Hot Water Pastry

Hot water pastry is a strangely-made but traditional pastry used for making raised pies. This includes the venerable pork pie, most popular in the UK (and one or two other places), but also extends to include veal or game pies. What distinguishes a raised pie from an everyday pie is the lack of pie dish. The pie itself is placed on a baking tray, and the sturdy walls of pastry are left to hold in the filling as best they can. Correctly made hot water pastry is easily up to the job, however, and constructing a hand-raised pork pie is an excellent excuse to melt a block of lard and stir in some flour.

Okay, there's a little more to it than that, but not much. Hot water pastry is simple, perhaps because it seems to break all the rules held most dear to the experienced pastry chef. Keeping it cool, refraining from overworking the mixture - all of that means nothing when it comes to hot water pastry. Something of a masochist, this pastry likes it hot and will thank you kindly for a good beating...

You'll need:
350g (12 oz) plain flour
A pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
4 tablespoons of milk
4 tablespoons of water
25g (1 oz) butter
75g (3 oz) lard

Begin by sifting the flour and salt into a bowl and making a well in the centre. Mix the egg yolk with one tablespoon of the milk and pour it into the well. Don't worry about it needing to be cold; warm milk and flour is perfectly acceptable for hot water pastry, mainly because in a moment you're going to heat the lard, butter and remaining milk and water in a saucepan.

Only heat it gently at first, just to allow the lard to melt, and then bring it to a brisk boil. Pour this into the well and mix until everything is completely blended. By this time your mixture should have cooled to the point where you can comfortably handle it, in which case it's time to tip it onto a floured work surface.

Knead it thoroughly until the pastry is smooth, at which point the pastry needs to rest for about half an hour. Keep it warm as it rests - the best way being to place in a bowl over a saucepan of hot water. Covering it with a clean cloth at this point is also beneficial.

Following this the pastry can be rolled out to a thickness of about 5 mm (quarter of an inch) and used as required. To create a pie case the pastry can be moulded around the bottom of a jar. Upon removing the jar it can be filled with whatever takes your fancy - rich pork and onion filling or a beef and gravy mixture - and topped off with a pastry lid before baking. Delicious!

Hot Water Pastry: Merely one of a series of adventures in the peculiar realms of British cuisine!

Curly Wurly

Delicious milk chocolate with a caramel centre, produced by one of the UK's leading manufacturers of confectionery - Cadbury Limited. The curly wurly is long and thin with a vaguely pretzel-like shape: imagine two long railway-lines of chewy caramel with a zig-zag crossing from one track to the other and you've pretty much got the basic idea. Furthermore, imagine a delicious coating of creamy milk chocolate and you're probably wanting one already.

The curly wurly, of course, has suffered slightly over the years, mainly due to nostalgia. The one I've just opened is around twenty centimetres long and three centimetres across. It might just be that my hands and mouth are bigger nowadays, but I'm sure that the average curly wurly was a good ten centimetres longer a couple of decades ago. And the shape - at one time they really were curly and, well... wurly, too. There was none of this zig-zag-railway-track business; there were shapes lurking in the caramel that were so weird and unearthly they would have grown men quaking with fear. There was, undoubtedly, something almost Lovecraftian about that innocent bar of sugary indulgence. Certainly the wrapper has changed; the public likes things fresh nowadays, and apparently wrapping everything in shiny plastic foil is the way to achieve this. The old waxy white paper has gone, and the curly wurly now comes resplendent in its own bubble-lettered wrapper with a rather pretty drop shadow and some swirly spirals in the background. Not that the wrapper matters; it's what's inside you really want...

But while we're discussing the wrapper, we must acknowledge the inevitable dilemma. Is it really curly wurly? There is no gap on the wrapper, thus one might assume it to be a curlywurly. However, Cadbury's own website uses the space, and anyway, you'd probably rather know more about the sweet itself than worry about a space. Speaking of Cadbury's website, a nice man called Charlie took the trouble to respond to my rather strange email ("Hey, Charlie - we've got another curly wurly obsessive here..."), and I can now share with authority that Curly Wurly has been made since at least the early 70s, has always been between twenty-five and thirty-grams, and the pattern is made in exactly the same way it's always been. This either hints at a dread conspiracy to delude the curly wurly enjoying public, or proves once and for all that the sweets you loved as a child really were exactly the same as they are now; you just remember them being three times as long and a lot more chewy.

Regardless, nowadays the Curly Wurly weighs precisely twenty-six grams, of which sixty-nine percent is soft, chewy caramel. That's glucose syrup, sweetened condensed skimmed milk, sugar, hydrogenated vegetable oil, dried whey, some emulsifiers, soya lecithin and E471, along with a bit of salt and some mysterious flavourings. Mmm! E471, by the way, is glyceryl monostearate and glyceryl distearate, but it's okay - they're just more emulsifiers and apparently a perfectly normal part of digestion anyway. (Note: If I told you height of the bar is approximately five millimetres you could even work out the density of the caramel. If you find yourself wanting to do that, seek professional help.)

The rest of it, of course, is chocolate. Lovely chocolate, with fourteen percent milk solids, and an unspecified quantity of cocoa solids. And, in the twenty seconds it takes you to bite and chew you'll be pleased to hear that the delightful sum of 115 calories will become yours. Frankly, it's worth it.

Cheese Scones

Cheese scones were always regarded as a bit of a luxury when I was a child. The reasoning behind this was the cheese, you see, which cost money. And despite this, the cheese scones were never very cheesy. Presumably it was the cost. Recipes for cheese scones abound with the cheese weighing in at about one ninth of the weight of the recipe. The rest is self-raising flour, which is cheap, cheap, cheap.

But, to my mind, if you're going to make cheese scones then the damn things should taste of cheese. And I don't mean just the top half a centimetre where someone's sprinkled some grated cheese prior to slamming them in the oven. There are a couple of practical ways of doing this. Firstly, you could add more cheese. Or, secondly, you could chop the cheese coarsely and add it to the mixture rather than grating it. Then you get chunks of intense cheese flavour rather than a diluted cheesy vagueness. Apparently.

Ingredients

225g of self raising flour. We have this here in the UK. It's plain flour with a bit of baking powder in it. Consult a chef or the side of a tub of baking powder if you want to make your own; they'll give you proper instructions.

