Pippa Middleton Wedding

      This is an aerial view of the £100k marquee erected in advance of the wedding of Phillipa Middleton and James Matthews on Saturday May 20. The marriage service will take place at St Marks Church, Englefield, Berkshire.

English Sauce.

      Custard, creamy, silky, sweet yellow cup of pleasure, it's not Sponge and Custard, but Custard and sponge, at least for those who know anything about cookery. The English Sauce, as the French, like to say, disparagingly, if any contempt is actually meant.
      I can recall, some years ago, working in a catering establishment which had to produce a menu for the staff and Custard would make a regular appearance upon this menu. The problem being that the chefs had a bad habit of not measuring or weighing the ingredients which always produced an end result of stodgy or watery vile and flavourless mess. Not fit for human consumption, let alone staff!
      However, there came a day when a new Head Chef arrived and took the trainees to one side, then told each one to prepare a half-pint of custard and serve it accordingly and the trainees, in their care free careless way, all thought this would be easy. But then the Head Chef added; For any sauce which wasn't perfect, the maker could expect to be dismissed!   And the end result, well no one was dismissed and the custard served on the staff menu was perfect for ever after.
      In my humble understanding of the culinary arts and the production of custard, I can honestly advise, weigh, measure, stir-well and become familiar with the recipe.
      A simple recipe; 1 pint of milk. 1 flu oz of single cream. 1 vanilla pod. 4 egg yolks. 1 oz caster sugar. 1 level teaspoon cornflour.
      Now, in a suitable pan, preferably over a gas ring (adjustable flame) bring the milk, cream and vanilla pod to a simmer. Remove the vanilla pod. Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together, in a bowl (you could already have done this) and then pour the milk and cream onto this mixture, whisking with a balloon whisk all the while. Then return this mixture to the pan and stir well over a low heat, with a spoon, wooden if possible, personally I use a melamine spoon, which works just as well. This process will help to thicken the custard, I often take the pan from the heat in the final stage and stir a good thirty or forty times for an extra smooth and creamy consistency. The sauce is now ready to serve, pour into a jug or straight into a bowl, with fruit or sponge.
      Of course if you haven't got a Vanilla Pod, you could always go to the corner shop.

     

 

Princess Charlotte ll

      A new photographic image of Princess Charlotte, upon the occasion of her second birthday, photographed by her mother Katherine the Duchess of Cambridge. The photograph was taken in April at the family home Anmer Hall in Norfolk.
      There are surprisingly few photographs of the young Princess due to her low number of public appearances and permitted formal photographs. And her privacy has been carefully guarded by her parents, over the past year and no doubt for the foreseeable future.

UK General Election 2017

      The General Election, oh yes, that old thing, I suppose I must try and advise you that this election has got nothing to do with Brexit, Post Brexit, Hard Brexit, the state of the Labour or Liberal or whoever might challenge, But in reality it's quite simply because, 30 Conservatives were about to be charged for fiddling their electoral expenses and those elected would be banned from sitting in the house. Which, in turn, would prevent Mrs May from having a parliamentary majority, which in itself would have meant a change of Government and not a General Election. This is because when the government of the day cannot command a majority in the house, then the Queen must then call upon the leader of the opposition to try and form a Government. You could therefore truthfully say this general election is nothing more than a contemptuous effort to save those from the stench of guilt and corruption. 

Easter

Happy Easter To You.

Pass the Smoked Mackerel Eric.

      Time to eat yourself slim, by the North-Person method, or the Scandinavian/Viking Diet. Mind you, those enormous meat eating sessions, need to be kept discreetly to one side. Of course you can always rely upon dishes prepared with Lamb and their should be a fair amount of Game, available.
      You know, such people living up a fjord, close to the sea, will naturally have lots of fish and a good variety of north water fish in their diets, such as Mackerel, Herring, Trout and Salmon, to name but a few.
      It's all about foods sourced locally and seasonally, a good balance of Protein, Carbohydrate and Fats, with Barley, Berries and Oats, with Poultry, Fish and Game, Cabbage, Kale and Root Vegetables.
      As a sampler you could try say a omelette cooked with bacon, or some smoked mackerel with a Scandinavian cheese, (the Vikings have a long tradition of cheese making) with a hunk of rye bread.      

Monkey Puzzle

      I've been toying with the idea of planting a Monkey Puzzle Tree, for a number of years now and it probably came about due to some local controversy regarding the felling of a full-grown specimen at a large country pile, where the tree was blocking the supposed view. Now I'm not saying these trees are a local phenomenon, by any means, but you do, or at least I have, started noticing them everywhere in my local neighbourhood and not just in the grounds of larger private houses, They seem to keep cropping up, just about anywhere and in various stages of their development. The only real matter to consider when planting such a tree is they are a long term prospect and will come to dominate their patch of ground, reaching heights of up to 50m.
      Araucaria araucana or Monkey Puzzle, so named because it would be a problem for a monkey to climb such a tree, as a slow rate of growth and can live for a thousand years.
      Perhaps I've bothered my friends a little too much with my talk of the trees that finally a couple gave me a tree, carefully cultivated at a local garden centre and I will now seek a suitable space where I can hopefully see it grow by at least a few inches!