Bonus baked onions

I’ve decided I’m not done with number nine yet; the onions deserve a mention. 

It’s a Nigel Slater recipe - one found in The Kitchen Diaries - that I’ve been meaning to make for ages. In the spirit of Getting Things Done before we move away, I finally made the baked onions (funny how I manage to tick things like “make baked onions” off the to-do list much quicker than “go to the dentist”). The onions were as good as I hoped, but they are baked in cream and cheese so it’s really no surprise.

Onions baked in cream

Makes enough for 6 – 8 people, as a substantial side dish

4 large onions, peeled and halved (but don’t cut off the core)

250ml cream (the original recipe calls for 330ml, but I found 250ml to be plenty)

Large handful grated parmesan (although I in fact used pecorino, which was good)

Salt and pepper

Place the peeled onion halves in a large pot with a teaspoon of salt and cover with cold water. Place over high heat and bring to the boil, then lower the heat to medium and simmer for 20 – 25 minutes, until the onions are tender but not soft. Remove from the heat.

Preheat the oven to 180 C. Remove the onions from the water with a slotted spoon and lay in an ovenproof dish. Pour the cream over the onions, season generously with salt and freshly ground pepper, and sprinkle the cheese on top. Place the onions in the oven and bake for 30 – 45 minutes, until the tops are dark golden and bubbly.

Dinner party number nine, with bonus nostalgia

The ninth dinner party was for a group of lovely cousins.

The menu:

Camembert baked with white wine and garlic, with carrot sticks and bread sticks for dipping

Roast chickens with vermouth gravy

Roast potatoes

Onions baked in cream

Salad:  rocket, watercress, avocado, citrus segments, sugar snap peas, peas, sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds

Pumpkin pie with ice cream

Pumpkin pie

I grew up amongst Americans – although not actually in America – and as a result attended quite a few Thanksgiving dinners. The first one was the most intense, including a reading of the pilgrims’ story from a children’s book, with voices and (forced) audience participation. My dad was scarred by the experience and from then on remained mildly horrified by the whole idea. But I was sold – stuffing! pie! cranberry sauce! I could sit through a great deal of pageantry and public thanksgiving for all that deliciousness. And so we continued on to many Thanksgiving dinners in subsequent years, and I continued to love the food.

So much so that, years later and once again living in South Africa, my sister and I organized our own Thanksgiving dinners for two years in a row with various friends and family members. They were good, but without the necessary Americans it felt like a bit of a forced production, so we stopped.

I was sad about the loss of Thanksgiving dinner, until it one day occurred to me that, hey, I can make my favourite parts of Thanksgiving dinner whenever I feel like it, without actually having to have a Thanksgiving dinner. I do not, in fact, need a turkey with all the trimmings in order to justify making a pumpkin pie.

So now I can make pumpkin pie whenever I feel like it.

And a close-up!

The recipe I use is Jean Sorrels’, my childhood best friend’s mother. The Sorrels family hosted us for our second, and my favourite ever, Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t remember too much from the main course, aside from the fact that we ate a vast amount and that, since it was November in Russia and the meal started at 4pm, it was pitch dark by the time we finished. The three Sorrels girls and my sister and I went outside to the playground after dinner and played in the snow, eventually laying down to make snow angels and stare at the stars. Then we went back inside, cheeks and noses pink from the cold, and Jean produced her homemade pumpkin pie and pecan pie with whipped cream.

Pumpkin pie

Serves 12

I think (but am not American, so do not know for sure) Jean’s pumpkin pie is quite traditional, and there are all sorts of variations and things you can add to fancy up a pumpkin pie. But as is probably obvious, I am very nostalgic about Thanksgiving dinner in general and pumpkin pie in particular, so this is the only pumpkin pie I’ll ever make.

A note on the pumpkin used in the filling: I cheat and use butternut, which I like better and is easier to work with. I peel and cube it, roast it, mash it, then push it through a sieve to make it really smooth. You don’t have to do the last bit, and you can steam instead of roast, although I think roasting makes for a more flavourful pie.

