When I was seventeen, I worked in the kind of restaurant that I was far too much of a food philistine to appreciate. Why would a fussy teenager who lived off a diet of McDonalds super-size happy meals, cheese sandwiches and fish fingers care about organic food that was lovingly sourced from within a fifty-mile radius, with an emphasis on seasonality, ‘from-scratch’ cooking and unusual flavour combinations? Not for my anaemic adolescent palate the delights of duck liver and raisin pâté, pickled fennel, greengage pavlova or Moroccan lamb and preserved lemon tagine. Pass the chicken nuggets.
Read moreTea of the Month: The True Tea Club
I’ve decided to dedicate a small corner of my blog to a passion that occupies a large corner of my heart: tea. From now on, each month I’ll feature a different favourite tea (or tea company), with the aim of introducing other tea obsessives like myself to exciting and unusual blends. Given that I now have three separate shelves devoted to my tea collection in my apartment, and a further shelf in my office at work, I also consider this a means of unburdening myself slightly of my ever-growing tea knowledge. I hope you love my suggestions and that they inspire you to seek out new brews from all over the world. To kick off, we have the True Tea Club, with their exciting tea subscription boxes. It’s exactly as it sounds: a fabulous collection of innovative blends delivered directly to your door on a monthly basis.
Read moreTea-infused banana and walnut cinnamon buns
I debated long and hard over what to call these. When I put a picture of them up on instagram the other day, my finger hovered over the keyboard as I found myself weighing up the merits of ‘cinnamon rolls’ versus ‘cinnamon buns’. Were I actually Danish, rather than simply pretending by living in Denmark, being relatively tall, cycling everywhere and knowing how to say ‘I’m dog-hungry, give me a big pastry now’ in Danish, I would simply call them kanelsnegler (cinnamon snails) and be done with it, but I’m not so there was pause for thought. (And even this appears to be hotly contested in Denmark, because alongside the kanelsnegl there also exist the kanelsnurre and even the kanelting, literally ‘cinnamon thing’, which definitely suggests someone somewhere is sick of the entire debate).
Read moreKaffir lime and coconut cheesecake
What can you tell about a person from the contents of their kitchen cupboards? When I was filmed for a cookery programme several years ago, the camera crew made me reveal, on film, the contents of my larder to prove that I was not your average student when it came to culinary ingenuity. ‘No pot noodles in my cupboard!’ they wanted me to declare with an impish grin, gesturing instead to the bottles of raspberry-infused balsamic vinegar, bergamot olive oil, buckwheat flour and dried edible rose petals. I refused, unwilling to abandon completely my dignity on national television, but they did have a point. You can infer a lot about a cook from rifling through their cupboards, whether they are of the Ottolenghi school of thought (giveaways: jars of za’atar and sumac, and wooden spoons forever tipped with purple stains from bashing out pomegranate seeds over every meal), the Nigella (fridge full of butter, double cream and bacon, mandatory carbonara-eating negligee draped over a chair), the Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (weird offal in the fridge and boxes of home-cured meats lying around in various stages of fermentation), or an ardent follower of the Clean Eating brigade (chia seeds, bee pollen, cacao powder, a frankly alarming and small mortgage-worthy quantity of Medjool dates). Or, of course, an indifferent, fairweather cook (large quantities of pasta in various shapes and sizes, lots of canned sauces, a jar of 'all-purpose seasoning').
Read moreLemon curd and blueberry twist bread
I don’t think I ever tried a piece of the lemon meringue pie that they used to serve in my school canteen, but it sticks in my memory because of its frankly alarming neon-yellow colouring. I watched friends manipulate chunks of this rubbery, radioactive stuff around their plates, reminiscent more of glow-in-the-dark wallpaper paste than of anything that was once rooted in the earth. I was oddly fascinated by it, the way its jelloid luminescence was able to support a crest of snowy meringue, the way it resembled that fluorescent putty you give children to play with. Its presence on a plate seemed somehow outrageous. Too yellow. Too lurid.
