Category: food and drink

This recipe is lifted almost unchanged from Delia Smith’s Summer Collection. She credits it to Kathleen Field’s recipe in the Food Aid Cookbook. I’ve added a couple of footnotes of my own and produce it here after promising to do so elsewhere.

INGREDIENTS (makes around 6lb of pickle):

900g/2lb runner beans (weighed after trimming and slicing)
700g/1½lb onion, chopped (or a mixure of onion and shallots)
850ml/1½pints malt vinegar (but see below)
40g/1½oz cornflour
1 heaped tbsp mustard powder
1 rounded tbsp turmeric
225g/8oz soft brown sugar
450g/1lb demerara sugar

You will also need suitable jars. You could use fancy jars if you wish, but we tend to re-use old coffee jars, olive jars, jam jars and, naturally, pickle jars – anything that is glass with a good airtight screw-on lid and a wide opening at the top. Your jars should be washed and sterilised by first scrubbing them in hot soapy water, then rinsing them and placing them in a cool oven to dry and be warmed through.

• Using a large saucepan, add the onions and 275ml/10 fl oz malt vinegar.
• Simmer for 20 minutes or until the onion is soft.
• Meanwhile, cook the beans in boiling salted water for 5 minutes. Drain and add to the onions.
• Mix the cornflour, mustard and turmeric with a little of the vinegar to make a smooth paste.
• Add this paste to the onion/bean mixture. BE WARNED – this stuff stains!
• Add the rest of the vinegar (but see below) and simmer for 10 minutes.
• Stir in both lots of sugar (best done in stages) and ensure it all dissolves.
• Simmer for a further 15 minutes (but see below).
• Fill your warmed jars and seal.
• Store for a month before eating. We usually manage to keep it stored for about a week before we succumb to temptation.

My experience is that you may not need the quanity of vinegar suggested, as it isn’t the only source of fluid in this recipe. Some fluid will comes from the beans – how much will depend on how much rain you’ve had and how watery your beans are. If the beans are fat and juicy, you’ll need less vinegar. I’ve not needed this quantity of vinegar when I’ve made it, perhaps 75% is enough.

I’ve also found that the last stage of simmering can be extended with very favourable results. It depends how you like your pickle, but I like it to be a little soft with the beans still nicely defined (not an amorphous gloop), but not under-done. So I tend to extend the last stage of the simmering to half an hour or more.

This pickle is good with cheese but absolutely wonderful with cold roast chicken or roast ham. Actually, it goes with more-or-less anything. It’s very moreish.

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.

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.

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.