Pumpkin with beetroot? Alain Passard gets it right

Chioggia and Burpees Golden Beetroots

Having an allotment or kitchen garden means there is almost always a glut of some fruit or vegetable to  challenge the imagination.  In February-March we are pulling leeks and parsnips from the frozen ground.  Come April we're planting seeds for the coming season but also feasting on purple sprouting broccoli.  Early summer sees us tentatively probing the autumn-planted garlic for the, hopefully, fat swollen bulbs and starting to pick the soft fruits.  By mid-summer we are scurrying to the plot every other day to deal with an embarrassment of riches from the raspberry canes.

Late summer into autumn is all about scarlet, yellow and white stemmed Ruby chard, earthy, sweet beetroot, squash and pumpkin.  Although growing pumpkins and squash has been a dispiriting affair for most of us this year, beetroot hasn't suffered much from the strange weather conditions in the UK. Right now, I can use as many good recipes for beetroot as I can get - there are only so many beetroot salads we can take.

A present of Alain Passard's book, The Art of Cooking with Vegetables, arrived at just the right time.  Though approached with trepidation (well, this is a 3 Michelin starred chef we're talking about here), the recipes are proving to be very simple, interesting and delicious.

Pumpkin & Beetroot Bake

Being so over-burdened with beetroot, I went straight to the page 'A tale of pumpkin and beetroot'. It's a perfect recipe for this time of year so, although I was doubtful about the combination, I tried it out.  Even Passard had his reservations when he considered the pairing - "... it is an encounter I did not really believe could work ..."  The firm, juicy earthiness of the red beetroot goes with the soft, sweet pumpkin wonderfully well.  A sharp burst of lime and mint cuts through the rich butter and cheese elements of the dish.  Visually it's a stunner too.  The recipe below is slightly adapted from the original, but when the original is so good you really don't want to mess with it too much. Passard does not instruct you to peel the pumpkin.  If you use butternut squash, peeling isn't necessary (though personally I prefer to), but with a hard-skinned pumpkin you will need to peel it.

A Dish of Pumpkin & Beetroot
(Generously serves 4 as a starter, 2 as a main course)

300g (11oz)  peeled butternut squash, or favourite pumpkin, cut into large crescent shaped wedges.
Uncooked red beetroot weighing at least 700g (1lb 10oz)
100g (4oz) lightly salted butter, preferably clarified
Juice of 1 lime
A small handful of mint leaves
200g (7 oz) Emmental cheese cut into thin slices
Salt & pepper

Cook the beetroots in lightly salted simmering water, in a covered pan, for up to an hour depending on size.  Leave to cool in the cooking water for 30 minutes, then peel and cut it into large dice.

Set a large pan over low heat (if it's one that can take all the ingredients and go under the grill at the end, so much the better), melt the butter and add the pumpkin wedges.  Sweat the pumpkin gently, partially covered, for 40 minutes or until tender and lightly coloured, turning it occasionally.  Remove from the heat.

If you need to change to a pan which can go under the grill, now is the time.  Arrange the crescents of pumpkin so that they are lying as flat as possible and distribute the diced beetroot in between, making a fairly level layer.  Add the lime juice and mint leaves and top with the slices of Emmental.

Place the pan under a hot grill for several minutes until the cheese melts.  Season with salt and pepper.  Serve immediately.

Salad leaves and crusty bread turn this into a substantial main course dish.

The Art of Cooking with Vegetables by Alain Passard

The Art of  Cooking with Vegetables
Alain Passard

Some time in the 1990's I was lucky enough to eat at L'Arpege in Paris.  Dish after sublime dish passed from kitchen to table.  I remember every plateful being simple but wonderful with, mercifully, none of the primping and tweaking one might have expected.  But it was the end of the meal which I remember best.  Yes, Passard did make an appearance, in a self-effacing way but what has stayed with me was the way a basket containing a whole tray of exquisite baby madeleines, hot from the oven, was placed before us.  It was a nice touch which left us feeling like we had dined with friends rather than at a Michelin starred restaurant, albeit we had paid for the privilege.

