Cardiff - puddings and pumpkin seeds

So where was I? Ah yes, skipping out of Wahaca in Cardiff last Saturday evening, admiring the pretty lights, replete with tacos and tequila, but not actually full to busting, having decided we didn’t fancy their puds and willing to try our luck elsewhere. 

Obviously the cocktails had gone to our head as we recalled the heady days BC (Before Children) when we lived in a flat in south London and on the rare occasions that we had any money to speak of, we would skip (figuratively of course, for we were young and hip... er actually no, we weren't but we didn't actually skip. It's figurative, OK?) off into the centre of Soho for late night cake, coffee and a walk along the river… 

Eager to repeat the experience, we were sadly brought up short by a distinct lack of comparable establishments in central Cardiff providing what we actually had in mind. The pie shop was closed up too, and most of the other places we found were heaving boozers, music thumping, pavements outside slick with beer (well, Wales had just beaten South Africa) so Carluccios had to do. Oh how times have changed. 

*insert nostalgic sigh for the days when a heaving boozer with beer-slickened pavements and thumping music would have been my idea of a top night out*

The waitress in Carluccios looked at us slightly askance when we declared our desire only for pudding and coffee, but she installed us at a table and produced a couple of the finest espressos I've had recently. There was nearly a major crisis when it transpired that they had (gasp) RUN OUT of lemon tart, but we managed to make do with 2 of their rather delicious chocolate offerings - a warm chocolate pudding for me, baked with ground almonds and served with ice cream, and a rich chocolate torte with raspberry coulis for the  Husband. I also managed a heady Amaretto - I love the stuff but hardly ever drink liqueurs so it was a real treat. I could actually just sit and sniff it and then drink it by dipping my tongue in the glass. But that's not for polite company, so I managed to restrain myself.

Of course, a cracking night out requires a decent breakfast the following morning, and while neither of us felt too shabby, despite tequilas and digestifs, a certain gravitas was required when it came to the contents of breakfast. We were staying on a room only basis in our hotel, so headed out to Bill's to enjoy their breakfasts and their industrial shabby chic restaurant.

I'd never heard of Bill's before and I was a bit disappointed to find out it was part of a chain, because on first glance it didn't feel very chain-like -nestled as it is in a lovely arcade, with a very independent feel too it, even down to the fleece blankets thoughtfully provided for those wishing to enjoy one of the outside tables. Then I spotted the blackboard hanging from the ceiling indicating that it had first started in a greengrocer's in Lewes, which is pretty far from Cardiff, and I was also a bit embarrassed because they seem to be EVERYWHERE. How have I not found out about this before?

Anyway, I can't vouch for the lunches or evening meals, but they do a cracking breakfast at Bill's. I had the eggs royale - smoked salmon and poached eggs on sourdough toast with hollandaise, scattered with pumpkin seeds which was a bit of a surprise addition, but I liked it. The Husband pondered out loud the fact that if he had a big breakfast, he'd feel full and have to moan about it, which lead me to believe he'd go for something else, but in fact he plumped for the full monty - the 'Bill's Breakfast' and enjoyed it hugely. And yes, he did moan about feeling full afterwards, but only in a half-hearted way. Lovely coffee too, although a couple of our drinks orders were missed or arrived very slowly - and in fact the Husband's second Americano just didn't arrive which meant we had to top up on caffeine in Cardiff Bay. But with the sun shining, that was no bad thing...

Apple & Almond Bake

While I don't follow a recipe for crumble topping in terms of the ingredients themselves, I never hold the proportions of flour to sugar to butter in my head. My 'go to' sanity checker (as I may have previously mentioned), is a Delia recipe from her Complete Cookery Course. She recommends flour, sugar and butter - and if you fancy going out on a limb (go on, you know you want to) you could replace some of the flour with oats.

Well, I like to go completely crazy and use ground almonds too, as well as oats, and although I always start off with Delia's proportions, I usually reduce down the sugar especially if I've added sugar to the fruit - which I did on Sunday in fact as I was using up the last of the bullace plums with some more of the apples.

