Once upon a time...

Living in the 21st century means that we are often slaves to time. The alarm clock alerts us that it's time to awaken and wrenches us from sleep. We rush to get the 7.32 train or the 8.16 bus or to cycle our 40 minute commute. We take an hour's lunch (if lucky) and a 15 minute break (if very lucky) during our working day of carefully clocked hours, squeezing in a 20 minute presentation or a two hour meeting. For a quick dinner, we might cook pasta (boil for about 10 minutes) or watch the timer on the microwave count down the 3 minutes it takes to heat a ready-meal. We're told to take at least 30 minutes of exercise every day. We're constantly measuring time, whether by ticking clock or watch, or by digital display on a phone, computer or TV, and we're regulated by the minutes and hours that make up each day. 
  

Of course human beings have always lived and worked to a rhythm (with the rising and setting sun being the most basic), though modern technology has allowed us to take this to extremes. But as regimented as this can be, being able to tell the time down to the minute is not always a bad thing and no more so for me than when baking and cooking. Take a typical cake recipe, which will instruct you to beat the butter and sugar for 10 minutes with an electric whisk or to bake in the oven for 35 minutes. Giving specific timings in a recipe means that (in theory) anyone can follow the instructions and successfully bake the cake. Similarly, we can set a timer when boiling an egg, knowing that in precisely 8 minutes we'll have the perfect hard-boiled egg. 

Obviously being able to time certain parts of the cooking process has always been necessary, but what do you do if you don't have a clock or other time-piece? Well, an experienced cook can usually tell by the look and smell of a cake that it's done, even if there's no timer beeping officiously when the requisite 35 minutes is up. But how to discern if an egg is boiled to your satisfaction while it's still in the pot? How to instruct an inexperienced cook or to describe the timings in a new recipe? It all becomes rather tricky without the handy device of precise time-telling. The mechanical clock wasn't invented until the 14th century and clocks (and subsequently watches) remained a rare and expensive luxury during the medieval period and into the early modern period. Surviving recipes show that cooks relied on communal knowledge to measure time, using prayers (e.g. boil for the time it takes to say two Hail Mary's) or even distance (e.g. bake for the time a person would take to walk three miles), though the latter is rather subjective, depending as it does on the speed, height and gait of the person walking. 

Timing by prayer would have been a particularly useful measure in an age when daily life revolved around the Church and everyone was expected to attend mass and know their prayers. I've been trying to imagine how 21st century cooks might manage if all of our clocks, watches and digital appliances magically disappeared. In our more secular and multi-racial society, we would struggle to find a prayer, song or poem that would be known by both young and old alike (I might know all the words to that classic 80s power ballad - ahem - but I can guarantee that my niece will not). For all that I sometimes resent being tied to timetables and schedules, hours and minutes, I won't be giving up my precious timer anytime soon.


You might be wondering right about now what any of this has to do with the photos of French pastries dotted throughout the post. Well, I had plenty of time to ponder the rhythms of our days and our reliance on clocks while I was making them. I've long wanted to try my hand at making croissant dough and finally had a few days free recently and a good incentive (Mam's birthday weekend). 

Full disclosure here: Making French pastries at home is a labour of love. I enjoyed both the process and the result (outstanding pastries, well worth the effort), but it would only be repeated for very special occasions. Granted, I made life even harder for myself by making three types of pastries - plain and almond croissants and pain au chocolat - so if you fancied giving it a go, making just the one type should ease the burden slightly. If you do decide to try, I followed Paul Hollywood's recipe, which is clear, concise and illustrated with photos of the different steps (happily it also sticks to modern conventions of timings, with not a Hail Mary in sight). 

It's a long, drawn-out affair- albeit not particularly difficult - that is very much regulated by time and by the different stages in the process over a period of two or three days. There's lots of rolling, folding and chilling involved and to describe it in detail here would bore you silly, so in case you're rushing to catch the 17.13 train home, here's the abbreviated version: 

Once upon a time, I made some French pastries. They were flaky, buttery and delicious and everyone loved them. 

The End.

Figaro, Figaro, Figaro!

