How To Cook The Perfect Risotto Nero

Risotto al nero di seppia is a Venetian classic that combines two of La Serenissima’s favourite ingredients: rice and seafood from the lagoon. The ink – generally harvested from the more generously supplied cuttlefish than the squid that is often preferred in English versions – gives the rice a creamy, distinctly maritime richness that pairs beautifully with the sweetness of the cephalopod.

The dish’s wider popularity is, I suspect, as much down to its striking appearance as its lovely flavour: few chefs can resist the temptation of a jet-black canvas for their creative flourishes. My problem is that, whenever I make it at home, it turns out an unappetising dirty-grey colour. So, what is the secret to making risotto nero that looks as good as it tastes?

The cephalopods

Although risotto nero in the Veneto tends to be made with cuttlefish as well as their ink, many of the recipes I use suggest squid as a substitute. This ought to be welcome news: while popular wisdom holds that cuttlefish are much cheaper, they prove impossible to come by in any of my local fishmongers, even though they are flourishing, apparently, in ever-warmer seas. I eventually find them lurking at the bottom of a capacious chest freezer at the back of a Chinese supermarket, under the label “squid”.

Cuttlefish are often said to have a stronger, meatier flavour than squid, but I think the difference is principally one of texture: cuttlefish seem to be sturdier and lack the delicately trailing tentacles that are one of the main attractions of their cousins. (The late Alan Davidson’s description of cephalopods as “like bags with heads on top and eight or 10 arms or tentacles sprouting therefrom” is apt.) After a week dealing with both, I have to admit I prefer squid, because it cooks more quickly, but use whichever you can get your hands on – it is more important that they are small and thin enough to soften in the same time as the rice (note that this is a dish in which they should retain some bite, as a contrast with the creamy risotto).

The recipe from Eataly, the global Italian food hall chain, uses prawns, rather than cuttlefish. This may or may not be a traditional variation, but it seems to make little sense. Given that risotto nero must be made with cuttlefish or squid ink, it would seem more logical to pair this with the beast that created it.

The liquid

One advantage of using prawns is that you can produce a stock from the shells. This makes Eataly’s risotto sweet and nuttily delicious, although it is emphatically shrimp-flavoured, rather than tasting of cuttlefish. Italian cookery bible The Silver Spoon and Tom Aikens both use fish stock, Rose Gray and Ruth Rogers’ The River Cafe Classic Italian Cookbook suggests fish stock or water and Bruce Poole of Chez Bruce in London recommends fish stock, light chicken stock or water.

Chicken is my usual choice for lighter risottos; it imparts a savoury element without too much in the way of meatiness. Here, though, while it certainly works, giving Poole’s recipe an elegant richness, it doesn’t blend in as seamlessly as The River Cafe’s water, which yields a surprisingly punchy result. Best of all, however, is a subtle fish stock. Be sure to taste it before use, and dilute it further if it is very salty or strong, because both squid and cuttlefish have a delicate flavour.

Wine-wise, most risottos use the cool, dry whites of the north-east, although the Eataly cooking method mentions red – which is confusing, given that the ingredients list specifies white. I decide to give red a try anyway, on the basis that it might help with the colour of the dish, but the acidity of white proves more pleasing and you can drink the rest of the bottle with dinner.

The rice

The River Cafe and Poole call for vialone nano rice, which, since it gives a slightly less creamy result than The Silver Spoon’s carnaroli, is more traditional with fish and seafood. My testers enjoyed both. Arborio is definitely a poor third – less starchy and more prone to breaking, it is the most widely available of the three, but use either of the others if you have the choice.

The flavourings

All risottos, or at least all those I have come across, start with a flavour base of softly fried alliums. The River Cafe recommends red onion, Poole and The Silver Spoon white and Eataly and Aikens shallots; everyone but Eataly also adds garlic. All of these are fine choices, but the slightly vinous, sweet flavour of the shallots seems to have an affinity with the seafood. In any case, garlic is rarely a bad idea.

Poole and The River Cafe also add tomatoes. Despite my initial commitment to keeping things as simple as possible, I am won over: they supply a fruity acidity that complements the wine and is less strident than Aikens’s lemon juice. I also fall, unexpectedly, for their dried red chilli – after all, Venice was on the ancient spice route, albeit long before chillies made it to the old world. Perhaps more historically accurate is Poole’s star anise, but my testers found it too strong – it is complex and interesting, but a bit distracting.

Poole’s recipe includes fennel and celery, too, which are nice additions without being essential to the success of the dish. The same goes for Aikens’s thyme and bay leaf, although I like his lemon zest, which I will be using to finish the dish.

To finish

Traditionally, risotto is finished with a big lump of butter and some grated cheese, but The River Cafe reckons that, “if you have plenty of the rich, creamy ink, butter is not necessary”. Aikens seems to agree, using creme fraiche instead (but then he has cooked the rice in 75g of the stuff already), while Poole adds “slightly less than usual, as the squid ink is rich”, which is still almost twice as much as The Silver Spoon suggests. While I am not often inclined to turn down butter, in this case, looking at the colours of all the risottos I have produced, I am going to substitute extra ink – and quite a lot of it, too.

The dish needs nothing more, but Poole’s gremolata – more commonly associated with osso buco – works so well that I was forced to make more to cater for my greedy testers. If the idea offends you, feel free to skip it, but this garlic-free version adds a zesty, peppery freshness that proves the perfect counterpart to the rice.

The method

Most risotto nero recipes follow the same method as any other risotto, with the notable exception of The Silver Spoon’s, which adds the stock in one go and leaves it to do its own thing, with decent, if distinctly less creamy, results. The difference comes in when they add the seafood: The Silver Spoon braises it for 20 minutes in wine and water before adding the rice; The River Cafe adds it just before the rice; and Poole and Aikens pop it in at the end of cooking, with Poole sautéing it first. This is why it is important to use small squid or cuttlefish – after 25 minutes of slow simmering, they will be just tender, with enough texture not to be lost in the rice, and will have given up their delicious flavour in the process.

Perfect risotto nero

Serves two as a main course, four as a starter

1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 banana shallot, 2 round ones or ½ white onion, finely chopped
1 garlic clove, finely chopped
Pinch of chilli flakes (optional)
400g baby squid or cuttlefish, cleaned (reserve any ink if you are buying them fresh), tentacles separated, bodies chopped into small rings
1l fish stock
175g risotto rice, preferably vialone nano, but carnaroli will work
75ml dry white wine
2 medium tomatoes, fresh or tinned, chopped
3 sachets of cuttlefish ink
Zest of 1 lemon, finely grated
2 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Heat the oil and butter in a wide, fairly high-sided pan over a medium heat. Cook the shallots until soft, but not brown, then stir in the garlic and chilli flakes, if using, and continue to cook for a couple of minutes. Meanwhile, put the stock in a second pan and bring to a slow simmer.

Add the seafood to the shallot pan and stir to combine, then add the rice and season. Cook for a couple of minutes, stirring to coat with the fat, until the edges of the grains of rice begin to turn translucent.

Turn up the heat slightly, then add the wine and tomatoes. Cook, stirring, until most of the liquid has been absorbed, then stir in one of the sachets of ink. When this is evenly distributed in the rice, begin stirring in the hot stock, a ladleful at a time, waiting until the rice has absorbed most of the liquid before adding more, and stirring regularly. How long this will take depends on how al dente or otherwise you like your rice, but reckon on 20 to 26 minutes.

