Berry pancakes for the British strawberry season

I mentioned in my recent post about my trip to Prague the discovery of bublanina, or Czech 'bubble cake'. I also mentioned that it was a bit of a revelation for me, in that it made me realise that it is possible, against all popular culinary advice, to cook a strawberry. The strawberries I unearthed in that beautiful sponge were not the sad, flaccid specimens that such advice would have taught me to expect, but rather a gorgeous juicy surprise with a flavour reminiscent of strawberry jam. For this reason, I was inspired to update my favourite Sunday brunch dish, pear and hazelnut pancakes, with a summery twist. You can tell it's my favourite, because I've posted about it twice in less than a fortnight.

The British strawberry season, much like the British asparagus season, has seemed to begin very early this year. I'm not complaining: there really is no beating a British strawberry. Asparagus I can take or leave, but these scarlet berries have to be British to be truly enjoyable. I sometimes use imported varieties outside this season, but they always have to be dolled up with a little sugar, lemon juice or balsamic vinegar before being edible, and more often than not they end up in a smoothie with an orange and a little orange flower water, where their tartness is appreciated.

No such tartness in the British berries: only beautiful, sweet, yielding flesh. Their colour is different too: they are much more of an orange red than the purple-blue red you find in Spanish and Moroccan strawberries. In order to showcase their loveliness, I chopped up a few and added them to my usual pancake batter (yoghurt, flour, baking powder, egg and a little milk). I also put in a little vanilla extract, to evoke strawberries and vanilla ice cream (probably one of the most simple but most delicious combinations on the planet). 

Still a bit wary of the berries turning to mush in the heat, I threw in some blueberries too. At least I knew these would be excellent in the pancakes, because I've used them before. Also, I figured their tartness would bring out the sweetness of the strawberries, and provide a nice burst of juicy sweet-sour flavour. I also love watching them burst in the pan, oozing their delicious purple juice everywhere. The best part of these pancakes is their unevenness: some will end up with loads of blueberries in, others with hardly any but lots of jammy, strawberry goodness. Either way you're in for a treat.

These were unexpectedly delicious. I mean, I expected them to be tasty, but I didn't quite anticipate the way the strawberries softened in the heat, resulting in incredibly moist pancakes. Normally some sort of syrup is an essential addition to the pear variety, because the pears retain their shape and don't emit too much juice. However, you really don't need any with these - I put a little golden syrup on the side of my plate but didn't end up eating it. The strawberries kind of collapse inside the batter, permeating it with their perfumed juice. It's almost like eating plain pancakes with a berry compote.

I decorated the plate with some extra whole strawberries, which is both a nice contrast in texture and temperature, and also has the benefit of making the plate look quite healthy. Which, actually, I suppose it is. Not that you need an excuse to make a huge batch of these and gorge yourself on them for brunch, though. A dusting of icing sugar is all you need to complete a perfect breakfast feast, and an ample celebration of the British strawberry season.

Strawberry and blueberry pancakes (serves 2):

• 130g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• A pinch of salt
• 1 egg
• Plain yoghurt - about 200ml
• Milk
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 200g strawberries, finely chopped, plus a few whole to garnish
• 100g blueberries
• Butter
• Icing sugar for dusting

Sift the flour and baking powder into a bowl. Add the salt. Make a well in the middle and add the egg and yoghurt, then combine with an electric whisk. While whisking, add enough milk to make a thick batter - about 4 tbsp. I don't tend to measure the milk and yoghurt, but just do it by instinct - you want the batter to be like thick custard. If it's too runny, just add more flour. Stir in the vanilla extract and berries - be gentle and try not to crush the strawberries.

Heat a little butter in a frying pan until sizzling. Drop spoonfuls of the batter into the pan and cook until bubbles appear, then flip over and cook for another couple of minutes. Keep warm in the oven while you use up the rest of the mixture.

Serve garnished with sliced fresh strawberries and dusting of icing sugar. You can add syrup if you like, but I'm not sure they need it.

Smoked fish and quail egg ravioli

I've had quite a few moments of late where I've one way or another stumbled upon a recipe idea or concept that is either so simple or so brilliant that I find myself amazed it had never occurred to me before. Tonight I went to La Cucina, one of my favourite Italian restaurants in Oxford, and on the specials board they had stuffed sardines wrapped in pancetta. So simple, yet so delicious-sounding, and something I can't wait to try. Another such moment occurred on an episode of Raymond Blanc's latest TV series. He made a stunning pasta dish featuring ravioli filled with spinach and quail eggs; the eggs were briefly poached before being encased in the pasta, meaning that they were still liquid when cooked. I remember the camera lingering lovingly on a shot where the knife cut through the beautiful pillowy pasta to reveal flowing golden egg yolk, encased in a nest of greenery, and I wondered why on earth that had never occurred to me before. Who doesn't love slicing into the tender yolk of an egg to reveal its molten core? Surround it with a thin film of carbohydrate, and you have food heaven.

This dish had been on my mental 'to make' list for a while, and the other day I had an enormous craving for ravioli. Sometimes nothing will do, except those beautiful plump parcels piled in a steaming mountain on a plate and drizzled with a buttery, creamy sauce. I thought about making Raymond's recipe, but couldn't really be bothered to create all the different garnishes he serves with it; sauteed mushrooms, beurre noisette... Whilst the taste of ravioli served with nothing but melted butter and herbs is sublime, my waistline will unfortunately not survive such things on a regular basis. I wanted to make ravioli that could survive being served with some sort of sauce, without losing its delicate flavour; spinach and eggs are too subtle to risk overpowering with a tomato or other non-buttery sauce.

I've no idea where the idea for this recipe came from. I was on the train, and it literally popped into my head. I feel this is a good sign: J.K. Rowling said the inspiration for the Harry Potter series popped into her head in the same way, also while she was on a train, so I must be on the right track for future fame and culinary stardom. Right?

I won't claim that pairing smoked fish with eggs is a culinary revelation, because it isn't, but I am quite proud of the flavours in this ravioli. For the fish filling, I mixed flaked smoked fish (Vietnamese river cobbler, because it was on offer in the supermarket, but you could also use haddock) poached in milk with ricotta cheese, grated parmesan, salt, pepper, chives, a few fresh thyme leaves, and some grated nutmeg. The parmesan is great for accentuating the smoky, savoury richness of the fish, while the ricotta lightens it as well as binding it all together. Some lemon thyme would be excellent, but I only had normal thyme, which works too; its fragrance cuts through the richness of the filling.

The tricky part involved the quail eggs. I'm not brilliant at poaching eggs - they turn into watery ghosts more often than not - and seeing as quail eggs are so tiny I was sure I'd fail miserably. Actually, they came out perfectly, which pleased me immensely. I just added a little vinegar to simmering water, dropped them in (cracking them is not as easy as a hen's egg - you end up having to pierce the membrane under the shell with your nail), and removed them about 30 seconds later with a slotted spoon. I left them to drain on kitchen paper before placing them atop a spoonful of fish mixture on a square of pasta. It was a bit fiddly, but went much better than expected. I was worried they'd break when I tried to seal the pasta around them, but had no problems.

Unfortunately, seeing as quail eggs are so small, in order to poach them enough to be able to handle them, you have to almost cook them completely. This means that by the time the ravioli has cooked in its boiling water, the egg will be hard rather than soft boiled. I'm not sure how Raymond managed to get his to ooze luscious yolk all over the plate, and I'm a bit jealous, but to me it didn't matter that much. You still have the wow factor of cutting into each raviolo to reveal a beautiful little egg yolk, and the combination of crumbly, creamy yolk with the smoky fish filling is wonderful.

I deliberated for a while about what to serve these with, and in the end chose spinach - another classic partner for smoked fish and eggs. I found some leeks in the fridge, so decided to use those too. I just sauteed them in a little olive oil until soft and wilting, and then stirred in some seasoning, a squeeze of lemon juice, and some creme fraiche. The latter helped bring the whole mixture together to form a gorgeous, creamy green sauce. I piled it onto plates and arranged the ravioli over the top.

I am pretty proud of this recipe. The creamy greens provide just enough moisture to go with the ravioli, but aren't strong enough to overpower the subtle egg and fish mixture. It's a perfect harmony of flavours, and a very luxurious-tasting dish that still remains quite light. A bit fiddly, perhaps, but actually easier than you'd expect, given the delicious results. Thank you, Raymond, for the excellent inspiration.

Smoked fish and quail egg ravioli (serves 2):

140g plain flour
1 whole egg and 1 yolk
1 tsp olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

150g ricotta cheese
1 fillet (about 200-300g) smoked fish
300ml milk
Salt and pepper
1/4 tsp grated nutmeg
3 tbsp grated parmesan
A few lemon thyme or normal thyme leaves
2 tbsp finely chopped chives
12 quail eggs
1 tsp white wine vinegar
Squeeze of lemon juice

2 leeks, finely chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
300g spinach leaves
3 tbsp creme fraiche

First, make the pasta dough. Combine the flour, egg and egg yolk, olive oil and salt in a food processor and then knead to a firm and not sticky dough. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for up to an hour.

To make the fish filling, poach the fish in the milk until cooked. Flake into a bowl, then add the ricotta, seasoning, nutmeg, lemon, parmesan, thyme, and chives. Mix together until you have a paste.

Poach the quail eggs in simmering water to which you have added the vinegar. Cook them for just long enough that you can remove them from the water with a slotted spoon. Leave to dry on kitchen paper.

Roll out the pasta using a pasta machine, and cut into evenly sized squares. Place a teaspoon of fish mixture in the centre of each square, then place a quail egg on top. Brush around the filling with water, then place another square over it. Be careful to push out any air when sealing the ravioli together.

Bring a large pan of salted water to the boil.

Now make the greens. Saute the leeks and spinach in the olive oil until the leeks are soft and the spinach has wilted. Stir in the creme fraiche, seasoning, and a touch of lemon juice. Keep warm while you cook the ravioli by putting them in the boiling water for 2-3 minutes.

To serve, pile the creamy greens into bowls and top with the cooked ravioli. Garnish with more grated nutmeg and parmesan, and a sprig of thyme.

Rhubarb preserves

Astrid from Paulchens Foodblog is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging this week, and once again I am going to go a little crazy over rhubarb. Still struggling to get through the enormous bag of the stuff given to my mum by a friend (the rhubarb and ginger cake made very slight inroads), I decided the most appealing option remaining was to preserve it in some shape or form. It wasn't quite gorgeously pink and slender enough for bottling, so I went down the jam and chutney route. It's been a while since I've made jam or chutney, but I do enjoy the wonderful alchemy of putting a load of apparently disparate ingredients (raisins, vinegar, onions, rhubarb, spices) in a huge pot and stirring away with a giant wooden spoon until they have merged together into a harmonious, spreadable delight. It makes me feel rather like a Victorian housewife.

I've never attempted either rhubarb jam or chutney before, but I decided to make both. Largely because I already have so much chutney (people just give it to me as a present - I'm not sure what exactly there is present in my constitution that screams "GIVE ME VINEGARY PRESERVES", but there must be something - not that I'm complaining) that I'm going to need to purchase either an entire pig or a kilo of cheese to go with it, and also because I've just run out of my beloved homemade fig jam and need a substitute. I am doubtful as to whether anything will match the sheer deliciousness of that jam, but surely if anything is going to, it will be rhubarb, one of my favourite ingredients.

I set about the chutney first, because it takes longer. I wanted ginger in there, for a fiery kick and also for its affinity with rhubarb. I wanted raisins, because I love the way they plump up in a preserve and add a lovely textural contrast. I wanted apple, to add another fruity flavour to the rhubarb, and I wanted brown sugar because I love its caramel notes. In they went, along with copious amounts of red wine vinegar, chopped red onions, rhubarb, salt, and curry powder. Adding curry powder is an idea I picked up from googling chutney recipes - it's easier than adding all your own spices in small amounts, and it adds a great spicy aroma. I would have put mustard seeds in there too, convinced we had a small bag of them in the larder - I had seen them before recently, and could visualise their location - except neither I nor my mum could find them anywhere. We practically dismantled the larder in search, but they were nowhere to be found, and now I am convinced I am losing my mind. You know you're too obsessed with food when you start hallucinating mustard seeds.

I let all of that bubble away happily, and set about making jam. Again, I used fresh ginger, and also the juice and zest of two oranges. I also put some ground ginger in there too, for extra heat, a lot of sugar, the rhubarb, and the juice of a lemon to help it set and to take the edge off all the sugar. Neither the jam nor the chutney looked the most appetising of things when they were finished, being rather brown and stringy, but it's all about the flavour, and the jam I tested was very nice. I haven't tried the chutney, as I need to let it mature for three months first, but it smelled rather delicious. I felt an immense sense of satisfaction as I spooned the finished preserves into their little jars, sealed them, and labelled them. My inner home economist is placated, and now all I need is to make a loaf of bread to eat the jam with. 

I bottled this jam and chutney in a mixture of Le Parfait and normal jam jars, so I've given roughly the number of normal jam jars it will fill. This depends on your jars, though, so have a selection sterilised and waiting for the finished preserve. If you can only half-fill one, just keep it in the fridge and eat it first!



Rhubarb and ginger chutney (makes about 6-7 jars):

1 kg rhubarb, cut into lengths
500g red onions, roughly chopped
4 cooking apples, peeled and roughly chopped
400g raisins
60g fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped
300ml red wine vinegar
1 tbsp curry powder
1 tbsp mustard seeds (if you actually have some, and are not just hallucinating)
2 tsp salt
400g muscovado sugar

Boil the onions, ginger and vinegar for 10 minutes. Add all the remaining ingredients, except the rhubarb, and cook for about 15 minutes until the apples have softened. Stir in the rhubarb, and simmer gently for about an hour, possibly two, until it has all softened and formed a thick brown mass. You should be able to run the spoon down the centre of the pan and leave a momentary gap between the two halves of the mixture.

Pour into hot sterilised jars while the mixture is still very hot, then cover with waxed discs and seal. Leave for at least three months to mature before eating.

Rhubarb, orange and ginger jam (makes 4-5 jars):

1 kg rhubarb, cut into short lengths
Juice and zest of 2 oranges
50g fresh ginger, grated or finely chopped
1 tsp ground ginger
700g granulated sugar or jam sugar
100g muscovado sugar
Juice of 1 lemon

Place all the ingredients in a large pan and bring to the boil, stirring to make sure the sugar doesn't burn. Lower the heat and simmer gently for an hour or two until the jam has thickened. To test it, put a plate in the fridge until cold, then spoon a little jam on top. Leave for a minute, then run your finger through it - it should wrinkle.

Spoon the hot jam into sterilised jars, cover with wax discs and seal.

Czeching out Eastern European cuisine

I've just returned from a lovely, albeit too brief, trip to Prague with my boyfriend. I was excited about this for a number of reasons - the five star hotel with spa and epic buffet breakfast, the prospect of relaxation, the fabled beauty of the city - but mostly I was keen to sample the cuisine. My guidebook disparagingly pointed out that "since Czech cuisine largely consists of dumplings and cabbage, it's never likely to win any awards". However, as an avid fan of Moya, Oxford's only (to my knowledge) Eastern European restaurant, I was pretty sure that Czech cuisine had slightly more to offer than the ubiquitous dumplings and cabbage. 

