Jam, Set and Match

It's a jam thing 

It's all about strawberries these days in the Holly Cottage. We've been watching them since February, minding them, more watching them, feeding and netting them, and so on it goes in the gardening way. And now that it's all happening, we're finding it hard to keep up with the harvest and keep ahead of the host of centipedes, slugs, ants and blackbirds that have suddenly appeared in a feasting army to unleash the magical strawberry elixir. Even Holly has been caught raiding the strawberry beds in previous years - she's being extra good this year though, although maybe we just haven't caught her in the act yet ;) 

What to do with this bounty? Well, the obvious delight is the jam thing - the easiest thing in the world since cutting a slice of homemade brown bread or a delicious fruit scone and making a cup of tea, all the things that go so well with the sweet, sticky magic of strawberry jam. And all while one is partaking in the entertainment that is Wimbledon and tennis - they take their strawberries straight - no mixers - with cream there (hence the Jam, Set and Match spin). Take a kilo of fruit, a kilo of sugar, all in the pot - melt the sugar down on gentle heat, then bring it all up to a boil and simmer until setting point is reached. The setting point can be a make or break moment, but if you really get it wrong - how bad? Strawberry sauce in a jar to pour over vanilla ice cream in the depths of winter - mmmm. If you have a lot of rhubarb to play with, like we do, then make a half and half batch of both fruits - its a really nice combination especially for those nervous of the rhubarb variety. 

dreamy, creamy, cheesy, strawberryyyyy....

The other creation of the day is a strawberry cheesecake, based on a blueberry cheesecake recipe by Rachel Allen. Take your favourite biscuit base - digestive and a melted butter was easiest for us this evening. Top this with freshly picked strawberries and leave to chill while you making the topping. For the top - now this is a half of the recipe since it's just the two of us - 225g cream cheese, 75g castor sugar, 2 eggs, half teasp vanilla essence all whizzed up together until smooth and creamy, mmmm ;) Pour this sweet and cheesy creamy promise over the biscuit and strawberry base and into the oven at 180deg for 40mins.....the result is waiting for us as we speak! It always shocks me really when I see the price of a slice of cake in shops and cafes especially when they taste so good straight from your own oven, and I guess what you're really paying for is service and atmosphere. Take my favourite cafe of the moment in Dublin city - Keoghs on Trinity Street - there's always a buzz of people coming in and grabbing coffee to go or one of their amazing selection of scones (brown raisin and cinnamon, and vanilla and pear deliciousness). And there is always a strange and eclectic mix - from the Samuel Beckett quotes on the wall to the cross section of native Dubs having their morning sugar fix. I like to think my odd splurge there is helping a bit to sustain places like that, however small that might be, but these small shops are the remedy to the one size fits all type of franchise cafes that seem to be squeezing out the last of the  brave, individualistic types. 

Shades of summer 

Having said all that and nodding my head to the buzz and vibrancy of an early morning coffee on the streets of Dublin city, there is such enormous satisfaction in being the master or mistress of your own sweet selection, and savouring each mouthful as you watch the sun gradually descend in the sky on the last day of June. Especially in the knowledge of: i. passing your practical yoga class exam the day before (phew), ii. having all the rooms in the Holly Cottage painted, iii. having all the outside windows and sills cleaned down and painted, iv. all the rubbish and clutter built up over the longest winter cleared, v . the array of colours in the garden - purple seems to feature a lot! vi. the first potatoes of the season dug and officially the best tasting spuds ever (again) and blissfully clear of blight (yay) and vii. it's lovely calm Sunday evening again ;) 

It's the simple pleasures that we bask in here...and oh yes, there is that deliciously creamy, dreamy, homemade strawberry cheesecake waiting to be to cut into as well.......

A Bit of a Pickle

Let the magic begin

The weather has us on a go slow in the Holly Cottage camp. Two weeks ago we were breaking our backs getting the good earth ready for planting, clearing the shed of two year's cumulative rubbish and basically clearing the decks to prepare for the sowing season. There was even talk of let's build a patio the sun was shining so well. We'll park that one until we see it again - the sun that is. Since then, we've had at least two days blanketed in pure white snow; another three being blown out of it by northeasterly gales and at least five days being pounded with hailstones the size of frozen peas. Hailstones big  enough to hurt when they ricochet off the corner of your forehead as you endeavour overdue walkovers of your summer field experiments ;)

Holly Cottage hot stuff ;)

Better we get it now says them in the know. Better now than mid June, when you might be glad to sand the rust of the BBQ grill and have an extended evening in the midsummer sun. Despite the inhospitable weather though we've been keeping it hot indoors ;) 

Last weekend was for making more pickledy stuff. Chillies were gathered from the plants in Cappaduff and further investigations to continue the evolution of the Holly Cottage pepper sauce species (there's been a few trial  runs - all good, all extremely hot) were conducted;  a Lime pickle started in January  was retrieved from the darkness to test and taste; and some vanilla pods were put to the test in a creme anglaise. We seem to have experimented a lot in the last year and a quick look in the crowded fridge tells a few tales indeed. The beetroot relish was polished off last week. That was a sad day. The sweet tomato chilli jam  from the start of October never really had enough time to call this place home - it was better than any sweet chilli sauce and streets ahead of anything I've tasted since. The green tomato chutney is still with us - only because we had so many unripened tomatoes in the autumn - the casualty of that cold and wet summer. A few other trials the last few months involved reduced balsamic vinegar flavoured with orange, more tomato relish - this time approaching the Ballymaloe style, and of course the sweet mint sauce that seems to have gotten tastier since its birth last November. 

Let's jam!

And then there's just the plain old jam. Such a small word, that belies sweet comforting and tastebud sensational sticky goodness that brightens up any corner of dry bread on an otherwise ordinary morning in March. I know I've raved about the strawberry bounty last year, and I will until I die! We have just one pot of strawberry-raspberry-rhubarb jam left and that will have to get us to June. Eek ;) Jam has to be the simplest thing in the whole world to make and yet we seem to rely on those dreadful, ultra processed versions that parade around on supermarket shelves as very poor imitiations of the real thing. They don't even have bits of fruit in most of them so it could actually be just flavoured jelly coloured to deceive us of an impostor! OK, I'm being somewhat over-dramatic. But ever since I made my first batch of blackcurrant jam back in the 90s - and somehow won a medal for it at the local harvest fair - I've been a homemade jam champion. A pound of fruit, a pound of sugar - take it to the magical setting point over bubbling heat and you're done. We tend to mix it up around here - whatever's going at the time. The rhubarb and strawberry mix was the biggest hit though. Do it ;)

Now that's a lime pickle...

And so, a bit of pickling and plenty of lounging indoors is keeping us busy these weekends. Some work to be done today though and a nephew's birthday cake to be shared this evening in Cappaduff. We're missing a Mornington extraordinaire birthday lunch for work today, so that's not good. But I know that they'll be having a feast sensation if Anne O'Hara has anything to do with it! 

I hope wherever you are that you are relishing in the drama of the March winds and looking forward to the sunshine of April to come. Happy birthday celebrations to all in Mornington and Cappaduff - let those birthdays just keep on coming!