Apricot and Almond Cake

 

There are times when one needs a good solid cake. Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake, while spectacular, has been done to death in our milieu, and yet I am still an absolute sucker for cake made with almond meal. This month, casting about for something to take to dinner with friends, my eye lit upon the latest bucket of apricots sitting in the kitchen. I stewed them up, took out a great dollop and, using the formula from pear and almond cake, made an apricot and almond cake.

Mmmm. The cake came out tinted gold, and was deeply redolent with apricots. We ate it for dinner with double cream and it was spectacular; it was also very good over the next day or two, demolished in great chunks until there was nothing left. The almond meal renders it very moist, and so the cake keeps well.

The recipe calls for slightly fewer apricots than a Fowler's No. #20 jar, so if you have already preserved apricots, particularly as purée, the cake will take only minutes to prepare. The remaining apricots in the jar are a perfect addition to plain yogurt – or indeed, you could warm them slightly and serve them with the cake.

You can see from the photograph that I cooked my cake slightly too long. My dinner companions, old friends all, reckoned they loved the slightly chewy bits; they're the bits I call overcooked. However, I'm never entirely convinced by the enthusiasm of good and faithful friends, so I recommend you check your cake from 35 minutes; don't leave it too long!

Apricot and Almond Cake - 8 eggs - 325g ground almonds - 275g lightly stewed apricots - 275g golden caster sugar - a squeeze of lemon - 40g slivered almonds If you have not already stewed your apricots, do so now and leave them to cool. (I recommend making extra and using it as a sauce on the cake, or dolloped onto tomorrow's muesli, or swirled into a late night yogurt.) Grease and line a 25cm spring form pan. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place everything bar the slivered almonds into a food processor, and whizz until you have a batter. Pour the resulting glop into the pan. Sprinkle with slivered almonds. Slip into the oven. Bake for 40 minutes or until golden and a cake tester comes out clean. Leave to cool in the tin on a baking rack. Eat plain for afternoon tea; with cream for dinner; or with a black coffee for elevenses. Adapted from a recipe by Nigella Lawson in her terrific book, Feast: Food that celebrates life, itself a variation on Claudia Roden's orange and almond cake in The New Book of Middle Eastern Food. (Backyard: apricots, eggs, lemon. Somewhere in Australia: almonds, sugar.)

Apricot Jam, Simple and Perfect

 

It's rather eccentric, I realise, to use a food blog to talk about vomit, but here in the real world that's how life is. The quote of the week goes to my nine year old. Her father called, 'Don't put apricots in the vomit bucket!' And she looked at him and yelled, 'What? This bucket's been vomited in, that bucket's been vomited in, what am I supposed to use?'. It's true, folks, all four of our plastic buckets have been vomited in these holidays. God, I love small children. But I assure you that the buckets had been washed out in hot soapy water and left in the sun for a few days before she used them to collect apricots; and now I've been making jam.

What says summer more clearly than jam? Backyard trees are covered in fruit, far too much to eat fresh... so I'm busy stewing, canning, and jamming it up. Most instructions for jam call for perfect, unblemished fruit. Perhaps there are people who buy boxes of perfect fruit for jam, but in this house jam is made from the imperfect, quite blemished fruit off the trees in the backyard. We have two apricot trees. Some of the fruit is surprisingly large and unblemished, and that is eaten straight off the tree – why waste effort on something that is already perfect? But most of the fruit is small, some of it is parrot-pecked, and a little is even wormy. And it's the small, pecked and wormy fruit that is thrown into buckets ready for preserving.

 

Jam is easy. An hour in the kitchen leaves you with something several hundred times better than anything you can buy in the shops; if the fruit is already stewed, it will take only twenty minutes. I admit that large perfect fruit will give you much more jam for your time than the small blemished fruit, but it all works.

I find the easiest way to make jam with the small fruit is to prepare the fruit one evening, and make jam the next. I don't make large quantities of jam anymore, as we eat very little sugar these days; but it makes a nice sometimes food, and a lovely gift. The following instructions make about four jars of not too sweet jam, decadently fruity, which, because of the low sugar content and sealing method, should be eaten sooner rather than later.

The jars are sealed using a traditional French method. Use pop top jars (you know, those jars with bumps in the middle of the lids), wash them in very hot soapy water, allow them to dry, pour in the jam, screw the lid on tightly, then flip the jar and leave it to cool upside down on the bench for 24 hours. The lid will seal very tightly. It is a reasonably safe method, but not one approved by any modern government department.

