Jell-O what?

The other day, my colleague left for his annual Thanksgiving break, and this time was flying home to Texas and then on to Delaware with the family. Whilst I am very happy he had such a lovely trip ahead, I am also a tad miffed, for I look forward to the leftovers and 'Tales from the Thanksgiving Table’. Last year was the first time I had tried Candied Yams, complete with marshmallows, and this year I was looking forward to yet stranger offerings, for he had told me of apocryphal traditional dishes such as green bean casserole, and I wanted to try them. (The recipe and picture below, for Candied yams, from Recipekey.com, is very similar to the recipe I made).

One of the things I love about our autumnal festivities is that, by and large, they are more to do with giving thanks and nature’s bounty than they are materialism. They hark back to a time before religion as we know it, to an entrenched, paganistic need to thank the land for what it’s given us. Sure, the shops fill with all manner of the brightly coloured, orange, black, green and purple, with the odd ghostly white thrown in for good measure – and they convince us that Halloween is about buckets to collect sweets in, and pumpkin candles and the like. That’s true to a degree, but the best parties are always the ones where the witches and skeleton costumes are home-made out of old tights and bin bags, and the food is made with creativity and a well-developed sense of the macabre. It’s too easy to buy it all, and I think that the desire to craft our own Halloween is deep within us – it’s about physically exorcising the bad through our own creativity. It’s about taking what we have and making the best of it, about thanking the earth, and celebrating the bounty of nature. The day I see ready-carved pumpkins in the shops will be the day I know that commercialism has started to win, but whilst people are still slicing awkward triangles for eyes, there is hope.

Thanksgiving is typical of an autumnal feast day. Again, the shops start with the fancy tableware and napkins, but it is still mainly about people you love gathering together over food and giving thanks. Although it’s principally an American tradition, as is the way with Americana, it is seeping into the British psyche. And as is the way with the British psyche, we have a tendency to assimilate the best of cultures that come to our shores. We have been doing it since the Roman times, and probably before that. If there’s a knees-up to be had, we will go and pray for a few weeks in the new-fangled temple prior to the big day if it means we get invited to the party. Why should Thanksgiving be any different? More and more people I personally know are having thanksgiving meals. At a time when churches are emptying out quicker than a JD Sports during a riot, we seem to be tail-gating the tradition as a kind of proxy-harvest festival. And so it is that all is not lost, for another friend who cooks Thanksgiving every year for a variety of ex-pat Americans plugged the festive gap for me in a rather surprising way.

Whilst in a frenzy of activity at my desk the other day (ahem), she sidled up to me and asked ‘Jen, what's the UK equivalent of Coolwhip?’. I immediately assumed the now defunct frozen Superwhip would be our closest equivalent, or Birds Dream Topping (now there's a misnomer if ever there was one), and then I wondered why on earth she wanted a substitute for a cream substitute? Was that not just cream? I tried in as diplomatic a way as possible to ask the question without sounding like I was calling her an idiot (for she is not, she is a highly intelligent young lady, which only served to further confuse me) and as she explained, all became clear. The delightful dish she was to be creating with her Coolwhip? Jell-O Salad.

Any Americans amongst my readers (oh how I flatter myself I am read globally) will instantly know what Jell-O Salad is. However to the uneducated Brit, it is alien. In the UK, we have been led to believe that thanksgiving dinner is just like Christmas dinner – roast turkey and all the trimmings. It is true, it is a feast dish, and is based around the native American turkey, roasted and dressed, with a variety of vegetable dishes served alongside. That, broadly speaking, would describe thanksgiving dinner. But in reality, the meal can be very different.

Let’s start with the turkey. Even cooking methods are different in some cases, though still by and large roasted. More and more, these days, according to a recent survey I saw, the most popular method, in fact, is to barbecue them outside. Traditionally, in the UK, we stuff the neck and the cavity with sage and onion, or if you are my mother, apricot and almond sausagement in the bird, with sage, onion and chestnut stuffing balls done separately (in America separate stuffing cooked outside the bird is 'dressing'). We dress and decorate the bird in a variety of garbs and unguents, principally streaky bacon but for those with rather more developed tastebuds and purses, pancetta, and anoint the skin with butter, push butter under the skin, indeed inject butter into the flesh to prevent that traditional turkey travesty, the over-cooked breast - basically as much butter as possible will counteract the long, dehydrating bake in the oven. In recent years we have taken to brining as a way of encouraging moistness. The Americans, however, take yet another tack. Some people like to deep fry their birds (yup), even having specialised fryers for the very purpose, and they would more than likely serve their cornbread ‘dressing’ separately, having reconstituted it in a pan first on the stove-top.

Then we come on to the real crazy stuff – the accompaniments.
The one perhaps the brits are most familiar with, thanks to the wonderful Nigella, is the aforementioned Candied Yams topped with marshmallows. I know – I hear a nation dry-heave. But this is, for the carb-addicted, sweet-toothed amongst you, simply fabulous. The sweetness of the potatoes with the spice from the cinnamon and the crispy, caramel vanilla of the marshmallow is just like velvet duvets of unctuousness on the tongue that complements the briny turkey beautifully. I know this for a fact as this was the first thing I ever tried in ‘Tales from the Thanksgiving Table’, and I have since made it myself several times. This one gets a tick.
The next is the apocryphal green bean casserole. Now – what do you think of when you hear the word casserole? A base of onions, celery and carrot, fried off, a touch of garlic and then some decent stock added to a mix of flavourful veg and meat, a splash of wine, all waiting to be cooked long and slow?
That is everything green bean casserole is not.
Green Bean Casserole is a mixture of canned or frozen green beans (obviously), Campbell’s cream of mushroom soup, and crispy fried onions (from a packet). Note I name the brand of soup – that is because Green Bean Casserole was invented in 1955 by Dorcas Reilly, Campbell's head chef, on behalf of Campbell’s soup, utilising specifically only store cupboard ingredients.
The next accompaniment was what totally bemused me. The first time my friend told me of it, I thought she had had a Rachel moment – you know? The one where the cookery book gets stuck together and she makes shepherds pie trifle? This is the recipe which started my brief foray into this American Thanksgiving dinner piece: The Jell-O Salad.
Imagine, if you will, a concoction of lime Jell-O (Jell-O in America is, I am led to believe, the powdered variety), that is then mixed with Coolwhip, and cottage cheese.
And then served with the turkey!
When my friend told me that her American friends mother had given her the recipe (where, if you couldn’t get it, the lime Jell-O could be substituted with strawberry) and then served alongside your beautifully burnished and bronzed roasted bird, I simply didn’t believe it. It was a little like the first time I learnt of the nuts and bolts of having sex. I was about 8 years old, and my friends older sister had given us the cold hard facts about what went where. I simply did not believe it. This was in the days before Google, I hasten to add – now, I would be given pictorial evidence in nanoseconds.
Thus it was with Jell-O salad. Too outlandish to even dream that this was a real recipe. The recipe that I found most outlandish was one that combined cucumber, onion, horseradish, and pineapple with cottage cheese and strawberry Jell-O. I know our American cousins have a sweet tooth, but really? (See below picture from ourfamilyrecipes.blogspot.com for an example of the mystifying concoction - I think I prefer the idea of vanilla pudding in it)

