Topsy turvy

09 Monday Sep 2013

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

A field of fennel

17 Monday Jun 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Food, Herbs, Ingredients, Italy, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories, Walking

A couple of days ago I went for a walk in Lake Hollywood, my usual amble in the morning. It is a flat, paved trail that loops round the lake – not actually a lake at all but a reservoir surrounded by a forbidding high wire fence – and was prepared to be unamazed by it. There have been a few interesting sightings in the past (Mila and Ashton swanning past, Valene from Knots Landing ‘jogging,’ an eagle having a bath), but I was not in the mood. I wanted to walk until my legs ached, with my head down.

There was no sun to speak of, but a heavy haze, and the occasional patch of vague brightness trying to push through. Two ducks sat in the muck, pecking at some iridescent greenery. After a while, one stopped pecking and just stood there. Come on, you’ve had your fun, it seemed to say. So I moved on. I sat on a grassy bank to rest my legs for a bit and watched a family of coyotes tumble down the side of the hill, stopping to bite each other’s ears and roll around. They appeared one at a time, looked up and down the trail, and loped across to a hole in the fence, slipping through to the other side where the water was.

Up ahead there was a hole for me too, an unusual clearing where normally there is a closed gate. I walked through and up the hill and was surrounded by an oasis of wild flowers, bees, butterflies and wild fennel. I sat down on a stone mound.

Wild fennel is difficult to photograph. From afar it is just a sea of green feathers, a strange network of tentacles, a web. Up close it is too fine and long and wavy. You can never get it all in. So in the end I rolled a few in my hand and took in the smell. I was expecting licorice, the tarry, sticky sweets from childhood, but not lemon, rubber, grass, aniseed, hay, manure, mint, cough mixture and ferns.

Even as I walked past, this strange concoction spilled out. Wild fennel is a herb (or edible weed depending on who you read), and grows abundantly around the Mediterranean, and in Mediterranean climates such as southern California. It is easily confused with fennel the bulb, which has the same curly fronds up top, but is used principally for the fresh, clean chunkiness of its base. The herb, all frilly leaf, is used a lot in southern Italian cooking, particularly Sicilian, where they like to stuff the finocchio selvatico in their sardines, and the seeds in their sausages.

Umbel beginnings

It felt like a real find, this place. There was no one else around, and though I could hear the voices of walkers on the main path, I was hidden from view. It is an economical landscape, because it is so dry. Looking only for lushness, meadows, and nodding snowdrops – Englishness – it’s easy to miss everything else. This field was gold, the dull, dry gold of old grass. Everything was matted, tufted and coarse with occasional bolts of bright colour from thistles. I had to give up the decision to be unmoved. The sun finally came out and I went and sat on the bridge and watched the turtles sunbathing at the lake’s edge.

Fennel grows often in the most unprepossessing places: wastelands, car parks and even in the street. It propagates like mad, and is considered something of a pest here and a fire hazard. Don’t pick it where there is a good chance a dog (or person) has peed on it. The spring and early summer is when you get the fresh green shoots, the wavy fronds, that are used for stuffing into fish and strewing over fava beans and ricotta, risotto, and as a base for pesto.

The simplest treatment is to boil them until tender and serve with olive oil and lemon juice. The autumn is when you get the seeds. This is when the fronds die back and you get the dried, burnt-looking stalks. However mangled they look, the plants will be full of seed clusters. They look like little umbrellas (hence the name Umbelliferae, the family to which fennel belongs). You can pick off the ‘umbels’, separate the seeds from the pods and dry them. They last forever.

After eating fennel pretty exhaustively all week, this recipe makes the most sense to me, gustatorially (I’m not sure that’s a word). It’s a classic pairing of fava beans (broad beans in England) and ricotta with wild fennel fronds. Use the bushy stalks of bulb fennel in its place, or some mint, or whatever takes your fancy. You could use peas as well as, or instead of, fava beans.

Fava beans, ricotta and wild fennel

Adapted from Matthew Fort, Sweet Honey, Bitter Lemons

Serves 4

1 small onion

1 bunch of wild fennel

4 big handfuls of fava beans

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Ricotta or feta

When fava beans are older, husk them and pinch off their skins to reveal the bright green pods beneath – boiling them for 3 minutes will help shuck off their coats, if need be. Heat a glug of olive oil in a pan. Slice the onion finely and chop the fennel into small bits. Wilt them for a couple of minutes and then add the beans. Cook very gently for about 15 minutes. Add a little water if the beans are drying out before becoming tender. Serve with ricotta, or feta if you prefer a bit of salty sharpness. This is lovely served alongside some prosciutto crudo.

