Author: @lickedspoon

Love and a Licked Spoon is written by Debora Robertson, food writer, editor, enthusiastic kitchen botherer and optimistic planter of pretty and edible things. She lives in SW France with her husband Séan, a dog, a cat and a mountain of cookbooks and seed catalogues. She is ideologically opposed to rectangular plates. Her latest book, Declutter: The get-real guide to creating calm from chaos was published by Kyle Books in 2018. Dogs' Dinners: The healthy, happy way to feed your dog was published by Pavillion Books in 2018. Gifts from the Garden: 100 Gorgeous Homegrown Presents, was published by Kyle Books in 2012.

Christmas is coming , the fruit is getting fat

This is a public service announcement. Next Sunday is the last Sunday before Advent. You know what that means.

If you don’t, it’s the day with the most cheering of titles: Stir-up Sunday, the day we traditionally make Christmas puddings to give them plenty of time to mature before the big day. I’ll be stirring up next weekend but I want to soak my dried fruit in booze first to make the pudding especially delicious.

If you want to make your pudding along with me, here’s how to get started.

Mix together 200g pitted, halved prunes with 500g dried vine fruits (a combination of raisins, currants and sultanas. You could just use raisins if you prefer. You could also use 700g of raisins and ditch the prunes).

Tip them into a Parfait-type glass jar which will hold them with some space to spare. Pour over 200ml brandy and seal. Store in a cool, dark place, shaking the jar from time to time so that all of the fruit gets evenly soaked.

Here’s the rest of the shopping list for next week:
225g chopped mixed peel (I’ll give you a recipe this week if you want to make your own)
225g glace cherries
120g blanched almonds
340g shredded suet
340g soft white breadcrumbs
8 eggs
150ml Guinness
Brandy

These quantities make enough for three 825ml puddings; each one serves 6-8 people. You can divide the pudding into two larger puddings or a single, enormous one if you prefer.

Perfectly purple in every way

You know I’m very easily led. I went into Stoke Newington Green on my way back from the park to pick up some lemons and within five minutes had a basket full. ‘I only came in for lemons,’ I said to the young Turkish man behind the counter. He smiled.
“Everybody does that, comes in for one thing, ends up with a lot more.”

Right by the counter (again, my downfall at the counter) was a box of round aubergines, labelled Rosa Bianca though to me they looked more like Prosperosa. With glossy, deep violet skins, these fat beauties are the most gorgeous aubergines of all. Their flesh is creamy and rich, with none of that mashed-tea bitterness that some aubergines have. Use them just as you would a normal aubergine in baba ganoush, ratatouille, or in thick slices on the grill. Or try this pretty salad. It really is enough for two but I’m afraid I ate it all myself.

Roasted aubergine and garlic salad

Serves 2

1 large prosperosa or rosa bianca aubergine, or 2 ordinary aubergines
8-10 cloves of garlic
3-4 tbsp olive oil
¼ – ½ tsp chilli flakes
A few bay leaves
A few sprigs of thyme
70g pine nuts
Some pomegranate seeds, optional
A small bunch of coriander, tough stalks removed and roughly chopped
1 small red chilli, halved, seeds and membrane removed and diced
1 tsp pomegranate molasses, optional (if not using, a few wedges of lemon instead)

Flaky sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Yoghurt sauce

2 tbsp greek yoghurt
1 tbsp tahini
Pinch of salt

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 6.

Cut the aubergine/s into large wedges. Peel a few cloves of garlic. If they’re large, cut lengthways into quarters; if small, halve them. Use a small, sharp knife to cut into the fleshiest part of each aubergine wedge and push a piece of garlic into each little pocket. Bash the rest of the cloves to break the skin but don’t peel them.

Toss the aubergines in a large roasting tin with the olive oil until they’re well coated. Add the whole garlic cloves, chilli flakes, bay leaves and thyme, season well with salt and pepper and toss again. Roast in the oven until the aubergines are soft, golden and starting to char a bit around the edges, rattling the pan from time to time. This should take about 35-40 minutes.

While the aubergines are roasting, warm a dry frying pan over a medium heat and toast the pine nuts, rattling the pan to make sure they don’t burn.

Make the yoghurt sauce by whisking together the tahini, yoghurt and salt and thinning it to the consistency of single cream with a splash of hot water from the kettle.

