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eggs: 2, lightly beaten
self-raising flour: 120g
For the sauce:
light muscovado sugar: 50g
double cream: 250ml
Butter and lightly flour four 200ml pudding tins. Don’t be tempted to skip this step, otherwise your puddings may stick. Roughly chop the prunes and pour the sherry over them. Set aside. Set the oven at 160°C/Gas 3.
Cream the butter and sugars together till light and fluffy. Add the beaten eggs a little at a time (introduce a spoonful or two of flour if the mixture looks as if it might curdle), then gently fold in the flour.
Stir in the chopped prunes and any liquid. Divide the mixture between the pudding bowls – it should fill them by two-thirds – and bake in the pre-heated oven for forty to forty-five minutes, until springy and golden. To turn the puddings out, run a tiny palette knife around the inside of the tins, then invert them and shake firmly.
For the sauce, put the sugar and cream in a saucepan, bring to the boil and simmer for two minutes. Serve with the puddings.
Enough for 4
Chicken with potatoes and dill
A mild treatment for chicken, with soft flavours. Steamed rice, possibly brown basmati, would work nicely here.
butter: 30g
olive oil: a tablespoon
a chicken, jointed into 8 pieces
small chestnut mushrooms: 250g
small potatoes: 400g
cider: 500ml
double cream: 150ml
a small bunch of dill
Melt the butter in a casserole and add the oil. When it starts to sizzle, put in the chicken pieces. Season with salt and pepper, then leave to cook over a moderate heat until the chicken is pale gold on both sides. Remove from the pan and set aside.
Halve or quarter the mushrooms, depending on their size, and add them to the pan. Let them soften, adding a little more butter or oil if necessary. Scrub and halve or quarter the potatoes. Add them to the pan and leave till lightly coloured, then pour in the cider. Return the chicken to the pan and bring to the boil. Immediately the liquid is boiling, lower the temperature so that it simmers gently.
Cover with a lid and leave to cook for thirty minutes or until the chicken is cooked right through. Check by pushing a skewer into the thickest part; if the juices run clear, then it is done.
Remove the chicken. There will be a lot of liquid. Turn up the heat and boil to concentrate the flavours, letting the quantity of liquid reduce by about a third. Stir in the cream and the chopped dill, then season to taste. Wait for a minute or two, then remove from the heat and serve.
Enough for 4
FEBRUARY 17
A can of butter beans
There are some who turn their noses up at a can of beans. As indeed I do on occasions, when I am in the mood for soaking, draining, boiling, skimming, testing, draining, cooling and dressing dried beans. But a can or two of butter beans (or the oval, green flageolet; tiny, bead-like haricot; or white cannellini, the dragée of the bean world) has got me out of jail more times than I can shake a wooden spoon at.
Rinsing the beans will rid them of the slimy canning liquor but it is best done under a softly running tap if you are not to mash them to a watery hummus. Butter beans are the meatiest of the canned beans, the ones you can roll over in your mouth like the golden toffees in a tin of Quality Street. They are similar to, but not quite the same as, the delicious lima beans that are so popular in the US.
I wouldn’t argue with those who say a lovingly made bean bake, simmered and then cooked in a low oven, is better than the quick canned-bean supper I made tonight, but I am not after perfection here, I’m after something good to eat following a long day at my desk.
Butter beans with mustard and tomato
onions: 3
garlic: 3 large cloves
olive oil: 3 tablespoons
thyme: a few sprigs
bay leaves: 2
crushed tomatoes (or tomato passata): two 400g cans
butter beans: two 400g cans, drained
medium chillies: 2, deseeded and chopped
black treacle: 2 tablespoons
grain mustard: a tablespoon
smooth French mustard: a tablespoon
Peel and roughly chop the onions and garlic, put them in a heavy-based casserole with the olive oil and cook over a moderate heat till they are soft and pale gold. An occasional stir will prevent them sticking to the pan.
Add the thyme, bay leaves, tomatoes, drained beans and 250ml water and bring to the boil. Season with salt and black pepper and stir in the chillies, treacle and mustards. Partially cover with a lid and leave to simmer gently for thirty minutes or so, until the sauce has thickened a little. Serve hot.
Enough for 4
FEBRUARY 18
Little cakes – getting a good start
It is the creaming together of the butter and sugar that tends to get overlooked by those new to cake making. Yes, the raising agent – baking powder or self-raising flour – plays an essential part in the texture of your cake, but the amount of time you give to the initial creaming should never be underestimated.
The right beater helps. A wooden spoon and elbow grease will work, but things have moved on, and a machine of some sort will give a quicker and frankly better result. A hand-held electric beater or an electric mixer has the power to produce a vastly superior mixture, where the sugar and butter are whipped up into something resembling soft ice cream, like an old-fashioned Mr Whippy.
Little cakes are a good place to start. Individual cakes are usually better-natured than a larger, family-sized sponge, and any shortcomings can be more easily masked. Not for nothing the success of the ubiquitous buttercream-crowned cupcake.
I’m guessing here, but I suspect the world doesn’t need another cupcake recipe, which is why I set about making something with a little more heart and soul. A cake with a backbone, not to mention an interesting texture, which comes from rolled oats and dried apricots. It’s as near as I can get to giving you a cupcake recipe.
