Sussex apple cake

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

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

If-in-doubt Lemon Tarts

25 Monday Feb 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 14 Comments

Tags

Cookbook, Cooking, Dessert, Failure, Food, Ingredients, Lemons, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

Sometimes I feel that I’m losing my touch. I’m sure this is normal, but it’s unnerving. How can you go wrong with lemon tart? Anything with lemons, I’m told, and I’m a sure-fire winner. I have a way with the lemon. So I was feeling rather cavalier, particularly as these reminded me of jam tarts. Not so much jam as gel, admittedly, and a bit rubbery. And the way the pastry rose up in the oven was odd, upending the lemon mixture, which lay blank and flabby on the floor of the pan. It was all rather irregular.

I was unsure what to write about this week. Or what to make. Perhaps this was what did it. The Oscars were coming to Hollywood for which we needed to be prepared. Halle Berry and Ben Affleck and various plasticated lovelies would be sashaying down the red carpet, and the road was closed off for days in preparation for this world-changing event. We had people over to watch it live and bet on who would win. I decided to make something with lemons. We have a rather bedraggled-looking lemon tree which produces small, intensely perfumed and rather sweet Meyers, but mainly we just pilfer them from the overhang of other people’s trees. You walk along and pop them in your pocket, while looking innocently around you as if new to the area.

I started off exploring a new recipe. It looked easy, but following a recipe is never just about following instructions. The language is important; it needs to be straight-forward, clear, unfussy. Lyrical is fine but too much information and I am apt to skip things, become impatient. I am not a baking nerd. And an old recipe is like an old friend – you pick up where you left off. One look at the page covered in pencilled amendments and various spillages, and I know we’ve been through something together, this recipe and me. There is also such a thing as muscle memory – the body remembers even if you don’t. A few swipes of a wooden spoon, an egg in the hand about to be cracked and the page warrants only a cursory glance from then on in. So the recipe below is a tried and trusted one – a lovely, simple Rick Stein offering that has never failed me. I have been kicking myself for wasting ingredients, and embarrassed that friends had had to eat something as willfully mediocre as the untried recipe proved to be. I swept the whole thing with a veil of confectioners’ sugar and hoped for the best. And it was fine. But there is a lesson in this, I’m sure – if in doubt, do what you know.

The rather prosaic-looking bars (above) are easier to manage at a party, but go for the classic and classier tart shape if you wish. You can certainly improvise here with other citrus, such as grapefruit, lime and even bergamot, if such a thing exists near you. Passion fruit (the juice of) may work too. However, nothing quite does the lemon’s job. I also add the zest for a bit of textural oomph. Use the left-over squeezed lemons for cleaning the sink.

Lemon tarts

From Rick Stein, Food For All Occasions (Puddings)

For the sweet pastry: (makes about 350g/12 oz)

175g (6 oz) plain flour

A small pinch of sea salt

50g (2 oz) icing/confectioners’ sugar

100g (4 oz) chilled butter, cut into pieces

1 egg yolk

1 – 1½ tsp cold water

For the filling:

6 medium eggs, beaten

3 large lemons

250g (9 oz) caster/superfine sugar

150ml (5 fl oz) double/thick cream

For the pastry – sift the flour, salt and sugar into a food processor or bowl. Add the pieces of chilled butter and work together briefly, either in the food processor or with your fingertips, until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the egg yolk and enough water until the mixture starts to come together into a ball (or add to the processor and process briefly), then turn out on to a lightly floured surface and knead briefly until smooth. Roll the pastry out thinly on a lightly floured surface and use to line a lightly greased, 25cm (10 in), loose-bottomed flat tin, 4cm (1½ in) deep. Prick the base here and there with a fork and chill for 20-30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 200C/400F. Line the pastry case with crumpled greaseproof paper, cover the base with a thin layer of baking beans (or rice) and bake for 12-15 minutes, until the edges are biscuit-coloured. Carefully remove the paper and beans/rice and return the pastry case to the oven for 3-4 minutes. Remove, brush the inside of the case with a little of the beaten egg and return to the oven once more for 2 minutes. Remove and lower the oven temp to 120C/250F.

