a sad centre

14 Friday Apr 2017

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe, Uncategorized

Tags

Almonds, Cake, Chocolate, forgotten towns, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories, Sugar, Sussex

This is what happens to some cakes, the ones that rise and then fall. The ‘sadness’ occurs in the centre which slumps defeatedly. Tamasin Day-Lewis was the cook I learnt this term from. It is purposeful, the slump, and not a mistake. Although here there is a hole; cake has been gouged out. It is that kind of cake – bitterly chocolatey, with espresso poured into the mix and with it almonds and butter. I only had a Pyrex dish to bake it in, because I was at my mum’s and I’d taken all her cake tins, slowly, stealthily, over the years. But it didn’t matter because it rose and fell as it should, was luscious and divine, thickly glottal and needing no accompaniment.

This is the most beautiful surface to photograph on. I never do anything to prep it, it is simply the north light and a navy counter hastily de-crumbed. I have had many late afternoon sessions, far at the end of a long corridor, where it is quiet, away from the bashing sea and the compulsive view – long stretches of water fill the windows at the front. The sea disappears gradually, engulfed in mist and the sun’s dazzle. You can’t not look. At the other end there’s nothing much, except height. I have been coming here to this plain seaside town for the last twenty years. I have never found a countertop to better it.

Late afternoons when we’ve trailed huffily up the stairs (92 of them) desperate for a cup of tea, after (just) getting the little green bus from Alfriston on a Sunday. Or a late swim in stagnant August weather, or I’m despatched to make something for an impromptu high tea. I’m miles away from it all in the kitchen and there are never any scales. I make do with the ones my mum uses for throwing her pots, I use her Cheffette mixer bought from a charity shop. I make a cake I ‘shouldn’t’ eat. “Are you allowed that?” is always the question I’m asked. As if I need written permission from a doctor before I can eat cake.

The flat belonged once to the painter Augustus John and when my mum bought it, it belonged to a potter, who with her husband decided after a year that Seaford was too friendless a place, and moved on back to France. From the beginning there were troubles; the building had heroin addicts and pigeon feeders and lots of ‘structural issues’. Neighbours were non-compliant. But my mum was left with a kiln and a room converted into a studio, perched over the English channel – overlooked only by the sea.

Seaford has no grand architecture. There are no great restaurants, food culture, no ‘scene’. It has a long and manmade shingle beach, is in a bit of a wind tunnel. It isn’t Dorset or those places in Suffolk that people flock to to eat organic ice cream and wear long ‘wraps’. It reminds me of the towns Paul Theroux visited in The Kingdom by the Sea, where he travelled by train and on foot round the coast of Britain during the period of the Falklands war. Seaford has a defeated, slightly belligerent air. It is true what he says here:

“The greatest advantage in this tour was that a country tended to seep to its coast; it was concentrated there, deposited against its beaches like the tide-wrack from the sea. People naturally gravitated to the coast, and they wore fewer clothes there – it was normal on the coast to be semi-naked, exposed”.

He is also a bit mean about us – it’s one criticism I have of the book. It is easy to be mean about Seaford and I can see it through others’ eyes. But it is twenty years of my life, the branch line train, the wave goodbye (with a jar of something from the health store, something earthy), the two florists and their reasonable bouquets, Paul’s Plaice the fishmonger and the vinegary smell of the sea within, Sussex Stationer’s and the smell of new books and wads of paper, the long sloping road to the sea and then the sea, green or blue, smarting under the sun if it’s out. And then turning into my mum’s and the key under a pot and the note in the letterbox – I’m on the beach, bring down avocados. And then the cake that at some point must be made.

Chocolate espresso cake

Taken from Tamasin Day-Lewis, Good Tempered Food

TDL is quite firm here on her use of whole blanched almonds, roasted and then ground, but having done it this way many times, I think there’s a real difference in the end result; texture and nuttiness are emphasised.

Serves 8-10

185g (6.5oz) unsalted butter, diced, plus extra for greasing

185g (6.5oz) dark chocolate (70% cocoa solids) broken into pieces

50 ml (2fl oz) very strong freshly brewed coffee

6 eggs, separated

185g (6.5oz) unrefined caster sugar

185g (6.5oz) blanched, roasted and coarsely ground almonds

Heat oven to 375F/190C/gas mark 5. Melt the butter and chocolate together with the coffee in a bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Resist the temptation to stir. While they are melting, cream the egg yolks and sugar in an electric mixer until pale and light, about 8-10 minutes. Continue to whisk, adding the now melted chocolate and butter.

Stop the machine, remove the whisk and fold in the *almonds with a metal spoon. In a clean glass or metal bowl whisk the egg whites to stiff peaks. Stir a spoonful into the chocolate mixture to lighten it before folding in the rest. Pour the mixture into a 10in springform tin with greased sides into which you have placed a circle of buttered greaseproof paper. Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 325F/160C/gas mark 3 and continue cooking for a further 40 minutes.

Remove the cake and leave in the tin set on a rack until completely cool. Turn out of the tin and remove the paper. Delicious served with creme fraiche but also lovely on its own.

*I would recommend roasting rather than toasting on the hob as this tends to scorch the almonds – roasting in the oven (preheated to the above temperature) for a few minutes (5 – 10 min) will give them a burnished colour without burning, but you do need to check regularly.

Delight in the dish

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Cake, Cookbook, Elizabeth David, Food, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories

This is ricotta pudding from Elizabeth David’s book Is there a Nutmeg in the House? The book is blue and there is somewhere on it a picture of quinces. In a heretical gesture, I added some dark chocolate, masquerading as raisins. I’m fairly sure that ED would not have approved. She would have spoken sharply. And of my decision to throw in some feta, to substitute strained Greek yoghurt, to add honey, as I have done occasionally, she would have regarded me coolly. I would have known this was not wise from the dip in temperature in the room.

It’s no surprise to me that she’d been an actress and had come to her writing life after failure in that department. I’ve always loved her writing; the recipe here for ricotta pudding (budino di ricotta) is simple and feels quite underwritten, basic almost. There is none of the hand holding we have now in cookery books. My mother remembers her kitchen shop in Pimlico in the sixties, remembers meeting her there, and watched as ED wrapped in tissue paper a present for my grandmother, to be shipped off later to Sydney.

It was an odd time then, hard to define when you haven’t lived it, but stories abound of London in the late Fifties, then the Sixties. It was this beatnik, makeshift place of eternal, random, spontaneous parties, according to my mother. ED appeared to be the only vaguely sniffy one there. But it was nice of her to wrap my mother’s present.

