Plum and Ginger Jam

I’ve been making jam this week and it’s absolutely perfect for a last-minute Christmas present.  (Another perfect last-minute present is one of my books, but I’ll leave that up to you!  As well as a Christie for Christmas what about a Haldean for the Holidays…?)

Anyway, back to jam.  I made it in the microwave, and the actual jam-boiling process was dead easy.  It needs to be left to cool down overnight, but once it has cooled, all it needs is a pretty label and there you go!  I “tweaked” a recipe for plum jam, adding some ideas of my own and the result was brilliant.  It’s got an adult, sophisticated taste with real depth to it.  (I know this sounds like dopey food talk, but it’s true!)

The whole process takes about an hour, including chopping the fruit.

Don’t double up the quantities.  If you want more, do the process twice!

To make two one pound jars of plum jam, you’ll need:

2 lbs or 1 kilo of plums.

2  lemons

1½ lbs of jam sugar

1 “finger” from a fresh ginger root



A microwave.

A food processor

2 1lb (or thereabouts) jam jars

Greaseproof/waxed paper circles to go on top of the jam



My microwave is 800 watt (E) but I’m sure any microwave will do.  For a lower wattage you might have to boil the jam for longer, but if it passes the “crinkle” test (described lower down) the jam is done.

Jam sugar is available from supermarkets.  It’s got added pectin, which makes the jam set.

Before you start, sterilise the jars.  Put a little bit of water in both jars and give them a minute or so in the microwave.  Then take them out – carefully! – and put them in a warm oven on a low temperature to dry out and warm up.  If you’re using metal lids, put them in a saucepan and boil them for a little while to sterilise.

Put two saucers in the freezer.  This is to test the jam when it’s cooked and you need two in case the first try doesn’t work

Take the stones out of the plums.  You don’t have to take the skin off but you do need to remove the stones.  Chop the plums into quarters.

Peel the “finger” of the ginger root.  I used the back of my potato peeler, but a blunt knife will do it easily.  The peel slides off and your hands smell wonderful afterwards! Chop the peeled ginger into bits and put it in the food processor.

Peel the lemons and keep the bigger bits of the rind.  Chop the lemons, take out the pips, then whiz up the lemon bits and the ginger together in the food processor.

Put all the fruit, including the lemon rinds, into the microwave (uncovered) for about 6 minutes or so to warm up and start cooking.

Add the sugar and cook, uncovered, on High for 20 to 25 minutes.

Drop a little bit of jam on one of the chilled saucers and leave it to cool for half a minute or so.  If it’s cooked, then it should crinkle and stay separate when you run your finger through it.  Do be careful – boiling jam is very, very hot.  If it’s not done, give it a few more minutes.

Then fill up the warmed jars, discarding the lemon rinds.  Put the paper circles on the top, put the sterilised lids on and turn the jars upside-down for a minute to help the seal along.  Then turn them the right way up and leave them to cool where no one can touch them, as they will be very hot.    If you’re lucky, there’ll be some left over, so put it in a dish, leave it to set, make some toast and enjoy it!

I labelled my jars, packed them in a decorated box on a nest of hay, and they look terrific.  Happy Christmas, everyone!

Off The Record

If you'd like to know more about what lies behind the story of my latest book, OFF THE RECORD, I'm delighted to say that my good friend, Jane Finnis, has invited me as her guest on her blog today to talk about the story behind the story.  Go to www.janefinnis.com

While you're there, do take a look at Jane's books, too.  They're an excellent series of mysteries set in Ancient Roman Yorkshire.  The background is terrific and the stories are gripping. The heroine of all three books, Aurelia, is someone you'll enjoy spending time with.

The picture, by the way, is one I love, depicting  just how attractive and warm those early Radio Days of the world of OFF THE RECORD were.  It's amazing how deceptive a picture can be....

Rudolf Buns And Seeds

You’re looking at a Rudolf bun.  I made about three dozen of them for our church Christmas Fair yesterday and – I’m glad to say – every one of them found a youthful owner!  As you can see, Rudolf has the requisite red nose, which is either due to severe cold (it’s parky up in Finland) or (and this is, perhaps, the reason for Rudolf being shunned by his fellow reindeer) he’s been a bit too free with the Christmas drinks.  Either way, old Rudy makes a very nice bun.