Pastry for one-crust pie (I use classic shortcrust pastry, one recipe’s worth, but store-bought is fine)

1 ½ c strained, cooked pumpkin (see note above)

2 large eggs

1 x 380g tin, or 1 ½ c, evaporated milk

2 tbsp high test molasses

½ c brown sugar

1 tbsp flour

½ tsp salt

½ tsp ground ginger (I used a bit less)

½ tsp ground cinnamon (I used a bit more)

Pinch of nutmeg

Pinch of ground cloves

Preheat the oven to 230 C. First, blind-bake the pastry: roll out the pastry and line a standard pie tin or quiche tin. Lay some tinfoil or baking paper over the pastry shell and fill with baking beans. When the oven is up to temperature, slide the lined tin onto a baking sheet and into the oven. Bake for 10 minutes.

While the pastry shell is in the oven, place the pumpkin, eggs, evaporated milk, and molasses in a bowl and whisk to combine. Add the remaining ingredients and whisk again, making sure there are no lumps.

When the pastry has baked for 10 minutes, remove it from the oven, lift the tinfoil/baking paper out and pour the pumpkin filling into the shell. Slide into the oven and bake for 10 minutes at 230 C, then lower the temperature to 180 C for a further 30 minutes. Check the pie after 15 minutes at 180 C – if the crust is starting to get quite brown, cover just the crust (not the whole pie) with some foil to prevent burning (I was distracted and did a very sloppy job with this, and ended up with some of the foil sadly making marks on the finished pie’s surface).

Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before slicing. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream. Leftovers make an excellent breakfast.

I tried to hide the worst of the foil-damaged top of the pie
with the cunning use of foliage

Dinner party number eight

The eighth dinner party was the night after the day the shipping people (what do you call them officially? shippers?) came to pack up all my kitchen things. By necessity, anything I cooked from that point on had to be simple, so a simple dinner it was.

I did, however, manage to impress myself endlessly by making a cake despite having no mixing bowls, no measuring cups or spoons, no scale, and to make it just that little bit more exciting, no recipe. I just tossed random amounts of things into an old bunged-up pot to melt, added still-random quantities of dry ingredients and stirred. Ta-da: cake batter. Poured into an old, battered pan on top of leftover poached pears. Miraculously, it rose and was edible, even very good, although of course I have no idea how much of what I used so there is no recipe.

Recipe-less cake

Anyway, the menu:

Cheese plate (insanely good taleggio and port salut, a gift) with crostini made with homemade bread (a leftover from my weekend baking escapade)

Oven-grilled beef fillet with chimichurri and sliced avocado

Smoky, spicy sweet potato wedges

Steamed greens – a mix of broccoli and green beans

Upside-down pear and ginger cake

Even though it would be nice to have the cake recipe to share, the chimichurri is really what stood out for me. The piece of fillet we had was on the small side for four people, and I got the idea in my head to stretch it by layering the cooked, sliced fillet with avocado slices. A red wine sauce or pepper sauce probably wouldn’t work well with the avocado, I thought; I wanted something light and fresh, and preferably not hot. Chimichurri seemed liked a good bet.

I’d never made chimichurri, so I scanned a few recipes to get the basic idea and then went ahead on my own. I thought it would require some effort, since I’m lazy and generally make similar kinds of sauces in my food processor which was packed and hopefully on a boat to Singapore. In the end, it was the simplest thing and something I’ll definitely make often. The finished fillet-avocado-chimichurri dish was probably my favourite thing I’ve made in months.

Bowl of chimichurri

Chimichurri

Makes about 1 cup

I made this a couple of hours before using it, and kept it at room temperature. I’m sure it would keep, covered and refrigerated, for a few days, although the garlic might become more pronounced with time.

2 big handfuls flat leaf parsley

1 big handful picked oregano leaves

2 small cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

½ c olive oil, approximately

½ tsp salt, approximately

¼ tsp chili powder (or less, a pinch, if you don’t like things too hot)

1 tsp red vinegar, approximately

Place the chopped garlic, parsley and oregano on a chopping board, making a big pile. Using a sharp knife, start chopping, working from top to bottom and side to side so you get to all the bits. Keep chopping until the herbs are very well chopped but still have some texture – the finished product isn’t meant to be smooth.

Scrape the chopped herbs and garlic into a bowl and add half of each of the remaining ingredients. Stir well and taste, then decide if you think the sauce needs the moisture from the remaining olive oil, and the seasoning from the remaining salt, chili powder and vinegar. Add and adjust as you see fit, tasting as you go.

This is a very strongly flavoured sauce, so however you use it, a little goes a long way.

