Christmas in Hackney

December 12, 2009 – 10:58 pm

While David and Ben have been living it up in America, I’ve been slaving away in chilly London preparing for a traditional home-made Christmas.

We’ve got gingerbread tree decorations and hand painted wrapping paper but my success for the festive season has to be the Christmas cake to end all Christmas cakes! Now, I’ve never baked one before but I was chief bowl-licker for many years as a child so I felt pretty confident… Sticking with the back to basics retro theme I ended up adapting a recipe from this awesome-looking 80’s cookery magazine.
Munch(3)I started soaking the fruit for this recipe (220g each of sultanas, currents and raisins, 100g each of chopped glace cherries and chopped dates, 50g ground almonds) at the end of October and it sat, in a dark corner of the kitchen, absorbing the following selection of booze over a three week period: Balvenie whisky; Chambord and St Germain liqueurs; and two types of French brandy. Lovely!

Then the following ingredients were plonked, in the order listed, in a massive mixing bowl and stirred vigorously by everyone in the house until our arms fell off.

  • 220g butter, creamed with 220g soft brown sugar until light and fluffy
  • 4 eggs, added one at a time
  • 1 tablespoon of golden syrup (I prefer this to the treacle demanded by the recipe)
  • 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
  • 300g plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon mixed spice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon (not because it’s in the original recipe asked for it, but because I like it)
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • Alcohol-soaked fruit (forsaking the optional 100g mixed peel as, in my opinion, it tastes nasty)

Everything gets spooned into a round 9” cake tin – that you’ve cunningly lined with baking paper – and baked at 140 degrees for 3½-4 hours.

I made my own almond paste and it was surprisingly easy but you could always buy a ready-made pack of marzipan if you’re feeling lazy (or have consumed too much mulled wine). As you can see from the picture below, I went for traditional plain royal icing as decoration. There’s still two weeks to go until Christmas and we’ve had to hide the finished cake lest the temptation to cut into it early gets too much. This is the most eagerly anticipated cake in London. Fact.

Almond paste Iced cake

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By Rebecca Hales | Posted in Baking, Recipes | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

On tour in Boston

December 5, 2009 – 3:25 pm

Ben and I recently met up in Boston for a Music Hackday, we took the chance to do explore the local area, and follow some recommendations. Here’s a round up of the best bits.

Breakfast

It’s a meal I usually skip, it comes with usually getting up late. But armed with some local recommendations and fond memories of Sanfranciscan brunches an effort was made to check them out. As I noticed after my last trip the the US, Breakfast and brunch is a serious business and a proper meal in itself.

First up was Sunny’s Diner, small friendly and literally a block or two from our hotel. I went with the pretty standard homefries, eggs, coffee and juice – all of which was quite satisfactory. The thing I like about US restaurants is infinite and quick coffee top ups, I don’t think I even got half way through a mug before it was topped up.

By far the best breakfast was at Zoe’s, up towards the Harvard campus. A "quintessential fifties diner", with vinyl booths and cream soda. We had to queue for about 30 minutes to get a table, but once we did the service was super fast and friendly. It was a Sunday, busiest day I guess, but it was packed and obviously very very popular. I went all out with homefries, double scrambled egg, bacon, an enormous pancake, coffee and a cream soda. Perfection. I can’t recommend this place enough.

I still don’t really get the "homefries" thing, they vary from almost chip-like to crumbly (or burnt) sauté potatoes – it’s not really a breakfast food is it? One thing I will be cooking at home in the coming few weeks will be American style pancakes, I miss them already.

Dinner

A recommendation from Ian Hogarth, the Barking Crab is best described as a seafood shack on the docks, . Between 5 of us we ordered 4lb of lobster and 5lb of crab, plus some coleslaw on the side. It gets served on one big plate and you each get a bucket and a bib. The seafood was magnificent, huge juice crab legs, some of the best I’ve ever tasted. If you’re anywhere nearby its worth a trip, but you might have to wait a bit to get in.

