Autumn Jams

Figs and strawberries, pre-glooping

The scent of Autumn is creeping into the fens, with the nights filled with the hint of bonfire smoke and the trees and hedges covered in a dark riot of berries and fruit. The Cambridge Spy, being a glutton of the first order, loves this time of year above all others, where he can hardly walk down the road without banging into an overhanging branch bending with fruit ripe for the pilfering. The glorious Cambridge market is filled with stalls overflowing with figs, apples, nectarines, berries, corn - you name it, you can nosh it - and if you ask nicely there's usually extra boxes to be rooted through, full of cheap, overly squishy fruit. Being a cheapskate as well as glutton, from the start of September, the Spy's fridge is filled with dozens of jars of every shape and size, full of a painters pallet of gloopy jams made from all the cheapest fruit he can buy, steal, beg or otherwise purloin in an unsavoury and untoward fashion.

All getting cosy in the fridge

On account of the continuing work avalanche, which seems to be gathering force in a wholly ungodly fashion, the Spy has been forced to make these jams at midnight, with the shipping forecast gently spooling out in the background on radio 4 and the smell of smoke and leaves creeping through the window. Not at all bad. There are a million jam recipes online, including information on which fruits need jam sugar and which have enough pectin to get on with it by themselves, so just to give you some ideas:

Marrow, lemon, orange and ginger jam, made with enormous marrows carried 8 miles back from Haslingfield (village of the recent scarecrow-abduction scandal), left on someone's wooden gate for the taking. On that particularly glorious day, nature's bounty hit the Spy hard, and at every turn he was confronted with figs, blackberries, apples, pears, redcurrants, plums; you name it, he guzzled it.

 

Creepy Haslingfield scarecrows: cannibal Bertie Bassett (L), Harry Potter on broom (R) and... gentleman hanging from the gibbet. It's Midsummer Murders all over again...

Fig, raspberry and red wine jam, with figs and raspberries both from the cheap box from the market fruit stall closest to the city hall. 

Fig, strawberry and cinnamon jam, figs and strawberries from the same magical cornucopia crate.

Peach, raspberry and vanilla jam, the surprising, amber-coloured hit of the year.

Pear, vanilla and lemon jam, with the pears pilfered from the tree trapped in the middle of the building site opposite the Catholic church on Hills Road. Turned the most  beautiful golden-red colour despite no such colour being in the raw ingredients, great on yogurt.

Now read on...

Finally, the Spy married two of his favourite things on earth - scones and autumn jam - by taking three of the little fellows on a day trip to The Orchard. The wasps seemed to appreciate them too, but quite frankly, there was quite enough to go round.... 

Gone! It was the wasps, honest guv..

.

Early-Autumn apple city. Yum.

Ely Sugarbeet Cake

From monstrosity to deliciousness.

Something grisly is buried in the fenland fields, gnarled and ugly as a monstrous bulldog / wasp hybrid chewing its way through a crate of lemons. Bearing a striking resemblance to the deadly screaming mandrake in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, this little monster is just as revolting to behold and looks like it might be every bit as fatal. Harvested between now and Christmas (when the sugar content is at its highest), the Cambridge Spy first stumbled across a field of these bad boys in a field on the marshes outside Ely a few years ago, when curiosity got the better of him and he pulled a couple up. What a horrible sight greeted his eyes:

 O grisly beasts! O scabby monstrous veg dug from a boggy fen! You too will have your place in the cake world!

Lover of nature and incorrigible glutton that he is, the Spy instantly sent a picture of this fearsome fiend to a botanist chum of his to ascertain a) what is was and b) whether it was edible. Various suggestions were bandied about (manglewort, crab fusticator, cribbly snort), before it was identified as that fenland staple sugarbeet. The Spy reasoned that if it had the words 'sugar' and 'beet' in it, it was damn well edible, and not just in a 'boil it up to make sugar' way. So, to counteract its bulbous, tentacled appearance, the Spy turned it into the kitschest, most 1950s-retro cake in the history of mankind. Raspberries from the Pick-Your-Own Farm in Butt Lane (teehee) just outside Ely. Cath Kidston eat your twee, chinzty heart out. 

The monster still lurks within...

Sugarbeet Cake:

(recipe in cups as it was adapted from www.cooks.com, but convert as appropriate)

3 cups grated sugarbeet (substitute for beetroot if you cant find sugarbeet / are not a pilfering thief)

4 eggs

2 cups sugar

1 cup vegetable oil

2 cups plain flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 1/5 tsps bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 cup chopped nuts (optional, the Spy doesn't like them so opted out)

to decorate: 

icing sugar

glacé cherries, raspberries, hundreds and thousands etc

Grease a 9 x 13 inch loaf tin (or similar)

Pre-heat oven to 180 C / 350 F 

Beat sugar, eggs and oil together

Sieve in dry ingredients

Add vanilla 

Stir in grated sugarbeet

Pour into tin, bake for 35-45 minutes

Cool for 5 minutes, remove from tin

When cool, ice and decorate as you wish (as long as it's kitschy)

When you have greedily polished off the raspberries, you could also try glacé cherries on top. Equally kitsch.

