Christmas Cranberry & Clementine Trifle

Is this becoming an all-trifle blog? It's certainly looking that way at this point! I've seen a couple of people talking about A Return To Blogging as the newsletter sites and various microblogging sites that shall remain nameless aren't very satisfactory, but I am not willing to commit to any regularity. For one thing, I'm not doing much interesting cooking at the moment, and not really paying enough attention to it to write about it.

This trifle, however, was a grand project and the result was worthy of recording. I took my inspiration from the Cosmopolitan, which is a great drink even if it is out of fashion, and is very Christmassy with the cranberries and lovely winter citrus.

We had a big family Christmas lunch on Christmas Eve (big, for our purposes, is any more than the two of us and in this case was 7 adults and a 2 week old baby) and I muscled my way into bringing the dessert. Not that it took a whole lot of convincing; Paul's family insist he keep me around for my cooking.

It was constructed over 3 days, but that was a very unpressured approach which left me feeling fairly relaxed about everything. Other than the usual worries about whether the jelly would be rubbery, the creme diplomat ropy, the curd curdled, the sponge cracked, the cream split. But no time crunch. I thoroughly recommend only being responsible for one element of Christmas dinner, if you can possibly manage it.

Day 1. 

Groceries arrive. My preferred brand of eggs were unavailable but an alternative high-welfare option was provided, so that was OK. Everything else was supplied in the quantities ordered so I didn't have to risk going to the shops.

First thing was making cranberry and clementine curd. I reserved some of the prettiest cranberries for crystallising. I followed Nigella Lawson's recipe for cranberry curd in How to be a Domestic Goddess (very straightforward, uses whole eggs because I knew I was going to have eggwhites left from other elements and didn't want to have a freezer full of eggwhites) but I reduced the amount of sugar considerably (from 500g to 350g), substituted the juice of a clementine for some of the water and added the finely grated zest of the clementine. I also didn't entirely trust myself to recognise "cook until thickened" but various places around the internet agreed that 77C is about the right point, so I used the thermometer. Gorgeous colour, silky smooth and it set beautifully.

Glorious colour

Next up, I candied the zest of a clementine. I blanched the shreds twice, then made a syrup of 50g each of sugar and water and simmered the zest in that for 5 minutes (by which time they were almost transparent) before lifting them out and spreading them out to dry. When they were almost dry I tossed them in some caster sugar and left them on some baking parchment until they were completely dry and a bit crispy.

Then the jelly. I used a 330ml bottle of unsweetened, 100% cranberry juice and made it up to 450ml with the juice of the clementine I had zested to candy, and some homemade bergamotcello. The bergamotcello is a lot less sugary than bought limoncello, so I added the syrup the zest had candied in and then some sugar to taste - keeping it very tangy to balance the richer, sweeter elements. I heated it gently until the sugar had dissolved and then added 4 bloomed gelatine sheets.

While the jelly was cooling, I zested 2 more clementines and reserved the zest for Day 2, and peeled the membrane from the clementine segments. Usually I would cut citrus into supremes but I think clementines are too delicate for that sort of manhandling, so I blanched them in boiling water, refreshed them and peeled the membranes off. It was a real faff and they broke up into smaller chunks but worth it for the final result of little pops of juicy acidity. I stirred them through the cooling jelly and poured it into the trifle bowl to chill overnight.

This year I have seen a few trifles where the jelly is a bottom layer with the cake either in a layer over it, or, as I ended up doing, a row around the edge of the bowl on top of the jelly - it makes the cake less soggy, which is the biggest complaint among trifle naysayers, but also it keeps the pattern clean, if you use a rolled cake. Now I have decided that this is the way to go for the future, I might even contemplate doing a joconde collar with a stencilled design or some such elaborate nonsense down the track.

Day 2

I planned things around just having a couple of tasks in the afternoon, because I had an optometrist's appointment in the middle of the day.

Creme patissiere, made with the reserved zest from the two clementines, and a splash of vanilla and a splash of fiori di Sicilia, clingfilm pressed directly onto the surface and allowed to cool, then chill. The recipe I use contained 4 eggyolks, so I froze 3 of the whites and the 4th I reserved.

For the cake, I made it to Nicola Lamb's Buche de Noel recipe but with additional flour substituted for the cocoa, and the grated zest of a clementine (reserving the zested fruit for day 3) and a teaspoon of fiori di Sicilia added for flavour. My aunt gave me the fiori di Sicilia as a gift a couple of months ago and it was quite a process to actually get it to me, so I am busting it out wherever possible. When cool, I filled the cake with the cranberry curd, rolled it up, wrapped it in clingfilm and put it in the fridge.

I crystallised the reserved cranberries by lightly beating the reserved eggwhite, tossing the cranberries in the eggwhite then into some caster sugar before spreading out on baking parchment to dry. While they were drying I dusted them very lightly with some edible lustre dust for a bit of extra bling because honestly more is more with a trifle.

Day 3

First thing I sliced the cake, and was very pleased to see pretty defined swirls. Also, I had a piece and it tasted really good, always a bonus.

