December 2006 Archives

Being a big fan of cranberries, I decided to turn some of the fresh ones currently in the shops into desert for our annual Christmas bookclub dinner last week. For the last few months I've been experimenting with Clotilde's versatile Gâteau au Yaourt or Yoghurt Cake, making different flavoured versions, including an All Spice Upside Down Plum Cake for dinner with my uncle, aunt and cousins in the cottage and, when the Boyfriend was hosting his Arabic class at our flat, a Middle Eastern-inspired Pine Nut, Orange and Rose Water Cake.

This time round, after catching sight of Nigella's Cranberry Upside Down Cake in her How to be a Domestic Goddess cookbook, I decided to adapt her recipe for my own purposes. The cranberries became extra Christmassy when flavoured with port and the cake batter that Nigella uses was replaced by a simple cinnamon-scented yoghurt cake. Although I didn't quite manage to get the cake out of the tin with all cranberries intact, it still - served warm with plenty of pouring cream - tasted good, the tangy yoghurt base complementing the tart cranberry topping, the seasonal jewel-like berries glistening with rich caramel. And, at a time of the year when stodge seems to rule, it is good to have a decently light desert in your repertoire. Merry Christmas everyone!

Number three in an occasional series...

Any foodie can't help but be seduced by Ana Pascal's (Maggie Gyllenhaal, never looking sexier than here, kneading dough in dungarees) passion for cooking in Marc Foster's Stranger than Fiction. You can find a good review here on Confessions of a Film Critic. An anarchist baker, Ana runs a little café, counters laden with tempting-looking cookies and cakes - just like the kind of café that you'd like to have in your own neighbourhood. Not amused by having to be audited by IRS agent Harold Crick (Will Ferrell, playing it straight for once), she nevertheless bakes him fresh chocolate chip cookies, serving them up with a glass of milk and a helping of light-up-the-screen charisma. She also has an amazing speech which, of course, I can't fully remember or find online anywhere, about how she realised in law school that she was meant to be a baker, giving a litany of American cookies, traybakes and brownies that will have you salivating at the cinema. And how does the IRS agent win her heart? With a box of flours - rye, wholegrain - all in little brown paper bags with colour-coded stickers. Anyone stuck for an idea for your favourite foodie this Christmas?

Incidentally, if you're looking for a café in Dublin as nice as Ana's looks in Stranger than Fiction, check out Michelle Darmody's The Cake Café, behind the Daintree paper shop on Camden Street. They've had gorgeous gingerbread houses on the counter lately, just perfect for Christmas, and - like Michelle's other establishment, the Curved Street Café - all the food is deliciously homemade. Well worth a wander.

If you're looking for a Christmas present with a difference, Oxfam Ireland recently launched an online Fair Trade shop at www.oxfamirelandshop.com - they have plenty of foodie gifts, including a selection of Blake's Irish Fairtrade and Organic Chocolate Bars, coffees, teas and a couple of lovely Fair Trade Hampers, along with jewellery, warm throws and wooden toys.

Or, this being the season of goodwill, you could give yourself (or another) a chance of a very special food bloggers prize by making a donation to the third A Menu for Hope fundraising campaign. For every US$10 that you donate - this year the funds raised are for the UN World Food Programme - you get a raffle ticket and a chance to win one of the great prizes from around the world: meals at Tetsuya's in Sydney, L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon in London; dinner in New York with New York Times Wine Critic Eric Asimov or a cup of tea with Harold McGee in San Francisco; books from New Zealand, France and Malaysia; tasty treats from all corners of the world, cook's tools and an substantial selection of wine-orientated gifts.

Check out Chez Pim for an ever-growing list of prizes (and David Lebovitz's blog for a detailed list of the prizes contributed by European bloggers) and go to the donation site for instructions on how to sign up. Winners will be announced on Chez Pim on 15 January 2007.

