After watching The Great British Bake Off recently, the episode where they were tasked with producing Cornish Pasties, I knew I had to make some that more closely resembled the true nature of these delicious treats!
I had a root around and found there is an accepted list of ingredients, namely potato, onion, swede, beef, salt, and white pepper. This sounded much more like the pasties I’ve eaten in Cornwall. Though while holidaying there I’ve seen such travesties as Mediterranean Vegetable (soggy), well as Cheese and Onion pasties (overly rich). The traditional recipe is such a perfect balance of flavours and textures, I find other versions a deep disappointment.
Nothing beats the real thing!
Our next door neighbour’s ancient plum tree blew down recently. Such a pity, it was visible from our bedroom as well as our garden, we could see birds and squirrels getting on with their day, just lovely. I was friends with the lady who lived there a long time ago, right up until her nineties. Her husband had planted the plum tree, one of a pair, as well as an apple tree, many decades ago, but the plum tree was the last one to go, her back garden looks rather bare now, but it still gives me pleasure to see the Solomon’s Seal plants in their front garden that Tom had planted way back when they first lived there.
Back to the plum tree…it didn’t produce a lot of fruit, but some years it went into overdrive and one such time I picked five stone (!) from the overhanging branches, needless to say, I made a lot of jam. Having seen its sad demise, I thought I’d make some more jam, raspberry this time though.
It’s such an easy jam to make
I used 700g of frozen raspberries
700g of sugar
The juice of one lemon
I started to cook the fruit over a medium heat, then added the sugar and lemon juice. Once the sugar had dissolved I brought it up to a rolling boil, stirring quite often, for about 7-10 minutes when it was at setting point.
Potted it up, labeled it, and felt sure Florrie would be pleased.
In memory of dear Florrie and Tom.
thequietstreet 