When the aubergines are ready, remove the bay leaves and thyme. Toss the aubergines and whole garlic cloves in a large bowl with the pine nuts, pomegranate seeds if using, coriander, mint and fresh chilli. Season with a little more salt and pepper if you like. Spoon onto a platter and trickle over the pomegranate molasses or lemon juice and the yoghurt sauce. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Remembrance Sunday

From a window at St Barahane’s Church, Castletownshend, County Cork, Ireland

Aftermath

Have you forgotten yet?…
For the world’s events have rumbled on since those gagged days,
Like traffic checked while at the crossing of city-ways:
And the haunted gap in your mind has filled with thoughts that flow
Like clouds in the lit heaven of life; and you’re a man reprieved to go,
Taking your peaceful share of Time, with joy to spare.
But the past is just the same–and War’s a bloody game…
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look down, and swear by the slain of the War that you’ll never forget.

Do you remember the dark months you held the sector at Mametz–
The nights you watched and wired and dug and piled sandbags on parapets?
Do you remember the rats; and the stench
Of corpses rotting in front of the front-line trench–
And dawn coming, dirty-white, and chill with a hopeless rain?
Do you ever stop and ask, ‘Is it all going to happen again?’

Do you remember that hour of din before the attack–
And the anger, the blind compassion that seized and shook you then
As you peered at the doomed and haggard faces of your men?
Do you remember the stretcher-cases lurching back
With dying eyes and lolling heads–those ashen-grey
Masks of the lads who once were keen and kind and gay?
Have you forgotten yet?…
Look up, and swear by the green of the spring that you’ll never forget.

Siegfried Sassoon

A fine pickle

Salted vegetables, ready to be transformed into piccalilli.

For months now, a certain woman has followed me all over London. I don’t mean literally. There is no stalker skulking at the end of the path, unless you count that rather severe-looking woman with a bun and sensible shoes I see every morning by the bus stop, but then she’s probably just on her way to work.

No, I mean Anna Colquhoun. When I took his garden design course earlier in the year, Andrew said to me ‘Do you know Anna, she has a pizza oven in her garden?’ As we walked our dogs around Clissold Park, my friend Karen would describe to me a series of amazing preserving courses she took every quarter in a pretty house right by the Arsenal stadium. At parties, with remarkable frequency, people would ask me if I knew her.

So when Riverford invited me to a cooking class to promote their pickling kits, I was delighted to discover it was just a short distance from my house, at the home of the fabled Anna who is also Riverford’s preserving expert.

Anna strains the apples for the sage jelly.

Half a dozen of us gathered in Anna’s kitchen to throw ourselves into the fine art of preserving, fuelled by wine and good ham. A self-confessed ‘food nerd’, Anna imparts her wisdom with great charm and enthusiasm. We chopped and stirred, measured and sniffed, and watched carefully for the sage and garlic jelly to reach its setting point. We made a fine green tomato chutney and, most excitingly for me, the best piccalilli I’ve ever tasted.

Green tomato chutney

Sage and apple jelly

Piccalilli has a special place in my heart. It’s one of the few things I can remember my grandmother making. Every autumn, she would patiently chop up the produce from my Uncle Jos’s allotment and steam up the kitchen with the spicy aroma of vinegar, ginger and mustard. As a child, I marvelled at its eye-shocking yellowness. Barbara’s piccalilli perked up many a northern Sunday tea, sitting alongside wedges of pork pie or slabs of ham.

I hope the late and indomitable Barbara will forgive me, but Anna’s piccalilli is even better than hers. It’s hot, which I like, but also she chops the vegetables much smaller than usual. I would be perfectly happy to eat it greedily with a spoon, which is exactly what I plan to do when this batch is ready in a week or so. Patience, Debora, patience.

Book one of Anna’s fantastic, hands-on, cooking classes.

Check out Riverford’s excellent, extensive range of produce.

Anna Colquhoun’s Amazing Piccalilli

The end of a delicious evening.

This is a hot piccalilli. You can use more or less spice, simply adjust it to your taste.

