Recipes over troubled water
Ali's Blog
My twelve days of Christmas
Before Christmas 2021 is a distant memory I decided to do a round up of my highlights and tips for bringing joy into the world – a post advent calendar, if you like, since moments of high anticipation and glad tidings need not be confined to the festive season.
Tasty Lankyshire Curd Tarts
How to describe a curd tart? It’s not the egg custard tart of my childhood which screams pasty as in pallid and not pasty as in pic-nic, although my mum and her mother could make an excellent home-made egg custard freckled with grated nutmeg. Not forgetting that it isn’t nutmeg unless it has been lurking in the bottom of the baking drawer for a good few decades. Nor is it the Manchester Tart from school dinners with a dollop of jam on top of solid day-glo custard and a smattering of desiccated coconut, and certainly not the unctuous and ubiquitous Portuguese Tarts that grace delis, cafés and food shops.
Full Circle Wild Garlic Scone
In March 2020, acclimatising to pandemic mode, I was establishing this blog and posting about wild garlic. Fastforward to March 2021 and I find myself in foraging mode again as the weather springs us forwards and signs of a fresh, new season can be i-spied all around. Reality keeps pace with this generous-spirited season as we emerge from the tunnel of Covid restrictions and follow chinks of light. “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” Leonard Cohen