The best lemon drizzle cake. Ever.

Reblogged from (Mostly) Yummy Mummy:

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Oooh, lemon drizzle cake is definitely one of my (many) favourites and of course, my recipe makes the best lemon drizzle cake ever. Or at least I like to think so. After much experimentation and tasting *cough* I like to think that I have finally come up with the best recipe ever. It was hard work, but someone had to do it …

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Why improve on perfection? I found this recipe on the (Mostly) Yummy Mummy's blog and the only thing I'd say is that I've added a 1/2 tsp of salt. But that's the pastry chef in me. (How do you make something sweet taste sweeter? Add salt.) My house is now permeated in the smell of butter & lemon.  And I can't think of anything better.

Vietnamese Ginger Chicken with Thai Jasmine Coconut Rice

Vietnamese Ginger Chicken with Thai Jasmine Coconut Rice

Ingredients

3 Tbs fish sauce
1 tsp oyster sauce
1 Tbs palm sugar
250-350g chicken, chopped into bite sized pieces
2 Tbs finely sliced ginger
2 Tbs vegetable oil (I use 1 Tbs organic raw coconut oil & 1 Tbs toasted sesame oil)
2 Tbs finely diced garlic
250ml chicken stock
1 star anise
1 cinnamon stick
4 spring onions (scallions), sliced into 4cm lengths
Pinch of cracked black pepper
1 long chilli, julienned, to garnish

Preparation

Step One: In a mixing bowl, combine the fish sauce, oyster sauce, cinnamon stick, star anise and sugar. Add the chicken and ginger, then cover and place in the fridge to marinate for half an hour.

Step Two: Bring your wok to medium heat and add the oil(s) and garlic, and cook until fragrant. The garlic shouldn’t be burnt, but should have a toasted brown appearance.

Step Three: Turn the heat to high, add the chicken and seal it on all sides. Cover the chicken with the stock, pour in the remaining marinade and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for 15-20 minutes until the sauce becomes thick and gravy-like. (But don’t reduce it too much!) Add the spring onions and cracked black pepper, stirring through and cooking for a further minute.

To Serve:  Arrange the chicken over Thai jasmine coconut rice and pour over the extra sauce.  Garnish with chilli and chopped coriander.

Thai Jasmine Coconut Rice: Cook the Thai jasmine rice according to instructions, but replace the water with light coconut milk.

Honey Chocolate Brownies

Honey…and chocolate? Together?

Yes. Now, let me tell you why. There are two benefits to this less than usual combination. One is the texture. The honey will make the brownies gooey and dense and fudgey. The second benefit, which you wouldn’t expect, is the flavour. Depending on what type of honey you use, you will get a sophisticated floral note which is absolutely beautiful with the bitterness of the cocoa. The honey also provides a much rounder sweetness than you would get from a cane sugar, which can be quite blunt and fairly unstimulating for the tastebuds. For me its a combination easily in the league of fleur de sel with caramel and dark chocolate. Think lavender in buttery shortbread. Think rosewater with pistachios in baklava. These are all stunning combinations, and I can promise you that made with a good quality honey, these brownies will impress even the fussiest of palates.

I have, actually, been banned from making these at home for the time being, because whenever I do, the entire tray gets eaten within 24 hours.

Ingredients:

1 cup softened butter
½ tsp. salt
1 ½ cups honey
1 cup flour (I used spelt to make it wheat-free)
3 eggs, beaten
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Green & Black’s organic)

Method:

Mix the butter with mixer until creamy.
Slowly add honey, mixing constantly.
Add the eggs, vanilla and salt.
Add the cocoa.
Add the flour.
Add the nuts.
Make sure it is mixed completely.
Pour batter into greased 9x13x2 inch. deep pan and bake at 350F for 30 to 35 minutes.

