Recipe: Easter rabbit biscuits

Studded with juicy currants and scattered with caster sugar, these biscuits would make an alternative sweet treat when chocolate eggs are beginning to cloy. Who says you can’t eat the Easter bunny?

MAKES 14
120g unsalted butter, softened
80g golden caster sugar, plus more to sprinkle
1 egg, separated
200g plain flour, plus more to dust
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1⁄2 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
80g currants
1 tbsp whole milk 

TOOLS
10cm rabbit cutter, or other shape

1 Line two baking trays with baking parchment. Using a food mixer or a large bowl with hand-held electric whisk or wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugar together and beat in the egg yolk. Sift in the flour, spices and salt. Stir in the currants and milk to make a pliable dough. Do not over-mix, or the biscuits will become tough. Wrap in cling film and chill for 30 mins.Preheat the oven to 190C/Fan 170/375F.
2 Lightly flour a work top and a rolling pin and roll the dough out to 5-6mm thick. Cut biscuits out quite close together. You need to press down hard to cut through the currants! Re-roll the dough and cut out the
biscuits until all the dough is used. (At this point, you can freeze the cut-out biscuits.) Place on the baking trays and bake in the preheated oven for about 10 mins.
3 Remove from the oven, brush each biscuit with a little ofthe egg white and sprinkle with caster sugar. Return to the oven for 5–7 mins, until golden. If you’ve used a smaller cutter, bear in mind that the baking time will be slightly less than for these 10cm-long rabbits,
so keep an eye on them.
4 Leave on the tray for a few mins to harden a bit, then carefully remove to cool on a wire rack. These will keep well in an airtight container for a few days.

Recipe taken from Seasonal Baking by Fiona Cairns (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, £17). This recipe was originally published in The Simple Things for Easter 2015.

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Sponsored post | La Vialla

Organic Italian food has never been so delicious thanks to pioneering biodynamic farm La Vialla

How often do you sit down with a great bowl of pasta and a fine glass of wine and know precisely what you’re eating? Knowing where your food comes from and exactly what’s in it is a luxury that’s largely been wiped out by mass production. Fattoria La Vialla offers a (wonderful) way back to products and ingredients that are big on taste, small on waste and come from an ethical, family-run company.

This farm and wine estate in the Chianti area of Tuscany is run by three brothers, Antonio, Bandino and Gianni Lo Franco. Fattoria La Vialla is a role model for biodynamic farming on a large scale: its 1,600 hectares are home to vineyards, olive groves, vegetable gardens and pastures, as well as crop fields. Around half of the site is preserved as forest that helps to offset the farm’s already low CO2 output, making La Vialla carbon neutral. As a pioneering enterprise that marries sustainability with preserving cultural heritage, the farm is a focus for various university research projects.

Ethical credentials, however, do not a nice bowl of pasta make. Luckily, the proof of La Vialla’s methods is in the tasting. You can buy La Vialla’s wines, sauces, pasta, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino cheese and honey online direct from the farm. Wines are low in sulphites; sauces have few ingredients and no added preservatives, and its oils, vinegars and pastas are reassuringly – and deliciously – rustic.

To find out more, visit lavialla.it/uk.

WIN A HAMPER

Now, La Vialla is offering readers of The Simple Things the chance to win one of their hampers, chock full of delicious organic Tuscan food and drink. The competition is online at thesimplethings.com/blog/lavialla.

More from our May issue…

Playlist: Songs About Cats

Listen at thesimplethings.com/blog/catplaylist

All join in

In the interests of fairness, next month’s playlist is Songs About Dogs. Do you have a favourite? Tell us on Facebook, @thesimplethingsmag, and it might be included next time.

More from our May issue…

More of our playlists…

Competition | Win an Italian Hamper from Fattoria La Vialla

The Simple Things has teamed up with La Vialla Farm to give five readers a food hamper worth £83

We discovered Fattoria La Vialla a few years ago completely by chance and completely fell in love

with their booklet full of delicious fare that took us straight to the hills of Tuscany.

Fattoria La Vialla is a family run agricultural Farm and Wine estate comprising 30 or so hill top

farmhouses and is situated in the Chianti Tuscan countryside near Arezzo.

Since 1978 the Lo Franco family has looked after its terrain and reared animals, employing biodynamic methods of cultivation throughout its production.