There was another figurehead at the time who gets talked of – Robert Carrier. Just before I was born, my parents owned a flat in Camden Passage, close to his restaurant. I think back then, you could afford to be a bit arbitrary and eccentric about food. Because people didn’t know about ratatouille and ricotta. These things came from the Continent, which a lot of people hadn’t explored in any great depth. And there had been rationing.

My mother knew more than most only because she had done the six week boat journey from Sydney, part of the first Push that included Clive James, Barry Humphries etc. and had stopped off along the way. She stayed in a brothel in Naples. But these are not my stories to tell. All I can tell you is how the book feels to read, and how it reminds me of the people who are still around, family friends in their eighties now and nineties, and how demure and evocative they can make an omelette seem. A collection of wooden spoons are there not just for show. An aura of quiet descends in the room, there are no winking red lights, no computer leads, and I find myself becalmed.

There’s the occasional sharpness if I lose the thread of the conversation, overwhelmed by central heating in a small space. A telling off is part of the deal somewhere, sometimes by accident I might break a chair. But on the whole it’s a relief not to be modern for a while. The food is delicious, simple, frugal, effortless. There is delight in the dish.

Ricotta pudding

Adapted from Elizabeth David, Is There A Nutmeg in the House?

I prefer strained Greek or Turkish yoghurt here to nasty supermarket ricotta. If you can find fresh, or even better if you can make it yourself, it will transform the dish. Ricotta is slightly drier, less silky than strained yoghurt. Not wishing to confuse, curd cheese is also lovely. I’m not imagining you’ll be as common as me and add chocolate, but if you have some raisins and some rum or marsala it’s a lovely addition. You can use honey here as well. And ground almonds instead of flour – ED does in her other cheese-cake recipes. She’s not here to tell you off.

100g raisins (optional)

4 tbsp rum

Butter, for greasing

3 tbsp plain flour (or ground almonds)

400g fresh ricotta or strained Greek or Turkish yoghurt

Pinch of sea salt

4 eggs

6 heaped tablespoons of caster sugar (or to taste)

Nutmeg

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Soak the raisins (if using) in the rum for a few hours until plump. Heat the oven to 180C/350F/gas mark 4. Butter a 25cm plain cake tin or oven-proof dish of about 1.5 litre capacity. Beat the ricotta or yoghurt until smooth. Beat in 1 whole egg and the three yolks, 4 heaped tablespoons of sugar, the salt, flour/almonds, the lemon zest, and a good grating of nutmeg. Use a whisk to get rid of any lumps. Finally, stir in the raisins, along with any rum left in the bowl. Beat the egg whites until they hold soft peaks. Keep beating, gradually adding the remaining sugar, until you have a thick, glossy meringue that stays in the bowl if you hold it upside down. Stir a heaped tablespoonful of the meringue into the cheese mixture to loosen it, then lightly fold in the rest, keeping as much air in the mix as you can.

Pour into the prepared tin or dish and give it a gentle shake to level the surface. Bake for about 35 – 40 minutes, or until golden and set. Leave to cool to room temperature (it will sink). Eat cold – perhaps with cream. Lovely with some sharp, honeyed rhubarb.

Pudding with goosegogs

28 Monday Jul 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Baking, Cake, Dessert, Fruit, Ingredients, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

These are red gooseberries, in case you were wondering. I didn’t realize that gooseberries could be anything but green, but here, as in many areas of my life, I am wrong. Red, yellow and white can be the goosegog, though Jane Grigson argues that none are as good in cooking as the green. These red ones were also on the small side, but I was too excited by the colour to do anything but shovel them up in my palsied hands and throw them into the nearest paper bag.

If you are English and have once seen a hedge or climbed a tree, you have also probably eaten a green gooseberry raw. It comes with a certain feral spirit and being too young not to be able to discern what is and isn’t ‘palate appropriate’. I do remember picking gooseberries (along with elderflowers, their natural bedfellows) and sampling the hairy little pod, being slightly put off by the veins, but somehow knowing I couldn’t not eat it. I was bemused by the elderflower picking, as it was for the making of wine, bottles of which would be stacked outside my bedroom window to ferment and mature etc but be still off limits to me.

However, the gooseberries would at some point make their way under a crumble or pie crust and then be served with cream or possibly ice cream. I even liked the sourness, that puckering beyond-lemon tartness, and the errant seeds that could be shot out like a catapult.

All of this under an intermittently blazing and then thunderous English sky. Because I am now back in England, back in time for the thunder and lightning and wild seas and bursts of heat and ladybirds. It’s all gone a bit Brazil here, with long languorous days at times humid and close then cloudy then bucketing down then warm, blank skies of blue. People swim with an abandon I find worrying. Far far out to sea I can see a lone swimmer doing front crawl out beyond the buoy. Children dive in and sometimes they’re naked; another signifier I’m no longer in LA. I’m walking again and so is everyone else.

We are all striding out, wading through fields of old rape and thick stiff wheat. Everyone is eating ice cream – big swathes of white – and everywhere there are bodies in various stages of rotundity; tattooed, jolly, in love, or sullen with a fag on, and I find I’m watching them with the tutored eye of an Angeleno. I’ve become aware of size and shape and it makes me feel uncomfortable. Suddenly I’m shallow. I’ve come back just in time.

But in the meantime there’s cake, or more specifically baked gooseberry pudding using a genoise sponge. All I previously knew about the genoise was that it was ‘difficult’ and a finalist from The Great British Bake Off dropped his all over the floor and was forced to scrape it back on to the plate, presenting it as a strange cloud of something dark with cream.

I made the gooseberry pudding to bring to a party, which served as an object lesson in what you shouldn’t do if you can avoid it: make something you’ve never made before for people you barely know. It looked fine, beautifully brown in that natural way of burnt fields and it smelled voluptuously puddingy. The gooseberries had risen up in revolt at being smothered and had formed a rim of sweet tacky juice. We walked along the seafront in Seaford to the party and the Pyrex dish kept itself cleverly hot all the way. And then the top collapsed, not in the way a flourless cake slumps, but it caved in the way meringue does. It simply all disappeared down a hole.

I grabbed what was down there and it was lovely and hot and gungy, and, I thought, terrifyingly uncooked. I then started to pick at it until there was an undeniable gaping hole in the centre of the pudding which was now unpresentable. ‘It’s the gesture that matters,’ my mother said reassuringly which translated into British English means, “This is a complete disaster and no one will say anything”.

By the time we got there people were peeling off to swim, taking advantage of the sudden heat and sun and all around us were half-demolished cakes, a gammon ripped to shreds, bowls of depleted food and children dancing in that deranged way that happens just before an emotional collapse. My empty cake did not look out of place and by the time everyone had trailed back from the sea under a blanket of rain it appeared to be cooked. It’s rather like meringue in that way, I realize; a crisp outer crust, followed by a hole and then a deep drift of softness below. Actually it’s pudding – that is what it is.

