CHOCOLATE CAKE of DOOM/ECSTACY

For my retreat guests I try to cook healthy dinners and then lower the tone with a super naughty pudding… You can make this dairy and gluten free but you cant substitute the eggs. Heres my recipe:

180 gr good quality dark cooking chocolate

200 gr butter/vegan alternative

5 eggs

200 gr caster sugar

80 gr plain flour/ g.f. flour/coconut flour

125 gr ground almonds

1 tsp baking powder

2 tbsp cocoa, 1 tsp vanilla essence

handful of raspberries/strawberries/blackberries

OVEN 180 C

Melt chocolate with butter in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water gently stir together once melted. Seperate the eggs being careful not to get any yolk in the whites. Whish the whites until fluffy and fairly stiff. Fold the yolks into the chocolate and butter mix then mix all the other ingredients into this except for the whites. Fold them in last. Scrape out into a medium sized cake tin and scatter the berries ontop of the cake. Bake in the oven for around 25 minutes – dont let it overcook! you want there to be a slight wobble in the centre when you take it it out.   Let it cool and eat with lots of cream and fresh fruit. If you want something really gooey then put the cake into the fridge before serving.

 

 

T H A I Y E L L O W C U R R Y

Sorry its been ages. Here as requested:

 

Thai curry recipe. Serves 5 ish

For the paste : 2 banana shallots, big thumb of ginger, handfull of coriander stalks, lump of fresh or 3 tsp dry turmeric, 1 tbsp coriander seeds, 2 tbsp fish sauce  (omit if vegan/veg obviously)

Pulse the paste ingredients with plenty of vegetable oil in the blender until you get a rough paste. Gently sweat the paste in a pot for 5 minutes or so. Then add:

1 block creamed coconut (dont use tinned or coconut cream as they usually contain weird emulsifyers – the block is pure coconut)

5 lime leaves dried or frozen

1tbsp sugar

4 tbsp soy sauce

Cover in 1 ltr of water and let the block dissolve and come to the boil. Once at the boil season the sauce with salt – it can be nice and salty. Now you can add your chopped up vegetables – pretty much anything works! Here are some suggestions: Pumpkin, carrot, courgette, green beans, peas, peppers, sweet potato, new potatoes, broccoli, kale, cauliflower., aubergine…

Just bare in mind that some vegetables take longer than others so you might want to stagger adding them to the sauce. Make sure the sauce almost covers the vegetables – add some more water if it doesnt

Once the vegetables are al dente (you want them to retain a bit of integrity this is not a stew!) Add in:

Juice of 1 lemon

4 tbsp sesame seed oil

Serve with some fresh coriander, lime wedges, peanuts, prawn crackers, rice and a crunchy salad.

 

Some Photos

That plum cake

Nothing too complicated here – but much appreciated by the yoga group at Bonhays that I was catering for this weekend. The sugar makes a sort of crunchy crust and then there is the softness of the baked fruit and then spongelike cake underneath – i served this with some cream cheese sweetened with some icing sugar and a lemons worth of lemon zest.

125 gr flour

1 tsp baking powder

200 gr sugar

115 gr butter

2 eggs

6 plums, stoned and halved

2tbsp demerara sugar

Cream the butter and sugar, add the eggs slowly. Fold in the flour and baking powder. Scrape the batter into the cake tin and arrange the plum halves over the top. Sprinkle with the sugar then bake for around 40 mins or until there is no wobble in the middle.

First weekend at Bonhays

some nice salady bits. Im hoping there might be a photo of the hazelnut pavlova somewhere as it was pretty to look at.

Yogurt

Just came back from catering at a writing retreat – had a few requests for my yogurt recipe:

1 ltr full fat milk

2tbsp live yogurt

Create a bainmarie by putting your milk in a pan that can fit into another pan filled with water. (this will help you avoid burned milk which will taint the yogurt). Heat to at least 92 C or until it starts to bubble up if you dont have a thermometer. Take the milk pan out of the hot water and allow to cool to 45 C or until you can just keep your finger in (you can speed this up by putting the pan into a washing up bowl full of cold water). Add your yogurt into the milk and stir thoroughly. Now you need to leave your milk to ‘yog’, undisturbed in a warm place like on the radiator, in the airing cupboard, by the burner, on a hotwater bottle, in the greenhouse etc for about 6/8 hours. It really does like it warm – imagine its like a cat.