If you are concerned about food safety or plan to store your jam for a long time, then use a 50/50 fruit/sugar ratio and sterilise the jars properly. The easiest way to sterilise small quantities of jars is to use a baby bottle steriliser; in lieu of that, you'll need boiling water and ovens... go find instructions, and good luck!

Apricot Jam - 1.5kg apricots (approximately; you will need to weigh them once they are prepared to gauge how much sugar to use. Slightly underripe fruit will give better results - firmer jam - than slightly overripe.) - white sugar (jam made with brown sugar tastes gross and goes off) - 2 tbs lemon juice Prepare the apricots. Remove the pits and quarter the flesh. If the apricots are, like mine, a bit wonky, cut out any pecks, wormholes, or bruises. Throw the good stuff into a large pot. Don't worry if there are big bits and little bits; we are making real food, not exhibits for the royal show. Add the lemon juice. Turn on the heat low, and gently cook the apricots until they have collapsed. Stir from time to time to ensure they don't stick. You do not need to add water; apricots produce plenty of moisture as they cook. When the apricots are lightly stewed, you can either turn off the heat, allow them to cool, and continue tomorrow; or you can continue now. Wash the jam jars and lids in hot soapy water and place them in a cool oven (ie the lowest temperature setting) while you finish the jam. Weigh the stewed apricots. You will need 70% of the weight in sugar (ie 1kg apricots = 700g sugar). Warm the apricots, then add the sugar in five or six batches, stirring between each batch to help it dissolve. Bring to a gentle boil, and let it plop away for 15 minutes or so, stirring occasionally to ensure it doesn't stick. While the jam is cooking, put a ceramic plate in the freezer. After 15 minutes, the jam should be looking quite glossy. Fetch out your chilly saucer, put a blob of jam on it, and leave it for a minute. Now run your finger through the middle of the blob. If the now-separated-blob remains in two well formed blobs, amoeba-like, the jam is ready; if the two halves run back together, give it a few more minutes. Place the hot jars on a wooden surface or board. (Careful: they really are hot!) Ladle or pour the jam into the jars. (I use a stainless steel jug.) Using a clean cloth, wipe any drips off the rims of the jars, then screw the lids on and invert the jars. Leave to cool upside down for 24 hours. The next day, flip the jars right side up and clearly label. Store in a cool dark place – NOT above the fridge or anywhere else high in the kitchen as that's where all the heat sits. Should keep for a year, but jam never lasts long in our house. (Backyard: apricots. Gleaned from a laneway: lemons. Bought from afar: sugar.)

Mummy's an astrophysicist, Daddy's a house husband, and makes very good jam - if a little too much!

Gluten Free Sugar Free Lamington Bars

 

Back in the 50's, an older friend of mine used to visit the prisoners at the Fremantle Jail with her school; the girls were to cheer up the prisoners. They'd sing and put on plays, and then serve afternoon tea. And they'd play terrible pranks. One regarded lamingtons. The girls would cut up bathroom sponges, bind them together with shaving cream, and ice them as usual. An unsuspecting prisoner would take a big rubbery bite, pause... then roar with laughter. What good sports they were, says my friend.

These days it's very hard to imagine a school sending a group of girls to visit a men's prison bearing cake; and even harder to imagine prisoners roaring with laughter when the best looking bit of food they've seen all year turns out to be a sham. But perhaps it didn't really matter. The 'lamingtons' were iced and coconutted as usual – and as everyone knows, the outside is the only part of the lamington worth eating. The sponge is invariably dry, something to politely mumble one's way through rather than actively enjoy.

Thinking about this, it occurred to me to fiddle around with the date-paste-bar idea and turn it into the outside of a lamington. I admit it's not a local seasonal food, but my justification for putting the recipe on this blog is two-fold. One, it's an incredibly quick, easy and healthy snack food that requires no packaging, very useful for lunchboxes. Two, we are about to move house and I'm cooking my way through the depths of the pantry; this is a great way to use up dried coconut, and date paste!

Unapologetically, then, I present to you: lamington bars. Lovely in a lunch box; delightful cut into squares and served with a short black or a hot tea; and not a bathroom sponge or shred of gluten in sight.

