When Life Gives You Lemons…
When life gives you lemons, don’t make lemonade. (This is London, not Miami, for Pete’s sake.) Make lemon drizzle cake. Its much tastier. That’s what I did yesterday on a rainy, cold & windy Sunday afternoon here in Bermondsey. One of the last Sundays I’ll spend here in my little Bermondsey kitchen. We’re moving at the end of the month. To the suburbs, I might add. I’m happy we’re moving into a bigger space and that we’ll have a garden to lounge about in on the one or two languid hot days we’ll have to look forward to over the course of the glorious English summertime. But our little urban pad has been a wonderful space to spend the last four years.
L has been spending the better part of the last few months negotiating our property exchange, and so he doesn’t get fired before we can pay for the place, he had to spend the day catching up in the office. Meanwhie the dog and I lounged about all the morning; me in my jammies, putting the Nespresso to good use and the dog sighing and staring mournfully out the window at the fifth consecutive day of rain.
Sometime around 3pm I rolled up my sleeves, marched into the kitchen, cleared the counter and fired up the…computer…and proceeded to spend the next 30 minutes researching recipes. But after THAT, I made some lemon drizzle cake. I found a great recipe by a fellow blogger (click here for (Mostly) Yummy Mummy’s original recipe), but I’ve spent enough of my life as a professional recipe developer that I can’t help but mess with recipes, and I love my lemon cake to be extra lemony – which in this recipe you really need to cut the intense butteryness.
So here’s what you’ll need to cook this cake…
- 6oz spelt (or wheat) flour (sifted)
- 6oz caster sugar
- 6oz butter
- 3 medium eggs
- 2 very juicy medium unwaxed lemons
- 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 2 tsp of icing (powdered) sugar
And here’s how you do it…
1. Grease & flour a small loaf tin & line base with parchment. Preheat oven to 190C/375F/Gas Mark 5.
2. Cream butter & sugar until pale in colour and fluffy in texture.
3. Add 3 eggs, one by one; mixing each egg thoroughly before adding the next.
4. Add the zest & juice of one whole unwaxed lemon straight into the wet mixture.
5. Add the sifted flour, salt & baking powder and fold in gently. Don’t overmix it or you’ll overdevelop the gluten. (You want a tender cake, right?)
6. Spoon the cake mixture into the loaf tin and pop it into the middle shelf of the oven for around 40 minutes. Once its golden brown, test it with a wooden skewer – if it comes out clean, its done.
7. Let the cake cool for a few minutes while you prepare the drizzle. The drizzle is prepared by whisking together the icing (powdered) sugar with the juice of the second lemon.
8. Remove the warm cake from the tin and turn it upside down. Make plenty of holes (20-30) with a wooden skewer and pour the drizzle all over the bottom of the warm cake. Let it sit upside down for a few minutes as the drizzle works its way down, flavouring the cake with the lemony sweetness. Once its cooled a bit, turn the cake around and let it totally cool before cutting.
. . .
So, in summary, a few of these…
…and a couple of these…
(girl with smeared mascara optional)
…gives you one of these…
Bon Appetit!
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A Surfeit of Blue Eggs & Lemons
I have rather a lot of eggs in my fridge right now. Three boxes, in fact. I mean, there’s only two of us, so three boxes of eggs is a bit ridiculous.
One box I bought last Saturday morning from folks at the Demeter farm in East Sussex – they come to the Bermondsey Farmer’s Market as well as Borough Market every week. The second box is something I think L bought from somewhere depressing, like Tesco. (Its organic & free range, but still…) The third box of eggs are these gorgeous babies from my future in laws’ farm in Buckinghamshire.
I also seem to have a mysterious surfeit of lemons. I think a lemon drizzle cake is on the horizon…
blue eggs
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Farewell Little Paris Kitchen
I have an absolute fascination with Rachel Khoo and her Little Paris Kitchen.
