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Feijoa_1
If any fruit could evoke my childhood with one deep inhalation it would have to be the feijoa. There’s something mystical about its flavour, something remarkable that you can’t quite put your finger on. It’s a fruit which fills the mouth with an unmistakably robust flavour yet somehow still remains subtle.

It’s a mouthful of nostalgia for me. It reminds me of a time and place where houses were separated by trees rather than fences, where I could walk home from school down the middle of the road, where milk bottles were delivered to the letterbox with silver foil caps and where we disappeared for hours on end, roaming about the neighbourhood, completely unaware of any angst our parents were enduring. Ahhhh yes…the sweet taste of childhood. All of this makes me sound rather old, which I shall neither confirm nor deny.

But let’s get back to the humble feijoa before the glass of wine beside me takes hold and all hell breaks loose. Or melancholy ensues. I’m not sure which is worse. The thing about feijoa that reminds me of my youth is that consuming them usually went hand in hand with roaming the streets to pass the time. I never once remember my parents buying a bag at the grocery store. That would have been completely ludicrous, given most people had a tree in their backyard or at least knew of one nearby that they could raid when the light fell low enough. Feijoa trees belonged to the common good, not the property on which they dug their roots. I just can’t bring myself to fork out for a bag, unless it’s an honesty-box roadside stall. As a result feijoa have been notably absent from my autumns in the last few years. Maybe it’s the urban lifestyle most of us lead…not many people I know have an accidental orchard in their backyards.

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Fortunately though, I visited friends earlier this week who have cultivated an enviable fruit and vegetable garden including a heavily-laden feijoa tree in desperate need of relief. I was, of course, more than willing to assist. The trick is to retrieve the fallen fruit before they turn into garden mulch, which seems to happen in the blink of an eye. What’s so great about them though is that while they are magnificent sliced through their girth, the flesh scooped out and eaten au naturel with a spoon, they are also unbelievably great cooked, the riper the better. A fresh batch of feijoa jam, stewed with apples or baked in a cake…it’s all happy stomachs as far as I can make out.

A fresh feijoa cake, still warm from the oven, served with greek yoghurt and a cup of tea seems like the perfect antidote to the falling autumn light, shortening days and ever-colder toes. This delicious cake below is one I adapted from the classic Edmonds banana cake recipe. I wanted to make it gluten-free, not only to suit household dietary requirements, but also because I am a huge fan of cakes which use ground almonds as their base. It’s seriously good. So good you just might plant a feijoa tree in your backyard. Or maybe even create a feijoa-tree-map of your neighbourhood, showing which are the easiest to pilfer from without getting caught. Not that you heard it from me.

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FEIJOA, LIME & ALMOND CAKE (gluten-free)

INGREDIENTS
125g butter – at room temperature
165g sugar
2 eggs
Finely grated zest of 1 lime
300g feijoa pulp – mashed with a fork
1 tsp baking soda
2 tbsp hot milk
150g ground almonds
165g gluten-free all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter a 20cm springform cake tin and line the base with baking paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until pale and creamy.
3. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
4. Stir the feijoa pulp and lime zest into the egg mixture, combining well with a large metal spoon.

Feijoa_pulp
5. Heat the milk, add the baking soda and stir well until frothy and the baking soda has dissolved.
6. Add to the feijoa mix along with the almonds, flour and baking powder and fold gently together until just combined. Stop stirring as soon as the last scrap of flour disappears. Don’t be tempted to overmix or the cake will be stodgy.
7. Pour the mix into the prepared tin, smooth the top gently with a spatula and bake for approximately 50 minutes until a skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean.

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Feijoa_cake_2
8. Leave the cake to cool in the tin for about 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack. Serve warm with a dollop of greek yoghurt on the side and dusting of icing sugar if you feel the need to keep up appearances.