For the filling – finely grate the zest from 2 of the lemons, then squeeze out enough juice from all the fruit to give you 175ml (6 fl oz). Beat the eggs and sugar together until just mixed but not frothy. Mix in the lemon juice and cream, pour through a sieve into a jug and stir in the lemon zest.

Partly pull out the oven shelf, slide in the pastry case and pour in the filling. Slide the shelf back in and bake the tart for 40-45 minutes, until just set – the mixture should still be quite wobbly in the centre but it will continue to firm up after it comes out of the oven. Remove and leave to cool, but don’t refrigerate it. This tart is best served on the day it is made. Wedges or bars – you decide, and a bit of crème fraîche is lovely alongside.

Strange fruit

12 Tuesday Feb 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 20 Comments

Tags

California, Citrus, Cookbook, Cooking, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Ojai, Oranges, Recipes, Stories

“If I had nowhere to go in the world, I would come to Ojai. I would sit under an orange tree; it would shade me from the sun, and I would live on the fruit.” Krishnamurti

It is hard to do justice to how central the orange is to Ojai. After a few hours of green forested land and glinting orange orbs, you find yourself stepping over dead and dying fruit. Blackened, hollow oranges lie dead on the branch. There are only so many oranges you can carry on a walk until the sight of yet more oranges lolling at your feet, often cloven in two by insects and small animals, feels like the end of a particularly debauched feast.

The fruit that we ate was pleasingly sour. There were lemons too, and grapefruit and tangerines. We walked through avocado groves, their long leaves scissoring the sky. Horses stood nearby on a patchwork of green. Because of the rain, the grass was almost neon and along the street were honesty boxes with trays and bags of fruit, all for a dollar – a nice round figure. Amazing to think we were only an hour and a bit from Los Angeles and its manic, urban sprawl. Up the road was Santa Paula, home to Mud Creek Ranch and their tantalizing bergamot trees.

A year ago, I began this blog and wrote about my first encounter with bergamots. So it feels right to revisit them after this weekend in Ojai, where citrus perfumed the air and sank into the pores. It came with us in the car, back to LA, as we let go of leaves and branches along the way. It would be wrong to surmise that Ojai is just oranges. But sometimes it’s good to simplify. Oranges are at its core. They are the view. The view Beatrice Wood looked out on, as did Krishnamurti, and countless free-ranging artists and thinkers who have called this place home. Where going out, as the saying goes, is really going in.*

The bergamot is the most intense experience you can have with your pants on. So heady as to be almost nauseating, a little goes a very long way. A marmalade or curd made exclusively with this fruit would be too punishing, but combined with lemon and orange you have a touch of the exotic, which is just enough.

For a citrus fruit, the bergamot has a deep, oily character, and the zest has an olive-green hue. The bergamot, orange and lemon curd below is unctuous and rich, rather like a citrus mayonnaise. If you find bergamot hard to come by – or just don’t fancy it – replace with lemon and adjust the sugar, according to taste. Don’t be tempted to use only oranges, as the results will be appalling sweet. Curd needs acidity to work.

Citrus curd

Adapted from Skye Gyngell, My Favourite Ingredients

Zest & juice of 2 bergamots, 3 lemons, 1 orange (to make 300ml/10 oz juice)

125g (¾ cup) of sugar

6 organic egg yolks

180g (¾ cup) of unsalted butter, cut into pieces

Method

Rub the citrus zests and sugar together – the essential oils in the peel are released in this way. Mix the juice, sugary zest and egg yolks together in a heatproof bowl until well combined. Stand the bowl over a pan of just-simmering water and stir continuously (meaning; a lot, but feel free to look around etc) with a wooden spoon as the mixture begins to warm and eventually thicken. Many curd recipes claim this takes about 7-10 minutes. I have not known the thickening to occur under 20. Also, do not be alarmed by the sheer amount of juice here – it does eventually surrender. The spoon will start to drag, and once the mixture coats the back of it, remove from the heat and immediately stir in the pieces of butter. Strain the curd through a fine strainer into a warm sterilized jar. Seal and store in the fridge for about a week – it doesn’t last that long generally.

* I’m paraphrasing from naturalist John Muir.

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.

