Bakewell

Dan's a Yorkshire boy, and as such one of his favourite puddings is Bakewell Tart. Yet despite it being on the list for quite some time I had never made one.

This weekend I finally put that right. The boy was heading off for a week away for work, so a proper send-off dinner seemed appropriate. And you can't have a proper dinner without a proper pudding.



I took my Bakewell Tart reipe from Tamasin Day-Lewis's Cookery Bible, and it was delicious still warm from the oven, and also lovely cold with a cup of tea when visitors dropped round the next morning.



Here's the recipe:

Bakewell Tart - enough for 6-8 slices

For the filling:
110g Rasberry Jam (preferably homemade)
70g butter
70g ground almonds
70g caster sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon almond essence
10g flaked almonds

For the pastry:
100g plain flour
50g butter
pinch salt

First make your pastry. Runb the cold butter into the flour and salt until it resembles the consistency of breadcrumbs. Mix to a stiff dough with a spoonful of cold water. Wrap in cligfilm and allow it to rest in the fridge for at least half an hour.
Grease a pie tin (approx 16-18cm diameter), roll out the pastry on a floured board and lay it in the tin, letting it slightly overhang the edges.
Return the tin to the fridge for half an hour.

Preheat the oven to 200C. Spread a generous layer of rasberry jam over the pastry base. In a bowl mix together the ground almonds, sugar, vanilla essence and almond essence. Beat in the eggs, mixing well. Then melt the butter over a low heat until it smells slightly nutty and add it to the cakey mixture. Mix well before spooning it into the pastry case on top of the jam.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes then sprinkle the flakes almonds on top and return it to the oven for a further 5 minutes - until the almonds are toasted and the cakey mixture is lightly browned and just set.

Allow to cool for 20 minutes, and serve warm with cream or icecream.

Sugar and Spice and all things nice

Autumn is a brilliant season in so many ways. Sure, its sad to see the end to the summer, but isn't that bitter pill easier to swallow with the abundance of tasty morsels in the hedgerows and woodlands?

This week I received a gift of hazelnuts from our neighbour and picked up a load of sweet chestnuts in the woods round my parents's place.



So, what to do with them all?



Why not combine my two favourite things - cooking and crafts? I found a yummy-sounding recipe in my Alice in Wonderland craft book. It was described as Sugar and Spice Comfits; a combination of nuts, seeds, spices, and dried fruit. I used roasted sweet chestnuts and hazelnuts, pecans, pistachios, blanched almonds, toasted caraway, fennel, and coriander seeds, some crystallised ginger, dried cranberries, sultanas, sunflower seeds, pinenuts and sesame seeds. Go mad - throw in whatever you have to hand (you'll want about 100g nuts, 50g dried fruit, 1 tablespoon spice seeds, 25g other seeds)!



Once I'd chosen my ingredients I made a small amount of sugar syrup by heating 50g caster sugar in a heavy pan over a gentle heat until it melted and turned into a syrup. I then removed the pan from the heat, mixed in the fruit and nuts, then spread it out on a baking tray lined with greaseproof paper and left it to cool.



These are meant to be brilliant on icecream, or you you can just snack on them as they are (which is what I've been doing). Yummy.



And for my next trick I collected up a load of sloes from the hedgerow, bought a bottle of gin and mixed up some sloe gin (700 ml gin, 450g sloes, 150g sugar, 1/4 teaspoon almond essence).



It won't be ready to drink until the end of January so I'll have to report back then. Between now and deepest-darkest winter I'll be shaking the kilner jar regularly, at least until the sugar dissolves. It'll be ready with perfect timing to see us through the harshness of coming back from a warm holiday to the cold British winter!

Blackberry and apple season

Its harvest time of year, and around our village there is plenty of evidence of an abundant year for apples. Lots of houses have big boxes of bramleys and assorted eating apples outside with 'please help yourself' signs. And if they're offering...well, it would be rude to turn them down!