Plated main dish

And here are bonus instructions for assembling the main dish I served:

Beef fillet with avocado and chimichurri

1 x recipe chimichurri

1 beef fillet, as much as you need for the number of guests (as I mentioned, we used one that was a little small for the number of guest, but worked perfectly presented this way, so it’s a good recipe to stretch your meat if you need to)

Salt

Pepper

Olive oil

1 avocado for every four guests

Make the chimichurri first, and set aside.

Grill the beef fillet, simply rubbed with olive oil and seasoned with black pepper and salt – use the oven’s grill, a stove-top griddle pan, braai it, whatever you like. Our griddle pan was packed and gone so I used the oven grill and it worked perfectly.

When the fillet is cooked how you like and resting, peel the avocado and cut it up into thinnish slices, about ½ cm thick. Slice the fillet into 1cm thick pieces. Lay the fillet and avocado down on a platter in an alternating pattern – 1 slice avocado, 1 slice fillet, repeat. Sprinkle with salt (crunchy Maldon salt flakes, if you have them), pour any steak juices over, and finally top with the chimichurri.

The mixture of meat juices and leftover bit of chimichurri that’s left after all the meat and avocado has been eaten is delicious, so some bread for mopping is nice to have on hand. 

Interruption for sweet orange rolls

I interrupt the dinner party posts for orange rolls. Halfway into our final month in our flat, the people shipping our things to Singapore came to pack up and remove everything we wanted to take with us. This consisted mostly of kitchen things, including all my baking tools and implements, leaving me only with a few very basic and battered cooking tools we plan to give away when we leave. So the weekend before the packing up happened, I felt I should bake while I still had the chance; it can apparently take up to fifteen weeks for our shipment to arrive in Singapore.

Ideally, I would’ve made cinnamon rolls. They’re comforting to eat, and while not difficult to make at all, it is a bit of a process so it feels like real baking (muffins, for example, don’t feel like real baking to me because it’s all over too quickly). But Andrew hates cinnamon.

So I made sweet orange rolls instead and they were delicious. I highly recommend them, but I also highly recommend that you follow the recipe suggestion to cut the filled, rolled-up dough into 12 pieces and place said 12 pieces in a big enough baking pan. I cut the dough into 10 pieces and then squished those ten pieces into a pan that was, it turned out, too small. The rolls rose beautifully high, so much so that they squashed a whole lot of their buttery, sugary filling out onto the oven bottom and caused a fire. Smoke! Drama! And lots of burnt caramel for me to clean, not my favourite activity on a Sunday night when I want to get a pizza in the oven (pizza dough and the resultant homemade pizza was another one of the weekend’s baking projects).

Sweet orange rolls

Makes 12

Dough:

1 ¼ c milk, warmed

1 packet instant active yeast

1/3 c sugar

2 tbsp butter, melted

1 tsp salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

4 c flour

Filling and topping:

1 c softened butter

½ c packed treacle sugar

1/3 cup orange zest (I substituted a bit of this with lemon zest)

½ tsp salt

3 c icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp orange extract

2 tbsp orange juice

Place all the dough ingredients except the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook and mix on medium till combined. Add the flour and mix on medium to form a dough; increase the speed to medium high and knead until the dough is smooth and has come away from the sides of the bowl completely. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with clingwrap and leave to double in size. This takes anywhere from one and a half to three hours.

While the dough rises, beat together the butter, brown sugar and zest to combine. Add the salt, icing sugar and extracts and beat again until light and fluffy. Remove a quarter of the mixture into a small bowl, add the orange juice and mix to combine. This mixture will “break” and look pretty grim, but don’t worry – this is the icing, you’re going to spread it over the hot rolls where it will melt into them. Cover the icing and refrigerate, and set the remaining filling aside.

When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface and roll it into a rectangle measuring approximately 45cm by 22cm. Spread the filling onto the dough evenly and roll it up the way you would a Swiss roll. Trim the ends, and cut the roll into 12 pieces using a sharp knife. Lay the pieces cut-side up in a buttered baking dish, making sure there is enough space for each piece to fit in with a little bit of room between the pieces. Cover with clingwrap and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, take the rolls out of the fridge while you preheat the oven to 190 C. Bake the rolls for about 25 minutes, until doubled in size and dark golden on top. Remove from the oven and immediately dollop the icing on the hot buns, spreading it out as it melts.