You might say that it's a pointless exercise me even opening the book at all - but I feel like it's become part of the ritual of making crumble, which is after all the pudding I make most often from September to March.

Or it was.

While I was ignoring Delia's crumble instructions in preparation for said crumble last week (it was a very good crumble by the way - a sprinkle of all spice and some brown sugar over the apples & plums - yummers), my eye strayed north on the page to the method of a recipe the ingredients for which are listed on the previous page. Specifically to the phrases "...gently fold in the ground almonds...spread this mixture over the apples...equally good served warm or cold - either way it's nice with some chilled pouring cream"

So yes, you guessed it. Sold to the lady with the insatiable love of all things almond and a bag of windfalls to deal with.

I made this the next day and it is a LOVELY pudding for Autumn or Winter. A bit more faff than a crumble, granted, but the combination of the cooked apples with the almost frangipane topping - well, it's my idea of heaven. 

I expect you'll enjoy it too.

Apple & Almond Bake

4-6 medium/large cooking apples
50g soft brown sugar
110g ground almonds
110g soft, unsalted butter
110g caster sugar
2 large eggs, beaten

You'll also need a baking dish, about 1 litre capacity - butter this.

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Peel, core and slice the apples. Put them in a pan with the soft brown sugar and a couple of tablespoons of water and cook down till they are starting to break up and go soft and fluffy - how long this takes will depend on the apples you are using. Keep an eye on them and make sure they don't burn.

When they've reached the required state of fluffiness, spread over the bottom of the buttered dish.

Cream together the butter and caster sugar till pale and fluffy, then add the egg a little at a time, beating after every addition. As with a sponge cake, it pays to go slowly here to stop the mixture curdling. But don't worry too much.

Using a metal spoon, fold in the ground almonds, then spread the mixture over the top of the apples, making sure they are evenly covered.

Pop this in the oven on a high shelf and bake for around an hour till golden on top and cooked.

As St Delia says, equally good served hot or cold, and exceptionally good with some cream...

Tasty tomatoes, and utterly scrumptious Butterscotch Apple Pudding

I keep getting side tracked by cake and pudding. Brownie eclipsed the healthy bean and chorizo salad that the kids enjoyed last week, and tonight, instead of getting excited about some rather tasty stuffed beef tomatoes, what I really want to talk about is pudding. But I will talk tomatoes, because this year, for the first time in AGES, we have had lots of lovely red tomatoes with more still coming. So you 'll just have to wait for pudding - or scroll down to the bottom of this post.

In fact the last time we produced this many tomatoes was when Blue was in his first year of chemo in 2006. He craved cherry tomatoes during the courses of steroids he had to take, and consumed kilos of them - quite literally. The Husband proudly grew tomatoes, they ripened, and guess what. The craving stopped. I think Blue moved on to raw mushrooms and Shreddies at that point. We've grown tomatoes ever since, but never with the same success, and green tomato chutney has been a big feature of our lives. This year, though, it will be different. The tomatoes have ripened, and they have been delicious.





Today, some particularly fine specimens - beef tomatoes - were on the menu, along with some baby courgettes ('pick 'em while they're small', is my current strategy for dealing with them). I hadn't really thought about what I was going to stuff them with, but I found some pork mince in the freezer, and some giant couscous in the cupboard.

I'd like to be able to give you the full recipe, but I got distracted by the pudding, so didn't weigh out everything - or keep a note of what I did weigh. Essentially, I cut out the tops of 4 beef tomatoes and scooped our the flesh and seeds into a bowl. I heated a splash of olive oil into a frying pan, and fried 100g giant couscous for a couple of minutes before adding what from memory (when I put it into the freezer) was 250g pork mince. I browned off the mince, and added 2 baby courgettes which I'd chopped quite small, plus a chopped clove of elephant garlic, 1/2 tsp of ground coriander and a tsp of smoked paprika.

