Fifteens Cheesecake

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fifteens side

The passing of Seamus Heaney this week brought me great sadness and immense homesickness. He wrote so evocatively about rural Northern Ireland and in a dialect that is so familiar in tone and cadence to me that it always thrilled me to hear. I loved the idea of people all round the world being exposed to that world with its mix of Irish, English and Ulster terms and phrases. For me it summons up memories of sitting round the open fire on Sunday afternoons at our granny’s house, hearing rural accents instead of Belfast ones. And that reminds me of two thing: love and sugar.

Northern Ireland, like its near neighbour Scotland, has a sweet tooth. It is the spiritual home of the traybake, those little morsel that are not quite cakes, not exactly buns. Different areas favour different sorts and a friend’s mother ran into some difficulty in Derry when she was asked to bring some ‘smalls’ to church on Sunday, not knowing the different name in the North West. But the grande dame of the traybake are Fifteens. Simple, delicious and a masterclass in the classic traybake ingredients of digestive biscuits, marshmallows, coconut, glacé cherries and condensed milk, it knocks the socks off the English ‘fridge cake‘.

Every time I’ve made Fifteens while living over here, they have always required some explanation first and I often ended up saying ‘like a cheesecake base but with marshmallows and cherries’ and I suddenly thought I should actually have a go at making them into a cheesecake. I could see no reason why it wouldn’t work, except that by Northern Irish standards such a thing is probably showing off.

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Carrot, Caraway and Honey Muffins

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muffinsRecently I had the pleasure of going over to Peckham and having a food tour of the area courtesy of The Skint Foodie. Our first stop was Persepolis and I could have spent all day there, rummaging through the treasure chest of amazing items they stock and chatting to Sally about her cookbooks. I managed to only buy a few things (but eyed up several others for a return visit) and came away with a bag of caraway seeds.

As far as I know, these are actually the fruit of the caraway plant rather than a true seed, but whatever they are botanically, they are underrated ingredient these days. Popular in Britain for centuries, they work well in sweet and savoury dishes and for some reason they remind me of my childhood. I’m not sure I remember eating them in anything particular, but they take me back every time. I haven’t had them regularly since I used to frequent a sandwich shop in Waterloo that did a New York club sandwich on caraway bread.

So when I saw them in Persepolis, I immediately wanted to make something with them that was neither sweet nor savoury but but would show them to full effect. Much as I love the idea of seed cake, it seemed too definitive a decision. Caraway duets delightfully with carrot and I figured this was the way to go.

I love making muffins but am always put off by having to buy the bigger sized liners and paying through the nose for them. So when I got sent a stunning non stick muffin tin recently by George Wilkinson, they promised to dispense with the need to line the tin. It was time to find out!

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No Fuss Gnocchi

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gnocchiI think everyone who has ever met me knows how I feel about potatoes. Pretty much a full food group in my life, I am never without a bag of spuds. My idea of treating myself is to buy a different sort for each recipe and mull over the merits of Anyas, King Edwards, Desirees and Kerr Pinks. I’ve even grown my own and spent hours on the internet trying to find the elusive Yukon Gold. I’m either slightly obessive or painfully stereotypically Irish.

So imagine how pained I was when I went to buy a bag of bog basic white spuds last week and they were a mindbending £2.40 for 2.5 kilos. At the rate I consume potatoes that’s bumped my shopping budget up to a point where there’s just not much wiggle room. I had two options: stop eating potatoes or find a cheaper option.

Obviously I went for the latter and decided to play around with the bag of Sainsbury’s Basics Instant Mashed Potato I bought a while back as a cheaper gluten free alternative to breadcrumbs and batter. 125g of dry mash and 150ml milk and 425ml water makes 695g of mash, meaning one 250g bag costing 49p makes well over a kilo of mash.

