Easter egg banana bread!

Spring is here! Officially, if not all that evidently…

And there’s nothing like spring to conjure up images of all that’s joyful; bleating, awkwardly leaping lambs, blousy bright yellow daffodils, splurges of colour appearing out of nowhere on grass verges and under trees, gently purple swathes of bluebells carpetting woodland floors and bubbling birdsong filtering through the newly green leaves.

With spring comes Easter, and whether it’s a meaningful religious occasion or just an excuse to gorge on chocolate, there’s something so homely and comforting about tucking into toasted hot cross buns slathered with dripping butter and homemade simnel cake topped with yellow marzipan – I always insisted on an extra marzipan disciples on the cake due to extreme sorrow over the fate of poor old Judas – and of course a glut of Easter eggs.

It’s long been a mystery to me why Easter egg chocolate tastes so much better than regular bars – can anyone help me out here? There’s no real reason I can think of why that should be the case, but it’s just, well…better isn’t it?

Last year I found myself with a clutch of uneaten mini chocolate eggs, and loathe to have them lying around, taunting me with their gaudily innocent pink, blue and green wrappers, I decided to team them up in that deliciously moreish combo, banana and milk chocolate, and having rather painstakingly unwrapped and chopped in half each egg, I turned them into Easter Egg Banana Bread.

There are no words for the deliciousness of gently melting Easter egg against baked, caramelised banana in a crumbling, impatiently carved out slice of warm loaf. And if you’re not the type to recognise the concept of leftover Easter eggs, I suggest buying extra, especially for the purpose. After all, it’ a whole year until the chocolate harvest tastes as good again!

What you need:

285g plain flour
1 a teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
110g butter
1/2 a teaspoon salt
200g caster sugar
25g dark brown sugar
2 eggs
4 ripe or overipe bananas (mashed)
85 mls of milk with a squeeze of lemon juice in it (a handy substitute for buttermilk which can be hard to find)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Plus…as many Easter eggs as you deem appropriate.

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C and grease a loaf tin – I put a square of greaseproof paper on the bottom too for extra non-stick power.
 
Use an electric whisk to whisk the butter (room temperature – it’s really hard if it’s straight from the fridge) with the sugar until it’s nice and fluffy.
 
Add the eggs, mashed banana, milk mix and vanilla extract and whisk together.
 
Sift and then fold in the flour and stir through the broken up/chopped Easter eggs. 
 
Tip it into the tin and sprinkle a bit of brown sugar on the top for a deliciously crispy little bit of topping.
 
Bake for about an hour. My oven takes about an hour and a quarter, but all ovens are different. Give it at least 40/50 minutes so that it’s well and truly risen before popping a skewer or a knife in it. If it comes out clean, it’s done. If there’s still mixture on it, pop it back in.
 
When it’s golden and no batter sticks, take it out and leave it for a minute or so. Then tip it out – best way it to put a plate over then flip it upside down and tap the bottom. Run a sharp knife round the edge first to loosen it if you need to. Then when it’s out (upside down) just flip it again onto a rack to cool. Or another plate if you don’t have one.
 
Tadah! Don’t cut it while it’s still really hot or it will just crumble apart. But do really, it’s too good not to.

Happy Easter baking!

Leftovers soup

I’ve always been pretty good at not throwing food away and using every last scrap. Growing up in Kenya we didn’t have labels and sell by dates on our market bought fruit and veg, fish from the fisherman who hawked it up to our garden gate or the clanging tin churns of milk from over the road. We sniffed, squished, mused, washed and made a decision based on our food’s edibility using our eyes, noses and tastebuds. And it still makes me squirm and bite my tongue when I see friends glance at the label and declare food to be out of date, binning it without even removing it from its vaccuum packed prison to check whether it’s useable or not.

But lately I’ve become even more militant in an attempt to both save cash and assauge my conscience about not being a naughty food waster.

The funny thing is, the more you use your scraps, the less you can bear to throw anything away – you become so conscious of your utter wastefulness and if you’re anything like me, begin to feel overly emotional about chucking out those poor wrinkly carrots, sniffing sadly a bit as you accept that that waterlogged, really quite black basil is actually completely disgusting and can’t be used, and throwing the hard, rindy ends of cheese into soups rather than throwing them. The idea of buying all these gluts of food only to throw half of it away just seems even more wanton and grotesque.

This week I had a plan to make some soup for my lunch the next day, but didn’t get a chance to get to the grocer. I knew I had some veggies knocking around, so set to the task of conjuring something lovely out of whatever was lurking in my fridge and cupboards. I came up with this, and it was so pleasing that I thought I’d blog the recipe. The red pepper and orange butternut squash flash made for a deliciously vibrant colour and the heat of the chilli is lovely with the roast squash, the potatoes just adding a welcome bit of silkiness and substance. It’s unlikely that you’ll have exactly the same ingredients lying around, but hopefully it might inspire you to skip the supermarket, dig out those sprouting potatoes and wilting spinach, lightly squidgesome pepper or green-centred garlic, cut out the dodgy bits and cook up something delicious – with all the added virtue of knowing you haven’t gluttonously splurged your money only to bin it as soon as it’s not quite perfect.

Lovely, healthy soup of goodness.

What I had:

One butternut squash that needed a 50p sized black bit cutting out of it

Half a slightly tired looking red onion

One rather sad looking red pepper that needed a couple of squidgy bits chopped out

A few cloves of garlic

Two small, sprouting and just a bit soft potatoes

Two spoons of bouillon

A sprinkling of salt

A good slug of olive oil

Some dried chilli flakes

Whatever herbs you fancy – I chucked in a bit of cumin and it was pretty nice

 

What I did

Loosely chopped the squash, pepper and onion, squashed the garlic, doused it in oil, salt, a bit of chilli and some cumin seeds and slung it in the oven at gas mark 6 for about 40 minutes.

After about half an hour of cooking, chucked the chopped potatoes in with about a litre of stock made from the bouillon and boiled until they were soft.

Walloped the roast veggies into the pan with the cooked potatoes and stock, blitzed, ground some pepper over the top from my ever so pleasing Sergeant Pepper mill.

The best pepper mill in the world?

DONE.