I put slices of the cake around the edge of the trifle dish, pushing them slightly into the jelly layer for stability, then I warmed some Corsican clementine jam and thinned it with a splash more bergamotcello and brushed it over the top and inside layer of the cake slices, and spread the last spoonful thinly over the surface of the jelly.

I bloomed some more sheets of gelatine and dissolved them in the juice of the reserved clementine from day 2. This was an expensive bag of fruit and I wanted to use every bit of them, OK? Then I whipped cream with the dissolved gelatine and folded it through the creme patissiere to make a creme diplomat. I scraped it into the middle of the cake border and nudged it down to mostly fill the gaps. Then it went back into the fridge to set while I had a shower and got dressed etc. 

Finally, just before we left to go to lunch, I whipped some plain double cream, not too much, because I have some family members who don't love too much cream, and then garnished wantonly, with some ridiculously blingy metallic cachous, the crystallised zest and cranberries, then another sprinkle of the cachous to fill in any bare patches.

It was very well received and I was extremely pleased with it. It tasted as good as it looked! Lots of different textures, different expressions of the cranberry and clementine flavours, all playing very well together. There was only a small quantity leftover for our host to have as her Christmas breakfast.

Merry Christmas, to all who celebrate.

A Wassail Trifle

 

First layer: Polish gingerbread hearts

I do make things that aren't trifles, although based on my recent blogging output, I can understand if you don't believe me at all. But I saw these lovely Polish iced gingerbread hearts (the brand name is Kopernik) in the Christmas clearance sales and they spoke to me very clearly and said they wanted to be trifle. They are very nice with a cup of tea, too, if you don't want the rest of this hassle. The flavour reminds me a bit of Swiss Basler Läckerli, but not as chewy a texture and no candied fruit.

Once I had settled on trifle, I thought about other flavours. I really liked the layers of citrus in the Jubilee trifle last year, and the citrus is so lovely at this time of year, but I really wasn't feeling that with gingerbread. The answer was obvious. Pears. And then I changed my mind because I had 5 very nice Egremont Russet apples in the fridge. 

Second layer: Brown sugar roasted apples

I roasted the apples with brown sugar and cinnamon according to a Diana Henry recipe - although hers is for unpeeled, uncored, halved apples and I did mine in chunks for ease of eating.

Then a layer of jelly - also based on a Diana Henry recipe - flavoured with a traditionally-made hard cider and Somerset cider brandy.

Once the jelly was set, I added a maple & cinnamon creme diplomat, and when that was set (not, I confess, quite as firmly as I wanted) I topped it with whipped cream, sprinkles, toasted almond flakes and some mini apples preserved in Calvados syrup. Very pretty, very delicious, not too sweet.

As I was putting all the layers together, it occurred to me that it was more-or-less seasonal too. Not because apples are in season now, but because a couple of weeks ago we were supposed to go to a local Iron Age Hillfort for a Wassail. The Wassail hasn't run for a few years because of Covid, but this year it was back on. But the week it was supposed to happen the ground was too soggy and it wasn't safe, so they postponed, then this week it was too cold and the group we were going with were dropping like flies with various illnesses and work commitments. But the combination here of cider, apples and spices is very much in keeping with a Wassail. So hopefully this trifle will be taken as an offering by any deities listening, and help produce a good harvest of apples this year.

Complete!

Malted Caramel Blondies

This recipe is not photogenic. We're not doing it for the 'Gram. There are no vibrant colours, no chocolate, no oozing, luscious toffee, no artful dribbles of icing. It looks like a plain, brown, utilitarian cake. Maybe a little dry. The last one to go at the bake sale. The piece you take, politely but unenthusiastically, when offered by someone you don't know well enough to be honest to. But behind that unprepossessing, unfrosted facade, it tastes fantastic.

I've been on a pottery summer school - 4 days last week building, back today to glaze the bisque-fired pieces. And on the last day of last week the teacher mentioned it was her birthday so I said I would bake something for today. Now, usually I would do something citrussy, both because I like it and because it's a crowd pleaser. But another person at the arts & crafts centre is very proud of his lemon drizzle cake and I felt that bringing something similar would be needlessly antagonistic.

These have layers of stuff making them taste good - there's browned butter, and wholemeal flour for nuttiness, soft brown sugar and chunks of caramel (which mostly melt) for rich caramellyness, and vanilla and malted milk powder to round things out. These are quite a chewy, rather than gooey blondie. If you really want goo I guess you could reduce the cooking time a bit, but I like them like this. They probably keep well but I didn't get a chance to find out.

