Norfolk treacle tart

Penny's Paella - an all-seafood version

One Saturday morning, friends invited us to come over that evening for an impromptu paella. I offered to take a dessert, of course. And then realised that I really, really didn't want to leave the house to buy ingredients.

My mental inventory of the fridge and pantry (was too lazy to actually stand up and look) showed that I had a small carton of cream, quite a few eggs and some limes. And some pastry in the freezer.

I happened upon a recipe for a Norfolk Treacle Tart. This is not what most people think of when they hear the term "treacle tart" (actually, outside of the UK I have no idea what people think of when they hear the term treacle tart - possibly a sticky prostitute?). The treacle tart that, for example, Harry Potter likes, is a delicious, but tooth-achingly sweet mixture of breadcrumbs and golden syrup in a shortcrust pastry case.

This one is more like a baked custard tart, with the golden syrup as a flavouring. It is very rich but much less sweet than the breadcrumb version. When I made the filling, I looked at the quantity and realised it was going to be a very thin smear of custard, so I increased it by 50% (i.e 170g butter, 180g syrup, 3 eggs, 6 tbs cream). I also used lime zest and not lemon. This seemed poetic, as one of my early food memories involves lime marmalade eaten in Norfolk.

The other change was to use puff pastry. I opened the freezer to get the shortcrust out and was horrified to discover that it was gluten free, vegan shortcrust pastry. I can only imagine that the grocery delivery substituted my usual butter shortcrust one day when I wasn't paying attention. Anyway, that odd substitute for food can stay in the freezer until the day when I entertain a coeliac vegan. The puff pastry was delicious with it, though. The combination of flaky, crisp pastry and syrupy custard made the dessert a bit reminiscent of two of my favourites - the Greek dessert galaktoboureko, and Portuguese pasteis de nata.

It's a very good dessert to keep in mind for unexpected company! Or unexpected invitations.

A pile of fresh berries would be good on the side. Some creme fraiche or icecream would also be delicious.

Sipsmith Summer Cup

Pretty label - with the usual Sipsmith swan

This really hasn't been a Pimms sort of summer. In a good summer, we drink loads of summer cup. It's a peculiarly British beverage, a mysterious mixture of gin and flavourings which you drink diluted with a fizzy mixer, ice and fruit. It sounds a bit odd if you haven't tried it before, but it really is exceptionally refreshing and delicious.

I'm not sure how the idea of making basically a fruit punch out of this stuff came about. And I am not sure how it became so synonymous with the English summer, but it has and it is. Even pretty basic pubs sell pitchers of Pimms through the summer months. It's the perfect thing when you are hot and thirsty and don't want something too alcoholic.

Sipsmith, the lovely boutique gin distillery I visited at the beginning of last year, has launched its own summer cup this year. Apparently they wanted to launch it last year but it took longer than they thought to get the blend right, so they missed the summer (Fairfax, from Sipsmith, spoke at the gin club I go to some months ago and that was one of the anecdotes he told).

My friend Sharon, who was also on that distillery visit, saw that her local Waitrose was stocking the Sipsmith Summer Cup and nabbed a bottle for me.

I've generally preferred my Pimms with ginger ale, rather than the more commonly seen lemonade, but as the label on the bottle suggests lemonade I thought I should taste a few different mixers. You know, so that you don't have to.

No idea why the fruit is traditional but it is and it is lovely

I tried ginger beer, ginger ale, lemonade and half ginger ale, half lemonade. All the Fevertree brand, all with strawberries, cucumber and mint, and mixed 1:3 with the Summer Cup.

The ginger beer was definitely wrong. Far too firey and overpowering. The ginger ale was good, the lemonade was good, but by far the best way was the mixture of ginger ale and lemonade. It allowed much more of the tea, juniper and citrus flavours in the Summer Cup to come through and somehow was less sweet than each mixer by itself.

If we ever get some hot weather this summer, that's definitely how I will be drinking the rest of the bottle.

Further adventures with sticky buns

A friend recently told me about a stall at her local market in W.A that sells frozen, bake-at-home pastries. She bought some maple walnut scrolls or some such delicacy, which she was then able to whisk out of the freezer and bake as a treat at a later date. I thought that was absolutely genius.

I also thought it was very achievable at home. Why not make a batch of buns some day when I was quietly at home, freeze them, and then bake them on a day with less time?

I made my usual sweet bun recipe (without dried fruit) filling it with a mixed spice butter. I'd planned to just do cinnamon, but there was less cinnamon in the jar than I'd thought, so I added 1/2 tsp nutmeg and 1/2 tsp ground cloves to the 1 tbs cinnamon I did have.

I put the buns in a foil baking tray, covered it tightly with foil and put it straight in the freezer.

