Egg-free brownies ... and ancestor-envy ...

We've had a miserable weekend, weather-wise, here in London. We'd planned to go on a wonderful long walk on Sunday followed by a lazy pub-terrace lunch down by the river with some of our very best friends, but everything got rained-off thanks to our doolalley British weather. Memo to the British climate: it's SPRINGTIME, can you please take note and behave accordingly?

So, instead we stayed at home and made a batch of yummy, egg-free Brownies. I should explain: Emi has an egg allergy. Eggs in cakes annoy him, but eggs in pancakes are just fine. Not sure exactly why that should be the case, but it's something I've got to work around in the sweet-things department.

And sweet-things, as we all know, are very important. After school, for instance, a cup of hot chocolate with some little nibble or other is an important part of our daily routine. Life's always better with chocolate in my view, and it certainly helps loosen young Emi's tongue as he enjoys his snack and gives me a blow-by-blow account of his day.

And right now he's in the grip of some serious ancestor-envy. It's like this: one of his friend's fathers thinks that he may be descended from Admiral Lord Nelson. And as a result F, the little chum, has had great fun telling the boys at school, that it's an absolute biological certainty that they share the great seaman's DNA.

They found some of his blood on a rusty sword and it was the exact same as mine, he explained to Emi and their other friend, G when they (enviously) voiced their doubts on the matter.

G, who's a very shrewd little operator, didn't miss a beat and replied that he was, of course, related to the late, great Nelson Mandela, which I strongly suspect is a total porkie pie, but full marks to him for quick thinking.

Emi, on the other hand, had not come prepared to claim an illustrious ancestor and he returned home that afternoon feeling very lacklustre in the DNA department.

Over our customary hot chocolate we had a think about his ancestry.

On my side they were a bunch of Border Reavers from the lowlands of Scotland, who played an exceptionally good hand at cattle rustling across the frontier with England. They enjoyed a certain notoriety for their professional talents, and boasted a flying stirrup as their clan emblem. All of it was very colourful, but not really up there with Admiral Lord Nelson.

On  my husband's side we could do little better. He looks like a man of exotic provenance, and we feel confident that there's a Barbary Pirate or two lurking in the upper branches of his family tree. His mother's family have an appellido Judeoespañole, a surname that was often used by Jewish people to hide their semitic origins when they were forced to convert to Catholicism back in the fifteenth century, so we may even have a learned Rabbi or two sitting on a hidden branch safely out of sight of the Spanish Inquisition. But again, there was nothing to compare with Admiral Lord Nelson's star ancestral cachet.

So, having exhausted the supply of actual ancestors, Emi turned his mind to think of whom he might like to have been related to. For reasons which elude adult logic, he decided that it would have been very cool to have owned Harry Houdini as an ancestor. I think he may just have liked the word escapologist: I've noticed that he's been collecting big words recently - possibly to hold in reserve and use defensively when he's feeling the want of an illustrious ancestor or two.

I can just tell everyone that I'm related to Harry Houdini, he mused, slurping the last dregs of his hot coffee through a straw. Using a straw to drink hot chocolate is, I should add, another of his current peccadilloes.

Normally I would not encourage my child to tell fibs, but on the basis that we are all descended from Adam - and, hence, by extension distant cousins - and given that he was by now quite bent out of shape about the Admiral Lord Nelson business I let the matter pass.

The following day he returned triumphant.

Mum, I told them all about my famous ancestor, Harry Hooligan, who discovered the dinosaurs, he announced proudly, having apparently forgotten Houdini's proper name and occupation and, perhaps more importantly, that the whole thing had been a fiction of his own making. 

They were dead impressed even though they didn't know who he was, and then F and I went off to play World War Two.

That's nice, dear. Which parts did you play in World War Two? I asked, happy to see him back on form.

I was Churchill and F was Admiral Lord Nelson, he replied, dabbing the last of the brownie crumbs on his plate with a chocolatey index finger, and popping them in his mouth.

