And the mystery ingredient is...

Swede. Honestly, it is. And it's really, really good - the cake I mean.

I've been very inspired since talking to the lovely lady who runs the Blackberry Cottage cake business - cakes with hidden ingredients - who I met at the Parsonage Farm Spring Market the other week. She'd sold out of her swede cake, but I was intrigued because I've had a swede pretty much every week in my veg box and frankly, it's getting a bit difficult to think of new and exciting ways to eat it. Yes, I raved about the soup, but  I'm only fasting on 2 days a week and I've only got so much space in the freezer. We've also had swede chips, as well as plenty of plain old mashed swede, and I've found an Ottolenghi recipe that I'll be trying out for a remoulade type salad, but cake? Really?

I turned for further inspiration to Harry Eastwood's gorgeous book Red Velvet & Chocolate Heartache. I have had it for a year or so, but - oh the shame - have not made anything out of it. It's a beautifully presented book, loads of wonderful cakes that you can almost smell off the pages, very pretty and evocative photography, and each cake has a little 'personality' which stays mostly on the cute side of twee. She also uses LOADS of veg in her creations. It's great bed time reading. Not only that, but 2 different cakes using swede. A lemon & lavender loaf, and an orange & rosemary drizzle cake.



I opted for the second, having lots of rosemary in the garden and no lavender as yet, and the results, well, see for yourself.

The addition of rosemary to the drizzle syrup adds extra interest but the flavour works really well with the orange, and I promise, there's not even a hint of swede. The idea of using swede puree instead of butter is a brilliant one, and based on the success of this, I will be trying it out in other things. We don't have intolerances in our house, but I can see that it would be fantastic for anyone with a dairy intolerance. Also, it uses rice flour which is gluten free. Marvellous.

Finally, I should just mention that while you can of course chop your swede with a knife, I used my Tefal Fresh Express Max which I have received as part of my membership of the Tefal Innovation Panel. I have to say that of the 3 pieces of equipment I have received, this is the one I have been most ambivalent about. However, for this recipe, the chopping cone did the job, and made easy work of the swede.

Orange & Rosemary Drizzle Cake

400g peeled swede, chopped quite small
4 medium eggs (or 2 largish ones and 2 smallish ones, our chickens not laying to conform with Government standards)
50g clear honey
150g caster sugar
finely grated zest of 4 oranges
125g white rice flour
200g ground almonds
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

plus (for the drizzle):

6 tbsp granulated sugar plus 1 for sprinkling
250ml water
8 tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
6 sprigs rosemary

You will also need a lined tray bake tin

First deal with the swede - cover it with water, bring to the boil and cook for 7 minutes or so, till cooked. Drain, then blitz to a puree.

Combine the rice flour, ground almonds, salt and baking powder in a bowl and set aside. In another, larger bowl, whisk together the honey, sugar and eggs for a good couple of minutes, till frothy. Stir in the orange zest, the flour & almond mixture, and finally whisk in the swede puree till it's all combined. Scrape into the tin, smooth, and bake for about 20-25 minutes, turning once during cooking if necessary.

While the cake is cooking, prepare the drizzle by putting the 6tbsp of granulated sugar, water, orange juice and rosemary into a small pan. Bring it gently to the boil, and when the water is bubbling so you can't see the rosemary, remove the pan from the heat, and leave for the rosemary to infuse into the liquid.

Once the cake is baked, take it out of the oven, and still in the tin, prick holes all over the cake using your preferred cake pricking implement. Carefully drizzle the rosemary-scented syrup all over the cake (you may have too much - use your judgement) then sprinkle the final tablespoon of granulated over the top and leave to cool.

Although Harry Eastwood thinks her orange & rosemary drizzle cake is "... that moment when a white hot sunbeam inches over your cheek, and wakes you up with a smile...", suggesting a morning type of cake (breakfast, even??), having smelt it coming out of the oven, I think mine has great possibilities as a warm pudding type cake - I think it's the almonds - served with some mascarpone. I'll leave that thought with you.

I'll be adding this to the lovely Karen's Herbs on Saturday once May's challenge is open, for the rosemary of course, and also to Ren's Simple and in Season which looks like it's still open on her blog for April.