55g of butter. Add a bit more if you're feeling generous.

25g of cheese. But no - let's ignore that. Double it. And add some more. But don't go wild. Let's say 75g of good tasty cheese, keeping a bit to scatter on top.

150ml milk. Cow's, usually, but feel free to experiment with soya, rice, almond, goat or whatever comes to hand.

Method

Quite literally easier than pie. Rub the butter into the flour, add a pinch of salt to season and then add the cheese. Make a dough with the milk and it's all ready to roll out to about 2cm thick (about 3/4 of an inch) and cut into little circles with an appropriately sized cutter. Aim for about twelve.

Pop them in the oven at 220°C (or 425°F) and wait for about 15 minutes until they're golden brown, maybe a little less. I made some and they were very brown by the time quarter of an hour had gone past. Oh, and they'll rise during cooking, as well.

A word about 'scones'

Now you've finished, was that what you were expecting? We call them scones over here in the UK, and they seem to originate from Scotland. Most of us pronounce it 'sc-on' and some of us pronounce it 'sc-oh!-n'. It's a bit like bread buns, tea cakes, barm cakes, rollsand baps; all the same thing, just pronounced differently.

Perhaps you call them biscuits, in which case what do you call proper biscuits? Probably cookies. Over here, we call cookies biscuits and biscuits scones, then. Exciting, isn't it?

Regardless of nomenclature: make... and enjoy.

Toad In The Hole

The British seem to have a penchant for naming foods in the most bizarre manner possible, leading to such delights as spotted dick, black pudding, faggots, and bubble and squeak - all of which are familiar to your everyday inhabitant of Little Britain but cause the rest of the world to scratch their heads and, in extreme cases, point.

Toad in the hole fits neatly in amongst these stalwarts of British cuisine, turning out to be nothing more than delicious pork sausages, browned nicely under the grill or on the stove top before being popped into a miniature lake of fat and subjected to a nice hot oven. A very hot oven, if truth be told; it needs to be hot enough to make that oil smoke.

Eventually the oil will be smoking away merrily, with or without appropriate help from the impatient chef who may well get sick of hanging about and just stick the tin onto the stove for a while. However, at this point a more thoughtful chef will have used the ten minutes wait by beating together flour, milk and eggs to produce a smooth batter - you're wondering how much of each, and I have a fail-safe recipe that stipulates equal quantities of each, including the eggs. For six sausages, I've always gone with four eggs and worked from there. This resulting yorkshire pudding batter, which some may say is a little thick, is poured around the sausages and the whole thing is returned to the oven for around twenty-five minutes. Perhaps a little longer, perhaps a little less - you can check to see if it's golden brown and crisp when it gets close to the magic twenty-five minute mark, but don't be tempted to peek too early: a disturbed yorkshire pudding is a flat yorkshire pudding, and nobody wants that.

Remove from the oven, plate it up and add onion gravy and mashed potato. Before digging in, however, note how the little sausages look very, very vaguely like tiny toads poking their inquisitive heads out of a crisp and battery landscape. You know, I have no idea who first called it that. I wish I could shake their hand. Feel free to muse on how odd we English folk are as you chew...

Birch Syrup

Similar to maple syrup in many ways, but with a subtly different flavour and an entirely different chemical structure, birch syrup is nevertheless obtained in a very similar way. The predominant, natural sugar in birch syrup is fructose; maple consists primarily of sucrose. Fructose is believed to be more digestible, and birch syrup itself is high in vitamins and minerals, including vitamin C, potassium, manganese, thiamin and calcium. Birch syrup lends itself to marinades, barbecue sauces, coffee, baked squash, breads, shakes and, of course, ice-cream.

Originally, collecting birch syrup was a work-intensive and time-consuming procedure. When the spring came and the sap began to rise in the trees, a camp would be set up, home to the collectors for a week or more. Medium-sized trees seemed to produce the best sap, and each tree would only be tapped once every two years - essentially being given a year off to recover. An upwards, slanting cut with a hatchet would produce a curl of bark on the selected trees. When propped open with a small twig, the sap would drip from this jutting curl into tin pails, propped against or tied to the tree. Collecting the pails was usually the responsibility of the children; some trees gave several gallons of sap, some only produced a cup or so. However much was produced, it was brought back to the camp where it boiled in a large kettle over an open fire.

Boiling the sap was a delicate process: it had to be kept boiling; there's an awful lot of extra liquid to evaporate before you end up with sweet birch syrup. Too little cooking, and the syrup would be watery and might even ferment later. Too much, on the other hand, and it would crystallise. Eventually, however, the syrup was ready to pour off and cool, maybe producing three or four gallons of precious syrup.

Nowadays, in early April the sap of the Alaska paper birch begins to rise. Ten to fifteen percent of each tree's sap is removed through a tapped, 7/16" hole which is plugged at the end of the season to preserve the tree. Time is saved by running the sap through a reverse osmosis machine which quickly removes seventy percent of the water, concentrating the sugar to approximately five percent. Concentration to sixty-seven percent is completed in a wood-fired evaporator. At present there is little or no commercial production of birch syrup anywhere else in the world, although one would imagine that as birch syrup becomes increasingly popular amongst gourmet chefs, production is likely to rise to meet demand.

Sadly, I have never tasted birch syrup, nor even seen it in the shops. Maybe one day...

Cheddar

It would seem the British have always been blessed with good cheese. That's not to say the rest of Europe aren't catered for in the cheese department - France, Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Germany all have massively distinctive varieties of cheese. Then there's the Dutch varieties, which I used to turn my nose up at, only having experienced what was labelled 'edam' and 'gouda', and which came complete with a mad woman with a flag and a smile that would shame a shark, which somehow projected beyond the waxy coating to illuminate the surroundings with a ghastly, Netherlandish air. I rightly put those words ('edam' and 'gouda', should you forget) between apostrophes for a reason: having tasted something I bought from the supermarket called 'Old Dutch Master' (note respectful apostrophes with capitalisation contained within). I am in a state of near ecstasy over this particular variety of Dutch cheese and can only assume there is better to follow. I conclude that an aged edam is at least as exciting as an aged Cheddar or a toughened-up Lancashire. Emmental, Brie and Rauchkäse: you have nothing to fear from this. Europe is safe, and America should quake.