Everyone said ‘Wow!’ a lot but they were also quite drunk. They talked at length about the sweetness, the miraculous crust and the tartness of the gooseberries. And that I had made a cake at all and who was I again? And would I like to come to Faversham? Did I want curry? More Steely Dan! the children cried and they danced red and sweating under the raindrops.

Baked Gooseberry Pudding

Adapted from Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book

I didn’t find the genoise sponge particularly tricky to make, though this might have something to do with my mother’s ancient Chefette free-standing mixer which whisked the eggs and sugar to buggery while I got on with reading the recipe. However, how difficult can it be to stand for seven minutes holding some beaters? This has quickly become my stand-by pudding and is also wonderful with rhubarb – in both cases the fruit can be chucked in raw with the barest tumble in brown sugar. You could use any sharp fruit here – cranberries also work well.

For the sponge

125g butter, plus a bit extra for buttering the bowl

1 large egg and 1 egg yolk (room temp)

175g unrefined caster sugar

100g plain flour, sifted (or rice flour)

½ teaspoon of mace and/or allspice

½ tsp sea salt

For the gooseberries

250-300g gooseberries (they do cook down)

25g-50g demerara sugar or any soft brown sugar

Preheat the oven to 160-170C/325F. Generously butter a Pyrex dish of about 1 litre capacity and 3-4 cm depth. Put in a tight-fitting layer of topped and tailed gooseberries and throw the sugar over them, tumbling them about to get full coverage. Gently melt the butter in a pan and leave to cool slightly.

Now for the sponge – the ‘trick’ is to aerate the eggs and sugar mixture, which means to whisk them together until they are very pale and light, almost white. At first they’ll be gloopy but after about 7-8 minutes the mixture will reach what is known as the ‘ribbon’ stage where it will leave a trail when the beaters are lifted out. Mix the flour, mace/allspice (actually whatever spice you fancy – ginger would be nice) and salt together in a separate bowl and then sift about half over the eggs and sugar, folding very gently using a metal spoon and working in a figure of eight. Fold in the rest of the flour very carefully, so as not to knock out any air.

Now drizzle the melted butter down the sides of the bowl, again gently but quickly working the batter. Now spoon this mixture over the gooseberries, smoothing it out to be level, and then bake for about 45-50 minutes. It will rise and then crack probably. Lovely warm but also gorgeous cold. It is not – though it will appear to be – uncooked inside.

The little lunch

10 Saturday May 2014

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Art, Bananas, Cake, Chocolate, Food, France, Recipes, Stories, Stories from the Stove

I seem to have an endless supply of browning and defeated bananas. We buy them principally for the B&B guests who never eat them. But they may do. They never say outright that they don’t like bananas; there may come a time when they will feel like one, and that moment will be hard to define, but when it comes we better have a bunch of bananas standing by.

I think in the last year we have probably had two straight-forward banana-eating guests. Still, we continue to buy them and then I make banana bread with the softening, spotting ones, which I give to the guests who don’t eat bananas and strangely they wolf it down. We have French guests now and they have what I think is the classic French attitude to breakfast – it should hurt. Their plates afterwards are beautifully smeared with arabesques of apricot jam and chocolate (from the chocolate banana bread, a variant*), the French press empty but for the coffee grounds, the French girls’ voices throaty from their first blissful draw of nicotine. Of course they are beautiful and slender. This is how it is.

If you are English and were at school during the 1980s you would have gone on a French exchange programme; you lived with a French family for a few weeks and the French student then came and lived with you. You learned their language and way of life and they learned yours, sort of thing. I also did this in Bilbao, northern Spain where I lived on chocolate biscuits for four weeks and learned to say “I know what you’re up to and I’m going to tell my mum what you did when I get home” in Spanish.

Annie was nicer; she was from Normandy and liked smoking and camping. She drank bowls of black coffee just before she went to bed, and wore extremely tight jeans. We were both fourteen but I got the impression she was worldlier than me. Sometimes we went on long walks into the countryside, or at other times she would hitch up the family’s pony – what she called a ponette – to a wagon and we would ride to an old lady’s house nearby and buy Coke from her fridge.

Annie lived in a rural area and there was not much to do except this, and eat chocolate sandwiches. I met other kids in the area because they too would wade into the fields, pale wheaten and straggly, and we would all smoke. I had never smoked like this before; filtered Gitanes, in a beautiful, uniform white that made me think of freshly laundered shirts. I watched them gulp back big blue lungfuls. I think I knew then I wouldn’t be able to inhale and remain standing. It was on my return to England that I did it in the privacy of my bedroom – I inhaled a Gitanes and fell to my knees.

Anyway, it’s all rolled into one in my mind; the smoking, the Coca Cola, the way Annie sat on a bench outside the boulangerie and handed me the long snout of bread to try, its crust sharp, almost splintery in the mouth followed by chunks of dark chocolate that she had fed into the crevices – our petit déjeuner, our ‘little lunch’ eaten vaguely in the morning. And lastly (and lastingly), the boys in the field one of whom in a lull in conversation languidly enquired “Do you make love?”

I think I pretended not to understand which wasn’t too far from the truth; something to do with the strangeness of the present simple. As if it was a hobby. It was the only time I remember being singled out for attention. I replayed the moment endlessly in my mind, trying to reframe my muteness as intrigue, but really I was just lost for words.

I wanted to showcase these beautiful drawings of bananas and chocolate by Jasmin Bhanji, who currently lives in Kenya, though is formerly of north London, and it’s strange because since she’s gone to Africa, I’ve got to know her better and that is one of the wonders of the internet. I knew her in person in England (she’s my new cousin) and now I know her through her drawings and photos of her amazing pots and her blog, Jasmin Bhanji Studio.

*I lifted the recipe for double chocolate banana bread wholesale from Emma Gardner’s baking blog Poires au Chocolat (who in turn adapted it from Smitten Kitchen), so it would seem a bit silly to repeat it here when she has already done such a lovely job and I did nothing to improve it seeing as it was, in my view, perfect. If you like bananas and chocolate and a big fistful of cocoa powder and eating oblong cake, then this is for you. A bit naughty you might think for breakfast, but not if you imagine you’re a Parigot (slang for Parisian), in gold sandals and a lamé cardigan.

Always winter

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 25 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Baking, Cake, Childhood, Chocolate, Dessert, Devon, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

Perhaps it’s because I have been spending a lot of time in the mud, but I’m drawn very much to muscovado sugar. Dark as earth, moist, crumbly and rich with minerals, it has sizeable heft. It is always winter with muscovado. And it reminds me of the eternal cold of Devon, before central heating, and the way our small fingers stuck to the inside of the windows and having to get dressed with our foggy breath snorting out of our mouths like buffalo.

