Tag: view from my window

Happy New Year… a new year, a new start

I know… this is hardly the start of the year, is it?  I have an excuse though. Since New Year’s Day I have been suffering with a vile cough and cold, which seems to me to be really unfair. OK, if I was still in the U.K. in the depths of winter… but here? In the heat and the sunshine? I have spent the last two weeks, moaning and coughing but I am finally feeling slightly more clear headed and sounding less like a chesty old pit pony.

Time to start again.

When I look back on 2011, from where I am now… well, it seems unbelievable.  At the start of that year we had no idea that we would  be moving anywhere, never mind half way round the world.  I suppose if I had thought of moving it would have been to a house, instead of our apartment, because I had been longing for an outside oven. I would have thought I’d have carried on cooking things like Beef and Ale Casserole with dumplings. or maybe the glorious Black Pudding and Haggis on Apple Mash (after all, it will soon be Burns’ Night again) or, or of our favourites, Bacon and Apple Risotto with Black Pudding. Everything rich and delicious and sustaining to get us through the cold and the snow.

I’d have been glad of the cold as we tucked into Jansson’s Temptation, my favourite potato dish ever. Maybe I’d have been making slimming soups, like Skinny Tomato Soup , in an attempt to lose weight after eating all of that lovely hearty food…

I would wake up and look out of our windows, in our apartment, down onto the frosty city below

And yet here we are, a year later, living just off the Equator, steaming gently in the Tropical heat. Now I wake up to dawn, over a vibrant city, with the Petronas Towers appearing through the mist.

I’m cooking things like Rendang terlagi-lagi and Sambal santan udang. I’m buying things in markets that I have no idea what they are and then trying to work out what to do with them later.

Some things are the same, though. I look ahead to the rest of the year, knowing that THIS will be the year that I get thin and fit….I’ve had that as a resolution for years. And I haven’t done it.

Maybe I will this time. After all, we are living in a place where I can swim each day (and that means, of course, putting on a swimming costume. Not a good look at the moment, I admit)

 

The fruit and vegetables here in Malaysia are incredible….. there’s an abundance of fish and seafood. All of which are fresh and tasty. All of which are just waiting for me to try.

And we have a wonderful new space, with a lovely, large dining table so we can invite our friends round….

We can sit ten round there (OK, ten at a push. Comfortably, we can seat eight) and I have two large kitchens to work in. My old friends back home can come out to visit and my new friends here can come round to eat.

It’s all such a change from Nottingham!

If we can go through so much change in one short year, I wonder what can happen in the coming year?

What WILL happen is that I am going to cook more and write more. There are so many delicious things to experiment with here, so many wonderfully tasty recipes to tell you about and, I have to say, so many things I cooked last year and didn’t have time to tell you about.

This year there’ll be a mix of Southeast Asian and British dishes as I look back at what I’ve done and look ahead to new experiences.

My resolutions, therefore, are to explore, remember, taste, experiment, enjoy and, most of all, to tell you all about everything!

Happy Belated New Year!

 

 

 

At last, cooking and internet… chicken Malaysian style – Ayam Golek

Finally, we have a half decent internet connection. It’s still slow to load pages but we can cope now, after Unifi finally arrived to install our internet connection. For the last six weeks or so we have been trying to manage on a mobile router device, or going to sit down at the poolside, where there’s a free wifi zone.

That’s fine, you know, in fact, that is gorgeous, but as a place to try and work? Well, it was too hot in the daytime. We used to go down at night and try and catch up with things. Thing is… it took forever to upload any pictures. The other thing is that the mosquitoes caught up with me. The Bear, of course, wasn’t troubled at all but I ended up with huge, horrible bites. I suppose it says something about the tastiness of my blood….

In the end we went and bought the mobile router so we could at least sit in the apartment and use the internet.

Of course, our other problem was that the container hadn’t arrived and all of our pots and pans , cutlery and crockery, knives and tools were miles from us and weeks from delivery. I did go out and buy the bare minimum…and when I say the bare minimum, that’s what I mean. I wasn’t going to replace everything when I had boxes and boxes of kitchen stuff on its way to me, so I ended up with a chopping board; one knife for cutting and one for bread; a colander and a pan. It was fine. It worked and I kept to the simplest of dishes. I steamed fish by wrapping it in tinfoil and adding ginger and garlic, adding a few drops of water and putting it in the oven. In my pan, I cooked rice and stirred shredded coconut through it (oh, the bliss of finding fresh, shredded coconut in the local food market!) and then quickly sauteed baby kailan leaves… we ate on the balcony, sitting at the only table and chairs we had. Thank goodness for IKEA, otherwise we would have been sitting on the floor!

Eventually, after many excuses by the shipping company, we got our container and the kitchen was filled with all of my lovely things… time, I thought, for a decent meal to celebrate. I sat on the balcony at dawn and started to consider what I could cook. Isn’t that a fabulous view? I sit there every morning with my coffee and plan what I am going to do while the Bear is at work.

I had been out and bought a small Malaysian recipe book and I really wanted to try a recipe I had seen in there – Ayam Golek – chicken boiled in coconut milk and spices and then roasted in the oven so the skin crisps up beautifully.

Malaysians love chicken… there are stalls at the roadside cooking chicken and the hawker stalls at the back of most shopping areas always have a fried chicken stand.  Everywhere you go you will find chicken cooked in various ways and this recipe sounded perfect.

