Halloween Chocolate & Prune Cake

I am fat fingered, cack handed, inept - useless basically - when it comes to doing fiddly things. Paint skirting boards? More on floor, walls and me than ever goes onto those strips of wood. Pretty cards with sprinkles, glitter and sticky on hearts and flowers? Fingers stuck together, glittery face, smudged card. Sew on a button? I once sewed a button onto the waistband of a pair of trousers, having lined it up with the hole - who says I never learn - and finished it without a single knot or tangle in the sewing thread. Can't tell you how thrilled I was till I tried them on and found the button was on the wrong side of the fabric.

So I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why I decided this week to decorate a cake.

I had some Agen prunes that I wanted to use, having opened the pack last week. I fancied cake and wanted chocolate, hoping for something dark and unctuous. I searched the internet for inspiration and was astounded how little there is to do with prunes. They have so little *love* that even the California Prunes site calls them ugly and acknowledges they're the butt of  many many jokes. Really guys? That is one odd marketing pitch. They are lovely things, richly flavoured, great texture, perfect amount of chewy, and they soak up liquids to replump into glorious fruit any time of  year. When I was a kid my mother made dessert pretty much every day and a regular one (snicker) was prunes soaked in cold tea and brown sugar overnight then served with cream or custard next evening that I just loved. A good starting point, I decided and set about adapting a couple of recipes I found till I arrived at this fab mousse like, brownie like, chocolate delight.

It's nearly Halloween, an event it's impossible to ignore these days with lots of creepy crawlies and fake spiders and ghoulies and goodness knows what adorning pretty much everything, and I suddenly thought I want to make it a creepy cake.So off I went  to buy black food colouring and something that could be legs or fangs or hairy appendages and came home with ready to roll black icing and a packet of Oreos. I was thinking I could crush the Oreos to make  a dirt topping then decided I didn't like the flavour of them enough to ruin my cake. I started to roll out long strips of icing - a fabulously messy process especially if you're me - and realised I could make worms to look like they were emerging from the holes I'd make testing the doneness of the cake. Deciding it looked brilliant - very life like - I made little bugs, like scarab beetles, cutting patterns into their backs with the blunt end of a butter knife. By this point my palms are black and sticky from rolling icing, the knife is black and sticky too and there's bits of discarded icing on the bench and stuck to the outside of my left elbow.

Has to be said I was having a lot of fun, really enjoying the way my 'design' was evolving. I had been thinking of making spiders entirely from icing but, in a flash of inspiration, remembered a half jar of rum soaked prunes in the cupboard from quite some time ago. Pure alcohol, basically. I melted a bit more dark chocolate and, using a couple of toothpicks, rolled my boozy prunes in it till they were well coated. I put a little pile of  popping candy (Waitrose sell it, Heston makes it) onto a sheet of baking parchment alongside another pile of those tiny coloured sticks and rolled my prunes around using increasingly encrusted toothpicks and sticky fingers everything - and I mean everything - was pretty much covered. Decidedly cack handed by now, I cut out some very unconvincing legs from a bit more of the icing and added them and some 'feelers' to my bugs. Didn't have enough legs so you'll have to believe there was some kind of terrible industrial accident in creepy crawly land and these were the lucky survivors. Dropped them onto the cake and - voila!

Be afraid....

Prune & Chocolate Cake

If the cake is to be eaten only by the grown ups, you can always soak the prunes in 5 tablespoons of rum or brandy rather than tea and sugar for an afternoon tea treat.

175g pitted prunes
1 tea bag
1 tablespoon brown sugar
100g butter, diced
150g dark chocolate
50g soft light brown sugar
100g caster sugar
4 eggs, 2 separated
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
100g ground almonds
1 tablespoon plain flour
2 tablespoons cocoa
50g soft black icing
50g dark chocolate, extra
2 tablespoons brown and coloured edible popping candy

Put the prunes into a heatproof bowl with the teabag and the tablespoon of brown sugar and cover with boiling water. Leave to soak for a couple of hours or overnight then drain away any remaining liquid, set 3 whole prunes to one side, and then roughly chop the rest using a stick blender.