Today's lament is for American cheese. What went wrong? We browse your supermarket aisles, America, and we find 'sharp cheddar'. Worse still, upon further investigation, 'Vermont cheddar' appears, or 'Colby', 'Longhorn' or 'New York Style'. It's okay - we too have these abominations that do not deserve to be called cheese. They're clearly labelled 'cheezstrings', 'Dairylea' or 'SUPERMARKET OWN BRAND DO NOT TOUCH'. No-one in their right mind dares to touch these things. It would appear, watching Jeremy Kyle, that we make allowances for those with children in tow, and that brings up a different world, with the accompanying irony of the common intimations of 'bringing up'.

Let us clear our palate. Cheddar in the UK isn't always capitalised. In fact, anyone in the UK, or indeed the world, can make cheddar by following the appropriate recipe, which usually involves kneading the curd with salt, cutting and allowing the whey to drain off, then repeating until you have something firm enough to age. Anything which gets to such a stage is usually marketed in the UK as cheddar, although I privately think of it as a 'cheddar-style cheese', which works pretty well for me, anyway. Certainly, any cafeteria or restaurant I've been to which claims to offer a cheddar-based product has always provided something I have taken or mistaken for cheddar. I dread to think what would happen in the US, but here in the UK it seems easy provide something similar to cheddar. (America, it's probably obvious by now that I hate your cheeses. Even Monterey Jack. Sorry.)

For real Cheddar, with the capital and the people who taste it and fashionably faint, by which I mean they actually contact brow with hand and lapse backwards, you have to visit Cheddar country, in the same way that anyone wishing to procure real Champagne would have to visit… well, the nearest supermarket. But relax… your supermarket has reached out to Champagne country for your posh wine, has it not? Well, it's done the same for your Cheddar. Nearly.

Cheddar has no protected designation of origin, and in fact it's only Stilton which has achieved any sort of protected designation of origin in the UK, which means that any bugger with a bit of congealed milk can call it cheddar, and even capitalise it if they wish. The European Union, bless their hearts, are a bit more stringent and will only allow you to label something as 'West Country Farmhouse Cheddar' if it's made in a traditional manner with local ingredients in either Somerset, Dorset, Devon or Cornwall. Join with me and 'whoopee', and then taste many of the bland, pointless, soul-destroyingly tasteless cheddars you can buy across Europe, to say nothing of the massive range available to the UK anti-gourmand.

Here in the UK, I have come to a solution, and that is if you can't find something labelled 'West Country' then avoid anything that says 'mild', 'everyday' or 'mature'. Go for 'extra-mature', and don't be fooled by things like 'young but mature', 'milky and full of taste' or 'magic and with a hint of plastic!'. Hold out for your rights like Jackson Browne, and all will be well. Don't be tempted by Philadelphia, Quark or <shudder> Supermarket Own Brand Slightly Yellow Cheddar. Similarly, don't be swayed by waxy-paper wrappers, sheeny-silk-pink plastic wrappers, rustic-looking paper-that's-actually-plastic trays. Do you really think the best product commands the best package? Use your judgement. Ask to taste. Let them prove it to you… make them prove it to you.

Cheddar… mmm. If you try.

Yorkshire Puddings

Yorkshire puddings are a popular accompaniment to a roast dinner, originating (as the name suggests) in Yorkshire, England. Although Yorkshire puddings are, nowadays, treated as an accompaniment to a meal, this status is a recent development. Originally, not so long ago, the single and sole purpose of a Yorkshire pudding was to fill you up. Served separately at the beginning of a meal, the cunning housewife would pile up her husband and children's plates with as much Yorkshire pudding as they'd let her, provide gravy (sometimes with onion), and wait. There was even a saying: Them that eats most pudding gets most meat. Which was a tongue-in-cheek blatant lie, actually...

The reasoning behind it all was simple. A joint of beef, for many families, was an extravagance that went so much further if everyone was already full of batter pudding. Another recipe designed to achieve the same result was the suet pudding, sometimes known as a crispy pudding. Stodgy, yet tasty and (above all) filling and cheap, there was always plenty of crispy pudding, or a goodly heap of Yorkshires. Far from being a cut-price hors d'oeuvre, Yorkshire puddings were an essential element of making sure there was enough food to go round.

Nowadays, Yorkshire puddings are seen as an accompaniment to a meal, and occasionally double up as a kind of trencher. Small, bun-sized Yorkshire puds will fit nicely on the edge of a plate, and one or two per person is more than sufficient to accompany a main meal. Larger puddings will fill a plate and are capacious enough to contain the whole meal; a yorkshire pudding filled with mince, sausages and gravy or even baked beans is a common sight on café menus, and a meal worth sampling.

Another traditional British dish which incorporates Yorkshire pudding is toad in the hole, a delightfully-named recipe which features no amphibians at all, coming up trumps instead with pork sausages, poking alluringly through a landscape of batter pudding.

The actual creation of Yorkshire pudding seems, at first glance, to be suspiciously simple. You can make pancake batter? Then you can make Yorkshire pudding batter - just make it a little thinner. Put it in the oven and wait a while. And that's it. In theory.

Realistically, getting the hang of Yorkshire puddings can be a little tricky. Novice pudding-wranglers may end up with a set of entirely flat mini-pancakes or a large dome of batter. Promisingly large puddings may churlishly deflate upon being observed, or a previously docile mixture might suddenly develop rebel tendencies and attempt to escape over the side of the pan. The solution to all these problems is, unhelpfully, experience. Yorkshire puddings, for all their simple and subtle charms, can be bastards at times, and the key to their mastery is simply to try again.

Recipes for Yorkshire pudding vary wildly. One can produce passable, even delicious, Yorkshire pudding with either a thick, stodgy batter or a thinner, more milky batter, and you'll find people who swear on either type. The following recipe produces a batter of medium consistency. Should you be unsuccessful with this, you may wish to experiment with either more flour or more milk, though a more likely cause of problems will be the temperature of your oven or the type of flour itself. Don't even think of using flour that's been lying around for months - invest in some good, fresh plain flour. And get that oven stoked up! Yorkshire puddings may seem plain and boring, but they're just reclusive little minxes - they like it hot and they like it quiet; don't disturb them once they're in the oven, not even to peek!

