Colourblocking

Wedding Cake

I wrote this post about a year and a half ago, and didn’t post it because I’m rubbish. Here, at last, is the wedding cake, my most ambitious cooking project ever!

The brief

My friend Ellie got married a few weeks months (well, there’s now a baby.. so quite some time) ago, and almost as soon as she'd announced her engagement I found myself offering to make her wedding cake. I'd never done anything on this scale before but I do like baking - although the decorating part scared me a bit - so I thought I could do a passable job. Following discussions with the bride, the format of the cake was decided - 3 tiers, round, at 6, 9 and 12 inches, each a different cake: traditional fruit, vanilla, and chocolate respectively. The fruit cake was to be one single cake, but the vanilla and chocolate would be triple layer cakes, filled with vanilla buttercream and chocolate ganache respectively, and all cakes would be covered with white fondant icing. We argued about the icing a bit - I thought fondant icing wouldn't taste as nice as, for example, a swiss or italian buttercream, but Ellie wanted the smooth look of fondant. And what the bride wants..

Before I start, I should say that I simply couldn't have done this if it hadn't been for the internet, and one blog in particular - Smitten Kitchen's fabulous wedding cake blog and all the incredibly helpful comments posted on it by other bakers. On Smitten Kitchen's recommendation, I also bought Sky High, which I used for the chocolate cake, vanilla cake, and the chocolate ganache.

I should also add that during the run up to the wedding I was leaving my old job, starting my new one, and on holiday for a few days. So the final decorating part took me until 3am on the morning of the wedding - but it was worth it!

About 2 months before the wedding, I made the fruitcake - this was the smallest cake, at 6 inches. I'd never made a fruitcake before, and was surprised at how, well, fruity it was. It is really more fruit than cake - tons of fruit, with just a bit of cake mix binding it together. I used Delia's recipe, unedited, which I will reproduce here. You make it as far in advance as you can, and then keep it wrapped in greaseproof paper in a cake tin, and feed it with brandy whenever you remember (I did it about once a week). (Feeding just means poking it all over with a large needle or toothpick, and then dribbling brandy over it.) Delia's site also has a helpful page which scales up the recipe for different sized tins.

General tips about wedding cake making

Most of these were gleaned before I started from the blogs, books and comments mentioned above, but these all served me very well and so I am passing them on.

· Bake the cakes well in advance and, with the exception of the fruitcake, freeze them. To freeze, when cool, simply wrap in loads and loads of clingfilm (leave no air gaps at all) and place each layer on a board (I just cut circles out of cardboard) and you can then stack them on top of each other in the freezer. The cakes are also easier to work with when frozen, and they defrost quite quickly, so no need to take them out of the freezer until you are ready to use them.

· There was a lot of advice around about how to bake the cakes so that they were level. Keeping the cakes level is important because when you stack them and ice them you need them to be completely flat and you don't want any domes in the middle. Of course, you can cut off any domes (a long serrated knife is best, and it's easiest when the cake is frozen), but it's easier still not to have any domes. The best way to ensure this is firstly to evenly spread the batter in the cake tin - easily done with the cakes I baked as they are quite liquidy - and secondly to bake the cake at a lower temperature than normal, for longer. I don't know why this works, but it does - I had very flat cakes. At the same time, if you are not stacking the cakes on top of each other, as I wasn't, you don't have to go mental about levelling the cakes and using spirit levels. In fact, we used a cake stand with three levels, so all we had to do was plonk the cakes on top of the levels and avoid the whole dowelling, stacking question.

· When rolling out the icing, do it on a large (or several large) sheet of clingfilm. Then you can easily pick up the clingfilm-icing and slap it on the cake, peel off the clingfilm and the icing will be smoothly in one piece on your cake.

· It will take hours to decorate. This isn't really a tip, it's a warning. It took me about 7 hours (with a few disasters on the way) to fill and ice all the cakes and make them look presentable. It might take me a bit less time if I were to do it again, but probably not much less. Also, you need an assistant. You could manage without, but it will be a lot easier if you don't try. Blondini was good at rolling out icing (harder work than it looks), smoothing icing, attaching ribbons, lifting heavy cakes, and buying new ingredients when there were last minute disasters

· For the large layer cakes, I would not recommend using your regular chocolate/vanilla sponge cakes. I have a stand-by chocolate cake recipe that I use all the time, which is light, fluffy, chocolatey and not too sweet - in short, perfect for birthday cakes, fairy cakes, etc. But it is not right for this - these layer cakes have to be really sturdy, because each layer has to be strong enough not to be squashed by the layers on top of it, with icing in between the layers, and then some heavy icing on top of the cake. The 12 inch chocolate cake weighed a ton. I don't know exactly how much, but I know that I used nearly 2 kg of icing sugar in the icing that covered that cake.

· You need a turntable, a smoother, and a non-stick rolling pin at minimum. You also need an electric mixer, like a KitchenAid - it's doable without, I guess, but it would be a horrific nightmare. If you have 3 tins of each size, this would also speed things up, since I had to bake 3 separate cakes for each of the chocolate and vanilla cakes, leaving time for them to cool in between as well. Having said that, you'll find it hard to fit cake mix for more than one layer at a time in your mixer, so perhaps it's not such a big deal.

