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.
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.
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