The antlers are made out of toffee. The antlers were bigger, but my Dad dropped the bun and poor old Rudolf suffered a bit. If I was making more Rudolf buns, and especially in the industrial quantities I churned them out, I think I’d use chocolate mint sticks, as the antlers were easily the hardest part. I know reindeers shed their antlers, but , even without Dad's help, Rudy did it a bit too enthusiastically for my liking!  Daughter Jessica roped herself in a fellow deer herdsman and she ran a sort of reindeer antler production line, as I melted the toffee in the microwave and she made antler shapes on a glass worktop with a wooden spatula.

Melting toffee in the microwave is dead easy.  A few toffees melt down in about 30 seconds or so, but put them in a glass Pyrex dish. I melted the bottom out of my plastic bowl very early on in the proceedings!

Still, it was all in a good cause.  I like the Christmas Fair.  It used to be called a Sale of Work years ago, which sounds a bit more earnest than a “fair” but it was always good fun, in that way things are fun when people have genuinely put some effort into things.   I and my friend Liz once starred as Santa’s fairies!  There’s still plenty of home-made stuff to buy, amongst the donations of unwanted gift, old books, DVD's and CD's, such as puddings, cakes and jams but the real money-spinners are the raffles and tombolas, of course.  One cert of a money maker is the whisky raffle, where a ticket is drawn when 20 tickets are sold.  Each ticket costs a pound, the whisky (bought wholesale) is about £10 or £11 a bottle, so that’s about 10 quid profit, there’s a good chance of winning and everyone’s happy!

It’s also a chance to catch up with old friends.  Joe was there, who I haven’t seen for a time.  He’s getting on a bit and has recently been in hospital.  He regaled everyone who would listen, as people are apt to do, with waaaay too much detail about having a camera inserted where the sun doesn't shine and the problems therein.  The trouble is, he’s been eating Healthy Bread.   You know the type – it’s organic and wholemeal and full of seeds.  The doctor operating the camera didn’t like the seeds.  The seeds were still all too visible and obscured the lens.  “All I can see,” said the doctor in reproof, “are seeds.”

“Never mind the seeds,” said Joe.  “Have you found the budgie yet?”

More Harry Potter (with Star Wars relish)

As assiduous readers will know. I went to see the new Harry Potter film last week.  My pal Jane Finnis added a comment to the post which you can see by clicking on “comments”.  Read it? Go on, click on the comments.  Done it?  Fine.  You’ll understand what I’m talking about then.

I must admit that I’ve got a lot of sympathy with Jane’s point of view. There’s always a resistance when the world queues up and tells you absolutely positively without stopping that you have to see/read/buy/go to whatever it is NOW!

It’s that vague resentment of   being bossed about, I think. That  and a innate distrust of propaganda.  Surely, one reflects, I’ve lived this long without absolutely positively without stopping  seeing/reading/buying/going to this life-changing TV programme/film/book/chocolate fire-lighter/amazing gig.  How difficult is it not to continue just doing it?  Besides that, there’s a certain imperious in some sorts of advertising that just puts my back up.  EAT! says the banner of a chain of sandwich shops.  To which, being contrary, I always think, “No, dammit, I won’t.  So there.”

I remember when the first Star Wars film came out.  The hype in Britain was like nothing we’d ever experienced before.  We were bombarded with endless magazine articles, pictures and little plastic models.  It was more like being in on the birth of a new religion than merely a new film coming out.  It was so over the top that a new top had to be invented for it to go over.  I wasn’t that fussed about seeing the film but went along with a group of science-fictioney friends to The Empire, Leicester Square.