On healthy, cheap, virtuous batch of lunchtime soup. Delicious.

Penny stretching power daal…

I don’t know about you lot, but I am feeling bloody poor this year. I’ve been feeling poor for quite sometime. Pretty much my entire career as a journalist. But recently I decided that enough was enough, and although I can hardly be described as living an extravagant lifestyle, savings were going to be made where they could be.

Who knows, perhaps I’ll finally scrape together enough pennies to tick off one or two of the places on my ‘to visit’ list, which is so dusty and untouched that I’ve almost given up on ever leaving these shores.

Most of my outgoings are non-negotiable in their cost. I don’t think my gas supplier would be all that understanding of my request for a discount so I can have a holiday. But food is the one area that I’ve discovered I can really slice a good chunk off if I’m careful. If I make time to visit the greengrocer on the weekend and stock up on fruit and veg, stick to a rigidly planned weekly menu and top up on my essentials – pasta, flour etc from Asda instead of Sainsburys, it really makes a difference. I’ve been raiding the reduced section and filling up the freezer with knockdown goodies and batches of soup and the exciting news is, for the first month in absolutely ages, I didn’t hit my overdraft limit this month! Which feels like a pretty enormous success.

This recipe is perfect for the pennies – so perfect in fact that my boss got me to write it up for our food section, which was quite exciting as I normally stick within the confines of my arts and music pages. It’s also wholesome, hearty and filling, not to mention ridiculously virtuous. The beautiful thing about daal is that you can chuck in whatever vegetables you’ve got lying around – all you really need are the lentils, spices and onion, and beyond that it’s up to you. Stick in some potato if you like it chunkier, or some mushrooms for a nice little robust dash of flavour. This particular combination came from a joyful sibling culinary fest when I went home over Christmas. It was a bit of joint effort from my brother, sister and me on an evening when we really fancied something healthy and tasty and came up with this. The flatbreads were a later experiment, but they’re so easy and tasty I seriously recommend being brave and taking them on. They don’t even take any extra time as you can knock them up while the daal and rice are cooking.

Here it is:

Aubergine and spinach daal

Gorgeous, healthy, cheap goodness.

Feeds four hungry ones or does about five lunch portions

What you need:

1 aubergine
1 bag of spinach
250g lentils
1 onion
3 cloves garlic
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teasoon garam masala
1 teaspoon turmeric
Half a litre vegetable stock
1 chilli
1.5 teaspoons fresh chopped ginger
Salt to season
A good slug of your oil of choice – olive, sunflower or vegetable
1 tin tomatoes

For the flatbreads

100g wholemeal flour
50 mls water
1 tablespoon olive oil
Half a teaspoon cumin seeds (or any spices/seasonings you like)
Pinch of salt

Serve with natural yogurt and brown rice

What to do:

First things first, slice the aubergine, brush with oil and a little salt and grill both sides until they’re golden brown. Grilling the aubergine brings out a really juicy, smoky flavour and gives the flesh a lovely mushy texture. Lay the cooked slices on some kitchen roll and put to one side. You’ll add them later – but it’s nice to get the rest of the daal a little further along first so you don’t overcook them.
Heat up the oil in a large pan and throw in the cumin seeds, garam masala and turmeric – be careful not to burn the spices, it’ll ruin the taste. Give them a little heat and add the crushed garlic, chopped chilli, ginger and chopped onion. Cook until the onions are translucent.
Pour in the lentils and give them a stir in the base so that they’re well coated with flavour before stirring in the stock and tomatoes. It’ll look pretty watery but lentils soak up a lot of water and you can always cook it down/add a bit more water to get the consistency right. Bring it to the boil and turn down to a simmer.
I’d stick the rice on at this point, brown rice takes quite a while and it’s annoying to forget and have to wait for it.
Now it’s just a matter of letting it gently bubble away, so let’s have a look at the flatbreads…
The amounts used here made four mini flatbreads, perfect for two people.
Weigh out the flour and add the water, oil and seasoning in a mixing bowl, with your hands bring it together until you have a good ball of dough.
Knead it on a clean surface for a couple of minutes, split it into four little balls and roll out flat. When you’ve got about five minutes to go on the daal, give them a few minutes each side on a hot griddle pan. I love the charred stripes a griddle pan gives them, but if you don’t have one just dry-fry them. Lovely.
Meanwhile, once the daal is looking good and thick and the lentils are tender, add the aubergine, rinse your spinach if it needs it and stir that in too, letting it wilt into the daal – although I try not to overcook it. It’s nice when it keeps a bit of perk to the leaf.
Dish it up with the nutty brown rice, a good dollop of natural yoghurt and your flatbreads. Delicious. Not only does it keep for a good few days, but the flavours of the spices will come out even better the next day, perfect to last you the week for lunch and save you those sandwich pennies.

Oh, and here’s the cheap eats feature which ran in the Colchester Gazette and the Basildon and Southend Echo. Rather amusing that journalist was judged to be in the same poverty bracket as student and self-employed single mum. Not to mention depressingly accurate…

Hello autumn…hello best soup in the world…

Blimey! I was only gone a week. But parking up today after work there was a definite drift of yellow leaves in the gutter down Avenue Terrace. And walking Lola in the park I could’ve done with a proper jumper instead of the jersey that’s been seeing me through the colder days of the sorry excuse of a summer we’ve had.

I’m not a fan of the dark days, occasional watery sunlight and freezing rain that autumn brings, but there is one big reason to love autumn – it’s the perfect excuse to curl up on the sofa in a big woolly jumper and gorge on soups and stews, fluffy dumplings in savoury broth and chunky sauces.

Having just got back from Kenya I was having a bit of a hankering for some of the mouthwatering coastal flavours I’d been scoffing for the last week – and I decided to try my hand at a coconut, chili and sweet potato concoction. I didn’t see how throwing pretty much all my favourite flavours into a pot: chili, coconut, garlic, cumin and sweet potato could possibly let me down but something especially magical must have happened in that pot when I wasn’t looking because the result was even better than I’d imagined, and there’ll most definitely be a few more vats of this one made before summer comes around again.