Gluten Free Sugar Free Lamington Bars - 180g date paste - 4 tbs unsweetened cocoa - 2 tbs cacao nibs - 60g coconut shreds - pinch of salt - water, as needed The date paste should be moist enough to work with; however, if it seems dry and hard, soak it in water for an hour before using. You can use the soaking water to sweeten a smoothie. Combine the first five ingredients in the large bowl of a food processor. Whizz for several minutes, until it forms small glossy pebbles. If the mixture is struggling to come together, slowly dribble in up to a tablespoon of water, a drop at a time, until it has combined. Tip half the mixture into a small dish; I use a ceramic dish 10cm x 18cm (4" x 7") bought at an op shop for just this purpose. Using the back of a metal spoon, press the mixture firmly into the dish. Tip in the rest of the mixture, and press the whole into a solid smooth slab. Cover with gladwrap and place in the fridge for several hours to harden up. When you are ready to serve, cut using a heavy knife. I slice mine crosswise into ten narrow bars ready for school lunches; or into squares for a sweet little something to share. (Ingredients from all over the world, but a bought bar would be similar, only with more chemicals and packaging.)

(aka Australian Food Magic)

People's Food Plan

In response to the Federal Government’s proposed National Food Plan, the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance is drawing up a People’s Food Plan. You are invited to contribute by hosting a Kitchen Table Talk with your friends and neighbours!

The National Food Plan is most likely to increase our dependency on GM crops, corporate farms and free-trade imports; the duopoly that already has a stranglehold over our groceries will only increase its power; and family farms and rural communities are at risk of even further decline.

If you value small farms, sustainable growing methods, local food, seasonal eating and anything else that means real food, contribute!

You can find out much more at the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance. There you can download a draft policy document for your consideration and comment; or, if you have less time, you can use the following list of questions as a jumping off point. The AFSA also welcomes your own policy ideas and personal stories.

So get some friends round your kitchen table, serve them a cup of tea and something yummy from the garden, and have a good chat.

If you would like more information, you can contact a member of the steering team; find the reps for your state here. Return your comments no later than early December to Nick Rose at the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance at info@foodsovereigntyalliance.org, or by snail mail to PO Box 3349, St Pauls NSW 2031.

***

10 Policy Ideas for a People’s Food Plan

Please determine whether your forum agrees, disagrees or is indifferent / undecided about the following statements. Please also indicate which three of these you would rank as the top priorities. If your forum decides that there are other priorities not on this list, please write them down and send them.

• Should agriculture and food policy in Australia support sustainable food sources, by subsidising farmers / growers / processors / distributors of locally grown and raised, seasonal fresh and preserved produce?

• Should Australian citizens have a strong and effective voice in the creation of food and agriculture policy?

• Should Australian governments support young, new and small farmers to ensure a future for family farming?

• Should Australian governments – federal, state and local – support people’s rights as citizens to a healthy and nutritious diet?

• Should the Australian National Preventive Health Agency develop a national health and climate change plan, and resource a national public health campaign with localised food as its focus?

• Should Australia’s prime agricultural land be fully audited and protected from alternative uses, e.g. suburban sprawl, coal-seam gas and other mining?

• Should Australian governments – Federal and State – support Australia’s family farmers by reintroducing publicly-funded extension officers, and publicly-funded agricultural research and development?

• Should Australian governments implement the right to food by ensuring that every Australian has good access to healthy, affordable food; and no Australian has to rely on emergency food sources?

• Should Australia prohibit the patenting of living organisms?

(The People’s Food Plan is supported by many fantastic people, including the very trustworthy Lolo Houbein, author of the fantastic One Magic Square, a call to straightforward backyard gardening and sustainable living. You can read my review of her book here.)

Smoked Trout, Orange and Quinoa Salad

 

Some Tuesdays, eating last night's leftovers with the floor crunchy underfoot, the washing nagging at me, and the four year old chatting, just won't cut it. You see, my partner looks after her for a few hours while I read with schoolkids, study and write. Lunch, then, is an early pit stop between volunteer work and Deep Thoughts – but our four year old wants to play with me. So some Tuesdays, as much as I love her, I stay out and have a bit of peace and quiet instead.

Sometimes I'll go downtown, grab sushi then head to the State Library – although it can be rather difficult to (a) find a desk and (b) read, since always one or two people are chatting and in the otherwise studious silence that lone conversation drives me crazy.