I got to wondering whether this was something that was perhaps viewed in the same way we view sprouts or Christmas pud – a tradition to be endured? The real issue with sprouts and Christmas pud, however, is not that they are inherently vile – it’s that they are cooked badly, by and large. Christmas pudding, I have discovered in recent years, is actually sublime when gently steamed after months of maturing. It's not great, however, microwaved to oblivion. Sprouts boiled until grey are, and never were, representative of cruciferous greatness. Therefore could this Jell-O salad perhaps fall into the same ranks of ‘we make it that way because, well, we just do’?
A straw poll amongst those I know from the North American continent confirmed otherwise. They make it because they like it. Pure and simple. They cannot hang a nations shame on the ‘tradition’ peg. Or so they say.
Although these dishes don’t really hark back to the time of the pilgrim fathers (unless jet-puffed marshmallow and condensed cream of mushroom soup was prevalent in Plymouth), they still tell a story of Americana, but more a modern, industrial history, where the housewife started working and time was tight. Where we had learnt new ways to mass produce and store food. The thing that my friend found most alarming was that her American guests, upon finding her one year in a sweaty, exhausted, red-cheeked heap upon arrival, howled with sympathetic laughter at the effort that she had gone to. The pumpkin pie was home-made, the flesh cooked and pulped, pie crust blind baked; the cornbread stuffing was made with actual cornbread that had been baked for the sole purpose of the stuffing. The cranberry sauce had been made from scratch. The Americans found this hilarious, but also inauthentic. They gave her the name of a lovely little American shop near Bagshot where she could purchase Keebler pie crust, Libby’s canned Pumpkin, genuine Jell-O, Frenchs Fried Onions and Aunt Jemima’s cornbread stuffing mix, amongst a variety of other pre-packaged, dessicated and dehydrated thanksgiving staples to be reconstituted at a (much) later date. This year, everything came out of a packet. Hell, this year, they even sold the stuff on Ocado! And do you know what? Her guests all said that, this year, it was just like momma used to make. Do you know why? Because it was.

The real thanksgiving story is a mix of harvest rituals, historical pride and religious traditions – Native American, British, Dutch, Canadian and other nations. It is perhaps still being crafted. We live in an age of plenty in the western world, thanks to the greatest industrialised nation on the planet, one that has formulated a way to ensure that food is plentiful for its population, even if not always exactly fresh. What the blogosphere demonstrates is that there are plenty of Americans out there blazing a trail for the home-cooked, the locally produced and the non-hydrogenated/dehydrated/powdered/instant, just as there are in Britain. But let us not sneer at what has become traditional, for if the Brits were to look to their own larders and recipe books, we have our fair share of oddities. Who am I to cast aspersions when I live in a country that regards Bisto as the smell of childhood, and where stock is Oxo and stuffing is Paxo for a great majority? Let us not sneer either at what those few people, who landed on the shores of Massachusetts in 1621, have achieved and have given the world. People throng to shout the American nation down, particularly in the UK. It is easy to do, and it’s the acceptable face of racism and xenophobia, but it shouldn’t be. Every nation has it's dark side. But every nation has something to be proud of too, and that’s what giving thanks is about. Without America, the world would be a much poorer place culturally and gastronomically if nothing else, and if we want to get pedantic about it, it’s all down to a few Europeans anyway! So I for one raised a metaphorical glass of egg-nog (Borden, natch) on Thursday to the great nation, and gave thanks to Aunt Jemima, Libby’s, Campbell’s and Keebler for their unique role in a nations gastronomic history.
But maybe not to Jell-O.

Passionfruit bars

My name is Jennifer and I have a passionfruit addiction.

Rich in beta-carotene, vitamin C, lycopene, potassium and with many other healthful properties, there are worse things in life to be addicted to, which as an ex-nicotine fiend I can attest to, so I like to indulge this particular addiction as frequently as possible. The passionfruit bars I am about to share with you came about after I purchased what can only be described as the find of the century, for someone who loves passionfruit as much as I do.

The problem with passionfruit in this country is that, by and large, they appear in the supermarkets all smooth-skinned loveliness, shiny, purple-green. But though they may look delightful, at this stage they are unripe and a bit pony, to be frank. What I want to see is, in fact, massively overgrown peppercorns – wrinkled, puckered, a bit ‘past their best’ looking, as this is when they actually taste of something. Alas, I rarely find them looking like this. Even when I buy them and stick a banana in with them to ripen them earlier, they just don’t seem to have much resonance flavour-wise. How on earth do cheffy types manage to procure passionfruit that taste of something a little more dynamic than watered-down Um Bongo? And I mean plain, pure passionfruit, by the way, I don’t want it adulterated with orange juice or mango. Just naked, glorious passionfruit.

