Nan's Kitchen

Most of my young growing up was spent in the family kitchen, ruled over by my dearest Nan. She was the chief cook and bottlewasher, and none dared interfere when she began her baking. She cooked every day, of course, as women did until feminism saw them leaving the kitchen in droves. (Gotta admit to leaving my husband to it sometimes, when the boys were young, as I had become very involved with various organisations, which is probably why he won't cook now, unless I am too ill to do so. Can't remember when that last was!)
Sunday morning was THE cooking time. We always had visitors in the house on Sunday. I would waken to the crash and bang of cooking tins and utensils being banged around in the kitchen. In fact, the entire household would waken, because Nan always made an early start on this day of rest, and could never do it quietly. I can still hear my uncle groaning and asking why she had to cook on a Sunday. She was always in a hurry. I was usually the first to enter her domain, and she always greeted me with a smile and a chat, and breakfast. I was never allowed to miss breakfast and, if I was lucky enough to catch Nan just taking scones from the oven, she would butter one for me, and I would carefully eat the hot morsel, butter dripping down my chin, because Nan never skimped with the topping on scones. Then I would sit at the table, amongst the teetering pans and bowls, and watch as she made fruit pies, cakes and biscuits and a pudding for lunch. There would be flour and icing sugar dusting the table top and spilling over onto the floor, and I would sometimes lick my finger and dip it into the spilled icing sugar, or honey or golden syrup, or whatever tasty ingredient had missed the mixing bowl.
Nan would have every item available spread around the kitchen and was always pushing things onto the floor to make room for rolling out the pastry or cutting cookies. It was a fascinating place for a child to be. It may also account for why, even now, I am an untidy cook! Then, when the last item of baking was out of the oven, Nan would put the Sunday roast in, dutifully sitting in half a container of dripping so that it would bake nicely. (And I wonder why I have a weight problem now!)
then there would be more banging and crashing as she hurriedly washed all the dishes -and believe me there was always a lot of washing up to do. Then she would make a cup of tea for herself and cocoa for me and I got to sample all the goodies she had made.
My Nan was known far and wide for her beautiful scones. There never seemed to be any rhyme or reason to the way she made them. I have watched her rub butter into flour, I have watched her use an egg and cream, and I think I even remember her just mixing SR flour, (well, on her time it was plain flour with baking powder and carb soda added) sugar and milk one time. But no matter what, the scones were always declicious. Now all of this remembering is because Alice asked me if I learned to cook by show and tell, or by following written down recipes. I think it was mostly show and tell, because I don't ever remember not being able to cook a roast, or make scones. Sometimes, if somebody asked, Nan would quickly pencil a recipe onto a piece of paper and put it in the dresser to pass on, or for my aunt to use. Never a book, just pieces of paper or an old envelope. Her shortbread was the best in the world, and I put her recipe on my last blog. I have only been making for the last few years because I never had her recipe. I mentioned this to my aunt one day and she was amazed. She promptly produced it for me, written in Nan's hurried, but ligible, script. But nobody had her recipe for pastry or her meat pies. I used to watch her make these pies, but have never been able to reproduce quite the same delicious recipe. Mind you, my family always liked my meat pies, and the grandchildren do now. Minced steak and vegetable filling encased in purchased puff pastry. Nan's pies would be made from scratch with the beef being minced in the old fashioned mincer attached to the old wooden kitchen table. She had a large aluminium (or something like, rectangular pie dish. Into this she would put the ground beef, any grated vegetables that she could lay her hand to, salt and pepper, and then pour boiling water over the lot and mix vigorously with a spoon. Then she would cover the lot with her very own pastry. She never had a failure. I used to be amazed that the meat would cook, but now I realise that it was the action of the boiling water that helped it on its way. Family still talk about her pies. All I know about her pastry is that it was made with dripping!
The pie would be served, and I would smother my

portion with Nan's delicious home made tomato

sauce. I have never tasted sauce like this for years. She made the best sauce, and pickles and preserves. Her cauliflower pickles were better than shop purchased. Her green tomato pickles were beautifully flavoured, and I didn't eat tomatoes because of the seeds. It is very hard to pick the seeds out of tomato pickles, but I used to manage. I had a terrible aversion to seeds, and I was in my thirties before I stopped deseeding tomatoes for my own consumption. I have only recently come to passionfruit. But I make sure that I don't crunch the seeds. A cousin asked if I had Nan's recipe for the tomato pickles as she could remember her own mother frantically making them, but I don't think the recipe was ever written down, or if it was, it got lost somewhere along the way. It was a recipe that came from my great grandmother, and presumably she had it from her mother, who emigrated to Australia from Cumbria, so I suspect it is an English recipe, just like last post's shortbread recipe.

I always make my own conserves, having watched Nan for many years making a variety of jams. It is something that I always seemed to know, although I had to check the first time for quantities. The only jam that Nan made that I haven't attempted to make,is melon and lemon, and melon and pineapple, because a) those melons are awfully big and b) who on earth knows what they are these days. I remember that Nan sometimes used to let me get the seeds out of them before she chopped the melon, but I was too slow for her. I always got the seeds on my toast! But, I shall never forget the warmth and generosity that came from her kitchen, because she showed her love for family and friends by feeding them. She would be wounded if anybody refused any of her fare, but honestly, it is very hard to have yet another helping just to show someone that you love them back, when you feel that you are about to burst. I wonder will we ever return to the days of everyone being involved in the cooking. Christmas is the closest I come to all the bustle, but that doesn'thappen every year, now that I have daughters in law, and extended family have all grown up and like to play host to the family Christmas. Mind you, I am not complaining!

Catch you next time, folks.