Sour cherry, pistachio & coconut fridge cake

Paul was very generous with the Lindt bunnies this Easter. So generous that we actually got a bit tired of eating delicious, smooth milk chocolate by itself.

And I had a day of dance workshops requiring a portable high-energy snack, so I delved in the cupboard for things that would be nice with chocolate. I came up with lovely unsweetened dried sour cherries, sweetened coconut flakes and shelled pistachios. I thought about adding some crumbled shortbread as well (tiffin/fridge cake things usually have some biscuit mixed in) but the only ones we had were Walkers shortbread Scottie dogs, and while I have no qualms about biting the head off a biscuit, I thought maybe melting down bunnies was enough animal carnage for one recipe.

It's incredibly easy, and adaptable, but this really was a very good combination.

Sour cherry, pistachio and coconut fridge cake (makes about 12 pieces)

200g milk chocolate (2 bunnies worth)
50g dried sour cherries
50g coconut
50g pistachios

Gently melt your chocolate in a heatproof bowl over simmering water.

Line a loaf tin with baking parchment. Combine the cherries, coconut and pistachios and place in an even layer in the loaf tin.

When the chocolate is melted and smooth, pour it into the loaf tin and give everything a bit of a wiggle with a spatula to make sure the chocolate gets through to the bottom.

Set in the fridge for an hour or so.

Apricot, ginger and coconut energy balls

I wouldn't usually be suggesting "energy" balls over Easter. Most of us have enough chocolate, hot cross buns and other sugary treats to keep us bouncing off the walls long after the bank holidays have passed. Tomorrow, however, I have 4 hours of dance workshops, and on Easter Monday we're going to Havergate Island to take pictures of birds and hares, so portable, sustaining snacks are on the agenda for this Easter.

These couldn't be simpler - and they let me use the mincer attachment for my stand mixer, which always makes me happy. If you have a robust food processor you could use that instead. The ginger is quite subtle. Add more if you want more heat.

Minced apricots and ginger

I used that American sweetened, moist shredded coconut, so everything clings together with its own tackiness. If you don't have access to that or are horrified (with reason) by the E-numbers in it, just use desiccated but you might need to add a bit of honey or something as glue.

Apricot, ginger and coconut energy balls (makes about 25)

300g soft dried apricots
20g crystallised ginger
100g sweetened shredded coconut
Desiccated coconut for coating

Mince together the apricots and ginger. Stir through the coconut. Roll into walnut-sized balls and toss through the desiccated coconut.

St Clements Brownies

Just like the T1000 melting at the end of Terminator 2.

I know some people laugh at the notion of "leftover chocolate", or even "chocolate you haven't eaten yet", but around Easter I realised I had some chocolate left from Christmas and wanted to use it up. It was dated best before October this year (better not to think about what they did to it to give it that shelf life), so I could have kept it for longer, but I felt that it was time.

I also had most of a packet of Marks & Spencer nuts which had sounded really tempting at the checkout but didn't really float my boat as a snack. They were very sticky and the pack wasn't re-sealable and it was all a bit messy. Plus after about a minute I found the random use of italics on the pack irritating.

The milk chocolate was too sweet for me, so I added 100g of very dark chocolate to it as it melted, poured it over the nuts and let it set. It made a fantastic, sustaining snack for a long day of dance workshops.

But then I still had quite a lot left over of that. And for a couple of weeks it sat in the cupboard, never quite tempting me. So, since it had been ages since I sent anything in for the gannets Paul works with, I turned it into brownies. This is fairly typical of the way I approach leftovers - I try really hard to avoid food waste and some things go through a couple of different incarnations on the way.

St Clements Brownies

125g butter
300g St Clements chocolate, chopped (or any dark fruit & nut chocolate, but without the orange and lemon bits it won't be St Clements)
3 eggs (I actually used 2 whole eggs and 1 yolk, because I wanted the white for something else)
100g caster sugar
200g plain flour

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Line your favourite brownie-baking tin with baking parchment.

In a double boiler, or heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water, melt the butter and chocolate. Remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.