As children we only ever had muscovado and we put it in our tea, which was like drinking turf. We sprinkled it over our porridge in the mornings and the strong malt-like aniseed depth of it was not always easy to take, though it helped if there was a moat of cold milk which the muscovado sweetened to butterscotch. If muscovado is turf then molasses is tar. It was sometimes given to us ‘for nerves’ in the same way that cod liver oil was administered ‘for bones’. And I can still remember the thick gluey strings of molasses making my jaw ache, the smell strangely reminiscent of tobacco and the colour which was like Victorian yacht varnish.

I was aware that other households didn’t have such things. My school friends had white sugar that was often mistaken for salt, and a wet dab of the finger was needed to ascertain which was which. I also remember that theirs were houses filled with neatness and pullovers and tank tops knitted in luminous artificial colours.

011

My friends didn’t have to be wrapped in sheets stiff with heat from the storage heater just before bedtime. They didn’t know what they were missing, because being swaddled like this so you could barely move and feeling the starchy steam rise into the room was actually very satisfying. And then we were lowered into our beds like mummies. But apart from this one thing, I really wanted to be banal and suburban and have nothing unique about me at all.

This might be why I called myself Marian, which I did for a while, thinking it was a nice, quiet name. But the black sugar was too much of a give away. It marked us out as odd and therefore vulnerable to attack. And it wasn’t used for things people understood, like chutneys, marinades and fruit cake. It spoke of the chaos underpinning everything, that we used muscovado outside of its real purpose, that we didn’t differentiate. Eventually we left, dad to Exmouth and the rest of us to Exeter and later onwards to London. It has left me with a lifelong nervousness of parochial life, of so-called ‘country living’. Those small places can be tough. But muscovado put iron in the soul and molasses helped to calm our fraying nerves.

The lowdown on muscovado

Muscovado (from the Portuguese açúcar mascavado meaning ‘separated sugar’) is also known as Barbados sugar, and is made differently to other brown sugars: instead of being white sugar to which molasses is added, it is boiled down from sugar cane juice, purified with lime juice, but then not refined any further. Muscovado is made in Barbados, in Mauritius, and in the Antique province in the Philippines, where it was one of the most prominent export commodities, from the 19th century until the late 1970s. It is nutritionally richer than other brown sugars, and retains most of the natural minerals – such as calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and iron – inherent in sugarcane juice.

Muscovado brownies with almonds

Adapted from Claire Thomson, The Guardian, Cook, 13/2/2016

You can use whatever nut takes your fancy, but almonds always work with this recipe and you can keep the skins on. Walnuts are also lovely as are prunes. This is on the ‘weeping’ end of the brownie spectrum – crisp on the outside and damp within. My earlier brownie recipe is even more luxe. I’m terrified now looking back at those ingredients; you will probably need a defibrillator standing by, just in case. This recipe is a bit more demure. Make it gluten-free by using rice flour or a gluten-free mix instead of the standard plain. You can go the whole hog here and only use dark muscovado or light muscovado if you want to forgo the caster sugar.

125g almonds (or walnuts/softened prunes, drained and roughly chopped)

150g dark cooking chocolate (60-70% cocoa solids)

150g unsalted butter

3 eggs

100g dark muscovado sugar

100g caster sugar

100g plain flour

15g cocoa powder

1/2 tsp salt (plus a pinch to sprinkle over the baked brownie)

Lightly grease a non-stick baking tin 6 x 10 inch (15 x 24 cm) and line with baking parchment. Allow the paper to come 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the tin. Heat the oven to 350F/180C, then chop the almonds roughly, put them on a baking sheet and toast in the oven for about 5-8 minutes, keeping an eye on them as they burn easily. Use skin-on or blanched, both are fine.

While the almonds are doing their work, put chocolate and butter together in a heatproof bowl fitted over a pan of barely simmering water. Allow the chocolate to melt without stirring it, then remove from the heat and gently stir to smoothness.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugars together until the mixture is creamy and thick. Mix the melted chocolate and butter into the egg and sugar mixture.

Sift the flour and cocoa powder and salt into the chocolate mixture. Beat together until smooth. Fold in the almonds.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake on the centre shelf for 20 -25 minutes. Don’t overcook the brownie – you want it to be just firm to the touch (not scorched at all) and still gooey inside. Leave to cool for ten minutes, and then put on a sheet of parchment on a wire rack. Cut squint, so you can eat the stray bits while no one’s looking.

Damp & Soulful

21 Monday Oct 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 23 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Baking, Cake, Chocolate, England, Gluten-free, Ingredients, Nuts, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

This is an autumn cake – damp and soulful and lovely with a few late mulberries or some cooked and treacly damsons, as small as olives now. This might also be the time to get out some prunes and soak them in Armagnac (you could lob some into the cake itself). Nuts instead of flour here, which makes it gluten-free. I made the mistake the first time round of putting two tablespoons of spelt in, which was unnecessary and also catastrophic. The 2 tbs were my undoing. I made it for a party and no one would touch it. It was as if I’d announced that there was cat food in it. Instead of flour I now add cocoa powder, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief. Except of course there’s sugar and butter and nuts and chocolate.

“Do you do anything gluten-free?” the lady asked. She was the carer for a much older lady who she’d just seated with difficulty at a nearby table. Rain drummed on the windows. I was sitting right by the till. It was a lovely cafe, full of rare teas and little glass milk bottles and ironic tea cosies. My head was next to the tips jar. My head was ‘tips jar adjacent’ as they say, and I could have lain it down directly on the counter and had a nap were it not for the pneumatic espresso machine and screaming milk being banged out on to waiting coffees nearby. When did milk become so loud?

The waitress had to shout above the roar of the foam, “Plum and polenta!” She pointed to some sandy mounds under a glass dome. The lady looked at them blankly and then back at the waitress. “You don’t do anything like a baked potato?” There was a moment between them where they both seemed at a loss. “Coq au Vin?” the waitress said eventually. “Is that gluten-free?” “Yes.”

It struck me that the term ‘gluten-free’ had got in the way of this exchange. As if this was what you had to say these days, in these sorts of places. I don’t know why this made me feel sad. I felt sorry for the baked potato. And I’m not sure I want to live in a gluten-free world. I love flourless cakes – cakes made with nuts, for example – because their flourlessness is often germane to the cake’s identity: they were born flourless. But a baked potato isn’t any more gluten-free than my trousers. It was a baked potato first. This is a cake first (or torte…). Enjoy it. I hope there will always be a place for it in our post gluten world.