After much trial and error with smooth and wrinkly ones, purple and golden ones, and a lot of googling, I made a discovery that has transformed my kitchen. It is now, regularly, heady with the scent of the tropics (or so I imagine having never even been to ‘the tropics’. I probably flew over them on the way to Tasmania once, but that was as close as I got). Merchant Gourmet, they of the deliciously chewy, sweet, raisin-like mi-cuit tomatoes, ready-to-zap puy lentils and other gourmet delights, have a ‘chef’ section on their site. Contained within said ‘chef’ section is bottled passionfruit juice. Eeep!

Well, strictly speaking it's a puree, not a juice, but its rather more fluid than a puree, to my mind. No matter, it does not detract!

Now, when I first saw this, I was hesitant. We are a bit tight-lipped about pre-bottled gubbins, aren’t we? Unless either we have bottled it ourselves, Aunty Mabel has bottled it, or it was bought from a farmers market of high repute, we tend to be suspicious of things that are pre-packaged. Not for the first time have I erupted with tangible, almost ectoplasmic joy at finding an elusive product, only to be deeply disappointed at what was contained therein, having left a slop of misplaced joy-slime in my wake. However on this occasion I was more than pleasantly surprised. I was goddam ecstatic. For whether this was pre-bottled juice or not, it was really excellent. The Bon Maman of bottled juice, if you like.No - the Merchant Gourmet of bottled juice!

Not only do I love passionfruit, but I hate the seeds with probably equal fervour. I hate any kind of frog-spawniness in fruit and veg. It is just wrong. I always disgorge cucumbers, deseed tomatoes, and look upon with envy those who pop whole cherry tomatoes in their mouths with gay abandon. I cannot think of anything more repulsive than popping the shiny, tight skins and happening upon gelatinous seed pulp. I feel a gip forming in my throat as I describe it. Which is fairly problematic when it comes to passionfruit as that is, ostensibly, what they are – pulp and seed. But, oh, the fragrance! Oh, the puckeringly sharp, teeth-dissolvingly acidic golden juices that encase those evil little black seeds!

Thus my excitement at the Merchant Gourmet product was yet all the more heightened as there was not a nasty little blighter of a seed in sight. Why do chefs and manufacturers insist in putting the seeds in things? I was told once that it is to show it’s real juice that’s used, not flavouring, but to be honest, if a fake flavouring was that good you couldn’t tell, that would be fine. Anyone worth their salt knows fake flavouring from real passionfruit. So I say, banish the ruddy seeds for good and sieve the damned stuff. And so, apparently, do Merchant Gourmet.

I purchased a bottle of the juice, £5.99 for 1kg (90% passionfruit juice, 10% sugar one presumes for the preserving properties, and still so fresh-tasting and sweetly sour that it makes every gland in your mouth cascade like Niagara). It’s a great product, and when used in marshmallows (see previous post), mousses, ice creams, sorbets, glazes, jellies and in the following recipe, I defy you to tell that it’s bottled. But if you are particularly precious, by all means use fresh passionfruit. Or if you are worried that the guests might think you are faking it, buy a passionfruit and scoop it, seeds and all, into your mix, along with some of the bottled stuff – the flavour is superbly deep and intoxicating. Talking of intoxication, the application of it in cocktails is limited only by your imagination. Passionfruit Bellini’s? Yes please!

This is a recipe adapted from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook, and is so delicious, I have to ration it when I make it. Their fabulous recipe for lemon bars lends itself to all sorts of jiggery-pokery – I’ve made St Clements versions, lime versions, grapefruit, even blackcurrant – if its sharp and acidic, it works. It's quick, it’s easy and it's super-impressive. I have been known to serve it with cream as dessert. A delicious shortbread base, topped with a lemon, or in this case passionfruit, curd.

Make this at your peril. It’s habit-formingly good!


Ingredients:

• 200g caster sugar
• 3 eggs (please use good ones)
• 100ml of Merchant Gourmet Passionfruit juice

Ingredients for base:

• 140g plain flour
• 120g unsalted butter
• 35g icing sugar
• 2 teaspoons of grated lemon zest
• a pinch of salt

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C.

2. Grease baking tray & line it with parchment paper.

3. The first stage is to make the base. Put the flour, sugar, salt, butter and lemon zest and using a hand held whisk, or a stand mixer, beat until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Or, if you are feeling particularly domesticated or don’t want too much washing up, it really is as easy to use your hands to make a lovely sandy crumble!

4.Press the crumble into the base of the prepared baking tray, flattening the crumbs down to make a pastry base. Bake in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes, or until light golden brown.

5. Put the sugar, eggs, passionfruit juice and zest in a bowl and whisk until well-mixed. It doesn’t say to do so, but I always seive the eggs to avoid nasty white clods in the final curd mix.

6. Pour over the baked base and return to the oven. The size of your tin will determine the depth of the tray-bake. Bake for 20 minutes or until the edges are golden brown and the topping has set in.

7. Leave to cool completely and either dust with icing sugar before serving, or drizzle with a criss-cross of dark chocolate, or straight up with no embellishments and let the glorious egg yolk orange sing out. Serve in bars as a tray-bake, or with a dollop of cream as a delicious, well-behaved alternative to a Tarte au Citron.

With a delicious slurp of cream for dessert!

Mummicat certainly approved!

Adventures in shmallow

Some time ago, I read an article in Delicious Magazine about how to make marshmallows a la Bea's of Bloomsbury, using fruit smoothie, and sans egg.

I don't know why, it had never occurred to me before that it was possible to make marshmallows on a domestic scale. It may seem obvious to some, but to me, the distinct absence of a domestic jet puff facility in my teeny tiny kitchen would immediately render the pursuit of home-grown marshmallow futile.

Seemingly, I am labouring under an uneducated misapprehension. You can, in fact, create marshmallow in your very own kitchen, with the aid of a stand mixer (thank you once again, Kitchenaid), gelatine (thank you dead animal bones), a shedload of sugar and a glug of golden syrup (thank you, Tate & Lyle).

