As Strong As Soup

At this time of year I know it's usual for food bloggers to offer Christmas cake and turkey recipes but I'm really not a Christmas person. So instead I'm offering this not entirely seasonal recipe because I think it might prove useful for all those festive leftovers. Now I'm about to let you into a secret, so keep this to yourself. This deceptively simple recipe was a staple of a late and much lamented Indian restaurant some years ago. They used this sauce in a number of different ways and in a number of different dishes. I've adapted this recipe a little since then and reduced the quantities for home use. To my shame, I can't recall the name of the chef from whom I stole, sorry I meant to say  learnt , the recipe but I wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that it still serves as a base in one or two restaurants somewhere in our fair land. This is a remarkably useful and adaptable concoction that can be used either hot or cold. Try serving small, undilut...

I've called this a gâteau because that's what the French original was called but this is definitely a dessert (or maybe a sweet snack) and not a cake to be nibbled with tea. The French seem to have a great love for flan-like desserts of various kinds such as the classic flan pâtissier,  le millas  made with maize flour from the Charente or maybe the pastizzu made with semolina from Corsica. This dish may follow that tradition but it's a modern and health-conscious invention. I've come across it in many forms in the last 20 or 30 years and I've always been a bit doubtful about some of the simpler and lighter forms of the recipe. Well, having played around with the recipe for a bit, I now realise that I was wrong. A simple and low fat version suits my less complicated tastes these days. If you want a dessert that's lighter and healthier than most cheesecakes but still creamier and smoother than a cake, then this might be right for you as well. In France this...

I've just been listening to someone on the radio wittering on about how terrible British restaurants were back in the 1960s and 70s. This version of history seems to be accepted as the official narrative today. I admit that many of the restaurants back then were pretty bad. In fact some of them were laughably awful such as the trendy restaurant that served only tinned food. But there were very good places to eat if you looked hard enough in the right places. I was lucky because the right places were often in London and that's where I happened to be living. If you headed for one of the simple trattorias scattered around town then you could get decent, straightforward Italian food at a reasonable price as well as encountering waiters with comically large pepper grinders. There wasn't a huge choice of food in those bygone tratts but some options were very similar to what's on offer in restaurants today. For instance, I swear I had crushed avocado on toast in a little pla...

This dish might sound a little eccentric - fish, cider and apples aren't usually best friends - but somehow it works. The sauce adds a savoury depth of flavour and the apples provide a contrasting acidity. Although it's more typical of Normandy, the last time I came across this kind of combination was on the Île d'Oléron. And that's entirely appropriate because I find the Île d'Oléron pleasingly eccentric too. To be honest, this dish isn't usually made with hake - cod or pollock would be more likely - but I'm very fond of hake so that's what I'm using. You could use pretty much any white fish you fancy. This is a little lighter than some similar northern French recipes but it's definitely not free from calories. Well, we are in Normandy after all. Or we might be on the Île d'Oléron for all I know. This will serve 2. 1 large shallot, finely chopped 300 ml cider (a light, dry cider would be best) 2 apples (ideally a firm variety with...

It's more than six years since I bothered you with my general-purpose “traditional” French macaron recipe  and at the time I promised to irritate you still further with my recreation of the macaron from the Picardy town of Amiens . Well, I may be slow but sometimes I do get there in the end. I have a fascination for the traditional food of Picardy not only because it's just across the channel but also because it's so often neglected, even by the French. This particular example of the macaron is said to date back to the sixteenth century, although I'm not pretending that my version is truly authentic. In fact, I've been told that if you make the Amiens macaron in less than three days, then you're not really trying. This type of macaron is sometimes baked in small cake tins, which will give you a more regular shape but I'm pretty confident that the more traditional bakers of Amiens don't do it that way. This version tends to be chunkier than most other ...

Please don't imagine that this dish is authentic. Let's just say that it's inspired by the Catalan dish ‘samfaina’, which is itself a cousin of ratatouille and caponata. Over the years I've heard many chefs insisting that the flavours and textures of the vegetables in ratatouille should always be kept distinct from one another but for this slow-cooked style of samfaina please forget about that. This dish is all about blending the flavours and textures into something closer to a jammy dip. That may sound odd but, believe me, it works. I have it on good authority that courgettes aren't normally used in the classic Catalonian samfaina but I like what they bring to the dish. (I warned you that this wasn't authentic.) The addition of smoked paprika to the dish at the end isn't really authentic either but I came across a restaurant doing something similar and so I've copied the idea. It makes a subtle but very real difference to the flavour. (A little warni...

I'm told that ‘bhuna’ means ‘brown’ and refers to the way that this curry is cooked until the colour darkens. In yet another of my shameful fits of nostalgia I'm attempting to recreate a curry that used to turn up on the menus of some of the nicest South London Indian restaurants back in the 1980s when I just happened to be living there. I've come across many bhunas that look and taste nothing like this in the intervening years. To be honest, this is close to the original but not entirely faithful. I think I've toned down my spice craving a bit since the 1980s and I definitely use less oil these days. I imagine that you can still find something like this dish in restaurants somewhere in the country, but it's probably not fancy enough for many London establishments these days. I've checked Google and the place where I first ate this bhuna is now an estate agents. That sums up the recent history of South London rather well I think.  The number of spices h...