6 inch fruitcake

8 oz currants

3 oz sultanas

3 oz raisins

1.5 oz glace cherries, rinsed and finely chopped

1.5 oz mixed peel, finely chopped

3 tbsp brandy

4 oz plain flour

0.5 tsp salt

0.25 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

0.25 tsp mixed spice

1.5 oz chopped almonds

4 oz soft brown sugar (I used muscovado)

1 rounded tsp black treacle

4 oz unsalted butter

2 eggs

Grated rind of half lemon

Grated rind of half orange

At least 12 hours before you start, put the currants, sultanas, raisins, glace cherries and mixed peel in a bowl and cover with the brandy.

Grease the tin and line with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 140C/275F.

Cream the butter and sugar together and it is light and fluffy. In a separate bowl, sieve the flour, salt and spices. Beat the eggs in another bowl, and then add them a spoon at a time to the butter/sugar mixture. If it looks like it might start to curdle, add a little flour to prevent it. When all the egg has been added, fold the flour mixture in, and then stir in the soaked fruit, the nuts, the fresh peel and the treacle. Spoon the mixture into the cake tin and spread it evenly, as the cake doesn't really rise so needs to start off evenly. Tie a band of brown paper around the outside of the tin (I didn't have any and used more baking paper - worked out fine for me) and cover the top with a square of greaseproof/baking paper with a hole in the middle about the size of a 50p piece. Bake the cake on the lower shelf of the oven for 3.5 hours, and don't open the oven for at least 3 hours. When cold, wrap it well in lots of greaseproof paper and put it in a tin.

Covering the fruitcake

Although I only did this the night before the wedding, I am putting it here for ease of reading. Confession: the only part of the cakes that I didn't make from scratch was the marzipan I used to cover the fruitcake. I did think about it, but decided I may not be able to get the desired smoothness of marzipan without some easy way of grinding the ground almonds. Here is a recipe that I may have used, if I hadn't just gone and bought a block. You need about 500g (I allowed myself 750g because I was buying it) to cover a 6 inch fruit cake. This recipe makes enough for 700g.

Before rolling the marzipan, take part of it and roll it into a long thin sausage that will fit all the way around the cake. Push this sausage onto the base of the cake, evening out the gap at the bottom of the cake between cake and board, and smooth the marzipan onto the cake. Then simply roll out the rest of the marzipan into a circle about 12 inches in diameter (enough for the top of the cake, the sides and the board that shows under the cake), spread a thin amount of apricot jam onto the cake, and put the marzipan on top. Use the smoother, and with one hand on top of the cake, work around the cake with the smoother to flatten down the marzipan and smooth any air out.

9 inch vanilla cake

This recipe is from Sky High. I edited it simply because I couldn't easily find one of the recommended ingredients, buttermilk. I decided it would be fine with regular milk - I think the buttermilk one would probably have had a very nice taste too, but with normal milk it worked out fine. I only have one 9 inch tin, so I had to divide this into 3 and bake it 3 times:

3 3/4 cups plain flour

2 1/2 cups caster sugar

1 tablespoon plus 2 3/4 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

10 ounces unsalted butter

1 1/4 cups plus 1/3 cup buttermilk (or just milk)

5 large eggs

2 egg yolks

2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Grease and line the tin. Preheat the oven to slightly lower than your normal cake-baking temperature (for me 150 on the fan oven).

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt, and then gently beat in the butter and 1 1/4 cup of buttermilk/milk.

In a smaller bowl, whisk all the eggs, remaining buttermilk/milk and vanilla, and pour this into the rest of the mix a third at a time, thoroughly beating it each time. Pour a third of the batter into the tin and bake for around 30 mins, testing to see if done with a fork or thin pricking device.

Vanilla buttercream

This buttercream was used between the layers, and then all over the top and round the sides, underneath the fondant icing. I adapted a recipe from Nigella and scaled it up quite a lot, to which I added, instead of plain old vanilla essence, vanilla seeds scraped from a vanilla pod - I think it made all the difference. This buttercream, simple though it is, was the only real disaster of the decorating process, as I opened some milk from the fridge and chucked it into the bowl without looking or smelling first, and it was disgusting, lumpy, and off. Luckily I hadn't added £8 worth of vanilla seeds yet, but I had ruined an entire bowl of icing, and was out of butter (and milk). Blondini had to rush out to buy emergency supplies.

5oz butter

10 oz icing sugar

2 tablespoons milk

Seeds from 1 vanilla pod

12 inch chocolate cake

This recipe is also from Sky High. I had to scale this one up, because none of the sizes in the book fitted what I needed - a round 12 inches. Finally, I found a use for my GCSE maths - I used πr² to work out how much cake mix I needed to get my 3 12 inch layers. This is a nice recipe - I probably wouldn't use it instead of my normal chocolate cake for a regular cake, but it is very chocolatey, with a nice slightly spicy hint, and it still feels light and moist, though not too airy and crumbly. Perfect for a wedding cake.

This recipe makes a 8 inch round 3 layer version:

3 cups plain flour

3 cups caster sugar

1 1/2 cups cocoa powder

3 teaspoons bicarbonate of soda

3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

3/4 teaspoon salt

12 ounces butter

1 1/2 cups milk/buttermilk

3 eggs

1 1/5 cups freshly brewed coffee, cooled

Grease and line the tin and preheat the oven to a bit lower than your normal baking temperature (150 for me on a fan oven).

