Tag: honey

Mulberry and Honey Polenta Cake

It’s been some time since I managed to sit down and tell you about something delicious… but as you know, I have rather a lot on. I’ve been so busy trying to sort out our move to Malaysia.

I swear, I thought I was a relatively organised and tidy person… but going through all the paperwork I have to sort out before we go, it appears I have been slowly, but surely, turning into one of those women you see on television programmes where their hoarding has got out of hand. I must have just filed every single bill and statement that I ever received and do I need them? No, I don’t.

Ballpoint pens…. who needs over a hundred half used ballpoint pens? I mean, hardly any of us write any more – we email, we text… but there they were…pen after pen in drawers  and on shelves, in handbags. And the paperclips? Where did they come from?  I am almost certain that I have never in my life bought a box of paperclips so they must have come with stuff I’d received and I kept them, thinking they’d come in useful at some point. There were rubber bands, half used Post-It pads and that peculiar dust and grit that seems to collect in any drawer that has Stuff in. I reckon we all have a drawer with Stuff in – it’s where we put things that don’t have a natural home anywhere else. That might explain why I also found two Swiss Army penknives, a small toffee hammer, a ball of string, my old cat’s vaccination record, a nail file, instructions from an old iPod shuffle, a broken travel alarm… oh the list went on.

And that was without starting on the clothes.

Twelve huge  bags of clothes on the first sort….. The Great North Air Ambulance were getting the lot.

After all, we are going to south east Asia for three years and the temperature there is roughly 28 degrees C all year round. I wasn’t going to need all the warm things I had to have so I could live without frostbite on the north east coast. I wouldn’t be working for a start, so all of my business suits were going.

I seem to have kept every pair of jeans I ever owned……

……..and I have finally come to the conclusion that I will never fit into those 24 inch Levi’s again. I looked at them and wondered how I ever did get into them…and why I thought that with a little cutting back I would get anywhere near them. Still, it shows my optimistic side, which is always a good thing.

It also seems that I won’t be getting anywhere near the 26 inch, the 28 inch and the 30 inch Levi’s….. there’s a pattern emerging, do you see? I have grown fatter, year by year. It’s been gradual and it has been over couple of decades… I always thought, though, that maybe one day I would regain my teenage litheness.

It wasn’t to be, of course.  Age does that to a person. As does eating delicious things.

Delicious things are one of the great joys of life and sharing something delicious with friends increases the general happiness quotient of any get together. What follows is one of the delicious things I can blame for the no-longer-fitting Levi’s.

The Bear and I had gone to our friends’ house for lunch so we could take a break from packing and sorting and all talk about our move to Malaysia. C&C had lived there for 18 months, some years ago and still go at least a couple of times a year, so they are an absolute mine of information. They were doing the main bit of lunch and I said I would do the pudding.

I wanted to do something different and I had something in mind.

Remember when I took it into my head to make Strawberry Surprise Marshmallows? I’d found some freeze dried strawberries at Healthy Supplies and realised that their sweet almost-crunchiness would be perfect hidden inside some home made marshmallow. Healthy Supplies really is a treasure trove because I also found freeze dried strawberry powder there that made the most delicious sweet coating to stop the marshmallows sticking together. There are things in their on line store that you’d never get in a supermarket – go and look, you’ll be amazed and delighted at what they have.

Brendan from Healthy Supplies had liked what I’d written about his freeze dried fruit and asked if there was anything I’d like to have a go with and after looking through the list, I spotted mulberries.  How could I resist that? Something I’d read about but never tried… AND they were called Pearls of Samarkand! With a name like that, they just called out to me…

There are two kinds of mulberrries, black and white.  Aren’t they strange? Knobbly and bulbous – but what really matters is the taste of them. The white ones taste almost honeyed – they are sweet and musky – and the black ones are sharper and fruity and after nibbling a couple I’d started to get an idea…

I’d made a polenta and honey cake before and I liked it but I thought there was room for improvement. Polenta in a cake gives it a wonderful dense and grainy texture; adding honey to the cake and serving it with cream makes it into a wonderful dessert.

Because the white mulberries tasted like honey they would be marvellous with a honeyed cake and the black, sharper mulberries could go in the cake to add a deliciously fruity contrast.