Folding in the caramel pieces

Malted Caramel Blondies (makes 18 generous pieces, could be cut bigger or smaller)

250g butter

300g light muscovado sugar

2 eggs

1tbs malted milk powder (I used Ovaltine) dissolved in 2 tsp vanilla extract

250g wholemeal plain flour

1/2 tsp salt (I use Diamond Kosher, adjust quantity for the salt you use)

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

125g soft caramels (I used Werthers with a soft centre, but I think original Werthers might hold their shape more) chopped roughly into pieces

First make the browned butter. Put your butter into a saucepan that's quite a lot bigger than you think you need, because it will foam up. Melt it over a medium heat, swirling gently, and continue to swirl until it is a rich brown colour and smells beautifully nutty. Remove from the heat and pour into a heatproof mixing bowl big enough to hold the rest of your ingredients. Make sure you get all the little toasty bits from the bottom of the pan - we're not clarifying the butter, we want those bits.

Allow the butter to cool.

Preheat the oven to 160C (fan). Line a 7" x 11" baking tin with baking parchment.

Beat the sugar into the butter, then add the eggs, one at a time, then the malt & vanilla mixture. In a medium bowl, combine the flour, salt and baking powder, and then mix the dry ingredients into the butter and sugar mixture. Fold in the caramels.

Scrape the batter into the lined baking tin. Bake for 25 - 30 minutes until set but just slightly soft in the the middle. Cool completely in the tin before cutting into pieces. Although it probably wouldn't hurt to serve them warm with ice cream as a dessert.

Jubilee Trifle

Trifle - with my trifle spoon - on the buffet. Picture by the party host, my friend Sharon.

This weekend the UK is celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. 70 years on the throne. I was trying to remember the last royal occasion where there was an extra Bank Holiday (making a 4 day weekend) and garden parties and so forth, and while I could remember that it rained a lot and I wore a very good t-shirt and made a dessert with lots of berries in a Union Jack pattern, I couldn't remember what it was actually for.

Turns out it was the Diamond Jubilee, 10 years ago. And to be honest, what I said then - that I am conflicted, that a hereditary head of state is obnoxious, that the country is in a very bad way and this feels like a very expensive distraction technique - all still stands.

This time around, Fortnum and Mason ran a competition to find a Platinum Pudding - a dessert to commemorate the occasion, with a recipe that could be made all around the country. The winner was a lemon and amaretto trifle, inspired by the lemon posset the Queen had at her wedding. 

I love a St Clements Trifle - I mean, I love a citrus dessert anyway, and I not only love the way lemon provides sprightliness and orange rounds out the flavour, but I love that in the UK the combination of lemon and orange is named for a nursery rhyme - but I didn't particularly care for the winning recipe. So for the garden party we attended, I took the inspiration and ran with it.

Slices of lemon Swiss roll (bought) around the base and sides of my trifle bowl, left open in the fridge for a couple of hours to dry out a little. 

Then a very small sprinkle of Cointreau. 

Then a lemon and orange jelly (same method as the winning trifle recipe, but less sugar syrup and more fruit juices) with orange supreme suspended in it. I let the jelly start to set before I poured it into the trifle bowl, so that it wouldn't make the cake completely soggy and so the orange supreme wouldn't all sink to the bottom. 

I let that layer set completely while I made the next layer, a lemon and orange creme diplomat, made by cludging together this recipe for lemon pastry cream and this recipe for vanilla creme diplomat.

This is not a dessert to make when you get home late from work. This needs time and many bowls.

After I spread the creme diplomat layer over the set jelly layer, I let the whole thing chill over night.

This morning I scattered shreds of candied calamondin zest over the creme diplomat, and whipped cream, stabilised with cornflour a la Rose Levy Berenbaum's method and flavoured with a little of the syrup from the calamondins.

FINALLY I garnished it with a lot of sprinkles and shards of citrus meringue, made with 2 of the egg whites left over from making the creme diplomat. 

And fortunately it was absolutely delicious and well worth the effort. The layers had just the right balance of stability and tenderness and the layers of citrus flavours were really fresh and bright.

If it isn't vulgarly over-dressed, is it even a trifle?

Florentine Slice

 

What a year. WHAT a year. Honestly, words fail me. As far as these things go, Paul and I have been very fortunate - our housing has been secure, none of our dearest loves has been ill, our time-tested internet shopping habits have served us well. Urchin has found having both of us at home all the time absolutely ideal. 

It's just the confinement. The narrowing of life and experience. The loss of fleeting, casual contact with other people. I am an introvert by nature and had no idea just how much I value those tiny instances of connection until they didn't happen any more. Looking at exhibitions online just can't compare with wandering through a gallery. Having a long chat on the phone isn't the same as attending a reading and then sharing a meal. Somehow spending time with actual people is more nourishing than just messaging or speaking, regardless of how freely you speak.

You wouldn't know from this blog, but I have spent a lot of time in the kitchen over the last year. With restaurants mostly closed and local delivery services unreliable, I have cooked most of what we've eaten, three meals a day and snacks. I am profoundly tired of cooking. But at the same time I'd mostly rather bake a cookie than buy a cookie because doing one fills in a couple of hours as I decide what to bake and then do it, instead of just the gratification of eating it.

I wasn't sure how these were going to go. We'd run out of the previous batch of biscuits (chocolate hobnobs) and had no eggs. I initially thought of a round of shortbread, cut into wedges, with half a glace cherry pressed into each piece, but as I searched for eggless cookies with glace cherries I kept coming up against Florentine recipes. But I really wanted shortbread.

