As we are in the middle of Bramley Apple Week, you knew that didn’t you, I wanted to give you a failsafe recipe for that most English of desserts the apple crumble, and you cannot make an apple crumble without a Bramley apple. In 1809 a Southwell* resident, Mary Ann Brailsford planted some apple pips one of which still bears fruit to this day. In 1846 her cottage and garden were sold to one Matthew Bramley and apart from shelling out the cash that is his total contribution. A local nurseryman admired the quality of the apples and asked to be allowed to take some grafts to develop more trees capable of producing the fruit. Matthew Bramley agreed to this on the condition that if the apples went on to any commercial success they would bear his name. The Bramley is now famous and cooks love it for its flavour and excellent cooking qualities. It remains one of the most widely grown British culinary apples.

The crumble is a quick and easy pudding that can be adapted to suit the seasons and the different fruits available often partnering softer fruits with apples or pears and enhancing the flavour with the use of spices. Apple crumble is the most popular version of the dish and due to the keeping quality of apples traditionally a staple throughout long winters when very few fresh fruits were available. Apples such as Bramley’s would have been stored in a loft or attic to provide a valuable source of vitamin C from November to February. Today your apples are shipped into supermarkets from around the world to overcome seasonality.

However, if you want to go seasonal and reduce your carbon footprint here are a few ideas spring is when rhubarb comes into its own, I pre-bake mine with brown sugar, ginger orange juice, and zest to help keep the shape and prevent the crumble becoming soggy

During the summer there is an abundance of produce, tart gooseberries with plenty of sugar, cherries, or then raspberries, strawberries, and blackcurrants and that all liven up the last of the previous year’s apples when baked together. Spiced plums, pears, apples, and blackberries are the staples of autumn and on into winter.

Crumbles are best enjoyed hot, with liberal dollops of custard, clotted cream or a scoop or two of ice cream. You can change the basic recipe for the crumble topping by mixing in oats or a sprinkling of chopped nuts and adding spices such as ginger, nutmeg, and cinnamon.

* Now in passing most people will know Southwell for its pretty minster and horse racing track but now you dear reader know Southwell is the home of the English Bramley cooking apple. The town holds an annual festival each October to celebrate the Bramley.

My Perfect Apple Crumble

1kg Bramley Apples

3 tablespoons of Apple Juice or water

2 tablespoons Caster Sugar ( approximately )

Juice of half a Lemon

½ teaspoon freshly grated Nutmeg

120 gr Self Raising Flour

100 gr Caster Sugar

75 gr Butter

Optional

40 gr Rolled Oats

40 gr Demerara Sugar

Preheat your oven to 200 C / 400 F/ Gas 6. Wash the apples, peel and cut them into quarters. Remove the cores and slice each piece of apple in two. Put the apple pieces into a medium sized, heavy bottomed pan with the apple and lemon juice and cook over a low heat for about five minutes, until the apples start to soften. I like the apples to start to break up leaving some bigger pieces for texture. Taste the apples for sweetness, sprinkle with sugar as required and carefully stir in. Add the nutmeg and gently stir again. Transfer the apple mixture to a shallow ovenproof dish.

In a bowl blend the flour and butter together by rubbing with the tips of your fingers until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs, alternatively you can pulse together in a food processor for a few seconds. Blend in the caster sugar thoroughly ( at this point stir in the oats and the brown sugar if required ) and then loosely sprinkle the mix over the cooked apples in the dish. Place the crumble in the oven to bake for thirty minutes or until crunchy and golden-brown on top.

Serve with custard, cream or ice cream.