Several days later, we had an "away day" for work. Some workplaces go paintballing, some do a day trip to Bruge. We go to David's house and actually spend most of the day working. I thought freshly baked sticky buns would facilitate the process. I took the frozen tray of buns with me, stuck them in the oven (his oven door is hinged at the side, which took me by surprise) and half an hour later we had elevenses.

So - given the distance between my freezer and David's house, the buns had 2 1/4 hours to thaw and have their second rise before they were baked. They didn't have quite as much ovenspring as normal, but I actually think that was the fault of the yeast - I ran out of instant dried yeast, and made up the quantity with regular dried yeast and I don't think it is as effective.

This was very successful. I think next time I'll make a bigger batch so I can have a few trays tucked away for those moments when a sticky bun would be a good thing.

Tanya's salmon

My friend Tanya is notorious for eating salmon about 4 times a week. She wraps it in foil, pours on some sweet chilli sauce and bakes it. This week I tried it for the first time, and it was absolutely delicious. Maybe not 4 times a week, but definitely once a month!

Behold these rowdy ladies - weekend in Bath

Last weekend, I snuck off for a girls' weekend in Bath. I can't remember the last time I was away with the girls without it being dance-related. This was not dance-related, it was purely sybaritic. It was the one weekend this decade (possible exaggeration) that Shannon wasn't at a wedding and Megan wasn't swanning off to the continent, so we grabbed the opportunity.

Megan handled travel, Sophia arranged accommodation and I was placed in charge of provisioning. We're a good team to have at your back if you need to invade a small neighbouring country. I put out a twitter plea for restaurant recommendations, did some intense googling, and came up with more options than we had time for.

As Shannon was arriving a little bit after the London contingent, we decided to settle in to a pub and wait for her before having lunch. Based on a complex equation (factoring in the quality of website, likelihood of avoiding ghastly tour buses, independent ownership, promise of menu, distance to hotel) I chose The Chequers. Unfortunately my calculations didn't factor in the fact that Bath is built on a steep hill and the pub was a long way up it. The pitcher of Pimms we'd discussed as a pleasant way to begin our lunch became an urgent necessity about half way up.

Knowing that we'd planned a blow-out for dinner, we all opted for light-ish meals. My BLT was delicious, but the sausage sandwich and burgers on the table looked equally good. I almost had order-envy over the veggie burger, which is a first for me. Good food, a very pleasant room and a charming toddler at the next table making goo-goo eyes at us was just what the doctor ordered after the trauma of a 10am train from Paddington.

  

The Chequers BLT

Suitably fortified, we headed off to the Thermae Bath Spa.  Quelle horrible surprise, there was a massive queue. There was a couple in front of us actually having a picnic (M&S sushi and froglet rose, in case you were wondering). We decided that we were not British enough to queue and went for a wander, which took us by a boule competition full of very, very British people having a delightfully eccentric time.

We went to the Jane Austen Centre. Here my "if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all" policy falls down, because if I don't say anything, how will anyone know what a fucking joke it is? And of course the joke was on us because they have the extraordinary nerve to charge £7.50 entry and we actually paid it. For £7.50 I could have got another delicious BLT and a second hand copy of Pride and Prejudice and had a lovely solo afternoon of appreciating Jane Austen, instead of listening to a dull lecture with nothing surprising in it, then traipsing around a very small collection of vaguely Austen-related memorabilia. On the other hand, seeing Shannon's face when she tasted one of the ratafia biscuits on offer was worth almost £2.

Further wandering was brought up short by exceptionally heavy rain. So obviously we had to take refuge in another pub, to while away the hours before getting back to the hotel, drying off and changing for dinner.

My twitter shout-out had produced a recommendation for Menu Gordon Jones, but even a month beforehand we couldn't get a reservation. Another shout-out produced The Olive Tree, which had actually caught my eye already.

We had to get a taxi because a) it was still bucketing with rain and b) it was right back up near The Chequers.

I was pretty tempted by the chef's menu of the day, but the main course was rabbit and the others were less convinced. Plus the à la carte menu was more than interesting enough to sway me.

The back of the menu at The Olive Tree. We took it as our motto.

The service was good (very sweetly, when the maître d' saw me get my camera out, he offered to take a group picture - had to explain that I was more interested in what my food looks like than what my friends look like). The food was better. 

Vichyssoise - I think there may have been some wild garlic involved. 

The other 3 had spring veg risotto. Best risotto I have had anywhere except Le Manoir.

Cornish Game Hen terrine with summer truffle. Cornish game hens aren't actually game and don't have enough flavour to stand up to truffle, so it was a bit over-seasoned to compensate. Very good textures though.

Megan had duck - couldn't get a decent picture of the gnocchi or the fish the others had

Pork belly with loin, cheek and pea tortellini. The thing on the left was a perfect little toffee apple. Utterly sublime cooking.

