Find of the week: Russian apple pastila
I’ve just discovered that incredible Russian delicacy, a kind of marshmallow made with sourish apples instead of sugar and beaten egg whites, a real treat.
It’s autumn – time to sloe down and make gin
Epping Forest Sloe Gin recipe
-450g sloes
-225g sugar
-1 litre of gin
Go on a nice walk no earlier than after the first frost, pick up sloe berries.
Once home, wash and dry the sloe, and frieze it so that you don’t have to prick them later
(life is too short too make tiny holes in hundred of small berries!)
Put the berries, sugar and gin together in a sterilised bottle. At this stage you may want to add a vanilla pod or an organic orange peel (unless you like the idea of pesticide in your foraged sloe Gin?)
Give it a good shake and forget about it for a while, only lightly swirling it every other day
for two weeks, after that another light swirl from time to time will do.
After at least a month, strain your gin through a muslin cloth into another sterilised bottle.
Voilà, you can label & enjoy.
The stylist with a Pearl Earring
It’s always a treat to work with a great stylist. Gotal Ryam, pictured here, does mainly fashion sets and we’ve worked on a few lookbooks together. Shot in a former hospital in Central London, we defined the series as portraits within architecture;
I’ll show some images here later!
A spa with no walls
While shooting an entirely different project at the Sanderson Hotel in Central London a few weeks ago, I came across the incredible wall-less Agua Spa. The whispering receptionist was kind enough to take me through the 10,000 square-foot haven of tranquility cocooned in miles of diaphanous white curtains. The soft and warm light contributes to creating a dreamy and almost cloud-like ambiance.