Honey Ice

30 Thursday May 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Claudia Roden, Farmers' market, Honey, Ice cream, Los Angeles, Mediterranean, Stories, Travel

This recipe comes from Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking by Claudia Roden. It is a small, plain book with no photographs, and at first I afforded it only a few cursory glances. And then I read the introduction and it made sense. I reread it and I was transported. She sweeps through the history of the Mediterranean with such blithe eloquence that all I could hope to do here is a blundering précis of facts and impressions. What has stayed with me is the culinary unity of all sixteen or so countries that nestle around this ‘little inland sea.’ And the sheer amount of traffic.

First there were the colonizers – the Phoenicians, Greeks and Romans – who brought their holy trinity of wheat, olives and vines. Then the area was positively over-run by invaders: the Arabs who occupied parts of Spain and Sicily for hundreds of years and introduced new trading routes and cultivated sugar cane, apricots and oranges, pomegranates, dates and aubergines. The Normans and the Republic of Venice also had a go, and then the Ottoman Empire muscled in. And then there were the travellers: traders, troubadours, jongleurs, spice merchants, whole populations uprooted – Tunisians were sent to Palermo in Sicily to build the cathedral, for instance. It must have been a nightmare for Social Services.

What I loved was the idea of the Mediterranean as its own world, distinct from the northern regions of its own countries. So the cuisine of Andalusia would have more in common with southern Italy than with Asturias, say. Provence and Sicily are related. They use the same clay pots and wood-burning stoves. There is olive oil, the juice of lemons, garlic, tomatoes, almonds, quince, basil and wild marjoram. Food is pummeled, slaked, ground with a pestle and mortar, little old women in black keen and worry beads in their gnarled hands, stopping as you pass to ask why you’re not married and how much you weigh.

And that made me think of all the seemingly disconnected events that had happened to me on my travels there. Rather than random or isolated, one event now began to inform the other. So the gesture of the café owner in Paxos in Greece who brought us a bottle of wine and two glasses as we were about to bed down for the night on the beach (with one sheet and two bin bags) was somehow related to the gesture of the boy (whose name I will never forget: Zoran) who boarded my train in Dubrovnik carrying a mattress and shared his lunch with me. The woman who complained we had flooded her bathroom in Corfu was definitely related to the man who ordered me out of his ballet class in Venice. I remember the alleyways in Tunisia and Amalfi, getting lost in darkness, the sounds of bare feet on stone, and the fear it was my stepmother.

There are big differences between the eastern Mediterranean and western, and there are many culinary distinctions between the countries in both regions. But for now, I like to imagine the similarities. We are encouraged in life to unmake connections, to see things as mere coincidence. But in the Mediterranean, it’s the same sun, the same sea, the same fish, the same herbs; all that empire on the chopping board. All those languages in one clay pot.

When it came to choosing a Mediterranean sweet to feature here, I was almost limp with temptation. “My soul responds to a mere vanilla ice smeared out into the thick glass of an Italian ice-cream vendor”, wrote Compton Mackenzie in First Athenian Memories, and despite the turrons, the sfogliatelle and the cassata Siciliana, I think ice cream is always a good place to start.

The honey you use can be characterful and not particularly sweet; remember honey is much more complex than sugar, and can range from treacly, nutty and even mildly bitter. Most honey is polyfloral – meaning the nectar has been taken from different floral sources – and is generally known as ‘wildflower’. Monofloral honey is when the bees have taken nectar from only one plant species (although the jury is out on whether a honey can ever be truly singular, because bees aren’t that picky and like all sorts), and the flavour is more pronounced. Some of the most highly prized honey comes from Sicily: orange blossom, the honey from zagara (the flower of the lemon tree), chestnut and thyme. Sardinian bitter honey comes from the autumnal flowering of the strawberry tree and is light green in hue. This ice cream recipe comes originally from Provence where they use lavender honey from their famous fields. There are fields of lavender here in Mediterranean southern California too, of course, as well as some wonderful urban honey around LA. Happy honey hunting.*

Honey ice cream

Adapted from Invitation to Mediterranean Cooking by Claudia Roden

I suggest pairing this ice cream with something resinous and rich (I want to say lusty), such as roasted figs (go to my recipe here), fig jam, or even better, quince paste (otherwise known as membrillo, recipe here). That said, some poached apricots or plums would also be pretty divine. And some chopped pistachios thrown from above.

As to milk, I used goat’s milk which I know is not to everyone’s taste. If you’re not sure you want goaty ice cream, go for cow’s milk. Sheep’s milk would be a lovely alternative.

