APPLECAKE
Æblekage (Denmark)
In the old days this Danish party treat would have been made with a yeast dough and be much like the Austrian Zwetschenfleck. The arrival of chemical raising agents early in this century gave the Danes an opportunity to lighten the mix–and so can we.
Quantity: Enough for 6 portions
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 35-40 minutes
175g/6 oz unsalted butter
175g/6 oz sugar
3 medium eggs
175g/6 oz self-raising flour
2-3 large cooking apples
Optional: 1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon mixed with 1 tablespoon sugar 1 tablespoon chopped blanched almonds
Utensils: A large mixing bowl and a hinged 25cm/10 inch cake tin, an electric mixer would be useful
Soften the butter and beat it in the mixing bowl with the sugar until the mixture is light and fluffy (takes twice as much energy as you think–the mix has to be really white and airy–easiest to achieve with an electric mixer). Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Sieve in the flour and fold it in thoroughly (called ‘tiring’). The mixture will be quite stiff.
Grease the baking tin.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Peel, core and finely slice the apples.
Spread half the cake mixture in the bottom of the cake tin and top with half the sliced apples. Cover with the rest of the mixture and then arrange the rest of the apple slices in pretty wheels over the top. Sprinkle over all the cinnamon, sugar and chopped almonds if you have them.
Put the apple cake to bake in the oven for 34-40 minutes, until well risen and golden.
APPLE AND BLACKBERRY PIE
(England)
Fruit pies–fresh fruit enclosed between a top and bottom crust made with the lightest of shortcrust pastry–have been prepared since the earliest times and were cooked, if an oven was not available, on a griddle, first one side, then the other. The fruit was mostly wild-gathered, since the early English system of annual triple-crop rotation in open strip fields made it impracticable for fruit trees, which take far longer than a year to mature, to be planted in fields. The solution, both in England and in Norman France, was to plant semi-wild trees on the edges of the woods, thus giving free access to a fruit orchard to all including the poorest. Blackberries grew wild in any event, as did raspberries, strawberries and several other varieties of wild berry. These were joined in the woodland by pear, plum, quince, cherry and medlar. The raw materials for fruit pies and dumplings were thus not difficult to come by, even in years of poor harvest.
The pastry
250g/8 oz all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon salt
25g/1 oz sugar
75g/3 oz cold butter
75g/3 oz cold lard
4 tablespoons cold water
The filling
2-3 large cooking apples–Bramleys, for choice
Same volume hedgerow blackberries
3 tablespoons sugar (more if the fruit is very sour)
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, a shallow pie dish and a rolling pin
Make the pastry first. Sieve the flour with the salt and mix in the sugar. Cut the butter into the flour with a sharp knife. Finish rubbing it in with your fingertips. The secret of light pastry is in keeping it cool–if you use the palms of your hands, the butter will oil and make the pastry tough. When you have a mix like fine breadcrumbs, work in the water 1 spoonful at a time still with the tips of your fingers. Knead into a soft round ball. You may need more or less water–it all depends on the weather and the dryness of the flour.
Leave the dough to rest in a cool place for ten minutes, while you prepare the fruit. Peel and slice the apples. Pick over and hull the blackberries. Put them into a bowl and mix in the sugar. Leave them aside to form juice.
Pre-heat the oven to 400°F/200°C/Gas 6.
On well floured board with a rolling pin, using quick light strokes pushing away from you, roll out two thirds of the dough to line the pie dish, and then roll out the rest to make a lid.
Line the pie dish with the larger round, pile in the fruit, sprinkle with a little water from your fingertips, just enough to help the juice but not enough to make the pastry soggy. Damp the edges of the pastry with a wet finger, and lay the lid over the fruit. Crimp the edges together with a fork and cut a steam hole in the top. If you have some scraps of pastry over, make a few pastry leaves with strips of pastry cut diagonally. Bake for 15 minutes to set the pastry, then turn the oven down to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4 and bake it for 25-30 minutes.
Serve with plenty of thick cream. Perfect after Sunday’s roast beef.
Suggestions:
• To make a lidded but unlined pie, prepare half quantities of pastry and reduce the cooking time by 10 minutes.
SUGAR CUSTARD PIE
Tarte au sucre (Belgium)
A sweet egg custard is the classic filling for a winter tart. The recipe comes from the monastery of Maredsous, where they serve it to customers in the cafeteria which provides the monks with a much-needed income for the maintenance of their vast nineteenth century buildings. The monastery owns its own land, and although the community is no longer large enough to work it and the brewing side of the monastery has been transferred to more commercial enterprises, lay brothers provide enough labour to maintain a dairy-farming enterprise–milk and eggs for the kitchens as well as the raw materials for the cheese for which the monastery is known.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Start 3 hours ahead
Preparation: 40-50 minutes
Cooking: 20-25 minutes
The pastry
250g/8 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon caster sugar
A pinch of salt
100g/4 oz butter
12g/½ oz fresh yeast
2 tablespoons warm milk
1 egg
Topping
125g/5 oz granulated sugar
1 large egg
200ml/1/3 pint single cream
25g/1 oz softened butter
Utensils: A mixing bowl, and a tart tin
Make the pastry first: Sift the flour into a warm bowl with the caster sugar and salt. Rub in 4oz/100g of the butter until the mixture looks like fine breadcrumbs. Work the yeast with the milk until it liquidises. Whisk in the egg and drop the mixture into a well in the middle of the flour-and-butter. Using the tips of your fingers work everything into a softish dough–adding more warm milk if you need it. Work the dough into a ball and leave it, covered with a clean cloth in its bowl, in a warm corner for 3 hours, until it has doubled its bulk. A rich dough needs longer to rise.
Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C/Gas 7.
Roll out the dough as thin as ordinary pastry, and use it to line a buttered tart tin. Sprinkle with the granulated sugar. Whisk up the second egg with the cream and trickle the mixture over the sugar. Dot with little pieces of butter.
Bake the tart for 20-30 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and crisp, and the filling has blistered and browned.
TREACLE TART
(Scotland)
This was my Edinburgh grandmother’s favourite pudding–and mine too, as a child. The Scots have a phenomenally sweet tooth reflected in the largest per capita consumption of sugar in the world. Greenock is the sugar centre of Scotland, and has been so ever since the first sugar shipments began to arrive in the 1680s direct from the West Indies. Then the tart would have been made with the dark brown treacle from the bottom of the sugar barrels, and would have contained raisins and currants and spices if the cook could afford it. Modern Golden Syrup is more refined and does not need such disguises.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Start 30 minutes ahead
Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 40 minutes
The pastry
175g/6 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
100g/4 oz cold butter
3 tablespoons cold water
The filling
4 tablespoons fresh white breadcrumbs
1 tablespoon lemon juice mixed with 1 tablespoon water
500g/1 lb golden syrup
1 tablespoon softened butter
Utensils: 2 mixing bowls, a rolling pin and a pie plate or shallow pie dish. A food processor would be useful
Make the shortcrust pastry as in the recipe for Blackberry and Apple Pie. Roll out two thirds of it to line a pie plate. Roll out the other third and cut it into finger-width strips. Leave to rest for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C/Gas 6.
Prick the pie base, line with silver foil shiny side down and bake for 15 minutes, removing the foil after 10 minutes, to set the pastry.
Meanwhile, make the filling: mix the breadcrumbs with lemon juice and water and stir in the syrup and softened butter. Spoon the filling over the pie base and lay a criss-cross lattice of pastry over the top. Bake for 25-30 minutes, till the pastry is crisp and the topping puffed and browned.
Suggestions:
• My grandmother used to serve it piping hot with thick cream or with a dollop of vanilla ice-cream to melt into it. Wonderful on a winter’s day after a thick soup of potatoes and leeks made with the stock from an old boiling hen. My grandmother was very proud of both her leek patch and her hencoop full of Rhode Island Red chickens–and I was sometimes allowed to collect the eggs tucked protectively under their soft breast feathers.
APPLE STRUDEL
Apfelstrudel (Austria)
In its modern incarnation, as prepared by the sophisticated cooks of Austria, the German hausfrau meets the Turkish pastry chef–the result is the sturdy apple dumpling wrapped in feathery filo. This was not always so. A strudel is a whirlpool–hence the name–and variations of the recipe are to be found throughout the Balkans as well as Austria and Germany. The enclosing dough varies from the sturdiest yeast pastry to a rich shortcrust. The lightest, most delicate wrapping, however, is that made with layers of buttery filo pastry–in the old days, before the advent of ready-made strudel dough, only to be found in a household blessed with a cook who had learned her trade in the kitchens of the occupying Turks. Fillings are even more variable: sweetened curd cheese flavoured with rose water or citrus zest, poppy seeds cooked with milk and sugar, stewed fruit set with a creamy custard. The Hungarians like a filling of sour cherries while the Romanians prefer apricots.