In 2000 Alain Passard, shockingly, removed red meat from his restaurant menu.  A brave move from a man who had worked hard to gain no less than 3 Michelin stars.  I haven't eaten at L'Arpege since the change in focus, but it does still have those 3 stars.  All the vegetables used in the restaurant are grown on Passard's biodynamic farm south-west of Paris.  As I grow biodynamically myself, I probably appreciate his enthusiasm more than most. His passion to unite a love of cooking with that of art took him on a "quest for gastronomic and visual harmony" and The Art of Cooking with Vegetables, is published for the 25th anniversary of L'Arpege.

Vegetarians will love this book for its unusual and interesting pairings.  It's so different, with not a grain of quinoa in sight, that I can see it appealing to the most committed meat eater too.  It takes vegetables seriously and, in 48 seasonal recipes, places them centre stage.  Despite the title, there are a few recipes for fruit too.  Personally, I love the colourful collage representations alongside the recipes but if you prefer to see clearly what you're aiming for you may not share my enthusiasm.  Having been given this book as a present, I opened it a little nervously thinking my cooking couldn't possibly live up to the recipes within.  In fact the recipes are very simple and in the case of the two I've tried so far, you really can't go wrong.  Both were visually impressive and delivered on taste, just as promised, so I'm keen to work my way through the book season by season.   Alain Passard would like his readers to be "a cook and an artist" and with recipes like these, how can we fail.


Published by Frances Lincoln Limited 

Raspberry & Rose Sponge Cake

Slice of Raspberry & Rose
Sponge Cake

I have a thing about roses.  The heady scent of old roses in a garden on a warm summer evening is intoxicating but the sight of them decaying softly through autumn is sadness personified.  Far better to sacrifice a few summer blooms and capture their essence in a jam, jelly, syrup or water to hold on to summer.  Being so highly aromatic, a little goes a long way.

Diana Henry has a recipe for Rose petal jelly in her preserving book Salt Sugar Smoke which urges you to "find roses whose fragrance makes you swoon".  For a jam, I could refer you to Sir Kenelm Digby's (or Digbie) 17th century recipe for a 'Conserve of Red Roses'.  Son of Gunpowder Plotter, Sir Everard, was an 'English courtier, philosopher and diplomat' but this hardly does justice to describing his colourful career.  Amongst his wide-ranging interests was cookery and a book 'The Closet of the Eminently Learned Sir Kenelme Digbie Kt. Opened' was published by his family in 1669, after his death.  As with most recipes of this time, amounts are somewhat imprecise but I do love the instruction to boil until the petals "be very tender and look pale like linen".  I point you instead to this magical post on the beautiful blog of Emiko Davies where you'll find a much simpler recipe: Rose Petal Jam from a Venetian Monastery.

If you don't have a garden, or can't bear to pluck your roses, there are a few good products available to buy.  In London La Fromagerie stocks a fabulous Romanengo fu Stefano Rose Petal Jam.  If it's a Rose petal syrup you want, Fortnum and Mason keep a luscious version from Forage Fine Foods.  In the range there is a Sweet Rose Dukkah blend of rose petals, spices, nuts and vanilla which is wonderful too.

Raspberry & Rose
Sponge Cake

On a grey, rainy London day, November is trying to edge out October before it has drawn breath. A perfect day to bake a cake, but it's too early to resort to autumnal gingerbread or parkin.  I want to hold on to summer just a little longer.  A bottle of Forage Fine Foods Rose Petal Syrup glows alongside a couple of jars of loose-set Raspberry & Rose conserve, made with what may be the last of my allotment raspberries.  A simple sponge is called for to allow the rose perfume to shine through.

This sponge cake uses the Genoise method to obtain the lightness I want. There being no raising agent added, the mixture relies on incorporating air for lift.  I always thought it was necessary to beat the eggs and sugar over simmering water until I tried Sally Clarke's method.  She makes Genoise sponges every day for here brilliant shop in Kensington Church Street ringing the changes through the seasons.  So long as you use an electric whisk, and mix for 5-10 minutes, you can achieve the volume without the risk of curdling the eggs over water.  For the filling, raspberry or strawberry jam will work equally well, I think, but a thin layer is enough.  If your jam is not flavoured with rose, add a little extra syrup to the cream so that your jam doesn't over-power the rose.