500ml milk

4 large egg yolks

150g lavender, acacia or other clear, distinctive honey

150ml double/thick cream (I used crème fraîche)

1 tbs orange blossom water

Boil the milk. If you are using goat’s milk, let it almost come to a boil, but take it off the heat just before. Beat the egg yolks to a pale cream, then beat in the honey, the cream, and then finally a tablespoon of the hot milk. Gradually add the rest of the milk.

Return the mixture to the pan and stir with a wooden spoon over a low heat until it thickens to a light cream. Do not let it boil or it will curdle. Let it cool, stirring occasionally to stop the mixture forming a skin. I accelerate this process by transferring the mixture to a bowl and putting it in the sink filled with some ice cubes and tap water. Stir in the orange blossom water. Cover the bowl with cling-film/plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill thoroughly. If you have an ice cream maker, follow the manufacturer’s instructions. This was my route, and the photo above and below is a soft-serve version directly after churning, and then a firmer set, having frozen the churned ice cream for a few hours. If you don’t have an ice cream maker, according to Claudia you can put the bowl directly in the freezer and freeze overnight or for at least 5 hours before serving. You can serve this ice cream straight from the freezer.

Recipe List

I have created a permanent recipe list if you’re interested in finding something specific. I will refine the categories as I go, but for now it’s a start. Hope it helps and you enjoy having a rummage through the archives.

*Addition 2nd June 2013

I found some lovely honey at the farmers’ market today from Bill’s Bees and wanted to share the discovery. I tried their local buckwheat honey which was strong, hearty and malt-like. The orange blossom honey was beautiful and surprising: clear like blown glass, smooth and silky, and floral without being overpoweringly sweet. There was also a small kick of acid when I was least expecting it, right at the end when I was about to ask another question. If you are in the area I would recommend giving them a visit.

Buckwheat honey

Orange blossom honey

Noticing Pecans

03 Monday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Homesickness, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Nuts, Recipes, Stories, Winter

There is an expression: You are here. This is now. Useful when you’re telling stories to contemplate this from time to time. It is easy to look back, to dip into a time removed. But right at this moment I’m sitting in LA. It is early morning. Outside it is dark and rain has fallen and continues to fall, soaking our cushions on the garden sofa we found in the road by Lake Hollywood.

There is a ring of mushrooms that has sprung up outside our window. It is a dark morning without the fog and cold breath of an English winter, but still, it’s recognisably the cold months here. The darkness feels slippery. There are long, wet days that close around 4pm. It is dank and faintly claustrophobic to be inside so much. The windows don’t blow and rattle like they do when there are gales in England. The windows here are doors and they stand firm. Still, listening to the rain at night is comforting, slightly numbing.

And then I went out. To the farmers’ market, where I found pecans. I took some photos – actually I pointed my camera, snapped and moved on. I kept coming back though. Once to ask how to crack the shell (put two in your hand and squeeze), the second time to ask where the nuts came from (Fresno), and then he saw me coming again and he wasn’t sure how to react. Yes, they’re peaking now – the next few weeks are their time.

When I got home I couldn’t believe how truly beautiful they were. I loved the way they rattled in their netting and the surprisingly friable nature of the shell. Simple pressure splits the skin. These are fresh, ‘wet’ pecans and they have a sweetness to them missing in walnuts. My first crunch – creamy and dry, faintly tannic – and I thought of maple syrup.

Fall in Los Angeles

Edmund de Waal talks in his book The Hare with Amber Eyes about the ‘default vagueness’ of melancholy and the ‘smothering lack of focus’ it can engender. We have our stories. Sometimes we forget to go out and make new ones. I have been missing England and the toing and froing of recent months has only added to this sense of dislocation and nostalgia. I have been keening. Now it’s time to be here. Because when I am no longer in this place, I will miss it.

So to pecans. I don’t want to mask their flavour and unique texture. I want to keep them simple and fairly whole. These toasted pecans go well with all manner of things. Here a pear, and though Ruth Watson decries the Conference as having ‘as much taste as a policeman in a string vest,’ I rather like the blandness and graininess. A nice ripe juicy pear anyway is a good thing. Take what you can get. Of course, sometimes it must be ice cream and nothing else. A ball of vanilla, a warm clutch of toasted pecans, a thin moat of maple syrup and I’m anyone’s.

Sweet and salty pecans and a ripe pear

David Lebovitz, The Sweet Life in Paris

Deborah Madison, Seasonal Fruit Desserts

Serves 2

1 cup (170g) shelled pecans

1 tbs (15g) butter

1 tbs dark brown sugar

A good pinch of flaky sea salt (fleur de sel) or smoked sea salt

A good pinch of freshly ground black pepper

A finely chopped sprig of rosemary (optional)

Maple syrup (optional)

2 ripe pears

Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and roast in a 300F (180C) oven for about 5 minutes to ‘tickle out’ their flavour. Try to avoid colouring them too much. Melt the butter in a pan over a medium heat, add the rosemary (if using) and then the warmed pecans. Sprinkle the brown sugar over them, and stir until the sugar has melted. Remove from the heat, then sprinkle with the salt and a fresh grind of pepper. Let cool to harden. Tap the pecans gently with a rolling pin to break them up or leave them whole.