It’s cold outside and you probably want something hearty to eat, worry no more I have the perfect recipe for the weekend before you indulge in all that rich Christmas food, from a few years back from when I lived and worked in Cornwall. On a journey through the southwest when you leave cuddly, cosy Devon and its world famous cream teas, scones piled high with clotted cream and jam*, you cross the Tamar river and enter another world. There is something different about Cornwall and it always has been so, it is a magical place, a mythical place, slightly out of step and even out of time with the rest of England. It is a land with a rich history, it was a stronghold of the Celtic resistance to the Roman invasion, Phoenician traders travelled across the seas, over five hundred years ago, to bargain for the tin mined from its stony ground. It is a land of rolling, bleak moors, secret coves and bays hiding smugglers and pirates. Tintagel Castle, birthplace of the once and future King Arthur clings to its rugged coast. Cornwall is the land of the pasty.

While I lived in Cornwall I made more than a few pasties culminating in a Bank Holiday weekend festival of pasties, real ale, music and more than a little mayhem at the New Inn, Tresco. People watched live bands, drank numerous pints of real ale and scrumpy in the Beer Festival Pavilion and ate pasties, ate pasties and ate more pasties. In fact, I’m pretty sure it could be a world record we sold thousands of pasties from producers all over Cornwall with some very unusual fillings. Peaches and Cream, Lamb Biryani, the Full English Breakfast Pasty ( grandma would approve ** ) to name just a few. I developed quite an aversion to the pasty but now I am slowly recovering.

So before I upset every Cornish man, woman and child with my totally unauthentic recipe I really ought to mention how it should be made. One of the first references to a meat pasty was made by the thirteenth-century chronicler Matthew Paris ( not the modern Times columnist although I’m sure he could make a mean pasty should he wish ) writing about the diet of the monks of St. Albans. The pasty often filled with venison was a delicacy and is mentioned by Jane Seymour, wife of King Henry VIII and the diarist Samuel Pepys.

As the popularity of the pasty waned nationally the Cornish pasty came into its own. The pasty was a popular filling dish to carry into the deep pits of the Cornish tin mines in the seventh and eighteenth century, wrap in thick pastry and muslin cloth the filling would keep warm for several hours. The pasty was often divided with meat the potato then fruit fillings. The thick twist of pastry was to allow the miners with dirty hands a convenient way to hold the pasty and was then discarded. There may be some truth that this also prevented contamination with the poisonous arsenic present in the tin mines.

A proper pasty is considered to contain beef, sliced potato, onion, and swede. Confusingly in Cornwall, a swede is called a turnip. I am not sure what they call Norwegians. The ingredients are sealed in the pastry with plenty of black pepper and cooked from raw. The Cornish pasty is protected under European law alongside Champagne and Parmesan cheese so the Cornish are right to be proud of their culinary heritage. Here is my recipe for the unauthentic but still quite tasty pasty. If you are Cornish I apologise.

*Always in Devon cream first and jam on top, in Cornwall the jam goes on the scone, it’s best not to ask wars are started over less.

** It is a little known fact all grandmothers don’t think you can get through the day without a hearty full English breakfast inside you. This is no bad thing

Beef and Vegetable Pasties makes 6 – 8

1 block of readymade Puff Pastry

Look I know we have not even got to the filling and I am using puff pastry and that is sacrilege, frozen puff pastry is a godsend to all but the most dedicated of cooks and always delivers a good finished result and they are very tasty I promise and I have apologised already.

500 gr Chuck Steak, cut in small chunks ( ask your butcher if you’re a bit unsure )

1 large White Onion, peeled and sliced

1 medium Swede, peeled and sliced about  ½ cm thick

4 Carrots, peeled and sliced

2 large Baking Potatoes, washed, peeled and sliced twice as thick as the swede

50 gr Button Mushrooms, wiped and thinly sliced ( optional )

A knob of butter

A glug of quality Olive Oil

30 gr Plain Flour

300 ml good Beef Stock

Worcestershire sauce

Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper

Flour for dusting

Egg wash

Preheat the oven to 200C / 400F / Gas 6. In a large heavy-bottomed pan heat the oil and butter over a medium heat and add the onion and sauté for five minutes. Seal the meat, flour and plenty of black pepper into a plastic bag and shake well. When the meat is coated add to the pan. Stir and add the carrots, swede, mushrooms and stock. Bring to the boil and simmer for ten minutes stirring occasionally. Add the swede and a good slug of Worcestershire sauce. Cook for a further fifteen minutes until the potatoes are just soft. Check seasoning and set aside to cool.