The velvety caramel of the sweet potato and mild milkiness of the coconut means you can sightly go to town on the stronger flavours, with the heat of the chili and the warm cumin coming through perfectly and the pungent garlic giving it a nice base. Obviously adjust the chili to your tastes – I went for a powerful little one which gave such a good warm scorch over the creamy coconut, but go for something milder if you prefer. I also used a particularly delicious bulb of smoked garlic, which my housemate Laura almost threw out because she thought it looked mouldy….I’m running low and I’m not quite sure how I’m going to go back onto regular garlic after those juicy, pungent cloves. If anyone finds another, put it in the post will you?

This soup was particularly perfect for me tonight – not only did it have all the warming, comforting qualities of a good autumnal soup, but a tantalising promise of Kilifi beaches, sunshine and warm coastal chilling to last me a little while longer through the impending cold autumn nights.

Comfort in a bowl.

What you need:

One onion

Three cloves of garlic

One chili – as mild or strong as you like

Two sweet potatos

Cumin seeds

Olive oil

Vegetable stock (I like Bouillon)

One tin of coconut milk

Sea salt

What you need to do:

Chop one sweet potato and shove in the oven (about gas mark 6) with some olive oil, salt and a sprinking of cumin seeds. It’ll get that amazing caramelly flavour as it roasts that’ll make the soup just that little bit richer and smoother.

Heat a good generous slug of olive oil in a big saucepan and throw in the chopped onion, chopped chili, crushed garlic and another sprinkle of cumin seeds with a pinch of sea salt. Once the onion’s gone tranluscent add the other sweet potato, chopped up nicely.

Boil the kettle, make half a litre of stock and pour it over the pan (don’t forget your roasting potatos – give them a turn every now and again.) Bring the stock to the boil and turn down to a simmer.

Simmer for about 20 minutes – or until a knife slides straight through the sweet potato easily. Make sure the one in the oven is properly cooked as well and add that to the pan.

Add the coconut milk and give it a good stir, breaking up the lumps of separated coconut cream as it warms up.

Blitz the lot in the blender and garnish with a few cumin seeds. My fabulous brother also brought me a precious tin of wonderful Spanish olive oil that I can’t seem to stop drizzling (frugally) on everything. So if you happen to have one too, go wild and spare an oily swirl. Deliciousness in a bowl!

Maybe I can bear autumn after all.

Hx

What do you do with rhubarb?

There’s nothing I like better than foraging for food, picking blackberries or stumbling across a clutch of wild strawberries – or even better being presented with a fresh crop of goodies from someone’s garden – and turning it into something lovely. I’ve been known to find blackberries on a Basildon industrial estate and turn them into crumble (after a good soak in salty water to get rid of the lorry fumes!) And happy were the days when we discovered a bush in our overgrown garden in Birmingham, which come the Autumn was positively groaning with slightly cleaner versions of the buggers.

Sometimes it’s even more exciting trying to decide just what to do with your bowls and bowls of berries or slightly bruised windfall apples than doing it the other way around and buying your ingredients to suit whatever it is you’ve decided to make.

I was faced with just such a challenge after a trip to see my Sussex friends Adele and Michael saw me wandering barefoot around their garden on a Sunday morning, admiring Michael’s rhubarb. A fine, healthy specimen, flushed to a perfect deep, luscious pink it truly was a stalk to be admired. Now REALLY! You horrid people. Sensing my admiration,  the generous pair tore me off a few stalks, all good and muddy and fresh, to take home with me back to Essex – what a lucky girl.

But then of course the dilemma was what on earth to do with them. It wasn’t a lack of ideas but rather a surplus of inspiration that didn’t match my limited glut of rhubarb that kept the tempting stalks sitting on my counter for some time.

The glory of rhubarb is it’s frank refusal to be sweetened, while pairing deliciously with soft custard or sprinkled sugar, drizzled honey or sweetened cream, it ferociously maintains it’s tart tingle. I had dreams of stewing it with raisins, honey and spices and topping the lot with a floating cloud of meringue, and I had an enthusiastic take up on Twitter of divine sounding suggestions including poaching it with ginger and topping it with cream, of course turning into that queenly pud the crumble and a very wicked sounding cocktail of reduced rhubarb juice topped up with prosecco – which will certainly be sipped at some point in the future.

I’m a sucker for a cake though, especially a wholesome, fruit-laced loaf. Not a fruitcake as such, but crumble topped apple cakes and strawberry and nectarine muffins, that kind of thing. And in the end it was to great a temptation to resist. I skimmed a few other recipes for inspiration, borrowed some bits from my trusty banana loaf recipe and cobbled together some ideas along with some twists and tweaks of my own and came up with this. I think it still needs a little work – I think honey would be a good, warm sweetener, and maybe a dash of buttermilk (or – good substitute, milk with a squeeze of lemon) somewhere along the line. I’ll let you know how I get on, but for now I’ll leave you with this squidgy, moreish, wholesome lump of a loaf with tingly nuggets of ginger peeking out like amber, and pale pink rhubarb streaking across like a sunset. Enjoy!

Rhubarb and ginger loaf

The fresh and fragrant loaf

You’ll need:

8oz plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

A pinch of salt

About five stalks of rhubarb

Around 4 oz of crystalised ginger

4 oz butter (room temp)

2 oz caster sugar and 2 oz dark sugar (The ratio is up to you really, I always like to mix in some dark when it involves fruit – I like the way it slightly caramelises)

2 eggs (beaten)

You’ll need to:

Grease your loaf tin and heat the oven up to gas mark 4

Sift your flour and add the butter, baking powder and salt – mix it with your fingers as it’s quite a dry mix and a bit messy to do with a whisk, the rhubarb provides a lot of moisture as it bakes. Alternatively, put it in a food processor.

Beat your eggs in and add the sugar and the chopped rhubarb and ginger.

Pop in it your lined tin and bake for around 50 minutes. Poke a skewer/knife in to see if it’s cooked or not.

Allow to cool a little in the tin before turning out. Delicious! The warm spice of the ginger with the gooey, tart squidge of the rhubarb is an irresistible combo, and the dark sugar caramelises it slightly – you can adjust the dark/caster sugar ratio as suits your tastes. You can even sprinkle some on the top before you bake for an extra crunch. I can’t help thinking I’ll add a little honey next time – and it would also be delicious served as a dessert with some lovely honey-sweetened whipped cream.

