Gerry brought the new 'fridge last night...it's very nice...very shiny...very new.
I've never been able to work up any enthusiasm for household equipment ...suppose the only items which would hold my interest would be copper-bottomed sauce-pans and glass blancmange moulds in the shape of a rabbit...I do have a little wooden wheel for neatening the edges of short-crust pies and a wooden reamer for juicing oranges and such like...used to have a glass rolling pin as well...it had a big cork on one end so you could fill it with iced water to stop your pastry getting warm...don't know what happened to that actually...one of those mysterious disappearances which happen every once in a while.
Mum used to make the lightest most crumbliest pastry...a plain jam tart became a delicious morsel...she had an ancient piece of marble which she knew for certain had belonged to her Granny...that was kept only for rolling out pastry on...never for anything else. It weighed a ton, so she kept it in the bottom of those odd little cupboards that were built under the servants stairs.
Those little cupboards were really quite odd...they were in the kitchen, but went way back right under the back stairs...you could actually get inside them, which was my job when we 'lost' the Brasso...the top cupboards held the clean tea-towels and hand-towels...the middle ones were for dusters and jars of beeswax polish...and the Brasso...while the bottom one had the marble slab and odd socks. It did honestly...that's where the odd socks went until they found their partners.
Mum also had a small wooden salt box...someone had that the minute she passed away I think...you'd shudder to see how much salt she'd put into vegetables while they were cooking...
But I think the only real gadget she had was one of those wire things for slicing hard-boiled eggs...that was used for beetroot as well, 'cos Dad loved beetroot with a salad...
My Mother made wonderful gravy...and stupendous Yorkshire Puddings which we ate before the meat and vegetables...she didn't have a great deal in the way of kitchen gadgets though and she simply couldn't make either pastry or cakes...lumpen and leaden actually. We ate them, of course we did...
Dumplings were for poor people, so it wasn't until I knew Mum that I found out how yummy dumplings were...she used to sort of squidge them into one of those ice-cream scoops...she'd asked Mr Morelli if she could possibly have one...he was the owner of the ice-cream parlour...then, when they were stuffed well in she'd let them go into the bubbling stew...
Funny where your thoughts go sometimes...
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I remember my gran making cloutie dumplings. She mixed the ingredients,shaped it & placed it a clean pillow slip kept especially for the pudding.
She tied each end with string & placed it into a huge pot full of boiling water. That then simmered away for hours.
The aroma, while cooking, was delicious. I can smell it now! 😌
Then she removed it from the clout & placed it on a plate on the hearth in front of the coal fire. It was turned & turned till a 'skin' formed all over.
The best way to eat it was warm.... Absolutely delicious 😋
Your post made me think of my reply. Great memories, thanks 💐
Hi Vashti, a Cloutie dumpling is a traditional dessert pudding made with flour, breadcrumbs, dried fruit (sultanas and currants), suet, sugar and spice with some milk to bind it, and sometimes golden syrup. Ingredients are mixed well into a dough, then wrapped up in a floured cloth, placed in a large pan of boiling water and simmered for a couple of hours before being lifted out and dried before the fire or in an oven.
Confused between Mum and Mother, Vashti. I must have missed it in an earlier post.
My Mother was a brilliant cook so were her sisters. I'm not too bad either. Perhaps it is because my Great grandfather was a baker, in Edwin Pettit Soham, Cambs.
My mother had one of those wire hard boiled egg cutting machines....I used to twang it like a guitar.
She also had a similar chip making gadget....I remember as a child putting all my wax crayons in it and chopping them up small....trouble!
My grandmother had one of those cupboards in her kitchen...she called it the ' glory hole' , full of dusters and polish and various odds and ends that ended up there. It had a distinctive smell I remember.
I so loved stew and dumplings. Yum I'm coeliac now and do not try to make too much of the beautiful pastries etc as I would be enormous but thinking of them.....yeh!
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