I used to do the following:

• 4oz (100g plain white flour
• 300ml (1/2 pint) milk
• 1 egg
• Oil, lard or dripping (for cooking)

Recently, however, I've adopted a new method based on volume which seems to give better results, but can be a little extravagant on the egg front:

• The same volume of flour, eggs and milk
• Oil, lard or dripping (for cooking)

Whichever you choose, place the flour in a bowl, break in the egg(s) and add the milk before beating into a batter. You may wish to add salt and pepper to season it. The surface will be covered with tiny bubbles when you've thoroughly beaten it together, at which point the mixture should be allowed to rest.

While it's resting, you'll want to get your oven to a high temperature - at least 425 degrees Farenheit, or 220 degrees centigrade. A little hotter won't hurt; it all depends what you have in the oven to begin with - your roast may not appreciate too high a temperature.

The tin in which the Yorkshire puddings will be cooked must be heated, too. Place a small amount of fat in each well if you're intending to produce many bun-sized puddings, or just grease out a larger tin if you're heading for a six or seven-inch pudding. Place this tin in the oven, and wait until the fat begins to smoke. Do not be tempted to add the batter before the fat has reached such a stage: very hot fat is an important part of the cooking process. Conversely, don't go to the other extreme - the fat should be slightly smoking, not billowing clouds of sooty malevolence.

When you have a hot tin of smoking fat you can safely add the batter. Cook it in the oven for ten to fifteen minutes if producing individual puddings. Larger puddings will require at least half an hour to cook. You may check after ten minutes or so, but do remember that a disturbed Yorkshire pudding will usually go flat. Allow it a little time on its own before checking - at least ten minutes.

Experience, a little tweaking, and a patient and systematic approach will easily produce excellent results. And once you've mastered a plain pudding, then the joys of toad in the hole are only a trip to the butchers away!

Parma Violets

(i) The Flower

Parma violets belong to the more exotic branch of the violet family. First appearing in Italy, in the 16th century, most types of parma violets sport lavender flowers of varying sizes. The d'Udine, for example, features large, bluish-lavender flowers and a strong perfume, whereas the Neapolitandisplays much paler flowers, although very rarely - it seems to be far more fussy about its living conditions.
There is, also, a single variety of white parma: the Comte De Brazza. Hardy, and with a sweetly delicate perfume, the Comte produces pure white blooms, which in some climates, produce pale blue tips when they are exposed to plenty of good, strong spring sunlight.

The origins of the parma violet are a source of some mystique. First imported into Naples a certain Count Brazza took the plant to Udine in the latter part of the 19th century. There are no records of his work, though it is widely believed that he made deliberate crossings to produce at least two varieties of parma. One of these is still available, whereas the other one is romantically believed to languish in some forgotten back garden somewhere, just waiting to be rediscovered.

Parma violets are widely believed to be sterile, and there is much store laid by their reproduction through cuttings. Armand Millet, French violet grower, proved this belief to be a myth, however, and with the right conditions any sturdy and content violet could well produce a seed pod.

(ii) The Sweet

The delicate purple flowers of the parma violet plant also give their name to a delicate, violet-scented sweet. Parma Violets, manufactured by Swizzels Matlow for decades, come in a cellophane roll. Delicately scented and flavoured, the sweets are a cheaper version of the traditional cachou. Though their taste is, apparently, an acquired one, Parma Violets are undeniably popular; they are aimed squarely at kids, despite their peculiar flavour, although the occasional offer of a trip down memory lane must sell a few packets to more than one wistful grown up. As well as their original, diminutive form, Parma Violets are also available as a 'giant' roll, just for those of us who can't get enough of their chalky-yet-fragrant perfection.

Langoustine

Nephrops norvegicus is a decapod - a ten legged crustacean - belonging to the family of clawed lobsters. Closely related to freshwater crayfish and slightly more distantly related to the clawless spiny lobster, the langoustine spends much of its time in burrows on the muddy sea bed. Around dusk it likes to emerge for whatever langoustines do socially; feeding on molluscs and other crustaceans seems popular. The Venetians, who have fished langoustines from the Adriatic Sea for centuries, refer to them as scampi, a term perhaps more familiar to many. Nowadays, much of Europe's langoustines come from colder, deeper waters, and they are fished from the sea off Brittany and Norway. Scotland, in particular, takes the langoustine trade seriously, producing more than a third of the world's catch from such regions as Loch Fyne and Loch Torridon, much of which is exported around the world.

With regard to appearance, the langoustine's similarity to a miniature lobster rapidly gives away its heritage. Slim and pink, with a body between three and ten inches, the langoustine's most notable feature is its claws. Often as long as its body, this long and skinny pair of nippers would be admirable claws on a full-sized lobster, and even on this smaller cousin one cannot help but feel they could provide a decent nip to the unwary.

Thankfully there's little chance of this, as the langoustine is generally sold uncooked and fresh, but rarely alive. Simple to prepare at home, a light coat of oil can be applied before roasting them in a hot oven for five minutes. More economically, they can be plunged into rapidly boiling water for between two and four minutes. The meat is removed from the tail in exactly the same way as a lobster. Alternately, enjoy the langoustine whilst eating out. The London restaurant serves them, quite simply, in butter with the merest hint of ginger, while Pierre Gagnaire chooses to encapsulate the langoustines in a clear aspic with almond caramel and corn kernels. Either way, the experience may be a little fiddly, but taste-wise it is sure to please...

Newcastle Brown Ale

As you might expect, Newcastle Brown Ale is brewed in Newcastle, said to be the oldest beer-making city in England. The beer is actually a mixture of two ales - a stronger, dark brew and a lighter blend. It's certainly well known, and a glass of 'Newkie Broon' goes down nicely if it's ice-cold and carefully poured so that the glass is always half full. Indeed the makers of Newcastle Brown Ale are so concerned about the temperature their beer is served at that a temperature-sensitive blue star is placed on the back label. Newcastle Brown Ale is a serious business...

Newcastle's first commercial brewery, John Barras And Company Of Gateshead was established in 1770, successfully expanding in 1890 to form (with some other smaller breweries) The Newcastle Breweries Ltd. It was in 1913, however, that the blue star was adopted as the company's trademark, and it was 1927 before Newcastle Brown Ale was first brewed, by the nearly-appropriately-named Jim Porter, who had already devoted three years to the development of his special brew.

