Tuesday 30 March 2010

More cakes - apologies - and Marguerite Patten


White choc and raspberry - tasted great since you ask

Oh dear. New readers to this blog (that's all of you) must think I am one crazed cake addict. Just a big soft ball of squishy sponge coated in a sickly sweet sugary coating who dissolves on contact into a puff of air.

Ok, if you know me you'll know there's no sugar coating. But as I've just spent the afternoon baking with Marguerite Patten, 94-year-old doyenne of baking, you'll forgive me for going on about cake one last time (for now).

The baking party was in aid of Stork's 90th birthday and Marguerite herself looked as pretty as the pastel cupcakes which fill the windows of kitsch bakeries, in a suit of the palest lavender, immaculate pink lipstick and a delicate ivory coiffure to top it all off.

Marguerite is most easily described as the original celebrity chef because she first hit the airwaves during the Second World War as an employee of the Ministry of Food, presenting Kitchen Front on BBC Radio to help housewives make the most of their rations. By 1947 she was presenting food shows on the TV and has sold 17 million copies of her 170 books.

Of which I own none. Which is a bit naughty given I'm writing about a revered cookery writer.

But what I can tell you is that the cakes and muffins I made today seem genuinely lighter than the ones I've baked over the last few weeks. So maybe Stork is the answer.

Telly chef and husband of Fern Britton Phil Vickery was there too and he appeared genuinely overcome by the wonder of Stork. Now, when you're at an event which is promoting a certain product, you would of course expect the hosts to do their best to champion whatever it is in return for their fee. But Vickery seemed so enthusiastic about the product I'm going to crown him the Messiah of Marg.

As for Marguerite, she says she wouldn't put her name to anything she doesn't believe in. She has been extolling the virtues of Stork for decades now and one could never accuse such a lovely and proper old dear of touting her name about for a quick buck.

She's no shy duck when it comes to voicing her opinion either. I asked her about Sophie Dahl's new cookery show and she said: "I couldn't believe my ears and I couldn't believe my eyes. She is very pretty but can she cook? The producers had no right letting her run riot in a kitchen when there are so many able cooks out there."

Here here. I said last week I was looking forward to watching Dahl goof about with some scrumptious puddings, but the poor thing was out of her depth. The food she made did look nice, but the premise was absurd and her cooking skills barely more developed than my own.

Giles Coren has already called her show a "crock of bogus mendacious shite", hammed up here by the Mail. Though look, the pair do have history.

I'm going to leave you with a Stork cake recipe, because that seems only fair. Lemon Drizzle Cake, bit of a surefire crowd pleaser -



322 calories per slice. Shite. That should make me think before I poke any more down my cakehole.

And after this I'm getting back to my roots of reading about cooking instead of trying to actually do it. I've learnt my lesson this week, what with the burnt rubber and the exploding pastry and the endless stream of cakes, and I don't have time to read about food, make it and then write it up here, so the cooking bit will have to be streamlined.

I am dedicating this post to my dear departed Grandma Shack (Nellie) who will today, looking down at me baking in the Good Housekeeping kitchen from her sofa in the sky, have been very proud indeed (I hope).




Monday 29 March 2010

Simon Rimmer's Madchester Onion Tart


Thinking of having some vegetarian friends over for dinner, I had a nose through Simon Rimmer's The Accidental Vegetarian last week (there's an updated one just out, but I have the 2004 edition). Rimmer was one of the founders of Greens in Manchester, the city's longstanding (20 years) and arguably best vegetarian restaurant.

I've never been, for no particular reason. It's very popular so you have to book, but I do know how to make restaurant reservations so that's no excuse. I mention it because once you're an emigre from your own home turf, you feel the need to champion it at any opportunity. Meanwhile, everyone you left behind treats you like a dirty traitor who's upped sticks and come over all snooty.

Even a mention of how shit the weather is in Manchester has people accusing me of knocking the North. People: the weather is shit in Manchester. On a normal year it rains every day. This year it rained and it snowed every day. I fucking love the place. Mad fer it.