Chocolate and hazelnut torte

Adapted from and inspired by Emma Gardner’s beautiful blog, Poires au Chocolat

This cake is rather drum-like in appearance, and has less of the fallen soufflé effect common in the flourless. However, its surface does eventually crack reassuringly. I have no idea how the cold-eggs-straight-from-the-fridge idea works, but the proof is in the eating. Keep the cake wrapped in greaseproof paper for up to three days, if you can, to let the flavours develop and deepen. It gets better.

75g whole hazelnuts

2 tbs cocoa powder

170g good dark chocolate (60 – 70% cocoa solids) broken into chunks

140g unsalted butter, slightly softened

150g light brown sugar

Big pinch of fine sea salt

4 large cold eggs (from the fridge)

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Lightly butter an 8″ springform or loose-based tin and line with baking parchment.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F. Lightly butter an 8″ springform or loose-based tin. Place the hazelnuts on a small tray in the oven and toast for a few minutes until they start to smell and darken slightly. If they have skins, rub as much as you can off with a tea towel. Put into a food processor with the flour and blast until they are finely ground. – See more at: http://www.poiresauchocolat.net/2012/11/chocolate-hazelnut-torte-with-smoked.html#sthash.3zwFHVRy.dpuf Place the hazelnuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 15 minutes or until nuts are brown and fragrant and the skins are starting to peel away from the nuts. Remove from oven and place the nuts in a clean dish towel. Roll up the towel and let the nuts ‘steam’ for about five minutes and then rub the nuts to remove the skins. Let cool.

Put the hazelnuts on a baking sheet and bake for about 10-15 minutes or until the nuts are brown and fragrant and the skins are starting to peel away. Keep an eye on them – they burn easily. Remove from the oven and put the nuts in a clean tea towel. Roll up the towel and let the nuts ‘steam’ for about five minutes and then rub the nuts to remove the skins. Think of someone you hate. Let them cool.

To make the ground hazelnuts: once the hazelnuts have completely cooled, throw them in a food processor, along with the cocoa, and process until they are finely ground. Alternatively, put them in a coffee grinder and do them in batches.

Put a heatproof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Add the chocolate pieces and let them melt without stirring. When they look as though they’re almost there, take the bowl off the heat, stir, and add the hopefully rather soft butter, the sugar and salt. Whisk until it’s all of uniform smoothness. It will have lightened a little.

Add the first egg, beat until incorporated, then add the next, and keep going until all four eggs are in and then add the vanilla extract. Whip the mixture on high for 1-2 minutes until it’s stiff and becoming paler. Add the ground hazelnuts and cocoa powder and fold in. Scoop into the pan and level out. Bake for 28-35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the centre of the cake brings out a few sticky crumbs.

Cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. It will rise and then fall gradually, leaving a higher rim of cake around the sides and there will also be some cracking. Wrap in foil or greaseproof paper for up to three days before eating. The flavours become more wickedly intense with time.

70g whole hazelnuts
30g plain flour
170g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
140g unsalted butter, slightly softened
150g light brown sugar
big pinch of fine sea salt
4 large cold eggs (from the fridge)
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of smoked sea salt flakesPreheat the oven to 180C/350F. Lightly butter an 8″ springform or loose-based tin. Place the hazelnuts on a small tray in the oven and toast for a few minutes until they start to smell and darken slightly. If they have skins, rub as much as you can off with a tea towel. Put into a food processor with the flour and blast until they are finely ground.Place a mixer bowl (or another bowl if using a hand mixer) over a pan of barely simmering water. Chop the chocolate up and tip into the bowl. Stir occasionally as it melts. Meanwhile weigh out the brown sugar and salt and cut the butter into cubes – it should be starting to soften, not squishy. When the chocolate has nearly melted, take it off the heat and stir until it’s smooth. Place on the mixer (with the whisk attached) and add the sugar, salt and butter. Whisk on medium until the ingredients have fully combined and the mixture has lightened a little. Scrape the sides down then add the first egg. Whip until combined, then add the next egg. Repeat until they’re all combined then add the vanilla and whip for 1-2 minutes on high until stiff and pale.Add the ground hazelnuts and fold in. Scoop into the pan and level out. Sprinkle the smoked sea salt over the top. Bake for 28-35 minutes – a tester should still bring up a few sticky crumbs. Place on a wire rack and leave to cool fully in the tin. Wrap in kitchen foil and leave for at least one day and up to three before serving. Lovely with a big spoonful of whipped cream or crème fraîche.
– See more at: http://www.poiresauchocolat.net/2012/11/chocolate-hazelnut-torte-with-smoked.html#sthash.nKxGe4qV.dpuf

70g whole hazelnuts
30g plain flour
170g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
140g unsalted butter, slightly softened
150g light brown sugar
big pinch of fine sea salt
4 large cold eggs (from the fridge)
1 tsp vanilla extract – See more at: http://www.poiresauchocolat.net/2012/11/chocolate-hazelnut-torte-with-smoked.html#sthash.nKxGe4qV.dpuf

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte with Smoked Salt
(adapted from Alice Medrich’s Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts)70g whole hazelnuts
30g plain flour
170g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
140g unsalted butter, slightly softened
150g light brown sugar
big pinch of fine sea salt
4 large cold eggs (from the fridge)
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of smoked sea salt flakesPreheat the oven to 180C/350F. Lightly butter an 8″ springform or loose-based tin. Place the hazelnuts on a small tray in the oven and toast for a few minutes until they start to smell and darken slightly. If they have skins, rub as much as you can off with a tea towel. Put into a food processor with the flour and blast until they are finely ground.Place a mixer bowl (or another bowl if using a hand mixer) over a pan of barely simmering water. Chop the chocolate up and tip into the bowl. Stir occasionally as it melts. Meanwhile weigh out the brown sugar and salt and cut the butter into cubes – it should be starting to soften, not squishy. When the chocolate has nearly melted, take it off the heat and stir until it’s smooth. Place on the mixer (with the whisk attached) and add the sugar, salt and butter. Whisk on medium until the ingredients have fully combined and the mixture has lightened a little. Scrape the sides down then add the first egg. Whip until combined, then add the next egg. Repeat until they’re all combined then add the vanilla and whip for 1-2 minutes on high until stiff and pale.Add the ground hazelnuts and fold in. Scoop into the pan and level out. Sprinkle the smoked sea salt over the top. Bake for 28-35 minutes – a tester should still bring up a few sticky crumbs. Place on a wire rack and leave to cool fully in the tin. Wrap in kitchen foil and leave for at least one day and up to three before serving. Lovely with a big spoonful of whipped cream or crème fraîche.(Serves 10-12) – See more at: http://www.poiresauchocolat.net/2012/11/chocolate-hazelnut-torte-with-smoked.html#sthash.nKxGe4qV.dpuf

