Organic

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Rose Hip Jelly

Longwood Crab Apples Dear Linda,

It’s great to hear that the Longwood garden is producing abundantly this autumn and that the crab apples are plentiful. Please send some photos.

At the thought of it, I can almost taste the lovely jelly that Mum used to make to go with Sunday roasts, in particular game, but really with any roast meat. Crab apple was the usual, but also small jars of jelly made from hedgerow booty.

However, I have not yet found the Crab Apple Jelly Recipe but here is one for Rose Hip. (Have you found the jelly bag yet? It’s looks a bit like an upside down Gandalf felt hat – but a yellowy brown colour.)

All the best – let us know if the jams and preserves are a hit at the Humbie Hub. Carola x

ROSE HIP JELLY

(BTW folks, when I say/write ‘jelly’ I am not referring to ‘jello’ or the dessert type of jelly, it’s a clear jam-like condiment – similar to cranberry sauce that complements baked ham at Christmas.)

healing-power-of-rose-hip-featured

Read more about the Healing Power of Rose Hips.

2lbs rose hips
2lbs apples
2 pints (5 cups) water
Juice of 1 lemon
White sugar

Wash hips and apples and chop roughly. Place fruit in separate pans & add half of the water to each.  Add lemon juice to the hips. Bring both pans to the boil and simmer till fruit is soft. Place juice and pulp together in the jelly bag and hang over a large pot or clean container. Do not squeeze. Measure juice and allow 1lb (2 cups) sugar to each pint of juice (2 and 1/2 cups). Bring to boil and boil rapidly when sugar is dissolved. Skim and bottle in clear small jars. (Jellies can develop a bit of a furry surface mould – which is harmless – but that’s why I recommend small jars – because they are eaten up faster!)

 

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Scones!

I’ve never been very good at scones, I don’t make them very often (that’s probably why), mainly because I don’t think I’ll ever be able to achieve the ease of throwing together an awesome scone like Pam. So it was with trepidation that I attempted scones this morning. The incentive –  so Hugo had something to take along to friends for morning tea (that’s what we call mid morning snack in Australia) and also because I promised Mike Small that I would post Pam’s Scone recipe!

Mum grew up in Australia and, as in Scotland, the Country Women’s Association or Women’s Rural Institute is famous for its scone making prowess. The simplest of recipes can be the most challenging and floor even the most accomplished chefs (as a recent MasterChef episode illustrated). Mum learnt to make scones with ‘Gravy’ (aka Ms Graves) – the most resourceful cook and dressmaker I have ever come across and who supported my grandmother in raising her 4 children alone in Sydney in the 1940s. Both Gravy and Mum loved the CWA and Australian Women’s Weekly recipe books.

Pamela’s scone tips:

  • don’t over work the dough (when a scone recipe says to knead the dough, all you are doing is pushing the mixture together and bringing it to a relative uni form). Mum made scones in a block on a baking tray, not cookie cutter scones, which probably accounts for the rougher texture of her scones. (They wouldn’t have won prizes at the local county show! She did win prizes for all sorts of other things though ….:-)
  • use a knife to mix in the milk
  • preferably use milk that’s gone off
  • to keep warm and soft, wrap in or cover with a clean tea-towel
  • eat them fresh out of the oven, warm with real butter and home made jam
  • a hot oven (at Longwood, the Aga top oven)
  • and generally I’m pretty sure that speed actually helps the lightness of a scone’s being…
Basic Scone

Basic Scone

BASIC SCONES a la PAMELA (makes about 12)

Heat your oven to 220 degrees. Oil and flour a small baking tray.
Use a knife to stir a dessert spoon of caster sugar (optional*) into 3 cups of SR flour (or plain flour + 3 tsp baking powder). Add a pinch of salt. Make a well in the centre, and with the knife, mix in 1 cup of milk (room temp is best) until you create a soft dough (you might have to add another tablespoon of milk; don’t add too much though or it will become too sticky). Use your hands to grab all the dough from the bowl into one large ball. (Do not knead as your scone will become heavy.) Press out the dough onto the tray to make a rectangle about 1.5cm thick and score into approx 12 squares. Brush the top with milk. Pop in the oven on the top shelf for about 12 minutes. Turn out onto a wire rack for a short cooling and cover with a clean tea towel.
Serve warm with just butter or decadent cream and jam.