So… to begin.

First of all, get the oven going to preheat – you will need it at 170 degrees C/325 degrees F. The cake takes only a few minutes to prepare so you need to have the oven on at the start.

330g of plain flour was mixed with 150g of fine polenta (cornmeal) and 2 tablespoons of baking powder and a teaspoon of salt.

I sliced up some good butter and melted it in a Pyrex jug in the microwave on a low setting

I was going to need 250 ml, so just pack it into the jug till you get the rough measure – anything extra you can use to grease the baking tin.

Mix the melted butter with 2 eggs, 180ml of runny honey and 435 ml of milk and pour it into the mixing bowl.

Then whizz it all round gently – don’t whip it to death, just make sure it is blended.

This is going to be a lovely deep and square cake, to be sliced easily at the table so I used a smallish baking/roasting tin (if you’re interested, it measured 13×9 inches) That was greased with the residue from the melted butter

You can see the graininess of the polenta – that will add fabulous texture.

Because I didn’t want all the fruit to sink to the bottom of the cake, I scattered most of the packet (saving a mainly white ones) on top of the mix. I dusted the fruit in flour to stop them sinking too quickly and then put the tin in the oven for half an hour.

While the cake was cooking, I needed to make the honey syrup that was going to be drizzled over the cake so in a pan I gently heated 125ml of Acacia honey

And because I wanted it to have a light and flowery hint about it (and because I had a bottle of it and I need to use it before we move) I added a good amount of English Provender Essence of Orange Blossom Flower water… maybe 4 tablespoons or so. Don’t worry if you haven’t got any – you can miss it out… or perhaps use orange juice instead?

Stir it all round, over a gentle heat until it comes to the boil and blends beautifully,  thickening slightly, making a rich and fragrant syrup.

Check whether the cake is done after 25 minutes or so. Does the skewer come out cleanly?

Now it is out, make sure you have the cake on a rack and you can wipe up any mess from this next step…. you are going to pour the honey and orange blossom syrup over the cake, covering it completely. It needs to cool before you serve it…..

That was the easy bit….we then had to get it from my kitchen to our friends’ house without making a mess.

Still, we got there and settled down for a marvellous time.

I’d brought along the rest of the mulberries and when we were ready for pudding I added them to a bowl of whipped cream…

The cake was firm and studded with mulberries. It wasn’t  too dense… there was a light crumbliness to it that you get when you use polenta.

And with a dollop of whipped cream and those honey flavoured white mulberries it was the perfect summery mouthful.

It was even worth eating knowing I would never get back into those jeans. Some things are worth more than being able to wear the jeans of my youth. I know when I was younger I’d never even eaten polenta, never mind had it in a cake and mulberries were the stuff of nursery rhymes. I like being older. I eat better for a start!

So. Mulberries? A definite yes. They were perfect in that honeyed cake. They were delicious to eat by themselves…. thanks Brendan! Keep on sourcing such delicious and original ingredients – I just wish I could have shared a slice of cake with you.

Honey and thyme roasted parsnips and apple butter roast potatoes

When I made the delicious roast pork and crackling, I didn’t just eat the pork by itself (although I could have done…. could have done quite easily, actually), I did, in fact,  behave like a civilised person and served it with vegetables.  

I really like to make the most of what we have and I always believe that adding something as simple as a few fresh herbs or spices or other flavourings, moves the finished dish up from the level of plain boiled vegetables (and how uninspiring that sounds) to something really delicious and which, if necessary can be eaten alone and still make the diner feel happy. It’s a policy that has served me well, as the Bear has been known to present me with extra people for dinner at short notice.

That’s not a bad thing as I love cooking and I always have more than enough for extras….at home we set an extra place for the Unexpected Guest…just in case. If they do arrive then they won’t feel like they are causing a problem. If they don’t, well, at least we were ready for them.

The only problem that can arise is that the extra guest might turn out to be vegetarian or (as happened on one fraught evening, less than an hour before a meaty, buttery, cheesey, creamy extravaganza of a dinner was served) a vegan. If the meal is based around a meat dish then the side dishes and vegetables should be delicious enough that it is no hardship to make a meal just from them.