Now - one thing you have to understand is that without the aid of the industrial jet puff machine, these are not the 'cumulonimbus' of the sweet world. But they aren't bad either. Rather, they are more... well, in all honesty, having made my very first batch, the nearest thing I can liken it to is...well...delicately fruit-scented neoprene. But don't get me wrong! It's tasty neoprene!

I jest. No, in all seriousness it's actually very, very good. It's more like tempur mattress. KIDDING!

It's not at all chemically, unlike the little clouds of sugary, squidgy air you buy in bulk from the pound shop, and is rather less uniform - it has a light, fruity freshness that you just will not get from a commercial brand. I may, however, be being rather facetious of my efforts in my latex-based description, as the following demonstrates.

I took some into the troops today, and was rather thrilled to watch a look of vague disgust turn to joyous disbelief that flooded their faces on trying a piece.
The first thing they said was 'Wow!'.
The second thing they said was 'Did you make that? That's amazing!'.
The third thing they said was 'I didn't think it was possible to make at home! What's the recipe?'.

So, for fellow Marketing buddies and marshmallow connoisseurs, here it is:

120ml fruit juice/smoothie (in this case passionfruit)
2 sachets of Dr Oetker powdered gelatine (approx 30g)
440g caster sugar
160g golden syrup/corn syrup
Vegetable oil to grease tin
Cornflour for coating

Utensils: suitable tin approx 20cm x 20cm, clingfilm, brush, pizza cutter, sugar thermometer, saucepan.

1. Place juice in bowl of stand mixer. Sprinkle gelatine over. Leave to sponge.
2. Boil sugar and syrup together til it reaches between 130 and 140 Celsius. Be careful not to scorch it, and although it takes a while to get there, when it goes, it goes quick!
3. Remove from heat and allow to cool for a minute.
4. Start the stand mixer going at a medium speed and start running syrup down the side of the bowl. If you want terrifying needles of sugar in your mix, let it get on the wire whisk. If not, keep it to the side of the bowl, as below.

 

Once it's all in, kick the speed up a touch. The mixture will increase in volume and go white.

5. Line the tin with clingfilm and grease the clingfilm incredibly well with your trusty pastry brush. Incredibly well. Literally slathered. This mix will stick to any known substance, even Teflon. Probably not Teflon actually, but you get my point.
6. Pour in to tin and leave to set for 2 hours.

7. When you come to turn it out, coat everything with Cornflour. With a cornfloured hand, hold the marshmallow down and pull the clingfilm from the surface, using you floured hand to ease it away when needed.
8. Cornflour your pizza cutter and chop the mattress of marshmallow into little fairy pillows of sugary lusciousness.

9. Toss them gently in plenty of cornflour, and leave it uncovered overnight to dry out the surface so as they don't stick together.
10. Take to friends and relatives and watch them fall in love!

Know your eggs

I am a farmer who owns a chicken (in Hypotheticalville, obviously). My chicken lays the same eggs in the same volume as my neighbour, also a chicken farmer. We sell the same product in the same way in the same volumes. So how do I add an edge to what is, essentially, the same product as my neighbours? How can I make more money from the same humble little egg than my neighbour, so that I may have a bigger farm and a bigger tractor and a bigger ego?

Its a quandary thats foxed many an egg marketeer (I feel vaguely psychopathic using the word 'foxed ' in an article about chicken farmers and egg producers.) I either have to sell more at the same price, or sell the same at a higher price, or a suitable combination of the two. But how can I add value to the same product? We see a plethora of 'interesting' eggs on the market - cheap eggs, battery eggs, free range eggs , free from eggs , freedom eggs, organic eggs, happy eggs, clever eggs, single breed eggs, white eggs, blue eggs , double yolk eggs, duck eggs, chocolate eggs - no, wait...

You get my point. How does the humble egg up its game? How does one create that false need, that urge to impulse buy what is a rather mundane product?

In what is already a saturated market place , it becomes increasingly difficult to charge more or shift more. But one thing the egg marketplace can leverage to great effect is the UKs current and seemingly insatiable baking craze.

We all seem to be trying to ape a Darling Buds existence - we have no money in our pockets, and so we hark back to another era when domestic creativity was one of the few ways to make you and your family feel good when your cash didn't stretch very far. We know how to sew a button, sow a bean and we also know how to whip up a batch of fairy cakes (or whatever guise your diminutive cake is taking, be it cupcake, muffin, fairy cake, whoopie pie, butterfly bun or otherwise). And fortunately for the egg marketeers, these creations are both delicious AND contain eggs!

The recent craze for channeling our inner Margot has had some of us buying our own chickens. Many a suburban garden has run the gamut of fox-proof coops, Eglus etc. Some early adopters have now come out the other side and after the remaining chicken has clucked its last, realised why subsistence poultry farming is all well and good when you either write about gardening or food or poultry-rearing, but for those of us who have to work a full time job away from the home, in order to pay down our sub-prime mortgages, it means working our fingers to the bone every spare second you have, either tilling the earth, collecting the eggs or tapping the keyboard. Still, Personal Chicken Ownership has to some degree further dented the egg market.

But what better way for egg marketeers to help themselves to a piece of the action than to jump on this nostalgic wagon train? To be a bona fide 1950s Stepford Wife (single-parent status notwithstanding), one must don a pinny and one must bake! And to bake, we need eggs.

But those egg marketers still want you eating your poached egg on toast, they don't want you simply using your eggs for your Victoria sponge and having a bowl of Special K instead. No - they want you buying eggs for all eventualities. For every circumstance. In short, you need eggs to dine on, but you also need a new fangled creation, eggs to bake with!

Enter Ella Valentine Baking Eggs.

Baking eggs - yes, you heard it right. The pretty pink boxes have been finding their way on to the shelves of your local supermarket and they have raised questions, not least from my friend who first asked me 'what are baking eggs, then, baking bird?' the other night, and who prompted this article. I found this super piece on Popsop.com the other day that talks further about the genius of egg marketing. By all accounts, Ella Valentines Baking Eggs have been specially developed by the manufacturers (manufacturers? Chickens?) to enable you to whip up the lightest of sponges, the most ethereal meringues. Or have they?

