Dairy free Soda Bread, butter and Autumn sunshine at River Cottage

 A few months back I won a raffle for a place at a Foodies Blog Camp at River Cottage. We organised accommodation, M arranged leave and I wrote it on the calendar. All of a sudden (or so it seemed) this week dawned, blue skies full of early autumn sunshine, the leaves just beginning to turn and the air suddenly developing a crispness. Unmistakably autumnal.

River Cottage is beautiful at every time of year, but this week it seemed to have truly embraced the turning seasons. Golden raspberry canes spiked with the pretty fruit, pears ripening against the kitchen garden walls and the last sweetcorn husks awaiting hungry bloggers.

I left Harry and M ready for a Daddy-son day, full of soft play and sandcastles. As only the second time I've left Harry for any length of time, to say I was nervous is probably an understatement. I waved, blew kisses and sent love before steeling myself to clamber up the tractor steps for the rocky ride down to the farm. I had a lot of hope pinned on a lot of coffee (someone who shall remain nameless was awake at 4am).

After a much needed coffee (or two) our day began with bread and butter making.  Butter making wasn't new to me - I've used it for a few years now as an activity for Guides and Brownies - they love to see their cream, shaken in a jam jar begin to change, and are so proud when everyone has it on their muffins at tea time. I knew M would love some homemade butter, so got on with whisking like my arms depended on it, before squeezing out the buttermilk, rinsing and adding a little salt and thyme.

Everyone else used their buttermilk as the liquid in their soda bread - however, obviously we needed to keep my bread dairy free as I had every intention of Harry and I tucking in later. Apple juice was to be my liquid, and paired beautifully with the apples, foraged blackberries, thyme and sage in my loaf. I love soda bread and although we weren't given quantities, this is what I would use if I were to recreate it at home:

Autumn stuffed soda bread - dairy free
Serves 8

300g malted grain bread flour
200ml cider/ apple juice
1 dsp baking powder
1 tsp sea salt
1 mug of foraged blackberries
1 eating apple, cored and chopped
1 sprig of thyme, leaves picked
3-4 sage leaves, rolled and sliced

Preheat your oven as hot as it will go
Lightly mix the flour, baking powder, salt, blackberries, apple, thyme and sage together before pouring in the cider/ apple juice and gently bringing the dough together
You don't need to knead soda bread dough so once the mixture is sticking together, simply shape it into a round before using the back of a knife to score the dough into 4 sections
Slide the loaf onto a greased baking sheet or preheated pizza stone
Heavily dust the dough with some more flour
Bake for 20 minutes

Allow to cool before enjoying as it is, or spread, liberally with some really good honey.

Still to come, some thoughts on the photography class and some of the pictures I took with M's DSLR - we think Harry has posted my point and shoot camera somewhere 'safe'

Strange Magic? My Domestic disasters

Being a food blogger you'd thing that my days of disastrous domesticity were far behind me. Languishing in the land time forgot. Or something. If only. For years now my kitchen has been home to a veritable host of things exploding, burning, inexplicably breaking, or just failing. I've mentioned once or twice how I'm not enamoured with the macaron obsession that seems prevalent at the moment. I was there with cupcakes, skipped over whoopie pies, am all over cake pops, but macarons? Not so much. Truth be told, each time I read a post about them, see them on the television or read an article in Delicious or Sainsbury's Magazine about them I react in much the same way to Doctor Who. When I was 8. In a feat of hitherto unseen gymnastic ability, I vault the sofa, wedging myself in the space between that and my bookcase until the shaking and sweating desists and I can breathe normally again. M is dispatched to "turn the page!" or "hide the pastel monstrosities!" while I consider the dust bunnies that seem to co-exist quite happily with my collection of Margaret Atwood novels. Then, once again I am safe, secure in the knowledge that not only will I never try to make macarons, but that I quite happily prefer the rusticity (it's a word) of almond macaroons. And have completed an in depth local survey and taste testing to find the best in the North London area. Muswell Hill's french cafe, patisserie. The one where I was introduced to M's parents for the first time.

So other than my innate (and some would say irrational) fear of macarons, what other domestic disasters can I regale you with. Well recently my much beloved Le Creuset casserole exploded. Yes, exploded. I'm still finding pieces of earthenware after about fifty attempts at hoovering and sweeping. I made cauliflower cheese. It's a relatively new addition to things I make, and I like to spike it with bacon or chorizo and cherry tomatoes. Just to break up the cheesiness (again, yes it's a word). Broccoli works well as an addition and a large dollop of mustard to the sauce works wonders. So, all components ready, in everything went, covered by a thick, unctuous cheese sauce. Into my (Christmas present) Le Creuset casserole, and into the oven at about 180. Half an hour later, oven gloved up, I removed the dish to the wooden chopping board I keep by the side of the oven. Put it down, turned around to get a plate only to hear the strangest noise. Then a huge BANG! I whisked around like a small Guidery dervish only to witness my beloved casserole in pieces over the chopping board, and large quantities (surely I didn't make that much?) of cauliflower cheese making a bid for my newly washed floor. I can't repeat the language that then ensued, but let's just say the air was blue and the floor delicately frosted with cheese sauce and decorated with cauliflower florets.


Mind you, these disasters aren't the first of their kind. I do come from a long line of women who only need to look at a kettle for it to whistle it's last. My mother goes through kettles like other women go through chocolate. Last week the lever you press to turn mine on. Just. Fell. Off. I only looked at it, and thought - oooh tea, at which point it decided that life in general was too much like hard work and lemminged to an unsuperglueable fate.


Never one to take all the blame for a disaster, of course there's the times I fall asleep and no one wakes me. I take fairly heavy going medication for my epilepsy, and have suffered with chronic pain since 2009 - at the moment it's migraines, back then it was a bad back. A lot of the medication I take makes me sleepy, so it's not unbeknown for me to put something in the oven, or on the hob and have a sit down. Hours later I'm roused by the bitter scent of burning pan or to the sound of a frantic smoke alarm. Fruit compotes, soups and casseroles have all gone this way. I'm getting better at scraping off the burnt bits these days. Food is too expensive to bin on a regular basis.


And then of course there was the time (10 years or so ago?) I poisoned my sister *waves* Hi Mandy! with an undercooked creme brulee. I followed the recipe exactly, but would the b****r thicken? Would it hell! In the end, after seemingly hours of whisking, I consigned said brulee to the ramekins, in a roasting tin of boiling water, whilst declaring "Well I'm sure that's how Nigella does it" Flippantly sure that they would thicken up in the oven. They didn't. Watery custard anyone? No, me neither. Gallantly Mandy decided to brave one and spent the next few days being violently ill. I am convinced-ish it was a virus, she's less so. I say potato you say po-tah-to? Anyone? Just me then.


So yes, domestic disasters. Tell me I'm not alone in my irrational fears, exploding dishes, suicidal kettles, and ability to poison my sister.... please?

This post is my entry to be a Foodies 100 Morphy Richards innovator