In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Beat in the cooled chocolate mixture. Fold in the flour. Pour into the lined tin and bake for 20 minutes or until the top is firm and the inside is still a bit soft. Cool in the tin before cutting into squares.

Definitely delicious - I kept some back for myself

Eatori's Flourless Espresso Brownies

When this post goes live I will be completing the first hour of a 3-day dance intensive. 18 hours of dance. And there is an evening performance as well.

I've made a batch of Tori Haschka's Flourless Espresso Brownies, which are a slow-carb treat, to sustain me through a lot of dance and three days of pub food. No added sugar: the sweetness is from banana and dates, with almonds and coconut instead of wheat flour. I used decaf coffee, because I'm leaving some for Paul and he doesn't tolerate too much caffeine these days. I've just tried that little piece on top there, and it is lovely. The perfect brownie texture, with a super-intense bitter chocolate flavour.

Have a lovely weekend!

Stax Diner brunch

Another dance rehearsal, another excuse for a bite to eat in central London. This time we thought a quick brunchy bite was in order (as theoretically I was on my way to a workshop, however a combination of lateness and eggs made me miss it).

My initial thought had been The Diner - I haven't heard much about it but I know they do all-day breakfast - but the queue out the door was off-putting. Getting out of the very crowded main bit of Carnaby Street seemed desirable, so we ducked into Kingly Court and up to Stax Diner.

Of course, I'd been to Stax during the soft launch, but I'd either forgotten or never knew that they have a weekend brunch menu.

I ordered poached eggs with hollandaise, and a side of the house cured beef bacon. Sharon had Half and Half - a short stack of buttermilk pancakes and a poached egg with hollandaise. As she realised after she'd ordered that she was going to Milli's afternoon tea supper club later on, that was possibly a bigger meal than she really wanted...

My eggs were lovely - beautifully runny yolks and no stinting on the well-seasoned hollandaise. The muffin was a bit on the heavy and chewy side so the lavish application of the sauce was very welcome. There were both the classic and jalapeno Tabasco sauces on the table, too, which was a nice touch. The beef bacon was sweet, sticky and beefy, but not quite as crisp as I like bacon to be. Didn't stop me from eating it all though!

The time I absolutely needed to leave Oxford Circus station in order to get to the workshop on time came and went as I finished my orange juice. A queue was forming outside Stax, so we paid up (£12ish each) and vacated the table.

Sharon headed off to her afternoon tea; I wandered about Soho before meeting a friend at the National Portrait Gallery. It's not often that I feel like I've really made the most of London, so this was a really successful day out.

Picture, Great Portland Street (back so soon!?)

Just in case you were wondering, the food at Picture is still really good even if you have to pay for it yourself.

My regular dance partner and I happened to be in the neighbourhood at noon today and decided to take advantage of the Saturday light lunch deal, of two savoury plates and a dessert for £16.50.

We both started with gin and tonic. Mine was a fairly standard one, done well, with Sipsmith gin and Fevertree tonic. Sharon's was a prettier and more seasonal affair made with damson gin and garnished with blackberries.

Damson gin & tonic

As much as I'd enjoyed some of the dishes I'd tried the last time I was at Picture, I decided to order entirely differently this time. But as I'd thoroughly recommended the broccoli with goats curd, and the beef, Sharon had those.

I started with ravioli of greens and ricotta. Three ravioli, served on a smear of chestnut puree and topped with tiny little tender brussels sprouts and some sprout tops. I swear this would turn around the most ardent sprout hater, and would, in fact, make a brilliant main course for a vegetarian Christmas. Buttery, herbal, with superbly silky pasta, I would happily have eaten it twice.

For my second savoury dish, I had wild boar sausage with braised celery, apple and hazelnuts. I wasn't sure how sausage would work as a small plate, but I needn't have worried - it was one generously sized sausage cut into chunks. The flavours were superb, but the apple chunks were served chilled and I thought they should possibly have been warm.