When the rice is nearly done, stir in as much of the remaining ink as you need to give the dish colour, then season to taste. Combine the lemon zest and parsley and sprinkle over the top to serve.

A Forgotten Taste of Europe

In America, talk of Jewish cuisine typically refers to all things Ashkenazi: the stuffed cabbage, rugelach, potato latkes, and other dishes of central and Eastern Europe that Jewish immigrants brought with them to this country. The conversation too often mutes the importance of Sephardic and Mizrahi cuisines—although that is beginning to change. At the same time, it also tends to present Ashkenazi cuisine as monolithic, blurring the regional ingredients, recipes, and cooking styles that made Jewish cooking in, say, Lithuania or Poland distinct from Jewish cooking in Hungary or Romania.

Enter The German-Jewish Cookbook. Published this month by Brandeis University Press, the authors—mother-daughter team Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman—lead readers on a historical and gastronomic exploration of a country’s unique contributions to the Jewish table.

The book’s introduction makes the authors’ intentions perfectly clear: “We wrote this book to preserve and document the cuisine of a nearly vanished culture.” And traditional German Jewish food is precisely that, nearly vanished. There is an extant Jewish food culture in Germany today, but it is shaped by the Israelis and Eastern European Jews who settled there in the decades after WWII. What’s gone are, as the book puts it, the vibrant “traditions of a culture that existed in Germany (and Austria) for hundreds of years—up until the Nazi era eradicated it.”

The idea for the cookbook originally came from Sonya, who grew up in Boston hearing her family’s stories about Germany and eating traditional dishes. At first, Gaby—who was born in Bramberg, Germany, in 1938 and immigrated to the United States with her parents a year later—resisted. Both Sonya and Gaby are visual artists, not chefs or researchers, which made the task seem daunting. But Sonya persisted and, over time, Gaby said she realized this was a story they were uniquely suited to tell.

Other cookbook authors have tackled regional Jewish cuisines. Tablet columnist Joan Nathan’s Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France, is one standout example. But it is rare to find a regional contemporary cookbook written by two people with such close familial knowledge of the subject. The German-Jewish Cookbook is, of course, a story of the holiday and everyday foods of the Jews of Germany. But it is also a story of immigration and resettling, particularly to Washington Heights, the upper Manhattan neighborhood where Gaby’s family settled. For much of the early and mid 20th-century, Washington Heights was a hub for nearly 20,000 German Jews. Gaby’s memories—of Washington Heights’ sloping streets and Hudson River views, of the kosher bakeries, butcher shops, and greengrocers that lined the streets, and of her family’s rich Shabbat and holiday meals—factor prominently into the book.

The Gropmans began their culinary and historical research with books, particularly Jewish cookbooks published in Germany between 1850 and WWII. Gaby’s grandmother Emma had two prized cookbooks in her collection, a handwritten one and one professionally published at the turn of the 20th century, that provided both inspiration and recipes. From there, Sonya said, the research process evolved organically—a years-long process of reading, cooking, and, on more than one occasion, arguing and making up.

They also interviewed as many people as possible. Firsthand accounts of German Jewish food are hard to come by. As the Gropmans write in the book, many German Jews—particularly those who came to America as children on the kindertransport—“had parents who were killed, or from whom they were separated at a young age.” And those who made it over with their families and memories intact are, at this point, quite advanced in age. Early on, the Gropmans contacted Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the well-known German-Jewish sex therapist and media personality, who has lived in Washington Heights for decades. “But she didn’t grow up with her mom and never learned to cook,” Sonya said.

Two of the standouts from the Gropmans’ interviews include Johanna (Hanna) Zurndorfer and Herta Bloch—women who, like Gaby, immigrated from Germany to New York in the 1930s. Zurndorfer remembered her childhood vividly: everything from the carp and spätzle her mother cooked for Shabbat, to the dairy cow they kept in the yard for milk and the goose that her mother “fattened with pellets of dough.” That goose would produce enough schmaltz to cook with for months. Bloch, meanwhile, was a local celebrity in Washington Heights because she and her husband co-owned the kosher German butcher shop Bloch & Falk. As the book states, “She knew practically everyone in the community because almost everyone came in … to buy their sausages and smoked meat.”

Both of these women, who remained vibrant into their 90s, died within the last two years—before the book could be published. Gaby and Sonya caught their stories and recipes just in time.

When it came to the recipes, there are dishes in The German-Jewish Cookbook that would be familiar to most Ashkenazi cooks: herring salad, coconut macaroons, chicken soup with matzo balls. But many of the dishes are specific to the German Jewish experience. Take berches, also called “water challah.” Like Eastern European egg challah, berches is made from a puffed, tender dough that is braided into a ceremonial loaf. But it contains no eggs and only the pinch of sugar needed to activate the yeast. Instead, the dough is typically enriched with mashed potato. “It looks the same on the outside, but is a completely different bread,” Sonya said.

A small handful of bakeries in Germany still make berches today. “Remarkably, these bakeries, which once baked berches every week for their Jewish customers, apparently never stopped,” the book states. But while the bread is available, its Jewish history and significance is lost on customers.

In a similar case, while visiting a food market in Frankfurt, Gaby and Sonya came across a dried beef sausage that seemed out of place among the overwhelming array of pork sausages. They realized it was a likely remnant of a time when Jewish customers had shopped there. “It wasn’t kosher, and not geared toward a Jewish audience anymore. But it was clear that the butcher shop had just never stopped making it,” Gaby said. They brought one home and used it while making lentil soup with ringwurst, which appears in the book. “It tasted almost identical to the beef sausages I ate growing up in Washington Heights,” said Gaby.

The Gropmans developed the book’s recipes with a contemporary cook in mind, providing sources for harder-to-find ingredients and using modern techniques. But when it came to flavor, they decided to keep the dishes as historically accurate as possible. Knieküchlein or “knee doughnuts” offer one humorous example. The doughnut was prepared for Hanukkah by groups of women who would sit together and stretch balls of yeast dough over their knees before slipping the rounded disks into hot oil. “The first step was always to wash their knees,” they write in the book. In addition to their rustic preparation, the book states that the doughnuts also have an old-fashioned taste, “not too sweet or rich, but satisfying in their fried, doughy goodness.”

The book describes another baked good, haman—which are little cookies shaped like gingerbread men, representing the Purim story’s villain—as having a “bready, not too sweet” flavor that might be less familiar to the modern palate. “People could make them much sweeter, but we followed the older tradition,” Sonya said. Americans today are most familiar with triangular hamataschen from Eastern European. But in Germany, haman cookies were decidedly the most popular Purim treat.

Produce-focused dishes, which tend to get lost in the American concept of Ashkenazi Jewish food, feature prominently in the book: everything from a springy radish salad and chilled sour cherry soup to a kosher version of the traditional German dish kohlrabi in white sauce. “There was more of a vegetable culture present in the old kosher German cookbooks than we expected,” Gaby said. “It was a pleasure to put those dishes into our book.”

In some cases, regional fruits and vegetables shaped German-Jewish dishes in specific ways. There is plenty of crossover with Eastern European cuisine, of course, like the shared love of radishes, stone fruits, and berries. But as Gaby said, “Germans have an obsession with asparagus” that doesn’t as readily apply to Eastern European cuisine. Not surprisingly, then, The German-Jewish Cookbook includes recipes for spring pea and asparagus soup and vegetable vinaigrette that includes the springy spears.

