Here, Have A Cookie

So a nice thing happened which I quite forgot to tell you about, what with all of the garden talks and bake sale hoopla. It’s a really nice thing, a skip-around-the-room-and-pour-yourself-a-margarita sort of thing.

My blog has been nominated for the Guild of Food Writers’ Food Blog of the Year Award , alongside Kerstin Rodgers’ The English Can Cook and Emma Gardner’s Poires au Chocolat . The chichi là là party is on May 29. Not long to wait. In the meantime, do join me in a celebratory Friday afternoon cookie.

MochaButta Cookies

I’ve been at my desk since seven o’clock this morning, taptaptapping away. By tea time, I was desperate for something sweet and there was nothing but oranges in the kitchen. Now I love an orange, but I needed the You-Lift-Me-Up transformative powers of butter and sugar. So I came up with these cookies using what I have in the cupboards, and they’re pretty good. Dark, nutty, not too sweet, quite grown up in fact. I’m eating one now. It’s still warm and I’m thinking how good it would be with vanilla ice cream.

I was going to make them with half caster- and half light muscovado sugar, but I’m out of light muscovado so I did a 8:2 blend of caster- and dark muscovado sugar. I also wanted to use up some caramelised cocoa nibs I was sent so I threw those in. Chocolate chips would be good if you’re all out of caramelised cocoa nibs.

Makes about 20 cookies.

75g plain flour
25g cocoa powder
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp salt
50g unsalted butter, softened
80g caster sugar
20g dark muscovado sugar
200g crunchy peanut butter
1 egg, room temperature
2 tbsp instant coffee, dissolved in 1 tbsp boiling water
1 tsp vanilla extract
70g caramelised cocoa nibs or chocolate chips

Sift the first four ingredients into a bowl and set aside.

In a stand mixer or with an electric hand mixer – or certainly by hand if your desire is to have perfectly toned upper arms to rival Michelle Obama’s – beat together the butter and sugars until well combined. Beat in the peanut butter, then the egg, coffee and vanilla. Slowly but thoroughly beat in the sieved dry ingredients then fold in the cocoa nibs or chocolate chips. Chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Line two cookie sheets with baking parchment. Preheat the oven to 170C.

Roll the cookies into balls roughly the size of a walnut. Place them on the prepared sheets about 4cm apart. Flatten them slightly with the bottom of a glass then press a criss-cross pattern into the surface with the tines of a fork.

Bake for 10 minutes. Leave on the tray for two minutes to firm up slightly, then drag the baking parchment onto wire cooling rack and let the cookies cool completely.

I Went South of the River and I Liked It

Making pesto: I pour the olive oil, Rachel mixes.

A couple of months ago, food writer Rachel de Thample emailed me to ask if I’d like to come and demonstrate a few of the projects from Gifts from the Garden to some like-minded souls in Crystal Palace. Rachel is so full of quietly determined Texas charm, it’s impossible to say no to her. Even though speaking in public is pretty new to me and fills me with proper white-knuckle fear.

Stupid, isn’t it? I’m ridiculously old still to be holding onto such terror so I’ve decided to say ‘Yes!’ to everything until I get over it like a proper grown up. My mum, who is undeniably the wisest person on the planet, sounded only mildly irritated when she said to me, ‘Oh for god’s sake, you love telling people what to do’. True.

So I went to Crystal Palace, the car rattling with mixing bowls, graters and knives and smelling deliciously of lavender and lemons. People were kind, no one threw things at my head, they asked interesting questions and nibbled happily on bits of bread topped with spoonfuls of chive and lemon pesto.

Grating ginger into the bathtime ‘tea’, which you infuse in your bathwater.

A relaxing tisane planter.

Making bundles of dried herb and flower tisanes.

Jars of rose and lavender body scrub.

I liked Crystal Palace. It has a busy high street with bakeries, delis and cafés, a good bookshop, and coffee shops where intense and Amishly-bearded young men discuss the optimum water temperature for making the perfect cup (SE19’s Amish say 93.4°C). In fact, it’s so like my dear, beloved Stoke Newington that I think we should have some sort of North-South-of-the-Thames twinning scheme.

That very weekend some of the people who came to my class were afterwards going off to publicise their brand new food market, which was inspired in part by N16’s award-winning Growing Communities. If you live locally, do check it out. It’s every Saturday, 10am to 3pm at Hayes Lane, SE19 3AP, crystalpalacefoodmarket.co.uk.

Joe, dressed as a carrot, to publicise Crystal Palace’s new Saturday food market.

Chive and Lemon Pesto

This recipe is from Gifts from the Garden. Do use its measurements as a template and experiment with other nuts, hard cheeses and herbs.

40g pine nuts
A generous bunch of chives, about 50g, finely chopped
60g Parmesan cheese, finely grated
Grated zest of 1 small lemon
1 small garlic clove, minced
4-6 tbsp olive oil, plus a little more for bottling
Salt and pepper

1x190g jar

Warm a dry frying pan over a medium heat and gently toast the pine nuts until just golden and fragrant, rattling the pan frequently to ensure they don’t burn. Cool and bash thoroughly in a pestle and mortar, or pulse a couple of times in a food processor. Combine with the chives, cheese, lemon zest, garlic and just enough oil to get the texture you like. Taste and season if necessary with salt and pepper.

Spoon the pesto into the cold, sterilised jar, pressing down with the back of a spoon to get rid of any air pockets. Ensure that the pesto is completely covered with a thin layer of oil before sealing. Refrigerated, the pesto will keep for 2-3 days.