First, get your chicken. That was easy. I went to the local food market and picked up a chicken and all the ingredients I needed to make ayam golek.  I bought coconut milk ( it did say make it yourself from fresh coconut but there were no further instructions, so I ended up buying three cartons to make the 750ml I needed); some shallots; garlic; three stalks of lemon grass; a knob of galangal; a knob of ginger; some cumin seeds; white peppercorns and fennel seeds.

I came back and started to sort out the ingredients so I could prepare the meal ready for the Bear to get home from work…..

 

Oh dear. That will teach me to wear my specs when I go shopping….

 

 

What the heck was I going to do with that? There was nothing in the recipe book about chicken heads!

 

 

Nor feet! I know I had seen chicken feet for sale… but I’d  never wanted to eat them. The horrible claws… like long fingernails…oh it made me shudder.

 

 

And the neck….it just stuck out horribly and I had to hack away at it.  Just shows how sanitised everything is in the West. Our chickens come prepared  and all we have to do is start cooking. Well, I got it ready but maybe next time I will look  more carefully at what I am buying. Maybe I will wear my specs.

First of all, then, I rubbed the chicken with salt and put it to one side while I started on the rest of the recipe.

 

Malaysians set great store by grinding everything in a pestle and mortar, so I started off…

 

I peeled twelve small shallots

 

 

and then got the ginger out to start peeling that… and discovered I’d made my first mistake

 

 

Yellow ginger ISN’T ginger of an attractive hue…it’s tumeric. My fingers and nails were stained for days.

 

 

I decided that grinding the seeds and peppercorns would be easier if I did that first, so into the mortar went one teaspoon each of white peppercorns and cumin and one tablespoon of fennel seeds.

 

… and bashed away until I had a smooth mix. I don’t think I’m going to need a gym membership because that gives you one heck of a work out.

 

 

I’d got the other ingredients ready – the twelve shallots; three cloves of garlic; three stalks of lemon grass and the peeled ginger….and decided that I wouldn’t put that ‘yellow ginger’ in after all.

 

So everything else went in and I bashed away

 

That’s hard work, that is.. Maybe if you aren’t looking to create a truly authentic dish, you could give everything a whizz with a blender? I think I might do that next time….

 

Especially when this was the temperature in the kitchen. That’s our kitchen clock, which helpfully confirmed what I thought – it was hot in there.

 

Finally, I was ready… 750 ml of coconut milk was added to a wok…

 

 

…..and the ground spices and bashed lemongrass stalks were added and everything  was heated to a slow boil before I added the chicken and a teaspoon of salt.

 

I was on Easy Street now… all I had to do was simmer that chicken for thirty minutes, turning it half way through so both sides got poached. The coconut milk and spices thickened at that point and it was time to put the chicken  into a roasting dish and then into a preheated oven (175°C/350°F) for another thirty minutes……the skin crisps up and the chicken browns…

 

 

Ohhh… the smell was divine!

 

The chicken was moist and succulent and fell apart as I tried to serve it. Just the way it should be if it is cooked properly.

I made boiled rice and stirred a handful of fresh grated coconut through it, with a few bits of chopped coriander (or, as they call it here, Chinese Parsley. I spend lots of time in the food markets sticking my nose into things to work out what things are)

Was it worth it? Very definitely. I’d suggest that if you do it, you use a blender unless you want a real work out.  That would be so quick and easy and if you were to get the ready prepared chopped garlic, ginger and lemongrass (because not everyone has access to the fresh ingredients) no one would blame you. Be as authentic as you like or as lazy as you like, but do try making it because the flavours are delicious. The simmering in coconut milk make for the most incredibly moist and juicy chicken while the roasting crisps the outside and adds a final layer of taste to it all.

Oh… and maybe don’t buy a chicken with its head and feet…….

 

The big move – Part 1

I know, I know… it’s been so long since I last wrote anything. Still, in all that time we have packed up in the UK and moved half way across the world, found somewhere to live and finally managed to get internet access. We have no belongings yet, other than the things we brought with us in suitcases or what I have had to go out and buy, just so we can manage.

The story, so far, then, or at least the first part of it….. those last few weeks in the UK were a chaotic scramble as I worked up until the last fortnight and the Bear was away for most of the time.  I managed to sell my house in the north and we brought the contents to Nottingham. What that meant, of course, was that I then had double the kitchen equipment and friends were given box loads of the spare stuff. I had to empty the cupboards of all my spices and ingredients, all those delicious things I had collected  on my travels and hadn’t used up and still the kitchen was overflowing with plates, cutlery and equipment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It all had to be packed away…..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 The pile of boxes stood taller than me and filled the kitchen area

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the living space… and that was just upstairs. Downstairs was just as bad. Boxes everwhere we looked and it wasn’t as if we were taking furniture apart from a bed, a desk and a chair. All of that was just things….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Boxes and boxes of things

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 That all had to be packed into the sea container, ready for the long journey from the UK to Malaysia.

Eventually it was all done and we could look  around at our empty apartment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was my kitchen – so small and yet so much went on in there. I always called it a Footballer’s Wife of a kitchen – pretty to look at but precious little to recommend it in real life.  It was badly planned, with the small fridge and freezer on either side of the oven and the drawers where you would keep cutlery and Stuff at the very end of the workbench, as far as you could get from where you would need it. 

