That was great

I turn the oven switch on, a white round ribbed knob with my fingerprints of harissa and olive oil, from yesterday, on it. Alright. It's going to get hot, I holler to Anthony who is in the bathroom, under the water. Slowly the temperature inside the apartment rises to a hundred degrees, possibly more. A million of sticky, sultry, sexy centigrades that will loop the apartment to penetrate every surface, from the cotton blanket to the metal sink, and then fall out on the skin in the form of sweat. This last week it finally started to feel like real summer to me but everyone you ask is grumpy and inconvenienced. Too hot, they'll say, and wipe their heated foreheads with the back of their wrists. Some will point to the skin peeling off their pink shoulders, as if to say, See? 

– Even the coldest shower setting has felt like it's at room temperature. Do you really have to do this now? Anthony asks, out of the shower.

– Yes, I do. I really want to cook dinner for you now. It's our first free day together like, what, in a month? I say and extend a can of chilled beer. Besides it'll be quick, I just want to soften these apricots, no more, in fact they are ready. See?

I pull a tray with them out of the oven, a little juice oozes from each half. The room is filling with the smell of sauteing onions.

– Alright, alright, but whatchya making? Anthony asks and opens the beer can. Click.

– You'll love this – giant couscous with apricots and harissa. I made it for myself a few times before, a great dish.

– I love tiny couscous, and not in the least for its fluffiness. Is this one going to be fluffy?

– No, it's going to be chewy and soft and spicy and flavourful, I say. Then add, You'll smack your lips, trust me.

Anthony walks around the kitchen table, turns on the ceiling fan and picks up the big glass jar with giant couscous for inspection. Mo-gra-bia, he reads out load the name on the label, breaks it up in syllables. Never heard of it. Where did you get it?

– A Middle Eastern store in town.

I pour the cooked couscous into the prepared sieve over the sink, run cold water through it.

– If you could just mix these two together, the dinner will be ready in a minute, I say and point at the harissa and olive oil lined up along the cutting board.

The recipe is meant to yield four servings, but at the end we push each other's forks out of the bowl for the last bits – the sweet-tart apricot threads, the starchy lone couscous pearls, the left-out deeply savoury soft onion dice, the smears of harissa paste on the bottom of the bowl.

– That was great, thank you, Anthony says and pulls my silk skirt off the back of a chair to hand to me. Let's get out for ice-cream now.

I dump the dishes in the sink, check if I turned the oven off. I dab a little lipstick on my lips with my fingertips, notice how it still smells of garlic and cardamom and how the lips are still burning from harissa.

We shut the door behind us, only leave the ceiling fan on.

Pearl Couscous with Apricots and Harissa

Adapted from TheKitchen Diaries II, by Nigel Slater

Serves 2 (as a main) or 4 (as a side dish)

Unless you have apricots so ripe they practically ooze themselves inside out, I'd suggest to briefly roast them to get them juicier and more fragrant of the themselves. Not too long, somewhere around fifteen minutes in a hot oven.

I found the couscous needs plenty of liquid to cook and not get stuck to the saucepan's bottom, so I upped the amount of stock (water) from 300 ml, as per the original recipe, to 750 ml. (I thought to mention this in case you own The Kitchen Diaries II, look up the recipe and question my choices.)

For the couscous

750 ml vegetable stock or water

150 g pearl couscous

2 Tablespoons olive oil, plus a little extra

1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 teaspoons harissa paste

a small bunch of flat-leaf parsley

For the apricot dressing

3 Tablespoons olive oil

2 small onions, finely diced

5 pods of green cardamom, lightly crushed

1 clove of garlic, finely chopped

finely grated zest from 1 small lemon

250 g ripe apricots, halved and stoned (see headnote)

To prepare the couscous, bring the stock or water to the boil in a large saucepan. Pour in the couscous, bring back to the boil and salt the liquid very well, as you might for pasta. Simmer for 15-20 minutes, until the couscous is tender but still with a little bite. Drain in a colander and run cold water through it to cool it quickly. Tip it into a bowl and toss gently with a few drops of olive oil to stop it sticking together.

In the meantime, warm the olive oil in a pan over medium heat. Add the onions and saute them gently till soft and lightly golden (don't brown it). Stir in the garlic, cardamom pods and lemon zest, and cook until the garlic has softened. Cut the (roasted) apricot halves in two or three and add to the onions.

Stir the warm onion and apricot mixture into the couscous, then stir in the lemon juice. Put the harissa paste in a small bowl, stir in the 2 Tablespoons of olive oil, then fold gently into the apricots and couscous. Taste and add salt if needed. Remove the leaves from the parsley, chop them roughly and stir into the couscous.

You'd have thought

“You mean you've never had rhubarb?” I say, incredulous, and pick up at the greengrocer's shop a bunch of rhubarb stalks, crimson and lanky, the leaves tightly furled. I stress 'never' in such a way you'd have thought my friend has just admitted never having had water. “And you are twenty-seven!” I don't know why I had to bring up age. As if one's placement on a time scale has anything to do with it. How old was I to try rhubarb for the first time? Twenty-five, I remember that. It was a simple rhubarb compote, I remember that too. I made it in my brand-new round Le Creuset (the colour of kiwi). I've had it for eights years now. It was the smallest in stock at the kitchenware store and it was on sale, and that's how I could afford it on my then student budget. I had just moved to Amsterdam. The shop assistant, a stocky young guy, described to me the merits and advantages of a bigger cast-iron pot, also a Le Creuset, but I recall saying I was going to use it to cook for myself only, so the smallest one would do fine, solo meals, you see. I instantly wondered if I didn't sound flirty for saying that, because I really didn't mean to sound that way. In the rhubarb compote I threw in some dried lavender flowers, I remember that too. I must have enjoyed the thing, but I assume that now, because, strangely, I don't remember if I did. I have to bend the rhubarb stalks to fit them in my shopping bag, one of which snaps and dislodges a fibrous deep purple thread. It hangs off the stem like a broken violin string. 