Also, I absolutely love dumplings and cabbage. I've mentioned before on this blog that my favourite foods usually involve some type of dough...or in fact, just some type of stodge. This is usually a pejorative term when applied to food, but I don't think it has to be. There's nothing wrong with a bit of stodge. In fact, often, it is exactly what you need. Long and difficult day with not much opportunity to eat anything? Stodge. Hangover? Stodge. Exam-related stress? STODGE IS THE KEY.

Ahem. Anyway. My first impressions of Prague were largely temperature-related, in that it was bloody freezing and I hadn't packed any warm clothes. Clever. My second impressions were largely monetary, in that it was bloody expensive. They say first impressions often turn out to be wrong. This was not the case. Prague was a) cold and b) incredibly expensive. On our last day, we went to a restaurant with a lovely set lunch menu that cost about a fiver for two courses. Too good to be true? Of course. The bill arrived, and we were charged £10 for a bottle of water. I drained my glass, just to check it wasn't, in fact, champagne, which would have explained the hefty price tag. Unfortunately not. The other shock came when I bought some potato gnocchi from a market stall. Street food, in my experience, is normally both cheap and tasty. It was tasty, but it cost me SEVEN POUNDS. For a tiny little box of potato dumplings. I still haven't come to terms with this fact; my boyfriend will testify to the fact that the recollection of it fills me with pure, unadulterated rage. I can understand paying a bit more for meat, or fish - especially as Prague is about as far from the sea as it is possible to get, unless you live in central Africa - but for water and potatoes? Really?

Anyway, I will try and suppress the inner potato demon struggling to break free inside my soul, and talk about one of the joyous things I discovered in Prague. This was brought to my attention on the first day, when we stumbled upon an Easter market in the central square, full of red-topped stalls proffering their wares - a mixture of tacky souvenirs, quaint handcrafted objects, and food. In every direction there was a hunk of pig spit-roasting over a fire, wafting the scent of barbecued meat, and almost every other person we passed seemed to be clutching a large bread roll struggling to contain either an enormous red sausage, or a chicken kebab.

However, interspersed with the aroma of sizzling meat was another scent altogether. This is, essentially, what I imagine heaven smells like. A delicious waft of sugar, cinnamon and baking dough, that drew me to it almost instantly. The stall proclaimed itself "TRDLO". If there's one thing I'd like to accomplish before I die (and reach heaven, perfumed with cinnamon and sugar and baking dough), it is to find out how on earth you pronounce that word. It would seem that vowels are also in short supply in Prague, along with cheap potatoes and reasonably-priced water.

Upon closer inspection, TRDLO (it will remain capitalised, in order to impress its goodness and curious spelling upon all my readers) turned out to be something so simple yet so divine I can't believe I've never seen or thought of it before. A strip of sweet dough is wrapped around long poles, which are then rotated over burning coals until it bakes to form a crispy crust and a soft, brioche-like centre. It's then dipped in either toffee and almonds or cinnamon sugar. If there's one thing - just one thing - I want you to take away from this post, it is the sheer, mind-boggling deliciousness of TRDLO. They remind me a bit of New York pretzels, the big doughy ones, dipped in cinnamon sugar - I remember discovering them on a trip to the city when I was 15. However, the beauty of TRDLO is the way the dough is coiled, enabling you to pull it apart in long, curly strips. The contrast between the crust, sprinkled liberally with crunchy sugar and fragrant cinnamon, and the still doughy centre is a thing of beauty. Truly. (TRDLY).

However, man (or gluttonous woman) cannot subsist off TRDLO alone, and so we gravitated towards the speared pig. We saw locals munching on "Prague prosciutto", which is just a fancy term for large chunks of meat hacked off the rotating porcine thighs and served with a simple piece of caraway-flavoured bread. I was immediately intrigued by the halusky, a huge pan of what initially looked a bit like tartiflette but upon closer inspection turned out to be potato gnocchi mixed with sauerkraut and smoked bacon. Having been up since 3.50am and eaten only a takeaway porridge from Pret a Manger (which was disturbing, in that it made me realise my usual daily serving of porridge is about five times larger than what such outlets consider a 'normal' portion), I gravitated towards the big pan of stodge and meat.

I later tried another version of these gnocchi (the ones I paid SEVEN POUNDS - SEVEN!) for, served with a creamy spinach sauce that looked a bit like pesto. Both were absolutely delicious - more rustic and odd-shaped than Italian gnocchi, but exactly the thing for a very empty stomach. The bacon and sauerkraut version was wonderful - the sharpness of the pickled cabbage and the smoky bacon stopped the whole thing from being too stodgy (though I do have a very high stodge threshold). I ate it greedily with a plastic fork, standing at a little table near the pig barbecue, while Jon tucked into one of those startlingly-red sausages. This was also delicious - quite spicy, and immensely meaty. I then wandered around taking voyeuristic photos of foodstuffs. The guidebook's list of 'must-see' attractions remained unthumbed throughout the entire trip - I was far more interesting in wandering around Prague's eateries. Though we did go to the castle.

That night we had proper restaurant food, at a lovely little place called U Modre, quite close to the square. It was practically deserted, which meant we got a gorgeous little table by the door with a fancy sofa to sit on, and were waited on hand and foot. I was tempted by the "all you can eat" set menu, which featured an enormous array of Czech dishes served in small portions, but eventually realised that I would feel grotesquely sick if I ordered it, because I would eat until I was close to paralysis. I have no willpower in foreign countries when it comes to food.

Instead, I ordered the intriguing "leg of wild boar with rosehip sauce and Carlsbad dumplings". This was incredible. I was half afraid I'd be presented with an entire shank of boar, knowing the Czech predilection for whole pig limbs, but the presentation of the dish was refined and elegant. Several slices of meat, served in a creamy sauce, garnished with a sprig of thyme and with the dumplings on the side. These are different from the normal Czech dumplings (actually more like steamed slices of bread than the kind of dumplings we English would put in a stew) in that they are made from cubes of bread bound together with egg, milk and herbs, so look rather knobbly and charming. They also have slightly crispy bits throughout. The rosehip sauce was delicious, providing enough sweetness to marry beautifully with the rich meat. Jon had crispy duck breast with prunes and potato croquettes, which were little balls of deep-fried mashed potato. Again, the sweetness of the sauce went beautifully with the meat, and the skin was crisped to perfection. 

For dessert, we shared an apple and walnut tart, and a "cottage cheese strudel". The latter I assumed was a mistranslation, but when it arrived it did in fact seem to have cottage cheese in the centre. This was no bad thing; along with pieces of apple, it was enveloped in beautifully soft, light pastry. The apple and walnut tart was half cheesecake and half crumble, with gorgeous crunchy pieces of nut and a lovely apple puree to add sweetness. Seriously wonderful desserts. It's nice to eat something with apples in, for a change; I don't tend to use them much in my cooking after December, for some reason. I might have to attempt a cottage cheese strudel sometime soon.

Another wonderful discovery made at the Easter market was bublanina, which translates as 'bubble cake'. I'd been eyeing these glorious little cakes for a while, as they sold them at the TRDLO stall (it took me a couple of days, though, to look past the sugared dough rolls). Intrigued, I bought one, and devoured it within minutes. It is rather like a clafoutis, in that it features fruit suspended in a light batter, but it also has a thin layer of buttery crumble topping. Initially I thought it was just a blueberry cake, but I found plums, raspberries and even a strawberry in there. Which has genuinely changed my life, culinarily speaking, because I have always been under the impression (aided by many cookbooks) that one should never cook a strawberry. Yet when encased in this sumptuous cake-like batter, the strawberry softens to something gorgeously jammy that contrasts wonderfully with the slightly vanilla-scented sponge. I can't wait to try out my own version of this bubble cake - so called, apparently, because the batter bubbles up around the fruit.

The Czechs apparently have a very sweet tooth (or should that be sweet teeth?) which was apparent from the numerous crêpe stalls and ice cream stands around the city. No more so than Italy or France, though. We had some very nice ice cream, including an interesting sesame seed and chocolate combination, but I think the TRDLO and the bubble cake were my favourite sugary delights of the trip. That is possibly because I had just spent a week in Italy, so my ice cream palate was rather jaded.

Another good find was a small market we stumbled across on the last day, with lots of fruit and vegetable stalls. Nothing particularly spectacular, but they had these gorgeous little punnets of berries for sale. They were tiny, and I think meant as a snack more than anything else, as they came with little plastic ice cream spoons tucked into the corners. The Czechs do seem to like their berries; instead of the classic lemon and sugar filling for crêpes, they seem to go for some sort of berry compote, and we found blueberry sorbet in one of the ice cream parlours, which I haven't seen before, even in Italy.

One of my meal highlights was a trip to a restaurant called U Sadlu. It has to be seen to be believed. It's laid out like a kind of faux-Medieval banqueting hall, complete with fake suits of armour everywhere and heraldic crests on the walls. It's lit basically just by candles, and the cutlery is on the table in a large metal flagon. Tables are long wooden affairs with matching long wooden benches. As Jon said, it's the kind of place you'd steer clear of in the UK, but somehow on holiday anything goes. Their menu actually read rather appetisingly, and featured titles such as "Dishes from the Water Realm" for the list of fish options. Given the setting and bizarre olde English language of the menu (sharing plates were described as 'Dishes for the Two Wayfarers'), I was apprehensive about the food, but needn't have been.

I had venison paté with a cranberry compote, served with lovely thick bread, which was truly delicious. I also had 'aubergine with Balkan cheese', which was a plate of wonderfully soft, smoky aubergine slices topped with a very salty, crumbly cheese, and green olives. This was incredible, the salty cheese and olives a perfect match for the rich aubergine. Finally, I tried trout in an almond crust. I was presented with a whole grilled trout, topped with something that looked like scrambled egg but turned out to be - obviously - almonds, in some kind of mixture, possibly involving breadcrumbs. The fish had been stuffed with dill, which gave it a lovely fragrant flavour. Unfortunately, by this point I could only eat half of it as I was so full. Jon had a hilarious goulash, which featured four different types of dumpling, as well as a fried egg and several enormous pieces of crispy bacon. Oh, and the actual goulash itself. It was the kind of thing you'd probably want to eat in the Arctic to sustain yourself when you need 5000 calories a day. The goulash was delicious, though, despite the carbohydrate party going on around it. It was, completely unexpectedly, one of the best meals I ate in Prague.

For our last meal we went to a very posh hotel restaurant - the one that charged £10 for the water - and had an excellent vegetable broth with homemade noodles, followed by stewed pork shoulder with sauerkraut in a creamy pepper sauce. With dumplings, naturally. The dumplings were light and fluffy, the sauce perfectly piquant, and the meat beautifully tender. We also ate little plaited brioche rolls and salted butter. Delicious - shame about the water.

Another excellent dinner was at a restaurant very near our hotel, called Hybernia. It specialised in charcuterie and kebabs (the proper, chunks of meat on a stick kind, not the student kind), which I didn't find out until after I'd eaten there, but luckily I did in fact have a kebab. Jon and I shared a quarter of crispy duck to start, which was served with two types of cabbage (red, and pickled white), and two types of dumpling (bread and potato). It was delicious, everything a good crispy duck should be. I'm used to eating it with Chinese pancakes, hoi sin sauce and cucumber, so it was interesting to try the Eastern European way of doing crispy duck. It seems to be a big thing in Prague; a lot of pubs advertise the following:

If that doesn't make you want to go to the country instantly, what does? After the duck (a completely unnecessary piece of ordering, once we saw what followed), we were presented with our main courses. For Jon, an enormous bucket of glazed chicken wings with tortilla chips and three different sauces. For me, a chicken and vegetable kebab. What was unusual about this kebab, however, was that it was presented vertically. It came in a special holder on a giant plate, and stretched about two feet upwards into the air, heavy with chunks of marinated chicken, huge pieces of fatty bacon, grilled pepper and grilled mushrooms. I'd unthinkingly ordered more grilled vegetables on the side, so this kebab towered over a plate replete with slices of chargrilled veg, and also three little buckets of dipping sauces. It was almost a shame to dismantle it. The vegetables were perfectly caramelised, and the chicken was superb: it had been marinated in yoghurt and spices. Jon's chicken wings were also delicious. I tried to steal a copy of the English menu, because there were some absolutely hilarious mistranslations in it, but in the end I didn't, so you'll just have to imagine them.

Last but not least, I feel I should mention a restaurant called U Male Velryby, or 'The Little Whale', which is near Prague castle and which we visited on our last night. It served Mediterranean, rather than Czech, cuisine, but this was quite nice after the dumpling- and TRDLO-fest of the past few days. The real surprise here was the homemade bread. I was absolutely in awe of this bread. It was thick, dark, studded with walnuts, and had a texture and richness that was more like cake than bread. The waitress seemed delighted when we asked for more, as she said often people don't like it. I could have eaten just that bread for my entire meal. Apparently it's just a soda bread recipe to which the chef adds walnuts. I've made soda bread a few times, and never has it tasted that good. I've been inspired to perfect my recipe now. Other than the incredible bread, I had a seafood pie, which was OK but nothing to write home about (except, ironically, I am blogging about it), and Jon had a steak served with a mushroom-filled pancake, which was absolutely delicious. But the bread was the real highlight for me. As you may have noticed, I like dough.

There were a few things I wanted to try but didn't: pork knuckle, for one, which is quite a big Czech thing apparently...roast rabbit...freshwater fish...goulash - I had a bit of Jon's but didn't have one to myself at any point. Another thing I was eagerly searching for was a fruit-stuffed dumpling served in a butter sauce, like the one they serve at Moya. I am so glad Moya exists, because I can still get my stew and dumpling fix despite being home. And it will probably cost less than in Prague. Overall, though, I think I did pretty well at sampling the spectrum of Czech cuisine. My overall impressions are pretty positive. It will never have the sheer variety and vibrance of Italian cooking, my all-time favourite, but there are a few truly delicious Czech specialities out there, and they definitely know how to do patisserie. A lot of people accuse the food of being on the bland side, but I don't think this is true. Meat is often deliciously spiced, and stews are wonderfully fragrant; yes, the dumplings are quite bland, but so is pasta. The one thing I would say is that the Czechs aren't really into their fresh vegetables; veg tends to come pickled, if at all. But that may just be the restaurant way; after all, no real people eat the kind of food that restaurants serve, every night. There is a huge variety of places to eat out in the city, many of which steer away from Czech cuisine towards French, Italian, and Thai. Prague and the Czech Republic are not exactly devoid of culinary joy...even if you will pay a rather steep price for such joy.

Also, I apologise profusely for the hideous pun in the title. But you can't be cross with me, because I have shared TRDLO with you, and thus made your lives a tiny fraction better.

Pear, pecan and berry pancakes

I promise I'll shut up about the royal wedding soon...but, then again, England shows no sign of shutting up about it, so I don't think I should have to either. Particularly when these sublime pancakes are involved. These are what I made and ate while watching William and Kate walk down the aisle. Indeed, we even had an iPad live streaming the wedding poised on the kitchen worktop so I could make the pancake batter while I watched the happy occasion - nothing, not even a regal marital union, can stand between me and my breakfast. 

I've written about these pear pancakes before, but I think on Friday I finally created the ultimate version, so I feel the need to share it. I've tried many variations on the chunks-of-fruit-embedded-in-thick-batter theme (including apples and apricots), but the pear variety is hard to beat. It's infinitely better than apple, though I'm not sure why; I think it's the yielding graininess of the cubes of pear, coupled with their fragrant, perfumed juice. You don't get those qualities from apples, which can be too crunchy and sharp, or from apricots, which can be too soft and also too sharp.