'Souper' swede

Swede gets a bit of a bad deal really, I think.

Relegated to being confused with turnips, lumped into that class of 'root veg' that no none really knows what to do with, not the most attractive vegetable on the block.

I'm as guilty as anyone else of this, but this last winter, it's been apparent that the kids really like it - when they have turned their noses up at other 'sweet' veg like sweet potato and butternut squash, they somehow seem to really like the taste of swede, which I think is also quite sweet. They have enjoyed it mashed with haggis and in pasties.

I got a swede in my veg box last week, and was thinking of other possibilities to make a star of it. Nothing inspirational came to mind, but based on on a recipe I saw in Rose Elliot's rather fabulous 30 Minute Vegetarian book, I made this soup.

 

Yes, I know it doesn't look like much (why do you think I put it in a pretty mug for the photo?) but adding cinammon and cumin really makes this into quite delicious soup. Even I was surprised by how tasty it was - almost like chestnut in its velvetiness, and very comforting. The Husband was very rude on Twitter about how excited I got with the results, and had the temerity to talk about turnip soup as if I was recreating something from the gulag, but believe me, not him (and anyway, he's away for a week so I can eat it to my heart's content).

And yes, it's 5:2 friendly. 425ml of this rocks up at a mere 71 calories.

Cinammon Swede Soup

500g swede (peeled weight)
1 large onion, peeled and chopped
2 celery sticks, chopped
5ml olive oil
2 kallo organic veg stock cubes made up with 1.5 litres boiling water
a sprinkling each of ground cinammon and cumin

Gently heat the oil in a large pan, then add the swede, onion and celery and sweat gently for 5-10 minutes, stirring every now and then. Sprinkle in the cinammon and cumin, stir and cook for a couple of minutes then add in the stock, some salt and pepper, bring tot he boil and simmer for 15-20 minutes till the swede is cooked.

Blitz.

You could serve with some Greek yoghurt in it, or some toasted cumin seeds - or even both. Rose Elliot fries onions and cumin seed to garnish hers with, and I bet that would be delicious too.

Old-fashioned cookbooks, bags of nostalgia and Boeuf a la movie - a random recipe

I have recently inherited a collection of old recipe books from my mum. 

A couple are 'fundraising' efforts, with recipes provided by the good people from a variety of parishes. In the case of "My Favourite Recipe" (circa. 1984), in aid of the Merseyside Association for Kidney Research, it includes Ken Dodd's 'Steak Diane', John Inman's Beef Wellington, and my personal favourite, Willy Russell's 'Midnight Madness' - which is essentially how to cook 2 slices of toast when you come home rather worse the wear for drink... reminds me of a story of a friend from law school who was once roundly berated by his wife, the long suffering Barbara (I never knew any more about her, and never met her) for frying ice cream wagon wheels one night, which he mistook for burgers. The mess was apparently something truly terrible to behold.  Willy Russell's method for toast fills just over 2 pages of the book:

"Switch on the kitchen light; you may have just put the world to rights and drunk eight pints of bitter beer but, and I am quite confident of this, YOU CANNOT SEE IN THE DARK, the best chefs of the best kitchens of the world agree with me on this." etc

The Carrier book "Childrens Party Menus" is one I remember flicking through incessantly as childhood birthdays approached.

Mum, why did you NEVER make me the carousel cake? Or hard boiled eggs decorated like mice and rabbits?

Best of all, the pile of books included 2 notebooks from a Great Aunt. Handwritten recipes, cuttings, little comments - I love them.




I was blessed with some great ,Great Aunts, though none of them are still living. I've already mentioned the one who not only worked full time but went home to cook a 2 course lunch every day for her husband - another Random Recipe entry, in fact.

The Great Aunt to whom these notebooks belonged was a cabinet maker and worked with the renowned (and currently in vogue) Edward Barnsley. I am lucky enough to have a stool that she designed and had made in the later years of her life by one of her own apprentices. I believe all her great nieces and nephews have one, elegant and beautiful.