The food low point was at the Middle East, a double gig venue/restaurant combo. Curious about an east-coast take on middle eastern food I was sadly disappointed. Everything was just a bit poor, from dry, flavorless falafel, to poor quality olives and pitta bread. I’ve spent quite a lot of time around Edgeware Rd in London, so I have a fair idea of tasty and authentic middle eastern food – this wasn’t it.

Beer

After the Music Hack day wrapped up everyone retreated to the Cambridge Brewing Company. A local brewery/restaurant and while the food wasn’t anything special the beer was wonderful. There were 4 or 5 types available including a delicious pumpkin ale and a nice strong belgian-style beer. The highlight were the 7 pint beer tubes, allowing you to pour your own pint.

Coffee

We like coffee and write about it quite a bit. So it was a bit of a shame to find Boston lacking in the coffee department. Maybe we had bad luck, but it didn’t feel like there was much of coffee culture – sure there were plenty of coffee shops, but it was all pretty mediocre.

Think I’m wrong? Let us know were you think is good for coffee in Boston.

The only upside is that it’s got me drinking sludgey drip-pot/filter coffee at work again. There’s something quite comforting about that dark and bitter coffee in the morning.

By David | Posted in Eating Out | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

London Coffee, a summary and a map

September 8, 2009 – 10:42 am

SF has a big coffee culture, I wrote about this recently in my San Francsico trip report. At the time I thought how the coffee (and coffee shops) out there put London to shame, but it’s more likely my lack of knowledge about good coffee in London that’s the problem.

Having done some research there’s definitely a London coffee scene, it’s just not something i’ve really looked at before. In an attempt to change that I put together a public map of good coffee shops and asked friends to add to it.

It’s become a collection of coffee places I like, friends favourites, and places i’d like to try.

London Coffee Map

http://bit.ly/london-coffee-map

Already i’m finding it useful, and have discovered (or rediscovered) good places.

An awesome discovery (thanks Matt Bilson) was The Counter in E3, a great coffee shop that does excellent brunch too. The best thing is that it’s still a bit of a hidden gem. Why? Because it’s really out of the way. Further out east that any other cafe on the map, over the north circular, at the back of an industrial estate, in the shadow of the Olympic stadium.

Latte and hot chocolate at The Counter

It’s far from an ideal location, but that’s why it’s so good. It’s not full of pretentious East London fashionistas idling through on their way to a market or gallery opening, there to be seen. If you go here, it’s because you’ve gone here, out of your way. The staff are friendly, the food good (I had a mumbai scramble, recommended), and the coffee excellent. Possibly the best latte i’ve had in London so far.

I’ve also rediscovered a few places I used to visit. At Broadway Market there’s a Vietnamese coffee stall, far from your normal coffee shop fare. It’s worth a visit. There’s also A Taste of Bitter Love, a tiny coffee shop in a retail unit on Hackney road. It’s directly on my route to work every day and I popped in here once or twice when it first opened. Back then it was deadly quiet and not amazing coffee, though not bad. Since then things seem to have improved, each time I cycle past it’s busier and I’ve heard good things about it, i’m going to have to go back.

There’s yet more places I still want to try, first on my list are Tina We Salute You (in Dalston) and Climpson & Sons on Broadway Market. And after that, there’s still plenty more. I’m looking forward to some cold, lazy, weekends exploring back streets in search of a good cup of coffee. I promise i’ll bring back some pictures and reviews.

This is the start of mission to rediscover good coffee in London. I have no doubt it exists here, you just need to look for it, beyond the stifling string of sub-mediocore high-street chains.

By David | Posted in Drinks, London | Tagged | Comments (7)

On tour in San Francisco

September 6, 2009 – 4:42 pm

This blog started over a year ago, when Ben and I lived together in London. About a year ago Ben moved out to San Francisco and rather than killing off the site it’s meant we’ve had a lot more variety. Mostly finding and posting recipes to try and make each other jealous.

For the last week i’ve been out here in SF visiting Ben and seeing what all the fuss is about. So while this is all old news to him (and anyone else local), this is my take on the food and drink I sampled in my time here.

Note; This isn’t a comprehensive review of SF food and drink, just the little corner of it I tried.

