This week in my kitchen :: Summer Fruit Crumble

It would be telling tales if I said that my cooking choices haven't been influenced by festival food.

There couldn't have been a more extreme selection of places to eat and drink there. From a 1920's themed Champagne Orangery tent with a white picket fenced garden full of beautiful people (just like a scene from The Great Gatsby), exclusive long table banquets hosted by famous chefs, or Petersham Nurseries' Michelin starred restaurant in a tent. To street food. Like worthy Wholefood Heaven's, Buddha Bowls  and The Chai Shop Organic, the tiny tea tent that's solar powered with water heated on a biomass fuelled heat exchanger, humble Good & Proper, tea and crumpets or the crumble shack. Something for everyones' taste from meat eating hedonists to vegan, wholefood, soul-food even foraged, or simple little old me... 

But you probably know by now that it was the wholesome down to earth food that I loved. The Wholefood Heaven's Buddha Bowl was the best thing I've eaten all year. Not sure if it was all that fresh air or that Hannah had invited me to go along with her (how awesome is that...mum's still cool enough to be seen at a festival with, never mind dancing to Bjork with) or maybe it was the music and the ginger beer but it tasted so good. 

Their Buddha bowl (that's won awards) is a noodle box filled with a vegan Massaman curry with new potatoes, pineapple and soya chunks, carrot and homemade kimchi pickle, flash steamed kale, organic brown rice and omega seeds. 

Apparently the Massaman curry is Thai but with Persian origins. I will try and make it when I get all the ingredients but I made up a concoction that was as close as I could with what I had to hand when I got home and added prawns and salmon; and what I thought was brown rice in the cupboard but was actually brown rice noodles...So not quite there, but scrumptious too. 

But I am on a crumble mission. We didn't manage to get to the crumble shack but once home I began making them with a vengeance. And I was hungry, so it was a quick root in the fruit bowl and cupboards that produced:

My Summer fruit crumble

Ingredients for four people:

• half a dozen small shrivelled apricots 
• a baking apple or any seasonal fresh fruit
• porridge oats
• coconut oil
• maple syrup
• light soft brown sugar 
• vanilla extract
• a little ground cinnamon

Method:

1. Pre-heat your oven to about 200-220c/400-425f/gas mark 6-7
2. Wash, cut in half and de-stone the apricots and place them in an oven proof dish. If using a baking apple peel,core and cut into eights or sixteenths depending on the size of the apple and add them too.
3. Sprinkle with a little soft brown sugar and ground cinnamon.
4. I have no quantities for this but have made it twice and it just works. Take a big spoonful of coconut oil and add to a saucepan. Heat until it melted, pour in a big drizzle of maple syrup and a few drops of vanilla extract.
5. Add  couple of handfuls of porridge oats and stir well. 
6. Put this topping on top of the fruit.
7. Bake for about half an hour or so until the fruit is tender and the crumble golden brown and a little crunchy.

This is delicious I could eat the whole thing just to myself (and almost did). The topping is crunchy and chewy not like some crumbles that can taste a bit like sawdust. The coconut oil gives a subtle coconut hint, the maple syrup and soft brown sugar...just a sprinkling but added an earthy fudgy toffee depth and the fruit...mmm...something else. I have tried this with nectarines too...heavenly...and if the oats aren't produced near any products with gluten, this recipe is gluten free and vegan...

Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall's orange and dried fruit salad is amazing too. It's called Carroty Dried Fruit Salad and you can find it on page 330 of River cottage Light and Easy: Recipes for Every Day. It's a lovely alternative to usual salads with dried fruit that plumps up and softens in the juice of fresh lemon and orange.

Oh and the crumpets...next on the list...I will try and make them...

But what about you...where do you find your food inspiration?

debx 

Pears poached in Pink Lady with homemade custard

Some of my favourite dishes have been happy accidents...the serendipity of finding odds and ends that need using up...putting them together and hey presto making something yummy.

A case in point is my pears poached in Pink Lady perry. A kind friend of A's  sent a bottle of Pink Lady Sparkling Perry pear wine for me at the weekend...I had a glass and didn't want the rest to go to waste. I also had three very ripe pears in the fruit basket...the two were made for each other.

 I simply covered the pears with the wine added a little honey, Muscovado sugar a crushed cardomom pod and a little cinnamon powder and poached the pears until they were tender. Then thickened the sauce with a little arrowroot powder.