I've noticed blackberries have been less successful this year. I've managed a couple of tubs full, but not the quantities that are normally easily found at this time of year. Still, for this week's recipe apples were the key ingredient, blackberries just the finishing flourish. A classic combination, and one I never get tired of, but this time I used them in a different way (normally the pudding at this time of year is Blackberry and apple crumble). There was finally space in the freezer, so I decided to try making Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's recipe for Bramley yoghurt Ice with Blackberry sauce swirl.

I stewed the apples with sugar, purreed them, added a little honey (things seem less sweet when frozen so a little extra sweetness seemed appropriate - Hugh suggests icing sugar but I prefered the idea of honey) and left them to cool while I went out blackberry picking.



Fresh blackberries acquired I set about making a blackberry sauce by stewing them with a little sugar and cinnamon, then sieving them to leave just a thick blackberry juice.



While this cooled I mixed the apple puree with a little yoghurt and churned it in the icecream maker:



When it had finished I drizzled the blackberry sauce over the top and transfered it to the freezer for a few hours.


(sorry - not focused, but this was the only snap I took!)

Mine actually ended up sitting in the freezer for a few days before we got round to eating some of it, so it needed to sit at room temperature for 10 minutes to soften a little before eating. I loved this. Its one of my favourite flavour combinations anyway, and a healthy, creamy, frozen pudding is a beautiful thing.

Summer eating

Our freezer is full of lamb. I mean, literally FULL. We were (extremely generously) given a whole lamb by Dan's parents a week or so ago. However, roast lamb isn't exactly what I fancy during a period of scorchingly hot weather! With the freezer groaning under the strain I had to find a way to have roast lamb on the hottest day of the year without feeling a bit sick and heavy.

I was actually very proud of my solution - spiced roast leg of lamb, with a fennel, pomegranate and feta salad, new potatoes, and a yoghurty minty dip.

I slathered the leg of lamb with a mixture of Ras-el-hanout spice, olive oil, a good squeeze of lemon and some salt and pepper then left it to marinate in the fridge overnight. I then slow cooked it so that I ended up with wonderfully tender lamb, almost falling off the bone.

The real star of the dinner was the salad;

An Ottolenghi masterpiece of fennel, tarragon, parsley, sumac, feta and pomegranate seeds. With this and a spoon of yoghurt (with chopped tomato and mint leaves mixed in), the lamb made a lovely summer meal. Not stodgy at all.

Speaking of Ottolenghi, I'm working my way through the salads in the Ottolenghi cookbook. I've recently made the French bean, orange and hazlenut salad



Which I had with new potatoes and grilled halloumi



and the Peach and Speck salad (I used parma ham instead of speck)



My lunches have been more interesting than usual this week!

Ottolenghi is my favourite person. Really. He makes my lunches and dinners so much more interesting. I hope I get to see him at
Alex James's Harvest festival. If he's there the same day as us Dan plans to tell him that its OK if he fancies coming round to cook for us sometime (and that he's willing to overlook the vegetarian cookbook).

UPDATE: Richard Corrigan, Monty Don and Yottam Ottolenghi will all be at the festival on the day we're going. The music line up sounds fun too. Marvellous!

Jelly

I seem to have been cooking with fruit a lot recently.

This time I added wine too.

Red wine and rhubarb jellies:



Very alcoholic tasting, a little bit fruity and a little bit citrusy. Grown up jellies for jelly and icecream. Or rhubarb and custard. Or just on their own...perhaps add just a little drizzle of cream? These turn out with a very strong and rich flavour - a love it or hate it dish I expect. I loved them, but they weren't Dan's thing AT ALL (all the more for me!).

If you have a bottle of red wine, some rhubarb, sugar, ginger, some gelatine (or agar-agar flakes) an orange and a lemon then do give it a try. Its elderflower season now, and a few elderflower heads added to the mix gives a nice floral fragrance to the jelly. You may love it, you may hate it, but its definitely worth a go!

Go on.

Please.

They're easy - I made mine while simulateously chatting to my boyfriend's mother, making her a coffee, and cooking pasta for our dinner.

See? Must be easy.