And lo! Unto us a Florentine slice was born. The caramel layer is quite soft, like a Millionaire's Shortbread, instead of being snappy and chewy like a proper Florentine. For something I cludged together and crossed my fingers over, these are very good. Something about this year that is actually worthy of being remembered.

Florentine Slice (Makes about 18 pieces, depending on how you cut it)

Base

175g butter, softened

85g caster sugar

1 tsp vanilla bean paste

200g plain flour

25g rice flour

1/2 tsp ground ginger

Cream the butter, sugar and vanilla bean paste with electric hand beaters until light and fluffy. Mix in the flours and ginger and fold & smear together with a spatula to a dough. Press into a baking paper-lined 8x11" pan and pat to an even layer. Chill in the fridge for about an hour.

Filling

50g butter

50g double cream

100g soft light brown sugar

50g golden syrup

50g plain flour

50g mixed peel

50g glace cherries, chopped

75g pistachio nuts, chopped

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan)

In a small bowl, combine the flour, mixed peel, glace cherries and nuts. In a small saucepan combine the butter, cream, sugar and golden syrup. Over a low heat bring just to the boil. Remove from heat and stir in the combined flour, fruit and nuts.

Pour the fruity caramel mixture over the chilled base and gently rotate the pan to encourage it into the corners. Bake for 15-18 minutes until evenly browned and bubbling.

Topping

100g dark chocolate

While the slice is baking, finely chop the chocolate. As soon as it comes out, sprinkle the chocolate evenly over the slice. In a few moments it will all have melted, so nudge it to cover the slice completely.

Allow to cool in the tin (which takes much longer than you'd think for the chocolate to set) before cutting into small pieces.

 

Passionfruit Pie

"May you live in interesting times" the apocryphal saying goes. With this coronavirus pandemic business, the times certainly are "interesting". And unsettling and worrying. And weirdly mundane, as laundry still has to get done, kitty litter needs to be scooped and meals still have to be cooked. In fact, even more meals than usual because Paul is working from home so all of a sudden lunch is required.

We were supposed to have Paul's mother staying with us for a month, but the South African government closed the borders a day before she was due to travel. Disappointing, since it was the first time she'd planned to come to the UK in several years, but being effectively in lockdown in a home that is not your own wouldn't be entirely cosy.

I had planned several very good meals for her stay. We wanted to cook some of the things we really enjoy which she may not have been familiar with, and also just take advantage of having an extra body in the house to justify a bit of extra indulgence. There were going to be curries and barbecues and cakes. Lots of vegetables prepared in interesting ways. Many, many cups of tea.

Having expected her to arrive on Wednesday morning, my grocery order for this week still contained a lot of the things I had on the menu for this weekend. We'd invited Paul's niece and her husband and Paul's sister in law to join us to celebrate Mothering Sunday and were going to pull all the stops out on the meal. Despite all the news about panic buying, denuded supermarket shelves and grocery deliveries arriving half empty, almost everything I ordered arrived - fortunately I'd had a chance to edit the order before the site crashed and had removed the very large standing rib roast that was an extravagance for six people and completely absurd for two.

The ingredients for the dessert arrived. Paul has revealed, 20 years into knowing him, that he really, really, really likes passionfruit. He also is quite partial to key lime pie. I concluded that passionfruit would probably be acidic enough to thicken the condensed milk and eggs in the way limes do and lo! Passionfruit pie was born. The crust is crunchy, the filling is fragrant and smooth and it's very, very easy. Although if this rush on eggs continues, it may be a historical artifact.

No filter or food colour, just lovely egg yolks

Passionfruit Pie (makes 8-10 slices. You can decide how many people that feeds)

140g digestive biscuits
70g roasted, salted macadamia nuts, roughly chopped in half
80g butter
9 passionfruit
2 limes (you need the juice and the finely grated zest)
2 cans sweetened condensed milk
4 egg yolks (I used particularly nice eggs with lovely glowing orange yolks, which gave my pie a gorgeous colour)
150ml double cream (optional) to garnish

Preheat the oven to 160C, fan

Melt the butter in a medium sized saucepan. In a food processor, combine the digestives and nuts and process until the biscuits are fine crumbs and the nuts still have some chunky bits (if you don't want to wash up the food processor, crush the biscuits in a plastic bag with a rolling pin and chop the nuts by hand) and mix the crumbs into the melted butter. That's why you melted the butter in a larger saucepan than you needed.

Press the buttery crumb mixture very firmly into the base and sides of a pie plate. I think your hands are the best tool for this, but you can use the back of a spoon if you insist.

Bake the crumb case for 8 minutes.