This was the only dessert picture that turned out for me - Megan's mascarpone cheesecake with roasted peaches and peach sorbet. Divine. I had an amazing citrus parfait with a shot of limoncello and some passionfruit sorbet, but my hand was not steady in those photos.

The rest of the evening was uneventful. The man behind our hotel bar was rude and dismissive (I asked for a double whiskey. He asked if I wanted them in the same glass), but a group of Koreans in Regency dress drinking beer made it matter less.

The following morning we decided to get to the spa early to beat the queue. It was a very good idea - both the roof top pool and the steam rooms were quite crowded already, but the basement "Minerva Pool" (which had a sort of 60s Bond villain pleasure-palace vibe) was emptier. A friend of Megan's had given her a couple of vouchers to the spa, so our 2 hours of bobbing around talking rubbish and abandoning attempts to keep our hair dry was very reasonably priced.

When Kavey did a jaunt to Bath last year, she said good things about the breakfast at The Pump Room, so I thought that would be a good way to celebrate our final meal in Bath (and hopefully see us through until we got home). We arrived at 11.55am and a slightly supercilious young man told us that they stopped serving breakfast at 12, but we could look at the breakfast menu of things we couldn't have. Then our much more obliging waitress said that of course we could order off the breakfast menu. So we did.

Megan and Sophia "took the waters" - Sophia is a country girl and said it just tasted like slightly warm bore water

3 x champagne breakfasts - gorgeous toasted soda bread, smoked salmon, poached egg and hollandaise with a bit of watercress. And a glass of champagne.

Sophia had been feeling fragile, so she had posh cauliflower cheese with truffles and grilled leeks

There was room for dessert - another magic cheesecake (I had a sherry trifle, which was OK but not awe-inspiring and not photogenic)

The thing about a moderately early start (we were in the spa shortly after 9am) followed by a bit of exercise and a nice breakfast, is that it leaves you disinclined for much activity. The rain had cleared up so we forked out £1.20 each (as non-residents) to get into the Parade Gardens, snaffled some deck-chairs and settled in for a final bit of hedonism before the trip home. The gardens really need to  get themselves organised with a drinks waiter.

These were not the same cosplayers that we saw in our hotel the night before

Divine decadence

The Portishead brass band

Nigella's sweet & salty crunchy nut bars

Becky is allergic to nuts, as I've mentioned, so I don't make treats for work that contain them, because I think it's a bit unfair. By the same reasoning the best possible thing for my waistline would be for a diabetic person to join the team.

But this week Becky is in the South of France, so I wanted to make something that packed in the maximum quantity of nuts. I did think about baklava, but I was away for the weekend (post about that is coming in a couple of days) so it had to be something quick.

The quickest, nuttiest things I know are Nigella Lawson's sweet & salty crunchy nut bars. Butter, chocolate, golden syrup, honeycomb and salted peanuts. I enhanced the nuttyness by using the remainder of my homemade maple and pecan cinder toffee (fascinatingly, given that I made that toffee in October and totally forgot it was there, it had no loss of either flavour or texture. Shows how effective candying is as a preservative!)

These bars would actually be the perfect thing to take on an arctic expedition when you needed really concentrated energy, but it also got an office full of people through a Monday.

Chocolate cherry pikelets

Not sure if anyone is actually interested in my "creative process" but these pikelets were a pretty good illustration of how it works.

It nearly always starts in bed, between sleeping and properly waking, where I decide the important things like what I am going to wear and what I am going to eat. A typical internal dialogue (can't call it a monologue - there usually are at least two voices involved...) goes very much like this:

A1: What do you want for breakfast?

A2: Eggs benedict

A1: Don't be ridiculous - we have no ham, no muffins and I'm not making bloody hollandaise.

A2: What about Laura's ginger crunch pikelets? They were good and there's still some crystallised ginger from Christmas. Plus, whipped butter, yum!

A1: Mmmm good idea, yes.

A2:... oh arse, used the last of the golden syrup in the chocolate fudge ripple.

A1: But I want pikelets now! What else can go in pikelets?

A2: There are those cherries in the fridge?

A1: Those are for a granita.

A2: Not enough space in the freezer for making granita.

A1: Oh all right. There's some of the chocolate fudge ripple left that can go in too.

A2: It's a plan. Coffee?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Oaty batter, fresh cherries and chocolate fudge sauce

 

 

Spoonfuls of the batter (about half oats, half self-raising flour, eggs and milk until runny) went into a pan of foaming butter. 3 halves of fresh cherry and a spoonful of chocolate fudge sauce went onto that, then another spoonful of batter over the top to encase the filling. They needed to cook a bit slower than a regular pancake to make sure they cooked through properly. They were good, but not chocolatey enough. Should have put some cocoa powder in the pikelets themselves! Which I now see from the ginger crunch pikelets post, I was planning to do anyway.

Garnish with more cherries and possibly some chocolate shavings