Cherries in Vinegar

The cherry trees at the local pick-your-own farm appear to be laden with fruit, which hopefully will begin to ripen nicely over the next few weeks. So I thought I'd get in quickly with this recipe that I've been saving up since the last year's cherry season.

This is an easy and refreshingly different little pickle that works particularly well alongside cold meats, terrines and pâtés, but will also sit very happily alongside cheeses and richer meats like duck. As a bonus, once you've eaten the cherries, filter the pickling mixture and you’ll have a very fine cherry vinegar that can be used in salad dressings and marinades. The cherry vinegar is also excellent when used to deglaze the pan after cooking beef, lamb or duck.

There are a number of old British recipes for cherries in vinegar as well as many different versions of ‘cerises au vinaigre’ in various parts of France. My version is actually based on recipes from the Picardy region and I reckon that makes it virtually local.

Actually, this version is not really typical of most British or French recipes. Traditional British versions are usually spicier and often use the herb English mace, while many French recipes contain cinnamon and cloves. If you’d prefer the spicier flavour, then add a piece of cinnamon stick, some coriander seeds and maybe a few cloves to the vinegar before heating it. You could also substitute English mace sprigs for the tarragon.

The amounts in this recipe will fill one jar of around 750 ml but treat the quantities here as a guide, since the size and shape of the cherries will make a difference to how many you can fit in a jar. Essentially, you should aim to fill your chosen jar three-quarters full with cherries and then fill it to the top with the vinegar mixture.

Store the cherries for at least 2 – 3 weeks before using, although some people consider it a crime to eat them before 10 –12 weeks. The cherries should keep for at least a year but are so good with summer salads and picnics that they don't usually last very long at all.

350 g cherries
2 sprigs French tarragon
1 bay leaf
420 ml either white wine vinegar or cider vinegar
180 g caster sugar
100 g light brown soft sugar
Grated zest of 1 lemon
Generous pinch of salt
Generous sprinkling of black pepper
A little freshly grated nutmeg

Sterilise a suitable 750 ml jar. Wash and dry the cherries. Don’t remove the stalks but cut them off close to the cherry. Don’t stone the cherries. Pack the cherries into the jar until it’s around three-quarters full. You can pack them in quite tightly but don’t crush them. Tuck the tarragon sprigs and the bay leaf in among the cherries.

Put the vinegar, sugars, lemon zest, salt, pepper and nutmeg in a pan and place on the heat. Bring to the boil, stirring frequently to ensure that the sugar has dissolved completely. Allow the mixture to boil for a minute or two, then take off the heat and let it cool.

Pour the cooled vinegar over the cherries until the jar is full. Seal and place in a cool, dark cupboard for at least 2 – 3 weeks. When serving, remember to warn people about the stones.

White Chocolate and Honey Coulant with Macadamias and Pistachios

I haven’t added any recipes to the blog lately because, due to circumstances being completely out of control, I haven’t cooked anything for several months. I'm hoping that situation will change soon, but for now here’s something that I baked last year and didn't get around to posting.

I'm aware that the world is in danger of disappearing under a sea of chocolate fondant and coulant recipes but they’re undeniably delicious and decadent and there’s still something special about cutting into a little cake and watching the chocolaty loveliness flow out.

This particular version is adapted from a recipe by Pierre-Yves Lorgeoux of the ‘Le Pyl-Pyl’ restaurant in Vichy. I’d love to say that I've been there but I have to confess that I saw it on an episode of ‘Les Escapades de Petitrenaud’ a while ago. It does look to be an excellent restaurant, though, so if you’re ever in the area maybe you could go on my behalf. You can find the original recipe here.

I can still remember the first time I ate a chocolate coulant (or was it a fondant?) on a warm summer night in a little restaurant near the Picasso Museum in Paris. They say you never forget your first time. Ah, it seems such a long time ago now. Funnily enough, that’s because it was a long time ago.

This will make 4 little coulants.

150 g white chocolate, broken into pieces
120 g unsalted butter
3 eggs
40 ml runny honey
40 ml agave nectar (you could use more honey instead)
70 g plain flour, sifted
40 g macadamias, broken into chunks
30 g pistachios, roughly chopped
Some extra butter and icing sugar to coat the ramekins

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Thoroughly butter four ramekins and dust generously with icing sugar. Pour off any excess icing sugar.

Melt the butter and chocolate together in a bowl placed over simmering water, with plenty of stirring. Set aside to cool a little.

Whisk the eggs with the honey and agave nectar. Once thoroughly mixed and lighter in colour, gradually pour in the chocolate and butter mixture while continuing to whisk. Stir in the flour followed by the nuts.

Pour the mixture into the ramekins and place in the oven for 12 – 14 minutes. It’s difficult to be exact about the timing since I've found to my cost that ramekins heat up at very different rates. You want the edges to be spongy but set and the centre to be very soft without feeling too liquid if you touch it lightly.