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4. Line the base of a 23cm springform pan with baking parchment and grease the sides with butter. Break the chocolate into large chunks and put it into a heatproof bowl with the diced butter and heat over a pan of just simmering water. When it’s all melted take off the heat and add the chopped prunes.

In a separate bowl beat the 2 sugars with 2 whole eggs and 2 egg yolks for about 5 minutes till the mixture is pale and doubled in volume. Fold in the chocolate prune mixture and then add the combined ground almonds, plain flour and cocoa and fold in gently till just mixed.

Whisk the remaining 2 egg whites till stiff and lightly fold those through the cake mixture. Pour it into the prepared tin and bake for 25 minutes till the cake is just set. Leave it in the tin on a cooling rack till cold.

Decorate as described above, or simply eat unadorned, it's still fabulous.

 Eat more prunes.

Tidbits

I know it's spring because we had the first strawberry smoothies for breakfast on the weekend, and they were pink glasses of frothy fabulousness.

The defining food for the week though was this wonderful top rib roast that I cooked Sunday. Well I say cooked, but in many ways I simply warmed it up. I was taken with the idea of slow cooking it, John at Ginger Pig had said low and slow was best. When I googled for it the first thing that came up was Heston and his suggestion to cook it in the oven for 4-6 hours. At 65C. And I couldn't resist! Actually I was out for the afternoon so I left the man in charge of the thermometer with instructions to take the meat out when it got to a core temperature around 55C.

He kept a neat list of where it was at....

 

We wapped it out at 6.30, then sealed it all over in a really hot pan, then left it to rest for an hour. It was wonderful, richly flavoured, really juicy and tender. Made a perfect Sunday dinner.

Lots left over though, so as well as lunches thought I'd get a bit creative for dinners.

 I figured it would make a brilliant thai style beef salad so marinated slices and chopped up lots of  crisp and crunchy things and tossed the lot together for a very pretty bowl of food 

Still had plenty left - it had been over 2kg when I bought it - no I don't know why I decided to buy so much!

thought it would make for a fine curry - it did, with cucumber raita and coriander chutney

And the rest of the curry is in the freezer for a fabulously quick dinner one night soon  

We had two lunches out this week, came down to one to love and one to avoid.

 This pretty bowl of veg was part of a disappointing tapas collection at Boqueria on Acre Lane, which was a shame, had been looking forward to it, made a (totally unnecessary as it turned out) reservation and everything. It was so empty when we arrived the man thought it was shut. This was okay, but underseasoned and very thin on flavour. It was part of a menu that was a special advertised as being the food of the Roca brothers. Ha!

If the veg had too little flavour this puckered pea puree had way too much and all of it horrible, it tasted the way bad fish shops smell. Guessing the Roca brothers don't serve anything like this, either.

Saturday we took a walk to Victoria, a place that is pretty much a wasteland for decent food to try a new place I'd read about. A Wong. They make individual dim sum and I love that you can order them one at a time. For some reason there is a horse, akimbo, outside. 

A tiny bowl of Chengdu street style tofu, gloriously silky 

We did share an order of mu shoo pork pancakes 

Everything else was single serves - we have to go back so we can both eat our way through the entire menu. And also go in the evening for the tasting menu, it also sounds brilliant.

Love A Wong big time!

Prawn and Noodle Salad

I have been thinking of  late about what it takes to put a meal on the table. So not just the chopping and the stirring but also the planning and the shopping and assembling and then the chopping and the stirring and - finally - the washing up, the clearing away, the cleaning of hob and benches and floors and the making sure that all the dishes and pots and plates are returned to their rightful place. I'm wondering about the balance - what makes it worth it and how much that influences what I choose to make and then whether I make it again.