Crumble_6
I could’ve sworn summer holidays used to feel longer. Wasn’t it just days ago that I was coercing you all to make a Campari-laden strawberry cocktail?  You might be needing that tipple now more than ever if you’ve returned to work this week. Ouch indeed. We’ve begrudgingly kissed goodbye to lie-ins, waved off the late-morning swims, crossed midday naps out of the diary, and taken pudding-every-day off the menu. I’m crying into my peppermint tea right now.

I really do rip into puddings over the Christmas-New Year period. It would be rude not to. There’s no other time of the year when such a bounty of bad is dangled in front of us like the carrot we probably should be eating. But ‘should’ doesn’t really get a look in where summer holidays are concerned. ‘Should’ is the anathema to good times. I should drink less wine. I should stop eating to excess. I should watch less re-runs of Seinfeld. I will, however, do the complete opposite. And maybe all at once. In fact that’s exactly what we ended up doing last night. Following a virtuous yet delicious dinner we retired to the couch with a glass of wine, an ample bowl of pudding and, fittingly, The Non-fat Yoghurt episode. Our wounded first-week-back souls were instantaneously warmed.

The end of summer and beginning of a new year doesn’t mean an end to puddings. We need all the comfort we can get when we’re staring down the barrel of a new working year so I say ignore all those do-good-ers who trumpet on about getting back to eating ‘right’ to correct all their holiday dietary wrongdoings. That’s what winter is for. No wait, puddings are great then too. Ah to hell with it…

For me, nothing beats a good fruit crumble where sweet comfort food is concerned. I had some stewed fruit in the freezer waiting patiently for me to come calling as soon as I had eaten one too many Christmas mince pies. What else could you possibly want to do with stewed fruit other than top it with some sweet, buttery, crunchy goodness? Don’t answer that.

This is my reinvention of the crumble wheel. I like my crumbles light (ground almonds in place of flour), crumbly (oats), nutty (pistachios) and crunchy (demerara sugar). I also like them flavorsome and to this end the cardamon and lemon provide a lovely marriage with the pistachios. I had the added bonus of putting my feet up where the fruit content was concerned…my mother having dropped off a vat of stewed rhubarb and apple the week prior. The fruit bit is easy though and you can use pretty much anything that takes your fancy (apple, rhubarb, pears, berries, fresh figs, etc). If you need some pointers on how to cook up some delicious stewed fruit take a look at this recipe from a previous post, just omit the cinnamon, orange rind and juice as it will be too many flavours thrown into the mix.

Yum, yum and yum. All you need to serve this to crumbly perfection is some freshly whipped cream and a large spoon for shoveling.

LEMON, CARDAMON & PISTACHIO CRUMBLE

INGREDIENTS (serves 4)
50g all-purpose gluten-free flour (or standard flour)
50g ground almonds
1/2 tsp ground cardamom
85g butter – roughly chopped into 1-2cm chunks
50g rolled oats
75g demerara sugar
50g shelled pistachios (raw and unsalted) – roughly chopped
Finely grated rind of 1 lemon
Pinch of salt
3 cups stewed fruit – such as apples, rhubarb, pears, fresh figs

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.
2. Combine the flour, ground almonds and cardamom in a large mixing bowl. Add the chopped butter and rub into the dry mix with your fingertips. You don’t need to spend too much time getting the mix to look like breadcrumbs, just get it to a point where the butter is somewhat incorporated into its surrounds with the finished mix still being coarse and chunky.

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Crumble_2
3. To this mix add the oats, demerara sugar, pistachios, lemon rind and salt and stir well to incorporate.

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Crumble_4
4. Put the stewed fruit into an oven-proof dish and sprinkle the crumble over the top without pressing it down.
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes until golden brown on top. Remove from the oven and allow to cool for 5-10 minutes then spoon into bowls and serve with copious dollops of freshly whipped cream.

Crumble_5

I haven’t had much time to get creative in the kitchen this week. I’ve been preoccupied. With quinoa mostly, but more on that later. The usual dinner suspects keep doing the rounds, challenging our loyalty to particular mealtime favourites. I find I go through phases with food…cooking in one culinary direction until I get a bit bored of the flavours then moving on to something more interesting and new. I’ve been wondering what it would take to dislodge Jerusalem from its firm attachment to my hip. What it took was a book which taps into both the food-loving and voyeuristic parts of my personality and allowed me to have a long, languid nosey into the lives of some of the most interesting foodies in the world.