Wine, extra virgin olive oil, pecorino cheese, pasta, sauces, jams and biscuits and typical desserts,

are made in its artisan workshops and the guests can assist in its daily production.

La Vialla and its flavours are what some would call ‘forgotten’ flavours. The care and

conservation of the land and its produce is in the hands of the Lo Franco family and its workers –

who for affection, dedication or for mere pleasure are known as the ‘Viallini’. Research into recipes

from the past, avant garde development projects, environmentally friendly technology and energy

saving are all an integral part of the production process.

All the products are available in the UK exclusively online at www.lavialla.it or at their Farm shop in Tuscany.

WIN!

Now, La Vialla is offering readers of The Simple Things the chance to win one of five hampers, chock full of delicious, organic Tuscan food and drink, and each worth £83. Simply click on the button below and answer the following question:

Q: Since which year have the Lo Franco family looked after the La Vialla farm?

Terms and conditions

The competition closes at 11.59pm on 20th May 2019. A winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received and notified soon afterwards. The prize cannot be swapped for cash or exchanged. Details of our full terms are online at icebergpress.co.uk/comprules.

More from our May issue…

Game: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Puzzler

Match the children who visited the factory to their grisly, confectionery fates

Here’s a little brainteaser for Easter. Five children won Golden Tickets to visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. But can you match the child to their fate in the plot? Scroll down for the solution.

1 Augustus Gloop

2. Verruca Salt

3. Mike Teavee

4. Violet Beauregarde

5. Charlie Bucket

a) Becomes a giant blueberry

b) Inherits the factory

c) Is declared to be a ‘bad nut’ by the squirrels in the nut room and thrown down a rubbish chute

d) Falls into the chocolate river and is sucked up the pipe into the fudge room’s mixing machine

e) Is shrunk by a miniaturisation machine and then stretched back in the gum stretching room, but leaves the factory 10 feet tall.

In our April issue, our Outing feature is all about chocolate. While you sadly can’t visit Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory yourself, you can visit the Cadbury factory (pictured above) that inspired Dahl. Just don’t go drinking from the chocolate river.

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Answers: 1d; 2c; 3e; 4a; 5b

More from our April issue…

Chocolatey recipes for big kids…

Cake-off: English vs American muffins

There’s certainly nuffin like a muffin. But which one would win in a duel? We investigate

They say to-may-toe and we say to-mar-toe; they aren’t too embarrassed to ask for a doggy bag for their expensive restaurant dinner and we would rather starve for a month; we have Proper Cheese and they… well, we’ll say no more. But still, that famous ‘special relationship’ endures. Muffins though. We’re never going to agree on those. Ours are a sort of dense bread roll, with flat tops and bottoms, rolled in semolina flour for a crispy edge. Theirs are veritable cakes, often served in a paper case and with toppings and flavours galore.

So, here at The Simple Things, we thought we should settle this once and for all and pit the English muffin against its American counterpart in five categories. En garde!

Texture

Well it’s no competition really. The American muffin is obviously a cake, so springy and soft it may be but there’s nothing like the bite on a toasted English muffin with its crunchy semolina floured surface. At the end of the day it’s a chewier bread-based item and in yeast we trust.

Flavour

We have to hand it to our American friends here, we love the flavour of an English muffin but you can’t chuck handfuls of chocolate, banana or blueberries in an English muffin. Well, you can, but it would be a waste.

Style

Again, the American muffin takes it. Basically it’s a giant cupcake, isn’t it? And we all know how show-offy cupcakes have become over the last two decades. This just goes one better. We sort of stand behind the plucky, salt-of-the-earth English muffin on this one, but it has to be said the English muffin is Woman’s Weekly to the American muffin’s Vogue.

Comfort factor

You’ve come in from a cold walk, you’ve put the kettle on the stove, built a fire and got a blanket and a good book. What are you having with it? It’s not a blueberry muffin is it? It’s a lovely English muffin sliced in half, toasted and slathered with butter. Especially on the black too-toasty bits.

Flexibility

Can you eat an American muffin with either lashings of butter and strawberry jam or under a couple of perky poached eggs, wilted spinach and a huge dollop of Hollandaise sauce? Can you jiggery. The English muffin wins hands down in the flexibility stakes. It makes a fancy breakfast, an easy lunch and a satisfying teatime snack. Also good with mature cheddar, melted or not, prosaic butter and marmite or a hundred other fancy toppings. The English muffin is a flavour vehicle in its infinite variety.

