My mum's porridge was hit and miss. Was either runny, or so thick the spoon was stuck in it!
Always Scott's Porridge Oats with a man in a kilt on the front. We used to have it with milk and really dark brown sugar.
Having proper porridge, cooked correctly from steel cut oats was only when we stayed with my great aunt or my any of my cousins when we went north of the border. Cooked slowly overnight on a range.
My mum had cold hands and made all her pastry with lard, whether for sweet or savoury purposes. She made her own version of cornish pasties, savoury mince pie, wonderful fruit pies with fruit she stewed for the purpose. The fruit pies were large ones cut into slices, and I would take a slice as part of my packed lunch...and have to share it out with all my friends who also loved her fruit pies. Apple, rhubarb, plum, gooseberry, blackcurrant, blackberry & apple and apricot are the ones, always with in season fruit. She made flans and quiches and tarts too. On Sundays she would bake cakes... Coffee & walnut, chocolate, orange, lemon, caraway seed, Madeira, Victoria sponge... always perfect and light.
I miss her crisp but slightly chewy pastry to this day. She tried to teach me to make pastry, but I can't bear getting stuff under my fingernails and my hands go from stone cold to red hot anyway.
This time of year the great Christmas prep would be underway. She had an outsized washing up bowl used solely for mixing up the Christmas goodies. Mincemeat, with so much booze in it you would fail a breathalyser test made into the best mincemeat pies I've ever eaten...Christmas puddings boiled and put up: never eaten the year they were made, but sufficient for Christmas, New Year, Easter and her own birthday in February. The Christmas cake was probably the biggest performance, with homemade jam, homemade marzipan and topped with royal icing made into rough peaks, then set (by my brother and I) with the cake decorations we used every year. You could break your teeth on that icing, but it kept the cake perfectly for the 2 months until we cut it.
Mince pies and Christmas puds were always served up with homemade brandy butter and whipped cream...but if you wanted custard, it was Bird's custard powder, castor sugar, and a small tin of evaporated milk plus 2 cans full of water. It was delicious flavour wise, but like the porridge, the texture was a bit hit or miss!
My mum in the kitchen was always hit and miss for other things, but she was matchless for cakes and pastry. Some of my happiest memories are of us working together in the kitchen.
The idea of watery porridge just turns me.