The short answer is, dear readers, no. And therein lies the genius!

Baking Eggs are, it would seem, an ad-mans creation. Baking eggs are no different to what you would find inside a standard pack of eggs. They are free range, they are good quality, and, perhaps oddly, they are slightly cheaper than their undesignated counterparts. They are no more or less bake-worthy than any other egg you might pluck from the supermarket shelves (yes, supermarkets, where people in the real, recession-teetering world are forced to shop due to favourable and aggressive pricing policies and a lack of alternative in our local communities). They do, however, come in a simply gorgeous little pink box complete with ginghamified label. The website is an ode to Cath Kidston, all pastels and vintage printed table frippery that I like to imagine I might use to dress my very own table when I invite the (non-existent) vicar round for high tea with my (non-existent) hubby and our brood of shiny-faced, wholegrain children (for 'children', read 'cynical, singular teen daughter'). The tabs on the website refer to their 'collections' and 'style tips'. You can even upload your very own cake creations for everyone at Ella's site to see and coo over - rather beautiful they all are too.

Put simply, this is the most chic, stylish, bang-on-trend and value-for-money egg-centric marketing ploy there ever was. If you can drag yourself away from your baby blue Clarence Court Cotswold Legbars or saffron-yolked Burford Browns (I'd honestly struggle, I love them so much) you could save a bob or two, but even if you only snuck an extra pack of Ella's into your basket for the pure pinkicity of the packaging, it would be a wise move.

 I love the ingenuity behind this brand. I love how it's taken a mundane and already fairly over-marketed commodity and managed to put an entirely fresh, new spin on it by taking flight on the current bakeratti zeitgeist. When I do my big shop on Friday evening, I'll be making sure I have my baking eggs on the list along side my Cotswold Legbars. And I will probably use them to bake with, specifically. Whereas my Cotswold Legbars will be cracked into a chili-spiked tomato sauce, poached until just set, and then served on a slice of charred sourdough that has then received a scrubbing of fresh garlic. I'll scatter them liberally with coriander, a crumbling of Maldon salt and cracked black pepper, and finally I'll season with a liberal sprinkling of sherry vinegar and a libation of olive oil. Then I will sit a while, and ponder upon why we have to invent such creative marketing campaigns for a product so delicious that, by rights, it should sell itself.

Round of applause, please, for getting through a whole egg article without a single, cringeworthy egg pun. Eggstraordinary.

Spooktacularly orange!

So I decided, about a month ago, to indulge the pagan in me and create a Halloween cake. What brought this about was too many evenings filled with Choccywoccydoodah re-runs. To put it mildly, I LOVE Choccywoccydoodah. Literally love it. When I am bored, I find my mind wandering, Brighton-bound. One of my bugbears with rolled fondant is the fact it tastes, by and large, pretty rotten. Particularly certain brands. There's nothing like peeling back the plasticised foil and the sweet, chemicular odour hitting the back of your throat (is chemicular a word? If it is not a word, it ruddy well should be). I search longingly for fondant that tastes good. The best combination I have found is Satinice for covering - the taste is far superior, and M&B and/or Renshaw for modelling. I hear, though, that the Americans have a product that is hallowed far and wide, Massa Grischuna. Nicholas Lodge is, allegedly, also a fan. This apocryphal covering is available to us in the UK if we are prepared to pay $63 a 6 kilo bucket of the stuff. A bit steep when you consider 10 kilos of standard fondant from the grey UK shores is about £30. But if the flavour is so superior, then just maybe it's worth it. Choccywoccydoodah on the other hand, have taken an entirely different tack and just use chocolate. Mouldable chocolate models adorn their cakes, and they are spectacular. I don't know how many people there are left in the baking blog-o-sphere who wouldn't have happened upon one of their creations, but if you haven't, go and google them and educate yourself in the art of chocolate kitsch.
Dave, head chocolatier, is a genius, of that there is no doubt, but it is the detail and tidiness of Tom, his equally talented wingman, coupled with Christine's (manager) fairy-fication if she feels not enough glitter has been used, that provides fertile ground for the folies a trois required to generate such creativity. And watching them just makes my fingers itch to create likewise.
Thus it was I began ordering copious quantities of orange icing, black glitter, and Celtic cross stamps. I fashioned black roses, black crosses, black ivy leaves. I ordered a pumpkin mould. I had my heart set on creating a Halloween masterpiece. And then Desk-buddy, curiosity getting the better of her, started asking why I was making the cake. Other than my daughter requesting it and pure self-indulgence of my creative urges, I had no justification. But then she said "Well if you want to make it for something, I'm having a Halloween party on the 29th for my birthday." And then I had an audience! My planning took on new fervour, but I also needed to scale down slightly, I realised. In the real world, not every birthday party heralds the arrival of 250 guests. And the resultant cake is here for you to view in all it's technicolor glory. The sponge is a chocolate mud cake courtesy of Paris Cutler, with a touch of orange zest, along with ganache made from Green and Blacks Mayan Gold chocolate, and soaked in a grand marnier syrup for extra moistness. Incidentally, if you hear of a good-tasting fondant, be sure to let me know!

Nigellas Banana Loaf

This is supremely good cake. Dense, substantial and yet improbably light. Nigella says to boil the fruits, but you can pre-soak them in rum, brandy - whatever tickles your booze-buds. This is courtesy of the Grande Dame of The Bakeratti, my ma, Pat. She always has a Parfait jar of steeping fruits nestled at the back of the cupboard, and therefore so do I. I add spice to mine too. They are wonderful neat over ice cream, rice pudding or, stroke-inducingly, just with a 'healthy' dollop of gilt-crusted clotted cream. And they work a treat in this banana loaf. Where Nigella states 'sugar', do yourself a favour and use light muscovado. The chemistry that takes place when it meets with the natural banana sugars, dried fruits and dark rum is sublime, wreathing each bite in toffee notes. You are committing a crime against humanity if you choose not to act on the recipe below!

