Recipes in the time of Corona

As I have said before, I never baked much until I retired and now find it quite therapeutic.  I felt so stressed yesterday that I ransacked the store cupboard and baked most of the day.  We have a neighbourhood WhatsApp group so left boxes of biscuits at the front doors this morning – rang the bell and ran away…….

The challenge of collecting family recipes is documenting things which are created from memory and when the instructions are vague to say the least. The only cake I ever baked for years was a fruitcake. Susan was my mother’s cook and I never saw her look at a recipe.  She never measured anything either – just put ingredients in until it looked correct. She was an excellent cook. 

The fruitcake was wonderful. I asked her if I could have the recipe and then stood with her in the kitchen trying to weigh every handful before it went in the bowl. My addition was piercing the baked cake with a tester and basting it with brandy. I have used brandy, rum and whisky at different times – not all together!

If you don’t have fruitcake mix you can make your own with chopped candied orange and lemon peel as well as a few raisins.

Susan’s Dark Fruit Cake

Place in a saucepan on the stove:

250 ml water                       250 g butter

500 fruit cake mix               140 g sugar

100 g cherries                      3 teas cocoa

75 g broken pecans             1 teas ginger

1 teas cinnamon                  100 ml brandy

Boil for about 15 minutes or until dark and syrupy, stirring frequently.  Cool.

Add 3 eggs one by one beating well

Sift together:

350 g plain flour with 2 level teaspoons bicarbonate of soda and mix in a third at a time.

Place in a 2lb loaf tin lined with baking paper (can be a round or square tin) and put in a 230°C oven then immediately reducing it to 130°C and bake for 2.5 hours.  Cool in pan for a few minutes.  Remove and prick with a cake tester and baste with ½ cup brandy.  Turn and repeat. It can be eaten when cool or wrapped up in foil and stored for a while - don't know how long - usually eaten in a week!

Socially distancing becomes more distant – so let’s bake

As of tonight the UK is almost in lockdown. I say almost because we can go out for food shopping, as seldom as possible; for medical reasons and once a day for exercise, all the time remaining at least six feet away from others. No groups of more than two people unless you are all living in the same household. We have been doing this anyway for two weeks but it was still chilling to hear the Prime Minister say it.

So let’s bake!  And at the same time you can give the children a science lesson. What is the effect of adding salt to water that is brought to the boil?  What is the effect of adding salt to ice in water?  I remember doing this very early on in science class never thinking I would need it in cooking!

This is a traditional South African dish: it can be bought in any South African supermarket (at least when I was living there) and will totally destroy your diet and your teeth – but it is worth it. Koeksuster literally translated means “cake sister” because the two pieces of dough are twined together (like my sister and me!)

A lovely man called Karl de Jager gave the recipe to my mother. He was of Afrikaans heritage so this would have been a family recipe - and a dress designer – he made my wedding dress.  This is usually made with a yeast dough but this works just as well. 

Koeksusters

Syrup

800 g sugar                                         600 ml water

2 teas ginger

couple of tablespoons rum/brandy

Boil until thick and syrupy and then chill in a bowl. Place the bowl in a larger bowl half filled with salted water with ice in it to keep cold.

450 g plain flour                   4 teas baking powder

½ teas salt                            60 g butter

2 – 3 eggs, beaten                milk – about 200 ml

Mix all dry ingredients and rub in butter until like crumbs.  Add eggs and as much milk as is necessary.  The dough should be stiff but pliable and easy to roll out.  Roll out quite thinly and cut into strips and plait.  Drop a few at a time into hot vegetable oil until they are golden and float to the surface, turn if necessary. I usually test a couple of pieces to make sure that the temperature is right.

Plunge one or two at a time into the icy syrup for a few moments.  Leave on a plate to dry.

This was the last batch I made for visiting grandchildren.

We are learning a new vocabulary and I don’t like it!

The year 2020 will go down in the history books and not in a happy way.  We are learning a whole new vocabulary and completely changing our way of life.  Given our seemingly advanced age (I don’t feel very old inside) we have been “socially distancing” for about two weeks. The only time we leave the house is to go for a walk – we are fortunate to live in suburbia where and we are seeing very few people and if we do we are all being very polite and giving each other a wide berth.

No one comes into the house. We can go to the pharmacy and for occasional food shopping. The delivery services are fully booked and are not taking on new customers.  Our weekly vegetable delivery from which you could pick what you wanted has changed to a set box – this will stop me from cooking the same things over and over again. We have adequate supplies.

The pubs and restaurants have been closed by the government and many department and other stores have closed: still there are people who don’t feel that any of this applies to them – some of the parks were very crowded today – children still going on play dates and older people “just popping in” to the neighbour.

I suppose the next stage will be lockdown…

I am not going stir crazy – I have TV to watch, books to read and music to listen to.  We can FaceTime or talk to family and friends on the telephone but I feel some sadness knowing that I can’t just pop in and see my son and his family in London or get on a plane to see my daughter and her family in Switzerland. We flew to Switzerland at short notice once when our granddaughter went into hospital and have travelled to our son in the early hours of the morning when someone has similarly had to go to hospital. I know in the big picture of things this is minor and we speak every day – but it saddens me to know I can’t.  I suppose that is being a parent. 

My mother-in-law’s recipe book

My mother-in-law was a fabulous baker as were all her friends and relations.  Having grown up in Upington in the Northern Cape, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert life was quite spartan. She was born early in the 20^thcentury and grew up in what we would consider very primitive circumstances. The family owned the general store which dealt in everything from karakul skins to wedding dresses.  The farmers would run up a tab which they would pay when the harvest was in.