Peel, quarter and core the pears. Slice them and serve with the pecans and a drizzle of maple syrup if you have some. And if you have some ice cream, go for it.

Things that go well with pecans: vanilla ice cream, maple syrup, bananas, cream, caramel, avocados, blue cheese, apples, pears, dates and beets.

Intense

05 Monday Nov 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Baking, Chocolate, Citrus, Fruit, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories

I’d like to clarify one thing: Los Angeles is not laid-back. I can illustrate this with a recent happening in Runyon Canyon which involved the lady in the picture below. It was immediately clear she was mad. To conflate the English and American uses of the word, she was both insane and angry. She strode up the hill, got very close to us, pivoted and marched back down. She did this a few times, and we took some surreptitious photos, which she seemed to know about even though she couldn’t see anything.

“Are you taking pictures of me?” she barked, striding up the hill again, ski hat and sunglasses obscuring most of her face. We assured her we were not, and continued on our way. But however far we got, she would find us, get very close, then pivot and stride in the opposite direction. It was like some sort of drama school exercise to do with spatial awareness. Specifically the work of Rudolf Laban, which she would have excelled at.

Each time she came near, she raised her voice, and started talking very loudly into her cellphone. It wasn’t clear if there was anyone real on the other end, but it was obvious she was talking about movies: meetings, castings, budgets were mentioned. And it occurred to me that this was like a mad and intense version of what happens in LA every day. This is a city of creatives. Imagine living in a city peopled only by librarians or lollipop ladies* (which would be nice, I think; you would have a wide selection of reading material while being able to cross the road safely).

I never thought I’d come to the conclusion that there is such a thing as too much creativity. Being surrounded by people who are expressing themselves all the time is quite frightening, particularly when there are also yawning canyons, deep bowls of dust, fissured, cracked earth. There are mountain lions and rattlesnakes in the vicinity. Hawks hang in the air. LA is quite wild enough.

In keeping with today’s theme, these cookies are very intense. They’re little explosions of citrus and chocolate, and leave you feeling quite caffeinated and in need of moisture. They use a lot of butter, so this is an opportunity to use the good stuff, if you can get your hands on it. They aren’t soft, but snap in the mouth, and have a crystalline, sandy quality. The flavour of orange is not subtle (the recipe asks for the zest of 5 oranges, no less) and the dark chocolate is strong and edgy. Children may well turn their noses up at them. All the more for you.

Orange chocolate chip cookies

Adapted from Dan Lepard, The Guardian

350g plain flour

½ tsp salt

150g icing sugar

200g unsalted butter, slightly softened

Finely grated zest of 5 oranges (have yourself an orange juice)

200g chocolate chips (or a block of dark chocolate roughly chopped)

Put the flour, salt, icing sugar, butter and zest in a bowl and rub together into a smooth, soft dough (or you can use a food processor). Add the chocolate and work quickly to combine. Either divide the dough in two, and roll each half into a cylinder, or pat the entire amount of dough into a wide, flat disc. Wrap in plastic wrap/clingfilm and put in the freezer to firm up (you can leave it there for a month).

To bake, heat the oven to 170C/335F. Line a baking tray with parchment/baking paper. Take the dough out of the freezer and let it soften slightly for about ten minutes. It needs to stay firm for slicing. Using a serrated knife, cut out thinnish rounds (0.75-1cm). Alternatively, place the whole disc of dough between two sheets of cling film/plastic wrap and roll out to the same thickness, and then use a pastry cutter. The first kind will look like coins, the second like your more conventional cookie.

Sit the cookies on the lined tray about 2-3cm apart and bake for about 15-20 minutes (I don’t know the fierceness of your oven), until lightly browned and crisp. Remove from the oven, transfer to wire racks and leave to cool.

An additional recipe

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Three Good Things on a Plate

These cookies can form the basis of a lovely chocolate tiffin, or refrigerator cake. Put 200g of broken up bits of dark chocolate, 110g butter and 1 tablespoon of syrup or honey into a heatproof bowl. Stand this over a pan of just-simmering water until the chocolate is melted and smooth. Roughly chop 75g of crystallised ginger (or a handful of raisins and/or dried apricots) and crush the cookies to small chunks. Pour the melted chocolate over the ginger/dried fruit and cookies, and mix. Tip this mixture into a lined loaf tin. Smooth out, leave to cool, then transfer to the fridge for several hours to set.