As a family we have always been strong on side dishes. We had a cousin of my father’s who would come to stay at Christmas or other family occasions and she would take great delight in counting the amount of separate dishes we had produced. That, of course, is because she lived through the war years when food was scarce and then later she lived alone. You never really make as much effort when you are cooking for one and a big selection of side dishes highlights the fact that first of all there’s plenty to eat and share and secondly,  it is a celebration.

I remember there was one famous occasion when Cousin Joan was almost beside herself  as she counted that there were over twenty separate dishes. OK, I admit several of them were potato dishes – roast potatoes, new potatoes boiled with mint, creamed potatoes and mini baked potatoes but even so, it was a triumph! My mother and aunt had excelled themselves. Everyone of us could choose something they particularly liked. Not one person felt left out and everyone felt full…..

So, as you see, I have a lot to live up to. This day, though, I wasn’t going for twenty or more vegetable and side dishes… just two. I was going to roast parsnips in honey and thyme and make roast potatoes with apple butter. Sweetly savoury vegetable dishes that would be perfect with the roast pork… or just by themselves!

The two can be cooked together, so read through this  because I will tell you about each, separately.

Honey and Thyme Roasted Parsnips

I had been shopping for vegetables and spotted some small parsnips labelled “Heritage variety parsnips”. They looked small and dainty and were, the greengrocer assured me, sweet and delicious. There was no other indication of what variety they were but it took it on trust and bought some.

I prefer my parsnips boiled then whizzed to a puree with some cream and horseradish but these were too small and dainty to do that to. Besides, the Bear adores roasted parsnips and as I was roasting pork anyway, it made life a lot easier to roast them alongside the joint.

They were topped and tailed, scrubbed and then rubbed in some garlic and oil. This is where using a tube of smooth garlic puree works well – it’s easy to get a smooth blend of oil and garlic so everything is coated consistently.

Parsnips with honey

Squeezing some honey over those baby roots will really work with the garlic and, when cooked, add a rich and tasty glaze.

Don’t go mad… just a drizzle over them will do.

Sprinkle some thyme over the parsnips as they cook – the stems will dry and the leaves fall off so don’t worry about trying to just get leaves, which is what everyone tells you to do. All you have to do then is pick out the by now hard and dried stems and the leaves stay behind. Cut the hardier stems from lower down on the thyme bush and just put them on top. (You will need the baby soft tender ends of the newest growth later) As they cook they will add another lovely layer of flavour.

The parsnips can go in the oven about half an hour, forty minutes before you take the meat out.  The temperature will be relatively low because of the meat so you won’t burn them.

 Then, when everything is ready  you can sprinkle some of the soft and tender baby thyme leaves over the parsnips.

They were delicious – parsnip is sweet and earthy by itself, the honey and thyme brightened that and the garlicky oil baste at the start brought everything together into a lovely sweet and savoury dish.

Apple Butter Roast Potatoes

I also had some baby potatoes and rather than just have them as steamed or boiled, I thought I might as well use the heat of the oven and roast them as well. Cost saving and efficient, as I’m sure you will agree.

Remember at the end of August we went foraging for apples in that abandoned orchard? I’d made lots of apple butter and used them in cakes and crumbles. I still had some left and they were really in need of being used up.

Pork and apple is a heavenly mix but rather than making an apple sauce, I thought I would roast them with the potatoes.

I didn’t peel them because I wasn’t going to peel the potatoes… I just cored and segmented them.

I cut the baby potatoes in half so they were roughly the size of the apple bits and sprinkled some thyme and oil over everything.

Using the same herb in the cooking process ties the dishes together well and makes them fit coherently. You don’t want them to taste overpoweringly of thyme – this just adds a hint, more of an echo really so they don’t clash with the parsnips.

Into the oven they go, alongside the parsnips so they can roast gently with the meat.

A spoonful or so of apple butter, towards the end of the cooking melts over the potatoes and adds a lovely appley, cinnamon, clove tasting glaze. Do this in the last ten minutes or so, after the potatoes have started to turn golden.

The apple has roasted to a soft, sweet mouthful and the potatoes have that delicious roasted taste, glazed over with the spiced apple butter.

Perfect to serve with roast meat.

