My (Raymond's) Plum Clafoutis

French clafoutis is the lightest pudding around -the perfect end to a heavy Sunday Roast- with arguably the prettiest name. The focus of this pudding should be its fruit, as ripe and flavoursome as possible, with the surrounding batter as no more than a delicately sweet cushion holding everything together. The recipe below has its roots in a Raymond Blanc classic which, out of circumstance and necessity, I changed around so much so that it no longer ressembles the original; I thus feel half-justified to call this recipe my own!

10-12 ripe plums

1 tbsp. caster sugar

1/2 tbsp. rum

20cm round baking/oven-proof dish, greased

Preheat the oven to Gas Mark 4/180C/350F

Destone and quarter the plums and place them in the baking dish. Scatter the sugar over the fruit as evenly as possible; likewise with the rum. Place the plums in the oven to warm through, soaking up the sugar and the alcohol, whilst you make the batter.

45g caster sugar

2 large eggs

1 tsp. vanilla/almond extract

40g plain flour, sifted

125ml whole milk

25g unsalted butter

Place the sugar, eggs and extract into a medium-sized bowl before whipping them together for a while until pale, thick and fluffy (girls may want to use an electric whisk, or their boyfriends). Add the flour and mix well. Melt the butter in a saucepan over a gentle heat to make a buerre noisette- sounds scary 'cause it's French but is easy to do: when brown flecks appear and the melted butter starts to smell nutty, take it off the heat and add to the egg mixture. Give the batter a good stir before removing the plums from the oven and pouring the batter over the fruit. Bake the clafoutis for 30-35 mins, until the centre is nice and springy but the top not too brown. Serve warm with custard or cream.

Valentine's Velvet Cake

Sometimes, as a singleton, it can be difficult to enter into the spirit of Valentine's Day. I am engaged with what borders on a love affair with my food, however, and see that there is hope still for me to feel included without the need to go boy-hunting.

Red Velvet Cake looks as though it were made for 14th February by St. Valentine himself. Ok, so the cocoa flavour of the sponge is not in keeping with its red crumbs and thus a strange feature for anyone who doesn't know it's in there; and yes, cream cheese in a butter-cream icing is to an acquired taste, BUT people...look at the colour of it! I assure you that the novelty of eating bright red cake, particularly on this upcoming Day of Love, will not wear off before you've finished eating a slice, although by the end of a second portion you may well wonder what the effect of all that food colouring could be on your delicate, love-struck mind.

I had my first attempt at making the cake with my friend Lucy, gleefully getting into the spirit of things by adding double the quantity of food colouring to the cake batter (well, if you're gonna bother to colour a cake...) and strewing crystalized rose petals all over its surface, as though decorating the bed of some romantic boudoir. We even held the knife together to cut the first slice (see above for a photo of 'the happy couple'). Everyone in our biology class loved it, and we loved them for loving it, and they loved us for loving them and...well, you get the picture. Either the spirit of St. Valentine fell upon us, or the mutual attraction was a nasty side-effect of too much food colouring.

Singletons and couples alike: Happy Valentine's Day- treat yourselves to a slice of Red Velvet Cake!

http://hummingbirdbakery.com/includes/pdf/Baking_Tips.pdf (see page 5 for recipe)

Caramelised-Apple Croissant

This recipe (which doesn't actually involve much cooking i.e. a teenage boy could make it) comes from Nigel Slater, who possesses the wonderful talent of knowing which foodstuffs go perfectly together. It's a dessert-sandwich/midnight snack which is both flaky and tender; sugary hot and creamy cold. It is also inevitably messy, and I would advise tackling the consumption of this dish with your fingers only in the company of good friends, who won't judge.

You begin by melting a large knob of butter (around 50g) in a frying pan whilst thickly slicing a couple of apples (cooking- or eating-). Fry the apple slices in the butter for 5-10 minutes until nicely golden before adding to the pan 50g soft brown sugar. Turn the heat up to let the sugar bubble (thus begin the caramelising process) and heat two croissants in the oven/under the grill. Get a tub of vanilla ice cream out of the freezer to soften. Continue cooking the apples for 5-10 minutes until soft (not mushy) and in a nice, sticky caramel. Slice each warm croissant in half and place on a plate. Spoon the apples into the middle along with a scoop of ice cream in each; finish by dribbling the remaining caramel over it all.