*Crossing guards

Fruit tea loaf

29 Monday Oct 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Afternoon tea, Baking, David Hockney, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories

This is good hibernating food, inclement weather or no, but bad weather definitely helps. When the sun is shining, I have always felt intense pressure to go out, to embrace the rays. Years of watching our little black and white TV in a darkened room while my mother stood in the doorway yelling “Turn that man off!” has complicated my relationship to daylight.

This was generally followed by her pulling back the curtains, flinging open the windows and shouting “Look! It’s a beautiful day outside!” The defense was nearly always the same: that this was our ‘favourite programme.’ But pretty much every TV show fulfilled this criteria – Charlie’s Angels, Swap Shop, Doctor Who, Dallas, Crown Court, Bagpuss, Juliet Bravo. However wonderful it was to play outside in the garden, or speed up and down the hills on our bikes, sadly nothing was as compelling as staring morosely at a screen eating crumpets.

I have had to fight this urge since returning to LA. It is October, the nights here are thankfully chilly, and there has been a bracing wind that makes everything rustle and bend. There is drama outside and this is a welcome distraction; it calls for a deep drift of blankets, and the roasting of root vegetables. It gets complicated during the day, when it is perfect. Warm, sunny, happy, solid, blank. I am back in a David Hockney painting. Tough little colours fight it out. I sit and watch, like a parade. Even the ladies’ swimming caps have a Kodachrome quality to them. I looked down at the pool today and watched this hot pink flower slicing through the water.

But I’m still clinging to afternoon tea and this is also when the sun dips behind the hill, ushering in coolness and flapping leaves. People crane to get the last few minutes of sun and heat here; towels are still draped at 4pm, chairs re-maneuvered every ten minutes. And so it seems perverse – even ungrateful – to say it, and it feels a guilty thing to want to admit to, but the dark is still my favourite time of day.

David Hockney, John St. Clair Swimming, 1972

You can simply stop at the tea-soaked dried fruit stage if you like and omit the sugar. After you’ve let it macerate overnight, drain off the liquid into a pan and boil until it’s reduced by half, then pour this syrup back over the fruit. In this state (see top picture), it is lovely added to a ricotta cheesecake or served on its own with a dollop of mascarpone. Or with Greek yoghurt for breakfast. It gets plumper and more syrupy the longer you leave it too. This is inspired by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s apricot and tea recipe from Three Good Things on a Plate.

Fruit tea loaf

Adapted from Jane Grigson, English Food

375g (12 oz) mixed dried fruit (I used only apricots and raisins)

125g (4 oz) dark brown sugar

250ml – 300ml (½ pint) strained, hot and strong Earl Grey tea

250g (8 oz) plain flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 egg

pinch of ground cloves and cinnamon

zest of 1 lemon

Stir together the dried fruit, lemon zest, sugar and hot tea. Leave overnight to macerate. The next day, beat in the dry ingredients, followed by the lightly beaten egg. Scrape the stiff batter into a lined and buttered 1lb loaf tin at 325F or 180C for about 1 hour, or until the loaf is firm to the touch and a skewer comes out clean. Serve thinly sliced (possibly toasted) with butter and a pot of tea. For the best flavour, keep the loaf airtight for two to three days. It gets better.

An Autumn Jelly

21 Sunday Oct 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

Autumn, England, Food, Fruit, Homesickness, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Preserve, Recipes, Stories, Sussex

I was torn between jelly and chutney. I was eventually won over by the jelly’s limpid beauty, the slow drip through muslin, the wobble. Chutney tends to be quite polarising, I find. I’m never entirely sure what to do with it, what to eat it with and who to give it to if I make it. And the flavours can be aggressive, sour, bullying. I’m obviously not doing it right. About jelly, there is something of autumn, distilled. A jar of pale amber or wine-red brings to mind rosehips and crab apples, sloes, rowan berries and warming spices. And stained glass windows.

To clarify, I am talking about jelly as a preserve rather than, say, jelly and ice cream. This version is lovely with roast meat or with a sharp, dry cheese. There is also nothing to stop you melting it over a crumpet for breakfast. Think deep, rather than sweet. Because many of the hedgerow fruits are low in pectin, it makes sense to combine them with apples. There are no hard and fast rules about what to use in these so-called ‘bramble’ jellies, except that apples will help them gel. And always go for something bittersweet and a bit tannic. Windfalls with all the bad bits cut out would do just fine.