And the world is no stranger to the well-travelled, well-connected Todd Selby. Many of you have no doubt heard of, if not read, his first book ‘The Selby is in your place’. His follow-up ‘Edible Selby‘ is the quintessential coffee-table book, something you can pick up and lose yourself in whether you have just a few minutes or an hour to spare. It’s not a cookbook, more a visual feast of seaside taco shacks, rooftop farms, open-air jungle eateries, avant-garde restaurants, Japanese drinking holes and so many more beautiful, curious, weird and enviable ways that people are living life with food at its heart. I have to try very hard not to hate them.


There are, however, a few recipes dotted throughout its pages and a couple in particular seemed rather appealing. One involving aubergines and the other strawberries. Funnily enough said vegetable is on the cusp of being out of season whilst said fruit is just embarking on its summer journey. I’ll tackle the strawberry cordial recipe in a couple of weeks at an upcoming picnic…maybe with a splash of Campari snuck in while no one is looking.

I’m slightly saddened that aubergines are now relegated to the ‘specials’ bin as they get heavier and mushier by the day. Still, that’s what seasonality is all about and it can only be out with the old and in with the new, shedding as few tears as possible along the way.


This dip, therefore, is my last hurrah to aubergines until next year. The recipes in Edible Selby are rudimentary, hand-scrawled notes and more often than not are missing vital quantities. From the list of ingredients provided I came up with this incarnation below, which is very delicious indeed. The flavours are soft and subtle so it’s best served with something simple such as warm flatbreads. And speaking of warm, if you can time it so that you make this just prior to devouring, it will be at its best. The slightly warm aubergines enhance the nutty, fragrant flavours provided by the walnuts and caraway seeds.

AUBERGINE, WALNUT AND CARAWAY SEED DIP

INGREDIENTS
1 medium aubergine – approx 300g
50g walnut halves
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp red wine vinegar
Juice of 1 lemon
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and bake the aubergine (whole, skin on) for 30-35 minutes until soft. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.
2. Roast the walnuts at the same temperature for approximately 6-8 minutes until lightly golden – watching carefully so they don’t burn – then roughly chop.
3. Toast the caraway seeds in a frying pan for a few minutes over a high heat until you can smell the aromas begin to release. Remove from the heat and grind to a coarse powder in a mortar and pestle.
4. When the aubergine is cool enough to handle, peel and discard the skin and roughly chop the flesh. Place the flesh in a colander and allow to drain for 10 minutes.


5. Put the aubergine, walnuts, caraway seeds, olive oil, red wine vinegar and lemon juice into a food processor, or use a stick blender, and blitz until smooth. Season well with plenty of freshly ground black pepper and a generous pinch or two of sea salt. Blitz once more and serve in a bowl with some chopped flat-leaf parsley to garnish.


With Christmas lurking menacingly on the sidelines I’m reminded of both the stresses and the pleasures which come with the closing of the year. I feel a little bit like the Grinch but I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I mostly look forward to Christmas being done and dusted. It’s far too often more of a burden than a time of excitement and anticipation. What I’d like to encourage with my own fledgling family is less focus on commercial pressures such as presents and more time shared together in and around the kitchen.

With a little bit of effort food can be such a great gift. I’d much rather labour in the kitchen than in the shops and knowing that time and energy has been spent on something delicious will surely be well received. Maybe there are people out there who enjoy the shopping process, but if you’re anything like me I just try and get it over with as quickly as possible and often buy something just to put an end to my misery, rather than actually thinking about the person on the receiving end. To this end I’m championing a return to the kitchen for Christmas gift-giving. It can be something as simple as a fresh batch of shortbread tied up with a string and a rose (or a wing and a prayer).