So there we have it. English muffins win. But to show we’re not bad sports, we’ve featured a delicious Rye, Buckwheat and Fruit breakfast muffin in our April issue’s Cake in the House. The recipe is from Nourish Cakes by Marianne Stewart (Quadrille). Photography: Catherine Frawley. The April issue is in shops now.

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More from our April issue…

More bakes to inspire…

What do memories smell like?

Why your nose is the door to nostalgia

Ever sniffed the air in a good bakery and been transported instantly back to sitting by your grandmother’s Aga? Or walked into a primary school and found the smell of utilitarian floors and Dettol made you feel six again?

It’s really more surprising if this hasn’t happened to you, as smell is the most evocative of all our senses. Because our language is not so rich in words to describe smells as it is sights or sounds, they are harder to pinpoint and describe but smells work more efficiently with our brains to evoke memories than anything we see or hear.

The US journal Cerebral Cortex found that the reason for this is that our brains log smells away in the area used for storing long-term memories. In fact, we are able to recall twice as many memories when they are associated with a smell as when they aren’t.

This will be why shops and would-be house vendors bake bread - in hopes of transporting you to a time when you felt safe and at home, hoping your purse will fall open during this reverie. Too bad if your mum only ever bought Hovis and the only time you smelled bread in the oven was at your most-disliked aunt’s house…

And it’s true, smell can evoke very negative memory responses too. The scent of an ex-boyfriend’s brand of aftershave might make you feel heartbroken (or just furious) all over again, 20 years after he dumped you for Carol with the bad perm.

Whether smells take you back to happy times or upsetting ones, we’ve been fascinated this month by what smells evoke strong nostalgic responses in you. The Simple Things staff listed everything from specific brands of shampoo, to cut grass to horse manure among theirs! We’d love you to share yours with us in the comments below, too.

If you’d like to learn more about the power of scent, in our April issue, our ‘Know a Thing or Two’ feature is all about essential oils. It’s in the shops now. Just don’t go down the bakery aisle while you’re there or who knows what you’ll come back with. Freshly baked apple puff, anyone?

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More things to make you think…

Recipe: Wild garlic soup

Ramsons, or wild garlic, makes for easy foraging. Around now, damp woodland becomes carpeted in bright green leaves, the air heavy with its savoury aroma. If you can’t find any wild garlic, you can replace it with watercress, young nettles (wear gloves when harvesting – the sting will go when cooked!), spinach, kale or chard. 

Wild garlic soup

25g butter
2 potatoes, diced
1 onion, chopped
1 litre chicken or vegetable stock
2 large handfuls of wild garlic leaves, washed and roughly chopped
110ml regular or double cream
Crusty bread, to serve

1 Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium heat. When foaming, add the potatoes and onion, and toss in the butter until well coated, then season with salt and pepper. Turn the heat down, cover the pan and cook for 10 mins or until vegetables are soft, stirring regularly so that the vegetables don’t stick and burn.
2 Next, add stock and bring to a rolling boil, then add the wild garlic leaves and cook for 2 mins or until the leaves have wilted. Don’t overcook or it will lose its fresh green colour and flavour.
3 Immediately pour into a blender and blitz until smooth, then return to the clean pan, stir in the cream and taste for seasoning.
4 Serve hot with crusty bread.

COOK’S NOTE: Harvest garlic leaves between March and May before the plant flowers. Be mindful and pick a little here and there. Wild garlic looks similar to the poisonous lily of the valley so always crush the leaves and check for the smell of garlic before picking.

Recipe from Recipes From My Mother by Rachel Allen (Harper Collins). 

If you’ve got a lust for something green and pungent after that you won’t want to miss the start of our new foraging series, Finders Keepers, by Lia Leendertz (first part in our April issue, in shops now). Foraged crops are free, abundant and flavourful. All you need do is get yourself to a good spot at the right time, basket and secateurs in hand, and you have some of the best crops available. Through the foraging seasons of spring, summer and autumn, we’ll show you where to find these crops, how to pick them, and ways to turn them into delicious dishes. This month’s pages include a fabulous recipe for wild garlic, nettle and broad bean frittata that has already gone in our best recipes notebook.