I then made a simple custard using this recipe and half quantities but omitted the butter.   This made a lovely light desert.

Flapjack Crumble with the last of the gooseberries

Battling biting little thorns, I collected the last of the gooseberries hiding under bushy green leaves.They are little devils to collect.  There weren't quite enough to make a dessert but along with windfall mulberries and small yellow cherry plums made a delicious base for my favourite flapjack crumble.

I've just  rooted out the original recipe to check that I'm writing down the correct ingredients.  I discovered that it's actually called Flapjack Plum Pudding and not crumble!  Whatever you call it, it's delicious and so easy to make that since making the first one  five or six years ago I've never made a conventional crumble again.This is a great gluten free recipe.
  

Flapjack Plum Pudding

Ingredients:
•               750g stoned ripe plum

•               75g(3oz)  butter

•               75g organic jumbo oats (I prefer this made with finer oat)

•               75g light Muscovado sugar

Method:

1.             Halve and stone the ripe plums and spread them in the bottom of a buttered ovenproof dish.

2.           Melt the butter in a saucepan and mix with the oats and sugar.

3.           Sprinkle over the plums and bake in a preheated oven, 180c/gas mark 4 for 35 - 40 minutes, until the fruit is tender.

4.           Serve with warm custard or pouring cream.

Simple...

In my slightly altered version, I cook the fruit for a little while in a saucepan.  Depending on the ripeness and type of fruit I add a little brown sugar or honey to taste. Then cook the fruit for a  while until it begins to fall, but not break up.  I then transfer it to an oven proof dish and  top with the flapjack mixture, which I usually put a little vanilla extract in.  This  method cuts down on the baking time by about ten or fifteen minutes.

I make this a lot after  Christmas  when the green grocers shelves are full of cranberries, often reduced radically.  The combination of windfall apples and sour cranberries is amazing...

It's sad we're coming to the end of our little berry crop but it looks like we're going to have a lot of apples this autumn and I think I spotted what looks like a damson tree in the woods peeping over the top of our fence...and it's full of fruit...I think I'll go and investigate...

Dom's Challenge, Vintage Recipes, and Why Foolproof is always good.

'Frangipani' page 90, that's where I opened up 'Round the World in Eighty Dishes:The World Through the Kitchen Window. 

Published in 1956 and written for: “Armchair travelers and young enthusiasts," it could just as easily have opened at The Zombie’s Secret, from Haiti p179 (I think I'll save that one for Halloween) or Bandit's Joy, from Albania, p104.

I should explain, as part of Dom of the Belleau Kitchen’s ongoing challenge, I’m randomly opening my most recently acquired cookery book, and then making the recipe on that page…no cheating.

I was compelled to get a copy after seeing author Lesley Blanch’s 103rd birthday picture. Be-caftaned, draped with beads and bracelets, white hair covered with an enormous turba; she apparently lived a most exotically bohemian life. But that’s another story.

I had a friend coming for coffee so thankfully Frangipani is a Sicilian sweet that once set can be cut up and served in a similar way to Turkish Delight. It sounded a little more inviting than: "would you like to come round for Bandit's Joy or The Zombie's Secret?"   Maybe less fun though. 

I’m sure that my new vintage cookery book is pretty much out of copyright so here’s the recipe:

RECIPES

NB for Vegan/lactose/gluten free,substitute with plant based/gluten free alternatives.(I'm always happy to suggest possible substitutes, just leave leave a message in the comments if you need any help. dx)

Frangipani

Ingredients:

3 eggs

3 tablespoons of flour 

3 cups of milk

5 tablespoons of caster sugar

5 tablespoons ground almonds

Method:

Beat 3 eggs together, add 3 tablespoons flour, mixed in a little cold milk, and stir carefully into the eggs. Add 2 cups of milk, and heat in the double boiler,stirring all the time. Cook it slowly for 15 minutes. During this time add, bit by bit, 5 tablespoons fine powdered sugar, and the same amount of ground almonds. When the whole thing is a thick smooth mixture, remove and pour it into a flat baking dish. Let it get quite cold, and then cut into small squares like Turkish Delight.

I’m not sure if proof reading was what it is today in 1956 but the recipe seems to have a number of errors in it. So I basically just mixed everything together and then patiently stirred it in a double boiler over the hob for 15 minutes.

So far, so good, I presumed that once cooled it should set to the correct consistency.

But it didn't...

