Elderberry and damson crumble - Where has all the time gone?

Elderberries

 I’m actually scared how fast time goes by. Autumn snuck up so quickly and winter is doing much the same. It’s bloody dark in the morning for Pete’s sake. I’ve really not made the most of the damson season that is drawing rapidly to a close as I write. I had the best intentions of making damson vodka, damson fragipane… Guess I’ll have to shelf those ideas till next year. I hope they aren’t too dusty in there. Chatting to one of my oldest chums at the weekend we were in such astonishment that we hadn’t seen each other in two months that she checked her diary. Sure enough, we hadn’t seen each other. All that time had gone by and what had I done? Eat, sleep, work, moan, holiday, hoover, kiss, walk, cook, natter, laugh…

Damsons

My Mum forwarded me Steve Jobs' commencement speech to Stanford University in 2005 and these words resonated greatly with me, “remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only is what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.”

I guess our time is so precious here on this “pale blue dot”. Death and change really are the only constants. I’m going to make the effort to be more aware of my time and then maybe I wont miss the damson season next year (and might actually do something useful with my evening).

This is a lovely little treat of a recipe. I’ve kept the crumble topping simple, almost like shortbread, to really show off the flavour of the fruit and berries. Elderberries are also a great way to get into foraging as they are easy to recognise and hugely common.

Damson and elderberry crumble with a bit of vanilla ice cream

Elderberry and Damson crumble – serves 4 – 6

Oven preheated to 180°C

For the fruit filling -

600g damsons

100g elderberries (about 10 heads of berries)

70g caster sugar

For the crumble topping -

100g plain flour

40g caster sugar

50g butter (at room temperature)

De-stone the damsons if you so wish.

Add the damsons, elderberries, sugar and a splash of water to a pan over a moderate heat.

Whilst the fruit is cooking make the crumble mix by rubbing the flour and butter together until you get an even, sandy texture.

Add the sugar to the flour and butter mixture and stir.

Stir occasionally till the damsons are soft.

Once the fruit has cooked add more sugar to taste as required.

Add the fruit mixture to an ovenproof dish and add the crumble topping to the top of it and gently pat down.

Cook for 15 – 20 minutes until light golden brown.

Serve with ice cream or crème fraiche.

Enjoy.

Roast peaches with Sauternes and lavender

Peaches, Sauternes and lavender - all ready for the oven

Sometime you get it right, sometimes you don’t. I’ve cooked a few blah recipes recently. Namely a disappointing almond sponge cake and a creamy rabbit, leek and mustard stew which frankly freaked me out. I managed to convince myself that it tasted “funny” and couldn't eat it. I think this is due to my nostalgic memories of my childhood pet bunny Shadow (whaaaa). Another culinary low light of late was a full on 3 hour recipe for an authentic Bolognese (made with 3 different types of meat and all). Despite all the effort the boyfriend’s verdict on it was “tastes like mince, as in mince and tatties”. Humph. Just when I was about to hang up my metaphorical apron and go sob into a packet of biscuits I pulled this little number out the bag/oven and all in the world was good again.

Flat peaches

Granted this is a very girly dessert but, without wanting to blow my trumpet, it is pretty interesting. Succulent white peaches, rich, sticky Sauternes syrup and the delicate perfume of the lavender. I think this would go lovely with some goat’s milk ice cream. If you don’t have any lavender you could substitute rosemary or thyme. I nicked the lavender from the flowerbed at the end of my street. My take on the English riots/rampage.

Lavender

Roast peaches with Sauternes and lavender

Oven set to 175 degrees celsius

Serves 2-4 depending on greediness and volume of ice cream consumed

6 flat peaches or 4 round peaches

20g butter finely chopped

2 tsp of demerara sugar

a glug of Sauternes, (75-100ml)

2 – 3 springs of lavender (ideally use the sprigs that are just beginning to open up)

Half the peaches and remove the stone, add the pieces to an ovenproof dish so that they fit snugly together.

Scatter over the butter and sugar.

Add a glug of the Sauternes so that the peaches are sitting in a Sauternes bath about 1cm deep.

Add the lavender to the Sauternes.

Pop in the oven for about 50 minutes until the peaches are wonderfully soft and the edges are sweet and crispy.

Enjoy.

