TREACLE TARTP

serves: 8 preparation time: 30 minutes, plus chilling times cooking time: 1¼ hours

Treacle tart … bread and butter pudding … treacle tart … bread and butter pudding … OK, I can’t decide which one wins the much coveted title of Paul Merrett’s favourite English pudding – it’s very close. As a young chef I spent a few years working for Gary Rhodes, who in those days was busy reviving classic British dishes. We cooked both treacle tart and bread and butter pudding regularly. If there was any left over the team were allowed to have their fill – now that’s what I call a job perk!

Any bread will do for this recipe and if it’s the end of the loaf that nobody will touch, then so much the better. Put any forgotten slices in a freezer bag when you have them and make treacle tart whenever you feel the need.

The tart case is always tricky to make the first time, but practice will make perfect. Any leftover pastry dough can be frozen and reused.

In a bowl, rub the flour and butter together using your fingertips until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Now mix in the icing sugar, egg yolks and cold water. Combine everything together to form a dough, but don’t overwork it at this stage. The pastry should be left in the fridge, wrapped in cling film, for a couple of hours to rest and firm up.

To bake the tart case you will need a baking tray lined with non-stick greaseproof paper and a flan ring or loose-bottomed tart tin, 23cm in diameter and 2cm deep. Paint the inside of your flan ring with a little melted butter and dust with flour. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas mark 6.

Once the pastry has rested it can be removed from the cling film and rolled out on a lightly floured surface until it’s about 4mm thick. Roll the pastry up on the rolling pin, then carefully unroll it over the flan ring. Push it down inside the ring, making sure the sides are covered too. Any overhanging pastry can be removed with a sharp knife. Now rest the lined flan ring for a further 30 minutes in the fridge.

When you remove the flan ring from the fridge, prick the base with a fork to stop it puffing up in the oven. Crumple some greaseproof paper, then smooth it out flat. Use this to line the base and sides of the flan ring. Fill the centre with baking beans and bake for 30 minutes. If it is not completely cooked after this time, return it to the oven for another 5 minutes or so. Your tart case is now ready for action.

To make the filling, put the bread in a food processor and whizz it up until you have breadcrumbs, then put these to one side. Pour the golden syrup into a pan and add the butter. Heat them together until the syrup is a runny liquid and the butter has melted. Meanwhile, whisk the egg and cream together until well combined and then pour in the syrup and butter mixture. Next stir in the breadcrumbs, lemon zest and salt, mixing everything together well.

Pour the filling into your cooked pastry case (still in its flan ring and sitting on the baking tray lined with paper). The tart will take about 45 minutes to cook through – at which point it should be a rich golden brown. Give it a few more minutes if it is very soft or under-coloured. Allow it to stand for 15 minutes before serving.

In my view treacle tart should be served warm, never hot, and always with obscene amounts of clotted cream.

TREACLE TARTP

CAROL’S BRAN MUFFINSA

makes: 20–24 preparation time: 15 minutes cooking time: 30 minutes

This is one of those recipes where a little bit of work goes a long, long way. The joy of this is that you take the 15 minutes necessary to throw together the mix, then it lasts for a fortnight in the fridge and those you love can have freshly baked, warm muffins daily for zero effort.

Fred, a great friend and kitchen consort, has a lovely mum called Carol and he remembers her making a double batch of this recipe every other Sunday. She could bake enough for the kids and then take extras into work at the potato factory. That sort of kindness comes from living on a small island off the coast of Canada – wouldn’t it be great if we could bring a bit of practical New World niceness to our modern British ways? Look out for someone handing round home-baked muffins at a workplace near you.

These muffins are quite dense and filling (as bran should be) and make for a proper breakfast, not like the American-style puffy muffins. They don’t rise much, so fill the muffin casings to the size you want them.

If you’re planning on baking some today, preheat the oven to 190ºC/170ºC fan/gas mark 5.

Put half of the bran in a bowl and pour 200ml boiling water over it. In a mixing bowl, cream the butter and sugar together, then stir in the bananas and add the eggs one by one.

Squeeze the juice of the lemon into the milk and pour this into the mixing bowl too. Stir well, then add the cooled soggy bran. At this point, the mixture looks very curdled, but don’t worry. Sift the flour and baking powder into the bowl, add the salt and stir in the raisins with the rest of the bran.

Scoop what you want to cook today into a lined muffin tray – I use squares of greaseproof rather than muffin cases, but it’s up to you. Bake for 30 minutes. Seriously yummy from the oven, broken open with a bit of butter.