The Ottoman Empire was all-powerful throughout the Balkans from the 13th until the early 20th century, stretching, in its prime, as far as the battlements of Vienna. On the departure of the invaders, their cooks took their skills to the kitchens of the aristocrats of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and eventually back home to their own valleys. The old-fashioned, yeast-dough strudel remained popular in country districts, with the filo version preferred by the sophisticated bourgeoisie, gradually gaining acceptance among the country folk as they learned how to make it for themselves. Before long, any skilled cook would always prefer to make a filo pastry for a special occasion. Frozen strudel pastry can be bought in supermarkets and delicatessens–you might have to overlap the sheets to get the width you want. When you make it yourself, remember it must be kept warm to stay flexible.
Quantity: Serves 4-6, after a good thick soup
Time: Start 20 minutes to a few hours ahead
Preparation: 1 hour
Cooking: 45 minutes
The pastry (bought frozen filo can substitute)
250g/8 oz plain flour
2 tablespoons oil
150ml/¼ pint warm water
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
The filling
1.5kg/3 lb apples
2 tablespoons raisins soaked in the juice of 1 lemon
1 teaspoon powdered cinnamon (optional)
2 tablespoons sugar (more if the apples are sour)
2 tablespoons melted butter
4 tablespoons breadcrumbs
Utensils: A rolling pin, a pastry brush, a large clean cloth and a baking tray
Prepare the pastry first. Pile the flour onto a pastry board, or (better still) straight onto your table top. Sprinkle with the salt. Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour in the warm water and oil. Mix thoroughly, working from the centre outwards. You may need a little more water if the flour or the air is very dry. The dough must be on the soft side. Flour your hands and set about kneading it very thoroughly. Feel it grow silky and elastic under your hands as the flour granules absorb the water. When it is smooth and shiny, knead the dough into a cushion, brush with melted butter and set it to rest in a warm place under an upturned bowl for a least 20 minutes or a maximum of 12 hours. At this stage it’s very good natured.
While the dough rests prepare the filling. Peel and core the apples. Slice them finely and sprinkle the sugar over them. If you are using these: mix in the raisins and sprinkle with the lemon juice and cinnamon. Melt the butter and fry the breadcrumbs gently until they turn pale gold. Set aside while you finish the pastry.
Lay a clean linen cloth on the table. Flour both your hands and the cloth (leave the flour jar on the table in case you need more). You can now work with the whole dough ball, but until you are used to the method, it’s easier to work with two rather than one–a smaller strudel is easier to handle–so cut the dough in half and reform it into 2 balls. Drop the first one into the middle of the floured cloth and flatten it with the palm of your hand. Leaving it on the cloth, roll it out with a floured rolling pin until you have a disk about the size of a dinner plate. That is as far as you go with the rolling pin. Using the backs of your hands with the fingers loosely bent into a fist, push your fists gently under the edge of the dough disk until the outer rim rests on your knuckles. Gently pull the pastry outwards, stretching it a little more each time. Pull it in all directions until you have a large transparent pancake through which, should you feel inclined, you could read a page of the family bible. The edges will be comparatively thick. These you tear off as you make the strudel. If the transparent part tears, patch it with trimmings from the edge. The dough will lap over the edge of the cloth when you drop it back down. Brush the surface with melted butter. Prepare the second dough ball.
Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C/Gas 8.
Finish the strudels. Butter the baking sheet. Spread the filling over two-thirds of each pastry disk, leaving a gap round the other sides. Tear off the thicker edges of pastry. Tuck the edges of the two shorter sides of pastry over the filling. Pick up the corners of the cloth and roll the strudel gently away from you and over itself to curl into a Swiss roll shape. Pick up the strudel in its cloth sling and roll it neatly out onto the baking sheet. Brush the top with melted butter. Prepare the second strudel and transfer it to the baking sheet.
Bake the strudels for 45-50 minutes, till the pastry is delicately gilded and crisp. Brush with melted butter and serve warm, sprinkled with powdered sugar. Austrian-Ottoman magic.
Suggestions:
• Leftover strudel dough cannot be revived. Instead, gather up the bits and pieces into a flat cake and allow it to dry until firm. Grate the cake on the coarse grater to make soup noodles–reibgerstl. Dry them in a very low oven and store in a tin ready to drop into boiling soup–they will only take a few minutes to cook.
• Bavarian apple strudel: The housewives of Bavaria like to cook their apple strudel bathed in a custard. To prepare, settle the strudels side by side in a well buttered pie dish (if you have made a single large one, curl it round in a hairpin bend). Leave a hand-width gap between each strudel. Bake in a hot oven (450°F/230°C/Gas 8) for 10 minutes to set the pastry. Remove from the oven and pour 300ml/½ pint cream whisked with a little sugar and two eggs into the gaps. Turn the heat down a notch, and cook for a further 45 minutes. Juicy and fragrant, served warm. It’s very good cold too–but nothing can compare with a freshly baked strudel still warm from the oven.
• Cherry, plum or rhubarb strudel filling: Proceed exactly as for apple strudel, but use pitted cherries, stoned plums, rhubarb cut into short lengths, instead of the apples. Be careful not to include too much juice as the mixture should not be wet.
• Curd cheese filling: Proceed exactly as for apple strudel (not forgetting the fried breadcrumbs). Beat together 500g/1 lb curd or any white fresh cheese, 2 eggs, a tablespoon of raisins and a tablespoon of sugar. Use this instead of the apple mixture.
APPLE PIE WITH RAISINS
Apfelkuchen mit rosine (Germany)
A luxury recipe for a special occasion. The inclusion of almonds is nice but not essential. Germany is too northerly for almond trees to thrive anyway–although these nuts were always part of the travelling spice merchants’ stock-in-trade.
Quantity: Enough for 6
Time: Preparation: 40 minutes
Cooking: 45 minutes
The pastry
350g/12 oz plain flour
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
250g/8 oz butter
Yolks of 2 eggs
l tablespoon brandy
4 tablespoons cold water
The filling
1kg/2 lb apples
25g/1 oz butter
50g/2 oz raisins
1 tablespoon brandy–or of the alcohol you have used to make the pastry
1 tablespoon blanched almonds (optional)
Utensils: A mixing bowl, a rolling pin, a small saucepan and a deep pie dish with hinged sides
Sift the flour, sugar and salt into a bowl and cut in the butter with a knife. When your mixture is like fine breadcrumbs, mix all to a soft dough with the egg, the water and the brandy (the alcohol evaporates during the cooking and leaves the pastry short and crisp). Knead the pastry lightly with the tips of your fingers, adding more liquid if the mixture is too crumbly. Everything must be kept as cool as possible. The palms of the hands are too warm: using them will oil the dough and make it tough.
Put the pastry aside to rest while you peel, core and slice the apples. Fry lightly in the butter. Meanwhile put the raisins to swell in the brandy, and then mix them with the apples. Add the almonds if you are using them.
Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C/Gas 7.
Roll out two-thirds of the pastry and use this to line the pie dish. Roll out the remaining one-third into a circle to fit over the top. Fill the dish with the apple mixture. Damp the edges of the pastry. Put on the lid and seal the edges by pressing them together with a fork. Decorate the lid. Make a hole for the steam to escape.
Bake for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4 and bake for another 40-45 minutes until the pastry is crisp and golden. Scatter thickly with caster sugar. Serve warm with whipped cream. Perfection after a good soup.
Suggestions:
Filling a deep pie dish with hinged sides, bake the pie in a large ring placed on a baking sheet.
CHEESE CAKE
Kasblotz (Germany)
A recipe which made the transatlantic crossing extraordinarily successfully: a grand total of 6 alternative mixtures are on offer in my American grandmother’s turn-of-the-century ‘Settlement Cook Book’. This version is from Franconia.
Quantity: Serves 6-8
Time: Preparation: 40-50 minutes
Cooking: about 40 minutes
The pastry
350g/12 oz plain flour
2 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
250g/8 oz butter
Yolks of 2 eggs
l tablespoon brandy
4 tablespoons cold water
The filling
500g/1 lb white curd cheese
150ml/1/4 pint thick or soured cream
3 medium eggs
2 tablespoons sugar
Grated rind of 1 lemon (optional)
To glaze: 1 egg yolk beaten up with a spoonful of cream
Utensils: 2 mixing bowls, a rolling pin and a deep pie tin, diameter 25cm/10 inch
Put the flour, sugar and salt into a bowl and cut in the butter with a knife. When the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs, mix all to a soft dough with the egg, the water and the brandy. Knead the pastry lightly with the tips of your fingers until you have a soft ball.