Raspberry & rose sponge cake
(makes a 24cm cake - halve the quantities for 18cm)

25g melted butter, plus a little extra to butter the tin
100g soft, plain flour plus a little extra for the tin
4 eggs
100g caster sugar
About 2-3 tbsp raspberry & rose jam (or raspberry or strawberry jam)
300ml double cream
1 tbsp rose petal syrup
1 heaped tsp icing sugar
1 tsp Sweet Rose Dukkah (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C/160C Fan/Gas 4.  Brush the cake tin with a little melted butter, line the bottom with baking parchment, brush again with butter and dust the inside of the tin with flour. Beat the eggs with the sugar with an electric mixer for between 5-10 minutes until it's the thickness of shaving foam and the whisk leaves a distinct trail.  Sieve the flour and fold in gently.  Gently mix in the cooled melted butter.  Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and immediately bake it in the oven for 15-20 minutes until golden. Remove, cool for a few minutes, then turn onto a cooling rack and remove the baking parchment.

When the cake has cooled completely, slice horizontally with a serrated bread knife.  Spread the jam thinly on the cut sides of both halves of sponge.  Whip the cream to soft peaks and fold in the rose syrup.  Spread the cream on the bottom half of the sponge. Carefully place the top half, jam side down, on the bottom layer, pressing down gently.  Dust with the sifted icing sugar. Scatter with the Sweet Rose Dukkah (if using).



La Fromagerie
Fortnum & Mason
Forage Fine Foods

Donostia, London W1

Donostia
Cod cheeks Pil Pil

Cod cheeks don't get better than this.  These little morsels, as desirable as the 'oysters' on a chicken, can be ruined in the wrong hands.  At Donostia in London they certainly know how to bring out the best in this traditional Basque dish in Pil Pil sauce.  Here the gelatinous quality of the cheeks was extracted by cooking in oil and put to luscious use in the sauce infused with just the right amount of guindillas (very small, hot peppers).  The attention to detail is evident from this photograph but you'll have to trust me on the taste and texture.  Let's just say this is a dish to keep all to yourself.

Opened 3 months ago by Nemanja Borjanovic and Melody Adams, owners of Mountain Valley Wines, Donostia (Basque for San Sebastian) was inspired by buying trips to the nregion.  Ex-Barrafina chef, Tomasz Baranski is heading up the kitchen. Barrafina is one of my favourite places so expectations were high on the two visits I made to Donostia before writing this piece.  Sitting at the kitchen bar, the focus and attention to detail is evident but staff are more than happy to talk about the food and drink if you show interest.  This is how I discovered the Angulas stuffed peppers were not to be missed.  Eel leaves me cold but here tiny elvers, shipped across from a trusted Spanish supplier, are stuffed into small red peppers, given a featherlight coating of batter and briefly fried. The matchstick sized Angulas are surprisingly meaty and make for a deliciously satisfying small dish.

The menu is headed up Picoteo £2-3, Pintxo £3-4.50, Cold Plates of fish from £4.80 to hand-carved 3 year old Jamon Iberico at £18.00, and Tapas to encompass the rest with dishes between £3-19.  A Pintxo of Crab on little gem lettuce was a lovely fresh mouthful, served in the Basque way on a soft piece of bread rather than the crisp slice I would have preferred.  Croquetas are flavoursome and pillowy, putting to shame the gooey, floury mess I was presented with in another London tapas bar recently.  Courgette flower stuffed with goats cheese, lightly battered, deep fried and served with orange blossom honey was good.  Lightness is a feature at Donostia, even the Classic Tortilla managed to be airy and almost virtuous.  A serving of two cuts of plump Pluma Iberica on a perfect, crunchy Romesco sauce was juicy, tender and full of flavour, and served only just pink as Pluma ought to be.