Makes 7-8 450g jars

2kg prepared vegetables: choose a colourful mix of cucumbers, carrots, onions/shallots, courgettes/marrows, bell peppers, cauliflowers, green beans, green tomatoes, sweetcorn kernels

About 8 tbsp fine pure salt
1050ml cider vinegar, white wine vinegar or malt vinegar
400g white granulated sugar
1tbsp coriander seeds, crushed
1 tbsp cumin seeds, crushed
1 tbsp celery seeds
2 tbsp yellow mustard seeds
40g cornflour, or 60g plain flour
2tbsp mustard powder
1tbsp turmeric
1tbsp powdered ginger

Cut all of the vegetables into matching 1cm dice, or larger if you prefer. You should have 2kg prepared weight. Layer them in a big bowl with the salt and leave for several hours or, preferably, overnight. Don’t skip this step – salting is important for drawing out excess water which would otherwise dilute the pickle. It also ensures the vegetables retain their crunch.

Place your clean jars in the oven and turn it on to 140˚C/275˚F/Gas mark 1 to sterilise them. Leave the jars in there until needed.

Rinse the vegetables in several changes of cold water and drain very well.

Reserve a little cup of vinegar and place the rest in a large pan with the sugar, coriander, cumin, celery seeds and mustard seeds. Heat to dissolve the sugar and simmer for 5 minutes.

Stir the cornflour, mustard powder, turmeric and ginger into the reserved vinegar to make a paste. Add some hot vinegar to this to loosen it, then pour the paste into the pan, stirring briskly as you go to avoid creating lumps. Simmer for a few minutes, stirring.

Bubbling away.

Now add the drained vegetables and simmer everything together for 5 minutes, stirring often. Anna likes the vegetables half-cooked, so they retain a little crunch and I do too.

Pack the hot pickles into hot jars, making sure there are no large air pockets, and seal immediately. Wait one month before opening and use within a year. Once opened, store in the fridge.

Miss Scarlet’s Vittles

Dutch rhubarb and Sicilian lemons by the counter.

I’ve been a bad food writer. I was passing through my favourite greengrocer and second home, Stoke Newington Green, the other morning, picking up a basket of mushrooms and pumpkins, clementines and walnuts. So far, so orange and brown and seasonally correct. I almost made it out. There, by the counter, was my temptress and seducer. A box of definitely-out-of-season Dutch rhubarb so spectacularly scarlet it was in my basket quicker than you can say crimson. Reader, I was weak.

I love red. I can’t resist it. The late, legendary American decorator Albert Hadley believed you should have a touch of red in every room. (His powerful client list reads like a roster of libraries, museums and hospital wings with all its Astors, Paleys, Rockefellers, Gettys and Whitneys.) A cushion, a rug, a vase of roses or berries, a pot of amaryllis, an enamel colander or a lacquer tray. Just a shot. It shakes up a room like a slick of red lipstick against a pale face. It’s also my emergency prescription for anything that looks too wearyingly tasteful.

So anyway, this is my long-way-around attempt to explain my food writer apostasy. Rhubarb in November. So shoot me. It will leave a lovely stain.

Kentish plums.

Kentish quince.

Egyptian pyramid.

So pretty.

Stoke Newington Green, 39 Stoke Newington Church Street, London N16 0NX

Open every day, 7am – 10ish pm

Rhubarb and vanilla jam

Sundae breakfast.

If there is a prettier way of starting the day than a spoonful of this jam swirled through some Greek yoghurt, I don’t know what it is.

Makes 4-5 340g jars

1kg rhubarb, trimmed weight, cut into 2.5cm chunks
1kg jam sugar with added pectin
1 vanilla pod, split lengthways
Juice of a small orange
Juice and pips of a small lemon

Macerating in the pan.

Pour a layer of sugar in the bottom of a preserving pan or large saucepan and then add a layer of rhubarb. Scrape the seeds from the vanilla pod with a small, sharp knife and place the seeds on top of the rhubarb with the pod. Continue layering the sugar and rhubarb, finishing with a layer of sugar. Cover and leave overnight to macerate.

The next day, place a couple of saucers in the freezer. Pour the juices over the rhubarb and tie the pips from the lemon in a small circle of muslin with kitchen string. Place the bundle in the pan too.

Warm the jam gently, stirring it slowly from time to time to dissolve the sugar without breaking up the chunks. Once the sugar is dissolved, bring to a rolling boil and boil rapidly until the setting point is reached. This should take about 8-10 minutes. This is a soft-set jam so don’t wait for it to get too solid. A droplet of the jam on one of the chilled saucers should just wrinkle when you push it with your finger.

Remove from the heat and let it sit for 5 minutes and remove the muslin bag. Seal the jam in warm, sterilised jars. Either discard the vanilla pod or snip a little bit into each jar. Unopened and kept in a cool, dark place the jam should keep for a year.