Corn, raspberry, and mascarpone ice cream

2 Comments

spoon of raspberry corn ice cream

I’m no statistician but I’m confident that there are likely more people throughout the world whose cultures celebrate corn in dessert form than there are those who think it’s weird. Nevertheless, you might need warming up here, ironic, when it comes in the form of something frozen — corn, raspberry, and mascarpone ice cream. This inspiration came to me via another, entirely savoury recipe that I’ll also post about down the line at a discreet remove; but it’s implicitly influenced by all those corn-based desserts and puddings consumed worldwide; if not by the same logic that presumably drove those recipes into existence: corn is sweet! Where else are you going to put it?

Continue reading →

Fennel seed cake

1 Comment

P1210941

There’s a certain power to the foods you read about in books when you’re at that preciocious-yet-still-given-to-phonetics stage, and have little life experience with which to contextualise the words like an obliging Viewmaster. There’s also a certain discombobulating power to reminiscing about something incorrectly – in this case, my blurred memory of reading about characters eating seed cake, striking a flare of curiousity within my young self that I had yet to act upon until now. Enid Blyton, of whom I was a hungry child acolyte, always had her characters foraging food and eating it in verboten or impermanent settings. Initially when writing this blog post I confidently attributed my knowledge of seed cake to her Magic Faraway Tree series; upon double checking it seems I was wrong, but I must have read about seed cake somewhere because I sure didn’t invent it and needed that first hint to plant the, well, seeds that would eventually bloom into this Fennel Seed Cake recipe. I still live in hope of knowing the jumbles and plumcake from What Katy Did at School – at least I know for sure they were actually mentioned in the book.

Continue reading →

Pork meatballs, fennel, apple, mustard, creme fraiche

2 Comments

P1210894

The irony of the “Florals for spring? Groundbreaking.” quote from The Devil Wears Prada is that invoking it has also become something of a cliche; but like most cliches, it is a useful shorthand. I rewatched this film back in January when I had Covid, assuming it would be exactly the sort of undemanding fare that my diminished self could handle, and weirdly, though I do not dream of labour I also have come to realise I hate movies where the main character gives up an incredible job opportunity for love — make of that what you will. Meryl Streep’s icily supercilious performance is of course easily the high point, but I could hear her imperious murmur encircling my brain as I planned out this recipe. Pork meatballs with fennel, apple, mustard and creme fraiche — for late autumn? Groundbreaking. What next, maple syrup? Cinnamon? But, remember what I said about cliches being useful? Well, they can also be delicious.

Continue reading →

Quadruple Crunch Bars

2 Comments

P1210834

Come the hour, come the time where one is compelled to shun righteous and elegant cookies and instead embrace slatternish recipes that involve several fully formed foods in their ingredients list. This happens roughly once every ten days, truth be told, and in this case, I acted upon this tawdry urge. Kind of: halfway through unwrapping individual Werthers Originals and slicing their squat, crystallised bodies into golden shards, I lost all energy to complete the cookie-rolling and waiting part of the transaction and certainly didn’t want to wish it upon anyone else; as such, what began as cookies became these Quadruple Crunch Bars instead; you still have to slice up lollies but it’s oddly satisfying, for what it’s worth.

Continue reading →

Caramelised Onion Butter Bean Soup with Chilli Butter Pumpkin Seeds

1 Comment

P1210718

It’s not on purpose — though I am something of a neurotically focus-pulling autonarrating main character myself — but there’s no way to say this without sounding like I’m trying to do a Carrie Bradshaw voice-over, so you’ll have to both go with it and trust me that it was simply a coincidentally-cadenced train of thought and not me doing a bit; and I’m also going to put a full stop here before I articulate that thought so we don’t all pass out from lack of opportunity to pause for a breath. So — with another deep breath — if the truism holds that soups and stews taste better the next day, and if it’s also true that I made this Caramelised Onion and Butter Bean Soup and it tasted better the next day, and even more glorious the next day, and positively rapturous the day after that— I couldn’t help but wonder, am I ever meant to eat this soup?

