LIVE24SEVEN // Wining & Dining
Betty Twyford SUMMER’S END
Betty’s thoughts turn to tranquil autumn days and an abundance of apples …
It always takes me by surprise, summer’s end. One day, glancing at the sun, you notice it has become softer, lower, and less intense. The garden takes on a slightly tired look, the hum of bees diminishes and the constant grass cutting becomes a distant memory. It is slightly sad, another season over, another one beginning.
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Autumn, the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness sneaks in and if you are lucky you get one or two of my favourite days – the quiet, misty ones when you can literally hear a pin drop, with a hint of a hazy sun. I call them the days of a perfect stillness. Wandering along my lane, I spy hazelnut cobs, blackberries and crab apples – this is food for the gods and there for the taking. I love picking apples without a care for the perfect flawless round – it matters not. They make the most glorious apple jelly which you can bottle and use throughout the winter to spice up your casseroles, chicken and rabbit dishes and to produce delicious roast pork gravies. (By the way, rabbits are gathering beneath my bird feeder, cheeky as anything. Why is rabbit so unpopular with the English, and yet the French treat it as a national dish? They are very practical, the French. Not for them the English way of looking at our horses and our cats and dogs as something we would rather die than eat. The same thing goes for the rabbit, so I will resist the rabbit casserole recipe with red wine and garlic that I was thinking of including. I know when I am beaten!)
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The days of the healthy salad are coming to an end. I managed to grow my own lettuce (do not chortle, I am no gardener). It was a delight to chip away at the leaves, which offered an almost endless supply. The best few pence I have ever spent. Now the salad leaf is no more and I am slightly relieved. Tasty casseroles cooked on the Aga beckon. We are on the run-up to Christmas and like it or not there will soon be a frost in the air. We will all be stacking logs for the fire and thinking of buying the odd Christmas present while we still have the will to live.
With food in mind, I am organising demonstrations in the showrooms at Twyford Cookers. Groups of ladies come to watch a demonstrator deliver her seamless art on the Aga. A flow of casual conversation accompanies her skilful culinary excesses, as she reveals all to her eager audience. Their mouths are watering; the aromas are intense. The time they have all been waiting for arrives, when they arm themselves with plate and cutlery to dive in and eat an Aga lunch.
The hub and the bub of the great run into the Christmas season is splendid and a way to get us through into the winter and then forthcoming spring. I love it all; each season is perfect in its way. Here is a recipe that may just help you through into winter. It’s for apple jelly and it is the easiest recipe in the world.
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