Mix all the dry ingredients together, and then beat in the butter and buttermilk until fluffy. Then whisk the eggs and coffee together and add to the rest of the batter in batches, beating thoroughly after each addition. Put a third of the batter into the tin and then bake for about 40 mins, or until done, testing with a fork or thin pricking device.

Chocolate ganache

This is also from the Sky High book. It was immensely chocolatey (with about 6 bars of 70% Lindt in it), perhaps even too rich for my customers - I made this as a test cake, in 9 inch version, and took it to work - people loved it but it was really really rich - it was hard to eat more than a very small amount. Which was also good because there were about 120 people at the wedding and most wanted to try more than one type of cake. This recipe makes about 4 cups, which was enough for the whole 12 inch cake.

24 ounces dark chocolate

6 ounces butter

1.5 cups of heavy cream (not freezing cold)

1/3 cup brandy or cognac

Melt the chocolate and butter over a pan of simmering water. When completely melted, whisk in the cream and then the brandy, scraping down the sides all the time. Allow to cool and thicken to a mayonnaise-like consistency (but don't cool too much as it will harden and become unspreadable).

Fondant icing

I sort of made this recipe up, after looking around in books and online for a recipe. Essentially most recipes seemed to call for egg white, icing sugar and then, most commonly, liquid glucose. I tried 3 different pharmacies and sent Blondini to another 4, but we couldn't find this, so I decided to use glycerine instead. I don't know whether the icing would have worked just as well with just eggwhite and icing sugar, but I think the glycerine gave it a bit of extra stretchiness, which was good for rolling and smoothing, and made smoothing and patching up disaster areas easier.

The recipe is quite simply -

1 large eggwhite

500g icing sugar, sifted

1 tsp (approx) glycerine

Add the icing sugar slowly and just keep sifting it in until the desired consistency (a smooth ball of dough) is reached. For a 12 inch cake, you need around 2 kilos worth of icing sugar. You also need a large non-stick rolling pin.

I covered the fruitcake first, and was amazed at how easy it was. Roll out the icing, put it on top of the marzipan and then smooth it in the same way as the marzipan. If the icing gets sticky on top, or the smoother starts sticking to it, just sprinkle a little more sifted icing sugar on to it.

The fruitcake was so easy it lulled me into a false sense of security, because the other cakes were a bit of a nightmare to cover. The main problem with the chocolate one, which I did next, was the sheer weight of the icing which was needed to cover the cake, which meant that when I had rolled out a circle about 22 inches in diameter (i.e. massive) and managed to get it on top of the cake, parts of the sides started breaking off. I initially thought there was no remedying this (and with the chocolate there was the concern that the chocolate ganache, which was luckily now quite hard, because it had frozen on impact with the frozen cake) would start to come through and stain the white icing. I just had to patch up the fondant and keep smoothing it down, and it took about an hour. You can see how disastrously horrible it looks here, but then take comfort from the fact that by the end it really looked almost perfect.

The vanilla cake was also difficult to ice. The icing wasn't quite as heavy this time, so it didn't threaten to break off, but because of the disaster with the vanilla buttercream, by the time I came to fill and cover the vanilla cake it was no longer really frozen, and the icing was quite soft. I put it back in the freezer while working on the other cakes, which helped, but wasn't quite enough. Also, this cake was the only one which was not really level, and Blondini and I thought it was a good idea to "level" the cake by adding loads of buttercream to the top. It wasn't. When the fondant icing was placed on the top and I tried to smooth it down, bits of buttercream started to squidge out of the bottom, and to form gross lumps under the surface. As before, we managed to save it, mostly, but it was a mess that could have been avoided by (a) using less buttercream on the top, and (b) totally freezing the cake before attempting the fondant, which would have been much easier to work on.

Decoration

I didn't really do much in the way of decoration, because I knew this was my weakest area. I'm crap at being artistic. Ellie had arranged for the florist to provide matching flowers to put on the cake, and she gave me ribbon which was being used for other wedding things, so it would match. I attached ribbon to the outsides of the cake, which helped disguise some of the more horrible areas, and I piped little flower/shell things around the base (this was also surprisingly hard - do a lot of piping practice beforehand, if you can).

I then put the cakes in boxes (I ordered boxes which would precisely fit the cakes from the same suppliers I used for most of my other equipment - Sugarcraft) and in the morning, took them to the venue with the flowers. And I was really proud and excited when it was cut, and the bride said it was the best cake she'd ever had, so it was totally worth it!

Working lunch

I'm back! And I intend to stay back. I have a very long draft post about the wedding cake I made for my friend's wedding in September still to put up (need to add some recipes and pictures to it), but in the meantime, I'm here and I have things to write and recipes to note down.

This recipe was inspired, oddly enough, by something I ate at Seder in Israel this year. If you're Jewish you'll probably be surprised to hear that Pesach inspired any new recipe ideas, but in fact (and perhaps this tells you all you need to know about the rest of the Seder meal) the nicest thing I ate at Seder was a salad made of parsley and seeds. I had never really thought of parsley as a major salad ingredient before - usually it's more of a garnish, or something to put in soups - but then I remembered tabbouleh, which also uses parsley as its main ingredient, and this salad came together in my head.