The crimson liquid, thick, almost viscose, is dripping through the sieve, separates from the rhubarb flesh, soft and slithery. I love the smell of roasted rhubarb. It smells fresh and clean, sharp even. The crimson flow slows down now, goes at a steady pace, like an IV drip. Arms crossed, I lean with my hips against the sink and wait until the rhubarb is fully drained. I'm putting together a rhubarb polenta cake. I have already rubbed the butter into the polenta with my fingertips. I almost got the wrong polenta meal at the supermarket – I needed the coarse polenta but distractedly pulled the fine off the shelf. Excuse me, I said to the cashier and to the ten people behind me in line at the check-out, then ran back to the grains aisle to exchange the bag. I wasn't leaving with the wrong polenta, I'm sorry. The whole point of this cake is the contrast of the gritty sugary buttery crust and the soft tart refreshing rhubarb.

What a wonderful thing! – I'd written in the margin next to the recipe after the first try, three years ago – I like how the coarse polenta requests a little extra work from the mouth, that it is a perfect foil to the fleshy rhubarb. I went on: Instead of cinnamon, which I believe would be lovely here, I used a vanilla bean, and will continue to do so, and in lieu of an orange, a lemon. But refrain adding either to the fruit itself, its clean taste is another nice contrast to the vanilla- and lemon-scented crust. And why is there no salt amongst the dry ingredients? A little of it should only zoom in on the flavours. And on: By the way, the soft, moist pink of this rhubarb looks like pure sex...

I love this cake, how it made its way into my memory and lodged itself there, solidly, despite the fact that until today I haven't made it as much as twice. That said, believe it or not, but I never stopped thinking about it. And I stress 'never' in such a way you'd have thought I've just admitted never having had a meal.

I set the kettle on for coffee and ask Anthony if he would like a slice with his cup. Yes, he'd give it a try, he says.

“I hate rhubarb. I was six when I tried it first. It used to grow in my backyard. My friends would eat it, they would eat it like a candy, can you imagine this, but I can't stand it. The only thing I hate more in my desserts than rhubarb is lemon. But this is not bad, it's actually nice, I quite like it. I won't finish my slice, though. Because I can't stand it.”

I get out for a moment to take the trash down. The slice is gone when I'm back. I know it's not in the trash bin, it can't be – I haven't yet placed a new bag in it.

I really love this cake.

 

Rhubarb Polenta Cake

Adapted from Ripe, by Nigel Slater

For the filling
500 g (1 pound) rhubarb
50 g (heaped 1/4 cup) unrefined cane sugar
4 tablespoons water

For the crust
125 g (¾ cup) coarse polenta
200 g (1 ½ cups plus 1 tablespoon) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
150 g (heaped 3/4 cup) unrefined cane sugar, plus 1 tablespoon more for sprinkling
1 plump vanilla pod, seeds only
grated zest of a small lemon
150 g (10 tablespoons) butter, cut in small pieces
1 large egg
3 tablespoons milk

Lightly oil or butter a 20cm (8-inch) springform cake pan. Heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 F) and put a baking sheet in the middle of it to get hot. Trim the rhubarb, cut each stem into short lengths, and put them in a baking dish. Scatter over the sugar and water and bake for twenty minutes, until the rhubarb is soft but still holds its shape. Remove the rhubarb pieces from the dish and put them in a colander or large sieve to drain. (Reserve the rhubarb juices to serve with the cake.) You can prepare the rhubarb filling up to one day in advance.

Combine the polenta, flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a large mixing bowl. Add the vanilla seeds, lemon zest and butter. Rub the butter into the polenta with your fingertips until the mixture looks like coarse rubble. Alternatively, blitz the mixture in a food processor. But really, do it manually. Not only it's a cinch to do, saves on washing up, is a peaceful thing to do, yes yes yes, but rubbing the butter into the polenta mixture with your fingers will also help to release the essential oils in the lemon zest and distribute the vanilla beans more evenly. Break the egg into a small bowl and mix with the milk, then blend into the crumble mix. Take care not to overmix; it's done when the dry and wet ingredients have come together to form a soft, slightly sticky dough. If it isn't a little sticky, add a touch more milk

Slightly wet your hands and press about two-thirds of the mixture into the prepared cake pan, pushing it 2cm up the sides. Make sure there are no large cracks or holes. Place the drained rhubarb on top, leaving a small rim around the edge. Crumble lumps of the remaining polenta mixture over the fruit with your fingertips, but don't worry if the rhubarb isn't all covered. Scatter over 1 tablespoon of unrefined cane sugar.

Put on the hot baking sheet and bake for 45-50 minutes, or until the edges and the crust turn deep golden brown. Mine was done after about 35 minutes, so I'd suggest to start checking from then on. Cool before removing from the pan. Serve in slices, with coffee.

Younger than he thought

The night falls. With it a softness -- the last indulgent lukewarm air -- permeates what's underneath the skin -- no skin. The light (vintage gold) exhales, makes me want to hold my breath. In darkness the water in canals seems motionless, unfeeling. Unlike the streetlights -- those dance. 

The morning started with a mist, thin, unsure. I woke up first -- it was still dark out. The street glistened, was absolutely silent. A car floated past the strong beam of a streetlight, a science-fiction scene. I closed the balcony door, picked up a DVD from the floor by the TV -- The Sopranos, season 3, disc 4 -- poured water in the kettle, switched it on, click.

I write down a list of groceries -- aubergines, basil, cherry tomatoes, wine -- then mindlessly place a cup of hot coffee on it. Instantaneously 'aubergines' grow fuzzy. I draw an exclamation mark next to 'wine'.

The day was rising, a pale, unhurried dawn, it reveals, catches clouds wandering off at the top of the sky. It should be a glorious day. Leaves are falling, gliding downwards of their own accord, like theater curtains at the end of a brilliant show. Goodbye to all that; encore, encore!

