Nights of passion?

This morning I was looking through one of those leaflets that you get from kebab places.
I've never bought a kebab in my life from one of these places, the odd burger when wandering home drunk after clubbing but never a kebab.
For some strange reason I always peek at the menu, willing the place to be nice but knowing that it won't.
This one made me laugh this morning, one of the desserts is called Nights of passion.
What sort of dessert could this be I wondered thinking it would have to be something insanely dark and rich.
A gooey chocolate cake of some kind? I think that with a name like that it implies stickiness and something that you can only eat in small bites at a time. Here was the description

"creamy moist carrot cake"
Carrot cake?! A nights of passion is carrot cake? Carrot cake is many things, all of them delicious but nights of passion it is not!
Carrot cake is homely, simple and an excuse to eat cake as you class it as one of your 5 a day.
The best carrot cakes also comes with cream cheese frosting, once again yummy yes. Passionate no
How do others feel about this? And has anyone else ever had a weird dessert experience?

A heart shaped cake

Not a great photo and the cake is showing signs of the brutal heat of my oven although it's not as bad as it has been before.
My mum gave me 2 of these cake tins so I will make a Victoria sponge for valentines day I think.
This was another cake that uses oil instead of butter, this time from the lovely orangette.
I wasn't greatly enamoured with the texture of this cake, but it is like Molly says a good everyday cake. The lemon glaze gives the cake a really nice zing.
I'm on a real baking binge at the moment, so expect more recipes that I've tried from the Internet and what I think of them.
This one was about a 3 1/2 outta 5 due to the texture.

A autumnal plumble

I realised this week that the English plum season was coming to an end. My blokes parents made their first visit to our house yesterday so I decided to make them a sweet treat. When I told him my plan of making a plum crumble my boyfriend started calling it a plumble so hence the title.
I found this recipe on the guardian website, the easiest to navigate of the newspaper websites who also happen to have some of my fave food writers on their staff.
This is the first of the Dan Lepard columns called sweet treats that is published once a week.
Of course I made some variations on Dan's plum and apple crumble the main one being that I couldn't get my grubby hands on cobnuts so instead I used ground almonds in the crumble mix.
The only other change I made was to add cooking apple to the mix as I still have some sitting about the house.
This smells amazing in the oven and only took about 20 minuets to make. As it's cooking the plum juice seeps out and goes deep red and sticky.
I only just managed to get a picture of the remains this as it was very moreish.
Hopefully I'll have a couple of book reviews for you again soon.

Beauty before comfort

I found this in a charity shop and it took my fancy. Being the kind of person who has always put comfort before beauty, the title tickled me a bit.
The book is about the authors grandmother, the beautiful Aneita Jean Blair who grows up in a small town in west Virginia before and during the second world war.
Aneita is full of ambition and wants to make her way out of the small town she lives in and on to bigger and better things that she feels she's entitled to.
The book is very atmospheric and gives you a good feel of the potentially claustrophobic nature of small town life.
As I was reading this I found that whilst enjoying the writing itself I didn't really connect with Aneita. As her dreams are stifled and she starts to see the impossibility of escaping you kind of watch her atrophy and sour.
As the story progressed I found myself not liking her much at all. I felt like you were meant to like her despite some of the things she does due to her wit and beauty but I personally couldn't get over the feeling that if I met her, I'd hate her.
True she goes through a lot of trauma and she does deserve sympathy but once again plenty of other people who lived in that town would have had hard lives and didn't do the things that she does.
One example that stays with me is when aneita uses her relationship with her married boss to steal her friends better job. Obviously they didn't remain friends afterwards.
It just seemed like due to her beauty she feels like she's entitled to more than others and that nothing was out of bounds in the way that she got it.
We see her messing around with married men that she doesn't love, playing around with peoples feelings in general and the only reason that you get for any of this is that the town was just too small for her brilliance.
It also felt like you were meant to agree with this, but I'm afraid that it just didn't cut the mustard with me.
Plenty of people need to get out of a miserable life and I just hated the implication that one person is more deserving of getting out than another for either their wit or beauty as a reason. Don't we all deserve to be happy and not trapped by circumstances that suck the life out of us?
I know that plenty of other people will read this differently to me and I've got to be honest and say that whiles I was coming to these conclusions I started to feel uncomfortable as this wasn't a fictional character that I disliked but the authors grandmother who she obviously adored.
I really felt bad for not liking her grandmother but I'm afraid that that's how I felt, saying all this the book is very well wrote and full of background information that really adds to the atmosphere.
Whilst not being a book that I'll ever read again it was a gritty and substantial read. I really wouldn't want anyone to not read it just because I said that I didn't like her, Aneita isn't a wholly evil character or anything.
In fact she's full of fire and wit and is a great character for a book, like I said before it's a personal prejudice and I really wouldn't have wanted to meet her.
As for the food side of this although we are told that she is a great baker and that "she swore that the day she used a box mix for cake was the day they might as well put her away" I didn't feel right cooking another cake for this book.
In the end I settled for a passage when she's taken out to an Italian steakhouse during the war by a gentleman that she's seeing. Given the circumstances of rationing I can only imagine what a treat this must have been.
I'm afraid that once again I don't have any pictures. What was described in the book was a meal consisting of a steak, vegetables, potatoes and iceberg lettuce served with Italian dressing.
I don't feel confident in given you a recipe for this sort of meal as I'm not a confident steak cooker and the dressing for the Italian dressing I made was just olive oil and red wine vinegar.
It was a lovely meal though and being of extra sentimental value to me as it's the first steak I've had since I had my tooth removed in September.
In my next review I promise to give a proper recipe for the book, and I have got some exciting things I'm planning to cook soon! Can't wait.

