Harvest started last week. Then it rained and harvest stopped. As usual, it looks as though it will be a stop start affair.
During harvest, food is eaten on the move; throughout the day and into the night, empty cold boxes are dumped on the shelf in the grain store and fresh ones grabbed (though sometimes quite often I get a phone call because the shelf is bare).
Each year I try to find something new to fill the harvest cold boxes and search magazines and the internet for picnic food ideas. Alas, the beautiful looking feather-light sponge cakes and jelly filled glasses set out on checked tablecloths wouldn’t last two minutes being jolted down the fields in a tractor cab.
Food on the move, whether for harvest workers or a day’s walking needs to be robust and filling. At harvest time, food must be easy to pull from the cold box while waiting on the headland for the next load and just as easy to stuff back quickly if the tractor driver needs to rush down the field to the combine . When walking, I like something that will still look appetising after it’s been squashed in the bottom of my rucksack all day. Old-fashioned foods like Scotch Eggs and slabs of fruit cake with a chunk of cheese fit the bill perfectly, though you might think you’d slipped back a few decades were you to glance into the lunch boxes.
Two other favourites for food on the move are Harvest Bars and Huffers. The harvest bars are an adaptation of Celia’s recipe for Butterscotch Bars and are often requested, even by those who don’t usually like sweet things. Huffers are an Essex peculiarity. Perhaps not the only Essex peculiarity.
Huffers are essentially enormous rolls that hold together far better than sandwiches, which have a tendency to fall apart at the first mouthful. I was told that the Essex huffer gets its name from ‘half a’ loaf, but I may have been having my leg pulled. No matter, you can make these the size of half a loaf or smaller and then split them in half horizontally to fill them to your heart’s content.
At our local pubs, the popular fillings seem to be BLT (bacon, lettuce, tomato) and FEB (full English breakfast). I’ve found FEBMTFE (full English breakfast minus the fried egg) a slightly less messy filling for huffers eaten on the move.
Follow this link for the recipe for Harvest Bars.
The recipe for huffers is given below. Ideally, for an Essex huffer you should use local produce such as Marriages flour and Maldon sea salt, though I don’t suppose they taste any different with substitutions.
ESSEX HUFFERS
200 ml milk
60 g butter, cubed
750 g strong white flour
1½ teasp Doves quick yeast
1½ teasp salt
280 ml cold water
Bring the milk to the boil, stir in the butter until melted and set aside to cool.
Meanwhile, put the flour, yeast and salt into a large bowl.
Add the cold water to your buttery milk and stir the warm (hand temperature) liquid into the flour. When all the flour’s incorporated, cover the bowl with a clean tea towel and leave it for ten minutes, which will make it easier to knead.
Knead until you have a smooth, stretchy dough and then cover and leave to rise in a warm place for about an hour.
When the dough has doubled in size turn it onto a lightly floured work surface, divide in half and make two tight balls. Leave the dough to relax for a minute or so and then roll out into two large rounds about 23 cms diameter.
Cut the rounds into four or six triangles and put into two round 24cm cake tins or onto a greased baking tray. Cover and leave to rise for about 45 minutes.
Sift a little flour over both tins and then bake for 25 minutes at 220C.
Anne, why can’t I like your posts anymore? Have you removed the button?
I am always fascinated when you say it rained during harvest. I don’t know much about farming but I do hear news reports here to the effect that, if it rains at harvest time, the crops are ruined. Is it because we grow a different variety of wheat in Australia than you grow in England? I guess it is much more likely to rain in summer in England than it is in Australia. Maybe our varieties need a dry summer. Life is full of mysteries 🙂
Yes, I’ve disabled the like button – mainly because I’d rather people left a comment and we had a conversation.
August is a wet month here, which means we inevitably get rained off at some point during harvest. The crops deteriorate every time it rains, so for instance our milling wheat may no longer meet the spec and will be downgraded meaning less £. Prolonged rain will undoubtedly ruin the crops so we just hope that the rain will soon pass through and the sun will shine again. That said, rain is forecast for the next couple of days which doesn’t bode well. Heigh ho. Such is life.
Your harvest lunches sound wonderful and perfect for food on the move for busy workers!!
Do you need any help with the harvest?😀I hope you soon have the sunshine you need to get finished.
These seem a relatively simple bread to make.
The biggest help would be if the rain stopped and the sun shone! Bread is simple to make Brian and much, much easier than cake baking.
I like the sound of those Essex Huffers! I will pass the recipe to my breadmaker (husband). Completely agree about wanting solid and substantial food for picnics and eating on the hoof – I often make the old Cranks’ recipes for cheese flapjacks and veggie flapjacks – do you know those, Anne? They are certainly substantial (particularly the cheese ones), and very popular with the whole family – indeed a great way to get them to eat veggies!
I hadn’t heard of cheese flapjacks but it’s been a very wet day here so I googled the recipe and made a batch. They’re very good – though with all that cheese it’s not surprising. Feel a whole new world of savoury flapjacks has now opened up. Thank you!
Now those huffers sound perfect .. what do the workers like them filled with?
Hello Anne. As you know I am always looking for sturdy, movable food also. Isn’t it funny how the sturdiest food seems to be rather old fashioned? I think I might try your huffers, I have re-embraced bread making lately.
I think people in days past weren’t quite so worried about whether food looked pretty so long as it tasted good. Oh, for those pre-Insta days when taste was more important than photographing 🙂