Little cakes from Toledo for Easter

I first made these little lemony almond cakes, called marquesas or marquesitas, when we had our Spanish long lunch on 2 August last year. I promised to put up the recipe - but I didn't.
      Needing a dessert contribution for a long lunch in the Wairarapa tomorrow, I decided these would do nicely. In The Food of Spain, Claudia Roden includes them in her section on "Dulces de Convento - pastries and confectionery from the hidden world of cloistered nuns", and says they are "most typical of Sonseca in the province of Toledo, where they are made at Christmas time".
       But I thought they would also be perfect for Easter. I've made them in small cupcake cases and packed them neatly into egg cartons to carry with me tomorrow on the bus (to Upper Hutt, because of line repairs) and then the train.


Almond Cupcakes (Marquesas)
Adapted slightly from The Food of Spain, Claudia Roden

5 large eggs
Zest and juice of 1 large lemon
200g caster sugar
50g cornflour
300g ground almonds
small paper cases to use in a baking tray with small cakecups
(or use medium cases in a medium-cup tray)
icing sugar for dusting

- Set the oven to 180C. (I used fan bake.)
- Separate the eggs. Put 2 egg whites into a medium-sized bowl; 1 white into a small bowl; and all 5 yolks into a large bowl. Set aside the remaining 2 whites for another use.
- With an electric beater, beat the 2 whites with 1/4 tsp lemon juice and 4 Tbspns of the sugar until stiff.
- Put the 1 egg white into the large bowl with the 5 yolks. Add the remaining sugar. Beat with the electric beater to make a pale cream.
- Beat in the grated lemon zest and the cornflour.
- Mix in the ground almonds thoroughly to make a thick paste.
(Roden says you can use a little water if it's too thick, but she didn't need to. I wanted a more lemony taste, so I mixed in 1 Tbsp of the remaining lemon juice at this point.)
- Gently fold in the egg whites.

- Using a teaspoon for the small cases, fill each case three-quarters full - or for higher cakes, to just below the case rim. (I think the height of each cake depends on the mixture and the oven as well as the size of the cases, so you may need to experiment.)
- Bake for approximately 9-10 minutes for the small cases.
They should colour only very slightly on top, but a thin knife or sewer inserted in the middle should come out clean. When they come out of the oven the cakes will be very soft when you press the top with your finger.
They will harden a little as they cool but will still be very soft and moist inside.
- Let them firm and cool a little in the tray after they come out of the oven. Dust them lightly with icing sugar and transfer them gently to a rack to cool.

Roden says this recipe makes 24-30 cakes, depending on the case size. I made 24 small cakes and 12 medium ones, following her instruction to fill the cases 3/4 full.  But to get the kind of well-risen, rounded top on each cake shown in her photo, I probably should have filled them up a bit more.
       I fancy a bit more lemon flavour, so I mixed together the leftover lemon juice, about a tablespoon of the leftover icing sugar and a splash of triple sec to make a light syrup that I can drizzle very sparingly on each cake tomorrow just before we eat them. I'll tell you how it goes.

An old favourite: Nigella's pea and roast garlic soup

I had a delightful lunch at my friend Ali's place a couple of weeks ago. She's a brilliant cook, so I always look forward to her food.  This time she made one of my all-time lunch favourites: Nigella Lawson's pea and roast garlic soup. I think Ali herself passed the recipe on to me years ago, but it's a little while since I made it, so I greeted its appearance with a big grin - especially as it came with Ali's legendary home-made foccaccia.  AND she grows her own garlic.
    The soup itself isn't at all ahrd to make, but it does need a bit of forethought, because you roast a whole head of garlic first, and that takes 45-60 minutes. It's also a good idea to plan ahead because you don't usually want to heat up the whole oven just for one head of garlic - so it pays to put it in while you're cooking something else.

Pea and roast garlic soup

Nigella Lawson

one whole head of garlic
2 tsps olive oil
200g frozen peas
25g butter
2 tbsps freshly grated parmesan (and more to serve)
200ml warm stock
150ml double cream (max - you may well want to use less)

To roast the garlic:
Preheat the oven to 200C. 