It is hard to overstate the importance of a book like The German-Jewish Cookbook, which the Gropmans hope to have translated into German. It captures a lost moment in time, elevating a rich history and culture that, within a generation, will have almost no one left who experienced it. “When I go back to Germany, Jews don’t exist there anymore,” Gaby said. “The history of the expulsion is there, but what came before is not. This was something we needed to do.”

Labor Day Showdown: Burger vs. Hot Dogs

The greasy sizzle of delicious meat on a grill is a staple of every Labor Day weekend. But as everyone breaks out the barbecue grill, paper plates, and “Kiss the Cook” aprons, a debate older than charcoal briquettes rages in the minds of grillmasters everywhere, along with their hungry audience: Do you want a burger? Or a hot dog? (“Both” is certainly an option, but not for the purposes of this showdown.)

Vegetarian? I’m so sorry.

Competition

Both burgers and hot dogs can be prepared in quite a few ways, whether by grilling, broiling, pan frying, or in the case of hot dogs, boiling. Throw on some toppings like ketchup, mustard, pickles, and cheese, and you’ve got yourself a delicious, meaty entree that goes perfectly with an ice cold soda or a delicious beer.

Burgers

Your traditional burger is a cooked ground beef patty in between two pieces of bread, like a bun or a roll. Of course, you can gussy it up with various accoutrement, including cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and other delicious toppings and condiments. It’s hard to beat the flavor profile of a fully-equipped burger, but it might be hard to maintain its structural integrity if you’re using only one hand.

Hot Dogs

Hot dogs are as iconic as apple pie and Superman in the fabric of American culture. A hot dog is a cooked sausage served in a partially sliced bun. Condiments like ketchup (however controversial), mustard, and relish are traditional toppings, but cheese, pickles, peppers, and bacon are also excellent additions that will supe up your dog. Sure, it’s not as filling as a burger, but you’re going to have more than one anyway.

Hot Dogs: Engineered to Be a One-Handed Beer Companion

Hot dogs are the more manageable of the two classic barbecue foods. Regional differences mean different types of meat may be involved, though the general shape and composition will be similar. The cylindrical sausage shape and long bun make it ideal for one-handed consumption. They’re a staple at baseball games, where you’ll need a free hand to either hold a pint of beer or catch a foul ball beelining for your face.

Hot dog variations range from the tame to the downright preposterous. Your standard dog is paired with ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. Some of the most unwieldy (but delicious) hot dog options include the chili cheese dog, the Chicago dog, and a Cleveland staple, the Polish Boy. The more elaborate versions may require a hot dog tray to contain the additional toppings.

Burgers: A Two-Handed Helping of Deliciousness

There’s a reason a cartoon show about a burger restaurant exists. They’re great. It’s hard to find something more mouth-watering to consume during a barbecue than a burger. The grilled beef patty, the toasted bun (if you’re doing it right), and the assortment of delicious toppings all add up to a both nutritionally dense and aromatically appealing meal. The origin of the burger as we know it today is disputed, but it was catapulted to the forefront of American culture thanks to its appearance at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. Where hot dogs are usually grilled in the same uniform manner, you can alter your burger’s taste depending on how rare you prefer to eat beef.

The actual components of a burger allow for a wide variety of permutations and variants that will appeal to nearly every palate. Bacon cheeseburgers, California burgers, and even Luther burgers (a burger with a sliced donut for a bun) are just a few of the innumerable varieties you can stuff into your gullet.

A burger’s structural integrity is its weakness, and relies on multiple factors. Bun thickness, patty size, and topping thickness all add up to a food that will potentially be too tall to fit in your pie hole, forcing you to compress the burger or take multiple bites, pushing the rest of the meal either out the rear or sides of the bun. Two hands are usually necessary, meaning you’ll probably need to take a seat while you chow down. Also, soggy bun bottoms are the worst.

Verdict: Burgers Rule, but Hot Dogs are The Perfect Barbecue Food

No one can deny the appeal of a delicious burger, no matter your dietary requirements. But in terms of outdoor barbecue fare, its composition is a double-edged sword. Hot dogs are the superior barbecue food thanks to the even delivery of both bread, beef, and condiments, all while using a single hand. You might not think it’s that big a deal, but when you’re walking around the park, beer in one hand, dog in the other, enjoying the beautiful weekend you’ve been waiting for all summer long, the answer will be undeniable. Throw a burger on the grill, for sure, but save a dog or two for me.

Find Delicious Berries Among The Thorns

Late August is not yet autumn, but with the shortening daylight, now less than 14 hours, we are moving in that direction. It is not hard to see these signs of the seasons. Migration of birds is happening more obviously now. Hawk Ridge is open and recording raptors passing by each day. Warbler species grouping into "warbler waves" are moving in the trees now, too. But it is the flight of the nighthawks, often in large flocks that gets our attention of this fall bird movement. Other signs are here too. Crickets, katydids and grasshoppers abound. Their kinds will die in the coming frosts and so they need to mate and lay eggs before the weather gets too cold. With the summer wild flowers done blooming and gone to seed, the fall wild flowers — most notably asters, goldenrods and sunflowers, about a dozen kinds of each — take over the flowering of the roadsides and open areas. Large and diverse, they will catch our attention until the frosts.

Going into the garden, we will see plenty of developed or developing produce. August has been called the time of early harvest and we see it here in the gardens each day. There's always something new. Though not yet ripe, the nearby apple and crab apple trees have their fruits reaching towards maturity. We also see this with the wild plums and hawthorns. I've often found hazel trees, both the American and beaked, loaded with green-husked products. Remembering the site, I returned when they are ripe only to find the local squirrels and bears beat me to this harvest! Acorns will be fully formed a bit later. And there's a plethora of mushrooms out in the woods now, new ones seen each day.
But it is the berry season that has been upon us for the last several weeks and will continue well into next month that many of us take note of.

Starting about a month ago, each woods walk has been made more colorful and delicious with the presence of berries. Berries are small fruits that have formed a covering their seeds. (An exception: strawberry seeds are on the outside.) Often they are very colorful and good tasting to get the attention of passing animals that will pick and eat these berries, thereby dispersing the plants seeds. Though many are edible for us, we are not going to eat lots that I see in the woods. Among these berries that are best left alone are red or white baneberries, blue-bead lily (Clintonia), sarsaparilla, rose twisted-stalk, false Solomon-seal and spikenard (Aralia) — all seen on a single woods walk that I took recently. But also on these forest forays, I located ripe blueberries, raspberries, juneberries and pin cherries. All of these have been ripe for a couple of weeks. Others, newly formed, join this list: choke cherry, gooseberry, currant and highbush cranberry, adding more color and taste to the scene. But during the second half of August, the one that gets me out picking regularly are the blackberries.

Not as common as their close cousins, the raspberries, blackberries are plants more likely to be found in the south part of the Northland. Blackberries are also known as brambles since they form as vine-like spreading shrubs that can develop into a thicket. Stems, called canes, can be six to eight feet long, usually growing in an arching pattern. These branches are filled with numerous sharp thorns that are usually curved. They have been described as being more like that of "fish hooks" than thorns. Anyone wandering into a patch of blackberries had better be ready to get hooked and caught by these thorns. For this reason, my avid picking of blackberries, despite their delicious juicy taste, is usually done alone. I find that whatever the effort and the wounds may be, the result of a collection of these berries makes the prickly picking worth it.