Rhubarb and Red Wine Jelly

250g rhubarb - chopped into chunks
450ml Red Wine
50g sugar (you could risk a little more if you like your desserts sweet)
2.5cm chunk root ginger - peeled & sliced
3 elderflower heads (optional)
40ml lemon juice
Juice of 1 orange (or about 100ml)
4-5 sheets of gelatine

Put all the ingredients except the gelatine in a pan and bring to a simmer over a low heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Allow to simmer for about 15 minutes until the rhubarb is soft.
Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly then strain the liquid, pressing as much of the fruit as possible through the sieve. Discard any remaining fruity puree.
Cut the gelatine sheets into small pieces and soak in cold water for 10 minutes. Then scoop the softened gelatine out of the water and mix it into the (still warm) red wine liquid. Stir until the gelatine dissolves then pour the liquid into jelly moulds.
Allow to cool to room temperature then refridgerate overnight to set.

Being foolish

This week I meandered out to the Pick Your Own farm again during my lunch break. This time I picked enough strawberries to have some to gobble straight away and a load to make jam. I made strawberry and mint jam using leaves from the chocolate mint in my garden. (I'd never heard of choclate mint, but came across it on a plant stall at a craft show: It has a richer flavour than normal garden mint - much more pudding-y.)

Gooseberries were also ready for picking at the farm.



When I was a child we had a gooseberry bush in the garden. They were my mum's favourite, but I never liked them. It could have been a reaction to getting prickled fingers when picking them I suppose but ever since I have assumed that I don't like gooseberries. Since they were ripe for picking I thought I would challenge myself to try one.

Revelatory moment: they're really nice!

I made Dan eat one when I got home: He was very dubious about the idea as he swore they were the kind of sharp fruit that could only be eaten stewed with lots of sugar. The look on his face when he realised how nice these ones were was priceless.

So, preconceptions squashed...what to do with 350g of gooseberries?

Last week I made a Rhubarb, Strawberry and Orange Flower Water Fool based on the recipe in Silvana Franco's Hi-Lo Cook Book. Dan and I both enjoyed it as a light, refreshing pudding, so I decided to try something similar with my gooseberries. I decided to go for a classic flavour combination of gooseberries and elderflowers, so I stewed 200g of gooseberries in 2 tablespoons of the elderflower cordial I made a couple of weeks ago, and used this to make a Gooseberry Fool.

The following recipe is mainly based on the Silvano Franco Rhubarb Fool recipe, but also takes elements from various other recipes that I found in the Riverford Cook Book, on BBC Good Food, and in Tamasin Day Lewis's Kitchen Bible.


Gooseberry and Elderflower Fool (for 2)

200g gooseberries
2 tablespoons elderflower cordial

60g double cream
60g thick yoghurt

Icing sugar to taste

Top and tail the gooseberries and place them in a pan with the elderflower cordial. Heat over a low-medium heat until the gooseberries soften (probably about 10-15 minutes in total). Set aside to cool.
Mix together the double cream and yoghurt with a whisk. Spoon alternate layers of yogurt-cream mixture and stewed gooseberries into a tall glass (sprinkle the gooseberry layers with a little icing sugar if you prefer your desserts on the sweet-side). Put in the fridge to chill over night.



Such an easy dessert, and not that bad for you really. It feels creamy and indulgent enough to be a treat whilst not being a heart-attack in a glass! It could handle a little more elderflower flavour if you like the taste of elderflowers, as the gooseberries are very dominant in the proportions above.

PS Its entirely irrelevant, but gooseberries really remind me of Chinese lanterns. I love that.

Three ways with Potato Salad - Daring Cooks

The June Daring Cooks Challenge was to make a delicious, healthy potato salad.

This is a challenge which really suits me as I like to make myself varied lunches to take to the office rather than always having a soggy sandwich. Potato salad falls into this system rather well, and expanding my lunchtime menu is always a good thing.

I decided to take this challenge seriously and do some decent experimentation rather than just making one version of the dish.

First up; Lemony potato salad with asparagus

A lunchtime outing took me to a farm which was selling fresh asparagus. It seemed a crime to walk away without some while its in-season and fresh from the field. This was the starting point for my potato salad. What goes with asparagus and potatoes? Lemon seemed like a good, tangy choice.

Also in the fridge that morning; spring onions, half a red chilli, some yellow pepper, parsley, and a packet of ham, so I chopped them all up and added them to my tupperware tub. Some mint from the garden too.


