I will warn you, though... YOU MUST NOT READ ON if you are feeling a bit peckish and the only thing in the house which is instantly edible is half a packet of Jaffa cakes and a dry crust of Wholemeal. Really, I warn you, it's NOT A GOOD IDEA.
Much better to hold off until you have had someone cook you a 3-course Sunday Dinner, and you get to that point where you'd love to offer to wash-up but actually can't move. Instead, have the PC brought to you - log on to TrunkCalls - and THEN read away.
OK
...sure?
Mary Armitage (nee Sennett) was a great cook, and there are several recipes we wish we had mastered before she died (I'm sure we do very well, really - it's natural to compare, though!!). She made fantastic Yorkshire Puds - but more by eye than by a recipe. She would add "a pile of flour to this bowl here until it got up to that scratch there, see". Sometimes it's not just a recipe, though - there are skills, too...
We'd especially add bread to that list - soda bread, teacakes, Stotty cakes. The memory of the smell & taste of fresh-baked bread is particularly linked with coming home from school. The slobbery joy of just plain bread buns, cooked in the range & then a few mins before they were done she pulled them out one by one and wiped the butter paper over them with a knob of butter that melted "and smelt varrry, varrrry good." Fabulous new bread with raspberry jam [the rasps picked from the graveyard and then they gave the priest a jar]. Always told that it was bad for you to eat straight out of the oven (never believed it).
It's the way she made 'em. The bread was still done in the oven heated by the sitting room fire/range. Had to remove the jarmies {PJ's!!} and Smokey the cat first. {Yes it's true, the cat loved to sleep in the oven & more to the point was allowed to sleep in the oven! Really important to check oven contents before locking door and getting it hot for baking!! By the way, the cat was called Smokey because of fur colour, not proximity to chimney}
Mary also made a mean ginger beer.
So many good food memories: Tastes and textures!
Monday's cold roast with chips and ketchup,
Tuesday's leftover roast with loads of spuds in stew in the pressure cooker.
Friday was always 'wet' fish delivered to the door from Doreen Hanselman/ Doreen the Fish.
Cooked Sunday breakfast of bacon or sausage sarnies after Mass cos we'd had to fast for communion.
Sunday tea was often tinned fruit which was very posh then - but it was served with bread and butter (to fill up?). It was a very special occasion to have Kunzel cakes!!
Rare treat of shared chips - on a newspaper - on the floor.
Rich oven stews and dumplings {with you there, even though now vegetarian - I can still remember Gran's Beef stew & dumplings - very vivid},
Broths, or Packet oxtail soup and dumplings.
Hot OXO drink with broken crackers sinking (especially if a bit poorly?)
Tomato waterlilies, and radish flowers opening in the iced water.
Each new issue of the BeRo baking book.
Custard tarts, lemon meringue from a packet mix.
Cherry meringue with cherry pie filling. Mum says "I adored it but it used to make me physically sick every time - it turns out I used to get to eat all the left over tart." {They probably hoped she'd learn her lesson???}
Pancake Tuesday.
Dying the Pace eggs.
New rhubarb and a twist of sugar in a paper.
Around Bonfire night, a baked potato was given to use as a hand warmer on the way to school (they'd been cooked in the overnight ashes - eating them was optional!)
The magical smell of spices stirred into Xmas puds and Christmas cake mix, with the added aroma of hot brown paper & greaseproof paper as it cooked. (Still enjoying that smell here, now!)
Mary always tried new fruits. This might have come from her joy at getting exotic fruits from the gardener at Shafto Hall, who lived next door when she was little. Grapes, peaches, figs! At Christmas, shiny [Canadian?] red apples to polish for the socks, whole boxes of tangerines with leaves and coloured foil. Pomegranates, chinese gooseberries and ugli fruit - decades before they became generally available.
The first ever foreign 'ready meals in a box', Vesta Chicken Chow Mein with Crispy noodles or Beef Curry.
And Grandmother Sennett, too:
Lizzie's cooking? Austin had separate meals after work - often a chop with chips. He used to let kids 'pinch' one or two and they were fantastically exotic cos he used to coat them in salt and loads of pepper.
For Bonfire night, she used to make excellent Taffy. Had a range of treacle toffee, fudge or the classic hard stuff to hit with a hammer and get glass-like shards that stuck to your teeth for yonks. The taffy was also shared in the middle of a group of folk working on a Clippy Mat.
(see link here or here). (And here's a link about a book on mats, and a podcast by the author - Beamish Museum has a great collection, some more than 100 years old!)
Girdle/Griddle scones (see link here) - which reminds us that Lizzie wore a boned girdle that was very solid - she could be tapped on the hip!
Crumpets toasted on the fire, but smoked in tar fumes from the coal which had just been put on the fire..... Yuk! Even smoked the tea sitting on the hob!
The smell of beef tea. Bread and drippin'.
If anyone killed a goose there used to be a fight for the wing to use as THE perfect hearth brush - once you'd cauterised the knuckle. Very characteristic smell.
Talking of smells, I'll quickly remind you of the smell of Nuncy's soup!! That's enough.
Cloutie pudding - that's NOT a cloutie dumpling, for the Scottish readers amongst us.
"My theory is that all of Scottish cuisine is based on a dare. "It is not a sweet suet pudding, but most definitely a savoury. Suet pastry surrounds sweated leeks, bound up in a cloth (or cloutie/clootie) and boiled. Serve with gravy & maybe a noseclip if you're a sensitive Southern softie. Recipes here and here.
- Mike Myers {not me, pall!!}
Family used to go through to Farnless Farm where Aunty Hannah (Willis) and Uncle Jack Anderson lived {not related, but great friends}. Hannah used to be constantly working. Fried egg sandwiches by the score, sandwiches and flasks to take down the fields.
Proper farmhouse teas where she would serve mountains of food for her family, us lot and farm hands. Round a big table with benches and chairs and stools.
Aunty Kit (nee Fitzpatrick) in Blackhall used to serve a New Year warmer of 'Ginger Wine' in tiny glasses to all after the New Year's day trot along the seafront. Later found it was actually Whisky Mac!
Merry Festivities to you all, wherever you find yourselves this year... all our love to you.
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