These are super easy to make and require very little baking prowess. My fail-proof tips for this recipe are to make sure you are precise with the measurements and be careful to watch them towards the end of the baking time so they don’t overcook. The recipe makes two rolls which yeild approximately 12 cookies each. I usually bake one roll and put the other one in the freezer for another day. Just allow to defrost completely then follow steps 7-9 below.


LEMON AND CARDAMON SHORTBREAD

INGREDIENTS (makes approximately 24 cookies)
250g butter – softened but not melted
1 cup icing sugar
2 cups flour
1 cup cornflour
zest of 1 lemon
4 cardamon pods – shells removed and seeds ground to a fine powder in a mortar and pestle

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line a tray with baking paper.
2. Cream the butter and icing sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer until pale, creamy and fluffy.
3. Add the lemon zest and cardamon to the butter mixture and beat again to combine.
4. Sift the flour and cornflour together into a separate bowl, then slowly add to the butter mixture, incorporating as you go, until the dough comes together.
5. Tip the dough onto a clean, dry surface and knead gently for a minute until smooth.
6. Divide the dough in half and roll each half into a log shape, approximately 4cm in diameter. Wrap each roll in clingfilm and leave in the fridge for one hour.
7. Remove from the fridge and cut the roll into slices approximately 1cm thick. Place on the baking paper and prick decorative holes on the surface with a fork.



8. Bake for 15-20 minutes until lightly golden. The high butter content means they can burn very easily so make sure you set a timer for 15 minutes, check their progress and cook a further five minutes if needed. All ovens differ slightly but my batch took the full 20 minutes.
9. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on the tray for 5 minutes, then place the cookies onto a wire rack to cool completely.

I’ve been set to task this week. Not that I mind, after all it’s my kind of task. A good friend asked me to design a menu for a dinner party she’s having in a week’s time. She’s very good at stroking my cooking ego, telling me how great my baking is, flattering me by asking my opinion on culinary conundrums which I pretend to know the answer to, convincing me I’m far more of a whizz in the kitchen than her. Not that my ego needs stroking to accept such a challenge, but I can’t deny it didn’t spur me on just a touch.

The brief was thus…eight guests, all female, one vegetarian and one gluten-free. The hostess is a social butterfly at heart and of course wants to spend minimal time in the kitchen, maximum time hosting and more than a little time in between for dressing up and drinking to the occasion. Très bien!

It’s fortuitous timing really as my new book turned up in the post after impatiently checking the mailbox twice a day. I was slightly shocked to see Hugh looking clean-shaven and well-groomed, so used am I to seeing him cuddling up to pigs, dissecting whole cows and generally getting his hands dirty in the countryside. The lack of facial hair seems to have done his book no harm though…on first inspection I must say it looks like a damn fine vegetarian cookbook. Over a third of the recipes are vegan too so it certainly provides broad appeal.


I had an idea of what I wanted to include in this menu, having blogged about portions of it already. What I was lacking was the main component which would provide the backbone of the meal, the meat-and-gluten-free foundations if you will. One of Hugh’s aubergine recipes caught my eye right off the bat. Aubergine is a great ingredient to pull into vegetarian meals as it’s substantial, soaks up loads of flavour and is very versatile. This recipe fulfilled the brief in more ways than one, not least of all because the whole thing can be prepped hours prior to serving, leaving our heroine time to do more important hosterlythingymajiggies. I’ve tweaked Hugh’s recipe slightly as I thought a couple of extra bits of yum wouldn’t go astray. If you want to stay true to his version replace the goats cheese with buffalo mozzarella and omit the parsley and the pinenuts. “Omit the pinenuts?”, I hear you gasp! I know. Tell it to Hugh.

So, herewith my menu for a vegetarian-gluten-free party of eight. I should probably point out that I’m not reinventing the wheel here. I’ve made many an over-zealous dinner party error by attempting a new, enticing recipe and ending up having to pretend that yes, that souffle is meant to sink in the middle. When you’re cooking for friends my new and highly successful rule of thumb is to make something you know is good and that you know works. My menu below is made up of some of my favourite recipes (plus one great, foolproof newbie) which I know deliver the goods.