I also decided to put in some blueberries and toasted hazelnuts. I've tried almonds before, but hazelnuts are much better because of their soft crunch and also their flavour. Pecans work equally well, but I didn't have any. The blueberries went in because I had some to use up, and because I thought their tartness would work well with the pears, though blackberries or raspberries would be excellent too.

The batter is a simple mix of flour, baking powder, egg, and a liquid such as buttermilk or yoghurt. I use buttermilk when I can find it, but this time I only had a tub of very thick Greek yoghurt. I have to say that I think it makes a better batter, because it's firmer and also has a tanginess that stops the pancakes from being too cloying. It needed a little milk to loosen it, though, because yoghurt isn't as runny as buttermilk. Finally, I grated in a lot of nutmeg, because I love it (would you have guessed?)

After the batter is mixed - I use an electric beater to avoid lumps - I add the fruit and nuts. In this case, a handful of blueberries and two pears, finely chopped. I leave the skin on because it adds a nice texture. The pears don't have to be too ripe for this, which is good, because ripe pears are nigh impossible to find unless you have a good greengrocer. I've never tried it with rock hard supermarket specimens, but halfway-ripe pears are fine - they soften in the heat of the pan. I have a simple trick to tell when a pear is ripe or not - rather than squeezing it, which usually tells you nothing unless it's ripe to the point of collapse, I just try and dig my fingernail into the flesh where the pear tapers out into the thinner end. I shouldn't really, I know, but it's not so bad - if the pear isn't ripe, you'll really struggle to dig your nail in, and so won't make any mark on the pear that has to go back on the shelf - no damage done. If it is ripe, your fingernail will make an indentation in the pear, but you'll be buying it anyway, so this slight scarring won't matter.

I use conference pears for this, normally, because they hold their shape, though firm Comice or Williams pears would work too. Stir the chunks of fruit and nuts through the completed batter, and you have pancake perfection almost ready to be realised. You end up with a very thick, lumpy mixture, but that's fine - it will be transformed by a little frying pan action.

All that's left to do is heat a little butter in a frying pan until sizzling, then dollop the mixture into the pan. You need less than you think, as it will spread quite a lot in the pan. I normally make these in about three batches, and have the oven on low (120C) with a baking dish ready to put the finished pancakes into. That way, they stay warm until I've finished with all the mixture. You know the pancakes are ready for flipping when small bubbles start to appear on the raw side of the batter. The beauty of putting them in the oven is that the inside cooks through fully - because the mixture is so thick, it can be hard to cook them all the way through in the pan without the edges burning. The oven accomplishes this, setting the yoghurt, egg and flour to a gorgeous fluffy centre. The best bit of the whole process is when the berries in the batter burst in the heat of the pan, oozing their gorgeous sugary juice.

I like these with copious drizzles of maple syrup, though golden syrup is a fine (and cheaper) substitute. I sometimes dust over some cinnamon or icing sugar, and sprinkle with more chopped nuts. This time, however, I just took the bottle of syrup to the table. I wasn't going to risk missing Will and Kate's vows because I was messing around chopping hazelnuts.

Pear, hazelnut and blueberry pancakes (serves 2):

• 130g plain flour, sifted
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 egg
• 200ml thick Greek yoghurt
• Milk
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon or grated nutmeg
• Pinch of salt
• 2 conference pears, cored and finely chopped (peel too, if you like)
• A handful of blueberries or raspberries
• A handful of toasted hazelnuts or pecans, finely chopped
• Butter
• Maple or golden syrup, to serve

Place the flour, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle, and crack in the egg. Use an electric whisk to mix the egg into some of the flour, then gradually add the yoghurt. You will end up with a stiff batter; add enough milk to loosen it slightly (about 4 tbsp should be enough). You still want it quite thick, rather like custard, not thin like a French crepe batter. Stir in the cinnamon or nutmeg.

Pre-heat the oven to 120C. Add the pears, berries and nuts to the batter, and stir in with a spoon until evenly mixed. Heat a large frying pan, and add a knob of butter. Heat until it's sizzling, spreading it around to coat the base of the pan. Dollop spoonfuls of the mixture onto the pan, leaving some space between each one. Cook for a couple of minutes, or until bubbles appear on the upper side, then flip over with a spatula and cook for another couple of minutes. Put in the oven to keep warm while you make the rest.

To serve, drizzle with syrup and scatter with some more chopped nuts, if you like. Best served for brunch with a huge cup of English breakfast tea, preferably while watching the royal wedding. God save the Queen (and pancakes).

Thai-flavoured prawn and mango salad

My food-related habits are so predictable. A couple of weeks ago I emerged from Italy feeling like I'd eaten an entire pig, and had consequently turned into one. I reached for the lime juice, ginger, chilli and Thai fish sauce to make me feel more human and less porcine. A couple of days ago I emerged from Prague, land of (more) pig and omnipresent dumplings, again feeling more like a farmyard animal ready for slaughter than my normal, relatively healthy self. The remedy? Thai food. Or, at least, vaguely Thai food, because this is in no way authentic and I'm sure would make a Thai person weep. There's just something about the freshness of lime juice, chilli, fish sauce and copious quantities of herbs that will bring life back to the most jaded and over-porked palates.

I'm a big fan of Thai papaya salads, in which unripe papaya is tossed with a zingy dressing and lots of chilli. I had it in a Thai restaurant in Oxford once; I had eaten half of it and sweat had started to bead on my brow and my mouth had started to burn, before I realised why: those lovely crunchy green beans I'd been eating in the salad were in fact whole green chillies. And as everyone knows, the smaller and greener the chilli, the greater the oral inferno. Still, it was delicious; the interplay of sour, salty, hot and sweet is a hallmark of Thai food and incredibly addictive.

I have therefore created something vaguely similar to the Thai papaya salad, but made a few additions. Firstly, some rice noodles, largely because despite feeling clinically obese I was still pretty hungry and I just knew that, sadly, vegetables alone would not cut it. Secondly, I didn't use papaya, but mango. You can substitute underripe mango for the underripe papaya, which was my intention, but the firm specimen I picked up in the supermarket turned out to be deliciously ripe and juicy. The one time I actually want rock hard supermarket mangoes, and they don't have any! Still, this did not matter, especially as I got to nibble all the bits of flesh from around the stone - cook's perk.

I also grated in some cucumber, for its coolness, added some beansprouts and spring onions, for crunch, and then tossed it all with a dressing. This was made from lime juice, finely chopped garlic and chilli, Thai fish sauce, and some sugar to balance the flavours and take the edge off the chilli. After mixing everything together I added a large amount of herbs: coriander, mint and basil, finely chopped and releasing the most delicious peppery aromas. I love all three of these herbs, but they work particularly well combined together; you get the aniseedy notes from the basil, the lemony freshness from the mint, and the lime notes from the coriander.

Finally, some protein in the form of prawns and langoustines. The former I bought cooked and ready-peeled; the latter still had shells on so I sauteed them in some olive oil until pink and crispy. They perched atop the salad, curled up like little pink commas, and it was ready to go. I think it looks great; the yellow of the mango and green of the herbs flecked with little pinpricks of red chilli and topped with those gorgeous salmon-coloured shellfish. A bowl of healthy goodness.

The different elements in this salad work together really well; the sweetness of the mango stops the dressing from being too hot or sour, and the fragrance of the herbs gives it a lovely freshness. All this goes very well with the rich prawns and langoustines, though you could use chicken or beef or perhaps duck instead. The only thing I'd do differently next time is omit most of the beansprouts, or cook them first: raw, they have an unpleasant bitterness that marred the sweet dressing and mango. It might also be easier to serve the mango, cucumber and dressing on top of a bed of rice noodles, rather than trying to toss the whole thing together; they tend to clump without mixing evenly with the dressing.

Minor issues aside, this is the perfect thing to counteract a little (or a lot, in my case) gastronomic over-indulgence. Not a pig or a dumpling in sight.

Thai-style prawn, noodle, mango and lime salad (serves 4):

• 1 medium-ripe mango, grated
• Half a cucumber, grated
• 4 spring onions, finely sliced diagonally
• 2 limes
• 1 red chilli, finely chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tsp Thai fish sauce
• 2 tsp brown sugar
• Large handfuls of chopped basil, coriander or mint (or all three)
• A packet of beansprouts, raw or briefly stir-fried, as you prefer
• Rice noodles (enough for 4 - see packet instructions)
• 500-600g raw or cooked prawns or langoustines, or both (or use strips of chicken, beef or duck)

First, cook the rice noodles - just pour over enough boiling water to cover and leave to soak.

Meanwhile, make the dressing. Mix the juice of the limes with the chilli, garlic, fish sauce and sugar. Add the mango, cucumber and spring onions. Mix in the herbs (reserve some for garnishing) and beansprouts. Taste - you might want more sugar, fish sauce, lime juice or chilli, depending on your individual preferences.

If your prawns are raw, heat a little olive oil in a frying pan until hot, then add the prawns and cook for a couple of minutes on each side, or until pink. If they're cooked, just add to the salad as they are (you might like to warm them through).

Divide the noodles between four plates. Top with the dressing and mango mixture, then top that with the cooked prawns. Serve garnished with extra herbs and lime wedges to squeeze over.

A dessert for the Royal Wedding

I immensely enjoyed watching the royal wedding today. I think this is very much due to the fact that I am an ardent lover of Disney princess films. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I think the wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton possesses an astonishing number of characteristics reminiscent of this iconic genre. It's essentially the plot of Beauty and the Beast. The part where she walked out onto the balcony to be greeted by thousands of screaming patriots? Almost exactly like the part in Aladdin where Jasmine thrusts the future king out onto a balcony in front of the entire population of Agrabah, and he's not entirely sure how to cope with such attention. I loved it. I hadn't really been bothered until it actually came up on the television, and I am not ashamed to admit I had to get my boyfriend to fetch me a piece of kitchen roll to dry my eyes. (Kitchen roll, not a tissue - that would have required going upstairs and possibly missing priceless nuptial action).

I tend to express my feelings best through the medium of food, so naturally I thought it would be appropriate to bake something in celebration of this great event. The result is a hazelnut, white chocolate and summer berry tart that incorporates the red, white and blue of our national flag. It's a twist on the traditional French fruit tarts you find in bakeries everywhere, the hazelnut pastry and white chocolate filling making it something rather special, just like the occasion itself. I like to think it's a perfect piece of confectionary for today's event: a mixture of classic, time-honoured tradition, and modernity.

I decided on a hazelnut pastry because I wanted something crunchy and rich to contrast with the very sweet white chocolate filling and the tartness of the berries. I deliberated between hazelnuts and almonds, but the former won, because they have more depth of flavour. I roasted them and ground them before mixing them with butter, flour, sugar and egg yolk. It's a very rich pastry, almost impossible to roll out without it crumbling everywhere. In the end I just put it all in the tart tin and pressed it into shape, which worked perfectly well. You end up with the most delicious crust, rather like the base of a cheesecake but better. It tastes like a digestive biscuit with hazelnuts in, and is the perfect crunchy foil to the melting filling.

I blind baked the tart crust before filling it; the smell from the oven was sublime. The pastry was buttery enough that it didn't stick to the tin, and so it was easy to pull away the casing. I put it in the fridge to chill while I made the pastry cream; a gorgeous thick custard, it was the wedding dress of my royal wedding tart.

I've made pastry cream a couple of times before. It's similar to making an ice cream custard base, but it thickens more. I whisked egg yolks and cornflour to a thick, yellow paste before adding warmed milk infused with vanilla, then stirring the whole thing over a low heat until it thickened. Every time I do this, I'm surprised by how quickly the mixture turns: you stir for ages and ages and it still has the consistency of milk, and then suddenly, a few seconds later, it thickens into something unctuous and spoonable. I stirred in some melted white chocolate to sweeten it; normally I'd add sugar to the egg yolks but in this case the chocolate was sweet enough.

Once the pastry cream had chilled in the fridge I spooned it into the tart case, and decorated the top with blueberries, sliced strawberries, and raspberries. Red, white and blue; the Union Jack in tart form. I think it looks rather spectacular, and much more labour-intensive than it actually was. Unlike the royal wedding, which looked effortlessly perfect (apart from that bit where it looked like the ring wasn't going to fit) yet which I'm sure has been years in the rehearsing.

As for the taste, it has all the delicious creaminess and textural contrast of something out of a Parisian bakery, but with a gorgeous nuttiness from the hazelnut crust and a vanilla-scented sweetness from the white chocolate pastry cream. The mixture of pastry, custard and sharp berries is beautiful, and I think the best part is the crust, which is like the kind of fabulous biscuit you might dream about.

I would urge you to try making this tart one day. It's actually quite easy - the only vaguely tricky part is making the pastry cream, but all you have to do is make sure you don't heat it too strongly or it will turn to scrambled egg. Other than that, the pastry can be made in a blender and the assembly of the tart takes no more than about ten minutes.

I've been singing the national anthem all day. I've watched the wedding at least three times, as the TV has been on for several hours and they've recapped the highlights constantly. I feel full of patriotic British spirit; my only regret is that I didn't bring this tart to share with the crowd assembled outside Buckingham Palace. I'm sure it would have made the perfect sustenance for a day celebrating a wonderful moment in British history. I bet Kate would have liked it too. Though the juicy berries would have been hazardous anywhere near that beautiful dress.

Royal Wedding hazelnut and white chocolate fruit tart (serves 8-10):

• 50g hazelnuts, toasted
• 140g plain flour
• 100g cold butter, cubed
• 50g brown sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 25g cornflour
• 3 egg yolks
• 400ml milk
• 1 vanilla pod, split
• 160g white chocolate, melted
• Summer berries, to decorate

First, make the pastry. Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Put the hazelnuts in a blender and grind fairly finely. Add the flour, sugar and butter and pulse until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the egg yolk. Tip the mixture out onto a floured work surface and pull together into a ball. 

Grease a tart tin with a removable bottom (mine was about 22cm I think) and press the pastry into it. You can try to roll it out with a rolling pin: it will crack a bit, but just put the pieces into the tin and press together like a jigsaw puzzle. Line the pastry with greaseproof paper and fill with baking beans. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove the paper and beans and bake for another 10. Relish the nutty, buttery scent emerging from your oven.

Meanwhile, heat the milk and vanilla pod until just boiling, then remove from the heat. When the pastry crust is cool, remove from the tin and place on a plate. Chill in the fridge.

For the pastry cream, use an electric whisk to mix together the cornflour and egg yolks; the mixture will be very thick. Add a little of the infused milk (remove the vanilla pod) to the yolks and whisk, then add the rest. Pour it into a saucepan and heat gently, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens. Don't heat it too much, and give it time; mine took over ten minutes to finally thicken, but it will turn eventually. Leave it to cool for about five minutes, then stir in the melted chocolate. Put it in a bowl covered with cling film and chill in the fridge for a few hours.