The cake about to be baked

A bowl of mulberries

Some other flourless cakes in my repertoire

Lemon and almond cake

Bitter chocolate olive oil cake

Chocolate marmalade slump cake

Chocolate Hazelnut Torte with Smoked Salt
(adapted from Alice Medrich’s Sinfully Easy Delicious Desserts)70g whole hazelnuts
30g plain flour
170g dark chocolate (I used 85%)
140g unsalted butter, slightly softened
150g light brown sugar
big pinch of fine sea salt
4 large cold eggs (from the fridge)
1 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of smoked sea salt flakesPreheat the oven to 180C/350F. Lightly butter an 8″ springform or loose-based tin. Place the hazelnuts on a small tray in the oven and toast for a few minutes until they start to smell and darken slightly. If they have skins, rub as much as you can off with a tea towel. Put into a food processor with the flour and blast until they are finely ground.Place a mixer bowl (or another bowl if using a hand mixer) over a pan of barely simmering water. Chop the chocolate up and tip into the bowl. Stir occasionally as it melts. Meanwhile weigh out the brown sugar and salt and cut the butter into cubes – it should be starting to soften, not squishy. When the chocolate has nearly melted, take it off the heat and stir until it’s smooth. Place on the mixer (with the whisk attached) and add the sugar, salt and butter. Whisk on medium until the ingredients have fully combined and the mixture has lightened a little. Scrape the sides down then add the first egg. Whip until combined, then add the next egg. Repeat until they’re all combined then add the vanilla and whip for 1-2 minutes on high until stiff and pale.Add the ground hazelnuts and fold in. Scoop into the pan and level out. Sprinkle the smoked sea salt over the top. Bake for 28-35 minutes – a tester should still bring up a few sticky crumbs. Place on a wire rack and leave to cool fully in the tin. Wrap in kitchen foil and leave for at least one day and up to three before serving. Lovely with a big spoonful of whipped cream or crème fraîche.(Serves 10-12)
– See more at: http://www.poiresauchocolat.net/2012/11/chocolate-hazelnut-torte-with-smoked.html#sthash.CDp8X22X.dpuf

Sussex apple cake

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 27 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Cake, Dessert, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

The sign read: “recent windfalls – ‘cookers’ – please help yourselves”. There was another sign next to it that said ‘eaters’. Cookers and eaters – two types of apple, one sour, bulky and big-shouldered, good really for cooking, where it goes to mush, the other sweeter, smaller – one to have in the hand. Although the sweet apple wasn’t particularly sweet; sharp, dry as bark on its dappled outside, but a brisk, juicy interior. When juiced later, the froth was brown, leading to a startling pink beneath.

There was not much wind to speak of that day. The air seemed suspended, with swifts carousing through little channels above us, their wings like black darts. Actually their wings were like wings, the kind you draw as a child – two V shapes. We listed with our enormous load, my plastic pockets crammed. Blackberries now liquidized were dripping like blood down my arm. And all this before lunch, which happened at three. Rather like Christmas day, without the presents.

We went into a cafe which specializes in china teacups and ladies. It is very English; everyone feels undeserving. The lady next door to us was alone. She ordered tea and apple cake. It is the kind of place where you are so close to your neighbours that you need to make a decision early on about whether to include them in your life for that brief window of time. But this was unnecessary because there was a flurry of misunderstandings, panic ensued, as the apple cake was off – and then suddenly back on – the menu. Almost no apple cake – not really a story. No tragedy there. Except it gave the lovely young waitresses (gap year) a chance to flounce around a bit, and have a laugh with each other. For the lady to show off her cool and calm persona. After the apple cake arrived, and her fork had made its incision, she produced a mobile phone and began a quiet, very civilized conversation with someone unknown (probably male) on the other end. She was very organized, I could see.

This is what I don’t have in LA: the chance to watch people at such close quarters. To notice things, like a certain kind of hair-clip, a cardigan, skin tone, imagining the man on the other end of the line. Watching a thought alight on a face. And aren’t English people interesting? We are so swathed in layers, submerged in stories that become more and more intricate with the telling. I am always surprised by English people, I think that’s it.

We waited at the bus stop, next to a couple eating ice cream. They shuffled up to let us in on the bench. I watched a man opposite with his dog, a scruffy thing, his tail wagging, his tongue out, looking around and occasionally up at his master. Two horses clip-clopped by. We got on the bus, a small Noddy bus, green and miniature, our coats bulging obscenely with our apple stash. We were deposited back to Seaford. I made the cake.

This is Mark Hix’s lovely regional apple cake made with cider and honey. In his case, the region is Somerset – mine is a Sussex story. You can use whatever local apples come your way – choose cookers, such as the Bramley, or sharp eaters at a pinch. A sweet dessert apple would be missing the point here.

Sussex apple cake

From Mark Hix, on Baking

I once ‘hilariously’ used cider vinegar instead of cider, by mistake. I thought it would destroy the cake but actually the flavours were enhanced by it, though it did make me think of fish and chips. If you’re unsure, stick to the original recipe. Also, don’t be put off by the sheer amount of apples required here. It really does make a difference. Dry apple cake isn’t fun.

Makes 1 x 24cm cake

170g unsalted butter, softened

170g soft brown sugar

3 medium eggs, room temperature, lightly beaten

1 heaped tbs of honey

240g self-raising flour, sifted

1 tsp mixed spice

600-700g cooking apples, peeled, cored and cut into smallish chunks

80ml cider

Prepare a loose-bottomed 24cm x 6-8cm deep cake tin by greasing it if it’s non-stick, or lining the base with buttered greaseproof paper if not. Pre-heat the oven to 160C/320F. Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and fluffy. Gradually beat in the eggs with the honey. Gently fold in the flour and mixed spice then stir in the cider and apples. Transfer to the cake tin and bake for 1 and a 1/4 hours, or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes our clean. Cool in the tin; serve warm on its own or with thick cream. Clotted cream would be stupendous here.

Other apple recipes to try:

Apple and rosemary cake

Lucas’s apple and sultana cake

Apple fritters

Hedgerow crumble

Topsy turvy

09 Monday Sep 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Baking, Cake, Fruit, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stone fruit, Stories

Plums are everywhere and it seems futile to resist. Although I managed it. Something about the skins that pulls one off balance. You should eat them bare, gnaw around the stone and savour the juice as it cascades down your arm. In the end, I cooked with apriums. Yes, I know it sounds more like an edible food-like substance (paraphrazing Michael Pollen) but it is the real thing. They have the rich wateriness of plums, the sour, clingy skin, but then there is apricot. They taste like the sibling of nectarines without the solidness of the flesh. Are we all clear then?

