Granola with pears poached in Prosecco

If you've been munching through a mound of granola on a daily basis thinking you're being healthy, then stop reading now. The reason toasted crunchy granola is so much better than your standard muesil comes down to two words - butter & sugar. It's simple to make. It may not be uber good for you but its richness means you eat it more as a sprinkling over fruit and yoghurt, rather than on its own by the bowl-ful.

I served my home made granola with pears poached in Prosecco as one of the courses at our brunch supper club on the weekend. The poached pears recipe comes from my Mum and the result is lovely pears in a delicate, delicious syrup, which balances the rich granola. All that's needed to finish it off is a dollop of good Greek yoghurt (oh and a glass of Champagne).

Granola
This recipe is based on one from Bill Granger's "Feed Me Now" book - Bill is the King of brunch in Sydney, so if anyone knows about granola it must surely be him.

125g unsalted butter
60g soft brown sugar
3-4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
300g porridge or rolled oats
160g almonds (skin on) (Bill chops his roughly but I added whole almonds)
I also added raw cashews, pepita/pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds. You can add whatever you like, however because the mix is baked in the oven, dried fruits can burn so add those after cooking.

Preheat the oven to 160 degreed C/Gas 3.

In a large saucepan, melt the butter with the sguar and cinnamon. Once melted, take off the heat and toss the oats etc. through the butter so everything is coated. If you've gone a bit crazy with the oats & nuts (hmmm, not me!) then just melt some more butter/sugar/cinnamon and add. 

Spread the mixture over oven trays which have been lined & greased. Bake for about 30 minutes until browned, giving the mix a stir/shake after 15 minutes. 

Make sure to let the granola cool completely before storing in an airtight container/jar. It will keep for longer than you can resist it. 

(Note, in these photos I was making about 3 times the quantity of this recipe)

Pears poached in Prosecco
This is my mum, Sue's recipe.

6 pears (Sue says beurre bosc pears, I used conference pears from Hubbub)
750ml sparkling wine/champagne/prosecco (Sue says "or water" but who is she kidding? I used this lovely prosecco) 
300g castor sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla bean, split
2 bay leaves
8 peppercorns

In a large saucepan, bring the champagne to the boil, stirring. Add the cinnamon, vanilla, bay leaves and peppercorns.

While the liquid is coming to the boil, prepare the pears. Sue poaches the pears whole and skin on. The whole pears look fabulous sitting up in a bowl. As I was serving the pears as one of several courses, I peeled and halved mine. If whole, cut out most of the core from the base. If halved, leave the stalk on but cut out the core.

Place the pears (upright if whole) into the liquid and simmer gently, uncovered, for 20-30minutes. If your pears are halved, you only need 15minutes. You can test the pears with a skewer - you want them to hold their shape and not become mushy.

You can then leave the pears to cool in the syrup. They can be prepared a few days in advance.

To serve, place a pear in each bowl, sprinkle with granola, add a dollop of Greek yoghurt and drizzle the pear syrup generously.

Happy brunching!

Chelsea buns

The keen observers amongst you will have noticed that our kitchen has been something of a bakery recently - croissants, English muffins, a failed attempt at crumpets (which didn't grace the pages of this blog), and now, Chelsea buns. I tore the recipe out of the Observer Food Monthly magazine in January 2010 and now finally got around to making them. The recipe is by Darina Allen from her book "The Forgotten Skills of Cooking" and is pretty straight forward. Y was demanding lurid pink icing, but I didn't want to cheapen my beautiful creations!

The result - gorgeous, slightly doughy, rolls with a brown crust, juicy sultanas and moist stickiness from the sugar glaze. Simply delicious. My batch made about 20 buns and I was in grave danger of eating the lot, so Y and I devoured some for breakfast, gifted 6 to a friend, and froze the others for re-heating in the oven.

A few notes about the recipe (which is here): I substituted dried active yeast and used about 20-30 grams. I omitted the peel and upped the sultana quantity but that's purely personal preference. The one part that is tricky is being sure to roll the dough up with its sultana filling, nice and tight. I think next time, once I've rolled out the dough and sprinkled generously with the sultana mixture, I'll then slice the dough into strips and roll up each individually. The sugar glaze instructions made a massive amount, so you really only need 1/3-1/2 of the quantity. I would also recommend cooking them for longer than the recommended 15minutes - 20/25minutes should be fine.