-- Happy birthday! Coffee?

Someone calls. 

-- Much too, much too close to forty. I gotta go pick a fight, Anthony says and laughs.

-- Thirty-six isn't close to forty, I say and extend a cup.

-- I'm thirty-seven -- am I not? 

-- Two thousand fifteen minus nineteen seventy-nine...

-- That's right -- thirty-six.

He goes on to say it's a great gift, to be younger than he thought. A homemade birthday lunch is a bonus.

In darkness the water in canals seems motionless, unfeeling. Like the streetlights, we'll dance too.

Pasta with Roasted Aubergines and Tomatoes
Adapted from Nigel Slater
Serves 2

This is a pasta dish unmasked by any sauce, and is what it is: a sum of its three key ingredients -- aubergine, tomatoes, garlic. The sweet juices from the roasted vegetables and a generous quantity of olive oil will take care that the lips glisten here. Crush the tomatoes with a fork as they roast to syphon their bright juices into the oil. As pasta, I used conchiglie (shells) to catch an odd bite here and there, and to lock in some of that mushroom flavour that appears when roasted aubergine meets caramelized garlic. Originally, it's penne.

1 large aubergine
250 g cherry tomatoes
3 cloves garlic
8 Tbsp olive oil
Salt and pepper
250 g dried conchiglie (shells)
A scarce handful of basil leaves

Set the oven to 200C.

Wipe the aubergine and slice it into thin rounds. Place the slices in a single layer in a large roasting tin. Peel and crush the garlic and scatter over the aubergines. Throw in the tomatoes, whole, and trickle the olive oil. Season well, then bake for 25-30 minutes.

Dump the pasta in a deep pan of salted boiling water. Cook for 9 minutes until al dente. Drain in a colander.

Add the drained pasta to the aubergines and toss gently together. Adjust the seasoning if needed. Tear the basil leaves and add to the lot. 

That we are all excited

Last Friday I had a little chat with Olivia the Cat Lady -- remember her? I was locking my bike in front of my work when she appeared from around the corner, her pink hat and sweat pants tucked into the knee-length off-white socks all in place, as ever.

"Be aware", she said putting her two tightly-packed supermarket plastic bags on the ground, "there will be a lot of cats on the streets today. It's Friday the thirteenth and it's twelve days before Christmas."

The dawn hadn't even broken out yet.

When I asked her, naively, which cats and how many of them to expect, she wasn't economical with her truth of how she feels about me. "I've been in Amsterdam for twenty years now, and I've had enough of you," said Olivia, wagging her swollen finger at me, in a pitch that sounded like a mosquito drone. I wanted to object, but her round face was already starting to deform into a frown, and may I remind you that Olivia can frown. So instead I nodded and affirmed that yes, it was Friday the thirteenth and it was twelve days before Christmas. "Exciting," I rounded my cadence off. 

The moment the word slipped off my lips the gloom on Olivia's face started to melt -- not unlike a knob of butter on a heated pan -- into a toothless but knowing smile. I was bewildered, even thought that maybe exciting was a code word for a change of heart. But then she leaned forward, encircled her mouth with her hands, and whispered: "It is internationally understood not to mention this."

"Mention what?", I whispered back.

"That we are all excited."

Merry Christmas, dear Reader!

Christmas Cake
Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries, by Nigel Slater
Yield: 12 generous servings

To make this Christmas cake has become my new annual tradition, and although it's new to me, I feel I've known it since long ago. Ideally it's a project for the start of December when there is still plenty of room to weekly nourish the cake with brandy, but this time, my second, I left it till exactly twelve days before Christmas. I'm not worried, though. Nigel Slater writes it will be almost as good, and his word has never failed me before. Which brings me to say if you haven't yet decided on your Christmas sweets, make this one, perhaps? Or bookmark it for next year?

It's a big-hearted cake - one kilo of dried fruits alone goes into making the lot -- so enjoy it by a thin wedge over the next few weeks, those empty, silent weeks after holidays. Or invite twelve people for dinner to tackle it on the spot. By the way, it's not cloying as it may seem, it's sweet just enough. Besides that, it doesn't reek of booze, it's moist, chewy and crunchy in all the right places, and above all, it's moreish. You have been warned.

600 g in total of prunes, apricots and figs
50 g candied citrus peel, roughly chopped
250 g butter, slightly softened
125 g light brown (or muscovado) sugar
125 g dark brown (or muscovado) sugar
3 large eggs, ideally free-range
65 g ground almonds
100 g shelled hazelnuts
350 g in total of raisins, sultanas, currants and cranberries
3 Tbsp brandy, plus more to 'feed' the cake
zest and juice of 1 medium orange
zest of 1 medium lemon
1/2 tsp baking powder
250 g flour

Set the oven to 160 C (320 F). Line a 20-cm (8-inch) cake tin with a double layer of lightly buttered greaseproof paper or baking parchment, which should come at least 5 cm (2 inches) above the top of the tin.

Cut the the prunes, apricots and figs into small pieces, removing the hard stalks from the figs.

In a large bowl, beat the butter and sugars to a cappuccino--coloured fluff, pushing the mixture down the sides of the bowl from time to time with a spoon or a spatula. Add the eggs, one at a time. Then slowly mix in the ground almonds, hazelnuts, all the dried fruit, the brandy and the citrus zest and juice. 

In a separate bowl, sieve the flour and baking powder together. Fold them lightly into the mix. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, smooth the top gently, and send it in the oven. Bake for an hour, then, without opening the oven door, turn the heat down to 150 C (300 F) and bake for one and a half hours before.

Check the cake for doneness by inserting a skewer or a toothpick into the centre. It should come out with just a few crumbs attached but no trace of raw cake mixture. Take the cake out of the oven and leave to cool before removing it from the tin.