While this was all cooking, I seived out as much juice as I could and added it into the pan, bringing it to a simmer to cook the couscous. After about 15 minutes, I filled the tomatoes with this mixture, arranged the leftover mixture around the tomatoes, then covered the dish with silver foil and baked it for 25 minutes. It could have done with being spicier, but it was pretty good and the Husband and Blue (and I) all enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I started this all too late, so Pink had to make do with pasta before she went to Brownies.

You'll be please to know, though, that Pink didn't miss out on pudding. What could have been so delicious? Well, I'll tell you - Rachel Allen's Butterscotch Apple Pudding, for which I will be eternally grateful to the lovely Annie who writes Scrummy Suppers and Quirky Cakes. As I mentioned before, as well as tomatoes, we also have an abundance of cooking apples at the moment, and this was quick to knock up and totally delicious. If I had one criticism, it would be that it could possibly have done with a little more of the butterscotch sauce - easily rectified by making more next time...

Butterscotch Apple Pudding  

100 g butter

125 g self-raising flour  
200 g light brown muscovado sugar
pinch of salt 
1 tsp vanilla extract 
1 egg
200 ml milk
3 cooking apples, (about 500g total weight)
1 tbsp golden syrup & 1 tbsp of runny honey

Pre-heat the oven to 180C

Melt the butter and set aside to cool slightly. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl with 100g of the sugar.  

In a jug, mix together the milk, egg and vanilla extract with the melted butter.

Peel, quarter and core the apples, then slice each quarter again lengthwise and then into half. You basically want large but still bitesize chunks.  Sprinkle these over the bottom of an oven proof dish - Rachel's was 20 by 30 cm. Mine was probably 22cm square-ish

Tip the wet ingredients into the dry and whisk quickly together - as you would for muffins. Tip over the apple pieces. and spread evenly over the dish.

Make the butterscotch - in a small pan, put the syrup & honey with the remaining 100g of sugar and 150ml of boiling water. Heat, stirring, while the sugar dissolves, then pour as evenly as you can over the batter and apples.

Pop in the oven for around 30 minutes. If you can resist, leave it cool a little before serving warm. It would probably be delicious with ice cream, cream or creme fraiche, but frankly it didn't need it.

Stripy Meringues - my BakingMad favourite summer dessert

What’s your favourite summer dessert?

That's the question BakingMad asked me recently, and invited me to write a post about it. 

BakingMad.com have loads of ideas for summer recipes, from cupcakes to take on a picnic, to luxurious cheesecake. Check out the website for more inspiration.

I tend to ignore dessert in the summer – not that we don’t have 'pudding', but there’s so much fantastic fruit around that it’s easy to just bring out a plate of strawberries & raspberries without further embellishment.

If pushed, well, Summer Pudding has to rank as one of the best puddings ever, and is certainly the Husband's all out fave, but it's not quite the right time for that yet. The currants in the garden are still green.

On the other hand, there are Hampshire strawberries around. Strawberries apparently go with black pepper, with balsamic vinegar, with a whole host of things. Call me traditional, though, but I like them with cream. And meringues.

I know a lot of people get the fear from meringue. 

I don't want to sound smug, but making meringue doesn't phase me. My mum always had a tin of meringues in the cupboard, and it's never given me much of a problem. On the other hand, chewy and delicious as I like it, my meringue never looks particularly beautiful. If it's for a pavlova, well, cracks are part of the charm, and anyway it'll all be covered in cream and fruit anyway. Individual meringues, well, again, if they are a complete disaster, you can break them up for an Eton mess kind of thing. More cream and fruit. Believe me, no one's going to complain.

So to make this a little more of a challenge, I decided to embrace something that does give me the fear - piping. For too long, I have looked at photos of beautifully piped cupcakes, cakes, petit fours on OPB (Other People's Blogs), and known with certainty that in my hands, a piping bag could only lead to one thing:  complete and utter disaster. You only have to look at the mess I made of my hot cross buns, cutting the corner off a freezer bag...

BakingMad sent me a variety of cake decorating paraphenalia, including some Silver Spoon food colouring, and a booklet which included a picture of beautifully striped meringues, and something clicked in my head.  "I'm going to have a go at that" I thought. "I'm going to get me some striped meringue" (in my best Southern drawl).

