No-bake white chocolate cheesecake with red berries

Cheesecake made with Philadelphia cream cheese was one of the revelations in a brief year of home economics classes at secondary school. I remember it was incredibly simple, bashing up digestive biscuits to make the base, sweetening the cream cheese and topping with a can of cherry compote. And it was utterly delicious.

Many of the recipes in my cookbook collection are for baked cheesecakes, and I can't find a recipe as simple as the one we used - maybe it was just cream cheese and icing sugar? In the end, I couldn't resist adding white chocolate as suggested by the Lorraine Pascal in the Philadelphia website. And with berries in season, it seemed only right to make my own compote and pile on the fresh fruit for an Instagram hit...

Ingredients

(Serves 6-8)

150g digestive biscuits

30g melted butter

250g white chocolate

360g cream cheese

50g icing sugar

A few handfuls of fruit (raspberries, strawberries and blueberries)

Method

1. Blitz the biscuits or bash in a freezer bag with a rolling pin until crumbed. Stir in the cooled melted butter and spoon into a lined 20cm loose bottomed cake tin (or a springform tin if you have one). Press down firmly and chill while you make the filling.

2. Melt the white chocolate in a bowl over a pan of simmering water. While it melts, beat together the cream cheese and icing sugar in another bowl. Add a spoonful of cream cheese mixture the chocolate and mix gently but thoroughly. Add the remainder of the cream cheese mix, one spoonful at a time until it's all combined.

3. Spread the filling onto the buttery biscuit base and put back in the fridge for at least at hour to firm up.

4. To make the topping, gently heat 2-3 tablespoons of berries until soft then press through a sieve to make a purée. Pour over the chilled cheesecake and put back in the fridge.

5. To serve, unmould the cheesecake by placing the base on a tin and wiggling and sliding the sides down to release the cake (or unclipping the spring), then pile the remaining berries on top.

Enjoy with a glass of prosecco while you try to convince your guests that you really didn't buy it at the shops!

Gooseberry fool: a simple summer pudding

Gooseberry fool, along with Apple snow, was one of my favourite childhood puddings. I must have had a thing for purée. I was reminded of it whilst flipping through The Garden Grows Cookbook by Eva and Tony Lambert, from 1978; they describe three gooseberry recipes although none of them were exactly a fool, so I texted my mum to check how she made it.

This dessert is a simple combination of cooked, sweetened gooseberries with creamy custard - a light summer pudding that should be sharp enough to make one eye squint from the tartness. I used standard ready made custard - don't use a low fat version as you need the creaminess to counteract the sharpness of the fruit, and the posh "Madagascan vanilla" types will compete with the flavour of the gooseberries. I've included a variation for a lighter version at the end.

Ingredients

(Serves 4)

250g fresh gooseberries

2 tbsp sugar

150g custard

Method

1. Top and tail the gooseberries, add to an oven dish and sprinkle with sugar and a splash of water. Bake at 180C for 20-30 minutes, until the berries are soft and about to burst.

2. Mash the berries with a fork or blitz briefly to a pulp and cool.

3. Stir in the custard and taste; add a little honey if it's too sour. 

Serve in cute little dishes with a sweet biscuit, like shortbread or amaretti, on the side. There's absolutely no need to stick it in a flower pot, I just got carried away with the garden theme...

Lighten up, you guys! For a lighter version, substitute elderflower cordial for the sugar and Greek yoghurt for the custard. 

 

Strawberry cream flans: for Wimbledon watching

This year, I'm watching every single minute of Wimbledon... all day every day for two weeks, with no obligations to work, play or interact with society in any way whatsoever. It's bliss. I didn't get tickets in the ballot to get into the courts (and nor did any of the people I "helped" by sending them forms for it, on the understanding that I would be their plus one!) so I've mastered the Red Button, printed off the draws and gone full geek from the sofa.

So how have I managed to cook and blog, I hear you say... Well, fortunately, I can angle the telly towards the kitchen, so this wimbledon-themed recipe was researched, cooked and eaten whilst watching the tennis though the hatch (which is why every kitchen needs a hatch). Strawberries were an obvious choice, and Audrey Ellis's Cookery for All Seasons from 1977 has a full page spread of strawberry flans: a sweet sponge base topped with thick crême patissiere and luscious ripe strawberries - perfect! And 1977 was the last time we won a ladies singles title - a good omen?

I've always wondered how to make crême patissiere, or "creme pat" as they call it on the Great British Bake Off. All the contestants seem to be able to whip up a batch from memory, something which I can only do for chocolate cake and pancakes (from years of near constant practice). The recipe in this book was very heavy on the sugar compared to some other versions, so I reduced it by about a third. It also only uses plain flour where others use a mix of plain flour and cornflour; using cornflour will make a thicker creme pat if you want to pipe it somewhere or it needs to hold its shape, like in the middle of a vanilla slice. And the optional butter adds a a little gloss to the final cream - I've suggested some other optional extras at the end of e recipe for when you've nailed the basics. It's not hard to make a good creme pat, but there is a technique to it.