(Everyone has a Stuff Drawer – it’s where you put bits of string in case you need to tie anything up, or where your Swiss Army penknife goes, just in case you meet a horse with a stone in its shoe and where you put the collection of red rubber bands the postman drops outside the letterbox because he can’t, quite frankly, be bothered to put them in his pocket. Stuff. It collects everywhere and needs a drawer of its own. I bet you all have a Stuff Drawer)

When I look at that kitchen I think of how much more I want from a kitchen. I want the space I’ll be working in to be away from the sink which is jammed in a corner. I can’t count the times The Bear has come over and wanted a cup of tea when I was trying to work .  I want a fridge that I can stand at and look into, rather than having to kneel on the floor and practice advanced packing techniques to get the bare necessities in there. To be fair to the planners though, they probably weren’t thinking of me when they did the apartment, they probably thought the people living in there would go out to eat all the time.

When we moved in, the person we bought the place from had left a huge pile of takeaway menus and the oven had never been used.

I really want gas – that electric hob has been the bane of my life because I love the speed and responsiveness of gas. We always planned to put an induction hob in but we just didn’t get around to it. We had just decided to go and get one in the sales when the Bear  got this new job in Malaysia.

I want more storage space – we did build a larder when we moved in, where there was some wasted space at the top of the stairs, but I want more cupboards to put things away easily.

As Bear says, all I’m saying is “I want… I want”  but I was determined that I  would think of all this when I went looking for a new place. The kitchen is probably the most important place for me and while I can, and have cooked quite successfully in that tiny space, if I can get somewhere better then I should.

The apartment looked empty now – well, empty of boxes, anyway

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We were leaving our furniture behind and the plan was we would rent out our place and then rent an apartment in KL. On our first trip out we had looked at some condos and a lot of them were available furnished so we thought that might do us. We didn’t have anywhere sorted but at least we had an idea which part of the city we wanted to live in and the type of place that would suit us. Besides, our container wouldn’t arrive for a good six weeks after we got there so there would be planty of time to sort all of that out.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We stood on the balcony and looked out over the city for the last time, wondering what the view from our window would be in Malaysia.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We headed back to the north to say goodbye to the family

and then we turned round and drove away……

 

 

 

 

The ever changing view from my window…..

Cooking, for me, is a calming and enjoyable experience. 

The apartment we live in has 28 windows running around three sides of our upper floor, so wherever I stand I can see the city below us. I love to work at a bench, kneading or chopping, grinding or mixing and being able to see all around me. The preparation of food can be a meditative experience as I stand and work and gaze out, soothed by the everchanging view of the unpredictable British weather. 

Because we are so high up and have so many windows, the views are amazing. I love seeing the seasons change and perhaps the most beautiful time is dawn…. 

 

……..the sun rising through the mist that swirls around the trees below us is one of my favourite sights. 

 

Sometimes a stormy dawn will fill the sky with vibrant colours contrasted against grey and turbulent skies…. 

 

… and a bright dawn fills me with happiness 

 

In the winter the snow reflects the light back, brightening the morning. 

 

Even on grey and rain filled days the apartment is filled with light. There’s something so cosy about being inside, in the warm, when the rain lashes against the windows. 

  

And the bliss of being inside when the snow piles up on the sills outside while you are inside, surrounded by warmth and the smell of something wonderful cooking. 

I do love living here. Not one day is the same as another and each day’s view is different.

Soon, though, the change is going to be more dramatic and you will be treated to a new and very different view from my window. 

The Bear and I are off, embarking on an adventure that will mean a total change in the way we live, the things we see and the food we cook and eat. I have to do lots of sorting and packing and sharing out the things we can’t take with us… there’ll be chances for everyone to win DVDs and cookery books. And I do mean everyone. Some things I give away will have to be sent to UK people only, simply because of the postage costs… but a light weight DVD? Well I am sure I could afford to post that almost anywhere. 

In six months time or so, we will be living on the other side of the world as the Bear will be working for three years in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. And I will be going with him. 

 

The Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur 

Imagine the difference in the views…..imagine the difference in the ingredients and the cooking…imagine the fun we will all have.  

The Bear has been to Kuala Lumpur many times and took the following pictures they  will give you an idea of the vibrancy, the colour and the busy bustling city…. 

                         

Traffic in Kuala Lumpur 

  

Beautifully illuminated fountains in Kuala Lumpur 

                

The KL Monorail 

 

The skyscrapers really do seem to scrape at the sky

… and it’s not all traffic and building… there are palm trees and beautiful fountains everywhere.

Things change all the time and I know this is going to be a big change but that’s  good.

Change is exciting and I hope you’ll enjoy the changing views and changing food and recipes with us.

Baked lemon cheesecake with blueberries

When I was growing up, I remember the excitement when Marks and Spencer introduced the baked cheesecake into their ready made food section. This was the 70’s, you know, and British food was hardly at its finest.

We’d had cheesecakes before of course, just not the baked ones. We’d had those  strange pre-frozen cheesecakes where the middle seemed to be made of some kind of whipped creamy nonsense and laden with luridly coloured strawberries….well, we’d had them when our mothers had got them for a dinner party and, if we were lucky, the following day there may have been a slice or two left over to be sneaked before (or even instead of, if Ma didn’t catch us) breakfast. Food like that was far too good to be specifically given to children. Maybe we’d had some at a friend’s birthday party where the mother was trying to outdo every other mother and you know, they were pretty fancy for the 70’s but they weren’t the be all and end all of desserts. They were OK.  Real cheesecakes? They weren’t available. Or at least if they were they never made their way to the North. Maybe it was something lucky young Londoners had.