I have been known to remake something that didn't work the first time in the hope that I will crack it the next time, so it's not always about taste. I have been known to really like something and never make it again as it's simply too much faff, so - again - it's not just about taste. I have been known to make something that is an enormous amount of faff, tastes great, and I mentally file it away to be made for special occasions only. It does get made again, and enjoyed, and mostly I am thinking I'm glad I don't make that every week... So - once again - not only about taste.

The last category is things that I'm expecting to be relatively straightforward that turn out to be an enormous faff which taste amazing and - with knowledge aforethought - I put straight on the menu for next week because I loved eating it so much that all the effort required in the washing up and the chopping and the extra trip to find the right noodles or sauce or particular veg or whatever is as nothing to the pleasure of  this food. Which is entirely about taste! There are some dishes that bring so much pleasure, such delight in every mouthful, that whatever it takes makes it worth it.

Such meals are remarkably rare - possibly fortunately! - but are a real joy to come across. We had one such last week, a Japanese inspired prawn and noodle salad that I've been meaning to make for weeks but, for one reason or another, it wasn't coming together. Then Friday I bought some wonderfully sweet prawns from Shellseekers and was sure that dinner would be whipped up in about 20-30 minutes. Ha!

The recipe comes from a recent cookbook purchase, Citrus and Spice, by Sybil Kapoor. It's a seductively lovely book written to match each month of the year and it's very evocative of the movement of flavour with the progress of time through the year. It's one of those books where you think mmmm, that sounds good, or yum must make that about pretty much every recipe. This was the first thing I'd made - there will definitely be more - and because the prawns were already cooked and nothing else was complicated or unknown I just assumed it would be really really quick. What I should have factored in was the book has a foreword by Heston Blumenthal, whose food I adore but, in truth, everything I've ever made from his recipes has taken vast amounts of time - again almost invariably worth it but it is already in my head that this will be slow before I set out. His admiration for the book and the cook is well placed, but it is a hint of what might be involved!

Buckwheat Noodles with Nori

This is included in February but will work all the way through spring and onwards

Serves 2

Sybil Kapoor notes that the nori adds an addictive ozone note to these noodles which will ensure that you feel virtuous and healthy as you slurp them up. She's right.

2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tablespoons sake
2 tablespoons Japanese soy sauce
2 tablespoons mirin
6 small spring onions - I used 2 very large ones
170g Japanese soba (buckwheat) noodles
150g peeled, cooked North Atlantic prawns
1 teaspoon plus 2 tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2 medium eggs beaten
1/2 tablspoon sunflower oil
7.5g toasted nori sheets - a sheet about 12cm x 8cm

Put the ginger, sake, soy sauce and mirin into a small saucepan. Set over a low heat and slowly bring up to a simmer, then cook for 2 minutes. Leave to cool while you prepare the other ingredients.

Trim the spring onions and finely slice their pale green stems. Place in a large mixing bowl.

Bring a large pan of unsalted water to the boil. Gradually add the noodles, making sure the water doesn't stop boiling. Cook according to the packet instructions until al dente. This is usually about 5-7 minutes. Drain and rinse thoroughly under the cold tap.

Meanwhile, pat the prawns dry on the kitchen paper and mix into the spring onions. Set a non-stick frying pan over a high heat. Whisk a teaspoon of sesame oil into the eggs. Add 1/2 tablespoon of sunflower oil to the pan and, once hot, add the beaten eggs and cook as a very thin omelette. Fry for 2 minutes or until cooked through. Tip the omelette out onto a wooden board and, as soon as it is cool enough to handle, roll it up and slice it finely into long thin shreds. Mix it with the prawns and spring onion.

Hold the sheet of nori with some tongs and wave it across the gas jet on the hob or over an electric plate to just warm it through. Snip the nori into small pieces and add to the prawns with the well-drained noodles. Whisk 2 tablespoons of sesame oil into the soy dressing and mix it into the noodels.

Serve immediately and be prepared for fabulous.

How much washing up is too much washing up?