As soon as they’re out of the oven, run a knife around the inside edge of the ramekins in case of any recalcitrant sticky bits and invert the coulants onto serving plates. If they seem to be sticking too much or you just don’t fancy the stress, you can always eat them out of the ramekins. It might not look quite so impressive but they’ll taste just as good.

Personally I like these just on their own but they would certainly go nicely with a little ice cream. They’re fairly rich – even I couldn't eat two. Well, maybe not.

Aromatic Lamb with Dried Apricots

Although I'm the homeliest of home cooks, every now and  then I get an urge to recreate something that I've eaten in a restaurant and today is one of those occasions. This dish probably started out long ago as a traditional Parsi dish but by the time that I came across it in a south London restaurant it had been adapted to British tastes and to restaurant cooking. Sadly, I didn't get the recipe at the time and the restaurant is long gone now. In my attempts to recreate the dish I've used some decidedly inauthentic ingredients. But who cares? It works.

The dried fruit brings a lovely sweetness to the dish while the spices add both depth of flavour and fragrance. There are a lot of ingredients listed, but it’s actually pretty easy to put together. If you can, allow yourself enough time for the overnight marinade – it really does make a difference.

The dish is fine on its own but it would also sit well alongside a vegetable curry or you could serve it with rice if you happen to be really hungry. A simple chutney would also be good – lemon chutney would be ideal. It should serve two fairly generously.

275 g trimmed lamb neck fillet, cut into chunks of about 3 cm
1 onion, finely chopped
3 cm (or thereabouts) fresh ginger, peeled and very finely chopped
1 tbsp tomato purée
8 dried apricots, cut in half
1 tbsp raisins
Seeds of 3 green cardamom pods, crushed
¼ tsp fennel seeds, crushed
2 tbsp ground almonds
Steamed or boiled new potatoes
A dash of lemon juice
Coriander leaves, roughly chopped

For the marinade:
     1 tsp paprika
     1 tsp cumin, ground
     1 tsp coriander seeds, ground
     Seeds of 1 black cardamom pod, crushed
     ½ tsp black pepper
     1 large clove garlic, crushed
     30 ml balsamic vinegar (a cheap but not nasty one is fine)
     30 ml red wine
     1 tbsp palm sugar (use brown sugar if you don’t have palm)

Mix together all the marinade ingredients in a non-reactive bowl, add the lamb, cover and leave in the fridge overnight (or for a few hours, if you’re in a hurry).

The next day, sweat the onion in a little oil over a low heat for at least 10 minutes. Add the ginger and continue cooking for another 5 minutes. Add the lamb and the marinade and stir in the tomato purée. Pour in water until the lamb is almost covered, bring to a simmer, cover the pan and let it cook very gently for an hour. Stir now and then and top up the water if it starts to dry out.

After an hour, add the apricots and raisins. Stir in the cardamom and fennel seeds and the ground almonds. Season with a little salt. Cover the pan loosely and continue cooking for another half an hour. The sauce should be quite thick – if it seems too thin, then remove the lid during this last half hour but, on the other hand, add a little water if it seems too dry. Stir in as many cooked new potatoes as you fancy for the final 15 minutes or so.

Once the cooking is complete, stir in a dash of lemon juice to freshen the taste, add a little more salt if it needs it and sprinkle with the coriander leaves just before serving.

Grapefruit Yogurt Cake

This is a classic and simple way of making a cake that turns up with minor variations in quite a few different countries. I first came across it in France where it often seems to be the first cake that children are taught to make because it’s easy, very forgiving and there’s no weighing needed.

For this month’s Random Recipe challenge Dom of Belleau Kitchen has asked us to select from our cuttings, clippings and old hand-written recipes. I'm very happy to do that – in fact, I should do it more often. Reaching into the magic cupboard containing my ‘library’ I came up with a notebook containing a mixture of hand-written and torn-out recipes dating from the 1990s. From that I randomly selected this yogurt cake, or I should really say ‘gateau au yaourt’ since it’s taken from a French magazine (although I'm not sure which one).

Lemon or lime is more commonly used to flavour this cake, but grapefruit is actually a very pleasant change. I have to confess to making two minor changes to the recipe. I added the grapefruit liqueur because I just love the stuff – it’s entirely optional. I also reduced the amount of sugar a little. Classically, the ratio used for the cake is one pot of yogurt, two pots of sugar and three pots of flour but, although that’s easy to remember, I think it’s a bit too sweet.

I used a plain, full-fat yogurt for this cake, but flavoured yogurts will work well. It’s also possible to use low-fat yogurt, provided that it’s not too thin – you will lose a little richness in the finished cake, though. Although I didn't add one this time, it’s quite common to make a syrup to drizzle over the cake, especially if you’re using it as a dessert.