I realise you may all glaze over if I dictate the full menu in one blog post so I’ve been just a little bit fancy and put it into a user-friendly format that you can download, print and cook with ease at home. It even includes a shopping list. So fancy.

ARRIVAL NIBBLES
- Spiced cauliflower fritters with avocado, coriander and lime sauce

I’ve blogged about these scrumptious fritters recently as part of a main meal but they also make good nibbles. Fry tablespoon-sized portions of the fritter mix and serve piled on a platter with a bowl of the avocado sauce for dipping. The recipe portions serve four as a main, or magically…eight as canapés. See, maths is fun.

MAIN
- Aubergine parmigiana served on steamed rice with a wilted herb salad and toasted cumin and yoghurt sauce


This aubergine dish is really good. It’s similar in concept to a lasagne but lighter and more refined than it’s gluten-laden counterpart, with aubergine providing structure to the dish where pasta would usually reside. It is fairly substantial in and of itself, but I think it works well with a small serving of plain steamed rice.

The wilted greens are also a recipe I’ve posted previously, but I finally got to try this using preserved lemons as originally specified in the Moro Cookbook. Having tried both I do think the preserves have a slight advantage, providing a more subtle lemon flavour rather than the sharp tang of the fresh. By all means use lemon rind/juice if you haven’t got preserved lemons on hand but shame on you for not following my orders five weeks ago. The fruits are worth the labour.

DESSERT
- Orange, almond and polenta cake with lemon, rosemary and fennel seed syrup


If you’ve been paying attention you’ll know this is one of my top five cakes of all time. It presents such interesting flavours with just the right combination of sweet and savoury that it’s a guaranteed crowd-pleaser. I had a genius idea to replace some of the ground almond content with pinenuts and my oh my it worked beautifully. Another tweak I made was to bake these as little individual cakes…somehow a little bit more special than a whole cake.

It’s been a big week for little ol’ Needle&I. The Fair is only two weeks away now and I’m finally starting to see the fruits of my labour having settled into a mostly frenzied pattern of work. I’ve stitched up a storm every time The Baby is asleep, punctured enough fingers to contemplate renaming my company Needle&Thimble, drunk enough coffee to make my temples throb and eaten excessively to A: keep up with my blogging efforts and B: calm myself down from said caffeine overload. Here’s a few pics from my week…

Baked The Carrot Cake To End All Carrot Cakes for a friend’s birthday. This little beauty is responsible for converting me from the fruity and dense carrot cake team to the lighter, fluffier side. Will post this recipe in the coming weeks. It’s one of my top five cakes of all time (I feel a blog post coming on).


My baby cage display crates arrived safe and sound from way down south. They’re exactly what I hoped for so am feeling mighty chuffed about ticking that one off the proverbial list.


The label saga has finally ended. I’ve been so eagerly awaiting these little tags to put an extra touch of awesome on my products…but they were worth the wait. I never anticipated the level of excitement that would ensue over little pieces of branded cotton tape.


My contribution to the Fair goodie bags was all sewn up this afternoon (oh ho ho) complete with my new labels!


Had a lightbulb moment and started designing a new product to add to my range…all will be revealed at the Fair.


And finally…though I know you are all sick of hearing me bleat on about this chourico cake…one final word is that your Sunday morning will be that much happier for having a piece of leftover bread, toasted and topped with fried eggs. Nuff said.


If you’ve been paying attention I posted a recipe a week or so back, somewhat dubiously entitled Meat Cake. As promised, I experimented with a gluten-free version and whatdoyaknow…it worked a treat! Every last salty crumb of it. From the very limited knowledge I have of converting gluten recipes to gluten-free I know it’s not always a simple case of switching standard flour for gluten-free varieties. Usually it involves a magical combo of flour alternatives to achieve a similar effect that won’t stick to the roof of your mouth.

This conversion is an exception to that rule. I literally replaced the flour content with a gluten-free brand (I use Orgran All Purpose Plain Flour) and let them do all the maths for me. And the texture was fantastic which is not always guaranteed when it comes to gluten-free baking.

