My Mum and Dad made Marmalade and it was too good a blogging opportunity to miss. It’s a very British thing, Marmalade – that combination of bitterness and sweetness – but frankly, toast is unthinkable without it.
It’s not hard to make; just time-consuming. Oh and you need a preserving pan. A saucepan just won’t take the quantities. Have a go – you’ll feel incredibly proficient and your friends and family will love you forever if you’re kind enough to share it round…
Continue reading 'Mum’s Marmalade!'»
Or Galette, or Crostata, or open-face pie, or bottom crust pie or as Alex said, ‘Oh. I thought it would have a lump in the middle, you know, like a hat’. It’s worth noting at this point that a strawberry pie was his request, thus he had a mental image of its appearance.
His disappointment didn’t affect his ability to eat two slices though, so disgard your worry.
The pastry is a Nigel Slater recipe and is really quick to knock together. You only chill it for the length of time it takes you to prepare the fruit, so no waiting around for upwards of three hours.
It could have taken a little more sugar for my liking, but we had some custard with it which sweetened it up nicely.
I’m not a fan of strawberries (unless they’re wild – in variety, that is; not in nature) but I have discovered that I like them cooked. Alex said that it tasted a little like jam, at which point it struck us that jam is the taste of cooked strawberries, rather than the pie tasted a little like jam. Oh dear. You had to be there, OK? So a little like jam, but not as sweet as jam and certainly fresher-tasting.
Yum.
Continue reading 'Strawberry Pie'»
cooking
| 
baked, bottom crust pie, butter, cook bake strawberries, crostata, easy pie, flour, galette, Nigel Slater, open pie, strawberry pie, sugar
An unchurned, non custard base ice cream that seduces anyone who tries it, this is not a sickly toffee/fudge sweet ice cream but the more sophisticated cooked caramel type.
It’s a creme caramel flavour- sweet yet bordering on bitter- a flavour to savour in the mouth long after the final swallow.
I have made this recipe countless times but we had it as an accompaniment to Tarte Tatin and it was a perfect match. Ice cream rarely stands up to the flavour of apple and caramel, but this, being of the same caramel technique not only stood alongside it, but enhanced and shored up the flavour.
It isn’t slow to melt due to its lack of custard base which is another point in its favour- you taste the caramel quickly and it lingers.
This is a John Torode recipe that I ripped out of an old Olive magazine and he says of this recipe that it has been a favourite for years and it’s not hard to see why; it’s easy to make, requires no specialised equipment, melts beautifully and is utterly delicious.
As an aside, I was flicking through a set of Marguerite Patten magazines that I rescued from the tip (and only paid £1 for to the man there) and discovered that this is her suggested method for making ice cream, although she uses the whole rather than just yolk of the egg. That opens up the opportunity for differing flavours whilst maintaining the ease with which it’s made.
Try this one first though; dinner party, simple dessert or evening solace, it’s an outstanding flavour.
Continue reading 'Caramel Ice Cream'»
I’m really happy with this recipe, not least because I couldn’t find a recipe for it in any of my books and an internet search only turned up a recipe that included cooking apples.
I wanted a pure, unadulterated and intense curd.
Using La Lawson’s cranberry curd as a starting point, it yielded a great result.
The quantity is for 300g blackcurrants because that is the modest amount I yielded from my blackcurrant bush, but as that is a significant improvement on last year’s harvest and it’s only its second year of life, I can roll with that. If you harvest pounds and pounds of them, alter the quantities to suit you and prepare to distribute jars of joy throughout your community…
Continue reading 'A Tale of Two Curds. First, Blackcurrant Curd'»
Comments (3) 