Green Soup & Onion Jam

25 Friday Jan 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Cayenne, Cookbook, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Ingredients, Lunch, Nonfiction, Onions, Recipes, Soup, Spices, Stories

I feel the need for some green in me, if you’ll pardon the expression. It’s all very well chowing down on sugar and coconuts and chocolate – and God help me, it’s good – but it’s not exactly lunch. So here’s to soup. And the sweet fug of caramelizing onions, the searing of greens, a few cooling drops of extra virgin olive oil.

I grew up with a book called The Vegetarian Epicure, though no one as far as I could tell was a vegetarian. Omnivores all, we nonetheless used this book a lot. It was plain and unpretentious with sweet illustrations reminiscent of a children’s book from the Seventies, with easy to follow recipes. In fact it was from these pages that I made my very first dessert; a summer fruit tart – pastry smothered in lemony, zesty cream cheese, with fruit piled on top. I made this endlessly, whatever the season. But occasionally, if it all got too much, I’d turn to the soup section.

Soup was a big thing with us. Onions were cheap, as were potatoes (and of course there was potato water). Greens you could pull up in the neighbour’s garden. The big pan of spitting, lurching soup, the calm silence of the soup bowl, a handful of toughened bread and melting clumps of butter. The book was thumbed to oblivion, daubed with grease and finally hung by a thread. What I particularly liked about it were the intros, the preamble to the thing itself; it had a way of leading you to the subject like a firm but friendly teacher. At the back of the book, most intriguingly to me, was the author’s bio. Apparently, she was doing this book to fund her studies in film at UCLA (wherever that was). Anna Thomas was someone in print only. She had no bearing on my actual life.

So, imagine the oddity, the thrill, of switching on the radio and hearing Anna Thomas speak. It was hard not to feel a sense of possession; she was ‘mine.’ And she was talking about soup. I was right back in our kitchen in Devon with the long windows and the trestle table and other people’s small gardens down below. Except I was here, in LA, with Anna Thomas. I had got here where she was, unthinkingly. I was impossible that day, apparently. In the end, I had to do the only thing that made sense, the only thing that would shut me up: I opened the book and made soup.

This recipe calls for chard and spinach, but I have also used mustard, collard and turnip greens to good effect. Also, not everyone likes chard’s rather bullying strength. If you don’t want to use rice, the creaminess can come from other sources, such as cooked squash, potato, parsnip or Jerusalem artichoke. The onion jam is simply onions taken to the very edge of burnt. You want some crispness without too much charring. The trick is to leave them for a very long time over a low heat until they become sticky and sweet.

Green soup

Adapted (and some liberties taken) from Anna Thomas, Eating Well

2 glugs of olive oil, plus more for drizzling

3 onions, sliced into half moons

Sea salt

2 tbs plus 3 cups (750ml) of water

¼ cup (50g) of arborio rice

1 bunch of green chard (about 1lb)

About 14 cups/12 oz/340g (your average bag) of gently packed spinach/greens

4 cups (1litre) of vegetable broth or potato water

Big pinch of cayenne pepper

1 tbs of lemon juice, or more to taste

Heat 2 glugs of oil in a large skillet/frying pan over a moderate heat. Add onions and a pinch of sea salt; cook until the onions go translucent. Reduce the heat to very low, add 2 tablespoons of water and cover. Cook, stirring frequently until the pan cools down, and then only occasionally, always covering the pan again, until the onions are greatly reduced and have a deep caramel color, at least 25 to 30 minutes. Take a handful and put to one side for use as your garnish.

Rice: Meanwhile, combine the remaining 3 cups (750ml) water with a pinch of sea salt in a soup pot; add the rice. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to maintain a simmer, cover and cook for 20 minutes.

Trim the white ribs out of the chard (save for another use, such as to add to a stir-fry or other soup). Coarsely chop the chard and spinach or other greens. When the onions are caramelized and ready, stir a little of the simmering liquid from the rice (or whatever you have to hand) into them; add the greens to the onions, give it all a stir, and then add the broth and cayenne. Add the rice here if you are using, or if not then the starch of your choice, or nothing. Return to a simmer, cover and cook, stirring once, until the spinach is tender but still bright green, about 5-10 minutes more.