So…refer back to my previous post for the recipe and go forth if gluten-free is your thing. I halved the recipe as the full version does make a large cake. I also baked it in a 8x20cm loaf tin which was perfect for the half-quantity volume.

For dinner tonight I’m going to grill it to accompany the Mexican Tomato Soup which features on the cover of the latest issue of Cuisine (currently bubbling away on my stovetop…the soup not the magazine). If I have any vegan readers left after the recent spate of meat-focussed recipes…this soup is indeed vegan so I just might post this one if it turns out as good as it looks!


So I think it’s time for an unashamedly gluten-laden recipe. Funnily enough this one coincides with my descent into the comfort-food time of the year…when every day seems like the perfect moment for rich, warming flavours to cheer the soul when the weather fails us. I am a summer-lover but I’m also a homebody and I really enjoy the inception of winter for all the cosiness it embodies.

I’m hoping the title of this post hasn’t repelled you from reading further. I know ‘meat cake’ is a slightly repugnant concept but, bad translations aside, this isn’t too far from the truth and I don’t see any reason to mince my words (pun intended). This is from the wonderful Portugese recipe book Piri Piri Starfish by Tessa Kiros. Not only is this book a beauty to behold, it has accessible, simple recipes from a cuisine which I think is well worth exploring. It bears similarities to Spanish cooking, with simple, bold and straightforward flavours with a strong seafood focus and dessert section to die for. And while this recipe resembles a cake where the method and baking is concerned, it is more akin to a bread in terms of texture and flavour.


Soups are, of course, de rigueur this season and this bread is divine paired with a simple bowl of pumpkin soup. The use of chorizo and prosciutto gives it a deliciously smokey, salty flavour which is a perfect match with the sweetness of pumpkin. As you’ll know, chorizo is full of fat, so don’t panic when you see oil bubbling on the surface of the bread during cooking. This all soaks back into the bread as it cools and, believe me, it’s worth an extra lap around the block for the glorious finished loaf you’ll end up with. I’m a firm believer in investing in good quality cured meats for recipes such as this. The payoff in terms of flavour far outweighs the extra cost involved in bypassing the supermarket deli section.

MEAT CAKE (or as Tessa more tastefully puts it…Chourico Cake)

INGREDIENTS
5 eggs
100g butter – melted and cooled
5 tbsp olive oil
185ml milk
310g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
100g prosciutto – roughly chopped (pancetta would work well too)
100g chorizo (buy as a sausage or thick slice so you can dice it into chunks)

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease the inside of a 25cm ring tin with butter and dust lightly with flour.
2. Beat the eggs until very fluffy and creamy then add the cooled butter and the olive oil and whisk well to combine.
3. Mix together the flour, baking powder and salt and then add gradually to the egg mixture, alternating with the milk, until well incorporated into a smooth batter.
4. Roughly chop the prosciutto and chorizo then crumble it with your fingers into the wet mix, separating any pieces that are stuck together as it is added. Stir the meat through the batter and pour into the prepared tin.
5. Bake for 35 minutes until puffed up and golden. Allow to cool in the tin for 10 mins then turn out and cut into thick chunks to serve.

This bread is completely divine still warm from the oven so time the cooking of your accompanying soup to suit.

In the next week or so I will attempt to convert this into a gluten-free version…life’s too short to go without meat cake. Will be sure to post my results!

We snuck away to our favorite beach retreat last weekend, the charming and peaceful Orua Bay on the Awhitu Peninsula. We had our usual list of achievements to accomplish…DVD pile to watch, recipe list to cook, vacant stares to fix on horizon, brains to shut down. Check, check and check. I also had a million and one cushions to appliqué in preparation for the upcoming Auckland Art & Craft Fair. Of course they will all sell like a million and one hotcakes and my bruised thumb and punctured fingertips will all be worth it.


