Joke’s Spicy Asian Tomato Soup

 Les Sarilles

I love bringing back memories of wonderful holidays and a treasured recipe is a great reminder. Les Sarilles is just 10 minutes from Cluny and with amazing views over the rolling countryside of Southern Burgundy in France.

Our Dutch hosts, Jan and Yoke Boekhoven, are a very interesting couple who have travelled all over the world and collected some wonderful recipes. Joke kindly sent me her cherished recipe for Asian Tomato Soup. She suggests making the soup one day ahead to let the flavours infuse.

 For 4 servings:

1 kilo fresh tomatoes, peeled and chopped

0.5 ltr water

2 parts of chicken stock

30g fresh ginger

30g sugar

2 onions

2 cloves of garlic

1 or two small tins of tomato puree

3 tbsps of ginger sirop (We used 3 pieces of preserved stem ginger and 2 tbsps of the syrup)

Cumin, paprika powder, cardamom, pepper and anise to your taste.  (We crushed cumin seed, cardamom pods, black peppercorns and half a piece of star anise in a pestle and mortar)

Peel the tomatoes by slightly heating them in water, but don’t boil them. Bring the water to the boil and simmer the tomatoes, onions and the chicken stock for 20 minutes. Add the garlic and fresh ginger in the last five minutes. Then add the tomato puree. Use a blender/liquidiser to mix all ingredients to a smooth soup. Add the sugar and spices to your taste. The following day, push the soup through a sieve and, if necessary, add extra spices, sugar and ginger sirop.

In any language this is a fantastic recipe so Selamat makan! Bon appétit! Enjoy! 

Marmalade Flapjack is a real baking gem

Marmalade Flapjack is a real gem of a recipe and an easy recipe to bake with children. Use homemade Marmalade to make it even more special. 

Marmalade Flapjack

8oz/225g butter

4 oz/110g soft brown sugar

2 tbsps golden syrup

5oz/150g marmalade

Zest of 2 oranges

12oz/350g porridge oats

6 oz /175g raisins

Preheat the oven to 180C(160C Fan), 350F/Mark 4. Melt the butter, sugar and golden syrup slowly in a pan over a gentle heat. Remove from the heat and add the orange zest and marmalade. Stir in the porridge oats and raisins. Put the mixture into a lined tin (approx 10 inch/23 cms square). Press it down so it is level. Bake in the oven for about 25 minutes until golden brown and firm at the edges. Remove from the oven and cut into bars while still warm.

Meryl says : I’ve made this recipe with chopped apricots instead of raisins. I've also tried  it with 1 tbsp black treacle and 1 tbsp golden syrup which gives it a slightly richer flavour. Just the thing for a mid morning break. Enjoy! 

Celebrating our rich tradition of British Baking

Richmond Maids of Honour

Our British baking tradition is rich in history and this English baked tartlet is said to date back to the time of Henry VIII. Apparently, he found Anne Boleyn and her Maids of Honour eating these little delicacies. It is rumoured that Henry liked them so much that he took the recipe and insisted that it was locked in a box at Richmond Palace in London. 

The Original Maids of Honour shop in Kew serves these little cakes today and is well worth a visit to sample their secret recipe

Whatever the story, Grandma had a version of the recipe and it's easy to make. 

Richmond Maids of Honour

8oz/225g Puff Pastry or Shortcrust Pastry

8oz/225g curd cheese

2 eggs

1oz /25g caster sugar

1 lemon grated zest and juice

1 oz ground almonds

1 tbsp currants

A little apricot jam

Preheat the oven to 400F, Mark 6, 200C. Roll out the pastry thinly and with a 3 ½ inch cutter cut out little circles and place in a tartlet tins. Chill for 15 minutes. Combine the curd cheese, caster sugar, lemon rind, ground almonds and currants in a bowl. Beat the egg and egg yolk together and add this to the mixture. Mix thoroughly until everything is well blended. Smooth a small amount of the jam into each pastry case and then fill each about 2/3rds full of the cheese mixture. Bake in the centre of the oven for about 25 minutes. The mixture should puff up and turn golden brown. Remove from the oven and place on a wire rack to cool. When cool, you can decorate with a light dusting of icing sugar. 

This recipe makes approximately 24 tartlets.

Meryl’s tip : You can get curd cheese in many of the large supermarkets as well as some local cheese shops. Enjoy a real traditional bake from the past with these Maids of Honour.

Afternoon Tea ..... at the Library!

It was time for Tea and Cakes on a summer’s afternoon at Armthorpe Community Library  when Volunteers and staff organised a special celebration of the Great British Tradition of Afternoon Tea.

The volunteers have been running the community library for over a year now with the support of local council staff. They’d prepared a wonderful scene of tables laid with the best china, pretty tablecloths and carefully folded napkins all set for the afternoon tea festivities.

I was delighted to do my talk on  'The History of Afternoon Tea' all about the characters in history who helped to make it popular, the key elements and the ‘rules’ involved with lots of questions to keep me on my toes.

