ZESTY ORANGE AND POPPY SEED CAKE

This cake was Nick’s contribution to the December CCC meeting.  The theme for the meeting was festive cakes from the three counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire.  We were hard pressed to find any cakes at all that you could say were uniquely from the three counties, let alone festive ones. 

I did find a recipe for a “Kedleston marmalade cake”.  After a bit of further internet research Nick found an orange and poppy seed cake on the food network website and decided to make that instead.  You can see the recipe here.

It is essentially a gluten free whole orange cake.  Boiled oranges, blitzed to a pulp, ground almonds and poppy seeds go into the cake and sliced tangerines form the topping.

I think his choice of cake was influenced a bit by the video.  If a bloke is going to make a cake it’s good if it’s a bloke’s recipe!  Typically he followed the recipe to the letter and it turned out perfectly. It was a very moist cake, more like a dessert cake than an afternoon tea offering.  A lot of its moistness came from the orange syrup drizzled over it after baking.  If we were to make it again we would probably use about half of the quantity stated in the recipe.  But it was delicious, the flavour of the oranges and the almonds coming through with a little bit of crunch from the poppy seeds.

Of course he then had to connect it somehow to the three counties for the CCC event.  He called it the “Rufford House Welcome Cake” and told the story of visiting monks from foreign lands bringing exotic foods as gifts to Rufford Abbey and the host monks baking a cake to welcome them.

It was all nonsense of course, but it sounded good.  I wonder how many people believed it and how many thought “I bet he made that up”!  We didn’t let on, naturally !!

I am submitting this recipe to this month’s Alphabakes Challenge, organised by Ros of The more than occasional baker, and Caroline of Caroline Makes.  The letter this month is “Z” and you can see the details here.

I confess that when Nick announced that he was making a “zesty orange and poppy seed cake” for his CCC contribution my first thought was that it sounded lovely and the second was that I might just save it for a future post as it could come in very handy.  The letter Z was bound to turn up sooner or later ~ and now it has !!

Ingredients

For the cake

2 medium oranges

3 large eggs

250 soft brown sugar

290g ground almonds

1 rounded tsp baking powder

1 rounded tsp poppy seeds

For the syrup

juice of 1 medium orange

4 tangerines or satsumas

150g golden syrup

Method

First, make cook the oranges by boiling them in water for about thirty minutes until tender.  Drain and place in a bowl of cold water to stop them from cooking any further.  Cut into chunks, remove any pips and reduce to a pulp in a food processor.

Preheat the oven to 180°C / 160° fan / gas mk 4.  Grease and line (bottom and sides) a 23cm round springform cake tin.

In a food mixer (or by hand), beat the eggs and sugar for 4-5 minutes until pale and thick.  Fold in one third of the ground almonds, then add the rest along with the baking powder, orange pulp and poppy seeds.

Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin, level the top and bake for 45-50 minutes until the cake is golden brown and passes the skewer test.  Cool in the tin for 10 minutes then turn out onto a wire rack to cool completely.

While the cake is in the oven, make the topping.  Slice each tangerine into 8 or 9 slices, discard the ends and put them into a saucepan with the orange juice and golden syrup.  Boil for 12-15 minutes until the skins are tender and the syrup has reduced a little.  Transfer to a dish to cool completely.

When the cake is cool, prick with a skewer and drizzle the orange syrup over.  Decorate with the tangerine slices.

Cuts into 12-14 slices.

PORK AND LEEK LATTICE PIE

The leftover season  is coming up.  By which I mean that most of us spend the week after Christmas conjuring up interesting dishes that use up the leftovers.

A couple of weeks ago we had a family lunch and cooked a large joint of pork which resulted in plenty of leftover meat.  I find it difficult to immediately think of what to do with leftover pork.  I have a reasonable repertoire of dishes that make good use of leftover chicken, lamb or beef, but apart from a roast pork sandwich I was a rather stumped.  I Googled “leftover pork” and came across  this recipe for pork, leek and celeriac pie on the Sainsbury’s website.

Although the meat used in this recipe is pork I think it would work just as well with turkey or chicken.  You could even add a few pieces of leftover stuffing to the pie mixture.

Basically, you cook some root vegetables ~ I didn’t have any celeriac but used carrot, parsnip and swede ~ fry some onions and leeks, add flour and milk to make a sauce.  You add pieces of cooked pork, smother with the sauce and add a pastry lid.

