West Yorkshire makes one very cynical regarding the weather.
Living in the perpetual dampness that is the Calder Valley has made me expect
rain at least once a day, regardless of what time of year it is. When spring
starts to shine its first few feeble rays of sunshine, we are invariably left
out. Weather reports are watched with hardened hearts and we can’t even watch
Gardener’s World anymore because it’s so depressing. Time to start moving
seedlings into deeper soil? You must be joking. Anything planted outside now
would turn to mulch after a few weeks of being battered by our storms. On a
rare day last week, however, we were blessed with a bit of sunshine; the high
winds kept us on our toes but Mum-y and I still managed a foray into the
garden, spending two hours attacking the overgrown mass of brambles and plants
in need of a prune. When we were finished, the sun was still shining so I
rustled up a spring lunch feast consisting of dips, flatbreads, cheeses and this
tomato salad. If like us, you’re still in root veg mode when what you crave is
a vibrant, zingy salad, then this will be enough to remind you that summer will
happen… someday.
Since moving back home I feel this blog has taken on a theme;
that of cooking meals my dad likes! I don’t have a problem with that; I’ve lost
weight since moving, so clearly the meals I was making for myself in York –or
should I say the endless stream of Pringles and blue cheese- weren’t doing me
any favours. Living in the middle of nowhere means that a 2 mile round-trip
walk, usually in the rain, separates me from indulging too much. Something anti-indulgence to me now is soup- it's the one thing in
our house that never goes amiss and I make a lot of it. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that
my Dad simply doesn’t eat lunch if there’s no soup. But I haven’t mentioned
that he goes crazy for oatcakes- must be a Scottish thing! When I moved
back, we had a hot July of oatcakes with goat’s cheese, made from a great
little Midlothian recipe in The Scottish Cookery Book by Elizabeth Craig. I used coarse oatmeal bought
randomly from the Baxter’s Soup Factory Shop somewhere on the Borders but when
it ran out, any subsequent oatcakes I made had the texture of dust. Glutafin,
who make the gluten-free flour we use, changed their white four mix recipe
around the same time and now I have problems with lots of my baking. As a
result, I’m turning to substitutions to help stabilise things and for this recipe, gram flour,
with its nutty flavour worked as well as I’d hoped. Obviously if you’re on the
oats-count-as-gluten side of the fence these aren’t for you, but non-allergy
sufferers are free to use plain flour instead.
I really connect with Polish food. It’s rustic, seasonal and
affordable, as well as being influenced by just about anyone who’s passed
through at some point; notably French, Jewish and Russian cuisines. I know this
is silly but it feels really earthy and spiritual somehow when I cook something
Polish for dinner; I feel transported to a scarred land of wheat fields,
cabbages, harvests and preserving. I want to go to Poland at some point to get
the “peasant making delicious stew on farmstead” image out of my head; I’m sure
that it doesn’t actually resemble a Bertold Brecht play. This aside, what’s
most important to me is the food, and it’s really delicious. One café,
Barbakan, situated on Walmgate in York was one of my favourite lunchtime spots
when I was a student. Small, bustling and cosy, Barbakan really opened my eyes
to the wonders of Polish food. Baskets of sourdough bread would be served
alongside piping hot dishes of goblaki -stuffed cabbage leaves- potato and
cheese stuffed pierogi -dumplings- or peppery, juniper-spiked bigos. According
to my worn cookbook, The Polish Kitchen,
by Mary Pininska, bigos is the national dish of Poland and was traditionally
made with any food harvested from the land; game, juniper berries, mushrooms,
all bolstered of course, by sauerkraut. See this as a base recipe to expand upon and make additions to; there is only one prerequisite, which is
that you absolutely must make bigos at least one day in advance to let the
flavours mature.