Roll out the pastry to fit the pie tin. Ease it in gently. Set aside to rest while you make the filling.
Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C/Gas 8.
Beat the cheese into the cream, and then beat in the eggs and the sugar. Stir in the grated lemon rind–this improves the flavour but is not essential. Brush with egg and cream–the top of the cheesecake remains rather pale and anaemic unless you glaze it.
Bake for 20 minutes, and then turn down the heat to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4 and bake for another 20 minutes. It should be well set and brown on the base when it is done. Serve warm–delicious with fresh berries in season.
Suggestions:
• For a more substantial cheesecake, spread over a yeast-pastry base, as for the plum tart.
STRAWBERRY TART
Tarte aux fraises (France)
French village bakers, often small one-man businesses who know their customers, bake a different tart every week in time for the weekend. The base is a custard cream spread over a pre-baked pie crust made with a rich shortcrust–pâté brisée–and the filling is whatever fruit is in season–raspberries, strawberries, apricots, sharp little mirabelle plums, and, all winter long, cartwheels of sliced apple, the edges caramelised dark from the oven’s heat; and during the winter, tarts with dried prunes and raisins and almonds–rich as plum pudding. In my local market town of Revel the tarts were baked every day and three times on Saturday. As soon as each batch was taken out of the oven, the scented steam curled out into the street and a queue of customers would form immediately. French housewives think it no shame to buy their Sunday treat from the maître patissier, provided, it goes without saying, he is unquestionably the best pastry cook in the area. In France, wise patronage reflects as well on the customer as it does on the purveyor.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 40 minutes
Cooking: 25-30 minutes
The pastry
100g/4 oz plain flour
25g/1 oz caster sugar
½ teaspoon salt
75g/3 oz butter
2-3 tablespoons cold water
Crème pâtissière
300ml/½ pint single cream or creamy milk
2 egg yolks
1 heaped tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 tablespoon butter
The fruit
500g/1 lb fresh strawberries, hulled and halved
250g/8 oz redcurrant or raspberry jam
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, rolling pin and a 20cm/8 inch tart tin, preferably with fluted sides and a removable base
Sift the flour into a bowl with the salt. Mix in the sugar and the butter cut into pieces. Chop the cold butter into the flour and sugar with a knife, and then finish by rubbing in with the tips of your fingers. Mix in the minimum amount of cold water to form a soft dough ball. Flatten the ball lightly with a rolling pin dusted with flour, then drape the pastry over the rolling pin to transfer to the tin. Press the circle of pastry out until it covers the base and the sides of the tin. This recipe is nearly as rich as shortbread which allows it to be baked ‘blind’ (i.e. empty) without bubbling. Prick the pastry base all over with a fork, and then put it to rest while you make the filling. You can if you wish, line the pastry with foil and weight it with beans–then you will need to add on 5 minutes to the cooking time.
Preheat the oven to 375°F/190°C/Gas 5.
Bake the pastry case for 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is golden and crisp. Slip it out of its tin, and leave the pastry shell to cool down.
Meanwhile, make the crème pâtissière, a thick custard. Stir two tablespoons of the cream or milk into the flour. Whisk in the egg yolks. Add the sugar and the butter and stir. This is a job that can be done in a liquidiser. Heat the mixture gently in a bowl set over boiling water until it thickens, stirring all the time. The flour must be cooked, or the custard will taste starchy, and the eggs should not be over-cooked or they will scramble (though not very seriously, as with an egg-only custard). If the mixture does curdle or go lumpy, plunge the base into cold water and whisk vigorously, or pour it quickly back in the liquidiser with a little cold milk and beat it up again. When the custard is good and thick, set the bottom of the saucepan in a basin of cold water to cool it down.
Prepare the fruit: wipe, twist off the stalks, and halve the strawberries lengthwise. Warm the jam (redcurrant is best, raspberry is good) with a little water to make a thick syrup. If there are masses of pips, pass it through a sieve when you pour it over the fruit.
Assemble the tart just before you are ready to eat–its flavours are fugitive. Spread the nowcooled pastry shell with the cream. Lay strawberries on their bed of custard, cut sides upwards, in a single layer of concentric circles. Finally pour over all a glazing of warm jam, which releases the irresistible perfume of warm berries: serve the tart immediately.
LEMON TART
Tarte au citron (France)
These beautiful sharp-flavoured lemon tarts were one of the specialities of the bakery in Castelnaudary, just down the hill from where my children spent an année scolaire. He also baked a fine pissaladière and was willing to accommodate his customers by putting their Sunday cassoulets to cook in his baking oven after the day’s bread baking was done. Tuesday was market day and the scent of citrus oil and warm butter would mingle with that of the blossom on the lemon trees which lined the avenue where the stallholders set up shop. Sensuous stuff.
Quantity: Serves 6
Time: Preparation: 30-40 minutes
Cooking: 40 minutes
The pastry
175g/6 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 level tablespoon sugar
175g/6 oz cold butter
2 egg yolks
About 3 tablespoons water
The filling
4 lemons
4-5 tablespoons caster sugar
5 medium free-range eggs
100g/4 oz unsalted butter
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, rolling pin, grater, lemon squeezer and whisk or electric mixer and a 25cm/10 inch tart tin (preferably one with a removable base)
Sift the flour into a bowl with the salt and sugar. Make a well in the middle and grate in the cold butter. Mix all together with a fork. Beat the egg yolks with the water and work them into the flour and butter with the tips of your fingers. Gather all into a soft ball. If you need a little more water sprinkle in the minimum. Knead lightly and gently for a short time–this is a very rich pastry and liable to oil. However, the dough should not be too stiff. Flour a board and roll out the pastry dough into a circle to fit the tart tin. Flip it over the rolling pin and transfer to the tin, easing it into the corners–don’t stretch it. Cover and put it aside to rest in a cool place while you make the filling.
Preheat the oven to 400°F/200°C/Gas 6.
Bake the pastry case for 10-15 minutes, till it looks sandy. Remove and allow to cool. Lower the heat of the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Grate the zest of one lemon and squeeze the juice of all four. Melt the butter. Beat the eggs and the sugar together (much easier with an electric whisk) until light, white and fluffy. Fold in the lemon juice and the butter. Pour the filling into the tart case as soon as it has cooled a little, and bake for 30 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and the filling only just set. Serve warm, with a bottle of chilled Beaume de Venise from the hills of Provence.
Suggestions:
• Prepare tartlets to the same recipe. They will take only 20-25 minutes in the oven.
CHERRY BATTER
Clafoutis aux cerises (France)
A recipe from the Limousin district of France and a true peasant dish. Not unlike Yorkshire pudding with cherries, I first encountered it in the kitchen of a French neighbour when I lived in Andalusia, a long-time resident. Lemon and orange trees flourished in her orchard, custard apples, pomegranates and medlars–even avocado, strange hermaphrodite tree–but only one disappointingly barren cherry. When it finally fruited in its seventh spring, this is the dish she made with its black harvest. She was a marvellous cook, but I have never seen her put a dish on the table with such pleasure and pride.
Quantity: Enough for 6
Time: Preparation: 20 minutes
Cooking: 40 minutes
500g/1 lb black cherries
1 tablespoon butter
100g/4 oz flour
½ teaspoon salt
150ml/¼ pint milk
4 medium eggs
1 small glass eau de vie or any fruit brandy
Sugar for sprinkling
Utensils: A mixing bowl and a 25cm/10 inch square baking tin, a blender would be useful
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4, and put in the baking dish with a knob of butter.
Stone the cherries. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl and whisk in the milk and the eggs to make a smooth, creamy batter. Stir in the eau de vie or brandy. All this is best done in a blender.
Take out the hot pan, roll the melted butter around it and pour in the batter. It will sizzle for a moment. Scatter the cherries into the batter and then sprinkle all with sugar.
Bake for 1 hour. It will puff up like a Yorkshire pudding and sink somewhat as it cools. Eat it warm with the delicious thick yellow crème fraîche of France. Failing that, Devonshire clotted cream would do well enough. Accompany with a little glass of eau de vie de fruits–Framboise or Poire William.
Suggestions:
• Other fruit suitable for pies–apples, plums, apricots–can substitute for the cherries. But there is something about the rich dark cherry juice on the golden crust that is particularly special.
• You could always marinate the fruit in brandy.
PASTRY WITH NUTS
Baklava (Turkey and Greece)
An invention, in its sophisticated modern form, of the sybaritic Ottoman Turks–who else? Bakers from Sophia to Alexandria sell it by the piece–huge, shiny golden traysful of it. The Armenians probably have the best title to its modern identity: the pastry was baked as a Lenten dish, bahk meaning Lent in Armenian and halva being the ancient word for ‘sweet’. Its consumption was, somewhat surprisingly, permitted during the forty-day fast–the layers of pastry were supposed to be 40 in number–although this was not an association the sponsoring Church necessarily condoned, the flock being more eager to adapt its favourite pagan rituals than the shepherd to countenance their pedigree. The dish appears on the menu at the Ottoman Emperor’s court no earlier than the end of the 15th century. It has made up for its late arrival in popularity ever since.