To assemble the tart, spoon the pastry cream into the hazelnut crust. Top with berries or other fruit as you like, and decorate with sprigs of mint and a dusting of icing sugar. This is best served after it has been out of the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Hot cross buns and happy Easter

It's Easter. Therefore it seems a fitting time to post about the hot cross buns I made a few days ago. I've been quite late with them this year - normally as soon as I return home for the holidays, I get out the flour, yeast, milk, dried fruit and spices. Better late than never, though, and I will be enjoying one of these delicious creations today, split, toasted and spread with lashings of butter. I think hot cross buns incorporate many of my favourite things: a doughy texture, a sweet crust, dried fruit, liberal amounts of spice, and the potential to be toasted and buttered. Rather like a teacake, but somehow better and more interesting. I hate the insipid versions you can buy en masse at supermarkets at this time of year: no more complex than a white bread roll, but with a cross piped on top in order to guarantee it goes in your basket in the run up to Easter. A hot cross bun is not a white roll with a bit of fruit in and a cross on top; its culinary DNA is completely different. The dough is enriched with butter, milk and sometimes an egg in order to give it that rich, glorious density that marries so well with sweet, spicy adornments.

I used to make hot cross buns in the breadmaker, getting it to do all the hard work of mixing, kneading and incorporating the fruit for me. However, now that I have the KitchenAid, this wasn't necessary. I did do some of the work by hand, though: I started off by rubbing butter into flour, as you would for a crumble, and after I had used the dough hook to knead the flour, yeast, butter, spices and milk together I folded the fruit into the dough by hand.

I've been reading articles on hot cross bun recipes over the last few weeks, and the general consensus is that you don't mess with the traditional dried fruit. There seems to be a particular aversion to using cranberries, for some reason. Naturally, I do love a good act of gastronomic rebellion, so I decided to make two batches of buns: one with the classic raisin, currant and mixed peel combination, and another using orange zest and cranberries. They're my hot cross buns and I will do what I like with them. Ever since I made cranberry stollen at Christmas, I can't get enough of these gorgeous, jewel-like dried berries. I also have a version including dried apple in the back of my mind for next year.

For these buns I decided to use fresh yeast, having recently discovered its miraculous qualities. It really does make a much lighter crumb and a dough that somehow feels much more alive. Some of my previous attempts at hot cross buns have been more like rock cakes, so I hoped that the inclusion of fresh yeast would give that delightful moist, spongy texture.

The dough was wonderful to work with: the smell of the spices and the rich texture from the butter and milk had me sitting there just inhaling the scent from the mixer bowl. Eventually I forced myself to start kneading the fruit in: the trick is to scatter it all over the stretched dough, fold it up to make a parcel, and then just keep kneading. Normally it can be quite tricky to keep all the fruit in, but because this is such a sticky dough I had no problems. I especially enjoyed grating the zest of an orange onto one batch of dough; the smell of the essential oils permeating the air as I kneaded was wonderful.

I let both doughs rise until doubled in size, which took a lot less time than I'd expected. I still can't get used to how quickly fresh yeast causes a dough to rise. Then I divided it into little balls, spaced them out on a baking tray, and let them rise again. For the crosses, I used a flour and water paste. I've seen recipes that call for fancy combinations of flour, yeast, water, oil and baking powder, but to be honest I think life's too short to faff around with the cross on a hot cross bun. After all, once it's smeared with butter and toasted, it doesn't really matter whether you used a simple mixture or a complex one.

It's true, you can buy many decent versions of hot cross buns. My favourite are the M&S ones, which have a wonderfully light texture and a really rich flavour. But if there's one incentive guaranteed to make you bake your own, it's the ensuing smell in your kitchen. The aroma of spices, fruit and butter will permeate every corner of your house, meaning that the wait for the buns to cool sufficiently so they can be eaten is agonising. I'm sure there has been many a burnt tongue over the years from eager cooks losing patience and devouring a just-baked bun.

Finally, the all-important sugar glaze. This gives the buns a moist, sweet stickiness. This year I decided to jazz up the glaze a little by adding a couple of strips of lemon peel. It makes it slightly more fresh-tasting, which is a good balance for the sweet fruit and dough. I really enjoy brushing the hot syrup onto the golden buns, hot from the oven, poking it into every nook and cranny on the dough's dimpled surface. They then sit there in their own little pools of syrup until cool enough to eat, which - fortunately - only takes about five minutes.

I am pleased with this recipe, although one thing I still haven't been able to master is getting the buns to rise to a sufficient height. They rose immensely with the fresh yeast, but outwards rather than upwards, resulting in quite a flat bun that isn't really big enough to split in half and toast. Not that they weren't delicious, pulled apart in a rustic, haphazard fashion and smeared with butter, but next time I might let the dough rise first and then cut it into squares before baking, instead of rolling it into little balls. This is, of course, a very minor aesthetic complaint. Otherwise, they're perfect. 

And, despite reports to the contrary, the orange and cranberry version is exceedingly good. In fact, I think I prefer it. Last year I went a bit mad and made a chocolate and orange version, which was incredible. I did feel a bit sacrilegious, introducing chocolate to the mix, but it was unfeasibly good. The chunks of chocolate melt when baked or toasted, giving a gorgeous cocoa stickiness to the bun, which, coupled with orange zest, resulted in a sort of hot cross bun slash jaffa cake taste sensation. Unorthodox, but wonderful. I suggest you try it.

Happy Easter!

Hot cross buns (makes about 20):

400g strong white bread flour
60g light brown sugar
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp each of ground cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger
45g cold butter, cut into cubes
50g fresh yeast
130ml tepid water
70ml milk
Either 100g currants, 115g sultanas and 50g chopped mixed peel, OR for the orange and cranberry version, zest of 1 orange, 150g dried cranberries, 50g mixed peel and 50g sultanas
Flour and water, for the crosses
100g caster sugar
100ml water
2 strips lemon peel

Place the flour, sugar, salt and spice in a mixing bowl. Rub the butter in with your fingers, as you would a crumble, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs.

Dissolve the yeast in the tepid water. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture, then add the yeast mixture and the milk. Use an electric mixer with a dough hook to knead for 10 minutes, or do so by hand. It will be a very sticky dough, but avoid the temptation to add much more flour.

Spread the dough out on a work surface and scatter over the dried fruit. Pull the dough up around it to make a parcel, then continue to knead for a few minutes until the fruit is evenly distributed. Place the dough back in the mixing bowl, cover with cling film and leave to rise in a warm place until doubled in size (about an hour).

Knock the air out of the dough, then shape into small balls and place on a baking tray lined with baking paper - allow space for them to spread out. Leave again to rise until doubled in size.

Pre-heat the oven to 200C.

For the crosses, mix a little flour with a little water until you have a thick paste. Spoon into a plastic freezer bag, cut the corner off, and use this to pipe crosses over the top of the buns. Place in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, or until golden brown.

While the buns are baking, heat the water and sugar together until boiling, then add the lemon peel. Bubble for 10 minutes until thick and syrupy. When the buns are cooked, remove from the oven and immediately brush over the sugar glaze. Remove to a cooling rack.

Wait, if you can, for the buns to cool, then spread with butter and eat.

(Adapted from Lesley Wild, A Year of Family Recipes)

Roasted loquat meringues

You know you're on your way to mastering a foreign language when you're able to glean information regarding the flavour, texture and culinary potential of a strange fruit that you've never seen before, entirely in the vernacular. Such was the case in Italy last week, when I stumbled across a box of 'nespole' in a little fruit shop. I'd never seen them before; they looked rather like apricots, but more oval-shaped. Intrigued, I asked the shop-owner, a devastatingly sweet little old lady, if she knew what they were called in English. She shook her head. A rather faltering (on my part) Italian dialogue then ensued, during which I attempted to find out if they were like apricots, and - more importantly - if they were edible raw, or likely to poison me. The lady was effervescent about the virtues of this fruit, to the extent that she picked one up and started stroking it, and assured me that it was "dolce, dolce!"

My curiosity got the better of me, and I bought one, to her immense delight.

After a brief exchange during which I thought she was telling me about an English man she was going to marry in April, and which I later realised was her asking about the Royal Wedding (the word principe should probably have given it away - running a greengrocers didn't seem like the typical choice of job for an Italian prince's fiancee), I unwrapped my curious fruit from its paper bag and took a bite. It was delicious, and unlike any fruit I've tasted before. It had the texture of an apricot or a peach, but a more watery, juicy texture and a tartness reminiscent of underripe pineapple. Delighted, I decided I was going to buy a big bag to take home and experiment with in the kitchen.

Unfortunately, Mr Ryanair got in the way of these plans. My luggage was already four kilos over the allowance (which resulted in me having to carry back three kilos of rice, four cakes and a packet of biscuits in my hand luggage), and realistically I would never have been able to take a huge bag of fruit home without it turning to mulch, even if I could have fitted it in my bag. I said goodbye to Italy and to the nespole, wistfully thinking of culinary possibilities that might have been.

A quick google informed me that the more commonly-known (at least in England) name for these fruit is loquats. This excited me a little, because I had actually heard of them, and because I'm rather enjoying kumquats at the moment. It was rather like meeting the parents of a boyfriend you really like, and discovering that they too are excellent specimens of the human race. The 'quat' family keeps getting better and better with every introduction.

So imagine my sheer, unadulterated delight when, shopping in Cambridge market yesterday, I stumbled upon a box of 'nesperos', from Spain. They were right there, at the forefront of the market stall, as if the hand of some gastronomic god had descended from heaven and placed them there for me to witness. I eagerly bought a kilo, mind ablaze with excitement and wild culinary ideas. I am not ashamed to say that this literally made my day. I know it's a bit tragic, but I do get unfeasibly excited about new ingredients and new ways of cooking them, and couldn't wait to try out the loquats in a recipe other than simply 'eating raw in the streets of Vercelli'.

The ones I bought weren't completely ripe: they were very tart and had an astringency rather like a lemon. It was clear that I'd have to cook them before I did anything, which meant that the lovely custard tart with a topping of sliced loquats would have to take a back seat for a while. Undeterred, I quartered them, and mixed them with some brown sugar, orange flower water, cinnamon, and apricot jam. The reason being that they are similar, in a kitchen context, to apricots, and I usually bake apricots with honey, orange flower and cinnamon to bring out their rich sweetness. The apricot jam added a tart sugary flavour that really enhanced the loquats. The smell of the baked fruit emerging from the oven was sublime.

The loquats would have been perfect just like this, with no other adornment than maybe a scoop of vanilla ice cream (or one of my more strange flavours, like Earl Grey), but it struck me that their gorgeous marigold colour would look beautiful atop a mound of snowy meringue, and the sugary crispness of the meringue would marry perfectly with their dense, grainy texture and tart sweetness.

I whipped up a batch of meringues in the KitchenAid, baked them for half an hour, scattered with flaked almonds, and they were ready for their topping. Instead of whipped cream I used ricotta sweetened with icing sugar - I much prefer this as a meringue topping, and generally for any occasion where cream is required, largely because I don't like whipped cream (it tastes of air! it's a waste of calories! I'd much rather skip the whipped cream with my cake and have more cake!). A little ricotta, a pile of glistening, fiery loquat slices, and a nest of meringue, crumbly and crispy on the outside but beautifully gooey in the middle. I was delighted when I served them to a Spanish student we have staying with us, and she recognised the fruit at once: "we have these in our garden - nesperos!"

Oh. Actual bliss. I cannot express how delicious this is. Loquats are going to be my new fruit obsession. The remaining fruit I had on porridge for breakfast, with a drizzle of its roasting syrup, and it was probably the best start to the day I've had for a long time.

Thank you, little Italian greengrocer, for bringing this wondrous fruit into my life. Grazie mille.

Roasted loquat meringues (serves 5):

• 300g loquats, quartered and stones removed (you could also use apricots or plums)
• 2 dsp apricot jam
• 3 dsp brown sugar
• 1 tsp orange flower water (optional, but lends a lovely fragrance)
• 2 tsp water
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 175g caster sugar
• 3 egg whites
• A handful of flaked almonds (optional)
• Half a tub of ricotta cheese
• 4 tbsp icing sugar

First, place the loquats in a dish with the jam, sugar, cinnamon, flower water and normal water. Roast in the oven at 170C for about 30 minutes, until the fruit has softened and the liquid and jam has formed a syrup. Remove and leave at room temperature. Turn the oven down to 160C.

For the meringues, beat the egg whites until thick and soft peaks form. Gradually add the sugar until the mixture is the consistency of shaving foam. Make five little nests on a sheet of baking parchment with the mixture and a spatula, then scatter over some flaked almonds, if using.

Place the meringues in the hot oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 130C. Bake for half an hour, then leave to cool with the oven door slightly ajar.

Mix the ricotta with the icing sugar. Spoon a little on top of each meringue, then top with a spoonful of roasted loquats. Dust with icing sugar and serve immediately.

Adventures with a KitchenAid mixer #3: sticky rhubarb cake

I came back from Italy a few days ago to find an enormous bag of rhubarb in our kitchen. Enormous. There must be at least three kilos of the stuff in it. I will spare you my favourite spiel about how much I adore rhubarb and proceed to describe how I turned this back of green and pink stalks into one of the most delicious cakes in existence, with the help - naturally - of my beloved new KitchenAid stand mixer. Because this rhubarb is later in the season, it lacks the slender, elegant pinkness of its champagne cousin, and therefore isn't entirely suitable for a simple poaching or roasting treatment. This cake is a great and pleasantly rustic way to make the most of rhubarb that needs a little more doing to it than a simple scattering of sugar.

First, the cake batter. This is a simple mixture of brown sugar and butter, creamed together before adding yoghurt, eggs, ginger and self-raising flour. I was pretty generous with the ground ginger, because it goes so well with rhubarb and also with brown sugar. I've made this cake once before using sour cream instead of yoghurt, but I decided to try yoghurt because a) the sour cream I found in the fridge was interspersed with thick veins of furry blue mould and b) because yoghurt is a rather healthier substitute and I am still feeling vast after my trip to Italia.

The result is a rather thick batter that smells and tastes incredible. I think it's the tartness of the yoghurt that, coupled with the brown sugar and ginger, provides the most wonderful balance between sweet and sour. It goes into a tin, and then it's time for the rhubarb. Of course, making the batter requires no more effort than putting things into the bowl of the KitchenAid and switching it on. I'm still getting used to having my cakes mixed in a fashion that requires no hands-on effort from me.

Having been spoiled by early season rhubarb, hacking my way through these rather thicker and tougher stems was a novelty. I nibbled a bit of one out of interest, and it was rather like eating a lemon. I quite like the way this kind of rhubarb is green in some places and pink in others; it's an unusual colour contrast and for some reason reminds me of sticks of rock. Though I have never eaten or in fact closely observed a stick of rock. I sliced the rhubarb into short lengths, and arranged it on top of the cake batter.

In retrospect, I think it would be better to slice the rhubarb into longer lengths and arrange them horizontally rather than vertically with the cut sides facing upwards. I was in the mood for making patterns, though, so I arranged the pieces in concentric circles, having a sneaking suspicion that when I removed the cake from the oven they wouldn't look nearly so neat. I was correct. The ends had sort of frazzled in the heat and it looked a bit dry. Fortunately, the next step is designed to rectify any such issues in the most delicious way imaginable.

Ginger syrup. Water, sugar and ground ginger boiled until sticky and fragrant. The perfect partner to tart rhubarb, the syrup goes over the top of the cake once it has had a while to cool. I made some holes in the cake before I poured it over, in the style of a lemon drizzle cake. There was a lot of syrup left over, even though I completely drenched the cake in it. It soaks into all the cracks between the rhubarb and the batter, leaving a gorgeous glistening finish and a superbly moist cake. It also seeps into the pieces of rhubarb, softening and sweetening their astringency.

