Yoghurt pot cake

We are back from a week on the Cornish riviera, with improbably good weather, cliffs of wild flowers, endless sands and clear blue sea. It’s the first time we’ve managed a whole week away as a trio for about three years; I barely looked at my phone (joy!) and soaked in the sunshine. It’s the first time that we’ve attempted a proper holiday during half-term week and the crowds were a shock; I’ve realised that the answer to this is to head where people are not, whether it’s our favourite beach at 8pm, a hidden creek on the Camel estuary, or a prehistoric quoit on Bodmin moor.

Sunlit day on the Camel estuary
Sunset at Mawgan Porth
Bedruthan Steps but water so clear it could be the Aegean
Trethevy quoit

The days on unbroken sunshine set off the wildflowers beautifully. The colours are richer than at home – pinks, yellows, purples – with banks of grasses, spikes and umbellifers drawing in the insects. The tree echiums are particularly magnificent in June with their 10 foot spikes; a sight that will never become old to me.

The glorious midsummer wildflowers
Wild gladioli
Tree echiums, which I will never tire of

In Cornwall, the wild flowers are so magnificent, it’s almost as if there is no need to garden – you simply need to head outside and be instantly surrounded by life and wildness and beauty. Here in Birmingham it’s a slightly different matter of course, and effort is required. Given the hot dry spell, I was concerned that the allotment beans, peas and greens would be all but dead through a week with no watering. Well, they’re not exactly thriving, but there is definite signs of growth and a few promising pods on the broad beans.

Came home to a grassy, weedy allotment but potatoes and broad beans doing OK

Veg is still thin on the ground at this time of year, but the cut flowers work to a different calendar. Tulips are over now, replaced by foxgloves and allium who take their crown as the showiest of blooms for the vase. The purple globes and pink and white spires are joined by the ‘pretties’: early sweet Williams, sweet rocket and a solitary lupin. The autumn-sown cornflowers and calendula have finally come into their own, and any doubt I had about the wisdom of growing on a windowsill over the winter have been cast away. The cornflowers in particular are magnificent, with long, straight stems and an abundance of buds.

The autumn-sown cornflowers and calendula are now coming into their prime
Favourite vase of foxgloves, allium, sweet william, cornflower and sweet rocket, plus calendula

Having said all that, the April-sown annuals are still really struggling to get going. Cosmos, scabious, more cornflower and calendula, plus other cut flowers, were all sown into peat-free compost, and whilst gemination was fine, the seedlings are still teeny-tiny. I’ve now moved them out of the sun room and onto the paving in the side-garden, where they will get more light but are at risk of slug attack. I am not 100% sure what the problem is but my instinct is the compost, which is a coir and bark-based mix (other seeds planted earlier did OK, using the Birmingham City Council compost that Matt was given last year). Perhaps I should stop all this seed-sowing angst and just buy everything as a plug plant next year; it’s more expensive, but lots more reliable.

Onto a recipe perfect for June, yoghurt pot cake. This cake is perfect foil for the abundance of strawberries and raspberries that are about to head into full production. A slice, with fruit and a dollop of cream, makes for a fine pudding, though you could do as the Italians do and eat it for breakfast. It’s a simple plain cake, scented with lemon and vanilla, and a shortness to the crumb that you find in Italian and French baking (that’s due to the cornflour). The name comes from the fact that everything can be measured using a small yoghurt pot. I am sure that I read somewhere that this is the first cake that French children are taught to make, a fact I find amusing, because although the measuring is easy, it is slightly involved to actually make – there’s egg whites to whisk and folding to be done. Either bake into a small round cake or ring, or it works well as small palm-sized fairy cakes.

Palm-size yoghurt pot cake
Or dust with icing sugar and go large

Yoghurt pot cake
adapted from Nigella.com

150g plain yoghurt
150ml vegetable oil
3 large eggs
250g caster sugar
Dash vanilla extract
zest of half a lemon
175g plain flour
75g cornflour
icing sugar

Preheat the oven to 180c. Prep your cake tin – this mixture makes a 9inch round tin, a 9 inch mould or a 6inch tin with 4 fairy cakes on the side. You could also just make 12 fairy cakes.