Puddings are not an afterthought here.  A Lemon Tart tasted great but though the pastry was clearly very fine, time in a fridge had tragically softened it - the Food Standards Agency strikes again.   It was saved by being given the sugar and blow-torch treatment before serving, creating a wafer thin caramel layer to restore a little crunch.  Purple figs were warmed briefly on the plancha, split and stuffed with caramelised citrus peel and toasted hazelnuts. Served with a kind of liquid marmalade sauce and vanilla cream it was completely delicious.

Given the ownership, you would expect wines to be good and the ones I've tasted so far certainly are.  Rueda is always a lunchtime favourite with me and the Riojas work well.  The "wines of the week" include some real gems.  There are also a couple of Sidras at £1 and £2 for a Basque-country glass.  Both are fresh and lively and, as you'd expect, go really well with the food.

Basque, especially San Sebastian, cuisine relies on the very best basic ingredients, absolute freshness and pure flavours.  For variety of ingredients, this region, wedged between sea and mountains, benefits from a mild, rainy climate.  Partly why, as Paul Richardson points out in A Late Dinner, "... the cuisine of this land has a wider, richer repertoire than that of any other Spanish region (though Catalunya runs close)."  If we see this reflected in the kitchen at Donostia Londoners are in for a treat, and it has certainly started well.

The location could be a problem but I really hope not.  On a quiet street of small shops just north-west of Marble Arch, it's hardly a food hot-spot.  The small, 40 cover, space, is smart with white walls, marble and stainless steel softened by panels of warm, knotted wood.  It can seem a little chilly until the space fills up but with food this good and focused, welcoming staff, I don't think they're going to find it difficult to build up a loyal customer base.  Tomasz's Cod Cheeks Pil Pil dish and those figs alone are well worth crossing London for.

Donostia
10 Seymour Place
London W1H 7ND

Tea with Diana Henry

It's not every day you get an invitation to take tea with an author your admire. Well, not in my world anyway.  It was never going to be a cosy one-to-one but it would, I was assured, be a small party.  So it came about that one day last week, together with a handful of fellow bloggers, I was welcomed into the home of food writer Diana Henry to celebrate the launch of her new book Salt Sugar Smoke.


This gathering was the chance to chat in a wonderfully relaxed setting to the highly respected, writer of Crazy Water, Pickled Lemons.  I wondered whether the passionate, scholarly and humorous writer of half a dozen books, leading articles and Telegraph Stella magazine columnist, would live up to expectations.




Despite the fact most of us had never met, a shared interest in food made for easy conversation over Champagne and cordials.  Somehow Diana managed to talk to everyone whilst feeding us all royally on salmon gravlax, cured meat, breads, pickles, chutneys, jams and more.  All this done seemingly effortlessly of course because this spread was what Diana's new book Salt Sugar Smoke is all about.



Everything on the table was home made and, excepting the freshly baked bread, prepared ahead.  Preserving, in all its forms, is the subject of her latest book and here it was gloriously spread out for us.  Diana Henry has said of her love of cooking that it "gives private pleasure and provides pleasure for others" and that sentiment was very evident in the room.


Some of us were known to her, others she had never met, but all were given the warmest of welcomes and treated to the highest of teas.  OK, we were there to be impressed but was Diana Henry all that I had hoped?  She was exactly as she comes across in her writing.  Warm and nurturing and the best person you could want to guide you in the kitchen. As for that new book, you can read my review of Salt Sugar Smoke and decide for yourself if this is a book you want in your kitchen.  I can tell you it's very firmly in mine.

Here's another view of this event from the excellent blog My Custard Pie with a Diana Henry recipe for Purple pickled eggs

Salt Sugar Smoke by Diana Henry

Salt Sugar Smoke
by Diana Henry

I've dabbled a little in preserving food over the years but until I got my hands on an allotment it was a spasmodic activity.  If you have a kitchen garden or allotment you'll know it's sometimes necessary to either give produce away or deal with a glut.  Diana Henry's latest book Salt Sugar Smoke is just what I need, but you don't have to grow your own food to find this book invaluable. It's perfect too for anyone who has just a small amount of food to preserve. Diana teaches the "know-how" of preserving nature's abundance, however small an amount you may have.  No backyard smokery, professional brining vat or other expensive equipment is required.  A kindly guiding hand takes you gently through enticing recipes that really work.  This is the perfect book for anyone who wants to learn about all aspects of preserving.