I am now in LA where there are no hedgerows. We have a nectarine tree ravaged by squirrels and some small but softening lemons on the tree. The sky feels very low and close. There is not much air. I am somewhat jellied myself, having been hauled off for questioning at immigration control on my arrival at LAX airport. I swayed and an angry man jabbed questions at me. They were all simple questions, laced with the playful acid of too many long and boring hours spent in an airless room. What do I do? Why was I in England? Why did I come back? Where do I live? Tell me again – you do what? At the best of times, I find these questions hard to answer, but after an eleven hour flight, they become truly existential. This man was like Kierkegaard with a shaved head. If the circumstances had been different I might have opened up a bit.

So, I hope you will forgive me for harping on about hedgerows and hawthorns. And apples. I still can’t get over this apple tree I found while out on a walk, en route to Alfriston. These apples had the hulking shoulders of the Bramley, but they were rosy, tawny, not green. I later juiced them and they were sharp but honeyed, creamy like Guinness with a pinky-red colour under the froth.

There may well be lovely apples here and I will enjoy discovering more about them over the coming weeks. But after a month of riding my brake-less bike through wind tunnels, gorging myself on autumn and being inside such a tactile landscape again, I suspect it may take me a while to land.

Autumn jelly

Adapted from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, The Wild Bunch, The Guardian

1kg tart apples, washed and cut into chunks (don’t peel or core them)

1kg blackberries, rosehips, haws, sloes, elderberries, or rowan berries

(if these are hard to come by, you could try blueberries or cranberries)

Granulated sugar

Herbs (mint, thyme or rosemary work well)

Fills 4-5 small jars

Method

Put the apples and berries in a preserving pan (or heavy-bottomed pan). You will need to roughly chop the rosehips beforehand, if you’re including them. Add enough water almost to cover the fruit. Tuck in the herbs, if using, and bring to a simmer. Leave to cook gently until the fruit is soft and pulpy. Tip into a jelly bag or into a sieve lined with muslin (cheesecloth) and leave overnight to drip. Don’t squeeze it if you want your jelly to be clear.

Prepare your jars by washing them in hot, soapy water, then put them in a low oven to dry out and heat up. Put a saucer in the fridge or freezer. Measure the juice and transfer to the clean pan. For every 600ml of juice, add 450g of sugar. Bring slowly to the boil to ensure the sugar properly dissolves, then boil hard for eight minutes. To test for a set, turn the heat off and drip a little jelly on the now-cold saucer. Push the jelly with your finger. If there is a ‘skin’ that wrinkles, then it’s reached setting point. Don’t be overly concerned with this; you don’t want totally solid jelly. A bit of sway is nice. Pot into hot jars and seal immediately. Leave to cool, label and store in a dark place. Use within a year and put in the fridge once opened.

Candied kumquats & rose jam

08 Tuesday May 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Breakfast, Cooking, Fruit, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

A bit of a whimsical pairing, this. Someone was throwing out a load of roses – they were lying in a sorry heap on the ground, by the bins – so I scooped them up, fished out the earwigs and got to work. In the same week, I found kumquats tumbling all over the road, the tree bowed down by its own luscious bounty, so I shoved as many of them into my bag as I could manage, and walked away whistling (always a sign of guilt).

Anyway, I was brought up to believe a bit of light thieving is not only acceptable, but common sense when we’re talking about food that would rot otherwise. Seeing a laden citrus tree in LA – a common sight, sadly – its golden orbs lolling on the ground mere yards from someone’s front door, makes me feel quite sick. “It’s food!” I want to shout through the letterbox. “You can eat it and everything!” It takes every cell in my body not to jump the fence and fill my pockets, secreting the fruit about my person like a drug mule. To put this in context, I am the daughter of a woman who regularly scaled a neighbour’s wall to forage for dandelion leaves, which she did at nightfall, as if she were about to make off with their stereo. The leaves were for us, by the way, in lieu of salad.

The kumquat is the perfect oval shape, like a little orange egg. The neatness and polish, the deep apricot hue of the skin, lends itself to being shown off on posh after-dinner fruit plates where no one knows what to do with them. They’re so small that it seems a pointless exercise to peel them and you don’t have to, because the rind is in fact the sweetest bit. In an interesting about-turn, the flesh is sour, so the idea is to pop the whole thing in your mouth and crunch. You are expected to eat the seeds. The tree itself has been known to sit at the table – the potted version, I should say – where guests can pluck directly from the branch.

I think these work best candied. It shows off their texture, that nubby rind is almost all there is, and sugar in this setting brings out the sour. It reminds me of a bitter version of quince paste and works well with cheese, particularly Manchego and Cabra al Vino. A chalky, wincing cheddar is also lovely. For breakfast, it takes on a poached complexion, particularly with yogurt. I know I’ve already mentioned apricots; these have more bite but retain the same sweet-sour balance. Limequats, as the name suggests, are a hybrid, and much tarter, more marmalade-like. In fact, both work well as a quick version of the preserve. In ten minutes you have a credible, and beautifully syrupy, burst of sunshine for your morning toast.