Anyway, if you'd like to make these tongue-loosening brownies to winkle secrets out of your own little people this is how I make them. The trick is to substitute mashed potato in place of eggs as the binding agent. I find that this works well in most other cake recipes when I want to adapt them for Emi.

Ingredients:

85g (3 oz) plain flour
40 g ( 1 1/2 oz) instant mashed potato powder
Sufficient hot water to turn the mashed potato powder into normal eating consistency mashed potato
1 tablespoon good quality cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
170 g (6 oz) caster sugar
55 g (2 oz) butter
2 tablespoonfuls water
100g (3 1/2 oz) plain chocolate
1 teaspoonful of vanilla essence

Method.

1. Preheat the oven to 180 C (Gas mark 4 or 350 F) and line a 7" x 11" baking tin with baking paper.

2. Sift flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking powder into a bowl.

3. Boil a kettle and mix the mashed potato powder with sufficient hot water to give it a normal eating consistency.

4. Over a Bain Marie, melt the chocolate with the butter and sugar until they are a smooth, even consistency. Remove from the heat and add the vanilla essence and the 2 tablespoonfuls of water and mix so that these last ingredients are evenly incorporated.

5. Pour the chocolate mixture and the mashed potato into the flour mixture, and beat until the combined mixture is smooth. Then pour it into the baking tray, and place in the preheated oven.

6. Cook for about 25 minutes, until the mixture forms a slight crust on top and becomes firm to the touch.

7. Remove from the oven and leave to cool for half an hour before cutting into brownies. Store in an air-tight container.

And enjoy with hot chocolate and tall tales of amazing ancestors, real or imagined,

Bonny x
As shared on The Alphabet Project

Nettle champ from Ulster ...

I should begin by praising the humble stinging nettle. It's a plant that most of us uproot from our gardens and take detours around when we find it in our path, but it's really rather amazing.

I mean just think about the mechanics of what it does: its hollow stinging hairs act like tiny hypodermic needles injecting a venom, made up of histamine and other chemicals, into the skin of passing animals. It does this to deter them from touching it or interfering with its growth cycle. It's a clever, defensive, "keep off my patch" mechanism that works brilliantly well.

In Ireland we've eaten fresh spring nettles since forever. Cooking destroys their sting, and - hey presto - you're left with is a delicious green vegetable, that contains more iron that spinach, is high in protein and loaded with vitamin C. It really is a bit of a superfood, but it's best eaten early in the season as they develop gritty particles called cystoliths later on as the leaves age. These cystoliths can cause urinary tract infections so, please, don't eat them after the end of June. 

Right now, though, I'd say the fresh green leaves are just about perfect for harvesting.

When I was a little girl my mum used to make nettle infusions as a hair tonic in the spring time. We'd pour it over our hair as a final rinse. The nettles made the hair shine, and they are also supposed to help control dandruff and scalp disorders. If you'd like to make some all you have to do is gather an armful of nettles and wash them in the sink. Chop them into manageable sized pieces with your kitchen scissors and place them in a saucepan with a couple of pints/ a litre of water. Bring the mixture to the boil, then turn down the heat and allow them to simmer for a few minutes. When they're done drain off the liquid and leave to cool. Once it's cooled down, add a drop of lavender oil to make it smell better, and then simply use it as a final rinse when you wash your hair. 

People have been making clothes out of nettles for the better part of two millennia. Do you remember in Hans Christian Andersen's Wild Swans how Eliza had to weave eleven shirts from the churchyard nettles to free her wild swan brothers from their stepmother's wicked spell? 

In cloth-making the nettles are processed in a manner very similar to the way in which flax is treated to produce a tough, hard-wearing material, not dissimilar to linen. Sadly it went out of fashion as a fabric way back in the sixteenth century with the arrival of cotton. During the First World War, however, some of the German soldiers' uniforms were made from nettle fabric as there was a shortage of cotton. There's been a bit of a resurgence of interest in it in more recent times. There's a lot of chat about it being an environmentally friendly material as they don't need to use agrochemicals given how robust our lovely native nettles are. 