Spike the cake with a skewer or a toothpick and drizzle in from two to three tablespoons of brandy. Continue feeding the cake by pouring brandy into it every week before Christmas. Cover tightly and leave in a cake tin till needed. It will keep for several weeks. When ready to serve, powder with some icing sugar (optional).

They have arrived

1979. My mother is a music student (piano). There is a tour to Bulgaria organized by her conservatory, and she applies to go. The application process involves an evaluation talk with a Komsomol commission, the members of which will have to decide if she is trustworthy enough to leave the country's borders. (To Bulgaria! So pro-communist then that it was known in the internal circles as an unofficial Soviet republic at the time!) In the end, it's a no. It's all unspoken, but she is dressed in clothes that look too Western (where does she get those from?); her last (maiden) name ends with -ovich and is therefore Jewish?

1989. My mother, now thirty one, is on a plane to Vilnius, Lithuania. Together with my late grandmother she is going to buy a luggage-ful of men's and women's clothes and maybe some footware to be sold among friends and acquaintances. Those goods are as close to Western as one can get. They are one of a kind in Shakhty and go fast. (From this trip I, then five, saw two summer dresses with short lantern sleeves -- one dress with butterflies and the other with chamomile flowers -- and a pack of Donuld Duck bubble gum.)  There followed two more Vilnius-bound trips, now alone. It would be alright but for one thing. My mother kept bringing the nicest looking attire as opposed to the better-priced one, and convinced that such approach disserved the "business", and besides, a mucisian would never know how to negotiate numbers, my late grandmother, a natural enterpreneur, "dismissed" my mother off her duties as a buyer. And so, Vilnius was as far abroad as my mother ever got to, and considering that back then Lithuania was still a part of the USSR, technically it wasn't even abroad.

The furthest my father went was Eastern Russia. No enteprenueral venture, this was his latest month-long work trip, in the grasp of winter, and the most memorable part of the month for him was seeing the endless Siberian taiga from the plane on his way back home.

This afternoon my parents flew in to Amsterdam for a ten-day visit. We were on the phone last night to iron out all the details -- what's English for this and that, what to say to a customs officers, and other such things -- and I could hear they were excited, a little proud even. I understand why. They are both in their fifties now. For two thirds of their lives a possibility to go abroad had been unimaginable because of the ideology and politics, then for another third because of the poor economy. For a change, I'm on the receiving end today and they have arrived. (Big thanks to the airport staffer who kindly walked them to the passport control after they had wandered off into transit zone and with an intention to collect the luggage stood in line for a flight to Mexico City.)
  
There will be important museums and the glimmer of canals and interesting faces and tall, tilted houses to look at and around. They will probably see Olivia the Cat Lady, and, with a little bit of luck, catch a glimpse of The Butt-Naked Man (I haven't seen him in a long while.) But so far, I cooked an Indian meal and baked banana bread for them tonight. They didn't have a banana bread like this before, I don't think. Heck, I didn't have a banana bread like this before either.

Here is what's unusual about it. First: instead of banana mush there is banana mash inside this one. Nigel Slater -- whose recipe it is and whose latest book, Kitchen Diaries II, in vein with his others, is magic! -- doesn't crush bananas into a smooth puree. He mashes them, ripe, almost sickly, with a fork to a lumpy state. This is smart, because later, when the bread is baked, these lumps will be those pleasant chunks of the moist and fragrant fruit that I always miss in a banana bread. (O how I'm upset with those banana breads whose only ties to a banana is in the title.) Then, there is chocolate, and its amount here is so right that it doesn't overpower banana flavor one bit. What it does is mingle with those banana lumps mid-mouthful and excite the palate. What's good for banana besides chocolate? Caramel. Its notes are here too, thanks to muscovado sugar.

Nigel Slater's Chocolate Muscovado Banana Cake (Bread) 

Adapted from Kitchen Diaries II, by Nigel Slater

Yield: 1 loaf

I will avoid the discussion of whether it's bread or cake, this. It's all in the baking vessel, isn't it? Commonly, cake comes from a baking tin and bread from a loaf pan. But seeing that Slater christens it as chocolate muscovado cake and bakes it as a loaf, I'll go ahead and say this: no matter. To me, banana bread rolls off the tongue, and banana cake does not. But never mind.

If you have the book, you will notice I upped vanilla extract to two teaspoons here. For me, a teaspoon is somewhat unnoticed amongst such heavy weights.

250 g plain flour

2 tsp baking powder
125 g butter, softened
235 g muscovado or dark brown sugar
3-4 very ripe bananas (400 g peeled weight)
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
100 g dark chocolate

Line a standard-size loaf tin (24cm*12cm*7cm) with baking paper, leaving a little overhang throughout. Heat the oven to 180 C (350 F). Sift the flour and baking powder together.

In a bowl, mash the bananas with a fork. The mixture should be lumpy. Stir in the vanilla extract. Chop the chocolate into small pieces the size of fine gravel.

Using an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together till light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs until incorporated. Stir in the bananas and chocolate. Gently fold the flour and baking powder into the banana batter. Pour the mixture into the lined baking tin and bake, rotating the tin halfway through, for about fifty minutes. Check for doneness by inserting a metal skewer into the centre. If the skewer comes out moist but clean the bread (cake) is ready. If not, put the bread (cake) back in the oven for a few more minutes and cover the surface with foil.

  
Leave the bread (cake) in the tin to settle and cool for 15 minutes, then remove from the tin by lifting the baking paper up and out. Cool some more before carefully peeling off the paper. Serve cool, in thick (!) slices. Wrapped in foil, keeps for up to a week.