Despite childhood memories of her mother's kitchen in Northern Ireland, surrounded by an extended family of home bakers and jam-makers, Diana Henry always felt preserving was for the "experts".  So whilst this book was inspired by childhood, it was informed by her reading choices, travels and a life lived in multi-cultural London.  Three years of constant learning and experimenting has gone into Salt Sugar Smoke.  The narrative style is warm and engaging, with fascinating nuggets of information on the origins of methods and recipes, and how the writer came by them.

Purple fig & pomegranate jam
prepared from Diana Henry's Salt Sugar Smoke

The opening chapter is on Jam and, given the British love of the preserve, is surprising short, though far from boring.  It starts with "the essentials" and "the process" covering how certain fruits behave, how to sterilise and how to get a 'set'.  Not that Diana, unlike many jam makers, gets hung up on 'set' jams.  She's an advocate of 'less is more' when it comes to sugar content.  Soft-set and "nearly" jams are celebrated and encouraged.  Flavour combinations are inventive, such as decadent Purple fig and pomegranate and Melon, lime and ginger, and aim to inspire.

Jellies, Curds & Fruit Cheeses include a smokey Quince and star anise jelly and a tart Passion fruit curd.  Next come chapters on  Sauces, Pastes, Mustards and Vinegars; Under Oil; and Smoking using a kitchen wok or stove-top smoker.  Recipes include Hot-smoked mackerel with Spanish flavours and Smoked maple and bourbon chicken.  An introduction to the "sinful pleasures" of Cordials, Alcohols, Fruits and Spoon Sweets is irresistible.  Diana wrties, "There is nothing here that is remotely necessary", though Plum and almond hooch and the Middle Eastern cordial Quince sharbat sound pretty necessary to me.  Salted, Cured and Potted is a good introduction to the different methods with recipes ranging from Streaky bacon to Sweet tea-brined chicken.  Chutneys, Relishes and Pickles is the longest chapter reflecting the British taste for sweet-sour.  I love the quote included from the American-Iranian poet Arash Saedinia who wrote of jars of vegetables "gossiping in vinegar".  Amongst many good recipes is Moldavian pepper relish and a must-try Indian pickle Pumpkin Achar.

There is brief essential information on the science of preserving, guidance on keeping times, including a reminder to use common sense "if it smells or looks off, it probably is ...".   There's also a useful suppliers list at the end of the book.

I tried a couple of recipes before writing this review and can't praise the Purple fig and pomegranate jam enough.  It's fragrance redolent of the Middle East, it tastes just as you imagine it will.  A couple of jars glow like rubies on my kitchen worktop as I write.  They won't sit there for long.  I also made the Carrot and coriander relish which will go well with cold meats, I think.  Both recipes worked like a dream, leaving me feeling much more confident, and with a huge sense of satisfaction.

The only danger with this latest of Diana Henry's books is that I'll be delving into the delicious prose when I should be preserving and, as Diana says,  "capturing and holding onto the season".



Book courtesy of Octopus Publishing Group

Autumn arrives with the Brogdale apples - Food Find

You know autumn is truly here when the Brogdale Farm fruit has arrived at Neal's Yard Dairy.  On Thursday the first crates arrived filled with Royal Russett, Laxton Superb and Oaken Pin.  Stacked outside the shops on Shorts Gardens in Covent Garden and Park Street, Bermondsey, for me they signal the arrival of autumn in the City.  The Oaken Pin is particularly fine at the moment.  Small, sweet and crisp.  No pears yet but maybe they'll arrive this Thursday(?).  Varieties change by the week so it's a great opportunity to try some of the hundreds of varieties of apples and pears which Brogdale, home of the UK's National Fruit Collection, does so much to preserve. 

