Autumn dinner for ‘Harvest Home’
Although it’s felt like Autumn’s been coming on a while now, it doesn’t officially start until 22 September. This is the 2017 date of the Autumn equinox when the sun is exactly above the equator so that day and night are of equal length.
The full moon closest to the equinox is called the Harvest Moon because it’s the end of the farming year when the cereal harvest is brought in and harvesters were able to work by the light of the Moon.
I started thinking about this while putting together a dinner menu suitable for the start of Autumn, so decided not just to highlight some seasonal ingredients but to incorporate some of the themes of harvest. If you want to jump straight to the recipes use the links below, but read on for more about the tradition of ‘Harvest Home’ and why I included these dishes.
Spiced Roasted Butternut Squash & Garlic Soup
One Pot Chicken with Apples & Creamy Cider Sauce
Cinnamon Plum Cake with Hazelnut Crumble Topping
Before the industrialisation of Britain, harvesting of wheat and other cereals such as oats, barley and rye was a massive task, having to take place in a relatively short time. Besides bringing in their own crops, tenant farmers had to help with their landlord’s harvest and groups of labourers also went from farm to farm, working their way around the countryside.
As part payment for the work carried out, farmers would traditionally provide a meal for the workers which was also a celebration of the end of harvest and this meal, often accompanied by drinking, singing, dancing and games, was known as ‘harvest supper’, ‘harvest feast’ or ‘harvest home’. Eventually, these traditional feasts were replaced by the more sedate harvest festival and thanksgiving service organised by the church.
Read my review of a Harvest Dinner menu at Denstone Hall here
Because of the importance of the harvest, lots of folklore came to be associated with it, for example the last sheaf of wheat to be harvested was the centre of a variety of local practices: it might be hung in the house until the next harvest or made into bread after the harvest supper. It was also sometimes woven into a human figure to represent the Harvest Spirit, to be preserved over the winter and ploughed in the following spring in the hopes of having a good harvest.
I think there’s something very appealing about the old traditions and a way of life that had the twin goals of thoroughly enjoying yourself in the here and now but, with one eye on the future, understanding the need to look after the earth sustainably, encapsulated in the old proverb:
‘A farmer should live as though he were going to die tomorrow but farm as though he were going to live for ever’.
When I was devising my Harvest Home meal, I wasn’t aiming for a huge celebratory feast, just some hearty, autumnal dishes with seasonal produce and incorporating a few elements evoking the harvest suppers of old and the cereal crops that farm workers strove so hard to bring in.
For the first course of my harvest dinner, I decided pretty quickly on a soup as that’s exactly what many people crave when the weather turns chillier. Butternut squash is a classic autumn and winter vegetable, first coming into season in September. But butternut squash can also be overly sweet and I wanted something properly savoury so included warming fennel, cumin and coriander seeds in my Spiced Roasted Butternut Squash & Garlic Soup. I think pureed butternut squash needs some added texture too if it’s not to resemble baby food so my soup is topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and fried whole sage leaves.
With a warming soup, it would be churlish not to offer bread. But it’s very fitting too as the harvest is dominated by the bringing in of cereal crops so I included wheat bread and, in honour of the old harvest celebrations seeming to include plenty of alcohol, I adapted my basic Sourdough recipe to include beer and created a Sourdough Beer Bread.
In apple growing regions I’m sure farmworkers would have had cider to drink at their celebrations, so I included it in my main course of One Pot Chicken with Apples & Creamy Cider Sauce British apples are in season right now, so I included Cox apples – some in small dice that meld into the sauce and some in slices near the end. Autumn and early winter was traditionally pig slaughtering time so it’s a bit early for the bacon to be ready, but deeply smokey bacon adds a lovely flavour to the creamy sauce so it went in anyway.
For dessert, I knew I wanted to include seasonal plums and decided to make a cake that could also serve very well as a warm pudding with custard, cream or ice-cream. The result was Cinnamon Plum Cake with Hazelnut Crumble Topping which I thought was a real triumph. Not-too-sweet Marjorie plums kept the cake lovely and moist but with a bit of a tang that contrasted really well with the crunchy topping containing hazelnuts which always speak to me of Autumn.
The only other elements needed to complete my simple but delicious meal were some sauteed kale and broccoli to serve with the chicken and, of course, some beer and cider.
So, nothing left to say except the harvest song:
We have ploughed, we have sowed
We have reaped, we have mowed
We have brought home every load
Hip, hip, hip, Harvest home!
Note: see Ronald Hutton ‘Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain’ for harvest traditions.