Both of those dishes took just a few minutes to prepare and then they were left to do their thing in the oven. Much easier in my eyes than boiling or steaming. Much tastier too.

If a vegetarian had arrived that night – or even a vegan – they could have had , at least potatoes and parsnips and not felt too badly done by.

Cousin Joan would have approved though I am sure she would have wondered why I couldn’t have served at least another four or five dishes to accompany them……

Hot Toddy for a cold

There’s a reason for me being so quiet over the past few days… I have had a cold that has made me feel dreadful.

A rattling cough, a pounding head and aches all over made me feel so bad that I actually came home from work.

I knew what I had to do, of course.

The best cure for a cold is to go to bed, clutching a hot toddy and try and sleep.

So, first of all, a spoonful of lovely honey in a mug

The juice of half a lemon and a slice of lemon go in next, topped up with hot (but not boiling) water

Then stir it round to make a hot, sweetly-sharp mix

Then, to help those poor, tired muscles relax and the pounding head to ease…. find a bottle of whiskey.

This is Redbreast, a gorgeous Irish pot still whiskey (there’s a difference, you know – Scotch whisky is classed by some as the only true whisky and it is spelled without the ‘e’. Irish whiskey has the extra ‘e’ and gets an extra distillation. Three as opposed to Scotch’s two) It doesn’t matter what you use – that was just at the front of the drinks cupboard.

Just a drop or so adds a deep, soothing, rounded flavour to the hot honey and lemon… and with a couple of cold cure capsules is the ideal medicine for a rotten cold.

The next step is the most important – get off to bed and curl up while you sip your hot toddy. Cocooned in a duvet and propped up on pillows, the delicious hot toddy soothes and relaxes….

Sleep really is the best medicine, you know.

After a couple of hours of sleep I felt so much better.

Just remember that, next time you have a dreadful cold!

Foraging to make Fruit Leather – Part 2

So, we returned from our foraging expedition with two bags of berries. There were still huge amounts left on the bushes but we had to stop. I needed to see if the fruit leather experiment would work, or, at least, work for me. If it does then I am going back to get more.

Once back in the kitchen I picked through the berries and removed any leaves and stray bits that had fallen into our bags and put them straight into a large, heavy bottomed pan on a gentle heat to start cooking down.

The theory behind making fruit leather is that you have to cook the fruit and puree it, adding just honey or sugar to sweeten it (if necessary) and lemon juice. What you end up with is the very essence of the fruit so it is important to keep everything simple. There’s no need to add too much sugar…I suppose, though, it is a matter of taste. Berries, especially wild berries, can be very sharp and do need something to sweeten them. Just don’t go masking the fruit with an overload of sugar.

A sprinkling of sugar helps the berries start to cook down – there’s  no need to add water as the juices soon come out. Just look at that glorious colour!

Once the fruit was cooked, I strained the fruit pulp to get the majority of the juice out

There was still a lot of juice in the pulp so I got my mouli food mill out and started milling the pulp. This will keep the seeds out and push through the pulp. Wild berries are very seedy so you must try and get the majority of them out. If you haven’t got a food mill then try pushing the pulp through a sieve.

You can see how many seeds there are as the pulp gets pushed through

And underneath the mill you can see the pure fruit pulp being squeezed out

Last year we had gone to a Pick Your Own Fruit farm and came home with punnets of strawberries. I had cooked some of them down and frozen, in bags, those we didn’t eat. This was an ideal time to use up the last of the bags of strawberries and add some extra fruit to our fruit leather. There would be seeds from the strawberries, I know, but at least I had removed the majority of the blackberry seeds.

I added the juice of a lemon

And some honey to taste

And pureed it all to a lovely smooth mix before letting it simmer, bubbling gently for 5 minutes.

I lined a couple of baking trays with clingfilm

And poured in a thin layer of the fruit puree. It spreads out over the cling film. You don’t need a really thick layer – maybe 3mm or thereabouts? Put in a bit at a time and tip the tin back and forth to get an even layer.

My great plan to free up freezer space by making preserved fruit that didn’t need freezing wasn’t quite working out because I had puree left over.  Into pots it went and into the freezer. Some was poured over yoghurt that evening to have a a dessert after supper.