So when I make some mild criticisms of Simon Rimmer in this post, I am questioning his recipes, not betraying my roots.

As a collection of recipes The Accidental Vegetarian is great for home cooking. As a restaurant showcase it's really odd, because it includes such a broad jumble of cuisines and styles of cooking - comforting potato bakes, sushi, coconut-spiced dishes, risottos, pasta and huevos rancheros. But it did start off as an unlicensed cafe.

I guess back in 1990 the fact Greens was a veggie place was enough of a lure in itself and the inconsistency welcomed. You still get places which only offer soup of the day and tomato sauced pasta for veggies.

Anyway this book is for home cooking, so we're good.

As I was having this nose through I realised I had all the ingredients for the delicious-looking Caramelised Onion and Mustard Tart, which as it is pictured at the front of the book must be one of the book's flagship recipes. It's certainly very "look at me" with its goldeny brown ribbons of sticky onions, creamy sauce and elegant spots of wholegrain mustard.

I also had all the ingredients in my cupboard, including a posh pot of Dijon mustard my mum had just brought me back from Beaune. She drove through champagne country on this trip so no a pot of mustard was not exactly the gift I had been hoping for.

But to be fair - and I find this more than hilarious - all the champagne chateaux were closed on their visit, and they could only get their hands on a measly case.

I did have to buy in the cream.

I set to making the pastry. It's not hard, and I had picked up a tart case at mum's yesterday.

Blend 225g plain flour with 75g chilled cubed butter and a pinch of salt.

Add in 50ml milk and a whisked egg yolk and blend a bit more until it comes together.

Knead for a few minutes on a lightly floured surface and chill in the fridge covered with a tea towel for at least an hour.

Then roll it out and press into a 20cm tart case and bake at 200C for 25-30 minutes.

Which I did, but Rimmer never said to weigh down the pastry. I'm not a complete pastry numpty. I just followed instructions and my tart bubbled up and burnt a bit, which was a shame.

See:




The filling rescued it. I melted 50g butter with 1tbsp oil (it said vegetable but I only had finest Greek olive). Into that I tipped four sliced onions and a crushed garlic clove and cooked over a very low heat for half an hour until soft and lovely.

In a bowl I mixed two whole eggs, two eggs yolks, 150ml double cream, 2tbsps mustard and seasoning.

This is where I realised that my posh new mustard was not wholegrain but smooth and pale Dijon. Looking at it reminds me of peanut butter. Sigh. (I fell off the peanut butter wagon last week but it was worth it).

I mixed in the onions, poured it all into the tart case and baked for 15 minutes at 180C (it said 20 mins). Yum.

The result was indeed yum. The kitchen was filled with a wholesome mustardy oniony baked goods smell. It looked nice (see pic) and sliced well. But the pastry was a bit dry and crap. Edible, definitely edible (I sneaked an extra mouthful every time I wandered past it this afternoon; one of the perils of working from home) but the sides were too dry and crumbly. I reckon a bit more butter, maybe even an extra splash of milk, and definitely some baking bead thingies next time.



I still ate a good quarter, with some lovely rocket, for my lunch.

The Accidental Vegetarian provides some good ideas to work from. Rimmer admits he was (I'm guessing still is) a carnivore when he started Greens, so perhaps that why a little zeal is lacking.

And some flavours are just wrong. Delicious beetroot and goat's cheese tart, spiced up with some broccoli. Like I said: that's just wrong.

I've picked up on Rimmer's mistakes before, eagle-eyed recipe porn devourer that I am. Like in the February issue of Olive, where he suggested fennel was in season. I decided to write a piece about the crunchy aniseedy bulb but every other source said that it wasn't in season. I wrote the piece anyway because fennel still rocks.