I was hellbent on making an upside down cake, so here I am. And it’s been an upside down few weeks. If I was part of the Mister Men series I would probably be upside down (they would put me in trousers, obviously) as I went about my business. I lost my camera. This was a camera I had found about two years ago. I put up posters in the area advertizing its whereabouts and when no one claimed it, I adopted it. It was a happy union. I took all the pictures for the blog with it. It accompanied me everywhere. And then suddenly it was gone – it was absolutely nowhere. I returned to gaps and crevices hoping to feel its bulky angles. It’s true what the comedian Lee Evans said: when you lose something you keep going back to the same place to look for it, the mind refusing to acknowledge you’ve just been there. Hands run over surfaces, feeling blindly behind books, fingers slide into nooks, and slide out again. I retraced my steps like an amateur sleuth.

I went to the doctor’s and sidled up to the receptionist with my query – I had all the details ready: I may have left my camera in the bathroom on my last visit. But someone was having a panic attack. This news was relayed to the assembled company with the words “You f******g assholes, she’s passed out!” According to the receptionist, now on the phone to emergency services, this man’s girlfriend had been having a panic attack, had left and was now sitting in the car outside, unconscious. Doctors and nurses spilled through the doors with wheelchairs and stethoscopes; they ran as if out of a burning building. It was mayhem. Had any of them seen my camera? It seemed not a good time to ask.

The girl who refrigerates the stool samples ran past me. Nobody was left. A few days later I encountered a man who was dispensing free hugs outside the farmers’ market. That is not me with the cute butt and sawn-off trousers, by the way. It was me later. He grasped me like a lumberjack. He didn’t speak but I felt as if he knew everything. What a difference it would make, I thought, if they had people like that around, parked on street corners, standing by subway tunnels, in the waiting room at the doctor’s. Around for when everything turns upside down.

Upside Down Cake with Stone Fruit

Adapted (everso slightly) from Pastry Studio

There is such a dizzying array of plums about in LA at the moment that it makes sense to use them here, or you could go for the hybridized pluots or apriums (as I did). However, this recipe was originally intended for apricots, and I suspect it would work equally well with other stone fruit too; anything that gives up its juice in a charitable manner. Nectarines, peaches and the like. The use of honey in the caramel makes quite a difference to the overall taste, and brings out the piquancy of the fruit.

Serves 8

For the fruit caramel

3 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon butter

½ teaspoon cinnamon

4 – 6 plums (depending on size)

2 – 3 tablespoons toasted flaked almonds

For the cake

140g (1 cup) flour ( this could be rice flour etc)

40g (½ cup) toasted flaked almonds

1½ teaspoons baking powder

¼ teaspoon salt

115g (8 tbs) butter at room temperature

150g (¾ cup) caster sugar

2 large eggs at room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

¼ teaspoon almond extract (optional)

120 ml (1/2 cup) milk at room temperature

2 tablespoons honey, to glaze

Preheat oven to 350F/190C. Lightly grease a 10 inch (25cm) cake tin.

For the fruit caramel layer, put the honey, butter and cinnamon in a saucepan and heat until melted. Pour into the bottom of the cake pan, then lift the pan and swirl to distribute evenly.

Slice the plums in half, remove the stones, and then cut the fruit into slices (or quarters), and fan them out on top of the honey butter mixture. Make sure that whatever fruit you use covers the bottom in a substantial layer, since it will cook down while baking. Fill in the gaps with a sprinkle of toasted almonds.

For the cake batter, place the flour, almonds, baking powder and salt in the bowl of a food processor or blender. Whizz until the almonds are ground but with some texture still. Pour into a bowl and set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Add vanilla and almond extracts if using and blend. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping down the bowl and mixing thoroughly after each addition.

Add a third of the flour mixture alternately with half the milk, beginning and ending with the flour. Don’t overmix. Spread the batter evenly over the fruit.

Bake until a toothpick tests clean, about 42 – 45 minutes. The sides of the cake will have started to shrink away from the sides of the pan and it will feel soft and springy to the touch. Place on a wire rack to cool for 15 minutes. Run a knife around the edge of the pan to loosen the cake. Invert the cake carefully using a plate – beware of any cascading hot juices.

Warm 2 tablespoons of the honey and brush on to the surface of the cake to glaze. Cool completely or serve at room temperature, as you would a pudding, with some cream of course.

Three other recipes that involve stone fruit:

Chocolate and apricot tart

Peach and amaretti tarte tatin

Sauteed plums and chocolate pudding

Another use for honey:

Quince paste and Manchego

Lemon, almond, olive oil cake

14 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Baking, Cake, Dessert, Food, Gluten-free, Ingredients, Lemons, Meyer lemons, Recipes

These are no ordinary lemons. They are Meyer lemons, big and blowsy, a deep yellowy-orange, the colour of fresh egg yolk. The smell and feel are both quite different to the pocked and gnarly Eureka, say: smoother, sweeter, riper, heavier in the hand. They are poreless, and at times almost round, and their leaves are dark and glossy. And they came from our friends’ garden. Before we got to the lemon tree, I was taken on a tour by their eight-year-old daughter, who picked me a posy of clover to eat (peppery) and we examined the orange tree we had given them as a present, which was actually two trees grafted on to one root. Their avocado tree was huge with leaves like big, green jazz hands. There were no more avocados though, so we stood and admired the foliage.

The lemon tree was matted with cobwebs. There was a birdhouse that hung from one of the branches which looked as though it had its own hammock, so cleverly had the house been divided by the spider’s yarn. When we brought the lemons home and lifted them out, spiders skittered over the surfaces of the fruit, unmoored. I liked the way that parts of the tree were still attached; bits of branch, leaves sprouting, as if the fruit was still in the throes of living.

We are back to the stagnant heat again. All this week there will be nothing to break the seal. The air is utterly still where we are, and at night one feels cloaked in it. The only place to be is the coast where there is a sea mist and a breeze. Inland we are engulfed; like characters from a Tennessee Williams play, we are bathed in a halo of glowing sweat. It seems the next logical step is a silk negligee and a bottle of scotch.

Although it may seem strange, being in the kitchen at times like this is actually a reprieve. Inside is cooler. Of course, if you have a glut of lemons, making lemonade would be perfect on days like these: a jug filled with ice and mint, frothing with syrupy lemon fizz. But this is a light cake and goes well with fresh seasonal fruit (the first apricots are in). I wanted to do something sufficiently involving and I liked the processes involved. I have made this flourless; it gives it a lovely dampness and it goes down beautifully. (In fact I wanted to call this post Rising Damp because the memory made me smile but I couldn’t fit it all in).