The following can obviously be adapted to suit your tastes, but the quantities below have been making me 3 lunches, and it is quick to make, extremely filling, healthy and really delicious. Even Blondini said that parsley had never tasted so good. Only my grandpa, who has often declared his love for all food except parsley, may refuse to eat this salad.

Quinoa and parsley salad

(Makes 3 portions)

150g dry quinoa

100g flat leaf parsley (large bunch)

4 or 5 spring onions

Around 30 walnut halves

Juice of half a lemon

Olive oil

Balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

Put the quinoa in a saucepan with 14 fl oz water and salt (the water should be double the volume of the quinoa) and boil until all the water is absorbed.

Chop the parsley very finely. Get rid of the green ends of the spring onions and finely slice them. Chop the walnuts into small bits.

In a glass, mix the lemon juice, a few drops of olive oil and a good slug of balsamic vinegar (or as you prefer) with salt and pepper. When the quinoa is cool, toss all the ingredients together in a bowl with the dressing. Keep it in the fridge for lunches throughout the week, or eat it all immediately!

If you like a fruity kick to your salad I think dried cranberries would go very well here.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Yeah, I'm writing again. Hello! I won't do my usual long apology/explanation for my absence because it will probably happen again and if I do it every time it will just get boring. This time, however, I must name check Jo, whose great new blog is an inspiration and delight and has encouraged me to get back in the game. The blogging game, that is.

So, a few of my besties and their men came for dinner on Friday, and to start with I made vegetable spring rolls. They are incredibly easy – the only slightly complicated bit is in the folding, which I'm sure most of you would be able to do without any difficulty but I was never good at origami and I couldn't work out how to do them until Vangie, my parents' great cleaner, showed me how, Phillipines-style. She gave me a spring roll masterclass one afternoon, and in exchange I gave her a chocolate cake masterclass – the perfect swap.

These spring rolls are only lightly pan-fried, so are much healthier than those you'd get in a restaurant, and they crisp up beautifully in the oven if you want to fry them in advance. Additionally, you can make up the spring rolls and leave them uncooked in the fridge for a couple of days before you need them, so they are great for parties and big dinners.

Vegetable Spring Rolls

Vegetables of your choice – I think the ones that work best are bean sprouts, carrots (grated or finely sliced), pak choi or Chinese cabbage, onion, and thinly sliced peppers. It's hard to give exact quantities but if you want to cheat with this, I recommend buying those packs of ready-prepared stir-fry vegetables – one 300g pack will make around 8 spring rolls (obviously depending on size)
Fresh ginger, grated
Garlic, crushed
Soy sauce
Vegetable oil
Spring roll wrappers
1 egg white

Add a small amount of oil to a hot frying pan, and add the ginger and garlic. Fry for a minute or two and then add all the vegetables. Stir fry for a few minutes, and add soy sauce. You could, of course, stir fry using any sauce of your choice. The key is to add all the flavour you want at this stage because there is no other opportunity to do so. The other important point is to make sure there is no liquid remaining – either drain the vegetables when cooked, or cook them enough so that all the liquid is absorbed or has evaporated. Soggy vegetables will make soggy spring rolls.

Cool, and spoon a small amount onto each spring roll wrapper (this is one kind of pastry I don't think I'll be making myself!) and roll and fold the pastry to seal. It is hard to explain how – see this link for pictures.

Essentially, angle the square pastry so that one of the points is facing you. Put a dollop of vegetables just above this point, about a quarter of the way up the pastry. Roll upwards from your point to the back, and when you are just over half way, fold the sides in over your roll. Continue rolling until the end, and then, using your fingers, smear some egg white over the last point of pastry remaining and stick it down to the roll to seal it.

When they are all formed, heat a little oil in a frying pan and put the spring rolls in. They cook very quickly, so keep turning them to make sure they don't burn. Crisp up later in a hot oven, or eat straight away.

The Bloggeraid Cookbook

Googling around the other day (or maybe I was following links from other bloggers, I can't remember), I came across Bloggeraid and its cookbook project. In support of the World Food Programme's School Meal project, which helps to provide a nutritious meal at school for children in developing countries who may get no other meal each day, Bloggeraid is publishing a very special cookbook!

I have just submitted my recipe to the people at Bloggeraid and hopefully, in November/December 2009, you will be able to buy the Bloggeraid cookbook on Amazon! 100% of the profits go to the WFP School Meal programme, and you'll get to enjoy recipes from food bloggers all over the world, including one never-before-released recipe from me! I think the closing date for submitting recipes is 31 March 2009, so there is still time for you to get involved. I am posting this now, even though I haven't got a picture of my recipe yet, to give any readers time to get involved as well.

I am very excited by this as, clearly, I love writing about and thinking about food, and I think the School Meals project is a great one. My months spent volunteering in Kenya and Ghana brought home to me the necessity for children to be given a nutritious meal at school, as for many, there may be no other meals that day. Additionally, many families are reluctant to send their children, particularly their daughters, to school, and the school's provision of a meal may be a great incentive for parents to allow their children to go. I can't wait for the cookbook to be published, and I encourage you to submit a recipe too, as this is a fantastic and fun way to get involved in such a great project.