Cakes, brooms, and grooms

Come what may, there is rarely a week over here without something sweet or other parrading or, depending on the results, tumbling out of the oven. A snug home-made sweet on the counter is a thing to look forward to any day, sun or rain, everybody knows that. Among all the sweet tooth-pacifiers out there, cookies -- heed these, would you? -- are usually my first choice. An average-sized batch yields a dozen or two of perfect foot soldiers ready to snap to it, one by one, at the click of my fingers. Well taken care of, they can stay in my command for days lending support and cheer whenever needed. I like cookies a lot for that, granting, of course, they taste good too. But however willing, one can't be sustained by cookies alone; one also needs cake. I know I do. There is a Russian proverb that says one can get sick of cake, but never of bread. Total hooey, if you ask me. Cake is a godsend. But unlike cookies that can so easily be stashed away strictly for personal use, cakes are meant to share, it's what you are expected to do as you set your foot in the kitchen to make one, especially if you live with someone else. In which case you are also supposed to inquire what kind of cake that other person would like, perhaps not every time, but at least every so often. I never do and time after time bake cakes I like -- this apple cake, or that marmelade cake, or now, thanks to this book, various other fruit cakes -- reckoning Anthony will like them too. Not surprising then it is that he never does: Your cakes are awful, there is no chocolate or buttercream in them. I hate your cakes. That's interesting, because I actually like to think my cakes are not so bad, but surely, surely tastes differ, and surely, surely I should be more considerate of other people's likes when I expect them to enjoy cake with me.

Today I made chocolate chip hazelnut cake with chocolate cinnamon buttercream (again Nigel Slater), and seeing that half of it is gone in less than half a day and I had only a sliver, I think I made a good cake. Put it in your pipe and smoke it, Anthony! Well, besides my addressing a certain person's stance towards some confections of mine, there is another motive for such luscious and celebratory sweet. Dear Reader, Anthony and I are getting married, on Monday September 17th!  (We may lean towards differents cakes, but we both agree that Mondays are great.) Nobody here is pregnant, stay calm. I know it sounds like such short notice. Such short notice, in fact, that it is tempting to think something is off. But nothing is, except, maybe, the way I deal with change. When things change around me, I am, always have been, the last to wrap my head around them, and so such is my nature to wait till the very last moment to peep a word and regard an occasion. I guess it's because when talked about loud, change, even the best kind, makes me feel vulnerable, as if I'm in the nude in a room full of properly-clad people, and I really, really don't like that feeling.

A touch more than a year ago Anthony gifted me with a pendant in the form of a snail and a butterfly hovering above, both in a circle. This is us, he said and seeing a question on my face, added, You are beautiful and I am slow and we are together. Do you want to marry me? I do. I like, very much so, the idea of getting married to Anthony, my best friend, my 'broom'! A short while ago I was filling in a form for witness details and in the field 'relationship' I wrote down, referring to Anthony's parents, 'the father and mother of the broom'. And now I keep calling him that, Anthony the Broom, secretly hoping that the Dutch civil servants who will issue our marriage certificate will not correct 'broom' to 'groom'. There is a concern on Anthony's side that if I repeat the joke too much, which I do, it will wear off too soon, but really I can't help it. I laugh a lot around him and I don't want that to change.

So: the cake. From the looks of it, one can get an inclination the sweet, composed of a moist sponge cake mainlined with toasted hazelnuts and chocolate nibs and a toothsome chocolate cream on top, is rich and cloying. I thought it would be, but I was mistaken. Despite all that butter (half pound) and sugar (half pound) and eggs (four) and chocolate that went into the cake, the latter stays miraculously light. To take that in can be rather disconcerting: as Anthony admitted, he feared for a moment that under that luscious frosting there sits something dry and prudent. No, no, and no. All is good about this cake. To say the least, perfumed with just a wiff of cinnamon the chocolate buttercream, not a distant cousin to ganache, cocoons each biteful of the moist, nutty sponge on your tongue with such care and affection that would similar interaction take place in a different context one might feel a little embarrassed to watch, if you know what I mean. The cake is to celebrate -- and for celebrations.

Chocolate Chip Hazelnut Cake with Chocolate Cinnamon Buttercream
Adapted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater
Yield: 10 to 12 (or more) servings

To be honest, I had a concern about the amount of the chocolate buttercream the recipe yields (a lot) and thought for an instance to replace, next time around, a recommended 20-cm (8-inch) cake pan with a larger one, to give such rich icing a bigger wingspan, so to say, but I'll tell you what -- I shall not replace a thing. It is not accidental, such quanity. Spread over the cake's top evenly (not like what I did in the picture above), it is this very thickness of the cream that lends a luscious and pleasant mouthfeel to each and every bite. With the cream in its place, I wasn't sure about how and where to better keep the whole composition, though. Refrigation turned the cream as well as the sponge underneath into rock, and after reaching room temperature again, the cream somehow took on a grainy quality. In doubts, I rapidly asked Nigel Slater for his advice and he suggested to keep it 'in a cool place, covered by a bowl or in a cake tin'. No fridge.

One more tidbit: with no golden bake's sugar in sight, I used conventional white sugar in its stead.

Ah, and remember to use ground cinnamon that is not too old.

For the cake

250 g (8 oz) butter
250 g (8 oz) white granulated sugar
75 g (2.5 oz) shelled hazelnuts
120 g (4 oz) good-quality dark chocolate
4 large eggs
125 g (4 oz) self-rising flour
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
4 tsp strong espresso

For the spiced chocolate buttercream

250 g (8 oz) dark chocoalte (70% cocoa)
125 g butter (4 oz)
a knifepoint of ground cinnamon

Warm the oven to 180 C (350 F). Line the bottom of a 20-cm (8-inch) deep springform cake pan with parchment paper and set aside. Toast the hazelnuts in a dry pan over medium heat, then rub them in a clean kitchen towl until almost all the skins have come off. Grind the nuts to a coarse powder, not as fine as almond meal but finer than they would be if chopped by hand. Cut up the chocolate fine enough for it to resemble coarse gravel; if chopped too roughly, the chocolate bits will just sink to the bottom of the cake batter. Sift the flour in a separate bowl.