Bourke Street Bakery Crazy Mousse-Cake

I've tried many a chocolate cake recipe in my time- whatever 'time' one gets from 16 years' living -but this one intrigued me in particular. All the way from Australia, it is, put crudely, a mixture of melted chocolate, cocoa powder, whipped eggs, whipped cream and -wait for it -curdled milk. (I'll leave it to someone else to devise the science behind that one.)

The first half an hour making it is spent melting, stirring, whipping and beating (you must try to ignore the gradual build-up of dirty utensils by the sink). Once all the components are prepared, you have the sensuous fun of combining them all into one bowl- gently folding in the fluffy meringue and delicate cream; watching the dark brown, pale yellow and white streaks mix into a light-cocoa shade. The batter is cooked gently and emerges from the oven as a towering souffle before sinking into deep, dark fudginess. This mousse-cake was described by a friend as '100% taste- no substance' and I'll add in agreement that, although light, it is decadently rich.

Here's a link to the recipe as posted on another fabulous food blog, Almost Bourdain, on which are further (arguably higher-quality) photos as well as a bit of background on Bourke Street Bakery, the creator of this cake.

http://almostbourdain.blogspot.com/2010/01/bourke-street-bakerys-flourless.html

Happy (Belated) New Year!

A little later than customary, perhaps, but I wish everyone a happy new year and hope that, by now, you're well into the swing of things following the Christmas slump. Over the new year weekend, we not only welcomed in 2011 but also celebrated the birthdays of my grandma and uncle...high time for family feasting, I'm sure you'd agree, and here are some photos of the meals we enjoyed. My auntie's a bit of a whizz in the kitchen (i.e. you know you're gonna get a good feeding in this household) and the greatest comfort in their home is the warm, promising scent of the next meal being made. I aspire to create the same atmosphere in my future home.

By the way, you may be interested to know that my new year's resolution for this blog is to wave off laziness and welcome in adventurous...er, ness in venturing to post more of my own recipes, sharing with you both the delights and disasters which emerge from our kitchen. Posts may be brief and/or sparse at times, particularly during exam period (!), but I look to make whatever I publish more entertaining and enticing than a picture of our latest Sunday roast, or the success of my most recent attempt at making brioche.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Festive Feasting

Fond foodie memories are held of the meals we ate this Christmas Day; photos are above and descriptions below:

Breakfast was scrambled egg and smoked salmon (seasoned with punchy black peppercorns and pungeant juniper berries) on toasted soda bread; having wholemeal meant that our first meal was easily digested during the morning in preparation for...

Lunch, where we swayed slightly from the traditional by serving roasted duck (which in my opinion has the crispiest and most delicious skin of all birds) along with a platter of curly Cumberland sausages and stuffed chicken thighs wrapped in crispy dry-cured bacon. Golden roasties, a colourful array of vegetables and flavoursome home-made condiments completed the spread. We served two desserts: an apple and mincemeat tart filled generously with sweet, spicy fruit as well as a rich chocolate log (thoroughly cracked and dusted with seasonal sugar-snow), after which...

Well, we all just about collapsed from cooking/eating such a lot, curing post-break peckishness by picking from whatever was in reaching distance (i.e. the annual Celebrations box). Altogether a culinary triumph; I hope that you, too, enjoyed your Christmas meal and, what's more, reap the benefits of all the leftovers for the next few days!

An Unopened Present

A very Merry Christmas to all the readers of my blog! Of course, I'll soon post pictures of the food we've eaten today, but first I'd like to share a Christmas message that I received this morning...

So, have you opened all of your Christmas presents already? Whether or not it's bare under the tree, there may be a Christmas present that remains unopened. The Lord God offers each one of us the most precious Christmas gift of new life in His Son, Jesus (you know, the guy whose birthday it is today), and it's certainly not one to be left in paper and ribbon. This Christmas time, contemplate what is being offered to you by the birth of Jesus, and don't leave the greatest gift of all unopened!