Return the handful of onions to a pan to crisp up. Puree the soup in the pot with a hand-held blender until perfectly smooth or in a regular blender in batches (return it to the pot). Stir in a tablespoon of lemon juice. Taste and add more lemon juice, if you like. Garnish each bowl of soup with a drizzle of olive oil and a few strands of the onion jam. Hot bread is good here, of course.

Chocolate pots with cardamom

16 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 26 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Chocolate, Cookbook, Cooking, Dessert, Dinner, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Spices, Stories

I am often asked to “bring pudding” when we go to friends’ houses for dinner. I always enjoy this activity, although it can be nerve-wracking, particularly if there are people there that I don’t know. Will me and my pudding be judged? Will I be able to “bring it” as the young folks say here? It doesn’t much matter either way, except that I am not a particularly skillful cook and still I am asked to bring something homemade.

I know there are many cultures where you buy in dessert and LA is one of them. I wouldn’t gripe, but the bought stuff here is dazzling in its aesthetic perfection but tastes of nothing. And it’s incredibly sweet. Horribly sweet. So here’s what I’m thinking: I write a book (which will be read by about seven people, but to those people I say thank you very much) about what you can make or bring that is neither horrifically sweet nor terribly complicated. It may well look as if a donkey has been let loose in the garden and then battered its way through the pots and pans before relieving itself in your cake tin. But it will taste good. And ‘afters’ need not be pudding or cake at all, but a rough cheek of apple and a chunk of crumbling Cheddar. Some toasted, spiced nuts. A bowl of sloping apricots with cardamom. Or a chocolate pot.

Cardamom was imported from its native India in the Middle Ages by Arabic traders to the Muslim Mediterranean (Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Egypt for example), where it now belongs to the sphere of cooking known as the saffron-cinnamon link*. Beloved of Scandinavians too, it does well in sweet things (including sweet vegetables like carrots and parsnips). It is strong, searing almost – as if you have found yourself in a clearing after a recent bonfire involving eucalyptus: charcoal, menthol, ash, smoke and the shock of clean air combine, particularly if you whizz up the seeds in a blender and stick your head in. It belongs with almonds, pistachios, rose water, oranges and lemons. Good in bread and cake, bewitching in a poaching syrup for fruit. Chocolate it loves, including the white stuff where it cuts through the sweet gloop with masterful directness.

Oh yes, and Happy New Year! Due to technical ineptitude, I was unable to get my head round the so-called interactive report I posted at the beginning of January and those wishing to use it would have been blocked. I would like to say thank you to everyone who has read and enjoyed me, followed me and either commented publicly or privately and generally cheered me on. It is also very exciting to be featured on Freshly Pressed. It’s a solitary business, writing, so any encouragement is my meat and potatoes.

These chocolate pots have the minimum of sugar and no flour. There is cream though so forget it being good for you, except in the psychological, spiritual and sensual sense. As for chocolate, you can take the bitterness right to the edge, but try to keep it this side of fruity. I would stop at 70% cocoa solids myself. Though the recipe asks for an egg, I made it without and it was still lovely; a handy detail for the egg-intolerant.

This recipe comes from Lucas Hollweg’s so-much-more-than-just-good book Good Things To Eat. My take comes with a toasted almond or two, which gives the pudding a sort of carb-like purchase and is in keeping with its Moorish provenance. But go bare if you dare.

Chocolate pots with cardamom

Adapted from Lucas Hollweg, Good Things to Eat

Serves 6

15 cardamom pods

200ml (7fl oz) whole milk

200g (7oz) dark chocolate (60-70% cocoa solids), broken into small pieces

150ml (5fl oz) heavy/double cream, plus extra to serve

50g (1¾ oz) caster/superfine sugar

1 medium egg

“Crush the cardamom pods in a pestle and mortar, or roughly chop, squashing the black seeds inside as you go. Put in a small saucepan with the milk and bring to a simmer, then turn off the heat, cover and leave to stand for 1 hour.

Put the chocolate in a mixing bowl. Add the cream and sugar to the milk and bring to a simmer. Turn off the heat and leave to stand for a minute, then strain through a sieve onto the chocolate. Allow everything to melt for a minute or two, then beat together until smooth and silky. Beat in the egg until everything is well combined.

Divide the mixture between 6 espresso-sized cups or small glasses and put in the fridge to set for a couple of hours. Add a splash of cream to the top of each one if you feel like it.”