The beer is produced from selected barley, soaked in water, spread on wide floors to germinate and is, at the right time, cured in a kiln. Before kegging, bottling or canning, however, the beer is pasteurized, ensuring high consistency as well as freedom from bacteria. The yeast strains used have not changed for many generations and this helps to give the beer a consistent flavour.

Upon its revelation to the world, Newcastle Brown Ale was quickly recognised as a superlative ale, winning gold medals at the 1928 International Brewers' Exhibition in London. Keen to capitalise on the success, the oval label on the original bottle was modified to carry the details of Newcastle Brown's success, and the vague figure-8 shape, now familiar to Newcastle Brown drinkers everywhere, was born. The blue star emblem, too, became part of the bottle's new design.

Newcastle Brown Ale was quickly established as a favourite beer in the North East of England, and sales were still climbing at the beginning of the Second World War. Despite the shortage of staff, raw materials and drastic Government restrictions, Newcastle Brown Ale was hardly changed during the war years.

The eighties saw further changes to the bottle design, and a new slogan - The One and Only - was adopted. New advertising campaigns were produced, based around the Northern habit of proclaiming oneself to be walking the dog, which in reality declares an intention to spend a couple of hours in the pub with the dog underneath your bar stool. By 1990, Newcastle Brown Ale had become the best-selling bottled beer in the UK, as well as Europe.

Newcastle Brown Ale is also available in America, and while I'm assured it is far better than the Budweiser over there, it has yet to achieve the same popularity. The American labelling is somewhat different. The main label, around the wide part of the bottle, remains the same, but the mini-label on the neck contains details of its origins: IMPORTED FROM ENGLAND. The bottle tells us that the product is distributed by Scottish & Newcastle Importers Co., San Rafael, California.

Turbo Truffles

"Turbo Truffles are the original and best tasting caffeinated chocolates on the planet! Supercharged with caffeine and maximum flavor! Better than duct taping your eyes open, Turbo Truffles will ready you for anything that comes your way."

Or so the marketing says. What we have here is a 'gourmet supercharged chocolate truffle' that 'tastes like after-dinner candy', the Turbo Truffle is part of the trend for caffeine or guarana laced products which saturate the market at present. Everyone wants more energy for less effort, and a quick glance through ThinkGeek's special category devoted to caffeinated products is a mind-boggling experience. From penguin mints to a re-energizing soap, you can enjoy caffeine in an amazing range of ways - smearing it on yourself, frantically rubbing caffeinated lip balm into your mucous membranes or, if you want to be boring, plain old ingestion.

Why? Marketing for these products tends to focus around key words and phrases. Energy boost, kick, fizz and buzz. Realistically, what actually happens? Well, caffeine is absorbed by the stomach and small intestine and alters the process by which your brain absorbs adenosine. The result is increased blood flow, increased blood sugar, dilated pupils and an increase in heart rate. Add an increase of dopamine levels in the brain, and yes, there's a bit of a boost going on somewhere; something of a caffeine rush. Thinking practically, are you going to notice it? Is the dose of caffeine in one small Turbo Truffle going to shift you into some higher plane of consciousness? Just how much caffeine is there in a Turbo Truffle and what is it going to do?

Well, each truffle contains 150mg of caffeine. That's about the same as three cans of coke, a little more than a cup of freshly-brewed coffee and approximately a third more than a mug of instant. If you're a fan of Excedrin and follow the instructions rigorously, then each of these Turbo Truffle chaps clocks in at two Excedrin tablets, but without the painkilling portion. No DoZ users will find they need to munch one and a half tablets for the same effect, while those of us in the UK will be disappointed to find out that the weak and puny Pro Plus tablet contains only a third of a Turbo Truffle. (This, incidentally, goes some way to explaining why munching Pro Plus by the handful seems to have almost no effect.)

Are they safe? Since the LD50 for caffeine is around 10g, you'd have to munch down about sixty truffles to get close, and at $16.95 for fifty of them, your wallet's likely to be complaining long before your nervous system even gets round to noticing. A recent review noted, however, that the kick comes pretty hard and pretty fast, and you're unlikely to want to eat two. Looks like fifty of them could last you a goodly while.

Taste-wise, Turbo Truffles generally come up trumps, although the review for 'Hot Rod Hazelnut' seems less than complimentary - "What the hell did I just eat? I know it says hazelnut, but that wasn't hazelnut..." If you've tried them, you'll undoubtedly have your own favourite flavour; if you haven't tried them, just be sure to avoid the hazelnut. There are eight different varieties, all ridiculously-named: Cosmic Coconut, Coffee Craze, Hot Rod Hazelnut, Chocolate Mint Madness, Outrageous Orange, Peanut Butter Blast, Racing Raspberry and Toffee Tornado. You can also, if you're unable to make up your mind, order a mixed bag and let God play dice with your chocolate selection.

Pikelets

Pikelets and crumpets - both traditional British tea-time dishes. What's the difference? A good question, because there isn't much of a one. Crumpets and pikelets are both raised bread products made with yeast, and they're both baked on a griddle (although a frying pan does just as well).. Crumpets - proper crumpets - are thick and usually cooked in a circular mould leading to a seven or eight centimetre diameter circle with a top covered in little open bubbles. When toasted and buttered, the melted butter oozes into these holes, producing a soft, buttery honeycomb with a crunchy exterior. A pikelet is usually flatter and less regularly shaped as you simply spoon a small amount of batter out rather than filling up a mould. Although other countries have their own versions, the traditional English recipe involves yeast, and so is a little more involved and lengthy than other recipes which use eggs or bicarbonate of soda as a raising agent.

This one contains a bit of both - yeast and bicarbonate of soda. Fresh yeast is always best, and it's surprisingly easy to get hold of if you don't mind asking at the local bakery. Even the supermarkets with in-store bakeries are usually happy to sell you a lump, and I know for a fact you can get it at Morrisons because I usually do; it's near the butter in our local store, and the bakery politely but firmly point you in that direction if you get mixed up. Strong bread flour has proteins necessary for making that wonderful gluten, which helps when you're making yeast-based bread treats, so do check your packet carefully and go for a good, strong flour.