An early, very generous, Christmas present from my brother arrived on Friday. A rapidly couriered, well padded little box containing a gold mine - a selection of walnut-sized, pungent-smelling black French truffles. Needless to say, I've never before had the opportunity to cook with truffles so this weekend, down at the cottage and far from the internet, was spent excitedly poring over my many cookbooks for recipes and ideas. Saturday night's dinner was an extravaganza of gently Scrambled Eggs with Truffles with a musky Truffle Risotto to follow, all accompanied by some decent sparkling wine (Jacob's Creek Chardonnay Pinot Noir), courtesy of the sister, and plenty of pauses for taste appreciation, much to the Boyfriend's amusement!

A few of the truffles have been frozen in olive oil at home in the hope that they retain some aroma for Christmas festivities and the rest are snuggled in bowls of eggs and rice in my Dublin fridge, imparting their unique flavour to these store cupboard basics. I'm just hoping that they don't fade too quickly and that I'm using them correctly! I'm cooking for a few people this week, including the Bibliofemme Bookclub Christmas Dinner, and, methinks, truffles might just be making an appearance during the meals...thanks Kieran!

If anyone's around Dublin for the weekend and at a loose end - although that might be unlikely given the time of the year! - the National Crafts and Design Fair is on at the RDS in Dublin this weekend. The Dublin-based Cousin and I went along last night and discovered plenty of ways of spending our money on arty, crafty bits for Christmas, plus a whole room devoted to a variety of food products, whether you're looking for regato style goat's cheese from Cloon Goat Farm or tubs of soft Springwell Sheep's Cheese, to stock up for Christmas on Filligans' chutneys, mustards and jams (make sure you check out the Irish Peach & Cardamon Chutney), mini caramel waffles from Wicklow Fine Foods and Boozeberries festive-coloured liqueur. At the Simply Swedish stand I was delighted to replace my all-but disappeared Cloudberry jam that Alexandra sent from Sweden for the last round of EBBP.

There are plenty of things to taste - chocolates, cheeses, cakes and cookies, delicious fresh-baked bread from Sowan's Organic Bread Mixes, delicate teas to smell. And, if you're anything like me, you'll come out with your wallet lighter and your arms heavy-laden with presents for other people - and yourself of course!

Last weekend's (unexpectedly extended) stay in England included a trip to the best farm shop I've ever visited, the HFG Farm Shop at Beeston, Norfolk. We were in Norwich visiting the Engineering Couple and my kinswoman, their beloved Irish terrier, Bridie, who, knowing my love of food, brought us there after a morning spent tramping and on the river in their Canadian canoe. Outside the shop were long stems of brussels sprouts and sparkly Christmas wreaths but the real treasure was inside. Tables were piled with home baking - hungry from our morning's activities, Paradise Slices, Flapjacks, Shortbread and Date Slices immediately caught our eye - while groaning shelves of jams, jellies, oils, vinegars and chocolate lined the walls. A freezer was stocked with a multi-coloured selection of loose frozen fruits and baskets of locally grown vegetables were stacked high at the end of the room. The food available was more than tempting and, although I did resist, I still managed to walk out of the shop heavily laden with the aforementioned baking, brown paper bags of spelt and wholewheat flour from Letheringsett Watermill, a warty celeriac, a selection of nobbly Jerusalem artichokes and, because I never can resist something gingery, a bottle of Great Uncle Cornelius' Finest Spiced Ginger Non-Alcoholic Apertif.

Add to this a selection of cookbooks purchased over the weekend - on a very brief trip into Books for Cooks I picked up Paula Wolfert's Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco, a very welcome copy of volume 7 of their own Books for Cooks cookbooks plus a bottle of owner Eric's own very decent biodynamic wine for our hosts - a pot of vanilla bean paste and bottle of pricy (but very necessary!) natural almond extract from Lakeland Limited and the Boyfriend's long-hunted for and LARGE rabbit trap and it's no wonder that we ended up having to check in a bag or, rather, the rabbit trap box, on the way back, something which caused great amusement at the luggage carousel in Dublin Airport. At least we managed to eat some of the weekend's purchases in situ, especially those from Sunday's farmers' market at the Forum - a rich chocolate pudding from the Old Fashioned Pudding Company (good with ice cream, albeit missing useful microwave instructions), juicy onion bhajis and other well spiced Indian snacks, tastings of moist Caribbean fruitcake, fudge, sausages and cheeses...it's surprising that we didn't roll off the airplane ourselves!