http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/ en Copyright 2008 Mon, 05 May 2008 13:24:08 +0000 http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/ http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss At New Year, I decided that I'd try growing some fruit and vegetables this year. We're now in May, so the time seems ripe for a bit of an update. My apple tree--pictured above with Dave and Lucas--seems to be relishing its home at the bottom of the garden. It's now a smidge over six feet tall, has plenty of leaves for its size, and has produced the cutest little pink blossom. As our neighbour has a huge mature apple tree in his garden, I'm hoping that the bees drawn to his tree will deign to visit my little one. I can't remember if I've mentioned it before, but it's a family apple tree, meaning that there are three varieties grafted onto the same rootstock. In my case they're Katy, James Grieve, and Cox. All dessert apples, and all very yummy. I love Cox apples! Family trees tend to yield lighter crops than normal trees, but I doubt this will be a problem for us. I'm not sure that three people could munch their way through a bumper crop of apples! On the subject of trees... here is our ancient, gnarled and much-neglected plum tree in the wilderness corner of the garden. Its blossom has already been and gone, so I expect that it will be fruiting enthusiastically later in the year. I do wonder if I should be ripping that ivy away from round its trunk and perhaps pruning it, but the crop gets bigger each year so perhaps it prefers to be ignored? I did give it some (very fishy) fertiliser back in April whilst I was lavishing love on the apple tree. So, it's definitely had more care this year than per usual! My little bay tree lives on the decking alongside my pot of garlic and flat-leaf parsley. I should probably prune it back to its original conical shape and dry out the leaves myself. Fresh bay is such a treat and I still get a real kick out of being able to walk outside and snip some! The garlic and flat-leaf parsley are my two biggest successes to date. They're both bog standard supermarket purchases. I had space in the strawberry planter last year--birds ate all the young berries. Not a success--so planted out one of those living herb containers. Surprisingly it flourished and it's still going strong this year. The garlic got planted on a similar whim. I just broke up a bulb of garlic, pushed the cloves into the holes of the strawberry planter and left them to it. Judging from the huge shoots, I'd say that the garlic is doing pretty well--wouldn't you? Indoors I've got some butternut squash seedlings that are growing at an incredible rate. I splashed out on a packet of Cobnut F1 butternut squash seeds. Apparently Cobnut is a fast-growing variety, bred for Britain's climate, and with a small seed cavity so more flesh. I can certainly vouch for the fast-growing part! The seedlings will get planted out at the end of May when all danger of frost will have passed. So far growing my own fruit and vegetables has been really satisfying. I'm very proud of my small efforts and I can't wait until I can harvest something!]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/05/grow_your_own_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/05/grow_your_own_1.html Miscellaneous Mon, 05 May 2008 13:24:08 +0000 This month's Daring Bakers challenge, hosted by Deborah of Taste and Tell and Elle of Feeding My Enthusiasms, is Cheesecake Pops. Or, as I like to think of it, cheesecake-onna-stick. My love of cheesecake is legendary and of course, I'm more than a little fond of chocolate, too. Alas, I'm firmly back on the Weight Watchers bandwagon, so making the cheesecake pops, while great fun, was absolutely tortuous. Still, I valiantly baked and dipped my pops without sneaking any "little tastes." I did taste all the different pops after dinner, and as they're very, very more-ish, I shall be packing the rest of them off to work with Dave tomorrow morning! I made three-fifths of the cheesecake batter and baked my cheesecake in an 8x8-inch ceramic dish for 40 minutes and it set beautifully. It had just gone from jiggly to firm in the centre when I pulled it out and this meant that when it came to scooping the balls, it rolled really well. It definitely pays to think up flavour/topping ideas before you put the cheesecake balls in the freezer. I came up with some fun ideas for the centre of each ball by which time the pops were solidly frozen, and pressing chopped stem ginger into the balls would have been much easier before they were frozen! Stem ginger pops I love the combination of hot ginger with smooth dark chocolate, so this one was a real winner for me. Next time round I'll press even more minced ginger into the cheesecake as I found myself wanting it to be really hot. Limoncello pops First dipped in a limoncello-spiked lemon jelly, then in white chocolate, these pops had a great flavour but the jelly had a disappointingly icy texture. Still quite delicious, though. Toffee pops Dipped in dark chocolate and quickly rolled in chocolate-toffee pieces, these were awesome. I had wanted to use Dime bars, but couldn't find any, so instead substituted Cadbury Chomp Bars which are similar but chewy rather than crunchy. Classic cheesecake pops Dark chocolate and a roll around in crushed Digestive biscuits equals classic cheesecake flavour in my book. The biscuits were salty in comparison to the cheesecake and chocolate, making this my absolute favourite of the bunch. Overall, these were a huge success. I reckon that they'd make the perfect party dessert for kids and adults alike, so I'll definitely be making them again. Thanks for choosing such a great recipe, Elle and Deborah!]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/04/daring_bakerscheesecake_pops.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/04/daring_bakerscheesecake_pops.html Blogging Events Chocolate Dessert Sun, 27 Apr 2008 12:22:42 +0000 When The Silver Spoon's English translation first hit bookshops in 2005, I leafed through it and thought that it was perhaps the most tedious and uninspiring cookbook on the market. I couldn't understand how this could be a classic. Almost three years later I found myself leafing through a copy in Waterstones--mainly because their Italian section was absolutely dire--and nodding thoughtfully at many a recipe. Perhaps my tastes have undergone a marked change in the last few years? I didn't think they had, other than my new-found love of both fresh fennel and fennel seed. At any rate, I'm now a big fan of The Silver Spoon, especially this recipe: Involtini di Pollo alla Salvia, or, chicken and sage rolls, wrapped in pancetta. I love the sheer simplicity of this recipe; to me it encapsulates what Italian food is all about. Great ingredients, treated simply.. yielding amazing results. Plus, surely any recipe that includes pancetta has to be gorgeous? This is a very friendly recipe; it'll cosy up to just about any carb that you care to pair it with. Previously I've tried some buttery little new potatoes, and also a carrot and swede mash. This time round I decided to do a roasted butternut squash purée (spiked with a little grated nutmeg) which worked really well with the smokiness of the pancetta. The green beans and squiggle of balsamic glaze balanced things out nicely.]