Slice off the top of the garlic so that you can see the tops of the cloves revealed in a cross section.

Cut out a square of foil large enough to make a parcel with room to spare around the garlic. Put the garlic in the middle and cover it with olive oil.

Make a loose parcel around the garlic, twisting the edges of the foil together at the top.
Bake at 200C for 45-60 mins until soft.

To make the soup:
Cook the peas in boiling salted water until tender but not mushy.
Drain and blend until smooth.

Squeeze in the soft cooked cloves of garlic.

Add the butter, parmesan and half of the stock. Process to a creamy puree.

Pour into a saucepan and add the remaining stock. Add cream (or extra stock - if it's not too salty - or some of both) to get a soupy consistency.

Heat gently and check seasoning, adding salt and pepper if needed.

Serve with good bread and extra parmesan on the side.

This is a lovely fresh-tasting and yet rich soup. We followed it with cheese (including my contribution, a home-made herb boursin) and Nigel Slater's fresh plum cake - with more cream, of course.

Memo to the Whitby and others: If you're not going to listen - why ask?

[PLEASE SEE NOTE AT THE END ABOUT THE WHITBY'S (BELATED) RESPONSE]

Today I went over the road by myself for coffee and cake. I usually go to the very good but rather noisy Marsden Cafe. This time I fancied a bit of peace and quiet, so i went to the cake place opposite instead. And it was lovely and peaceful - when I went in I was the only one there (their real raison d'etre is making and selling cupcakes).
       I got my coffee and cake and sat down to read the paper. Then the pop music came on - loudly. After a few minutes a young woman who looked as if she was in charge came over to ask "How is everything?""Fine, thanks", I said - and then I added "But the music is a bit too loud."
      So she went back behind the counter and disappeared, and I waited for the music to be turned down. After all, I was still the only customer.
      Only it wasn't. So after a little while, when she was near the counter again, I called out, "Could you turn the music down a bit please?" She looked quite surprised, but she did turn it down.
      The thing is - why ask your customers what they think if you aren't going to bother to listen?

I had my worst experience of this back in December at the James Cook's Whitby restaurant.
       My sister, my brother-in-law and my niece were all coming down to Wellington for the day, the weekend before Christmas, to spend time with me and my son and go to Te Papa. They wanted to go out for a Christmas-themed lunch, and I decided I would shout them as my Christmas present.
       The only pre-Christmas lunch I could find was at the Whitby. I'd been there several times some years ago with Harvey, especially when he had out-of-town work colleagues staying. While it was a fairly standard buffet lunch or dinner, it was always nicely done, with a good range of fresh food and excellent joints of meat.
        Buffets are easy for a group, this Christmas lunch was affordable, and I knew the dining room had been moved upstairs, out of the slightly depressing basement. So I thought it would do nicely, and I booked for the five of us. The Whitby checked twice, by phone and email, to make sure we were coming.
        We weren't the only guests - the large room was about half full, with several large groups, and it had a great view. But the entree and main course buffet was remarkably disappointing. Most of the very conventional selection on offer looked dull and tired - more like an old-fashioned works canteen lunch than a hotel buffet.
       Still, I could see the promised turkey and a large hot ham, so I hoped they would make up for the rest.  I was wrong.
       When I went up, no one was carving. In front of each was a plate covered not with decent-sized slices, but with a meagre spread of small, chewed-looking morsels.
        Then the carver came out, and I realised what was happening. Instead of a carving knife and fork, he used an Asian-style cleaver to hack off more little morsels. My son, who has lived in China for over a decade, told me that was how the Chinese liked it.
         Obviously no one in charge had bothered to notice what was happening to their much-vaunted turkey and ham, let alone put it right.
         The dessert buffet was a bit better than the rest, and my family was much too kind and polite to complain. But I felt mortified that their nice Christmas treat had turned out to be such a disappointment. And I did complain at the end, discreetly, to the man taking my money at the cash register.
          A day later, I received an email from the Whitby:

Hello Anne Else,
Thank you for eating with us in Whitby's Restaurant & Bar on Saturday, 19 December 2015.
We really would like to get your feedback on your meal – if you have any comments you would like to make, please email us at whitbys@jamescookhotel.co.nz or call us on +64 4 499 9500.

