Today we ventured out to the Pentland Hills only to find half of Edinburgh had the same idea. We were lulled into a false expectation as our Christmas Day walk was, surprisingly, all on our own. Today every roadside was lined with cars and council staff were putting either warnings or penalty notices on the windscreens of particularly badly parked cars. All the same there was room and more tranquillity once you ventured away from the car parks!
The trees were oblivious of the hoo-ha but displaying a seasonal streak of snow on the windward side.
Even the most gnarled shrubs take on a festive look.
Just to confound all expectations at this time of year the gorse is flowering in places around the district. We headed home under a dramatic wintery sky
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all readers.
Staying with Italy for another day, here is an example of treating a familiar material (dough) in a different way to produce something novel: breadsticks or "grissini"
Having made a Ciabatta dough you slice off strips which are then stretched and rolled in a coating of salt flakes, sesame seeds or poppy seeds and rested on a lined tray for the second rise.
Baked for a good while (30 mins or so) until they have dried out to the core.
As they have no moisture left they will keep for ages in a tin or jar. It is a little too easy to overdo the salt flakes but the sesame seed and poppy seed ones are infallible!
A firm favourite at Christmas, Italian pannetone has usurped the place of barmbrack (which I recall arriving parcel post from Ireland each year.) Rich sweet but still light it is truly seductive. The good news is that you don't have to get it imported from Italy, you can make the real thing fresh at home!
Over the years I have gathered more than one pannetone baking tin, but this year the large one (below)is not going to be used due to the restrictions on family gatherings. Instead I am making one larger and two smaller ones so that they can be "gifted" to other households.
Recipes are widely available online and you will want to adapt any one you choose to allow for tastes. Some use fresh peel or candied. Some add chocolate or cherries or all sorts of things. The good news is you can choose your own fruit mix depending on what you like (and what you have in store). My go to recipe since 2012 has been Dan Lepard's - with adaptations. He tops off the loaf just before baking with a sweet nutty paste and some whole almonds.
Ready for the final rise
Many traditional recipes include overnight proving in the fridge but as long as you leave plenty of time (4-6 hrs or so) for that final rise there is no problem. (You should feel how cold our kitchen gets anyway!)
Oven ready
.
A further spring while baking makes for a light texture.
Fresh out of the oven
With plenty of butter and sugar these keep for ages, well wrapped or in a tin, and never fail to impress!
Today's bake is Taralli - an Italian snack made from flour, wine and olive oil. Additional flavourings are either chilli flakes, dried rosemary, fennel seeds or cracked black pepper. Each member of the family has their favourite, but without doubt the chilli ones boss the rest. (They have to be cooked last so that the flavours don't mingle.) For us they have become associated with Christmas.
The process is to knead together 1Kg of '00' pasta flour with 400ml of wine and 200ml olive oil and 3 teaspoons of salt. Rest the dough for at least an hour. Then divide into 4 before adding the chosen flavourings, rolling out into stands and shaping into rings. Each ring is then dunked into a large pan of simmering water and only fished out once it has risen to the surface. (Slotted spoon required!)
Quickly dried off on a teatowel they are then laid out on a lined baking tray and baked until dried out to the core. About half an hour at gas mark 5 seems to do the trick.
The end result stores for weeks (or months) and is traditionally served with a glass of wine or a cocktail nibble. They are also very popular on their own although they will make you thirsty! The above quantities make about 140 taralli.
It is time to dust off the recipe books for those seasonal treats. Ordinarily they would be snaffled up by visiting friends and family. This year consumption is likely to be over a longer period with fewer mouths to feed! I am starting with long shelf life items. These spiced biscuits are baked to a dry 'biscuit' consistency. They benefit from a freshly made up spice mix. All over Europe the mix varies subtly. I have gingered these up a bit more than the mix I found on the net.
This lady sparrowhawk was sitting in the plum tree where we hang the bird feeders...
...and had already feasted on a kill.
While I agree with Monty Don on most things (garden centres and peat compost for example) there is a limit to my tolerance when it comes to predating on small songbirds. One is enough! So out I went to photograph it away.
For light relief I headed off to the allotment to harvest carrots. Some of them are whoppers and only a few are forked.
I am about halfway through the crop now. The net was originally to keep the carrot fly away but now serves as frost protection.
For the record, here is the first parsnip of the year - and that's my first celeriac, destined for a warming Winter Casserole of Vegetables.
Now a return of the music in honour of our visitor:
The Royal Edinburgh Botanic Gardens Christmas light show has become an annual feature. There were restrictions in force but a sense of extraordinary was reassuringly "normal" this year!