*Read Sam and Sam Clark’s beautiful cookbook Moro for more on this.

Sweet and salty almonds

David Lebovitz, The Sweet Life in Paris

Deborah Madison, Seasonal Fruit Desserts

Serves 2

1 cup (170g) blanched almonds

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

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 and then add the warmed almonds. 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 almonds gently with a rolling pin to break them up or leave them whole.

Savage stuff

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 71 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Art, Cooking, Dinner, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Spices, Stories

Paprika is a savage red, and though it might sound strange, I like a bit of savagery. I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown LA yesterday where there was a lot of visual angst on display, much of it headache-inducing. Cavernous warehouses full of ripped metal and brown swaddling, swirling red daubs and matted roadkill. The colours were rust and grey and dried blood. Nothing had a frame, the frame was no longer needed. The only room I liked was the one housing the permanent collection, the ones always there; Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Jasper Johns.

But it was a small, angry picture, the first one I saw as I entered, that held my attention. It was by Dubuffet, and it was called Le Havre. It was a map of sorts and the colours were magnificently wild and fierce. There was little attempt at verisimilitude. The painter’s quote next to it caught my eye. It said “Personally, I believe very much in values of savagery; I mean: instinct, passion, mood, violence, madness.” Cooking and food itself is nothing if not a passionate and instinctive endeavour, although it’s easy to get disconnected from this. Madness I can believe, if only through the sheer boredom and repetition of eating the same things (I am 75% avocado). Violence can be mined in the pummeling of garlic and herbs, the mashing of potatoes, the beating, the whipping, the disemboweling of cake batter*. You can feel as pent up as a boxer and as a zen as a yogi. The paprika in the photo was in a bowl, powdery like pigment, along with other spices and teas in a stall at the farmers’ market. You were allowed to lift up a spoon of it and smell, and this helped because the one above was smoky and the other paprika was not. But the colour was the reason I bought. It made me want to stick a finger in the middle. It was an angry red; savage, mad and violent. See you in the kitchen.

Just so you know, paprika is the dried and ground flesh of peppers (cayenne pepper comes from dried and ground chillis – it’s easy to get confused). The peppers are dried from the oven, sun or smoke (the best over oak fires) and used mainly in Spanish and Hungarian dishes. Paprika can be sweet, smoky or hot with a huge variation both in flavour and colour. Try not to put the powder over direct heat or it will scorch and taste bitter. It has an affinity with coriander and cumin and potatoes, as well as chickpeas and dusted over halloumi. I tried it with Jerusalem artichokes to very good effect. The roasted almonds with paprika recipe is a Spanish one and smoked paprika is recommended.

Roast almonds with paprika and rosemary

Adapted from Sam and Sam Clark, Moro

250g whole blanched almonds

2 tsps of olive oil

1 tsp of smoked sweet paprika

1½ tsps of flaky sea salt, like Maldon

2 sprigs of rosemary, chopped finely without any wood

Preheat the oven to 150C/300F. Place the almonds on a baking tray and dry-roast in the top of the oven for about 10 minutes or until starting to turn golden. Remove and stir in the olive oil, paprika, salt and rosemary. Return to the oven for around 10-15 minutes. Everything should be sizzling and fragrant. If you would like to crisp everything up a little more, give the nuts a shake in a dry frying pan/skillet at the end. Remove and cool before eating.

Jerusalem artichokes with garlic and paprika

Adapted from Nigel Slater, Real Cooking

Serves 2

500g Jerusalem artichokes (3 or 4 big handfuls)

Butter, about 75g

6-8 cloves of garlic

A couple of bay leaves

1 heaped tsp of paprika

Peel the artichokes and slice them into rounds. Melt the butter in a shallow pan, one which has a lid. Drop the garlic cloves, whole and unpeeled, the bay leaves and the paprika into the butter and whirl it around with a wooden spoon. Add the artichokes and cook over a moderate heat until the chokes and garlic are slightly golden. Take care not to let the butter burn. Pour in a small glug of olive oil if it looks that way. Turn the heat down so the butter is lightly bubbling, cover with a lid and cook for about ten minutes. Shake the pan as they cook. Remove the lid, turn up the heat and continue cooking until the artichokes are tender, golden and crusty. Eat with the smashed open garlic pearls.