The dressing was a dessertspoon of olive oil, a couple of dessertspoons of lemon juice, a squeeze of lime and 1/2 teaspoon of sumac whisked together.



The resulting salad was colourful, flavourful and tangy. I suppose it might be pushing it to describe it as potato salad since it had lots of other things in it too!

At the weekend I was back home for my sister's wedding. I needed a decent lunch on saturday before the ceremony - filling but not bloating. Potatoes were perfect for this.
On this occasion I decided to go with a more Oriental flavour combination, so I ended up with:
Potato, plum sauce and sesame seed Salad
This is how I made it:
Steam the potatoes, add a sprinkle of sesame seeds and a splash of light soy sauce. Make a dressing from a dash of plum sauce, about a dessertspoon of rice wine vinegar, a squeeze of lime, some chopped coriander leaves and a sprinkle of chilli flakes.
I served the potato salad with a sliced smoked chicken breast, some lettuce leaves, and a handful of fresh mint leaves. The weather was appropriately warm and sunny to eat in the garden, close the eyes, and pretend I was really in Asia.

And finally....a bit of a wild card. I came across a recipe on the BBC website which intrigued me, Potato, green bean and rhubarb salad with almond pesto. Find the recipe here.

Raw rhubarb? I'd never thought to have rhubarb any way but stewed. I like it when my preconceptions are challenged so I resolved to make this one. I kept it for a day at home though, just in case it was nasty and I had to make a different lunch!
I should have had more faith. The salad was beautiful. Colourful and a fantastic balance of flavours. The raw rhubarb was tart and crunchy but not sour, the warmth from the chilli flakes enlivened the potatoes, and the almond and parsley pesto tied the whole dish together. I highly recommend this!



I amended the BBC dish slightly, so here's my final version:

Potato, Rhubarb and Green Bean Salad with Almond and Parsley Pesto (for 1 person)
150g new potatoes (I used Cornish Royals as they're in season here and delicious)
pinch of chilli flakes
salt and pepper
50g green beans (trimmed)
2 spring onions - white part only, sliced
1/2 stick of rhubarb (approx 35-40g) finely sliced
Squeeze lemon juice

For the pesto
20g blanched almonds
1 clove fresh garlic
1 teaspoon olive oil
Handful of fresh parsley

Scrub the potatoes, sprinkle with a small amount of salt, then steam them over simmering water for 20 minutes, or until cooked.
Add the green beans for the last 5 minutes in the steamer so that they are lightly cooked but retain a slight crunch.
Meanwhile make the pesto by blending all the ingredients together. Add more olive oil if you aren't eating the salad that day.

Remove the potatoes and beans from the heat, sprinkle with a pinch of chilli flakes and some freshly ground black pepper. Put aside to cool.
Chop the spring onions and rhubarb and arrange potatoes, beans, rhubarb and spring onion on a plate. Dab the pesto round the plate and squeeze a little lemon juice over the top.
Serve and enjoy.

Thank you to the Daring Cooks for helping me to expand my lunchtime salad options!


Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

Yummmm

I love Oxford. Really I do.

In what other city can you hop on your bike at lunchtime and 2 minutes later be cycling past this....



On your way to an idyllic little spot that feels like the deepest darkest most rural of countryside...



To pick lovely sweet, fresh strawberries



And eat a few as you pick of course - why make the effort to pick your own otherwise?

The asparagus and fresh garlic on sale were an added bonus.

This little haul is for me and Dan to eat fresh, but next time I'll buy enough to make jam.



How wholesome.

Fishy Otti

By chance rather than by design I ended up cooking a lot of fishy meals this week. The star meal of the week was definitely Tuna with a Pistachio Crust and papaya salsa, taken from the Ottolenghi cookbook. I used tuna chunks instead of a loin piece simply because it was cheaper! Instead of coating the piece of tuna with a crust of pistachio and mustard I scattered the crust over the top of the chunks. It seemed to work just fine that way.

The salsa was really very pretty, and tasted just as lovely as it looked.