But my own personal favourite thing to do with nettles is to make Nettle Champ. Champ is a big thing back home in Ulster. It's the Ulster version of Colcannon. You can find my recipe for Colcannon here: Recipe for Colcannon

If you'd like to turn your hand to making some nettle champ here's what you'll need:

Ingredients for Nettle Champ for four people:

Several handfuls of nettle tops

6 medium to large potatoes

200 ml of milk

150 g of butter 

1 large spring onion

Salt and pepper to taste 

Now, just a word or two about cutting nettles. You need to wear a pair of thick rubber gloves to cut them, and you need to wash them carefully. It's best to gather them from somewhere wild where they won't have been doused with any toxic pesticides. I'd also steer clear of the grass verges along the roadsides as they're going to be contaminated with all the nasties from passing vehicle emissions. I take the first four or five inches of the plant, using my kitchen scissors to cut them, and then lift them into a basket using the scissors like tongs to grip the stems. Avoid any unhealthy-looking brown leaves.

When you get them home wash them carefully. Cut off the green leaves and discard the stems. 

Peel the potatoes, chop the spring onion and boil them together until the potatoes are cooked.

Whilst the potatoes are cooking put the nettle leaves and the milk in a saucepan and bring to the boil, turn the heat down and let them simmer gently for seven or eight minutes. Then leave to one side.

When the potatoes have cooked, drain them and leave them to steam off any remaining moisture. Mash them with the spring onions, and season to taste. Add all of the nettles and then the milk, a little at a time, mashing as you go to achieve a light fluffy puree. Depending on which potatoes you use you may not need all the milk. Stop when you've achieved the desired, lightly-whipped consistency, and before you end up with something soupy. 

Your champ should be served with a well in the middle into which you place a dollop of butter, which melts to create a wonderful, salty, yellow reservoir. It makes a great accompaniment to a Sunday roast.

Delicious! 

When I was a child, this was a restorative dish that my grandmothers or my mum would make when I was off-colour. And to this day it is my ultimate comfort food.

If you have any left over (which is highly unlikely, but just saying that you had ...) you could save it in the fridge. Next morning shape the champ into little balls, and flatten them to make pancake shapes. Dust these with flour and fry them gently in the frying pan as part of a fried breakfast.

Delicious again! 

Clearly none of this is good for your cholesterol levels, but the odd little treat every now and then is good for morale. I mean what's the point in living to be a hundred and five if you're going to be as miserable as sin? 

Enjoy!

 Bonny x

Paella ...

My husband has come out to join us for Easter. He flew in yesterday morning. We've missed him, so it's great that we're all back together again. And to celebrate I made him a paella. It's his favourite food.

Over here in Catalonia the seafood paella seems to be the equivalent of our Sunday Roast: the special meal that people make an occasion of eating together. When I go to our friends' houses this is the traditional favourite for a long, lazy Sunday lunch with everyone gathered around the table - al fresco, if the weather's behaving itself - chatting, putting the world to rights and enjoying the food and the good company.

Here's how I make this wonderful dish. It's really not that complicated.

Ingredients

OK! Let's start with the ingredients that I used yesterday.

Selection of sea food: I used this dish of prawns, langoustines, squid rings, clams and mussels for the three of us. With this selection we had three or four of everything mixed in with our rice.
A large onion, finely chopped
3 medium or 2 large tomatoes finely chopped
240 g of paella rice (short-grained rice, similar to risotto rice - in fact use risotto rice if you can't find paella rice). I allow 80 g of rice per person.
A few cloves of sliced garlic
1 litre of tasty stock. In England I'd use a good chicken stock made with the bones of a couple of roast chickens, a couple of carrots, a leek, an onion and two or three sticks of celery with all the lovely celery leaves from whatever celery I had in the fridge. Over here in Spain they sell fabulous ready-made caldo - stock - in cartons in the supermarket. The one I used yesterday was Caldo Casero de Escudella, which is my all-time favourite Spanish stock. It's essentially a chicken stock but one that has been made with vegetables, ham and chick peas and it adds another level of flavour to the paella.
Spices: over here in Spain I use a sachet of Carmencita's paella spice mix, but back in England I'd add a few strands of safron (soaked in a couple of tablespoonfuls of warm water), a half teaspoon of sweet paprika, a good pinch of ground cloves and a few twists of black pepper from the pepper mill.
Salt to taste