First separate the eggs, yolks into one bowl and whites into the other. With an electric whisk, beat the whites into submission, until firm. Set them aside.

Add the yoghurt, vanilla, lemon and sugar to the egg yolks and use the electric whisk to combine them together – they will be light but not thick. With the whisk still going, trickle in the oil until thoroughly combined. Sieve in the flour and cornflour, and whisk to combine. Finally, fold the egg whites in gently but firmly, until the mixture is completely mixed and surprisingly voluminous.

Transfer gently to your tin and/or fairy cake cases, and bake until done. A large cake takes about 35 minutes, fairy cakes about 20 minutes. When done, the cake will pull in around the edges and look cracked on the top; a skewer inserted in the middle will come out clean.

Leave the cake(s) to cool and dust with icing sugar to serve. I have not tried it, but I suspect that a handful of chocolate chips and maybe orange zest would both make fine additions.

Also this week:
Harvesting: Foxgloves, alliums, first sweet williams, sweet rocket, first cornflower, first calendula, last PSB, last winter-sown rocket and spinach. One singular, magnificent strawberry.
Jobs: Took out last of last year’s kale and PSB. Strimmed, not that it makes much difference, the grass is so virile. Planted out snapdragons, cerinthe, quaking grass and amaranth. Slugs have been nibbling both allotment and house dahlias but still I am not using pellets. Moved everything out of the sun room to see if added light will make the seedlings finally grow. In the garden, the allium, roses and foxgloves are coming into their crescendo.
Cooking and eating: Porthilly mussels, crab sandwiches, Cornish yeast cake, fudge, strawberry and blackcurrant compoty-jam, English sparkling wine, nuts-and-seeds as apparently it’s good for my hormone health.
Also: Reading A Year at the Chateau by the Strawbridges, pure escapist fun.

Clementine Cake

I’ve been reading up on baby weaning lately and in so-doing, was prompted to revisit Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat. There’s a chapter buried in the back devoted to the feeding of babies….ten days later I’ve yet to get to said chapter for it turns out that this is the most distracting of books, a calming balm for the sleep-deprived cook.

A 1990s classic: How to Eat

Putting to one side the fact that Nigella drops into her introduction that she wrote How to Eat whilst pregnant / nursing (note, this is a whopper of a book with 500+ pages of dense prose. Already I feel inadequate, as I consider it a success if I manage to check my email in the course of a day, never mind write a classic. I suppose being monied helps), I am struck by how ahead of its time How to Eat was. The pages are full of foods that, as a student in 1998, I had heard of but would never dream to encounter: pomegranate molasses, marsala, quince. There is talk of Lebanese supermarkets and popping out for brioche and challah. Meat comes not with a dollop of mash, but with chick pea’d couscous and polenta.

At the time I felt myself to be terribly unsophisticated for not cooking like this on a daily basis (I was, but then so was 99.99% of the population). This was the food of the London sophisticate, recorded unapologetically, in a fashion that is now unpopular in the age of austerity and clean eating. I think I can thank Nigella for widening my culinary horizons… Twenty years on I can remember making some of her dishes – including walking three miles to the Co-op to try to find an aubergine (they didn’t have any) – and was beside myself the first time that I went to an actual real life Lebanese supermarket (it was in north London in about 2006 and the celery was amazing, in full leaf like the most over-the-top floral display).

In homage to Nigella, here’s her clementine cake, which I first made for a New Year’s Eve gathering in the early 2000s. It manages to be sweet but with an element of bitter, which comes from the inclusion of the whole fruit in the batter. I wasn’t so keen on it then, but I now prefer bakes that aren’t too sweet and I think it’s marvellous. Incidentally Sarah Raven has a similar cake in her Garden Cookbook, which I also turn to from time to time.

Clementine Cake
From Nigella Lawson’s How to Eat

First, put 5 clementines in a saucepan and simmer for about two hours, until completely soft. Leave to go cold, then remove any bits of stalk and pips, and whizz to a pulp in the food processor.