Read morePanettone French toast with raspberry compote
You know those moments where you take a good, hard look at your life? My most recent one involved surveying the two bulging suitcases I had packed to take back to Denmark after a month in England for Christmas. Nestled among the paperback novels (an English-language book in a shop in Aarhus can easily set you back the equivalent of £22), January sales clothing purchases, frivolous impulse-buy cashmere items, and actual essentials (toiletries, socks, thermal tights, Scandi crime drama DVDs, scented candles infused with tea, etc.) were the following:
- 800g of new season Yorkshire rhubarb
- 2 boxes of M&S clotted cream
- 7 packets of tea, including ‘Blueberry Hill’, ‘Wanderlust’, ‘Yoga Tea’ and ‘Gingerbread Chai’
- 2 packets of pecan nuts, nestled into the toe of my shoes (packed shoes, not the ones I was wearing)
- 1 bag of toasted quinoa
- 2 packets of pistachio nuts (ditto)
- 1 huge panettone
If this reads like a list of ingredients, the recipe would be for ‘not missing out on seasonal home comforts in your life abroad’, and the method would read simply: ‘smuggle home via Ryanair. Unpack. Gorge’.
Read moreVilana cake
Vilana cake is an unusual sweet from the beautiful tiny volcanic island of La Gomera, in the Canary Islands, and is named after the ‘vilana’, or tin pot, in which it is traditionally baked. Thanks to its sub-tropical climate, La Gomera boasts fabulous produce – avocadoes, fresh fish, bananas, tomatoes – but the region is best known for its potato recipes, making the most of the island’s flavoursome root vegetables which arrived there shortly after the conquest of America. This simple, hearty cake incorporates mashed potato into its moist, buttery crumb, along with other key ingredients from the island: almonds, spice and dried fruit.
Read moreSweet plum bread with chestnut and vanilla cream
That auspicious transitional period between the years has arrived, and with it the impulse to invent unattainable goals as a coping mechanism, to quell the anxieties of liminality and assert some control over the unnerving blank space that is ‘2017’. While I will not be treading the same path as my friend’s husband, who last year decided that his new year’s resolution was simply and decisively ‘to be better’, it strikes me that using this threshold period as a time to consider ways of improving the year ahead is no bad thing. It’ll take more than a few facile resolutions to tackle the quagmire of misery, post-truth and political turmoil that was 2016, so let’s turn our attention instead to the more manageable, the smaller but still significant: our appetites; the food on our plates; how we eat. Since my life, and my years, are inevitably mapped out around the intricacies of food and cooking, it struck me that there are a few issues we food bloggers, writers, chefs and cooks may want to consider over the coming 365 days in order, ahem, ‘to be better’.
Read moreEggnog custard tarts
Given that my blog sings the praises of the nutmeg, it stands to reason that I should advise you all to go out and drink more eggnog at this time of year. Not only does it have a wonderfully charming name, but this beverage is the ultimate form of edible central heating, and showcases the musky warmth of my favourite spice, with its extraordinary power to transform and enrich dairy-based concoctions. It’s undeniably rich, being a mixture of milk or cream, sugar, spirits and whipped eggs, but a little dram is ideal for those lingering winter nights, particularly if you’re the kind of person who likes your desserts drinkable and enriched with booze.
Read morePersimmon, date and walnut scones
I never thought I’d be one of those expats who pines for tastes of home and can be found looking shifty around the security gates at airports, nervously anticipating the moment they are forced to unveil to the bemused staff their suitcase, tightly packed with jars of Marmite and cylinders of Digestive biscuits. Then again, I don’t like Marmite, I haven’t eaten a Digestive biscuit in years, and the usual suspects hardly register on my radar of desire either: baked beans I consider an atrocity, Yorkshire tea is unpleasantly bitter, and Branston pickle is a surefire way to ruin almost any food.
Read morePumpkin, goat’s cheese and sage madbrød with rosemary walnut gremolata
While piles of crisp, eddying golden leaves and a nip in the morning air are sure signs that autumn is in full swing, I tend to feel the seasons more through their food. Nothing for me is more autumnal than the sight of pumpkins, in all shapes, sizes and colours, lined up at the farmers market, or russet apples piled in abundance in the grocery stores. At this time of year, my appetite shifts towards hearty, bolstering foods in varying shades of gold, green and red; porridge becomes a staple breakfast and my love of baking shifts up a gear or two. Here in Denmark, we are blessed with fabulous bakeries on every corner, and one thing I particularly love about this little Scandinavian corner of Europe is the dark, flavoursome nature of the breads on offer, which are often punctuated by crunchy seeds and dense with nutty wholegrain flours.