I served this dish on steamed new potatoes with peashoots. It was a good dinner, but the salsa does take quite a while to prepare because of all the peeling, chopping and mixing. On the otherhand, you could make it a day or two ahead. Next time I may swap the mustard in the crust for wasabi which I have a hunch may work a little better with the salsa.

A close runner up in the week's favourites was fillets of fish served with green tahini sauce and pomegranate seeds. I dished this one up with roasted aubergines and couscous. Another Ottolenghi special. It seems I'm cooking my way through the book! Again I used a cheaper piece of fish than was recommended; haddock worked perfectly OK so who need sea bream?!



Papaya Salsa
1/3 Papaya, diced
1/3 Mango, diced
1/3 cucumber, peeled, deseeded and diced
1/2 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
3g fresh ginger, grated
1/3 red onion, finely chopped
grated zest and juice of 1/2 lime
2 tspn thai fish sauce
2 tspn olive oil
1 tspn caster sugar

Mix everything together, season with salt and pepper, then chill for at least an hour before serving.

Super quick post this week. My sister's getting married on saturday and we're catering it ourselves so there's not a whole lot of time to spare for blogging!

Bread and Jam

Strawberry honey butter.

Doesn't it sound lovely?

The idea for this came from a blog I read last week, although I did tweak the recipe a little to make it a bit less sweet. This is the blog which inspired me.



The butter is nice alternative to jam, and was easier and quicker to make too. You need really good in-season strawberries for the best results; don't bother with inferior under-ripe examples. I enjoyed my strawberry honey butter on a slice of olive bread (basically the same as ciabatta); homemade and fresh from the oven just a few hours before. Tasty.



The bread was a good method: marvellous with in-season asparagus and poached eggs for breakfast, and a life saver when the in-laws came round for sunday lunch with only 4 hours notice. Father-in-law (sort-of, Dan and I aren't actually married we've just been together for ages) declared it the best bread he's ever eaten. The bread recipe was from the Bourke Street Bakery book. Its turning out to have been a very good purchase.

My top tip from today's sunday lunch: steamed new potatoes are way nicer than boiled ones and don't take any longer.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend.

Kasmiri prawn curry

On sunday night I was in the mood for a curry. I'd run a 10k race, not as fast as I wanted to, also cycled 5 miles, and had a good walk round the grounds of Blenheim Palace. I was hungry for comfort food. Even if I was inclined to eat one, take aways are few and far between in our area - far easier, quicker, and nicer to make my own curry.
So, out came the Curry Bible and after some debate a Kashmiri prawn curry was chosen.

The curry was basically a korma-style curry, but the kormas I make are much spicier, less sweet and creamy than the variety you would get in a jar or from a takeaway. The dish has a good blend of spices, a small amount of coconut milk, onion, garlic, and red and green peppers, as well as the king prawns. The recipe called for the addition of four canned lychees, and suggested garnishing the dish with sliced bananas.


Trust me, this was WAY nicer than it looks!

This definitely was a very beautiful curry to eat. It feels like a meal for a maharajah - indulgent, creamy, rich, fruity. For my palate it was a little sweet for a regular dinner. Nice as a one off though. I would make this again for an unusual dinner for anyone with a slightly sweet tooth, but I think I'll generally stick to tomato-y, spicier dishes (except when comfort food is needed; then this is ideal).

Three ways with chicken

This month we are feeling poor (buying all the bits for a new bathroom will do that to you), so we're eating thriftily. Chicken fillets were on special offer at the butcher's this week, so that's what we've had for three dinners in the last five days. I'm not keen on eating the same thing over-again on successive days, so here are three ways with chicken pieces.



1. Chicken with sumac, za'aatar and lemon
This recipe came from the Ottolenghi recipe book. I marinated the chicken pieces in a mix of middle eastern spices (cinnamon, allspice, sumac) and lemon, then baked it in the oven with an approximation of za'aatar (I used a mix of sesame seeds, dried thyme and sea salt) and lemon slices on top. The lemon went soft and gave a delicious tang to the dish. I served this with couscous and some toasted pinenuts. It was a lot like a tagine: Perhaps not one of the most unusual-tasting recipes in the Ottolanghi recipe book, but easy, filling and certainly a very pleasant dinner.