Coffee

Wow, they really like coffee here, and they do it very well. There’s a real culture around coffee here. Quite a few places even roast their own beans. Sipping a latte while beans are being roasted a few feet away is quite an experience – the smell is wonderful.

Four Barrel latte

Ritual Raosters

Latte in Mission Beach Cafe

If you’re in the area check out Ritual Roasters, it was busy every time I was there, but it’s damn good. Four Barrel is also very very good, a nice modern wood interior and delicious coffee. I tried had a variety of styles, but mostly stuck with lattes because they were so damn good everywhere.

It feels like London has a long way to catch up in this area – or perhaps I need to do more exploring for good coffee shops.

Beer

There’s a massive micro-brew culture here, lots of small (and slightly larger) brewing companies making excellent beer. Not your stereotypically "weak and watery" america beer, there’s an appreciation for world beers too. I’ve had excellent stouts, wheat beers, IPAs and belgian style beer.

Anchor Porter

Anchor Steam Summer Beer

Anchor is one of the more popular local breweries, in fact I drink it in London whenever I find it (try a good off license, or the beer/wine stall at Borough Market).

A real highlight was a trip to the thirsty bear brewing co for dinner with Ben and his family. They offer a beer sampler, a large shot of each of the 9 beers they make, including 2 seasonal one. Really nice wheat beer, good belgian beer, delicious pudding like stout. The sampler is easy to miss on the menu (it’s just a small note), luckily it was recommended to me before we went (Thanks foursquare.

Dairy

When Ben and I lived together cheese was a very important thing, to the point that in our rather small 3 drawer fridge 1 drawer was dedicated to cheese only. I was a bit worried about the prospect of american cheese too. You hear such bad things.

The cheese section at Bi-Rite (below, a local grocery which had an impressive selection of, well, everything) was pretty good, lots of it’s locally made by small(ish) producers. Plus your usual selection of excellent english/european cheeses.

Cheese at a grocery

Caramel/ginger + roasted coconut

Bi-rite creamery ice cream

Not cheese, but amazing in it’s own right was the ice cream of Bi-rite Creamery (a separate shop just up the road from the grocery). A really varied selection of flavours, from traditional (but delicious) to unusual and even more delicious. A highlight was lavender and the wonderful ginger/roasted coconut. Each time I went there were queues around the block, but it’s worth it.

Mexican Food

One of my food-goals for this trip was really good mexican food. Luckily I wasn’t disappointed, the huge hispanic/mexican community in San Francisco, especially in Mission, means the good was great, even just from street vendors. I was also a bit worried about the availability/quality of veggie/fish friendly options, but there was no need. I’d imagine it’s down to SF’s liberal leanings but almost everywhere I went had excellent veggie options.

Sadly, the jar of salsa I brought back in my checked luggage didn’t do so well. When I got home and opened the jar it made a horrible hissing noise, slightly worried I left it on the side and to my horror it started bubbling. I’ll chalk that up to the air pressure changes/freezing cold of the plane’s cargo hold. Oh well. A good excuse to try making my own soon.

Towards the end of the trip Ben and I trekked out in to deepest mission to get lunch at a diner. The place had a proper old school american diner feel, really friendly staff, busy (in a good way), booths, counter seats – and really good food. I can’t remember the name of the place. Its called St. Francis Fountain and i’d recommend it above all others mentioned here.

Brunch

Brunch is a very serious business here. Even more important than breakfast or lunch. Considering i’m rarely up early enough to eat properly at breakfast it’s an idea I can really get behind. The Mission beach cafe did a fine selection of scrambles, really hearty meals that set you up for the day.

Brunch

Brunch scramble with ricotta

Conclusions

The food and drink I had over there was pretty damn good. This list doesn’t cover everything, there was Thorough Bread Bakery (with delicious croissants and tuna sandwiches), the excellent tapas we had and plenty more.

I realise Ben was probably taking me on a fairly whirlwind tour of the best places, but it’s made me think more about what’s available here in London – and making the most of it. I’m already on a mission to find better coffee (with some success), to try and visit more markets (large and small) and more interesting food off the beaten track. With any luck this will lead to more regular updates as I post my exploration, findings and failures.