Like raspberries, the fruits of blackberries are formed on growths called drupes. A drupe is defined as a fleshy fruit with seed inside. Some drupes, like plums, have a hard, single seed inside, while others have multiple seeds. These compound drupes are what we find in raspberries and blackberries — many tiny drupes each with a seed inside. Anyone familiar with eating these two kinds of berries is also very familiar with crushing the seeds. With red raspberries, the fleshy fruit detaches from the receptacle when ripe. Blackberries ripen with this receptacle or core still attached to the multiple drupes. We pick the whole fruit to eat. Blackberry season is mostly late summer and I find that due to the thorns, competition to gather them is less than the earlier berries. But I'm not alone. Some bears and birds will devour the large berries and I have noted that a couple of insects — stinkbugs and hornets — also seem to enjoy this treat. They add more to the picking at this time and late August is a delightful time that, with the presence of blackberries, is made delicious as well.

How To Cook The Perfect Chocolate Crispy Cakes

Chocolate crispy squares are some of the first cakes most of us learn to make – maybe the fond memories of standing on a stool to laboriously stir the bowl, cereal flying everywhere, mean these simple treats never quite lose their appeal. Or perhaps they just tick all the boxes our most basic selves demand: at once sweet, buttery and delightfully crunchy.

Either way, they’re useful to have up your sleeve (and squashed under your feet) in what are the dog days of the school holidays for much of the country. At this stage in the summer, any activity that makes everyone happy is a rare gift indeed – and remember: you’re never too old to lick the bowl.

The rice

You wouldn’t think there was much debate about this, but Christal Sczebel of the Nutrition in the Kitch blog rejects the usual “puffed refined rice” in favour of the brown version. Although nobody in the UK seems to sell the Canadian organic sprouted rice cereal she uses, I do locate some wholegrain rice puffs. Unfortunately, they have a different texture to the usual kind – chewy, rather than crunchy. Clearly, this is not a treat that is ever going to be high in fibre.

Chocolate

Although I remember making these with cocoa powder back in the frugal 80s, chocolate seems to be a more common choice these days, Martha Stewart and Sczebel do use powder (the latter in the form of raw cacao, naturally). Chocolate gives the cakes a more rounded character, with testers preferring the higher cocoa versions to the very sweet milk variety used by Nigella Lawson (under-10s may disagree). Everyone loves the combination of milk and dark chocolate in the recipe from Annie Bell’s Baking Bible, however – and, to make them really chocolatey, I’m going to stir in some cocoa powder, too.

Nicky Evans wins a prize for the best start to a recipe I have ever come across: “Five Mars bars, chopped,” beats the mythical, “First, catch your hare,” hands down. Her recipe divides the table; we all love its salty, caramel tang, but it is much richer than the traditional variety – “You couldn’t eat more than a tiny square,” says one tester, shovelling in her third. Well worth a go, especially if you’re making these with ingredients foraged from the all-night garage (no judgment here), but not canonical crispy cake territory.

The fat

Butter is the usual choice of lubricant, although Sczebel substitutes vegan margarine and almond butter. This works well texture-wise and gives the cakes a subtle nutty flavour that’s a real hit with testers, but, again, we conclude that it doesn’t fit with our fond memories. It’s also worth bearing in mind that neither of these things sets quite as firm as dairy butter, so the resulting cakes will be more fragile than the usual sticky missiles – the recipe recommends a spell in the freezer, then overnight refrigeration to help them set.

The sweetener

Bell and Evans feel that chocolate is sweet enough on its own (and no wonder, with five Mars bars), but sugar acts as a binder as well as a flavouring here: Lawson’s golden syrup gives her cakes a pleasing, slightly sticky, quality which makes them feel less dry than Bell’s version. Stewart goes for melted marshmallows, that gives her cakes an unnervingly chewy, almost stringy, consistency, and Sczebel opts for raw honey, which we can’t detect in the finished product. Sometimes, you just can’t beat an inverted sugar syrup.

The extras

Stewart and Evans top their cakes with melted dark chocolate (don’t blame Stewart for the bloom on the top of hers; it’s entirely my fault), but this feels far too decadent for such a simple treat – even Bell’s white chocolate chips add too much complexity, while Sczebel’s desiccated coconut confuses the issue no end, nice though it is. This is a gloriously one-dimensional pleasure: no gussying up required.

Perfect chocolate crispy cakes

(Makes about 25)
100g dark chocolate
75g milk chocolate
50g butter
2 tbsp cocoa powder
4 tbsp golden syrup
135g puffed rice

Set a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, making sure it doesn’t touch the water. Break the chocolate into roughly equally sized pieces and add to the bowl along with the butter. Melt, stirring occasionally to help it along.

Meanwhile, put the puffed rice in a large bowl and line a tin about 20cm square with foil.

Once the chocolate has melted, stir in the syrup and cocoa until you have a smooth mixture. Pour into the bowl of puffed rice and mix well, then spoon into the tin. Press down very firmly with the back of a spoon, then refrigerate for 1-2 hours until set. Cut into squares and store in an airtight container well out of easy reach.

How to Have Your Health Food and Love It

At some point in the ’70s my mom bought her first pair of bluejeans. She didn’t suddenly throw away all her tailored wool skirts and silk scarves, or dump all the cashmere sweaters from the dresser drawers into bags destined for the Salvation Army, but there they were, in rotation: A pair of soft bluejeans, modestly flared at the ankle, with two flat front pockets, that she wore, if I may say, with exceptional and enviable style.

And then, around this same time, you opened the fridge one day and found she had glass jars lying on their sides, cheesecloth held with rubber bands over their mouths, alfalfa sprouts growing inside. And there on the kitchen ­counter, nestled like a flock of broken fledglings fallen too early from the nest, were eight little glass jars wrapped in kitchen towels and set on an electric medical heating pad meant for sore back muscles, incubating her homemade cultured yogurt. Which turned out tangy and creamy and expert.

My mother was dispositionally unwilling to sacrifice pleasure for politics, or style for trends, enough so that I did not mind the dialed-down frequency of her customary brown-butter sauces, ripe, oozing full-fat cheeses and visits to the butchers. And I welcomed the open-faced avocado sandwiches on pumpernickel with cream cheese, red onion and alfalfa sprouts (hers were clean and fresh and lively) and fruit preserves stirred into yogurt for dessert and shopping trips to the memorably dirty health-food store. There the bulk jugs of tamari and tahini and separated almond butter under an inch of rancid oil had crud on their spouts, and the bulk bins of oats and millet and whole-grain flours were lively with meal moths. This was as fascinating to me as the whole sides of bloody animals hanging from hooks in the refrigerated walk-in at the Italian butcher we used.

I thought it was just as miraculous and cool to see her making her own yogurt and granola, and sprouting her own sprouts, as I did watching her make Irish soda bread or duck-leg confit or the annual birthday baked alaska that she set under mesmerizing blue rivulets of fire with kirsch flowing from half an empty eggshell set at the top of the meringue Vesuvius. In a way, her French background, her impeccable kitchen skills and her intractable devotion to pleasure in eating made her a kind of perfect precursor and model for healthful whole-foods cooking, 45 years ago.

