Ice Cream With A Medieval Twist

My two 'hobbies' in life are making ice cream and medieval castle history. The subjects may seem disparate at first glance but in fact it's suprising how often the two cross over. Don't believe me? I'll give you a recent instance ....

I had just enjoyed a late lunch at a Tea Room near Hadrian's Wall and on my way out visited their farm shop. My eyes gravitated to an ice cream freezer in the corner where locally made ice cream was being advertised. Having already eaten but unable to resist the temptation, I opted to buy a small tub of the vanilla ice cream on offer.

I left the Tea Room to take a walk to the historic, medieval Lanercost Priory next door. The sun was setting and I began to eat my ice cream as I walked and looked around this historic place. Lanercost was already familiar to me, having previously read a lot about its history. King Edward I of England had stayed here on his way to Scotland in 1306/07, Robert The Bruce subsequently came and ransacked the priory and before both of them there had been William Wallace, one of the greatest of medieval heroes, who had also paid a visit. In more recent times, members of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood had also been here - William Morris and Sir Edward Burne-Jones, the latter having created 3 of the priory's beautiful stained glass windows.

This was tangible history - a real place where real people had played out part of their historic lives. The memory still abides, as does the taste of that vanilla ice cream!

Bread & Ice Cream

I was reading about bread today; it's a fascinating subject. Bread is a staple food that we have enjoyed for generations. Everyone has their own preference of bread - white bread, brown bread, black bread, wholemeal or rye bread, french bread, the list goes on.

If I think of the countries that I have visited over the years, the one thing I have noticed is that the bread differs from one country to the next. Just compare France, Italy and Germany for example; the bread in those countries varies enormously as does when it's eaten and what it's eaten with.

In England, bread is most commonly eaten in sandwiches - though ice cream sandwiches don't have bread in them! There's a popular, traditional English dessert called bread and butter pudding. It may not sound exotic but, cooked with the right recipe, it's delicious!

When it comes to traditional foods, bread has to be one of the classics - let's take medieval bread for example. The baking of bread around 600 years ago was taken very seriously and medieval bread recipes were surprisingly varied producing some wonderful sounding breads like pandemain, wastel and clapbread. Back to modern day bread, however ... if you like bread and butter pudding and want to try something a little different, Nigella Lawson has a super ginger jam bread and butter pudding recipe.

If that doesn't get your tastebuds going, then you can always try my recipe for brown bread ice cream. One thing I used to love as a child was eating the occasional strawberry jam sandwich ... I might just try that in a new ice cream recipe! Watch this space :)