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Archive for the tag “baking”

02 Feb 2021

Try the brown cake: it’s delicious!

I’m celebrating my love of the food columns and supplements in The Guardian by trying to cook at least one recipe from each issue of Guardian Feast in 2021. Find out a bit more about that here.

After the extravaganza that was Ravneet Gill’s miso caramel and chocolate tart (see my take on that here) in Guardian Feast Issue No.159, I’ll confess that Pamela Yung’s celeriac cake with winter citrus looked a tad dull. Still, I had a celeriac in stock so what the heck. Well. Pamela’s recipe does not so much reimagine celeriac as launch it into its own galaxy of cake heaven.

I can safely say that it was one of the most delicious raw cake mixes I’ve ever eaten.

By some miracle I had 180g of wholegrain spelt flour. I topped it up to 240g with rye flour. The eldest daughter doesn’t like celeriac (another good reason for disguising it in a cake!) or celery. I opted for another member of the Apiaceae family with a different flavour accent to replace the required dose of one teaspoon of celery seeds: fennel (I later found I didn’t have any celery seeds anyway). I completely missed the fact that I was supposed to add 100ml of grapeseed oil after the eggs – hey-ho, the finished cake didn’t seem to mind that I’d missed that particular memo. I licked the spatula after I’d scraped the mix into the greased and lined tin. I can safely say that it was one of the most delicious raw cake mixes I’ve ever eaten.

I suddenly started looking forward to the finished cake a whole lot more.

Meyer lemons are not something we have in this house or are ever likely to source in Berwick, so I created my ‘winter citrus’ garnish with bog standard lemons and oranges. I sliced the fruit and brewed the syrup while the cake cooked. My cake took about five minutes more in the oven than the max of 40 minutes that Pamela suggests.

I did just about wait for it to cool before I sliced, but that early taste had me impatient to try the end product. I whipped up the dollop of vintage crème fraiche I found lurking in a yellowing tub at the back of the fridge and garnished with a flourish of grated satsuma zest and hey presto! Even the celeriac-hating daughter declared it ‘delicious!’. The Husband agreed. His verdict: ‘A light cake with a richer darker flavour.’ You definitely get pops of earthiness but I’m not sure I would have identified celeriac if I hadn’t known. Yum.

This is definitely a recipe I would not have tried if I were not committed to my year with Guardian Feast. I’m very glad I did. Thanks Pamela Yung and Guardian Feast.

Original recipe:

Pamela Yung – Celeriac cake with winter citrus

Posted in A year with The Guardian Feast, Foody stuff, Posts, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment
21 Jan 2021

I’m Feast-ing with The Guardian in 2021

I have gorged on Guardian Weekend food columns and supplements for many years. Devouring the words and recipes like a child allowed sweeties for the first time after a tooth extraction. So, what better way to distract myself, feed my family and hopefully entertain others than to attempt to cook one recipe from each edition of Feast in 2021, and share my experiences and results here.

The emphasis of recipes in the paper has shifted over time shimmying from solid British cookery towards an expansive worldview and broader dietary palette. I’ve embraced new names at the top of columns, salivated over different twists on the same ingredients, and wrestled to source ingredients never heard of – let alone seen – up here in the north east. I mourned the loss of Cook and became accustomed – grew to love – Feast.

I’ve cooked every animal fat under the sun with Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall (I still make his 2009-featured lemon posset and lemon shortbread biscuits); baked with Dan Lepard (the beauty of his sticky 2011 mocha fig muffins is unparalleled). I have massaged kale at the behest of my food hero Yotam Ottolenghi for kale and grilled asparagus salad (his Brussels sprouts with caramelised garlic and lemon peel has become a family Christmas tradition). I’ve created the sublime pink and white cowpat that is Jeremy Lee’s Easter bonnie and been amazed by Rachel Roddy’s wonderful gnocchi alla Romana.

Our 2020 Christmas spread featuring Yotam’s sprouts

I watched, delighted, as Stephen Smith cooked his way through Delia Smith’s Complete How to Cook. Dated it may be, but that book is my Bible! My eldest daughter replaced my disintegrated copy back in 2006. Her lovingly inscribed gift is now held together with Sellotape and the sticky spray of every recipe I’ve ever cooked from it. I worried when word perfect, acerbic Marina O’Loughlin moved on as resto critic supremo at Weekend. Groundlessly, of course. I have laughed, gasped and wept at Grace Dent’s brilliant restaurant reviews – her recent columns about lockdown, food and nursing her mum through palliative care are superb writing – evocative, funny, poignant.

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My take on Rachel Roddy’s Gnocchi alla Romana from 2020
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And my daughter’s version of Biang Biang noodles, created by Ixta Belfrage and shared in Feast by Yotam Ottolenghi also 2020

First up in my kitchen will be Meera Sodha’s apple pudding cake. Do join me to find out how Meera’s vegan cake recipe fared against my family’s fave apple cake (recipe from The Guardian Weekend of course – 2004!).

Posted in A year with The Guardian Feast, Foody stuff, Posts, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment
28 Apr 2020
3 Comments

Living the Covid dream

Sourdough porn shots are flooding social media, and the Husband is getting more exasperated. His loaves are dense, he complains. He’s under-proving or over-proving or something. It takes him so many stages to get his loaves in the oven and out again. And it’s painful to watch his little crestfallen face when the ta-dah! moment is not quite what he’d hoped for.

  • Not a pork pie

It’s all a bit like having Boris Johnson back at Number 10 after his sick leave. A little bit flat. Mind you, Johnson says that we’re beginning to turn the tide on Covid19 (hurrah!). And maybe his presence will turn back another tide: the one of people getting gung-ho about lockdown. Obviously, no one’s mentioning the austerity tide which washed away massive parts of the NHS years ago – that would be bad form. So, the good news is that Johnson is with us as we wrestle Covid19 to the floor.