A pinky, golden slice of summer jolliness.

My love for rhubarb has well and truly been re-kindled, and I can’t wait to get stuck into some of the fabulous suggestions that came my way – it seems the humble pink stalks are a seriously well-loved summer ingredient.

Happy rhubarb times.

Hx

A Cornish wedding

Aaah Cornwall. The pace of life seems to slow down as soon as you cross the River Tamar, leaving Devon and the rest of England behind (everybody knows Cornwall isn’t really England). The space becomes wider – and wilder – hills open out into sweeping, gorse-covered slopes and houses become tinier and more crooked with every stop the train makes.

I have so many wondrous and magical memories of Cornwall. Although I only lived there for about eight months when I was on my journalism course, it always feels like home and I often think about rambling around over Gwithian collecting blackberries, ambling around St Ives clutching hot pasties, wild winter storms when cat fish would be flung from the harbour and onto the slippery, drenched path and jumping in the freezing November sea in a bikini – while everyone else was in wetsuits.

It was on my course that I met my darling friend Kate and her now husband Mike who’s wedding I travelled down for last weekend, and I have plenty of memories of turning up at their flat in my pyjamas to use their internet – until they moved out of town, maybe because of the repeated pyjama incidents? Riding massive, awkward-on-the-trot Rio while Kate laughed at me, taking their gangly, ginger, howling Shmoo (a leggy, lovely Hungarian vizsla) for his first explore of the beach, accidentally swimming with seals – fear! and drinking lots of tea. And Cornwall is one of those places that is so intrinsically linked with beautiful food – whether the inevitable golden, salty crust of a pasty or curl of clotted cream on a puffy, jam smeared scone or Mike’s homemade pizza, the beautiful fresh fish that is everywhere, baking crumble with fresh-picked blackberries or groaning with fullness outside St Ives’ finest Mexican joint after getting competitive with the food.

Since leaving Cornwall I visited it often from Brighton, a long but pretty drive down the coast, through blossom bubbling Dorset with it’s crumbling brick and neat thatched picture postcard cottages, into the West Country and down into Cornwall. But since I’ve been in Essex it really has been a coast to coast drive, from edge to tip, and I haven’t done it as often. This time I took the train and was lucky enough to completely by accident be on the same train from London as Kate’s sister, and although I’d never met her before there was no mistaking her, a carbon copy in looks, voice, mannerisms – it was totally disconcerting! But it was lovely to have company – and we even managed to put our joint charms towards engaging a gentlemanly escort from Par station to Fowey, after befriendly three relatively worse for wear chaps who were also in need of a taxi – and also on their way to a wedding. (Where comically the groom was even called Mike. But he was marrying Georgia, not Kate.) They paid, which was kind.

On arriving at the Old Quay House we were thoroughly disgusting from being squidged up on a cramped train for hours, and in dire need of a spruce up – but fortunately the hotel turned out to be the most beautiful and perfect place to shake off London grime and filth and breathe in fresh Cornwall jolliness. A haven of buttery biscuit and oatmeal with plenty of tall windows to let in the light, it couldn’t have been a more perfect antidote to the hassle of traveling.

Here’s the link: http://www.theoldquayhouse.com

The beautiful view from my window. Lushness!

Only one thing could have made our arrival happier – a gin and tonic on the terrace – and it was in my hands within moments of me walking out there feeling a million miles away from Essex. Heaven.

Our food adventures began at a bistro next door, which was kind enough to welcome in Shmoo too – although I think everywhere in Cornwall likes having dogs, if Lola ever heard about this she would be very determined to move there straight away. We were served up delicious wine and I enjoyed a very wonderful goats cheese souffle with caramelised onion marmalade and of course, being in Cornwall, had to go for crab, which I had topping a massive plate of linguine. Smothered in garlic and lemon and full of meaty crab chunks, it was utterly delicious – but sadly the service was so eyewateringly slow that non of us could quite bear to order dessert, by that time we were all yawning and restless, so we wandered back next door and contented ourselves with another drink instead.

And so onto the wedding day itself – which we woke up to in glorious sunshine, which was a happy surprise after gloomy forecasts. After, in my eyes anyway, the perfect breakfast of Greek yoghurt, granola and rhubarb, black coffee, apple juice and eggs royale – with generous rolls of thick smoked salmon beneath a perfectly poached egg, we wandered down to the beach through pretty, whitewashed Fowey. With Jubilee bunting fluttering in the breeze and roses tumbling down from steeply sloping gardens, it looked as happy as we were.

A sneaky peek out to sea…

When we arrived the sparkling sea was much too irresistible and fortunately for me, it turned out that Kate and Mike’s friend Emma is a kindred spirit in her matching inherent need to throw herself into any kind of water with the bounding enthusiasm of an overexcited labrador, and we even managed to drag Kate in for a pre-wedding dip. Of course then the boys had to prove their manliness and jump in off rocks…grrrrrr….it was a swampy, soaking walk back, but true to their faultless service, the staff at the Old Quay House didn’t bat an eyelid at our sandy puddles and instead collected our wet things to be freshly laundered and dried for the next morning.

After the entire wedding party jumped in their respective showers – accidentally leaving our bride shampooed up with no hot water – we waited, dolled up and somewhat less bedraggled than we’d been that morning for the most important part of our weekend.

The most beautiful thing about it being such a tiny wedding – just enough to fill the little hotel – was that every person there felt so connected to Mike and Kate. I’ve been to weddings where I’ve been stealthily trying to glance at my watch during the service and wondering when the toasting can begin, but everything about the wedding was so personal and perfect, and when Kate walked in, looking unbelievably angelic and beautiful – I think most of us half-expected her to come in wearing jodhpurs – I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t sniffling and wiping away tears. Even Shmoo was quiet – until the signing of the register when he clearly felt desperately outraged to be left out of something so important. I think he would have offered his pawprint if only that counted for a legal signature.

The weather held out for us to have mojitos and Pimms on the terrace…and more mojitos and Pimms…and more. In fact more than anyone should ever really try and drink over the course of several hours. Melting fishcake canapes and even popping candy truffles did little to soak up the ridiculous amounts of rum floating around, and it was an extremely merry party that sat down to the wedding breakfast.