She herself was a fantastic character. All tweed skirts and sensible shoes. She smoked like a chimney (indeed it was the fags what done her in, in the end) and lived with her devoted 'companion' (no other attribution or recognition could be given in those days, even though their relationship was far more devoted than many marriages I have seen). As I recall, they shared their home with a grey African parrot. I always remember how interested she was in anything and everything I was doing; What was going on at school, what I was studying. I was off to France for a year - fantastic! what a great opportunity. She spent hours telling me about her own travels. In fact, she sadly died while I was in France and I missed her funeral, but somehow being in the Languedoc at the time, an area I know she loved, made it more bearable. My memories of her are fading but I have some clear images of her and her partner, their house and beautiful garden, which I know will stay with me.

Having her notebooks has brought many of those images and memories that I do retain back to the forefront of my mind. I can't date the notebooks accurately. One of them includes recipes attributed to "(Delia Smith TV)" in the exquisite handwriting you might expect. In fact all the recipes that have been written out by hand are attributed - names I recognise from my childhood - Jessie (my granny), Mrs Godfrey, Beth - and some I don't. There is an article about aubergine, cut out and kept from a newspaper from the day before my 6th birthday (I am sure the events were unrelated, but it puts things in context for me). I am particularly tickled by the comment accompanying a recipe for Roast Duck: "Very satisfactory." Those 2 words transport me right back in time - the sensibleness and practicality of them. No flowery nonsense. Just "Very satisfactory". I can hear her voice now.

But what of the random recipe? Well, this month the randomness is down to us: Dom's challenge at Belleau Kitchen is to choose a book our own way but to be sure to select a recipe randomly from it.




Alas, the roasted duck was not the random recipe. You'll understand why I had to choose one of these notebooks as my recipe book, tbough, so I very scientifically held them behind my back, swapped them over a couple of times and in my right hand the ringbound, falling apart Sherwood Notebook from Boots Stationery Department. 






And the recipe? Well, the page that I opened included 4 recipes cut from newspapers. 2 veal recipes ('Veal Cutlets - Victoria', and stewed breast of veal), another one  for a 'Standing Pie' (lots of lard) and this one. I couldn't resist. I love the idea that whenever this was written (imperial measurements, oven temp in Gas mark/farenheit only), people were thinking about how best to make sure they had a hot meal on the table - even if they wanted to go out and enjoy themselves in the meantime.

I copy it out directly because I am sure that any copyright has long since passed. If it hasn't and you recognise this as yours, please let me know, and I will offer full attribution.

Boeuf a la movie (for 2)

So called because you throw everything into a casserole, go to the cinema (and come back and eat it)

1lb stewing beef
small tin tomato soup
glass red wine
2 medium carrots, sliced
2 medium onions, sliced
1 medium potato, sliced
bay leaf
1/2 teaspoon of salt, and some screws of pepper

Put everything in a casserole and cover it closely. Put it into the middle of the oven with the heat at mark 1, 275F and leave it for 4 1/2 hours. When you return, serve it with tinned Swedish red cabbage (heated).

And that's it.

I defy anyone to say "Wow, what a beautiful looking dinner" - because frankly it wasn't:

The soup in the sauce made it alarmingly orange, and the fact that you don't brown the meat first meant that there was really quite a lot of fat floating around, but it was all cooked and quite tasty actually. It was completely hassle free - as all slow cooking is - and for a day when I was out at a training course and backwards and forwards on the school run and then delivering children to Rainbows etc, it was super-convenient. The only changes I made were to slightly up the vegetable quantities and I used a large tin of soup to stretch it to 4 of us. I also couldn't bring myself to serve it with tinned red cabbage - indeed I couldn't find any (although I didn't look too hard), but in keeping with the recipe, I did liberate some red cabbage, left over from Christmas, from the freezer.

I'm not sure it's the kind of thing I'd want to come back to from watching a movie, but I can certainly imagine Vera & Freda (you knew they'd have names like that) coming home - more likely from a concert at the Liverpool Philharmonic than the movies (although you never know), kicking off their brogues and sitting down, with their napkins on knees, to a big plateful of this...

Another weekend away. Tut tut...

Listen! Can you hear it? No – neither. It’s very quiet! That’s because there’s only me at home. Yes, really, 6 p.m. on a Friday evening and it’s just me. Not even the dog – he has already been dispatched, as have children and Husband, and I am taking just a little moment before I too head off to the station for a much looked forward to weekend away with my lovely school friends.