Ndali Fairtrade Gift Swap - what you missed

If you read my posting on the Ndali Vanilla Fairtrade Gift Swap you'll know that I was so moved by a report on the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme featuring the Ugandan vanilla growers that I asked to attend a Fairtrade event.  The 'Ndali Fairtrade Gift Swap' was organised by food writer and broadcaster Vanessa Kimbell to raise the profile of these growers and get more people to consider buying Ndali vanilla.

A rainy Monday saw 40 of us gather to listen, talk and ask questions about Fairtrade and Ndali vanilla production. We also took along gifts of cakes, biscuits, preserves and sweets, all containing Ndali vanilla, to swap at the end of day. To add a fun element the categories were judged by experts including food writer and journalist Lucas Hollweg and chocolatier Chantal Coady. With some of the best blogger bakers and preserve makers in the room it was a tough task.  The photographs here show a selection of those gifts which caught my eye.



Fortnum and Mason hosted us kindly and elegantly. Kenwood provided handsome prizes for the winners but no-one went away empty handed. Eileen Maybin of the Fairtrade Foundation made sure we all had a few gifts to remind us there are other good Fairtrade products out there.



Apart from regularly buying Fairtrade Windward Isles bananas, mainly because they taste better than any other, I have to admit Fairtrade has not been high on my shopping criteria.  Taste has always come first for me and always will. Another Fair Trade product I routinely buy is Ndali vanilla, because it is better than any other vanilla.  So I've found two foodstuffs which are the best of their kind that happen to be Fairtrade. It's no coincidence that Fairtrade helps small growers/producers and these are often the ones who put the care into distinctive, quality products.   Quite likely there are more out there and I intend to look for them in future rather than picking up the packet of sugar or chocolate, or whatever, I usually pluck from the shelf.  If you are in any doubt, as I was, that Fairtrade makes a difference to the lives of farmers, read about the Ndali vanilla growers for yourself and pay a fair price.

Was the Ndali event a success? I, for one, enjoyed it and learned from it. Already, I have had 2 food businesses wanting to follow up the potential for using Ndali vanilla in their products.  I call that a success!

Here is the recipe for my entry, Pear Vanilla Jam.  I selected pears for seasonality as they are just being harvested now and because the colour would show off the vanilla seeds well.  Pears have only a medium natural pectin content.  Don't do what I did and think you can reduce the amount of pectin in this recipe.  I ended up with a rather looser set than I intended.  Not what you want when you're up against a jam-maker as good as Vivien Lloyd.  It still tastes good, I think, and can be partnered with cheese or spread on toast.

Pear Vanilla Jam

Pear Vanilla Jam

1kg thin-skinned pears, cored and chopped but unpeeled
500g Fairtrade granulated sugar
1 packet powdered pectin, or equivalent liquid (or you can buy FairTrade sugar with added pectin)
1 Ndali Fairtrade vanilla pod, split and de-seeded


Wash and sterilise jars.
Put chopped pears, sugar and vanilla seeds and pod in a heavy-based pan.
Cook over medium heat, stirring to ensure sugar doesn't burn, until it melts and the pear softens.
Remove *vanilla pod and mash pears lightly.
Add pectin (if not already in sugar)
Bring to a rolling boil and cook for 5 minutes to activate the pectin.
Fill the sterilised jars, wipe the rims and apply lids.

* Wash the vanilla pod in water, leave to dry thoroughly.  Add to a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar.


This event coincided rather neatly with the Fairtrade Big Fair Bake taking place this week and next.  Why not join in and bake for someone else, I did.

 Fairtrade Organisation

'Jerusalem' by Yotam Ottolenghi & Sami Tamimi

Shakshuka cooked from 'Jerusalem'

It was the bold flavours of Levantine cuisine that brought together Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi when they found themselves working together in London.  Living only 2km apart but never meeting, they separately left Jewish West and Palestinian East Jerusalem for London, via Tel Aviv, in the 1990's. With Italian and German parentage Ottolenghi was used to eating both European food and the Arab food familiar to Tamimi when both were growing up.  This mix of cuisines has informed the cooking at their four cafe/shops and new restaurant, NOPI, in London.  Their signature is bright, fresh, spicy flavours; sometimes surprising and sometimes challenging.