If you've had the misfortune of following this blog for some time, then it's just about possible you may remember that I've wittered on about nonnettes before . But it's nearly 5 years since I last featured them and, since they're one of my favourite cakes, I don't feel too guilty about wittering on again. After all, imagine how bad you'd feel if you went to see a band and they only played new songs and none of their hits. (It felt pretty bad, actually, but let's not go there). This version started when my wife was given a jar of local honey produced in the spring. (I admit that my knowledge of honey is minimal at best). This honey is light in colour, less intense than a high summer honey but with some lovely, subtle flavours and I wanted to use it to produce a lighter and fragrant nonnette with some of the flavours of early summer. I made 11 relatively large cakes with this mix using friand and medium-sized muffin tins. If you choose a small muffi...

I've made some very pleasant ice creams over the years but I wanted to write down this particular recipe because quite simply it's the one that I like best (at least, it is this week). On the whole, there's nothing revolutionary or unusual about this recipe. It's essentially a classic, creamy, custard-based ice cream but there are two ingredients that give it the edge: the hazelnut paste and the ice cream stabiliser. You could use a supermarket hazelnut butter or a hazelnut spread of some kind for this ice cream and it would work very well but using a smooth paste made solely from hazelnuts gives a much better result in my opinion. You can make your own paste if you have a tough blender and a fair bit of patience or you can buy a pure paste that's intended for baking and desserts. Good quality, pure hazelnut paste isn't cheap but it really is worth it for the ultimate flavour. (If you do use a hazelnut butter or spread for this recipe then you may also need to...

Mention Roscoff Onions to people of advanced age in the UK, such as myself, and there's a good chance that they will start to tell you nostalgic tales of the Onion Johnnies selling their onions door to door throughout England and Wales while dressed in hooped shirts and riding bicycles. This isn't a complete fantasy, there were Onion Johnnies and they did ride bikes and very possibly wore Breton hooped shirts now and then. (In fact, I'm told that there's an Onion Johnny Museum in Roscoff). But the truth is that the heyday of the Onion Johnny was before World War Two and by the 1960s and 70s there were very few about. When I was a young thing in the early 1960s, there was a Breton onion seller who visited our area of London but I'm pretty sure he had an old battered van and not a bike. (I'm not too certain if he wore a striped shirt, but I doubt it). My family didn't buy any onions from him because they considered onions to be too exotic and posh for the like...

These days Surrey is probably better known for commuting than farming but there's actually some very fine produce available locally. One product that's become increasingly common over the last few years is rosé veal. (I know that some people say rose  veal and others say rosé veal but since I've no idea which it should be, I've chosen rosé at random). It's a very adaptable meat but, for me, it really comes into its own in this lighter type of casserole. The veal I used came from an excellent local producer, Hunts Hill Farm , who have a farm shop open several days a week as well as being a familiar fixture at several of the local farmers' markets. This recipe is based loosely ( very loosely) on a Spanish dish but the way I make it isn't in the least authentic. On the other hand, since it was born in Spain, I couldn't resist adding a little Pedro Ximenez sherry to finish the dish - that's optional, but very nice. You could also use a PX vinegar ins...

There are plenty of recipes for cakes made with olive oil knocking about but not too many that use a dessert wine as well. Well here's one that I found under a bush in the Languedoc. It produces a moist cake with a fruity flavour that's a little bit different to the norm. Since it's a bit different, I'm not sure that it's the typical British afternoon tea cake, unless your chosen beverage is a fruit tea or maybe a fragrant Earl Grey. Admittedly, others who have tried the cake disagree and like the fact that it adds variety, so what do I know? On the other hand, I do know that it works really well as a dessert cake alongside some fruit and maybe a little crème anglaise or cream. I paired it with a poached pear this time, which is lovely but isn't particularly Languedoc. Poached apricots or peaches would probably be more of a southern French choice. This is a very straightforward cake to make but it's important to choose the wine and oil carefully. Don't...

I know I should be telling you about all the fine things that I've cooked lately, but I've been diseased and dilapidated lately and I haven't cooked anything at all. So I thought for once I'd tell you about something else instead. I could tell you about the packet of  Pudding Rice that I bought a while ago which helpfully told me on the said packet that it was “Ideal for Rice Pudding”. But, on reflection, I think I'll pass on a few items that I've spotted on menus over the years instead. (I swear these are genuine although not from the same restaurant). I also feel it's my duty to present a reproduction of a specials board that I spotted a while back. Finally, as the following photograph taken in the lab shows, I'm happy to say that my investigation into how all the flavour is removed from supermarket cheese continues apace. Normal, haphazard service should be resumed shortly, but in the meantime