While the crust is baking, scoop 8 1/2 of the passionfruit out into a mini processor and reserve the last half passionfruit for garnishing later. If your passionfruit don't come in multiples of 3 you can go nuts and use 9 whole passionfruit for the filling and an extra one for the garnish. It's the end of the world! Let your hair down. Whizz in the mini processor until the pulp on the seeds has broken down and the seeds are starting to break up a bit. This maximises the amount of juice you get out of them. Strain the passionfruit into a 1l measuring jug and add the grated lime zest and juice. This should give you about 200ml juice. Whisk in the sweetened condensed milk and egg yolks and stir until smooth. You will feel it thickening almost immediately.

Pour the filling into the baked crumb crust and return to the oven for 15-20 minutes or until set but still with a bit of a jiggle. Allow to cool completely and then chill for a couple of hours before serving.

Whip the double cream to peaks, pipe it on if you can be bothered or just splodge it as I did, then garnish with the pulp from the reserved half passionfruit.

Cookbooks 2019

This hasn't been a great year for blogging, from my point of view. Not a lot I have cooked has been worthy of a whole post, so I've mostly been sticking photos on Instagram as reminders to myself of what I have been eating, and making notes on Eat Your Books and hoping it's enough to replicate my results if I want to. But here we are, staring down the barrel of December, when people are thinking about what to get their food-inclined loved ones for Christmas. So here are the four cookbooks, released this year, that I have cooked the most from.

And just as a by the way, I don't have affiliate links or make any money from this, any links I have inserted are purely to help you find things. Also, I bought all of these myself and would do it again.

They all have really good recipes, but the main thing I love about them is the writing. Dishoom, Mandalay and Baan all tell stories which give context to the dishes in a way that I really love.  Diana Henry's writing is always delightful: evocative and inviting, but the other three give a sense of place to the cultures and cuisines they are writing about which I think is important when you are cooking from outside a culture.

Dishoom is a British chain of restaurants, modelled on the "Irani" cafes in Bombay. The food is a lot better than the majority of neighbourhood curry houses we've been to (there are excellent exceptions, but most of the Indian restaurants we've been to in this country haven't been very good), the atmosphere is relaxed and they are reliable. Even though you nearly always have to queue. It took me years to get Paul into one, and now he is a confirmed fan. When I saw that they had a book coming out, with the famous House Black Daal recipe in it, I had to have it.

Dishoom's garam masala is not like bought, ground garam masala

The Irani cafes apparently had their heyday in the 1960s, but Dishoom tries hard to capture the essence of them, and set a scene for when and how you eat the dishes in the book. I don't think my Kejriwal quite captured the grandeur of the Willingdon Club, but they tasted lovely.

Kejriwal - fried eggs on chilli cheese toast

It appears that I took no pictures of the daal - so imagine, if you will, a bowl of dark brown sludge that tastes deeply of hours spent perfecting it. It is rich, creamy, subtly spiced and utterly entrancing. If you think of a bowl of lentils as being penance in food form, this will show you how very wrong you are.

Spicy lamb chops

Everything I have made has been delicious, and well worth the extra effort of making my own masalas and making batches of fresh ginger and garlic purees. A technique I hadn't come across before, which is used in grilled meat dishes, is to do a short, first marinade in green papaya puree, before adding an aromatic second marinade. It's very successful - it seems to open the meat fibres so that the aromatics really penetrate, and it makes the meat incredibly tender. To the point that even with flat metal barbecue skewers, it's hard to turn kebabs because the meat just falls apart. So delicious!

Okra fries

MiMi Aye has become a friend through the magic of social media. She's a brilliant human - passionate and articulate whether she's pointing out racism and discrimination or being geekily enthusiastic about pop culture. Her first book, Noodle! is great and I thoroughly recommend it, but you can easily see that Mandalay is the book she wanted to write. It's deeply personal - which is not something you often say about a cookbook.

Duck egg curry - a long-standing favourite

Burmese food, apparently, tends not to be pretty food. Mostly muted shades, it makes up for the appearance with incredibly punchy, savoury flavours. I have shared some of my more photogenic pictures, but there have also been several intensely flavoured, aromatic bowls of brown and beige.

Tofu fritters like you have never experienced tofu before, ginger salad, chicken goujons and two dipping sauces

Goat and split pea curry, and Burmese coleslaw

Lahpet thoke - pickled tea leaf salad

Lemon salad

Baan is also a clear labour of love. Having read Kay Plunkett-Hogge's Adventures of a Terribly Greedy Girl, I was familiar with her Thai childhood, and adult love for Thailand and its food. It's interesting to juxtapose MiMi and Kay's experiences - one brown woman born in the UK and for years not being quite Burmese enough and one white woman born in Thailand but not quite Thai enough. I feel extremely fortunate to have their books in my hands.

Classic gai yarn - incredibly juicy chicken

 As delicious as the recipes I have tried have been, my favourite thing, I think, is the method of brining the chicken for the Classic gai yarn - I have used it many times since I first bought the book, and used the same brine for my most successful ever roast pork.

