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?

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.

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.

Flourless chocolate orange cupcakes

I mostly do my grocery shopping online. I like being able to ponder without pressure and other people. I like having various tabs open on my computer with recipes and a weekly meal plan. I like being able to duck down to check what I have in the freezer and being able to consider my budget. Of course, the down side is that there are some things that are less convenient. The smallest pack size for oranges is 4. So if I want to make something that uses the zest and juice of an orange, I have to come up with other things that use the rest of the oranges.

Which is my excuse for making these. They are mostly Claudia Roden's wonderful orange almond cake. Which is also Nigella's wonderful clementine cake. But deeply chocolatey. And small. They aren't particularly pretty - at first sight you might think they were going to be a bit healthy and worthy - but they are moist to the edge of gooeyness, with a voluptuous, rich chocolate orange flavour. Like an R-rated Jaffa cake.

Flourless Chocolate Orange Cupcakes - Makes 18 medium sized

2 large oranges (approx 375g)
6 eggs
250g caster sugar
2 tbs good quality cocoa powder
100g dark chocolate
1tsp baking powder
250g ground almonds
Chocolate decorations and a bit of marmalade if you are feeling extra, but this is not the time for buttercream

Wash the oranges and boil them whole for 1½ hours or until they are very soft, topping up with boiling water from the kettle as necessary.

While the oranges are cooling, preheat oven to 190C (fan) and line medium-sized cupcake tins with paper cases

In a large bowl, beat the eggs, sugar and cocoa powder.

Either chop the chocolate into small pieces, or break it up and pulse it to rubble in a food processor (you have the processor out to puree the oranges in a moment, so you might as well. You don't have to wash it up before you do the oranges. But I digress).

Add the baking powder, chocolate rubble and almonds to the egg and sugar mixture and mix well.

When cool enough to handle, cut the oranges open and remove any pips, then puree the oranges, including the peels, in a food processor. Mix the orange puree into the batter and divide between the cupcake cases - about 2 tablespoons in each, which will come up 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 20 minutes, rotating the tins at half time. Let cool before decorating with chocolate decorations or segments of chocolate orange or chocolate dipped orange peel or whatever, glued on with a dab of marmalade.

Margarita cheesecake ice cream

You may have heard that the UK is in the grip of a heatwave. It's not quite as hot as the infamous summer of 1976 (mention the weather in front of any British person over the age of 45 and they start to tell you about the summer of '76) but weeks of high 20s temperatures and very little rain have meant that there's barbecuing and grilling and salads and not a lot of other cooking going on.

But I did make this rather good dessert over the weekend.

It relies on the booze to stop it from freezing hard, so if you don't like to consume alcohol this really isn't for you.

Margarita Cheesecake Ice Cream (it's rich, makes lots)

1 x 397g can of full-fat condensed milk
300g cream cheese
2 limes
3 tbs tequila
3 tbs Cointreau or triple sec
300ml double cream
Shortbread biscuits, to serve

In a large bowl, using an electric whisk, beat together the condensed milk, cream cheese, grated zest and juice of the limes and the alcohol until smooth. Add the cream and whisk until soft peaks form. Scrape into a freezer-proof container and freeze overnight. Serve with a shortbread biscuit on the side. I'd have crumbled them up and mixed them through, but Paul really hates those sorts of bits in his ice cream.

Ginger and lemon friands

March 3rd, 2018

As you'll probably know if you have any friends in the UK, over the last few days we've had snow. Snow in places and quantities that don't usually get snow. Yesterday it was bitterly cold and coming down pretty much all day, leaving an even blanket this morning.

Now, our house is magnificently insulated. In our previous house winter was freezing, we'd have to run the heating constantly and still have a sleeping bag piled over the winter duvets, wearing gloves to keep hands flexible enough to type. In this house, unless the wind is howling we sleep with the bedroom window open and we haven't even put the winter duvets on the bed. It's comfy. It means that now when we look at charming character properties in estate agent windows we just give a shudder and think of the energy bill. We're finding the mod cons of insulation and double glazing to be, well, convenient.

Makes 12. One had already been snaffled for science

What I am saying is I didn't really have to bake. It's not like I wanted to run the oven to help heat the kitchen, or that we needed the extra calories for warmth. But I had eggwhites and we weren't leaving the house, so I spent a few quiet minutes pottering in the kitchen.