At the risk of pointing out the obvious – the better the milk the better the yogurt and if, like me, you like it creamy add a glug of cream to the milk whilst its cooling.

Very lazy sourdough

Some sourdough recipes are all about being slave to the loaf, not one for sufferation food  I’ve developed a rye bread recipe that’s dead simple with no kneading and only really requires a bit of attention at the baking stage. Ingredients 500gr rye flour Handful of seeds, I like to use linseeds and sunflower 2tbsp Sourdough starter Water 2tsp fine sea/rock salt 1 tbsp molasses Put all your ingredients in a bowl and mix in around 400-500 ml water, I never measure but aim for a very thick, batter like consistency. Mix in some fat if you want like hemp/flaxseed oil, virgin coconut oil or melted butter. Pour the dough into a greased bread tin and leave this to rise in plastic bag in a warm place for as long as you like. The longer the more sour. I generally make the mix in the evening and then bake it the next day, you want it to have noticeably risen, about doubled in size. Put into the oven at around 175 C for an hour, then turn out and place back in the oven upside down for another half hour or so. Turn the oven off and leave the loaf in there to further dry out and cool down as it can be a bit cakey if too wet.

Sour Pickles

Too easy – another tasty fermented recipe.

Find gherkins – either grow them (then you can get all the diddly ones) or find a Polish shop where they sell them fresh at the right time of year.

Dissolve 6 tablespoons of salt in 2 ltrs water. Peel plenty of garlic cloves and chop some chili. Also nice in the pickles are fennel or dill heads, pepper corns and caraway seeds. You will need some leaves that are high in tanins like vine leaves, cherry leaves, oak leaves – these keep the pickles crunchy. Wash the gherkins of all their prickly hairs and leftover flower heads then layer them up with all the other ingredients in a big jar. Weigh the gherkins down with a plastic bag full of brine so they are submerged. Leave out of fridge to ferment. Should be good to eat in 5/6 days after which you are probably best to put them in the fridge or they might turn into snozzcombers. any mould and scum just wipe off with a clean cloth.

Catering for the masses

Mini trifles at ‘Festoon’

250 heart shaped scones with Jyoti from PEPCO

Aubergine and tapenade rolls, borage

Chicory, za’tar, burned butter and hazelnuts with anchovy dressing

Beetroot and sunflower seed dip

 

Piccalilli as requested

So much better than the flaccid yellow goop that you buy in shops. You want a mix of vegetables that have a good crunch and some nice colours I usually use a 2 kg mixture of:

Cauliflower

Fine green beans

Shallots

Red pepper or chillies

Courgettes, yellow and green

Carrots

Nasturtium pods

100 gr Salt

2 ltr Water

8 tbsp cornfour

6 tbsp sugar

700 ml vinegar

3tbsp Mustard powder

2 tbsp Turmeric

1 tbsp Black mustard seeds

1tbsp Onion seeds

In order to draw the moisture out of the veg and make sure they stay crunchy in the pickle you submerge them in a brine overnight. Make up a couple of litres of brine by mixing the salt with water and stirring until the salt is dissolved. Cut the vegetables up into small pieces. If you take your time and do this well it will make a really pretty pickle– you want the pieces of vegetable to be fairly dainty but not finely chopped. So that when you spoon some out of the jar you can distinguish the vegetables. Separate the cauliflower down into little florets and leave out the stem, I usually cut out and discard the inner soft part of the courgette and then slice on a bias. Cut the fine beans on the bias into 2cm lengths, finely slice the shallot and the peppers/chillies.

Mix vegetables into brine in a big bowl and weigh down with a plate so that all the vegetables are submerged, leave this overnight or for at least 5 hours.

Set the vegetables to drain well in a colander, taste them: if they are really salty give them a rinse under cold water. Combine cornflour, mustard powder and turneric and mix to a paste with a little cold water. Heat up the vinegar, sugar and mustard/nigella seeds add the cornflour mix and cook out until good and thick. This will smell really vinegary.

Mix vegetables with the as much of the sauce as you like ( I don’t like it too liquid)  and spoon into sterilised jars. Jobs a goodn.