La Recette du Jour

The other day Steve bought about a kilo of organic carrots when I only needed a couple. So I was searching around for ways of using them up. I almost made Ivy’s carrot cupcakes, but I didn’t have any oranges, so I decided to try something different. I ended up with this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, but as so often with American cake recipes I ended up changing it so radically it was hardly the same recipe by the time I’d finished. The result was quite different from Ivy’s cakes, but equally delicious. I loved the spices, especially the ginger (I’d even add a bit more next time), and the cakes were both light and moist.

It was yet another cake recipe that specified 2 cups each of flour and sugar. Hey people, a cup of sugar weighs about twice as much as a cup of flour! I like my cakes to taste of something other than sugar, especially when they are topped with tooth-achingly sweet frosting. So I decided to go for pound-cake ratios — equal weights of sugar and flour — reducing the sugar content by half.

The recipe uses vegetable oil instead of butter. I thought this was a bit odd, but we’ve been eating an awful lot of saturated fat recently, one way or another, so I decided it was time for a change. Again, 260 ml of oil looked like a lot, so I reduced it to 220, and I think I could even have used a little bit less without ill effect. If you want, you can replace all or part of the oil with softened butter.

And finally, instead of the raisins and walnuts, I used some chopped candied orange peel. But I think they might have been even nicer with chopped candied ginger as well or instead (can you tell I really liked the ginger flavour?).

This recipe makes a large batch; I used muffin tins and got 16 cakes out of it, but they would have been better a bit smaller. I frosted them with Ivy’s mascarpone frosting, except that I added maple syrup to it instead of lemon zest.
Recipe for Carrot cupcakes with maple cream cheese frosting »

This month’s Taste & Create partner was Rachel of Tangerine’s Kitchen. Not a blog I’m familiar with, so I enjoyed browsing through the wide range of recipes (although the design could use a bit of work, the large un-optimised photos brought my slow connection grinding to a halt!).

As usual there were a few that tempted me: cheesy calzones and spiced apple tart to name but two. In the end though, yet again I went for something quick and simple.

A couple of weeks ago (during a visit to a free-range pig farm as it happens) we were served some delicious non-alcoholic aperitifs before lunch. One of them was made with fresh ginger, and it was excellent. So my eyes lit up when I saw Rachel’s gingery lime punch. This had to be worth a try. And it was.

After making the syrup I refrigerated it and then served it topped up with chilled sparkling water. Lovely, so refreshing; I did add a bit more ginger after tasting it, as it wasn’t quite zingy enough initially. It will make a great non-alcoholic and driver-friendly alternative to the lethally thirst-quenching Marquise that we serve at summer parties.
Recipe for Gingery Lime Punch »

I adapted this from a recipe by Jeremy Lee of the Blueprint Café. It’s rather like pommes Anna, only made with duck fat instead of butter. OK, neither of them is very good for you, but it’s not something you’re going to eat every day! Serve with a simple roast; we had it with the pot-roasted pork I posted a couple of days ago. It is crispy on the outside and melting in the middle — lovely!

Really it should be turned out, but a galette made with enough potatoes for 9 people was so large and so dense I just served it straight from the dish, using a slotted spoon so it wasn’t swimming in fat. If yours is smaller, do turn it out.
Recipe for Potato galette »

Bet you thought I’d forgotten about my cookbook challenge, didn’t you? Things have been going on in the background though — not all of them entirely successful.

Due to “technical difficulties” there is no photo of this particular recipe from Delicious Days, but it was really lovely. In a glass, a layer of panna cotta is allowed to set for a few hours, and is then topped with a thin layer of coffee jelly. I let the coffee cool for 10 minutes as instructed, and spooned it carefully onto the panna cottas. They looked lovely, a symphony in black and white. But when I took them out of the fridge a couple of hours later, the still-liquid coffee had managed to insinuate itself down the sides of the glasses in dark streaks, so it really didn’t look very attractive! It tasted gorgeous though, the strong coffee complementing the mild creaminess of the panna cotta perfectly. Next time — and there definitely will be a next time — I will let the coffee almost set before adding it.

I twiddled the recipe a bit; the coffee was actually supposed to be Kahlua, but I’m not a liqueur drinker, and I wasn’t about to buy a whole bottle just for this. I first discovered Delicious Days via Nicky’s recipe for coffee jelly, so it seemed entirely reasonable to use this: I just made a cup of very strong espresso and sweetened it before adding the gelatine. Taking a leaf out of Pascale’s book, I also substituted a couple of tablespoons of crème fraîche for part of the cream; I’ve done this before and it really enhances the flavour of the panna cotta, especially when you can only get nasty UHT cream. It still amazes me how something as simple as “boiled cream” can be so very good.