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/03/involtini_di_pollo_alla_salvia.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/03/involtini_di_pollo_alla_salvia.html Cooking The Boot Dinner Is Served Sun, 23 Mar 2008 20:28:56 +0000 'Twas Dave's birthday last week and as is traditional in our house, he got to choose his own birthday cake. After a surprisingly short deliberation--I take days to decide--he settled upon coffee and walnut cake. I was pretty sure he'd go for that, but still plied him with recipe books in the scant hope that he'd go for something really elaborate. The coffee and walnut cake is beloved of many a village fete and is quite charming in its simplicity, however, I couldn't resist fiddling a little with the presentation to make it a little more birthday-esque. Left entirely to my own devices I'd have been tempted to play with different blends of coffee in each component of the cake, and perhaps forsake the buttercream filling in favour of a mousse or bavarian cream. Individual coffee cakes served with a scoop of walnut ice-cream would be fab, too. However, this was Dave's Cake, so I behaved myself! My vast collection of baking equipment still lacks useful things such as an icing turntable and an offset spatula, so the icing on the side of the cake looks a little... shoddy, however I was quite pleased at my ingenuity in using an olive dish to form a well for a quick coffee glace icing. (Coffee plus sieved icing sugar. It doesn't get simpler than that!) The birthday boy greatly enjoyed his cake and was generous enough to share a few slices, so I can report to you that the coffee buttercream--and indeed the sponge itself--were positively mild-mannered compared to the bitter caffeine jolt that the pool of glace icing provided. I didn't just want a colour or textural contrast, I wanted a much more aggressive coffee flavour. A bit of an edge, if you will. Despite the extra boost to the coffee flavour, the walnuts weren't overpowered. Perhaps this is because I toasted the walnuts that I chopped for the sponge? Happy birthday, babe!]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/03/coffee_and_walnut_cake.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/03/coffee_and_walnut_cake.html Baking & Cakes Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:31:44 +0000 Riddle me this... what recipe sprawls over ten pages and takes seven hours to complete? Julia Child's French Bread, of course! Julia Child evokes warm, fuzzy feelings in the hearts of many Americans, however on this side of the pond she's hardly a household name. So I headed over to Wikipedia--I know, I know... hardly an accurate source, but it's a good starting point--for some background, and was amazed to discover that she worked in US Intelligence during WWII. Very cool. It was also quite inspiring to read that she only started cooking seriously in her 40s. That should give hope to career changers or even the most inexperienced and nervous cooks, presuming they want to improve, of course! Julia's French Bread clocks in at an impressive ten pages as already mentioned. It's not just a recipe, though. It's more of a treatise on the art of French bread-making as it stood in the fifties. The best bread is often the simplest, and you can't get much more simple than Julia's ingredients: flour, salt, yeast and water. One of the requirements for this month's challenge was that we use all-purpose flour to get as close as possible to the 8% gluten that French bakers use. I've got to admit, this hurt. I hate using all-purpose/plain flour for bread baking. It always produces a weak, flabby dough and in any case, the brand that I use is 11% protein and my standard bread flour (Dove's) is 12.8%. I really, really wanted to pull out the bread flour but decided that I should be a proper Daring Baker and put aside my prejudices. Despite--or perhaps because of--the length of the recipe, it went pretty well. Certainly much better than last month's disastrous Lemon Meringue Pie. My crust wasn't terrifically hard--no nice shattering noises when I tore into the loaf, alas--but it was very tasty indeed. I did manage to get some decent-sized holes in the crumb which worked perfectly for holding butter. The flavour was good, but as I've never had real French bread I don't have anything to compare it to. I can say, however, that it was a decent loaf of bread. I've baked far better in the past and I'm sure I will in the future, but I'm glad that I gave this recipe a whirl! The best thing about this recipe was that it gave me the perfect opportunity to christen my shiny new dough scraper and lame, bought in a (slightly) enthusiastic splurge after my cookery course last weekend. I've always wanted a lame and I have to say that the proper tool makes a massive difference. Normally even my sharpest knife drags and deflates the dough, but the lame glided through without snagging. And the dough scraper was awesome! Very good for mixing and also the initial very sticky stage of the kneading. I've actually been using it every day when chopping vegetables as it's a nice safe way of transferring them from board to pot or container. Better for your knife, too, I suspect. Next time round I think I will swap to bread flour and perhaps reduce the amount of yeast as my dough rose twice as fast as the recipe dictated, despite my efforts to find the coldest spot in the house. I think that proving the dough on the final baking sheet would also be an improvement--I lost a lot of air in the painstaking transfer between cloth, intermediate and baking sheet. As the crust wasn't terribly golden or very hard--but still tasty!--I would increase the oven temperature to maximum for the first 10 minutes of baking, and then drop it back down. For the full recipe (and helpful pictures), visit Breadchick Mary's website.]