I’d read in stories that Americans had cheesecake and they loved it but as far as I was concerned, as far as I knew, cheesecake… well it came out of a frozen packet and it was nice, but not brilliant.

Anyway… one day my friend F got a slice and let me taste it. I couldn’t believe the rich, dense filling. No lurid strawberries, just a lemony hint. I couldn’t believe how deep it was. A solid wedge.

I loved it. I loved the way it stuck, almost, to the roof of my mouth in its glorious clagginess… the way the flavour seemed to be so luxurious. Now I understood why people loved cheesecake.

Of course we still didn’t make it (there was no internet to look up recipes in those far off days) and sometimes we were lucky when we ordered cheesecake in a restaurant… and sometimes we weren’t. Sometimes we got real baked cheesecake and usually, I suppose, we got the defrosted thin one from the packet.

I don’t know when I first made a real baked cheesecake but it wasn’t so many years ago. I do know that I realised just how simple it was and how much I had been missing out on. This really was the stuff of that amazing childhood memory – that delicious, thick, sumptuous and dense filling. So very different to the thin whipped and set filling that appeared so often elsewhere.

I suppose it is because of that that I think of cheesecake as a special treat. It has to be a special treat, really, because if I made that just for the Bear and I we would end up eating it all and let’s face it, we are fat enough.

Anyway, the one I was going to make was for a special occasion – we had friends coming for dinner and we wanted to have a good time. There may have been an element of hoping (just like back in the 70’s) that it wouldn’t all get eaten and then I could maybe have some for breakfast……

I’d  used a recipe from Good Food before and it had turned out very well  and would be worth doing again. All I needed were some digestive biscuits; 100g of butter; 250g of mascarpone, (that’s one tub); 600g of soft cheese, (that would be two tubs of Philadelphia); 4 eggs, ( but you won’t need two of the whites. Save them for something else… or maybe have an egg white omelette the following day to make up for any indulgence. Maybe not, eh? Maybe make meringues instead!);  3 or 4 lemons and some caster sugar and some plain flour.

Once it was baked, a small pot  soured cream and some lemon curd and fruit were to go on top. Simple. But oh so delicious.

So, I needed my springform tin and to make sure there were no leaks I got out a preshaped baking paper liner.

I decided that Hobnobs would make a lovely crumbly, rich base… because I love them.

And as I needed 225g – which came to 16 Hobnobs in case you are interested (or can’t find the scales to weigh them) then that also meant, I thought, that  there would be a few Hobnobs left over to have with a cup of coffee. Always thinking, that’s me.

Making the base is the simplest thing ever – and with such crumbly biscuits it is so easy to give them a bash with the end of a rolling pin to crumble them.

100g of melted butter (heat it gently and carefully in the microwave) was poured in and stirred round until the butter was absorbed. Pour the buttery, crumby mix into the lined springform tin and press down.

Using a spoon round the edges means you get a good firm base and then put it in the fridge for the butter to set firm again and the base to chill.

Heat the oven to 160°C (fan assisted)/320°F.

Then start to get everything else ready. This is so easy.

Zest all of the the lemons, add the two whole eggs and the two egg yolks, the pot of  mascarpone, the two tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese and  the juice of two of the lemons to a mixing bowl.

And then add 175g of caster sugar and 4 tablespoons of plain flour

And start whizzing it together.

The colour changes  as it becomes smooth and delicious.

Now, take the chilled crumb base out of the fridge and spoon in the lucious filling.

If you give it a gentle side-to-side shake the mixture settles and the top smooths slightly… though this will also happen in the oven.

Put it carefully into the oven for thirty five to forty minutes and when you check it, give it a little shake…. it won’t (or it shouldn’t) slosh, it will just have a gentle wobble to it.

Turn the oven off and leave it to cool completely in there.

That was handy for me because I had to get things ready. There were floors to wash, a table to lay, cushions to be plumped, surfaces to polish…. and a mad rush to get me looking half way presentable before the guests came.

Now, you may have read about the mushroom pate with caramelised red onions, and the squash and goat’s cheese lasagne and the singing. This cheesecake was the final part of the meal and I was going to put the topping on just before serving it.

And, as I am sure you will agree, if you are eating you will probably have been drinking….not to excess, you understand, but enough to laugh happily.

Enough to laugh happily and cover the top of the cool cheesecake with some lemon curd and then spoon the soured cream over the top and, still, laughing happily, make attractive patterns with a fork on it before realising that photographs should have been taken.

Oh well.

Imagine it instead… the top of a baked cheesecake, looking pale and beautiful has a few spoons of  good quality lemon curd spread over it. I used lemon curd I made but any good brand will do.

Then the soured cream was poured over the top of that… and then I got artistic.

Right, we are caught up with ourselves and the pictures now.

In the freezer I had some frozen blueberries so I grabbed a handful and dotted them over the top.

(Look, you can see the lovely lemon curd poking through the swirled sour cream!)

The blueberries defrost quickly when you put them on top of the cake and the beautiful juices run down through the tracks of the fork in the soured cream.

Oh… it was delicious.

The beautiful baked cheescake filling had the perfect mouth-sticking texture that dissolved into lovely creamy lemon-ness.

The soured cream and the blueberries were the ideal match to the rich smooth sweetness.

I say again, ohhhh it was delicious.

And the next morning, while I stood, waiting for the kettle to boil, looking out of the window at the early Sunday morning city below us, I might (just as I did back in the 1970’s)  have cut myself the tiniest sliver of cheesecake to eat as a pre-breakfast, post dinner party treat.