My mum gave me this book a few years ago when I was a vegetarian myself. I still am one at heart, but was persuaded to start chomping flesh again by my mad trainer/friend Mike. I'll explain why another time, possibly when I've finished reading Jonathan Safran Foer's Eating Animals, which I am too scared to even start as I know I'll agree with everything he says and be left with two choices:

1) Becoming a veggie again.

2) Accepting that my imagined morals are not remotely in line with my craven and selfish animal-eating behaviour.




Friday 26 March 2010

Why I Don't Cook So Often Disastrous Example No. 1



Delia's Giardiniera Pickled Veg (except they're my dad's now)


Yesterday was a harsh but just reminder of why I cook so infrequently.

It was my dad's birthday on Monday. For my birthday the week before, dad travelled up to London from Manchester and bought me a lovely dinner and afternoon tea at Claridges, not to mention countless Martinis.

Though I clearly have mentioned them now. I hate that phrase. It's also funny that I am remembering not to mention them, because at the time I obviously couldn't remember even having drunk them, or I would have stopped at one (perhaps two).

For dad's birthday I bought a card which slipped out of my hand into a letter box just as I read the collection times, which would not deliver it on time.

As I can't afford to buy any of the absurd almost-retired man in his sixties toys he no doubt wants, I decided to make him some pickled vegetables with my own fair hands.

I thought this a splendid idea. He likes pickled vegetables and is very greedy, and they are expensive. This way he could just paw at them straight from the jar at snack time without getting a rollocking from mum that they are intended for some occasion or other.

That was until I told mum, who didn't agree it was a splendid idea. But she never does.

I'd been having a poke through Delia's Italian Collection, which has some good recipes but has been surpassed over the last decade by a much better and truer approach to Italian cooking in this country.

You'd think she wrote it before everyone knew what parma ham was (and before everyone called it prosciutto) and when little balls of buffalo mozzarella were still a novelty. Yet it was first published in 2004.

But let's not forget Delia introduced us all to balsamic vinegar. She has anglicised some of the dishes to make them easier for us, and for that I salute her.

The tomato sauce on p39 is a gloopy winner, a true Italian-style pasta sauce.

The baked mushroom risotto on p81 is a very rich treat and not tricky at all. Even my mum has made it, she who "can't be faffed" standing and stirring risottos.

The reason she made it was because it doesn't require stirring. I would recommend giving it a good stir for ten minutes as you bring it to the boil with the Madeira and mushrooms before putting it in the oven to bake, to get your rice cooked evenly.

Nevertheless this is a good introduction to some Italian classics and more than detailed enough for any cook not overly pedantic about provenance and authenticity. It avoids ingredients you can never find, and is in big print with big piccies.

See -



Giardiniera (Italian garden pickles) is recipe numero uno, and a complete doddle.

Get an aubergine, half a fennel bulb, half each red and yellow peppers, 50g button mushrooms, 100g red onions and 100g courgettes and chop into the sort of chunks you'd expect to see in a large jar of pickled veg.

Layer into bowls sprinkling salt between the layers. Cover with water then a plate with a weight on it. Leave in a cool place overnight.

The next day get hold of two 500ml storage jars. I found this classic design at John Lewis.

Now sterilise them.

For anyone who is not a regular steriliser, may I suggest REMOVING THE RUBBER SEALS BEFORE PLACING IN A HOT OVEN?

For anyone who sees fit to dismiss my advice, may I suggest dousing the partly melted rings in cold water immediately WITHOUT SPLASHING THE COLD WATER ALL OVER THE HOT JAR AND CRACKING IT?

Otherwise you just wash and dry the jars, pop them in the oven for at least five minutes, then they're done.


Here are my jars, sitting pretty in the oven with their rubber seals.
This pic was proudly taken before I realised how dumb dumb very dumb I had been.

Drain the veg well, drying on a tea towel, then mix in a bowl with three cloves of garlic, sliced and a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes.

Pour a thin layer of white wine vinegar into each jar then drop in a bay leaf, sprig of thyme, sprig of rosemary and a few black peppercorns. Add some veg and carry on, pouring in vinegar and the odd sprig of herbs as you go, until your jar is full and the veg packed well down.