Ginger and lemon friands (makes 12)

85g plain flour
250g icing sugar
100g ground almonds
1tsp ground ginger
Grated zest of a lemon
45g blanched almonds
85g crystallised ginger
7 eggwhites (210g liquid eggwhite)
190g melted butter

Preheat the oven to 180C (fan). Use a little of the melted butter to grease the friand tins.

Sift the flour and icing sugar into a bowl and add the ground almonds, ground ginger and lemon zest. Either finely chop or pulse together in a small processor the blanched almonds and crystallised ginger. Not to a paste, but to a crumb. Mix that through the other dry ingredients. Whip the eggwhites with a fork until frothy and fold in with the melted butter. It takes quite a bit of folding to convince the butter to play nicely.

Divide the mixture between the tins - for 12 friand tins it comes up about 2/3 of the way.

Bake for 15 minutes, then reduce temperature to 160C and bake for another 10 minutes. This initial high heat (in my old oven I did it at 210C but this oven - again a mod con - is much more efficient) gives the characteristic central cracked dome.

Cool for a couple of minutes before turning onto a wire rack. Will keep a week if you let them.

Pasta with tuna, capers and lemon

About 18 years ago I cooked for Paul for the first time. I made a very simple pasta dish, and I still remember even that being a challenge because he was kissing the back of my neck distractingly. I'm not entirely sure what day it is today and yet I also remember vividly that after we ate he said that he really liked the way I put slivers of the lemon zest in with the tuna. I like that bit too, so I think the lemon zest is essential.

I've been making it exactly the same way ever since. The only thing I have done differently this time is boosted the lemon flavour a bit by dropping the shell of the juiced and zested lemon into the cooking water.

Pasta with tuna, capers and lemon (serves 2)

Pasta (you know how much 2 of you eat. I am not going to recommend or judge)
Olive oil
3-4 cloves of garlic
1 tbs capers, drained
1 lemon, zested and juiced
A handful of flatleaf parsley, chopped
Good quality tuna in oil. 1-2 large cans depending on whether you have to share it with your cat

While the pasta (I think this is best with linguine, but we were eating in front of the TV so a smaller shape was more manageable) is boiling, put the capers, lemon zest and juice, parsley and tuna in a bowl. Slice the garlic.

When the pasta is cooked, reserve about a quarter of a cup of the cooking water and drain the rest, discarding the shell of the lemon if you added that to the water. Return the pot to the heat. Warm a slosh of olive oil and saute the sliced garlic until it is fragrant and beginning to brown, then add the bowl of tuna etc. Return the drained pasta to the pot, add the reserved starchy cooking water and bring back to the boil, simmering for just a minute or so. If you want to add some grated parmesan, in the teeth of Italian disapproval, go ahead. Silvio Berlusconi's ongoing career demonstrates that not all Italians get it right all the time.

Happy New Year! And festive feasting

New Year's Eve fondue

Happy New Year, all! Hope you've been able to muster some cautious optimism for the year to come.

Bit of an unusual festive season for us. We entertained! And we mostly didn't eat meat!

My aunt came to stay with us for a couple of weeks over Christmas and New Year. She's been a vegetarian for almost 40 years, and I couldn't face the idea of making two different meals for three people, so we resolved to cook vegetarian at home while she was with us.

In the end there were loads of things I planned to make that I never got around to (the gado gado, cheesy polenta with roast shallots and figs, sage and walnut lasagne and the white bean puree with roast radicchio can all wait until her next visit) but what I did cook went pretty well, I thought.

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's savoury carrot and feta cake

Felicity Cloake's perfect panforte

Nigella's take on pizzocheri - pasta with potato, brussels sprouts and cheese - for Christmas Eve dinner

I started planning what to cook for Christmas Day a couple of months ago. We aren't wedded to any particular traditional Christmas meal, so we weren't trying to fit vegetarian food into a pre-existing format, but we wanted something a bit sumptuous and celebratory. I originally thought that a stuffed pumpkin would be good, but decided that there isn't enough room inside a pumpkin to have a decent amount of stuffing, so I reimagined it as a baked, layered dish.

Sour cherry couronne

We started Christmas day, however, with couronne. It's mostly Paul Hollywood's recipe, but substituting sour cherries for apricots (I didn't bother soaking them) and lovely Italian crystallised citrus peel for the raisins. Instead of plain marzipan I used a new-to-me brandy marzipan, which packed quite a wallop.