Flour a clean work surface and roll out pastry to between a quarter and one-eighth of an inch thick. Using a plate cut out circles around six to seven inches in diameter. With a soft pastry brush egg wash one side of the circle. Spoon on a generous amount of filling and pull over pastry.

Crimp together the edges between finger and thumb to seal the pasty and place on a baking tray covered in parchment or with a silicon mat. Continue until all of the filling is used up.

Chill in the refrigerator for twenty minutes to relax the pastry then brush twice with the egg wash. Prick once with the tip of a sharp knife to let out the steam and place in oven. Bake for twenty minutes until golden brown and serve.

Early Autumn is one of my favourite culinary times of the year, root vegetables are becoming abundant, it is the season for game, hearty stews and fiery curries and it is when soups really come into their own. As the expected cold spell descends from the Artic just in time for Bonfire Night I thought I would pass one of our family favourite recipes. There is nothing as comforting after walking on the beach or kicking up some leaves up in the park with the children as a nice bowl of soup.

We love creamy chowder, spicy sweet potato with cumin and chilli but in my house the girls love roasted red pepper best. This is a really easy, comforting recipe that freezes exceeding well so could be made in advance, it is a fantastic thick tasty potage full of sweet, smoky flavours and great served in a mug as you stand to watch the fireworks. Passed through a sieve it can be dressed up as a lovely lunchtime treat or simple supper dish. So for the perfect fifth of November feast make sure you have some crisp-skinned jacket potatoes freshly baked in the oven, a plate full of toffee apples for the children and a big, big pan of this delicious soup.

Roasted Red Pepper Soup            serves 4 to 6

2 large deep Red Peppers, halved & de-seeded.

1 large Onion, peeled and sliced

3 cloves of Garlic, peeled.

2 sticks of Celery, washed and thinly sliced

1 large Carrot, peeled and thinly sliced

2 x 400 gr tins of chopped Tomatoes

1/2 litre of Vegetable Stock

100 ml quality Olive Oil

50 gr Tomato Purée

1 heaped teaspoon dried Basil

1 teaspoon Smoked Paprika

Juice of one fresh Lemon

A generous pinch of dried Chilli flakes

Sea Salt and freshly ground Black Pepper

Pre-heat your oven to 200 C /  360 F / Gas Mark 4. Place the pepper halves and garlic cloves on to a baking tray and drizzle with a little of the olive oil. Bake at the top of your oven for thirty minutes until the vegetables are roasted and nicely caramelised. In the meantime, heat the remaining oil in a large heavy-bottomed pan, over a medium heat, and sauté the chopped up onion, carrot and celery for about ten minutes until soft.

In a second pan heat up the vegetable stock and add the tomato purée and the chilli flakes. Whisk and then add to the onions, celery and carrots. Peel any very dark, burnt spots from the peppers and add them, the garlic and remaining ingredients to the stock and vegetables. Bring the soup to a low boil, turn down the heat and simmer for twenty to twenty-five minutes.

Remove from heat and allow to completely cool then using a hand blender or food processor blitz the until the soup is smooth. You can pass the soup through a sieve if you want a more refined dinner party finish. To serve, reheat and season with salt, pepper and lemon to taste.

Barbecue Diplomacy and the Most Important BBQ That Never Was – A Recipe for Walter Jetton’s BBQ Sauce

The culinary aware reader will know we are in the middle of National BBQ Week, you knew that didn’t you? I learnt that there is a National Hotdog Council over in America yesterday, so it really is never too late to learn and with that in mind I thought I would write a little about Lyndon B. Johnson. By nineteen sixty-three Lyndon B. Johnson had risen above the hurly-burly politics of the Lone star state to be vice president of the United States in the administration of the meteoric John F Kennedy. In a government of outstanding personalities including the president’s charismatic brother the attorney general, secretary of defense Robert McNamara and secretary of state Dean Rusk many saw Johnson’s role as mere window dressing. Yet this homely former school teacher established himself with quiet determination and pioneered what became known as barbecue diplomacy. As people relaxed due to the informal atmosphere of a barbecue around a pit or grill it was often easier for LBJ to talk business than in the rigid formal settings of a state banquette. My apologies as this is definitely an apolitical blog we need to talk more about the barbecue and not the man.