Label when they're cold. Wait one month before eating, and consume within three (in total).

Tomorrow I'll be on the 9am from London Euston with these beauteous jars of picked veggies and my latest batch of red velvets (one for mum, if she's not rude to me about the veggies first, the rest for the hen do I'm heading for).

Dad can't work a computer, so he'll never know.


Thursday 25 March 2010

Hundreds of cupcakes and the lovely Freya




Gosh golly wotsit it's time to fill in the gaps about all the cakes I've been harping on about.

I've used the photo above because it's the only one that exists of (some of) the 200 incredibly stylish and impossibly delicious miniature cupcakes I baked last week for my 30th party, which I shared with the lovely Freya. I eat quite a bit with Freya, and we talk about food too (the best friends are the greediest ones; much better to share than to eat with someone who doesn't get it) so maybe I should give her a clever acronymistic name for future references, but for now I quite like "the lovely Freya".

The fact this is the only picture annoys me intensely. Because as it is, it looks like I was making fairy cakes for a kids' Easter parade. In fact they are the latest (ok, about 2008/09) in chintzy urbanite sweet-toothed trends, in miniature. If you don't believe me I wrote about it here last year.

Some say it's all about the Whoopie Pie now, but they're just deconstructed cupcakes anyhow, and a bit wrong.

So these cakes, they were so not bound for suburban Brownie fundraiser hell. No, they were off to mingle with cocktails and grown ups and fancy frocks.

Pictured you see chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting (cream cheese frosting, not icing) and lemon cupcakes. Not pictured are the little red velvet pretties.

Unfortunately I overestimated the varieties of cake I could make in a single day. This meant the three types I was left with did not co-ordinate exactly as I had wished. Cue a panicked email to the lovely Freya, who yes likes eating but actually has a job and a life as well, who pointed out people would still eat them.

Oh to have her wise head atop my weary feverish shoulders.

More to the point, can you imagine if I had the type of friend who wouldn't eat my birthday cupcakes because they weren't quite colour co-ordinated? That would be like being friends with myself over and over and over. And over and over. It would be horrific. In retrospect I wish I had eaten some of the cupcakes though.

BUT THE RECIPES! Yes, the point of all this. Baking books come and go. The better ones stay. For me this means Nigella and Mrs Beeton for now (bought for me by the lovely Freya, but you'll have to ask her about the lemon sex cake, or catch me in a better mood). But the cupcake trend has unleashed a whole set of accompanying literature.

The Magnolia Bakery Cookbook is one of these. For any of you who aren't single/pathetic/female, the Magnolia Bakery "introduced" cupcakes to the UK by way of Sex and the City.

As if we needed to be told it was possible to make a cake just like our own fairy cakes but three times the size and with seven times the volume of icing. But we fell for it hook, line and muffin top anyway.

The point of the cupcake is two thirds cake to one third icing/frosting. It is the only, I repeat, the only cake in the universe and all that lies beyond that I have found myself unable to finish in one sitting. As in: I could and have finished them in one sitting, but I wouldn't do so out of choice.

This alone makes it quite a stonker of a cake and a complete anomaly in the world of food as approached by me.

I don't own the Magnolia book or any of its several follow ups, but I do own The Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook, a shop which is at least in the UK, even if it creates queues of tourists way out west in Notting Hill.

This is a *great* book. The asterisks are for emphasis, not irony. It understands the importance of photography, nostalgia, dreams and gluttony.

I've cooked a bunch of stuff from here. There are pies, cakes, brownies and cookies as well as cupcakes. Even some sensible loaf cakes (lemon) and a great twist on the carrot cake made with bananas, pecans and pineapple and stacked three layers high sandwiched with thick layers of cream cheese frosting.