Mezze plate

For lunch we just had mezze - bought hummus, felafel, artichoke hearts, olives, dolmades and stuffed peppadews, with some leftover carrot and feta cake, and a few bits of pickled carrot and mooli. Then the layered baked squash for dinner.

November's trial run on the Christmas squash

In my practice runs I had used delica pumpkin, which sliced into neat crescents which cooked evenly and looked like a pretty sunburst.

Unfortunately Ocado let me down on the day and delivered a butternut - good flavour but not as pretty!

The layers of squash were interspersed with sauteed onion, loads of rosemary and sage, crumbled sourdough bread, toasted hazelnuts, crumbled Stilton cheese and garlic. Then I poured cream and white wine over the lot and let it bake slowly.

We had a persimmon and chicory salad with it (Diana Henry's recipe, although for obvious reasons I left out the cheese and nuts). Delicious, if not in any way photogenic.

Final version of baked layered squash

There was no need at all for dessert after all that! Later in the week I made a quince and clementine trifle, but we really didn't go in much for pudding at home.

Quince and clementine trifle

On New Year's Eve we had a fondue for lunch, and then friends came over for tea and cake. I'd been looking for an excuse to make Ottolenghi's walnut and halva cake, and this seemed like just the time. It's a very good cake.

Ottolenghi's walnut & halva cake

The other main home-cooking highlights of the festive period were a rather triumphant take on megadarra (I used siyez bulgar instead of rice, topped it with pomegranate arils and goats curd and served it with runner beans stewed in tomatoes) and pairing Ottolenghi's bulgar with mushrooms, feta and dill with Gizzi Erskine's brussels sprout, pomegranate and pistachio salad. Which end up looking quite similar, so fortunately we didn't have them back to back.

Megadarra and runner beans

Ottolenghi's bulgar and Gizzi Erskine's sprouts

Flourless Calamondin Cake

I am told there are people who don't like Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake or Nigella Lawson's clementine cake, without the excuse of a nut allergy, but I have never met them myself. Flourless, moist and intensely citrussy, to me they are pretty much perfect. They've been on my mind a bit lately - I've recommended it to a friend who needed a gluten free recipe: it was very well received, and Kavey made it for the first time recently. And, of course, we're still in citrus season, with all sorts of interesting blood oranges, seville oranges, mandarins and whatnot to be had.

But what I chose to use were the fruit from our calamondin bonsai. Calamondins aren't frost tolerant, so it's been inside for the winter, and has responded to the coddling with loads of fruit.

The method of making the cake usually involves boiling the whole fruit, then removing the seeds and processing it. I decided that was probably not going to work for the calamondin, because they have loads of seeds. Instead, I used the method I hit on a couple of years ago making calamondin marmalade, of freezing the fruit. The peel then has a really soft texture, just like the boiled citrus, and the pulp comes away cleanly. I put all the peels in the processor and pushed the pulp through a sieve.

I followed Nigella's recipe, but did a half quantity (calamondin aren't sweet, so I followed her directions for the lemon version) and baked it in a 6" tin. I should have reduced the oven temperature a bit, I think - it was very thoroughly browned outside by the time it was cooked in the middle.

This cake doesn't need icing, but Paul had an inexplicable craving for a lemon butter icing. I didn't know he knew what butter icing was. So I reserved a teaspoon of the pureed calamondin, and whipped it with 70g butter and 130g icing sugar and a splash of milk.

It really is an excellent cake.

Quince and lemon tart

My dishwasher was broken for a fortnight - tragedy - which broke my spirit for cooking a bit. We weren't quite reduced to paper plates, but the prospect of having to wash up every utensil by hand really put me off.

Fortunately last Friday the nice man came and fixed it, so I celebrated with some pot-intensive cookery.

I didn't get a picture of the cassoulet, because it wasn't that pretty (but it was delicious and used an awful lot of pots). But I did get a picture of the quince and lemon tart. Which proves that the fan in my oven doesn't do a lot to cook evenly.