Six weeks ago, I’d never heard of her. But now, I want to be best friends with Rachel Khoo. I want to get my fringe cut and wear red lipstick and live in a postage stamp apartment. Oh wait…I did do that. Five years ago when I was single. In London. I guess I mean I want to do all those things…but in Paris.
Totally different in Paris.
Anyway, tonight is the final episode of The Little Paris Kitchen, and quiche lorraine is on the menu. So, goodbye Rachel, but only for a while I hope…
*I ripped these photos off her website. They’re not mine. Obviously. But thought I’d say it anyway.
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Flour Art on Bread Street
I work in the City of London.
For those who don’t live in London, it doesn’t mean the city of London. That includes places like Oxford Street, Knightsbridge and Covent Garden. I’m talking about the City of London – with a capital ‘C’. Its the old Roman square mile which is now one of the world’s major financial districts. And to those who work there, it feels more like working in a small town. On Cheapside, at the western edge of the City near St Paul’s Cathedral, the streets still are named for the goods which would have been sold there in Wren’s day. (‘Cheap’ meaning ‘market’ in Medieval English. Apparently in Medieval times, the conduits of Cheapside would flow with wine on state occasions. Now its just filled with swish American-style champagne bars and celebrity chef restaurants.)
There’s Milk Street. Honey Lane. Poultry. Old Fish Street (as opposed to Fish Street Hill leading up from Old Billingsgate Fish Market near London Bridge). And Bread Street.
I work closest to the last of these, and having qualified as a baker many years ago, I was delighted to see an artist – I didn’t catch her name – setting up her temporary exhibit there. Sound, texture, visuals, history, food, recipes and poetry – A charming mingling of baking, art and history stencilled in white flour on the street. I found it shocking to see the other City workers walking through the display, scuffing the flour poetry under their Louboutins - too busy with their BlackBerries and urban stress to notice.
I asked if she minded if I took a few photographs. She was more than happy for me to do so, and I thought I’d share them here.
What you won’t be able to appreciate from the photographs is the accompanying background soundtrack of 17th century bustling market sounds, echoeing off the walls of this small alleyway off Bread Street.
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Dark Chocolate, Smoked Chilli, Espresso And Tequila Cake – Cooking | Tommi Miers
I stumbled across this recipe today in an email from my favourite Mexican restaurant in London – Wahaca. I have plans for this to be one of the first recipes I try when I get my new Kitchen Aid. (I’m thinking about colours right now, but I should make my mind up and have it within the next couple of weeks while the Selfridge’s sale is still on.)
What’s not to like? Three of my favourite things - dark chocolate, chilli and coffee. And a bit of tequila to boot – though I may use my smokey aged Mezcal for an authentic Oaxacan kick.
Dark Chocolate, Smoked Chilli, Espresso And Tequila Cake – Cooking | Tommi Miers.
But…if you try it and the recipe’s a bit crap, let me know…
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Bloomsbury
Boris, I sincerely hope that you never succeed in your attempts to rebrand Bloomsbury as ‘Midtown’.
It’s February. My body, mind and spirit have all felt a bit miserable and undernourished lately. I waited at the top of the steps at the British Museum for Jane on this bright Saturday morning, sipping on my Pret capuccino, and when she arrived we spent the better part of an hour wandering through the Grayson Perry exhibition.
We tend to part ways when at exhibitions; quietly taking in whatever it is we’re looking at and then regroup for a chat afterwards over a meal or a glass of wine – on this occasion over espresso & cake at the London Review Bookshop. We’ve both been there more than a few times now, and while Jane ordered her usual Lemon, Rosemary and Olive Oil cake, I had the Chocolate Almond torte I always order. But they don’t know how to make a bad cake – which is why it usually takes 20 minutes to get a seat.
