Seasonal Stocktake #2

Misty Disney forest trees; an apple crumble blueprint; mushrooms in the grass

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Time now for my second Seasonal Stocktake, in which I look around me and…well just notice things, and bring them here, and encourage you to do the same.

Here’s mine:

Misty Disney-forest trees

You might think I should be holding back on mists, keeping my tinder dry, mist-wise, for the more challenging months ahead, when not so much changes week to week.

Alas, this one was so beautiful that I can’t help myself: an early morning mist, and as I walked down through the park these trees almost seemed separated out into layers, as if they were from some classic 1950s Disney animation.

Neighbours’ apples crumble, and a crumble blueprint

The excellent time has arrived when neighbours are now so overwhelmed by the apples on their trees that they start leaving out boxes of them for us all to help ourselves to. Hooray! I did that this week, and made a crumble. Apples are absolutely everywhere, and crumble is always my first port of call. I thought you might make use of my crumble blueprint, from the 2018 edition of The Almanac (2023 edition is out now! Find it here)

Use this recipe for apples now, but also adapt it all year round for whatever fruit you have in abundance. Almost every element of it is changeable, and swapping the type of flour, sugar or rubble can make this an entirely different dessert. Muck about. I used white flour, golden caster sugar, a few oats and some slivered almonds in the topping, and some sultanas and a bit of cinnamon in the apples. A very straightforward crumble. But change to spelt flour, add chopped pecan nuts and use muscovado sugar and perhaps a bit of ginger, and it becomes a much darker and more complex thing.

The below does for between 500-700g fruit. For cooking apples I always add a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and generally either cinnamon or nutmeg, plus a good few glugs of apple or orange juice, which gets the juices flowing and the fruit cooking.

100g flour/ground almond (alter the ratio as you wish)

75g butter

100g rubbly stuff: rolled oats or chopped nuts

75g sugar

2 teaspoons spice/zest

Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles rough breadcrumbs, then stir in the sugar, rubble and spice.  Sprinkle it over the fruit, pat it down lightly, then bake for 30-45 minutes at gas mark 5/190C.

Some variations:

Apple and sultana filling crumble with wholemeal flour, oats, cinnamon, light soft brown sugar and pecan topping

Pear and quince filling with spelt flour, muscovado sugar, ground clove and chopped walnut topping

Rhubarb filling with Demerara sugar, ground ginger, chopped stem ginger and orange zest topping

Plum filling with wholemeal flour, ground almond, sliced almond and golden caster sugar topping

Apricot, strawberry and vanilla filling with white flour, oats, caster sugar and lemon zest topping

And so on...

Mushrooms in the grass

I dont know my mushrooms at all, it is a terrible gap in my knowledge, but I spotted these in the grass at the common where I walk the dogs this week. The expression of a vast network of fungal myselium working away under there, and only now finding its moment to shine.

What have you noticed or done this week that felt particularly of this moment? Leave me a comment below.