Quantity: 36-40 pieces–small quantities are not worth the trouble
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes (longer if you make your own pastry)
Cooking: 40-50 minutes
1 recipe homemade filo or 500g/1 lb bought filo
250g/8 oz shelled almonds or walnuts
250g/8 oz clarified butter
500g/1 lb honey
Utensils: A large baking tray, a small saucepan and a pastry brush
Chop the nuts roughly and put them aside. Melt the clarified butter.
Brush the baking tray with a little butter. Cover lightly with 2 layers of filo–there must be plenty of air between the layers, so don’t press on the pastry if you can help it. Sprinkle melted butter over the sheets. Lay on another 2 sheets and sprinkle on more butter. Continue until you have 8 sheets in place.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Scatter half the nuts over the pastry. Continue with more filo sheets and butter until you have added another 8 sheets. Scatter on the rest of the nuts. Finish with a final layer of 8 sheets. Mark into lengthways parallel lines and then cut diagonals across to give you diamonds. Pour the rest of the butter into the slits. Sprinkle with water from wet fingers–this ensures the sheets stay flat.
Bake for 40-45 minutes, till prettily browned and crisp all the way through.
Meanwhile make a syrup by melting the honey in a little pan with 3-4 tablespoons of water. The syrup must be hot when you pour it over the baklava.
When the pastry is well risen and golden pour the honey syrup over it, trickling it well into the cuts. Return it to the oven for 5 minutes. Allow to cool. Serve at room temperature, with a glass of water and a little cup of thick black Greek or Turkish coffee.
Suggestions:
• To prepare clarified butter, melting ordinary butter, allow it to cool and then lift off the solids at the top. The watery whey and salt will remain at the bottom along with any additives and the butter will keep sweet and fresh for a long time.
• Instead of honey, make a classic soaking syrup with 300ml/½ pint water, 250g/8 oz sugar and the juice and zest of a lemon, simmered together for 10 minutes until the syrup thickens.
OLIVE OIL BISCUITS
Tortas de aceite (Spain)
A treat for both children and adults: flaky, exquisitely caramelised in parts, crisp and delicious–not unlike sweet water biscuits.
Quantity: Makes 15-20
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
500g/1 lb plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
175g/6 oz sugar
4 tablespoons light olive oil
1 egg
4 tablespoons anis brandy or water
1 teaspoon aniseeds
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, clingfilm or rolling pin and board, and a baking sheet
Sieve the flour into a bowl with the salt, and mix in 100g/4 oz of the sugar and the salt together in a bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in the oil and the egg beaten with the brandy or water–just enough to knead into a pliable dough. Roll into a sausage shape and cut into 15-20 short lengths. Work each piece into a ball and pat out between 2 sheets of clingfilm till very thin–or press out with a rolling pin on a pastry board. Repeat until all the dough is used up. Sprinkle with water from the tips of your fingers and dust with aniseeds and a little more sugar.
Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C/Gas 7.
Bake for 10 minutes. Sprinkle the biscuits with the extra sugar a minute or two before you take them out. They will keep very well if wrapped in waxed paper and stored in a tin. Delicious for breakfast or at any time, particularly to dip into a bowl of hot chocolate or milky coffee.
WALNUT TOURTE
Prajitura cu nici (Romania)
Teresa Stratilesco took note of important gastronomic encounters such as the tourte–and their circumstances–during her travels in the Carpathians circa 1900.
‘The Christmas Eve, the Ajun, the day of the 24th of December, the last of Advent, is a holiday too, and a special dish is eaten in every household, the tourte. It is made up of a pile of thin dry leaves of dough, with melted sugar or honey and pounded walnut, the sugar being often replaced by the juice of bruised hemp seed, supposed to be sweet too. These tourte are meant to represent the Infant Christ’s swaddling clothes. The dough is prepared on the previous evening, and in some places it is used as a means of making the trees bear a rich crop of fruit in the coming summer, a kind of suggestion to Nature by threatening. The wife, with her fingers full of dough, walks into the garden; the husband, axe in hand, follows close after. They stop at the first tree, and he says “Wife I am going to fell this tree, as it seems to me it bears no fruit”. “Oh no,” says she. “Don’t for I am sure next summer it will be as full of fruit as my fingers are full of dough”. And so on with every other tree.’
Quantity: Serves 6-8
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 35-40 minutes
The pastry
250g/8 oz plain flour
1 tablespoon sugar
125g/4 oz cold butter
2 egg yolks (the whites go into the filling)
The filling
4 egg yolks
6 egg whites
250g/8 oz shelled walnuts
Apricot jam and juice of 1 lemon
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, rolling pin and board, foil, a whisk or electric beater, and a 20cm/8 inch baking tin, a food processor would be useful
Sieve the flour into a bowl and mix in the sugar. Cut the butter into the flour and then finish rubbing the two together with the tips of your fingers as lightly as possible. Or you can freeze the butter and then grate it in. When the mixture is like fine breadcrumbs, work in the egg yolks to make a soft dough–you may need extra liquid, in which case use soured cream or cold water.
Roll out the ball of dough with firm light strokes of a rolling pin into a thin circle to fit the baking tin. Ease the pastry in–if you stretch it will shrink back in the cooking–prick with a fork and line with foil, shiny side down. Put it in a cool place to rest while you make the filling.
Preheat the oven to 350°F/180°C/Gas 4.
Bake the pie case for 10 minutes, remove the foil and allow it another 5 minutes. Remove and leave to cool a little.
Meanwhile, make the filling. Grind or pulverise the walnuts with a pestle in a mortar. Whisk the eggs yolks with the sugar until white, fluffy and pale. This always takes far longer than you expect, and is best done with an electric beater. Fold in the powdered walnuts. Beat the egg whites with a little more sugar until they hold soft peaks. Fold them into the egg and walnut mixture. Pile the filling into the pastry case.
Bake for 35-40 minutes, until well risen and golden. It should hardly sink at all as it cools. Serve with mulled wine. Best on a cold winter’s night in the Carpathian mountains, huddled round the little crib on Christmas Eve, waiting for the stroke of midnight so that the youngest child can put the tiny figure of Jesus in his hay-lined manger.
APPLE AND CALVADOS TART
La croustade (France)
A speciality of Gascogny, a crisp buttery layered pastry encloses thick soft layer of apples. Particularly skilled cooks make it in the Austrian style, on the fist–pulling the dough into a very fine skin by the pressure of air alone. Most people use a thin rolling pin–an Arab technique imported into Spain by the Moors and to Austria by the Ottoman Turks.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation: 40 minutes
Cooking: About 50 minutes
The filling
1kg/2 lb golden delicious or reinette apples
3-4 tablespoons armagnac or brandy
100g/4 oz caster sugar
The pastry
350g/12 oz plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 eggs, forked up
About 150ml/¼ pint water
175g/6 oz softened butter
25g/1 oz lard (goose fat is traditional)
The technique for making a paper-thin dough which can be layered with butter varies from family to family. Some cooks make it like puff pastry, others stretch the dough on a cloth-covered table–an operation for which two people are required, one at each side, rather like making a bed.
Make the pastry first. Sift the flour with the salt. Make a well in the middle and pour in the eggs. Work well, adding enough water to make a soft ball of dough–you may need more or less water, depending on the size of the eggs. Work it into a ball, dust liberally with flour, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Roll the dough out as thin as for a pie on a floured board and spread on the softened butter. Dust with flour, fold in three, and roll it out again. Fold it in three once more and roll it out again–not forgetting to dust the pastry with flour each time. Repeat the operation once more. Roll the pastry out into a rectangle as thin as a twenty-pence piece, and leave it to dry for an hour.
Meanwhile peel, quarter and core the apples and cut them into thin slivers, sprinkle with armagnac or brandy, and set aside to macerate (overnight, if you like).
Preheat the oven to 450°F/230°C/Gas 8.
Assemble the pie. Melt the lard. Line a baking tin (a small roasting tin is the right size and shape) with just under half the pastry. Spread the apples on in a thick layer, sprinkling with the sugar. Trim the rest of the pastry to make a lid, saving the trimmings, and set this over the apples. Cut the trimmings into large flakes, sprinkle water (or armagnac) over the lid, and scatter on the trimmings lightly, like fallen leaves.