Read moreQuince, olive oil and spice upside-down cake
How do you go about making a home?
Recently, I’ve been thinking a lot about the gradual process by which a place shrugs off its aura of newness and unfamiliarity and starts to become home. The repetitive performance of micro-rituals that, step by step, wear down the strangeness of a place and cosset it in the comforting blanket of domesticity and belonging. When do you stop being a tourist and start becoming a citizen? When does house become home? How do you stop staying in a place and start living there?
Read moreGolden matcha cacao banana bread
Walking into a Japanese bakery, you might be forgiven for thinking you are somewhere in the heart of Paris. Pastries, loaves and rolls are piled high and plentiful, and you are cosseted by the sumptuous aromas of warm dough and hot sugar. But look a little more closely, and you may start to reconsider. The cheese has a slightly odd, plasticky sheen. What you thought were chocolate chips appear, upon closer inspection, to be red beans, the kind you might normally expect to find in your chilli con carne. And, of course, much of the bread is green.
Read moreReconsidering the apple
If J. Alfred Prufrock measured out his life in coffee spoons, I could measure mine out in apples. For those fussy nursery years, the inoffensive blandness of the Golden Delicious, which I wanted pre-chopped in my lunchbox but would refuse to let my mother put lemon juice on to stop it turning brown, because the idea of something as exotic as lemon juice seemed, to my picky infant self, a truly atrocious adulteration of my lunchtime snack. During my pre-pubescent years, having figured out that the Golden Delicious was in fact anything but, I craved the juicy sweetness of the ubiquitous Pink Lady, soothed by the succulent flavour of homogeneity. The perfect apple for a child who just wants to blend in. For my teenage years, I favoured the Granny Smith. Hard, speckled and slightly sour, I think this apple is a fitting metaphor for my experience of adolescence.
Read moreAdventures in tea
I have recently been forced to come to terms with the true extent of my tea obsession. The necessity of moving my worldly possessions across Europe in the back of a van recently has thrown into sharp relief several things I already suspected, but was vehemently denying: I have too many clothes, cookbooks and plates; I hoard convenient ‘travel size’ toiletries; there are too many odds and ends of bread in my freezer. I didn’t quite realise how out of hand my love of tea had become until I found myself packing my collection into not one but three boxes. Recent trips to India and Japan have hardly helped, adding at least twelve more items to the collection, and I was also recently sent some wonderful samples from the kind people at Bluebird Tea and Tea Shirt to broaden my extensive repertoire. Nothing makes me sadder than a person for whom ‘a cup of tea’ signifies simply a mug of tannic black brew adulterated with milk and sugar. The world of tea is expansive and glorious, so I’m going to share some of my favourites in the hope that I may turn you too into a ridiculous tea lady like myself. Or, at least, encourage you to try something new and exciting. The tea I drink on any particular occasion depends a lot on the time of day, my mental and physical state at the time, the particular type of tea that appeals, whether I want it to be on the sweet or savoury side, whether I need caffeine or decaf, et cetera. So here’s a tea menu for all hours and all moods. You can order most of these online, and many are available both as loose leaf teas or teabags.
Read moreFive things I love this week #16
1. Abundance and preserving. It’s that time of year again: the regular thud of apples falling off heavily-laden boughs onto my lawn; the triffid-like majesty of two thriving rhubarb plants; the first swelling of aubergines and cucumbers on their stalks in the greenhouse, and the flourishing of herbs - lemon verbena, grapefruit mint, Thai basil, oregano, lavender…The markets are full of beautiful rosy Victoria plums and blooming jade greengages, the last of summer’s peaches and downy apricots, and jewel-like berries in abundance. At times like these, I love nothing more than to dust off my jam pan and start preserving for the autumn and winter (although admittedly I make far more preserves than I can ever get through alone, and give away around 80% of what I produce, but that’s part of the joy too). Favourite recipes at the moment include Diana Henry’s plum, orange and cardamom jam, greengage and honey compote (this freezes well for use on winter porridge), and my own spiced apple and date jam, or rhubarb, vanilla and cardamom jam. If you have an apple glut, try making flavoured jellies for sweet and savoury food: my two favourites are festive apple jelly and lemon verbena jelly. For more luscious jam ideas, see Diana Henry’s beautiful book Salt Sugar Smoke – the apricot and lavender jam is also excellent.