Little apricot and oat cakes
You will need about 16 paper muffin cases and a couple of muffin trays or tart tins to hold them.
butter, at room temperature: 225g
golden caster sugar: 225g
eggs: 3
dried apricots: 160g
self-raising flour: 225g
chopped mixed candied peel: a tablespoon
the grated zest of an orange
rolled oats: 3 tablespoons
a little demerara sugar
Set the oven at 180°C/Gas 4. Put the butter into a food mixer with the sugar and beat together until light and fluffy. The mixture should be pale, almost the colour of double cream. Break the eggs and beat them lightly, just to break them up, then beat them into the butter and sugar mixture a little at a time. Chop the apricots in a food processor till they resemble fine orange grit.
Add the flour to the cake mixture, through a sieve if you wish, stirring gently with a large metal spoon until no flour is visible. Stir in the chopped apricots, peel and orange zest.
Divide between the paper muffin cases, scatter with the oats and a good pinch of demerara sugar and bake in the preheated oven for twenty to thirty minutes, until risen (they may sink slightly in the centre) and golden brown.
Makes about 16
FEBRUARY 19
The beauty of kale
When it is touched with frost, it is hard to picture a leaf so beautiful as kale, even more than a nasturtium with morning dew caught in its veins. But there is more to it than that. The frost will sweeten the strident notes of the brassica, just as it does with sprouts and parsnips.
Cabbage and pork is an age-old marriage that I am still finding new versions of. Brussels sprouts, fried and tossed with bacon and cream, was a recent one; white cabbage with crumbled black pudding; a salad of sprouted broccoli and shredded coppa. All variations on a theme that works brilliantly. Chorizo has a spiciness that goes nicely with kale but, more importantly, it has great pearls of fat that will work the same magic with the dark, bitter leaves as sausages do for sauerkraut and streaky bacon does for Brussels sprouts.
Kale with chorizo and almonds
Good-quality cooking chorizo is not the cheapest of meats but I find a little goes a long way. When this recipe was first published in my column I was asked why I suggested discarding the oil, especially as it contains so much chorizo flavour. A good point, but I felt there was enough fat in the dish already. So the suggestion is just that. Leave the spicy, orange, liquid fat in, if you wish.
curly kale: 250g
soft cooking chorizo: 250g
skinned whole almonds: 50g
a little groundnut or sunflower oil
a clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
Wash the kale thoroughly – the leaves can hold grit in their curls. Put several of the leaves on top of one another and shred them coarsely, discarding the really thick ends of the stalks as you go.
Cut the chorizo into thick slices. Warm a non-stick frying pan over a moderate heat, add the slices of chorizo and fry until golden. Lift them out with a draining spoon on to a dish lined with kitchen paper. Discard most of the oil that has come out of the chorizo (better still, keep it for frying potatoes) and wipe the pan clean. Add the almonds and cook for two or three minutes, till pale gold, then lift out and add to the chorizo.
Warm a little oil in the pan, add the crushed garlic and shredded greens and cook for a couple of minutes, turning the greens over as they cook, till glossy and starting to darken in colour. Return the chorizo and almonds to the pan, add a little salt and continue cooking till all is sizzling, then tip on to hot plates.
Enough for 2 as a light main course, 4 as a side dish
FEBRUARY 20
The pancetta question
Modern cookbooks, mine included, are awash with pancetta – to start a sauce, flavour a soup, add protein to a leaf salad or simply give depth and savour. But could we not use bacon?
Though both bring a similar note to a recipe, pancetta has a few advantages over bacon. Most bacon in the UK is sold in rashers, while pancetta is more often found in useful cubes (often labelled as cubetti), which give more body to a sauce than strips of wafer-thin bacon. Most cures are less salty than our own back or streaky, and seem to have a faintly herbal note to them. (In practice they don’t, but most pancetta is more subtly aromatic.)
It is this subtlety that makes pancetta more suitable for so many recipes. It tends to become part of the backbone of a dish, rather than intrude as bacon can occasionally do. But that is not all. The reason it is so often specified over bacon is that it is a more consistent product. Suggest chopped bacon for a recipe and you can get any one of a hundred different cures, ranging from pale and watery to deeply smoky and dry. Although there are most certainly differing qualities of pancetta available, it is by and large consistent and therefore a safer bet.
A block of pancetta bought from an Italian deli will keep in decent condition in the fridge for a week. Bacon rashers less so. I regard a lump of the stuff, dirty rose pink in colour, thickly ribbed with white fat, as one of the kitchen essentials – like lemons, Parmesan and olive oil. A meal it does not make, but the difference it adds to even a few lettuce leaves or a bowl of soup is extraordinary. Today’s bean and spaghetti soup is a case in point.
Pancetta and bean soup with spaghetti
The one good thing about having little in the larder is that it prompts experimentation.
pancetta in the piece: 175g (you can use pancetta cubetti at a push)
a little olive oil
garlic: 2 small cloves
chopped tomatoes: two 400g cans
chickpeas or other large, firm pulses: a 400g can, drained
spaghetti: 250g
parsley: a small bunch
extra virgin olive oil
Chop the pancetta into small pieces, then fry for a minute or two in the olive oil over a moderate heat. Once the pancetta starts to turn golden, peel and crush the garlic and add to the pan, followed by the chopped tomatoes, 400ml water and the drained canned chickpeas or beans. Bring to the boil and season with salt and black pepper. Lower the heat so that the mixture simmers gently, thickening slowly, for about fifteen to twenty minutes.
Break the spaghetti into short lengths and boil in deep, generously salted water for eight or nine minutes, till tender, then drain. Roughly chop the parsley and stir into the soup together with the spaghetti. I add a trickle of really good olive oil to each bowl at the table.
Enough for 4