Bang Bang Prawn Salad

Ingredients for Salad:
100 g dried vermicelli mung bean noodles
1 cucumber, deseeded
250 g king prawns
2 large spring onions, finely sliced
1 medium red chilli, finely chopped

Ingredients for Dressing:
2 Tbs groundnut oil
1 Tbs toasted sesame oil
1 tsp dried chilli flakes
1 tsp freshly ground pepper
2 tsp crunchy organic peanut butter
1 tsp light soy sauce
1 lime, juice only
1 tsp grated ginger
2 Tbs water

Ingredients for Garnish:
Handful of chopped coriander
Black & white sesame seeds

Method:

Step One:
Soak the noodles in a bowl with hot water for 3-5 minutes. Rinse with cold water and then drain and set aside, having lightly drizzled in a few drops of toasted sesame oil. While you are doing this, steam the prawns. Once they are cooked, rinse them in cold water and set aside.

Step Two:
Deseed the cucumber and julienne or cut into chunks – whatever you prefer. Finely dice the chilli and slice the spring onions. Combine the noodles, chilled prawns and chopped vegetables in a bowl and place in the fridge for 20 minutes or up to 2 hours.

Step Three:
When you’re ready to serve the salad, prepare the dressing by whizzing all the ingredients in the food processor. You can warm it up a bit in a saucepan before pouring it onto the salad, and the noodles will suck up the flavours better, but its up to you. Add the garnish to the top.

Variation: If you’re preparing this dish for vegetarians, nix the prawns and replace them with cut up chunks of deep fried tofu, which can often be found prepared in Chinese grocery stores. It has a lovely texture and sweet & smoky flavour. I use it as well as prawns when I make this salad, as it provides an interesting contrast between the savoury quality of the deep fried tofu against the sweetness of the prawns.

Tamales Dulces (Mexican Sweet Tamales)

Tamales Dulces

ingredients…

• 24-30 corn husks
• 1/2 (1 stick) cup butter, softened
• 3  cups masa harina flour
• 1  tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1  teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4  cups warm water
• 1 (14 ounces) can Sweetened Condensed Milk (400g)
• 1/4  cup pure organic coconut oil
• 3/4  cup raisins

preparation…

Soaking the Husks

SOAK 18 large corn husks in warm water for at least 1 hour or until softened and easy to fold.

BEAT butter in large mixer bowl until creamy. Combine flour, cinnamon and salt in medium bowl. Alternately add flour mixture, water, sweetened condensed milk and oil to butter, mixing well after each addition until consistency of thick cake batter (masa). Stir in the raisins.

Preparing the Tamales

DRY each corn husk gently by patting between two tea towels and place 1/3 cup masa mixture (a large ice cream scoop is perfect) in the lower middle portion of a corn husk. Form the masa into a square and then fold the right then left edge of husk over masa. Fold up bottom edge. Repeat with remaining masa mixture and soaked corn husks.

Prepare the Pot

Stack the Tamales in the Pot

Cook the Tamales

PREPARE the pot by lining the bottom of the steamer with a circle of parchment.  Add water to just below steamer. Arrange tamales in steamer rack. Cover top of tamales with remaining dry husks and a square of parchment.  Cover.  Bring to a boil; reduce heat to low. Steam, adding water as needed, for about 1 hour or until masa pulls away from husks.  Serve warm.

Enjoy Your Finished Tamal

Thin Crust Pizza

Baked Pizza

A couple of years ago when my boyfriend and I moved in together and merged our book collections, my already extensive collection of cookbooks expanded with the addition of his late mother’s cookbook collection.  I never met her, but she was a truly superb cook and her legacy lives on through the tried and true recipes she left behind.  And so when I decided to make pizza for our dinner last night, I referred to her well worn Marcella Hazan classic Italian cookbooks (circa 1978) for a recipe.  I adapted it for my own use, trading spelt flour for the conventional flour, but have a feeling I will be returning to these books many times in the future.

In fact, this posting was meant to make it onto this site yesterday, but when the pizza came out of the oven, it looked so good that I had eaten half of it before remembering I needed to photograph it.

What an awful thing to have to make (AND eat) pizza twice in one weekend!

You will notice that my recipe is half in grams and half in imperial measurements.  My excuse is that the pastry chef in me says that weighing your main ingredients, such as flour, is still the most accurate way to measure, but I do still find it easier to use measuring spoons for very small quantities (such as yeast and salt), and I suspect most other people will find this as well.