I love the look of this cake; it's very rustic, with its scattering of rhubarb sticking up at odd angles, but also intensely inviting because of the way the syrup shines wickedly over the surface, hinting at promises of sugary goodness to come. Cut into it, and you're rewarded with an incredibly moist crumb with a slight sourness that balances perfectly with the rhubarb and lashings of sugar. The ginger also marries perfectly, preventing over-sweetness. The best part is the top layer where the syrup has soaked down into the cake. Words cannot express just how satisfying and simply delicious this is. Add some vanilla ice cream, and you have dessert heaven. It's best eaten warm but keeps well for a few days too.

Sticky rhubarb and ginger cake (makes a 22cm cake):

75g butter, softened
250g brown sugar (light or dark - I used light)
300ml natural yoghurt
2 eggs
2 tsp ground ginger
300g self-raising flour
400g rhubarb
100g caster sugar
1 tsp ground ginger

Pre-heat the oven to 180C. Grease and line a 22cm springform cake tin.

Cream the butter and sugar together using an electric mixer. Add the yoghurt, eggs and ginger, and mix well until combined. Fold in the flour - you should have a smooth but fairly stiff batter. Pour the batter into the cake tin.

Chop the rhubarb into short lengths and scatter over the top of the cake, as neatly or as messily as you like.

Place in the oven and bake for an hour and a half. If the top starts to brown too much, cover with foil. Remove and leave to cool.

Make the syrup by mixing the caster sugar and ginger with 100ml water. Bring to the boil and bubble until thickened and syrupy. Use a fork to poke some holes into the cake (try not to go all the way through to the bottom), then drizzle the syrup over.

Serve immediately with creme fraiche, yoghurt, or vanilla ice cream.

Pearl barley risotto with asparagus, quail eggs and parma ham

Here goes. Episode number something-or-other in the series of "Elly tries, yet again, to like asparagus". As I've mentioned before, I am not the biggest fan of those green spears that, come late spring, set most food-lovers' hearts ablaze with excitement. Yet I feel compelled to like asparagus, because it's one of those 'things' that any self-respecting gastronome should go mad for, along with the first rhubarb of the season, real English strawberries, and purple sprouting broccoli. I therefore feel it is my mission to devise recipes that will render the green stuff a little more palatable; I am usually put off by its bitterness and almost sour flavour (maybe there's something in my saliva that reacts badly with it - I know this is the reason a lot of people can't stand coriander). So when I saw the first spears of the season at the market the other day, I snapped them up (at vast expense - how is it that English-grown produce can be three times the price of stuff flown in from Spain?) and set about devising a way of making the most of such a widely-revered crop.



I can usually enjoy asparagus when coupled with something salty to offset its bitterness. Parma ham is a classic partner, and I also thought that the salty, savouriness of a risotto would provide the perfect blanket for the green spears. Quail eggs were not really essential to the dish, but I discovered a few days ago that Sainsburys sells them (I'd only ever seen them at the market before), and they are so lovely that I just had to include them. Besides, eggs and asparagus are another classic combination (although one that, alone, I find rather cloying).

I used pearl barley for this risotto, rather than rice, because I love its texture and nutty flavour, which I thought would balance well with the salty parma ham and eggs. I used the same technique as for a rice-based risotto, but stirred for about a million hours more. Barley takes longer than you'd think (or wish, when ravenous) to cook. My friend Ben (who has berated me on several occasions for never being mentioned on my blog, so I am now rectifying this situation) stood there harassing me in the manner of a small child in the back of a car: "Is it ready yet? Is it ready now?"

I put some of the parma ham in the risotto towards the end of the cooking time, and the rest I dry-fried in a pan until it became crispy and I could crumble it over the risotto. I hard-boiled the quail eggs and used them as a garnish. I was annoyed that I overcooked them, because I wanted them soft-boiled, but I am writing this two weeks later, having had soft-boiled quail eggs yesterday, and I now know that they are nigh on impossible to peel when soft-boiled, so maybe the extra cooking time was a good thing.

I wanted to make the most of the expensive asparagus in the risotto, so I used every bit of the stem: the tough end of the stalks went in with the stock to add extra flavour; the base of the stalk I sliced finely and stirred into the onions at the beginning of the cooking time, and the fragile tips went into the mixture towards the end of cooking, so they softened in the heat of the final ladleful of stock. Some grated parmesan, black pepper, and that was it. Actually it didn't even need parmesan; it was salty enough from the stock and the ham.



The verdict? Very enjoyable. In fact, it was delicious. The combination of barley, stock, salty ham and tiny eggs transforms asparagus into something superb. It would work well with normal risotto rice, as well, and bacon instead of parma ham. The eggs are optional, but I just love the look of them perched atop a mound of glistening creamy rice. Be warned that they are possibly the biggest faff in the world to peel; start at least ten minutes before you want to eat them.

I think Ben also enjoyed it. I hope the mention of him here will make up for the countless times I have omitted his name in descriptions of dinners I've cooked for him. He provides excellent risotto-stirring entertainment by regaling me with his entrepreneurial ideas for iPhone-related gadgets...but I will say no more, because he's certain one such idea will be the making of his millionaire future, and I wouldn't want to spoil that for him by giving the idea away.

What I will give away, however, is the recipe for this risotto. Because it was very tasty and I think will win over any fellow asparagus-sceptics - are there any of you out there?! I sometimes I feel I am the only one...



Pearl barley risotto with asparagus, quail eggs and parma ham (serves 4):

1 large onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
A bundle of asparagus
Olive oil
Butter
350g pearl barley (or risotto rice, in which case cook for less time)
A glass of white wine
2 litres chicken stock
Parma ham (quantities are up to you - I used about 8 slices)
12 quail eggs
Parmesan, to serve
Chives, lemon thyme or parsley, finely chopped (or all three)

Bring the stock to the boil in a saucepan. Snap the tough ends off the asparagus, and put them in the stock. Keep it at a gentle simmer.

Heat some olive oil in a pan and saute the onion and garlic until softened. Slice the asparagus stalks into thin rounds and add to the onion and garlic - reserve the tips for later. Add a knob of butter to the pan and leave to melt, then stir in the barley and coat in the butter.

Pour in the wine, and let bubble until it has been absorbed by the barley. Add the stock, a ladle at a time, stirring until it has all been absorbed before adding the next. This will take a good 40 minutes or more for barley, about 25 for rice. The barley should be soft but still a little bit nutty. You might not need all the stock, or you might need more, in which case use hot water if you run out. Don't add the tough asparagus ends along with the stock - they're just to add flavour.

Towards the end of cooking time, dry-fry half the parma ham in a frying pan until crispy, then remove to some kitchen paper. Stir the rest of the ham into the risotto, along with the asparagus tips. Taste and season. Stir in your choice of herbs - I used chives because they go so well with eggs and ham.

For the quail eggs, bring a pan of water to the boil. Drop in the eggs and cook for 2 minutes, then remove to a bowl of cold water. Peel and halve them.

To serve, place the risotto in bowls and crumble the crispy parma ham over the top. Garnish with the halved eggs. Serve with grated parmesan.

Asian fusion fishcakes

One of the perils of being obsessed with food is that you constantly carry around with you a mental list of various food-related tasks that you intend to effect at some point in the near future, items from which will pop up in your head in the most unexpected places. You're on the tube and see an advert for pregnancy tests - naturally it immediately causes you to remember that desire to obtain some goose eggs and cook with them. You smell that artificial baked aroma wafting from a nearby Subway and your mind is forcibly recalled to the huge bag of rhubarb in the kitchen that you keep meaning to create a bread recipe for. And - I know this is quite morbid, but I can't help it - you see the deer frolicking around Christ Church meadows and remember that recipe for venison kebabs that you keep meaning to try.

One item on this vast culinary to-do list of mine is to compile a 'Top 20' of my favourite kitchen-related tasks. It seems that whenever I write a blog post, I reference at least one of these: the satisfying sizzle of a steak on a griddle pan; how much I love separating eggs; the sheer unadulterated pleasure there is to be had from driving a ridged scone-cutter into a pillowy mound of moist, fruit-studded dough; the joy of knocking back the air from a risen ball of yeasty bread mixture. I will now add another to that list: I have a little bit of an obsession with any form of pancake.

I don't necessarily mean pancakes of the brunch or dessert variety, though I do have an undeniable adoration for them; Sunday morning is just not quite right without a vast, Pisa-style stack of thick pancakes brimming with chunks of juicy fruit and drizzled with succulent sticky syrup and a sprinkle of icing sugar. But 'pancake' can stretch to cover all sorts of delights: I recently made some carrot and coriander cakes that involved mixing grated carrot and onion, fresh coriander, beaten egg, grated cheese and some cream together to form small cakes. These little orange burgers were placed gently into a pan of shallow oil, until the edges had sizzled and crisped up like an onion bhaji, while the centre remained soft and unctuous, oozing cheese. A variation of these involves grated courgettes, spring onions, dill, mint, and feta cheese, and is another of my favourite recipes and a way of making a lot of people realise that courgettes are actually quite nice.

Fishcakes are, of course, another example, and they even have 'cake' in the title. I just love the action of shaping a stiff mixture into small, flat cakes with one's hands, flouring them, then placing them in the pan and listening to their exterior become golden and crispy. I suppose it's a textural thing: the contrast between the crunchy, caramelised outside and the soft centre. Last night I was really craving that taste sensation, and, having spent the last week in Italy eating nothing but carbohydrates, pork in all its various manifestations, and cheese, I needed something fresh-tasting and healthy to wake up my tastebuds and jolt my - usually acceptable and good at hiding the fact that I am an unashamed glutton - metabolism into action.

I told myself it would be easy. A week without carbohydrates to make up for the excess of Italy, and I would be in no danger of putting on about ten stone. A week without carbohydrates. No problem. I'd done very well the night before: dinner was grilled chicken salad with roasted vegetables, and not a crouton in sight. I should clarify here that I don't mean all carbohydrates - fruit and veg don't count. I basically mean bread, pasta, potatoes and rice. The kind of stuff that, eaten three times a day for a week, will make you feel positively elephantine. At least, in my case, because I normally reserve such foodstuffs for one meal a day only, or I get too sleepy to function.

I could have made Thai-style fishcakes: nothing but fish and aromatics. But I wanted the potato. I needed it to give the fishcakes that essential fluffiness in the middle, that comforting blanket to swaddle the flakes of fish and contrast the crunchy outside of the pan-seared cake. Perhaps I have been spoilt by the fishcakes at the restaurant I work for, which are incredible (a trio of smoked haddock, cod, and salmon cakes, gorgeously crunchy on the outside and still firm and flaky in the middle, served with a tomato salsa and the best chips I've ever eaten). I just didn't think dinner would be as good without potato in the fishcakes. They wouldn't be fishcakes as I know them and fishcakes as I was craving them.

Reader, I failed. I succumbed to the lure of the carbohydrate. But it was only a small amount of potato (two potatoes in the whole recipe, which serves four people), and I feel it gave the necessary bulk to the fishcakes. Besides, if I hadn't put it in, I would only have ended up making some potato wedges and thus eating even more potato than planned. And somehow potato doesn't seem as bad as bread; it does, after all, grow in the ground, therefore it at least pretends to be a vegetable and somehow good for you. Bread, in my eyes, has the nutritional value of a sponge. This is not to say that I don't adore it. But a week in Italy is enough to make most people enact a temporary bread amnesty.

I still wanted the fishcakes to be light and fresh-tasting, so I reached for chilli. Whenever I've overindulged with a lot of heavy, rich food, I always wake up the next day craving chilli (obviously not immediately, as chilli for breakfast is just not something that registers on my Western culinary radar). When I suggested fishcakes for dinner, Jon immediately asked, "Will they have coriander in?" Thus, the addition of Thai flavours to the humble potato was born: lime, lemongrass, ginger, garlic, fish sauce, lime leaves, coriander. I call these Asian fusion fishcakes because they're not authentic Thai fishcakes, but they add an exciting Asian twist to your basic British potato-and-fish combo.

One of the many things I've learned from Masterchef is that one should never combine Asian flavours with potato. John Torode loathes it; every series a new contestant comes along thinking they can produce the definitive Asian-tuber combination, and every series they are forced to hideously and humiliatingly bow down before the mighty Torode and his fusion-food wisdom. Wasabi mash? Always fails. Every time. As does any dish that features potatoes and soy sauce within forking distance of each other. No, don't think you can get away with it because it's a sweet potato and therefore somehow more exotic. You can't. John will spot it and your Masterchef journey will be over.

So really, it was going against every Masterchef-infused cell in my body to couple Thai ingredients with potato, but I did it anyway. This is probably why I'll never be on Masterchef. That and the inevitable crushing humiliation and requirement that I should use revolting phrases such as "raise my game", "incredible journey", "pull it out of the bag" and "this competition means everything". I do, despite being twenty-two and therefore a good four years out of the teenage stage, still cry quite a lot (usually when hungry). But I don't think even my tear ducts could produce the amount of facial saltwater necessary to appear on Masterchef. I'm surprised they haven't started giving contestants a set of Masterchef-embroidered handkerchiefs as well as the trademark aprons.

Back to the fishcakes, while my Masterchef dream collapses in tatters before my (insufficiently weepy) eyes. I blitzed all the aromatics to a fine paste in a blender and mixed with a little fish sauce. I added the cooled mash and flaked cooked fish (I used Vietnamese river cobbler, which seemed rather appropriate in terms of region for Thai fishcakes, and which you can get in Tesco), then shaped the mixture into little cakes, dusted with flour, and chilled for half an hour to make them less likely to fall apart in the pan.

Oh, the sizzle. Such a perfect golden coating when I flipped the cakes over to cook the other side. They held their shape perfectly, browning nicely on each side and remaining soft and yielding in the middle. I served them with some broccoli and corn on the cob (again, not particularly orthodox, but we had some in the fridge to use up and I suddenly remembered that corn on the cob is amazing), and a big drizzle of sweet chilli sauce. I reckon they'd also be good with sticky rice (unless you too have just returned from eating your own body weight in pork and pizza) or some steamed Pak choi seasoned with chilli and soy sauce, or just as a starter with the sweet chilli.

Sorry, unrealistically-ambitious-attempt at-Atkins-diet. Sorry, John Torode. But these are just so damn tasty.

Thai-flavoured fishcakes (serves 3-4):

• 350g firm white fish (cod, haddock, coley, whiting, pollack, etc)
• Olive oil
• Salt and pepper
• Flour for dredging
• 2 large potatoes
• 4 lime leaves (fresh if possible; I used dried)
• 1 red chilli, deseeded
• 1 inch piece root ginger, peeled
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled
• 2 stalks lemongrass, tough end removed and roughly sliced (or 2 tsp lemongrass paste from a jar)
• 2 tsp fish sauce
• Juice of half a lime
• Bunch of fresh coriander
• Lime wedges, to serve

Peel the potatoes if you like (I leave the skins on because I like the texture, and they're full of vitamins apparently), then cut into large pieces and boil until tender. Mash well and leave to cool.