Enjoy the festivities, everyone.

Welcome Table (with a Bonus)

I had a few friends over for a sleepover last night (yes, I know, very teenage of me!) and lay out this (relatively) humble spread of easy finger-food*. I like to call it a Welcome Table, which is essentially the same as a buffet, but more homely and somewhat less seventies. Besides, I'm not one for cocktail sticks or vol-au-vents; I keep catering rustic and simple, not least because I'm unashamed to say that I haven't the patience for precise presentation.

*Ok, so perhaps I set my guests a challenge in serving them puff-pastry pizza to devour sans forchette. Nevertheless, it was a delicious addition to the Welcome Table and the pastry base was pleasantly light (which is the relief one needs when faced with a hefty loaf of warm garlic bread alongside, see above).

I made a simple tomato sauce for the pizza, starting by gently frying a red onion and a chopped garlic clove in a glug of olive oil. I then added two tins of tomatoes and brought the mixture to the boil, before simmering on a low heat. You keep on cooking the sauce until there is no more watery juice sitting on the surface, but before anything sticks or black flecks start to appear (!). What you are doing is letting the water in the tomatoes steam off to leave a richer, thicker, more concentrated sauce, which can be spread onto a pizza base or stirred into hot pasta. For the pizza above, I rolled out a packet of puff pastry (supermarkets make it so well that we never feel the need to) onto a baking tray, spreading the sauce and strewing ripped-up chunks of mozzarella on top of this, before baking the whole thing on 220 C/Gas 7 until the cheese was bubbling and the flaky crusts were lightly browned.

The pizza tasted just as good grilled for lunch today, and we eggy-fried leftover slices of garlic bread for a simple supper with a pungeant twist. Therein lies the bonus of the Welcome Table- fill it in abundance and it'll keep you filled up the following day!

Christmas day came early for us this lunchtime, as we sat down to enjoy this year's festive family meal (on the 25th we will be one member short). We ate roasted duck confit (whose meat had been cooked slowly in duck fat beforehand, thus giving it a richer flavour and wonderful tenderness). The fat from the confit was used again, this time in cooking rustic little roast potatoes (smaller chunks= larger total surface area= more crispy bits), and alongside these we served up sweet and tangy stewed red cabbage, brussel spouts and bread sauce.

I didn't have bags of time to make dessert, but it's amazing what you can come up with in under ten minutes using an egg, caster sugar, dark rum, Bourbon brandy, a jug of cream and the culinary instructions of Nigella Lawson. Tiny coffee-cupfuls of eggnog syllabub made a delightful end to the meal, giving us something sweet to finish off with no more strain on the stomach.

Now normally, I am all about the food, yet it must be shared that the real treat of today was the magic of gushing snowfall outside. It certainly gave the meal a special, festive touch...that, and having the whole family together for one of the last times this year.

The countdown to Christmas continues and there will be further festive foodie fun to be had this coming week...so who's game?!

Christmas Lunch Prep.

This duck confit, above, is the starting point of our family Christmas lunch, being eaten today as this is the only weekend that we shall all be together. Roasted limbs half-buried in fat sounds (and looks) a little gruesome, but this is a method of preserving which will give the meat a wonderful buttery taste and unbeatable tenderness.

This will also be the first meal cooked by our new oven, which arrived yesterday. After 25 years of faithful service by our old Cannon cooker, we've upgraded to a shiny black (still gas-run, 'cause it's the best way) Hotpoint. So far, it's taken Mum fifteen minutes to work out how to power up the hob and, having used only four front knobs and no digital timer with the Cannon, I think we're all a little bit daunted by its technology. Nevertheless, we hope to come up with a nice festive meal in the next few hours, of which I'll post some pictures once it's made.

Brie and Bacon Butty

School's shut for a snow day- hooray!