Making the batter:
125g strong bread flour
125g plain flour
1 and a half teaspoons bicarbonate of soda
Half a teaspoon of salt
8g fresh yeast (if you're using powdered, you may need to prepare it differently)
75ml lukewarm whole milk
250ml lukewarm water

Sort your yeast out first, adding the water to it slowly until you've made a yeasty paste into which it's easy to combine the remaining water. Add this to the flours with just half a teaspoon of the bicarbonate of soda and mix it into a very thick batter.

You're going to leave this in a warm place for two hours, covered with a damp cloth. The batter will go very frothy, and you can now dissolve the remaining bicarbonate of soda in the lukewarm milk and add it to the batter. Yay! You're now ready to make pikelets!


Cooking the pikelets:
Lightly butter and heat a non-stick frying pan. Spoon tablespoons of the mixture onto the pan and watch the pikelet for signs of the bubbles beginning to burst on the surface. When this happens, turn over the pikelet and continue to cook for a little longer until the top, bubbled surface is golden.
It's best now to allow them to cool, then re-toast them and slather them with plenty of butter. In practice, however, the freshly cooked pikelets are a little too tempting to be left alone, and a good smear of butter on top of them is hard to resist. Either way, enjoy.

Sources:
The Great British Kitchen, The Lovely Delia, Wikibooks

Aunt Bessie's

Who is Aunt Bessie?

Aunt Bessie does not exist. Nevertheless, she's a ruddy-faced individual with her hair drawn back into a rather severe bun, clad in a polka-dotted blouse with a Peter Pan collar. Her right hand clutches a slightly over-filled mixing bowl, in which she is vigorously stirring a sturdy wooden spoon. I say vigorously - you can't really tell, as the style of the drawing tends more towards a pastel sketch than cartoon graphics, and thus motion lines are not included. However, the contents of the bowl appear to be swirling, and possibly in danger of spilling over the side. For protection against such accidental spillage Aunt Bessie is equipped with a white apron that only just covers her rather ample bosoms, which are permanently projected over a red swoosh of ribbon, upon which the words Aunt Bessie's are proudly emblazoned. Aunt Bessie, whilst unashamedly mammiferous, may have no legs; we will never know.

Whenever you see Aunt Bessie, she's guaranteed to be chilled to at least 0°C, and usually to even less. Well known for hanging round chill cabinets and freezer units, mention Aunt Bessie to almost anyone in the United Kingdom and you're guaranteed at least some sort of response. If you're not sure why... read on!

So who is behind Aunt Bessie?

Aunt Bessie is the product of Tryton Foods, a long-established company based in Hull, UK. Tryton Foods itself, should you be interested, is also part of the WJS Group, which includes Kwoks, a company aiming to become "Europe's best oriental food company ... by providing authentic, exciting and convenient food of the quality that you would find in the best restaurant", Jackson's Bakers, who offer "quality high specification sandwich and other bread products for the fast food industry", and The Ferguson Fawsitt Arms, a pub and restaurant near Beverley. Beverley itself is local to Hull, and in fact one of the stops between Driffield, near where I used to live, and Hull. Mentioning Driffield, since I've never heard of any of the other partners in the WJS Group, it was at the famed Driffield Show where I first encountered Tryton Foods: Their stall offered a giant yorkshire pudding with onion gravy for a notably nominal fee. Who could resist, even if you did have to eat it from a plastic tray with a wooden fork?

Notably, at this time, Aunt Bessie did not exist. Or maybe she was there, just a gleam in the eye of a marketing executive. Maybe, one day, sitting down to a cosy roast dinner at someone else's house, everything just clicked.

executive thoughts: . o (The Way To Sell More Yorkshire Puddings!)

Well it's obvious, isn't it? Who wants to buy mass-produced yorkshire puddings with a vague link to the Greek god of the sea's son when you can have home cooked goodness from dear, dear old Aunt Bessie; the very name conjuring up images of Sunday lunch, Nan fresh home from Church with the grandkids to find the roast potatoes growing crisp around the rib of beef, thick gravy bubbling on the stove with all the tasty bits scraped out of the bottom of the roasting pan. There's Aunt Bessie, with her florid cheeks and good, strong arms that have wrung out a thousand sheets, banging warmed plates onto the cork mats. Good creamy farm milk from Old Buttercup stands in jugs, everything set out just so on a big checked table-cloth and there's Uncle Simon shouting "Who's seen t'big servin' spoon?" and Granny proclaiming her intention to have just one more small sherry before everyone retires to the summer house for cloudy lemonade and an apple and custard tart while Grandpa Alf plays cricket with the young 'uns on the cow pasture over t'hedge. Come on, Barney, you tousle-haired oaf! Ginger nuts for everyone! Oh - I do apologise; I've just come.

But, yes, let's get serious. Marketing genius, that's what Aunt Bessie's is, cleverly offsetting the idea of a traditional family lunch against the slightly repulsive idea of purchasing a TV dinner. And the beginnings - the humble yorkshire pudding - what a place to start. Everyone knows yorkshire puddings can be troublesome. I had some go flat for no reason at all last week, the bastards. They do it on purpose. Oh, the convenience of Aunt Bessie's - the oven's already hot, you fling them in, wait three minutes and bang - instant crunchy Northern pleasure.

The Lure Of Aunt Bessie: A Lament

But that's all it is, really, a cleverly packaged TV dinner. I'd hate to proclaim all TV dinners as poor fare, of course; it's quite possible to buy processed food of a high quality, just as it's exceedingly easy to buy processed food of low quality. As processed food goes, Aunt Bessie's is damn fine stuff. The yorkshire puddings are crisp and uniformly risen. While you may end up adding non-biodegradable plastic packaging to landfill sites around the UK, at least you don't end up with any messy bowls and wooden spoons, and there's absolutely no need to get any flour all over those pristine weighing scales you've been keeping in the kitchen. But yes, yorkshire pudding can be a tricky little beast, as previously mentioned, and so the convenience drags us in. Only it doesn't stop there. Allow me to introduce the entire range. If you're sane, you'll feel a slow sense of despair as you progress through this part.