So whatever you wanted you had to make and they were all fabulous bakers.  She would say that she was a very plain cook – which meant that she took excellent fresh ingredients and didn’t mess them around – something I sometimes wish there was more of today.  

She and my father-in-law moved to Cape Town and that is where we used to visit them, and latterly, her, after he died.  No only were all the biscuit tins full of her baking, but all the family and friends would bring something and our children were in sugar heaven for the duration of our visit!

Over the years I used to copy out a recipe or two when we visited, with no real intention of baking anything – who had the time? When she died her recipe book vanished but reappeared a few years later.  When I retired from full time work I decided to have a go at baking some of her recipes and they have become firm family favourites.  One recipe I found in her book that had clearly been cut from a newspaper and which I don’t remember ever having was the one below. 

It has been a great success with grandchildren and friends alike. I have all these things in my store-cupboard but then I do bake rather more than my waistline can take. (g = grams; ml = Millilitre)

Yumski Bars

150 g butter                          150 g sugar

25 ml golden syrup               150 rolled oats

150 g self raising flour    

3 ml bicarbonate of soda

Makes about 32.  Slowly melt the butter, sugar and syrup in a saucepan.  Stir in flour mixed with oats and bicarb and beat well.  Spread into a lined 23 x 33 cm swiss roll tin and bake at 180C for 15 minutes.

Topping

100 g dark chocolate           50 g butter

60 ml golden syrup              50 g plain flour

Over a low heat melt the chocolate with the butter and syrup. Stir in the flour and spread carefully over the biscuit base.  Bake for a further 10 – 15 minutes or until bubbling.   Cool in the tin for a few minutes then mark into bars.  When firm enough move to a rack to cool.

Irrational behaviour in times of stress

When I grew up in Johannesburg the car was always kept full of petrol.  My father was a surgeon and he never knew when he might be called out and where he would have to go. Fuel efficiency wasn’t that great then either.

I cannot bear to let my fuel level go much below half (Number One Husband waits until the gauge is on the red) and for absolutely no good reason I went to fill up a couple of days ago.  Don't know where I think I will be driving but rationality had nothing to do with it.

I came to live in London when we married and then in 1970 we decided to go back to Johannesburg for family reasons. Going back to Johannesburg wasn’t that stressful – we had few possessions and Number One Daughter was a baby – and after all I was going “home”.  Number One Husband had a job to go back to as well.

By 1976 it was time to return to London and we did so the following year.  When we returned to London it was very different – family and friends were gradually leaving and spreading out all over the world. We had two children and my mother was going to follow once we were settled and also spend time with my sister in the USA.

There was great uncertainty in terms of jobs and schools and where we would live. I did some vaguely sensible things such as buying underwear, t-shirts etc for the children for a couple of years and one hundred pairs of tights for myself (they were incredibly cheap!) 

The one action that was completely irrational sticks in my mind:  on the day the packers came I suddenly felt the need for a wicker basket.  I still have it and I use it for storage – but I could have lived without it. Still not sure what it represented……

First embarrass your children….

When both my children were at university, Number One Daughter developed chicken pox.  I tasked Number One Son with doing food shopping for her and delivering it.  This he dutifully did, leaving it on the doorstep and crossing the road to wave at her when she picked it up. We laughed about it at the time – not so funny now.

Daughter lives abroad so can only offer advice (and plenty of it) but Son phoned to see if there was anything we needed. We haven’t stockpiled but having never quite got used to catering for a household of two we have plenty – especially as we won’t be doing any entertaining. However, today his sons have been sent home from boarding school as a housemate has tested positive for the virus – the whole household is socially distancing as well. I have volunteered my services to deliver stuff (driving in my car, no passenger, only I travel in it) and leaving it on the doorstep and running across the road to wave…..

Grandmothers don’t know everything….

I am an experienced grandmother: I know important things such as how to make Barbie cakes and favourite biscuits; tell embarrassing stories about their parents and read the same Mr Men books over and over again. I provided rescue monkey when teddy had been forgotten for a sleepover and especially “Grandma’s house, Grandma’s rules”.  That applies to sitting properly at the table as well as not having to finish your broccoli in order to have ice cream….

When the Corona virus advice started to come in I was resistant to changing behaviour. My adult children started to nag: we have an epidemiologist in the family and I am conditioned to believe evidence rather than anecdote so we reluctantly caved in. By the time the UK government recommended “social distancing” we were ready for it.  

Never mind pandemic, pandemonium ensued around us. People were bulk-buying toilet paper. As far as I am aware diarrhoea is not a consequence of the disease.  However I do realise that in a situation where we have no control (!) to be able to control something ticks a box. We always need toilet paper, it doesn’t date or go off – but the supermarkets can’t keep up with supply. There have been scenes in the supermarkets reminiscent of the first day of the summer sales. 

Some pharmacies have been charging extortionate prices for disinfectant hand gel. We are going to move to another pharmacy when all this is over as the one we usually use is doing this – an increase in price during a shortage I can understand but almost ten times? I have half a dozen bottles of barely used hand gel because every time we go away I forget to take it and buy a bottle at the airport. 

And then there’s soap - I confess I am a hoarder. A French market visits our area every quarter and I am always tempted by the lovely fragranced soaps. They are scattered around in drawers and on shelves and in wardrobes. Perhaps time to repurpose.

Wash your hands!