Pre-heat the oven to 190C. Place the fish in a baking dish, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper and cook for about 10 minutes until cooked through. Flake into small pieces and add to the mashed potatoes.

Roughly chop the ginger, garlic and chilli and put in a blender with the lime leaves, lemongrass, fish sauce, lime juice and coriander. Blend to a rough paste. You can chop it all by hand if you don't have a blender. Add this mixture to the potatoes and fish, and mix well. Taste - you might want some more lime juice or fish sauce.

Shape the mixture into small cakes then place on a floured plate and chill in the fridge for half an hour.

When ready to cook, heat a shallow layer of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan until quite hot (you want the cakes to sizzle when they come into contact with it). Flour the cakes on both sides and add to the hot oil - you will probably need to do this in batches. Cook for about 3 minutes on each side; the outside should be golden brown and the inside warmed through.

Serve with sweet chilli sauce, and steamed or stir-fried greens, along with lime wedges.

Spring has sprung with scones in Yorkshire

I've recently spent a weekend at our house in Yorkshire. This is always a noteworthy occasion, culinarily speaking, largely because of said house's proximity to Betty's tearoom in Harrogate. This, for the uninitiated, means cream teas, excellent lunches, delicious baked goods and pastries, fine tea and coffee, and a wonderful bakery and gift shop. However, there were several other gastronomic perks to the weekend. In fact, Betty's hardly featured at all, as I was in Harrogate alone and it seemed a little tragic to queue for about an hour for a table to have tea on my own. I bought a Fat Rascal from the shop, though - this is a Yorkshire classic, a rather dense, scone-like cake with fruit, citrus and almonds. But that was not the only scone-related incident of the trip.

We've just had a new kitchen put in, so naturally I wanted to test the facilities. I went down to the corner shop intending to buy some apples or pears to make porridge with, and instead found at the local deli a huge tray of gorgeous Yorkshire rhubarb. Truly beautiful stuff - perfectly pink, perfectly slender stalks, still with the pale, cabbage-like crinkly leaves attached. Orchard fruits were instantly dismissed in favour of this rather more alluring option, and instead I made myself a huge bowl of porridge with a rhubarb, orange and raisin compote - rhubarb simmered with a splash of water, a handful of raisins, and sugar to taste until soft, then mixed with a segmented orange.

It's delicious, especially because the raisins soften in the hot rhubarb liquor and become all juicy, and the contrast in texture between the almost crunchy orange segments and the gossamer-fine strings of the pink rhubarb is delicious atop a mountain of yielding, milky oats.

For my second kitchen test, I made scones. I haven't made scones in a long time, and I hardly ever make plain ones, preferring to add some sort of twist to them. However, I fancied the plain, fluffy crumbliness of a fruit scone, so I used this basic recipe. They filled the kitchen with a delightful aroma of baked goodness. I'd forgotten how much I love the texture of scone dough; thick and satisfying like bread dough, but with a moistness to it from milk and a sweeter smell as you roll it out. I also defy anyone to not love the action of pressing a metal scone cutter down into a thick blanket of floured dough.

However, I was not content to rest with my basic scones. There was a punnet of blueberries languishing in the fridge, and it brought to mind the blueberry scones I used to eye up at Starbucks, back in the day when I used to actually offer my business to the ubiquitous, gimmicky, tepid-cappuccino-serving chain. What I really loved about those scones was the fact that they were wedge-shaped, rather than round. They had a gorgeous-looking crusty surface area with small crystals of sugar, and although I never ate one, I could just imagine how doughy yet crispy they'd be.

I'm not sure why the simple shape of a scone can make so much difference, but these just fascinated me for some reason. I think it's the rather rustic idea of baking a whole scone then slicing it into thick wedges, just waiting to be slathered in butter. Possibly also it's because the wedges resemble slices of cake, which can only be a good thing. I set about making my own version.

I decided to use mainly wholemeal flour, because I love the contrast of its nutty flavour with sweet fruits like blueberries, and because generally I like wholemeal scones for their more interesting flavour. Other than that, I used the same basic ratio of ingredients as in the basic scone mixture. I threw in a few raisins, and the punnet of blueberries (after consigning those wearing little furry grey coats to the bin), mixed it all together gently, then placed it in a buttered, round pyrex dish before placing it in the oven. This was mainly due to my lack of baking parchment - in future I'd just shape it into a round and put it on a baking tray, as I reckon it would cook more quickly.

Having sort of improvised the recipe, I could not have been more delighted. I could tell from the way the scone crisped up in the oven and became golden and cracked in places that it would have the perfect crust, but I wasn't quite prepared for the way the blueberries burst in the heat of the oven and resulted in a juicy, sweet, tart centre. You end up with something crusty yet gooey and doughy in the centre, perfect with a little butter but equally good just on its own. Slicing it into wedges was a thing of joy.

I am failing to truly convey the sheer deliciousness of this scone. You'll just have to try it for yourselves. You can even pretend its healthy, too, because of the wholemeal flour and 'superfood' blueberries (although I reckon even superfoods lose their nutrients after about a month in the fridge). A very frugal way to prevent the throwing away of perfectly fine fruit, and yet it tastes the very opposite of frugal. Mmmm.

Finally, just a few photos of another thing I love about Yorkshire at this time of year: the lambs. They are everywhere, bleating innocently around the fields and stumbling about on their impossibly spindly legs. I usually use the term 'frolicking' in an ironic, euphemistic or facetious fashion, but in this case it seems perfectly applicable: they do frolic.

I came across this pair of sleeping lambs by the side of the road and couldn't resist a photo. They just looked at me with mild interest, blinking in the sunlight. Mummy sheep, however, was not impressed, and soon afterwards came along, nudging them away from me. Bless. It's enough to fill anyone with the joys of spring. The joys of spring, and the joys of scones. A good weekend.

Wholemeal blueberry scone

• 150g wholemeal self-raising flour (or use plain wholemeal and 1 tsp baking powder instead of half)
• 75g plain self-raising flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• Pinch of salt
• 60g butter
• 25g caster sugar
• 150ml milk
• A large pinch of cinnamon
• A handful of sultanas (optional)
• One punnet of blueberries (month-old shrivelling optional)
• 1 egg, beaten, to glaze

Pre-heat the oven to 190C.

Mix the flour, salt, baking powder and cinnamon together. Rub in the butter, cubed, until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar, sultanas and blueberries, then add the milk and mix to a smooth dough, trying not to crush too many berries.

Flour a board and roll the dough out into a circle shape, about an inch thick. Place on a sheet of baking parchment. Slash across the top of the dough to divide it into eight wedges, then brush with beaten egg.

Bake for about 20 minutes, though it could take longer - it's ready when it's crusty and crispy on top and still a bit doughy in the centre, and you can check by cutting into one of the wedges a little bit.

Eat while warm, spread liberally with butter.

Walnut and juniper crusted venison loin with chocolate jus

This beautiful loin of Yorkshire venison has been sitting in my freezer for months. It seemed so special that I could never find an occasion good enough to defrost and cook it. I was also frightened of doing something bad to it and ruining what is one of the most wonderful ingredients I have ever used. The loin of venison is the prized cut: like beef fillet, it is tender, succulent, and beautiful. Overcooking it would be a culinary crime. I've only used it once before, to make a venison carpaccio with raspberry vinaigrette. I seared the loin, and then thinly sliced it to serve with a mixture of balsamic vinegar and crushed raspberries. I remember being delighted when my guests didn't finish it all, and the next day I feasted off sandwiches of thinly-sliced, rare deer. Carving rare meat is one of my favourite kitchen tasks; I love the incredible colour and texture of tender, pink flesh, particularly game. Finally I plucked up the courage to remove the venison from the freezer.

I had no fixed idea of what I wanted to do with it, so I made a mental list of all the things that work well with this meat: juniper, nuts, mash, chocolate, raspberries, bitter greens. I've seen Jerusalem artichokes around for ages now, and keep meaning to use them, so I decided I'd definitely include them in a mash to go with the venison. The rest just sort of happened in my head: I wanted some kale in there, because I love it, and because the dark, iron richness of greens goes well with game. I like the idea of encasing meat in a crispy crust, for textural interest, so I found a way there to incorporate walnuts and juniper. Finally, a chocolate and red wine jus.

Chocolate and venison is by now a well-established culinary connection. There's something about the cocoa richness of dark chocolate that really enhances the flavour of the meat. I just grated a little into a jus made from the pan juices of the venison loin, some beef stock, some red wine, and a sprig of thyme. Finally, I added a few raspberries, crushing them into the jus for a hint of piquancy to lift what is otherwise a very earthy dish. The chocolate adds a depth of flavour that you wouldn't expect; it's excellent.

For the venison, I seared the loin in a pan before rolling it in a mixture of crushed walnuts, crushed juniper berries, dried thyme and seasoning. It then went in the oven for ten minutes; the walnuts became crispy, and I left it to rest under foil while I finished the mash, greens and sauce. It sounds like a fairly complicated recipe, but it isn't really: the trick is getting all the elements finished at the same time.

I was really pleased with how it turned out. The meat was cooked exactly as I like it: very rare. Anything else would have been wrong with such a tender cut of meat. I was surprised at its moistness, too - game can often be very dry, even when left bloody. I sliced it into beautiful rounds, still with a few walnut crumbs clinging to them, placed them on the mash, and drizzled over the jus and raspberries. The sauce is absolutely wonderful: the beef stock gives it a richness that the chocolate then enhances, and it works so well with the texture of the meat. There are lots of very big, rich flavours going on, but they're balanced by the greens and the raspberries, and the slight sweetness of the rare meat. One to repeat, I think. If I could change one thing, I'd toast the walnuts first for extra crunch.

Juniper and walnut crusted venison loin with raspberry and chocolate sauce, Jerusalem artichoke mash, and kale (serves 4):

1 venison loin (about 600g)

A little olive oil

A handful of walnuts, toasted

6 juniper berries

1 tsp dried thyme

6 Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and halved

3 mashing potatoes, peeled and cut into large chunks

3 tbsp creme fraiche, cream, or butter, for the mash

Several large handfuls of curly kale

200ml red wine

200ml beef stock

Sprig of thyme

A bar of dark chocolate

A few raspberries (optional)

1 tsp balsamic vinegar

First, bring a pan of water to the boil and add the artichokes and potatoes. Simmer until tender. Pre-heat the oven to 180C.

Meanwhile, pulse the walnuts, juniper berries, dried thyme and some seasoning in a blender to make fine crumbs. Spread out on a plate. Get a frying pan very hot, add a little olive oil, then sear the venison loin on all sides. Roll it in the crumb mixture to coat all over, then place on a baking tray and put in the oven for 10 minutes (this is for rare - increase the timings a little if you like your meat more cooked, but beware of overcooking this very tender cut). When done, remove and cover with foil to rest for 10 minutes.

Pour the stock and red wine into the venison pan to deglaze. Add the sprig of thyme and simmer until reduced by half. Taste and check the seasoning, then add the balsamic. Strain into a jug, and just before serving, grate in some dark chocolate. How much is up to you - keep tasting. You don't want it to turn into chocolate sauce, but you can put a surprising amount in without overpowering the meat. Add the raspberries too, if you like.

Place the kale with 2 tbsp water in a large, microwaveable bowl, cover with clingfilm and microwave on full power for 3 minutes. Alternatively, steam using a steamer. Season and keep warm.

Drain the potatoes and artichokes and mash. Add creme fraiche, cream, butter and milk to taste, along with lots of salt and pepper.

To assemble, spread some mash on a plate. Slice the venison loin into slices about 1.5cm thick, and arrange on top. Spoon some kale onto the side, then finally drizzle over the chocolate jus.

Adventures with a KitchenAid mixer #2: fennel and garlic focaccia

I love making bread, but I am not afraid to admit what most cookery writers steadfastly refuse to concede: that it is a bit of a faff. Of course, this depends on the bread - there are some excellent no-knead, straight-in-the-oven versions around (soda bread, for example, or any bread involving the reaction between yoghurt or buttermilk and some form of acid) - but, largely, bread does require a bit of effort. It would probably be unrealistic to say that for the average busy person, baking bread daily is a doddle. Even if it doesn't require much kitchen effort, it usually requires several hours of sitting around waiting for it to prove, then knocking it back, shaping it, giving it a second rise, and finally the actual baking. And while kneading is usually rather enjoyable, it does make a hell of a mess - not just the worktop, but your hands too. My hands are always hideously dry for a couple of days after I've made bread, because I've had to scrub them with a nail brush to remove all the congealed bits of dough. It's also why I never allow my fingernails to grow more than about two millimetres.

So imagine my excitement at the potential of the KitchenAid mixer's dough hook. I've never used a dough hook before, having always made bread by hand (and therefore experienced the aforementioned arid hands and dough-encrusted worktop). I think it may have changed my bread-making habits forever. It's just so easy.

I admit I was sceptical at first: how can a piece of metal that is barely even hooked somehow achieve the same results as a pair of pummelling hands? I'm sure KitchenAid have designed it so it does; I wouldn't know the exact details of why, but suffice to say it's very effective.

For my first foray into KitchenAid bread making, I decided upon focaccia, that gorgeous Italian classic. Its name derives from focus, Latin for 'centre' and also 'hearth', because the fireplace was the centre of the home: the bread was cooked on the hot hearth. I love the texture of a big slab of focaccia; an open sponginess ideal for soaking up delicious Italian sauces or pairing with simple meat and cheese. My favourite topping is the simplest: coarse sea salt and rosemary, which I've made before and which is delightful with fresh, milky mozzarella and sharp summer tomatoes. This time, however, I decided to experiment and use fennel seed and garlic, to accompany a fish stew, and because I'm having huge garlic cravings at the moment (coincidentally, I had a dream about vampires last night...maybe the two are linked).

I used a basic recipe from Michel Roux's cookbook, and for the first time in my life had the experience of cooking with fresh yeast. I'm not sure why I haven't before; I think it's because I didn't realise that it's readily obtainable from most bakeries (and also the in-store bakeries of large supermakets), until someone mentioned it to me in passing. I acquired 50g of the stuff from Sainsburys for the lowly sum of 25 pence, and walked home rather thrilled at the prospect of using it. It's funny-looking, crumbly stuff, that looks rather like half-set plaster of paris. The scent of it took me back to the days when my dad used to brew his own beer; a wonderfully earthy, deep, almost living aroma. I dissolved it in some tepid water, and set about making the dough.

For this, I put everything in the mixing bowl and turned on the mixer. It was as simple as that. Flour, olive oil, salt, some fennel seeds, the yeast and water mixture. And then I let the mixer do its work, for about seven minutes until it had produced a gorgeous ball of silky dough. Not a floury worktop in sight, and the texture of the dough was just as it should have been had I kneaded it by hand. I sat and watched the delightful purple mixing machine doing its thing, marvelling at my un-doughy hands and lack of mess.

I then let the dough rise in the bowl for about an hour. I was incredibly surprised by how much it rose: I don't know if it was the fresh yeast, but the dough somehow felt much more alive than it usually does when I use dried yeast, and it tripled in size within about forty minutes, which has never happened before. Clearly delicious things were in store from this recipe. I spread it out on a baking sheet, left it for another twenty minutes, then slashed it in a criss-cross pattern and drizzled over some garlic-infused olive oil. A sprinkling of fennel seeds and sliced garlic, and it went into the oven with a pan of water to create steam. The beauty of focaccia is its versatility: you can top it with anything you like. Michel suggests basil, garlic and anchovies, which I reckon would be delicious, but you can also put things like pancetta or cheese into the bread mix.