Having frolicked about outside for a little while (my stamina for cold weather being pretty poor), I came inside to have some lunch. This weather calls for hot, tasty fill-me-ups like this oven-baked brie and bacon baguette, see above. Baking it makes the bread warm and crispy, and the creamy cheese comes out moreishly melted; it's a sandwich to really get your teeth into. What makes it so delicious is its contrasts: the mellow softness of the brie against the saltiness of the bacon; the crisp crust of the bread and it's chewy inside against the slight toughness of the meat. Simple, hot and hearty: job done.

Suet-crust Pie and Christmas Cakes

Sunday lunch this week was a proper hearty lamb pie. Hearty because it was packed full of slow-cooked meat, root vegetables, potatoes and pearl barley (if you haven't yet caught the buzz of this medieval grain, you're missing out). To top it all off (quite literally), a suet-pastry crust that was just the right balance of crispy and crumbly; so good, we now want to suet-crust everything we eat- suet-crusted pasties, suet-crusted apples, suet-crusted turkey on Christmas day...(joke).

Speaking of Christmas- excitement, excitement- festive food preparation has kicked off in our kitchen, involving lots of lovely ingredients that come together to create those unmistakable December smells. Already this week I've come home to a batch of stewed red cabbage, fragrant with apples, raisins and mixed spice; this will be stored away in the freezer to be reheated for Christmas dinner (if not before). Today, a bowl stood on the kitchen-top filled with the magical mixture of dried fruit, orange zest and spices all steeped in rum...I'm afraid I couldn't resist a healthy spoonful straight away! What was left has since been made into mother-and-child-esque Christmas cakes (above right), which shall be wrapped up and fed regularly with further rum, ready to be served in fat slices alongside hot cups of tea.

Ah, the Christmas spirit is upon me, and I won't resist it any longer!

Domestic Daddy

My fabulous father took to the kitchen yesterday evening, proving to us ladies of the house that he is more than just a handsome face. No sooner had he finished being up a ladder, painting windowsills, than he set about kneading dough (see above), frying minced lamb and mashing potatoes. The finished products: a stella batch of bread and a proper Shepherd's Pie. His culinary capacity didn't quite stretch to making a pudding on top of this, though, so I put together some mini pear crumbles to shove in the oven whilst the bread finished baking. Very tasty the pie was, too, and we ate his wholemeal rolls with jam and a big jug of coffee for breakfast this morning. I wouldn't go so far as to deem my father to be a domestic god, but he's certainly proved that something good can come of his being in the kitchen!

Lonely Fruit

There seems to be a strange trend in this household at the moment, whereby we find single fruits lying around on the dining-room table or in the fridge which need finishing up before their flesh goes all shrivelled and furry-green. I used up a wayward pear in the crumbles last night and 'found a home' for a lonely, zestless orange in today's lunchtime pudding. Perhaps this phrase creates too caring a connotation, for in reality I sliced up the poor thing and lay it on top of an almond sponge. Still, it had to be used up somehow and the sponge did make a lovely desert; so delicious, in fact, that I'll give you the recipe in case you, too, have a solitary citrus fruit to 'give a home'.

Lonely-Orange and Almond Sponge:

4 oz./ 115 g unsalted butter, softened

4 oz./ 115 g caster sugar

2 eggs

3 oz./ 85 g ground almonds

1 oz./ 30 g plain flour

1/2 tsp. baking powder

1 orange, zested then peeled, with the flesh sliced into thin rounds

1 tsp. almond essence (optional)

1 tbsp. flaked almonds (optional)

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C/ Gas Mark 3.

Cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well; stir in the almond essence, if using, and orange zest. Fold in the ground almonds, sifted flour and baking powder. Tip the mixture into a greased tin/pie dish (20-25cm in diameter) and lay the orange rounds on top, scattering over the flaked almonds also, if using.

Bake the sponge for 20 minutes; because the orange slices will leak their juice, the sponge will need to be baked for another 10-15 mins covered with tin foil, to stop it from burning. Serve warm, with crème fraîche or cold, with a cup of tea.