Cue a trip to Hobbycraft and confusion in the cake icing aisle, while Pink roamed the store unchecked, looking for things to spend money on. We exited with some disposable piping bags, 2 nozzles and a 'coupler'. Plus some face paints and a bag of fizzy sweets.

Anyway, back to the meringues. This is my basic recipe, which you can increase or reduce as you like. As I use my trusty Kenwood to make the meringue mix, I'd never make less than 2 egg whites' worth.

4 egg whites

pinch of salt

225g caster sugar

1 tsp cornflower (to make chewy meringue)

Whisk the egg white with the salt till stiff but still wet.  Add a couple of tablespoons of the sugar, whisk in, then sprinkle on the cornflour and carry on whisking, slowly pouring in the rest of the sugar, till the meringue is looking shiny, and you get stiff peaks.

At this point, you can then make a large meringue for pavlova, or spoon dollops on to baking paper lined baking sheets, and bake the meringues for 1-2 hrs till dry and lift from the paper. Alternatively, just turn off the oven and leave while the oven cools down (just don't forget to take then out before you turn the oven on again).

So if you're not going to dollop with a spoon, you could use a piping bag and pipe out the meringue. And you could colour the mix, to make coloured meringue, or simply (Ha!) paint a line of food colour up your piping bag and Bob (or striped meringue) would be your Uncle. 

Well, call it a fluke, but it really worked. I made up my meringue, and took it slowly. I used gel colour for the stripey meringues, and used the Silver Spoon food colourings to make the pink and green meringues. For the stripes, you literally use a brush or a cocktail stick and paint a line of colour up the inside of the piping bag, then spoon in your mixture for piping, and pipe away.

The actual piping itself left something to be desired, certainly I didn't get it right every time, Pink had a go with a few of them, and there's no way I could offer you my 'top tips' for piping meringue, because there's a whole host of talented meringue-pipers out there in internet-land, and I am not about to try and compete - but I managed to get enough of them looking pretty good.

So there you have it. Our favourite summer dessert. Strawberries (& raspberries) with stripy meringue. And cream.

Random Recipes & a poncy ingredient alert - Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake

I was wondering how I was going to fit a Random Recipe in this month, but the blog challenge fairies were obviously smiling on me.

Dom's challenge from Belleau Kitchen this month was to get all those cut out snippets of recipe, those torn out pages, and clippings, throw them up in the air - or spread them out, or do something with them to enable you to randomly select one.

I thought I'd give it a go and see what it came up with. No obligation to complete the challenge if I couldn't fit it in or the recipe was one of the more obscure I'd cut out and kept. But as I say, no need to worry. The selection process turned up Yottam Ottolenghi's Orange Polenta Cake which I'd copied at Christmas from my brother's newly received copy of the Ottolenghi cook book. Fortuitous indeed because we had people coming for dinner, and there had to be dessert. Not that this is a hardship, you understand, but I'd already planned a moorish style chicken & chorizo casserole for the main course, so this fitted perfectly. Caramelised oranges, almonds, some orange blossom water (this is an Ottolenghi recipe after all - poncy ingredients are to be expected!).

First up, though, the challenge of sourcing the ingredients. I know there used to be a bag of polenta in the cupboard, but I must have used it up, because when I looked again, there was nothing. I couldn't get it in my online shop so sent the Husband off to do his hunter gatherer thing. The poor man went to 4 different supermarkets on 2 separate trips after work - he even went and worked at a different office on Friday in order to try different supermarkets, before ending up in Waitrose in Andover. Where, of course, they had at least 2 varieties. Anyway, he came home triumphant with an impressively artisan looking bag, plus some tahini paste and some unsalted pistachios which I also required.

While I've learned my lesson over the years that when people are coming for dinner it's wise to stick to the familiar and easy, there's always a certain amount of frisson to be gained cooking something with a little bit of fiddle factor when you have no idea how it's going to turn out and 10 people expecting to be fed. I have limited experience cooking Ottolenghi, and while it's always turned out brilliantly, I'm not in the same comfort zone with his stuff that I am cooking, say, Nigella. Add to this the opportunity for third degree burns that making caramel presents, and perhaps I should have stuck to something tried and tested, but I like a challenge.