By David | Posted in Eating Out, San Francisco | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Thick tomato peperoncini sauce

August 24, 2009 – 9:30 am

Also known as: The best meal I’ve ever cooked.

A haphazard, somewhat spontaneous approach to cookery usually garners me mixed results, but following my recent passion for local, fresh produce in San Francisco, the variance in what I can cook has increased massively (and, the overall result has improved.)

This evening I planned to cook lamb steaks, serve them with small potatoes, fresh broccoli and some small amount of a tomato sauce, just to add moisture for the potatoes. Shopping around for my current obsession—heirloom tomatoes—I wanted a slow cooked, ragu-like sauce (sans meat), using some sweeter ingredients (shallots rather than onions, red peppers). It would be simple, thick and a make nice side. Instead, in the course of cooking, I was inspired to completely rework my meal around this sauce. Heirloom tomatoes have a unique, sweet taste, and it became a celebration of them.

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###The sauce itself

This makes enough for three generous portions, but could extend further depending on the meal

  • 5 large heirloom tomatoes (deep red, green variety), diced
  • 2 red peppers, diced
  • 3 shallots, sliced
  • Half a leek, sliced
  • 3 cloves of garlic, chopped
  • 2" piece of fresh ginger, chopped
  • 6 small peperoncini, sliced (with seeds), sliced
  • Salt and pepper, ground

The method follows my rudimentary understanding of making a ragu; that is, use a very low heat and cook it slowly. I wanted to bring out the sweetness in the shallots, not flash fry them.

Start the pan on a low heat. I’m convinced an orange, cast iron pot would be ideal for this, but since I don’t own one, a heavy frying pan sufficed. Add a small amount of olive oil, throw in the leek, shallots, garlic and ginger. Stir to coat it all with oil, grind on salt and pepper. Then, leave well alone. Stir every 15 minutes or so to avoid sticking. Let it sweat and cook down.

Real ragu is cooked for hours, so start the sauce as far in advance of your meal as you can; cook it as slow as you can allow.

With the base established, add all of the tomatoes and red peppers. Make sure all the tomato juice goes in; there’s no other liquid to be added. Stir, and again leave it to warm through to a simmer.

As the tomato chunks start to break down and the flesh thickens the sauce, add the peperoncini slices. I actually just let these sit in a pile at the centre of the pan until near the end. They provide a sweet, peppery heat that complements the tomatoes to absolute perfection.

You’ll find that it’s never necessary to turn up the heat; the sauce will be slowly thickening. You should err on the side of caution to ensure that the sauce doesn’t burn off too much liquid. Stir to test the consistency, and cover the pan when it gets thick.

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###The rest of the meal

The rest of the meal is very simple, and can be cooked in the final 20 minutes. You need:

  • Six thick slices of bacon (or 4 if you’re back home and have access to bacon rashers rather than slices)
  • Corn flour
  • Fresh pasta
  • Broccoli

Not wanting to make the meal oily, I elected to bake the bacon, rather than fry it. Since the bacon is also the main meat of an otherwise conventional meal, I wanted to maintain some texture and softness to it—in opposition to the common American method of cooking bacon, which is to cook it until it’s crisp and too dry.

Lay out the bacon slices on a tray, and as you do so coat both sides in a generous amount of corn flour (cornmeal). The flour cooks in the bacon fat, making an extra, crispy coating, and also makes the flavour far more savoury than bacon alone. That’s ideal to complement the sweetness of the tomatoes. (This bacon variation comes from about.com’s culinary arts page on baking bacon, by the way.)

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Expect to bake the bacon at 200°C (400°F)for about 20 minutes, but check regularly to drain off excess fat, and to allow for variance and your cooking preference.

With 5 minutes to go: Steam the broccoli, and boil the pasta. Avoid doing anything special to either of these. In fact, with the flavours and textures of the sauce and the cornmeal-coated bacon, it’s very important that these are kept simple to balance the meal.

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These old variety heritage tomatoes are proving to be a better tasting and surprisingly flexible replacement for the familiar and sometimes bland tomato varieties we default to. Far from just adding a more interesting flavour to a simple sauce, they transformed the dish. It was an inspiring experience, and has been encouraged to seek out alternate varieties of other foods, just to explore.