I started with a dinky little salmon trio. Complete with parmesan crisp it was an elegant affair and as yummy as it looked. Unfortunately it didn’t last very long.

Deliciousness.

I made the classic error of filling up on bread in an attempt to slow down the effects of the rum and by now the wine, but even the bread was so chewy and delicious that it was hard not to. And I still managed a valiant effort on my sea bass main, which came with the most delicate little baby asparagus and bursting, juicy vine roasted tomatoes. It’s one of those dishes I keep thinking back to and wishing would just appear in my kitchen now. Gosh darn it.

Anyone want to try and recreate this for me? I’m hungry just looking.

And while we all tucked into our food, we couldn’t help having a rather cruel laugh at poor old Shmoo, who could only gaze longingly at Mike’s steak.

The food envy!

(This photo was actually taken by Emma and not me – so really you should go and read her delicious blog as well, especially if you adore gorgeous fabric-y, button-y, textile-y, sewing-y adventures: http://emmeloucreates.blogspot.co.uk)

We couldn’t feel too sorry for him though as the gorgeous manager Martin had made him up his very own canape, which he enjoyed furtively, not quite sure whether something so delicious should really be coming his way.

While we all discussed what we’d ordered for dessert with a fair amount of defensiveness and competition already mounting, Kate looked smug, and we found out why when it turned out that unable to decide she’d ordered an assiette of all three options -vanilla seed panna cotta, trio of rhubarb – with a mouthwatering brulee, ice cream and crumble – and a delicious silky dark chocolate tart with mango sorbet. She even managed to not burst out of her beautiful dress – at that point anyway.

Our turn to have food envy! (Another lovely Emma pic)

The rain finally came, but I don’t think anyone noticed. The wine kept flowing and guests straggled off slowly – what a treat to just have to wander upstairs instead of the usual sorry state of a taxi journey back.

I’m sorry(I’m not really) to admit that I did not go to bed. I stayed up late and danced the Charleston and the waltz to AC/DC and even later decided that it would be a good idea to shimmy over the gate and perform an elegant dive into the sea, complete with lots of squealing and giggles – made less elegant by the fact that I was only in my knickers, the slight opposite of our modesty earlier that morning where we’d gone in fully clothed and demure. But us swimmers had fun – until we were told the next day that the hotel had CCTV footage on the terrace, and no doubt had a good old laugh at their stupid, intoxicated, naked guests.

Creeping down the next morning I managed to just about enjoy another perfect breakfast of eggs florentine (not quite able to stomach the salmon again) and a pot of green tea – green to match my face I think. I wasn’t feeling very strong, but I finally managed to weepily drag myself from the warm embrace of Cornwall and a wonderful weekend and slump onto the long train back home. Please can I come again soon?

I scream, you scream, we all scream…etc….

Just a very short note, although I have eaten LOTS of wonderful food to blog about this weekend….for those of you lucky enough to live within spitting distance of lovely Leigh-on-Sea, you must pop in and sample an ice cream from divine new ice cream parlour Hokey Pokey.

According to them, ‘eccco un poco’ used to be the tempting cry that went up from early Italian ice cream vendors in London as they pushed their handcarts around the streets advertising their tasty wares. From that came the slang ‘hokey pokey’, which they’ve taken as their own name.

With a selection of the most tantalising flavours including honey and lavender, white chocolate and cardamom, salted caramel and hokey pokey – a sort of honeycomb crunch – it’s not exactly your bog standard lolly joint. And all of the loveliness is made by the small family team on the shop premises, so you know it hasn’t come far. That must account for it’s deliciousness!

I’ll be popping down there (fingers crossed!) to do a food feature for our food supplement  at some point soon, so keep an eye out for that if you get the Echo, but until then, here’s a pic of my first foray into Hokey Pokey joy, a honey and lavender/salted caramel combo…delicious!

Happy eating.

Hx

An Oxford theme

Well…I’ve been incredibly lazy and not written about anything exciting in the food department for a long time. Fortunately I’ve not been as lazy in the eating stakes and have gathered a rather scrumptious array of yumminess to share in a somewhat selfish way.

I’ve had a couple of weekends in Oxford for various recent reasons and it’s always such a massive pleasure to spend a couple of days wandering among the dreaming spires, walking Lola along the river banks and through sunny Oxford meadows, popping into favourite cafes and coffee houses and of course seeing whichever members of my family happen to be there at the time – which at the moment is relatively permanently my brother and sister and occasionally my mum and dad.

Oxford is home to several of my favourite foodie haunts, and I managed to squeeze in trips to a couple of them over the two weekends I was there recently. I don’t want to write another length essay like my Sussex blog, which even I found a bit excrutiating in its length so I think I’ll keep this one short, very sweet and picture heavy, just to get you all hungry…

One of the lovely things about being with family is cooking and eating together. When I was up last time, my sister was due back from a work trip to Brussels (which is a hilarious story in itself involving wrong hotels being booked, sharing awkwardly small double beds with work colleagues in close proximity to the red light district and leftover noodles for breakfast), so Jonty and I got a mushroom risotto on the go for her return. I’ll post the recipe up seperately, but a mushroom risotto has got to be one of the most comforting, hearty, tasty and satisfying dishes known to man. This one marries thyme, garlic, parsley, rich porcini mushrooms, nutty chestnut ones and sharp lemon to cut through all that creamy butter and parmesan. I like it with a good handful of peppery rocket o the top and a drizzle of balsamic.

Here’s how it turned out:

And here’s Jonty about to tuck in:

Oxford happens to be home to my favourite ever cafe, my favourite ever pub and my favourite ever restaurant – which is quite an achievement. And next on my list was Jacob and Fields – cafe and deli most amazing and magical. I managed to persuade Jonty away from his savagely hardcore work schedule – he’s doing a masters at the moment and describes his life at the moment as Groundhog Day, getting up, working solidly, and going to bed before it all starts again. But as the first recent Oxford visit took place over that gloriously sunny period that seems to have faded away rather dramatically now, I tempted him away with talk of lunch at our favourite J&F.