Except this was far better than any 70’s cheesecake. This was a perfect baked cheesecake.

Remembrance of Things Past… madeleines for an anniversary tea.

One year ago today I started this blog. I can’t believe how many things I have cooked since then. One good thing about writing about what I cook is that I have been forced to cook new things. I know how easy it is to rely on the same old favourites all the time. I have been inspired by reading all the blogs my new friends have written or have pointed me to. I have made things I had just previously read about and discovered that things are never as tricky as they might seem. All it ever takes is a bit of time to read things through so you understand the process and love and determination in your heart. My main inspiration is the Bear – I just want to make good things for him… and after all, this blog is named after him.

When I look back at all the posts I’m amazed that anyone read them or that they continue to read them.

I had to celebrate a full year of blogging and all the friends I have made because of it. I’d love to be able to celebrate with you all here.. maybe laughing and talking about the past year over cups of tea and cakes….

And that made me think of Marcel Proust. And madeleines. Proust talks of eating a madeleine with a cup of tea and being transported back to earlier times….

“She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called petites madeleines, which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim’s shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate than a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place…at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory…”

— Remembrance of Things Past, Volume 1: Swann’s Way.

What better cakes to bake for a wet Sunday afternoon when I want to look back on the last year?

The rain was lashing against the windows and all over Britain people were staring at the dismal weather and deciding to stay inside. We were going to do the same but I was going to make tea time special to celebrate this special day.

To make madeleines you need a madeleine tin. These have a wonderful scalloped base that are essential for the perfect madeleine. You won’t regret buying one (if you need any encouragement, that is) If you are looking at kinds to buy, avoid the silicone ones – the metal heats better and is  much easier to handle than a wobbly, rubbery tray.

You also need good instructions and the best I have found (after intensive searches) is from David Leibovitz  on “Living the sweet life in Paris”

First of all melt, then let cool, 120g unsalted butter.

You will use most of it in the cake batter but just lightly brush the madeleine tins with a quick wipe of melted butter.

Sprinkle the buttered tins with flour

Then upend the tin over the sink and shake off the excess.

Put the tin in the freezer to chill down properly.

In the bowl of a mixer, put a pinch of salt, 130g of golden granulated sugar and three large eggs (that have been allowed to come to room temperature)

Whisk them together for five minutes until the mix becomes pale and thickens slightly.

Weigh out 175g of fine plain flour – I always use ’00’ (it’s available in most supermarkets now, in the baking aisle) and add 1 level teaspoon of baking powder. The baking powder makes them rise well, giving the traditional (and desired) “humpy” effect on the back of the finished madeleines.

Sieve the flour mix into the egg and sugar bow and fold it in carefully.

Zest a lemon and add it to the melted butter. Remember to scrub the lemon if it is a waxed one.

Once the flour is in, add a little of the melted butter and fold it in gently.

 

Gradually, add it all slowly and carefully. Don’t overwork it because all that will do is toughen the gluten. Just fold it in as lightly and smoothly as possible.

Pour your beautifully smooth and silky batter into a jug and put it in the fridge for at least an hour. You can make the madeleine batter up to 12 hours ahead, if that will suit you?  What a great thing that would be if you had people coming round!

When you are ready, heat the the oven to 220 degrees C/425 degrees F

Get your beautifully frozen tin from the freezer

… and spoon in a dollop of the madeleine mix

The madeleines will only take between 8 or 9 minutes, so while they are baking, make some  tea.

We love beautifully fragrant green tea and I think the pure, delicate taste would be perfect with the light, sweet cakes.

As the tea infuses the leaves unfurl.

At the same time,  the madeleines are ready.

Beautifully humped and golden.

They are tipped out onto a wire rack to cool slightly. The underside has the gorgeous scalloped markings of the perfect madeleine.

Golden, sweet, warm cakes. Light and delicious.

We ate them with our steaming cups of tea as we looked back over the past year. We used the random post picker button on the main website page (which you can also get to by clicking on the Bear in the top corner) and read about meals and treats and smiled as we did so.

The weather may have been awful but the madeleines were fabulous.

Happy Anniversary to the blog!

Meatfree Monday – Roast Garlic and Marrow Soup

It’s the time of year when everyone who gardens starts to look around for people to take their extra produce off their hands. There are messages at work telling people if they want apples or pears they can help themselves, people come to work carrying bags of fruit and vegetables and we all start to look for recipes to use up the glut. This week’s harvest is vegetable marrow.

Vegetable marrow, for those of you who aren’t British, are a kind of squash with a very pale, slightly sweet flesh. They are quite large, as you can see – that’s one lying across my large chopping board – and when they are ready for harvesting, there are bound to be lots of them. That’s quite a lot of marrow to deal with.

I need to think of something tasty and warming. I also need to keep an eye on the calorie count. It’s so easy to go wild when the weather turns cold and treat yourself with calorific goodies. I want the best of both worlds – rich and delicious as well as low calorie and healthy.

The weather is changing and this weekend has been very grey and miserable. The temperature is dropping and the winds are picking up. Looking out of our windows I can see rain coming down on the horizon and it is moving our way. I want to stay inside and be cocooned in warmth and comfort.

Soup, I thought. A big bowl of silky, tasty soup. That was what I needed.

Now, vegetable marrow has a very delicate flavour that can, if handled badly,  seem insipid. What I wanted to do was enhance its lovely sweetness and one way of doing it is to add roast garlic to the soup. Garlic, when roasted, develops a lovely sweetness of its own and it works well with the pure taste of the marrow.