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/daring_bakers_julia_childs_fre_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/daring_bakers_julia_childs_fre_1.html Blogging Events Breads Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:32:06 +0000 I can see why Mario Batali refers to polenta pasticciata as 'messy polenta.' It was a real challenge--almost like a reverse game of Jenga--getting it out of the dish in any less than three completely unphotgenic blobs, despite my attempts at giving it structural integrity. However, I suspect that peasants living in hillside rusticos cared far more about taste than appearances when they devised this polenta dish many, many years ago. And they certainly didn't mess around with a camera at dinner-time! According to Anna del Conte, polenta pasticciata is made in many different variations, each polenta-loving region having their own spin on it. This recipe hails from Lombardy, but even within the region itself there are many variations. Some add bechamel sauce, bringing the dish even closer to lasagne, and others further enrich the meat sauce with lots of lovely salami and pancetta. Previously I've found polenta to be both bland and stodgy. This was apparently user-error on my part. It's still stodgy, but when done right, it's stodgy in a good way. Filling and warming, in fact, and when seasoned correctly, it's rather tasty, too Polenta can really soak up salt. I started off with the tablespoon that Anna stipulated and then--very carefully!--tasted and corrected the volcanically bubbling and spitting polenta until it tasted good. When making the meat sauce I had to have very stern words with myself as I instinctively reached for the garlic. One of the reasons for Cooking The Boot was to gain a greater appreciation for regional food, and that means not chucking garlic in where there shouldn't be garlic! I suspect a bit of palate-retraining may be in order as I really do adore garlic in almost all savoury food. (I did go through a brief phase of munching pickled garlic cloves once. Shamefully, I wasn't pregnant at the time, so there was absolutely no excuse for it!) Even without garlic the sauce tasted pretty good. The porcini enhanced the flavour of the beef--as well as retaining their own robust earthiness--and created some pretty heady aromas in the house. I served the pasticciata with some green beans which I simply dressed with a tiny drizzle of extra-virgin olive oil and some balsamic vinegar. I think they worked really well together to cut through the rich, unctuousness of the pasticciata. ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/polenta_pasticciata.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/polenta_pasticciata.html Cooking The Boot Dinner Is Served Lombardy Sun, 03 Feb 2008 13:18:33 +0000 I first heard about The Fat Duck in 2001, when Heston Blumenthal's take on molecular gastronomy was really starting to attract critical acclaim and err... robust discussion. (Looking at the restaurant website, I'm quite surprised to learn that it opened in 1995.) I've been dying to eat there ever since, and this year I struck gold when Dave offered to take me there for my birthday! It only took two attempts to get a reservation for lunch--I'm so thankful that modern phones have a redial button. I can't imagine twirling a dial at speed to try and break into the queue!--and then Dave and I spent the next two months eagerly anticipating (and fretting slightly) our meal. On the duly appointed day, we dropped Lucas off with Auntie Sarah in Reading for a day of fun, frolics, song and—if desperate measures were required—classic Doctor Who DVDs, and then drove onto Bray, arriving with plenty of time to spare. I've seen a lot of reviews describe Bray as a quaint little English country village. I think that's overstating it, really. Bray is a hamlet. We're talking a handful of houses, village hall, hairdressers—men's night on Thursday!—two pubs and The Fat Duck. We stopped in at The Hinds Head Hotel--another Heston venture--for a drink as did many of our fellow diners. We arrived at The Fat Duck on time and were seated immediately in a nice corner table, close to the kitchen. This was by far the best table in my opinion. I love to catch a glimpse inside kitchens when I eat out, and it also let me have a really good look around the restaurant itself. The Fat Duck used to be a pub--I find it incredible that Bray could ever have supported three pubs--and it still has a little of that vibe to it. There was no stuffy formality or hushed tones as you would tend to find at Michelin starred restaurants. Au contraire! There was quite a lively buzz--doubtlessly many people were discussing the dishes that they were eating--and everyone seemed nicely relaxed. The sommelier sallied forth with the champagne trolley and asked if we'd like a glass. As it was my birthday, I chose a very nice Tattinger Brut Reserve which had the tiniest, most delicate bubbles I've ever encountered in a champagne. All champagne is elegant, but this was very special indeed. Next we were presented with our menus and despite lusting after several of the dishes on the A La Carte menu, we went for the tasting menu. I asked for the wine list and it was lugged over in due course. I really wish I'd taken a picture of the wine list for it was an absolute tome of a book. Thickly bound in leather with the Fat Duck logo embossed on the cover, several inches thick and just on the right side of playful as opposed to ostentatious. Each page contained only a handful of wines, which is just one of many examples of the way Heston plays with your expectations. I was slightly peeved that the wine list was handed to Dave even though I'd been the one to ask for it. Not quite what one expects in a modern restaurant. But that is a very minor quibble! We began with the now-famous Nitro Green Tea and Lime Mousse. We watched with child-like glee as the waiter poured liquid nitrogen into a bowl and then squirted mousse from a nitrous whip onto a spoon before deftly 'poaching' it in the liquid nitrogen. The ball of mousse jittered and danced over the surface of the nitrogen as if it was alive. Great theatre! A dusting of green tea from a fine muslin bag provided the final flourish and then the mousse was presented to me with a polite instruction to eat it all in one bite. I crammed it in--it really was quite a large ball of mousse--and wow! Not at all the texture I'd expected. It was crisp, like good meringue, with only the very centre remaining slightly gooey. Sharply tart from the lime, slightly musty from the green tea, and then the vodka whooshed in and left my mouth tingling. Next came a nice little extra. Two vibrant squares of orange and beetroot jelly. I'm sure everyone know the trick by now—golden beetroot and blood oranges—but for us the real surprise was the complexity of the flavours, especially when they mingled on the palate. The next amuse bouche was Oyster and passion fruit jelly, lavender. I'd never eaten oysters