A cosy, chic yet rustic cafe, J&F is a bit like a French farmhouse occupied by a family with an eye for creative detail, a talent for reclaiming oddments of wooden furniture and enamelled crockery, a love of fresh herbs and a passion for all things delicious. It’s counters overflow with crumble-topped apple cake, oozing brownies and fragrant loaves and there are piles of golden russet apples in barrels, haunches of ham and jewel-like olives glistening next to juicy pates and spreads. We tucked into doorstopper sandwiches – pork belly for Jonts and houmous and falafel for me and although Jonty had to dash off back to work, I decided to stay in the sunshine and get indugent with a slice of warm, buttery banana bread and a cappuccino.

Funnily enough, I could never remember the name of J&F, as does sometimes happens when you go somewhere a lot and know where it is, but somehow never notice it’s name…but it’s rather inexplicable in this case…

Duh…

I was also pretty successful in my second mission the next day to give Jonts a second break for the weekend and dragged him down to the Isis, the most magical and wondrous of pubs  think maybe in the world. You can’t get to it by car, and it’s a shabby, run down but enchanted looking famhouse with a huge garden, delicious homemade cakes, a fine selection of local ales and two specials of the day. In winter they tend to be hearty, stew-type fare but we got summery platters – a cheese ploughmans for me and a pork pie one for Jonts. Unfortunately for this blog, they were so delicious that we chowed them down without even thinking to take photos, so I’ll have to save a writeup of the food for another time.

One of my favourite things about Oxford is how easy it is to cycle absolutely everywhere, and in cycling to town I came upon a surprise MOST exciting – a chocolate festival. I’d never even imagined that such a delicious event could exist, except in my dreams, but entranced I wandered open mouthed and went home loaded up with a peanut butter brownie cake pop (which, admittedly, didn’t make it all the way back – and neither should it have!) and a thick, sticky slab of salted caramel cheesecake which I (generously I thought) shared with Jonty. I should mention at this point that Ali had by now departed to Brighton for the weekend, we didn’t just wantonly leave her out of all the fun.

Here are just a few of the delights I witnessed:

Brownies dotted with cake pops…argh!

I almost went for one of these badboys…

…but how could I resist this?

My final favourite place in Oxford – the restaurant – is the utterly beautiful Kazbah. Now it’s a big claim, but I’ve thought long and hard, weighing up resto after resto to come to this decision. Such an impudent claim warrants justification and here’s mine. My restaurant checklist goes as follows, and while I don’t always look for all of them, Kazbah happens to have all of them: 1. Obviously, incredible food. 2. Wonderful staff. 3. Beautiful, preferably inventive and quirky decor. 4. Good wine to accompany. 5. Great cocktails to start. And 6. Not necessarily cheap, but good value prices for what you’re getting.

A glittering den of all six, there’s never anywhere I’d rather go than Kazbah, and here’s just a few of the reasons why. As you walk in, it’s a fabulously quirky homage to Moroccan/Spanish influences, with a ceiling that opens up in good weather, twinkly lights, heavy rugs over the low, comfy seats, tiled tables, stone floors and an amusingly dangling coffee pot and guitar, which move up and down as doors elsewhere in the building open and close. The waiter and waitresses wear similarly themed harem pants and low slung leather belts – which would be a bit tacky were it not for the fact that they’re always so relaxed and natural, no one ever looks like they’ve been forced into cringe-inducing uniforms. And if you go, be sure to take a trip to the Ladies, even if you’re a boy, just for the sight of the enormous copper, tiled sink, which is so large that after a few too many cocktails, my sister and I once decided to both get in, at the same time. We fitted. Which is pretty amazing. Not so great to looking in the mirror though – unless you have a giraffe-like neck for craning over it.

Anyway, I digress. Here’s something a little less bathroom related and a little more tempting…my delicious vanilla and fig daquiri.

Gorgeousness in a glass

We were a little under pressure to order – and I have to say that despite my earlier ravings about the wonderful service, the manager that night was a little brusque. It was Easter Sunday but  we had rung ahead and made sure they would be serving still. They were, but we were pretty much told to order immediately or shove it. If I hadn’t been such an ardent lover of Kazbah I think I would have been tempted to shove it, in his direction, but we were determined to get our evening’s worth of Kazbah love, so being somewhat familiar with the menu, I rapidly ordered a selection of their finest Morrocan inspired tapas. Here’s a little taster of the loveliness that arrived…

To describe a little better some of our favourite delights, we had juicy prawns swimming in chili and garlic, soft roasted red pepper with artichoke heart and goats cheese, ibikha – a chickpea and butternut squash stewy kind of dish, patatas not quite bravas but something similar, waxy, translucent manchego with a sweet membrillo – quince jelly – and a strong but creamy blue cheese with more of the quince to go with it. For the non veggies there were also albondigas – meatballs and a charcuterie platter. And of course we had plenty of fluffy, chewy bread and grainy houmous with swirls of chilli on top. In case you’re not licking the drool from your chops already, here are some more pictorial temptations…

The glorious blue cheese and membrillo about to be munched…

Patatas

Prawns and ibikha…yum!

We couldn’t resist a dessert and my eye had already been firmly caught by a membrillo cheesecake special. Ali went for a chocolate tart, which we knew based on previous visits to be divine. They were every bit as good as they looked, the cheesecake creamy, smooth, sweet and light and the tart rich, wonderfully silky and intense.

Pure deliciousness…

Well that just about sums up my latest Oxfordian foodie adventures, I’ve been so delayed in uploading this that I’ll probably be having some more soon (fingers crossed…) And I must scribble down some of the tastier recipes I’ve come up with lately – a particular fave being my Easter bunny banana bread, where I threw all my leftover Easter eggs into a banana loaf minus the cinnamon and raisins…it was divine. Until then. Han xx

Raspberry-Vanilla-Cheesecake-Chocolate-Brownies

Pure indulgence...

 

These are possibly the most scrummy dessert/cakey thing in my repetoire. I’ve no idea where the original recipe came from, it’s scribbled on a piece of paper from school days, and naturally I’ve tweaked it here and there over the years.