Other times I seek peace and quiet in the bustle of a coffee shop, and in the general din am able to eat, read and write. Just around the corner from our house is 'the red door place'. More properly known as l'atelier de Monsieur Truffe (351 Lygon Street, East Brunswick) it's a chocolate shop and café rolled into one. My partner will do anything for one of their hot chocolates; my kids will do anything for their toasted brioche served with grated chocolate and salt; and I think their salads are wonderful.

L'atelier recently had a smoked trout, orange and quinoa salad on the menu, and after inhaling it one lunch time I've been playing with the combination at home. I've made it bigger, simpler, and just the thing for a one-dish dinner on a warm night. The most fiddly aspect is collecting and cleaning the salad greens – and if you buy washed greens (gasp!), then it will be quicker still.

Most quinoa (pronounced keen-wa) comes from South America; however, some Tasmanian farmers are now growing it. Tasmania may not be quite local for Melbourne but it's pretty close, and quinoa is, they say, a superfood.

It's only a fairly recent addition to the domestic kitchen, as evidenced by a scene in Offspring. A character is trying a host of new things. She does yoga in the park; she tweets; she shoves a great forkful of quinoa into her mouth... then spits out the lot in a great disgusted puff across the room.* It's pretty much what I did the first time, too.

So a couple of notes. One, quinoa has a bitter coating on the surface of the grain, so it must be rinsed very well before cooking. Rinse, rinse, rinse, and only then put it into the pan to cook. You can cook it in a saucepan like rice; or even use a rice cooker if you don't want to pay it any mind.

Two, unlike rice quinoa doesn't taste inoffensively bland by itself; eaten plain, it is not delicious. So don't cook it and serve it in a great mound on the side of the plate. Quinoa should be eaten with other things. It absorbs flavours beautifully, so always serve it with a stew or in a salad with a good dressing.

As to why you'd serve a grain that requires rinsing and isn't delicious alone? Well, it's very high in protein, iron and magnesium; high in fibre; gluten free; and fun to look at. The grains puff into little spirals which I think are very cute! And it has a strength of flavour which goes well with a juicy melange, and can form the backbone of a substantial salad.

Between the quinoa and the smoked trout, this salad is certainly substantial. And why nasturtiums? The bright petals echo the orange segments and make it look like a party, so pretty that even my kids will eat it. They also give the salad a slight peppery tang. Nasturtiums are flowering all over Melbourne this month. If you don't have any in your garden, ask your neighbours or, better, go for a stroll along a creek. You'll find some soon enough and, if you're lucky, a little peace and quiet too.

Smoked Trout, Orange and Quinoa Salad - 1 cup quinoa - 1 smoked trout - 2 oranges - 1 small salad onion - 4-6 cups loosely packed baby salad greens (I use a combination of rocket (arugula), baby mallow, baby rainbow chard and salad burnet; but you can make it with just lettuces if you wish.) - 4-6 nasturtium flowers, if you have them - a few stems of mint - pinch of salt, pepper - olive oil First, prepare the quinoa. Rinse it very thoroughly in a fine sieve, drain it, then place it in a saucepan with 2 cups of water. Cover, bring to the boil, then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes or until it is cooked but still has a little bite. Remove the lid, fluff the quinoa with a fork, and allow it to cool a little while you prepare the rest of the ingredients. Flake the trout. I find it easiest to use my fingers, but if you wish to be more refined, use two forks to gently pull the flesh from the bones. Zest the oranges – easiest with a Microplane. Sorry for the product placement, but nothing else does the job half so well. Finely chop the salad onion, then fork it and the zest through the quinoa. Juice one of the oranges. Combine the juice with two tablespoons of olive oil, a good pinch of salt, and pepper if you wish. Taste. If it requires more zing, add the juice of half of the remaining orange. Remove the pith from what remains of that latter orange (a half or a whole, depending on how juicy the first orange was), then cut the flesh into little segments. Pull the mint leaves from their stems, and tear into smaller pieces. Gently pull the nasturtium petals from the base. Either use them whole, or slice them into ribbons using a very sharp knife. Keep one or two flowers for garnish. Tip the quinoa mixture into a large salad bowl. Drizzle with half the dressing, and mix and toss with a fork to combine. Now add everything else bar the whole nasturtiums. Using your hands, lightly mix and toss the salad until all is thoroughly combined. Lick your fingers, wash your hands, then garnish the salad with the nasturtium flowers and serve. (*Thanks to Chris who told me about this scene, and tested the salad first.) (Backyard: salad leaves, salad onion, nasturtium flowers, mint. Yarra Valley: smoked trout. From the local food box: oranges. Grampians: olive oil. Northern Victoria: salt. Interstate (Tasmania): quinoa.)