Bergen

Bergen from the top of Fløibanen Funicular, at the summit of Fløyen mountain.

Sometimes life gets tough as a gristly wartime sausage. As hairy as a bearded lady from a Victorian sideshow. As desperate as a band of despairing desperadoes desperately making one last desperate stand from behind a scrutty desert cactus. As perilous as a periwinkle sipping Perrier... ok, enough! When the cards are on the table, the writing is on the wall and the clock-hand is pointing to squeaky-bums-time, it can only mean one thing. The Spy is holed up in another hotel room (enemies doubtless patrolling in the street below) on another windswept Scandinavian mountainside, with his stomach growling and grumbling like a caged beast. His workload is now so mighty that he forgot to pick up food before everywhere closed, and now he is faced with a terrible, life-or-death decision. Does he eat the other half of the jar of pickled gherkins he has sitting on his desk, thereby risking corroding his stomach with its acidic contents? The room is already awash with the stench of vinegar; the desperate Spy was forced to break into the jar by piercing the lid with a fork, as it was too tight to open (O noble, piteous Spy, made weak as a lamb through lack of sustenance!). The only other hope of nourishment was a fruit salad that had lain forgotten for several days, but when the Spy discovered it and eagerly tucked in, he found that something horribly ... fermenty ... had occurred... And so with that lesson in mind, when the chips are down and you find yourself down on your luck and eyeballing a jar of elderly gherkins, you've gotta ask yourself, do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

A Spy's gotta do what a Spy's gotta do...

Enough of this melodrama. Breakfast is a mere night away, and the Spy is in Bergen, which he loves with a passion as strong and hearty as the hardy mountain folk that this fine city breeds. He has trod these streets many times, frequently gumbooted, for last time he was here it rained Every Single Day for a month straight. (Being nestled between seven mountains on a fjord coastline that backs directly onto the North Sea will do that for you.) Yet as a happy result, the Spy now knows every lovely cafe and bakery in the area like the back of his soggy, wrinkling hand, for he took to diving into the nearest one whenever the heavens reopened and he became too sodden to go on. The Spy has precisely ten minutes before his work jumps on him again. Just enough time to post some pictures, but if you ever find yourself in Bergen and need recommendations, contact the Spy. Hell, he'll even fly out to give you a guided tour if you settle the small matter of his airfare...

           Bryggen, taken from the fish market.

Best for traditional Norwegian (soups representing):

 

Best for Bergen's legendary fish soup and delicious homemade bread, mighty Pingvinen (The Penguin). On Thursdays, try their local speciality of pinnekjøtt and raspbeballer (the Spy beheld the dumplings and quaked). Try also Cafe Opera, same kind of atmosphere, fish soup nearly as good...

Best for the ancient dried salt cod dish of bacalao, Byggeloftet & Stuene is down on Bergen's picturesque wooden sea front and always worth a visit. 

Best (and cheapest) for Italian / Noodles:

 Zupperia (although this mighty fish dish was absent from the menu last time the Spy went to guzzle: curses!)

Pasta Sentral: and two half portions of pasta for a tenner! Unheard of in Norway - the Spy nearly swooned! And yes those are prawns on that pizza. This is Norway.

The Spy's time is up, and he must flee. Be warned, go nowhere near the fish and chips in the fish market: the Spy was nearly poisoned, and wept many tears for the far-off Petrou Brothers of Ely and Chatteris:

Despite those fish tails curled up like the toes of the Wicked Witch of the East, post-farmhouse, the Spy is so hungry right now he would happily guzzle them...

The Spy's time has definitely elapsed. He hasn't even started on the best hot chocolate, the best waffles, the best cinnamon buns, the pros and cons of the fish market (where you can sample raw whale meat if you've a mind to)... However, if he doesn't get back to work right now, something grisly will happen. Don't ask him what, but it will be bad; he might even be forced to drink all that pickle juice and turns into a dessicated Egyptian mummy. One final picture, lest you are left with that horrible image in your head: Bergen at 4am on a beautiful clear morning, just to prove it doesn't rain all the time.

Loverly.

Wood-Fired Ovens and Sourdough Bread

Light and dark sourdough breads

The Spy took a break from his grisly labours yesterday for a day so surreal and magical that he is still not sure whether the whole thing was a hallucination brought on by too many of said grizzled labours. There is only so much information he can impart, lest his enemies (always dogging his step, blast their sneaky eyes) trace him and uncover the whole racket, but in short, the Spy found himself in an undisclosed location in the fens, standing by a wood-fired oven covered in roses and teasels, a bucket of Californian sourdough starter by his side, helping two bakers from either side of the Atlantic to bake over 60 loaves, from flours including wholemeal spelt, dark rye, light rye, and an experimental einkorn number (an ancient wheat still used in some areas of France for pancake-making). Plus spelt pizzas for lunch. Quite simply, life does not get better than this. 

Since he is unable to disclose too much information, a series of pictures will have to suffice:  

 

Roses!

Teasels! On an oven roof! The Spy couldn't believe his eyes...