Let cool for a few minutes and eat; these are best still warm from the oven, although they reheat very well. They also freeze well.

In which we have dinner but not a dinner party

And then, we had friends over for hot dogs. I am too embarrassed to call it a dinner party, and I don’t even know why we had hot dogs other than that Andrew said we should. In my defence: I bought sausages from the German deli, and bread from a nice bakery, and then made a potato salad with lots of colour so we didn’t just have plain hot dogs. I liked the potato salad; it’s not the mayonnaise-y, eggy one I grew up with, which I also like but which leaves me wracked with guilt in the middle of the night. This one has green bits and no mayonnaise, so it feels like it’s a bit French and much better for you.

This looks like mostly green beans, but there were
actually quite a few potatoes underneath

Potato salad

I haven’t included any amounts, because I just add as much as I have or feel like; this one turned out with a lot of greens in comparison to potatoes, for example, because I had a lot of lovely fresh baby green beans I wanted to use.

Baby potatoes, halved and roasted with a little oil, thyme, salt and pepper; roast a couple gloves of garlic, skin on, along with the potatoes

Fine green beans, topped and tailed and lightly steamed (they should still be crunchy)

red onion, very thinly sliced

wild rocket

olive oil

lemon juice

salt

pepper

Dijon mustard

flat leaf parsley, roughly chopped

Place the potatoes and red onion in a bowl. In a smaller bowl, combine the peeled roasted garlic and mash it up with a fork. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper and whisk to combine. Taste and adjust seasoning, adding a pinch of sugar if you like. Add to the potato bowl and toss well, set aside and leave to soak up flavours until you’re ready to eat. At this point, add the green beans, parsley and rocket, toss again, and serve.

Dinner party number seven

The seventh dinner party was a somewhat more casual affair, since I had been sick and wasn’t up to a huge cooked dinner. But there had to be cake, since it was also a belated birthday dinner for my mother-in-law.

The menu (which broke the red meat/pork sausage rule. It’s my rule so I can break it):

Corn chips with guacamole and tomato salsa

Pork carnitas and flour tortillas, with:

Smoky, spicy roasted sweetcorn and red pepper salsa

Tangy avocado and pineapple salsa

Radish, red onion and feta salsa

Sour cream

Pistachio and almond cake with crystallized rose petals

I make lots of carnitas and salsas, so I’ve got my standard base recipes which I find delicious but not very exciting to talk about. I also make lots of cake, but rarely pistachio cake. I don’t know why, since it transpires that pistachio cakes are very good.

Pistachio and almond cake

Makes a one-layer cake, enough for 12 – 16 servings

This is a simple butter cake with ground nuts that I made up as I went along, hence the strange quantities and the mix of volume and weight amounts in the ingredients list. I bought the almonds already ground, but ground the pistachios in my food processor and left some nice bigger pieces in there – not huge, but big enough to notice. The texture, flavour bursts and colour that the bigger chunks provide is nice, I think.

I topped the cake with crystallized rose petals (wash and dry some rose petals, lightly whisk an egg white and paint the petals with the egg white, dust them with castor sugar and let them dry for a few hours), chopped pistachios and toasted flaked almonds. That was all just to make it pretty, though; I really don’t think this cake needs any toppings or sides as far as flavour goes. It’s perfect as is, with a cup of strong tea. If you must have an accompaniment, some baked/poached/stewed fruit, such as apricots, would be good, as would thick Greek yoghurt.

½ c butter

¾ c plus 2tbsp sugar

2 large eggs

100g ground almonds

100g ground pistachios

¾ c flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 tsp vanilla essence or extract

¼ - ½ c milk, as needed to achieve correct consistency

Preheat the oven to 160C. Butter a standard cake tin, then dust with flour (lining with buttered, flour-dusted baking paper is also a good idea).

Cream the butter and sugar – don’t worry about getting it very light, I didn’t and the cake was fine. Add the eggs one by one, beating well after each addition. Add the nuts and stir through, then sift the flour, baking powder and salt into the bowl, add the vanilla and ¼ cup milk, and start to stir slowly. As you stir, add more milk if necessary to achieve a dropping consistency. Stir until just combined.

Bake for approximately 30 minutes, until firm and golden brown, and a knife inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Dinner party number six - with complex broccoli!