[For a richer flavour, you can rub 25g of butter or marg into the SR flour with your fingertips til the mixture resembles breadcrumbs or I like to use half milk, half cream.]

* Mostly sugar was not added into the main mixture (kids probably would prefer it), because the jam usually adds enough sugar.

DIVERSIFYING YOUR SCONES

At the  sugar stage you could add chopped dates, sultanas, cheese etc. At the Longwood Bakehouse organic flour was always used, but usually white for scones. For a wholemeal scone that tastes okay and is not like a brick, I recommend using 1 cup wholemeal, 1 cup white. I haven’t tried scones with quinoa, pumpkin and sunflower seeds etc but I think that would enter the ‘muffin’ genre of scone-making. Please comment and share your favourite scone variations.

This morning I experimented with ricotta and dark chocolate ….

Chocolate Ricotta Scones

Chocolate Ricotta Scones

Chocolate Ricotta Scones

I replaced the 1 cup of milk with 1/2 cup of Ricotta + 1/2 cup milk. I broke up 2 pieces of Lindt 85% dark chocolate into shards and stirred these in with the knife before adding the last bit of milk. Also, after brushing with milk, I sprinkled the surface with sugar ( I used caster but brown would have been better). Hugo will let us know if they were palatable……?

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Welcome! I’m just getting started!

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This blog is all about sharing Pamela’s wonderful collection of recipes with family, friends and the community that enjoyed so many of her meals around the Longwood kitchen table and all the other Flockhart family homes over the years.

Pamela Ellison Flockhart (nee Macartney) was an avid home-maker and superb cook – cooking for the five thousand was a regular feat and delivered with ease over the 61 years of her marriage to Ross, nourishing five children, five grandchildren and whoever walked in the continually open back door. An architect by profession she performed the duties of a minister’s wife for many years and continued in the same ways long after my father left the occupation. Pamela was a role model to many who inspired us all with her effortless hospitality, her good nature and level-headed advice.

My brothers, David, Andrew and Patrick, and I, as well as my sisters-in-law over the years have been known to ring Mum with an urgent request for one of her classic recipes – no matter where we were living at the time – it could have been Tennessee, Taiwan, Australia, Malaysia or France.

Many of these recipes were stashed in a notebook that my grandmother, Thelma Macartney (nee Buchanan) gave mum in the 1950’s – an imperial sized lined notebook – the sort that were standard issue in Australian schools at the time. This book now lies in tatters next to me on my desk, held together with rubber bands and yellowy sticky tape. It contains many of Pamela’s favourite recipes collected from many sources, either clipped from magazines, shared by friends or requested from a restaurant. What it doesn’t contain, and which are sadly now lost, are her tips on how to vary the recipe or to shortcut the process. She had an inimitable way of throwing ingredients together without too much care for measuring exactly and was always adventurous in replacing an ingredient with another if it wasn’t in her generously stocked pantry.

I’m not sure of the exact date when she decided to start the Longwood Bakehouse (or indeed when she closed it; I’m sure Dad or my brothers will set me straight) but I think it must have been running from the early 1980’s into the mid-90’s.

The Bakehouse was our family country kitchen, in East Lothian, where Mum used stoneground organically grown wholewheat flour and free range eggs to produce a variety of bread, rolls, quiches, pizzas, cakes and pavlovas. Rising at around 3am five days a week to mix and knead, prove and bake became the ritual that my father joined, helping Mum before he drove 20 miles into Edinburgh for a day at the office (delivering bread on the way!).

This blog is an attempt to share Pamela’s Longwood Bakehouse Recipe Book with all the family, friends and community that so enjoyed many meals around the Longwood kitchen table or the dining tables of the Polwarth, Pentland View, Northfield, Iona, Buccleugh Place, Argyll Crescent and Sydney homes.

Please leave your comments and anecdotes about Pamela and her recipe collection, especially if you recall any of her special tips!