Many strawberry tart/flan/pie recipes use either a ready-made flan base or a pastry base (ready-made or otherwise). I chose this recipe because I wanted to make my own sponge base, although I did fill the spare holes in the muffin tray with a couple of shortcrust pastry cases. The original recipe makes double the amount below and suggests cutting the sponge in half to make two flans. I can never make that work, and also, who am I going to feed two flans to?! So I just halved the ingredients and made individual flans by baking them in a muffin (or Yorkshire pudding) tin rather than a fluted flan tin.

Ingredients

(Makes 10-12 individual flans)

250-300g strawberries 

Flan base

2 large egg yolks

65g icing sugar, sifted

125g self raising flour

65g butter, melted

1 large egg white

Pastry cream / crême patissiere

2 egg yolks

25g plain flour (or half and half plain flour and cornflour)

50g caster sugar

250ml whole milk

2-3 drops vanilla extract

A knob of butter (optional)

Method

1. To make the flan bases, beat the 2 egg yolks with the sifted icing sugar until pale and thick, then fold in the flour and melted butter. Beat the egg white until stiff and fold into the mixture.

2. Add a tablespoon of the mix to each hole of a greased, 12-hole muffin tin and flatten the surface with a palette knife. If there are any spare holes you could fill them with pastry cases (add baking beans and blind bake).

3. Bake at 160C (fan) for 15 minutes until they spring back when pressed. Cool in the tin, then on a wire rack.

4. To make the creme pat, beat the egg yolks, sugar and flour together. Heat the milk and vanilla extract until starting to boil, then slowly pour over the mixture with the whisk going. Continue beating until combined then return the mixture to the pan. 

5. Heat gently and stir constantly - it will thicken quickly. Don't worry if you get lumps, just keep whisking and they'll soon go. When the cream is smooth and as thick as custard, remove from the heat and whisk in the butter if using. Dust with icing sugar to prevent a skin forming and cool.

6. To assemble the flans, slice the top off a sponge base and press down the soft middle with the back of a spoon. Add a tablespoon of creme pat and top with hulled, halved strawberries.

Enjoy with a cup of tea (pre 6pm) or glass of prosecco (post 6pm). Come on Tim! I mean Go Andy/Jo/Kyle/Heather/Aljaz/Katie! 

Crem pat optional extras:

- add some orange or lemon zest and a squirt of juice to sharpen the taste

- add a tablespoon of cocoa powder with the flour, or melt chocolate into the milk, for chocolate creme pat

- add a teaspoon of instant coffee powder to the hot milk

- add a shot of liqueur such as Amaretto, Cointreau, rum or brandy for a sophisticated dinner party twist.

Torta pascualina: an italian-argentine spinach, ricotta and egg pie

This week I made another recipe from our Argentine Grandma's cookbook, La Cocina de Lorenzo Taberna (1961), with a little help from Antonio Carluccio. Torta pascualina is a traditional Italian tart eaten at Easter, with 33 layers of pastry, one of each if Jesus's lives. The Argentine version in Grandma Antonia's book has just six layers of pastry, but if you're short on time her namesake, Don Carluccio, uses one layer of shop-bought shortcrust pastry for the base of the tart, with a lattice of cut-offs over the top. Jesus must be turning in his shroud... 

The pastry in Grandma's book is empanada pastry, so you can also use this recipe to make empanadas if you can't get pre-made sheets from Garcia's in London - here's the link to my empanada post: http://bit.ly/2kvWw8e. The pastry was much easier to make than I expected, had a really pleasant, soft texture and rolled very thin without splitting.

The key ingredients for the tart filling are ricotta, dark green leaves and whole eggs, which are baked inside the pie. Chard is a popular choice for the greenery but I can't seem to find any, and spinach works just as well. Artichokes are another traditional component, and Carliccio recommends braising them with some onions and capers, which adds a little more depth to the flavour. 

One of my favourite things about this pie is how well it keeps for leftovers, because it's delicious cold. It makes a perfect packed lunch or an interesting picnic option.

Ingredients

(Serves 6) 

For the pastry:

350g plain flour

150g cold, unsalted butter

2 tsp salt

1 egg

100-130ml cold water

Or use a 500g packet of ready-made shortcrust pastry, and blind-bake for 10 minutes before adding the filling.