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More from the April issue:

More wild garlic recipes:

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View the sampler here

How to: speak 'Rabbit'

Want to learn to understand these furry friends a little better? Twitch your nose twice for ‘yes’

Rabbits are creatures of few words, so, in honour of spring, we’ve put together this short guide to interpreting your pet rabbit’s innermost thoughts. The guide works for wild rabbits, too, but we’d be surprised if you got close enough to any wild rabbits to read their body language. Without further ado, here’s a guide to speaking rabbit, or ‘Leporid in Translation’, if you will…

Rabbit: Turns her back on you, or flicks her back legs towards you as she hops away.

English: I’m furious with you. What you’re seeing here is the rabbity hump. Be afraid.

Rabbit: Clicks her teeth.

English: I’m happy. What? You don’t click your teeth when you’re happy?

Rabbit: Grunts.

English: Leave me alone. I want some me-time.

Rabbit: Throws herself on her side.

English: I might look like I’ve fainted, in fact I’m just so chill I’m horizontal.

Rabbit: Pokes you with nose.

English: What does a girl have to do to get a nice stroke around here?

Rabbit: Ears flat back to head.

English: All is good in my world.  

Rabbit: Ears standing up straight.

English: I’m freaked out. Something here isn’t right. I’ve got a Mr MacGregorish feeling in my waters.

Rabbit: One ear back and one up straight.

English: I’m concerned something is amiss but I’m not sure. I’ll hedge my bets.

Rabbit: Binkies. (Does a little twisty jump in the air).

English: I’m so ecstatic, it’s like all my Carrotmases have come at once.

So now you know. If you want to read more about rabbits and why we think they are magical creatures, buy our April issue, in shops now.

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More Spring Things to inspire…

More from our April issue…

Make: an upcycled hanging tomato planter

Repurpose a plastic bottle and have tomatoes hanging around all summer

This simple project can be done in an hour and you’ll have cherry tomatoes dangling temptingly by the back door ready for salads all summer long. We recommend you make lots and hang them together in bunches. Green plastic bottles look most attractive if you have them but any will do.

You will need:

Used plastic bottles, between two and four litres

Cherry tomato plant seedlings

Masking tape

Hole punch

Knife

Strong twine

Soil

1 Clean your plastic bottles, removing any labels. Carefully cut away the bottom of the bottle.

2 Seal over the jagged edge with masking tape; then, using the hole punch, make four holes in the tape, one on each side of the bottle.

3 With the mouth of the bottle facing down, insert your tomato seedling and carefully work the plant into the mouth. Then spread the root ball out inside the bottle.

4 Fill the bottle three-quarters full with compost.

5 Thread your twine through the holes and tie securely together.

6 Hang somewhere sunny and water really regularly.

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More garden hacks…

Jaunt: the Isle of Wight

This is our island in the sun(shine, turning cloudy through the afternoon)

You can take your Canaries and your private Caribbean islands; they’re nice if you just want sun sea and sand. And much as we love some wild wilderness, you can keep your Hebrides and your Orkneys; lovely for a bit of alone time and drama, but a bit, well, unfestive for a jolly holiday.

But the Isle of Wight is hard to beat. As a holiday resort, he island has come in for some criticism in recent years. Perhaps poshos indulge it for Cowes Week, but its seaside proms, amusements and crazy golf courses might be seen as a little infra dig in some circles. We say hurrah to that - more jolly Isle of Wight fun for us, and they’re missing the best of the island.

There can’t be many places that you can visit as a child and return 30-odd years later to find nothing has changed - in a good way. But the island is one of them. In some of the chocolate box villages, you could be walking into the 1950s. It also has some of the best of the UK’s beaches, rolling countryside and top-notch eateries.  And the best thing about it is that wherever you happen to visit that morning, if you tire of it you can simply jump in the car - or on the wonderful train line serviced by ex-London Underground cars dating back to 1938, and rocket across the island to a different venue. No, wait - the very best thing about it is that you get to go on a ferry ride, making it feel like you are truly leaving real life behind and jetting off to foreign climes… and yet it only takes about 45 minutes.

In our April issue our ‘My Neighbourhood’ feature takes us on a tour of the Isle of Wight and it had us all just itching to jump onto a Red Funnel ferry immediately and be pouring coloured sand into glass lighthouses and eating fish and chips by an open fire by lunchtime. So we’ve been thinking about famous fictitious journeys to the Isle of Wight. Here’s our round-up of our favourites.