Method

Now here's what you need to do:

First up: the shell fish. You need to de-beard the mussels, and wash them with the clams in fresh water. Then I leave them on the side in a bowl of fresh water. De-vein your prawns, removing the little black vein that runs down their back, and leave to one side.

Put the onions in the paella pan with some olive oil (if you don't have one a big frying pan with a lid will work just fine) and cook over a low heat for a few minutes until soft. Add the tomatoes and cook for a few minutes more. Then add the garlic. This is called a sofrito in Spanish, and is the base from which any number of Spanish dishes are made.

Rinse your rice under running water, and add to the sofrito of tomato, onion and garlic. Stir so that the rice is evenly distributed. Add the spices, and stir some more, allowing the heat to release some of their wonderful aromas. Now add the stock, a little at a time, not all in one go. Allow the rice to cook slowly and gently, stirring from time to time to make sure that it doesn't stick. The technique here is similar to making a risotto: add enough liquid to keep things moving on the pan but not enough to flood it. Keep a careful eye, and add more as required.

While my rice is cooking I fry the squid, prawns and langoustines in another frying pan and then set them to one side on some kitchen paper when they're done.

When the rice is almost ready add the cooked prawns and langoustines to the paella pan, along with the mussels and clams. Put the lid on, reduce the heat to as low a setting as possible and leave for a few minutes until the shell fish have opened. I use one of those metal diffusers on my gas burner to moderate the temperature below the lowest gas setting.

When your shell fish have opened you're good to go. Serve up with quarters of lemon and enjoy!

And there's one little chap who's a big fan of my cooking. He sat quietly in the corner watching all my work in the kitchen, sniffing the air appreciatively:

Wishing you a very Happy Easter!

All the best,

Bonny x

Mulberry granola

I started making mulberry granola by accident!

Mulberry Granola

You see I'd set out to make flapjacks, but the recipe went disastrously wrong. I'd forgotten to add mashed up banana and grated apple, which were binding agents in a very healthy flapjack recipe that I make for Emi, my son, from time to time.

There was an ominous smell of burning that ought to have had me running to the oven to check things out, but I was busy multi-tasking and didn't manage to tear myself away from whatever I was doing in the other room. As a result, when I finally opened the door I was faced with something that was much too crumbly to cut, and that wouldn't hold together in the way in which a flapjack ought to.

So I nibbled a bit, and it didn't taste too bad. I looked at the mess, scratched my head and wondered if there was anything I could do to salvage the situation. All that luxurious dried fruit seemed too rich to feed to the wild birds. After a moment's thought it occurred to me that my tray full of crumbs looked a bit like a slightly overcooked granola mix. Bingo! Eureka! That was it. I'd inadvertently made granola! I tried it with a few spoonfuls of Greek yoghurt and it wasn't half bad. It wasn't perfect as I'd burnt it slightly, but with a bit of tweaking I reckoned I could make something really tasty next time round.

And that was how my granola recipe was born: by pulling victory out of the jaws of defeat!

Anyway, enough of telling stories. Here's what you need, and here's how to go about it if you'd like to give it a try.

Ingredients

250 g/ 9 oz rolled porridge oats
50 g/ 2 oz butter
2 tablespoonfuls of chunky peanut butter
3 tablespoonfuls of golden syrup or maple syrup (whichever you prefer)
200 g/ 7 oz of mixed dried fruit. This is what I added today, starting from top left and going clockwise: 40g barberries, 40g apricots, 40 g papaya, 40g mulberries, and 40 g golden sultanas.

