Steaming seas

The steaming sea and leaden sky soon gave way to steady snow.  This is the seaside.  This is the south of England.  We aren't supposed to have snow. 

The amusement of seeing a boat called Polar Bear covered in snow wore off 11 months ago.  Enough is enough.

Samphire Hoe

Samphire: corruption of the French Saint Pierre.  an edible plant sometimes called sea asparagus.  It doesn't taste in the least like asparagus but it's delicious.  In France it's salicorne, or Salicornia, though in the UK it's a different species entirely, rock samphire,  growing on cliffs and mentioned by Shakespeare in King Lear: "Half-way down, Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade!".

Hoe: a piece of land that juts out into the sea.

Samphire Hoe:  a piece of land reclaimed from the sea using the spoil from the excavation of the Channel Tunnel and officially opened to the public in 1997.  It is the newest part of Kent, between the famed White Cliffs and the English Channel just to the west of Dover.

This wonderful location provides peace and quiet, walking and wildlife.  This view is to the east, towards Dover.

In this view to the west you can see the main line railway to Dover as it follows the base of the cliffs, disappearing into it from time to time.  It's actually quite a spectacular train journey at times, right on the edge of the sea.

In order to reach Samphire Hoe, you have to go through this tunnel.  To the left you can just sea the rail tunnels.  To the right are the works for Eurotunnel.

The west beach, a shingle or pebbled beach, gives a view of Folkestone.  Unlike Deal beach, it's quite rocky at low tide and would merit further investigation.

A good view of the sea wall construction.  It consists of two rows of sheet piles driven into the sea bed, the space between the two walls being filled with concrete.  On the outer edge boulders are piled up to stop the sea from undermining the base of the wall.

Material was placed behind the walls and topped with concrete slabs to create terracing.  This allows the water to run off and out through the drainage gaps on the lip of the sea wall.  The round concrete blocks on the wall provide access to the site drains.

I fondly imagined the terracing was intended to view spectacles out at sea or in Folkestone, firework displays or something similar, until I read one of the several information placards which told me the more mundane truth.

 This one described some of the birds I didn't see.  There were plenty of gulls though.

Somewhere halfway up this cliff is where the samphire grows, they say.  I didn't try to find out.  The little hut or shelter at the top is, I think, a view point from the North Downs Way which runs along the top of the cliff.  I'll save that one for another day.

This was the view from the road on the way home.  The cliff straight ahead is Shakespeare Cliff with Samphire Hoe below and to the west.  Dover harbour is straight ahead with one of the cross channel ferries about to leave.

Who would believe, on a day like this, that just a few days earlier the wind was so strong that they considered closing the harbour for a time.

It's raining leaves

It's that time of year again when our neighbour's tree  torments us.

x
The leaves are very small and light and get everywhere.  I suppose technically, they should be called leaflets because the leaf itself is a compound leaf. They fill the gutters, not only on the roof but the road too.

They land on every available surface

This year we haven't been blessed with many of the giant seed pods.  I think it exhausted itself after last year's efforts.  Nevertheless there are pods and they are sprouting.  These are probably from last year.
 

They've fallen on stony ground.  I really hope they know what that means.

I looked up some facts about this tree after various people left me comments to help me identify it.  According to Wikipedia, it's Gleditsia triacanthos or Honey Locust native to eastern North America.  Ha!  So Christopher Columbus is to blame!  It can reach heights of up to 30m (almost 100ft) but I think it's reached that already.

My spirits lifted when I read that it's relatively short-lived, especially given that it's fully grown.  However they were dashed again when I saw that short-lived for a tree means 150 years.  I can't wait that long!

Weights and measures

My grandmother and her sister ran a small shop, a bit of an "Open All Hours".  They sold something of everything but especially home baked cakes and savouries.  My grandmother was the savoury specialist and her sister, Kate, the pastry cook.  Kate was a great lover of all things sweet and collected recipes almost compulsively.  She copied recipes on to every possible space in her recipe books as you can see.