Aunt Bessie's Range

Aunt Bessie's Frozen Meal Solutions includes pies containing chicken or steak, and cottage pie. There's oven-ready toad in the hole, vegetarian toad in the hole and something mysteriously called Tidgy Toads. That's miniature sausages in miniature yorkshire pudding. You can get giant yorkshire puddings filled with either beef steak in gravy or sausage casserole. And that's it for the TV dinner department. I don't know about you, but there's something about pre-made pies that doesn't draw me in. For about the same price, you can grab some beef skirt, braise it gently for a couple of hours and whip up a quick batch of pie crust yourself, engendering awe in your dinner guests, particularly if you cut out little crinkly leaves from the left-over pastry and stick them to the top of the pie with a dab of water.

Aunt Bessie's Frozen Baked Yorkshire Puddings we've already mentioned. There's a 12-pack of bun-sized puddings, a four pack of larger puddings, a single or even twin-pack of giant puddings, or 40 mini yorkshire puddings, endearingly known as 'tidgy puds'. They're quite good for when you're having curries, by the way - you can dip them in like naan breads. If you've got the oven on already you can buy frozen, uncooked puddings. Oven-ready uncooked puddings, that's right - each in a little individual tin. 12 small ones, in normal or organic, or 6 large ones. And to complete the pudding range, you can buy a small tetra-pack of batter. That's right - pre-mixed flour, eggs and milk. This is where convenience and laziness become blurred, I feel; it's hardly convenient and it is entirely lazy. Oh, hang on - that's not blurred, that's really is ridiculous.

Still, if we're resigned to being unforgivably lazy now, what else can we find? Which other simple kitchen tasks are beyond us? Aunt Bessie's Frozen Stuffing Balls, Aunt Bessie's Frozen Dumplings and Aunt Bessie's Frozen Pancakes. There's Aunt Bessie's Frozen Cookies - not actually cooked, just mixed together and ready-to-bake. Scones, too. I mean, what is wrong with people? It's flour, butter and a splash of milk, then you put them in the oven. I worry, I really do.

I forgot the vegetables! Is peeling a parsnip too much for you? Worry not - Aunt Bessie's got it covered. I can understand oven chips - that saves getting out the pan of hot oil and risking life and limb from scalding oily splashback. Oven roast potatoes I'm having trouble justifying - parboil potatoes and place in a tray of oil - not too different from 'open freezer, cut open special cutting-resistant plastic bag of Aunt Bessie's Frozen Roast Potatoes and place on oven tray'. But parsnips? You peel them and cook them. Oh, the inconvenience!

Enough.

The Madness Of Aunt Bessie: The Website

Finally, we come to Aunt Bessie's pride and joy, her ready-made frozen website. Simply unwrap, pop in the oven and thirty minutes later you'll have a complete website. Ha - not true. Aunt Bessie's own website is an amazing place. Why not join Aunt Bessie's club? Contact Aunt Bessi to share recipes - perhaps suggest a new range of pre-mixed salt and pepper - the convenience!

There used to be a lovely 'News' section, which featured quotes from the media, such as:

"Love freshly baked cakes but can't be bothered to make them? Then try Aunt Bessie's new frozen range. It includes fairly cakes, cookies, a Victorian sponge - and our favourite, fruit scones."

- Chat Magazine

We assume that 'fairly cakes' was a typo, rather than a sad indictment on the quality of the sponge. Even better was this one:

"Good batter - crisp, tasty and well risen - with two generous sausages."

- That's Life! Magazine

Presumably they take the less-philanthropic sausages out on beneficial trips, treating them to an ice-cream.

Sadly, too, in a recent update Aunt Bessie saw off her 'History' section. Not, as you'd expect, a history of Aunt Bessie's, waiting for an eager writer to find out information about Tryton Food's origins, but instead 'The Discovery Of The Parsnip' and 'The History Of Yorkshire Puddings'. Apparently, parsnips were cultivated by the early Romans, and Emperor Tiberius liked them so much he had some shipped from France each year. Oh, and yorkshire puddings originally started as flat pudding cooked underneath a roasting joint, slowly absorbing all the fatty juices from above, until one day in the 18th Century Hannah Glasse, in a move which is not made clear, somehow produced a puffed-up version. Perhaps she used the wrong flour.

I think, and I probably shouldn't say this, but I think that despite her unashamed inculcation of laziness in the common man, her yorkshire puddings are firm and crisp enough that I must confess that I'm helplessly in love with Aunt Bessie.

They're right about the flat version, by the way.

Jarlsberg

Jarlsberg cheese, and let's all pronounce it with a 'y' instead of a 'j' right from the word go ('Yarlsberg, darling?' - 'Yes please, dear...'), is a Norwegian cheese that is absolutely delicious and also has the benefit of looking exactly like cheese is supposed to look in cartoons.

It's mild, but full of flavour. It has big holes in it, and with only a little coaxing you can get a mouse to peek out through one while you take photos and subsequently post them on flickr for fun and profit. It's slightly rubbery, with a yellow, waxy rind to it that you don't eat. (You do nibble as much cheese as possible off the rind before throwing it in the bin, but that's uncultured so make sure you treat it as a chef's prerogative and only do it in the privacy of your own kitchen. It's like those tinned confit of duck legs you can buy in France - if there's an extra one when you open it, keep your mouth shut and pop it in the fridge for breakfast tomorrow...)

Other words that describe Jarlsberg (Yarlsberg, remember!) are nutty, mellow and buttery. I simply use 'delicious'. It melts nicely without spewing out masses of unpalatable grease, works superbly as little cubes in cheese scones (you know, rather than size-zero-model-thin grated shavings which simply get lost in amongst all the flour...), or as an ingredient for cheese straws, sauces and even in souffles. True, it's not as strong as a ripe Gruyere or a nicely mature cheddar, but that's not always a bad thing - even the most splendid Stilton can be a little too much at times, no matter how much Port wine you have to hand. Jarlsberg has nothing, believe me, in common with 'American Cheese' or Kraft Singles. Dairylea Lunchables (an abomination) can go fish. 

Monterey Jack pales in comparison. Even the veritable Port Salut, my seventh favourite cheese, has nothing on Jarlsberg. (Although it must be noted that Jarlsberg is only my sixth favourite cheese.)

I laud Anders Larsen Bakke, who died in 1899 but between his birth year of 1815 and that lamentable day managed to produce the (sixth) finest cheese I've ever tasted. Astoundingly, they stopped making the stuff in the nineteen hundreds, goodness knows why, and only caught up with the scene again in 1950. Mad.