And then this is when I started to wonder how I was going to do the next bit….

Everything I had read suggested that the trays were then put into the oven on 50 degrees c (120 degrees F) and left for 6 hours. And yes, it was OK to use clingfilm and put it in the oven. That temperature is so low it won’t melt the clingfilm. What you are really doing, of course, is just drying it out, rather than cooking it. When this is manufactured on a large scale, dehydrators are used but an oven on the lowest temperature possible for a long time does the job just as well.

Thing is, it was 9pm and I was tired… did I start it off now and then set my alarm for 3am? Or did I try and stay awake till midnight and then turn the oven off when I got up for work?  What would happen if I left it in for longer?

I decided, in the end, to start it off before I went to bed and get up at three…. but then, of course, I ended up waking up every hour or so and going to check.  I thought I might as well so at least we would all have some kind of idea about cooking it.

For the first few hours it was definitely liquid and I thought I must have gone wrong somewhere but eventually

as the sun came up,  it became thicker and sticky… and at last it looked set.

It was darker and when I touched it it felt tacky but not sticky

I could peel it away from the cling film! It had worked!

Maybe it could have stayed in a bit longer as there was some puree still liquid underneath…

But really? I think it worked! It pulled up as a sheet just as I’d read it would do

I had two sheets of fruit leather

It was easy to cut into strips

And held up to the light it was the most beautiful colour

All I had to do now was put the strips into an airtight box and we had our supplies of fruit leather.

The big question, of course, is was it worth it?

Was it worth diving through the bushes, getting scratched and prickled to collect the fruit? Was it worth the constant getting up to check the progress of the leather? Would I do it again?

Yes, yes and yes.

I know that next time I will be more relaxed about the timing  – 50 degrees C is so low that leaving it in there for longer won’t harm it and next time when there’s puree left over I will simply make another tray of it.

The taste was fantastic – it really was the fruitiest fruity taste I’d ever had. The texture was smooth and chewy, but not horribly so… it soon dissolves. We have eaten it as a sweet treat  and also cut it into slices and stirred it through yoghurt.

Guess what? We’re going out blackberrying again.

Foraging to make Fruit Leather – Part 1

The Bear was finally home from his travels and we were  not at work.  It was also not raining or blowing a gale. For everything to come together like that,  is actually a very rare occurrence in our lives so we decided to make the most of it and go for a stroll and see how the blackberries were doing in the hedgerows. Goodness knows why the Bear and I went out to get more fruit because our freezer (and the freezer of everyone associated with our family) is already packed with fruit already. I suppose it’s just that  I just can’t bear to see waste. The brambles are absolutely laden with fruit and even the birds can’t get through that much.

This year has been fantastic for fruit – my apples and figs were fruiting heavily on the trees on the balcony and my mother’s fruit garden has produced more pounds of goosecurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants and gooseberries than we know what to do with.

We have had family and friends round to pick as much as they want and there are still pounds more to pick

It comes to something when even her young grandson is sent out to help get the redcurrants. He carefully showed me how best to get them off the stems using a fork to drag down the stalks, knocking the currants off as it goes and a bowl underneath to catch them.

The goosecurrants (two ancient bushes) are a cross between a blackcurrant and a gooseberry and they have been particularly prolific this year.

They make fantastic jam or jelly and my sister in law has made some spectacular jam that puts my mother’s to shame. Mind you, she is the one who did the Pheasant Breasting Masterclass  while my brother took the pictures,back in December, so you know from that that she has a real talent in the kitchen.

Even my mother’s  ancient apple tree that hasn’t borne fruit for the last 20 odd years has suddenly started producing. There are bags of cleaned fruit in the freezers just waiting to have something done with them. Enough jam has been made to go on toast and fill cakes until all of us are old and grey and we still have more bags than we can count. Cordials and ice creams are next on the list to make – all we are missing is the time to do them all.

But still, we thought, we might as well go and look at the blackberries. And besides, I had an idea for something. Something that wouldn’t take up any more freezer space. If we did get blackberries I would use them that evening.