I learnt what cooking skills I have from Kate and while I was battling with the measurements for the chocolate cake recipe, measuring everything out to the nearest gram, I remembered that she rarely used a weighing scales.  She used spoons to measure out, and judgement, and there I was worrying about precise grams.

I used to have an old recipe book, very old, it must have been given to me by Kate, and inside the front cover was a conversion table for spoonfuls to ounces for various ingredients.  That book is long gone so I was delighted to find, stuck inside the back cover of the recipe book above, a conversion chart for all sorts of things.

A few examples of 1 ounce measurements

3 tablespoons flour
2 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon jam
3 tablespoons currants
4 tablespoons rolled oats (for your porridge, no doubt)
5 tablespoons fresh breadcrumbs


And these tablespoons weren't special measuring spoons, they were normal everyday spoons we used.


Along with these, there were a number of useful amounts, such as 1lb peas is enough for 2 people but 2 lbs spinach is barely enough for three.  A pint of batter will make 16 fairly thin pancakes while half a pound of flour makes 16 fairly big rock cakes.
I could go on for quite a while but I'll spare you.  Suffice it to say, I'll not be quite so precise on my measurements in future.

PS, since I'm back to adjust the weird spacing that Blogger gives me these days, I'll add that on an inside page I found in tiny writing in a top margin:

"1 cupful measures 10 oz.  In America cupful measures 8 oz liquid. 3 teaspoons go to American tablespoon instead of 4." 

A gluten free chocolate cake

I have a friend who is has to follow a gluten free diet.  She's a good friend and so I find myself reading recipes and food labels in detail trying to find anything suitable for a meal.  It isn't always easy.

I have decided it's preferable to work with recipes that have acceptable ingredients rather than using what I call "made up" recipes with odd substitutes.  Desserts can be quite problematic but I was delighted to find that my old friend Gateau Lawrence is perfect.  It contains no flour at all, and you don't have to use anything called gum.  It isn't even complicated.

Ingredients

for the cake:
180g (6.5 ounces) good dark chocolate
175g (6 ounces) butter
125g (4.5 ounces) brown sugar
200g (7 ounces) ground almonds
4 eggs

for the topping:
50g (almost 2 ounces)milk chocolate
75g (2.5 ounces)dark chocolate
125ml (4.5 fl ounces) double cream
OR
100g (3.5 ounces) dark chocolate
50g (almost 2 ounces) butter

The sugar says unrefined sugar which could be anything from golden granulated sugar to dark muscovado.  The muscovado gives a deeper and richer taste (and takes forever to mix in) but I prefer a lighter sugar.

You're supposed to use a loose bottomed or spring-form tin but I used a silicone bakeware (I can't very well call it a tin).  It's supposed to be 25 cm but mine was 22 cm, say 9.5 down to 8.5 inches.  It should have meant a longer cooking time but it didn't seem to.  Maybe that was down to the silicone bakeware.  Even though you aren't supposed to need to, I did line the "tin" with baking parchment.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over hot water.  It doesn't have to be boiling water, but getting close.

Beat the butter and sugar until they are light and creamy.  It's easier if the butter is soft or at least at room temperature before you start.

Separate the egg yolks from the whites and add the yolks, ground almonds and melted chocolate to the mix.  Beat again until evenly mixed.

Whisk the egg whites until stiff then carefully add to the cake mixture, mixing them in quickly and lightly with a metal spoon.

Pour into the baking tray of choice and cook in an over set to 150° C/300° F/gas 2 for 35 minutes.  It should have a crust on top but be quite squishy to the touch.

Leave to cool a while before removing from the tin.  It breaks rather easily, so care is needed.

Melt the chocolate and butter, or chocolate and cream, over hot water and spread over the cake.

If you can wait that long, I think it's better the next day.  It's meant to serve 6 but it's very rich and can very easily stretch a lot further.