Crystallized coconut strips
These are a perfect nibble or topping for a cake (as here), and make a great addition to your breakfast granola.
1 coconut in its shell
100g coarse sanding sugar to coat (or granulated sugar, if you don’t have coarse sanding sugar)
Start by cracking the coconut. Go outside and throw it onto the pavement or a hard surface to crack the shell in a few places. It may take a couple of attempts.
Pull the shell apart to expose the white flesh. Slowly insert a spoon between the flesh and the hard shell and jig it about to loosen and release some of the coconut from the side. Once you have a few decent pieces, leave the rest for someone else to wrestle with and use a peeler to make the pieces into long shards of coconut. I like to keep the thin brown membrane on the flesh as it gives a lovely color contrast.
Toss the shards in the sugar and lay them flat on a tray. Allow to dry and crisp at room temperature for 24 hours or, if you are rushed, in a very low oven (around 250°F/225°F convection for 2 hours, stirring or shaking the tray occasionally to stop the shards sticking together. These will keep in an airtight container for at least 2 weeks.
Preserved apricots
Makes 3 × 250ml jars
1kg apricots
1 vanilla pod, halved lengthways
3 sprigs of thyme
strips of peel from 1 lemon (use a peeler)
juice of 2 lemons (the one you peeled plus one other)
700g granulated sugar
Heat your oven to 375°F/350°F convection.
Halve the apricots, remove the pits and lay the fruit on a baking tray. Add the vanilla pod, thyme sprigs and lemon peel to the tray and sprinkle everything with the lemon juice and sugar. Place in the oven for 5 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350°F/325°F convection and cook for a further 15 minutes.
Carefully remove from the oven. All the sugar should have dissolved into a syrup by now—use a spoon to baste the apricots with it and return to the oven. Reduce the heat to 275°F/250°F convection and cook for a further 20 minutes. Baste again and continue cooking for another 10 minutes. While the apricots are cooking for the final 10 minutes, wash your jars and then place them in the oven to sterilize (see notes here).
Once the time is up remove the apricots and the jars from the oven. Very carefully transfer the apricot halves to the jars and cover with the syrup.
Spice mixes & flavored sugar
We opened our restaurant on the tightest of budgets, looking for freebies wherever we could. Our old employers at Ottolenghi, with their typical generosity and kindness, rummaged around for any unused equipment they could spare and we ended up with a coffee grinder. We had already inherited one from the previous owners of 25a Warren Street, but we took what we could get. We soon realized we could use it to grind spices. We were quite a small outfit then and a domestic spice grinder would have sufficed for our needs, but now that we are so much busier and consume large amounts of freshly ground spices, we would not be able to cope without our second grinder. It does as much work as the one upstairs, providing fragrant spice mixes for the kitchen and for our customers, who buy them in little jars.
Do take the time to roast and grind your own spices—it is so little work and so satisfying on many levels, not least that it makes your kitchen smell wonderful.
Sweet spice mix
We mostly use this mix for cakes and baked goods, but it is also great in dishes that require a lighter touch.
10 cardamom pods
6 cloves
½ nutmeg
1 tsp whole fennel seeds
2 tsp whole mahleb seeds
3 tsp ground ginger
4 tsp ground cinnamon
Preheat the oven to 375°F/350°F convection. Roast the cardamom pods, cloves and nutmeg on a baking tray for 5 minutes, then add the fennel and mahleb seeds and roast for another 5 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely before grinding and then mixing with the ginger and cinnamon. Store any that you don’t use straight away in a jar or other airtight container. This will keep for up to 6 months, but I always think you should try to use it within 2 months to get the flavor at its best.
Savory spice mix (aka baharat)
1 dried chile
3 tsp coriander seeds
4 tsp cumin seeds
2 tsp ground allspice
1 tsp ground white pepper
½ tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp sweet spice mix (see opposite)
Preheat your oven to 375°F/350°F convection. Crack the dried chile open and shake out the seeds. Place the deseeded chile on a baking tray with the coriander and cumin seeds and roast for 6 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool completely on the tray.
Crumble the chile between your fingers, then grind to a powder with the roasted coriander and cumin. Mix with the other spices and store in an airtight container. It will keep for up to 6 months, but ideally use within 2 months for the full effect.
Flavored sugars
Vanilla sugar
You can use this in place of vanilla and sugar in recipes that call for both, or simply add it whenever a sweet hit is required. You can also just open the jar occasionally to get a whiff of vanilla and be happy.
used vanilla pods
granulated sugar
Whenever you prepare a recipe using the fresh vanilla seeds, make sure to retain the used black pod as it contains loads of flavor (and most of the time you only use the seeds).
Pop the used pod in a jar containing 150g of granulated sugar (I find that a ratio of 1 pod to 150g sugar works best). Shake it about and allow at least a day for the flavor to infuse. After that, each time you use another pod, add it to the jar and top up the sugar. You can store this jar for as long as you wish.
Spice sugars
We use a lot of mixed spice sugars, and some tried-and-tested combinations appear in recipes in this book (e.g. Fitzrovia buns, here). However, we also make flavored sugar simply to add something special to a fruit salad, or to sprinkle over pancakes or French toast.
To make your own, just use one teaspoon of ground spice for every 150g of sugar and mix well. Keep the same ratio of spice to sugar whether you are using a single spice or a mixture. Fennel seeds, cardamom, mahleb, cinnamon and star anise all work amazingly well either individually or together.
Citrus sugars
These are great if you want to give your sugar a zesty finish. Spread the citrus fruit zest (lemon, orange, lime and mandarin all work well) on a tray lined with baking parchment. Place in a warm place for 12–14 hours to dry a little, then mix with 150g of sugar for every teaspoon of dried zest. Store in an airtight container.