Tofu, however, I came to for the first time during my second attempt at college in the early ’80s, at a lefty, rigorously political liberal-arts college in New England, under decidedly less stylish and markedly less pleasure-principled circumstances. It seemed as if there were a dog-eared ‘‘Moosewood Cookbook’’ in every kitchen on campus. They sold it in the campus bookstore next to Wollstonecraft and Hume and John Stuart Mill. The chore wheel — that egalitarian method for distributing household chores to make these experiments in communal living harmonious and less fetid — in our on-campus apartment had a slot wedged right there between Clean Bathrooms and Vacuum Common Area: Water the Tofu! Everybody cut the tofu into cubes and steamed it in a wok with celery and onions and mushrooms and garlic and ginger. We meant to stir-fry it, but you could never get a wok hot enough on those electric coil burners, so tofu dinner was always wet and limp, then drenched in tamari. It was not stylish, expert or enviable.

When I started making soft, silken tofu about five years ago, it was like getting my own first pair of bluejeans. I did not toss out all my marrow bones and suckling pig and the crème Chantilly to remake myself in soy. I started my first batch in a stainless-steel pot on the kitchen counter and finished in glass Ball jars. I took exceptional care of the beans, the soak, the milk. The tofu was rich, almost nutty. It had, and will always have, a faint, chalky mouth-feel, which the unctuousness of salted French butter will completely smooth out in the finished dish. If you went at this in the spirit of the chefs who have labs/test kitchens/ateliers with interesting appliances and chemicals, I think you could add lecithin or other mail-ordered emulsifiers to ‘‘correct’’ that effect in the milk before you coagulate the tofu. But I really want you to go at this the way my mom eventually went for the macramé bikini and the addition of brewer’s yeast on our popcorn: Enjoy yourself, but remain yourself.

Yes, You Can Cook Cucumbers, And They Are Delicious

We eat a lot of cucumbers stateside, most often served raw and crunchy to impart a refreshing quality to a meal. Does “cool as a cucumber” ring a bell?

Hardly do we ever cook them ― but we can, and we should.

Cooked cucumbers are more common in Asian cuisines, where they work wonders in stir fries and side dishes. But they shouldn’t be reserved just for that part of the world.

Julia Child has a recipe for cooked cucumbers in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in which she actually bakes them in the oven. Martha Stewart also has a recipe where she quickly sautés cukes in butter with dill. But it’s time to give them more play in your kitchen.

Cooking cucumbers first came to our attention while listening to the podcast The Splendid Table, when a caller asked host Francis Lam what to do with excess cucumbers. (It does become a problem in the summer.) When he suggested sautéing them, our interest was piqued and we got to cooking.

We came up with a simple recipe that’s quick to make, and actually easy to love. So when you have too many cucumbers on hand, or just want to switch things up, give this easy recipe a try. It just might convert you.

Spicy Sautéed Cucumbers

2 medium-sized cucumbers, sliced, seeded and partially peeled
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 large garlic clove, sliced
1/4 teaspoon chili flakes
1. Place sliced cucumbers in colander, toss with salt and let sit for 30 minutes to drain out the excess water. Rinse well and pat dry.

2. In a sauté pan, add canola oil and garlic. Cook on medium-low heat for a couple of minutes, until the garlic is fragrant. Add cucumbers, soy sauce and chili flakes and cook for 3-5 more minutes, before the cucumbers become overly cooked (and mushy) and when they still have a little crunch to them. Enjoy!

Nigel Slater’s linguine with nduja and tomatoes recipe

The recipe

Bring a deep pan of water to the boil, salt it, then add 250g linguine and cook it for 8 or 9 minutes, until the pasta is tender.

While the linguine cooks, make the sauce: in a shallow pan – one to which nothing will stick – warm 140g of nduja over a moderate heat, stirring it regularly.

Slice 300g of cherry tomatoes in half then fold them into the warm nduja and continue cooking. Stir in 30g of cornichons, sliced in half lengthways, and 2 tsp of capers.

Leave to cook for 3 or 4 minutes until the tomatoes have started to give up some their juice. Then stir in 2 tbsp of olive oil.

Drain the linguine, then toss it with the sauce, folding the spiced tomatoes through the pasta.

The trick

The nduja sauce is very spicy. If you feel the need to tone down its heat, simply stir in more tomatoes, halved or crushed or as you serve the dish, and fold in a spoonful of yogurt or cream.

Nduja burns easily, so keep the heat moderate while it warms, and stir regularly to prevent it from scorching.

The twist

Instead of using pasta, the spiced tomato sauce can be spooned on to thick toast or bruschetta. Top the toast with a soft goat’s cheese, or a spoonful of goat’s curd or mascarpone. It is also good as a dressing for vegetables, such as baked courgettes, pumpkin or potatoes.

How You Can Help Save Local Kids From Going Hungry This Summer

For many children, summer vacation evokes images of their favorite foods: backyard barbecues, fresh farmer’s market produce, s’mores by the campfire and frozen delights from the ice cream truck. However, for the 13 million children in America living in food-insecure households — homes lacking the adequate resources to purchase the food needed for an active, healthy lifestyle — summer vacation offers less relief than it does hunger and uncertainty. During the school year, free or reduced-price school meal programs often serve as the front line of defense against food insecurity for millions of children. But when school is out, the overwhelming majority of these children lose access to this assistance, and their rates of food insecurity increase.

Childhood food insecurity is a tangible problem for millions of families throughout the country — in suburbs, exurbs, small towns, and urban centers from coast to coast. As of 2015, over one in six American children lived in households with food insecurity, and in five states the rate surpasses one in four. Despite steady declines since the depths of the Great Recession, these rates remain unconscionably high.

Fortunately, some students continue to have access to school lunches in the summer, through summer school programs or year-round schooling. Others may benefit from additional U.S. Department of Agriculture–funded programs run by local organizations (such as the YMCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, churches, schools and parks) aimed at feeding children when school is out of session. Last summer, over three million children received lunch through these critical summer food service programs. And in some areas, the USDA has offered a summer-only program, awarding electronic voucher benefits of $30–60 per month per child that can be used to purchase food in grocery stores. Research has shown that increasing food benefits is a particularly effective method to combat food insecurity among families.

Nevertheless, while these USDA initiatives and community-based programs provide a much-needed lifeline for some children and their families, they serve only 15 out of every 100 children who receive free or reduced price lunches during the school year. These programs have also often been unable to reach their full potential due to factors including burdensome regulations imposed by USDA (such as certifying that all meals meet USDA nutrition standards) and limited access in rural and suburban areas due to lack of transportation for children, which deters many organizations from creating or expanding summer meals programs.

The good news is that there are actionable steps you can take to reduce the indignity of childhood hunger in your local community — which do not require much time, energy or resources (unless you would like them to).

First, know what’s already in your area. The USDA has a summer meal program locator, which tells you where your region’s summer meals programs are located. Then, spread the word. Share it on Facebook and other social media. Speak about it with other families at camps or daycare or, really, anywhere. Too often, a lack of awareness about existing summer meal programs currently available can prevent kids from accessing the nutrition they need.