Figuring it would be better to say what I thought in writing, I promptly replied:

Thank you for asking me for my feedback on the Christmas buffet lunch I had with my family on Saturday 19 December. My family had come down from Auckland especially to have pre-Christmas lunch with me. Remembering the high standard I had previously enjoyed at Whitby's buffet lunch, I booked for the five of us.
     What a disappointment. The entree and main course dishes on the socalled Christmas buffet were distinctly lacklustre. The overall impression was more like a cafeteria than a hotel buffet. I got the impression that the restaurant was simply not very concerned about what was served or how it was presented.
      Worst of all was the way the ham and turkey were served. I was very surprised to see that there were only little scraps of ham and turkey available, rather than slices.  I realised why when I later saw a chef with a cleaver, rather than a carving knife, hacking off scraps of both and piling them haphazardly on the serving plates.
       He clearly had no idea how to serve properly carved slices of ham and turkey breast. Even worse was the fact that no one working in the restaurant had noticed how badly the meat was being handled, let alone done anything about this.
       It was embarrassing to have brought my family to the Whitby, and I will not be returning.

And guess what? I have heard absolutely nothing from the Whitby since.

If you're not going to listen - why ask?

PS: Some time after this blog post appeared, I had a phone call from the bar manager at the Whitby. She apologised for the lack of any reply to my original emails, but she did also mention the blog post, so I'm guessing that their response was prompted by their media scan finding it. She offered me a free buffet lunch for two. Eventually I managed to find a time when my son and I could go in the weekend.
         From the time we arrived, we did receive excellent service. We were also offered what turned out to be not just one glass of house wine each, as I had understood earlier, but an unlimited number of glasses (though of course we drank only a perfectly sensible amount - and fortunately we had come on the bus).
         As for the food, I have to say it was of the same relatively low standard as on the first visit, only this time, of course, there was no Christmas ham or turkey or pudding. There were plenty of other people there, especially families, for whom the prospect of unlimited quantities of food for a reasonable set price was obviously appealing - perfectly understandable when they had hungry teenagers to feed. It did occur to me, though, that it must be fairly dispiriting for the cooks to be preparing the same buffet spread, with only a few minor variations such as different soups, day after day. We did our best to put together a passable lunch, but the best thing was the cheese.  And we certainly enjoyed the service.

Mediterranean fish bake

When I wrote to my new-mother niece Jenny in Melbourne a while ago, saying I wished there was something I could do to be helpful, she replied saying there was: could I please send her some easy one-dish recipes for dinner.  So I did, and they were exactly what she wanted.
         Recently I stayed with my best-private-cook-I-know friend Rosemary in Auckland, and she gave me another great recipe that I'll be passing on to Jenny. It came originally from Dish magazine, and as she pointed out, it's really more of a method for a good way to use firm-fleshed fish, such as trevally (araara). You can usually get it quite a bit cheaper than, say, terakihi - it was only $19.95 at the wonderful Wellington Seamarket in Cuba Street, and 500g served three of us the first night and two the second - the gently reheated leftovers were remarkably good.
          This recipe is my version, loosely based on the Dish one.  It's all rather approximate and very flexible. The key ingredients are the fish, potatoes, peppers and olives, but otherwise you can use what you have, such as sliced courgettes, quartered tomatoes, crushed tinned tomatoes instead of miso stock, or capers instead of artichoke hearts.


Mediterranean fish bake

500g trevally, cut into 2 cm cubes
Extra virgin olive oil
Enough thinly sliced roasting potatoes to form a double layer in the bottom of a medium roasting tin

(Agria are good but nice little oval Annabelle, pictured, are even better, because they cut neatly into small round slices. I peeled mine, but you could leave on the smooth scrubbed skins of fresh Annabelle potatoes if you prefer.)

