Environmental Leadership and "Squashed Fly" Biscuits

I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death.

Extract Wikiquote. From G.M. Treelyan, Garibaldi's Defense of the Roman Republic (1907-1911)

I grant you, it's not your average start to a recipe blog, but my head this past week or so has been consumed by leadership. Specifically environmental leadership. Perhaps it is because I collaborated with writers who wrote a story on Vocal called The Scorn of Mother Nature. Maybe it is because I attended a local Eco-Poetry workshop and wrote a poem for their Ted Hughes' Iron Man collection. Perhaps it is because I return to work after a week off tomorrow, and my consciousness is already weaving the threads of how I will move my shop forward this coming financial year.

Likely, it is all of these things.

Right now, I am sitting at my kitchen table typing my thoughts while the biscuits I have just made are baking in the oven. The room is full of a warm, lightly sweet, buttery aroma, which completely belies their colloquial school name, "squashed fly biscuits." I am laughing as I type this because, as with most things out of the mouths of babes, the currants do look like a filling of squashed flies. I think they are more enduring because of this name. It makes them fun. Which is absurd really because, as I read their history on thebiscuitbaron.co.uk I learn that they were invented by Jonathan Dodgson Carr of the once Great British Bermondsey Biscuit Company, Peek Freens, to honour the unification of Italy, a feat hugely enabled by the man who gave us the quote I opened with, Giuseppe Garibaldi. Now, that doesn't sound anywhere near as fun as the schoolyard name. However, I did laugh at the title of The Biscuit Baron article, The History of the Garibaldi: No One's Favourite Biscuit. Looking at the infamous quote above from Garibaldi, I think he would have approved of their title. Thinking about it, he would probably have approved of the "squashed fly" association, too.

Our times are so different these days from when Garibaldi rallied a nation to unify. We are quite rightly consciously focused on the rights of every life on our planet. We can no longer drag people into battles and expect them to incur poverty and hardship. I wonder, would any goal justify that means?

Saving the planet from ourselves- would that?

All I know is I have some lovely biscuits currently cooling on my kitchen island to the side of me. I have a poem that makes me cry when I read it (added below), and I have a large cup of tea in my favourite yellow sunshine mug waiting to be savoured with a golden, crunchy, buttery, fruit-laden biscuit that is apparently nobody's favourite.

Cheers!

The Recipe:

Heat oven to 180/350

Put all of this into a small mixer and pulse to breadcrumbs:

2 cups plain/all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/3 cup of caster sugar

3/4 cup unsalted butter cubed.

Then add enough milk into the opening in the mixer, a little at a time, until it binds together.

Place onto a floured surface and roll into a rectangle that is around 4mm thick. (No need to chill the pastry).

Cover one half of the rolled pastry completely with currants, and fold the other half on top, and roll out again into a big rectangle.

Use a pastry brush to paint an egg, and milk wash over the top lightly.

Sprinkle with a little sugar.

Trim to neaten using a pizza cutter and then slice into equal fingers.

Put on a lined baking tray and bake for 20 mins. Checking and turning if needed.

They should be a golden brown colour when they emerge.

Leave to cool and savour every bite because they are a light, buttery joy regardless of what people say.

Enjoy,

CJ xx

P.S. - That poem...