My mothers southern kitchen

I finally got back to my original reading list and decided to cook something from My Mothers Southern Kitchen.
I don't really know what to say about this book, from the name I thought it would be more of a memoir than it was.
Most of the memories are confined to the front of each chapter like in an ordinary cookbook and they are more random than a properly laid out memoir in fact it's designed like a normal albeit very chatty cookbook.
The other thing I found was that a lot of the recipes just didn't take my fancy for a number of reasons, either I couldn't get some of the ingredients or they just didn't appeal to my palate (a jello salad anyone?)
Or the work that went into the recipes themselves seemed disproportionate to the finished product.
I think maybe I was suffering from culture shock, the book is obviously written by an American and nothing is taken into account for international readers.
You are given specific brands that are good to use (what's the nearest British equivalent to crisco?) and certain ingredients aren't explained, are Graham crackers like digestive biscuits? Is american ham processed in the same way as british? How do I know if it's a good piece for that particular recipe? and I still don't know what a bloody smore is?!
But in the end I found this recipe for apple cake and decided to make this, I also decided to make it into little buns to prevent the inevitable burning that would take place and I also decided to ice the cakes with a cinnamon icing. I ended up with forty of these buggers!



Very tasty but I really don't want to get fat by eating all of these on my own. So if you make these yourself do make sure that you have people to share them with.
I changed the recipe in so much as using cooking apples instead of eating apples as I still have some that need eating up.
The recipe also uses oil instead of butter in the batter, having never done it this way before I was quite nervous. The cakes come out ever so moist and not greasy at all. It's rather scary when you first add the oil though but it soon starts to look like cake batter as your stirring it.
I'm giving the recipe in cup measurement as I had he'll converting it into grams, I'm sorry if this is a bugger for you.
The icing recipe is in grams though, once again I'm sorry.

Fresh apple cake

Ingredients
2 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/12 cups vegetable oil
3 cups plain flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
3 cups apple (I used 4 smallish cooking apples)
1 cup chopped walnuts

Method

Preheat oven to 350'f
In a large bowl mix together the sugar, eggs, vanilla and oil together until it starts comes together. At first it doesn't look like the oils going to mix in and looks like a slick but it does eventually come together.
Then sift in the flour, soda, spices and salt. Stir again and it should look like real cake batter.
Finally fold in the apple and walnuts, I forgot to say that as I was preparing the apples that I sprinkled them with lemon juice and sugar. The lemon juice to stop them going brown and the sugar because cooking apples aren't as sweet as eaters.
Then spoon the mixture into bun cakes and bake in the oven for 15 minuets or so. Allow them to cool and make the icing with.

110g unsalted butter
60ml milk
500g icing sugar
A pinch of cinnamon
Orange food colouring
Hundreds and thousands to sprinkle

Cream half the sugar with the rest of the ingredients until it starts to come together, then work in the rest of the sugar.
Ice your cakes and enjoy.

Greater graters

I have a big thing about kitchen equipment as you may have noticed, and since I've finally got my finances sorted again for the first time in years I've been upgrading my kitchen stuff a piece at a time.
So I thought I'd share what I've been purchasing and if I thought it actually deserves any hype it receives or not.
First up is my new hand grater, a very strange thing to spend over a fiver on and to lust over indeed but hear me out on this one.
I have used a box grater for years and whilst it's fine when your grating something like cheddar, it's an absolute pain when it comes to harder cheeses like Parmesan. It gives your wrist a workout that's akin to shaking a Walkman which isn't working.
Since I got into baking I also found grating the zest of citrus fruit rather frustrating, finding that either I can't get all the zest off or I end up hitting the pith and then spend ages picking it out of whatever I'm making to make sure that it doesn't taste bitter.
Lastly, who hasn't felt the pain of grating their knuckles when trying to use up that tiny last piece of cheese?