Next, build more. Encourage both public and private organizations in your area — libraries, parks and recreation departments, tutoring programs, religious congregations, athletic leagues — to open their doors and offer meals programs to children this summer. Talk for a few minutes after the next meeting with the leaders you know. There are plenty of obvious benefits: Comprehensive and enriching summer programs will help meet the needs of kids and families, reduce summer learning loss, improve health and keep children safe and out of trouble. The cost of providing summer programs to kids is reduced when USDA funding for food is there to help defray costs.

Then, expand your reach. Write a letter (not a tweet) to your Congressional representatives to advocate for funding for comprehensive and enriching summer programs. If this fails: Try writing an opinion-editorial for a regional newspaper in your Congressperson’s area. While there is currently funding available for summer meals, there is not adequate funding to support summer enrichment programs at which children can also be fed — and President Trump’s proposed budget calls for even greater reductions to summer enrichment programs. This is problematic because although some cities (such as Seattle) are able to serve children free meals in enriching, summer day camp settings — made possible by USDA support for meals, coupled with local government and philanthropic funding — many others (including Washington, D.C.) lack the funding to offer enriching activities to accompany their summer meal programs. Fortunately, Congress has the power to make it easier for rural and suburban organizations to adopt and grow these programs, by funding transportation to summer feeding sites and expanding the summer food voucher program so more families can purchase additional groceries for their children during the summer.

All the while, keep it simple. Donate food, money or a few hours of your time to your local food bank and the other community organizations already working hard to feed kids this summer. Even better, organize a group of friends and go.Our nation’s children deserve to experience summer breaks filled with fun, not hunger pangs. In order to make this a reality, all of us — from private citizens to community organizations to our nation’s leaders in Washington, D.C. — must step up to the plate to strike out childhood hunger.

Nigel Slater’s lamb steak and caper dressing recipe

The recipe

Slice 300g of new potatoes into coins. Warm 4 tbsp of oil in a frying pan then add the potatoes and cook for 12-15 minutes, over a moderate heat, till they are golden.

While the potatoes cook put 150ml of soured cream into a small bowl. Stir in 1 tbsp each of Dijon mustard and capers. Chop 1 tbsp of tarragon leaves, then add to the soured cream. Halve lengthways 6 small gherkins then stir into the dressing, together with a little salt and pepper. Cover and refrigerate.

Remove the potatoes with a draining spoon and keep warm. Season a couple of lamb steaks, each about 180g in weight, then sauté them for 4-5 minutes on each side, until they are cooked as you like them. Remove the lamb and let it rest for a few minutes. Briefly return the potatoes back into the pan, tossing them in the meat juices.

Serve the lamb steaks with the sour cream dressing and the potatoes. Enough for 2.

The trick

The principle of resting meat between cooking and serving benefits small cuts like a lamb steak as much as large joints. In this case, a matter of just 7-10 minutes in a warm place will ensure juicier lamb.

The twist

Young, sweet carrots are good here. Slice them in half lengthways and use in place of the potatoes. I’d add chopped mint leaves, too, when the carrots are returned to the meat juices in the pan. This method also works with pork steaks and chicken breasts.

WHY GELATO IS GOING TO BE THE FOOD OF 2018

Something weird happened to me the other day. It was a balmy July evening, so I headed out with my flatmate to grab a cool glass of white wine or a crisp Aperol spritz at the new food market near our flat. But instead of heading to the bar, I went straight to the gelato stand without a second thought, as if pulled to it by an invisible force.

Intense pistachio. Moreish black sesame. Bitter coffee. Creamy stracciatella. My head was swimming with the possibilities. Two hours later, we left. But I hadn’t even had a snifter of wine, and my friend, disappointed by the knok-off Aperol she was served, abandoned the full glass on the table. The gelatos, on the other hand, were demolished in minutes, in a flurry of groans, moans and eye rolls.

I got to thinking, I can’t be the only person who has uncharacteristically ditched booze for a dinky cup of pistachio gelato, or at least forged a new love affair with the dessert. Gelatos beautifully presented like roses or pressed into gourmet waffle cones seemed to be popping up across social media more and more, and gelatarias opening up across the country. Plus, the third annual Gelato Festival in London in June almost sold out. I, coming to terms with the fact that I had an addiction, decided to investigate.

My suspicions were confirmed by Alex Beckett, global food and drink analyst at the Mintel forecasting agency who specialises in ice creams and its sub-categories like gelato and sorbets. After some probing, he excitedly predicted that 2018 will indeed by the year of the gelato.

He says he has also noticed stores opening up across the UK, from Swoon in Bristol, to Badiani at the Mercato Metropolitano in London, and the newly-refurbished Unico in the capital which offers delicious vegan takes on favourites like moody dark chocolate. Google searches for the term have reached their highest ever point in the UK. Remeo, meanwhile, has this year become the first Italian gelato maker to start selling in the UK, with deals with Waitrose and Ocado rolling out earlier this year. All of this is great news for someone like me who has a habit to prop up.

At this point it's important to arm you with some facts if you want to enter the year of the gelato like a true pompous foodie. First, ice cream and gelato are most certainly not the same thing. Yes, they’re very similar, but not the same.

Gelato contains more milk than cream, making it freeze at a lower temperature and taste cooler, lighter and, arguably, more refreshing. Churned slower than ice cream, it is more dense and has a more intense flavour. According to Maggie Rush, the president of the Ice Cream Alliance, the ingredients and the fact that it contains less air than ice cream means it also has a short shelf life and generally must be sold the same day that it is made. As gelato must be produced in smaller batches, this makes it ripe for experimentation with the highest quality ingredients, from sweet lychee or fig to black olives and wasabi.

“The quality of the gelato on offer in the UK is increasing and people are enamoured by the discernible flavour of gelato, which is less ‘diluted’ than ice cream,” adds Charlotte Vile, a spokeswoman for the Nationwide Caterers Association.

This, says Beckett, taps into the overall demand for healthier, artisanal, “craft” foods containing ingredients with an engaging story of provenance... and all the other buzzwords that make something a surefire hit these days.

“We are on the cusp of gelato becoming mainstream," says Beckett. "There is a latent understanding that it is high quality. It’s just that supermarkets are so competitive it's hard for brands to break through into retail." He says once a global manufacturer like Unilever takes the plunge, gelato will be everywhere.

"We know that alcohol consumption is declining and people still want their treats. Ice cream is one of the biggest treat foods out there. Millennials want to pay out for quality and authentic foods that have a clean label with fewer ingredients,” he adds. “Ice cream struggles in UK, but in the US gelato has been its saviour. We expect to see the same thing happening here."

For Jacopo Cordero di Vonzo, the founder of Remeo, it's not just data that plays into why he decided to bring gelato to the UK, but a bit of raw, carnal desire.

“We are convinced that Gelato is a better product than ice-cream  - tastier, healthier, sexier,” he tells The Independent. "In the last five to ten years gelato has grown enormously in US and Brazil so we expect this to happen in the UK as well, and we are seeing this already."

Established gelaterias are already noticing a difference. “Our sales continue to grow year on year and if you needed any evidence to support that you just have to look at the queues that form outside our shop," says Owen Hazel, the co-owner of Jannettas in St Andrews, which has been open for over 100 years. "Where once our customers waited perhaps five to ten minutes they sometimes, during peak periods, have to wait 40 minutes."