For dessert I chose a blueberry and almond tart, which was absolutely gorgeous. Incredibly thin, crisp sweet pastry, with a slick of blueberry jam, a frangipane and fresh blueberries, it was served slightly warm and topped with some of the best frozen yoghurt I've ever had. I like fro yo to be very yoghurty, and this was - light, tart and velvety. Just lovely.

So, the two dishes and dessert, with more of their lovely sourdough and whipped butter, made a satisfying but not bloating lunch. With a gin and tonic a piece, a (very good) coffee and service charge, it came to £30 each. Slightly more than I had planned for a quick bite, but definitely worth it.

Picture, Great Portland Street

I've made a new friend this year. It's quite exciting really, because the difficulty of making new friends in your 30s and 40s is conventional wisdom. Anyway, she's recently moved to the UK and posted in one of the dance groups on Facebook that she wanted someone to jam with and I had the time to do it. Of course, we've ended up spending much more time gossiping and drinking coffee than actually dancing, but never mind.

It meant that when I received an invitation to join a group of bloggers at Picture, on Great Portland St, a five minute walk from her house, on a day that we'd planned a jam, there was no earthly reason to turn it down. Serendipity!

Photo courtesy of Picture restaurant

Of course, with the gossiping and drinking coffee, I ended up having to rush that five minute walk, so I arrived a bit warm and out of breath, making the welcoming glass of prosecco with elderflower very refreshing. And I don't even like elderflower.

We were experiencing Picture's six-course tasting menu, which comes in at an exceptionally reasonable £35. Manager Tom and chefs Alan and Colin had previously worked together at the highly regarded Arbutus group of restaurants (I've only been to Le Deux Salons, but one day I will get to the others!) so I was reasonably confident that we were in good hands. The excellent sourdough bread with whipped butter confirmed that belief.

The first course was a squash veloute. I was disproportionately thrilled by this, because one of the (few) laments I have about living in the UK is that people here don't really seem to understand the winter squash family. It isn't a staple the way it is in Australia. Fortunately there was a fellow Antipodean at my end of the table, Emma from Adventures of a London Kiwi, who agreed with me that butternut or pumpkin soup is one of life's great pleasures and a winter essential. The veloute was very good, with a nice bite of cumin, if not the most exciting bowl of soup I've drunk.

Grilled tenderstem broccoli, with fresh goats curd was better, although I could have done without the broccoli and just smeared the goats curd on some more of the lovely bread. Not that there was anything wrong with the broccoli, I just really like goats curd, especially with good bread.

Picture used with permission of Kavita of Kavey Eats

Pork cheek was up next. With celery, celeriac and hazelnuts. I don't know if it is because of the current ubiquity of pulled pork, or I am at an age where I appreciate having all my own teeth, but I am getting a bit tired of spoon-soft meat. I like to chew! So this was a bit of a disappointment because the meat was as tender and sticky as can be. If "melt-in-the-mouth" is your measure of success, this was a winner. It was quite a large portion for a tasting menu too, and I honestly don't think I could have eaten more of it - particularly knowing there were still three courses to come.

The fish course was my dish of the day. Perfectly cooked sea bream with chard and a scattering of lentils: it was beautifully fresh and deliciously seasoned. I'd been a bit confused by the menu moving from veg to pork to fish, but it was a very intelligent decision - the pork was so rich that to go from that straight to the beef wouldn't have shown either of them to advantage. As it was, the bream was almost a palate cleanser.

28 day aged beef with kale, sweet potato and salsify was quite heavily smoked, to the point where it almost tasted like bacon, but the meat had a lovely (chewable) texture. I always like eating salsify when other people prepare it too. The sweet potato and kale made it all taste very autumnal, which seemed a little incongruous two weeks ago when the weather was lovely and warm, but now seems like just the right thing.

The photos haven't done it justice, but the crockery at Picture is beautiful. The only bum note was the dessert plate - a brown plate just doesn't show a lovely chocolate mousse to its best advantage. And it was a lovely chocolate mousse, if a little sweeter than I usually like it. That extra sweetness did the blackberries a bit of a disservice, making them taste a little sharp by comparison. The peanut cream also didn't entirely float my boat - taken in a bite with the mousse and a bit of blackberry, it was a balanced mouthful, but by itself it was a bit flat. Of course, I was very full by this stage of the evening, so being pickier than I would otherwise have been.