Incidentally, on the same weekend, the lovely Jo of Afternoon Tease was also making Chelsea buns, and it's with more than a hint of jealousy that I admit hers look better than mine! She's used a different recipe, so if you decide to give them a go, maybe check out both recipes first. 

Look what I can make! (croissants & lime marmalade)

“If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?” Likewise, if I cook something impressive and I don't photograph it and put it on my blog, did it really happen? Basically, I'm just looking for an excuse to show off a few things I've made recently.

Croissants have been high on my list of "things-I-should-be-able-to-make-but-haven't-yet" for some time. I wanted to use the recipe from Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" but the instructions do go on and on. Instead, I found this brilliant blog post which makes croissants according to Julia's book and provides really great photos of the whole process. I followed the instructions to the letter and I'm pretty proud of the results! My croissants are slightly tanned, but, when they get eaten as fast as these did, who notices what they look like? I'll definitely be making them again. (Even if you're not tempted to take up the challenge, check out the superb instructional blog post). (Note, the flour to use is strong white flour)  

In the first week of January the newspapers in London reported that sales of marmalade were at a low whilst sales in peanut butter and chocolate spread soared. A week later, the reports were that sales of pectin and oranges were up, as were internet searches of recipes for making marmalade. One reason for the increase may have been the recipe section of the Telegraph in early January, which ran this lime marmalade recipe. I have been wanting to make jam or marmalade for a while. Whilst I've never really liked traditional orange marmalades, I don't mind lime varieties. So lime marmalade it was. The Telegraph recipe by Nick Selby (the marmalade maker for Melrose and Morgan) is excellent and easy to follow for first time preserve makers like me. The marmalade is delicious with lashings of butter on, say, a home made croissant ...  

So now you've seen my pastry and marmalade making, it all officially exists. Phew.

Wattle seed, chocolate & macadamia cake

I recently made lemon myrtle crispy squid using one of several Australian spices my mum sent me from Herbie's Spices in Sydney. Another of the spices was wattle seed, which has a lovely coffee-like taste and smell.

I used the wattle seed to make this lovely cake. It has a gooey, slightly chewy meringue top, with a moist filling of dates, chocolate and macadamia nuts, and the deep flavour of the wattle seed. A rather grown up cake I would say.

You can get wattle seed sent to you from Herbie's in Sydney, however, for this recipe you could substitute a small shot of espresso or finely ground good coffee.

The recipe is ever so slightly adapted from Rayleen's wattle seed, date and macadamia nut, made by Australian food guru, Maggie Beer, on her Aussie tv show.

Ingredients



Cake


1 1/2 cups of castor sugar
8 egg whites
1/2 cup plain flour, sifted
120g dark chocolate, grated or finely chopped but leaving some larger chunks of chocolate
1 cup macadamia nuts, finely chopped but leaving some medium/larger chunks of nuts
1 cup dates, chopped
2 teaspoons wattleseed, ground

Wattleseed cream


250-300ml creme fraiche
2 tablespoons icing sugar
1 teaspoon ground wattleseed

Method



Cake


Grease round baking pan (26cm round tin) and line base with baking paper.

Beat egg whites with an electric beater/mix master until soft peaks form.


Gradually add sugar, beating well until sugar is dissolved and whites are firm.

Fold in the macadamia nuts, dates, flour, wattle seed and chocolate.

Spread mixture evenly in tin.

Cook at 160C, the original recipe says to cook for about 25 minutes until firm, however I cooked my cake for about 35-40 minutes and it never felt firm. The meringue forms a crust on top, but the inside of the cake will still be nice and moist.

Cool for a couple of hours and serve with lashings of wattle seed cream.


Cream


Mix the cream and sugar together and add the wattle seed. Let it sit for a while for the flavours to permeate. 

Make sure you enjoy a slice of this cake with a generous dollop of the creme fraiche. It's a great cake to have with tea (just ask my work colleagues), but I think it would be even better as a dessert with a lovely fortified wine.

