Celebrate the season of gathering by feasting outdoors with friends and family. Claire Thomson creates four delicious recipes that embrace the flavours of autumn
Photos: Jason Ingram
Eating al fresco in autumn is a joy. With the weather still holding out and the days relatively long, this is a terrific time of year to pack up a picnic and make plans for a good stomp in the countryside.
Fortunately for those of us interested in cooking, autumn also happens to be the most fruitful time of the year for produce, with the shops bursting with harvest-time ingredients – gluts in need of gobbling up and produce that requires processing to preserve it for the months ahead.
The following recipes are all ideal dishes to pack for a picnic. The piccalilli here is my mum’s recipe and my fridge is rarely without a jar after I’m allocated my yearly ration; good bread and cheese is all the accompaniment that is needed. The squash and sausage recipe is a chunky, robust salad of sorts to pack for an outdoor lunch and keep everyone well nourished. The sweetcorn fritters are completely delicious when served alongside the plum ketchup. For a sweet treat, the handpies are a pasty of sorts (the caveat being I am not Cornish), made here with a sour-cream pastry and a filling as lovely as it sounds – inky sweet damsons studded with chunks of marzipan. Enjoy.
DAMSON AND MARZIPAN HANDPIES
MAKES 6
150g cold butter, diced 250g plain flour Pinch of salt 3 tbsp demerara or granulated sugar, plus more to sprinkle 25g sour cream 350g damsons, halved and stones removed, or use roughly chopped plums 2 tbsp plum jam, though any jam works 80g marzipan, diced into ½cm pieces 1 egg, beaten with a splash of cold water
1 Place the butter, flour, salt and 3 tbsp sugar in a food processor and pulse briefly until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. If you are making this by hand, use your fingertips to rub the mixture together in a bowl.
2 Add the sour cream and briefly pulse or mix until the dough just comes together. Form the dough into a flat disc, wrap in baking paper and chill for at least 30 minutes before using.
3 Meanwhile, mix the damsons and jam together in a bowl. Add the marzipan and put to one side.
4 Preheat the oven to 210ºC and line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
5 Roll the chilled pastry out to 2cm thickness and use a 16cm circular cutter or small plate to cut out circles. Reroll the scraps and continue cutting out circles until you use all the pastry. You should get six rounds.
6 Place the pastry circles on a lined baking tray and divide the filling between the rounds, he