Cookbook and Cake Sale

My first cake for Free Cakes for Kids Hackney

Recently I signed up as a volunteer for Free Cakes for Kids Hackney. Essentially, FCKH matches up keen bakers like me with families who find it difficult to provide birthday cakes for their children. I get to bake, which I love, and a kid gets to blow out some candles. Simple.

When FCKH were trying to think of a way to celebrate the making of their hundredth birthday cake, I had an idea. My dining room table was creaking under the weight of more than a hundred cookbooks I’d been sent as a judge for the Guild of Food Writers’ Cookbook of the Year award. Why not have a cookbook and cake sale to raise some funds so we can make more cakes for more kids?

Some books for the sale.

So if you’re free this Sunday, May 19, do come. There’ll be many of the biggest titles from 2012, so you can tuck into brand new copies of Ottolenghi, Nigella, Jamie, Hugh and Mary Berry at knock down prices – and there’ll be quite a few second-hand books too. And if that isn’t a big enough draw, we’ll be serving tea and cake, of course.

There are Free Cakes for Kids groups springing up all over the country. If you’d like to volunteer or donate, check out their website here.

COOKBOOK AND CAKE SALE

19 May, 2-5pm, 112 Rectory Road, Stoke Newington, London N16 7SD

Cash only, please.

Hello London, I Love You

Ballerina, Queen of Night and Barcelona tulips.

Last Sunday was real sunhat weather.

I sat on the grass weeding, low enough to smell the soft, sweet scent of the orange Ballerina tulips and to enjoy the dazzle of their lily-shaped heads against the fat cups of purple Queen of Night and shriek pink Barcelona. I love to sit on the grass. You see things differently there.

Beautiful shriek-pink Barcelona tulips.

As I pulled out soft-leaved, milky-rooted dandelions and tiny sycamore seedlings, music drifted across the wall, through the trellis and over the roses. Our neighbours are in a bluegrass band. They’re really good. The plaintive sounds of the fiddle, guitar and banjo pulled the hipsters who live on the other side of us from their beds and onto their little roof terrace. Pale chested boys and girls with last night’s mascara smudged around their pretty eyes sat and watched, listened. When they came to the end of their first song, we all applauded.

Gentle wisps of smoke from our Turkish neighbours’ barbecue curled deliciously into the warm afternoon air.

And in that moment, I just fell for London really hard and all over again.

Spring.

Cherry blossom, before…

…and after the wind.

Apple blossom.

Barney – is it the demise of the blossom, or the bluegrass music that’s making him so mournful?

Thank You Salad Burnet, You’ve Been Wonderful

Apple blossom

Someone put out the bunting. It seems we are finally allowed to wave goodbye to winter.

I am sitting in the garden writing this. In the time it takes me to lift a teacup to my lips, leaves unfurl, buds fatten, ferns slowly straighten and bees dart in and out of the rosemary flowers. Apple- and cherry blossom froth about. Greenfly descend on soft, new rose leaves like OAPs with vouchers for the earlybird special.

Magnolia stellata and grape hyacinths, growing cheerfully together in a big pot.

At this point, I feel I have to say a small thank you to salad burnet, which stood by me through the cold, dark months, appearing regularly in salads and sandwiches or scattered on soups and casseroles when other, more robust-looking herbs, gave up the ghost.

Pretty salad burnet, cucumber’s happy companion.

Salad burnet is delicate, with prettily serrated leaves and at first glance you think it might be a bit of a prima donna. It’s not. It’ll grow in pots or in any reasonably well-drained soil. It will tolerate full sun and put up with a bit of shade. You can dig up established plants in early spring or autumn and divide them to create new plants, or simply leave a few flowers to self seed at the end of the season. Just keep snipping at it to encourage tasty young growth – and given its versatility in the kitchen, that won’t be a hardship.

When Lola and Jane came to tea, we had to have cucumber sandwiches. That’s the Number One byelaw of afternoon tea: cucumber sandwiches must be served. Whenever I make them for my friends, I always wonder why I never make them to enjoy by myself, when polishing off the whole plate wouldn’t be such an embarrassment.

I’m not one for messing things about much. To me there’s no more chilling phrase on a menu or in a recipe introduction than ‘With a twist’. Just stop it. But here I am, breaking my own rules. To the glorious triumvirate of white bread, unsalted butter and cucumbers I add some salad burnet. In my defence, I will say that salad burnet tastes of cucumber, so it makes it taste more of itself.

If you’re not in the market for a cucumber sandwich (who are you and what are you doing here?), salad burnet is very good in potato salads, with boiled eggs or steamed carrots. In summer, it’s delicious with tomatoes or in lemonade. You don’t really want to cook it. Use it in cold things or fling it on hot dishes at the last minute so you can enjoy its colour, shape and flavour at its fullest.

And an invitation…

If I haven’t put you off too much with my love letter to a herb,
and you live in or near Crystal Palace,
and you are free this Saturday, May 4…

Between 11.30-12.30, I’ll be demonstrating some projects from my book, Gifts from the Garden, at Westow Park Edible Garden. The park is opposite The Secret Garden Centre, Coxwell Road, off Westow Street, Upper Norwood, London, SE19 3AF

And between 1-2pm, I’ll be at Bookseller Crow, 50 Westow Street, London SE19 3AF, signing copies of Gifts from the Garden.

Do come and say hello. It’d be lovely to see you and I might give you a biscuit.