Candied kumquats

Adapted from David Lebovitz

This recipe is adapted from ‘sweet king’ David Lebovitz, who suggests poached prunes as an accompaniment. Interestingly, the rose petal jam is prune-like both in texture and appearance, though lacking the prune’s deliciously plump sloppiness.

1 cup (250ml) water

¼ cup (50g) sugar

15 – 20 kumquats or limequats

2 tbs crystallized ginger, chopped finely

1 cinnamon stick

Method

Slice the kumquats into thinnish rounds and de-seed. Any seeds you don’t get can be easily sieved out later, so don’t worry if some escape you. Bring the water, sugar, cinnamon, ginger (feel free to improvise if you don’t have these) and kumquats to a gradual boil in a small saucepan.

Reduce the heat to a simmer and cook for about 10 minutes, keeping an eye on it near the end. The liquid will now be reduced and syrupy. Remove from the heat, take out the cinnamon stick, and let the kumquats come to room temperature. They can keep in the fridge for a good six weeks, stored in an airtight container.

Interesting fact: The kumquat, though it behaves like a citrus, was discovered in 1915 to have enough cellular differences to be moved to a separate genus known as Fortunella, named after Robert Fortune, an English traveller who introduced the fruit into Europe in 1846.

My rose booty

I have been longing to make this jam for some time now, ever since I came across it in Alys Fowler’s book, The Thrifty Forager. I’ve never been much of a rose fancier – who can forget Annette Bening shrieking in her gardening gloves in American Beauty? – but I always hoped to be given some, or at least to be walking past a compost heap at the right moment.

I found my multi-coloured stash took on a deep port-wine appearance, and started to reduce after it was allowed to cook for 20-25 minutes. It managed this cleverly without pectin – I suspect the sugar does most of the work – and the result is delicately toothsome. A faint ‘tearing’ sensation is important here – some resistance, rather than a general jammyness. For breakfast, serve with the candied kumquats over Greek yogurt. Some chopped pistachios would make an interesting contrast.

Rose petal jam

Adapted from The Thrifty Forager by Alys Fowler

250g (9oz) unsprayed rose petals

1.1 litres (2 pints) water

Juice of 2 lemons

450g (1lb) granulated sugar

Method

Shake the petals free of any bugs, place in a bowl, and add half the sugar. Leave for a few hours or overnight. This infuses the rose flavour into the sugar, and darkens the petals. In a heavy-based pan, add the water, lemon juice and remaining sugar, and heat gently until all the sugar has dissolved. Stir in the rose petals and simmer for 20 minutes or until the rose petals look as if they are melting and have softened. Try one – there should still be a slight bite to it. Turn the heat up and bring to a boil for another 20 minutes or until setting point is reached. Remove any scum that may have risen to the top and allow to cool slightly, stirring gently so that the petals are evenly distributed. Cover and bottle as usual.

Food Forward

If you live in the LA area and have a groaning fruit tree that you can’t deal with or you know someone who does, Food Forward will come round, pick the excess fruit (and vegetables too, if you have them) and distribute them to those in need. You can also get involved in picking the fruit and canning it, and they run hands-on food preserving workshops, with some of the leading LA ‘foodsteaders’.

A word about limes

15 Thursday Mar 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Citrus, Cooking, Food, Fruit, Ingredients, Los Angeles, Recipes, Stories

Although lemons and limes are often used interchangeably (and both names come from the Arabic word limah), limes are noticeably different: stronger, sharper, almost darker in taste. Whereas lemons grow well in a Mediterranean climate with long, dry spells and poor soil, true limes favour the tropics. The little beauties above came from an expedition we took to a Mexican supermarket in the valley. So taken were we with the meat section – pickled pigs’ ears daintily presented in trays, sheets of beef honeycomb tripe that looked almost marine-like, and the wonderfully labelled “beef feet” – that we temporarily forgot why we had come, which was to find proper Mexican limes. These nuggets of blistering juice are pretty standard in Mexican cuisine: spritzed over avocados, as a way of ‘cooking’ fish in a ceviche, in margaritas, mixed with sea salt and squeezed into a cold beer, mixed with salt again and sprinkled over chunks of mango, as well as being the star of the show in limonada.

I am embarrassed to say I have often been at a loss as to how to best employ limes. It was only when I chanced upon them at the farmers’ market that I gave them any real thought. These were Persian and Palestine sweet limes, the difference here being the lack of acidity which creates an exceptionally mild flavour. What character they have is concentrated in the rind, which has a light, clean, fresh pine aroma, so I used this in a curd and simply ate the fruit which was at least succulent, and, for an added bonus, apparently cures “everything.”