So, overall verdict? A fantastic neighbourhood restaurant, which I would happily frequent even if I had to pay for it myself. I will have to maintain my new friendship in order to provide opportunities to do just that. Maybe on a Monday night, when they offer free corkage for BYO? With any luck, our husbands will even get along.

 Many thanks to Picture restaurant and Sarah and Jenny at Salt PR for a lovely evening.

Spiced chocolate caramel peanut popcorn

 

This is yet another version of sweet, salty and spicy popcorn, this time inspired by the Snickers bar. It features chunks of turrón, salted peanuts and a spiced chocolate caramel. It's very hard to resist! The key to it keeping its crunch for a couple of days is that it's slowly baked after coating, which also helps get an even distribution of the caramel.

I made this as a snack for a three-hour dance class, and as a thank you to Kavey for a jar of her homemade kimchi, but the leftovers were still good three days later (and a little softer but still tasty the day after that).

Snickers-inspired spiced chocolate caramel peanut popcorn

1tbs vegetable oil
120g popping corn
100g roasted salted peanuts
100g nougat (I used soft turrón de Jijona which has a texture similar to halva, but hard, Alicante-style turrón duro would be better), chopped into small chunks
Pinch chilli flakes (I used chile de arbol)
Pinch Maldon salt (i.e good quality seasalt)
Pinch ground cinnamon
Pinch ground nutmeg
2tbs good-quality cocoa powder
100g salted butter
100ml golden syrup
125g sugar

Heat the oil in a large saucepan with a lid, and add the popping corn. Cover, and shake until the corn has popped, then pour into a large, baking parchment-lined roasting tin, holding back any unpopped kernels if possible. Scatter over the peanuts and chunks of nougat.

Combine the salt, cocoa powder and spices in a little ramekin or bowl. Give it a stir to make sure the cocoa powder doesn't have any lumps, and have it standing by while you make the syrup. In a heavy-bottomed saucepan, combine the butter, sugar and golden syrup over a medium heat, and swirl gently until the sugar dissolves and it comes to the boil. Boil rapidly for a few minutes, or until it changes colour to a rich golden brown.

Take the caramel off the heat and tip the cocoa quickly into it. Keeping your fingers well clear, stir with a silicon spatula until well combined and pour the caramel evenly over the popcorn. Stir it through. It won't coat all of the popcorn but that is part of the charm - every bite is different.

Place the roasting tin in a slow oven - mine only goes down to 120C, but if yours does 100C that would be better - and bake for an hour, giving it a stir every 15 minutes. Allow to cool and harden before packing in an airtight box or gift bags.

The Blacksmith & the Toffeemaker, EC1

Halloumi burger

 Basically, I am writing a bunch of quick posts to procrastinate from the HUGE cherry post that is still to come. Those cherries have been haunting my dreams...

But this was a great find. I had a dance practice scheduled at a studio on Goswell Rd. We'd decided that the most constructive way to ensure that we practiced properly was to book an hour's studio time and then go somewhere for dinner and a proper catch-up. So, obviously I put out a request on twitter for recommendations.

Back came The Blacksmith and the Toffeemaker. Which is, of course, an excellent name. They also had a good gin list, an appealing post-dance posh junk food menu and a price-point that suited my fairly restricted purse. Then I looked at the map and realised it was about a 3 minute walk from the dance studio, and the deal was sealed.

It was hot as Hades, so inside the pub was virtually empty, except for a cluster of punters at the bar ordering cold drinks. We got a couple of Blackwoods gin and tonics and had our choice of seats. It's not what you'd call sumptuously decorated. They haven't even gone for Russell Norman-style filament-bulb chic. This reads much more like they went to car boot sales and repossession auctions and generally begged, borrowed or stole the furniture for the fit-out. The grunge has authenticity.