INGREDIENTS
100g sultanas
75ml bourbon or dark rum
175g plain flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
125g unsalted butter, melted
150g sugar
2 large eggs
4 small, very ripe bananas (about 300g weighed without skin), mashed
60g chopped walnuts
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
23 x 13 x 7cm loaf tin, buttered and floured or with a paper insert

METHOD Serves: Makes 8-10 slices

Put the sultanas and rum or bourbon in a smallish saucepan and bring to the boil.
Remove from the heat, cover and leave for an hour if you can, or until the sultanas have absorbed most of the liquid, then drain.
Preheat the oven to 170ºC/gas mark 3 and get started on the rest. Put the flour, baking powder, bicarb and salt in a medium-sized bowl and, using your hands or a wooden spoon, combine well.
In a large bowl, mix the melted butter and sugar and beat until blended. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then the mashed bananas. Then, with your wooden spoon, stir in the walnuts, drained sultanas and vanilla extract. Add the flour mixture, a third at a time, stirring well after each bit. Scrape into the loaf tin and bake in the middle of the oven for 1-11/4 hours. When it's ready, an inserted toothpick or fine skewer should come out cleanish. Leave in the tin on a rack to cool, and eat thickly or thinly sliced, as you prefer.

Baking for one (or two dieting females)

It's a quandary I have been pondering upon for some time now. I like to cook. Specifically, I like to bake, for baking allows me to indulge in attention seeking behaviour. If I whip up a fabulous beef Wellington or cook a perfectly plump and juicy burnished roast chicken, nobody except my daughter will get to try this. So the praise-giving is fairly limited to my immediate family/those who are duty bound to tell me my food's sublime. But baking - well that is something that allows me to whip up vast batches of creamy, spongey, vanilla scented deliciousness that will generate coos and aaahs from colleagues. For when it comes to baking, it is nearly always for the troops on the front line of the financial services marketing teams that my creations are destined. Except, attention-seeking is not really why I bake. No - I bake because I cannot stand shop-bought cake. I bake as a creative outlet. I bake, in all honesty, to lick the bowl. I don't need to be told by my team a cake is good. I know if it's good or not, and I have my fair share of 'or nots' that get carefully edited out from the offerings I take in. I don't require 50 people letting me know it's good. The reason I bake for my department is, simply, either because I am asked to, or because if I did not take the food in, the produce would end up in the bin.

As a single mother of a teenage daughter, I have yet to solve the small batch baking dilemma. Neither myself nor the daughter care to eat such profound quantities of baked goods, yet we both like home cooked cakes and fancies.
Thus, it is that I have decided that this situation can continue no more. Not because my colleagues are unhappy with the situation. It just seems a little bit wasteful. I want to make small batches that are eaten in one fell swoop (or maybe two tops). I do not want to hate cupcakes by day three.
I have failed to find any useful compendium on the subject, even from the grande dame Delia in her singletons guide to cooking "One is Fun", the first landmark, mainstream cookbook to broach the rising social trend of cooking for one, but there's little on baking for one for the main reason it has stumped many a cook - that is, The Egg (upper case intentional). The single most irksome element. I feel this needs some R&D of my very own.
You cannot buy half an egg, or a quarter - you just have to use the whole thing. Which invariably requires a fair quantity of flour, sugar, fat etc to render it spongeworthy. Either that, or you must waste some. Sure, you can buy egg white in a carton, but what of the flavour-giving, gilding quality of the yolk? And if you like cake, will you really enjoy eggwhite omlettes? Sure, you can stockpile meringues, but who, really, does that?
Well, I think I may have the answer to this whole egg conundrum. But before I announce this revolution to the world, I'll need to practice first. Which means a few more cakes to wade through, but hey - for the furtherance of baking and the single girl, I'm prepared to take one for the team. To be continued...

Kitchenaid Artisan - a design classic

What is it about the Kitchenaid Artisan Mixer that makes me go weak at the knees? I imagine it's how boys feel about prestige cars. Having said that, increasingly I see the mixer as less of an indulgence and more or a pre-requisite. As a society we have long since passed the point of viewing the humble kettle as an indulgence. No, we would no more draw fresh water from the well and then pop the cauldron in the coals on the hearth than we would fly unless on a particularly remote Hebridean island, or partaking in a living history experiment, or even if living in Surbiton but with a penchant for the twee. No - we get water from the good old tap, put it in our good old kettle that we expect to die in three years, and that matches our good old toaster. It was no longer an attempt at channelling Nigella through 1950s style Kitschenalia in order to buy ourselves her life.
I was a grown-up. I had my own house, a full time job, a teenage daughter who was herself a trainee Bakeratti in the making, and failing joints. I could no longer use my Dualit handheld, which has amazing torque but weighs a ton and gives you whitefinger, without considerable arthritic pain afterwards. I had convinced myself I HAD to have a stand mixer.
So I did what any self-respecting grown-up did and called my mother suggesting she might like to donate some John Lewis vouchers in lieu of a birthday/christmas present. In the event, she bought the whole thing. Which was a rather clever move on her part. A Kitchenaid, at £419, is a once, at a push twice, in a lifetime purchase for the average heavy domestic user. Thusly, years from now when I am helping my grandchildren whip up their first batch of fairy cakes, I'll be able to tell them about their great grandmother, who bought me the machine. So she has ensured her place in the family history books. Not that she wouldn't have done anyway, but every time I walk past the gorgeous pinkness of the stunningly beautiful design classic, I'll send a little prayer of thanks her way.

Great Pointless Food Purchases - or what not to do in a delicatessen.

Do you do this too?

You pop into your local delicatessen for a couple of fat, spicy, salty Napoli sausages to pop in the freezer (in lieu of the 'Sicilian style' monstrosities sold by Waitrose, which are, after all, merely British bangers with a handful of fennel seeds and some extra garlic thrown in for good measure, and nothing like the beautiful, firm, semi-cured, juicy Italian creations) but leave with an abundance of mismatched produce that was simply too good to walk past but which you're not quite sure how or when to use? (Round of applause for a ridiculously long sentence, please).