Anyway, I poached peeled, cored and quartered quinces in a basic sugar syrup until they were tender and a lovely dark amber colour. Then I arranged them on a slick of quince paste on a puff pastry case, and poured over a lemony custard. The custard was 2 whole eggs and a yolk, 2 tablespoons of sugar, the rind and juice of a lemon and 150ml of whole milk. Baked until the custard was almost set, then pulled out, drizzled the poking-out bits of quince with a little of the syrup they were poached in, and then back in the oven for a final few minutes to set as a glaze.

It's very good warm with a slosh of cold double cream.

New Year's Eve Trifle

Happy New Year! Hope 2016 is kind to you. So far I am not loving this year, I have to say. The weather has been unrelenting bollocks and the dishwasher is broken, so I don't even want to entertain myself with elaborate cooking.

But we saw out the old year in fine style, so I am still optimistic.

Instead of our long-established habit of staying at home for New Year's Eve and cooking something nice, we went out and cooked something nice. We took an impressive piece of beef (3 rib standing rib roast) over to friends and Paul stood out in the wind and rain (under a canopy, fortunately) and barbecued it while I drank champagne and ate Spanish ham indoors.

Building up the lairs, as Mary Berry would say

My contribution was a trifle. It was pretty much a large version of the individual ones I made for us for Christmas, although I did tweak it a little.

Trifle sponges, split and spread with home made calamondin and Cointreau marmalade, squidged in the bottom of the bowl and sprinkled with Cointreau. Fresh orange, and fresh orange and Cointreau jelly. Vanilla custard swirled with lemon curd. Then a generous layer of lemon syllabub. Decorated with delightful tackiness with orange and lemon jelly slices and pink and yellow sugar pearls.

It was fab. Not too sweet, beautifully boozy and a good way to round off the evening. Unfortunately, being out of the habit of late nights we faded at this point and were home before midnight, watching fireworks through the bedroom curtains.

Christmas feasting

For our Christmas dinner this year we bought a plump Yorkshire duck from Turner & George. We tossed around a few ideas but decided to look to the East for our meal - following Meera Sodha's recipe for roast duck fesenjan.

Initially I'd thought to just do the wonderful persimmon & chicory salad we had last year, but for some reason Ocado aren't selling persimmons this year, and the thought of going to an actual shop was just not to be born. So I made a different Diana Henry recipe, a bulgar pilau with glazed figs from A Change of Appetite. I thought the balsamic and honey glazed figs would play particularly nicely with the sweet/sour pomegranate in the duck. And they did. Instead of the cavolo nero in the original recipe, I added a packet of flower sprouts on top of the bulgar wheat, to steam gently while the wheat cooked. It made a dish that was both delicious (lovely nutty bulgar, delicious tender flower sprouts, juicy figs) and festive.

For dessert I'd made some citrussy trifles. I did individual portions because it was just us and a big trifle looks so messy and unappetising once a couple of spoonfuls have come out, so the spares could stay pristine in the fridge for a couple of days. They were mini orange and lemon sponges (half iced, which is why there is a big white smear half way down), with a good slosh of Cointreau, then orange suprême and Cointreau and orange jelly (just freshly squeezed orange juice and a bit of Cointreau, set with leaf gelatine), then a layer of (bought) vanilla custard, topped with orange syllabub and garnished with crystallised pomelo rind. Very boozy, but fresh and lovely.

Of course, a whole duck is still a bit much for two, so on Christmas Day we just had the breasts. On Boxing Day I pulled the rest of the meat from the bones and reheated it in the remaining walnut sauce. I made some spinach rice and a simple apple raita. And it was just as delicious as the original roast.

Playing with Pomelo

Steak and Vietnamese-ish pomelo salad

One of the things that people who don't like online grocery shopping say about it is that they like to browse. They also say they'd rather choose their own fresh produce. And I understand that. For me, though, the convenience and ability to take a leisurely approach over the course of the week more than make up for being stuck with Ocado's "New" tab.

But as it happens I was perusing the New tab when I noticed that they had started to stock pomelos. I've been hearing things about pomelos for a while but never knowingly tried one, so I decided to order one to play with. And to be honest, I am glad Ocado were choosing my fresh produce for me, because the pomelo is a curious beast that flies in the face of everything I know about citrus.

For one thing, it was tightly wrapped in plastic, so I couldn't tell if it was aromatic. It was also very light for its size - I'm used to choosing fruit that seem heavy and juice-laden, but apparently that's not something you look for in a pomelo.