By Ben | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Growing your own

August 23, 2009 – 2:18 pm

Herbs

I have quite limited space for plants in this flat, but for a year or so I had a few herbs in pots on the balcony. It’s been nice having fresh mint, thyme, oregano, rosemary, parsley and sage on my doorstep. It’s certainly helped with cooking, homegrown herbs do taste that bit better, plus they’re always there, you don’t need to run out to the shop and get them. Having good quality ingredients on hand

  • A simple mixed herb omelette
  • Rosemary infused olive oil
  • Lemon sage with oven baked fish
  • Fresh mint for Pimms and lemonade

There’s also a great sense of achievement cooking with and eating something you’ve gone yourself, especially in this harsh city environment.

At the start of spring I decided to expand my garden a little beyond herbs and try some fruit and vegetables. While i’ve love to try square foot gardening I sadly don’t have the space for it. Instead I picked up some seeds and made a trip to Columbia Road market (a wonderful flowers, herbs and plants market in East London) to pick up some new plants, pots and compost.

So, 6 months later, how did I get on? Not great, but not a complete disaster.

Spinach & Beetroot

This is spinach and beetroot as i’m clearing the pot today. They were a mixed success, while the spinach sprouted early and gave a good harvest it never really had enough space. They were delicious and really quite easy though, recommended. The beetroot could have done with more space too, most importantly more depth. Pulling them up today it was clear that the bulb had barely started to form on any of them. A real shame, but I did use some of the leaves in a salad and those were lovely, so not a complete failure.

Poor tomato plant

My tomato plant was doing OK for a while. It wasn’t big (due to being in an overly small pot for too long) but it had produced a few nice size fruits. Unfortunately, when I went on holiday I forgot to ask anyone to water anything. It turned out that was a very very hot week. Whoops. Everything was looking pretty bad when I got back, but the tomato plant had the worst of it. The big tomato was badly scorched and the whole plant was yellowed and crispy. It still looks this way, but the large fruit at the front is still ripening, so maybe i’ll get something out of it. Next time i’d get a grow bag and do it the easier way – and water them.

Spring Onions

The spring onions were a surprise success, grown from seed in a pot. They took a long time (~4 months?) to get to that size, but that’s almost store bought sizes. I’m quite proud. I’ve used a couple of young ones in a salad before, but i’m looking forward to using up the rest of them this week. Definitely recommended if you have a bit of space and time.

Chilies

My final attempt was a couple of chili plants. I picked up the seeds at Wahaca, a mexican restaurant in Covent Garden. I wasn’t really expecting to do much, but they’re not bad. They’ve not actually grown any chilies, but i’m going to move them inside for the winter, once I move, and see how they do next year. I have great hopes.

Overall, i think it was an interesting attempt, equal parts success and failure. The success down to luck, and the failure caused by my lazyness and a pretty poor location. I’ll be moving to a new flat in the next month, this one has even less outside space, but does have lots of light and a couple of small balconies.

I’ll be moving some of my herbs (and the chilies) with me, but sadly the rest is going on the compost heap and i’ll try again next spring. Perhaps I should look at some indoors/balcony plants for autumn, any suggestions?

By David | Posted in London | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

A simple smoked salmon dinner

August 22, 2009 – 7:26 am

I’ve spent a large part of this week being, well, quite ill. Social, mental and physical exhaustion—perhaps—all caught up with me at once and took me down. It’s also true that the pseudo-bohemian San Francisco lifestyle of eating out with friends all the time can take its toll. This week I’ve been making more effort to cook for myself, keep it simple, and eat a lot of fresh vegetables. That culminated this evening in a meal of fabulous freshness, and it photographed well, so here you go.

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The recipe is gloriously simple and worth documenting more as a testament to quality, fresh ingredients than for reproduction: The gist is that you can throw any combination of fresh vegetables together on a griddle, add salt and serve to great effect.