Yellow Chicken Curry

Ok, so this looks like a pile of dog sick, but it's actually a really great dish and one of my favourite chicken curries. Adapted from a Delia recipe, it's quick, easy and delicious, and I make it all the time. We had it on Wednesday, when Steve came for dinner and to play board games - it went down very well, but I was still able to snatch one portion away to freeze before it was all gobbled up.

Yellow Chicken Curry
(serves 2 people - easily multipliable for more)

Chicken pieces (I use chicken breast meat, skinless and boneless and cut into bite-size pieces, but you can make it with bigger pieces, pieces on the bone, etc - you just cook it for longer when you first put it in the oven) - enough for 2 people
1 large red pepper, roughly chopped
1 large green chilli, finely chopped
2 onions, finely chopped or blended in a food processor
2-3 cloves garlic
Large knob of ginger
1 tbsp cumin seeds
1 tbsp coriander seeds
8 cardamom pods
1 tbsp turmeric
approx 200ml soy cream
salt and pepper
oil

Choose an oven-proof dish that is big enough to fit all the chicken pieces in a single layer. In this dish, grate the ginger, crush the garlic, add 1-2 teasps oil, the turmeric, salt and pepper. Mix together, and then add the chicken to this dish and coat the chicken in the mix. You can put this straight into the oven if you're in a rush, otherwise, leave this to marinade.

If you are using skinless boneless meat as I did, put it in the oven uncovered and start doing the following steps straight away. If the meat has bones, you will need to cook it for at least 30 minutes before starting on the rest of the recipe.

In a frying pan with no oil, heat the cardamon, cumin and coriander seeds, tossing them for a few minutes until you can really smell them and they turn a shade or two darker. Tip them into a pestle and mortar and grind to a fine powder.

Put the finely chopped or ground onions into the frying pan with a little oil, and fry until they turn golden. Add the red pepper and green chilli with some salt, and then add the ground spices. Cook for a few minutes until the pepper has softened, and then take the frying pan off the heat. Add the soy cream and stir until you have a thick, brownish sauce. Remove the chicken from the oven, and pour the sauce over the chicken. Cover the chicken with foil and return to the oven. Cook for at least 15 minutes like this (probably longer if your chicken has bones).

In the meantime prepare your rice or whatever accompaniment. About 10 minutes before you are ready to eat, remove the foil from the chicken and stir. The sauce should now look yellow as you mix in the marinade from the chicken into the sauce. Cook uncovered for 10 minutes and then serve.

a couscous comeback

I have been a bad blogger. I apologise, but I am staging a comeback. Thanks to those who remembered that I had a blog and kept pushing me to update it (Jo and Dannii) and to Vanessa whose fabulous blog inspired me to return.

Why haven't I been writing? Well, in the past eight months I've gone off cooking and Blondini and I have been eating nothing but takeaways and ready meals. And then pigs flew and the Pope became a druid. Really, it's because it turns out that blogging is one of those things that is really enjoyable but once stopped is hard to restart. I kept thinking: that would be interesting to write about, I'll do it later, but obviously later never came. And then of course there were the photos that I constantly felt guilty about not taking and not uploading, because I felt that a food blog needed to have lots of pictures of the food I'd been making (which it does). But maybe sometimes I'll have to do it without pictures, because I just can't always be bothered.

So, something foodie....

Well, last night I discovered couscous. I had known of couscous, of course, but I just didn't really get couscous before, and I now know that this was because I, and probably most people in this country, didn't know how to make couscous. Blondini makes it for lunch quite often, with sardines or tuna or mackerel and vegetables, and he had made it for me as a side dish on a couple of occasions but although I generally love everything he makes, I just didn't really love the couscous. It was a bit tasteless (apart from the bit where he'd put an enormous quantity of cayenne, cumin and salt and not stirred it in - that bit had too much taste) and kind of lumpy and stodgy. But then about a month ago we went out for dinner to a Moroccan restaurant and I had couscous and it was delicious. So I did some googling around, and found out that although in this country couscous is considered to be a kind of instant food - just pour on some hot water and let it stand - in North Africa it is anything but instant. I am not talking about the laborious process of actually making couscous, the rolling of the semolina and so on, but of the actual cooking itself.

According to google, the first thing I needed was a couscousiere. This appears to be an enormous pot whose sole purpose is, yes, couscous cooking, and since we don't have the largest kitchen on the planet, nor did I even know if I liked couscous yet, I decided, in an uncharacteristic move, not to go out and immediately purchase a couscousiere. Instead, I discovered that you can fashion a makeshift couscousiere out of an ordinary saucepan, a sieve and some foil.

Step 1

Weigh out the couscous. Apparently you want approximately 60 grams of dry couscous per person. I made 200g for 3 generous portions.

Put the couscous in a shallow but quite large bowl. Dissolve a teaspoon of salt in water - use approximately 15ml water for every 50g couscous. Pour the water onto the couscous and stir in with your fingers, rubbing to separate the grain and break up lumps. When the couscous has soaked all the water, stir in approximately a teaspooon of olive oil.

Step 2

Pour boiling water into the saucepan and put the sieve on top. Choose a saucepan that your sieve fits snugly on top off - the point is to avoid any steam escaping around the sides of the sieve but to allow as much surface area of the sieve to have contact with the steam rising from the pot as possible. It is also important that the water does not reach the sieve, so pour out some of the water if necessary. Fit foil around the sieve and saucepan to close off any gaps, and then put the couscous in the sieve. Cover with the saucepan lid, and simmer the water for about 20 minutes.