The couple in ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’ by The Beatles.

In this whimsical imagining of how a relationship would pan out years from the present, the singer hopes: ‘Every summer we can rent a cottage in the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear… We shall scrimp and save.’ Well. Don’t go in Cowes Week, but off peak, you should be fine. Vera, Chuck and Dave (the grandchildren on their knee) might have to stay behind if it’s school term time, though.
Sadly, The Fab Four never actually crossed the Solent together to play, but we think of the Isle of Wight as a very Beatles place to have a jolly still.

Martha in Julian Barnes’s England England

In the second part of this tripartite novel, Martha is employed by Sir Jack Pitman who wants to turn the Isle of Wight into a huge theme park called England England, which replicates all of the country’s best known historical buildings, sites and people, to save tourists the bother of traipsing around the whole of England itself. Genius.

The films Mrs Brown and Victoria and Abdul

Both were filmed at Osborne House on the island. Perhaps no great surprise since Osborne House was summer home to Queen Victoria for the last 50 years of her reign. But she had a lovely time apparently. Loved the crazy gold at Shanklin.

Day of the Triffids

Saving our favourite IOW appearance for last… Day of the Triffids. In the John Wyndham 1950s Sci-Fi novel, the characters flee the mainland and set up a new colony on the island, safe from the ravages of the giant man-eating plants. The island is actually a real-life safe haven for unusual flora and fauna today, from the red squirrel and Granville Fritillary butterfly to narrow-leaved lungwort and Early Gentian. Just don’t pick the flowers - they might bite back!

For more on the Isle of Wight buy our April issue, in shops now.

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More from our April issue…

Other jaunts to tickle your fancy…

Recipe: Ploughman's scones

Cheesy scones. With cheese… What? This is fine.

We’re big fans of a Ploughman’s Lunch here at The Simple Things. And, while you might think the story of The Ploughman’s would be something of a pastoral, in fact it’s something more prosaic altogether.

Of course, farming types have been slinging a cloth filled with bread, a hunk of cheese and an apple in their bags for centuries. But it was The Cheese Bureau which first germinated the idea. The Bureau wrote in its monthly bulletin in 1956 that it “exists for the admirable purpose of popularising cheese and, as a corollary, the public house lunch of bread, beer, cheese and pickle. This traditional combination was broken by rationing; the Cheese Bureau hopes, by demonstrating the natural affinity of the two parties, to effect a remarriage”. To be honest, we’re just thrilled to hear there is such a thing as The Cheese Bureau and we’re wondering if we can arrange some work experience with them… We digress.

The Cheese Bureau clearly made sterling efforts to put the component part of a Ploughman’s back on the pub table. But it was The Milk Marketing Board which picked up the idea in the 1960s and ran with it, coining the phrase ‘Ploughman’s Lunch’ to describe this combination of bread, cheese, apple (and, one hopes, a huge brown pickled onion and a stick of crunchy celery). The Ploughman’s Lunch was hoped to boost the sale of cheese, particularly through pubs and it worked a treat. We’re still eating Ploughman’s Lunches with gusto half a century later.

So, in the spirit of entrepeneurship, in our April issue’s Gathering, we have this jolly little recipe for Ploughman’s Scones. We recommend you serve them stuffed with cheese and chutney alongside an apple and a pickled onion or two.

The Ploughman’s Scones are part of our Any-Time Tea Party feature by Catherine Frawley, which also includes recipes for Hot Cross Bun Loaf, Mini Egg Rocky Road, Mini Victoria Sponges and Marshmallow Pops. Make it for an Easter treat or just, you know, any time. The recipes are in our April issue, which is in the shops now.

Makes 10–12

225g self-raising flour, plus extra to dust

1 tsp baking powder 55g butter, cubed

125g cheddar, grated

60ml milk, plus extra to glaze to serve

Cheddar cheese

Branston pickle

1 Preheat oven to 200C/Fan 180C/ Gas 6 and line a baking sheet with baking parchment.

2 Sift the flour, baking power and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Add the butter and rub with your fingertips until you have a breadcrumb mixture.

3 Gently mix in 100g grated cheese, make a well in the centre, then pour in the milk slowly, mixing until you have a soft but firm dough.