The burgers were good. There didn't seem to be a menu that you could take away from the bar, so I ordered the thing I remembered that sounded good, which turned out to be the Blacksmith burger. I didn't realise that it was going to be two patties... and it didn't occur to me to ask about lettuce, which brought nothing to the party. But the burger itself was excellent. It tasted freshly seasoned, very peppery and quite beefy. I wouldn't have guessed that the skin-on chips were triple-fried, but they were the perfect combination of crisp and floppy.

Sharon's burger was much more interesting and, I think, the better choice. Massive slabs of grilled halloumi (still with the stupid lettuce) and a pile of kimchi. An unusual fusion but a very successful one!

We had more Blackwoods gin and commiserated about husbands who haven't read all of A song of ice and fire. And made mental notes to come back and try more of the menu.

Blacksmith burger

Baked chicken with chickpeas, spinach and rice

On a Tuesday, I get home late and hungry from dancing. Because Paul has been working long hours recently, the easiest thing has been for me to make something large and substantial and tolerant of reheating so he can have his tea when he wants it and I have an instant meal waiting for me when I get home.

We've been eating a lot of pasta.

And there is nothing at all wrong with that. But I've never wanted to be the sort of person who ate on a set rota of dishes, if-it's-Wednesday-it-must-be-meatloaf. I decided to mix it up a bit and make a rice-based dish.

This is inspired by Delia's Moroccan baked chicken dish, but with some changes to streamline it and make it a more complete one-pot meal.

Baked chicken with chickpeas, spinach and rice (serves 3)

olive oil
4 chicken thighs (skin on, bone in)
1 large onion, sliced finely
2 cloves of garlic, sliced
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1 pinch saffron stamens
1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1/2 cup white basmati rice (approx - it was how much was left in the bag and I didn't weigh it)
1 can artichoke hearts in water, drained and halved
200g spinach leaves, roughly chopped
1 cup vegetable stock
75ml dry sherry
handful coriander leaves
1 small preserved lemon, skin only

Brown the onion and chicken in a good splash of oil in a casserole dish. Add the garlic, cumin, coriander and saffron, then the chickpeas, rice, artichoke hearts and spinach leaves. Pour the vegetable stock and sherry over everything and put the lid on the dish. Bake in a 180C oven for about 30 minutes. There should be a lot of extra liquid in the dish and the rice should be cooked. Give it a bit of a stir and fish around with a spoon to bring the chicken pieces to the surface, then return to the oven for another 10 minutes just to get a more appetising colour on the chicken. Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and shreds of preserved lemon.

This would also be very nice without the chicken as a vegetarian main course or substantial side-dish with grilled meat.

Seville orange ice cream - BSFIC

To celebrate the fact that Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream is now a year old, Kavey's challenge this month was to make a frozen treat that fit the theme for one of the preceding months. The one I have come up with actually fit the brief for three months gone by - June's fruit, July's condensed milk and December's booze. Three times as good, then.

Last Sunday it was our wedding anniversary. 7 years. We just stayed in and had a nice dinner. Getting married so close to Valentine's Day means we sometimes bundle it up in the set-dinner-for-two thing, but this year it was just a special day for us.

For our dinner on Sunday, I served delicious onglet steaks with duck-fat sauteed potatoes and steamed broccoli topped with anchovy and garlic breadcrumbs. And then I served this light, tangy ice cream for dessert, along with Azelia's marmalade brandy snaps.

Azelia published the recipe and step-by-step guide at just the right time

I'm giving two recipes here - the one that I made and the one that I think will improve on what I did. You see, even though it is the obedient condensed milk base, I put in a bit too much of the deliciously acidic orange juice, so it doesn't scoop so softly. It does have a wonderful fresh flavour and lovely velvety texture though, so it certainly wasn't a failure, it just needed to sit out to ripen for a few minutes before scooping.  Paul even asked for a portion of his own, which never happens. I didn't have to share the brandy snaps though, he found their butterscotchy gorgeousness too sweet for his palate.