The wood smouldering in the oven, ready to be scraped out when the baking begins (the bread is cooked with the residual heat of the bricks)

 

Mixing... Dividing...

 

A particularly fine batch of dark rye sourdough proofing in their little baskets

Light rye topped with caraway seeds, about to be consigned to the fiery pits

 

Wee bread dudes chilling out in the heat (L), and post-cooking, a tumbling heap of light and dark rye (R)

A quick spot of lunch...

Early results from the oven proved successful, although the Spy was only able to conclude this after he had tested 3 pieces...

 

Have we got enough bread yet, chaps? No, sure not, here's another batch, this time with mustard seeds, linseeds and honey (L) and a seeded wholemeal number covered in pumpkin seeds....

Well, that's all, folks. Eight hours after he arrived, the Spy left this paradise with his belly and soul singing. Oh, and did he mention the ancient orchard that stood behind the oven? The pumpkin patch to its left? The herb garden behind it? The cold smoker fashioned out of an oil drum? The bushes of currants, the purple podded peas, the homemade apple juice, the broad beans and the roses? The Spy can only conclude that this was indeed a hallucination: such a paradise couldn't possibly exist in real life. Ho hum, back to the daily grind...

 

Can the Spy interest anyone in purple beans and ancient eikhorn wheat (L)? Perhaps an oil-drum cold-smoker with a rose and clematis backdrop (R)?

In which case, he'll just finish with an end-of-the-day shot of the roses over the oven, pumpkin patch in the background...

Spotlight: Oxford

The Spy snuck sneakily into Magdalene College, where he made friends with a wisteria and a clematis.

The Cambridge Spy is experiencing a profound crisis of the soul, otherwise known as an almighty work-avalanche of biblical proportions. This will continue for the next few months, during which time his brain will shrivel, his vital organs will wither and his personality will be slowly eroded by the crushing burden of his labours. Posts will be brief, if not non-existent. The Spy anticipates that almost all of them will be in note-form, punctuated by bouts of authorial madness (you may find yourself reading treaties on subjects such as 'The Spy: Man or Malt Loaf?' or 'The Spy is a Bald Greenlandic Walrus named Gerald. Discuss'). 

In the mean time, a brief account of the Spy's recent stint in Oxford. In close-to-note form. 

Contentious though this confession may be, the Spy would be happy to spend the rest of his days swinging from the dreaming spires of Oxford like a little monkey in a stone rainforest. However, the first thing to be established would be where to find scones to rival those of The Orchard in Grantchester. Preliminary results reveal this may not be as straightforward as he hoped: those at The Rose Cafe were warmed and fairly nice, but a little too small and buttery for the Spy's taste. Excellent tea, however. 

Rose. Scone. Butter. Jam. 'Nuff sed.

Those at the magnificent  Grand Cafe got top marks for presentation (on a tiered silver stand with sliced strawberries perched on the cream), but alas, bottom marks for taste (think soft, slightly sweet bread). However, the full English breakfast came with a choice of rye or granary toast (yum!) and a particularly excellent Oxfordshire sausage, while the elderflower cordial was quite simply the nicest drink the Spy had ever encountered (think a non-alcoholic Mojito, with crushed mint and a mix of sharp lemon and sweet elderflower that set his tastebuds singing). And the door-closing-weight is a brass kettle on a string. What more could you want?

All that glitters is not gold...

Fry-up with rye bread. Classy.

Elixir of the gods cosying up to beautiful milk jug. Kettle out of shot.

A strong contender to match the excellent Nanna Mexico here in Cambridge, top-notch burritos came courtesy of The Mission, with enough red onions to put an end to the Spy's attempts to woo the luscious ladies of this fair city. They swooned before him, eyes watering...

Joining the crowds for one of the delis on the High Street, the Spy bought many olives. Many, many olives. He then took them to the Botanic Gardens, where he ate them whilst watching a sparrow savaging a heron. Nature is a cruel mistress...

The queue was stretching out the door. The Spy joined it enthusiastically: that's the British way!

The Covered Market provided the Spy with soft, squidgily warm Ben's Cookies straight out of the oven. A toss-up between the spiced oatmeal and the white chocolate chip. 

In the heat of the day, ice cream proved a necessity. It was practically medicinal; the Spy would have died of heatstroke without it. Reminiscent of JP Licks in Boston (which still retains the edge, however), G&D's Ice Cream Parlour hit the spot, with the smallest blobbette (i.e. the size of his fist) of Daim nestled next to an even more modest (i.e. bloody huge) helping of cherry-and-white-chocolate. On top of a warm waffle. Open from 8am until midnight for all your ice cream cravings. 

 

The medicine cabinet...

In short, the Spy hearts Oxford. Muchly. And there was a Northlight Homestore shop that the Spy went mad in (the good kind of mad, i.e. 'bought a lot', not the bad kind of mad, i.e. 'put his underpants on his head and started singing a song about sexually adventurous elves')  to counteract his Scandinavia-sickness from the time his work takes him out there. Next time, he's got his eyes on the restaurant specialising in bangers and mash. He will be back!

The Spy is secure enough in his own manhood that he can indulge his Nordic candle fetish without censure. Let there be light!