“I think the Brits are now embracing gelato,” adds Jon Adams, who founded Brighton’s Gelato Gusto in 2012. "I think in general people today are more discerning about the food they eat. Brighton in particular is a very foodie city and people appreciate the fact that we are an artisan producer making small batches of fresh gelato and sorbetto each day above the shop and they are willing." Meanwhile, Swoon in Bristol says it has seen as 43 per cent rise in sales up on last year.

Gelato, it seems, is set to explode in popularity across the UK. But there’s just one small problem to solve before it becomes embedded in British culture like it is in Italian, says Adams: "it would also be helpful if we had a little more sunshine."

Jeremy Lee’s recipe for vanilla pots with raspberries

Who ate all the ice-cream? This is all I had for lunch!” cries our beleaguered pudding chef, all too often. On warm summer days, he fights off steamy cooks, who seek out bowls of cooling ice-cream to soothe them in the heat of the kitchen.

There is rarely any pity for the pudding cook, just hoots of laughter and an outstretched hand for more. I am as guilty, if not more so, for heading up the ice-cream raids on his section, particularly when there is a delivery of fine fruit at the restaurant. Freshly churned vanilla ice-cream and a punnet of the best raspberries is a formidable pairing – peerless even, and consistently irresistible.

The raspberry has a quality that rises above its rather odd daily availability. Unlike most harvests that defy the seasons and outstay their welcome, offering little more than shape or colour, a raspberry out of season is sort of OK when a little cheer is needed. However, at its allotted time, when the fruit harvest begins its great summer season, the raspberry rises to the fore of the avalanche mightily.

Amid the many puddings that enjoy the company of raspberries, one in particular stands out, surpassing even that bowl of ice-cream: the vanilla pot.

Simply put, it is a vanilla custard, gently baked in a bain-marie until just set, then put aside to cool. Then it’s heaped with a raspberry sauce and served with a bowl of raspberries alongside, a clean, delicate conclusion to lunch or dinner when temperatures are on the rise. Or indeed, any time in between those two meals. I confess to being found in the kitchen all too often with an empty ramekin in one hand and a telltale splash of cream and raspberry pink down my front, rumbled by cooks whose suspicions were aroused by a half-eaten punnet of raspberries sitting upon a bench.

In the words of Messrs Gilbert and Sullivan in HMS Pinafore … “With a bit of burglary” … although I’m not sure those masters of topsy-turvy quite had the contents of a fridge in mind.

Vanilla pots with raspberries and raspberry sauce

Makes 8
600ml milk
1 vanilla pod
30g sugar
7 egg yolks

Fresh raspberries and caster sugar, to serve

For the sauce
250g raspberries
Juice of 1 lemon
1 tbsp icing sugar

1. Preheat the oven to 130C/250F/gas mark ½. Prepare a deep roasting pan and a kettle full of hot water. You will also need 8 little pots, cups or ramekins.

2. Pour the milk into a heavy-based saucepan. Split the vanilla pod and scrape the seeds into the pan. Gently bring the milk to a simmer, then remove from the heat.

3. In a bowl, stir the sugar into the egg yolks. Pour the infused milk into the bowl and stir well. Let the custard sit for 15 minutes or so, then spoon away any foam that may have formed on the surface. Pour the custard into the pots.

4. Put the pots in the roasting tray. Put the tray in the oven. With great care, pour the water from the kettle into a jug, then fill the roasting tray with enough water to reach halfway to two‑thirds of the way up the side of the pots. Bake for 40-50 minutes. There should not be a bubble upon the surface.

5. Carefully remove the entire tray from the oven. Put it down on a wire rack and let the custard pots cool in the water. Once cooled, put the pots on a tray and transfer to the fridge. They do not suffer for sitting, covered, overnight.

6. To make the raspberry sauce, put all the ingredients in a blender and render smooth. Put a sieve over a bowl and pour the sauce into it, pushing through with the back of a spoon to leave the myriad pips behind.

7. To serve, heap the raspberries in a bowl. Have a small bowl of caster sugar alongside. Put each pot on a plate and pour on a spoonful of the raspberry sauce. Leftover sauce can be poured into a jug for people to help themselves.

Nigel Slater’s orecchiette with peas

The recipe

Put a deep pan of vegetable stock on to boil (you can use water at a push) and salt it lightly. You will need 300g of peas, shelled weight. Keeping a handful of raw peas to one side, cook the rest in the boiling water for 5-7 minutes, depending in their size.

While the peas cook, grill 10 thin rashers of pancetta until crisp, then drain them on kitchen paper. Cook 250g of dried orecchiette in deep, generously salted boiling water.

Put the peas and their cooking liquor into a blender and process until smooth. Drain the pasta and return to the pan, pour in the pea sauce and fold into the pasta. Check the seasoning. Divide between 2 deep plates.

Break the pancetta into large pieces and add them to the pasta, scatter over the reserved raw peas and serve. Enough for 2.

The trick

Start the pea sauce before putting the pasta on. The sauce will hold in good condition while the pasta cooks. If you are using fresh peas, then check them every minute or so throughout cooking – they can take anything from 4 minutes to much longer to become tender. Much depends on their age and size. If you are using frozen peas, they should be done in 4-5 minutes. Process the peas and their stock in two goes rather than risk overfilling the blender. (Sorry. Obvious, I know, but it is so easy to.)

The twist

You can make a similar sauce with broad beans. They are more starchy than peas, so be prepared to add a little more stock during blending. Although I love the simplicity of peas, pasta and pancetta, I have introduced shelled clams to this before now, thinning the sauce down with some of their (strained) cooking liquor.

Nigel Slater’s cherry pie and cake recipes

We went in search of cherries: punnet after punnet of dark, sweet fruits, cheap enough for us to boil up a batch of jam. The pickers had been at work before breakfast, teetering on tall ladders, their heads hidden in the canopy of leaves. We ignored the dead blackbird that hung ominously from the gate and went in. I was struck by how cool it was under those trees, a good few degrees cooler than in the open, and we sat in their shade feasting on fruit and spotting our shirts pink with juice before driving off with our cut-price haul.

That was a few years ago, but I have always associated cherries with the cool, serving them on dishes of ice in lieu of pudding; making a cordial of their juice with sparkling water and glasses of crushed ice, or just snatching the odd, chilled orb from its paper bag each time I opened the fridge door.

It is only recently I have started to think of the cherry as a cook’s fruit – a fruit for cakes and compotes, crumbles and pies. Jam aside, they seemed too precious to cook. Of course, warm cherry pie is heavenly if you take the trouble to stone the cherries. (A cherry pie with stones is more torture than treat.) And maybe do as I did this week, tossing in a handful of blueberries, the little fruits having the effect of making the cherries sing all the louder, their juice all the more rich.

Cherry pie

Use all cherries if you wish, but the tartness of the blueberries seems to amplify the flavour of the cherries. The cornflour becomes invisible, but effectively thickens the juices. Serves 6.

For the pastry:
plain flour 230g
butter 140g
icing sugar 50g
eggs 1 large yolk, plus another beaten to seal and glaze the pie
For the filling:
cherries 800g
blueberries 200g
cornflour 2 tbsp
lemon 1
caster sugar 100g (plus a little extra)

You will also need a wide-rimmed metal pie plate or tart tin measuring approximately 26cm in diameter (including rim).

Make the pastry: put the flour into the bowl of a food processor, add the butter cut into pieces and process until the ingredients resemble fine, fresh breadcrumbs. Mix in the icing sugar and the egg yolk. Transfer the mixture to a bowl, then bring the dough together with your hands to form a smooth ball. Wrap the dough in parchment or clingfilm and refrigerate for 20 minutes.