I blanched, roasted and ground the almonds myself – it makes a difference if you like uneven nuttiness in a cake, which I profess I do. It doesn’t rise and fall quite as dramatically as other ‘broken’ cakes I have featured, such as the chocolate marmalade slump cake and the bitter chocolate olive oil cake but it has the same softly flattened character.

Lemon, almond, olive oil cake

Adapted (almost beyond recognition) from Pastry Studio

I am quite hardcore here about the almond preparation but using a packet of already ground almonds is totally acceptable. Give them a gentle toast in a frying pan beforehand to release flavour. If you are using regular lemons, the cake will generally be sharper and taste more lemony.

Serves 8

5 free range eggs, separated

150g (5½ oz) sugar, divided

175ml (6 fl oz) extra virgin olive oil

Juice of 1 lemon

Finely grated zest of 2 lemons

175g (6 oz) blanched, toasted and ground almonds

½ tsp salt

1 tbs sugar, for the top of the cake

Preheat the oven to 350F/180C. Lightly grease a 23cm (9in) cake tin with olive oil and line with parchment.

Beat the yolks and just under half of the sugar until thick and pale. Reduce the whisk to medium speed and drizzle in the olive oil. Then add the lemon juice and zest. The mixture may look a bit sloppy. Sift half the ground almonds into the batter and fold in gently. Sift in the remaining almonds until combined, making sure to lift up the batter from the bottom and sides of the bowl. Beat the egg whites with the salt until foamy. Slowly rain in the rest of the sugar until they hold a soft, satiny peak. Fold a third of the whites into the yolk mixture to lighten the batter, then fold in the remaining whites.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and gently tap the bottom on to a work surface to release any air bubbles. Sprinkle the 1 tbs of sugar on to the top of the cake (don’t omit this as it gives the cake a nice crunch). Bake until the cake is puffed and golden – about 30 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes. Release the cake and let it cool completely. Gently invert the cake and remove the paper. Serve with some crème fraîche and some poached apricots or other seasonal fruit.

Bitter chocolate olive oil cake

03 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 28 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Cake, Chocolate, Cookbook, Cooking, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Olive oil, Recipes, Stories

This is not a rant against butter. Far from it. But I am rather in love with olive oil and its peculiar affinity with desserts. And while butter highlights sweetness, is dense and comforting, olive oil is less weighty, making the crumb lighter, almost bubbly. Initially, I was scared of going for an extra virginal oil, but the fruity-pepper quality is reminiscent of spice. And good olive oil will have traces of bitterness and pungency, with echoes still of the actual olive. I know I’m probably a bit behind, but the notion of tasting fresh olive oil, sipping it like wine, was new to me, until I tried it. Weirdly, it’s not oily or greasy, but fresh and clean, spring-like.

And here in LA, it is spring; particularly early in the morning with the desert air still biting but with a still and steady sun above. After months of wet (it’s true what they say – LA in the rain is basically Slough with palm trees), it is good to remember the heat, the sharpness and dryness of the air. Things are budding again. Magnolia with its slip of pink just pushing through. Lemon trees a forest of blossom, with the first yellow fruit like tear drops. And everything is green, courtesy of the rain. Troughs of dried mud have appeared next to banks of luminous grass. It’s all very Hollywood.

Olive oil is big business and full of controversy. It’s a minefield, frankly. Here in California, olive trees were brought to the state by Spanish missionaries in the 18th century. Everywhere the silver-grey leaves, stark as bullets in the sun, remind you of the fact that despite its New World appearance, the terroir of this part of California is fundamentally Mediterranean.

I cannot begin to unravel the complexity of what makes a good olive oil, but apparently it has little to do with colour and everything to do with freshness; olives are a stone fruit and the oil is essentially the juice of the olive, and like all juice, it is perishable. Look for bottles with a ‘best by’ date, or better still a date of harvest. Early harvest oil will be generally much more pungent and more flavourful than late harvest. And the oil should be extracted by cold-pressing, using neither heat nor chemicals. This is obviously in an ideal world.

Anyway, back to cake. Try not to be cowed by the robustness of the oil you are using here; the bitterness in both the chocolate and the oil is tempered by the delightful texture of the almonds and the fissured exterior of the cake once baked – the way it cracks like a dinosaur’s egg and sinks gratefully into a thick mound of cream. It is not as truffle-like as it looks – it’s glistening because I decided, erroneously, to fleck it with olive oil for presentation purposes. I also sprinkled it with flaky salt, but have a glass of water on hand if you decide to go this route.

Bitter chocolate olive oil cake

Adapted from The Bojon Gourmet/Alice Medrich

50g (1/2 cup) blanched whole almonds

1 tbs cocoa powder

150g dark chocolate (70-72% cocoa solids) broken into pieces

120ml (½ cup) extra virgin olive oil

Pinch of flaky sea salt, plus some for serving

4 large eggs, separated at room temperature

170g (¾ cup) caster sugar, divided use

¼ tsp cream of tartar

Position a rack in the centre of the oven and pre-heat to 325F/170C. Grease an 8 or 9″ (20cm) round cake tin with a bit of olive oil. If using whole almonds (which I would recommend) toast them for a minute or so over a medium heat until they start to smell nice and turn a little golden. Then grind them with the cocoa powder in a blender or coffee grinder until powdery but with a few stray bits of nut left, for texture. Place the chocolate in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of barely simmering water. Once it looks well on its way to melting, add the oil and the pinch of sea salt and stir.

Remove the bowl from the pan and whisk in 110g (½ cup) of the sugar and the almond mixture until combined. Whisk in the egg yolks. If the mixture starts to get cold, it may ‘seize’ or look grainy. If this happens, place the bowl back over the simmering pan and stir until it loosens again. Place the egg whites in a very clean bowl and whisk until just frothy. Then add the cream of tartar and continue until foamy. Rain in the remaining sugar, continuing to whisk until the whites hold soft peaks.

Without delay, use a rubber spatula to stir a small portion of the whipped whites into the chocolate mixture to loosen, then gently fold in the remaining whites until the batter is just combined and no streaks remain. Immediately pour mixture into the prepared pan, smooth out the top and bake until a toothpick inserted comes out with moist crumbs attached – 35 to 45 minutes. Let the cake cool completely, then remove from the pan and sprinkle with sea salt – this may not be to your liking, so omit if not. The cake improves with time, courtesy of the almonds. Keep covered at room temperature for 3-4 days for the full effect.

Read on Read Tom Mueller’s book Extra Virginity if you’re interested in olive oil intrigue. Also check out his website and blog truthinoliveoil.com for lots of fascinating facts.