Before we start, you need to know that to get a crispy base to your pizza, you want to jack your home oven up as high as it will go.  Mine is a fan oven which goes up to 250 C, which was fine.  Leave your pizza stone or the baking tray in the oven while the oven is heating up so its extremely hot when you put the pizza on it and it starts to cook right away.

Ingredients:

200 g all purpose flour (I used 220 g of white all purpose spelt flour)
1 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp salt (I used flor sal, a Portuguese version of fleur de sel and it lends a lovely flavour)
8 Tbs luke warm water
1 1/2 tsp dried active yeast (this is about 7 g)

Step One:  The Dough

Pizza Dough

In a small bowl, place the yeast and lukewarm water.  Set this aside for about 10 minutes until the yeast is dissolved.

Meanwhile, place the flour in a bowl.  I have stated all purpose flour because all the research I have done over the years on pizza dough, indicates that you will get far better results with all purpose flour rather than bread flour.  Create a well in the centre of the flour and place into it the olive oil, salt and the yeast/water mixture.  Using your hands, bring the dough together  until you end up with a slightly shaggy dough.

Throw the dough onto your worksurface and knead for 8 minutes.  It will start to firm up.  Place the kneaded dough back in the bowl, cover with a damp teatowel and leave to rise in a warm spot.  (I balanced mine on top of the coffee maker under a halogen lightbulb on my kitchen counter and this worked great.)

You want your dough to rise for as long as it possibly can, as this will make a much nicer crust.  When I first made this recipe, I only let it rise for 3 hours and that was fine, but it was far better today when I made it in the morning and let it rise for 10 hours.  You can, in fact, make it the night before, if you’re that well organised, and if you rub some olive oil on top of the dough so it doesn’t dry out.  This sounds excessive, but if you’re crazy fussy about pizza dough, like I am, then its worth the effort and wait.

The quantities in the recipe I’ve given you can later be divided in half to make two individual pizzas.

Step Two:  The Sauce

Tomato Sauce

The pizza sauce is my own creation and its easy to make.  Throw a tin of good quality Italian tinned tomatoes into the food processor with 1 large clove of garlic, a few drops of balsamic, a tablespoon of mixed Italian spices and (as long as you’re not cooking for vegetarians) one single anchovy.  (This sounds a bit wierd, but you won’t taste it and it adds a gorgeous rich depth to the sauce.)  Whiz the ingredients together, throw them into the frying pan and cook down the sauce until it about condenses down to about half the volume.  Make sure you stir it constantly.

Step Three:  Rolling Out the Dough

Rolling Out The Dough

Now this is the part that reveals just how easy it is to roll out a thin crust pizza dough without having to introduce extra flour into the dough.  Put a sheet of parchment down on your work surface, place one of your dough balls on top of that.  Place a large sheet of cling film on top of that and just roll it out.  Its as easy as that.  If you want to dust it with a bit of cornmeal or flour after this in order to provide a bit of texture, go ahead at this stage.

Step Four:  Dressing the Pizza

Dressed Pizza

Your pizza is now naked, sitting on a piece of parchment paper and it needs to be dressed.  I’m a fan of a plain old Margherita, so that’s what I’ve shown here.  Its pretty simple, but to spell it out:  spread out the sauce, grate on some parmesan and sprinkle a handful of grated mozarella cheese.  (If you’ve got some proper buffalo mozarella and basil leaves, then you’ll end up with a far more elegant pizza than mine, but I just used what I had around the house.)  If you want your pizza to have that glistening restaurant finish when its done, now is the time to drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil on top of the cheese.

Step Five:  Baking the Pizza

Baked Pizza

By now you’ll have a scary hot oven with a very hot pizza stone or baking tray ready.  Put the pizza, still sitting on its parchment base onto the tray and put it back in the oven very quickly.  It will only take about 8 minutes to bake off your pizza to bubbly, browned, cheesey perfection.   Take it out of the oven, cut it up into pieces with a 9″ chefs knife and, still sitting on the parchment base, place the pizza onto a plate.  You can now pull out the parchment and dispose of it, as it has served its many useful purposes now.  I like to sprinkle some crushed dried chili flakes onto my pizza at this stage, but that’s just my taste.