Stone the cherries, put them in a mixing bowl then add the blueberries and the cornflour. Finely grate the lemon, add it to the cherries, then cut the lemon in half and squeeze the juice. Sprinkle the juice over the fruit and add the sugar. Tumble the fruit, cornflour, juice, zest and sugar together and set aside.

Place an empty baking sheet in the oven, then preheat to 200C/gas mark 6. Cut the pastry in half. Roll out one half to fit the base of the pie plate, then lower on to the pie plate, leaving any overhanging pastry in place. Spoon the filling into the dish, leaving a bare rim of pastry around the edge. Brush the rim with a little beaten egg.

Roll out the remaining pastry and place it over the top of the tart, pressing firmly around the rim to seal. Trim the pastry. Brush the surface with beaten egg, pierce a small hole in the middle to let out any steam, then sprinkle the pie lightly with caster sugar. Bake for 25-30 minutes, on the heated baking sheet, until golden.

Cherry polenta cake

Serves 8-10.

butter 220g
caster sugar 220g
cherries 200g
ground almonds 180g
fine polenta 220g
baking powder 1 tsp
lemon 1
eggs 3, large 
For the syrup:
cherries 400g
honey 3 tbsp
elderflower cordial 160ml

Set the oven at 180C/gas mark 4. Line the base of a 20cm cake tin with baking parchment.

Dice the butter and put it in the bowl of a food mixer with the caster sugar and beat until light and creamy. Halve and stone the 200g of cherries.

Mix together the ground almonds, fine polenta and the baking powder. Grate the zest from the lemon and stir into the polenta. Squeeze the juice from the lemon into a small bowl. Break the eggs into a bowl and beat them lightly.

Add the beaten egg to the butter and sugar mixture, beating continuously, adding a little of the polenta mixture should it start to curdle. Fold in the remaining polenta mixture and the lemon juice.

Spoon half the batter into the lined cake tin, add the cherries, then the remaining batter and smooth the surface. Bake for 35 minutes, then lower the heat to 160C/gas mark 4 and bake for further 25 minutes until the cake is lightly firm to the touch.

While the cake bakes, make the syrup. Halve and stone the 400g of cherries. Warm the elderflower cordial and honey in a small pan, then add the cherries and let them simmer for 5-7 minutes until the fruit has given up some of its juice.

When the cake is ready, remove from the oven, then pierce all over with a skewer or knitting needle. Spoon some of the syrup from the cherries over the surface so it runs down through the holes into the crumb of the cake, then leave to cool.

Remove the cake from its tin; serve with the cherry compote and, if you like some cream or crème fraîche.

National picnic week 2017: Recipes from smoked salmon pate to tomato tarte tatin

Tomato and shallot savoury tarte tatin

​Tarte tatin is often associated with dessert, but savoury versions are delicious too and this one is no exception.

Serves 6-8

250g French shallots, unpeeled
1tbsp olive oil
25g butter
2 garlic cloves, crushed
6 Roma tomatoes, halved lengthways
1tbsp thyme leaves, plus extra to garnish
1tsp sugar
1 sheet frozen puff pastry (about 24 x 24cm), thawed in fridge

Find yourself a 20cm (across the base) ovenproof frying pan. Check the handle is ovenproof too, basically not plastic, or cover it with a double layer of foil. Also check it fits in your oven with the door closed! Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180°C (200°C conventional/Gas 6).

Simmer the shallots in water for 5 minutes, then drain well. Cool slightly, then peel (the skins should slip off easily). Heat the oil in your frying pan. Add the shallots and cook for about 5 minutes or until starting to brown. Transfer to a plate and remove the oil from the pan.

Put the butter in the pan over a low heat. Once it has melted, add the garlic and stir around briefly. Add the tomatoes cut-side down and sprinkle with the thyme and sugar. Cook over a medium heat for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and add the shallots, ensuring that everything is in a single, compact layer.

If your pastry is a square sheet, snip off the corners to make them rounded. Carefully place the pastry over the shallots, tucking it inside the pan (not over the edges of the pan).

Place on a baking sheet and bake for 30-35 minutes until the pastry is puffed and golden. Remove from the oven and cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Then carefully turn out onto a large serving plate, remembering the handle will still be hot. Also be aware the tomatoes may have leaked a little juice. Serve warm or cold, scattered with the extra thyme. If transporting, cover with foil once cool.

Smoked salmon and roasted red capsicum pâté on toast

Serves 6

This creamy smoked salmon pâté served on crisp toast triangles is perfect finger food. You can make the pâté smooth or slightly chunky, depending on whether you blend the capsicum into the mix. If you stir the capsicum through after blending, the resulting pâté will be a little creamier.

1 small red capsicum (pepper), halved and seeded (or 50g bought chargrilled capsicum, drained)
200g smoked salmon
200g cream cheese
100g sour cream
4tbsp finely chopped dill
60-80ml lemon juice
8 thin slices of wholegrain or wholemeal (whole-wheat) bread

Preheat a grill (broiler) to high. Squash the capsicum halves to flatten them, then place under the hot grill, skin side up. Grill until the skin is completely blackened. Place in a plastic bag, seal the bag and leave for 15 minutes. Rub or peel off the skin (do not rinse), then finely dice the capsicum and set aside.

Put the smoked salmon, cream cheese, sour cream, dill and 60ml (2fl oz/¼ cup) of the lemon juice into the bowl of a food processor. Blend for about 20 seconds. Taste, then season with sea salt and freshly ground black pepper and add the extra tablespoon of lemon juice if needed. Now either add the diced capsicum and blend for 10 seconds, or transfer the pâté to a bowl and stir in the diced capsicum. Chill the mixture in the fridge for about 30 minutes so it firms up slightly.

Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F) fan-forced, or 200°C (400°F) conventional, and place a baking sheet in the oven to heat up. Remove the crusts from the bread, then roll the slices out thinly using a rolling pin or bottle. Cut each piece into four triangles. Place on the baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes, or until the toasts are golden and crisp. Set aside to cool.

Store and transport the toasts in an airtight container, then serve alongside the pâté.

Goats cheese, black olive and herb muffins

These are best eaten on the day they’re made, however, if you do have any left over, warm them up and serve with some butter the next day.

Makes 12 muffins

2 free-range eggs, lightly beaten
220ml milk
150ml olive oil, plus extra  for greasing
300g (2 cups) self-raising flour
1tsp sea or table salt
120g pitted kalamata olives, finely chopped
3tbsp flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped
150g goats cheese, crumbled
1 red chilli, deseeded and finely chopped (optional)

Preheat a fan-forced oven to 180°C (200°Conventional/ Gas 6). Grease a 12-hole (capacity 80ml or 1/3 cup) muffin tin or line with cupcake cases. Combine the eggs, milk and olive oil in a bowl. Sift the flour and salt over the egg mixture then stir gently to combine. Fold in the olives, parsley, goats cheese and chilli and season with freshly ground black pepper.

Divide the mixture between the muffin holes and bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the muffins have risen and are golden. Leave to cool for 5 minutes in the tin then transfer to wire racks to cool further.

Styling tip: Balls of coloured and textured twine look beautiful stacked in glass jars and are handy for wrapping sandwiches and muffins for lunches.