before and I loathe passion fruit, so I really wasn't looking forward to this. The presentation was breathtakingly gorgeous--alas, my pictures of this dish are decidedly out of focus--and I actually quite enjoyed the oyster. The lavender flavour must have been very subtle indeed as I didn't detect it in the little sugary wafer shard that decorated the dish. Pommery Grain Mustard Ice Cream, Red Cabbage Gaspacho. This was wonderful. Amazing, even. I'd have licked the plate clean if I hadn't been out in public. The ice cream was sweet-hot and the tiny mustard seeds popped on your tongue—I'd love to know how they achieved that. The red cabbage gaspacho was quite mellow and was a great foil for the fire of the mustard. A brunoise of cucumber nestled under the ice cream gave a delicious, cooling crunch. The next amuse was quite spectacular, especially visually. The waiter brought over a tray of oak moss, oak moss and truffle toasts, and a very cute dish containing jelly of quail, langoustine cream, parfait of foie gras. Perched on top of the tray of moss were two little plastic containers containing a film of oak moss, which dissolved on the tongue like a breath freshener, to prepare the palate for the truffle. It was explained to us that oak moss and truffle contain many identical flavour compounds, hence the flavour combination. The waiter then produced a little iron teapot and poured its contents--I think it was a fir tea--over the tray of oak moss, and more magic happened. White smoke began pouring from the tray of moss and drifting, thickly across our table like fog. Heston must have been a magician in a past life. (Dry ice in the bottom of the tray, if you were curious.) The smoke had a very faint--to my nose; Dave smelled it much more clearly--aroma of oak moss and fir The truffle toast was very good, but to me it just tasted and smelled of mushrooms. Dave, on the other hand, thought it smelt absolutely amazing and was in raptures over it. I fear that I may well be one of those women who can't smell/taste truffles properly. The quail jelly, langoustine cream, and foie gras parfait was far more my sort of thing. Incredibly rich--you definitely couldn't eat more than one portion, no matter how much you would want to--and oh-so-intensely flavoured. This was by far my favourite amuse bouche. Nestled at the very bottom of each dish was a spoonful of vibrant pea puree which helped to cut through the salty richness of the quail jelly. The tiny quenelle of foie gras parfait that decorated the dish was buttery, rich and really just perfect. I would go back for this dish alone. (Alas, my photos of this dish were horrendous, so I cannot share the joy with you.) We then moved seamlessly to the main dishes. First--and please excuse the photograph--was the (in)famous Snail Porridge and Dave's most feared dish. I've only had snails once before and I liked them very much at the time, so I was really looking forward to this dish, despite the rather Roald Dahl-esque name. (I think Dahl would have appreciated Heston--and his approach to cooking--a lot.) When the plate arrived I was amused to see that it resembled a risotto far more than any porridge I've ever eaten. Smooth, creamy, and with the grains of oats nicely separated with no lumps in evidence. There was a strong snail flavour through the porridge itself, which was fabulous. Perched on top were some large meaty snails which had soaked up layer upon layer of flavour, but mainly garlic. Little slivers of salty-sweet Joselito ham nestled between the snails and the whole thing was topped off with fennel that had been shaved paper-thin and somehow made delicious. (I don't generally like raw fennel,but this was lovely.) Alas, Dave didn't appreciate the porridge as much as I did. The porridge itself was fine, as was the first snail, but then his mind reminded him that he was eating a snail, and it went downhill from there. Ah well, I had no plans to start a snail farm at home anyway. The next dish was Roast Fois Gras, almond fluid gel, cherry, chamomile. Aside from the beautiful presentation, the flavour combinations here were to die for. Absolutely glorious! The cherry puree was incredibly intense but was mellowed out by the almond fluid gel. I loved the tiny cubes of Amaretto jelly, too. They had a real kick to them! The best thing about this dish was that you every forkful was different, but it always came back to the softly melting, buttery foie gras. Incredibly good. Stunning, even. "Sounds of the Sea" was the next dish, and for both of us this was a real low point. It looked absolutely beautiful and was very convincing in its attempt to recreate a seaside scene, but... I'm not a fan of raw shellfish. I did quite enjoy the sea urchin—the orange-yellow blob in front—and the oyster—at the back—but whatever the middle shellfish was... well, it just disagreed with my palate. Very strong and the texture was just unpleasant to me. The seaside sounds delivered via iPods in seashells was fun, but I don't think it added anything to the taste of the food. I ate whilst listening to the sounds and without and didn't notice any change in the flavours. I suspect that growing up in a fishing town has just left me with the urge to duck every time I hear gulls circling overhead rather than any fond food memory associations! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/the_fat_duck.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/02/the_fat_duck.html Restaurant Reviews Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:16:29 +0000 ...or how to dent your ego in one easy step. I've been baking Lemon Meringue Pies (hereafter abbreviated to LMP) since the age of seven, so when LMP was announced as the January challenge for the Daring Bakers--hosted by Canadian Baker, Jen--I was slightly... underwhelmed. "How on earth could LMP be challenging," I thought to myself, smugly. Dave suggested that perhaps the challenge in this instance would be in following the recipe exactly and not making any adjustments, even those I would normally do to rescue things. If things went wrong, which of course they wouldn't. Because, you know, I've been making these things since I was seven. See my ego? I have to admit that I started to get worried when reports of weepy meringue and runny filling--or sauce, as one poster described it--started to pour in on the Daring Bakers private blog. So I took a closer look at the recipe. Oh dear. Now I could see why people were having so much trouble with the filling. The ingredients for the lemon filling were absolutely standard, but the proportions and the techniques used were different to what I've previously used. Pouring a dry mixture of cornflour (cornstarch) and sugar into hot water really didn't sit