The sixth dinner party was in fact a Sunday lunch, and was the afternoon after the fifth dinner party.

The menu (which, now that I look at it, contains lots of things cooked in wine):

Cheese plate – oozy camembert and local gruyere with spiced red wine plums and crackers

Beef and red wine pie

Roasted sweet potatoes and potatoes

Smoky-savoury roasted tenderstem broccoli, tossed with baby greens

White wine-poached pears with thick chocolate sauce and toasted almonds

Sunday lunch in progress

Aside from the fact that I managed to slightly burn some of the potatoes and sweet potatoes, I think it all turned out well and was a good cold-day meal. But what I really loved most about this dinner (aside from the chocolate sauce, of course; chocolate sauce always wins) was the broccoli. It’s so simple, but tastes complex. And who doesn’t love complex broccoli?!

Smoky-savoury roasted broccoli florets

Toss together:

250g tenderstem broccoli

2tbsp soy sauce

½ tsp sweet smoked paprika

1 tsp canola oil

¼ tsp salt

Spread the broccoli out evenly on a roasting tray, and slide into a hot (200C) oven. Roast for ten minutes – the broccoli should still have a bite to it. Serve as is, or toss with baby greens.

Dinner party number five

The fifth dinner party was the night after the fourth dinner party, and I was not up to cooking much. Also, there were a lot of people, too many to fit round our table, so by necessity it was going to be a living room, eat-on-your lap affair. Hence, the menu:

A variety of ordered-in pizzas

Homemade Maldon salt-sprinkled brownies, with ice cream

and caramel sauce

I was going to make a salad to go with the pizza, but after consultation it was decided that we all really just wanted pizza and brownies. We ordered the pizzas from a nondescript little place close to our flat that, in all our years in the neighbourhood, we’d never tried. Turns out they make perfectly thin-based, crispy, chewy and flavourful pizzas. That’ll teach us to judge a restaurant on its nondescript cover.

Brownies! I forgot to take photos on the night; this
is a recycled photo. Same recipe, though.

I used my favourite brownie recipe. It’s a slight adaptation of the old classic Hershey’s recipe: simple and basic, with no melted chocolate in the batter and no specialty extra-dark cocoa powder. There is a time and a place for expensive brownies laden with couverture chocolate, but I think there is even more time and place for these simpler brownies. My only concession to fancying them up is to add more salt to the batter, as well as sprinkling Maldon salt flakes on top before baking.

Again, a recycled photo - there are hazelnuts in these.
Most nuts are a good addition to these brownies.

Basic gooey brownies

Makes 9 to 12, depending on your pan size and how big you cut them

¾ cup cocoa powder

½ t baking soda

2/3 c butter, melted and divided

½ c boiling water

1 c packed treacle sugar

1 c sugar

2 eggs

1 1/3 c flour

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp salt

180g chopped dark chocolate – I generally used Cadbury’s Bourneville

Maldon salt

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Butter a square or rectangular cake tin (20cm x 20cm is the classic size for this recipe, although I prefer a slightly bigger and more rectangular tin) and line with baking parchment, enough so that the parchment hangs over the sides of the pan and can be used to lift the finished brownies out of the pan. Butter the parchment and dust with cocoa powder and set aside.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the cocoa powder, baking soda and half of the melted butter and stir to combine. Add the boiling water and stir until thick. Add the remaining butter, sugars and eggs, and beat for about two minutes till smooth and glossy. Add the remaining ingredients and stir until just combined, taking care not to over-mix – it’s fine to leave a few streaks of flour.

Pour the batter into the prepared pan and bake for 30 to 45 minutes – the smaller the pan and the thicker your brownies, the longer they’ll take. The brownies are done when they’re starting to pull away from the sides of the pan a little, but still seem gooey and under-baked in the centre. It’s important not to over-bake the brownies, as they’ll end up dry, so don’t be afraid to take them out of the oven when they still seem a bit raw. Remember, they’ll continue cooking and setting as they cool.

(Tip: if you become distracted and over-bake your brownies, fill a larger pan than your brownie pan with some cold water and lots of ice cubes. Gently place the brownie pan into the ice and water, which will cool the brownies down quickly so they don’t keep cooking as they cool.)

Allow to cool for about an hour before lifting out of the pan and cutting up into squares.

These brownies keep well, covered, for up to five days.

