Summer Berry Yoghurt Cake

Last weekend we went to Hampstead for lunch. At least, we set out for Hampstead, but after we'd spent an hour on the M1 and had travelled 1/4 mile, we aborted the mission and came (very slowly) home. And thus the beautiful Summer Berry Yoghurt Cake that I had nursed on my lap for the entire tedious journey only ended up with an appreciative audience of two. Which is a crying shame, because it was a bloody good cake.

I spotted it on Farida's Azerbaijani Cookbook, and she had adapted it from a recipe on the wonderful Elle's New England Kitchen.

And now this is my version.

Summer Berry Yoghurt Cake

2 cups plain flour
2tsp baking powder
1/2 cup butter (I only had salted in, so I didn't add any extra salt to the cake)
1 cup raw caster sugar
3 eggs (Farida's recipe called for 4, but I only had 3 and the texture was just fine)
Splash of vanilla extract (adds a little flavour, but it is mostly because I adore the scent of baking vanilla)
1 cup strained Greek yoghurt
1 cup frozen mixed berries (blueberries, raspberries and blackberries in this mix)
Finely grated zest of a lemon
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1/4 cup demerera sugar

Cream the butter and caster sugar until light and fluffy with a wooden spoon, add the eggs one at a time, beating each one in well. Add the yoghurt and vanilla and mix well.

Add the sifted flour and baking powder and mix until just blended. Fold in the berries and lemon zest (I over-mixed at this point - ignoring common sense - and the cake went an odd purple colour).

Pour into a greased 21cm x 11cm loaf tin and bake in a 180C oven for 70 minutes or until the cake is golden and a skewer comes out clean.

Mix the lemon juice and demerera sugar, and pour evenly over the hot cake. Allow to cool in the tin before turning onto a wire rack.

Keeps really well - I had the last slice today and it was still moist and delicious 8 days after baking.

Cardamom, Rosewater and Saffron Kulfi

About 10 years ago, a friend of the family was visiting family in India, and she very kindly bought me some kulfi moulds. So the other week when I made Dharm's lovely wife's curry, I thought it was about time I used them... and of course, by the time we'd eaten curry, aubergine, lentils, rice and pineapple, we really didn't have enough room for dessert!

Still, it never hurt anyone to have some icecream stowed away in the freezer.

The really special thing about the kulfi moulds is that they are handmade, so the thread on each lid only fits its own mould. Hence the purple nailpolish numbering so that I can keep them matched up.

This is a cheating version of kulfi that I made up after reading lots and lots of other recipes - it uses condensed and evaporated milk, instead of carefully cooking down fresh milk the way you are supposed to. Still, it tastes good; sweet and perfumed. I used reduced fat versions of all the dairy products in it, and it worked OK - but feel free to use full-fat.

Easy Kulfi

1 can reduced fat evaporated milk
1 can reduced fat sweetened condensed milk
300ml reduced fat thickened cream
The seeds of 3 green cardamom pods
Rosewater to taste
Pinch of saffron threads

In a mortar and pestle, crush the cardamom seeds and saffron to a powder and mix with the other ingredients. The specks of saffron will start to bleed beautiful patches of gold into the mix, and you can either wait until they have infused thoroughly, and the mixture is a fairly uniform colour, but I like the almost marbled look.

Pour the mixture into your kulfi moulds (or a loaf tin lined with cling film) and freeze. Kulfi freezes hard, so there is a balance to be struck between being too hard to eat and melting. Some passionfruit or other tangy fruit would be good with it, too moderate the sweetness a bit, but Indian desserts do tend to be very sweet! If I'd had a bit of edible gold leaf I think I would have had to use it.

Rabbit tortellini

I recently had a week day at home. A stolen treat; I'd taken a day of annual leave to get to an appointment, I couldn't go to the appointment but I decided that a mental health day was in order.

And at lunchtime, something tasty, quick, and slightly luxurious was called for.

Rabbit tortellini (serves 2)

1 packet cheese tortellini
2 cloves garlic
3 or 4 marinated artichoke hearts
1/2 jar of tonno di coniglio
1 packet of baby spinach leaves (120g)
2 tbs sour cream
2 tbs dry sherry

Cook the tortellini according to packet instructions.

In a saute pan big enough to accommodate both pasta and sauce, saute sliced garlic in some of the oil from the artichoke hearts and add the chopped artichokes and shredded rabbit and cook for 2 or 3 minutes. Add the sherry, when it has bubbled off, add the sour cream and baby spinach leaves. As the sour cream melts into the sauce, add the drained tortellini and stir it around, letting it absorb the sauce and wilt the spinach. Serve in wide bowls with lots of freshly ground black pepper. No extra salt or grated parmesan is needed.