One for the Weekend

Winter gives me a sweet tooth, and if you too are looking for something simple, speedy and sugary to devour in chunks (at intervals, or in one sitting) over the weekend, here's the thing to cure your craving. Nigella's (need I mention her second name? We all know exactly who I'm talking about? Good....) recipe for Rocky Road involves no real cooking, uses just five ingredients and includes no nasty surprises (i.e. raisins or nuts- always controversial subjects). I made a tray of this for my biology class last week (which partakes in the educational revolution that is Cake Friday) and it went down a treat; add the following to tomorrow's shopping list:

125g unsalted butter (i.e. half a packet)
300g dark chocolate
3 tbsp golden syrup
200g rich tea biscuits
100g mini marshmallows

Melt the butter, chocolate and the golden syrup over a moderate heat on the hob. Bash the biscuits up in a sturdy plastic bag until some are crumbs, but a few bigger bits remain. Once the melted mixture is all stirred together nicely, add the biscuits and marshmallows. Tip into a lightly greased tin and leave in the fridge for at least two hours, before cutting up into as-big-as-you-like slices. Dust with icing sugar if you want to be fancy, although it usually just annoys me to have powder all over my fingers...

Have a nice weekend, everyone!

Pumpkin Treats

Sorry it's been a while- I've had the small matter of starting A Levels to contend with...this may well become a bi-annual blog...

It's been Hallowe'en this weekend and, although I don't celebrate the occasion itself, I have a particular fondness for its culinary symbol: the colourful, pungent, plump-yet-sturdy pumpkin. Even the name cannot be said without a jolly little bounce, and for all the joy it brings it turns out to be pretty versatile cookery ingredient, as well. We had delievered to our door on Friday night a hefty bucket-load of pumpkin flesh (a great convenience for us cooks is the tradition of pumpkin-carving- leave it to someone creative to do the prep. work!) and spent all day Saturday baking pumpkin cupcakes and cheesy pumpkin scones.

Such was the mountain of pumpkin that our two pairs of hands were not enough to shift it in its entirety; nevertheless, the fruits of our labour made a nice spread for the following day, when my church set up a market-stall and gave out to passers-by our pumpkin treats (no tricks, unless our creations weren't as delicious as we'd thought!...) Our scones and cupcakes were accompanied by pumpkin tartlets (maple syrup in the filling with a glazed pecan on top) and hot pumpkin soup- the latter a particular hit with the public as they stood shivering in the rain.

Thanks to my friend Debbie for the photos- our only decent camera is away at the moment with my father in India...it should be back for my next post, for which I hope not to leave you waiting another month!

Chicken, Cous Cous and Chocolate Cake

Yesterday was a busy one. At the end of it, my family and I sat slumped in the living room when a minor bombshell was suddenly dropped by my father: we were to welcome a guest to lunch tomorrow; no-one familiar, but one whom we'd never met before and thus called for a special effort ot be made in order for us to create a good first-impression. 'Lunch tomorrow?!' my sister, my mother and I questioned indignantly, 'But we haven't planned anything nice!' At once, like the onset of some culinary mission, we began a quick brainstorm and supermarket-dash to discover all stops that could be pulled out for our surprise visitor. Cookery books lay strewn and open on top of tables, and our thoughts were filled that night with all that needed to be cooked the next day.

The results of this effort, I now tell you with a satisfied stomach, weren't half bad. Our kitchen has been in a flurry of activity since last night until just over an hour ago, when my mother and I presented to our diners a spread of roast chicken, cous cous-stuffed peppers, new potatoes, ratatouille, mixed vegetables, herby-yoghurt dressing -see above- and gravy (yes, I too thought that combination was a little strange). Granted, the mix of flavours and cuisines hadn't been so thoroughly thought out as past meals, but every individual dish was very tasty and our guest, a friend of a friend from Romania, enjoyed them very much, as well as experiencing his first taste of a sweet pepper (I wonder, don't they have such things in his country?).

For dessert, I made a flourless chocolate cake covered (or rather dolloped-on- and-smothered) with rich chocolate ganache- nothing fancy (then was not the time for fiddly confectionary) but jolly nice. A light, sweet flavour it had not, but an accompaniment of fresh blueberries and pouring cream (Mum's ideas) addressed the balance.