The other task at hand was to bid farewell to a statuette we bought in Mina Clavero, Argentina, a couple of years ago. I wish I could remember his official name. For the purposes of this post I shall call him José. We found him in a health store (I’ll take one ceramic saint and a bag of almonds thanks) and his purpose in our lives was, apparently, to watch over our wellbeing forever and ever, amen. He’s fallen a little short of that lately and what I used to see as a friendly glance in our direction I now perceive as a sinister stare. He did get knocked to the floor at one point, breaking his head off and chipping his shoulder (ominous) but we lovingly glued him back together and thought our efforts to restore his former glory would have worked well in our favor. Not so! He has thus steadily crept into the clown-in-my-child’s-room category of possessions which have no welcome presence in a home in which you wish to sleep through the night.

So we made the executive decision that maybe José was missing his homeland and wanted to take a boat ride back there toute de suite. The boy made a sturdy and sea-worthy raft out of branches, tied him in snugly with flax, gave him a hibiscus as a peace offering and an unripe lemon for the road (it would ripen by the time he docked in Argentina). He was then cast afloat on the ocean and we drove off without looking back for fear he would wash up again.


With that crippling superstition out of the way I then focussed on cooking up a storm to fuel an otherwise lazy weekend. Recipes to come in the next few weeks will be a divine slow-cooked lamb shank dish and my slightly fancy version of pasta putanesca. The focus of today’s post though, is a cake which is on my Top Ten Cakes of All Time list, and might…just might…be a contender for first place. The boy and I ate this latest incarnation within 24 hours of its exit from the oven. Obviously the fault here lies with the awesomeness of the cake and not our greedy natures. Obviously.


This is a recipe from Dish which I’ve baked an innumerable amount of times. It has a slightly savory bent to it with the use of rosemary and fennel which is offset by a sweet-as-you-like syrup. I love flourless cakes. They have a beautiful texture and gentle crumble with moreish, nutty undertones. This cake called for semolina in place of my version which uses polenta. Both work well so use whichever suits depending on your gluten and/or pantry status. The recipe makes a small cake so use a 20cm tin or you will have a crepe where a cake should be. This cake needs no fancy frills…a dollop of good quality yoghurt is the best accompaniment. I recommend the full cream version of the Gopala brand which can be found in most supermarkets. It’s the cheapest and, in my opinion, by far the best of the natural yoghurt range.

ORANGE, ALMOND & POLENTA CAKE WITH LEMON, ROSEMARY & FENNEL SEED SYRUP

INGREDIENTS (CAKE)
100g butter – at room temperature
1/2 cup demerara sugar
2 eggs
125g ground almonds
1/3 cup fine polenta (or semolina)
1/2 tsp baking powder
pinch of salt
finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange

INGREDIENTS (SYRUP)
1/2 cup caster sugar
2 tbsp honey
6 tbsp water
juice of 2 lemons
1/4 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp rosemary – very finely chopped
1 small, thin-skinned lemon – thinly sliced

METHOD – CAKE
1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Grease and line the base of a 20cm round cake tin.
2. Beat the butter and sugar in an electric mixer for 5 minutes (the sugar will still be grainy at the end of this time) then beat in the eggs, one at a time, until well combined.
3. Combine the almonds, polenta (or semolina), baking powder, salt and the orange zest in a separate bowl and rub between your fingertips to infuse with the zest.
4. Combine the almond and egg mixtures along with the orange juice, stirring gently until well incorporated.
5. Tip into the prepared tin, smooth the top and bake for 45-50 minutes until golden and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Allow to cool in the tin.

METHOD – SYRUP
1. Put all the ingredients, except the lemon slices, into a saucepan and stir to dissolve the sugar. Simmer over a low heat until the surface is covered with small bubbles and the syrup is thick.
2. Add the lemon slices and gently turn to coat in the syrup. Simmer gently for 3 minutes then remove from the heat, cover and leave to stand for a further 5 minutes. This finishes cooking the lemons.

TO SERVE
Turn the cake out onto a plate and slowly spoon the hot syrup over the cold cake until it is all absorbed, then top with the lemon slices.

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