The London Review Book Shop
Caffeinated and refueled, we wandered down Great Russell Street and then onto Lambs Conduit Street. While I managed to restrain myself from buying some beautiful linen cushions and a set of etched champagne glasses at The French House, and we deftly avoided the parmesan & pomodoro wafts from the Italian restaurant at the end of the street (that has inspired many a late boozy lunch, I’m led to understand), we did go into Cornelissen & Sons and spent a small fortune on yet more art supplies for our already overstocked and far too under-used artist kits. I could buy pastels enough to fill a whole house and admit to compulsively buying them whenever I see them – the rich pigments and beautiful labels, crafted into elegant sticks and packed in expensive boxes – I’m sure its an illness. But today I didn’t buy pastels. I bought a new watercolour kit (though I already have two more of the same ones somewhere in storage), a good supply of watercolour and pastel papers, new brushes and a stick of a rather fabulously unusual colour of blue sealing wax. (Nope, no idea why either…)
A little bit poorer and a little bit fatter, but much happier, I came home with my bags full of books & art supplies, and I knew that I remembered just why I love London.
I need to go see if something needs sealing now…
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Strudel
Apfelstrudel at a cafe in Innsbruck
“…Oh, Cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels. Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles. Silver white winters that melt into springs. These are a few of my favorite things…”
Actually, doorbells aren’t one of my favourite things. They give me anxiety because they’re usually being rung by evangelists or delivery boys dropping off delicious takeaways for other flats. And I don’t eat schnitzel. Nor do I particularly like when winter melts into spring – its usually slushy and my boots get wet and muddy. But I do like ponies and I absolutely LOVE crisp apple strudel. Not to mention Mohnstrudel with poppy seeds. And Topfenstrudel which puts any other cheesecake to shame.
I remember, years ago in culinary school, my instructor, Chef Jean-Luc, a native of Alsace, who was intensely serious about both his French and German patisserie, taught me to perfectly pull and stretch a small elastic ball of this supple dough out to the size of a tablecloth, big enough to cover a card table. I was really proud of that skill, though I haven’t done it for years now.
As we walk through through unsuitable house after unsuitable house, in our attempts to find a new home, I look at the kitchen and I think “could I stretch a strudel dough in here?” Its just as well I don’t say this out loud really because I think our agents are getting a bit fed up with me as it is.
["Gosh, this room's really tired, isn't it? But there's a lot of scope here." I say as they show me a run down mess of a conversion, infested by students and damp. Or "It would just be gorgeous if you converted this second bedroom back into a dining room." Two bedroom flat, my arse. Oh, and don't get me started on the 'shared' gardens. If I still wanted to have a communal living space, I'd still be at uni, living in halls of residence.]
But I digress.
On a recent trip to Tirol, I recently indulged my fondness for this semi sweet-savoury pastry accompanied by a short dark coffee with thick crema.
And now I long for a house where I can stretch a strudel. And that’s not even a euphamism.
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Barcelona
After spending 30 minutes arguing in Barcelona Sants train station about which mode of public transport to use to get to our hotel, we gave in and took a taxi. Which always feels like cheating. But I won’t lie – it was nice. We arrived at our hotel, where a lovely room awaited us with the marble bathrooms and hallways that you always find in continental European hotels. Up on the top floor there was an ice cold swimming pool and lounging areas to take full advantage of the hot afternoon Catalan sun and the beautiful views over the rooftops of the city. I cooled down my skin and temper with a dip and admired the view.
Tapas at Bar Lobo
In the evening we dressed and went to Bar Lobo, which was soon to become our favourite tapas bar in the city, and proceeded to heavily over-order a spread of gambas, tortilla, patatas bravas, whitefish, andalusian style squid and avocado salad, amongst other local delicacies which I cannot even remember now. I sipped on a small glass of the local cava while Luke sampled the local beer.
That was October 2011 and its now nearing the end of January 2012. The Catalan sun feels like it was an awfully long time ago and its the middle of a cold English winter; without the charm of snow or even the odd comforts of a torential rain. It’s going to be an expensive year for us - new house, new mortgage and a wedding – so it may be an awfully long time before we’re seen rambling down Las Ramblas again, or lustily eyeing up the produce at La Boqueria; but tonight – here in Bermondsey, under the shadow of The Shard and with the chill of the wind off the Thames beating against the windows - you will find a small homage to our favourite European city. We will eat tortilla. We will fry gambas in sinful amounts of olive oil, garlic & chili. We will do our utmost best to bring down the surplus squid population – vile creatures, but oh so tasty. And we will sip the honey-herbed-appley bubbles of an excellent cava.