Unfortunately I have bad memories of instant mash from school dinners where it came served in uniform scoops with a oddly powdery texture. It needed so much butter that it would be heartstopping in cost and health consequences. So what was I going to do with my mountain of mash now?

Older, wiser and more versed in the potato dishes of the world, that’s an easy one. I’m going to make gnocchi with it. And potato bread. Then I’m going to marvel at how quick both are and how I suddenly feel like one of those home economics teachers from the 70s by telling you this.

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Panzanella-ish Bread Salad

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bread salad dish

For me the best bit about bread (if you don’t make your own you can eat warm from the oven) is the fact it goes stale and allows you to use it for all kinds of things. I love croutons, I love schnitzel style meat, I love stuffing. All made possible by the power of stale bread.

But I have a particular love for Italian style stale bread dishes. We spent time on holiday in Tuscany when we were children and we used to go to sagras or festivals in the local town. These each specialised in certain dishes. There was frog and trout, there was wild boar. There was the Florentine beefsteak one that remains the moment I most regret of my teenage vegetarianism. And then there was something called zuppa Etrusca or Etruscan soup.

Basically a bowl of chilled soup filled with cabbage, beans and stale bread along with fabulously ripe tomatoes, it was amazing. It came served in a beautiful glazed blue and white bowl and I volunteered to take one for the team and have a second portion so we could have a full set of bowls for the house. We still use those bowls and I still dream about the soup.

But rather than ruin a good memory by trying my own version that might come up short, I tend to make panzanella instead in the summer. Basically bread meets Greek salad but with capers instead of olives, it’s a great warm weather meal. It’s a dish that suits a spot of improvisation for me so you can be sure this version isn’t wholly authentic.

Often panzanells is dressed with an abundance of oil and vinegar that can feel both sickly and astringent to me if you aren’t using the very best quality in both so I’ve adapted the dressing to reduce the need for as much oil or vinegar. I can also stick to Lidl quality instead this way. My dressing is a salsa verde of cucumber, basil, oil, vinegar and capers to give a light bright feel. Very quick and easy.

The one thing you can’t skimp on though is the bread. If you use sliced Kingsmill or Warburtons type bread, you’ll get wallpaper paste. You could use something more loaf like such as a farmhouse loaf or some sourdough. I used some Polish half wheat half rye chleb I’ve been buying recently that’s a bit more robust than a sliced pan.

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Mango Lassi Frozen Yoghurt

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mango lassi

London has been hot and humid recently. The kind of weather where I stop daydreaming about dinner for once and imagine cold showers and ice lollies instead. I’ve been drinking ice coffees to cool down and rather than cooking in the evenings, standing over the kitchen sink trying to keep the juice of a chilled watermelon or a sun ripened mango from running down my front.

Mangoes are one of the finest flavours in warm weather. Sunshine turns them into something really special, and it’s a joy to suck the flesh from the stone inside while holding it in sticky hands sitting outside. But few things are more refreshing than the subcontinent classic of a mango lassi.

Sweet velvety mango puree with creamy chilled yoghurt and the tiniest dash of salt cools any day or any curry down beautifully and I can’t get enough of them in Indian restaurants. I can never get them quite right at home though usually. The yoghurt isn’t thin enough for drinking consistency and if I water it down, I lose the flavour of the mango. But this heat had me determined to crack the code.

And that answer came with the recent discovery of buttermilk in the local Polish shop. I think we all know I’m totally and utterly obsessed with this ingredient and it’s a total fridge staple for me. The Polish stuff is a lovely loose consistency and I knew it would get the texture just right if I mixed it with the yoghurt. It did and I’ve been starting the morning with a glass of this amber nectar.

It put me in mind of how I’ve always meat to try making frozen yoghurt again after an ill fated attempt a few years ago where it frozen so densely, it took about an hour to defrost enough to chip a spoonful out by which time we’d eaten the dessert it went with and moved onto ice cold beers instead. Perhaps the buttermilk would sort the texture here too?

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