So, first roast your garlic. I have one and a half bulbs, which might seem a lot but once garlic is roasted gently it loses its pungency and becomes almost sweet.

Heat the oven to 200 degrees C/390 degrees F.

While the oven is getting to the right temperature, pour some olive oil into a heatproof bowl. You need enough to cover the cloves of garlic, but don’t worry – once the garlic has cooked gently you can save the oil to use again. Not only have you made a necessary ingredient for your soup but the by-product is a gorgeously flavoured garlic oil that you can use in all sorts of things later.

Separate the cloves, removing the outer layer but leave the skins on. Put them all in the bowl with the olive oil, making sure there’s enough oil to cover the cloves and put the bowl in the oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

While that is cooking, get started on the marrow.

The skin of a vegetable marrow is extremely hard so the only way to peel it, I found, is to cut the marrow into manageable pieces and then cut the skin off.

Scoop out the seedy, fibrous middle and cut the flesh into cubes.

I wanted to emphasise the sweet and aromatic flavours in the soup, so I chose sweet white onions for the base.

A good tablespoon of butter was heated in a large pan. And when I say large pan, that’s what I mean.

Until the marrow cooks down you will end up with what seems like an enormous quantity so use your biggest pan.

Peel and dice the onion and start to soften it gently. Add a pinch of salt to keep the onion soft and white. You don’t want burned or browned onion as the final soup is a lovely pale cream colour.

By now, the garlic will be cooked so take the bowl out carefully and remove the cloves of garlic with a slotted spoon so they can cool enough to be handled. Remember to keep the oil and bottle it when it is cooled so you can use it later.

Once you can touch the garlic cloves easily, snip the end off the papery outside covering and squeeze out the soft white inside.

Add the garlic, the marrow and a pint and a half of vegetable stock.

Add a small amount of chilli. I get those tubes of chilli, ready prepared, and keep them in the fridge. Very labour saving and, seeing as this year’s chilli harvest has been a dismal failure to date, an absolute god-send.

Stir everything round, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer gently until the marrow is soft.

Whizz the softened marrow mix to a smooth consistency.

You’ll see that it looks rather watery and it needs something to pull it together into a rich and delicious soup.

And this is it.

Dried skimmed milk powder. Almost totally fat free.

Adding a ladle full of Marvel will make the soup taste rich and creamy with negligible addition of fat. Trust me, this is a brilliant way to make soup taste like it is made with cream. You have plenty of liquid already in the soup base, the milk powder dissolves into that  and enriches the whole pan without adding extra liquid.

Whizz it round and you can see the texture change from  an almost granular in appearance puree, to a smooth and silky soup base.

Snip some chives to go on the top of the soup and serve it up.

That was, when served with some savoury scones, absolutely gorgeous.

Each big bowl of soup contained minimal calories yet it felt as rich and luxurious as if it was made with double cream. Of course, if I had been really serious about cutting calories I wouldn’t have made the scones as well…. but hey ho. It’s a start, isn’t it?

Apple Butter Cake

I do love autumn. As a season it suits  me better than any other. I love the cooking I do then… I like the cooler weather.. I absolutely adore the darker nights and getting home to our warm and cosy apartment and putting the lights on so the place glows. I love the colours of the trees and the crispness of the air. When I get up in the morning the skies are just starting to lighten and the view is magnificent.

In autumn I start to bake again.

I decided that as it was getting cooler it would be fine to have a nice cake to have with coffee. I wanted something  that could be classed as a plain cake… but not too plain. If you having a cup of tea or coffee you want a cake that will enhance the experience, not fight against it.

One of my great favourites is the Blueberry Yoghurt cake but right at this time? I had no blueberries  but I did have a lot of apples. All that foraging we did meant that there are still lots of apples left.

I thought I could adapt the recipe and add in apples… and as I have a lot of Apple Butter I could use that as well.

In my reading about apple butter, before I made it, there were mentions of it being used in baking as a fat substitute. The apple keeps moisture in the cake just as fat does. Now I wasn’t going to go all the way along that route as I’d never cooked with it before and I was using a recipe for another cake entirely, but I was going to give it a go.

Plenty of apples to work with, anyway.

First of all, the oven was put on at 180 degrees C/350 degrees F and I lined a springform cake tin with a siliconed paper liner.

I peeled, cored and diced 6 smallish apples and put them in a bowl with the juice of half a lemon to stop the apple pieces turning brown.

250ml of yoghurt was measured out and put in the mixing bowl’

with 200g of sugar and 60ml of vegetable oil.

Two eggs and a teaspoon of  vanilla extract went in next.

I would have liked to have added Calvados  to the mix as a good apple brandy will enhance the flavours… thing is, we had had Calvados and as it was good, so good that we no longer had any….well, we’d drunk it. Ordinary brandy would have to do instead. I poured a good sloosh…maybe a couple of tablespoons.

All of these wet ingredients were gently mixed together. Gently, you note, not thrashed to death in a high speed mixing frenzy.

Next, the dry ingredients had to be mixed

300 g  of plain flour and 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder and  ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda have to be mixed together properly to make sure everything is evenly distributed because then you have to add that to the cake mix.

Before that went in though, I got my jar of Apple Butter 

and added two heaped dessertspoonfuls of apple butter to the mix.