Put the rest of the mix in an airtight container and store in the fridge. When you want freshly baked muffins, just scoop out what you need – don’t keep stirring it every time you dig in as the mix doesn’t seem to like it.

CAROL’S BRAN MUFFINSA

BANANA SPONGEP

WITH TOFFEE SAUCE

serves: 6–8 preparation time: 15 minutes cooking time: 1½ hours

Hands up everyone who has a fruit bowl containing a banana which is rapidly turning from yellow to brown. Lots of us, I bet. In my house this was an ongoing problem because I was the only person prepared to eat browning bananas. But all this changed with my amazing frozen-banana discovery. As soon as you notice a banana that is discolouring, put it straight in the freezer. When you revisit the freezer, you will notice that the yellowing skin is now positively mahogany brown all over, but if you defrost the banana the inside will be the creamy ivory colour all of us wish our bananas to be. It’s a bloody miracle!

The downside is you may soon need a second freezer for all the bananas, unless you come up with lots of recipes for them. Well, they work fabulously in smoothies – no need for ice when you have frozen fruit. Banana bread is another good one. But my absolute favourite is this steamed sponge. Imagine for a moment warm sponge, baked with lots of fresh banana, laced with cinnamon and served with toffee sauce … I should be writing adverts.

If you have a food mixer with a beater attachment you have just struck it lucky. If not you can mix by hand with a wooden spoon, smug in the knowledge that you are burning calories in readiness for a steamed-sponge fest.

Beat the butter, flour, spices, sugar and eggs until they become a smooth, thick batter. Add the milk and mix in well. Chop the bananas into small chunks and mix these in too.

Butter a 1.2 litre plastic or glass pudding basin and fill it three-quarters full with the sponge mix. Cover the top loosely with a piece of buttered tin foil and secure it tightly with string. Put a large pot on the hob and pour in about 5cm of water. When this is boiling, lower the pudding basin in and put a lid on the pot to retain the steam. Let the pudding boil away on a good medium heat. The sponge will take about 1½ hours to cook.

Check back every so often and top up the water from a boiled kettle if necessary. To test the sponge, stick a metal skewer into it and pull it back out – the skewer should be clean.

The sponge can be served immediately or cooled, refrigerated and microwaved when you want to eat it. It’s worth mentioning that I have never managed to cool one and get it to the fridge yet. It’s always eaten well before that!

To serve, I would recommend having a decent vanilla ice-cream on hand and also a dollop of dulce de leche. This fabulous Argentinian toffee sauce is available in most good food stores … I mean it, I really should have been in advertising!

BANANA SPONGEP

RHUBARB AND CUSTARD POTSA

makes: 6–8 ramekins preparation time: 20 minutes cooking time: 50 minutes

British rhubarb has two seasons. The forced stuff, usually from Yorkshire and grown in sheds, appears around early spring, but left to its own devices, the natural season is late spring to summer.

Given its status as one of the all-time British classics, this very straightforward reworking of this exalted combo is a real no-brainer to throw together. We tried them hot, warm, room temperature and cold and, for us, cold from the fridge was the winner … but you can make up your own mind.

Preheat the oven to 160°C/140°C fan/gas mark 3.

Give the rhubarb a rinse and put it into a pan with a lid on a high heat with half the sugar.

In a separate saucepan, heat the milk and star anise. Split the vanilla pod down the middle and use a knife to scrape out the seeds, dropping both pod and seeds into the milk. Slowly bring this up to steaming for maximum infusion. When almost boiling turn the heat off and leave it to one side.

After 5 minutes of your rhubarb simmering away, take the lid off and turn the heat down a bit. Stir regularly for 15–20 minutes until it looks kind of jammy, then turn the heat off and leave to cool.

Gently whisk the eggs with the rest of the sugar by hand – a machine would make too much air and froth. Boil a full kettle. Pour your milk infusion through a sieve into your egg mixture whilst whisking. You want as little froth as possible, as this will be skimmed and chucked.

Back to your rhubarb – give it a squeeze of lemon, a good stir and then taste your mixture. If it is too tart, add a touch more sugar. Spoon a 1cm layer of rhubarb into the bottom of six to eight 130–180ml ramekins (roughly 40g–50g in each). Don’t go more than 2cm high (any leftovers are lovely on muesli with yoghurt).

Use either a ladle or a measuring jug to pour the egg mixture gently on top of the rhubarb, up to the top of the ramekins. Sit the ramekins in a high-sided roasting tray with space between each one and put it in the middle of the oven. Fill the roasting tray with water from the kettle up to the lip of the ramekins – two thirds of the way up will do.