The result was one of the most impressive-looking loaves I've ever made (as well as a gorgeous-smelling kitchen). It also happened to be absolutely enormous, easily enough to feed about seven people. I reckon it was the fresh yeast that achieved such a magnificent expansion; it also resulted in a wonderfully light, spongy, open texture. The best part of the whole loaf was the crispy crust around the edges; combined with the garlicky oil and fennel seeds, it was good enough to eat without any accompaniment. However, I had made a French-style bouillabaisse, with haddock, monkfish, clams, prawns, tomatoes, saffron and fennel, to go with it (that's how much I love bread - I design the bread first, then work out a meal to accompany it, rather than vice versa). We sat there with a glass of wine, a huge loaf of focaccia, and a bowl full of gorgeous seafood flavours to dunk the bread into. I think that's about as close to a perfect meal as you can get.

And no need for hand cream. Thank you, KitchenAid.

Garlic and fennel seed focaccia (makes one huge loaf):

(Adapted from Michel Roux's Cooking with the Master Chef)

• 25g fresh yeast
• 350ml lukewarm water
• 750g white bread flour, sifted
• 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 heaped tsp sugar
• 2 tsp salt
• 3 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 clove garlic
• 1 tsp coarse sea salt
• Garlic-infused olive oil, for drizzling

Dissolve the yeast in the lukewarm water and add to the flour with the olive oil, 2 tsp of the fennel seeds, sugar and salt. Mix to a dough and knead (or use a KitchenAid with a dough hook!) until smooth and elastic - about 10 mins by hand, or 5-7 in the mixer. Place in a bowl and cover with a teatowel, then leave to rise until doubled in size (about 30 mins to an hour).

Roll the dough out on a floured surface to a thickness of about an inch. Place on a baking sheet lined with non-stick paper and leave to rise again for another 20 minutes. 

Pre-heat the oven to 220C. Place a roasting tin in the bottom while it's heating up. Slash the dough in a criss-cross pattern across the centre, then drizzle over some garlic oil, a sliced garlic clove, and sprinkle over the remaining fennel seeds and coarse sea salt. 

When the oven is hot, open the door and put the bread in, then immediately pour a jug of cold water into the roasting tray at the bottom; it should steam up. Shut the door and bake the focaccia for 20-30 minutes until golden and the bread sounds hollow when you knock on the bottom.

Remove and devour; good with anything tomatoey. It's also wonderful the next day cut in half, topped with roasted red peppers and/or tomatoes, torn mozzarella, and basil, then placed in the oven until the cheese has melted.

Adventures with a KitchenAid mixer #1: simnel cake

If you haven't seen one of these before, where have you been living? The iconic design of the KitchenAid stand mixer means it is coveted by cooks everywhere. And probably also non-cooking hedonists whose lives are dominated by a search for the aesthetically pleasing. You can't deny that its gorgeous curves, sleek surface and beautiful colours are probably more of an incentive to purchase it than any skill it might have in actual mixing; however, style and substance unite in its ability to effect a huge variety of kitchen tasks while still looking fabulous - it's the Nigella Lawson of kitchen equipment. I'm lucky enough to possess one of these mixers at the moment, so I'll be putting it through its paces to see how it fares in my busy culinary lifestyle.

KitchenAid pride themselves on their stylish, durable and reliable mixer. It comes with three basic attachments: a wire whisk, a dough hook, and a beater. The former is for whipping fragile mixtures like egg whites; the dough hook for - obviously - bread doughs, and the beater for thicker, more sturdy mixtures like cake batters. However, should you wish to branch out, you can get all sorts of fancy attachments for it - a pasta maker, a sausage stuffer, a mincer, a citrus juicer, and an ice cream maker, to name but a few. It's pretty amazing what you can do with one piece of equipment. Especially when it's purple. My one is the 'grape' colour, but if you take a look at the website there are over 20 beautiful colours to choose from (my favourites are 'electric blue' and 'candy apple'). 

Now, it's all very well me saying this, but I can't really sing the praises of the mixer until I've tested it. Fortuitously, it's that time of year when I need to start thinking about making simnel cake, an Easter favourite in our house, replete with dried fruit, marzipan, and citrus flavours. I've made it for the last couple of years and decided to make it in good time this year to allow it to mature before Easter. I'm not very good at allowing baked goods to mature - I tend to eat them before they have half a chance - so it's probably a good thing I'm going to Italy on Saturday for a week; the poor simnel cake will be able to slumber, unmolested, in my kitchen, its sticky, sugary ingredients becoming acquainted and fusing together into a fruit-studded mass of Eastery goodness. Seeing as I declared the KitchenAid to be the Nigella Lawson of kitchen equipment, I decided to use a Nigella recipe to test it.

I used the beater attachment for this cake, because it's quite a thick mixture, especially once the fruit is added. Butter and sugar went into the mixing bowl, and within about a minute the mixer had beaten them to within an inch of their lives, forming a fluffy, creamy mass. I then incorporated the eggs, alternating with the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, ground almonds, cinnamon, ginger). Finally, the fruit: glace cherries, sultanas, raisins, currants, mixed peel. One thing I would suggest is not to try cracking the eggs directly into the bowl while the mixer is on: you're guaranteed to drop half the shell in there too, which will be blitzed to a jagged paste before you can even utter a single word of profanity.

Ovoid disasters aside, I was very pleased with the mixer's performance. It's incredibly heavy, which also means it sits sturdily on the worktop and doesn't make huge amounts of noise as it mixes - far less noise than my electric whisk, which I'd normally use. One very minor criticism is that the lever you pull to change the speeds is rather stiff, and you can accidentally end up turning it off or right up when you only wanted to turn it down or up by a speed. But other than that, I have no complaints. I was worried that the beater might not be able to reach to the bottom of the mixing bowl (which, by the way, looks quite small but actually has a capacity large enough for most baking projects, at nearly five litres), leaving a residue of unmixed ingredients, but its unique planetary action (which sounds rather more exciting than it actually is, and had me eagerly expecting the mixer to launch into outer space and start orbiting Saturn) means that no part of the bowl is left unscraped.

The attachments are also very easy to attach and remove, as is the bowl, which makes for easy cleaning. It's definitely a piece of equipment that you'd want to sit on your worktop, rather than in a cupboard, largely because it's so heavy that you'd be built like a wrestler if you were trying to manoeuvre it every day. I think that's why they make so many lovely colours: you're guaranteed to find one that works with your kitchen decor.

I put half the cake mixture in its tin, and rolled out a circle of marzipan to cover it, before spreading the rest of the mixture on top. It then went in the oven. This delightful vein of almond paste in the centre of the cake adds moisture and flavour without being overpowering; it's not like the huge chunk of marzipan you find in stollen. I'm not sure who had the idea of putting sugary almond mixture in the middle of a cake, but it's a good one.

After the cake was baked and cooled, it was time to decorate it with more marzipan, and of course, the marzipan 'disciples' (minus Judas, because the culinary - and of course, religious - world is none too pleased with him). I like this part: rolling golden orbs of marzipan between one's hands, forming not-quite-perfect little spheres of sugar, is one of those therapeutic kitchen tasks that I love (along with making risotto, or rubbing butter into flour). I used an apricot glaze to stick the marzipan to the cake, and the disciples on top.

The next step is to score the surface of the cake with a sharp knife, and place it under the grill. This of course is optional, but I think the burnished surface of the marzipan (and, of course, the smell of toasting almonds and sugar) is wonderful. Two years ago I burnt it, so last year I used my cook's blowtorch, but as I hadn't brought the blowtorch home this year I had to use the grill again. I kept a very careful eye on it: it can turn from pleasant gold to carcinogenic black in a matter of seconds. I think this year I achieved just the right level of toastiness. I love the colours of the golden and brown top.

A very successful first outing for the KitchenAid, I think. Obviously I can't report on the simnel cake yet, because it has not matured. It will mature, I am determined, so I will have to let you know about it at a later date. I can't wait to try out the KitchenAid for other recipes, so watch this space. In the meantime, I will admit to standing in the kitchen and stroking the mixer lovingly, emitting sighs of culinary covetousness.



Simnel cake (makes a 20-22cm cake):


100g glacé cherries 
¼ teaspoon ground ginger 
500g mixed dried fruit 
25g ground almonds 
175g soft, unsalted butter (at room temperature)
3 eggs 
175g caster sugar 
2 tablespoons milk 
Zest of 1 lemon 
1kg yellow marzipan to decorate
225g plain flour icing sugar for rolling 
1 teaspoon baking powder 
1 tablespoon apricot jam, melted 
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon 

Take everything you need out of the fridge. Preheat the oven to 170C. Butter and line the bottom and sides of a 20cm or 22cm springform cake tin with baking paper. Chop the cherries very finely and add them to the rest of the fruit.

Cream the butter and sugar until very soft and light, and add the lemon zest. Measure the flour, baking powder, cinnamon, ginger and ground almonds into a bowl and stir to combine.

Add one of the eggs to the creamed butter and sugar with 2 tablespoons of the dry flour-and-spice ingredients, then beat in the remaining eggs in the same way. Beat in the rest of the dry ingredients, and then the milk. Finally fold in the fruit.

Dust a surface with a little icing sugar and then roll out about 400g of the marzipan. Cut it into a 23cm circle that will fit in the middle of the cake later. Spoon half of the fruit-cake mixture into the cake tin, smoothing it down with a rubber spatula, and then lay the marzipan circle on top of it. Spoon the rest of the mixture into the tin on top of the marzipan circle and smooth the top again. Bake for half an hour and then turn the oven down to 150C for another 1½ hours or until the cake has risen and is firm on top. Let it cool completely on a rack before you spring it open.

Unspring the cooled fruit cake, and unwrap the lining from the cake. Roll out another 400g circle of marzipan, paint the top of the cake with the melted apricot jam, and then stick it on.

Make 11 balls out of the remaining marzipan, roughly 2.5cm in size. Stick them around the cake using the apricot jam. Lightly score the centre of the marzipan in a criss-cross pattern with a sharp knife.

Preheat the grill to around 220C, and put the cake underneath it. Watch it carefully - you want it to be golden, but not dark brown. Remove, allow to cool, then leave to mature (if you can) for a few days or weeks before eating.

(By Nigella Lawson for The Times)

Bottled rhubarb

This week Rachel from The Crispy Cook is hosting Weekend Herb Blogging, and I've found an exciting new way of using one of my favourite ingredients.

There are some ingredients so beautiful and exciting that they always put a spring in my step on the journey back from the market to my kitchen. Blood oranges are one; really fresh, glistening mackerel is another; gorgeous jade-green, slightly squat Williams pears, with their promise of fragrant, sweet juice; dark aubergines, plump, glossy and black like beetle eyes. But probably my favourite is rhubarb. Spring rhubarb: bright, almost obscenely pink, poking out of my bag like sticks of rock. It's even better when the leaves are still attached: the contrasting bright green and pink is slightly mesmerising. I just love this vegetable, and am always looking for new ways to use it.

I'm also keen to use it while it's this lovely: as the season goes on, home-grown rhubarb turns tough, dark green, and woody. It needs a lot more sugar, and doesn't have the delicate flavour and colour that works so well in desserts. It's fine hidden under a thick, crumbly pastry crust or a buttery crumble topping, but isn't ideal for topping a snow-white pavlova or mixing into an orange roulade. A couple of weeks ago I bought a kilo of the pink stuff and put it in my freezer, to satisfy any rhubarb cravings that will inevitably arise over the coming months. But when I spied a heap of gorgeous, pale pastel rhubarb at the farmers' market the other day, and realised we have no more space in our freezer at home, I turned to another method of preservation: bottling.

I remembered an article in the Guardian a year or so ago about bottling rhubarb, and needed no further prompting, especially as we have a supply of these beautiful Le Parfait jars at home. I've preserved lemons in them before (great in Moroccan cooking), and they are just too pretty when filled with fruit to sit behind a cupboard door - my preserved lemons sit next to my bed on the windowsill. Ideal if I ever wanted a midnight snack of mouth-puckeringly sour, salty lemon flesh.

I've also bottled fresh apricots before - they are another ingredient I'm absolutely obsessed with when they're in season. I can't get enough of them: they go on my porridge (simmered into a thick, jammy compote with a cinnamon stick and some dates), on tarts, in pies and crumbles, all through the summer until they disappear and I'm left pining for them. They're one of the few fruits that you can't find all year round in England; unlike plums, they aren't imported all year, usually coming from France or further afield in the summer and then disappearing.

The technique for bottling fruit is simple: make a sugar syrup, then pack the fruit in the jars and pour it over. Then you have to vacuum-seal the jars (see below), but that's it. It is, in my opinion, a better method of preservation than jam-making, because the fruit retains its shape and flavour rather than collapsing into an overly sweet sticky mass. That said, I do love making my own jam and chutney as well, but I usually reserve it for things like apples that are in plentiful supply, rather than treasured rhubarb or apricots.

All I did for this was make a sugar syrup, cut the rhubarb into lengths and soak in the syrup overnight, then sterilise the jars (in the oven, though you can also do it in a pan of boiling water or a dishwasher), pack in the rhubarb, bring the syrup to the boil and pour it over. I then vacuum-sealed the jars by closing the lids, but not tightening the metal clasp, placing them in a low oven, and cooking for about 50 minutes before closing them. You can test the vacuum seal on this type of jar by unclasping the metal bit - if the lid stays tightly on, you know it's worked. To be honest, I'm not sure this step is essential - when I bottled apricots I didn't bother, and they were still delicious several months later when I came to eat them.

That's it, really: beautiful jars of gorgeous pink rhubarb, ready to extract and use in desserts and compotes whenever you fancy. I'm going to try and wait before opening my first jar, but we'll see how long that resolution lasts. I already have an exciting rhubarb cake in my mind. And how gorgeous do these jars look? They'll make a fine addition to my bedside windowsill, and a much better potential midnight snack than a preserved lemon...

Bottled rhubarb 

It's difficult to say how many jars this will fill. Your best bet is to sterilise several jars of different sizes, and use a combination to ensure the rhubarb is tightly packed. Mine filled a 1 litre jar and a 500ml jar. See the Guardian article for tips on sterilising and vacuum-sealing jars: this is the method I used, and it worked perfectly, but you can also use kilner jars. You can also double, triple, or halve the quantities as you wish.

1 kilo spring rhubarb, cut into short lengths
400ml water
180g caster sugar
Le Parfait jars (a total of about 1.5l capacity)

Place the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. Bubble away for a few minutes, then pour over the rhubarb. Place in the fridge, covered, and leave to soak overnight.

Sterilise your jars by running them through a dishwasher, or washing in hot, soapy water then placing in the oven at 160C for ten minutes, or boiling for 10 minutes in a large pan. Make sure when you take them out of the oven/pan that you put them down on a chopping board or something - if they go on a cold surface they can crack. Sterilise the rubber rings from the jars by pouring boiling water over them.

Remove the rhubarb from the syrup and pack it tightly into the jars. Bring the syrup to the boil, and pour over the rhubarb so it just about covers it. If you don't have quite enough syrup, top up with boiling water fresh from the kettle.