There you are, you see- our household has proved that it can cope with catering for unexpected guests (mind you, that's no invitation!).

Bikinis Bite the Dust

The weather in England grows increasingly autumnal; I hear cries of 'sod the diet!' as the opportunity for donning a bikini dims and we all pull on wooly jumpers to shield us from the howling wind. I was at a friend's house on Wednesday evening to a) have dinner and b) forage around in his neighbour's vegetable patch (with the owner's consent, of course). Having ventured out into heavy rain and picked a generous crop of tomatoes and root vegetables, we were in need of something warm and sweet to take our minds off our soggy feet. I prepared this easy-peasy chocolate & peanut-butter sauce and spooned it over vanilla ice-cream, creating a fussiless comfort dessert. The sauce is adapted from a Nigel Slater recipe; I have reduced the ingredients list to just four items, three of which may well exist in your household anyday.

Ingredients:
180g dark chocolate
2 tbsp. golden syrup
2 tbsp. peanut butter (quantity can be varied, according to your taste)
Milk

Method:
1. Melt the chocolate and peanut butter in a bain-marie, cooking gently and without the bottom of the bowl touching the water beneath it.
2. Stir in the golden syrup, reserving some if the mixture gets too thick to stir comfortably.
3. Stir in splashes of milk, little be little, until a smooth, glossy sauce is achieved that dribbles in thick ribbons off the spoon.

Substitute unsalted butter for the peanut-butter if you'd like a simpler, less sickly sauce. The end result will always be calorific but, with swimsuits back in the drawer, there's now much less pressure to have such a defined figure.

Different Sizes, Same Passion #3

The final food fix in this particular trilogy is the smallest and, in my own soppy judgment, the sweetest of the lot. A sprightly Frenchman selling fresh fruit and vegetables is a quintessential image of l'hexagon, to which I travelled just over a month ago, yet this particular vendor was not sandwiched between fresh bread and seafood stalls in a bustling city market. Rather, he was set up on his own in a small town car park; as vibrant in spirit as the colour of his carrots and tomatoes, despite his lack of company or the rain that fell from cloudy skies. It's a shame that, already rushing to catch a train to Paris, I could not stop and buy something from this admirable chap, but he was more than happy for me to take his picture (I couldn't think quickly enough to ask him if he would mind appearing on the internet!).

The produce did look delicous, though, and was worthy enough for Monsieur to sell unaccompanied in the best spot he could find, albeit with petrol fumes wafting past!

So, there we are, three places that differ in form but not in function, as each provides the customer with food that is tasty and rustic; grown and sold with pride to us who will cook and eat it with pleasure. I hope this has inspired you to look for the likes of it in your area.

Different Sizes, Same Passion #2

The second food establishment; this time a little closer to home as I share my recent visit to a local farm shop in Essex, my home county. Cressing Park Farm Shop is a small setup, tucked away next to the agricultural plot of land on which some of shop's produce- meat, eggs, fruit, veg. and dairy- is grown or reared; and if the food's not from the site itself, it's most definitely locally sourced, such as the fresh bread delivered daily from Braintree company Legg's Bakery, along with the vast array of chutneys and honey from Coggeshall and Silver End respectively.

I spoke to Fiona, the front lady of the shop that day, and asked her what's so special about the food that she sells. Without hesitation, she replied, "It's all so fresh." And that makes for the best taste? "Exactly." Fiona was also keen to promote the role of the Farm Shop in the community, holding regular events on the site for local families or schools.

What's more, affirmation of the high quality of produce and provision comes through the shop's becoming a finalist in the Essex Food & Drink Awards 2010.

It's a shame that time and availability constraints deem wholly relying on the local farm shop impractical; neverthless it's refreshing to know that, less than ten minutes from the supermarkets in a commercial town centre, there's a rural alternative where buying your groceries means supporting local trade and fuelling a community passion for food- something that, I'm sure you'll agree with me, should exist in every county.

For more information on events or shop produce, visit http://www.cressingparkfarmshop.co.uk/