Cook for 25–30 minutes, turning the tray around after 15 minutes to cook evenly. Keep an eye on them, you want them to just dome up. When done, take the ramekins out of the water and let them sit for 15 minutes before putting in the fridge to cool completely. To serve, run a thin knife around the edges of the ramekins and flip the rhubarb and custards out on to little plates.

RHUBARB AND CUSTARD POTSA

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE BISCUITSP

makes: 20 preparation time: 15 minutes cooking time: 10 minutes

The Americans know their chocolate brownies, so it’s fitting that this recipe has truly stateside origins – it was given to me by a New York chef who came to work in my kitchen. What’s unusual is that rather than baking the mixture in a tray and then cutting it into slabs, this recipe delivers much lighter biscuits (or cookies, as they are known over there) which have all the characteristics of the classic brownie. I like macadamia or hazelnuts added to mine, but it works with any nuts or indeed none at all, in which case use more chocolate.

A word of warning … these are truly irresistible. You will not be able to stop at just eating one. And everybody in the house, even those who seem to have a genetic inability to cook, will suddenly appear at your side, pretending to be very interested in brownie production. They are simply trying to claim first place in the queue. Personally, I would suggest you lock the kitchen door to make sure you get first tasting!

Preheat the oven to 180ºC/160ºC fan/gas mark 4.

Whisk together the eggs, sugar and coffee thoroughly. The mixture will eventually lighten in colour and thicken slightly as the eggs trap the air being whisked in. This could take 7–8 minutes with an electric hand whisk, or considerably longer by hand. Put the mixture to one side for a moment.

Melt the butter and chocolate by placing them in a bowl and putting the bowl over a pan of steaming water. Once melted, remove the bowl from the pan and allow the butter and chocolate mixture to cool for 5 minutes before gently stirring it into the whisked eggs.

It’s important not to overwork the mixing in of the remaining ingredients or you will knock all the air out of the original egg mix, so use a folding-turning motion to combine them. First, fold in the flour and baking powder and add the pinch of salt. Then fold in the nuts and chocolate chunks.

Line a very shallow baking tray (or two) with non-stick baking paper and drop on evenly spaced heaped dessertspoon-sized dollops of the batter. Bake for 10 minutes until the mixture has risen, the tops have cracked slightly but the centre is still gooey. If you can, allow the biscuits to cool completely on the trays (they break up otherwise) before diving in.

CHOCOLATE BROWNIE BISCUITSP

ANYTIME COOKIESA

(FRESH FROM THE FREEZER)

makes: 30 cookies preparation time: 10–15 minutes cooking time: 8 minutes

Like the muffins on p.298 that are ready to go from the fridge, this cookie recipe follows the same lines – do a little prep when you have a few minutes, then reap the rewards of freshly baked cookies anytime. You make the dough, freeze it as a log and then just cut off discs with a knife as and when the cookie monster shows up. Stud them with whatever you want, from hazelnuts to chocolate to crystallized ginger to nothing at all.

Who knew providing instant fun and joy could be quite so easy.

If you want to bake the cookies today, preheat the oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas mark 6.

In a big bowl, mix the butter and sugar until there are no lumps of butter left. Stir in the vanilla and egg. Sift the flour, baking powder and salt, if using, into the bowl and give it a quick, thorough mix.

Lay out a square of cling film, about 30cm x 30cm, and tip the mix into the middle of it. Bring the far edge of the cling film over and towards you, then use the side of a palette knife to press into the base of the cling film to make it into a tight sausage about 7–8cm wide. Tie the ends and chill in the fridge until fairly solid.

Before it sets rock hard, reshape it with your hands so your cookies don’t have a flat side, then put in the freezer until needed (the dough will keep for up to six weeks). If that need is now, cut discs (a hot knife makes it easier) about 1cm thick and put them on a baking tray, spaced well apart.

Sit whatever you fancy (or nothing, as they’re pretty light and buttery as is) on top of them without pushing – the toppers will sink in as the cookies soften in the oven. Cook for about 8 minutes, until the edges are just going golden.

Leave the cookies to firm up on the tray for just a minute, then lift on to a wire rack to cool. Eat now.

ANYTIME COOKIESA

LEMON CREAMP

WITH A BERRY COMPOTE

serves: 4 preparation time: 15 minutes, plus chilling time cooking time: 10 minutes

If you didn’t get round to freezing any berries last summer you should have a go at doing so this year. Pick them in season, freeze them and use them all year round. This is the only way to eat berries in December in my opinion. The flown-in rubbish is simply not an option. Lemons, on the other hand, are fairly reliable all year and having this recipe up your sleeve means you are only one pan and twenty minutes away from knocking up a pretty impressive pudding. The berries add to the overall thing, but they are not a necessity. Strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants or gooseberries all work well – together or individually.

