Category: food and drink

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Edna’s boiled pineapple cake

My Mum was given this recipe years ago by Edna Thomas. Edna was a customer of the nursery that my parents own and was known for always coming in for a bit of a chat. She was Welsh and very proud of her heritage and always had a good story to tell. I’m not quite sure how she came to pass this recipe – probably as a result of a discussion with my Mum about the enormous quantities of fruit cake that were consumed on a daily basis in our household. We used to have a big Tupperware box that had a large made-to-measure fruit cake in it. This cake generally had to be replaced every two to three days.

Hels has been passed this recipe by Mum – I think Mum wanted to be sure that her son’s wife would amply provide for his needs and clearly chief amongst those needs is the need for cake. My Mum knows me well.

Edna’s boiled pineapple cake (as slightly amended by Hels)

This recipe is sufficient for two 2lb loaf tins, with liners.

INGREDIENTS:

330g/12oz dark soft brown sugar
660g/24oz mixed dried fruit or raisins (we prefer Waitrose Vine Fruits from their Wholesome range)
110g/4oz glacé cherries or soft dried apricots (we use apricots)
Large (435g) can of pineapple pieces in juice
440g/1lb self raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 large eggs, beaten
220g/8oz margarine
110g/4 oz chopped walnuts
walnut halves to decorate the top of the cakes
1½ tbsp sherry (optional)

  • Using a large saucepan over a low heat, add the sugar, dried fruit, pineapple (complete with juice), butter and cherries/apricots.
  • Bring to the boil (do not leave unattended or it will burn!), stirring thoroughly.
  • Remove from the heat and allow to cool.
  • Sieve the flour together with the baking powder.
  • Add eggs, chopped walnuts and flour/baking powder to the saucepan. Mix thoroughly.
  • Add the sherry and stir in.
  • Divide the mixture equally between the two lined loaf tins.
  • Bake at 140 – 150°C for 60 to 90 minutes (we have a fan oven – adjust accordingly for conventional ovens). Check with a skewer after 50 minutes (if the skewer comes out clean, then they are done or nearly done). If the cakes are going too brown on top, cover with tin foil before cooking for the remaining time.

Why two cakes at once? Well, experience has shown that these cakes are great for freezing and some (i.e. my Mum) would say that they actually improve if frozen. So we generally have one for immediate consumption and another “stashed”.

Pineapple pieces work best. Rings can be chopped up or that pineapple “crush” can be used, but both give less satisfactory results, probably because the fruit-to-juice ratio is different.

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Graybo’s moules marinières

Ok, so actually this is Anthony Bourdain‘s moules marinières with a dollop of cream and some garlic added – but since I modified the recipe successfully, I claim it as my own and you can all send your money now.

Serves 2 as a main course, just. Would probably be enough for three as a starter.

  • 1 kilogram lovely fresh mussels. We got ours from here. A bargain at three quid a kilo. For those that worry about this sort of thing, 1 kilo gave us 58 mussels. In hindsight, we could have used a little more, but that depends on what you serve it with. If you made some home-made frîtes, then this would be plenty. With just bread, then perhaps 1.2kg would be better.
  • 300 ml dry white wine. We had a cheeky Sicilian in the fridge, so I used that. Incidentally, how can wines be cheeky? This is more wine than Bourdain suggests and I think is justified when adding cream.
  • 2 shallots, finely sliced.
  • 25g butter.
  • 1 tbsp cream. I used extra thick single because we happened to have some, but normal single would do just as well.
  • 3 small cloves of garlic, finely chopped.
  • some parsley, finely chopped.
  • salt and pepper.

This doesn’t take long. The time-consuming bit is the cleaning of the mussels – say 20 minutes. The cooking takes just 15 minutes.