Yesterday we found the weather was good enough for our "town-country walk". The view below would have our home in the middle of it - if it wasn't for the Craiglockhart hills in-between.
The walk is inside the Edinburgh bypass but feels like the countryside because of the Braid Hills. These are the foothills to the much larger Pentland Hills range which starts on the other side of the ring road and cast an evening shadow over Edinburgh's southern suburbs. To the north is Edinburgh Castle Rock and Arthur's Seat and the accompanying Salisbury Crags, evidence of volcanic activity in a bygone geological era.
It is not all ridgewalking by any means. There is farmland to meander through and woodland too at other stages of the circular walk around the perimeter of the Mortonhall and Braid Hills Golfcourses.
A veritable escape from the hustle and bustle of the Christmas shopping (on Amazon).
I think you can agree things are looking a bit forlorn on my visit to the allotment today. I keep wondering "Who is that" before remembering that the sunflower is being left for the birds. It is all that is left of the beans and cucurbits (and I think it came in with the plants having originally come from the birdfood at home).
One area still very much in production is the "Other Roots" which is mostly given over to carrots (under environmesh netting) because we eat so many of them over the year and they taste so much better than any you can buy. We haven't even finished harvesting half of them. as we pick them as we need them. I do hope we will get away with leaving them in the ground over winter. The net helps - and I will supplement that with straw if severe frosts are forecast.
Carrots under netting
The rest of the "Other Roots" are parsnips and scorzonera squeezed in at the end. These happily don't need protection. Celeriac had to be squeezed elsewhere (with the cucurbits) as space had run out!
Green tops of "Other Roots"
The Allium area only has leeks left. They have been intercropped with late lettuces, some of which are still on the go - along with the weeds.
Lettuces and Leeks
Harvested lettuces and leeks - and beetroot
Something else still on the go, by design, is curly endive - Pancalieri. I tried these last year tying a string around each plant to blanche them. It worked fine but some insects got wise to my plan and took up residence. So I am being a bit more relaxed (lazy) this year and I have left the rosettes unrestrained. They make great lettuce soup.
New this year is chicory. Rossa di Traveso (I think) is the one that has worked out best. Time will tell if they reach edible proportions.
Rossa di Traveso heads
A mention for the more traditional brassica patch. The small plants are Spring Hero cabbages I am overwintering. There's plenty broccoli, sprouts and kale for the winter too, provided the pigeons don't gain access under that net.
Brassica Patch
So even though it is looking murky and winter is approaching there is still the prospect of more to come from the allotment.
When things quieted down at the allotment at the end of September I was glad that I would have more time to invest in my renewed interest in wildflowers. But guess what: It's not just vegetables that stop growing, the rest of the vegetative world also goes into hibernation once days shorten, temperatures drop and the wind and rain arrive. I do have a whole load of snaps taken over the summer that I can review over the winter months but today I am sticking to wildflowers that piqued my interest in October. A floral last hurrah
First prize has to go to Wood Sage. The rugose leaves form a rosette only to be outshone by a spike of creamy yellow flowers leaving an architectural tower of seedpods. I found plenty of it growing on a hilltop near me. Quite odd for a "wood" plant.
Wood Sage - Teucrium scorodonia
Then I discovered an intriguing white patch with a definite pink tinge in a wayside ditch: Pink Purslane whose leaves are described as like those of the Ace of Spades. 5 divided and deeply notched petals had me mistaking this for a chickweed at first.
Pink Purslane - Claytonia sibirica
Along the same lane I spotted some dramatic nodding heads. The leaves are those of Herb Bennet (Wood Avens) but the flowers are entirely different. Colloquially known as Billy's Buttons this is Water Avens
Water Avens - Geum rivale
There is a cross between Wood Avens and Water Avens: Geum x intermedium. The flowers of the cross are more colourfull and more open. It grows in cracks in the pavement nearby.
My next October flower was definitely a vetch, but which one? Narrow-leaved Vetch fitted the description. Flowers in pairs, uniform in colour (concolorous!) Auricles (ears) either side of the main stem where leaf stalks branch off.
Narrow-leaved Vetch - Vicia sativa ssp nigra
Last on my ramblings is another plant with nodding flowers. Could this be why it is known as the "mourning widow"? With such dramatic flowers it is a pity that they are always pointing downwards.
Geranium phacum
Also known as Dusky Cranes-bill this was on a farm lane - right beside a cottage garden it had, no doubt escaped from.
I hope you have enjoyed sharing some of nature's late show of colour.