Interruption for cake

The cake table

Upside-down berry maple cake

I interrupt the regularly scheduled dinner party posts for some wedding cake pictures (by our photographer, whose site I will link to once it’s set up).

Vanilla sponge cake with lemon curd,
pastry cream and vanilla buttercream

       

Hazelnut torte

Classic baked cheesecake

Chocolate chiffon cake with
chocolate buttercream

The red velvet cake that we used for cake-cutting photos and to feed the obligatory bite to each other has been my most popular cake while I’ve been a caterer. Whether as a large cake or as cupcakes, I’ve had countless red velvet orders. (Not true. I could go through all my invoices and count them, but I’m not going to.) On finding out I’d be making a variety of cakes to take the place of a separate dessert and wedding cake, many of the wedding guests hinted hopefully that there would be a red velvet cake. So there it was.

Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting

Honestly, I’m confused by the widespread devotion to red velvet cake. I think it’s the cream cheese frosting that people like so much, and maybe also the velvet factor (the cake is very moist but still soft and light). The red part, being just red food colouring and a little bit of cocoa powder to make the red darker, is a bit of a gimmick. Nevertheless, here is the red velvet cake recipe, in all its red gimmicky glory.

Red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting

Makes one large two-layer cake

The recipe is easily adjustable to make a very good classic yellow cake, just by replacing the cocoa powder with flour and the red food colouring with more water. I’ve also tinkered further with the recipe to create all sorts of other version – coconut, lemon, orange and more. It’s worked well every time and is probably my favourite basic non-chocolate cake recipe.

A stand mixer or hand-held mixer is a big help and makes this an easy recipe. You can definitely do it all by hand, it’ll just take longer and be a bit more of an effort.

¾ c butter, softened

2 c sugar

3 eggs

2 bottles red food colouring (I just use ordinary food colouring, but you can use natural super-concentrated beetroot-based colouring, if you can find it and afford it)

3 tbsp warm water

1 tsp vanilla extract

2 ½ c flour

3 tbsp cocoa powder

1 ½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

1 c buttermilk

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar

Preheat the oven to 170 C. Butter two standard cake tins, line with baking parchment, butter again and dust with flour. Set aside.

Cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy – this will take a while, up to ten minutes with a mixer. You might need to stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl a few times. When the mixture is light and fluffy, add the eggs one by one, beating as you add them and making sure to incorporate them well.

Add the colouring, vanilla and water and beat again to combine. The mixture will probably split, but don’t worry about it. Sift in the flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder, add the buttermilk and beat to combine, no longer than ten seconds. The batter consistency should be smooth and it should drop easily from a spoon – if it seems too thick, add a bit more warm water and beat for a few seconds to combine.

In a small bowl, mix the baking soda and vinegar – it will fizz and bubble. Pour this into the batter and beat until just combined, no more than ten seconds.

Divide the batter between the two prepared pans and bake for 25 – 35 minutes, until the cake is firm to the touch and a toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.

Remove from the oven and cool in the pans for about fifteen minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.

(Alternatively, make cupcakes, filling each cupcake container 2/3 to the top and reducing the baking time to approximately 15 minutes. This recipe makes quite a lot of cupcakes, about 30 depending on how much of the batter you eat)

Frost with cream cheese frosting (recipe below). It’s a good idea to halve each layer lengthwise so that you have four thinner layers – it means the frosting is more evenly distributed, and it looks pretty when you slice it. Sadly, I’m lazy and usually just have two big layers of cake with one very thick layer of frosting in between. Further proof of laziness: I rarely trim the top of each cake to make them perfectly flat. When each layer is perfectly flat on both sides, the layers fit together well and your cake won’t be uneven and lopsided. It also probably won’t slide apart when you try to lift it, which is spectacular but disheartening.

Cake table again

Classic cream cheese frosting

Makes enough to generously fill and cover one large layer cake

2 x 250g blocks of cream cheese, Philadelphia or Lancewood (not the tubs, they’re too soft), left at room temperature to soften

¼ c softened butter

2 – 3 ½ c sifted icing sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

Juice of a small lemon

Beat the cream cheese and butter together until the mixture is completely smooth, with no lumps or streaks of butter. Add a cup of sifted icing sugar, the vanilla and lemon juice, and beat to combine. Now taste and add more sugar bit by bit, beating well after each addition. Stop adding sugar when you think it tastes sweet enough - some people like this frosting very sweet, others like it barely sweet. I'm somewhere in the middle and usually add around 2 cups.