100 g/ 3 1|2 oz mixed seeds [I use a mixture of roughly equal weights of golden linseed, pumpkin seed and sunflower seed]

Method

Preheat your oven to 160 degrees C/ 320 degrees F

Mix the rolled oats, dried fruit and seeds together to get an even, uniform mix.

Melt the butter in a saucepan over a low heat with the peanut butter and the syrup. Stir well to get a smooth, uniform liquid.

Add the melted butter/ peanut butter and syrup to the oat mixture and stir well so that the oats are evenly coated by the butter mixture.

Line a baking tray with a sheet of baking paper and tip the oat mixture onto it, spreading it out so that it is evenly distributed in a thin layer on the tray.

Bake in the oven for 35 to 40 minutes until golden and crispy.

Cool and store in an airtight container.

Eat and enjoy!

I was running around with no time to do anything last week and had to eat some store-bought granola. It cost me three times as much and wasn't a patch on this scrumptious stuff.

Bonny x

Lemon & Lavender marmalade anyone?

Today I’m making marmalade, and my whole house smells of lemons and lavender. It’s reminding me of summer and sunshine and big blue skies. And when all around is grey and rainy, that’s making me just a little bit happy.

I’m fussy about my marmalade. I like it to be not too sweet, very citrusy with a fragrant hint of something aromatic – I like notes of cardamom, elderflower and lavender, but probably not all at the same time. The peel has to be included, but must be soft and very thinly sliced. When I hold the jar of not-too-sweet loveliness up to the light I like to see tones of bright golden sunshine. Nothing sludgy or brown for me, thank you very much, and I’d never dream of adding a heavy flavour like whiskey. No, not ever. That would just be wrong.

I'm not a big fan of the supermarkets, so I try to shop with the independents as much as possible. Here in West Ealing we have Cudi Foods, the most fabulous store in town. It’s an independent ethnic grocery shop with wonderful fresh fruit and vegetables piled high outside. Inside you find the very nicest bottled pulses, spices, Turkish breads and other wonderful things to eat. And I’m not talking Harrods' prices. No, this is a place where regular people come to buy great produce. In fact it’s usually cheaper than the big supermarkets.

So, on my way back from school yesterday, I headed over to Cudi for some lemons. Feast your eyes on these beauties:

With any marmalade or jam-making, the basic recipe is fruit plus twice the weight of granulated sugar. I find that I don’t need to add any setting agent to this marmalade as the pectin in the fruit and the pips is plenty strong enough to get it to the right consistency.

My basic jam making kit comprises one very large saucepan, a long wooden spoon that doesn’t get lost in said saucepan, a jam thermometer, clean jam jars with fitting lids (you could buy these, but there’s nothing wrong with saving the glass jars that you buy other things in and re-using them after a good clean), some waxed paper disks, a soup ladle and a pair of oven gloves for lifting the hot jars - and that’s pretty much it.

Check this lot out:

Now down to business, here’s what you need, and here’s how to go about it:

Ingredients :-

About 10 lemons (weight 950 g)

Twice the weight of the boiled-down lemons of granulated sugar (1.6 Kg. in this case)

Two heaped tablespoonfuls of edible lavender seeds. Or, as an alternative if it makes your life easier, you could buy some lavender-infused sugar. I save my own lavender flowers, but last year’s crop looked a bit too manky to risk in the pot, so I bought a 250g box of lavender-infused sugar and used that as part of my sugar addition.

1 teaspoonful of citric acid (This is an optional extra. The recipe will work just fine without this ingredient. I use it, because I like the extra zing it adds to the lemony flavour. You can buy it in an ethnic grocery shop such as Cudi.)

2.8 litres of Water          
 

Knob of butter

Method

Day 1

The first step is to give the lemons a really good scrub, and remove the eyes (the little circular bits that come off the ends, where they used to join on the tree).

Then they need to be cut in half and juiced. Save the juice.

Remove the pips, and save them on a saucer.

Now slice the skins of the lemons into the thinnest slices that you can possibly manage without losing any of your digits.

Place the slices into a large non-metallic bowl, add the lemon juice and give everything a bit of a stir.