Strawberry icecream

This...

becomes this...

Which then becomes this...

Lovely homemade strawberry icecream. 400ml of bought premium vanilla custard, a splash of cointreau and 7 or 8 perfectly ripe and luscious strawberries. Half of the strawbs were roughly mashed with a fork, the rest cut into halves or quarters. The fragrance of the strawberries ran all the way through the lovely creamy icecream. Just wonderful!

Pork curry

After the not-very-successful pulled pork wraps, we had a large bowl of leftover pork and no particular inclination to do more wraps.

So Paul curried it.

Leftover Pork Curry

In a big enamelled cast iron dutch oven, he put the pork & some water and started to simmer it. In a small pan, he heated quite a lot of vegetable oil and fried some cloves (8 or 9), some cardamom pods (6 or 7) and about 5 whole star anise and a diced onion. After about 5 minutes, when there is a bit of aroma off the hard dried spices, he added a level teaspoon of cumin seeds (the whole seeds add a nice nutty texture as well as flavour) and a few dried kaffir lime leaves. The last thing to add to the oil is 1tsp turmeric, because it burns quite quickly.

In with the meat he added 3 tsp paprika, another 1 tsp turmeric and 1tsp garam masala and about 1tsp diced garlic and 1tsp diced ginger. Then he added the fried spice mixture, some diced chilli. We let it simmer for a while (not as long as normal because the meat was already cooked and tender) then added some salt to taste and a bag of baby spinach leaves. Stirred some cooked rice through it and there it was. Infinitely tastier than the original dish.

Mexican Pulled Pork Wraps

I made these. I won't be making them again. I gave it an hour longer than the recipe said, and while the meat was tender and succulent, it certainly wasn't fall-apart pullable. And not the slightest bit of the flavouring had penetrated it. I would have been better off roasting the pork for an hour or so and just doing it as plain roast pork wraps. Same flavour, fewer ingredients and more economical with the fuel. I love the idea of pulled pork, but I need a tried and tested recipe. Any suggestions?

Chilean Wine Dinner 09

As we sat down at the latest wine tasting dinner, and picked up the menus, I was hit with the most amazing sense of deja vu. Surely we'd had a seafood bake and beef and corn pie at the last Chilean wine dinner? Well yes. I looked through my archives and found that last May we sat down to the exact same menu. But I found it interesting to see how things had been done differently, so I hope you will too.

Last year they called the starter Jerusalem Artichoke Soup. I said "I don't think it was. For one thing, I haven't seen a Jerusalem Artichoke in the shops for weeks, and for another, Jerusalem Artichokes puree so very beautifully that I don't think you could achieve the effect of a clear green liquid with pulverised little hard vegetable bits." This year they mistranslated Sopa de Topinambur as Artichoke Soup and produced a lovely, creamy, lemony soup, with the occasional bit of artichoke heart in it. Last year's sauvignon blanc was replaced by a very nice (if underchilled) unoaked chardonnay.

Of last year's seafood bake I said "fairly large portion of very rich, very delicious seafood baked in creamy, cheesy sauce. It had nice chunky pieces of crayfish, mussels and squid". This year it was a smaller portion, scooped onto the plate instead of served in the individual gratin dishes of last year. Last year's crayfish and squid were replaced by little shrimp and crab. The sauce was overthickened and a bit stodgy, but it still had a very good flavour and a squeeze of lemon and the fresh green salad really lifted it. It was served with a buttery, lightly oaked viognier, instead of last year's chardonnay.

The pastel de choclo, beef and corn pie, was quite different. Last year "it was a casserole of mince with sweetcorn kernels, sultanas and slices of hardboiled egg, served with some rice". This year small pieces of tender, slow-cooked beef (shin, I think) in a slightly gloopy gravy was covered by a thick layer of creamed corn topping. Tasty, but too big a portion, and I have a faint feeling that the topping was probably supposed to be cornmeal rather than creamed sweetcorn. It was served with a very good carmenere.

Last year's Turron de vino was translated as wine and almond nougat and was "a glass with a layer of a sweet, loose almond paste, broken up with flaked almonds, topped by a strawberry puree and a generous amount of whipped cream". This year they translated it as "wine custard with meringue" and produced a very nice vanilla anglais, with a scoop of icecream in the middle, topped with a really horrible sickly-sweet grey foam that reminded me of the tideline at the beach when there has been heavy sewage pollution. It was served with a very big, inky dark cabernet sauvignon that didn't speak to the dessert in any way.

So. Some hits, some misses - the soup particularly was immeasurably improved, even if it still wasn't made with the right vegetable - but I can't do better than repeat last year's closing remark: "I just feel that if they hadn't tried to do Chilean food they would probably have been better off".