Wrestling is one exercise the family has not taken up during lockdown. Although I wouldn’t blame the younger daughter for throwing the eldest into a body press. She’s taken to calling her little sister ‘slut monkey’. Apparently, it’s a term of endearment. And, in fact, when I did intervene in one bicker-fest, I was firmly told by both daughters to butt out. Is this what it’s like to be Donald Trump, I wonder? He must always feel as if he’s in the wrong, no matter what he says. I mean, how could the President of the United States public ‘musings’ on ingesting bleach possibly be dangerous? It’s not as if he’s some quack leader making up rules and then actively encouraging people to flout them, is it? Oh, hang on…

I find the whole idea of facemasks slightly depressing. When we were lucky enough to go to Japan, they seemed like an exotic accessory: something you always noticed but tried not to stare at. So, when I overheard the eldest daughter saying she’d ordered some, I was impressed but also resigned. Now I’ll have to wear one when I go on my once-weekly shopping trip, I thought. Turns out we’d got our wires crossed.

  • Mother!
  • Not that kind of facemask.

The Husband’s sourdough saga is a weekly serial (see what I did there). Needless to say, we mock his efforts. My favourite way of tormenting him is waggling Instagram at him and saying: ‘Can we have one like this next time?’ We answered a plea for sourdough starter from a friend at the beginning of lockdown. The photographic evidence of the friend’s airy, soft, perky, plump loaves is particularly painful to the Husband. ‘That’s made with my starter!’ he wails. He’s just read this paragraph and said: ‘It’s more than weekly!’ It certainly feels that way to the rest of us.

The daughters have me out running (well, I shuffle and watch their firm buns disappear into the distance) every other day. They’ve both done the Run For Heroes Challenge to fund the NHS – Run 5, Donate 5. I’m up next. It’s lovely that we’re all raising funds for a national institution – just how we used to raise money for charities. In amongst the on-line Pilates, ping pong, mini-badminton, and endless training runs, I’m feeling primed and ready. Even so, I’m a bit anxious. Things can so easily go wrong, can’t they?

A shuffle in the Berwick sunshine. What could possibly go wrong?

Yesterday I knocked out a brioche loaf while the Husband went through the numerous and baffling sourdough steps. The whole process of creating a sourdough lasts two days. At least. Why does the dough have to go in the fridge overnight, we ask? Why do you split the dough between two tins? If the loaf’s not big enough, why not just put the whole lot in one tin? He retaliates by telling me I taste like a human-sized ready salted crisp after I come back from a run. But his taunt is rather endearing. Who wouldn’t want to be married to a giant crisp? I feel bolstered rather than beleaguered.

Look at the brioche on that!

It’s difficult to imagine Boris Johnson having any insecurities. He could turn beleaguered into bolstered by mumbling a few incoherent sentences. He’s very like Trump in his ability to shake off the most extraordinary statements and actions (things that would be self-sabotaging for anyone else). The kind of guy who could bounce back even after infecting loads of people with coronavirus by shaking hands with them. Mind you, they called Tony Blair ‘Teflon Tony’…

The Husband’s back in the kitchen today. I hear a little sigh. His loaf has fallen short of expectations again. However, as with all things, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. And, despite our teasing, we devour his bread-offerings with gusto.

    Posted in 2020, Covid Diary, Posts, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments
    23 Jul 2017

    A mother & daughter moment with pastel de nata

    So the 15-year-old has just been to Portugal. She came home longing for those gorgeous, sticky custard pastries whose sweetness is so cleverly balanced by an ethereal hint of lemon and cinnamon. She remembered that I had a recipe tucked away somewhere and asked me to dig it out. Turns out it was an old BBC Good Food recipe (this is a slightly different recipe to the one we tried).

    I remember so keenly cooking with my Mum. Mostly it involved me licking the spoon after cake-making, making pastry animals with off-cuts, and stirring grated cheese into cheese sauce and saying, ‘I’m bored’. Mum always maintained that I showed no interest in cooking whatsoever and that trying to teach me was pointless. Despite this, I do remember Mum showing me how to make a roux (so useful!). I suspect that my love of cooking comes largely from hanging around and watching her cook (and eating the results!) and, even if in her eyes I was disdainful of it all, her skills seem to have rubbed off: I’m a pretty good cook!

    So I was chuffed that the 15-year-old wanted to cook with me. In fact she’s been showing an increasing interest in experimenting – cooking us scrambled eggs for lunch, trying out different ways with pancakes etc. But Portuguese egg custard tarts would certainly be pushing her skills.

    I was in charge of weighing and setting out equipment. The 15-year-old occupied herself with being a bit tetchy (she’d been working late as a pot-washer in a local hotel the previous night!) and making the cinnamon-lemon syrup and the custard. This was slightly fraught but much beating and a quick sieve solved everything (isn’t that exactly the way to learn how ingredients behave?)!

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    The custard cooling post beating and sieving

    Energy levels had waned by the time it came to rolling and cutting the ready-roll puff pastry! However, the repartee while I made pastry discs (all that making pastry animals paid off Mum!) and the 15-year-old inserted them into the buttered muffin tray was second to none!

    Look, the result wasn’t perfect – I forgot to put the muffin tray on a pre-heated baking sheet so we had a bit of Mary Berry’s proverbial soggy bottoms. But they tasted great. And maybe this will be a moment that my 15-year-old will look back on warmly one day – I know I shall.

    The cooled pastel de nata: not perfect but dang tasty!
    And prettified with a little blowtorching and hazy filter!

    Posted in Foody stuff, Posts, Uncategorized and tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

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