To make the lemon cream, put the double cream in a thick-based pan and bring to boiling point. Add the sugar, then reduce the heat and simmer for 3 minutes, stirring. Pour in the lemon juice and zest and, while the cream is simmering, stir for 30 seconds. Turn off the heat and allow to stand and cool for 10 minutes, then pour the lemony cream into glasses and set in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Meanwhile, place the berries and sugar in a pan and bring to a simmer. Simmer for about 5 minutes, then remove from the heat and cool – job done.

Serve a small pot of the berry compote next to each glass of lemon cream or spoon over the top. Shortbread would round things off nicely.

LEMON CREAMP

SAD FRUIT MADE HAPPYA

Fruit is attractive and good for you. It also goes off, sometimes at an alarming rate. Apples and bananas are at numbers three and four respectively of the top-ten most thrown away foods in the country. Often we are guilty of writing off these previously perfect symbols of well-being as soon as they exhibit a blemish, and from then on they’re history in our eyes.

But there is a magic window where we can give them a last lovely lease of life, whether their destination is a smoothie, juice or compote.

SMOOTHIES

A smoothie should have the following staple ingredients: , yoghurt and milk. Ice is optional and add honey if necessary. There’s also something called a ‘thickie’ and the difference is to do with whether it has dairy or not, but I don’t think it sounds very nice anyway.

Fruit that works well: mangoes, peaches, berries, nectarines, apricots and pineapple, soft fruit and cooked hard fruit, like rhubarb. On the next page is a recipe idea you can run with.

JUICES

Bread-maker, pilates video, ice-cream machine … do you really need a juicer? After engaging and disengaging with them for many years, I think the answer is ‘yes’. They are useful, helpful and make delicious and soul-healing drinks. However, if you don’t clean it there and then, well, you might as well chuck it out and get a new one.

And as a final thought, if you do have a juicer, you can also use sad veg – our all-time house favourite is beetroot and celery, with a little apple.

And as for a recipe: in goes unhappy fruit and out comes juice filled with vigour. It’s hard to go wrong.

COMPOTES

Weirdly, some of the stone fruits, like plums, peaches, kiwis and nectarines, never seem to ripen (happens more often with those from the supermarket) and by cooking them into a compote before they become wax effigies of themselves, somehow their flavour is outed.

A compote is to jam what a burger is to steak. A steak may be superior, but a burger tastes good and is never more than half an hour away. Sad fruit in pot, bit of sugar (or not), bubble for a bit and hey presto – fruity goop that tastes delicious.

Muesli, toast, ice-cream, porridge, with pud or milkshakes/smoothies. Very good idea.

Fruit that suits ‘compote-ing’: berries, rhubarb, stone fruit (peaches, greengages, cherries, nectarines, plums), apples, pears. Most of the hard and soft natives and some of the imports. Dodgy ground with citrus, except marmalade of course, which is closer to a jam.

I’ve given you a recipe for a strawberry and plum compote over the page, just so you get the general idea.

SAD FRUIT MADE HAPPYA

MANGO SMOOTHIE

makes: 2 long glasses preparation time: 5 minutes

Chuck everything into the blender and give it a good blitz until it starts to go frothy.

STRAWBERRY AND PLUM COMPOTE

makes: roughly 2 x jam jars (480g) preparation time: 10–15 minutes cooking time: 45 minutes

Put everything apart from the strawberries into a saucepan with a lid on a medium heat. Hull the strawberries and add these too.

After 15 minutes, take the lid off. Depending on what fruit you’re cooking, it may look kind of soupy right now – what happens with a compote is all the water comes out of the fruit and evaporates away whilst the flavour is absorbed. Once your compote has started to thicken up, lower the heat, stir well and make sure it’s not catching on the bottom. For this combo, it took about another 30 minutes after the lid came off to hit the right loose, jammy consistency, but obviously that varies enormously with what fruit you’re using and how sad it is. The time to turn the heat off is when it’s really beginning to stick on the bottom.

Leave to cool whilst you soak two jars and their lids in a bowl of boiling water or run them through the dishwasher on a hot cycle, then lift the jars out and spoon the compote in. Leave to cool and then keep in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks.

GRAPEY SPRITZER

makes: 2 glasses preparation time: 5 minutes

This is a ridiculously refreshing boozy one for summer evenings.

Blitz all the ingredients, apart from the water, and pour into tall glasses with more ice. Top up with sparkling water. The great Laura Herring at Penguin suggests making this with a shot of gin instead of the wine. We like that.