2. Chicken and bacon burgers
I used the recipe for chicken and bacon sausage rolls from the Bourke Street Bakery book for these burgers. Instead of encasing them in puff pastry I grilled them up and served them in pitta breads with salad, potatoes and fried apple wedges. 'Junk' food but certainly no junk in them. Two chicken fillets and 3 rashers of smokey bacon made 4 burgers, so it was quite a thrifty dinner. The only other ingredients were a few breadcrumbs, a quarter of an onion, and a few spring onions. These burgers weren't quite as fantastic as the pork and fennel sausage roll mix that I adapted into burgers a couple of weeks ago, but they were meaty whilst feeling light on the calorie load.

3. Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
I have a cook book which I've had for years - since my teens I think. It is one that my Mum bought us all as a job-lot for stocking fillers around the time she was trying to encourage us all to cook and fend for ourselves. The book's by Josceline Dimbleby and is called The Nearly Vegetarian Cookbook. It truely is a treasure trove of achieveable, delicious dinners.


We had left-over oranges still sitting in the fruit bowl from making Dan's birthday cake last week, and flicking through the book I spotted this recipe, which had the advantage that it would use the last of my special-offer chicken, some of the oranges, and the recipe described it as a 'delightful' dish. I decided to put my scepticism to one side (orange and anchovies didn't seem like natural partners) and give it a try.
I should have had more faith - it was lovely!
None of the individual flavours dominated the dish, which was subtle but well flavoured, and delicious served with wild rice and baby corn-on-the-cob. Dan liked it so much he licked the plate. Bad manners, but a ringing endorsement!
A first for me on this dish - I'd never used chicory in cooking before.

Here's the recipe:
Chicken rolls stuffed with orange, anchovies and chicory
Serves 2

2 Chicken breast fillets, skin removed
3 anchovy fillets (in oil or salt - drained and/or rinsed), finely chopped
1-2 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1cm ginger root, finely chopped
1 medium chicory
Juice and zest of half an orange
150ml milk
5g cornflour, mixed to a paste with a little water
Parsley
Salt (go easy - the anchovies are salty) and pepper

Preheat the oven to 180C.
Place the chicken pieces (one at a time) in a plastic sandwich bag and bash them flat with a rolling pin. You need to get them to a thickness of about 1/2cm-1cm. Very theraputic!
Mix together the chicory, garlic, orange, ginger, anchovies and orange zest. Spoon this over the flattened chicken fillets and roll them up to encase the chicory mixture. Secure with a cocktail stick if necessary. Place the chicken rolls in an ovenproof dish and pour the orange juice around them. Cover the dish with foil and bake in the oven for 40-45 minutes.
Once the chicken is cooked drain the liquid from the oven dish into a heavy based saucepan and keep the chicken warm while you make the sauce. Add the milk and cornflour paste to the cooking liquid from the chicken and bring it slowly to the boil, stirring all the time so that it doesn't catch. Once the sauce has thickened slightly add the parsley, pepper, and a small amount of salt.
Serve the chicken rolls with fried mushrooms (I loathe them so I left them off my plate), wild rice, lightly steamed baby corn, and spoon the sauce over the top.

Birthday cake

3rd May is Dan's birthday. We decided not to go out this year, but I still wanted to make it special so I gave him the option to choose any dinner he wanted. He chose beef wellington and dauphinoise potatoes - high effort, but his absolute favourite. I made myself a monkfish wellington, which was delicious. (I found the recipe on the BBC website here.)

But a birthday isn't a proper celebration without cake, so I had to make a birthday cake. Dan's not a particular fan of chocolate cakes and sponge cakes, and with just the two of us in our household we wouldn't get through that kind of cake before it went stale anyway. Instead I chose to make an Orange Polenta Cake - the recipe comes from the Ottolenghi cook book. I'm a total amateur with sugar cookery, so I had to make 3 attempts before I managed a proper caramel for the top of the cake, but I got there in the end. The citrusy-fresh orange scent of the cake was AMAZING as it cooked. Here it is straight out of the oven:


(although the colour cast seems a bit odd on this photo.)