Bake for 20 minutes, and then turn the oven down to 325°F/160°C/Gas 3 and bake for a further 25-30 minutes, until the pastry is set and crisp. Because of the egg in the pastry, it’ll be quite chewy–the thinner the pastry, the lighter the pie. If you can get it really thin, use 2 layers, and brush between with melted butter.
Or make smaller pies–round turnovers–and cut the baking time by half.
PLATE PIE
Teisen lap (Wales)
There’s a great skill in the making of a plate pie by the traditional method, cooked on the planc, set over a flame and flicked over half way through the cooking to be baked on the other side. Modern usage adds baking powder to the mix.
Quantity: Enough for 5-6 portions
Time: 45 minutes to make and bake
175g/6 oz flour
1 teaspoon baking powder (not needed by those with light fingers)
125g/4 oz salty butter
75g/3 oz sugar
75g/3 oz currants and raisins
1 egg
150ml/¼ pint cream or milk
Utensils: A mixing bowl, a rolling pin, and 20cm/8 inch enamel plate or shallow baking tin and if possible a planc or a griddle (the oven may substitute if necessary)
Sieve the flour and the optional baking powder into a basin and then rub in the butter lightly with tips of your fingers. Stir in the sugar and the fruit. Beat the egg with the milk or cream and mix it into the flour. Knead all into a soft dough ball. Roll the dough out into a circle to fit the plate.
Bake the pie on a medium hot planc or heavy pan placed directly over the fire, for 15-20 minutes. Then turn it over with great skill and Welsh sleight of hand, and cook it on the other side for 15 minutes. If you prefer, the pie can be baked in the oven at 350°F/180°C/Gas 4 for 45 minutes. But you will not then be able to show off your skill to the young man who has come courting. Sprinkle the top with plenty of caster sugar before serving.
SWEET PUDDINGS AND DUMPLINGS
RHUBARB DUMPLING AND CUSTARD
(Britain)
Rhubarb, a native of Tibet, was introduced to the medicinal herb garden in Tudor times, but it was not until the 18th century that its scarlet, straw-cosseted early spring shoots became a familiar sight near the manure heap of every cottage garden from Land’s End to John O’Groats. The country poor of Northern Europe soon discovered the virtues of a hardy perennial plant which could survive its freezing winters, gave plentiful fruit (albeit in an unfamiliar shape) for its pies, and, most importantly in Scandinavia, good material for its cottage wines. This dumpling was originally tied in a cloth and suspended in the broth cauldron along with the vegetables and meat. Still at its best after something plain from the boiling pot–beef and carrots, chicken and leeks, gammon with stewed apples.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation: 40-50 minutes
Cooking: 2½ hours
The pastry
175g/6 oz suet
350g/12 oz plain flour (self-raising gives a lighter result)
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
150ml/¼ pint cold water
The filling
500g/1 lb rhubarb
3-4 tablespoons sugar
3-4 tablespoons water
The custard
4 egg yolks
2 tablespoons sugar
600ml/1 pint milk
150ml/¼ pint cream
Utensils: A sieve and mixing bowl, a 1.5 litre/3 pint pudding bowl and a rolling pin, greaseproof paper, string, a clean pudding cloth or foil, and a large boiling pot
Sieve the flour into a bowl with the salt and sugar and then stir in the suet. Add cold water slowly (you may need more or less liquid) to make a smooth soft dough which leaves the sides of the bowl clean.
Butter or rub the pudding bowl with a scrap of suet.
Cut off two thirds of the pastry, knead lightly into a ball, and roll out on a well-floured board with a rolling pin, until you have a circular disk wide enough to line the bowl. Raising it on the rolling pin, drop it gently into the bowl, easing the pastry well down so that it does not shrink too much in the cooking. Work the remaining third into a ball, roll out gently to make a lid, and reserve.
Wash and trim the rhubarb stalks, trimming off any scraps of leaf–the leaves themselves are toxic. Chop into short lengths and pack into the lined pudding bowl, sprinkling on the sugar as you go. Add a little water–no more than half a tumbler. The filling should come to within a finger’s breadth of the top. Wet the rim of the pastry and lay on the rolled-out lid. Pinch the edges together to seal. Cover with a circle of greaseproof paper and the cloth, pleated in the middle and tied round with string. Make a string handle to lift it in and out. Silver foil can be used instead of the cloth.
Bring to the boil a pan of water large enough to accommodate your basin. Before you set it on the heat, drop in a metal ring or upturned unbreakable saucer on which to rest the pudding basin. As soon as the water comes to a rolling boil, lower in the basin and steam the pudding for 2-2½ hours, checking regularly that the water has not boiled dry, and topping up with boiling water. Suet puddings are amiable and easy-going: the only damage that can be done is to let them boil dry or come off the boil while they are cooking. Unmould onto a warm serving dish when you’re ready to serve and not before. It gets heavier as it cools, and an extra half-hour’s boiling will do it no harm.
Meanwhile, make the custard. Whisk or liquidise the yolks of the eggs with the sugar. Bring the milk to just below boiling point and add gradually to the egg yolks, whisking vigorously. Return the mixture to the pan and cook over a gentle heat–set the bowl over the pan and steam over simmer water if you prefer. Stir steadily until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of the spoon. Remove from the heat and stir in the cream. Float a knob of butter to melt over the surface and prevent a skin forming. Serve with the dumpling, handed separately in a jug.
In spite of my warnings about heaviness if allowed to cool, a suet pudding can be made in advance and then reboiled for at least an hour to return it to its former lightness.
Suggestions:
• Alternative fillings for the dumpling: apples and raisins, apples and blackberries, a filling of cherries, damsons or plums. For extra richness, bury a knob of butter in the fruit. Extra ingredients might include blanched almonds, lemon peel, and marmalade: there is plenty of room for invention.
• Alternatives for serving the custard: also good with stewed fruit, baked apples and fruit pies. Flavoured with vanilla, coffee or chocolate or fresh fruit purées it can be frozen into an ice cream. As the basis of a traditional English fruit fool, fold with an equal volume of sweetened fruit purée, and fold in the well-whisked egg whites you have not used in the custard.
STEAMED JAM PUDDING
(England)
A steamed pudding enriched with butter and raised with baking powder, a relatively recent–late Victorian–recipe, but still the heir to the great English pudding. The heirs to England’s tradition of peasant cookery, defeated by the drift to the towns which followed the Industrial Revolution, retreated to the nursery where they nourished generations of empire builders.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation: 20-25 minutes
Cooking: 1½ hours
250g/8 oz plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder (or use self-raising flour)
½ teaspoon salt
125g/4 oz chilled butter
125g/4 oz sugar
2 eggs
150g/¼ pint milk
250g/½ lb jam (damson or raspberry is perfect)
Utensils: A sieve, mixing bowl, a 1 litre/2 pint pudding basin, some greaseproof paper, some foil, and a large boiling pan
Sieve the flour into the mixing bowl with the baking powder and salt. Grate the cold butter into the flour and toss lightly until the mixture looks like coarse breadcrumbs, or cut it in with a knife. Add the sugar. Fork the eggs to blend and stir them in. Mix to a soft dropping consistency with the milk.
Spoon the jam into the pudding basin–no need to grease it first–and spread it up the sides. Spoon in the pudding mixture. Top with a circle of buttered greaseproof paper. Cover the top with a double layer of aluminium foil well-folded over the edges. Place the basin on a piece of wood or an upturned saucer in a large pan with a well-fitting lid. Pour in enough boiling water to come just under half way up the basin–any higher and you risk a soggy boiled pudding rather than a light steamed one.
Bring the water back to the boil and then turn the heat down. Keep the water at a steady simmer for 1½ hours, checking every 20 minutes or so that the pan has not boiled dry, topping up when necessary with boiling water. Unmould onto a hot plate just before you are ready to serve the pudding. It can be kept warm in its simmering water for as long as convenient. Serve with a jug of pouring cream, or with custard as in the previous recipe.
Suggestions:
• Use treacle instead of the jam–you need plenty to give a sticky slightly caramelised coating to the pudding–to weigh syrup, scatter a handful of flour in the scales first. Or add chopped ginger and its syrup (a taste acquired in the Colonies).
• The pudding can be baked in the oven in a well-buttered dish for approximately 1 hour (depending on the shape of the dish) at 350°F/180°F/Gas 4. Serve after a simple nursery dish such as Shepherd’s Pie or Cottage Pie.
SEMOLINA HALVA
(Turkey and the Balkans)
The halva made in peasant kitchens all over the Balkans as well as Turkey is a simple affair, made with semolina, baked and sweetened with honey or pekmekz, concentrated grape syrup. Sometimes the balls are spiked with pine kernels. Semolina halva remains a favourite votive gift among Turkish women. Promised and delivered in gratitude for favours, it combines the most symbolically valuable and the most enjoyable ingredients available.