Place all of the saved pips onto a piece of muslin (you can buy this in any good kitchen shop), and tie to make a little package with a piece of string. The idea is to hold the pips and not let them mix through the marmalade. They will help your mixture to set, and the parcelling-them-up business will make it easier to discard them before bottling.

Place the muslin parcel of pips in the bowl with the sliced lemons in their juice and add 2.8 litres of fresh water. Give the mixture a bit of a stir-about, and leave covered in a clean t-towel overnight so that the acidity of the liquid will soften the skins.

Day 2 - roughly 24 hours later

Take an old saucer and put it in the freezer to get it crazy cold. You will use this to test the consistency of your marmalade later in the process.

Put your lemon skin/juice/pips/water mixture in a large saucepan and bring to the boil. Leave to boil gently for about two and a half hours until the skins are soft and slightly translucent.

While you’re waiting for the skins to cook you should sterilise your jam jars. Wash both the jars and their lids in hot soapy water. Rinse well with warm clean water. Dry the outsides but not the insides. Place them on a baking tray (open top ends up) with the lids (top sides up) on a separate tray in an oven pre-heated to 150 degrees Celsius for about 20 minutes to half an hour.

You should also ‘warm’ your sugar. With about half an hour to go before the lemons are ready, weigh it out and put it in the oven at about 150 degrees Celsius in a large flat dish.

After the lemons in the saucepan have been boiled to the point where they are soft and translucent, add the sugar, citric acid and the lavender seeds with a knob of butter (this helps to stop it burning, according to my mum) and bring to a rolling boil, which is a gentle boil that isn’t too violent – think of gently churning rapids downstream from a large waterfall. Stir occasionally and let everything boil for another fifteen to twenty minutes or so until it starts to set. You should use your thermometer for this stage to check the temperature. The marmalade will start to set at around 106 degrees Celsius.

When it reaches this stage, and you see it starting to thicken, you need to do the frozen saucer test.

Take your saucer from the freezer and drip a little drop of the marmalade onto it. Leave it for a few seconds and then gently push it with your fingertip. If the marmalade is ready it should have formed a thin skin on top and you should be getting wrinkles when you apply pressure. It may still seem to be too liquid for spreading on your toast, but if there is a very thin skin with wrinkles you are good to go. The mixture will thicken/ solidify a bit more once it cools. This is the trickiest stage of the process, so do keep your eyes peeled.

Anyway if you haven’t reached this point let the mixture boil on for another three or four minutes and test again. Keep going until you get that skin-and-wrinkle-thing happening on your saucer, but be really careful as it can easily burn if it overheats (and, believe me, cleaning the bottom of the saucepan when it does is a nightmare job).

When the magic point arrives (skin and wrinkles on the saucer) take the saucepan straight off the heat, and let everything sit for about 10 minutes before starting to bottle it into the jars.  This slight cooling should result in the optimum amount of peel being dispersed through the mix rather than all settling at the bottom of the jars. Remove your little parcel of pips and fill each jar to the neck. I use my oven gloves and a soup ladle that I've washed down with boiling water for this part of the operation. Then place a disk of waxed paper on top, and put on the lids.

When they’ve cooled down you can apply labels and pretty them up in whatever way takes your fancy. They go down well as little treats for friends or as an alternative offering at the school cake sale.  Keep them stored in a cool, dark place and they should be good for about a year from the date on which they’ve been made. I keep my stash on the out-of reach top shelves in my kitchen cupboards. I’m a bit too short to make comfortable use of these shelves for every-day things, so they make a great larder for storing unopened preserves.   

For alternatives to the lavender you may like to consider adding some elderflower cordial with the sugar for a floral note. Alternatively, at the sugar stage, add a couple of tablespoonfuls of green cardamom seeds, split in half lengthways. 

And finally a photo of my not-too-sweet jars of sunshiny loveliness:

I got about 1.6kg of jam.

What do you think?

Totally, fragrantly delicious!

Go on, try some on your toast, and think of happy, sunshiny days.

Bonny x