Ok, ok. I have never made or eaten this cake, but it looks so cool in the picture I am inclined to say I have, which shows you how good the book is. It is aspirational. It makes me want to create things I am never going to. Good cookbooks must inspire you to desire to emulate the wonders on their pages, or they may as well be a magazine pamphlet on easy TV dinners. Proper food, cooked from a recipe, shouldn't be a stopgap or make do thing, however little time you have.

You don't actually have to cook the stuff. Wanting to is enough.

Enough blah. I'll give you the Red Velvet recipe. I have genuinely made them about four times and they're a signature Hummingbird cake and really different from fairy cakes. They have buttermilk and cocoa in the sponge for a sour chocolatey hit which is yummy and very grown up for such a big hunk of sugar.

So...
Preheat oven to 170C/Gas 3.

Beat 60g unsalted butter with 150g caster sugar until light and fluffy. Add in one beaten egg.

In another bowl mix 20g cocoa powder with 40ml red food colouring and 1/2 tsp vanilla extract and mix to thick sludgy paste.

Add to butter mixture and blend in.

Pour in 60ml buttermilk and blend. Then 75g plain flour and beat in well

Repeat.

Beat as well as you can with your KitchenAid/cheap hand mixer/poor little arm.

When smooth, add 1/2 tsp bicarb and 1 1/2 teaspoons white wine vinegar and mix for a few more minutes.

Only fill your cupcake cases (this makes about 12) two thirds full, or you'll spill over.

Then splodge on lots of cream cheese frosting made by...

...beating 300g icing sugar with 50g unsalted butter, then beating in 125g cream cheese until light and fluffy.

if not using cream cheese use 80g or 100g butter and 25ml or 40ml milk and your flavour of choice - some cocoa powder, vanilla extract, coconut milk perhaps.

I wanted to write about Eat Me!, a new-ish book my brother-in-law gave me for my birthday. I had been planning to make pistachio and rosewater cupcakes for the party from here, but time got the better of me. Maybe I will wait until I've tried a few things.

I could post a pic of Freya and me at the bash with some of the mini cakes in the background, but I should probably get her permission first.

Oh as if she cares. Here we are -



The bloke in the middle is the lovely Freya's man, who is about to prove his manliness by running seven marathons across the Sahara in seven days.

I know.

You can sponsor him here.

Oh ok, here's another pic with some more cakes in it, and the beautiful Becca. We talk about food too, and her husband Nick is a tiptop chef. He even sustained a cooking injury this week in the name of fancy midweek dinners.

You can see all three varieties of cake here, and the "Where's my
Pussy?" card Freya gave me which mysteriously disappeared

All this week, while languishing in bed with the flu of death and tummy bug from hell I have been wondering if instead of beating warmth, joy and love into those 200 little cupcakes my friends polished off I actually infected them with anger and frustration at turning 30 and still having acne and this ghastly snot and vomit and exhaustion.

Everyone else seems ok though.


Thursday 11 March 2010

Weirdy cauliflowers and cake and more cake (and banana shallots, again)



Oh dear. I uploaded this picture almost two weeks ago with the intention of expressing my confusion at this teeny tiny weird looking cauliflower (cunningly snapped next to my iPhone to show you how small it is), and to express my dismay at the contents of my first Riverford box but a) I realised the box wasn't actually so bad (lots of lovely blood oranges and delicious sweet plums, an aubergine, some huge portobello mushrooms, onions and this odd thing) and b) lots of actual eating got in the way of writing about my usual diet of food porn.

So instead I'll give you a snippet from the food porn headlines of the day, which is that M&S are dropping their long running "This is not just any melt in the mouth chocolate fondant...." ads to make way for a campaign adjusted to giving customers value for money.

You can read about it here in today's Independent.

I don't know about you, but I'm sick to death of all this austerity retro cooking bullshit. Yes, it is indeed a great thing to "rediscover" cheap cuts of meat and not to waste food. But that doesn't mean we can't celebrate it. Or dream about the joy brought by a good ribeye when one can afford it and the treat of a sugar and cream laden pudding given we are definitely not living with rationing?