I have done it again.

I drove to Maidenhead a few days ago, in order to stock up on my only local source of Italian sausage, the Intercontinental Deli in Vicarage Road. The shopping list was short. 2 packs of Napoli sausage, 2 packs of Luganica sausage, and maybe a box of Turron de Jijona if they had any. I cannot abide hard Turron, mainly because my vitamin D deficient crumbling pearly whites cannot cope with it, however the glorious, unctuous nougat confection they produce in ingots of golden lusciousness in Jijona, I lust for, and indeed, could theoretically be driven to kill for. At one time in my life, I had to wait for pitying friends to smuggle some back from the annual Spanish package deal, until I discovered it was stocked by this little epicurean haven in the midst of Maidenhead.

But I digress.
 

Digressing, though, is also what happens when I enter such establishments as the Intercontinental Deli (desperately poor website, btw. Which I kind of like, as it shows they care more about the food than their 'web presence'). I digress wildly the minute I set foot over their threshold. I start with one purpose but digress my way around the shelves and counters, stocking up on must-haves such as cherry Mostarda di Cremona (for all those Bolito Mistos I make), along with a Zampone, a Cotechino, some linguine (in different sizes to take account of what mood I may be in the next time I make pasta), orrechiette, 6 slices of Coppa to nibble on in the car, and a whole piece to take home, A1 steak sauce, a jar of Polish pickled mushroons (why?), a panforte, and a fabulous quarter of a sour-dough cushion, burnished by wood-firing, its crust like bark and with a pleasingly firm and tangy mouth-feel .

There is just me in the house. Just me. Quite when or how I ever imagined eating any of this, I cannot be certain.

But perhaps the most wantonly pointless purchase was a couple of packs of frozen Kataifi pastry. I am not sure what it is about pastries of the Eastern Mediterranean and its environs, but I love them. I find it remarkable that cultures with hot, dry climates make pastries that are prone to dry out and shatter, whereas we in damp, cold Northern Europe demonstrate a fondness for great clods of grey flour and fat pastes. Surely it should be the other way round? The fact that the people of more arid climes disregard the cards that appear to be stacked against them and persevere to make such delicate flour films and shreds is testament to a culture that is used to adversity of many kinds as a way of life, and continue making good things in spite of it.

Kataifi, for the uninitiated, is (or should that be are?) the fine shreds that wreath themselves around middle eastern pastries such as those delicious cashew nut rolls, filled generously with nuts, anointed in clarified butter, baked and finally doused liberally in thick sugar syrup, fragrant with rose or orange flower water. Teethachingly sweet, any possibility of savouriness from the nuts banished by the delicate scent of the rose or orange, or both, sometimes combined with honey, cinnamon or cardamon.

I have always fancied that in a previous life, I lived in this area. I could not be precise as to which country, but there is often a hint of the Maghreb in my favourite recipes, or at the very least, the Moors (Spanish, not Yorkshire).

Thus it was, when I happened upon the virgin gossamer strands of pure white pastry, frozen in time, I felt compelled to release them from their minus 25 degree prison, and carry them home to one day bring them to life.

The next question was - what to do with them?

There was a recipe I had in the Momo cookbook which was a kind of Galaktoboureko (recipe here), but more of a baked cheesecake using the kataifi as a base as opposed to custard filling between layers of kataifi. 

You place the kataifi in the bottom of a flan dish, coat liberally with clarified butter, bake until golden, douse with the requisite embalming of sugar and rosewater syrup, fill the shell with clotted cream, then bake some more. Chill it, and serve as you would a cheesecake. I like the idea of this. But my hips don't. And not being at work at the moment, there is nobody to help me eat it. As much as the idea of sitting down to a whole cheesecake-type-affair and eating the entire thing myself appealed, I knew it would end in a session self-loathing and/or vomit.

So I then thought, what about a savoury recipe? I had not seen it used in savoury recipes, but reasoned that there must be some.

So I googled.

And I googled and I googled. Bar using it to wrap around king prawns and serve with cheap sweet chili sauce, I could not find a recipe. And I do not consider a typical Harvester pub starter worthy of my time.

I googled some more.

I found varying recipes that involved wrapping around cheese and deep frying or baking, or using it as a shell or crust and other plays on themes. These did not, however, strike me as overly authentic. They were quite clearly experimental uses, or crude attempts at 'fusion'. Some were found on American sites, some on Turkish sites (which recommended using it for appetisers - so one assumes as a quirky alternative base or case for a canape), one suggested using it instead of phyllo for Spanikopita. But none of these sat right with me. It would appear, there is not a savoury use, one that smacks of any authenticity at any rate, for my Kataifi.

Thus I am left with two packs of white shreds in my freezer. I cannot make sweet as it will make me fat (ter), and I cannot make savoury as it makes me superficial.

And so it has come to pass that the kataifi will take its place in the ranks of my Great Pointless Food Purchases, which I cannot stand the thoughts of parting with, which lend an air of the exotic to my storecupboard, but which sadly will no doubt reach their sell-by date and be consigned to the bin, never having had their chance to live full and productive lives.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, they'd run out of Turron. It was probably for the best.

The Courtyard, Wokingham

The Courtyard, Wokingham, occupies the old town hall building in the market place - a stunning red brick affair that nods to the traditional industry of nearby Reading. The reason we chose this place to dine was because of our love affair with Dolce Vita, its sister - not so much an Italian, but a Mediterranean restaurant in the Kings Walk, Reading. Dolce Vita is well established in Reading - as a family, we have eaten there many times over the last 15 years or so (possibly longer), and every time we have a superlative eating experience. It is not Michelin standard but it is not your local cheesy bistro with carafes of vino plonk on the table. It is light, airy, spacious and welcoming. Front of House lady is one of the warmest hosts I have come across in a local restaurant - she is just lovely. She always remembers my (now teenage) daughter whenever we dine there, and I choose to believe she keeps a mental record of our lives (even though a blonde, blue-eyed 15 year old could conceivably have once been a blonde, blue-eyed toddler, I choose to imagine that Front Of House lady remembers just how special she was). I have had birthdays, engagements, remembrance dinners, even first dates (for which there seems to be an unspoken rule, and they are wonderfully discreet. I am sure if I was partial to affairs, it would be a perfect place to take my quarry).