Simmer five clementines until totally soft then whizz to a pulp

Next, oil and line a 21cm springform tin and preheat the oven to 180c. Beat 6 eggs until just combined, then add 225g caster sugar250g almonds and 1 teaspoon baking powder. (If you’re short on almonds, you can use 150g almonds and 100g plain flour or, even better, a mixture of almonds and breadcrumbs. The cake will be lighter in texture but still good.) Stir in the orange pulp.

As well as your clementine pulp, have ready eggs, almonds and caster sugar (& baking powder, not shown)

Whisk eggs with the sugar and almonds

Add the clementines

Pour the lot into the tin and bake for about an hour. The cake will likely need to be covered with foil after about 40 minutes to stop it browning too much. Cool in the tin and then turn out, to be served naked or with cream and a dollop of fruit (rhubarb compote would be excellent).

Once baked – a not-too-sweet cake for tea or pudding

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Sweet potato & pumpkin curry

In the two-and-a-bit months since the baby was born, the allotment has gone from high summer productivity to sodden and vaguely overgrown. The so-called compost bin is overflowing with the debris of the season, sunflower stalks, hop vines and mouldy chard. The veg patches are green with weeds and the fruit bushes are bare saved for the buds of new life, already visible on the branches. I pop down when I can for a spot of tidying – the success of this depends entirely on what mood Harry is in, and how much sleep I’ve had (or not had) the night before.

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Harry is not much help when it comes to allotmenting

I’ve covered both of the main beds with black plastic, partly to keep the weeds down over winter but also because I don’t know how much I’ll get around to cultivating next year. Left uncovered this soil becomes a carpet of weeds in a blink of an eye; this is a case of an hour’s work now saving me serious amounts of graft come spring.

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If left to its own devices, the allotment would be this overgrown all over

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I’ve put black plastic over the beds to keep the weeds down

There’s not much to pick now but the cavolo nero is still going strong, as is the kale and chard. What I do have though is a serious pile of pumpkins; having served their time as Halloween decorations, it’s time to transfer them to the pot.

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Cavolo nero still going strong, as is the kale and chard

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Pumpkins form the basis of this easy curry

This is an easy curry that I have shamelessly pinched from Nigella Lawson, though in truth it’s more the kind of dish I’d expect to find on a yoga retreat than from a ‘sleb chef. It’s vegan (shock!) and cheap (horror!), and more to the point I am able to cook up a massive vat of it in the few minutes that the baby is asleep in the afternoon. If you’re not lucky enough to have a pumpkin pile at home, use butternut squash instead.

Sweet potato and pumpkin curry
Recipe adapted from Nigella Lawson. Makes loads, about 8 portions.

1 red onion, cut into chunks
1 red chilli, stalk removed
Thumb of fresh ginger, peeled
3 fat cloves of garlic, peeled
1 tsp turmeric
2 heaped tsp whole coriander seeds, bashed in a pestle and mortar (or 1 tsp ground coriander)
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 vegetable stock cube (I use low salt)
Salt
Sunflower oil
1 x 400ml tin coconut milk
1 x 400g tin tomatoes
Water
1 large sweet potato, trimmed and cut into large chunks
1/2 pumpkin or winter squash, peeled and cut into large chunks
Juice of 1 lime

First, make the curry paste. In the food processor, whizz together the onion, chilli, ginger, garlic, turmeric, coriander, cinnamon  and stock cube, adding a splash of water to help it combine if needed.

In a large casserole or stock pot, warm the oil over a medium heat and add the curry paste with a pinch of salt. Fry for a few minutes until the oil begins to separate from the paste. Add the solid coconut cream from the top of the tin of coconut milk, fry for a few minutes more, the add the rest of the coconut milk and tomatoes. Swill both tins out with water and add to the pan.

Finally slide in the sweet potato and squash, bring to a gentle simmer, and cook until the veggies are soft – about half an hour. Some of the squash will disintegrate into the curry, which helps it to thicken. Season with more salt and lime juice to taste, then serve with brown rice and a dollop of yoghurt.