Tarter and more piercing are the California-grown Key limes. Interestingly, these are lemon-yellow, which according to my sage at Mud Creek Ranch – who patiently puts up with my endless battery of questions – is their natural colour here; green rind can actually be an indication of the fruit’s unreadiness. They are hell to pick. The branches have thick, angry thorns that slash the skin and make it itch for days. The fact that they can grow here at all is due to an amazing micro climate at the ranch, where they flourish alongside bananas and cherimoyas.

I was surprised to find that my brief investigation into US recipes for lime yielded little apart from Key Lime Pie, a local speciality from Florida’s coral islands – the keys – which is made with the juice of the fruit (Citrus aurantifolia ‘Swingle‘), eggs and condensed milk. The lime’s acidity cleverly ‘cooks’ the pie, and this is possibly why the first recorded recipe came from local sponge fishermen who had no access to refrigeration or a stove (and obviously went through a lot of condensed milk). Semi-wild limes still grow in the area to this day, though they are no longer cultivated due to the 1926 hurricane which destroyed all the citrus groves. Growers replaced the Key Lime trees with Persian Lime because they are easier to grow and pick, but have none of the original’s arresting flavour.

I don’t know whether it’s because I’m a Northerner (as in I hail from Northern Europe), but I am instinctively drawn to the more lumpen uses for fruit – a baked pudding, a warm tart, a crater of puff pastry exuding steam, something thick and hopefully syrupy within, so lime marmalade was pretty much a given for me to try, if only to plunder my childhood memories of Rose’s fluorescent version, with its dainty green shred.

Grilled bananas with lime marmalade and spices

Bananas are best eaten in the spring, according to the experts, so this recipe can make you feel doubly smug. If you haven’t got round to making the lime marmalade – or never intend to – then a squeeze of lime would also work here. Serving this with something creamy is essential if you want the syrup to matter. Thick yoghurt is good in the morning, cream at other times, and add almonds if you want a more interesting texture. Lime is a friend of the banana and opposites definitely attract in this case; soft and placid meets brisk and glossy, yet somehow each makes the other more itself in the process.

Serves 2

2 bananas

2 tbs of juice from an orange or tangerine

2 tbs lime marmalade with shred (or lime juice)

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of cardamom

1 tbs butter

Peel the bananas and slice them in half, lengthways. Lie them cut side up, in a shallow baking dish. Mix the marmalade and juice together and spoon over the bananas. Dot with butter which has been mixed with the ground spices. Grill until soft and brown (about five minutes). Scatter with toasted slivers of almond if you have them, and serve with either yogurt or cream. You could also try grilling the whole fruit, unpeeled, until black, tearing off a strip of skin to eat the hot, banana fondant within, and serve the syrup separately.

Interesting fact; British explorers and traders in the West Indian colonies used limes to prevent scurvy, which is why we’re still called ‘limeys’ to this day.

Steering clear of the sweet: Yotam Ottolenghi is a fan of lime. His Iranian legume noodle soup uses the juice to cut through soured cream, and lime halves accompany his corn and squash fritters. If you’re a fan of pickles, then pickled limes can be used as the basis of a sour relish for spicy dishes, and anything with an Indian bent.

Mexican limes

A word about bergamots

12 Sunday Feb 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Fruit, Herbs, Los Angeles, Stories

Ber-ga-mot from the Turkish ”beg-armade” which means “Lord’s Pear”

Citrus Bergamia Risso

The bergamots I used in the marmalade recipe were the less photogenic, exceptionally bitter Italian kind (citrus bergamia risso) rather than their sweeter, more fragrant French counterparts (citrons doux). ‘Balmy’ has been a word accurately used to describe the sensation of eating marmalade made exclusively with the Italian bergamotto. The sour, cheek-chewing intensity is always welcome in a marmalade but too much floral bouquet and it’s like eating a jar of Yardley.

The bergamot season is late and short – January to February – and as there are only three fruiting bergamot trees in the whole of southern California you should start chatting up the fine people at Mud Creek Ranch, and get in there before the restaurateurs do. Calabria in Southern Italy is where 80 percent of the world’s bergamot is grown with southern France also a producer, so you may still get lucky if you live in Europe.

This is an interesting one: Monarda fistulosa is an aromatic woodland herb, a member of the mint family, and native to North America. It is called ‘bergamot’ because its scent is very close to that of the bitter citrus but has nothing whatsoever to do with it, and is not the source of the bergamot essential oil used in Earl Grey tea and approximately half of all women’s perfume. The herb is also known as Bee Balm for its ability to attract bees and butterflies. Who knew?