Quantity: Makes 20-25 little balls
Time: Preparation and cooking: 40-50 minutes
Syrup
4 tablespoons sugar
150ml/¼ pint water
Juice of 1 lemon
The halva
175g/6 oz semolina
50g/2 oz butter
2 tablespoons shelled nuts–walnuts, pine kernels, almonds, hazelnuts, whatever grows in your wood (optional)
Utensils: A small saucepan and a flat dish
Make the syrup by heating together in a small pan the sugar, water and lemon juice and simmering them together for 10 minutes. Chop the nuts roughly.
Melt the butter in a pan and stir in the semolina. Stir it around while it takes a light colour–an important step this as it gives finished halva a delicious roasted flavour. Add the nuts. Fry lightly for a moment. Pour in the syrup, stirring vigorously. Simmer gently for 5 minutes to allow the semolina to absorb the liquid. Remove from the heat and pour into a wide, lightly oiled dish. Leave to cool a little and then cut the paste into small squares. Roll each one into a ball with clean hands. You can spear each little ball with an almond or pine nut if you like, or roll in chopped nuts. Serve warm, with thick cream.
Take a little glass of raki with the halva, a small cup of Turkish coffee and a long glass of water. They taste like a particularly nutty marzipan.
Suggestions:
• Stir in 2 tablespoons of raisins when you add the nuts.
SOURED CREAM PORRIDGE
Rømmegrøt (Norway)
Porridge is favourite time-honoured Norwegian country meal. Taken at any time of the day, ordinary porridge is prepared with coarsely milled grains (oats, barley, rye). Special porridge is made with the best the larder holds: rich cream and fine flour. Rømmegrøt is served as festival food, at Christmas and on Midsummer Day. Very good rommegrøt is now made and sold deep frozen by Norwegian dairies. Some confusion arose when nineteenth century travellers, and indeed twentieth century sociologists, questioned the inhabitants of isolated communities on their diet. When the reply was universally grøt, it was not appreciated for some time that grøt and ‘food’ were synonymous, and that those questioned did not think it necessary to specify that they also ate fish, berries, milk and meat.
Quantity: Serves 4-6 people
Time: Preparation: 10-15 minutes (positively fast food)
600ml/1 pint soured cream
175g/6 oz flour
600ml/1 pint fresh milk
1 teaspoon salt
Utensils: A roomy saucepan, a bowl and a whisk
Bring the cream gently to the boil. Meanwhile, mix 3 tablespoons of the flour to a liquid with a little cold milk and stir into the cream just before it boils. As soon as it boils, the butter in the cream will rise. Skim it off and reserve to serve separately. Mix the rest of the flour to a smooth cream with the remaining milk and whisk it into the boiling cream. Simmer for 5 minutes to cook the flour (stirring all the while–it’s a devil for sticking and burning). Add salt.
Serve with a jug of the skimmed butter and a bowl of sugar. If berries are in season–cloudberries, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries–hand separately in a bowl. Raspberry or blackcurrant cordial, or a nip of rhubarb wine, are good to drink with it.
Suggestions:
• Unlock the spice chest for Christmas and sprinkle with powdered cinnamon just before you serve.
• The dish can be made with porridge oats, but you will have to increase the cooking time. See porridge recipe.
BAVARIAN CURD DUMPLINGS
Topfernockerl (Germany)
Delicate curd-cheese dumplings to be served after a good thick soup. Excellent with a plum or apple compote or with soured cherries in syrup.
Quantity: Makes 15-20 little dumplings
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
250g/8 oz fresh curd cheese
2 free-range eggs
1 level tablespoon sugar
1-2 heaped tablespoon plain flour
Utensils: A mixing bowl, a saucepan and a draining spoon
Beat the cream cheese, eggs and sugar together. Beat as much flour as you need to give you a soft firm dough. The less flour you use, the lighter the dumplings.
Bring a pan of salted water to the boil.
Using 2 teaspoons dipped in cold water, form the curd mixture into little dumplings and drop them into the boiling water a few at a time–don’t let the water come off the boil. Poach them for 5-8 minutes at a gentle simmer. They will bounce up to the surface immediately and bob about in the bubbles. When they are firm, remove with a draining spoon. Serve with a juicy fruit compote and a jug of cream.
Suggestions:
• Bury a stoned plum in the middle of each dumpling, or a little black damson with its stone replaced by a lump of sugar.
• Or poach them and serve them in a fruit soup.
VEILED COUNTRY MAIDEN
Bondepige med slør (Denmark)
A Danish rural housewife’s dish, substantial and economical–the recipe which inspired the English apple charlotte. Traditionally served after a meatless Friday soup thickened with fresh or dried peas.
Quantity: Serves 4
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
1kg/2 lb yellow apples–reinettes or Golden delicious
150ml/¼ pint apple juice or plain water
2-3 cloves
3-4 tablespoons brown sugar
250g/8 oz dry rye bread
2 tablespoons shelled hazelnuts or almonds (optional)
About 75g/3 oz unsalted butter
4 tablespoons raspberry or redcurrant jam (optional)
Utensils: A saucepan, grater and a baking dish, a food processor would be useful
Peel, core and slice the apples. Stew them to a mush with a couple of cloves in a small pan with the apple juice or water, a small knob of the butter and a tablespoon of sugar.
Grate the bread into fine breadcrumbs. Fry them in the remaining butter until they are golden brown. Mix in the rest of the sugar and the optional nuts, roughly chopped.
Spread a layer of breadcrumbs on the bottom of the baking dish, cover over with the apple mush (remove the cloves–they can be used again) spoon on the jam if using, top with the rest of the breadcrumbs. That’s all. Serve cool with plenty of thick soured cream.
Suggestions:
• The French version, charlotte aux pommes, is a rather grander confection. To prepare, line a plain pudding mould with crustless slices of white bread fried golden in butter. Fill the middle with apples stewed with sugar and butter and maybe a touch of calvados. Cover with a layer of butter-fried bread and sprinkle with sugar. Bake in a moderate oven–350°F/180°C/Gas 4–for 20 minutes or so to crisp its exterior. Serve hot or cold. Legend has it that it was the Emperor Napoleon who named the dish in honour of the heroine of Goethe’s novel Werther. In Britain, it was Farmer George’s queen, Princess Charlotte of Denmark, who was held responsible for its introduction to the English kitchen, though it’s usually made without the jam. The jam, on the other hand, reappears as the underlying layer for a Queen of Puddings–a bread pudding topped with a layer of meringue. Confused? You’re not alone.
WATKIN’S BREAD PUDDING
(Wales)
Welshman Watkin Williams-Wynne’s wholesome recipe for bread pudding as supplied to the housewives of the valleys by teetotaller and reformer Lady Llanover, the Isabella Beeton of Wales. The marmalade is optional.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation: 15-20 minutes
Cooking: 2 hours
175g/6 oz day-old (at least) white bread
75g/3 oz suet
75g/3 oz sugar
2 eggs
1½ tablespoons marmalade
A little milk
To serve
Melted marmalade or melted butter sweetened with a little sugar
Utensils: A mixing bowl, a 1 litre/2 pint pudding basin, greaseproof paper, and a grater or food processor
Grate the bread to make fine crumbs–or use the processor. Shred the suet with your fingers–dust them with flour to avoid sticking–then chop finely. Mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl. Beat up the eggs and add with the marmalade to the dry ingredients. The mixture should be rather moist to allow the breadcrumbs to swell; add more milk if needed. Turn the mixture into a greased pudding bowl, cover with greased paper and steam for 2 hours (see recipe steamed pudding). Turn it onto a hot dish, and pour round it either marmalade or sweet melted-butter sauce.
BREAD AND BUTTER PUDDING
(England)
The recipe given in E.S. Dallas’ idiosyncratic mid-Victorian cookery manual Kettner’s Book of the Table, says all that need be on the matter of this simple dish:
‘Bread Pudding: When one is in the humour to eat bread pudding one wants it very simple–therefore the simplest receipt is the best, and the less we say of currants and candied citron the better. The rule is to pour upon fine breadcrumbs about three times the quantity of liquid in the form of rich milk and butter. Say there are six ounces of bread, on this put two ounces of fresh butter, and then pour boiling hot a pint of the creamiest milk to be obtained. Cover this over, and let it stand until the bread is well soaked, which will take about half an hour. Then mix in three ounces of sugar, the yolks of five eggs, the whites of three, and a little nutmeg. Pour it into a dish and bake it for half an hour.’
I would only add that a jug of cream makes the dish sublime.