And wow.  Believe you me, when the utterly vast space cruiser flew overhead on the big screen and vanished into the back row, somewhere far above our heads, I was totally hooked.  Seeing Star Wars really was more than just seeing another film, no matter how good it was.  It suddenly made you free of a whole new raft of shared cultural references.  A grim boss could be referred to as Darth Vader, if you waited too long to be served in a bar, you could do the Jedi Mind trick (or pretend to, at any rate – how cool would the real thing be!) and say, “Use the Force, Luke!” and everyone would get the reference and laugh. Now, of course, those references are completely embedded. When Radio Four launched a new show which  asked celebs to try a new activity, it was called, without explanation, “I’ve never seen Star Wars”.

That’s what Harry Potter’s like.  When Peter Mandeleson was first sacked from the government (yes, he’s been back and forward ever such a lot of times since!) MP’s in the House of Commons dining-room were heard to rejoice that Voldemort had gone.  If you want to phone someone and can’t get through, it’s fairly commonplace to say you’ll “Send an owl” and everyone knows that we’re technically Muggles.

But… Star Wars was a mega budget film with jaw-dropping special effects. Harry Potter is (just) a book. (Books, I know but don’t quibble.)  And books, pre Harry, were on the way out.  Children, in particular, were thought to have given up on reading, dazzled by the sirens of computer games and TV.  By and large, children's books were about Issues or cartoon-types that talked endlessly about lavatories because toilets (apparently) made kids laugh. Grave academic studies told us that the attention span of the average child had dwindled to slightly less than that of a mentally defective mosquito and words on a page were just boring, innit?  I mean, like, they don’t move or nuffin.  I have, as I’ve mentioned before, there are five junior Gordon-Smiths.  On those golden weekends when a new Harry Potter book was published, the house was deathly quiet, full of five intensely reading children.  Well done, Harry.

Harry Potter

In common with most of the world I went to see the new Harry Potter film at the weekend.  Wow.  It looks fantastic and the acting is brilliant.  It’s hard to pick out the best bits, as it moves like greased lightning and is totally absorbing, but the part when the great snake, Nagini, hurls herself at the audience is a real shocker, then there’s the sheer look of the Ministry of Magic (black, shining and threatening) Snape walking confidently through iron gates which turn to smoke, and the heart-stopping chase as Voldemort and his Deatheaters chase Harry and Hagrid as they escape from Privet Drive.

The story of the Three Brothers where the Hallows come into the story is beautifully done, in a sort of Eastern European paper-cut-out cartoon.  It’s exactly right for that fairy-tale atmosphere.  However, one of the terrific bits of the book is when, after having heard the tale of the legendary Hallows, Harry, Ron and Hermione realise they actually have one of the hallows themselves, the Invisibility Cloak which Harry had owned ever since his first year at school.  The sadness of Luna’s disappearance and the mounting tension and sheer creepiness of her unexplained absence is missing from the film too.  However, you can’t have everything and there’s always the book to re-read.

Speaking of which, I’m sure someone somewhere (perhaps quite a lots of someones somewhere) will be grumbling about the amount of knowledge you have to bring to the film.  Well, yes you do.  If you’ve been living in a box for the last few years and have never heard of Harry Potter, don’t begin here!  It’ll be fairly baffling, so go back to the beginning and read/watch the Philosopher’s Stone.

It’s always hard, with such a well-loved book, to translate it to the screen, as you necessarily miss out on a great deal of the subtlety that makes the book so rewarding.  By and large, less is more, but with Harry Potter, more is actually more. The Deathly Hallows is a long book but you need that many words to make the world live.

And isn’t it interesting?  A book is so personal.  It’s one person with their imagination and a keyboard, conjuring up a world that will take hundreds of people to bring to life on the screen.

Having read and loved the book, it’s really hard to come away from the cinema when the story’s half-told.  I really wanted to carry on, to see the ending.  I was only glad I knew what happened!  Incidentally, if anyone wants to have a master-class in how to write action, read the battle of Hogwarts at the end of the Deathly Hallows.  Action is where film comes into it’s own, of course.  It’s far easier to see a punch than write about it, to show an explosion that to describe it and to keep action going over pages is really hard.  (I know!  Believe me, I know!)  But JK Rowling does it superbly well, so it’s an edge-of-your-seat read that simply keeps on going.

So book or film?  Ah, c’mon, do we really have to choose?  After all, we’ve got both to love!