Step 3

Tip the couscous back into the bowl and sprinkle with more water - the same amount as you used before. Add another teaspoon of olive oil and stir well with a wooden spoon. Let it soak up and fluff up. You can leave the couscous at this stage until 10-15 minutes before you are ready to eat it.

Step 4

Put the couscous back into the sieve and repeat Step 2 for another 10-15 minutes. Serve your delicious, fluffy and light couscous with anything you like! We had it with a simple chicken tagine of my own invention - caramelised onions and preserved lemons.

Chicken Dhansak

There's no picture today as the battery in my camera died before I could take it, although this isn't a particularly photogenic dish anyway. Sorry - you'll just have to imagine this one - it's a greenish-brown curry with quite a thick sauce which is served with caramelised onion brown rice.

This is a Parsi dish from Mumbai, something I've been wanting to try for a while as vegetable dhansak is my brother's favourite curry in his favourite Indian restaurant. I had looked online in the past for a dhansak recipe but never found anything very appealing, and I was also put off by the description of dhansak curries as "sweet and sour" - in Chinese food that is my worst flavour combination.

Anyway, for our anniversary a couple of weeks ago, my mum bought us Camilla Panjabi's 50 Great Curries of India, and there was a recipe for Chicken Dhansak that looked very appealing. I made quite a few changes and substitutions but it turned out beautifully - it's spicy and tangy and has a really unusual flavour that is very different to the curries I usually make. The sauce is thick and creamy, but not made with dairy (or dairy substitutes) but with lentils and vegetables, so it is a really nutritious dish. I will definitely be making it again, it is yum!

Chicken Dhansak
(serves 2)

1 large chicken breast or enough chicken for 2 people, cut into chunks
100g toor dal (these are yellow lentils)
1 inch piece of ginger
2 cloves garlic
3oz red pumpkin (I substituted a courgette for this)
2oz aubergine (this is about 1/2 an aubergine)
1 tbsp fresh dill, chopped
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 1/2 tbsp fresh coriander, chopped
7 fresh mint leaves
1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves or fresh fenugreek (I couldn't find this so left it out)
1 tsp Parsi sambar marsala (I couldn't find this so I used 3/4 tsp fenugreek seeds, 1/2 tsp mustard seeds, 1 tsp red chilli, 1/2 tsp ground pepper)
1 tsp dhansak marsala (I did find this but if you can't, mix 1 1/2 tsp garam marsala, 1/2 tsp star anise, 1/4 tsp nutmeg)
1/2 tsp cumin
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp red chilli powder
1 tomato
2 green chillies
1 tsp jaggery/palm sugar (I substituted dark brown muscovado sugar for this)
Juice of 1/2 lime
1 tsp tamarind paste

Brown pulao rice

6 fl oz brown basmati rice (I use 3 fl oz per person - always measure rice by volume, not by weight)
1 small/medium onion, finely chopped
Cinammon stick, bay leaf and some whole cloves (or some garam marsala instead)

Start by soaking the dal, and leave for 30 minutes. While it is soaking, prepare all the vegetables: chop the aubergine and courgette (or squash or pumpkin or whatever you can find) into 1cm cubes and put it in a large saucepan with a quarter of the ginger, 1 garlic clove, the fresh dill, 1/2 tablespoon of fresh coriander, 3 of the mint leaves and the turmeric. Add 1/3 pint of water and when the dal has soaked, drain the water and add it to the saucepan. Simmer until cooked and soft (should take 15-20 minutes).

While this is happening, toast any of the whole spices in a dry frying pan (you can use ground spices for everything but I prefer whole spices, so I put cumin seeds, coriander seeds and the fenugreek seeds and mustard seeds which are part of the Parsi sambar marsala into the pan). After a few minutes, tip these together with all of the ground spices into a pestle and mortar, and grind and blend together. Even if you are only using ground spices, blend them together before cooking with them.

Drop the tomato into some boiling water for 1 minute and then remove, slipping the skin off. Chop the tomato and the 2 chillies (remove their seeds unless you like a REALLY hot curry), and then heat a tablespoon of flavourless oil (I like rapeseed) in the frying pan and add the tomato, chillies, the remaining fresh coriander, the remaining mint leaves and all the spices, and fry for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Then add the cut up chicken and fry for another few minutes, making sure it is browned on all sides. It doesn't matter if the chicken isn't totally cooked through at this point because it will continue to cook in the sauce.

When the dal is cooked (this should hopefully happen at about the same time as the chicken is browning), use a stick blender or pour the contents of the saucepan into a blender and blend until smooth. Then add the chicken and any of the spicy mix in the frying pan to the saucepan together with 1/3 pint of water and let it simmer, covered.

While it cooks, start making the rice, as it will take about 20 minutes to cook. Start by frying the onion in a saucepan until it is lightly golden. Then add the (dry uncooked) rice to the saucepan, and fry the rice for a minute or so. Add 12 fl oz water (or twice the volume of the rice), some salt and the cinammon, bay leaf and cloves. Cover and let it simmer slowly.