Seville Orange Ice Cream (which was not quite right)

300g condensed milk
300ml double cream
Juice and zest of 3 seville oranges
1 tbs marmalade vodka

Whisk the condensed milk into the juice and zest of the seville oranges. It should thicken pretty much straight away. Then add the cream and vodka and whisk until it holds soft peaks. Scrape into a container and freeze. 

Creamy orange-flecked folds of loveliness

Seville Orange Ice Cream (which will be better next time)
300g condensed milk
300ml double cream
Grated zest of 3 seville oranges
Juice of 2 seville oranges
2tbs marmalade vodka

Follow the recipe as above, increasing the booze and decreasing the juice. I think this will be brilliant, but I will let you know when I have tried it!

We ate it with a little shot of the chilled vodka on the side

Afternoon Tea at Bea's of Bloomsbury

My dear friend and dance partner Sharon is getting married in a couple of weeks. This is cause for great joy because she is awesome, her fiancé (a slender man referred to by my husband as "Sharon's portly lover") is awesome, and as a couple they are really brilliant. Unfortunately, the wedding is happening in Scotland and we're not going to be able to go. Still, it gave us a very good excuse for a celebration involving quite a lot of cake.

Sharon's bridesmaid lives in Scotland, and she was herself a bit preoccupied with preparing for her professional viva (and organising a wedding) so I offered to book something for a small group of her London-based friends. Afternoon tea is a very good way to do a low key but luxurious pre-wedding-but-not-hen-party celebration. A lot of the afternoon teas in hotels in London are absolutely extortionate, but you honestly don't have to spend a huge amount of money to have a good one. I settled on Bea's of Bloomsbury, although it was the St Paul's branch not, in fact, Bloomsbury. It's a funny thing to be in the City of London on a Saturday - hardly anyone around and many of the shops don't even bother to open.

There were a few little niggles with the booking process (i.e I chose the day when they were changing the system they use and I slipped through the gap, then the email address on their site was the wrong one, rapidly resolved through speedy tweeting to @beas_bloomsbury) but once the booking had actually been accepted, it was pretty much plain sailing.

The savoury component of the tea was a selection of filled baguettes. These were lovely - really good bread, with a lovely crackling crust. There were goats cheese and sun dried tomato; mozzarella and pesto; ham and mustard; and chorizo. Not your regular afternoon tea finger sandwiches at all. But the thing is, I like your regular afternoon tea finger sandwiches! I'd spent the journey into London in a reverie about smoked salmon, egg and cress, and delicious cucumber sandwiches, so I was a little discombobulated to be denied them. Baguettes are also quite a bit more filling than finger sandwiches, so I didn't really feel able to do justice to the sweet stuff on offer.

Filled baguettes

And what a lot of sweet stuff there was! Scones, a selection of cupcakes, marshmallows, meringues and three kinds of brownies. The scones were perfect, served with proper clotted cream and jam (the waiter proudly announced that they have started to make their jam in-house, which is worthy, but they need to buy some Certo - it really needed a better set). The mango and strawberry marshmallow was also excellent, if not quite as interesting in flavour as my pink grapefruit ones. Next I ventured upon one of the pretty raspberry meringue hearts, which were nice and chewy in the middle and given a good bit of zing by the raspberry gloss on the outside.

At that point I was mostly defeated, although after a time I rallied enough to go halves in a delicious coffee-topped cupcake. I just couldn't face the brownies, blondies or chocolate and nut killer brownies. The doggy bag that Sharon took home to her portly lover contained 3 whole cupcakes, quantities of brownies and a few meringues. 

Everything we were served was excellent (the "champagne tea" is served with actual Moet et Chandon champagne, not a cheaper sparkling wine), the presentation was very pretty, the room was lovely and filled with natural light and the staff were all charming. My only real gripe was that it was all quite unremittingly sweet. Maybe two of the brownies and the marshmallows could be swapped out for a slice of tarte au citron, or a tarte aux fraises or even a shot glass of lemon posset. Just something of a less cakey texture and less cloying sweetness to mix it up a bit. Fantastic value though, at £24.50 for the champagne tea, and well worth it for someone with a serious sweet-tooth.