The fourth dinner party

The menu

The fourth dinner party was not at our house. When you tell people you're leaving the country indefinitely, they become very nice to you and do things like take you to the Mount Nelson's garagiste wine pairing evening. Below are some photos of the food. Inexplicably, the photos become more and more blurry as the evening progresses. Strange.

The first course: beetroot, raw and marinated, with
mozzarella, fennel and orange

The second course: pepper cured duck with pickled persimmon

The third course: mushroom crusted hake in crayfish bisque

The fourth course: quail, confit and crown roasted, with
barley and Jerusalem artichoke puree

Talking! In the very pretty dining room

The fifth, very blurry, course: cheese mille-feuille 

The sixth, final course: a chocolate and banana dessert
with brown butter ice cream. Also very blurry

Thank you to our friends for the lovely dinner!

Dinner party number three

The third dinner party menu:

Spaghetti and meatballs

Garlic bread

Salad with avocado, nuts and seeds

Apple and plum crumble with ice cream

Meatballs cooking away

I have basic methods and ingredient proportions for things like meatballs, garlic bread, and crumbles, but no specifics. So no recipes. But! My own meatballs were recently transformed by one simple tip that I came across on The Kitchn, in a post all about making meatballs.

Previously, in all my extensive meatball-related reading, there seemed to be a consensus to not work the raw meatball mixture too much lest you end up with tough, dense meatballs. Ick. So, I accordingly fluffed my raw mixture lightly with my fingertips. I found that this meant liquid didn’t get incorporated too well, so as a result I ended up cutting my liquid additions (usually milk) quite a lot. But suddenly, in Faith Durand’s post, she mentioned that it was very important to get in there when you mixed up the raw ingredients, making sure it was all thoroughly combined so you don’t end up with pockets of either under-seasoned or over-seasoned mixture.

What?!

I decided to give this a try, although not for this dinner party; just a dinner for me and Andrew alone, an experiment. I combined my usual ingredients, but instead of lightly stirring with my fingertips, I got stuck in. In the process, the mixture quickly soaked up all the liquid I’d added, so I added quite a bit more, hoping the extra liquid would further lighten up the meatballs.

Then I went on with my meatball-making as per usual. I confess I was suspicious and thought they’d be tough and not very nice. But lo! they were tender, perfectly seasoned little balls of deliciousness. And thus I was converted, quickly making them again for the above-mentioned dinner party.

Moral of the story (obviously): mix your meatball mixture well. The end.

Yet another candlelit dinner table scene

The second dinner party

The second dinner party menu:

Roasted parsnip and carrot soup with sourdough bread

Slow-roasted springbok leg, with pomegranate-red wine-port sauce

Creamy risotto-style samp

Grilled, then braised, baby fennel

Triple ginger cake with hot lemon sauce and pouring cream

This was a good meal. But, although I took a few process pictures, I didn’t take single picture of any of the finished products. Behold:

Pomegranate-red wine-port sauce reducing

Grilled fennel ready for its braising liquid

Samp, before cooking

While I say it was good, I also don’t really think any of the recipes are worth repeating. The soup and the fennel were super simple things, and both the springbok leg and samp were things I’d never made before. Instead of finding good, reputable recipes, I winged it, cobbling together vague ideas and tips for the springbok and treating the samp as if it was Arborio rice, only bigger-grained. It all worked out well, but I’m sure I did many unacceptable things so I won’t risk embarrassing myself by repeating any of it here.

The ginger cake, though. That did work out very well, using a base recipe that I tweaked. And although I did make it two days in advance, knowing that most ginger cakes benefit from a few days’ maturation, it was even better three-four-five days after being baked. Maybe it could mature even longer, but by day five it was all gone. So here is the ginger cake recipe – but if you can, try to bake it at least three days in advance.

After clearing up, in the pretty new kitchen

Triple ginger cake

Makes one large cake (12 - 16 servings)

I made a tangy lemon pouring sauce to serve hot alongside, which was good, but to my mind detracted from the cake. I think this is probably at its best plain, alongside a cup of strong tea.