A selection of Mediterranean vegetables, sliced fairly thin, to strew over the top
(I used a large onion, a red pepper, and a small aubergine - I sprinkled the aubergine with salt and left it while I did the rest, then rinsed it off.)
Half a tin of artichoke hearts, cut into halves or thirds lengthwise
(Artichokes are very good with firm, well-flavoured fish, and for this dish the tinned ones work much better than the little ones in jars)
About 100g black olives
1 sachet of miso soup made into stock with 3/4 of a cup boiling water
1 medium glass (about 125ml) dry white wine
Salt and pepper to taste
To serve:
Lemon quarters
Crusty bread

Heat oven to 200C.
Dribble olive oil over base of roasting tin.
Arrange overlapping potato slices to form a more-or-less double layer covering the base.
Pour over the stock. Put tin into oven and turn heat down to 180C.
Cook for approximately 30 minutes, until potatoes are semi-cooked.
Meanwhile, microwave the slices of onion, pepper and aubergine separately for a few minutes on high (the time depends on your microwave) just enough to soften them before they go in the oven.
Take out roasting tin and strew the onion, pepper and aubergine slices evenly over the top. Return to oven for 15 minutes.
Take out tin and add sliced artichoke hearts and olives. Return to oven for 15 minutes.
Take out tin and add cubes of fish. Heat the white wine to reduce it a little, then pour over the fish and vegetables. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
Return to oven for no more than 10 minutes - just enough to cook the fish through but not dry it out. Check seasoning.
Serve with lemon quarters and crusty bread to mop up the juices.

The aftermath: ham risotto, fluffy pancakes

Have you eaten all the ham yet? Probably you have, but in case you've still got a chunk sitting around, I thought it could be timely to call up a lovely recipe for ham and cheese risotto, or to give it the proper name, Risotto Antico Sabaudo. It's in Claudia Roden's The Food of Italy, and now that we have ham instead of a roast, I make it every year after the big event. Roden calls for only75 grams of ham, but I must admit I like to use about twice that much.

      I first posted about it in January 2011, three weeks after Harvey died.  I noted then that in the last two weeks,  "I've eaten dinner on my own nine times....haven't done much shopping and I've been inclined to eat pasta and rice." I'm recalling it here partly because five years have passed since then, as we recalled when we toasted him and all our other "absent friends" on Christmas Day this year. I served the same risotto again this week for a post-Christmas dinner with friends. 

http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/savoury-comfort-food-from-italy.html

After all the festive food, ordinary breakfast can seem a bit of a let-down. With two house guests, my son and my New York friend, I thought we should have something a bit more exciting - not, of course, on Boxing Day, when I try not to set pan to stove at all but just point people to the fridge, with its cache of leftovers, but the next day, falling neatly on a Sunday this year. 

       Ages ago I picked up a really good lemon pancake recipe in Moore Wilson, so I made that. It's sad I never made it for Harvey - but he was a real stickler for tradition when it came to pancakes (large with lemon and sugar only),  so he might not have liked it.

http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.co.nz/2014/06/light-lemony-pancakes.html

This time we had them with poached strawberries, grapes and blueberries, and of course whipped cream. 

Savoury bread and butter pudding

Before the onslaught of Christmas richness and excess, here's something light and distinctly un-excessive.
    I don't know whether it's my inherent parsimony or my love of making something delicious out of nothing, but I really enjoy finding a good use for a clutch of leftovers. Last week I had:
- crusts cut from a plate of little salmon sandwiches (with tiny bits of salmon and butter clinging to them), popped into the fridge in case they came in handy
- about half a cup of leftover salmon sandwich filling (tinned salmon mashed with lemon, vinegar and a scrap of creamy salad dressing)
- a third of a loaf of dry but quite good white bread
- a couple of lumps of rather dry cheddar