Off The Record

My big news of the week is that my new book, Off The Record, is out.  My word, it looks good!  And, if you go onto the Books page of the website (use the neat little toolbar at the top) you can see it too.  And, should you fancy it, you can read the first chapter, as well.

It’s called Off The Record because I like bad puns.  Well, I think they’re good puns actually, but the family don’t agree.  Poor old Lucy lost the heel off her boot yesterday and was subjected to about five minutes incessant merriment to the tune of she might not have a heel, but she’s got sole, she’d put her foot in it, etcetera, etcetera.  Anyway, the pun in the title of Off The Record is because the story is woven round the hunt for a workable electrical sound-recording system in the early 1920’s, or, to put it another way, how to make a better gramophone.

Not only do I invent a better gramophone, I invent, with a wave of the pen (or computer keyboard) – this is like Grand Designs only cheaper - an entire Ideal Factory and Ideal Village run by the philanthropist, Charles Otterbourne, who manufactures record-players and, as you’d expect in any story that's got Jack in it, there’s some very rum goings-on in Mr Otterbourne’s life.

I really enjoyed dreaming up Mr Otterbourne’s Ideal Village (it’s all in chapter one – you can read this bit on the Books Page!).  My Dad grew up in the 1930’s in Welwyn Garden City, a new town built by one Ebenezer Howard in the 1920’s, and my Ideal Village is a version of Welwyn.  I know it’s difficult to think of someone called Ebenezer as having the milk of human kindness sloshing around inside him (he sounds like a grasping miser out of Dickens)  but Ebenezer sounds OK.  He had the radical idea that working people might like houses with bathrooms (gasp!) and gardens (double gasp!) and – now he was really spoiling folk – enough space.  This is when the average working class household lived squashed together in a sort of brick-built shed with a shared outdoor loo and a tin bath hung up in the yard.  To add to the idyll, my Granny kept chickens and had an apple tree.  He didn’t like the Demon Drink, though, did old Ebenezer, and every Sunday morning was marked by a procession of men strolling out of Paradise in search of a pub.

One other little nugget in Off The Record (and there are many, believe you me!) is the word Otorhinolaryngological. Can you credit it?  Don’t bother looking in the Oxford English Dictionary, because it’s not there.  It is, however, in the 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica as a footnote to the article on soundwaves.  I giggled myself stupid when I came across that and just had to get it in.  In amongst the Ideal Homes, gramophones and unpronounceable words there’s an awful lot of skulduggery, corpses and impenetrable mysteries and poor old Jack (who has a chance to wear full evening dress – soooo mega cool!) has to do some serious brainwork, to say nothing of falling off the odd roof, before it all becomes clear and order is restored.

Newsflash!  Beth Kanell of Kingdom Books, Vermont (which is a long way from Welwyn Garden City!) emailed me to say that Off The Record features in the USA Library Journal under the title of What’s Hot For Spring 2011. (The American publication date for Off The Record is March 2011) Here’s the link.

http://blog.libraryjournal.com/prepubalert/2010/10/25/what-else-is-hot-spring-2011-mystery

If, however, you’re reading this in the Land Of The Free or elsewhere in the world than Britain and fancy getting hold of a copy of Off The Record now (and why not?) you could try The Book Depository, www.bookdepository.co.uk who have free postage worldwide.  There’s Amazon, too, of course, or you could demand it from the library (go on! Be imperious and demand it!) or, as they say, all good bookshops.

Kindle a row

Incidentally, there’s a huge row going on at the moment with Amazon’s Kindle, because publishers have upped the price of ebooks to the same price as the paper book.  This surely can’t be right.  A paper book is a real thing, an actual object, that needs no technology apart from a pair of eyes to read, and (perhaps) has some re-sale value.

However, not to be unduly lacking in commercial sense, can I point you in the direction of my ebook, Frankie’s Letter?  As I uploaded it to Amazon myself, I was able to choose the price (low! A bargain! Stunning value!) and, which was really nice, had total editorial control.  If you fancy taking a look, there’s a link to the first chapter on the “Books” page of this website which is totally free.