For the filling:

280g jar artichokes in oil (mine had garlic and parley in too)

1 small onion or 2-3 shallots, finely chopped

1 tbsp capers (desalted in tap water for 15mins then drained), finely chopped

1 tbsp chopped fresh flat leaf parsley, finely chopped

200g spinach

250g ricotta 

60g Parmesan, grated

A pinch of grated nutmeg

8 eggs

Salt & pepper

 Method

1. To make the pastry, rub the butter into the flour then add the egg and half the water. Mix until the dough comes together, adding more water if needed. Knead gently until thoroughly combined and the dough is smooth. Chill in the fridge until ready to use.

2. Add the artichokes and 2-3 tablespoons of oil from the jar to a pan with the onion, capers, and parsley. Add a little water, cover and braise on a low heat for 15 minutes, then drain.

3. Pour boiling water over the spinach in a colander to wilt then squeeze out excess water.

4. Beat 4 of the eggs with the ricotta and grated Parmesan and nutmeg. Add the artichokes and wilted spinach and mix together. Season with salt and pepper.

5. Split the pastry into 6 pieces, 2 slightly smaller than the others - save these for the top of the pie. Roll out one of the larger pieces until it's really thin and will cover a 30cm fluted, loose-bottomed tart tin. Oil the tin and line with the sheet of pastry, then brush this sheet with olive oil. 

6. Roll out the remaining 3 larger pieces of pastry and layer into the tin, oiling between each layer.

7. Add two thirds of the filling to the pastry-lined tin and make 4 wells. Break the remaining 4 eggs into the wells and grate over a little Parmesan, salt and pepper. Add the rest of the filling, being careful not to break the yolks.

8. Roll out the two smaller sheets of pastry and cover the pie with both layers, oiling in between. Seal the edges of the tart, making a pretty border (artistic skills dependent, not employed here). Brush with beaten egg and bake at 200C for 35 minutes until golden brown. 

To serve, allow to cool a little then remove the fluted ring. Slice into portions, aiming for the baked eggs if you can! 

Pork and pistachio terrine

It's never really "perfect picnic weather" in the UK, but when the wind dies down and the rain buggers off for half a day, I love to pack up some foil-wrapped parcels and head to a sunny patch of grass for some al fresco drinking. I mean dining. Following on from last month's mushroom pâté recipe (http://bit.ly/2rLw7qr), here's another hamper filler showcasing my highly intagrammable Le Creuset terrine.

I made this traditional farmhouse style pork terrine for our quarterly Barbican Life magazine - hello if you've made it here from there. Acquiring some new (secondhand) pots and pans recently sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole into the history of kitchenware style, where I learnt all about the Le Creuset manufacturing process, and made some shocking discoveries, like Catherine Holm is not an actual person... Anyway, I wrote it all down for the magazine article, which you can get here when it's posted online in mid-June: http://www.barbicanlifeonline.com/barbican-life-magazine/magazine-issues/

A few of my favourite kitchen items posing on the balcony (Don't panic, I took everything back inside straight after so they're not blocking the fire escape - Barbican resident private joke)

This recipe is inspired by one in Elizabeth David's French Provincial Cooking, first published in 1960. It's a classic pork and veal pairing, subtly flavoured with allspice, port and juniper berries, and I added chopped pistachios for some extra crunch.

Ingredients

6-8 shallots, finely chopped

2 garlic cloves, finely chopped

500g pork shoulder, finely chopped 

450g sausage meat

400g minced veal

12 juniper berries, crushed

12 back peppercorns, crushed

1/2 tsp cloves, crushed

1/2 tsp ground allspice

1 tbsp fresh parsley and/or thyme

100g shelled pistachios, chopped

2 tbsp port or brandy

16 rashers of streaky smoked bacon

As with the mushroom pâté, if you don't have a terrine dish, rethink your life priorities and/or use a loaf tin instead.

Method

1. Gently fry the chopped shallots in a little oil until starting to colour. Add the garlic and cook for another few minutes, then leave to cool.

2. In a large bowl, combine the cooled shallots and garlic with all the remaining ingredients except the bacon. Mix well, then fry a small lump of the mixture to taste and adjust the seasoning as necessary.

3. Stretch the bacon rashers over the back of a knife so they are long enough to line the terrine or loaf tin with the ends overhanging (about 28cm) - as demostarted by tmy little helper in the pic-strip below:

4. Add the meat mixture to the bacon-lined dish, press down firmly and wrap the overhanging rashers over the top of the meat.

5. Place the terrine in a roasting tin with an inch of water and cook uncovered at 160C for 75 to 90 minutes, until the pâté is starting to come away from the sides of the dish.

6. Remove from the oven, cover with foil and add some weight to the top of the terrine. Most recipes recommend tinned food, but I found that the digital radio was a perfect fit - feel free to be inventive with whatever you have to hand in your kitchen...