I took it out of the plastic and got a waft of a subtle floral, almost jasmine-y fragrance. I thinly pared off the rind, for candying, and then cut off the pith with the intention of cutting the flesh into suprême for putting in a salad.

And discovered that that isn't something you do with pomelos either. The membranes are very thick and the juice sacs quite dry and separated, so it's actually the easiest thing to just pull the fruit into segments and peel the membranes off with your fingers. Which isn't as sticky as it sounds.

The flesh went into a Vietnamese-ish salad with cucumber, shallots, mint, coriander and peanuts. I made a light dressing of chilli, fish sauce and lime juice. Even with all the chunks of pomelo in the salad, it still needed the fresh acidity of the lime juice, as the fruit is fragrant rather than sharp. Wonderful with a steak.

Then I candied the peel. I've been nibbling small chunks of it whenever I feel like something sweet, but I think most of it is going to be adorning my Christmas trifle.

 

Seville orange Madeira cake for a blogoversary

On this day in 2007 I started this blog. I think eight years of blogging is deserving of a piece of cake! Unfortunately I have grave doubts as to whether I will get a piece of this one. You see, Great British Bake Off is back. Last year I made a couple of the bakes featured on the show, and sent them in to Paul's office. They went down well! And he said that if I wanted to do any baking this year, they would also find it acceptable. The first week's "signature bake" was a Madeira cake, which is absolutely in Paul's cake wheelhouse - quite dense and plain with a bit of citrus, good with a cup of tea.

I've posted my great grandmother's first prize certificate for Madeira cake before, but I've never actually made one that I can remember. Some other bloggers that I know and love have made GBBO-inspired Madeira cakes (Miss Whiplash got hers out the day after the show aired, which was impressively speedy) and they all looked wonderfully inspiring. Jassy at Gin & Crumpets based her lemon and fennel flavoured cake on Nigella Lawson's mother-in-law's Madeira cake - which seemed like a good pattern to follow.  

My "twist", because the signature bake always needs a twist, was to use the zest and juice of two Seville oranges instead of the traditional lemon. "But wait", I hear observant readers cry, "it's August!". Well yes, these oranges are part of a stash in my freezer from January when the lovely bitter oranges are in season. The microplane zests them beautifully while they are still rock-hard, and then when they thaw the cells have broken down enough to get maximum juice out of them. The smell of the grated zest filled the whole house deliciously.

Based on the Bake Off judging last week, I now know that one of the things you have to look for in a Madeira cake is the long crack down the top. So even if I don't get to taste my cake, or get meaningful feedback from the gannets who eat it, I am still quite satisfied that this was a very successful bake. Worthy of an 8th blogoversary.

No-churn lemon ripple ice cream

I've mentioned that I hate food waste, haven't I? It feels so wrong to throw away ingredients because I've not made it around to cooking the dish I bought them for, or even worse, because I've misjudged use-by dates. This ice cream happened because a carton of cream was on its use-by date and I didn't have any other plans to use it for the next couple of days (I find that sealed cartons of cream are usually fine for at least a day or two afterwards, but I didn't want to push it too far). It also finished up a squeezy bottle of condensed milk that had been in the fridge for a while and the jar of lemon curd left from my raspberry and lemon dacquoise, so definitely a worthwhile, simple and useful little recipe. And delicious. Oh so delicious.

It uses the whipped cream and condensed milk base which makes a no-churn ice cream scoopable straight from the freezer, but I added a little vodka just to help it along. If you have a bottle of limoncello that you bought on holidays and have never got around to using, you could add that instead.

No-churn lemon ripple ice cream (serves about 4)

170g condensed milk
170ml double cream
1 lemon, juice and grated zest
2tbs vodka
good quality lemon curd

Put the condensed milk, lemon zest, juice and vodka in a large glass bowl and give it a bit of a stir to combine. Then add the cream and whip until it forms defined peaks.

Fold in the lemon curd (I had about 3 heaped tablespoons left from the dacquoise and dunking a spoon in the jar every time I went into the kitchen) very roughly, so it's rippled through the cream. Scrape into a plastic box, cover and freeze.

Now, Kavey's Bloggers Scream For Ice Cream event this month has a water ice theme - sorbets and granitas. So this doesn't qualify AT ALL. But it tastes so good that I am going to send it along to her anyway. And lemon is refreshing, so it's almost like a sorbet, right? Creamy, luscious sorbet.