At his home on the banks of the Perdernale river, LBJ hosted an array of important barbecues for VIP dignitaries and most of these were catered for by Walter Jettson. He ran a local, well for Texas, catering company in Fort Worth and prepared the food at the LBJ ranch. On November 23, 1963 the staff of the ranch and Jettson were preparing for the biggest event of their lives the president was to visit and eat smoked ribs and brisket. As we all know he was never to make it. LBJ was sworn in as the thirty-sixth president of the United States on board Air force One carrying the body of President Kennedy back to Washington. Jettson was to become the President’s Pitmaster * and LBJ even flew him around the country to cater at political rallies. On the back of his celebrity, Jetton published a barbecue cookbook, which is unfortunately out of print but available on Amazon and other retailers.

Jetton catered for the first barbecue at the White House and continued to do so during LBJ’s term in office. When he decided not to stand for re-election LBJ hosted one last farewell barbecue on the White House lawns for over two hundred friends and supporters. The Texas style ribs must have been quite special as the Swiss-born, formally trained, White House head chef Henry Haller, wrote in his The White House Family Cookbook, ” He did a terrific job and I was most impressed with the results. His barbecue sauce avoided all of the common flaws (over sweetening, overcooking, excessive thinning) and by serving the sauce separately, he also avoided drying out the meat. ”

*Pit Master : An experienced barbecue cook, a skilled craftsman, who watches over the pit and can tell by sight, sound, smell, and touch, if it is running too hot or too cold, when it needs fuel, when to add wood, when to add sauce, and when the meat is ready.

For more information on Barbecuing visit www.joyofgrilling.com/glossary/

Here is my only slightly amended version of Walter Jetton’s recipe. As the full recipe is of authentic American origin it is measured in cups. A cup is between 200 and 250ml, providing one standard cup is used the proportions will work.

Walter Jettons’s BBQ Sauce

1 1/2 cups Water

1 cup Ketchup

1/2 cup Cider Vinegar

3 Stalks Celery, washed and chopped

1/4 cup Butter

1/4 cup Worcestershire Sauce

1/2 cup Onion, peeled and finely chopped

3 Bay Leaves

1 Large Clove Garlic, peeled and minced

½ tablespoon Sugar

1 teaspoon Chilli Powder

1 teaspoon Smoked Paprika

1/8 teaspoon Sea Salt

pinch of freshly ground Black Pepper

Mix all ingredients together. Place in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and bring to a boil and simmer for ½ an hour. Remove from heat and strain.

Walter Jetton’s LBJ Barbecue Cookbook– By the Caterer to the LBJ Ranch, Written with Arthur Whitman, 1965, Pocket Books.

A quick look at the weather forecast confirms that I have not mistaken a rise in the UESW Index*, if as expected we do have a mini heat wave then it is time to brush off the barbecue and go get out the gas fired grill. Speed to your shed or garage and send the spiders spinning and check the charcoal. I get excited about barbecuing pretty much anything but today is all about the burger. The burger has become a much-maligned meal when it has the true potential for mouth-watering, meaty magnificence. Our supermarket freezers are stuffed with mechanically extracted, pulverised, ground and additive enhanced excuses and many of the massive chain restaurants serve products that are little better. If you intend to barbecue ( or grill if you must ) please, please, please have a go at making some yourself.