Suck it up – Worcester berry and marzipan crumble

Worcester berry and marzipan crumble

I remember being told as a young child, “sometimes we need to do things we don’t necessarily want to do”. Tough love. I think the next few months are going to fall under that heading. I’m just going to have to “suck it up”  (and comfort eat).

An ex-boyfriend once told me my food wasn’t “sexy”. Perhaps he was right but frankly I couldn’t care less, on a good day it is pretty darn tasty. This recipe is a perfect example of that; not sexy but great comfort food.

Worcester berries

I hadn’t come across Worcester berries before last Saturday when I spotted them at the farmer's market. If you are interested they are a cross between a red gooseberry and a blueberry and make excellent jam apparently. If you can’t find them most stone fruit such as plums or berries such as brambles would work well.

Worcester berry crumble filling

Worcester and marzipan crumble

Makes 4 pots

Oven set to 180 degrees c

For the topping –

100g plain flour

80g of butter at room temperature

20g demerara sugar

35g marzipan chopped into ½ cm cubes

For the filling -

600g Worcester berries, topped and tailed

80 - 100g approx of caster sugar

Add the filling ingredients to a pan over a moderate heat.

Maybe add a tiny splash of water if you think it will stick.

Cook for approx 5 minutes or until soft.

Have a taste you may need to add more sugar.

To make the topping add the flour and butter together by rubbing the mixture between your fingers until it resembles rough sand.

Stir in the sugar and half of the marzipan.

To assemble the crumble add some of the filling to a wee pot or ramekin if you are being posh.

You may want to add the fruit and just a little of juice as it would be a bit of a watery crumble if you add the whole of the filling mixture.

Scatter the remaining half of the marzipan onto the filling and then add the topping mix.

To make a crisp crumble make sure the top is completely covered and compress slightly.

Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until crisp and lovely.

Serve with cream, custard, yogurt or whatever you fancy. Personally I think some elderflower ice cream would be pretty amazing with this.

Enjoy.

Worcester berry and marzipan crumble - tucking in

Raspberry sorbet with vodka and lime (foraging trip part 2)

Our foraging trip last weekend was just so nice. It was just great being away from the city for a few hours. I am always amazed by the marvellous goodies we find when we start looking out a bit more. It makes me think about how much we miss day to day, zoned out in our own little worlds.  We came across crab apples, watercress, wild cherries, pineapple camomile, orange birch bolete, sweet cicely, rosehips, hawthorn and wild strawberries. Our main bounty, however, was lots of ruby red wild raspberries. These are smaller and slightly more tart and intense than commercially grown raspberries which of course you could use in this recipe instead.  “Glen ample” is a wonderful raspberry variety – large and plump with a pleasant acidity. It is widely available in different supermarkets.

This recipe makes an intense sorbet which really is very quick and painless to make, taking about 20 minutes from beginning to eating. I served it in a little glass with a wee hit of vodka and some lime zest. This recipe works on proportions, 4 parts fruit to 1 part sugar, so whatever quantity of fruit you find/buy you can enjoy it in sorbet form.

Raspberry sorbet

600g raspberries

150g icing sugar

to serve – vodka

lime zest

Mash the raspberries through a sieve with a bowl underneath to catch the puree.

Discard the pips (unless you are more inventive than me and have a great use for them).

Add the icing sugar to the raspberry puree and mix.

Have a taste, you may wish to add more sugar.

Pour into an ice cream maker.

Leave to churn until the required consistency is achieved.

Enjoy.

(Note to the sister-in-law-to be, check out the glass, recognise it?)

Oh Molly I've fallen for you and your pistachio and honeyed apricot cake.

Pistachio and honeyed apricot cake

As an avid Orangette fan I was excited to read Molly Wizenberg’s food memoir “a homemade life”. It’s the story of her life to date and the recipes that have intersected it. It’s such a beautiful read and so touching in parts. I think I may have even had a wee tear in my eye at one stage. I would just like to state that this is not normal behaviour for me, I’m normally ‘ard as nails hailing from Glasgow and all that.

If I am being completely honest quite a few of the recipes didn’t entirely appeal to me. An example of this would be ranch dressing and caraway seed potato salad. However, this pistachio and honey apricot cake recipe plus her incredible ability to convey the nuances of people, time and place in prose more than compensates. As I’ve written before food has nostalgic and comforting dimensions and it is this that Molly captures so beautifully. Although this book is sorrowful in places overall it is a really charming read filled with warmth. Who needs prozac when you’ve got this and pistachio and honeyed apricot cake?