1 pot plain yogurt, 150 g (see note above)
2 eggs
1½ yogurt pots of caster sugar
3 yogurt pots of plain flour, sifted
2 tsp baking powder
½ yogurt pot of sunflower (or other neutral oil)
Zest of 1 small grapefruit
1 tbsp grapefruit liqueur

Preheat the oven to 180°C. Butter and line a cake tin. I followed the French instructions and used a 22 cm cake tin, which produces a relatively thin cake. If you’d prefer a taller, more British cake, then use a smaller tin – around 20 cm should be fine.

Place the yogurt in a bowl. Wash out and dry the yogurt pot to use as a measure for the other ingredients. Whisk the eggs into the yogurt one at a time.

Once the eggs are combined, whisk in the sugar followed by the flour. It’s best to add the flour gradually to ensure that you don’t get any lumps in the mixture. It’s important to combine everything well but don’t overdo the whisking at this stage.

Gradually pour in the oil while continuing to whisk gently. Finally, stir in the grapefruit zest and liqueur.

Pour the finished mixture into the prepared cake tin and bake for around 35 minutes or until a knife-point inserted into the centre comes out clean.

You have to admit, that's a pretty easy cake. En effet, c'est du gâteau.

Debden Chocolate Pudding

If you've not come across this little pudding before, then you might think that the recipe sounds ridiculous. Well, it is a bit odd, but it does works, honest. It’s one of those puddings that separates out during cooking. You should end up with three layers: a crunchy sweet topping, a chocolate sponge middle and a chocolate fudgey base.  It’s indulgent and delicious without being too ridiculously high in fat. What’s not to like there?

This month’s We Should Cocoa challenge is being hosted by Lucy over at The Kitchen Maid and she’s asked us to share a famous chocolate recipe.  Well this one’s famous. Or, at least, it used to be famous. Around the early to mid 1980s this dish seemed to turn up everywhere. OK, it’s old-fashioned and it’s not photogenic but it’s also delicious and it definitely doesn't deserve to be forgotten.

I really don’t know the origins of this dish. When I first came across it in the 1970s I’m pretty sure that I was told it was named after the place in Essex. Later someone told me that it was named after a Mrs or Mr Debden. More recently I found that there’s a similar American dish called Denver pudding. As usual, I'm confused.

You can eat Debden pudding warm or chilled but it’s at its best when served at room temperature, I think. A little cream, ice cream or thick yogurt would be a nice addition. This should serve 6 – although, frankly I could eat the whole thing myself.

120 g plain flour
2 tsp baking powder
170 g granulated sugar (ideally the golden, unrefined type)
30 g unsalted butter
40 g dark chocolate
140 ml milk (preferably full-fat, although semi-skimmed will work)
50 g demerara sugar
50 g caster sugar
20 g cocoa powder
175 ml cold water

You’ll need an ovenproof dish that will hold at least 900 ml. Butter the dish. Preheat the oven to 170°C.

Mix together the flour, the baking powder and the granulated sugar. Melt the butter and chocolate together over a bowl of simmering water or in the microwave. Stir the butter and chocolate mixture into the flour and sugar, followed by the milk. The mixture won’t look promising at this stage, but don’t worry – trust me, I’m a blogger.

Pour the mixture into the prepared dish. Sprinkle the demerara sugar evenly over the mixture in the dish. Do the same with the caster sugar and, finally, with the cocoa powder. Now carefully pour in the cold water, trying to avoid disturbing the layers of sugar and cocoa as far as possible.

Place in the oven and bake for 40 – 50 minutes until the top has formed a crust. (The type of dish you use is likely to make a difference to the cooking time. The old-fashioned enamel tins are probably the quickest.) Allow the pudding to cool before serving. If you’re not planning to eat the pudding immediately, then store it in the fridge, but preferably return it to room temperature before serving.

The We Should Cocoa challenge was created by Choclette at Chocolate Log Blog and Chele at Chocolate Teapot.

Palets de Dames

Gaze into the window of a boulangerie in the north of France and there’s a chance that you’ll spot some palets de dames.  Gaze into a number of boulangerie windows, though, and you might notice that the palets look very different.  They’re a pleasing little treat that’s somewhere between a cake and a biscuit but sometimes they have a smooth covering of fondant icing, sometimes no icing  at all and sometimes they contain currants or candied peel. Well, my version has a coating of apricot jam and a thin, lemony icing. I don’t really know if that’s authentic but it’s a recreation of the first palets that I ever came across while wandering around the Baie de Somme.

If you’re unfamiliar with the Baie de Somme, then I’d describe it as an area of spectacularly large and rapid tides, seabirds, seals, fine seafood,  salicorne (samphire), salt marsh lamb and some excellent baking among many other things. Happily for me, it’s also not all that far from the south of England.

