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.