). I love the idea of an extra slice of bread soaked in gravy being added in the middle of the sandwich as ‘the moist maker’. I have not tried this because, frankly, cold gravy is not very appealing, but it would probably taste great! White or brown bread? It doesn’t matter for a turkey sandwich as it is all about the filling. A big bap might work well I guess but I haven’t tried that.

I am sure you are full up right now so ‘My Life in Sandwiches – Part II’ follows after a break for digestion. Share your own sandwich-based memories with us by adding a comment or by posting on Facebook. We would love to hear from you.

Photo of an egg sandwich: By jill, jellidonut... whatever from Raleigh, NC, USA [CC-BY-2.5 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons

With the new series of The Great British Bake Off (#GBBO) underway, and with our new title Mrs Beeton’s Jam-making and Preserves to present to you, I thought I would offer up my favourite cake recipe.

For me, the winner of GBBO Week 1’s show-stopper challenge was Nancy with her Jaffa Orange cakes. My recipe is similar – it is an orange drizzle cake. Everyone is familiar with the lemon drizzle cake (now ubiquitous in supermarkets and tea rooms everywhere – yawn!) but the orange drizzle cake is less common, which is a pity because it is delicious. My recipe also cocks a snook at Paul Hollywood’s disdain for soggy bottoms. The whole point of my recipe is to create a soggy bottom (well, a soggy centre anyway). The orange drizzle cake works as both a cake and a pudding – perfect to close out a winter dinner party with the addition of some alcohol and double cream.

Ingredients:

Cake (baked in a 2 lb loaf tin)

Margarine – 6 oz/170 gms

Caster sugar – 6 oz/170 gms

3 eggs

Self-raising flour – 6 oz/170 gms

Milk – 2 tablespoons/28 ml

Rind of 2 oranges (no pith)

Syrup

The juice of 2 oranges

Sugar – 4 oz/114 gms

Cointreau – 1 sherry-glass full (optional, but this turns the cake from a teatime treat to a dinner party dessert).

Icing

Plain chocolate – 4 oz/114 gms

Butter – ½ oz/14 gms

Method:

Cream the margarine with the sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs a little at a time. Fold in the flour. Add the milk and the grated orange rind. Bake for 1 hour at gas mark 4 (190°C / 375°F).

While the cake is baking make the syrup by dissolving the sugar in the orange juice.

When the cake is ready, take it out of the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. When it is nearly cool make slits across the top of the cake. Place a plate under the wire rack (as shown in the photograph below) to catch any syrup overflow. Drizzle the syrup over the cake and leave to soak in. If there is syrup that has dripped into the plate, drizzle this over the cake. Keep drizzling until all the syrup has soaked into the cake. Yes, this makes quite a soggy cake but it is amazing how much syrup is taken up by the sponge.

When the cake is cold, make the icing by melting the chocolate and butter together. Pour the melted dark chocolate over the cake and spread quickly with a palette knife so that the icing runs down the sides of the cake. The icing should be quite thick and glossy. Put the iced cake somewhere cool so the chocolate icing sets. The dark chocolate icing looks great but, if you want to add more decoration, I recommend adding some crystallised orange slices arranged in a nice pattern on top of the chocolate icing. Mrs Beeton’s Jam-making and Preserves has some lovely recipes for crystallised fruits, including oranges.

Make a cup of tea, sit down and anticipate that first slice of gooey orangey chocolatey cake. I recommend using a cake fork to eat it with – the cake is quite difficult to pick up as it should have a soggy bottom!

When autumn is nigh my mother is overcome by the squirreling urge. The garden, local fruit farms and the surrounding countryside are bursting with fruit and vegetables that are crying out to be stashed away for winter. Obviously, these days, some garden produce goes into the freezer, but Mum is also a keen jam-maker and preserver. As a child, autumn walks always required a pocket full of plastic bags in case we came across blackberries for bramble jelly, sloes for sloe gin or elderberries for jelly and wine. I also have fond memories of coming home from school to a kitchen filled with fragrant steam as the preserving pan on the stove blipped and blurped with gently simmering concoctions (Mum knows when her jam is ready because it makes a ‘knocking’ noise in the pan as the mixture thickens). Muslin jelly bags hung from an old mangle frame so that the clear juice could drip slowly into the bowl beneath.

It is clear that there is enormous satisfaction and a sense of wellbeing to be gained from shelves full of neatly labelled jars filled with a range of jewel-coloured jams, jellies, chutneys and sauces. Home-made jams and preserves are a defence against the dark fruitless days of winter, a taste of summer and a great gift for friends and family all year round.

Our new Vintage Words of Wisdom title is Mrs Beeton’s Jam-making and Preserves. This book includes many recipes that my mother has made over the years, including sloe gin, marmalade, pickled pears (my Dad’s favourite – fantastic with cold meats) and blackberry (bramble) jelly (my favourite – perfect with scones and clotted cream). However, Mrs Beeton seems to have missed out one of our all-time family favourites (one could say it is a family addiction) – Mum’s famous rhubarb sauce. Therefore, I have included the recipe here.

Rhubarb sauce (this recipe was originally taken from a ‘cut-out and keep’ leaflet in Woman magazine, 17 June 1972, but we have never seen it since and Mum has adapted it over the years).

Makes about 4 pints:

3 lb of rhubarb;

1 lb of raisins (using fewer raisins makes the recipe more savoury if you find it too sweet);

2 lb of brown sugar (you can use white sugar but brown sugar improves the colour);

½ pint of spiced vinegar (there is a recipe for spiced vinegar in our Mrs Beeton book but you can also buy it ready-made these days);

½ lb of red onions (optional but they make a more savoury sauce. Also, white onions are fine but red onions improve the colour).

Method:

Wash the rhubarb, trim off and discard the ends. Cut the rhubarb flesh into 1 inch lengths. Stone the raisins (seedless may be used if preferred). Dissolve the sugar in the spiced vinegar over a gentle heat, then simmer for 10 minutes. Add the prepared rhubarb, raisins and onions (if you are using them) and cook gently until the mixture is thick. Put into a liquidiser and blend or pass through a sieve to form a smooth purée. Pour into warm, dry bottles or jars. Seal when cold. This sauce improves with age so resist the temptation to try it until it has sat on the shelf for a couple of months or more. If you like to re-use jam jars remember to use a jam pot cover (waxed paper or transparent) each time as, if you don’t, the acid in pickles, chutneys and sauces will gradually eat away holes in a tin jam-jar lid if it is used regularly with vinegar-based contents!

Rhubarb sauce is great with meat pies (for example, corned beef tart or Cornish pasties), lovely with quiche and other cheese dishes, and it makes a fantastic sandwich with some liver sausage or other cold meat. It even works with smoked mackerel or other strongly flavoured fish. It is very brown but absolutely delicious!

Image attributions: Marmalade by Amanda Slater [CC-BY-SA-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Rhubarb sauce: poster’s own image.