Now this, I thought, would add a beautiful spiced apple flavour and, if the theory was right about reducing the fat content, still keep the cake moist. The recipe I was tinkering with had specified 80ml of vegetable oil so I had effectively reduced the oil by 25% when I only put 60ml in.

I mixed that through, gently then added the flour, bicarb and baking powder mix

Again, another gentle mix

And then the apple

Once in the springform tin, I gave it a little shake, from side to side to even out the mix and then put it in the oven on the middle shelf.

I had a feeling that this was going to be a good cake because when I was clearing up, I just happened to run my finger over the mixer blade… and tasted the mix…..it was delicious.

I felt like a little kid again, scraping out the bowl and eating the mix.

Now, my original recipe had said that 35 minutes would do the cake to perfection but I HAD added what would be extra moisture with the apple butter… and apples do make cakes very moist whereas the original recipe specified blueberries. I was prepared for extra cooking time.

Which was just as well because I kept checking and the skewer kept coming out sticky and the top started to brown. I decided the thing to do would be to turn the oven down slightly  to 160 degrees C/320 degrees F and keep going.

Eventually, a good fifty minutes after I put it in the oven, the skewer emerged clean.

It looked pretty good and smelled even better

I sprinkled just the faintest dusting of golden caster (superfine) sugar over the top

And cut a slice.

It was excellent. Not too sweet and with little nuggets of apple and the hints of aromatic spiceness from the apple butter it was more than just a plain cake for tea or coffee. I wanted to eat more of it but I couldn’t. I had promised to take it round to my friend’s house to let the children try.

These are the children who came round to learn how to make Bear Bars and helped to make pasta and they are developing a keen interest in cooking. They were waiting to try the apple butter as well as the cake.

Their verdict? They want more. This cake is perfect with a cup of tea or coffee but they had it as a pudding with an extra spoonful of apple butter and a spoonful of cream.

And you know what? They were right. It makes a pretty good dessert.

And as that was done in a haphazard fashion and I want you to try baking this cake I shall set out the recipe:

Apple Butter Cake

Wet ingredients: 6 small apples/3 medium apples, peeled, cored and diced;  juice of half a lemon; 250ml natural Greek yoghurt; 200g golden caster sugar; 60ml vegetable oil; 2 free range eggs; 1 teaspon of pure vanilla extract, 2 tablespoons of brandy; 2 heaped dessertspoons of apple butter (if you have it. Otherwise increase oil to 80ml)

Dry ingredients: 300 g  of plain flour; 1 ½ teaspoon baking powder and  ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees C /350 degrees F and line a medium sized springform tin with a cake liner.

Mix all of the wet ingredients first, bar the diced apple which goes in after the flour mix has been added. Only mix it gently.

Mix the dry ingredients together to ensure an even mix then add that to the cake batter, again only mix gently.

Now add the diced apple . The apple will sink in the mixture so don’t bother to stir it through – it will settle of its own accord.

Pour the cake mix into the lined tin and shake slightly to let it setlle and place it in the middle of the preheated oven.

After 40 minutes turn the oven down to 150 degrees C/ 320 degrees F and check with a skewer to see how the cake is doing.

After 50 minutes check again and leave in until the skewer emerges clean.

Take out and let cool.

And that’s it.

Put the kettle on, will you? Make a cup of tea and have a perfect slice of cake!

Toffee and Apple Butter Crumble

When I was at school we studied the English Romantic poet, John Keats. To this day, I can still recite many of his odes and whenever my friend J and I get together, something will trigger something in our heads and we will burst into recitation – either sonnets from Shakespeare or poetry or even psalms and verses from the Bible. It must be hard wired into our brains now and it still makes us laugh that after all these decades, the words our teachers drummed into our heads when we were little schoolgirls, still remain. It seemed so hard at the time to learn everything and now it seems we can’t forget anything! Makes us pretty good at quizzes, of course, and a source of irritation to our husbands as they weren’t taught like us Grammar School girls and they roll their eyes when we go into our synchronised recitation mode at the least provocation or reminder. We can’t help it. It just happens automatically. We must have been terrified of our teachers.

 Keats, in his ode “To Autumn” called this the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”  and he was right. The apple trees are bending under the weight of the apples and this morning, the first of the real autumn mists filled the valley below us. What might have seemed boring and irrelevant to our teenaged minds is now appreciated and I found myself reciting the ode as I made coffee for breakfast and gazed out of the window.

Mists certainly… mellow fruitfulness? Yes. We still had such a lot of apples from our brief foraging trip and I needed to use them.

I was going to be cooking a meal that evening for a visitor from South Africa and another colleague. It wasn’t going to be a fancy dinner but it had to be good. I wanted to show what traditional British cooking was like and prove that it is delicious. What better for dessert, I thought, than Apple Crumble? Perfectly British and perfectly delicious.

Last time I made crumble, I made Toffee Apple Crumble and it was delicious – the addition of fudge made an ordinary apple crumble something special. This time, I thought, I would use fudge again but also add the Apple Butter I made at the weekend. That would add in another layer of appley lusciousness to the crumble…..

So, I got in from work and peeled some apples. Normally I use good sized apples and allow one per person. That normally works out about right.

These were my foraged apples – not quite so big as ones from a managed orchard, so I decided 6 would do. Also, I am rather greedy and I was hoping for leftovers the next day.

Peeled, cored and chopped, I put them in a large baking dish and sprinkled the juice of half a lemon over the bits to stop them getting too brown.