Close the jars and replace the rubber seals but don't clip them down. Put the oven to 110C and place the jars on a baking sheet with some newspaper underneath in case the contents leak in the oven. Put in the oven and leave for 50 minutes. Remove and clip down the metal clips. Alternatively, you can clip the lids down and place the jars in a large pan lined with a teatowel to stop them moving around and breaking. Cover with water and bring to the boil; boil for a few minutes then turn off the heat and let the jars cool in the water.

The next day, unclip the metal. If the lid stays on and doesn't pop up, the seal has worked.

Duck sausage, red wine and radicchio risotto

I've been meaning to try a risotto with red wine for ages. Sometimes I find the pure white creaminess of a standard risotto a bit boring and monotonous, and was intrigued by the notion of bringing more flavour to it using red wine, as well as creating something dark and delicious. A white risotto goes well with delicate ingredients like seafood or chicken; for a red risotto, I wanted something more meaty. The butcher I normally visit had all sorts of sausages on display, which caught my eye because of their unusual ingredient combinations: pigeon and peach, pheasant and pear, guinea fowl and apricot, duck and mandarin. The pheasant and pear I've tried before, and they were delicious, so this time I went for the duck. I figured the gameyness of duck would go quite well in a sausage. I could have cooked them as they were, with mash, but the red wine risotto occurred to me and I decided to try them together.

I do enjoy experimenting with risotto: it's one of those basic recipes where very little can go wrong. The basic components of a risotto - creamy rice, flavoursome stock, herbs, melting onion and garlic - are so good together that even if you put something completely weird in with them, it's bound to taste halfway decent. Another ingredient I've wanted to try for ages is red radicchio; it's a bitter leaf, a bit like chicory, and I thought it would work very well stirred into my risotto at the end: its sharpness is great at counteracting rich meats like pork or duck.

I cooked the sliced sausages in a pan first before adding the onions, coating them in the sausage fat, and proceeding as I normally would for a risotto, except instead of adding a glass of white wine, I used a glass of red. It turned the rice a lovely russet colour, which I contrasted with some beautiful leaves of my favourite herb, lemon thyme. The lemon note lifts what is otherwise quite a strongly-flavoured, rich dish.

Finally, I shredded the radicchio and stirred it into the almost-cooked risotto, allowing it to wilt in the heat and become slippery. It keeps a slight crunch, rather like the texture of steamed greens, which is a good addition to the soft uniformity of the risotto and the sausages. Sausage risotto works very well, whatever sausages you use: these weren't overly redolent of duck, but they had an interesting flavour and made for a lovely and rather unusual Italian dinner. I reckon venison sausages would work well too, or just your average pork variety. A spicy Italian type like luganega would also be good.

Sausage risotto with red wine and radicchio (serves 4):

• 6 good-quality sausages, of whatever variety you like
• Olive oil and butter
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 300g risotto rice
• One large glass red wine
• 1 litre chicken stock
• A few sprigs lemon thyme (or normal thyme)
• 1 head of radicchio, shredded
• Parmesan, to serve

Slice the sausages and roll the meat into little balls. Heat some oil in a large pan and fry the sausages until golden. Add the onions and garlic, and cook until softened. Add a knob of butter and melt.

Stir in the risotto rice, coating in the fat. Cook for a minute or so, then pour in the wine. Leave to bubble and reduce, then add a ladleful of hot stock. Wait until all the liquid has been absorbed, then add another ladleful, proceeding until the rice is soft with a little bite to it.

Check the seasoning, and stir in as much lemon thyme as you fancy (I like a lot of it, but I have a penchant for the stuff). Stir in the radicchio and leave to wilt. Add grated parmesan to taste, and serve.

Kumquat, vanilla and ginger cheesecake

I've decided to further investigate the intriguing kumquat. I have eaten these little citrus beauties three times: first at Gordon Ramsay's York & Albany restaurant; next, I tried them in a sharp compote with venison, and last week I decided to explore their dessert potential. I find them curiously exciting: I think it's because you wouldn't think, from looking at their dimpled, waxy skins, that you could put one in your mouth whole and enjoy it. Yet you can: they have an astringent edge that ideally requires the mellowing effect of dairy, but they are certainly not unpleasant raw and unadulterated. I love finding a new ingredient and thinking of interesting and tasty ways to use it. Seeing as the kumquat is part of the citrus family, I started thinking about other flavours that go well with oranges and lemons. I came up with ginger, and also remembered the blood orange cheesecake I made a while ago. I decided that the tartness of the kumquats would work very well folded into a crumbly, sweet, creamy cheesecake.

I debated over what type of cheesecake to make: both the unbaked, gelatine-set version and the baked, crumbly, thickly creamy version have their merits. I think either would work with the kumquats, but because they are so sour, I decided they needed a stronger cheesecake mixture with more texture to stand up to them, so the baked version won. Plus I just love making baked cheesecakes: it's immensely satisfying to spoon a bowlful of loose, creamy cheese and eggs into a tin and watch it emerge a little while later with a golden hue on top, cracked in places and starting to turn firm at the edges, but still with a little gelatinous wobble in the centre.

First, I made a kumquat compote. This was nothing more than a little water and sugar boiled together until syrupy, to which I added some quartered kumquats and cooked with a lid on until they had softened. I then stirred in rather a lot of ground ginger. This is incredibly delicious as it is: the skins of the kumquats become soft and slippery and taste rather like the thick zest you find in rustic, homemade marmalade. I ate rather a lot of it for testing purposes. The ginger gives quite a kick to it, which, combined with the intense sweetness, is wonderful. It's immensely refreshing, like the fruit itself: it has the edible tartness of grapefruit, and the perfume of orange.

Next, I made a basic cheesecake mixture: ricotta, creme fraiche, eggs, sugar, a little honey. I also added rather a lot of vanilla extract: I've become a bit obsessed with it lately, and as it somehow makes everything taste sweeter, I thought it would help heighten the contrast between the tart fruit and the sweet cheesecake. I sprinkled some crumbled ginger biscuits over the bottom of a cake tin for the base, and then swirled some of the kumquat compote through the cake mixture. I poured it over the base, and put it in the oven for about 50 minutes. It took longer to cook than I'd expected, probably because the mixture came quite high up in the tin. I left it a little bit wobbly in the middle; that way you get a delicious creamy centre and a thicker, crumbly exterior.

When the cake had cooled, I spooned the rest of the kumquats on top. I was going to arrange them into some kind of Michelin-starred precision, but then realised that they looked pleasingly rustic just piled on top. A sprig of mint, and it was finished. The contrasting colours are just beautiful: dark biscuit, creamy golden cheesecake, and the luscious orange of the citrus fruit on top.

It tastes wonderful. I was really pleased with this, especially because I made it up in my head and it worked out as well as I could have hoped. The combination of creamy cheesecake with firm, tart-sweet fruit is delicious; the little slivers of kumquat hidden inside the cake are a lovely surprise in every mouthful. The ginger in the compote and in the biscuit base is also excellent with the sweet creaminess of the cake. I'm very happy with this.

Kumquat cheesecake (serves 4-6):

• Kumquats (I didn't weigh them, but about two large handfuls should be enough - or you can use more and make extra compote to eat with ice cream or porridge)
• 100ml water
• 60g sugar
• 15 ginger nut biscuits
• 2 tsp ground ginger
• 250g ricotta cheese
• 150ml creme fraiche
• 90g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tbsp honey
• 1-2 tsp vanilla extract

Pre-heat the oven to 170C. Grease and line an 18cm springform cake tin (you can use a 20cm tin - if so reduce the cooking time by about 5-10 minutes).

Place the sugar and water in a small pan and heat until boiling. Quarter the kumquats lengthways, remove the stones, and place in the syrup. Cover with a lid and simmer until the fruit has softened. You want there to still be some liquid remaining in the pan - add a little more water if it has dried up; conversely, if it is too runny, take off the lid and simmer for a bit. Add the ground ginger and leave to cool. Taste it - you might want a little more sugar or ginger.

Place the ginger biscuits in a food processor and process to fine crumbs. Place in the bottom of the tin. Mix the rest of the ingredients together in a food processor or using a hand whisk. Stir through some of the kumquat compote - you want to leave enough to decorate the top of the cake. Don't mix it in too much - you want a sort of ripple effect in the finished cake.

Place the cake in the oven, and bake for 45-55 minutes. If it starts to brown too much on top, cover with foil. It doesn't matter if it cracks a little - it's ready when it's firm and golden at the edges and still slightly wobbly in the middle. Leave to cool with the oven door open, then place in the fridge and chill.

Before serving, spoon the rest of the kumquat compote over the cake. Decorate with mint sprigs, dust with icing sugar, and serve.

For my inner home economist: ham hock terrine

It struck me as I was standing in the covered market a week ago. One minute I was standing there quite calmly; it was a lovely spring day, I was heading home for a much-needed month away from university, I'd just handed in the last of my term's work, and I decided to get something nice to take home for dinner. The next, I was gripped by it: food-shopping indecision. It's a condition that I find plaguing me on at least a weekly basis. Often when I've headed to the shops or the market with something specific in mind, and then suddenly I spy something quite different and exciting, and then dither for hours over what to do with it and what else I need to buy. Or, often worse, when I have no idea what to cook, am presented with several potential options, and can't settle on one. I'm generally a fairly indecisive person. It drives my boyfriend absolutely mad. Oddly, the more minor the decision, the more difficult I find it. Selecting a film, for example, or choosing between going for a walk in the morning or the afternoon. When you add food to the decision-making process, it's nigh impossible. I've been known to circle the covered market for almost half an hour, weighing up in my head the comparative merits of duck sausages versus pork tenderloin, or mussels versus red mullet. I realise this is deeply tragic, but I've heard that acceptance is the first step towards recovery. The result of this aforementioned indecision last week was a completely unexpected ham hock. Honestly, you may as well have crept up behind me in the street and placed a bag of ham hock in my hand. I have no idea what possessed me to buy it. I only know that it took me about twenty minutes to finally do so.

I've never cooked a ham hock before, which makes the decision even more bizarre. But for some reason I decided that it was a good thing to have. I think my subconscious may have been recalling the rather luscious picture in Diana Henry's Food from Plenty cookbook of ham with parsley sauce: glorious thick, pink, juicy chunks of ham hock scattered on a plate with a dollop of green-flecked creamy goodness. When I turned to the book after returning home, I discovered that on the next page was a recipe for ham hock terrine. Another subconscious moment: only the other day I'd watched Raymond Blanc prepare a ham hock terrine on TV. Given my absolute adoration for all things Raymond, it just had to be done. I feel closer to the great man himself when I am using the very ingredients that he puts his manly hands to every Monday night on the BBC.

What I love most about this dish is its sheer frugality. You take what is essentially a pig's ankle, add a few vegetables, and a couple of days later have a rather fine-looking dinner party centrepiece. All I did was boil the ham hock with celery, carrots and onion, shred the meat after a few hours of slow cooking, mix it with some mustard and parsley, put it in a loaf tin lined with cling film, and pour over some of the braising liquid. The gelatine from the bone in the hock turns the liquid to jelly, so it sets the meat into a loaf shape without the need for extra gelatine. It's really rather amazing how you can create something so splendid with so few, and such cheap, ingredients. The ham hock cost me £2. The herbs and vegetables probably about another pound. The result: delicious, and even more so because it made my inner home economist very happy. The stock doesn't go to waste, either: it makes a delicious pea soup.

To accompany my terrine, I baked a loaf of bread. It was a recipe from one of my Michel Roux cookbooks: celery and herb bread. It sounded odd and not particularly appetising, but I thought the celery would work well with the ham (and I had a load in the fridge - this is definitely a meal in the spirit of frugal cooking), and I trust Michel (after Raymond, he is my favourite Frenchman). I now trust him enough to jump blindfolded off a cliff supposedly into his arms: the loaf was incredible.

I'm not entirely sure how, but it made my whole house smell of cake. I put it in the oven, went to the gym, and returned to probably the best post-gym aroma known to man. I was almost convinced that my mother had put a cake in the oven while I was gone. But no, my virtuous-sounding celery and herb bread had transformed into something moist, doughy, cakey and sublime. It's an incredibly moist loaf; whether that's from the inclusion of celery and onions, or a small amount of butter, I don't know. It could also be down to me placing a pan of water in the bottom of the oven to create steam and stop the loaf drying out. Either way, I'd heartily recommend you try this bread. It doesn't really taste of celery; rather, you get a lovely aromatic herbiness that goes well with meat or cheese, but is equally delicious on its own with butter. Beautiful.

I really appreciate the sheer rusticity of this meal. Bread with vegetables, a terrine fit for a king but cheap enough for a pauper, some chutney and mustard, cheese, green salad, and a glass of wine. Wonderful. The terrine falls apart somewhat as you try to cut it, but I like to think this only adds to the effect. The meat is wonderfully moist from the surrounding juices and mustard, and strongly flavoured enough to work very well with a dollop of chutney. Not bad for about a pound per person, and considering it contains pig's ankles.

My brother pointed out that the terrine looks a bit like cat food. I'm not sure what to make of that. I actually think cat food looks quite tasty sometimes. Be assured that the terrine is good enough not to feed to your cat. What it lacks in appearance it compensates for in flavour.

Ham hock terrine (serves 6):

• 1 large ham hock
• 1 stick celery
• 1 carrot
• 1 onion
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 clove garlic
• Sprigs lemon thyme
• Bunch of parsley, finely chopped
• 2-3 tsp wholegrain mustard

Soak the ham hock for 24 hours, changing the water twice. Then place it in a large pa, cover with fresh water and add the vegetables, garlic, bay leaf and thyme. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer gently for 2-3 hours until the meat is tender. Leave to cool then remove the hock to a bowl, and place both stock and hock in the fridge overnight. 

When the stock has cooled, skim off all the fat. It will have turned to jelly. Remove about 250ml of the stock to a small pan and boil to reduce by half. Shred the ham meat (discard the fat and bones) and mix with the mustard and parsley (you can add some leaves of lemon thyme too if you have any left). Taste, check the seasoning, then press into a loaf tin lined with cling film. Pour over the reduced stock so it almost covers the shredded meat, then place in the fridge for 24 hours or so. When ready to serve, simply turn out onto a plate.

(From Diana Henry's Food from Plenty)

Celery and herb loaf:

• 250g strong white bread flour
• 250g wholemeal or wholegrain bread flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp celery salt (optional)
• 1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
• 40g butter
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 2 sticks celery, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 2 tsp celery seeds
• Juice of 1 lemon
• 250ml milk

Finely chopped parsley, celery leaves, lemon thyme and mint - a handful of each

Pre-heat the oven to 200C. Place a roasting tin the bottom of the oven.

Mix the flours and salts and bicarb together in a large bowl. Rub in the butter. Meanwhile, heat the oil in a pan and fry the onion and celery until softened but not coloured. Add the celery seeds.

Add the celery and onion mixture to the flour. Make a well in the centre and add the lemon juice and milk. Mix to form a dough, adding the herbs. Knead on a floured surface for a few minutes until you have a smooth but not sticky dough.

Grease and line a loaf tin, then shape the dough into an oblong and place in the tin. Slash the top. 

Open the oven door and put the loaf in. Fill a jug with water and pour some onto the hot roasting tin in the oven - this will create steam and make the loaf extra-moist. Bake for 45 minutes, then remove to a wire rack to cool.

(From Michel Roux's Cooking with the Master Chef)