Northeastern-style [duck] laarp

This meal danced all over South East Asia, but the rings are Kay's Squid deepfried with garlic and white pepper

Diana Henry's last book, How To Eat A Peach, was glorious. From the tactile flocked cover to the stories to the carefully considered menus, the whole thing is a treasure: a fantasy of long lunches and expansive hospitality. From the Oven to the Table is a very different kettle of fish. You may not have noticed, but the UK is in a very tense and uncertain period at the moment, which I think has created a need to cocoon and seek comfort - this book certainly seems to be an expression of that.

Croque monsieur bread pudding

Of course, having previously heard that Diana plans several books ahead, she was probably considering this book well before the 2016 referendum. So it may not have been a response to the current climate, but it certainly seems to articulate the zeitgeist. These are dishes to give heart. To nourish the people you hold dear before you let them go back into the world.

Lamb chops with sweet potatoes, peppers and mojo verde

Not all the dishes are bung-it-in-the-oven-and-wait: some have a few stages, some are made by the final addition of a relish or sauce, but they all feel quite achievable. The recipes also aren't trying to be too clever - it's not about "I bet you didn't know you could cook THIS in the oven", it's about dishes that the oven is the right thing for.

Baked lime, passionfruit and coconut pudding

Baked sausages, apples and blackberries with mustard and maple syrup

Roast peppers with burrata and 'nduja

Tomato, goats cheese and olive clafoutis with basil

I honestly couldn't pick a favourite from these books, so don't ask me. I think I will go back to all of them again and again, whether it's to re-read a passage or to take inspiration or actually follow a recipe. And I can't imagine anyone being disappointed to receive any of these as a gift.

Barbecued chicken wings - a summer's work

Work in progress - April. Excellent colour but not much crunch

For inexplicable reasons, Paul's never been much of a fan of chicken wings. He'd always opt for a drumstick or a piece of breast or something first. I, on the other hand, love them. Deep-fried and crisp or richly sticky with a sweet marinade, I think they are delicious little morsels and well worth nibbling around the bones.

Just as inexplicable as Paul's traditional lack of interest in chicken wings has been his sudden enthusiasm for them this year. Chances are it was kicked off by something he saw on youtube, but I really don't remember what it was. But he wanted chicken wings and he wanted them barbecued. However it started, we've had a summer-long pursuit of the perfect barbecued chicken wing.

Chicken is supposed to be quite tricky to barbecue. Certainly anyone who has ever been faced with bloody-at-the-bone drumsticks with a charred outer layer would tell you that it's not that easy. But you certainly don't have to par-cook it and finish it on the barbecue, the way a lot of recipes suggest.

August: method perfected, experimenting with flavours

It took some trial and error, but we've hit on a really, really good method for barbecued wings. Paul thinks the theory is sound for bone-in chicken thighs, but we haven't tested that yet. The key is a long, off-set cook, so that the meat is cooked through, gently enough that the connective tissues are starting to melt as well.

Sometimes with barbecued chicken, the smoke, while giving the meat a delicious flavour, makes the skin leathery. We've discovered that a spoonful of cornflour in the marinade counteracts that leatheriness, leaving a lovely crisp skin and also helping the seasonings to adhere.

So good. Succulent all the way through, crisp outside.

The basic principle is a spoonful of cornflour, a spoonful of vegetable oil and your choice of seasonings. From that framework, it's really adaptable. We've done fish sauce and garlic, inspired by the famous Pok Pok wings. We've done kim chi juice, which has a delicious fermented funk. We've gone Greek-ish, using olive oil instead of vegetable oil and seasoning with lemon juice, garlic and oregano. We've done soy sauce, ginger and garlic. We haven't yet tried saucing them afterwards, a la buffalo wings, but I am sure that would work too.

The calamondin almost died over winter 2017/18, but it's back on track

This version, with fruit from our bonsai calamondin tree, is particularly successful. The main flavour is the bittersweet not-quite-orange flavour of the calamondin, with a subtle warmth from the chilli and the (for me) essential garlic.

Calamondin and Garlic Chicken Wings

1kg chicken wings (we get the ones with the wing tips removed - 1kg is 12-14 wings)
1tbs cornflour
1tbs vegetable oil
1tbs light soy sauce
3 calamondins, cut into rough chunks, seeds removed (if you don't have access to fresh calamondins - and I can see why you wouldn't - use 1 medium tangerine)
6 cloves garlic, peeled and cut into rough chunks
1tsp chilli flakes
Pinch of salt

In a small processor, combine everything except the chicken wings. Pulse to a thick puree - it doesn't have to be completely smooth. Pour the puree over the chicken wings and turn to give a good coating. I used to do this in a ziplock bag, which is just the right thing for smooshing sauces into all the nooks, but I am trying to cut down on single use plastics so now I do it in a pyrex dish with a lid and just give them a good stir.

Refrigerate until ready to cook. An hour in the marinade is better than no time at all, but 6-8 hours is better. I try to do it just after breakfast for eating in the evening.

A kilo of wings takes up quite a bit of space, so you'll need to build a fire set off as far to the side of the barbecue as you can. We start with a bag of easy-light charcoal and then add a thick layer of lumpwood - the fire needs to last a while and burn pretty hot.