I for one am looking forward to the new Sophie Dahl cookery show starting on BBC2 tonight. My first thoughts when I heard about her book and then the show were, "Oh please. Beautiful rich model famous because she once carried a few spare ounces of puppy fat boasting about how much she can put away without getting fat again. Give. Me. A. Damn. Break."

But then I softened a little and realised that if she's flying the flag for cake and cookies she's ok by me (more on cake at a later date. Maybe tomorrow. I baked 200 of the little munchies last week, contracting gastric flu somewhere along the line so just the thought of them makes me sick. Really hope it's not making the 100 people I fed them to on Saturday night sick too).

There are amazing cakes in every baker's window and all the fancy cake shops, and it's sooooo easy to turn out something edible yourself. Therefore the cheap nasty shit filling supermarket shelves really annoys me. Stuff that reminds you of your childhood, or at least helps you reminisce through mint Viscount-tinted glasses, is just about ok. But people, if you're going to treat yourself, you need something either high end (expensive) or home baked (preferably with the love, tears, well wishes or whatever else applies of yourself or your nearest and dearest).

If Miss Dahl champions this sort of gluttony, I'm all for it.

Christ, I have so many cake blogs to write I am beginning to realise why I am so fat. From the last week alone, which happened to coincide with my birthday, there are the cakes baked for me, the cakes bought for me, the Pierre Herme macaroons, the cakes I baked for others, the cake books bought for me...

PS. Thanks to last night's episode of Masterchef I now know what a banana shallot is. In the cooking challenge they all immediately grabbed a banana-shaped shallot and set to the mussels or the chicken prep. I thought, "What a cleverly-shaped shallot. The normal ones are such a bitch to peel and pop out of your clammy grip during chopping." And then it dawned on me...

Monday 8 March 2010

Shriver exposed as miserabilist food hater

A new day, some new recipe porn....ok, ok: technically this new recipe porn of which I write came to my attention last Thursday when I first saw The Table, The Times' new food & drink supplement.

My first reaction was: "Joy. More yummy food writing to gorge on."

So it's to be hoped that the coming weeks are an improvement on their first effort.

On the front page we have an interview with Mary McCartney, whose mum invented horrid frozen veggie sausages and burgers.

Inside she shared recipes for Aubergine Layered Bake (aubs, tomatoes and cheese) and Sauteed Leeks which are leeks, sauteed, in a pan, with some lemon juice.

Later on there's some better stuff: a column from Heston, and Alex Renton, one of my favourite food writers.

The layout looks a bit squashed up, but I think they had about five minutes to design the whole thing so I'll forgive this for now.

The real crime, and the reason I've taken so long to post this (I needed a substantial cooling off period), comes on page 9 by way of an interview with writer Lionel Shriver called "What I ate yesterday?"

And what, folks, do you imagine Shriver ate the day before she did this interview?

Absolutely diddly squat.

I wondered why she always looked so miserable. And now I know: she doesn't eat.

That's her bag, but The Times shouldn't be recommending this sort of food-hating behaviour (and a hatred of anyone who does actually eat) to its readers.

Here are a few of the nastier bits:

"Breakfast. One enormous cup of coffee. I have no desires past this highly evolved cup of coffee, which powers me through the whole day."

"Lunch. Nothing. I don't have any understanding of people who can eat three meals a day. How do they ever get anything else done?"


Which is odd, because almost exactly a year earlier, on 6 March 2009, here's Shriver in The Guardian talking about her passion for strong flavours in food (the same food she doesn't really eat, I imagine).

Her description of food and writing here makes me quite warm to her -

"I'm not a subtle person, and I cook the way I write. In the kitchen or at a keyboard, I push flavour towards an absolute limit. Food, like fiction, should leave an after-burn. As a good novel should make you cry, so a good main dish should make your eyes water and your nose run."

And then here she is again moaning about how she has been criticised for accepting a free holiday, when actually she utterly detests holidays, although she did happen to take this particular one.

