October A Month of Cooking

Now that it's October and the weather is cooler, Its time to start making reals meals and real desserts. - none of this grilled or iced stuff.It's also time for Octoberfests both in Germany and America. The month also brings Halloween parties and treats along with a celebratory tea for Samuel Taylor Coleridge's birthday.

Octoberfest is big ,especially in the German  .neighborhoods. Many restaurants such as Bahr's in New Jersey's Atlantic Highlands offers a full menu complete with rouladen and potato pancakes. It's easy to recreate any German dish. Rouladen is one of the most delicious to make. It's simply rolled flank steak that's stuffed with pickles and onions although some family recipes  sub in creamed spinach. This last is a fantastic pairing with the beef, each flavor complementing each other.Potato pancakes are another yummy October fest treat.They are labor intensive to make,especially with grating the potatoes but so worth it. Serve it with homemade apple sauce which brings up the other October activity - apple picking. This is definitely the month and the season for it. Remember there are several different types of apples. They're not all the same. Use the correct one for the recipe you want and your pies and fritters along with applesauce will turn out perfect. Apples can also be used in many German dishes too, such as roast pork..They are sliced and usually placed with onions around the roast to infuse flavor. Apple butter and apple sauce can also be used as glazes for these roasts as well as for pork chops.

Many Coleridge fans along, with most English majors, know that the third week of the month, October 21st is is the great poet's birthday. Some celebrate with a Devonshire cream tea, since he was born in the scenic county of Devonshire. Cream teas are a  wonderful combination of clotted cream, scones and jam. It's traditional for the last to be strawberry. Scones are split and one half is slathered with clotted cream,a cooked cream from Devon while the other half is covered with the strawberry jam.They're 'washed down with straight , sweetened or unsweetened black tea. Milk and cream aren't added  because they'll take away from the clotted cream. If  the cream is hard to come by (it can be bought on Amazon) then blend freshly whipped cream with sour cream and a tablespoon of confectioner's sugar.The month ends with Halloween where there's all sort of sweets and treats.This is where home chefs and bakers can explore their creative side with creating dishes such as Monster Meat Loaf or Spider Burgers - basically cooked , and split hot dogs served on a hamburger buns.Then there is Bones and Blood, breadsticks baked in the shape of bones and dipped into marinara sauce. End with Yeti cupcakes that are iced with vanilla icing and shredded coconuts. Candy eyes and fangs are added for the finishing touches.

It's October, a month of fun and feasting.It's also a time for making delicious dinners and tantalizing desserts. Celebrate the festivities with gusto.

A Perfect Tea For Coleridge

Today is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's birthday and for many of his fans, including myself , this is a day to celebrate the great poet's birthday.He was born in the lovely Devonshire town of Ottery Saint Mary , where cream teas and other good food abound.This is English country food, of the finest farm to table and sea to table variety. Devon is a coastal county or shire located on the English Channel.It may be the birthplace of Coleridge but its main seaside town, Torquay, became famous thanks to the hilarious TV show "Faulty Towers" over forty years ago.The area boasts true farm to table cuisine.One of the most famous dishes is the pasty.This is a small, handheld pie stuffed with meat, usually beef or sausage.The pastry is buttery and flaky ,a melt in your mouth treat, especially if the filling is juicy and tender.Another tea or lunch time treat is white pudding, a highly spiced pork sausage.Mutton, lamb and beef are abundant here and everyone from visiting foodie's to locals can enjoy a variety of different roasts and stews .Since there are plenty of creameries, there is also plenty of good cheese.A favorite and decadent treat is fried cheese.This is when small wedges of different cheeses are breaded and then deep fried .A dash of tart lignon berry jam.They also love potted cheese, basically leftover cheese mixed with butter an, pounded for malleability and then poured into a pot.Sometimes sherry is added for zing and then it's served with bread or crackers.There is some good cheese here, from the cream cheese like Curworthy and Sharpham, a Devon take on the French Brie.Surprisingly seaweed plays a part in the diet too, thanks to locals gathering it up from the Devon coast. It's not as popular as it once was, however some chefs are cooking with it and appreciate it's nutritional value The county is also famed for it's cream teas.This is a proper English tea but with clotted cream generously dotting scones along with a healthy scoop of homemade jam.Most usually serve the tame and almost boring strawberry jam but some prefer the highly tart and eye opening rhubarb and gooseberry sorts.Devon is also known for their apples and these along with apple cakes abound here.Some recipes have been handed down since Elizabethan times and I'm sure Coleridge enjoyed a few during his boyhood in the Devon countryside?Clotted cream also figures in fudge as well.Creameries featuring fresh made ice cream is sold throughout the area, some creameries even using clotted cream as a base. Samuel Taylor Coleridge grew up with some of the freshest foods for his time.They can still be enjoyed today, thanks to the purity and abundance of meats, fish produce and dairy.Devonshire food is the food of poets, supplying them with sustenance for centuries.

A Perfect Coleridge Tea

Today is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's birthday and just like any Englishman of his time (and of today) he appreciated a good tea.He was born and raised in Devon , England ,a shire known for its' dairy and jams.    It was good then and now is amazing, true British locavore treats and dishes that can sustain anyone, be it poet or just foodie.

Devonshire is known for one of England's greatest contributions to high tea, clotted cream. Originally , introduced to ancient Britannia by the Phoenicians trading with the locals around what's now present day Torquay this variation of yogurt is essentially a thick cream steamed and then left in pans toook slowly.it separates during this and the top is full of clouts or clots. Devon locals have it smeared on scones , with a dollop of jam to add to the decadence.Of course teas also have fairy cakes or cupcakes as well as shortbread cookies and miniature tarts.

Coleridge probably would have preferred his county's scrumpy, the tangy   apple cider and a pasty, however  he also would have appreciated  savory.sandwiches too.These usually involve some form of seafood, usually a shrimp paste or baby prawns with mayonaisse on thin slices of white bread.A curry chicken salad is also served,  on raisin bread but it could also be spread on plain scones,As far as teas, most serve the mild but flavorful Earl Grey as well as the exotic Darjeeling and Assam teas -a nod to Britain's colonial past;

Samuel Taylor Coleridge probably had enjoyed many a traditional Devon cream tea.He would feel right at home, today on his birthday, savoring a modern one. The recipes haven;t changed in two hundred years. They are still delicious now as they were then