Arrange the wings. Barbecue, lid down, with the vent over the wings and open a little bit to encourage the heat to flow over them, for 45 minutes to an hour.

Calamondin & Garlic wings. Slightly caught on the outside, absolutely delicious.

Mars Bar Slice

On Saturday, it was the kids day at the farm where Paul shoots. Last year was the first time he'd been involved - the day before we smoked and wrapped two shoulders of lamb with a lot of harissa, garlic and preserved lemons. They, along with everything else on offer, disappeared as if a plague of locusts had been let loose.

This year, they were determined to out-do themselves. They had four kettle barbecues set up for slow roasting and a gas grill for burgers. Paul acted as pitmaster. Starting at 7am they cooked through until about 4pm, getting through 1.5 sheep (in various cuts), 3 small deer, 160 pheasant, duck and venison burgers and some sausages. All meat either produced or shot on the farm. There was also a bakery full of bread and buns, salads and a vast array of confectionary. He got home sunburnt and too tired to speak and slept for 12 hours.

My small contribution was a tray of Mars Bar Slice. Always a crowd-pleaser. Although given that the locusts left not a single bite of anything, it's hard to adequately assess the popularity with this particular crowd.

Mars Bar Slice (makes lots)

100g butter
2 tbs golden syrup
More-or-less 500g mars bars (they keep changing the size, but anything from 450-550g total weight is absolutely fine). 1/4 of them finely chopped, the rest cut into rough chunks.
120g rice krispies
200g milk chocolate
200g dark chocolate - or you could use 400g milk chocolate, but I like that touch less sweetness from combining the two
30g coconut oil
Pinch of salt
Sprinkles (optional)

Line a tin with non-stick baking parchment. I used a 20 x 30cm pyrex lasagne dish, but an inch either side of those measurements isn't a problem.

Combine the butter, golden syrup and the roughly chopped mars bars in a medium pan, and melt gently over a low heat, stirring constantly until smooth, then remove from heat.

Put the rice krispies in a large bowl with the finely chopped mars bars. With your hands, gently toss the mixture together to separate out the pieces of mars bar, which have a tendency to cling together.

Stir the melted mars bar mixture through the rice krispies. Scrape into the prepared tin and press down well with a spatula. Cool for an hour to set.

Combine the milk and dark chocolate, chopped into chunks, with the coconut oil and a small pinch of salt in a heat-proof bowl over a pan of simmering water (not letting the water touch the base of the bowl) and stir until the chocolate melts. Pour the melted chocolate over the set slice and tilt the pan around to make the coating even. If you are using sprinkles, allow the chocolate to cool for about 5 minutes before adding them, so they don't just sink straight through. I used some very glamorous bronze crunch sprinkles which I think make everything look classy. They'll probably turn up on cauliflower cheese at some point.

Allow to cool for 30-45 minutes at room temperature before cutting into small squares with a sharp knife. Store in the fridge if it's warm or humid.

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake

We had a house guest staying last weekend. He's a friend of Paul's who comes over 3-4 times a year, but he lives a 3 hour train trip away. So if he comes to visit he stays the night so they can sit in the living room talking shit for hours. I assume - I usually go to bed. I limit my hostessing to washing the spare room sheets, cleaning the bathroom and making a salad.

Any excuse to make a pudding, however. The last time he came over I made Felicity Cloake's perfect pecan pie. Which was SO darn good. Really. Best pecan pie I have ever eaten. I've made it again subsequently and it's actually a bit tricky to think of other desserts to make when that exists in the world. It also makes other pies and tarts feel a bit shy. How can they live up to that?! Paul ended up solving the dilemma, when he asked for a cheesecake with a layer of a tart fruit jam on top.

It's quite a dense, baked cheesecake, and not too sweet (unusually for white chocolate). I used a very nice 70% fruit sour cherry preserve, which was just the thing.

White chocolate sour cherry cheesecake (serves 8-10)

120g ginger nut biscuits
50g butter
pinch salt
200g white chocolate
300g sour cherry jam, divided in half
300g cream cheese
300g sour cream
50g caster sugar
2tbs cornflour
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
finely grated zest of 1/2 lemon
1tbs kirsch (or other booze)

Preheat oven to 180C, with a metal oven tray on the middle shelf.

Melt the chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water and set aside to cool.

Melt the butter in a small pan. Using a rolling pin, crush the biscuits in a plastic bag until they are mostly fine crumbs, with the occasional bigger bit. Mix the crumbs into the melted butter, add a pinch of salt and stir well.

Line a deep 20cm round cake tin with a removable base (you don't really have to, especially if you are using a springform tin, but it helps avoid the cheesecake's tendency to crack as it cools because the lining moves with it) and firmly press the buttery crumbs into the base of the tin.

Bake the base on the preheated oven tray for 15 minutes.

Remove the tin from the oven and reduce the oven temperature to 110C.

Dollop half the jam over the hot biscuit base, and spread gently around as it melts.