And then fully briefed on the etiquette of this quintessential British ceremony, we started on tea and cakes, including Grandma’s traditional baking recipes. 

Scones with jam and cream

Orange Cake

Marmalade Spice Cake

Family Fruit Loaf

Feedback from everyone was tremendous with pleas for more events like this one and suggestions to roll out the format in other localities. A huge thank you to DMBC staff Shirley and Helen for making this glorious event possible but, most of all, to the amazingly talented team of Volunteers who are really making this Library so highly valued and playing such a vital role in the community.  

Have you been involved in an Afternoon Tea event? Tell us more about it... what do you like best? 

Uncovering the past with Coconut Haystacks

This recipe was a firm favourite with coconut fans at the Life on the Home Front Doncaster 1914-18 at Cusworth Hall Museum and Park where visitors were invited to explore what life was like in Doncaster in 1915. 

 

Lucy and I baked 6 recipes from the First World War era including this one for 'Cocoanut Haystacks' from The Best Way one of Grandma's old recipe books. Published in 1907, it was a prized book in Grandma’s collection of 850 practical and tried recipes and household hints for 6d.

 Coconut Haystacks

Two cupfuls of desiccated coconut

One cupful of sugar

Half a cupful of flour

2oz (50g) of butter

1 egg

N.B. 1 cup = approx 4oz/110g

Mix the coconut, sugar and flour together and rub in the butter well. Beat the egg and mix in with the other ingredients. Make into cones and bake in a hot oven (400F, Mark6, 200C) till they are slightly browned, which will be in about 10 minutes.

Meryl's tip : You can use an egg cup to make a really smooth cone.

Take a look at the other recipes I baked for the Life on the Home Front event.

Trench Cake

Imperial/Empire Biscuits

Anzac Biscuits

and Yorkshire Parkin recipes

Which one is your favourite? 

Uncovering the past with Trench Cake

Here’s another recipe from the World War 1 period which I baked at the Life on the Home Front Doncaster 1914-18 event at Cusworth Hall Museum and Park. We tried out traditional recipes sent to soldiers in the trenches during the First World War. Although its name doesn’t sound too appetizing, visitors were highly impressed when they tried a slice.

Trench Cake

8oz/225g plain flour

4oz/110g margarine or butter

3oz/75g brown sugar

3oz/75g cleaned currants

2 tsps cocoa

½ tsp baking soda/powder

1 tsp vinegar

¼ pint/150ml milk

½ tsp nutmeg

1 tsp ginger

Grated zest of 1 lemon

Grease a 1lb/450g loaf tin. Rub the margarine or butter into the flour in a basin. Add the dry ingredients. Mix well. Add the soda dissolved in vinegar and milk. Beat well. Turn into the loaf tin. Bake in a moderate oven (350F, Mark 4,180C) for about 45 minutes.

This recipe is adapted from Francis Quinn’s Trench cake for the Department for Culture Media & Sport. I reduced the time of the baking to approximately 45 minutes to an hour as the 2 hours given in the recipe seemed to make the cake too dry and it had baked sufficiently in less time.

Although rationing in World War 1 didn’t start until 1917, some traditional cake ingredients were hard to come by. There were no eggs in this recipe; they were replaced with milk and margarine, lard or butter and vinegar was used to react with the baking soda to help the cake rise. It’s quite a dense cake but once packaged up, it would travel well and arrive at the front in reasonable condition.  

Here are more recipes I baked at Life on the Home Front

 Imperial/Empire Biscuits

AnzacBiscuits

and Yorkshire Parkin

Many of the visitors to the Life on the Home Front Doncaster 1914-18  had someone in their family who went to the front line. Grandma’s Abson’s brother, Frederick Henry Cave sadly died alongside many others in the Somme battlefields in July 1916. 

Uncovering the past with Imperial/Empire Biscuits

Imperial/Empire Biscuits

Is it the cherry or the glace icing which made Imperial or Empire biscuits a hit in Doncaster for the 1914-18 commemorative event? Despite being from a different era, they are also still popular in tearooms across Scotland today. 

I found the recipe for these biscuits in my treasured copy of The Glasgow School of Cookery published in 1910. The Glasgow School alongside similar schools in Liverpool and Leeds was at the forefront of developing classes in cookery for women and girls of all social backgrounds.

Imperial/Empire Biscuits

¼ lb (110g) butter

¼ lb (110g) sugar

½ lb (225g) flour

1 teaspoonful cinnamon

½ teaspoonful baking powder

1 small egg (beaten)

Raspberry jam

Water icing and cherries

Cream the butter and sugar; add the flour, cinnamon and baking powder, also the egg by degrees. Work smoothly. Set aside to become stiff. Roll thinly and cut into biscuits. Bake 15-20 minutes in a moderate oven (350F, Mark 4,180C). Spread half the biscuits with jam, place the others on top. Then decorate with water icing and a small piece of cherry on top. 