Whatevs Shriver, just stay away from our food porn in the future.




Wednesday 3 March 2010

Take one Teletubby, peel and dice...




I was less than impressed to open my Abel & Cole veg box this morning to find this (see above). Carrots, parsnips, potatoes, leeks, so far so boring, but useful at least. But there on top of them all was one of those roundy planet-shaped things with alien antennae.

It is a kohlrabi. I had my suspicions but I had to check. This is what happens when you say you don't want something in the ready-picked box, as you can online each week. The catch being you can't choose the replacement - it's a bit of a Deal Or No Deal lottery.

Inevitably the veg folk fob you off with the boring or odd stuff no one else wants. Their defence? They are celebrating the diversity of British veg and supporting renegade farmers who grow stuff no one really wants to eat.

The veg box packers know exactly which stuff we hate, they've told me as much, but they have to offload it somehow.

I don't have too much of a problem with this. Hurray for odd veggies and their champions. And bollocks to market forces

The kohlrabi's arrival at least gave me the opportunity for a nose through the Riverford Farm Cook Book, which doubles as a sort of glossary for lesser known and liked fruit and veg: Jerusalem artichokes, chard, escarole, farro...


Riverford admits kohlrabi are weird-looking and resemble Teletubbies and Mr Men, but claim that "customers who had previously shown some resistance were intrigued by their culinary possibilities and, for the most part, converted."

The last time I got one I assumed I could leave it to hang around for ages like the other root veg and it would still be ok, but when I came to use it (can't be sure of how long I left it exactly, more than a week, less than two) it was spongy like a squash ball and looked quite ill. So I binned it. And I hate wasting stuff.

Apparently you should think of the flavour as like "mild turnip", which doesn't fill me with excitement, nor does the story of the German who once worked at Riverford and "ate them like apples".

There are two recipes. Kohlrabi, Apple and Walnut Salad, which I'm not going to insult your intelligence by repeating in great detail: peel and chop three kohlrabis, mix with lettuce, apple, watercress, toasted walnuts and lemon juice and dress with a walnut oil and Dijon dressing.

Kohlrabi and Peanut Stir-fry sounds more promising. Although I've given up peanuts for Lent, or for good, whichever lasts longer, due to an incident with some peanut butter.

This recipe is promisingly introduced with the words "Kohlrabi is a worthwhile vegetable but needs lots of help. The Asian seasonings give it a real boost."

They better had. It's certainly a one-pot-single-girl-needs-dinner-ready-in-five-minutes-so-she-can-dash-out-again-or-slouch-in-front-of-tv wonder.

Basically, stir fry crushed garlic, ginger, carrot, kohlrabi and chilli for a few mins, whack in cooked noodles, sugarsnaps, green beans and spring onions, then at the last minute stir through three tbsps hoisin sauce, two tbsps soy sauce, two tbsps water, one tsp peanut butter (PEOPLE: GET THE FRESH PEANUT-ONLY STUFF FROM WHOLEFOODS OR MAKE YOUR OWN IN A FOOD PROCESSOR. The nasty whipped stuff is for smearing on toast for midnight feasts or hungover mornings only), and two tbsps crushed and toasted peanuts.

One teaspoon seems a bit stingy to me. I'd whack in four or five. But then I am in peanut rehab.

Make sure it's hot, and serve.

All in all, this book is quite a winner. Take the celeriac entry for example. No one likes getting those in their veg deliveries, but there are recipes for the classic French holiday Celeriac Remoulade as well as some clever-looking spicy celeriac chips (Spiced Celeriac with Lemon). Plus there is a good mix of comfort, cosmopolitanism and innovation in the spread of recipes: Chocolate Beetroot Brownies, Bubble & Squeak Soup, Apple and Amaretti Tart, Black Rice with Black Kale and Truffle Oil, and Ceviche. I rest my case.