It might be suggested that I am overly keen to spend time away from my family, given that hot on the heels of half term, when I packed the kids off to Allotment Junkie’s for a week, I am now about to head off again, but that would not be true, oh no. Half term was a necessity, enabling the Husband and I to decorate Pink’s bedroom with minimal disruption. It is true that it also neatly resolved the need for a weeks’ childcare, and allowed the Husband and I a night away, but that’s by the by.

We retrieved Pink and Blue as planned at Kings Cross last Saturday.  Blue seemed bright enough, but then Allotment Junkie had dealt with the sick on the train down from Leeds. To cut a long story short, he then went downhill again to the point where I panicked and took him in to hospital for a blood test. I spent the rest of Monday and Tuesday running away from the big, black monster that had managed to escape from his box in the naughty corner and rampage round my brain, shouting RELAPSE! Bear in mind that this is the third virally type illness that he’s had in not quite as many months, and he’s never quite seemed to pick back up properly. My brain was in overdrive, and when the results of the blood test came back, I couldn’t quite believe that the low platelets and neutrophils could be 99.9% certainly down to viral suppression.  By Tuesday evening, Blue had started to pick up and I’d managed to get a grip and at least reduce the monster to cartoon proportions. Blue actually ate his supper – the last of the swede and potato pasties which I’d stashed in the freezer. I once read somewhere that it’s psychologically quite useful to serve up food that you’ve prepared on a different day and frozen because it removes the link between the effort you have put into preparing it and their rejection of it, and makes you less likely to take it personally. Anyway, I had no need to fear, because both Blue and Pink ate them again with gusto (and not too much HP). Definitely no ‘one hit wonder’. I have plans for bulk production.

Had another Veg Everyday success with twice baked potatoes on Wednesday – always a busy evening as the Husband has scouts. Pink wasn’t happy with the idea of mixing everything (cooked potato, spring onion, sweet corn, cream cheese - the recipe says sour cream or creme fraiche, but true to form I didn’t have either - and grated cheddar) together, then piling it back into the potato skin for another 15 mins – have you seen ‘When Harry met Sally?’ She is such an ‘on the side’ kinda gal – so I gave her the component parts and she was happy enough. She did try some of mine though, and having decided that she liked it after all, proceeded to negotiate with the Husband to have the rest of his in exchange for her potato skins. Canny. Blue loved it too, and he’s not one for warm cheese, so I got above myself and decided that the time was right for spinach and penne ‘Spouffle’, a recipe again from Veg Everyday that I’ve been eyeing up since I opened it.

Actually, I should have known I was pushing my luck. For a start, the tea making slot was severely compromised by the fact that Pink was making her Rainbows promise yesterday, so my normal 45 min slot between dropping her off and picking her up was reduced to 30  mins as I had to go back 15 ins earlier to witness said promise. And this is basically a soufflé. Who in their right minds would attempt such a thing without a clear run at it? Apparently I would. Despite the fact that I had to spend some of the time I had between getting in from the school run and back out again to Rainbows repairing Pink’s ‘make up’ so that she looked slightly less Alice Cooperish, I managed to get most of it prepped before walking her down to Rainbows. I should say that I in no way condone the wearing of makeup for Rainbows promise making – or in fact at all at the age of 5 ¾  - but I have a theory that if she can get it all out of her system now, while I’m not worried that she’s on the prowl for boys, then it won’t be an issue when she’s a teenager. I expect I will be proved horribly wrong, but frankly there are more important battles to fight.

I got back home and managed to finish the final mixing together, whipping the egg whites and getting it all into a dish for the oven. My only option was then to set the oven on timer and hope that it would turn out OK. It did work out pretty well, and I enjoyed it, but Blue and Pink both struggled. Ho hum – some you win etc. To be fair, Blue said it was better than cauliflower cheese, so that’s something, I suppose.

Anyway, finally made it through to Friday. We had chilli – straight out of the freezer, and tomorrow, the Husband is fending for himself with the kids. I have left him cottage pie and frozen peas, so all should be well. Tomorrow, for me, no day of swimming lessons and general running around, but a day at a Spa followed by cocktails and dinner at Jamie Oliver’s Italian in Covent Garden. Get me on that train.