The interesting bit for me was that I decided the time had come to once and for all get my act together and make a proper pastry lattice top.

By which I mean strips of pastry that weave under and over each other rather than just a layer going horizontally topped by a layer going vertically.

It was fiddly but worth it.  I started by sticking a strip all the way round the edge of the pie dish.  Then you add a few strips and start weaving.  There are several tutorials on YouTube that show you how to do it, including this one:

The pie was delicious.  Definitely tasty comfort food for this time of year and a good way to use up leftover pork and an assortment of vegetables.  And don’t panic if you can’t face making a proper woven lattice on the top ~ a plain pastry lid would be just as good.

Ingredients

3 carrots, 1 parsnip and a piece of swede, peeled and cut into 3cm cubes

1 onion, peeled and chopped

1 leek, washed and sliced

Flora Cuisine or olive oil for frying

shortcrust pastry made with 200g flour and 100g lard, Trex or similar

2 tblsp plain flour and 500ml milk to make a sauce

a handful of fresh parsley, chopped

250g (or however much you have) cubed leftover roast pork

Method

Preheat the oven to 200°C / 180°fan / gas mk 6.

Put the vegetables into a pan of boiling water and cook until soft.

Meanwhile, heat the Flora Cuisine or oil in a deep frying pan or sauté pan and cook the onion and leek until soft.  Sprinkle on the flour and cook for  minute or so.  Add the milk and stir until you have a thick sauce.  Season with salt and pepper.

Put the cooked vegetables into a pie dish and scatter over the pork.  Sprinkle over the parsley and pour the sauce over the top to coat the whole mixture.

Make the pastry and roll out as usual.  Cut into strips about 2-3 cm wide.  Lay one strip (or two depending on how long they are) in a single layer along the rim of the dish.  Press two or three more strips onto the rim and begin weaving.  (See video).  Continue weaving until the whole pie is covered.

Brush with beaten egg and bake for 25-30 minutes until the pastry is golden and the filling bubbling.

Serve hot with more vegetables.

Serves 4.

CROQUE MADAME MUFFINS

The first time I attempted to make these it was a total disaster.  I constructed the muffins then as I put them in the oven I caught the muffin tin on the oven shelf, the whole thing fell out of my hands and landed upside down on the oven door !!

You can read about it here if you want to see how the disaster turned out.

Yesterday we had a visitor at lunchtime chez nous and I decided to try making them again.  It was either grim determination not to be beaten by mere muffins, or misguided optimism.  As it happened, they turned out fine.  In fact they were yummy.

A croque madame is essentially a toasted ham and cheese sandwich with with some béchamel sauce and an egg in it – croque monsieur being the same thing but without the egg.  The idea for the muffins came from the totally charming series that was on TV last year featuring the cook Rachel Khoo.

 

To make six muffins you take six slices of thin white bread – the Mother’s Pride type of sliced bread that my dad used to have for his sandwiches every day of his working life.  Much to my amazement you can buy this stuff in French supermarkets and in fact you can even buy it with the crusts already cut off, which is perfect for the recipe as that’s exactly what you need.

First you make a fairly stiff béchamel sauce by melting 1 tablespoon of butter in a small pan, stirring in 1 tablespoon of flour and cooking for a minute until the mixture (roux) is smooth, then stirring in 200ml of milk.  Cook until it thickens and add a good pinch of grated nutmeg and a teaspoon of Dijon mustard.

Next you melt some butter in a small saucepan and then brush it over both sides of the bread, having first made the bread thinner by rolling it with a rolling pin.  Use each slice of bread to line a hole of a muffin tin.

Put a bit of ham in the bottom of the muffin and add the yolk of an egg with a little of the white.  (If you use a whole egg the muffin will be too full of egg and there will be no room for the sauce.)

Spoon about a tablespoon of the béchamel sauce on top and sprinkle some grated cheddar, gruyere or comté cheese on top of that.  Brush the edges of the bread with more melted butter if you have any left.

Bake for 15 mins at 180°C if you like your egg runny or 20 mins if you like it cooked.

One muffin per person makes a small snack – it is after all only one egg and one slice of bread.  Two muffins with a little salad makes a nice lunch.  Two muffins each with chips makes a really good treat !!