After about 15 minutes, uncover the chicken and see how liquidy the sauce is, as you may want to reduce it. Add the lime juice and tamarind and salt to taste. Let it simmer until the rice is ready, and serve.

Veggie Burgers

What do you make when you're home late, you're hungry, you kind of want a burger but maybe something lighter and you want it FAST? A homemade veggie burger! With some sort of protein, of course - I get anxious about meals made with not enough protein.

This veggie burger is one of my least photogenic creations, but as I still wanted to show you what it looked like I have taken more of an action shot - burgers in the frying pan.

Veggie Burgers
(makes 4 large burgers, could serve 2-4 depending on how hungry you are!)

1 can of chickpeas, drained (400g chickpeas)
1 red onion, roughly chopped
1 red pepper, roughly chopped
2 cloves of garlic, peeled
Olive oil
Balsamic vinegar
Tabasco sauce
Salt and pepper

Put the onion, pepper and garlic on a tray, spray a little olive oil on them and season. Put them in the oven on a high temperature or put them under the grill for about 15 minutes. While you are doing this you could be thinking about the accompaniment to your meal. I think these would go well with pitta bread and salad - we actually had them with chips, because we were thinking about burgers and chips. If you're having something like chips, put these in the oven at the same time.

When the vegetables are cooked and maybe a little bit blackened, take them out of the oven and tip them into a food processor. Add the drained chickpeas, and whizz. Taste the mixture and see what you think - I added a little tabasco sauce, balsamic vinegar and salt and pepper at this stage and the result was a very flavoursome and slightly spicy burger. Experiment with other flavours and seasonings (and indeed with other vegetables) as you wish.

It is probably preferable to chill the mixture once it is all blended, so put it in the fridge but don't worry too much - I only had it in there for about 15 minutes while I waited for the chips to finish cooking. Heat a frying pan with about a teaspoon of olive oil, and when hot add the mixture in spoonfuls, shaping them into flat patties as you put them in the pan. I made 4 large burgers with this mixture - you may prefer to make smaller burgers, which would be more manageable when trying to flip them over. Cook for a few minutes on each side, and then serve!

French Apple Tart

I actually made this last week but I've been a bad blogger recently. I haven't been cooking anything very exciting either, mostly because it has been so hot that I really don't want to be standing over a hot stove for any length of time. The apple crisp I posted about a couple of weeks ago is Blondini's real favourite apple dessert but in the summer who can face a hot apple pie? This, therefore, is our summer version.

French Apple Tart

Pastry
4oz hard tomor (or other hard fat)
8 oz plain flour
1 oz caster sugar
1 egg
A little water (I fill half an eggshell with water and this is usually the right amount)

Filling
7 cooking apples (rough amount - obviously depends on size)
Caster sugar to taste
Cinnamon to taste
Juice of half a lemon
1 teasp of oil or small amount of butter

Glaze
3 tablespoons apricot jam
3 tablespoons caster sugar

Combine the pastry ingredients together in a food processor or mix by hand until you have a smooth dough. Roll out and press into the pie dish. Cover with baking paper and baking beads (or weigh it down with something else) and put in the oven at 160 or your normal baking temperature for about 30 minutes, or until it has hardened but it not totally cooked.

While it is cooking, peel all of the apples (rub lemon juice over them to keep them from going brown while you work on other apples. Quarter 3 of the apples and cut them into thin slices - these will be the top of the tart. Put these in a bowl with a little of the lemon juice and sprinkle a little sugar over them. Cut the remaining apples into small chunks.

Heat the butter or oil in a saucepan and add the chunks of apple to it, stirring to prevent the apples burning or sticking to the bottom. Cover the pan and let the apples cook slowly. When they have softened, taste and add lemon juice, sugar and cinnamon as required. Keep stirring and cooking (covered) until you have an apple puree.

Spread the apple puree into the pastry case. Layer the sliced apples on top, starting on the outside, overlapping the pieces so that you have rings of overlapping apple. When completed, put the whole thing back into the oven. Cook for about 30 minutes (but check to ensure that the apples on the top are not burning (some may have darkened edges - this is unavoidable) on 160 or your normal baking temperature.

When the tart is out of the oven, take a bowl andcombine the jam and sugar and heat in the microwave (or in a saucepan) until a thick syrup is formed. I do this in the microwave and it is best to heat it for no more than a minute each time, and keep checking on it, as too long can burn it very quickly. It usually takes around 3 minutes, though obviously this will vary for all microwaves.

Using a spoon or palette knife, spread the glaze thinly over the whole tart. Leave to set and then refridgerate.

Red Onion Tarte Tatin

Circumstances have conspired against me so that I have been unable to blog for a while. We have been eating well, never fear, but a cold and then a virus and then a million late nights and crazy days at work have meant that I haven't been photographing and writing about my food.

This week has already been crazy at work (24 hours non-stop in the office on Monday-Tuesday, followed by a 5 hour respite, and then back again Tuesday afternoon) Since I left the office at a relatively civil 7:00 last night I thought I would take advantage of the hour and do some Shabbat preparation, other than the chicken soup which is always made on Wednesday night.