Scones & cakes

After tea (more than 3 hours later) we were a bit unwilling to call it a day. One of the girls, while trying to get her over-tired baby off to sleep by wandering around with him, had noticed that there was a roof-top terrace and bar in the building, so we trooped up for a stickybeak. Fabulous view. The sun was in the wrong spot so I couldn't get a nice picture, but you are on a level with the dome of the cathedral and it's RIGHT THERE. The bar had comfy leather seats and windows that reminded me oddly of Jabba's sail barge in Return of the Jedi, but fortunately fewer slave girls in bikinis. Although I suspect that on a Thursday night when all the City boy trader douchebags are spending up big, the slave girls would be arranged. For a quiet amaretto sour in good company on a Saturday evening, it was perfection. And a fellow patron admired my red patent boots, which is all I really ask of a venue.

Roof Terrace at One New Change

Meat-Free Monday: Danish Pastry and Dancing

A few weeks ago I had the enormous privilege and pleasure of attending the ATS General Skills training with Carolena Nericcio. For American Tribal Style dancers, this is a Big Deal. Over 4 days, Carolena and her hosts/assistants Jesse, Philippa and Deana spent 20 hours cleaning up our technique, refining our understanding of the movement vocabulary and dancing the hell out of us. It was amazing and wonderful.

The only downside was the food. The caterers really let the hosts down. The lunches that were provided were vegetarian and vegan, to cater for the majority of the dancers. This shouldn't have been a problem. Vegetarian cuisine can and should be delicious and nutritious: it isn't difficult, expensive or time consuming to make amazing meals without meat. Unfortunately the caterers apparently have never heard of felafels and what they provided was at best uninteresting and not really adequate to fuel the amount of physical exercise we were doing.

This meant that I was eating enormous breakfasts of eggs and bacon, and then having egg and cheese sandwiches for lunch. After 4 days I was egged out.

When it came to the following weekend, and our cooked-breakfast blowout, I couldn't face another egg. It had to be pastry.

I followed this recipe for the laminated dough, and made the raisin swirls, just adding the zest of an orange for a bit of kick.

They were flakey, light, sweet and delicious. Just what I needed.

Snacks for dancing

My dancing has been coming along quite well of late. This is me in my first ATS public performance a couple of months ago, which was nerve-wracking but unexpectedly fun.

The downside to this progress is that I have moved into a more advanced class. Which in itself is great, but it means that on a Tuesday I have a very late night, not getting home until after 10, or closer to 11 if the trains don't cooperate. And THAT means that I get home too late to cook, but having danced for 2 hours I really need some food.

I've been working around that by making a series of portable snacks. Lots of oat and nut based things, to give sustained energy and stop me from buying chocolate bars at the station. So far, I've made a couple of different kinds of flapjack, nuts with a spicy coating, Joy of Baking's lovely lemon bars, and a strangely successful carrot cheesecake swirl bar. Wish I could remember how I made them.

Fig and Walnut Flapjacks

The other weekend I went to a dance festival. It wasn't the best-organised event I have ever been to - no joining instructions were sent out, no details were available about the facilities etc. So I was heading off for 6 hours of workshops without knowing if there was going to be food available. And you must know that for me that is an impossible situation.

So - just in case there was no food available - I decided to take a snack and a hell of a lot of water (the last festival I went to ran out of bottled water half-way through the last day). My snack needed to be nutritious, sustaining and portable. Something with oats and nuts seemed to fit the bill.

I decided on Nigel Slater's Fig and Pumpkin Seed Bars (at the bottom of this page). Of course, the pumpkin seeds that I was sure I had turned out to be sunflower seeds, but the substitution wasn't a problem. The walnut flavour was much more dominant than the sunflower seeds, and calling it a "bar" doesn't appropriately convey the sticky moistness so I renamed it.

As it happens, there was some food available, but a piece of my flapjack was very welcome in between the Dynamic Duos and Spins and Formations workshops and it saved me from whatever horrors lurked in the snack vending machine.