In this case, the combination goes like this:

  • Smoked salmon
  • A fresh loaf of multi-grain artisan bread
  • Half a lemon
  • One yellow heirloom (heritage) tomato
  • Broccoli
  • Yellow squash
  • Leek
  • Carrot
  • New potatoes
  • Dash of white wine
  • Crème fraîche
  • Salt

Parboil (or steam) the potatoes, then fry the remaining vegetables on a griddle, with a little oil. Add a liberal amount of salt.

When the potatoes are done, add them to the vegetable griddle, splash of white wine, fry off the alcohol.

Whilst that’s going on, prepare two slices of bread, butter them, add slices of smoked salmon and drizzle with lemon juice to taste. Slice the tomato and arrange on the side.

Turn down the heat on the vegetables and add the crème fraîche. Stir it in until it’s even, and serve.

Little recipes like this are one of the reasons I love food so dearly; it’s not a simple dish like beans-on-toast or a cheese toastie is simple; it’s simple because it keeps close to its component parts, is quick to prepare and yet still serves up great variations of complementing flavour.

By Ben | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Thorough Bread Bakery, San Francisco

May 23, 2009 – 10:56 am

San Francisco, as you may have heard, has quite a reputation for food. You can get all kinds of wonderful meals here (most notably brunch, which I will cover in a later post). But, what I especially value in a city’s cuisine is not just bigger meals, but the quality of more regular food. The meals you grab for lunch, eat alone, eat at work or straight from the wrapping. Affirming my love for this city is the availability of simpler foods prepared to incredible quality with real care. It’s appropriate, then, that my first San Francisco review is of a sandwich. (The humble Tuna Melt, no-less.)

Thorough Bread and Pastry is a fairly new bakery and café on Church Street. Small, but open and airy, with eye catching, elaborate bread-based window displays, it has real class whilst still being a friendly and welcoming little store. Inside is a massive selection of pastries, tarts, cakes and breads, all freshly prepared in front of you, on premises by some outstandingly talented bakers.

What’s made me recognisable there are the sandwiches. They offer eight, all of which are completely different, on different (fresh made) breads. Prepared in about five minutes, each one is something special.

The Blondie’s Pulled Pork was the first (actually, I ordered one on three successive visits before I could bring myself to order anything else). You can’t go wrong with barbecue, but it’s better than just that. Consider that the butter on the bread, melting into the warm pork, is absolutely right. A vital part of the flavour, not just moisture for the bread.

The roast beef is now (with amusing predictability) my favourite. The beef is fine (yeah, just ‘fine’), but the bread. Oh, the bread. It’s made on a fresh, warm, spongy granary bread that might be the best I’ve ever tasted. I could eat that bread on its own for days.

And then, as pictured above. A tuna melt. A tuna melt is perhaps one of the simplest sandwiches you can make. That triggers prejudice. You dismiss it because it’s simple. You’re ordering food, so of course you will have something fancier, or made with less trivial ingredients. Canned tuna; slice of cheese; dash of Worcestershire Sauce; microwave. Easy, right? Do it at home, surely? Sure. Tasty, too. Except. Except when the recipe begins by drizzling olive oil into the bread and toasting it on a hot plate. Then, there’s an extra mile being run to make an extraordinary sandwich.

Tuna mayonnaise is not so simple, and Thorough Bread’s tuna mayonnaise is amazing. Strong on herb and citrus flavours, the texture is fluffy and light; not stodgy. The result is flavour that tastes really fresh and jumps out.

Everything about these sandwiches has been carefully considered. Every single ingredient fits and complements the flavour. There’s care gone into these recipes that doesn’t go into some three course meals. And yet there it is, between two slices of bread.

Transforming a sandwich that’s easily taken for granted into a small meal to go out of your way for is a pretty fantastic achievement. In San Francisco, Thorough Bread are not alone in their fine artisan offerings. They are, however, my favourite.

Thorough Bread is at 248 Church Street (off Market), San Francisco

By Ben | Posted in Eating Out, San Francisco | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)

Profiteroles with chocolate sauce

May 16, 2009 – 11:52 pm

How Profiteroles should look.