7. Cool at room temperature, then pour off any excess fat before chilling until ready to serve; it should come out of the terrine mould quite easily.

To serve, wrap up tightly for transport to the picnic site then slice thickly - it's pretty firm in texture and shouldn't disintegrate when you chomp into it. It also keeps in the fridge for up to a week and freezes well; just thaw completely at room termperature. 

Happy picnicking!

Baked Alaska: my first Fanny classic

This week's recipe has a slightly different origin to my usual charity shop finds; it's from a pile of magazines sent to me by a very generous Twitter follower, and fellow vintage cookbook addict, Cosmic Apple Pips. The hours I've wasted on social media suddenly seem completely worth it! The magazines in question are part of Fanny Cradock's 1970 Cookery Programme, a weekly publication stuffed full of colour photos and "pic-strips", Fanny's rather severe advice and garlic pushing (we didn't like it in the 70s) and a wine column written by her husband, monocle-wearing Johnnie. 

There are so many things I love about the programme, but I think my favourite aspect is the food styling and use of crockery and props, both old and new, which Fanny name checks in the caption - "we think it looks rather nice sting on its 1/ junk shop plate!". If you like the sound of it, there's another blog entirely devoted to the programme called Keep Calm and Fanny On :)

Baked Alaska appears in issue 7, which is all about omelettes... because Fanny says it's called Omelette Novegienne and the Americans have nicknamed it Baked Alaska. And rather than being a technical challenge as evidenced by the Great British Bake Off and the infamous "Bingate" incident, Fanny assures us that it's "far, far easier to make than Yorkshire pudding". So a bit tricky then.

As usual, I've followed the basic rules, as she's very strict about that sort of thing, but added a few of my own variations. I made a fatless sponge for the base according to Fanny's recipe, but rather than using tinned pineapple under the ice cream dome, I made one of our favourite frozen puds, mango sorbet, which is unbelievably simple if you have an ice cream machine, and layered it into the ice cream. And as I've successfully conquered meringues before (http://bit.ly/2sHCZFw) I used the same recipe and technique here.

Ingredients 

For the filling

1 tin mango slices in juice

500ml vanilla ice cream, softened at room temperature

For the sponge

110g caster sugar

3 eggs

70g self-raising flour

For the meringue

6 egg whites

300g caster sugar

Handful chopped pistachios

Method

1. Make the mango sorbet by blitzing the mango slices and juice, then churn in an ice cream maker for 30 minutes until almost completely frozen

2. Line a pudding basin or similar shaped (domed) bowl with cling film. Add half the softened vanilla ice cream and press down. Add the mango sorbet to make a thick layer then freeze for about 10-15 minutes. Add the remainder of the ice cream to fill the bowl, level and wrap in the overhanging cling film. Freeze for at least 2 hours.

3. To make the sponge, heat the sugar in a hot oven for 6 minutes, then tip onto the eggs cracked into a mixing bowl. Beat until light and fluffy and almost double in size, then gently fold in the flour. Pour into a lined circular cake tin, a little larger than your ice cream filled pudding basin, and bake at 180C for 15 minutes. Cool slightly, remove from the tin and, once completely cold, wrap and chill until assembly time.

4. Heat the sugar for the meringue in a hot oven until starting to melt at the edges (this bit is optional but adds a little caramel taste). Whisk the egg whites in a very clean bowl until foamy then throw in the sugar and continue to whisk energetically until the mixture is very stiff. If you're not going to use immediately, chill in the fridge.

5. Assemble quickly: unwrap the chilled sponge and place on a baking tray; unmould the ice cream (a few seconds in hot water will help if it's stuck), remove the film and place the ice cream in the centre of the sponge base; spoon or pipe the meringue all over the ice cream down to the sponge base (I don't have photos of this as thee wasn't time!) then pop in a hot oven at 220C for 5 minutes to brown the meringue. As its too tricky to take photos and assemble a Baked Alaska, here's Fanny's pic-strip featuring the delectable Peter:

The following circumstances do not facilitate the assembly procedure:

- a blocked piping nozzle

- an audience

- very fresh eggs that don't whip as well

- not starting until 10.30pm

and since I made all of these rookie errors, I ended up throwing the meringue onto the ice cream and sponge, while it proceeded to slip down the sides as everything was getting too warm. But it made it into the oven rather than the bin and the final result didn't look too bad:

The sorbet and ice cream were still frozen and the meringue was cooked and gooey. Cutting slices was a bit messy but a handful of toasted pistachios made a good disguise! The sweet meringue and ice cream is perfectly offset by the fresh mango sorbet, and the light sponge holds it all together. Next time, I'd try making individual ones to avoid the messy serving bit, and Mary Berry says you can freeze them for an hour before cooking which might help the presentation. And I'm getting a bigger piping nozzle!