Read moreMadbrød (Danish 'food breads')
If one needed any further examples of how much technology can distract and distance us from reality, one should look no further than a screenshot from my phone that I uploaded to Facebook last week. This was taken from my language-learning app, which had made a triumphant sound and presented me with a page declaring that I was ‘25% fluent in Danish’, thanks to my daily practice of 15-minute sessions over the last week, matching word pairs, translating small sentences and picking the correct word out of possible options. This sounded excellent, and I was ready and willing to crow about my progress to anyone who would listen, until I realised that I am only fluent in a particularly niche subset of the Danish language, one comprised entirely of sentences along the lines of “the turtle is drinking the milk” or “elephants are vegetarian” or “the horses do not eat steak”. This would be fine if my new job were taking me to work in some kind of hipster Danish zoo, or a supermarket catering to the dietary needs of exotic fauna, but unfortunately I am moving to Denmark to work in a university that, as far as I know, does not have resident turtles or elephants and probably won’t require me to inform my students that ‘the girl is eating the oranges’ or ‘he has a dog and horses’.
Read moreStudent kitchen essentials with Steamer Trading
One thing I get asked for a lot, as a result of this blog, is advice on student cooking. Fortunately it has been quite a long time since I had to endure the pitfalls of a student kitchen (people leaving the freezer open overnight, using my pans and leaving them full of rancid oil for days, teatowels covered in unthinkable stains…), but university definitely provided my formative years in terms of becoming a cook and food writer. Learning to cook properly as a student is a rite of passage, in my opinion, one that may be a little challenging but is infinitely rewarding and joyful. Better still, it’s a great social skill to have up your sleeve; few things impress your student peers more than a home-cooked feast. You’ll also save money, eat more healthily and gain a new creative hobby into the bargain. So this month I’m working in partnership with Steamer Trading Cookshop, one of my favourite small independent retailers, to offer some advice on essential kit for your first student kitchen (and no, it doesn’t include novelty shot glasses or cocktail shakers…but it should obviously include a huge bowl of avocados and some key cookbooks - see above...)
Read moreGiant couscous 'tabbouleh' with fresh apricots
Summer is a time when it almost seems a shame to use dried fruit in cooking, since the fresh variety is so bountiful. The rich, treacly taste and sticky texture of dried fruit has its place, but for me that place is in a comforting winter stew or tagine, or to pep up an autumnal salad of grains, nuts and perhaps a crumbling of soft cheese. Right now I’d much rather enjoy the crisp, sweet flesh and gentle bloom of an early-season Victoria plum, the voluptuous curve of a fresh fig or the mouth-puckering tang of a sun-ripened berry or currant than the caramelised, winey flavours of their dried counterparts.
Read moreBlackcurrant and lemon verbena cheesecake
One of the biggest disappointments a gastronome can experience is to order their favourite dessert from a restaurant menu, only to find it presented to them in unrecognisable compartmentalised format. Instead of ‘lemon tart’, a Cubist explosion of prismatic pastry shards, perfectly piped mounds of glossy lemon curd, and a smattering of smug mint leaves for garnish. Instead of the glorious marriage of hot, sweet-tart fruit syrup and a toothsome crunchy topping, your ‘crumble’ will instead manifest as something that resembles the dreams of a Scandinavian minimalist with obsessive compulsive disorder; a piece of poached fruit here, a slick of compote there, and a stingy scattering of crunchy granola that refuses to interact on any sensible basis with the other two elements and entirely misses the point of a crumble. Or, heaven forbid, a cheesecake that anarchically ignores the latter part of its title and instead of being a sliceable paean to dairy and biscuit is a Kilner jar full of cream with a shot of fruit juice and a cookie on the side, more like the individual components of a child’s packed lunch than anything suitable for restaurant consumption.
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