  • Firstly, clean those mussels. Bourdain gives a long examination of this subject in his Les Halles Cookbook (one of my bibles), but you can boil it down to this:
  • buy fresh. Don’t buy pre-frozen or rubbish.
  • use quickly and prepare just before you use them. Don’t store them if you can help it.
  • wash them in a colander.
  • pull the beards off – that fluffy bit that sticks out.
  • as you go, check to see if any are open. If they are, tap them and see if they close. This is fun! They actually do close quite quickly if they are open. Unless they’re dead, in which case they don’t shut and you can bung them in the bin. Out of our 58, we chucked one.
  • wash them again. And again. You can’t wash them too much, really. Leave them in the colander for the water to drain off.

Ok? Good. Have a glass of wine.

  • Next, in a big pan with a good lid (not a loose one – we used an Ikea casserole which was perfect for bringing to the table and eating straight from), melt the butter.
  • Add the shallots and scoot them around for a minute or two until soft and just beginning to brown.
  • Add the wine, garlic and cream. Bring to the boil (turn your heat up all the way) and season.
  • Throw in the mussels and put on the lid. Sit down and have another glass of wine for ten minutes (what did you think you do with the rest of the bottle?).
  • Check in the pan. The mussels should now be nicely open. Take the pan off the heat and, holding the lid on, give it a bit of a shake. Then add the parsley and shake it again.
  • Bring it to the table and serve with some good chunky bread to mop up the juices. Or frîtes.

 

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Not that boring

Apparently, this blog has turned boring in 2008 (so says my wife). It seems that posts about my new laptop and bag are not exciting enough (my new phone will be delivered tomorrow, so there’ll be another subject to discuss! And my laptop case (along with the plants) have been delayed and will not arrive until Friday, which means I won’t get my hands on them until Monday).

So, in a probably futile attempt to change the subject and make reading more interesting, here’s a recipe (serves two):

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 whole fresh squid, cleaned and prepared into tentacles (separated), wings (cut into strips) and mantle (cut into rings). See here for a good step-by-step guide to cleaning and preparing squid if you haven’t done it before – it’s not that difficult. You should look for a squid that will yield around 225g/8oz of useable flesh. Our local Morrisons has an excellent fish counter and is our preferred source, but you might know a better place near to you.
  • 1 pepper (capsicum for our overseas friends) – I used yellow, but red would do. Cut into small pieces.
  • 1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped
  • 12 or so baby plum tomatoes, halved
  • juice of half a lime
  • 1 head of pak choi, divided to individual leaves
  • 275g/10oz pack of fresh (not dried) fine egg noodles. If you only have dried, prepare them as normal but drain them from the water when they are not-quite done
  • Olive oil, black pepper, salt

METHOD

  1. Heat a wok over a high heat and add about two or three teaspoons of olive oil.
  2. Throw in the pepper and squid. Toss about until the squid is just beginning to “catch” on the pan.
  3. Add the chilli and lime juice. Toss for another minute or so.
  4. Add the tomatoes and noodles. Keep tossing in the pan or else the noodles will burn. Reduce the heat a little if necessary.
  5. For the last thirty seconds or so, place the pak choi on top of the pan just so that it wilts a little (not too much – you really just want it warmed through without becoming soggy).
  6. Season and serve.

Low fat, healthy, tasty. And not too expensive either (we got our squid for three, er, quid).

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On being busy and vodka

[..insert long post about being very busy here..]

Anyway, whilst you ponder how busy I am, rush out now and get some Wyborowa Exquisite vodka – if you thought all vodkas were the same, then this will open your eyes to a whole new world of drunkeness. It’s very smooth with a distinct hint of vanilla. And, apparently, it is made in a small bath. Hmm.

And it comes in a funky Gehry-designed bottle. Yay!

More content to come soon (yeah, right), possibly including posts on the following topics:

  • tours and trips of the past year, possibly including photographic highlights
  • on Polish motorists
  • a rant on politics
  • Tom update
  • a post about food
  • Ruralville news

You could even vote-me-up if there is one of these you particularly want to read.