Pink soup and a not so blue Blue after all

Soup of the week is roasted beetroot without horseradish cream. I am hoping (perhaps over ambitiously) that the pink-ness of the soup will appeal to Pink and get her over her dislike of this particular root vegetable. I have to say that she enjoyed it more than the Husband and Blue when made into the beetroot variation of Hugh’s Pumpkin and Raisin tea loaf. I think I mentioned this in an  earlier post. I had over-ordered on the beetroot front and was looking for recipes to use it in. A friend had recommended the tea loaf recipe (although not the beetroot variation) so I thought I would give it a go. Hugh promises purple marbling. My version was more ‘pink flecking’, but it tasted great, and not a hint of the earthiness which I think puts Pink off. I say that it is without Horseradish cream because at the time of writing, the horseradish is still in the ground and the ground is frozen solid. Chances of extracting are virtually zero (and that’s better than the current outside temperature). That said there might be some in the freezer. I will need to investigate. The soup isn’t for eating till tomorrow so there may yet be time for horseradish cream.

I had far more success on the root veg front this week with the swede and potato pasties out of Veg Everyday. Blue is continuing to lobby for more meat back on the menu, and looked particularly cheated when I advised him that the pasty did not contain meat. I had tried to avoid actually spelling this out to him, but he likes to know where he stands so his questions became more specific as my answers became more and more vague, until he eventually pinned me down. “What is in the pasties?” (this on the way home from school) . I told him. “Oh”. Then “I thought when you said ‘pasties’ you meant like those ones you cooked with meat in them.” Oh dear.

Despite my recent saga with Sainsburys over packets of bought puff pastry, I pushed my pastry boundaries and made the rough puff for these little babies (the bought stuff is for a Hugh onion tart, culled from Sarah Raven and included in Veg Everyday). I think I have made a sweet variation of this before out of Domestic Goddess, and used it to make a lovely tarte tatin type pud. Actually, I think the other half of the pasty that I made for that is languishing somewhere, unloved and unlabeled at the bottom of the freezer. I have a vague memory that almond danishes were on the cards at one stage. I must re-investigate.

Back to the pasties, though. This pastry is really easy and I write as a pastry-phobe. I am getting better with practise, and it’s experiences like this that boost my confidence. It all worked, and rolled out brilliantly. You have to do lots of rolling because the butter starts off as cubes in the flour, and you have to roll it out, fold it over itself and then turn it a quarter-turn, and do it again - 5 times.

first rolling!

cubes of butter - the unrolled dough

I made double quantities, which gave me 4 large pasties and then 6 smaller ones to go in lunchboxes, and there was plenty of filling (just a tiny bit too much in fact).

unbaked

If you’re interested, I did add the ‘optional’ cheddar. For me, cheese is never ‘optional’. But then, I am not a ‘swede-purist’, unlike Hugh (that’s what he calls himself – it’s there in print.). I was very gratified to see that Pink had eaten her pasty almost before I had sat down, faffing around as I was trying to do 100 other things. She had another half, too, Blue pronounced it ‘pretty good actually’ and they both wanted to take a cold one in to school for lunch today.

baked!

I’ve had a mad cook this evening – over the course of today (well starting last night) I have made some loaves with my newly revived sourdough starter following the River Cottage Bread Handbook’s method (‘My Sourdough’). It’s looking pretty good, although I think my starter (and so sponge) was a bit sloppy so the dough was similarly. Not good for the stress levels trying to do a first knead at the same time as you should be walking your small daughter to school with the dough showing no sign of becoming smooth and satiny. In the end I just had to say b******s and leave it to rise. Still - apparently no harm done. I retrieved the second half of the cookie dough that I’d squirreled into the freezer last week and baked some more cookies – I was interested to see if this ‘freeze half the dough’ thing would work – well what do you know, it did! And as the oven was on, I managed too roast the beetroot for the soup – or was it because I’d planned the roast beetroot that I baked the bread and the cookies. I can’t remember, but now the oven's off, the kids are in bed and it's G&T time. Happy Friday!