DROP SCONES
(Scotland)
Otherwise known as Scotch pancakes, these were my birthday treat as child, and the first thing I ever learnt to cook. For a fine bronzed crust, the sugar can be replaced by a knife tip of golden syrup (draw a clean blade through the syrup tin and then through the mix).
Quantity: Makes about 20 pancakes
Time: 20-25 minutes
500g/1 lb plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 tablespoon caster sugar
1 egg
About 450ml/¾ pint milk (soured is best, but if so, cut down on the cream of tartar)
Butter to grease (traditional is a lump of suet held in a cloth)
Utensils: A sieve, a bowl, wooden spoon, and griddle or heavy frying pan
Sift the flour into a bowl with the salt, bicarbonate and cream of tartar. Make a well in the flour and work the egg in with a wooden spoon. Beat in enough milk to make a thick cream. Beat it some more until it bubbles. Now the chemicals are beginning to work, so the mixture will not wait.
Heat a griddle or heavy frying pan. Grease it lightly with butter. When it is hot but not too hot, pour on spoonfuls of the mixture. Let the pancakes cook. They are ready for turning when the bubbles which form on the surface burst. Turn and cook on the other side. Continue until the mixture is all used up. The hot pancakes should be piled up with butter in between, but eaten separately, not cut through like a cake. Have a good thick soup to start the meal, and strong milky tea to drink, with or without a drop of whisky.
PANCAKE SOUP
Frittensuppe (Austria)
Annaliese Vogel, a teacher in a rural school near Vienna, makes this as a quick winter pick-me-up for her own children as soon as they get home. She says you can roast the bones first if you like–her children get the marrow spread on bread to keep the wolf from the door while she makes the pancakes.
Quantity: Allow 300ml/½ pint broth and 2 pancakes per person
Time: The bone broth takes the time. Annaliese makes hers in a pressure cooker–10 minutes is all it needs
Preparation and cooking: 20 minutes to make the pancakes
The broth
Marrow bone sawn into lengths
2-3 carrots, scraped and chunked
1 parsley root and leaf, scraped and chopped
2-3 sticks celery, washed and chunked
1 onion, quartered but unskinned
1 garlic clove, roughly crushed
½ teaspoon peppercorns
½ teaspoon allspice berries
Salt
The pancakes
3 eggs
250g/8 oz flour
about 250ml/½ pint milk
Salt
To finish
Chopped parsley
Utensils: A large soup pot, frying pan
To make the broth, simmer all the ingredients slowly together in 2 litres/4 pints water and then strain out and discard the solids.
Now make the pancakes. Whisk the ingredients thoroughly together in a jug. Heat a pancake pan and wipe it over with a buttery rag. Pour in the batter a tablespoon at a time, flip once as soon as the edges brown and curl. Continue till all are done. Pile them up, quarter them right through and then cut them into short strips.
Ladle the broth into plates without skimming–the little round globules of fat show the broth is homemade. Finish each serving with a handful of pancake strips and a sprinkle of parsley.
SOUFFLÉ PANCAKES WITH PLUM COMPOTE
Kaisersmarm mit zwetschkenroster (Austria)
Loosely translated, ‘the King’s little nothings’, a dish allegedly devised to tempt the royal appetite at a moment of indisposition–the perfect fast food for hungry schoolchildren. You can make it with fewer eggs, but the more eggs, the better and richer the mix.
Quantity: Serves 4-6
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30 minutes
Plum compote
1kg/2 lb plums
1 tablespoonful raisins (optional)
A little water and sugar
1 short stick cinnamon and 2-3 cloves
The pancakes
3 eggs, separated
1 pinch salt
150ml/¼ pint milk
200g/7 oz flour
50g/2 oz butter
Utensils: A roomy saucepan and frying pan
Make the plum compote first. Stone the plums and put them to stew gently with a little water, enough sugar to cut the sharpness, and the cinnamon and cloves.
Meanwhile make the pancakes. Beat the egg yolks, salt, milk and flour together. Whisk the whites till stiff and fold them into the mixture. Melt the butter in a small frying pan. Tip in the mixture, and use two forks to turn it as soon as it begins to set; as the mixture puffs, use the forks to pull it into soft strips. Serve it as soon as it is set, with sugar on the side, so everyone can sweeten their own. Hand the compote separately.
Suggestions:
• At the appropriate time of year, the compote could be apricot, apple, red or blackcurrants, blackberries.
BUCKWHEAT PANCAKES
Galettes de sarrasin (France)
In the old days, a plain all-buckwheat batter raised with soured buttermilk or water, the daily bread of the Bretons, washed down with the local cider. Nowadays, they’re prepared with a magician’s skill in the marketplace: spread, raked and flipped to enclose a filling to order, presented with a stand-up comic’s banter. Home cooks who don’t have a chance to practise daily do better with this more manageable batter.
Quantity: Makes 8-10 pancakes
Time: Preparation: 30 minutes
Cooking: 20 minutes
250g/8 oz buckwheat flour
250g/8 oz strong white wheat flour
1 level teaspoon salt
1 level teaspoon baking powder
2 eggs, beaten
About 400ml/¾ pint water
Unsmoked bacon fat for greasing
Utensils: A bowl, a whisk and a frying pan or griddle, a blender would be helpful
Sieve the flours with the baking powder and salt and then whisk in the rest of the ingredients to make a thin cream. Or process in a blender. Leave for 10 minutes for the grains to swell. Transfer to a jug for ease of pouring.
Heat a griddle or heavy frying pan, grease lightly with a piece of fatty bacon (easiest held in a clean rag), and test the heat with a drop of the mixture–it should sizzle and set immediately.
Pour on enough of the mixture to cover the base of the cooking implement–the galette should be large, about the size of a dinner plate–pouring any surplus back into the jug. Cook over a medium heat until the top looks dry. Flip over and cook the other side. If the first one looks too thick, dilute the batter with a little water.
Continue cooking till all the mixture is used up. Either serve straight from the griddle, or keep the galettes warm in a clean cloth while you complete the pile.
Suggestions:
• You can eat your galettes plain, as you would bread; or with Normandy butter and honey or plum jam. Or roll each up like a little carpet and cut into noodle strips to eat with milk or cream and sugar, or drop a handful into a broth from the pot-au-feu as a light supper or late breakfast.
• To enclose a stuffing–any mixture, sweet or savoury, with which you would stuff any other crepe–fold into quarters rather than rolling. The classic market-snack stuffing is a grilled all-meat sausage–galette robiquette, named for a suburb of Rennes famous for its succulent all-meat pork sausages.
• To enclose an egg, cook the galette on one side, flip, then drop the egg to one side of cooked (uppermost) side, season quickly (a shake of chilli’s good), allow to set for a minute or two, then flip one side over the other to make a half moon, flip again to make a fan shape and flip it over again to allow the heat to penetrate the egg a little more. Eat straight from the griddle–if you hold it in your hand, take care not burn your chin on the scalding yolk.
JAM PANCAKES
Palacinke (Serbia)
Jam-stuffed pancakes are the party treat throughout the Balkans–and everywhere else that someone has had the bright idea of making a batter with flour, eggs and milk. Each region has its own way of enjoying them, and great pride is taken in the excellence of the ingredients. Buffalo cream–very rich and thick and sold as little golden carpet rolls–is the proper accompaniment, as you’ll find if you are fortunate enough to be passing through Sibiu or Plovdiv or some such town in Hungary or Romania or Bulgaria or anywhere where buffalo are still the beasts of burden.
Quantity: 15-20 small pancakes
Time: Preparation and cooking: 1 hour
100g/4 oz plain flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 eggs
About 400ml/¾ pint milk-and-water
2 tablespoons slivovica (plum brandy) or any eau de vie
Butter for frying
To finish
Plum or apricot jam
Utensils: A bowl, a whisk, a jug and a small frying pan, a liquidiser would be useful
Sift the flour with the salt and sugar into a bowl. Stir in the eggs and then beat in the milk-and-water gradually until you have a thin cream–or process in a liquidiser. Leave the batter to rest for 20 minutes.
When you are ready to make the pancakes, beat it again for a few minutes, adding the brandy to lighten the mix–in the winter in the mountains, a fistful of snow can be used instead. Transfer the batter to a jug.
Heat your smallest frying pan–an omelette pan is very suitable. Throw in a tiny knob of butter (clarified if you have any–it will not splutter and burn). Roll the pan around to spread the butter evenly as it melts.
When it’s good and frothy, pour in a couple of tablespoonfuls of the batter (judged by eye of course–you don’t want to be fiddling around with spoons at a moment like this). Roll the batter round the pan–it will stick to it in a thin layer. If you have put in too much just pour the surplus back into the jug. Cook the pancake over a medium-high flame, keeping a careful eye on it. When the edges are lacy, dry and curl away from the sides of the pan (the work of a few moments), the pancake is ready to be turned. If you are feeling exuberant and the pan is one of those light raw-iron ones, flip it over in the air. If not, a spatula will do fine. Turn the pancake and cook the other side. Flip it out onto a reversed saucer–pile the pancakes on top of each other as you make them.