*I know you can’t disembowel cake batter.

Persimmons

18 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Almonds, Dessert, Fruit, Gluten-free, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Stories

Fuyu or Sharon persimmon

There are two kinds of persimmon. The first, the Fuyu, looks like a tomato and is eaten like an apple or sliced into a salad. Although they are supposed to be crisp when eaten, I find they are more flavourful when properly ripe, which is to say, bulbous and crepey and as if about to burst their banks. They look so beautiful it almost doesn’t matter about the rest.

The Hachiya, like the quince and medlar fruit, can only be eaten when fully ‘bletted’ – almost rotten, with most of their astringency gone. They look pretty miserable; bruised and bloated with a long chin. They taste stunning, if occasionally slightly furry. The inside of a Hachiya is the kind of orange I have only ever seen in a Howard Hodgkin painting. It is floating and jelly-like to eat – if you can imagine a creamy mouthful of the best jelly at the finest children’s birthday party you have ever been to. A wisp of mint and some crème fraîche and you’re an addict forever.

Hachiya persimmon

In California, there is much talk of persimmon pies, purees, tarts, butters and such. This might be because there is often a glut of them in winter. But sometimes between fruit and pudding falls the shadow. So much of their beauty is lost once you interfere. It’s true that wild persimmon, Diospyros virginiana, was cooked by the early American settlers until they were “baked and sodden,” so ubiquitous was the fruit. We are unlikely ever to be in their shoes again.

With the Hachiya, simply slice off the ‘lid’ (with its fawn-coloured calyx) and proceed as you would a soft-boiled egg. A spoon and some deep yellow cream is all you need. And even that might be pushing it. With the Fuyu, peel off the skin which can be tough, and then slice it as you would a tomato – horizontally. Serve with some toasted nuts, some sea salt, lemon and nut oil and perhaps some hard cheese. Treat it as you would melon; as a nice clean starter. Alternatively, if you’re in a rush or frankly can’t be arsed, then eat it as is.

Hoshigaki

Hoshigaki is the name for Hachiya persimmons that are dried and massaged daily for six weeks until the flesh is leathery but soft and covered in the fruit’s natural sugars. It’s laborious and the results can vary hugely. At the Santa Monica farmers’ market, it was like eating the world’s largest date, a huge fudgy teardrop that caved at the slightest pressure. The ones above were tougher, more like dried banana. The woman whose job it was to massage them professed it made her feel a bit pervy (I’m paraphrasing). It’s a bit like milking a cow, apparently.

Fuyu or Sharon persimmon with sea salt, toasted nuts and hard cheese

Adapted from Deborah Madison, Seasonal Fruit Desserts

Slice the fruit into sections or cut it horizontally into thinnish rounds. Arrange the slices on a plate; add some crunchy sea salt (fleur de sel), some chopped, toasted nuts (hazelnuts are nice here), and a few drops of nut oil. Add some slices of a hard, sharp cheese.

Write me down

As one who loved poetry,

And persimmons.

Shiki

Fuyu is also known as Sharon fruit – persimmon developed by Israelis in the Sharon valley.

Toasted Ginger Cake

11 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Baking, Cake, Cookbook, Dessert, Food, Ingredients, Nonfiction, Recipes, Spices, Stories

Something dark is needed, and I feel it can’t be chocolate. Something dense, oblong and with ginger nubbins. Some sort of nub is required. I have spent the whole week researching chocolate pecan torte. I still know nothing about tortes. And I realize this is not the time for light and airy cakes with a dusting of something smokily ethereal. If ever there was a time for density it is now. And the heart wants what it wants, as Woody Allen once said (as well as “I’ll have the alfalfa sprouts and a plate of mashed yeast” – LA restaurant, Annie Hall).

I don’t know why this has to be toasted, but it does. I first tried it about two years ago in a cafe in Sussex. I asked if I could get the recipe and the cook refused. He didn’t refuse to my face, which was in some ways more embarrassing because he was about a yard away from me in his open kitchen, and the rejection was delivered via a waitress. I don’t know whether I was being a bit pushy, presumptuous in asking. I thought it was the best ginger cake ever, and was sending my compliments along with the question. I didn’t want a print-out or anything. Just the basics. Anyway, two years on and many ginger cake recipes later, and by George I think I’ve got it.