Pistachios

It’s a nice dessert cake. I’m not going to lie and say it is the best cake in the history of  all desserts but it does fill me with exotic imagery and was certainly good enough for me to eat 3 slices in one afternoon. If anyone would like my copy of  Molly’s book just leave a comment to say so and I can post it on. First one wins. Whoop: my first blog competition!

Pistachio and honeyed apricots cake batter

Pistachio and honeyed apricot cake

Adapted from Molly Wizenberg’s “a Homemade Life”

Oven set to 170 degrees c

Grease and flour a 9 inch round tin – I used a springform tin and it seemed to work pretty well.

100g raw pistachios very finely ground

150g plan flour

2 tsp baking powder

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

¼ tsp salt

½ cup of milk

¼ tsp vanilla extract

110g unsalted butter at room temperature

220g caster sugar

3 large eggs

5 apricots

1tbsp runny honey

Combine the milk and vanilla in one bowl.

Combine the flour, nutmeg, salt and baking powder in another bowl.

In a third bowl mix the butter and sugar together with an electric whisk until light and fluffy.

Add the eggs, one at a time, to the butter and sugar mixture whisking well after each egg.

To this mixture add a third of the flour, mix with a wooden spoon and add a third of the milk mixture then stir.

Continue this process until all the batches are in the cake batter.

Pour the cake batter into the tin.

Half the apricots and place them in the batter cut side up.

Add some honey into the centre of each apricot.

Bake for 35 minutes or so until a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.

Cool in the tin for 5-10 minutes and then turn out on to a cooling rack to cool completely.

Enjoy.

Yogurt pannacotta (mark 3)

Yogurt pannacotta with elsanta strawberries

Mark 1 - Eventually I won the war with pannacotta. I'm not too proud to admit that the first time I made it the pannacotta was inedible. Quite an achievement considering the fact I will pretty much eat anything, drawing the line at the  “stuff” that comes out of the work canteen. To be honest I’m not too sure what went wrong last time. I’ve gone over it in my head like some broken hearted teenage girl. Maybe I neglected it? Maybe I did it all wrong?  Realistically I think it failed because I because the buttermilk that I tried to make it with was off.  It smelt acrid. Horrible stuff. Seems so obvious now.

Mark 2 – I had tried to freeze cream. It didn’t work. When I defrosted it, it was lumpy. To quote the Smiths “I was bored before I even began”. Pannacotta mark 2 was a non-starter.

Mark 3 - Third time I tried it with yogurt it seemed to work better. I wanted to keep it fresher than just set cream. Persistence paid off and I was able to bring a nice summery dessert over to a friend's for dinner. I was smug; I had won the pannacotta war.

This dish is unbelievably easy (despite my previous attempts). It took only 10 minutes to make. It needs a chum to accompany it, fresh strawberries like these “elsantas” were tasty or some roasted rhubarb would work equally well.

Yogurt pannacotta serves 4

2 ½-3 sheets of gelatine (depending how wobbly you like it)

285ml carton of double cream

300ml plain yogurt (2 yeo valley pots)

1tsp vanilla paste (or 1 vanilla pod, split and seeds scraped out)

4 slightly heaped dessertspoons caster sugar

Add the gelatine to a bowl of cold water, leave to stand for about 10 minutes.

In the meantime gently heat the cream in a pan over a medium to low heat.

Add the sugar and stir until dissolved.

Slowly increase the heat till the cream is just about to boil and has thickened.

It should be able to coat the back of a spoon.

Take the cream off the heat, squeeze the water out of the gelatine and add to the cream.

Stir until dissolved.

Leave the mixture to cool for a minute or two.

Be patient.

Add the yogurt and vanilla, stir in.

If you are a perfectionist, put the mixture through a sieve, otherwise pour the mixture into the 4 dishes.

Leave to cool for about an hour before putting in the fridge.

Once in the fridge they will take 2-3 hours to set.

To serve, dip the bottomof the pots in hot water for a couple of seconds.

Put a butter knife around the top of the pot to loosen.

Give it a gentle shake to get the air to the bottom and turnout on a plate.

Enjoy.