Cut the butter into small pieces and put it along with the sugar into the bowl of an electric mixer, then beat until light and fluffy. In the meantime, break the eggs into a small bowl and beat them lightly. Slowly add them to the butter and sugar, beating continuously -- it's ok if the micture curdles slightly. Stop the mixer. Tip in half the ground nuts and half the flour, beat briefly and at a slow speed, then stop the mixer again, add the rest of the nuts and flour, together with the chopped chocolate and cinnamon, and mix till just incorporated. Taking care not to knock the air from the batter, gently fold in the espresso. Scoop the whole lot into the prepared cake pan. Smooth the top and bake for 35-45 minutes. If during the last ten minutes the cake colors too fast, cover it loosely with foil. Remove the cake from the oven and check doneness with a skewer/toothpick/sharp knife -- there shoule be no uncooked cake batter clinging to it. Leave the cake to cool for a little while in its pan, then turn out onto a cooling rack and peel off the parchment paper from its sides and bottom.

To make the chocolate buttercream, break the chocolate into small pieces and let melt in a small bowl set over a pot of simmering water (the bottom of the bowl shouldn't touch the water). Leave to melt, wirh minium stirring, add the butter, cut into small chunks, and the cinnamon. Stir until the butter has melted, then immediately remove from the fire. Leave to cool until the mixture is thick enough to spread. Evenly cover the top of the cake with the chocolate cream, decorate as you wish, and leave for an hour or so before cutting. Serve in thin slices. Store, covered by a bowl, in a cool place (don't refrigerate). The cake will keep for 3-4 days.

A good feeling

Last time we talked I couldn't stop mouthing off about how fruit is my siren, how all I can do is eating it fresh, except that I would also like to cook with it more, somewhat. To this end, I told you, I had taken some measures, that being I'd got myself one special book -- Nigel Slater's Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard. (Ten Speed Press, 2012). When I heard Jess mention it once, I was on the edge of my seat. When Jess spoke fondly of it twice, wheels got turning. I got the book weeks ago and not a day has passed by since that I wouldn't lose myself in its pages. 

I think Nigel Slater is a magician. For most of us an apple, for example, tastes like, um, an apple, right? We can tell if it's sweet or sour, no problem there, and with some effort we could even decipher scents of grass or honey in the apple bite. But Nigel Slater sees beyond that. He tastes this apple and senses it has the flavors of strawberry, walnut and nail polish(!!); in that apple he picks up the notes of nutmeg, aniseed or pineapple. Isn't it pretty spectacular? He is also a romantic, that Nigel Slater. Just check this out: "Cherries bring with them a certain frivolity, a carefree joy like hearing the far-off laughter of a child at play. Their appearance, in deepest summer, comes when life is often at its most untroubled. A bag of cherries is a bag of happiness" (p.171). Or this: "I catch my breath and stand quite motionless; a moment of quiet excitement. I feel as if there is a butterfly in my chest. There, two feet away, is the first catkin of spring, already heavy with yellow pollen and dangling like a lamb's tail from a bare, brittle twig" (p.315). Beautiful, isn't it? The book is filled with such gracefulness and delicacy to the fullest.

Aside being instructive and educative, cookbooks for me are kitchen windows into somebody else's story and culture. Through recipes and stories of others I get to know what's there. And while filling my head with information and treble inspiration all right, Nigel Slater's sentient and observant writing does something else: it makes me want to never stop paying attention to what's here, right around me. I want to see for myself what shade of yellow is canary yellow, to walk through a monastery orchard, to find a sea rock and remind myself what hue it is exactly, to hear that noise that comes from the corners of my mouth as I bite into a fresh and juicy peach...You see what I mean? I think it's special when a (cook)book inspirits you to look at where you are right now. Ripe does that in tenfold.

To say that each one of three hundred plus seasonal recipes this beautiful tome holds would yield blog-worthy results wouldn't be a far-fetched statement, not at all. But I had to start somewhere, and because I'm not impartial to it I started with tabbouleh. 

                                                                                                       

                                                          ***

I was twenty-one and edging into my final year of college when, figuring out what I should be soon doing with my degree in English linguistics, I took a gap year and enrolled into the Au-pair program. For various reasons, I ended up in the Netherlands (the Hague), and for the year to come I was to take care of a lovely six-year-old girl in a single-parent family (a working mother). That year was supposed to be my coming of age of sorts, meaning not only that I was going to be completely on my own in a place far away from everything and everyone familiar, but also that I was now responsible for somebody else. That surely had to make me more mature, stronger, wiser, something, anything. That surely had to, and on some level it did, except only when I would step into my host family's kitchen, you know, to cook myself a meal. One day not too long after my arrival I thought to braise for my lunch white cabbage in tomato broth, with charred onions, laurel and all that, something I really liked, something that said home to me. I was standing by the kitchen stove stirring the cabbage when the mother walked in, her heels knocking urgent staccato on the black tiled floor, to say, her arm over her nose: It's shocking you can eat something like this; it smells foul. Did she just imply I eat shit? Lost for words on my side, I sheepishly smiled and kept stirring my food, deeply embarrassed and strangely hurt. Forward the tape and you'll see that other time over breakfast when I sat down with my plate of pan-fried potatoes leftover from the night before and her I can't believe you are eating this firing at me again, only now reaching somewhere deeper and making me feel so completely out of place.