A sprinkling of golden granulated sugar over the top would balance things nicely and help make delicious juices (and I do mean, by the way, just a sprinkling. More sweetness will come from the fudge)

The fudge needed to be cut up too…

And the apple butter I made? Look how it has set… it can be cut into slices, just like real butter. Apple butter is just apples cooked slowly until their natural sugars caramelise, which is why it is a deep golden brown, and spices (cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves) stirred in and cooked with the apples.

I layered some slices over the apple, knowing that when everything baked, the apple butter would melt over the apple pieces and that lovely spiced apple mix would be perfect in the crumble.

Next, the fudge pieces were scattered over the top.

The crumble mix is simplicity itself – 300g of plain flour, 200g of sugar and 175g of butter.

Making the crumble topping is really easy – just rub the mix through your fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. It doesn’t take long.

Then scatter the crumble mix over the prepared fruit and fudge.

Don’t pack it down, just shake the bowl from side to let the crumbs settle round the fruit, fudge and apple butter.

And then all you have to do is put it in the oven at 180 degrees C/350 degrees F for 40 minutes or so.

Oh, the smell of it as it cooked – there was the sweet buttery smell of the crumble itself and the sharpness of the apples and the spicy mix of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves and ginger from the apple butter.

And what was it like?

It was lovely. So lovely I forgot to take a picture of it as it came out of the oven. I just dug into it and served it up.

Served with a great dollop of extra thick double cream.

It was eaten and seconds were requested. Our South African friend said she had not wanted to go home without trying a hot English pudding, so that was good. I suppose our traditional hot puddings are famous, and rightly so.

It was a perfect pudding, it really was. Toffee Apple Crumble was excellent but adding Apple Butter as well? That made it truly delicious.

And there are no leftovers.

High, high above the city – you can still grow your own fruit and vegetables!

Some of you may have picked up on the fact that nowadays the Bear and I live high above the city, in an apartment. We are at the top of the block, which is itself on top of a hill and have the most marvellous views over the city below us. One of the best things about living here is that in the morning the dawns are fantastic

I’ve always been an early riser and I love to make my coffee and look down over the city sleeping below.

Each day the dawn is different… sometimes misty and calm and sometimes outrageously colourful. It probably is the best part of the day.

We have the most incredible views all round because our apartment is on two levels and the top floor has walls of windows on three sides.

                                                                                       

… and running the full length of the apartment is our balcony

It’s not a big balcony – it’s quite narrow, really – but I have managed to make the most of what I have. I knew I would be able to grow something – there were so many things I just didn’t want to be without.

 

There’s a fig tree in a pot with (so far) over thirty figs, ripening nicely.

Who would have thought you could grow figs so high up? It can get very windy up here but Brown Turkey Figs are very hardy (that tree was with me in the far north, in Durham and fruited well up there too) Figs produce best when their roots are confined so keeping it in a pot is the best thing for it.

I even have an apple tree up there – if you buy the single stem fruit trees, specifically grown for containers, it is amazing what you can get away with in the smallest of spaces. Despite being told that I should keep the balcony clear………

Of course, the Bear is forever on at me as I smuggle more and more onto the balcony. I just wait until he is travelling and then I bring something more from the north… Of course he was going to notice a five and a half feet tall apple tree. And as for that fig tree – well, that is in a terracotta pot and it half killed me getting it up to the top floor. Still, he is going to be happy when he can just wander outside and pick a fresh apple or ask for a juicy fig…

I have herbs, of course, there’s thyme and rosemary standing next to a pot of lavender on either side of the french doors and a large pot of sage. When I walk out onto the balcony when I get in from work, I brush past the plants and smell their gorgeous perfumes.

We have herb pots (carefully attached to the railings) all along the top of the wall, so I can go and cut fresh sweet basil, coriander, parsley (both curly and flat leaved), mint, chives, garlic chives, a huge selection of salad leaves that I can cut at and go back for more almost daily.

It’s where I grow pots of chillies, ready for cooking with

or preserving in oil

This year, my brother has given me three chilli plants – Pinocchio, Decayenne and Heatwave, all grown from seed. I really should get some jalapeno chillies going as well, though at this time of year I’ll have to buy a seedling.

 

And that’s not all I have up there… there’s a bay tree and an olive tree growing there too. OK, I use the bay leaves but somehow I don’t think I will be brining my own olives.

It’s flowering now and it did have fruit on it last year but they were small and didn’t amount to much.

 The top of an apartment block in the Midlands just isn’t the same as a sun scorched hillside in Greece.

My cousin has her own allotment and always starts her seeds off in time and sends me the seedlings… this year her gorgeous french beans and a couple of sunflowers.  I like to snap off a bean and eat it as I water the pots. There’s a sweetness about them, straight from the stem.

My wild garlic grows up there in a pot

and it is the first thing I can eat from my balcony garden.

I’d love to grow more, of course, but what I do grow is pretty good for such a small space. I would love an allotment but the ones nearest to our apartment, St Ann’s Allotments, have a waiting list as long as your arm. I’ve been on the list for a couple of years now and I suppose I shall be on there for a few years yet.

When I moved here, to be with the Bear, I remember thinking there would be so much I would miss and so much I wouldn’t be able to do if we lived in apartment. Do you know what? I probably grow more up here than I did in the north.

No matter how small a space you live in, there is always room for something to grow. And there’s nothing like the wonderful sense of achievement you get when you can just walk outside and bring in something perfectly fresh that you have grown yourself.

What do you grow?  What couldn’t you live without?