A day spent discovering Clerkenwell

We have spent several lovely Sundays strolling around the general area of Clerkenwell/Smithfield, just south of Angel and about a 30 minute walk west of where we live in Hoxton. There are some great eating places in the area and on one stroll we found out about a couple of walking tours operating in the area. The walks and museum we went on/to seem largely undiscovered so I thought I might put together a little itinerary in the hope of encouraging others to explore the area.

My recommended Sunday in Clerkenwell

Start with a quick brunch. My suggestion would be The Modern Pantry which opens at 10am on a Sunday. Get there at opening time and you should be able to get a table fairly easily, although if you go after 11am you should book. We enjoyed a brunch of porridge with cream and muscovado sugar, and soft boiled eggs with Vegemite soldiers. The neighbouring table ate divine looking blueberry pancakes and later confirmed they were delicious. The coffee is roasted by Caravan, which is my second brunch recommendation.

Caravan is on Exmouth Market and I love their "crumpets with too much butter" and avocado on sourdough with chilli flakes. It's hard to get a table at Caravan most of the time, but if you're there on the dot of 10am you'll be ok. Second choice for a quick brunch on Exmouth Market is Gail's Artisan Bakery, which, if you can avoid the children and their prams, is rather lovely and we've had good granola, English muffins, and pancakes with baked pears (to name a few dishes) there.

There's no time for a leisurely brunch spent reading the papers as you'll need to be at Barbican tube station by 11am to meet your lovely tour guide from the Clerkenwell and Islington Guides Association. Barbican station is a quick 10 minute walk from the Modern Pantry and about 18 minutes from Exmouth Market (Caravan opens at 10am on a Sunday whereas Gail's Artisan Bakery opens at 8am, so you may want to go to Gail's if you're trying to make the 11am walk). If you've only got time for a coffee, perhaps duck into Look Mum No Hands for a cup of Square Mile coffee.

Our guide for the walk was Peter and for £6 each he guided 11 of us through the Smithfield area on the Murders, Monastries and Martyrs tour. The tour was very well run and moved at a suitable pace. Peter was extremely knowledgeable and entertaining.

The Clerkenwell and Islington Guides Association also run a walk called Radicals, Religion and Rivers through Clerkenwell (2pm on Saturdays and 11am Wednesdays from Farringdon Station) and The Angel's Delights (from Angel Station at 2pm on Sundays).

We'll definitely be going on more walks in the area and sending our visitors from Australia along. (By the way, there's also a tour of Smithfield meat market run by the City of London at 7am on the third Thursday of each month. We went last week and it was excellent. The tour costs £8 and you need to book. It's really fascinating and you can grab a coffee at Dose Espresso afterwards)

The Clerkenwell walk finished on Ely Road, which is so close to Bea's of Bloomsbury (below - 15 minute walk) it would be rude not to drop by - we had cake and meringues (they offer an excellent high tea for a measly £12 which {in the interests of research you understand} we've tried too).

The walk finished at 12.45pm so if you missed the brunch option perhaps head to The Modern Pantry, The Zetter or Exmouth Market (I recommend Caravan, Gail's Artisan Bakery and Moro, but Morito and Medcalf also look great) for lunch - you'd want to have booked for lunch where you can. You're also near St John Bar and Restaurant Smithfield here which may be a good lunch option, but when we walked past a couple celebrating their wedding anniversary were just leaving and told us they had been disappointed in the roast pork main course (I'd wait and go to St John Bread and Wine at Spitalfields instead).

From Bea's of Bloomsbury we headed up Gray's Inn Road to the London Canal Museum on New Wharf Road. As we live on Regent's Canal and love spending time walking along it, the museum was of particular interest to us, but now that we've visited I think it would appeal to anyone. The museum is in an old ice house which used to store ice brought along the canal from Norway and then distributed in huge blocks all over London, before the days of refrigeration. There's an even a small exhibit on the creation and sale of ice cream in London. We downloaded the podcast to our iphones from the website before we visited and this provided excellent commentary as we walked around the museum.

From here we strolled along the canal home, feeling full of local knowledge and food. A really great day that both locals and visitors would be crazy not to enjoy!

P.S. do check out readers' comments for some more eating/drinking suggestions in the area.