I considered these remnants thoughtfully, and the idea of a savoury bread and butter pudding swam into view.  So I looked this phrase up on Google, and straight away I found a very appealing recipe by Ruth Pretty.
     (I do prefer to use NZ or, at a pinch, Australian internet recipes - the ingredients and measurements are usually familiar, as are the hobs and ovens, and they always seem to work out well).
      Her recipe did not, of course, have any leftover salmon in it. But it did have cheese, and I thought it could easily be adapted to include a bit of salmon, not to mention crumbs made from crusts.
      But it called for six eggs and looked quite large, so I halved it. And because it was so much smaller, I thought it could probably stand for four hours in advance, rather than the minimum of six she specified. Anyway, I only had four hours to spare before I wanted to bake and eat it, so that would have to do.  

Cheese and salmon savoury bread and butter pudding

Butter to grease dish
3 large eggs
1/2 cup milk
or
1/4 cup milk and 1/4 cup cream
a dash of chili flakes
1/2 cup fine dry breadcrumbs (I made these from the nicely dry sandwich crusts)
a good-sized piece of stale white bread (not sliced), crusts removed
(weighing about 100g without the crusts)
1/2 to 3/4 cup grated cheddar
1/2 cup mashed tinned salmon, seasoned to taste (if liked) with lemon and/or vinegar and/or mayonnaise

NB: Mix and stand for four hours before cooking

- Grease a round ceramic or glass baking dish with butter.

· Put eggs, milk, cream if using, and chili flakes into a bowl and whisk to combine.

- Cut bread into 2.5 cm cubes.

- Sprinkle half the breadcrumbs into the base of the dish. Cover with 1/3 of the grated cheese.

- Layer half the cubes of bread on top, cover with the salmon, then sprinkle over another 1/3 of the cheese.

- Cover with remaining cubes of bread.

- Pour egg mixture evenly over bread layers in dish. Season well.

- Sprinkle remaining breadcrumbs on top. Cover with remaining 1/3 of cheese.

- Leave dish to stand in fridge for four hours.

- Preheat oven to 180C. Bake bread pudding for 25-30 minutes until puffed and golden.

(Ruth's recipe said 20-25 minutes, but even though my pudding was half the size, I preferred to cook it for a little longer so that it was nicely set,but not dried out. The dampish salmon probably meant it needed to cook a bit longer than her recipe without that.)

 This turned out remarkably well - light, tasty and delicious. It serves two generously, or three with lots of veges and/or salad. I had it with skinny asparagus - perfect.

The true Iberian ham

Spanish ham of any kind isn't easy to find in NZ, though On Trays in Petone has Serrano ham - see my earlier post, 

http://somethingelsetoeat.blogspot.com.es/2015/08/home-made-spain.html

On my bus (sorry, coach!) tour of Spain, driving the back roads from Seville to Lisbon, we stopped at a family-owned factory producing the real thing, the ham called bellota. It's made from the meat of small black Iberian pigs who feed (free range, of course) exclusively on acorns.  They deal with 30,000 pigs a year, though not all of them produce bellota - some are for Serrano ham.

        The process of making the hams is remarkably simple, but the care and control that goes into it is remarkable. Essentially, the fresh legs are first buried in salt - the picture shows this stage set up for visitors, the real thing is the same only much bigger. The salt comes from the coast and can be used several times.

They are then air dried in an ascending series of temperatures. 

Each leg is individually coded, tracked and tested, and the entire process can take up to four years, as the ham slowly dries and shrinks.  A family will buy a whole ham for Christmas and New Year for several hundred euros, depending on size - the 100g pack of bellota I bought was 10 euros, 100 euros a kilo, but they're cheaper bought whole. You can see rows of hams hanging up in good restaurants and tapas bars. They need no further cooking. Stored and cut correctly, they keep for months.

   

Every other part of the pig is also used - nothing is thrown away.  Here I am in front of the hams ready to be on sold to wholesalers...

...and here's the ham on sale in Barcelona's famous covered market.  It is, of course, utterly delicious - a little like prosciutto, but darker and more strongly flavoured. Perfect with a glass of pale, well chilled dry sherry.  Salud!