250g butter

250g treacle sugar

250g molasses

300ml buttermilk

2 eggs

100ml glace ginger from a jar, chopped, plus some of the syrup

2 tsp fresh ginger, peeled and finely chopped

375g cake flour

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp ground cloves

2 tsp ground ginger

Butter and line a standard round cake tin, and preheat the oven to 160 C.

Place the butter, sugar and molasses in a pot over medium heat to melt and combine. Remove from the heat, stir in the buttermilk, then beat in the eggs one by one. Add the glace ginger, ginger syrup and fresh ginger and stir.

Place the remaining ingredients in a bowl, making a well in the centre, and pour the melted mixture into the well. Stir from the centre, gradually drawing the dry ingredients in until you’ve created a thick, smooth batter.

Pour the batter into the cake tin and bake for about 1 hour, until a skewer inserted in the centre comes out clean. 

Cool completely in the tin, then turn out, wrap in clingwrap and keep in a cool, dry place for up to a week.

Dinner party number one

We got married.

I baked the cakes!

Wedding cake table

There was a honeymoon. Immediately followed by major flat renovations, turning our kitchen into a lovely space. 

Which was followed by the news that we’ll be moving to Singapore in August. 

Immediately followed by repeatedly having dinner parties so we can get good use out of the new flat while we slowly start saying goodbye to friends and family.

There are some rules for the dinner parties: they must involve red meat or pork sausages, wine, and dairy products (ice cream, custards, cream, cheese, anything), all things that are apparently available but insanely expensive in Singapore. Luckily it’s winter here, so the rules work with the weather. Not so much with what we’ll be wearing once we get to Singapore, but that’s a worry for another day.

This was our first dinner party menu:

Some leftover wedding bubbles (this despite earnest attempts on my part to make sure it was all drunk during the wedding reception)

Cheat’s cassoulet, meaning herby sausage, bacon and bean casserole with breadcrumbs on top

Crusty bread

Green salad

Sundaes made with sautéed apple slices, hot boozy caramel sauce and salty-sweet toasted pecan nuts

Ready to eat

I forgot to take any pictures of the food properly, other than the two badly-lit photos shown here. It's all for the best, though; cassoulet doesn’t look like much when dished up, being a mish-mosh of beans, sausage, bacon chunks and breadcrumbs. But it is delicious!

Crumbs! They weren't red in real life.

Cheat’s cassoulet

Makes about 6 servings

200g smoked lardons (I bought a big thick chunk of bacon and cut it up myself)

An onion, chopped

2 medium carrots, chopped

2 celery stalks, chopped

3 cloves garlic, crushed

8 good quality, herby pork sausages (or not pork; but why not?)

½ bottle red wine (plus more, if you like, which I do)

250ml crushed tinned tomatoes

750ml chicken stock

Few sprigs of thyme

Sprig of rosemary

A bay leaf

3 cups cooked white beans (preferably cooked at home, i.e. not from a tin)

1 medium loaf of white bread (such as baguette), stale and processed into crumbs

Preheat the oven to 160 C. Heat some butter over medium heat in a large, heavy-based cast iron dish and add the lardons, sautéing until you’ve rendered a lot of the fat. Remove the lardons with a slotted spoon, leaving all the fat in the pan, and add the onion. Saute for a few minutes, add the carrots and celery and sauté for a further ten minutes until the vegetables are all softened. Add the garlic and sauté for a further two minutes, add the wine and simmer for about five minutes. Add the tomatoes, chicken stock, thyme, rosemary and bay leaf and stir, then tip in the beans and sausages and cover the casserole with a lid or foil. 

Slide the dish into the oven. Cook the casserole for two hours, then cook uncovered for a further hour. When I remove the cover, I add more wine, but that’s optional; you can add more water or stock instead if you feel it’s getting too dry. There should be quite a lot of liquid, since the breadcrumb topping will soak up a lot of the liquid, so use your judgement adding sufficient liquid.

Remove the casserole from the oven, taste and season. I find that it doesn’t need much salt because of all the bacon, but it does need lots of freshly ground black pepper. I also add quite a big glug of red wine vinegar to brighten it up, but that’s optional. Once the seasoning is perfect, spread the breadcrumbs over the top of the casserole and return to the even for another 30-45 minutes. The breadcrumbs should be golden and crunchy on top, and soaked full of the delicious juices on the bottom.

Serve in bowls alongside sturdy bread for scooping and a green salad for palate-cleansing.