Magical fig tree

For no reason other than their shared initial letters, every time I think of figs, the jukebox in my head starts singing Figaro's aria from the Barber of Seville opera (you'd know it if you heard it). Figaro is the name of the aforementioned barber and has not a thing to do with figs, but either way, I've found myself singing the tune constantly since I came back from my holidays, partly because figs were in season while I was there and partly because of the beautiful fig tree on the beach (I know! Who knew fig trees could grow on beaches??). It was old and gnarled, with wide branches sweeping down to the sand and laden with unripe fruit. The low-lying branches and full foliage created a majestic canopy, providing a cool, shady den for anyone who needed it (one man appeared to have taken up almost permanent residence there, blankets and all). And every time we passed by, there was the most incredible perfume in the air - slightly sweet and nutty and uniquely figgy. 

And since we're on the topic of figs, have you ever wondered how Jacob's get the figs in the Fig Roll? I've puzzled over this mystery for many a year, no doubt prompted by the TV ad of my childhood which asked the very same question (the one with the cartoon spy trying to gain access to the factory to find the answer). Now it's not something I've thought long and hard about, but it has warranted the occasional musing. If you make a sausage roll, for example, the crease where you join the two sides of the pastry is always visible. But any dough soft enough that it melts in the heat of the oven - thus smoothing out the crease - could not be moulded successfully into shape to contain the figs. A veritable conundrum, but one that was finally answered when I thought to ask a friend of mine who used to work in Jacob's (she shall henceforth be known as Agent F). The answer is remarkably (and sadly) mundane: co-extrusion (the method whereby both filling and dough are extruded at the same time from two tubes, one inside another). As is often the case, life's little mysteries are much more exciting unsolved. Ho hum. So apologies if I've taken the magic of the Fig Roll away. I'd like to blame Agent F, but really, I did ask.

The King of Dates

When it comes to using dried fruit in treats - baked or otherwise - I find figs a little underwhelming, so in spite of the lengthy intro featuring figs, I'm now going to turn my attention to dates (another exotic fruit not native to our little island in the Atlantic). If your only experience of dates are the small, dried-up variety, may I introduce you to their much rarer cousin, the Medjool. They are at least twice the size, softer, squidgier and decadently plump. In the same way that regular dried dates are like nature's toffees, these are a sophisticated soft caramel created especially by Mother Nature. They are quite expensive to buy here, when you can find them, but every year I bring home an enormous bag of them from the market in Spain (much cheaper). Generally I just eat them as they are - a sweet treat with a cuppa - but this time I had bigger plans. Home-made Nutella.

Chocolate nirvana

Yes, you read that right. I've been wanting to try my hand at a home-made hazelnut chocolate spread for quite some time now and recently came across a recipe that used Medjool dates. The original recipe came from Deliciously Ella, a blog dedicated to wholesome recipes, and uses only good things (which of course means that this is one guilt-free treat). The Medjool dates (full of nutritious goodness) provide much of the sweetness as well as adding a soft texture and caramel notes. For the chocolate spread, they're blended with raw cacao powder (like cocoa, but in its natural, unroasted state, so it retains the nutrients and enzymes of the cacao bean), roasted hazelnuts, water and some pure maple syrup (another natural product). I tweaked the recipe, adding a greater amount of cacao powder for a richer chocolate hit and roasted hazelnuts instead of soaked, unroasted ones. I also added a little bit of Maldon salt to balance the flavours and a sprinkle of instant espresso powder to further enhance the chocolate kick. 

Oat cakes made chocolatey

As my food processor is not brilliant, the hazelnuts didn't get completely whizzed into a paste, but the resulting spread had a pleasing nutty bite to it (much like crunchy peanut butter, which I love). Although you need to keep the spread in the fridge, it remains slightly soft; the perfect spreading consisting. In keeping with the healthy theme, I tried it on some oat cakes (yum), on a spoon (even more yum) and had to draw the line at just diving on in there face first, though it was tempting. I reckon it would make a delicious filling for a chocolate layer cake and I'm looking forward to trying it on toast, fresh crusty bread, crackers, on a larger spoon... While this is indeed a very healthy treat, good health is first and foremost about moderation, so I may be in trouble here. It's possible that I have just created my own chocolatey doom. But what a way to go, Ladies and Gentlemen, what a way to go.