The Raspberry-Vanilla-Cheesecake-Chocolate-Brownie is as rich a mouthful as it’s name, a mouthwatering combo of sharp raspberry, rich, fudgy chocolate brownie and smooth vanilla cheesecake. Divine.

For the brownies you need:

280g butter

170 plain chocolate

375g sugar

170g plain flour

Half a tsp of salt

2 tsp vanilla extract

5 eggs

For the cheesecake you need:

350g cream cheese

75g sugar

1tsp vanilla extract

2 eggs

A punnet of raspberries.

Then you:

Preheat the oven to gas mk 4 which is 180 degrees C

Melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over a pan of boiling water. While you’re doing this measure out the flour, sugar and salt in one bowl and beat the eggs with the vanilla extract in a jug.

Once the chocolate and butter is completely melted, pour it over the flour mix and stir in the eggs and vanilla. Pour that into greased and lined brownie tin.

Then make the cheesecake mix, which really couldn’t be easier. Chuck all the ingredients into a bowl (not the rapberries) and beat with an electric whisk until smooth. It’ll be quite runny, but it’s going to be baked so it’ll be fine.

Pour the cheesecake over the chocolate, and I like to run a spoon around in it a bit, not to churn it up completely, but just marble it slightly.

Dot your raspberries on top and cook for 45 minutes. It should have a slight wobble, but when you stick a knife in the cheesecake should slice cleanly, even if the brownie’s a little gooey.

Let it cool and here’s the real trick, DON’T TAKE IT OUT OF THE TRAY. Instead when it’s cool, resist the temptation to stick your face in it and gobble and instead put the tray in the fridge, preferably overnight.

Once it’s well chilled it’ll be much easier to cut – otherwise it sort of just explodes in the middle and is incredibly messy and tricky to eat. The chilling solidifies it and makes it easy to cut into yummilicious squares.

Happy eating!

Han xx

 

 

A Sussex food-themed weekend

Well blogettes, I sit here on a Sunday evening with no desire whatsoever to cook myself any dinner, for the very good reason that this weekend has seen a shockingly wonderful amount of food consumed. Is there anything in the world quite so pleasurable as good food, good wine and good company? Not in my mind, and this weekend offered up a glutton’s feast of all three.

Lola and I hopped in the car after work on Friday and headed down to the picturesque Sussex village of Linfield where the lovely Adele and her husband Michael spent a large portion of last year completely redecorating their first house – which is now looking absolutely fabulous with very swish stone floors, hazy green colour combos – and of course their signature purple lounge. Purple is a bit of a theme for these two, from being the colour of their sofa, which consequently everything else in the room had to be bought to match, to being the colour of our bridesmaid dresses when they got married. The journey was somewhat arduous, mainly thanks to the utterly crappy Sadlers Farm roadworks which mean the A127 is currently an absolute state. It has nothing to do with food at all, but the expression of complete boredom on Lola’s face pretty sums up the Essex leg of our journey…and amuses me.

“Are we nearly there yet?”

But of course, like any wonderful weekend, it was well worth the journey, and it was beautiful indeed to be back with Adele and our other friend, my old Brighton flatmate the talented and generally exceptional in every way Andrea Fox, who is not just a fabulous breakfast show radio DJ but a stand up comic, writer and marathon runner (fingers crossed on the last one…) Michael of course was sensible enough to keep a low profile for the weekend, gracing us with his presence enough for it to be lovely to see him, but allowing for plenty of girlsome times to take place too. What a well-trained husband he is!

When I arrived, Adele was cooking up a risotto – now there’s a bit of a history to our obsession with risottos which comes from the fact that it was a bit of a go to meal for me when we all lived in Brighton and I seemed to cook it on a regular basis. In my mind, a good risotto is the one dish that will never, ever be better in a restaurant, however swanky and accomplished that restaurant is, than it tastes at home. Firstly, it’s such a comforting, homey dish that the very surroundings of a friendly kitchen or dining room add to it’s flavour and secondly the key to a truly scrumptious risotto of course is serving it up at the very moment it’s perfectly cooked – which just can’t ever quite be replicated by a part-cooked and quickly finished off one you’d get in a resto. There is one particularly famous mushroom risotto that Adele is partial to, mainly because Michael has a deeply ingrained and verging on the pathological hatred of the humble mushroom, so she rarely gets to eat them. So whenever she came round to our flat for dinner, she’d demand, or at least politely request or even plead for mushroom risotto. The combination of mushrooms, thyme, lemon, parmesan and of course a large amount of butter, all oozing onto crusty bread and into vinaigrette-y salad was a bit of  a regular feast for us. We also have fond memories of a lazy, hazy summer day in Brighton which involved some rather sozzled croquet on Hove lawns, silly boy wrestling on the grassy stretch, general antics and possibly a trip to a champagne festival…Brighton’s a place, like many seaside towns, that really surpasses itself and sparkles in the summer…and such was our regular enjoyment of balmy summer weekends that lots of the days sort of merge into one long, sunny blur in my mind.

Anyway, I digress. Andrea and I had planned to cook ourselves up a butternut squash, leek and feta risotto – my attempt to recreate a magical dish cooked up in a caravan by my cousin Eleanor and her husband Tim. It was one of those occasions where we seemed to invite more and more people as we encountered them until we had a veritable hoard of hungry mouths to feed. I ended up cooking up a vat – with Adele bringing round the biggest pot she had, and I hadn’t quite countered for how much longer a seven tonne vat of risotto would take to cook than my regular pot. Needless to say more wine was consumed, Adele probably tried to instigate a game of charades, and eventually the risotto was ready, complete with a small version for one guest who had an allergy to all things onion related. It was a bit of a triumph and one of those happy, golden times that sticks in your mind.

So with as our risotto-loving background, Adele was cooking up one of her own invention – due to her lack of impressedness in the recipe she’d started with. It was a leek and salmon creation and what a creation it was. Perfectly cooked, glutinously and outrageously oozing across our plates, the translucent green of the leeks a visual delight next to the pale pink of the salmon. We scooped it up with fresh, crusty olive bread and didn’t waste much time bolting it down. Unfortunately, I was too concerned about scoffing it to even think about taking a photo.