N.B.  To make water icing, mix 5oz/150g icing sugar, 2 tbs water and 1 tsp lemon juice.

I made these biscuits as one of several recipes from the 1900s as part of the Life on the Home Front weekend event at Cusworth Hall Museum and Park on 18- 19 July 2015. It was an amazing weekend with lots of visitors and activities to remind us of the events of 100 years ago.

 Here are Anzac Biscuits

and Yorkshire Parkin recipes

More #ww1 recipes coming soon ....

Make a date with Matrimony Cake

This glorious traditional recipe, which is basically a date biscuit sandwich, originates in Canada where it’s called Matrimonial Cake.  Anne from Huddersfield brought it from Canada. It’s a firm favourite in her family and another of those old fashioned recipes so easy to weigh out with a cup of this and that.

Matrimony Cake

450g/1lb chopped dates

4 tbsps lemon juice or water 

2 large cups of oats (I used 225g/8oz)

1 large cup plain flour (I used 110g /4oz)

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tbsp brown sugar      

110g/4oz butter

3 tbsps golden syrup

Warm the dates in the lemon juice or water in a pan for around 10 minutes until soft and thickened. Leave to cool slightly. Put the oats, flour, bicarbonate of soda, cinnamon and sugar into a large bowl and mix together. Melt the butter and golden syrup in a pan. Then add this to the dry ingredients in the bowl. Grease or line a flat tin approx 25 x 18 cms /10 x 7 inches. Spread half the mixture from the bowl on the bottom of the tin and then spread the date filling on top. Put the other half of the mixture to cover it all. Bake in a preheated oven 190C, 375F, Gas Mark 5 for about 30 minutes until golden brown. Cut into bars or squares when cool.

Meryl’s tip : Anne had used black treacle to the mixture which gives more flavour but I preferred the recipe with golden syrup – but either will make a good cake.

Canadian tradition says that the origins of Matrimonial Cake were because the two layers of the cake which sandwich the dates together  symbolise the marriage bond. Whatever the custom, they are a tasty treat so thanks to Anne for bringing it over the pond.

Let me know if you have you got a family favourite recipe to share?

Make the most of a bag of Mangoes

 Mango & Apple Chutney

Spotting a bag of over ripe mangoes on the market, I set about making Mango and Apple Chutney. It’s a recipe adapted from one of Grandma’s easy Chutney recipes. This amount make about 3 small jars. It's out of the ‘Waste not, want’ repertoire.

2 apples (peeled, cored and chopped)

3 mangoes (stones removed, peeled and chopped)

2 onions (chopped)

2 cloves of garlic (finely chopped)

200g demerara sugar

125ml white wine vinegar

3 tbsps root ginger (grated)

2 tbsps lemon juice

1 tsp mustard powder

1 tsp cumin powder

½ tsp cayenne pepper

½ tsp turmeric

½ tsp salt

Combine the chopped apples, mangoes, onions, garlic, demerara sugar, vinegar and grated ginger in a large pan. Bring to the boil, then reduce the heat. Allow to simmer uncovered for about an hour until the fruit is tender. Add lemon juice, mustard powder, spices and salt. Continue to simmer for 5 to 10 more minutes until the chutney leaves a clear trail when a spoon is drawn across. Allow to cool and then spoon into clean jars.

Meryl’s tip : You can eat this Chutney straightaway. It doesn’t need a long time to mature but keeps well for a couple of months because of the high acidity content.

Buen Camino to Santiago

 Pastel de Santiago

 Sharing a meal with pilgrims on their way to Santiago has to be one of the most enjoyable experiences in Northern rural Spain and even better when there was a new cake to taste. Here's Rocio's recipe for a wonderful Santiago Cake called 'Pastel de Santiago' in Spanish. 

Pastel de Santiago

250g caster sugar

250g ground almonds

1 tps cinnamon

5 eggs

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Mark 4. Mix the sugar with the ground almonds and cinnamon. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating them into the mixture. Pour the mixture into a greased and lined 23cm/9 inch flan dish or cake tin. Bake in the oven for around 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before turning out onto a cooling rack. Place a Santiago cross or cut-out (see photo below) in the centre to act as a stencil. Then sprinkle with sieved icing sugar and remove the stencil to leave an outline of the Santiago cross.

 Rocio runs the beautiful Hotel Rural las Aguedas  in a small village called Ventosa in the region of La Rioja, on one of the Caminos de Santiago (traditional pilgrimage pathways to the shrine of Santiago de Compostela - St. James). 

On our last evening, we were in the company of 3 pilgrims who were walking to Santiago, Klaus from Munich, Pierre from Poitiers and Sunny, originally from Korea but now living in Los Angeles. Since it was Sunny's birthday, Rocio had made the special Santiago Cake for us all to share. It is a scrumptious cake and was the perfect end to a glorious meal with our new friends. We all sang 'Happy Birthday' and wished her 'Buen Camino'. 

Santiago de Compostela