So much so, I could only imagine that The Courtyard would offer the same ambiance and hospitality when I attended with my mother a few days ago. Alas, I fear that if ones expectations are so high, then you can only be disappointed. And, probably unfairly, I was.

Front of House lady cannot teleport, as was obvious when we arrived, to be pleasantly but brusquely ushered to the table, just outside the kitchen, which is my favourite spot. Sadly it is not my mothers - at one point it looked like we might get moved however I could not face shuffling through the narrow walkways to another table, so sat down assertively. You see, the place is the most awkward shape, and as is the habit of eateries these days, they have crammed in as many tables as possible. The restaurant itself is continentalised by a smattering of tables just outside the door, and inside is an homage to modern day austerity - all blond wood and minimal soft furnishings. Clanky. But contemporary. My dislike of clankiness is a subjective thing, I realise.

So to the food. I ordered a plate of antipasti, mother order kofta. I recently ate at Fifteen in Watergate Bay and ordered anitpasti there. Maybe it is unreasonable to expect the same kind of thing, but surely antipasti is antipasti? What I got was a plate with slices and chippings of salamis and parma hams (I rather liked the fact that not one slice was perfect - it looked like it had just been sliced off the salami by hand, not carved wafer thin in a factory, which is a GOOD thing), with a tussle of leaves, a punchy dressing, a couple of slices of mozzarella (pleasant but nothing special).

And then the weirdness.

Scattered over the meats were strings of deep-fried calamari. It was good calamari - nice and soft and not remotely rubbery, but was it correct to use it as a sort of garnish over the meats? I was not so sure it was. It all became, all of a sudden, a greasy Italian surf and turf. The dips that accompanied were equally strange. Aioli, maybe, or perhaps a red pepper dip - maybe hummus? No. What accompanied it was the same yoghurt sauce that accompanied my mothers lamb kofta, and a smear of what, just by looking at the vivid pinkness of it, I instantly knew was taramasalata. None of the elements in themselves was bad - even the bread was fresh and tasty (though the somewhat anglicised baguette could conceivably have been replaced with foccacia or ciabatta for a touch more authenticity. Given they offer pizza, I cannot imagine it would be too hard to offer foccacia). Yet it felt a bit like someone putting a plate of deep fried scampi and garnishing it with a slice of battered cod. It doesn't matter how good each element is, they have to work together. It lacked any acidity too, and would have been offset nicely by a peperonata.
So far, so indifferent.

Mains were better - a very nice piece of slow-roasted pork (no crackling though), on a bed of red cabbage, with plum sauce and poatoes dauphinoise. The meat melted and was not overly fatty, though this did seem to be because the fat had rendered into the sauce and promptly split it - the layer of grease was not appetising. It was either this or the fact someone had drizzled olive oil over what is already a greasy meal to begin with. You can see from the photo the puddles of fat in the sauce.

The potato was...fine. Mother loved it. I, on the other hand, like my potato dauphinoise to taste like someone might have crushed an actual garlic clove into actual cream with a grating of actual nutmeg as an accent. However, it was all a tiny bit bland. Just a bit too nursery-school. The red cabbage, on the other hand was well executed, delicately spiced, nicely acidic without being harsh and cut through the richness of the potato and pork wonderfully. The plum sauce was tasty and deep and managed to pull off a tangy sweetness with a strong savoury note that hit the back of the palate.

So to dessert. I do think you have to try really hard to screw up dessert. Most places these days are well versed in brownie, lemon tart, posh ice creams, a crumble - the usual suspects. I was pleased to see a cherry cheesecake on the menu. I love cherrys - and as the season is on its way out, I leapt upon the chance to savour them. Silly me. It might be churlish to say it was cherry pie filling, but thats what it tasted like. With a somewhat random drizzle of blackcurrant coulis (which I can guarantee was out of a bottle). The cheesecake itself was not the ubiquitous american baked affair, nor was it a gelatine-set one (which I have to say is my favourite type of cheesecake - you can keep your new york baked. Nowhere near enough acid for my liking, and far too cloying). No, it was one of those ones that I call 'Sainsburys advert' cheesecakes, popularised in the 1990s. The ones where you mix whipping cream and mascarpone and then leave it to set. Nothing wrong with these as long as the balance is right. But the balance was not, in this case, at all right. The 'cheese' was 2 inches thick and had no acidity to it whatsoever. I know some people would be very happy with that, and that this is probably just my personal issue, given the odd popularity of American cheesecake which is similarly non-acidic. But it did not hit the spot. The biscuit, I hate to say, was also a bit stale.

And so after coffee, we left. Inside me, a little spark went out. I had so wanted The Courtyard to be everything that Dolce Vita was. Mother said she really liked it. I am sure she did. I am sure alot of people will have left, having spent £45 a head (as we did - one glass of wine, one diet coke and one bottle of S. Pellegrino), and in order to fend of the cognitive dissonance at having parted with £45 a head for what is only a little bit above average, will tell themselves it was wonderful. In fairness, it isn't dreadful. Nothing got sent back (which is more than can be said for another recent trip I had to Jamies Italian in Reading), and everything was well cooked. It just lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that Dolce Vita seems to have in buckets. Effortlessly. Would I eat there again? Given the choice available in Wokingham, probably. I will eat there again, if only to give it another chance. It is fine. No really. Fine. In the same way a giftbag from the Boots 3 for 2 range is fine as a Christmas present. Nothing wrong with it and not bad quality. Just not quite special enough. It seems Dolce Vita will for now remain the more sophisticated, elegant and welcoming of the siblings.