Repeat until all the batter is used. Stuff the pancakes with a spoonful of your best homemade jam. Serve with the thickest, yellowiest cream money can buy–Cornish clotted is perfect.
Suggestions:
• Make double quantities and freeze some for later.
• For an extra special occasion, tuck the stuffed pancakes into a baking dish in rows, bathe them in double cream, cover the dish with foil and put it to bake in a moderate oven, 350°F/180°C/Gas 4, for 20 minutes, till bubbling.
• Only the British seem to eat their pancakes with sugar and lemon–everyone else prefers jam or cream or both. Pancake Day in Britain is Shrove Tuesday, the day devout households ate up all the good things in the larder before the voluntary deprivations of Lent.
• The Scandinavians like their pancakes small: they can buy a special frying pan with little hollows in it for making several at a time. The usual filling is upland berries–cloudberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries–fresh or preserved, or stewed apples.
CINDER FRITTERS
Cenci (Italy)
Italian housewives usually have a deep fryer at their disposal, making these little fritters quick and easy to prepare. Cane sugar, the predecessor of our cheap modern beet sugar, was established as a crop in Sicily and Corsica as early as the fifteenth century, allowing Italians to satisfy their passion for sweetness in their favourite beverage, imported Arabian coffee, as well as permitting the preparation of i dolci–the sweet things with which even the poorest celebrate their festivals.
‘The rich strangers who visit our country pick a little of many things, but we eat all we can get of one or two things–bread and macaroni, or bread and beans. It is only at weddings,’ he finished confidentially, ‘that we arrive at sweets.’
Sicilian peasant to Eliza Putnam Heaton, recorded in the 1920s in By-Paths in Sicily.
Quantity: Makes about 2 dozen
Time: Preparation and cooking: 30-40 minutes
500g/1 lb plain flour
50g/2 oz sugar
50g/2 oz butter
2 eggs
2 tablespoons grappa or any white brandy
Oil for frying
Utensils: A bowl, a rolling pin and a deep fryer with a basket, a food processor would make the pastry in a moment
Sift the flour and sugar into a bowl. Cut in the butter with a knife. Mix the eggs together and work them in, adding as much grappa or brandy as you need to make a soft dough–using liquor rather than water makes a lighter dough. The alcohol evaporates completely in the heat of the fryer, making them perfectly suitable for children.
Roll the dough out thinly and cut into ribbons about the width of your thumb. A crinkle-edge cutter gives a pretty finish. Twist the ribbons into knots.
Heat the oil in the deep fryer–a light olive oil or sunflower. Deep fry the knots until they are light and golden. Drain them on kitchen paper and then pile them up in your best earthenware platter. Sprinkle with sugar and serve hot, just as for the Scandinavian Christmas dish of Hjortakk. Children can have their cenci with fresh grape juice. For grownups, serve with a little glasses of vin santo.
Suggestions:
• You can make cenci with scraps of pastry or leftover fresh egg pasta. Michaela, who cooked in the pension in which I stayed as a student in Florence, would make them to keep her little grandchildren happy while she prepared the family’s Sunday all-egg pasta–dropping the scraps in the deep fryer. Transferred to one of her big earthenware dishes, the piping-hot fritters would be sprinkled with powdered sugar and eaten instantly–the children never learned to leave them until they were cool enough to handle.
STAG’S ANTLERS
Hjortetakk (Norway)
Made with luxurious ingredients–the best in the larder–these fritters are Norway’s Christmas treat, as M. du Chaillu discovered when he visited a Norwegian farmhouse in 1871:
‘The larder is well stocked; fish, birds, and venison are kept in reserve; the best spige kjod (dry mutton, or either beef or mutton sausage) is now brought forward. A calf or a sheep is slaughtered, and as the day draws near sweet fritters and cakes are made. The humblest household will live well at Christmas … The little country stores carry on a thriving trade in coffee, sugar, prunes, raisins, and rice for puddings. Oats are specially bought and put out to feed the birds.’
More sophisticated recipes involve the use of an instrument rather like a flower-shaped branding iron which is dipped in batter and then plunged into the hot oil. A flavouring of imported lemons and spices make them doubly festive.
Quantity: Makes 25-30 fritters
Time: Start a few hours or the day before
Preparation and cooking: about 1 hour
3 eggs
175g/6 oz golden caster sugar
50g/2 oz butter
6 tablespoons cream
2 tablespoons aquavit (or any anis-flavoured white brandy)
Crushed cardamoms and grated lemon zest
500g/1 lb plain flour
Fat for frying (pork lard was used in Norway. Vegetable oil usually substitutes today)
To serve
Powdered cinnamon and more caster sugar for dusting
Utensils: 3 bowls and a pan for deep frying
Whisk the eggs thoroughly with the sugar till light and pale. Melt the butter. Whip the cream. Fold all together with the aquavit, lemon zest and crushed cardamom seeds. Using your hand, work in enough flour–you may need less or more, depending on the size of the eggs and the absorbency of the flour–to give a soft, workable dough. Allow the dough to rest in a cool place, overnight in the fridge if possible.
Roll the dough into a sausage shape, and chop off in short lengths–2 dozen in all. Roll each length into a pencil-thin rope which you can bend to form a ring (secure with a dampened finger). Cut a few notches into each ring to make the horn branches.
Heat a pan of deep fat until a faint blue haze rises. Fry the fritters until puffed and golden. Drain on absorbent paper. Sprinkle with sugar and powdered cinnamon and serve in a beautiful golden scented pile on your best white dish.
Suggestions:
• These biscuits keep well in an air-tight tin. In the clear Arctic sunshine of July, I enjoyed a plateful which had somehow escaped the children’s attentions the previous Christmas.
WAFFLES
Gauffres de Brussels (Belgium)
Brussels, happily for our politicians, is the waffle capital of Europe in more ways than one: nowhere has the art of the waffle iron been raised higher. Every Belgian housewife possesses at least two of the traditional square-patterned irons–one for making everyday gauffres and another with shallower, more delicate indentions to make festive gauffrettes. Breweries and hens being as common in Belgium as politicos, I give the traditional yeast-raised batter enriched with eggs.
Quantity: Makes 12-15 gauffres
Time: Start 2 hours ahead
Preparation and cooking: 40-50 minutes
25g/1 oz yeast (half quantity if dried)
600ml/1 pint milk
6 eggs
500g/1 lb plain flour
2 tablespoons sugar
A pinch salt
1 tablespoon melted butter
Utensils: A large basin and a waffle iron
Warm half a cup of the milk and dissolve the yeast in it.
Beat the eggs with the rest of the milk. Put the flour in a warm basin, make a well in the centre and pour in the yeast mixture, the eggs and milk. Beat until you have a creamy lump-free batter. Put aside in a warm, draught-free cupboard for 2 hours to allow the yeast to develop. Then stir in the sugar, salt and melted butter.
Heat your waffle iron and rub with butter–easiest to handle with a scrap of clean linen. Ladle in enough of the mixture to fill all the indentations, close it, wait till your nose tells you it’s done–3-4 minutes–remove and continue till the mixture is all used up. Serve with butter and sugar or jam or syrup.
CURD CHEESE FRITTERS
Papanasi (Romania)
A fried dumpling, these little fritters can be served with meat, or, as here, as a sweet dish after a soup.
Quantity: Makes 20-25 fritters
Time: Preparation and cooking: 40 minutes
250g/8 oz fresh curd cheese
2 eggs and the yolks of 2 more
100g/4 oz plain flour
½ teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon caster sugar
Grated rind of 1 lemon or orange (optional)
Frying oil
To finish
Soured cream and powdered sugar (icing or caster)
Utensils: A sieve, a bowl and a deep fryer, a food processor would be useful
Sieve or process the cheese if it is the lumpy ‘cottage’ variety, and then beat it into a smooth dough with the egg yolks, flour, salt and grated rind. Leave the mixture to rest for 15-20 minutes. When you are ready to proceed, beat the whites with the sugar until they hold peaks. Fold this into the cheese mixture.
Put the oil on to heat in a deep fryer. When a faint blue haze rises, drop in tablespoons of the mixture. Fry them gently until puffed up and golden. Drain well on kitchen paper.
To serve, fold with soured cream, pile in a glorious golden pyramid and finish with a shower of sugar.
Suggestions:
• To accompany a meat dish, leave out the sugar and the grated peel from the batter; fold the finished fritters with soured cream and finish with a shower of chopped chives.