And then there was ketchup. I liked to have it with everything, you see. Or better, I just liked to have it. A true fact: brain freeze from my necking heavily refrigerated ketchup straight from a bottle wasn't a foreign thing to me. So when my host mother said I've never seen anybody eating so much ketchup before, during a family meal, the words catching me in 'crime' as I was reaching for the stuff, to squirt some on rice, I recall, it just got me. And when I was repeatedly told it's plain stupid not to eat after 6pm, it got me even more, because I was twenty-one and stubborn and weight conscious and no-food-after 6pm was my thing then. It's then when I should have said something back, something like a friendly Your comments make me feel uncomfortable, to speak up for myself, for my bottle of ketchup, for my cabbage. Too fast to fold, I said nothing. Instead, I got into a habit of hiding what and when I would eat (yes sir, bad behavior). Which, given my sentiments, for the next eight months meant I would tiptoe down into the kitchen for breakfast (Weetabix, I got besotted by you!) and race against the clock to have dinner before everybody else, lunch being a dash in the neurotic sentence of my every day. In such developments, hunger soon got to thunderously and ceaselessly rumble in my every cell. And the irony is that I couldn't be any hungrier than then, what with all those wonderful, delicious, beautiful foods I hadn't known of before right under my nose at the farmer's markets (my first taste of avocado and leeks (!) and 'organic') and deli stores and ethnic supermarkets and pastry shops.

In the thick of it, I didn't see at all how things were spinning out of control. It pleased my eyes to see how much I thinned down (from eighty-five to forty-five kilos in less than six months), but I didn't pay much mind to how anxious of a weight gain I became (one apple, and I would be off to a gym, burning 'the fat'); how my hair started to suddenly falling out; how hungry indeed and drenched in fatigue I felt all the time. It was a shock when my host mother sat me down to say she is going to take me to a doctor to test me for anorexia, because she is afraid I'm hurting myself and need help, her face creased with concern. I'm not diseased, I cried, I need no doctor, no help, you are mistaken, no, I don't throw up my meals (I really didn't!), please everybody just leave me alone.

I so often wish none of that ever took place. I wish I didn't cause so much hurt and anxiety to my parents. Smashed to smithereens by what they saw -- a yellow-skinned skeleton; no exaggeration, that -- they stood there at the arrival gates frozen first, but coming to tears by the minute, my mother loudly and my father quietly so. What did you do to yourself, Anya? To which I just kept repeating, What's the big deal? I'm fine. The first weeks after I'd returned, my father, a man of a few words, didn't say much else on the subject; he only kept buying me bundles of bananas. I wish I hadn't scared my host mother like that. I wish I hadn't done such damage to myself. I hate to have been afflicted with an eating disorder. It absolutely sucks. They say anorexia never completely goes away, but I really don't know. It's been six years since then, and I want to think I'm through. Hey, I earn my keeps these days making pastries, eating my way through butter-loaded this or sugar-crammed that almost every day; how is that for a proof? Although, it hadn't quite been the battle with weight that sent me into a tailspin in the first place. My biggest problem of all had been the battle with self-confidence. It's my hidebound insecurity that had been standing squarely athwart on my way, taking good care I remain impressionable, and self-conscious, and that I listen really good to what others have to say about me. I'm wondering how much longer I'm going to battle that, though.

Towards the end of my stay, I went on a 24-hour trip to Brussels. The weather that summer day was chili-hot, uncomfortable. I was walking around town, shopping, and la la la, soaking in that beautiful city's air (rich in waffle scent), and the next thing I knew I was feeling weird, clammy. The feeling was that I had to eat something, all my bullshit notwithstanding. I made a pit stop at a nearby health food bar where I ordered smoked salmon tabbouleh. Strewn with raisins and cumin seeds, it was fresh, earthy and nutty. It was comforting and welcome. I loved it, for it was tasty. But what's more, I loved it because for a split, split, split second, the first time in so long, I didn't see food as a cunning agent of weight. It was a good feeling.

      

                                                            ***

Peach and Mint Tabbouleh

Adapted from Ripe: A Cook in the Orchard by Nigel Slater

Yield: 4-6 servings

The charm of this dish is in a relationship between sweet and juicy fruitiness and zippy spiciness. One comes from the peaches, as you could have inferred; the other from the red chili. Theirs is not a tug-of-war game, because despite the obvious contrast there is no opposition: the chili just makes each mouthful sassier or something.

I am a person who can consume raw onion (thinly sliced) as a remedy for cold, which is just to say I am not an onion objector in no way or form. But I feel quite strongly against adding the onion to a dish if I want to keep it for later, what with the onion flavor becoming too pungent and unruly with time, its pleasant bite turning into the jaw clasp. Unless there are plans to finish the whole lot right away, add the onions only before serving, or skip them altogether, which I did.

I'm also a person who would like to be able to eat chillies, even the most fiery ones, by the handful. Alas, the nature didn't cut me fit enough for the job. But I still try and add extra chillies, seeds intact, whenever I can. Here I used two bird's eye chillies, instead of one, and left the seeds in, instead of out.

And a few more things...One, I cut down the amount of bulgur, the only reason being I like this tabbouleh better with the peach upfront, not the grain. Two: you absolutely need to get your hands on ripe peaches. It should give to your gentle touch but not be mushy. Yes, stay away from the mushy business. 

120 g (4 ounces) bulgur (I used medium-coarse type)

4 ripe peaches

1 or 2 hot red chillies, deseeded (or not)

6 bushy sprigs of mint, leaves only

2 large handfuls of cilantro leaves

2 large handfusl of parsley leaves

juice of 1 medium lemon

2 Tbsp olive oil

Salt, pepper

Put the bulgur in a bowl and pour just enough boiling water to cover; put a lid or a plate over the bowl to prevent the bulgur from drying and set aside.

Slice the peaches in half, remove the pits, dice the flesh and put in a mixing bowl. Finely chop the chili, coarsely chop the mint, cilantro and parsley, and add to the peaches. Add the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt and pepper. You will need a good grinding of both to balance the whole thing out.

Fluff up the bulgur with a fork and crumble into the peaches. Serve at room temperature. On its own, or with roasted or poached chicken, or fish, even.