I always think of this time of year as a period in which chocolate is passed over in favour of nuts and spices. We are entering the season of thin, biscuity pastry, lemony innards, honeyed syrup, stewed fruit, toasted nuts. The Elizabethan sweetmeat reigns. I am gearing up for mince pies. I feel I’ve thrown everything into this cake. Because it’s such a straightforward recipe, I felt it could be fattened up a bit. I wanted peel so I threw in some of my thick-cut marmalade. I had maple syrup so in it went. I also tried maple sugar, because I like its darker ‘dried toffee’ taste. But most importantly, I candied some ginger. This took a while, but the results were far more interesting than the stuff you buy. The syrup alone is worth the effort; peppery and pungent and a deep thick amber. It keeps for months.

To return to the source of the wound for a moment, the cake whose recipe I coveted was a ginger parkin, a staple from the northeast of England. ‘Fresh’ parkin is frowned upon; a slightly aged parkin is the acceptable form, so try to withstand the temptation to eat it straight away. It improves if you leave it at least a couple of days. On its own, unadorned, the cake is lovely with a cup of tea. The toffee sauce takes it to an almost obscene level of indulgence; we are now in pudding territory. Eat it on Boxing day watching a crap film.

Toasted Ginger Cake

Adapted from Andrew Pern, Black Pudding and Foie Gras

100g self-raising flour (or use plain flour and add 1 tsp of baking powder)

75g oatmeal (or porridge oats whizzed in a blender)

A pinch of sea salt

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 heaped tsp ground ginger

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp freshly ground nutmeg

2 tbs shred from marmalade (optional)

2 heaped tbs preserved/candied ginger, finely diced

175g golden syrup* (utilize some of the ginger syrup if you have it)

50g black treacle*

100g butter

100g soft brown sugar

1 egg, beaten

2 heaped tbs milk

For the toffee sauce

115g unsalted butter

115g light brown sugar

140ml double/heavy cream

Sea salt

Preheat the oven to 140C/285F/gas mark 1. Sieve the flour, bicarb, salt, ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon into a bowl, then stir in the oatmeal and the candied ginger and peel (if using). Gently melt down the syrup, treacle, butter and sugar, keeping it just below a simmer – do not let it boil. Stir in the dry mix until amalgamated, then add the egg and milk, so it’s a soft, semi-pouring consistency. Pour into a greased, 20cm square cake tin and bake for an hour and a half, or until firm in the centre. Leave to stand for half an hour, then turn out. The parkin’s now ready to be served. Like good wine, it improves with age; store in an airtight container. For the best flavour, keep for three weeks.

Make the sauce by putting all the ingredients into a pan. Heat slowly until the butter has melted, then turn up the heat and bring to the boil. Boil for about 3 minutes, or until the sauce has thickened enough to coat the back of a spoon. If you want a more gutsy flavour (and you don’t want insipid toffee sauce) go until the colour has deepened slightly to a warm nut-brown. Poke some holes in the cake and slather the sauce over the top, letting it drip down the sides. Toast under the grill before serving. This recipe is based on the same principle as the Sticky Toffee Pudding.

* In the US, use corn syrup in place of golden syrup if you can’t find it, and molasses in place of black treacle. I went to India Sweets and Spices here in LA where they have a British section.

Candied ginger

Adapted from David Lebovitz, Ready for Dessert

1 pound (500g) fresh ginger, peeled

4 cups (800g) sugar, plus additional sugar for coating the ginger slices, if desired

4 cups (1l) water

Pinch of salt

Slice the ginger as thinly as possible. It can’t be too thin, so use a sharp knife. Get the youngest ginger you can find, as it’ll be less fibrous. Put the ginger slices in a non-reactive saucepan, add enough water to cover the ginger, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and let the ginger simmer for ten minutes. Drain, and repeat, simmering the ginger slices one more time. Mix the sugar and 4 cups (1l) water in the pan, along with a generous pinch of sea salt and the ginger slices, and cook until the temperature reaches 225F (106C.) If you don’t have a candy thermometer, the consistency will be similar to runny honey. It will have reduced quite considerably, and will leave a generous coating on the back of a wooden spoon.