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A Sunday Lunch in December
I find more and more now that I create meals which are blended components of Candian Maritime cuisine and other North American classics with the new recipes which I’ve learned since moving to London. The comforts of my own childhood blended with the culinary memories of my boyfriend from his Sussex youth and boarding school.
As we speak, in the oven I have a sausage stuffed turkey roulade baking (an experiment, inspired by Gordon Ramsay’s method of cooking the Christmas Turkey), which will be accompanied by baked sweet potatoes and jalapeno cornbread. And perhaps a little cranberry sauce on the side. I used to make this same jalapeno cornbread in huge sheet trays when I worked at a fine dining restaurant in Canada, but now I only make a small batch in an 8″ pan – enough for the two of us. (If I hadn’t put jalapenos in the recipe, I’d be sneaking a warm slice with butter and Crosby’s molasses.)
This will be our Sunday Lunch today – a rather late Sunday lunch I’m afraid - which we will enjoy with a glass of Chat-en-Oeuf and perhaps afterwards a bowl of my boyfrirend’s excellent apple crumble.
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Couldn’t Wait for Stir-Up Sunday
Stir Up Sunday is the day in the UK when the preparation of Christmas Puddings traditionally begins. This year it will be on 20 November.
But really, who wants a ‘fresh’ pudding when you can have one where plumped up currants, prunes, raisins, cranberries, dates and cherries all start to melt into each other in a liquor of muscovado sugar and brandy. So I’ve started my work a few weeks early.
In fact, as I understand it, my boyfriend’s late mother used to make her Christmas puddings a year ahead of time.
It all started last Sunday when I mixed the fruits and dark, molasses-rich moscovado sugar together. As my usual cherry brandy wasn’t available at the shop, I used calvados. After a few days of macerating together, the smell was heavenly, and on Wednesday I added the spices and some roughly chopped marcona almonds. Only last night did I finally add the eggs and bread crumbs to prepare the final puddings for potting and steaming.
If you have a full time job, as I do, finding the time to steam a large pudding for 5 or so hours is nearly impossible. It usually involves setting an alarm for 2am and rather alot of stress about whether the steamer will run dry. After years of this anxiety I have finally found the solution, as well as a use for the naffest thing in my kitchen – the Crock Pot! 10 hours overnight on the low setting in a Crock Pot bain marie and your large pudding will be ready, and satisfying plumped up on top.
As rather a hectic Christmas season awaits me – with many friends and family to see – I made a double batch of pudding this year. One large pudding, two medium and six small puddings all have designated homes, but not before I’ve spent the next month ‘feeding’ them with brandy.
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About Me
After finishing my degree in Literature, I already knew I wanted to make madeleines rather than just read Proust reminiscing about them. So within a couple of years, I progressed quickly through culinary school and was headhunted for a role as Pastry Chef at one of the top fine dining restaurants in Eastern Canada.
Which would have been great. But I wasn’t just born with the travel bug. I am the travel bug.
Pretty soon I soon found myself moving to Mexico City and then on to Oaxaca where I settled for a few years. Without the support of my beloved KitchenAid…or even an oven for that matter…the meals I prepared for myself and others were now dependent upon a world of new and mysterious foods being sold at the local markets and I had to learn to cook using whatever seasonal and local produce was available – usually following (with my extremely dodgy ear for Spanish) the recipe being passed on to me by a variety of abuelas in the market.
My skills as a cook were challenged and developed more than ever before and it was under these conditions that I relearned my entire relationship to food – where it comes from, how its been produced and the interdependent relationship between food and the person who has produced it.
I now live in London, UK, conveniently close to my spiritual home – Borough Market. I eat, I cook, and now I write about it too.