It would look decent

Dear Reader, hello –

How are things with you? I got a little bit distracted from here, as you can see. Since my temporary return to the bakery, I’ve been laboring there four consecutive days a week (as opposed to three days spread throughout the week before). Seeing that for most job-bound a working week would usually be comprised of five days, I feel I have no legitimate right to make a fuss now. I’d just say my only beef would be not to pass all my after-work hours in the vacuum of a deep slumber, which is what I’ve successfully been doing lately. I’m not a sloth, really. I’m rather confident my having to wake up for work before the birds – at 5 a.m. on a weekday, at 4 a.m. on weekends -- has a lot to do with my recent fondness of the pillow. Reader, I’d like to do much better than counting sheep before my usual bed time around 11 p.m, so I’m working on it. My latter-day strategy, of which I’m going to tell you in a jiffy, is working remarkably well. It keeps me from falling asleep soon after I get back from work in the late afternoon, which, in turn, raises my morale up a notch, which, in turn, makes me a better-ish person overall.

The afore-mentioned strategy is…cake-making. It’s brilliant. All this whisking, beating, and mixing have me skip around my kitchen area shooing hibernation away. Then it’s (usually) an hour wait for a cake to bake which has the same effect on me as a shot of inky espresso, only it’s milder and more considerate towards my heart rate. And of course it’s the eating of a cake itself that takes the edge off my tiredness completely. (Some irony: baking at work tires me, baking at home perks me up.)

I made my first cake when I was fourteen or fifteen of age (I was a late bloomer). It was an apple cake known in Russia as sharlotka (not to be confused with charlotte Russe). Growing up I was not really encouraged to cook. Reason being, tap water was a pleasant surprise rather than a 24/7 attribute in our household back then (brilliant post-Soviet reality). It’s well understood cooking goes hand-in-glove with washing up, but the latter in our situation was a rather dire endeavor to accomplish, what with the limited water stored in vats and buckets kept in the bathroom. In other words, no need for unnecessary whisking, whipping, and mixing, thank you very much. But I saw that cake on a Russian cooking show, and it seemed an easy one-bowl affair. All the domestic encumbrances be damned, I was so making it. The simplicity of the said confection laid in its use of all the ingredients in equal measure, the ingredients being flour, sugar, eggs and apples. You beat one part sugar with a few eggs, introduce one part flour to the mixture, and round the deal off by mixing in a few apples. The lot was baked in a frying pan, and regardless of one half of the cake going lopsided and the other burnt, my parents and I had a piece each with tea. We all agreed that theoretically it was a good no-nonsense cake, and that I shouldn’t be making it again.

Nigel Slater’s apple cake reminds me of my first baking affair, sharlotka. Similarly to the latter, it also calls for the equal quantities of the ingredients, only in addition to flour, eggs, sugar and apples it also cordially invites butter to the premises. Besides that, another difference is that nobody in their right mind would ever think of not making it again. You cream the butter with the sugar first, nudge the eggs in second, fold in the flour and baking powder third, and lastly, once the mixture is scraped in a baking tin, put spiced apples on top. At first you’ll most likely think that the cake batter is a dud, on the account of it being too thick, almost cookie dough thick. But go on notwithstanding -- the heat will take care of everything. The apples will surrender and sink in the batter, their juices trickling down and moisturizing the crumb. And the crumb, it will spring up a bit, carefully closing in around the apple pieces. The result is a loveable slim, tender, open-crumb apple cake that stays moist for a few days, no assistance of aluminum foil needed (as I accidentally discovered). It’s not overly sweet, with a quiet tart voice coming out from a little bit of lemon juice used with the apples. Last time I baked it I subbed whole wheat for plain flour. That is not necessary at all for the taste enhancement -- the cake is good as it is; I just think apple and whole wheat together make a fine autumn treat. In case if apple pies start to rub you the wrong way by now, give a chance to this apple cake. Some whipped cream on the side, it would look decent on your Thanksgiving table, that.

Happy Thanksgiving, Reader!

Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake

Adapted from The Kitchen Diaries
Yield: 8-10 servings

Slater calls the afore-mentioned sweetness English Apple Cake, but I’m not sure whether it’s because he uses local English apples for the recipe or because it’s originally an English recipe. I tend to think it’s the former, for the recipe is included in an entry christened A Basket of Apples. On the grounds that I’m not using the English fruit here and, generally, for the sake of clarity, I’ve taken to call this cake quite simply as Nigel Slater’s Apple Cake.

I don’t mind the apple-cinnamon flavor combination as such, but I personally prefer fresh vanilla as a spice for an apple. If cinnamon would be your choice, disregard my call for half a vanilla bean and use ½ tsp ground cinnamon instead, or use both, perhaps.

Slater uses a 24-cm square tin for this cake, but since I don’t own one I utilize a 24-cm round spring form here. It seems to work just fine too.

3 medium-size apples (I used Santana)
juice of ½ lemon
seeds from ½ vanilla bean
2 Tbsp demerara sugar
130 g (4.4 oz.) butter
130 g (4.4 oz) light brown sugar
2 large eggs
130 gr (4.4 oz) whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking powder
a little extra sugar (optional)

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (355 degrees Fahrenheit). Place a rack in the lower third of the oven. Butter and flour a 24-cm (9 1/2-inch) baking spring form; shake off excess flour.

2. Cut the apple into small chunks, removing the cores as you proceed and dumping the fruit in a small bowl with the lemon juice. Add the vanilla bean seeds and demerara sugar and toss well. Set aside.

3. Sift the whole-weat flour and baking powder together, set aside. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Fold the flour mix gently into the butter mixture (the mixture will be very thick). Scrape into the prepared baking form and smooth out. The cake mixture will be very shallow in the form. Put the spiced apples (together with the lemon juice, if you wish) on top of the cake mixture and scatter a little bit more demerara sugar, if desired.

4. Bake for 55-60 minutes. The centre should be firm and the edges should be nicely browning. Cool for 10 mins, still in the baking tin. Run a sharp knife around the cake and take off the side of the spring form. To remove the bottom of the spring form, you might want to run a long serrated knife under the cake. This cake is best eaten warm – reheat in a gentle oven before serving. Keeps well for two days.