well with me. Apart from the distinct possibility of lumps forming, the cornflour was added at the beginning of the cooking process for the filling and was then subsequently heated to boiling point twice. And all that heating means lots of stirring to prevent lumps, and cornflour doesn't particularly like being stirred. The other thing with cornflour is that it loses its thickening properties when heated too high and for too long. I never, ever bring it to a boil, and yet... if I was following the recipe as I promised I would when I signed up to become a Daring Baker, I had to boil the damn filling. Sure enough, I had problems. Despite the huge amount of cornflour, the mixture never got really, really thick. And given how temperamental cornflour is, I didn't want to cook it for even longer or more aggressively. When I added the egg yolks, I expected the mixture to finally thicken up properly... but it didn't. And when I finished it off with butter--thickened slightly--and lemon juice--got thinner and thinner despite adding it ultra-slowly--I knew it was a disaster. I should probably have just started again, but I chose to be optimistic. Perhaps I hadn't cooked the filling for long enough and it would firm up more after a trip through the oven and then the fridge? Yeah, right. A really, really good lemon meringue pie should have a thick, slicable filling. It shouldn't be completely set and firm like a Key Lime Pie, but neither should it slither out from under the meringue and cover your plate. Instead, it should generously concede to wobble ever-so-slightly and perhaps bulge at the edges once the slice has made its perilous journey to your plate. (I should point out that I only ever eat LMP cold. A hot LMP is heresy, as far as I'm concerned.) This... this... lemon sauce does not correspond in any way, shape or form with my idea of the perfect lemon meringue pie. Frankly, it was pretty disastrous. To give you some idea of just how runny the filling was, when I cut into the pie there was an immediate whoosh as filling spurted out and proceeded to run all over the worktop and dribble onto the floor. After staring in horror for a few seconds, I hurriedly put the collar back on the tart tin and shoved a plate underneath to catch the drips. I knew it would be runny, but I never expected it to be quite so bad! The worst thing was that I'd promised Dave's mum the finished pie as it's her absolute favourite dessert ever. I wound up making a very embarrassed phone call and promised to make her one--using my own recipe--with a proper filling rather than sauce. Despite the problems I encountered with the filling, quite a few other DBers reported back that their pies turned out amazingly well with properly set fillings, so the recipe isn't totally flawed. Just highly variable. If the pie had tasted amazing, then I could have forgiven the runny filling, but it just didn't taste that great to be honest. You would think that it would be exquisitely tart with the massive amount of lemon juice needed, but it was just sweet and vaguely lemony. Now, since I used five organic, unwaxed lemons, I was a little peeved about this. The crust was nice and short, but somehow managed to lack flavour. Left to my own devices I would probably have added some vanilla seeds and a little bit more salt to bring out the sweetness of the pastry. No complaints about the meringue. I really liked the addition of vanilla and will probably add it into my own LMP recipe. I didn't have any problems at all with the meringue weeping; the only weeping in our household came from me as I stood helplessly watching lemon sauce cascade over the worktop. So, after my first Daring Bakers challenge, I stand before you all, humbled and shame-faced, but still very excited to be a DBer. I wonder what next month's challenge will be?]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/daring_bakers_lemon_meringue_p.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/daring_bakers_lemon_meringue_p.html Baking & Cakes Blogging Events Dessert Disaster Strikes Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:38:38 +0000 Hay Hay, it's Donna Day! For ages now I've been stumbling across HHDD themes the day that entries close or just after. In December I decided to take charge of the situation and make a proper effort to keep an eye on ChichaJo 's blog to ensure that I didn't miss yet another one. And hooray! My obsessiveness has paid off! This month's theme for HHDD is pizza. Double-hooray! Each edition of HHDD produces amazingly creative and beautiful entries and I'll be the first to admit that I wanted to join the beautiful people—and food. I'm not sure how successful I've been in either the creative or beautiful departments, however I know that this pizza definitely tasted amazing, despite its rather homely looks! My first instinct upon seeing the pizza theme was to recreate my favourite pizza: caramelised onion and feta with rosemary. It's a triumph of sweet, sour, creamy and salty flavours. One of Mr Waitrose's triumphs, in fact. However, as we're (a) back on the eternal/infernal diet and (b) it's not a pizza that Dave gets excited about—I am far too lazy to contemplate doing individual pizzas—I had to rethink things. After some thought I settled upon making something more akin to comfort food than conceptual/cutting-edge stuff... meatball pizza. Unlike 99% of the meatball pizza recipes you'll find in a Google search, my meatball pizza actually contains bona fide meatballs. Lately I've been using an Allegra McEvedy recipe which contains two of my current darlings—pork and fennel—and makes meatballs packed with flavour that always manage to be succulent despite being baked. By happy coincidence, I happened to have a bag of them stashed away in the freezer. Alas, my sensible stashing of food in the freezer never seems to extend as far as putting tomato sauce in there, so I put together a pretty basic tomato sauce. In deference to my week of regional Italian cooking, I did make a proper soffrito and also let the sauce bubble gently for two hours, but I'd also happily use a quick 15-minute sauce or even a jar of pizza sauce. On this occasion I had the time to let the sauce cook for ages... so I did. I'm happy to report that the pizza delivers a double-whammy of comfort. It's got all the familiarity and comfort of a pizza plus the spicy, snuggled-up on the sofa feel of a good bowl of spaghetti and meatballs. I was particularly pleased that I thought to drape slices of mozzarella over the meatballs to keep them from drying out. Of course, gooey cheese on top of meatballs tastes fantastic, too! Boot notes: This is more of an Italian-American dish, although it does have its roots firmly in Naples where all the individual components hail from. So, here's to my second dish from Campania! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/hhdd_17_meatball_pizza.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/hhdd_17_meatball_pizza.html Blogging Events Campania Cooking The Boot Dinner Is Served Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:49:52 +0000 Lucas had a little friend (T) over to play on Monday so I thought I'd do a little bit of baking for us all. I've been eyeing the cookie chapter in Dolce Italiano since it arrived, so I felt this was a good enough excuse for some full-fat baking. I want to make every single cookie recipe from Dolce Italiano--from the chocolate kisses, to the zaletti, to the mosaic biscotti, they all just sound so enticing. As much as I love chocolate, lemon is Lucas's favourite flavour in the whole wide world--although beef runs a close second--so I chose the Lemony Semolina Cookies. The majority of lemons in Italy come from the sun-drenched Amalfi coast—running between Sorrento and Amalfi itself--in the Campagnia region. I particularly liked that this recipe calls for both fresh lemon and limoncello for an added burst of intense lemony goodness. I made some limoncello last summer, and while I'm not 100% happy with it—I think I grated in some pith as it's a bit on the bitter side—I'm always pleased when I get to use my 'own' ingredients, if that makes sense. (I should point out that I used a quarter of the amount of limoncello called for since I planned for the kids to be eating them.) With the distinctly southern additions of semolina and extra-virgin olive oil, I'm quite happy to slot this recipe into the Campagnia region. If your butter is nice and soft, this is a very quick dough to bring together. As I knew Monday would be a whirlwind of tidying—how does one keep a house vaguely neat with a toddler around?—and lots and lots of fun, I weighed out the dry ingredients and left the butter out to soften the night before. The dough came together really quickly and had a beautiful lemony-yellow colour to it, thanks in part to the extra egg yolk. I rolled the dough into quite small balls as I wanted to have cookies that were just the right size for little hands. It was an additional bonus that they came out looking afternoon tea dainty. I made a full sheet of cookies and within half an hour there were only three left, which speaks for itself really. Lucas and his friend T kept toddling over and helping themselves, and best of all... actually eating them instead of stuffing them under the sofa or inside toys as children are so fond of doing. These cookies are deliciously crunchy, lemony enough to suit any lemon-head and not too sweet. They go equally well with tea or coffee and would probably be very nice along with a glass of limoncello after a heavy dinner in place of a more traditional dolce. I love the sparkles from their quick dip into sugar before baking. Next time I'll make them with the full amount of limoncello called for; maybe splitting the recipe into adult and kid batches would work? While two tablespoons spread over five dozen cookies is practically homeopathic, I didn't feel comfortable serving up boozy cookies to a mum friend and little ones; I think 14 months is a bit early to discover if Lucas is a mean drunk or not!! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/lemony_semolina_cookies_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/lemony_semolina_cookies_1.html Baking & Cakes Campania Cooking The Boot Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:29:31 +0000 Recently Antonio Carluccio presented a one-off documentary-slash-pilgrimage, following in the footsteps of Bartolomeo Scappi. If you're saying, "Who?" then you're not alone. I'd never heard of him either, but the trailers billed him as the world's first celebrity chef, back in the sixteenth century, no less. Scappi cooked for several cardinals before being appointed chef to Pope Pius IV. Little is known of his early life, but all scholars agree that it was the publication of his master-work Opera dell'arte del cucinare that made him the culinary superstar of his time. Nobles and wannabe-nobles bought copies for their cooks, making it an almost instant bestseller. During the course of the documentary, Carluccio cooked several dishes from Opera. Apart from the (overly) generous use of sugar and spices--both reflected the wealth of the people he cooked for--the food was not completely dissimilar to what we think of today as Italian food. This sweet and sour tuna dish is an adaptation by Anna del Conte of one of Scappi's recipes in Opera. I must admit that I felt some relief when I saw that the sweetness came from fruit rather than a copious handful of sugar. Of course, this may be Anna's adaptation at work. Either way, I'd rather eat some yummy prunes than plain old sugar. As Anna del Conte notes in her recipe introduction, the sweet and sour tempers the oiliness of the tuna. It also enhances the texture of the fish and makes it meatier--always a good thing! The amount of spice may look as though it will overwhelm the fish, but trust me. It all works out very nicely indeed--I might actually add more next time! The sauce is overall very gentle and almost refined in flavour. Ideally you should use individual portions of tuna, and not one huge steak like I did. I'm not sure it registered mentally how large the tuna was when I asked the fishmonger for two 2cm-thick steaks... 800g and £14 later, it certainly hit home! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/renaissance_sweet_and_sour_tun_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/renaissance_sweet_and_sour_tun_1.html Cooking The Boot Dinner Is Served Veneto Mon, 14 Jan 2008 21:44:31 +0000 The turn of the year always brings with it a host of good intentions and the now-ubiquitous New Year resolutions, the majority of which fall by the wayside by... oh, about now, usually. This year I've decided to be kinder to myself and not make stupidly unattainable resolutions. (You know the sort: lose half your body weight, get fit, write a book, become amazingly tidy etc..) After all, when I look back over the year in December, do I really want to spend time beating myself up over everything I haven't accomplished or being justly proud of myself for what I have? That's not to say that there isn't an element of challenge, but it's all good, achievable stuff. So, what's on my plate for 2008? First up is growing some of my own fruit and perhaps vegetables. I have to admit that I have a bit of a head-start on this one as we already have a mature plum tree and while I'm not expecting my new apple tree to fruit this year, I will lavish some love and attention--in the form of manure or mulch--upon it. I'm also planning on turning my strawberry planter into a planter for garlic. Hopefully garlic will prove less palatable to the local birds, who snagged every last one of my strawberry crop last year. I also want to grow loads and loads of basil with the ultimate goal of making my own pesto in mid-summer. I'd also like to conquer sourdough. There's a wide streak of the Mad Scientist in me, and I can really picture myself standing over a bubbling jar, cackling, "It's alive!" I've made three attempts but I've never managed to achieve a really vigorous, world-dominating starter. Mine have been more of the genteel, tiny-bubbled ilk which seemed embarrassed to be caught fermenting. There are various other small things I'd like to do—soufflés, butchering meat, spun sugar—but what I really, really want to do this year is to Cook The Boot or... cook my way around Italy from the comfort of my own home. ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/cooking_the_boot_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/cooking_the_boot_1.html Cooking The Boot Sat, 12 Jan 2008 13:57:24 +0000 Just before carving.... Yesterday was particularly momentous on two fronts. Firstly, Dave's parents came over and planted the beautiful family apple tree they bought me for Christmas--I should point out that I'm not lazy! I'm just not allowed to do any digging because of my lovely prolapsed disc--and secondly, in return for the tree, the planting and all the incredible roast dinners that they've fed me over the years... I cooked them dinner for the first time. Yep, you heard that right. The first time. I've been with Dave for almost a decade now, have a food blog, cook extensively, and yet I've never cooked a meal for his parents. Shame on me. (I am rather good at turning up on the doorstep with cake in hand, looking for some hungry mouths to feed, though!) Whilst at the library on Friday after a morning of fun at toddler group, I was flicking through Jamie's Italy when I spotted a great shot of a piglet roasting in a wood-fired oven. Intrigued by the picture I read the accompanying prose and was promptly sold on the whole concept of making porchetta as a Sunday roast. The fact that I had a largeish leg of pork in the freezer may have helped sway my decision. Just a little. I've never been a huge fan of Jamie Oliver, but over Christmas I slowly warmed up to him after watching his Jamie at Home Christmas Special on Channel 4 and also catching part of a mini-biography of him and Gary Rhodes. I expected to love Gary and loathe Jamie, but that got turned upside-down! It was nice to see a very young Jamie, in the clip from the River Cafe documentary, talking like he does these days. Albeit slightly toned down. I feel less irritated by him--and his made-up words--now that I know he's not completely hamming it up for the cameras. Spurred on by Jamie--now there's a sentence I never thought I'd write--I started doing a bit of reading about porchetta. Traditional porchetta involves a whole piglet or suckling pig. You--or your friendly porchettaio, which is the route the very sensible Italian housewife would take--slaughter your pig, then stuff the belly with a herby green stuffing containing rosemary, fennel and onions, and some of the pig's own offal. The whole thing then gets roasted on a spit over a wood fire for several hours before being sliced up and served on crusty bread rolls. (The eternally lovely Nigella Lawson advises ciabatta rolls to soak up all the juices.) Now, I love a culinary challenge, but a piglet is a bit beyond my comfort zone. Plus, since I can't persuade Dave to let me turn the pit in the garage into a tandoor, I didn't hold out much hope of him saying that a fire pit was a wonderful idea. It was time to stop dreaming about gloriously burnished piglets, snouts running with fat, and return to a more domestic--but hopefully just as tasty--reality. I eventually settled on a recipe after cobbling bits together from Jamie, Nigella Lawson, Gennaro Contaldo and Mario Batali and diligently assembled a huge pile of aromatics and herbs. Frankly, it was a formidable amount of flavouring and if it hadn't all smelt gorgeous then I'd have worried about it being a case of “too many cooks”, but once I thought about it logically I realised that it all knit together neatly in terms of flavours. Pictured are bay leaves (from the garden!) rosemary, sage, onion, garlic, lemon, dried chilli, fennel seeds and black peppercorns. Bay leaves go with any sort of meat, rosemary and sage are particularly good with pork and combine beautifully with bay. Onions, garlic and lemon are no-brainers—a fundamental of any stuffing as far as I'm concerned. As for fennel seeds and chilli... well, they just taste great! I served the porchetta with roasted potatoes--as always, courtesy of Dave--some roasted butternut squash--I added some crushed chilli as suggested by Jamie and it was fantastic--and some spring greens that I sauteed in garlic and lemon after blanching. It was all just fantastically good. The crackling that I'd been so worried about had crackled. As my punnish husband put it, "The crackling was cracking!" The meat was succulent and so full of flavour--and not just from the herby stuffing. The British Meat Marketing Board are right--British pork is incredibly good, even the supermarket stuff. I was particularly proud of the gravy which was powerfully flavoured with all the fresh herbs I'd chucked into the roasting tin, and also slightly sweet from the root vegetables. The only thing I'd do differently next time is use a razor blade to score the skin of the pork and... cook a much bigger piece of meat! I really wanted to try it in a sandwich today, but it was all devoured in one sitting.]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/porchetta_1.