In a large bowl, beat together the cream cheese, sour cream, sugar, cornflour, eggs, vanilla and lemon zest until smooth. Fold in the cooled white chocolate and pour into the tin, over the base. It's quite runny, so it should self-level well.

Bake for 1 1/4 - 1 1/2 hours, until set but still slightly wobbly in the middle. If you didn't line your tin, when you pull the tin out of the oven, run a palette knife all the way around the cake to make sure it's loosened from the sides of the tin (again, helps avoid cracking). Allow to cool completely.

In a small pan, warm the remaining half of the sour cherry jam with the kirsch until it's a bit runnier. Spread over the cold cheesecake. Chill before serving.

A good start to the year: garlic thyme potatoes

Finger lime

Happy New Year! 2019 is currently feeling overwhelming and fairly terrifying, so my main hope for us all is that it won't be as bad as it looks.

Last night, as is our preference, we stayed home and ate a delicious dinner. I had planned our traditional fondue, but then when the groceries were delivered my cheese wasn't in it. I couldn't quite face the prospect of a trip to the shops, so I re-thought, and came up with a very good plan using the available ingredients.

Fortunately, our starter was not affected by the lack of cheese. When I did the seafood platter for last week's Christmas Eve meal, Paul was smitten with the finger limes. He decided that if it could be had, some caviar would be a perfect New Year's Eve nibble, garnished with the finger lime beads. Caviar was obtainable (at predictably terrible price, but hey, we didn't have to pay for taxis last night), and it was a perfect combination. The matching size and texture and contrasting flavour and colour was excellent. It would even have been worth brushing my hair and leaving the house for, but fortunately I didn't have to go to those lengths.

For our not-fondue main course, I pulled some flatiron steaks out of the freezer, which we grilled over charcoal, braised some chicory and made these fab, meltingly delicious potatoes. It's the same potato dish I made for Christmas, and I think making it 2 weeks running means it's worth writing up the recipe. It's still very buttery, so it's not a low-calorie option, but it's much lighter than a dauphinoise.

You can see how sticky and melting they are

Garlic thyme potatoes (serves 2)

3-4 medium Charlotte potatoes (or other waxy or all-purpose variety), peeled and thinly sliced
45-60g (3-4tbs) salted butter
1 big sprig fresh thyme
3 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1/2 cup dry white wine or white vermouth
1/2 cup chicken or vegetable stock
Black pepper

Preheat oven to 180C

Grease the base of a small casserole dish thickly with 1tbs butter. Arrange half the potatoes evenly in it. Scatter the garlic, thyme leaves, a good grinding of pepper and half the remaining butter on the potatoes, then add the remaining potatoes.

Pour over the wine and stock - it should come up about 2/3 of the way up the potatoes. Press down on the spuds so they are briefly submerged. Scatter with knobs of the remaining butter and another grinding of pepper.

Bake for half an hour or so, until the potatoes are golden on top, melting in the middle and most of the juices have evaporated. If your dish is deep rather than long it'll take longer. Allow to sit for 5 minutes before serving.

2018 Christmas Feasting

Merry Christmas, all! Hope you had the best possible day yesterday.

Last year, of course, we ate mostly vegetarian over the festive period - and very nice it was too. This year we were back on the beasts. And it was just us so we pared things back to a few indulgent meals.

Solstice dinner

We started on Friday, to mark the Solstice. A roast rack of cured pork, with roast autumn vegetables (a Diana Henry recipe), steamed kalettes and parsley sauce. We had some gorgeous Somerset cider brandy later on, to toast the turning of the wheel and the return of the sun.

There was loads of pork leftover. The bones and some of the meat made a lovely thick bean stew, and the rest of the meat went into sandwiches.

Stollen buns

I made a big batch of Spiced and Fruity Stollen Buns for our breakfasts this week. I don't think we'll get through them before they go stale, but the last few are going to make a magnificent bread and butter pudding.

Miso-butter double salmon rillettes

For Christmas Eve we had seafood. Mostly a bought seafood platter - which was vast, we have loads of prawns left - but I also made these absolutely gorgeous miso-butter double salmon rillettes. The miso gives the rillettes an extra deep savour. We had some of the leftover for lunch on Christmas Day, on toasted olive bread, and we're very happy to still have some tucked in the fridge.

Salmon rillettes on chicory leaves, garnished with finger lime

Seafood platter

We had our Christmas Dinner in the evening. As people who don't have a carved-in-stone traditional Christmas meal, it's snuck up on me that my most enduring tradition is Diana Henry's persimmon and chicory salad, which has adorned our Christmas table on three of the last four years, only missing Christmas 2015 because I couldn't get persimmons. This year I left out the pomegranate, because they were really expensive for just a bit of garnish. We had a really lovely lightly-smoked venison rack, and sort-of confit potatoes, cooked slowly with loads of garlic and thyme, and white wine, butter and vegetable stock.

Going easy on the main course left us with space for a very boozy almond tiramisu, made with an abundance of amaretto. And I used Paul's decaf coffee, so we both got a good night's sleep afterwards. 

Tiramisu