And this is it once it had cooled and I'd glazed it with some of my Mum's homemade marmalade:



We had a slice of the cake each on Dan's birthday. Dan had his with a scoop of creme fraiche. The cake had a slightly grittier texture than a normal sponge (possibly because I coudn't find instant polenta). That wasn't unpleasant though - in fact it was rather nice. The cake was moist, slightly bitter on the top, very orangey and utterly gorgeous. I'd buy the recipe book just for this cake!

Traditionally you have to take cakes to work on a birthday, and orange cake didn't seem the most portable variety, so I also made some rasberry cupcakes. (Dan was fitting our new bathroom all weekend, so it seemed only fair that I assume responsibility for work cake snacks for him!) The recipe was from the Primrose Bakery cupcake book - a vanilla sponge swirled with homemade rasberry jam, then filled with a little spot of rasberry jam and iced with vanilla buttercream icing. I decorated them with a little grated white chocolate and silver sugar balls.



I know they look a bit girly and pink and white for a boy's birthday, but if you're going to get your girlfirend to make cakes for your office what do you expect?!



Of course he told everyone he made them himself. Some of them even believed it.

sushi #2

The coming of spring makes me want salads and sushi. Just like everyone else, I get less bothered about having hot meals for dinner as soon as the weather warms up. Maybe all the blossom springing into bloom around home and work brought an association to mind with the Hanami (cherry blossom) festival in Japan, but whatever it was that made me desire sushi, this weekend I was a bit spoilt, and treated myself to sushi two days in a row - one lot bought, and one lot home made.





Now I know that I have blogged sushi making before, but I do so again because I made some different kinds of sushi this time. I'm sure its a good thing to develop the repertoire!

This time I made nori maki again; the normal nori (seaweed) wrapped sushi, filled with smoked salmon, cucumber, spring onion and a little wasabi. This time I marinated the smoked salmon in a mixture of sake, shoyu and water for an hour before I used it.

I also had a try at inside-out sushi rolls. These were easier to form than I'd been expecting, which was a nice surprise. You start off in the same way as for the nori-maki, but cover the nori and rice with cling film once you've spread the rice on the nori, then turn it over onto the rolling mat so that the seaweed is on the top. I filled these ones with a similar filling; waabi, cucumber, smoked salmon, and then rolled the finished sushi rolls in furikake, which is a Japanese seasoning made from black and white sesame seeds, nori (seaweed), and red shiso leaves. It gave the outside of the rolls an appealing crunch.



And finally....drum roll please... I tried something entirely new: Onigri. These are rice balls filled with tasty morsels and wrapped in a strip of nori. I made one for each of us filled with smoked mackerel, and one each filled with a mixture of Omeboshi (Japanese pickled plums), mirin, and sesame seeds. Those plums were SHARP! The only thing I've had before of similar face-scrunching sourness is the lime pickle you get with poppadums in Indian restaurants. Not unpleasant, but I think I'd make smaller portions next time!



Of course, this was all served up with extra wasabi, shoyu, and pickled ginger condiments, and a small salad of cucmber and spring onion.



Yummy sushi - My favourite.

Apple tart

A while back I blogged my love of the Riverford Farm Cook book. In fact I love it so much that I have been evangelising, and I gave a copy to a friend for her birthday a few months ago. When I went to her place for lunch she obligingly served up a dish from the book - the apple and amaretti tart. It was light, crunchy and yummy, and even better I'd never made it myself. So good to be introduced to a recipe you had under your nose the whole time but hadn't made!

This weekend I had a group of lovely ladies over for a meal, so the time had come to make an attempt at the tart. It was super-simple to make, and handily could be made in advance and served at room temperature - the perfect pudding for when you don't want to be spending your time in the kitchen instead of with your guests. The base is not dissimilar to a cheese cake base, so you end up with something like tart tatin but with a crunchier base. I really liked it, especially with a small scoop of creme fraiche on the side.


Not my tart in this picture I'm afraid, but mine did look a lot like it!

I shall now go forth and experiment with different flavour combinations along the same lines - maybe pear with almonds in the base, or rhubarb with ginger biscuits, or perhaps subsitiute the apples for peaches in the amaretti version. Oh the possibilities....