Wikipedia tells me, and I have no idea how it knows, that one ton of Jarlsberg cheese is eaten every hour. It doesn't say by whom, and I don't like to ask.

Cheese Straws

Cheese straws are long pastry fingers with, as you might have guessed, added cheese. A sort of long, cheesy biscuit, if you will. They sit nicely alongside sausage rolls, chunks of cheddar and pineapple on cocktail sticks and cucumber sandwiches with the crusts cut off as quintessential British party food. A glass of crisp white wine, a plate of cheese straws and a doily, and you're away...
Ingredients
100g (3.5 oz) butter
100g (3.5 oz) plain flour
150g (5.25 oz) deliciously tasty cheese (go for a mature, strong flavour)
Salt and pepper to season
1 egg yolk
Method
Sieve the flour and grate the cheese. Cut or rub the fat into the flour, just as if you were making pastry, and add the grated cheese. Mix in a sprinkle of salt and a grind or two of pepper. It's important to use a good, tasty cheese here - after all, if you're going to use butter to make something pastry-based, you might as well splash out on the cheese as well. If you're stuck with supermarket brands then a good pinch of cayenne pepper can help add to the bite.
Use the egg yolk and a couple of tablespoons of water to bind the mixture together into a ball. Be careful here - it really is just like very cheesy pastry, so if you go wild and add too much water you'll end up with tough cheese straws. You want it to just hold together; if you can get it to do this with just the egg yolk then so much the better.
Flour a work surface and roll the dough out to about 5mm (1/8th of an inch) thick, gently pressing it into a square, if you can. Then simply cut it into strips about 1cm wide. You could also do them a little wider, if you want chunky cheese straws. Pop them on a baking tray, possibly lined with some non-stick baking paper, leaving a small gap between each straw.
Nearly there now... pop them in a 220°C oven (that's about 425°F) for about seven minutes. You could put them in a lower oven for longer, of course, but whatever you're doing, it's wise to check these after about six minutes. They're supposed to be a beautiful pale golden brown, you see, not black...
This basics of this recipe come from a wonderful book I found under the stairs called 'Bestway Cookery Gift Book', a treasure trove of pre-war cookery. My favourite recipe is for boiled calf's head with parsley and brain sauce, although I've never dared try to make it. Mmm!

Amuse Bouche

Amuse Bouche, on occasion known as amuse gueule, are delicious little delicacies served in many good quality restaurants to tantalise and whet our palates in anticipation of the meal to come. Indeed, the very phrase amuse bouche translates as mouth amusement, a little treat to excite the tastebuds; a taste experience crammed into just one mouthful. Once a relatively unknown feature of French culinary tradition, amuse bouche have now become increasingly common, the modern equivalent of the once-popular hors d'oeuvres.

Sometimes an espresso cup of soup, a single scoop of savoury sorbet, a mere spoonful of dressed salad (perhaps actually served on a spoon) or a single, bite-sized tart, the attraction of the amuse bouche has to be its sheer decadence. Rarely, at home, would one devote the time to produce food in such tiny servings, all for a half-minute of heaven before the main course. Eating out, however, and the situation sees a sharp change: if someone else is prepared to stand around and do it for you, and serve it cooked to perfection at just the right time, a bite of Blue Cheese Foam with Port Wine Reduction seems like just the thing to pass the time before the starters arrive.

However, one shouldn't give the impression that the amuse bouche has to be complicated. Rick Tramonto's book Amuse-Bouche: Little Bites That Delight Before The Meal Begins features page after page of these miniature treats, many of which incorporate no more than four or five ingredients. The simplicity of Creamy Corn Grits with Butternut Squash and Sweetcorn sits happily alongside Charred Lamb With Truffled Vinaigrette and Oven-dried Tomatoes, both just begging you to put in the time and effort.

For an even simpler start, straighten shrimp on bamboo skewers; two per person is adequate. Marinade in soy sauce and ginger for at least half an hour. Remove from the marinade, dip into sesame seeds and briefly grill just prior to serving. Provide a small bowl of chilli dipping sauce.
Your mouth, and any dinner guests, will thank you for it...

Nanette Newman

Nanette Newman is an English actress and author. She was born on the 29th of May, 1934, which means that she's getting on a bit. She is remembered fondly for her appearances in the Fairy Liquid advertisements, and she has also produced a small amount of film and television work.

A small amount, yes: Nanette Newman isn't what you'd call prolific. Her first film appearance was in Personal Affairs in 1953, and was followed by twelve other films before the Stepford Wives movie in 1975. International Velvet followed three years later, after which there was a pause of seven years before Restless Natives and The Mystery Of Edwin Drood failed to make much of an impact on anyone. That last one was in 1993, following which Nanette seems to have taken time out from television or film. Her last television appearances were on a children's cookery programme called Fun Food Factory, and she also appeared as a panellist on the 70s game show 'What's My Line?'.

Nanette is also an author. Six cookery books and thirty children's books. One of them, The Summer Cookbook, netted her cookbook of the year award. In 1955 she married Bryan Forbes, and together they produced a couple of kids, now known, in adulthood, as Emma Forbes and Sarah Standing. Nanette appears in Burke's Peerage, and has her own page on the IMDb.

But let's think back to those Fairy Liquid adverts. Every now and then there's an advert, or in this case a series of adverts, that kind of grabs the public attention. We all have a soft spot for the PG Tips Chimps, the irritatingly lovely OXO Family and Maureen Lipman's Beattie (replete with quote 'You got an ology!' and so on. I say a 'soft spot' - in many cases we'd secretly love to kill them. Bob Hoskins' series of BT ads fall easily into this category. Anyway, Nanette had this wonderful habit of getting thirty thousandgirl guides or cub scouts into a marquee of some sort, all armed with greasy plates. They'd line up, and Nanette would add one small squeeze to a tiny tub of water. While espousing the grease-cutting nature of the magical liquid, these poor kids would wash their plates, one after the other. The whole point seemed to be that one tiny squeeze of Fairy could clean up after the whole of the United Kingdom's scouting fraternity. I always felt vaguely sorry for the last ten thousand little kids, dipping their plates into a slurry of left-over gravy and insipid slivers of onion. Classic stuff...