4 Dust the work surface with flour and roll the dough to about 2cm thick. Using a 5cm cutter, cut out your scones, re-rolling and cutting the remaining dough, until it’s all used.

5 Place the scones on the baking tray, brush with milk and sprinkle with the remaining grated cheese. Bake for 12–15 mins or until golden brown. Leave to cool on a rack, then serve with slices of cheddar and pickle.

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More from our April issue…

More afternoon tea recipes…

March: a final thought

Photography: Catherine Frawley

Please enjoy our back page chalkboard message and a seasonal haiku

Our ‘Seek’ issue has been a veritable romp through spring sights, quirky curiosities and all sorts of magical things that you only spot when you’re really looking. We hope you’ve enjoyed it as much as we have.

Here’s a March haiku in homage to all that. Do have a go at your own and leave it in the comments below. We send a lovely book to the author of our favourite each month.

Light, bright mornings and

A breath of bulbs on the air.

Spring is really here.

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More from our March issue…

More inspiration from our chalkboard…

British Summer Time: a brief history

When you put your clocks forward this Sunday spare a thought for the man who began it all

Talk of adopting different times in summer has been discussed since ancient times and Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding father’s of the United States even mooted the idea of everyone getting up a bit earlier in summer. Franklin is often credited with being the inventor of daylight saving but in fact, the chap we really have to thank is one William Willett of Chislehurst, Kent.

Willett was out riding his horse early one summer’s morning in Petts Wood, he noticed how many blinds were still down and began mulling the idea of daylight saving.

In 1907 he published a pamphlet called ‘The Waste of Daylight’, in which Willett proposed that all clocks should be moved forward by 20 minutes at 2am each Sunday in April and then back by 20 minutes at 2am each Sunday in September. It’s not a bad idea, and does negate the loss of a large chunk of sleep on ‘move the clocks’ day in Spring. Though we’d be quite sad to lose our extra hour in bed come October, it must be said.

Progress was slower than a watched clock, however, and by the time Willett’s plan was gaining the required support, World War I was on the horizon.

So eventually, it was not until 1916 that the Summer Time Act was passed, introducing British Summer Time as being GMT plus one hour and Dublin Mean Time plus one hour.

Sadly, and rather ironically, this came too late for William Willett who died in early 1915. If only he could have turned the hands of the clocks back just a little more.

Since 2002 the Act has specified the last Sunday in March as the beginning of British Summer Time. We’ll miss the hour in bed but like Willett, we’ll be glad of the extra light evenings. We might even take our horses for a little trot around the village in the semi-light dawn to celebrate.

In our March issue, our regular ‘Analogue’ feature is about a horologist and her love of clocks and watches. The issue is on sale now.

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More from our March issue

More history to think about…

Five plants for making allotment booze

Advice from the Two Thirsty Gardeners, Richard and Nick on what to grow to stock an allotment pub

In our March issue we have an inspiring feature with two chaps known as The thirsty Gardeners. Here we share their ideas for what to plant for allotment tipples and how best to use it.

NETTLES Harvest a kilo of young nettle leaves and simmer in a large pan of water for 10 minutes. Strain the liquid into a bucket, add 3 cups of demerara sugar, the zest and the juice of 3 lemons, then cover. When cooled, add ale yeast and ferment for 3 days before storing in expandable plastic bottles. It’ll be ready to drink a week after bottling – it tastes like a zingy, herbal ginger beer.

MARROW Hollow out the insides of a large marrow from one end, and stuff it with 2½ cups of demerara sugar, a 3cm piece of ginger, 1 tbsp black treacle and the juice of 1 orange. Add red wine yeast. Stand the marrow upright in a bucket. After 4 weeks, poke a hole in the base of the marrow and collect the liquor. Pour into a fermentation jar, fit an airlock and allow fermentation to finish before bottling (around 2 weeks). You’ll get a rummy brew to impress guests.

BEETROOT To make Eastern European beet kvass, place 500g of washed, peeled and chopped beetroot in a fermenting bucket, along with a scant cup of sugar, the juice and zest of 2 lemons, a toasted slice of rye bread (yes, really) and a pinch of caraway seeds. Add ale yeast and leave to ferment quietly for 4 or 5 days. Strain and store in bottles for 2 weeks to mature. The resulting beverage is mildly alcoholic, with a unique, sour tang.