In fact, I'm going to switch my Abel & Cole box for a Riverford one for a few weeks to show my appreciation. There are some inspiring stories in the book from founder Guy Watson too, who pretty much pioneered organic veg deliveries.

Nigel Slater's veg book Tender (volume one), out late last year, is wonderful on the veg front. It's the maestro's ode to veg, and makes for very satisfying reading. Unfortunately I sacrificed mine to my mother, owing to my having been sent it for inclusion in The Independent's 50 Best Winter Reads (I'll let you skip straight to entry no.10. Flicking through 50 pages is really annoying), and her showing up in London before I'd had chance to buy her a birthday present.

I also sacrificed an entire box of Pierre Hermé macaroons, freshly queued up for in Paris the day before. God how I regret that. But thank everything and everyone they are now available in Selfridges and a London shop is soon to open. I amsaving myself for a gluttonous visit, will keep you posted...

Monday 1 March 2010

Lemons, cherries and surprises















Admittedly this picture is not the most accessible (sorry for making you squint) recipe porn. But sometimes you have to work a little for your gratification.

The recipe, which is for Lemon Surprise Pudding if your eyesight is really that crappy, comes from Simon Hopkinson and Lindsey Bareham's Roast Chicken and Other Stories.

Hopkinson is an industry favourite, and Lindsey Bareham shares really good recipes most days in The Times (see dreamy comfort-food-yet-almost-healthy crab egg-fried rice here).

I also have a soft spot for Bareham because her A Wolf in the Kitchen: Easy Food for Hungry People was the third cookery book I ever owned (the first was a Jane Asher book for kids, the second Larousse Gastronomique, a food encyclopedia) and helped me eat my way through university.

Anyway, this Lemon Surprise recipe came to my attention yesterday, when I was trying to persuade my eight-year-old nephew Olly to eat the Petit Filous yoghurt his mum had given him for dessert.

He didn't like these nasty little yoghurts, and wasn't going to swallow it without a struggle. I tried to bribe him by saying I'd make him his favourite pudding next time he was at mine if he ate this without a fuss.

He had a long think about what that might be. He might be young, but he understands how to benefit from devious bribes and deals.

That said, if an eight-year-old chooses a proper pudding over a Rice Krispie Square as his favourite dessert, it has to be a winner.

If you've already read the recipe, you'll know that the surprise is a bright yellow layer of lemon sauce which settles just below the pudding's spongy crust. So you get two puddings for the price of one, and it is possibly the easiest thing to make ever - you just cream butter with lemon rind and sugar, beat in egg yolks, stir in flour and milk, fold in stiff egg whites and the juice of a lemon and whack in the oven for 45 minutes.

Despite its simplicity, I didn't ask his mum to whip one up there and then. My eldest sister is a harassed mother of two with a full time job. Do you remember the mad-as-a-box-of-frogs mum character in Green Wing whose handbag was full of mouldy old nappies and crafty rubbish? That's my sister that is.

So I had offered to make the family Sunday lunch this weekend. She rebuffed the offer, and wouldn't even let me bring along the delicious cherry clafoutis I had planned -




















I knew there had to be a point to my Sunday, apart from a lie in, a mild hangover and a relaxed trawl through the papers (NB: turns out it wasn't OFM week after all, so fears on hold for another week or two).

There had to be someone out there who wanted to eat my food. Someone who would grin with every mouthful and make me explain where I found the right type of cherries, how I got the batter soft on the inside and nicely browned on top. And would I mind awfully sharing the story of where I first ate a clafoutis?

Apparently today wasn't the day for this.

My sister spent most of the afternoon on the phone whilst making
a fish pie
houmous
pizza
carrot and jerusalem artichoke soup
a ham hock and bean casserole
a mincemeat in filo pastry slice for our dessert (er, why would you eat this when Yuletide is clearly long past?)

But she couldn't spare the one dish for poor little cookery-starved me to make.

Instead I knocked back the bottle of cheap red I had brought over, scared there would be nothing to drink as she has given up for Lent, and plotted my revenge...