Remove from heat and let stand for at least an hour – overnight is ideal. Or if you want to coat the slices with sugar, drain very well while the ginger is hot and toss the slices in granulated sugar. Shake off the excess and spread the ginger slices on a cooling rack overnight, until they are tacky-dry. Alternatively, the ginger, packed in its syrup, can be stored in the refrigerator for up to one year. If tossed in sugar, the pieces can be stored at room temperature for a few months.

Salad of pears

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by Sophie James in Recipe

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Autumn, Cookbook, Food, Ingredients, London, Nonfiction, Recipes, Salad, Stories

My first salad. Not the first salad I’ve ever eaten – that would be a bit perverse – but the first one I’ve written about here. The blue cheese is not essential; it is the pear and watercress that makes the dish, but a nice Stilton or Roquefort lends a lactic headiness to proceedings. This crosses the border between indulgence and virtue. Yes, it has a lot of fresh, raw greenery, but that mustn’t deter us. And it is a meal in itself. Have some hot crusty bread, a jug of dressing to mop up, and nothing else is required.

Pears are one of my favourite things. They are tricky, temperamental. The moment between just ripe – your thumb making the slightest depression in the skin, the juice ready to spill – and pear-rot is a hair’s breath. They are peaceful to look at, a still-life, long and sloping, the Modigliani of fruit. I love Conference* pears the best – their mottled, taupe skin, slightly rough to the touch. They ooze and fall into your mouth, but never collapse. It’s good to eat them from the point down. In fact they fit in the palm perfectly.

This recipe – minus the blue cheese – came by way of my Australian aunt Cynthia and when we took it on, perhaps unconsciously, we would always serve it in an Aboriginal bowl made of wood. It was a strange shape, like an opened clam, and on the outside there were black inked carvings. You weren’t supposed to wash it, but we did, and it withstood this neglect and abuse for years. It still exists now as a receptacle for other things, looking terminally dusty. But we used it in London mainly, in Redcliffe Square, and I sometimes sat and ate this salad and watched Hugh Grant and Liz Hurley leave their flat from the house opposite. Sometimes, I would see them through the glass getting ready for things. I once inadvertently walked past his door when he was coming down the steps to be ‘caught’ by a paparazzo. Afterwards, he and the photographer stood around and chatted.

This was around the time when strange pairings were encouraged generally. It was as if we had woken from our Eighties torpor, ready to push the boat out. There was lamb and pears, for example. The macrobiotic diet was doing the rounds and there was talk of yin and yang. Things that were acidic needed to be mixed with things that were alkaline. Even the area was mixed: rent-controlled apartments such as ours existed alongside celebrities and landed gentry. Earls Court, although at that time largely Arabic, still had the residue of transplanted Aussies, like my mum, who had arrived in the late Fifties and stuck around.

Strangely, this recipe hasn’t dated, nor is it ubiquitous. It has survived the fashions and vagaries of the time. It reminds me of interesting couplings. Of rubbing along. I think it might be worth a revisit.

Pears, watercress and blue cheese

Adapted from Ruth Watson, The Really Helpful Cookbook

Serves 4

2 large handfuls of watercress

2 or 3 ripe-but-firm pears

100g Roquefort (or other blue cheese) – you can improvise with the amount

For the dressing

1-2 tbsp balsamic vinegar

4-5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

1 tbs honey

1 tbs Dijon mustard

Pinch of sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper

Make the dressing: dissolve the sea salt with the balsamic vinegar by giving it a good swirl, then add the mustard and stir throughly to combine. Slowly drizzle in the olive oil until it’s all mixed. Add the honey and stir. Put to one side.

Break up the watercress and remove the stems. Artfully arrange onto plates. Peel, core and cut the pears into sixths (or quarters if they’re quite small). Do this at the last moment to prevent the pears from browning, or slather in lemon juice and put to one side. Leave on some of the skin if you like a bit of texture. Tuck the pears into the watercress and season with some black pepper. Crumble some blue cheese over each plate. Drizzle with the dressing and some extra honey if you like. Serve immediately. Likes hot bread.

*Bosc pears are a good substitute in the US. In fact, they are plumper and juicier.