So I finally got round to making the profiteroles filled with patisserie cream as promised. It was a mistake to start baking these late on a Monday evening when my housemates had just returned from a festival and were too hung-over/exhausted to enjoy them. It is not possible for one person to eat 40 profiteroles, however hard they try. Attempt this recipe when you know you’ve got friends about who’ll help you eat them or freeze the unfilled profiteroles for later (the cream filling will keep for 3 days covered in the fridge).

Choux pastry is easy but involves quite a few steps. Here are the ingredients:

  • 125ml milk
  • 200ml water
  • 150g plain flour
  • 1 tsp golden caster sugar
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 100g unsalted butter
  • 4 medium eggs, lightly beaten

Ingredients

Preheat the oven to 200˚C. Pop the flour and salt into a bowl. Place the milk, cold water, salt, sugar into a saucepan over a low heat. Once the sugar and salt has dissolved add the butter. Once the butter has melted, bring to the boil. Turn off the heat then tip in the flour and beat vigorously with a wooden spoon. As soon as the mixture starts to come away from the side of the pan, stop beating and tip onto a plate to cool for about a minute. Then, slide the mixture back into the pan, then gradually beat in the eggs – mixing well – until you have a smooth paste.

Most recipes tell you to bake the buns on greaseproof paper but a floured baking try worked fine. Either spoon the choux pastry into a piping bag fitted with a large plain nozzle or use a trusty spoon. Pipe (or dollop) walnut-sized blobs onto the baking tray with a couple of inches between them. Bake for 18-20 minutes until well risen and golden brown. Leave to cool.

The mix

The mix

Ready to bake

I used this recipe for patisserie cream and mixed it with 250ml of whipped cream spiked with ½ a vanilla pod and a tbsp of icing sugar. Stab a hole in the base of a profiterole and pipe in the mixture. Repeat until all the buns are filled or you get bored.

Fresh out of the oven.

Making the patisserie cream

Piping cream in to the profiteroles

Serve the profiteroles chilled with a warm melted chocolate topping.

  • 100g dark chocolate and 100g milk chocolate
  • 2 tbsp clear honey
  • 100ml single cream

Melt the ingredients together in a saucepan on a low heat, stirring continuously and you should be able to top about 20 profiteroles generously. Mine didn’t come out looking like this but were still pretty awesome.

Yum. Finished profiteroles

By Rebecca Hales | Posted in Baking, Recipes | Tagged , , , | Comments (1)

Rum & Muscovado barbecued Bananas

May 11, 2009 – 9:44 pm

A quick one, since I served these up twice over the last weekend. Barbecue weather has arrived in California.

This a dead-simple dessert to follow a barbecue. Bananas require very little preparation and are well suited to the dwindling heat of coals past their peak. Plus, they can be left cooking for a variable long time whilst your guests digest all the sausages they’ve filled up on.

Dad used to cook these all the time over the summer when I was a kid; it’s been a favourite part of every barbecue with my family.

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The recipe is very simple:

  • One banana per person
  • Muscovado sugar (or the best alternative dark brown sugar you can find)
  • Dark rum (Ward tradition dictates Mount Gay Eclipse Rum)

Slice down the length of the banana, along the inside of the curve. Be careful not to cut through the skin on the other side (the banana will be cooked in its skin). Then, run your thumb deep along the incision to open it out and make a cavity.

Fill the cavity will muscovado sugar.

Before grilling, pour rum into the sugar, up to the brim of the open skin. You might get half a shot in, but it’s really not exact. You can add more during the cooking if you like, or if (when) a banana falls over. Since it’s the end of the barbecue and you’re probably drunk, I’ll remind you now that rum is obviously flammable, so be careful of spills as you’re placing each onto the grill.

If you’re making these for children, you can use lemon juice instead of rum (actually, this is super-tasty in its own right; lucky kids.)

The barbecue heat needs to be dropping. If you’ve a gas barbecue, use a low heat. Time is key. Once on, expect to leave them 45 minutes. As they cook the bananas will soften, melting together with the sugar and rum.

Serve in their skins with a single small scoop of thick unsweetened cream, or vanilla ice cream.

Photograph by Amy Hammond.

By Ben | Posted in Recipes | Tagged , , , , | Comments (1)