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Kokos Flocken

Anyone got any idea where I can buy Berggold Kokos Flocken in the UK? We bought some in Rostock and they’re addictive – waaaay better than Bounty or other chocolate-covered coconut things I’ve had.

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Spelt flour pizza

Hels has been trying to cut down, or even cut out, wheat consumption as it seems to have a funny effect on her.

However, we love bread and pizza and other wheaty things, so we have been casting around for a suitable substitute. I have to say that most wheat-free products are pretty awful. Exceptions that we have discovered include Waitrose German rye bread and Dr Karg’s spelt crackers – wheat-free they may be, but they are also tasty.

One piece of kitchen equipment which hasn’t been used so much lately is our lovely bread maker. Hels recently purchased a pack of wholemeal spelt flour and set me the task of making wheat-free pizzas. I searched numerous internet recipe databases (the bread maker recipe book offers no guidance on this) and eventually found a recipe which I modified as follows:

  • 1 tsp dried yeast
  • 4 cups spelt flour
  • 9 and one third fl oz water
  • two thirds tsp salt
  • two thirds tsp sugar
  • 1 tsp dried mixed herbs
  • 1½ fl oz olive oil

Put the ingredients in the bread maker in the order suggested by the manufacturer (usually yeast first, then the other dry ingredients and finally the oil and water) and run the pizza dough programme. You could, or course, use a food processor or mix by hand, but I prefer the bread maker as it warms the dough as it goes and therefore accelerates the proving process. It must be said that this makes a heavy dough which was right at the upper limit of what our machine could cope with. Although our machine has a capacity of 600g (and four cups is roughly 450g), I don’t think it would be wise to put that much in for fear of damaging the motor.

The dough that comes out is not pretty and I really thought that it would turn out pretty bad when I looked at it. But once I tipped it out of the tin and got my hands to it, I was pleased to find that it had a lovely stretchy quality and was actually good to handle.

You definitely need to make a fairly thin base with this mixture. I spread it across our large roasting sheet (roughly 30 x 40cm) and then put it in a only-slightly-warm oven for fifteen minutes to prove. After that, and with an all-over pricking with a fork, I blind-baked it for ten minutes or so before topping it and cooking it through. The recipes I found online all suggested blind baking to ensure some crispiness and avoid sogginess.

It turned out pretty well. The base turned out to be quite flavoursome in its own right, so I recommend a good strongly-flavoured topping (we had tomato purée, basil, red pepper, chorizo, mozarella, thinly sliced shallots, grated strong cheddar – but I think it would be great with anchovies, capers, olives). It also seemed to stick to the pan more than our conventional wheat-based recipe, so be sure to thoroughly grease your pan before cooking (I’ll pay more attention to this next time so that Hels doesn’t need a hammer and chisel when washing up).

The next challenge is to find a spelt bread recipe that works. Watch this space.

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Wine tasting classes

The French governing party, the UMP, has suggested that children should be taught to appreciate wines when in school – which doesn’t strike me as half as daft as it might first appear. I’m not sure about wine alone, but there could be something in encouraging kids to learn more about art, literature, architecture, food and drink – to be able to critically appraise it and understand its origins. Of course, some of this sort of stuff is taught already as part of a wider education, but I know from my own industry that plenty of kids seem to come out of school with no idea where food comes from, what art is “about” and why architecture is important. Even my own wife can’t tell the difference between sage, marjoram and tarragon growing in our herb trough outside the door.

I have no doubt that having a greater understanding of these things helps you to look beyond yourself, understand the world around you and further appreciate the inter-relationships between so many things in life. That has to be no bad thing, in my view.

Anyway, in other news we have today found out that we will not be liable for Capital Gains Tax when Hels finally sells her flat in the spring, which means that we are tonight celebrating with gin and tonics, noting the subtlety of the fine gin, the delicate tang of the quinine and the sharp twist of lime (or getting drunk, you decide).