HORSERADISH Scrub, peel and chop a cupful of horseradish root. Add 15 black peppercorns and a spoonful of honey and pour into a jam jar, with a 70cl bottle of vodka. Let marinate for around 3 days before straining and serving.

ROSEMARY Use a sprig or two to liven up a G&T. A stripped rosemary stalk also makes an ideal cocktail muddler

Read more from the Two Thirsty Gardeners in our March issue, in shops now.

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More from The Two Thirsty Gardeners…

More from our March issue…

How to: build a woodland den

Find a likely looking spot with a few decent branches and an afternoon’s fun beckons

1 Find somewhere with plentiful natural debris (dead leaves, pine needles, ferns, bark, grasses). Avoid areas with water or where you can see animal tracks running through.

2 Build facing downwards, using a long branch as a ridge pole. Prop one end into the crook of a tree (or create a support from branches). Slope the pole downwards diagonally, propping the other end onto a stone.

3 Add ‘rib’ branches coming off your ridge pole. Use twigs to create a lattice. Don’t forget to leave a way in.

4 Layer inside with your debris (the driest and softest stuff) – leaving enough space to just be able to lay inside. If you twist handfuls of bracken before placing them they’ll have more staying power.

5 Cover outer framework with more layers of natural debris, until at least 60cm thick.

6 Once you’re inside, fill the doorway by pulling in more debris. Sleep well!

This how to was featured in this month’s March miscellany. The issue is on sale now if you’d like to read more.

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More from the March issue…

More miscellany…

Competition | Win a boating holiday worth £1,000

All aboard for your chance to win a luxury boating escape courtesy of ABC Boat Hire

How much do you know about Britain’s canals? Boating holidays bring a whole new perspective to the UK countryside, giving you access to waterside towns and villages, a quieter way to travel and a whole lot of wildlife along the way. A real departure from everyday life, it can feel like a big deal, but actually, with ABC Boat Hire, you can dip your toe in with a short boating break. The boating holiday experts offer everything from three-night to two-week getaways.

Exploring the UK’s best inland waterways, adopting a slower pace of life and relishing the adventure that comes with making a boat your home for a few days, a boating holiday is an idea worth getting on board with. All ABC boats come with comfortable berths and modern amenties – even on-board wifi!

With almost 200 boats, 16 start points and over 1,500 miles of waterways to explore, it’s time to start planning your best holiday yet.

YOUR CHANCE TO WIN

Enter this month’s competition and you could win a short break with ABC Boat Hire. You can pick your route, from selected start bases in England or Wales, and bring along up to seven guests on your eight-berth boat. Choose from either a three-night weekend break or four-night escape mid week. It’s a brilliant prize worth up to £1,000. All the cue you need to plan your next adventure…

HOW TO ENTER

To be in with a chance of the prize click below to enter and answer the question: How many start points do ABC Boat Hire have?

Terms & conditions:

The competition closes at 11.59pm on 8 May 2019. A winner will be selected at random from all correct entries received and notified soon afterwards. The prize is a self-drive, self-catering canal boat holiday with ABC Boat Hire for up to 8 people. The winner can choose either 3 nights, Friday to Monday, or 4 nights, Monday to Friday, from selected start bases in England or Wales. You can’t swap the prize for cash, and travel to and from your start point is not included.

The prize includes bed linen, towels, fuel and damage waiver, and a breakfast hamper to the value of £30 prior to departure. There must be a minimum crew of two adults (18+) to operate the boat safely. The prize must be taken by 26 October 2019, subject to availability.

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Sponsored post: Abel & Cole's Crab Spaghetti

Bring coastal cheer to a midweek supper with help from our friends at Abel & Cole

You'll know all about wild, foraged foods if you've leafed through the latest edition of The Simple Things. In fact, if you hold your ear close to Abel & Cole’s wild coastal mix, you just might hear the lapping of the waves. This seasonal selection of freshly-foraged greens are the perfect accompaniment to a crab spaghetti, rustled up in double-quick time.

Quick Crab Spaghetti with Wild Sea Vegetables

This supper is like the seaside on a plate, starring a mix of wild foraged sea veg – including samphire, all gathered specially for us – which go swimmingly with sweet Cornish crab, stirred into a buttery pasta sauce with a pinch of chilli heat.