Thankfully there was time to whip up a quick chocolate cake using this foolproof recipe:

Foolproof Maderia

Ingredients:

8oz Plain flour

1 tsp baking powder

2 large eggs

5oz soft butter or margarine

5 oz caster sugar

5 tablespoons milk

3 tablespoons of cocoa powder

1tsp good vanilla extract

A little made espresso or instant coffee

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180c/350f/Gas Mark 4. Prepare a six-inch cake tin by rubbing oil onto the base and sides, then coating with a dusting of flour. Cream together the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs, one at a time and then fold in the dry ingredients. Add the milk until you have a dropping consistency.

Place the mixture in the tin and bake. The original recipe suggest you leave this for an hour before checking but I always check half way through as I have a fan oven which gets really hot. I check with a skewer to make sure it's cooked through.

When ready remove and leave to cool on a wire wrack.

Then decorate as required. Chocolate ganache is great with cream or chocolate spread filling. The sides can be coated with either and then covered with flaked chocolate...as you wish.

I cut the cake into three slices. I used a thick layer of good strawberry jam to sandwich the bottom two together. I like Bonne Maman, but home made would have been even better. As strawberries are in season I whipped double cream, sweetened with a little icing sugar and added a dash of vanilla extract for the top one and then layered with thin strawberry slices, finally topping the cake with a dusting of icing sugar.

My felt-making friend loved the chocolate cake, and was really sweet about the frangipani. She tried some even though it was sloppy and not at all like Turkish Delight, even complimenting the nice almondy flavour.

I don't think I've really cheated I did try out the recipe but the foolproof chocolate cake just came out much better...

Fruit Salad

I know it's naughty to buy fruit out of season but I couldn't resist getting some strawberries. They smack of summer days and picnics in the garden. I like to make big fruit salads with my favourite fruits and a little apple juice or squeeze on a lemon or lime then pile up big bowls of it for a snack or plop it on top of green salad or quinoa or yummy porridge.......mmm......

Orange and Almond Buns

All the Christmas cake and biscuit stock has been consumed at last and I can start baking again.

A quick fruit bowl, store cupboard search revealed oranges and ground almonds....a great combination....an even quicker google search introduced me to a lovely blog beehive95, and a slightly different version of the Nigella clementine cake recipe that I think most of us have made at some time.

Beehive95's recipe uses a slightly higher ground almond to egg ratio, and oranges rather than clementines.

I'd just bought these cup cake or muffin cases....I'm not sure exactly what the difference is...so I was dying to use them. I only had enough ground almonds to make exactly half the amount so I thought it would be perfect to try...and just call them buns to solve the dilemma!

To make beehive95's Orange & Almond cake you will need:

• Two large organic unwaxed oranges
• 300g of ground almonds
• 250g of caster or granulated sugar
• 6 eggs
• 1 heaped teaspoon of baking powder

This is a very easy cake to make but takes quite a while to bake and you need a long time to cook the oranges, so it's the kind of thing to make in the evening when you're pottering about. It's great because almonds are really good for you and it's both fat and wheat free.

To make the cake or buns simply:

• Place the orange/s in a pan, cover with water bring to the boil, reduce the heat and then cook until tender when pierced with a knife. Apparently this can take up to two hours. Mine took a lot less, I suppose this will depend on the size and thickness of the skin.
• Cut in half and leave to cool.

• Remove the pips and blend the orange halves, skin, pith and all.

• Whip up the eggs and sugar using an ordinary hand held balloon whisk.

• Fold in the ground almonds and baking powder. Put into a 25cm loose bottom baking pan lined with parchment and bake at 150c for 45 minutes to one hour.
• Leave to cool in the tin before cutting.

I used exactly half the ingredients which made exactly nine small cakes. They took about half an hour to cook which surprised me. I checked them after the first ten or fifteen minutes but they needed longer.

I forgot to put the baking powder in....I was glad actually because they worked fine without. These are the most deliciously moist little buns....mmm......lovely.....

They are scrumptious just as they are but make a great desert served with custard and with a fruit coulis. I reserved some of the sauce I made whilst poaching pears in a Cinnamon, Cardamon and Rosemary Sauce with a red grape juice base. It working amazingly well and this will be on my repertoire from now on.

This post is linked to The Kitchen Maid's bloghop Sweet Sweet Friday that you can see here.

Do you have an end of week sweet treat? Add it here to spread the sweetness of Fridays....