I am so very glad I did make this unknowing - if I'd thought about the time involved without eating it first I  might never have done it and my culinary repertoire would be the worst for it. What's your tipping point for making - or not - new things?

Dinner at the Fat Duck

I don't normally write restaurant reviews on this blog but this week I did something I have wanted to do for a long time and I need to tell the world.

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I had dinner at the Fat Duck.

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I am thoroughly intrigued by the pleasure and delight Heston Blumenthal obviously derives from making the food that he does and the apparent impossibility of mere mortals reproducing it. I really wanted to try it.

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Better and stranger than I was expecting it was like falling through the looking glass.

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But to start at the beginning. Months ago I rang the restaurant and, after waiting on hold for the best part of an hour I spoke to a friendly woman who told me I could have a table for four at 7pm on the 17th March. Had to say yes.

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Then we waited and waited and finally it was March. Time slowed.

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To snail's pace.

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And then, out of nowhere, it was March 17th. Our day!

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The man and I caught the train to Waterloo, Jaey and Marie joined us at Richmond and we got off at Windsor. We'd booked a cab to to Bray - got in to the wrong mini cab as it happens but hey - it was cold. And we got there!

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Place is tiny with low ceilings crisscrossed with beams. Lots of front of house - and all of them delightfully cheerful. Started with champagne - of course. Then a man came over with a trolley and what looked like an ice bucket which he filled with liquid nitrogen and then he made quenelles - one at a time - from egg white that had been mixed with lime and vodka which he then froze. Then this little frozen meringue was put on a plate and dusted with green tea powder and you eat the whole thing in one go - and it really is like nothing you have ever put in your mouth. Meanwhile they spray something with a little atomiser only you don't notice till you've swallowed and then you have this amazing scent of citrus and lime. They did this for each of us around the table - and our palettes were cleansed and we were buzzing.

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The first woman who served us told us they would serve a couple of dishes in quick succession to take the edge off our excitement and then we would be able to relax and enjoy the whole evening.Then there were a teaspoon size ball of grain mustard icecream - yes I ate it in one! - in a gazpacho of red cabbage that was darkest purple with tiny tiny cubes of cucumber in the base, quickly followed by the most sublime thing you've ever seen. They brought out a square of oak moss about 30cm square onto which they tipped more liquid nitrogen to make it smoke so you had this really lovely smell of woodland forest. There were little tiny plastic cases about 2cm long that you popped open and there was a thin sheet like gold leaf that you put on your tongue and it melted to give you the flavour of smoked wood. Then you ate a tiny rectangle of truffle toast topped with miniscule dice of radish and in a separate deep cup was langoustine cream with a lump of foie gras parfait and tiny tiny cubes of quail jelly scattered like tiny jewels. Could not have been more impressed (I thought) and we did calm down a little, partly I think because it was already just like magic to be there and from now on it could not be a disappointment.

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A few minutes later it was the famous snail porridge - a circle of dense green made from puréed parsley and barley grains with black slices of snail and an elegant swirl of fennel ribbons on the top - just amazing flavours and textures, cooked raw clean rich - wow.

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Then the was cube of the most sublimely well cooked peice of foie gras studded with toasted pine nuts on a plate with a stripe of bitter almond cream and a kirsch cherry - and I think it was this one that a tiny stripe of zested lime. Each plate was so incredibly exquisite I wish I had taken a camera and shot each one before I started. Partly as an aide memoir and partly so I could lick them surreptitiously in case some magic of alchemy offered a final taste.

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Sound of the sea - whaaaa. First there were conch shells and each one had a mini ipod with the sound of a very english beach - ie more lonesome seagull than crashing wave. Then they gave us a 30 cm square dish that had a wooden base covered in shells and things and there was a raised glass square like a platform upon which everything was edible. There was sand made from tapioca that was so fabulous it had all of us determined to find out how it was done topped with tiny crunches of eel skin, individual slices of raw fish - yellowfin, salmon and mackerel, and a spume of foam down the side made from essence of fish. So beautiful to see and to eat.

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By now I never ever want to leave.