Ingredients

• 80g wild coastal mix from Abel & Cole

• 2 garlic cloves

• 1 lemon

• A handful of flat leaf parsley, leaves only

• 200g spaghetti

• 45g butter

• A pinch or 2 of dried chilli flakes

• 100g white crab meat

• Freshly ground pepper

• 50g watercress

• 1 tbsp aged balsamic vinegar

Method

1. Put a large pan of water on to boil. Give the sea veg a good wash. Peel and finely chop the garlic cloves. Finely grate the zest from the lemon. Pick the parsley leaves from their stalk and roughly chop them (discard the stalks or keep them to go in your stockpot).

2. When the water in the pan is boiling, add the sea veg. Simmer for 3 mins, then scoop them out of the water and pop them aside in a colander to cool for a min. (See our tip for what to do with each type of veg, once it’s cool enough to handle.) Set the prepped sea veg to one side.

3. Bring the water back to the boil and add the spaghetti. Simmer for 8 mins till the spaghetti is tender but still with some bite.

4. While the spaghetti simmers, put a deep frying pan on a medium heat for 2 mins, then add the butter and swirl it round the pan till it’s melted. Add the garlic and a pinch or 2 of the chilli flakes (they’re hot, so use as large or little a pinch as you like). Fry, stirring, for 30 secs till the garlic is golden.

5. Flake the crab meat into the pan. Crack in a little black pepper and fry, stirring, for 3 mins. Then add the sea veg and the lemon zest to the pan. Fry, stirring for another 2 mins.

6. The spaghetti should be ready by now. Scoop 1 cup of water out of the pan (mind your fingers). Drain the spaghetti, then add it to the frying pan with the crab. Add around 50ml of the pasta water then toss to mix everything together.

7. Divide the crab spaghetti between 2 warm plates. Serve with handfuls of the watercress on the side, drizzled with 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar.

Playlist | Songs to make you smile

DJ: Clare Gogerty Illustration: Anneliese Klos

Listen at thesimplethings.com/blog/makemesmileplaylist

More from our Playlists DJ…

More from our April issue…

Five favourite fictional frogs

We take a look at some famous amphibious creatures

1. Jeremy Fisher

The daddy of fictional frogs - Beatrix Potter’s dear little amphibian who wore a read coat (a frog coat presumably) and had a near miss with a trout while catching minnows for a dinner party to which he’d invited his good chums Isaac Newton (a newt) and Mr Alderman Ptolemy Tortoise.

2. Kermit the frog

This muppet must be the most famous of all frogs worldwide. With his endearingly skinny legs and rubbery mouth, he lives a much more ‘Hollywood’ life than most of his fellow fictional frogs. But as he’s often said, it’s not easy being green. He uses his fame to good ends though. Here he is taking the ice bucket challenge [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mmax3yEZX58] in 2014.

3. Frog from ‘Frog and Toad’

Arnold Lobel’s fictional friends, Frog and Toad, enjoy simple adventures together such as flying kites, cleaning their homes and providing short stories for early readers. Lobel’s daughter Adrianne has suggested that Frog and Toad were a little more than friends (now we’re wondering about Jeremy Fisher’s chums, too…) and were in fact the beginning of her father coming out. Lobel himself said they represented different parts of himself (the squatter brown part and the leaner green part, perhaps?)

4. The Frog Prince

The tale dates back to Roman times but the best known version is by The Brothers Grimm and tells the story of a princess whose ball is rescued from a well by a frog on the promise that he can be her constant companion. Against her better judgement she is forced by her father to hold good on her promise, but loses her temper with the frog and hurls him against a wall. Whereupon he turns into a prince and they live happily ever after. Note the lack of a kiss in this story; all that schmaltzy nonsense was added much later.

5. Oi Frog!

A recent entry but this is one frog sure to become a classic. The first in a series of rhyming books by Kes Grey and Jim Field features a bossy cat who tells Frog  he must sit on a log because frogs sit on logs. He can’t sit on a stool (mules sit on stools), he can’t sit on a sofa (gophers sit on sofas) and so on. Frog objects to sitting on a log (“They’re all knobbly and give you splinters in your bottom”) but Frog’s day gets worse when he asks what dogs sit on… (no spoilers here but it’s a heck of an ending).

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More appreciating nature…

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