I’ll take this opportunity to mumble quietly about a couple of other less successful attempts from the book: the smoked trout, red onion, fennel and orange salad was a nice idea, and looked attractive, but there was far too much onion, and we felt the flavours didn’t really work together that well. No photo, we were entertaining and I didn’t have time to take one.

The caramelized almonds suffered from my following the instructions too closely; “after 5-8 minutes the liquid will have evaporated and the sugar covers the almonds with a dry crust”. This didn’t happen, and I was just musing that the cinnamon in the syrup made it hard to see just how caramelized it was when — sniff, sniff — aargh! I snatched the pan of the heat and quickly tipped the almonds onto the prepared baking tray. They were only just the right side of burnt. I didn’t photograph them because they would have looked like cockroaches, but if they had been just a fraction less done they would have been really nice. As it was, they were still OK as a nibble with drinks.

This is a recipe from an ancient Sainsbury’s magazine. La Vallée d’Auge is in Normandy, and this name invariably means a dish (usually chicken) that’s cooked with apples, cream, and probably cider and/or Calvados. We don’t eat much pork, but for this occasion (9 people for dinner) we treated ourselves to a fabulous 2 kg pork roast from the local charcutier. It’s quite a lot of work, but the results are worth it. There wasn’t a scrap of it left over.

We served it with a potato galette cooked with duck fat, and followed it with Val’s gorgeous pear upside-down cake, so all in all it was an artery-clogging extravaganza.
Recipe for Pot-roasted Pork Vallée d’Auge »

I really like fruit cake and marzipan, but I’ve never made a Simnel cake before. These are traditional in the UK at Easter, apparently since Roman times, and the 11 marzipan balls on top are supposed to represent the 11 apostles (minus Judas).

The recipe I used comes from a guest post from the Mildred Mittens Manufactory on the Cottage Smallholder, my favourite blog and always a reliable source for recipes.

Mildred is obviously a one-woman cake-baking factory. Her recipe makes two or three cakes depending on size, so I adapted it slightly, since for one thing I only have one suitably sized cake tin. I halved the recipe and then converted it to metric since my scales don’t do pounds and ounces. Note: if you are doing this with a recipe, always sit down and do the sums on paper first, then check your maths, and keep the paper by you when you are measuring. I have messed up a couple of times by doing this in my head as I go along and forgetting to halve some vital ingredient!

Then I twiddled the fruit a bit to suit what I had: no glacé cherries, so I used a mixture of sultanas, raisins, a few chopped dried apricots and prunes, candied lemon and orange peel, and dried cranberries. Then in a flight of fancy I popped in some diced candied papaya. We don’t give sweet sherry house room here, so instead I soaked the fruit overnight in lemon juice and a glug of Monbazillac — it smelled gorgeous while it was soaking. Oh, and I didn’t make my own almond paste — you can buy very good soft marzipan here, so I used that.

If you want the original recipe in pounds and ounces, pop over to Fiona’s blog. If you want to see loads of cute photos of guinea pigs and hedgehogs, visit Mildred’s site. Otherwise, read on for the recipe.
Recipe for Simnel cake »

This is a fantastically quick and easy way to knock up an elegant-looking dessert in 10 minutes from ingredients you always have on hand. OK, it won’t look as if you’ve spent hours slaving over it in the kitchen, but it is delicious and would make a light and refreshing finish to a substantial meal. Don’t leave it too long in the fridge, or it will start to separate and collapse. The usual warnings about lightly cooked/raw eggs apply.

Adapted from Very Easy…Kitchen (in French).
Recipe for Lemon and olive oil mousse »

This is quite a popular way of presenting apple “crumble” in France. It’s lighter than the traditional British crumble, and looks a bit more sophisticated too. You can make it with whatever fruit you fancy, e.g. pears, plums, apricots … but if you use anything too juicy (e.g. rhubarb, blackcurrants) you may end up with soggy pastry. To avoid this, scatter a tablespoon or so of semolina or ground almonds over the pastry before adding the fruit. It is best served warm, with crème anglaise (not Bird’s custard please, this is France!), cream, or ice cream.
Recipe for Apple crumble tart »