So when I found myself in Lakeland Limited with only a Swiss roll tin in my hands that cost a tenner, and in possession of a voucher that gave me a fiver off if I spent over twenty five I found myself wandering over to the section with the graters.
As I stared at these handheld everyday pieces of kitchen tech I balked at the price,£22!
Next, I went through in my head where I'd seen this particular make of graters recommended, hmm Nigella, Nigel Slater I think and just about every foodie mag I'd ever read.
The next thing I know I'm walking out of the store with a brand spanking new micro plane grater with the smallest hole size available for grating zest and hard cheeses.

So far I've just babbled on about acquiring my new bit of kitchen tech, but let me now tell you more about how it is to actually use.
When I got home obviously I wanted to put it to the test and so decided to cook a pasta recipe that would need the use of mucho gracias parmesan cheese.
After only having used discount shop graters all my life I have to say that using a micro plane grater is actually a bit of a revelation, it's like when you get your first cashmere jumper after only having worn nylon and acrylic.
The handle is nice to the touch and easy to grip on to, it also has a hand guard to stop you from slipping.
I never knew that grating Parmesan could be so easy, I actually felt like Jamie Oliver standing there going "and now you just finish it off with a bit of this". I used to stand there for what felt like an age and then stare down mournfully at the pathetic pile that had required so much effort from myself.
Zesting is also accomplished with similar ease, for once I haven't had to leave most of the zest on to guarantee that I also don't add pith to the recipe.
So the conclusion I've come to is yes I can see why people go on about the micro plane graters, and I'm extremely happy that I spent my hard earned cash on one.
Saying that £22 quid is a lot to spend on a grater so I'm not going to go down the route of "everyone" should buy one as I remember having the tinniest and most crappily kitted out kitchen ever. I also remember turning out better meals than some people I knew who had better kitchens than me because they just couldn't be bothered to attempt anything more laborious than things on toast.
I love things though that make everyday tasks easier and when I find something that I like I am prone to becoming a bit of a fan girl.
So from a fan girl perspective let me say that if you hate grating as much as I used to and you have a spare twenty odd quid spare then go on and treat yourself it will probably last you a lifetime (or pop it on your Xmas or birthday list, I acquire a lot of expensive stuff that way), and let's hear it for the micro plane the greatest grater!

Apple and blackberry kitchen

This is a really glorious upmarket peasant style dish. There are a few good descriptions of food and eating in the book but I decided to put my own twist on it for this one.
Whilst in their honeymoon cottage in the Belgian Ardennes you hear of their housekeeper bringing them meals in pans. Things like stews, they also have omelettes and coffee for breakfast but I had a few problems with these.
First of all I couldn't find any recipes from the Belgian ardennes anywhere. Google searches brought up holiday companies and although there were great descriptions of food no recipes.
As the housekeeper was a countrywoman from the area you know it would have been local dishes that she was serving them and that was what I'd had my heart set on cooking for this post in the beginning.
When it's a style of food I know nothing about I don't like to play it fast and loose and serve it up as traditional, so I scrapped that idea completely.
An omelet was too boring as I have one practically every week with a baked potato.
In one of the scenes in the book though the couple are running away from all the fighting and hiding from the soldiers and come across some blackberries.
They're famished and take to them with a passion.
this seemed perfect to me as surely if it had been more peaceful the housekeeper would have cooked them something delicious with blackberries in?
This decision was made even better by the fact that we have a blackberry bush in our garden which was in full production when I made this decision and I didn't want them to go to waste.
I then had a gift of cooking apples from the tree in my parents garden and since apples and blackberries are a classic combination they had to join the Fray. Besides it felt like I'd foraged for these ingredients for myself which was keeping with the passage in the book I was basing this meal on.
Lastly I remembered seeing this recipe in the Nigella Bites book and I'd been meaning to try it out for a while, perfection!
This recipe is basically a rich bread dough that is then topped with blackberries and apples with an extra layer of crumble topping.
The bread dough I let rise over night and I was impressed with how it turns out. If like me you haven't made bread in years don't worry this really was quite easy.
This recipe for me was better than a fruit pie due to the fact that because the bread dough rises so much the juices don't seep all the way down to the bottom and make it soggy. This gives you a gooey with fruit juice top with a nice crisp base, mmmmm.
My only problem with this would be that it specifies cooking it in a Swiss roll tin. I was quite happy to go out and buy one but I do realise that others aren't as obsessed with kitchen equipment as I am.
The tin has a larger than normal side to it so you could probably get away with an ordinary tin if the sides are high enough. Saying that though, I've been using the Swiss roll tin for cooking other things aswel and have therefore not regretted the purchase as a one trick pony at all.
The other thing I found a bit of a bugger was storage of the fully made product, if you store it in the fridge to keep the berries fresh for longer the bread goes hard and if you store it in an airtight container you risk mouldy berries. Eat it in a few days of making. although if the bread does go hard cut it into pieces, bung it in a ceramic dish, cover with custard and bake in the oven as for bread and butter pudding. Devine!
I found the exact recipe that I used over here on the inter web and I hope you enjoyed this post.