Continue reading →

Zibdiyit Gambari (Prawns in Spiced Tomato Sauce)

5 Comments

P1210812

When I say I saw the moon last month, I mean for real: through a mighty telescope, staring right at her, frankly exposed and yet somehow voyeuristic — like seeing a painted Edward Hopper character, but also through a telescope — and undeniably powerful, not least because it happened on my birthday, not least because it had rained all evening and in the final minutes before calling it for the night, the sky suddenly shrugged and cleared for us. On the other hand, I completely missed the Aurora Borealis this week, experiencing it only as a vicarious facsimile of a facsimile through other people’s photos; to which I say: it’s the same sky! Give it to me! Food blogging in winter evokes those same emotions when I’m in a breakneck race against the clock to photograph my food in the twelve usable minutes — at best! — of Good Light. I can see the blue sky! It’s light and airy in my apartment! Give me the light! Why does my food look so muddy and dull?!

Fortunately, I caught this Zibdiyit Gambari at the golden hour of 4.38pm-4.52pm, and so you get to see it and hear about it. And not that I deal in hypotheticals, because they’re not real options and therefore there’s no point considering, but if a small goblin appeared and offered me either the chance to see Aurora Borealis or the ability to always catch the perfect light for my food blogging I can’t tell you, hand on heart, that I’d definitely go for the captivating visual miracle of science. Or at least, not the one you’re thinking of.

Continue reading →

Kimchi Tagliata

1 Comment

P1210772

Though I celebrate culinary simplicity in theory — a crystalline yet oleaginous broth, a salted ripe tomato wreathed in basil, a steamed new-season potato — I am, in practice and in soul, a meddler who often mistakes more for superior. You know, “this recipe or menu item must be the best (and best value for money) because it has the most components”. And, in all honesty, I only desire a plain steamed potato, no matter how lovingly and organically grown, about zero point seven five times a year. Getting a firm grip on my maximalist tendencies doesn’t mean sacrificing flamboyance: see my café brûlot ice cream, which I accepted was significantly better with less condensed milk while still retaining both richness of flavour and component frequency. And so, this kimchi tagliata — a supremely simple recipe — has only been meddled with marginally, walking back my initial excess aspirations to great effect.

Continue reading →

No-bake Chocolate Ganache Tart

1 Comment

P1210673

A base of butter-coated crumbs clinging to each other, a simple ganache filling, a little stove-top action, but the dial of the main oven remains untwisted; that, to me, is perfection. In this content-saturated world that semiotically re-introduces its creators in an endless loop (I never know if I’ve used the word semiotic correctly but I figure if I keep using it, I’ll have to be correct eventually), I grow weary of the need for faux-deep wraparound justifications for each recipe, all of which eventually sound the same — you know, here’s the thing: it’s time we talk about tubers; here’s part one in my series called, it just me or is no one celebrating the cephalopod; call me crazy but I’ve had it up to here with [x ingredient that they have previously shared nineteen recipes of] and it’s time to admit that [y ingredient which has one molecule’s difference from x ingredient] is superior. But without wanting to accept self-awareness as a means to an end; I’ve got to hand it to the dull-to-me food creators in this one regard: when I consider this no-bake chocolate ganache tart, I genuinely do feel like saying bland platitudes about how it’s superior to all other chocolate goods, indicating that I’m the first person to ever feel this way. Ever taste a chocolate tart so good it makes you boring?

I’d shudder, if it weren’t so distractingly delicious.

Continue reading →

Pappardelle with Fennel and Bean Escabeche

1 Comment

P1210634

Sometimes I’m not sure who my recipes are for, other than myself. It’s not that they’re so very different, as you can find ice cream and pasta anywhere without vigorous effort. It’s more that they’re neither technically whizz-bang nor weekdayishly practical, on top of which they aren’t arriving with any reliable consistency and when they do, there’s caveats. Caveats like: this Pappardelle with Fennel and Bean Escabeche is too fancy to be truly humble, but too humble to be truly fancy; small children probably won’t like it; it’s as pale as a pile of crumpled cashmere mock-neck sweaters; and it contains four tablespoons of vinegar.

Continue reading →

Lemon Feta Pistachio Cookies

4 Comments

P1210584

For quite some time — coinciding with me nervously and vaguely muttering “freelancer” whenever anyone asked what I did for a job — I had a Patreon account where I shared recipes and interminable snippets of poetry and manuscripts to a supportive group of subscribers. I’ve since closed it down, now that I have a real live job, but one of these for-your-eyes-only recipes was a lemon curd made with preserved lemons that I was inordinately fond of. I had of late imagined a salted lemon ripple ice cream flowing with that very curd, but couldn’t find any preserved lemons within a walkable radius. No mere velleity, the thought of lemon and salt together lingered, and, nudged along by the flavours of the Palestinian dessert knafeh, the idea morphed deliciously into these Lemon, Feta, and Pistachio cookies.

Continue reading →