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/porchetta_1.html Dinner Is Served Mon, 07 Jan 2008 00:41:29 +0000 Pepparkakor are traditional Swedish Christmas biscuits-- What's that you say? Christmas was last week? Yeah I know... Luckily for me, and my knack of blogging at a snail's pace, pepparkakor are now eaten all year round in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries so I can safely tell you all about them without being rapped on the knuckles for being un-seasonal. As you might suspect, the name translates to "pepper cookie", but fear not! There's no pepper in these little beauties. According to one website I came across, back in ye olden days when pepper was very valuable,, people tried to emulate the colour--if not the flavour--with (slightly) less expensive spices. In this case, cinnamon and ginger. I'm not entirely sure that I buy that story since cinnamon was always considered a highly valuable spice, too. Slight tangent: if even just a sole merchant ship--from the small fleet that would have made the outbound journey from merry olde England--made it back from the East Indies, laden with cinnamon and other spices... well, that would be enough to defray the cost of the loss of the other ships and set up the merchant trader for life. It's quite humbling to think that the spices I take for granted were so difficult and perilous to procure in times gone by. This recipe from Diana Henry is very simple. Possibly a little too simple, in retrospect. The flavour is fantastic but the dough is quite tough to work with. Next year I'd probably up the butter to 75g, giving equal proportions with the sugar and add in an egg to make it more supple. But, as I say, the flavour of the cookies was fantastic. Sweet and spicy, with a very, very subtle hint of citrus from the orange zest which was unexpected but quite welcome. I had a lot of fun icing the pepparkakor, despite being somewhat hampered by my lack of a fine piping tip which led to me improvising with a decidedly floppy sandwich bag. I'm going to use this as my sole excuse for the rather rustic appearance of the icing. I know, I know... only a poor workman and so forth. Next year Lucas will be two and should be well up for some sticky fun with a piping bag, icing and cookies. I can't wait to see what sort of designs he comes up with! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/scandinavian_pepparkakor.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/scandinavian_pepparkakor.html Baking & Cakes Festive Food Wed, 02 Jan 2008 23:21:33 +0000 Happy New Year everyone! Thank-you for visiting A Spoonful of Sugar--especially those readers who have stuck with me though my all-too-frequent absences--and for all your kind comments and questions. I really appreciate them. As I skipped out on blogging for rather a lot most of 2007, I feel like a bit of a fraud joining in with the triumphant parade of "Best of 2007" posts. So, instead, allow me to present to you our Hogmanay dessert! Introducing... individual Banana Praline Parfaits with a secret centre of mixed berry sorbet, topped with a shard of macadamia praline. It's a Heston Blumenthal recipe and while it feels so thrilling and exciting to say that I've cooked one of Heston's recipes, in truth he intended it as a component rather than a dessert in its own right. However, I'm sure he wouldn't be too upset to see it served in this fashion. The much more elaborate dessert that this was originally a component for is Heston's Perfect Baked Alaska, which I hope to have occasion to make one day. This was probably the best episode--followed closely by the risotto one--of his recent television series: Further Adventures In Search of Perfection. I love Heston--he's absolutely barking mad, passionate about food, and a genius to boot. I'm sure he'd be absolutely impossible to live with, but his unerring attention to detail and deep need to investigate every possible way of handling or eating food is just so appealing and it makes great television, too. He gets a lot of criticism from people who dismiss his food as overly fussy and pretentious or those who don't see the point of a cookery programme that doesn't showcase recipes achievable by even a chimpanzee working in an ill-equipped kitchen, while a hurricane rages outside. Just by way of an example, you understand. Those sort of people are missing the point. Heston doesn't expect you to go out and buy a squirrel cage and smoke your own fish, but if you want to copy him? No problem. Want to top your trifle with mediaeval comfits? Sure! Here's the method! It's all about trying new ways of doing things, pulling the best possible flavour from each dish, treating food with respect and above all... having a bit of fun with it too. And that, ladies and gents, concludes my (unintentional) love-note to Heston. (Hi, Heston! Can't wait to come over for lunch! Mwah-mwah!) Did I mention that we're going to The Fat Duck for my birthday this month? No? Well, we are and I can't wait! For someone who is renowned for complicate cooking, this is a very straightforward recipe. You start off by making a nut brittle--the original recipe called ror hazelnuts but I couldn't get hold of any, so substituted my favourite macadamias instead--grind it, then make a caramelised banana puree. These then get gently combined with a regular meringue and some whipped cream before being still-frozen. At Christmas Dave's parents gave me lots of lovely silicone bakeware. Amongst all the goodies was a jumbo muffin tray which I thought would be the right sort of size for desserts. I've always been intrigued by--and suspicious of--silicone moulds. It just seems wrong to bake a cake in something that feels so floppy and thin. However, I'm certainly a convert when it comes to freezing ice-cream in them! The parfaits popped out from the moulds with absolutely no need to run a knife around the edges, whack on the counter, or perform any arcane rituals of the sort that would normally be necessary with a metal mould. The sides were even beautifully smooth, which made for my best dessert presentation of the year. (Okay, so I couldn't resist slipping a Best... in there. So sue me!) The most surprising thing about the parfaits was the aroma. Straight from the freezer, with absolutely no chance of defrosting, you could smell the bananas. Considering that my bananas were only just ripe, that's quite a feat! The next thing I noticed was the texture: silky smooth, punctuated by all those lovely nutty praline speckles. You'd swear that it'd been lovingly churned in an ice-cream maker, but no... just dolloped into a mould and frozen. My attempt at a secret centre half-worked. The sorbet melted at a slightly faster rate than the parfait mixture, but I put it into the moulds too early and it sank straight to the bottom. The unadorned parfaits revealed all--a shameful scarlet splodge on the surface. Next time round I'll freeze the parfaits for a couple of hours before pushing the sorbet cubes into the centre. Hopefully that will be enough to prevent further sinkage. The flavours, on the other hand, worked beautifully. I'd added some limoncello to the berry mixture to (a) keep it from freezing solid and (b) cut the sweetness, and the slight sharpness played really well against the soft, mellow sweetness of the banana and praline. Really, it was almost like having summer and winter on the spoon at the same time. There are two left in the freezer... first come, first served! ]]> http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/happy_new_year.html http://www.aspoonfulofsugar.net/blog/2008/01/happy_new_year.html Cookbooks Dessert Tue, 01 Jan 2008 16:14:50 +0000