Goodbye 2018 (and hello as well...)

Happy New Year! Depending on when/where you're reading this, that might seem slightly early - indeed, as I write this, here in London, 2019 is just under an hour away. (Yes, I am at home doing nothing on New Year's Eve. Are you really surprised? I write a blog about tins, for goodness' sake.)

In fact, my message is late. Very late. This is, unbelievably, my first blogpost of 2018, so I should have been writing a similar message 364 days ago to welcome in that new year. As it is, the year is all but over. I feel a bit of a cheat in posting this at the last minute in 2018, as to prove that I have done something on the blog front this year. Anyway - huge apologies. Life has got in the way this year, up to a point. But largely it is just that I am a terrible and/or lazy person. In 2019 I will endeavour be less so, and to do much better in providing you with nuggets of tinned goodness to read.

Aside from a very brief post at Christmas last year, the last time I wrote properly in 2017 was Halloween. Let's imagine therefore that there has been a bit of a time-warp, and it is not over a year since my last post, but just a couple of days. Because hot on the heels of Halloween in the UK comes Bonfire Night, on 5th November, when we commemorate a failed attempt to blow up the monarchy and government by setting off fireworks and lighting big fires, traditionally with the effigy of the most famous of the plotters burning on top.

Given that Bonfire Night celebrations demand that we spend time outside in the dark to enjoy them, at a time when the weather is getting colder, the food and drink we associate with Bonfire Night tends to be more warming, comforting fare: hot soup, jacket potatoes, sausages, warm booze, hot chocolate, toasted marshmallows and so on. Not exactly haute cuisine, but it does the job, warming you up and filling you up at the same time. Apart from toffee apples, which I've never really seen the point of.

One Bonfire Night foodstuff that I had never heard of before, but apparently is traditionally eaten at that time of year in Lancashire, is parched peas. You might think of peas as being a quintessentially summery vegetable, and you'd be right. Green garden peas are indeed in season then. Parched peas are something quite different though - the peas in question are black peas, maple peas or carlin peas, all variants of the common field pea, and in some parts are also known by the even more wonderful name of 'black badgers' or pigeon peas. (N.B. There is also a different type of pea from the Caribbean known as the pigeon pea, but the British ones we are talking about here are a completely different species. They get their unusual name from the fact that they were often used as pigeon feed).

Unlike the peas that find their way into the freezer section of the supermarket, the 'black badgers' are left to grow to maturity and harvested when dried out, and as such are generally cooked from dried, which requires a long, slow simmering, or 'parching'. Outside the north of England, the peas are largely unknown - or at least they were until 2012, when a company called Hodmedod's was set-up, selling lesser-known and forgotten varieties of British beans, grains and crops from farms in the UK, including fava beans (which have not been widely grown here for many decades), red haricots, gog magog beans (another amazing name), quinoa and various seeds and lentils. Do look them up - they sell some very interesting things.

Hodmedod's beans are mainly sold dried, but they have a few varieties that come ready-cooked in tins. A few years back I came across the company's founder and director, Nick Saltmarsh, on a stall at a farmers' market near Kings Cross, and got chatting with him about what they do. On mentioning my blog, he very kindly gave me a few of his tins to try, along with this rather nice tote bag to carry them in. ('Hodemedod' is a Norfolk dialect word for hedgehog, in case you were wondering.)

Literally a couple of years then went by without me writing about the beans, because, as you know, I am a terrible and/or lazy person, and I feel dreadful about it. I had almost got round to opening the carlin peas just before Easter, as the label on the tin said that they are also traditionally eaten in Yorkshire and the north east on the Sunday before Palm Sunday, which is known (for that very reason) as Carlin Sunday. (It has been suggested that the name is a derivation of "Care Sunday", after the population of Newcastle were saved from starvation in a siege when a ship arrived from Norway with a cargo of these peas on that day. Given that it is unknown whether this was the siege of 1327 or 1644, I am not sure this idea can be relied on, but it makes a nice story nonetheless.) But Easter came and went with me forgetting all about it, and so when Bonfire Night came round this year, I was adamant that parched peas would be on the menu.

Traditionally, parched peas would have been served hot at fairgrounds and markets, in either a cup or a paper cone, and doused in malt vinegar - an early form, I suppose, of what we might now call 'street food'. These days they aren't seen anywhere near as widely, but you can still buy them in places like Bury and Preston, ready-cooked in tubs to take home. With their tins, Hodmedod's are bringing them back and making them available to a much wider audience.

Opening the tin revealed a murky brown liquid, but beneath the surface lay some rather lovely looking little specimens, brown in colour with a black marking on one side, perfectly round like a pea but much larger, naturally, than your average petit pois. Trying a few straight from the tin, they had quite a thick skin but a soft middle, and a nice nutty flavour.

For my traditional parched peas I put a few tablespoons of them in a pan, with a knob of butter and just a little of the canning liquor to heat through. Curiously, they seemed to give off an almost chocolately smell as they warmed up, which was very appealing indeed. I did my best to put thoughts of chocolate out of my mind though as I served them up the traditional way, with a good splash of malt vinegar. And goodness me, they really were quite delicious. Nutty and buttery, with a zing from the vinegar which was not at all overpowering, as I had feared. I think I probably should have added a little more of the liquor, but they were still excellent. I should imagine a steaming cup of these would be amazing when out in the cold watching the fireworks.

In need of something a bit more substantial on that occasion however, I served mine up with a couple of faggots, which I had bought on a whim from the local market. I had always thought of faggots as bring a quintessentially northern dish, but apparently they originated in the Black Country/West Midlands area, often served with peas. Their popularity has spread though, as in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Lincolnshire they are sometimes known as "ducks" or "savoury ducks", which is somewhat more endearing than their real name.

So I had my plate of savoury ducks and black badgers, which admittedly looked like a little like a comparison of types of animal droppings served alongside a pile of veg. Or a couple of cannon balls alongside a handful of lead shot. But the taste more than made up for what the dish might have been lacking in looks. 

  I had also seen a suggestion online that a less traditional but equally good way of serving them was adding sugar and booze at the end, rather than vinegar.  I was very keen to give this a go, as warm alcohol is clearly the essence of the winter season. So the day after I tried the parched peas, I heated up another batch, again with a knob of butter, but adding dark brown sugar and a good slug of rum just before taking them off the hob (don't add the rum too soon, or you'll burn off the alcohol). Blimey, these were really good - again, they gave off that nutty, chocolatey aroma, which was perfectly complemented by the butter, sugar and booze. A slightly unusual dessert, admittedly, when you consider the fact that you're eating sweetened alcoholic peas, but really really moreish and well worth a try.



 With the small amount of peas I had left, I went down a completely untraditional route, albeit one suggested on the Hodmedod's label, and made a sort of hummus out of them, blending them with tahini, lemon, a hint of garlic and some of the dark brown canning liquor. While the colour might not have been particularly appealing (and the whole peas I had reserved as a garnish looking very much like rabbit droppings on top), I really liked the flavour - again, the nuttiness of the peas really shone through, bringing an interesting new twist to the usual hummus taste. Highly recommended.

It was only after finishing off the tin that I discovered that when eaten on Carlin Sunday, the peas are usually boiled for less time and then fried in butter, rather than just adding a knob to the parched peas for flavour, which sounds even better. I might have to get myself another tin to try this too.

More posts on Hodmedod's other tins will follow in due course - hopefully not a matter of years this time. While this may be my first and last post of 2018, I promise that 2019 will be a more productive year (which, let's face it, shouldn't be too difficult), and I hope it is a good one for you all too.