 


The recipe was at least helpful in that it pointed out the need to thoroughly line the tin (if you're using springform, which I was) in order to prevent caramel leaking all over your oven, and as an extra precaution, I also put the cake tin on a baking sheet. A wise precaution as it turns out because even with what I thought was thorough tin lining, I did have a little bit of caramel leakage. But nothing serious.









Anyway, the recipe. I couldn't find it online to link to, but it's in the Ottolenghi cook book. Having lined your tin, you make some caramel which you use to cover the bottom of the tin.

 Next, there are oranges to zest and peel, and place on top of the caramel layer, 

before making a deliciously orangey scented batter using eggs, ground almonds, polenta along with the usual butter and eggs. The recipe also calls for orange blossom water, I forgot to put this on the Husband's foraging list, and having put him through supermarket hell in search of polenta, I didn't have the heart to fess up to needing orange blossom water, so in the end I just squeezed in a little extra orange juice. I think the random recipe rules state that you have to cook the recipe as it is, with little deviation. Well, I'm afraid that as well as missing the orange blossom water, I upped the recipe by a third to make a big enough cake to feed all of us. I hope I'm not disqualified.

 As a result of the increase in ingredients, it took quite a bit longer than the stated 40-45 minutes to bake, and I ended up covering the tin with foil to stop the top of the cake catching, but it all turned out fine. Once baked, the final nerve-wracking turnout passed without a hitch.

Ta daah!

In praise of the Husband - and James Martin's steamed syrup sponge

Someone once asked me in a comment on a post on his blog if the Husband ever cooked. I think I gave some glib response along the lines of ‘only if he’s allowed to’ - but it’s true: I hog the kitchen, and I like to think that I reign supreme. The truth is that the Husband does cook. Admittedly, he’s usually only permitted to do ‘man’ cooking. He makes sausages. 

He pickles shallots – rather fiercely it must be said (apologies for the rubbish photo, but for H&S reasons, these stay in the back of the cupboard at all times – Blue had 2 of these for lunch yesterday and hiccupped until tea time.)

He is the man you want in charge of a BBQ, and has designs on a wood fired pizza oven in the back garden.

But today is Mothers’ Day, and he was well and truly in charge in the kitchen. I’d already managed to graciously accept presents in bed (an apron and a Bunny Nightlight – yes really – Pink chose it because it was 'so cute', and has already appropriated it for herself, such is life) and avoid breakfast in bed which I really hate (call me ungrateful, but there we go – a cup of tea is fine, but breakfast? No thanks). After a quick turn around a much depleted Winchester Farmers Market, under steely clouds which may or may not be promising snow at some point soon, we got home, and I left him to it.

Well, I didn’t have any major concerns, and I was proved right. When I got home from Church, he and the kids were the picture of domestic harmony, table laid, lamb resting, veg in hand. It was delicious – and he was the picture of cool calm and collected man about the kitchen, although I noticed that the port was out, and not just for the gravy...

But a roast, I hear you say – it’s not that tricky. Well may be not, but even if you remain unimpressed, let me show you the pudding. For with the assistance (virtual, of course) of James Martin, the Husband produced a steamed syrup sponge of such wondrous proportions, and plenty of custard, that I was ready to chuck in my apron and relinquish control of the kitchen for good.

In order to show my gratitude, I forced – FORCED, I tell you - myself to eat 2 helpings.

Then, in true role reversal, I did the washing up while the Husband went out with the dog (and to borrow the DVD of Madagascar 3 from some friends, which Pink had determined would be an appropriate way for us to spend the afternoon on Mothers’ Day - are you getting an idea about who REALLY rules the roost in the RJ household?)

It's really all been most enjoyable - even Madagscar 3. I have a fantastic family, and it's times like these that makes me appreciate them all the more.  And now, after all that enforced idleness, I have the left over lamb to turn into shepherd's pie - or maybe I should ask the Husband to do it...