I am about to show you my red onion tarte tatin, but before I do I must tell you that this delicious tarte was also the ruination of my night (and Blondini's) - when I went to take it out of the oven I had one hand in the oven glove with which I grasped the pan part, and with my bare hand I grabbed the handle. This happened at about 10:30. 2 hours later I was still sitting with my hand under the cold tap, and I tried to go to bed by holding onto a bag of ice and then a bottle of vodka from the freezer but I was literally crying out in pain every time my hand slipped off the coldness. I ended up having to put a chair by the sink in the bathroom and just holding my hand under the water there, thinking that perhaps I'd fall asleep like that. Obviously I didn't, and at 3am Blondini called NHS Direct, who said someone would call me back in an hour. A nice nurse called back and asked me lots of questions and then told me to go to A & E because I might have caused some deeper nerve damage. Blondini had fallen asleep so I had to wake him up and then he took me to A & E, where we sat in a waiting room (I sat by the tap again) for 2.5 hours and I was finally seen and given enormous quantities of painkillers and a burn dressing. It feels better now but I am completely exhausted! It is my second all-nighter in 3 days, I am not cut out for this kind of thing!

So, back to the tarte tatin! It is adapted from a Delia recipe (and I note that she even reminds you to protect your hands well when removing the pan from the oven) - I have changed the pastry because she uses a cheese pastry which I do not like the sound of, so I have created my own spicy tomato pastry which I think goes very well with the onions. Since I also make this as a non-dairy thing, I have exchanged butter for oil.

Red Onion Tarte Tatin
(serves 4-6)

1.2 kg red onions
1 tablespoon rapeseed/olive oil
1 teaspoon caster sugar
1 tablespoon chopped fresh thyme plus a few small thyme sprigs
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
Salt and pepper

Pastry
2.5oz hard tomor or other margarine
5oz wholewheat flour
1 tablespoon tomato puree
1 teaspoon tabasco sauc
Salt and pepper
A little water

Begin by making the pastry - blend all the ingredients together in a food processor or by hand, and then when you have a nice orange dough, cover with clingfilm and refridgerate.

Then take the skins of the onions and cut the tops and bottoms off. Cut each onion in half, longways (from stem to root) and then turn the heat on under the pan. When it is hot, add the sugar and oil. I use a Le Creuset frying pan for this as it is heavy and can also go in the oven. Whatever you use, it needs to be usable in the oven and on the hob. When the oil and sugar are combined and really hot, add the sprigs of thyme and then start putting the onions, cut side down, into the pan. You want the onions to be as close together as possible, so when you have no more space start cutting up the remaining onions and fitting bits into the gaps. Season with salt and pepper, sprinkle the vinegar over it and add the chopped thyme. Turn the heat down and cook gently for about 10 minutes. Then cover the pan with foil and put it into the oven for about 1 hour.

Protect your hands well (!) and remove the pan from the oven, testing the onions with a skewer (they should be cooked through but not totally soft) to see if they are done. Turn the oven up higher to about 190 and heat the pan on the hob to reduce all the juices in the pan. While this is happening, roll out the pastry, and when the juices are reduced (varies each time but probably 5 -10 minutes), turn the heat off and press the pastry down over the onions, tucking it in at the edges. Put it back in the oven on a high shelf and let it cook for around 30 minutes until the pastry is crisp.

Allow the tarte to cool for around 20 minutes and then turn it out onto a flat plate (cover it with the plate and flip it over, using oven gloves). If onions stay in the pan just lift them out with a knife and put them back in their space. You can refridgerate this tarte to use later and reheat - I just put it in the oven for 10-15 minutes to warm up before serving.

Seabass Fillets with Pesto

I was inspired by Kevin at Closet Cooking to try using pesto, which I love but have only ever eaten with pasta, on fish. Those who know me will know I'm a bit obsessed with meals that are "nutritionally complete" and as much as I like pasta with pesto, it is a bit inadequate since there really isn't any protein. Pesto with fish, therefore, seemed like a great idea. Kevin used tilapia in his recipe but I'm allergic to that (and it's also not widely available in the UK), so I used seabass fillets. It was extremely simple, and extremely delicious - I'll definitely be doing it again.

Seabass fillets with Pesto
(serves 2)

2-4 fillets of seabass (depending on size)
1-2 tablespoons of pesto

For the pesto:

A handful of fresh basil
Large tablespoon of pine nuts (toast these by heating them in a dry frying pan for a few minutes)
1 large clove of garlic
Approx 1 teasp olive oil
Salt

Put the pesto ingredients into a food processor (or a pestle and mortar if you are old-school) and blend until they form a paste.

Wash the fish and put it on a sheet of foil or on a tray for grilling. Spoon the pesto onto the fish and spread around. Put the fish under the grill for around 8 minutes, and you're done!

I served this with roasted baby new potatoes and sautéed leeks and mushrooms, which I have to talk about here because they were Blondini's idea. Since we had a sad little leek sitting in the fridge and no plans as to how to use it up, Blondini decided to buy some chestnut mushrooms which he thought would go very well with the leek.

Sautéed Leeks and Chestnut Mushrooms

1 leek
approx 200g chestnut mushrooms
A little oil for frying
Salt and pepper

I julienned the leek, for no other reason than I thought it would look pretty and resemble noodles, which would be fun. I cut the stalk bits off the mushrooms and then just cut them in half.

Heat a little oil in a frying pan until it is really hot, and then put in the leeks and mushrooms and stir, coating them all with the oil. Let them fry for a few minutes, and season to taste.