At the heart of every burger is the meat to fat ratio, when selecting your cuts of meat to mince, you ideally want to achieve around 85% lean meat. The fat is very important to your finished burger, much of the flavour comes from the fat during cooking and is responsible for the correct mouthfeel of the finished product. The fat moistens the burger as it cooks but much of the fat will drain off onto your barbecue. If you cook too close to the coals this is when you get flaring as the fat ignites. Less than 15% fat and your burger will be dry, much more and your burger will shrink drastically during cooking. The finished burger will only be, a not unhealthy 5% fat so fear not if you are trying to diet, it is better for you than you think, positively rocking paleo speaking. You can ask your butcher for advice on which cuts to use but a fifty/ fifty split of ground chuck and ground sirloin will achieve outstanding results.

If you ask you butcher for advice he can help you with the next stage and mince your beef for you. You want to get a coarse grind. Too fine and the mixture is sloppy and the end result can be like rubber. You want to avoid working the meat as much as possible, your butcher will grind the beef in an industrial mincer which will process the beef quicker than a small handheld mincer. Many commercial burgers included numerous other ingredients but I like to keep it simple with just sea salt and plenty of freshly ground black pepper. If you do want to add other ingredients, an onion is just about acceptable, dice them very, very finely. Anything over the finest dice and the added ingredients will not cook and the minced beef will not hold together leaving you with burger pieces on the grill.

If your butcher prepares your mince for you, chill it for a couple of hours before you prepare the actual burgers. Keeping your seasoned burger mince cold by placing it in a bowl, in another bowl packed with ice, will result in a much better burger and help ensure a safe hygienic production. You could purchase a burger press if you are going to barbecue every weekend but it is just as easy to shape a medium sized handful into a ball then lightly pat it flat. Run some cold water over your hands to keep them cool before you shape your burgers and try to work them as gently and as little as possible. Over handling bruises the meat and will result in a tough, dry burger. Cover a tray with cling film and place the completed burgers onto the film. Cover with more cling film and store in the refrigerator until cooking time

Fire up your clean barbecue and get the coals nice and hot so the grill heats up. Give the grill a good going over with a wire brush then very carefully give the bars a quick wipe of oil. The safest method is to sprinkle some vegetable oil on a thick fold of kitchen paper. Using barbecue tongues wipe the oiled paper over the grill to wipe off any remaining burnt fragments and charcoal dust. Once the barbecue is ready we can cook.

Brush the chilled burgers with a little olive oil to help prevent sticking and place on the grill. Quickly press down with your thumb in the centre of each burger to leave a slight indentation, as the meat cooks and the proteins contract and pull together this will stop the burger looking like a rugby ball, or for you Americans one shaped just like your footballs. Aim to leave around a third of your grill empty. You might think this is an underemployment of your glowing coals but if you do get flare ups you will have space to move your burgers and prevent them from burning. After three minutes give the burgers a ninety-degree turn ( that’s one quarter-turn ). If you think your burger is cooking too fast and it will burn just raise the grill one notch from the coals. Turning the burger will give the criss-cross appearance of char marks on your burger that will demonstrate your professional cooking skills. Do not be tempted to squash the burger with your spatula as this squeezes out the tasty melted fat leaving a dry burger.

After another two minutes, your burger is should be ready to flip, the edges will be browning and you might see pinkish pearls of moisture on the burger surface. As you develop your barbecue grilling skills you will learn the cooking times of different meats and cuts. You really only ever have to turn the burger over once let it cook for three more minutes and you can then check if it is ready. The cooking time is directly proportional to the thickness of your burger when it is ready any escaping juices will be clear and the internal temperature if you check it with a thermometer should be over 80C / 180F.

Place the cooked burgers on a warm plate, cover with foil and place to the side of the barbecue to keep warm and let them rest for a few minutes. Brush the cut sides of your burger rolls with a little melted butter and toast them over the coals. The rest is up to you, personally, I favour sliced pickles, crisp lettuce, and really ripe tomatoes and maybe a slice of Monterey Jack Cheese. Enjoy.

* Unexpected Early Short Wearing – the major exponent is my friend Steven but he is South African and cannot help it.