Incidentally, they’re called palets de dames because ‘jeu de dames’ is French for the game of draughts (or checkers, if you’re not British). I've only ever seen white icing being used, though, so it might be a one-sided game.

For the palets:
     130 g unsalted butter, softened
     130 g icing sugar, sifted
     2 eggs, lightly beaten
     150 g plain flour, sifted
     75 g ground almonds
     Apricot jam

For the icing:
     225 g icing sugar
     1 tbsp lemon juice
     4 or 5 tbsp water

Preheat the oven to 170°C. Beat the butter briefly, then add the icing sugar and continue beating until light in colour and very smooth. Gradually add the eggs while continuing to beat the mixture. Stir in the flour, followed by the ground almonds. The flour and ground almonds need to be thoroughly combined, but don’t overwork the mixture at this stage.

Line a couple of oven trays with baking parchment or silicone sheets. If you want a regular and nicely rounded finish on the palets then you could pipe the mixture onto the baking trays in neat circles. That’s what a true patissière would do, I'm sure. On the other hand, if you don’t mind a touch of irregularity, then simply spoon small piles of the mixture onto the lined trays and flatten them a little with the back of the spoon. The amount here will make around 16 decent sized palets but you could make them smaller if you wished. Space the palets out to allow them to spread while baking.

Bake in the preheated oven for around 10 minutes. The palets should feel fairly springy to the touch, should have a light golden colour around the edge but should remain pale in the centre. Cool on a wire rack.

Once cool, spread the tops with some apricot jam. This will be easier if the jam is warmed a little first, but allow the jam to cool before adding the icing. Prepare the icing by mixing together the icing sugar, the lemon juice and enough water to produce a fairly thin but not too watery icing. Spread the icing over the palets, being careful to avoid disturbing the apricot jam layer too much. Allow the icing to set  before enjoying with your favourite beverage. Store in an airtight container.

Tea Time Treats is a blogging challenge created by Lavender and Lovage and What Kate Baked and this month's challenge, hosted by Lavender and Lovage, is for French treats. So that's completely within my comfort zone and I can't resist entering this little effort.

This Is Not A Gâteau Creusois

Today we make another stop on my annoyingly long tour de cakes de France and find ourselves in the Creuse. The Creuse is a lovely region, although the last time I was there it was around this time of the year and it was really cold. Anyway, it’s there that you’re likely to find examples of a gâteau called ‘Le Creusois’ on sale.

It’s also possible that you’ll find several similar cakes under slightly different names in French supermarkets, as well as a number of versions of gâteau Creusois recipes which people will tell you are the real, authentic recipe that their grand-mère made. They may well be authentic and ancient recipes – I have nothing but the greatest respect for grand-mères – but the particular cake sold as ‘Le Creusois’ was actually born shortly after the Beatles gave their last performance on the Apple roof in 1969. It appears that the gâteau was inspired by a 15th century parchment found in a monastery around that time, although the actual recipe itself is a closely guarded secret.

I have no wish to upset the pâtissiers or any of the other residents of the Creuse with my efforts so let me make it absolutely clear that this is not a Gâteau Creusois, it just happens to be rather like one. Let’s think of it instead as my tribute to that fine region and as a delicious hazelnut cake.

In the Creuse the gâteau (whatever it’s called) is most often eaten cold as a dessert with crème anglaise or crème fraîche and it’s truly delicious that way. On the other hand, if you want to break with tradition, try making a syrup of equal parts water and sugar, boiled together for a minute or two. Take the syrup off the heat and add a very generous glug of Frangelico liqueur. Once cool, make a few small holes in the top of the cake with a knifepoint and soak it with the syrup. That's what I did and it made the cake sink a little in the middle (a bit like the Creuse) but, in my opinion, it makes an even nicer dessert.

210 g caster sugar
110 g plain flour
110 g ground hazelnuts
120 g butter, softened
1 whole egg
2 egg whites

Grease and line a 23 cm cake tin – a springform tin is probably best, if you have one. (You could use a smaller tin if you want a thicker, more British-looking cake, but I think the thinner gâteau is nicer as a dessert). Preheat the oven to 160°C.

Mix together the sugar, flour and hazelnuts. Thoroughly beat in the softened butter followed by the whole egg.

Whisk the 2 egg whites to the firm peak stage and stir about a third of them into the mixture to loosen it. Gently, but thoroughly, fold in the remaining egg white. Put into the prepared cake tin and level the top. Bake for around 30 minutes (but check after 25 minutes). When the point of a knife or skewer comes out clean, the cake is ready.

Cool in the tin for 10 minutes or so before turning out onto a wire rack to cool completely. Soak with a Frangelico-laced syrup, if you’re so inclined (and I'd certainly recommend it).