Simple Orange Cake

 

Fridays mornings are ‘time off’. My four year old is at kinder for three! whole! hours!, and I, in theory, write – but life usually intervenes. Last week I spent the time doing laundry; working my way through a backlog of mail, bills and paperwork; washing the dishes; admiring the crab apple tree just about to bloom; and baking a couple of cakes, muttering all the while.

Kinder fetes, school afternoon teas: when will they learn that modern families rarely bake? A friend of mine told me that her brother-in-law always bought cakes or biccies from the supermarket to give to the school cake stalls. Late at night, he’d unwrap them and carefully arrange them on the plastic plate. Then, labelling laws being what they are even for a community cake stall, he’d painstakingly write out all the ingredients including the food additives thus: ‘flour, sugar, cocoa, vegetable oil, emulsifier 471, preservative 282’. Not the sort of thing I’d be falling over myself to buy, I must say!

Then again, I’ve talked to other parents who recommend particular brands of cookies as having no artificial additives; thus, when copied out on the cake stall label, they appear homemade and perfectly pure. Oh, the illusions we live by.

I haven’t quite come to that; I still bake, if with a sigh. And with the glut of oranges at winter’s end, I made the easiest orange cake recipe I know, Stephanie Alexander’s Afternoon Tea Orange Cake. I need to substitute gluten free flour for the wheat flour; I always add a pinch of salt to my cakes; and I cook it in a loaf pan. Otherwise, I follow her recipe. It’s just the thing for early spring, when the fruit bowl is full of oranges and the view out the window is of blossom.

Simple Orange Cake - 1 orange - 2 eggs - 125g softened unsalted butter - ¼ cup caster sugar - 225g self raising flour(real or gluten free) - pinch of salt Preheat the oven to 190°C. Line a loaf tin with baking paper. Zest then juice the orange. Place all ingredients into a food processor and whizz until thoroughly combined. Pour the batter into the tin and bake for 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out with a few minuscule crumbs attached. Let cool for five to ten minutes in the tin, then remove to a cake rack to cool completely - although it is absolutely superb served warm! Alexander recommends an orange icing, but it’s not something I can be bothered with, myself. If you want the recipe for that, buy the book; it’s the modern Australian kitchen bible. (Backyard: eggs. Local: oranges. Victoria: butter, salt. Queensland: sugar. General supermarket mystery: GF flour.

Bracken Fiddleheads with Butter and Truffle Salt

 

Life was a little dull, and I wanted a thrill. So I went to a friend’s country block to pick young bracken, a food I have never sampled and have read about only on the internet. As you can see, I get my thrills quite easily these days.

The day was magnificent. We sat at the top of the hill and watched the weather sweep in hour after hour: sun, rain, hail, sleet, wet snow, dry powder – we got the lot. Great bands of clouds rushed across the sky; snow fell through a rainbow; and every form of precipitation dumped down on us.

 

Between showers, we picked juvenile bracken. We chose firm fresh looking stems, some still bent like a horseshoe, others upright but not yet unfurled. And when the next bout of weather swept in, we dashed back to the partial shelter of the tumbledown shack, warmed our tootsies by the roaring fire, and admired the show through the broken windows.

 

A day or so later, in a house with a complete roof and intact glazing, I prepared the bracken. I was slightly nervous, as bracken contains a known carcinogen; then again, so does red meat. So I washed it, blanched it, dumped it in an ice bath, soaked it, sautéd it, and served it up with a hint of truffles, as instructed. And then I discovered that none of us like it much. It was strong, nutty, but really not that great. Unusually for our family, we didn’t even finish the plateful. Meh.

As we have never eaten bracken before, I have no idea where the problem lies. Is Australian bracken unsavoury? Did I cook it badly? Or do we, quite simply, not like bracken? One day, I will travel overseas and sample bracken abroad. Until then, I will ponder these mysteries, and get my thrills via the weather instead.

If you want to try bracken yourself, click here. The link has a balanced discussion regarding bracken’s carcinogenic properties, and describes how to prepare it to minimise them. I followed the instructions and recipe in the link, but in place of truffle butter I used unsalted butter and truffle salt (a birthday present). I didn’t like it much, but perhaps you’ll fare better. If you have tried Australian bracken, please let me know how you cooked it, and what you think!