Andrea had been busy whipping up a tasty batch up cupcakes that were topped with the most decadent of white and dark chocolate fudge icing, and I’d not been idle myself, bringing along another particular favourite of ours, what I like to rather laboriously call Raspberry-Vanilla-Cheesecake-Chocolate-Brownies. Again they’re something I used to make a lot of in Brighton, I’ve been making them for so long I have no idea where the original recipe came from, needless to say it’s been slightly tweaked and changed over the years and although there are a million versions around – including a just too sickly looking one in the otherwise wonderful Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, which I can’t quite bring myself to try as they’re additionally topped with mountains of whipped cream, I’d be impressed if I found a formula tastier than this one. Which makes me sound quite big headed. But honestly, they’re pretty fab.

Here’s what they looked like before they were sliced up and packed up. They’re the most melting combination of rich, fudgy, wonderfully squidgy brownie, silky smooth vanilla cheescake and tart raspberries. Mouthwatering indeed!

Mmmmmmm....

I’ll post the recipe in a separate blog once I’ve finished this one, so as not to clutter this one anymore than I already am by practically writing a novel…

Now, some food is worth a bit of a journey. And that was certainly the case when it came to a visit to the Sloop Inn the next day. Our plan was to go on a hearty country walk, enjoy the amble and arrive having worked up an appetite and appreciated the lovely Sussex countryside. Of course it was bucketing down with rain when we awoke, which resulted in the formation of about a million alternative plans. But we couldn’t quite shake the desire to earn our lunch, and non of us particularly wanted the responsibility of a car to spoil our enjoyment of the inevitably accompanying wine, so in the end, after consulting numerous forecasts and eventually finding one that more of less suited our requirements – much more encouraging than going by the ones that told us the rain was unlikely to stop anytime soon – we wrapped up, wellied up and strode out.

There had been some debate over how long the walk would be with Michael assuring us it would be a good two hour hike and Adele ambitiously pitching for an hour. Adele’s estimations tend to be a combination of wild optimism combined with steely ambition and a good dose of sheer willpower, and so it was after a gasping stride, with Adele pushing the dawdling Andrea along for some of it, we arrived in exactly an hour, a little damp, but rosy cheeked and hungry.

The lovely bar staff let us take a very muddy and delighted Lola into the restaurant, even though really she should have stayed in the bar, as the rugby was about to start and the bar was about to become a little busy – so they wanted us out of the way and indeed that suited us perfectly too. Lola comfortably curled up on my jacket we turned our attentions to the menu, which was pleasantly concise – I do loathe a lengthy menu – and generally consisting of deliciously tempting English dishes with a heavy emphasis on local, seasonal produce. I couldn’t resist the appearance of new season asparagus and went for what turned out to be a very pleasing choice of a creation that involved light, golden puff pasty, tender baby asparagus, hollandaise sauce and a soft poached egg. There’s something about in season asparagus that just heralds the start of warm weather and the joys of spring, and that brought us an extra little level of food-happiness

Food heaven...

Adele was similarly lured and we also shared a plate of what I can categorically say were the best pub chips I’ve ever had. Crunchy, salty, soft in the middle, they were gosh darned tasty and we wished we hadn’t shared – although in light of our dessert choices, I think we made the sensible choice…Andrea tucked into a chicken and bacon pie and raved about the combination of the salty bacon and creamy sauce. It came with more of the heavenly chips and a load of yummy, perfectly cooked veggies – hearty fare indeed.

Adele about to attack!

 

Food is so affected by surroundings, and the Sloop is a gentle, comforting pub, sludgy Farrow and Ball shades are daubed on the walls and the staff were all absolutely delightful, friendly and welcoming – they didn’t even mind when Lola decided to have an explore around the serving side of the bar once she’d woken from her nap.

Obviously we were having dessert, and egged on by the two bottles of wine we’d put away, a nice dry house Sauvignon, what started out as an intention to share went awry and we all ordered slabs of the white chocolate honeycomb cheesecake. Bravely we attacked the creamy, solid slices, topped with chewy, sweet, cindery honeycomb, and after a very prolonged session, we did all manage our last bites. Merry and full – rather too full – we rolled out of the pub and after two bottles of vino, the walk home seemed ever shorter than an hour, despite our laden bellies meaning it was more of a pained meander than the march we’d employed to reach our culinary destination. One of the most exceptional things about our visit to the Sloop was that our two bottles of wine, three mains and three desserts came to only £26 each. Not exactly a heavy hit. Which was pretty amazing really, considering what a gorgeous little pub it is, not to mention the quality of the food. If anyone is ever in Sussex, I can’t recommend it more, here’s a link to their website:

http://www.thesloopinn.com

I didn’t think there was any way we’d possibly ever be hungry again. But on our return and following deliciously hot showers – with a special one for mudface Lola who enjoyed the benefits of Adele’s Tresemme shampoo – we decided it was only reasonable to crack open a bottle of Laurent-Perrier that Adele had been given at work for being so amazing at her job. In fact she’s so amazing at her job that there’s an entire collection of rather yummy champagne on top of her fridge – cheers! And obviously once we’d got stuck into that we thought it only acceptable to line our stomachs to prevent any unwanted side effects from the booze – excepting drunkenness of course. So we enjoyed a sort of platter of mushroom crisp bakes – Adele indulging while she could – leftover risotto and a fine selection of cheese including a gooey camembert, a scrummy cheddar and a lovely nutty Jarlsberg…oh cheese heaven!

Andrea and I have a particular cheese fetish, when we lived together it was standard procedure for our fridge to contain at least seven different types of cheese at any one time. If you’ve ever seen the Chin Review, an evening round ours was not unlike Julian and Tarquin’s regular sejourns into cheese and wine. If you haven’t seen the Chin Review, you should. Here’s a link. Do it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rJ206ApObI

Stomachs enthusiastically lined and champagne swigged, we toddled off to the sweetly named Stand Up Inn, where we polished off some warming Shiraz – although Andrea paid tribute to her Irish roots with a traditional starter of Guinness first – and generally indulged in one of those hysterical, hilarious, affectionate, wonderful evenings that you only have with your very best of girl friends.

All in all, a supremely indulgent, decadent and divine weekend.

Cheers ladies!

Han xx