We live on the top of a hill and to the side of where we are, is a lovely park. We can walk out along the private path and down into the park itself. It is a fantastic walk in every season of the year – in winter it really looks magical in the snow… in summer, people are out on the grass and now? Now the bushes are laden with fruit and people are walking round with bags.

The park is well maintained and the grass is mown and even the edges where the hedgerow plants are, are looked after. The gardeners  always leave the blackberry bushes to fruit.

Deep inside the bushes that line the edge of the park are old, abandoned apple trees that fruit heavily and the apples just fall to the ground.

Today though, we were there for blackberries. Plenty of people had been there before us so we were going to have to head deeper into the bushes.

We went further into the wild tangle of brambles – so wild they had entwined themselves around apple trees and the blackberries hung down alongside ripening apples.

Luckily I brought along a straightened out wire coat hanger (with the hook left, of course) so I could pull down the best of the blackberry branches.

We got lots of great big, fat and juicy blackberries with only minor damage to ourselves – a few scratches here and there and a minor tumble into the stinging nettles… but, as I assured the Bear as he lay there yelping in agony, it would all be worth it.

The thing about blackberries is that you have to use them the day you pick them. They must carry mould spores on them because if you leave them for a few hours, once picked, they will go mouldy.

There was a reason for me wanting to get more fruit, though. I wanted to try something I had read about over the past few years. When we first met, for our first Christmas, the Bear bought me “Preserved” by Johnny Acton and Nick Sandler – fabulous book that details all kinds of methods and recipes for preserving food. I’d read it and made plans to work through it but, as always, life got in the way and I never got round to it.

The thing I was most intrigued by was fruit leather – where quantities of fruit were pureed and then dried, in a thin layer, making a dried fruit sheet that lasts  without having to freeze it. It’s called leather because that is what it looks like – it is soft and chewy in reality.

So… something that could use up extra fruit and wouldn’t take up space in my freezer? That had to be worth a go, right?

Pomegranate and Saffron Lamb

 I was looking in the freezer for something to cook while I was at work and found some lamb neck and decided that would be perfect for the slow cooker but the gloom of December is getting to me and I need something with a bit of zing to it… some brightness to cut through the dark…

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Lamb neck is inexpensive and, if cooked correctly, incredibly tasty. Those four fat slices cost just £1.70.

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There’s a good amount of meat on them, with fat running through it that, if cooked slowly and cossetted with spices, will turn the meat into something that is so tender and melting and so mouthwateringly lovely you can’t help but  smile.

I wanted spices with it, spices and a touch of sharpness and thought that a kind of Middle Eastern theme would work. In my cupboard I had a bottle of Pomegranate Molasses which would be perfect. The flavour it adds is a rich and tangy one – a mix of sour and sweet and it goes perfectly with all sorts of meat, particularly the fattier kinds as it cuts right through, really letting the meat flavour expand , if you know what I mean.

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As with any kind of slow cooking, the best thing to do is to brown the meat – not only does it add a deeper flavour but it makes it look better too.

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Then, maybe other Middle eastern flavours…. garlic and ginger – crush some, or squeeze some from a tube and fry it off in the pan after you have taken the meat out.

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Add some stock and stir it round to loosen up the caramelised meat bits and the lovely garlic and ginger.

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A good pinch of saffron will add a deeper note and the most wonderful colour.

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And crush some cardomom seeds – break them open first and then crush the little seeds inside the papery cases…. they are the bits with the flavour… sprinkle them over the bits of lamb in the slow cooker..

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Add a couple of teaspoons of honey

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And a couple of tablespoons of pomegranate molasses, then pour over the saffrony stock.

You know the chilli oil I made? Well those chillies are soft now after their long bath but just as hot… one of them dropped in there will add another layer of flavour… a spike of heat

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And that’s it.

Well that’s it till the next day, anyway. The slow cooker can go on before setting off for work in the morning and then,  on getting in from work?

Then you will find your home filled with the most beautiful smell and know that you are going to eat the perfect supper for a dark and gloomy night…. oh it was gorgeous.

There was this deep, rich smell blended with a  fruity sharpness and the underlying tang that comes from saffron. Quite mouthwatering

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The meat was falling away from the bone… all I had to do was make some couscous and then spoon the tender, aromatic lamb and gravy over it….

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And then tuck in…..