Enjoy Your Pizza!

The Last Slice

Plaice with Creamy Fennel & Samphire

Step One

Chopped Fennel

Chop up your fennel into fairly fine chunks and toss into a hot frying pan that has a knob of melted, but not yet browned butter.  Season well with salt and pepper and continue to sautee for about 15 minutes until soft and slightly translucent and the edges are just starting to caramelise.

If the pan seems to get a bit dry near the end and you have some good dry white wine such as a Sauvignon Blanc in the fridge, throw in a small splash of that to burn off and help further soften the fennel.  You don’t want crunchy fennel!

Frying Fennel

I’ve done the fish and fennel at the same time, but its easier if you remove the fennel at this stage and place it in a bowl separately.

Step Two

Dry off your filet of plaice with a paper towel and dredge it through some flour which has been well seasoned with salt and pepper.  Make sure you have dredged it well, so the whole fish, front and back is coated.

Frying Fish and Fennel: I did them at the same time, but you can do them in two steps for better results

Melt a knob of butter in the same hot frying pan you have been using to cook the fennel in and place the fish in the pan, skin side down.  You’ll know its ready to turn in a couple of minutes when the edges start to curl up and you can see they’ve started to turn opaque.  Carefully flip the fish and brown other side of the filet.

Step Three

At this stage you should return to the cooked fennel, which will have cooled just slightly and is ready to have 2 tablespoons of creme fraiche added without curdling, which would happen if you add it while still hot from the pan.  I use a low fat creme fraiche, but you can use whatever you like; either will help cut through the harsh aniseed flavour inherent to fennel.  Mix well and ensure its seasoned adequately.  It ain’t a pretty dish, but it makes up for its bland appearance with a simultaneously rich and tart and suprisingly more-ish taste.

Arrange on the plate with the plaice.

Step Four

Samphire

Add a drizzle of olive oil to the same hot pan you have been using, and throw in a small handful of samphire.  Its quite salty, so don’t add any salt to it.  You will want to add some pepper though.  You want it to take on a similar texture to asparagus, so its not too crunchy still, but not soggy and it should retain its beautiful bright seagreen colour.

Arrange on the plate and squeeze everything with some lemon juice to heighten the flavour.

Step Five

Finished Dish - Fish and Fennel with Samphire

Enjoy!

Banana Bran Muffins

Banana bran muffins you say?  What sort of American nonsense is this?  No really though;  I wouldn’t waste my inaugural blog recipe on yucky cakes.  These muffins are quick to whip together on a Sunday morning and they’re a good way of using up those manky-looking bananas lurking in the fruit bowl.  In fact, I sometimes freeze the bananas in batches of 4 during the week, so I can thaw them out over the course of Saturday night and they’re all pre-mushed and ready to add to the recipe by morning.  Try them, but please, please don’t use mean little muffin tins.  Use the big jumbo tins and your muffins will be moist and flavourful, and suprisingly decadent for a bran-based treat.

Ingredients:

• 115 g butter
• 100 g brown sugar
• 1 tbs molasses
• 3-4 mashed bananas, depending on size
• 115 ml milk
• 1 tsk vanilla extract
• 2 eggs
• 175 g wholewheat flour
• 100 g bran
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/4 tsp salt
• handful of raisins

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 190 C or 375 F and line your muffin tins with paper cases.
2. Cream the butter & brown sugar in a large mixing bowl until they are fluffy and light.  Add the bananas, milk, vanilla, molasses and eggs.  Mix well.
3. Combine the flour, bran, baking powder, baking soda and salt and blend these with the wet mixture.  Stir in the raisins.  Scoop into muffin cases.*
4. Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes and cool in the tray for a few minutes before transferring the muffins to a wire rack to cool completely.

*Here’s a trick.  For evenly sized muffins, get a large, professional ice cream scoop from your local catering supply store.  They reduce waste of batter and make the transfer of batter from bowl to muffin trays quicker & cleaner.