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The next plate has a thick rectangle of salmon that has a fine black skin made from intense liquorice that didn't penetrate the fish somehow, with a slick of vanilla mayonnaise with two halves of grilled artichoke heart and tiny drops of olive oil - a rendition of salmon in black & white. Strewn across the plate like petals were dozens and dozens of individual pellets of ruby grapefruit - you know the little tiny bubbles of flesh they have inside each segment? - adding colour and miniscule bursts of sour.

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There was a short hiatus of perhaps 10 minutes and I was vaguely aware of the other tables but not really. Though it is actually very small and the tables are quite close together you don't hear other conversations and there are an extraordinary number of staff but no sense that they are under each others' feet or putting any pressure on you to do anything other than have a fabulous time. They serve slices of a great sourdough bread - white and brown, with salted and unsalted butter - and whenever one of us finished a piece they would come and offer more individually, occasionally lifting the plate to clear the crumbs and replacing it again till all the savoury dishes were done.

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And indeed the next one was the last one of said savoury plates. Tiny - that word again - tiny portions of sliced perfectly rare pigeon, boned and rolled and poached in spiced red with a slick of what looked like dark blood and was in fact black pudding.

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Just swooning with pleasure.

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After that they came with little glasses of tea - ever so slightly jellied - one half hot and one half cold vertically in the glass - so strange a sensation - wonderful.
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They bought a bowl filled with those silver confectioners balls into which they had stuck four little ice cream cones with a crispy salty skin and filled with an apple curd. Waaah!

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Then little tubes that looked like hollowed out sticks with a kind of tube at the top like liquorice but we were warned not to eat it - it was there to scoop out the sherbert in the bottom of the 'stick' - and now our mouths are zinging and no one can stop smiling.

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The next plate has a thin orange stripe of mango a bright orange disk of the same and woody flavoured deep red/black thick stripe and a perfect ball of blackcurrant sorbet.

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I'm starting to worry that this might be coming to an end but they bring out mini cereal boxes with cornflakes that are really parsnip and a bowl to tip them into and a jug of parsnip flavoured milk to pour over them once you've tried them plain - all this after the woman announces that now it's time for breakfast!

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Still there is more - the man comes back with his liquid nitrogen and makes balls of frozen scrambled eggs - some of which sticks to the bottom of the pan just like real scrambled eggs - and he balances the eggs on top of little slices of pain perdu across which he drapes a slice of bacon. There is also tea jelly.

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It is almost over - but not quite yet. There are two more plates put onto the table - one with perfect shiny round disks of darkest chocolate that is violet in your mouth, then chocolate cups that are bubbly like aero's and taste of mandarin. On the other plate there are four caramels wrapped in cellophane which we are instructed to eat without unwrapping - which taste like essence of rich butter with a little crackle before the wrapper melts against your tongue.

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By now it is nearly 10.30 - we have been here since 7pm. I can't believe that really is it. I want to applaud it has been so astounding.

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Can't wait to go again.

Heston Makes a Fondue!

Strictly speaking this is not Borough connected but I wanted to share this with you anyway. A couple of weeks ago I went to an evening hosted by the Sherry Institute of Spain where the brilliant Heston Blumenthal spoke of the work he had been doing with them pairing food and sherry. I am fascinated by the way he approaches food as an overarching interlocking experience about taste and texture, scents and remembrance of things past to create pleasure but also delight. He really spreads joy about his food. My serious wish for my birthday was to be given his new Big Fat Duck Cookbook - and it was a wish fulfilled.

One of my favourites of the little dishes we sampled that night was this warm fondue of gruyere and cloves paired with fino. When my friend Andrea lived in Balham we spent many pleasant afternoons sat in her garden dipping hunks of bread into a lightly bubbling cheese fondue in the sunshine, gossiping about everything and nothing, sipping a cool glass of wine. Sampling this creation reminded me of those happy days - evoking such food memories is one of this chef's driving passions. If only we'd known to add a little ground cloves.