The recipe can be found here. I didn't use quite as much apple as directed as about 200g of apple slices filled my tart tin nicely. I notice that the apples here are a lot more overlapping than mine though, so presumably that's why I didn't need quite so much fruit.

In praise of spontaneity

A couple of weeks ago Dan came back from town bringing treats in brown paper bags: One small blueberry amandine tart, one strawberry tart, and one bakewell tart. They were much appreciated in my cold-filled state. We very democratically divided each into thirds, sharing them out for lunch with our guest.

That blueberry tart really stuck in my mind, so when blueberries were on special offer this week I stocked up and hunted high and low to find a recipe for the Amandine tart. Eventually achieved (it was surprisingly tricky to track one down), I made mini tarts so that the leftovers would be more portable for lunches.



The tart is a wonderful combination of crisp, flakey pastry, filled with sweet, juicy blueberries and a custardy sponge, all topped off with the crunch of flaked almonds. YUM. A new favourite. Keeps well in the fridge too; it may be the perfect pudding.



A different kind of serendipity lead me to the other subject of this post; griddled vegetables and halloumi. I'd never eaten or cooked halloumi before, but the cheese man at the farmer's market had made some Halloumi-esque cheese and so it seemed like the perfect time to try it. I griddled a load of aubergine, courgette and red onion slices, topped it with the griddled cheese, and hey presto, lunch was served. It certainly helped me get over my long hilly run! It will have to become a regular feature, if only so that I get more use out of the griddle pan which is sadly underused.

An on-going love affair

I do love rhubarb.

I find it particularly appealling at this time of year when its the forced variety available. It comes out a beautiful shade of pink when its stewed. Sadly, I think there's probably only a very short amount time left in the forced rhubarb season, so I've been eek out every last morsel of enjoyment I can from it! (Although it does feel wierd to buy rhubarb after years of having it in the garden - I must plant some for next year.)

So far my rhubarb experiments haven't got much further than crumble, stewed with strawberries, or cheesecake. All fantastic. However, browsing the internet I stumbled across Rhubarb Custard cake, and that sounded like it just had to be tried.



And indeed it was delicious. Lovely and crunchy on the top, with the moist texture of drizzle cake on the inside. Perfect served warm for pudding, but also a big hit with my work colleagues the next day.

The recipe can be found here on the Lazy Giraffe blog. She makes pretty jewellery too.

Daring Cooks March Challenge

This month's challenge from the Daring Cooks was a Peruvian speciality; Ceviche.
What a treat! I love fish and seafood and adore sushi and sashimi. When I think about it its strange that I'd never thought to try Ceviche before, so it was brilliant to have it suggested.

Ceviche is fish or seafood cured in citrus fruit rather than cooked. I chose scallops and cured them in lime juice, nectarine and tarragon. I sliced each scallop into 3 or 4 rounds so they were pretty thin, and they took just 20 minutes to cure in the fridge.



I served them up with some salad leaves and toasted pecan nuts as a starter:



I took the idea of adding the tarragon and nectarine from a recipe I found on the BBC website, and they were definitely tasty additions. I also enjoyed having the earthiness of the pecan nuts to balance out the sharper citrus flavours. I think walnuts would also work. I spooned the marinade liquid over the top of the scallops when I served them, and I would caution against this - in future I will drain it off before serving as otherwise the dish does become a bit too sharp.

All in all, this recipe is definitely one I would do again, but its best either as a starter or a light meal on a hot day.

The monthly challenge did suggest that we could also try Papas Rellenas, which are a kind of potato cake - stuffed with a meat mixture (typically beef) and fried. They sound delicious and I'm sure I'll give them a go at some point, but this month was a bit busy so I decided to stop at one Daring Cooks recipe.

Kathlyn of Bake Like a Ninja was our Daring Cooks’ March 2011 hostess. Kathlyn challenges us to make two classic Peruvian dishes: Ceviche de Pescado from “Peruvian Cooking – Basic Recipes” by Annik Franco Barreau. And Papas Rellenas adapted from a home recipe by Kathlyn’s Spanish teacher, Mayra.