A nostalgia for the food of Jerusalem finally drew them back to research this handsome, heavyweight book.  The food of Jerusalem is informed by its mix of Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants and there are many debates over the origins of dishes in this book.  Not all the food of Jerusalem is a visual feast, so some of the recipes are loose interpretations of traditional dishes. With 'Jerusalem" they hope they have succeeded in "distilling the spirit of the place ....." by "... relying on our impulses for what feels right, looks beautiful and tastes delicious to us".

I have to say I ignored the fish dishes in this book.  I prefer my fish almost flapping and none of the recipes fit the bill for me, but the authors do own that "Jerusalem is not a city of fish".  Instead what caught my attention were dishes such as Mejadra (sweetly spiced rice and lentils with fried onions), a dish of Braised eggs with lamb, tahini & sumac, the Ashkenazi Hanukkah speciality Latkes and the syrup-laced pudding Mutabbaq.

Stuffed aubergine
with lamb & pine nuts cooked
from 'Jerusalem'

Stuffed aubergine with lamb and pine nuts was easy to prepare and soon popped in the oven.  After an hour and a half and a couple of bastings the aromas were sweet, smokey and intense. I really wanted to get it out of the oven and tuck in.  The dish needs, as the recipe points out, to cool  to allow full appreciation of the flavours of the spice combination.  Rice was good to mop up the juices and I used mango chutney for the suggested 'pickle', to balance the flavours.

Shakshuka is my kind of food.  Originally of Tunisian origin, it's a simple and comforting dish of red peppers, tomatoes and eggs spiced up with cumin and an intense chilli and garlic Pilpelchuma sauce (or harissa).  Served with a cooling spoonful of yoghurt and a good flatbread it made a great lunch and I can see myself following the suggestion to "play around with different ingredients" according to the time of year.

At first reading I felt daunted by the number of ingredients for many of the recipes in 'Jerusalem'.  However, I relaxed once I realised I had most of the spices in my store cupboard.  Dukkah, Baharat and Zhoug mixes were new to me and if you have difficulty buying them there is a useful condiment section at the back of the book for making your own.

'Jerusalem' has introduced me to a part of the world with a myriad of cultural food influences of which I had only a hazy notion.  There are many recipes in here - such as Saffron rice with barberries, pistachio and mixed herbs and Cardamom rice pudding with pistachios & rose water - which have caught my imagination and what more could you wish for in a cookery book?



Book courtesy of Ebury Press

Ndali Vanilla Fair Trade Gift Swap

Ndali Vanilla pods & Costa Rica cane sugar

Next Monday I'll be enjoying myself at a Gift Swap with a serious purpose. Along with cakes, biscuits, sweets and jams, we'll be exchanging baking tips and experiences of using that most heady of spices, vanilla.  It will be a social occasion but there's a serious point to our get-together.  We won't all know each other but we will all have something in common, beside an interest in cooking.  We've all been moved by the lives of the vanilla growers of Uganda and this is a chance to get involved and try to help raise their profile.

Three week's ago I listened to a Radio 4 Food & Drink Programme on vanilla.  Writer and broadcaster Vanessa Kimbell painted a vivid audio picture of her walk from field to production plant on a plantation in Western Uganda. The name of the estate, Ndali, was familiar to me.  In fact I had some of their Fair Trade vanilla pods in my store cupboard.  After listening to the programme I went on-line to learn a little more of the difficulties the small farmers on neighbouring estates faced in growing vanilla.

Lulu Sturdy inherited a former tea plantation and, after experimenting with other crops, settled on vanilla.    She now grows premium quality Fair Trade vanilla on her organic 1,000 acre mixed tropical farm, Ndali.  She also processes the individual vanilla crops of hundreds of small farmers who she has helped to gain Fair Trade deals.  Growing, pollinating (by hand), harvesting and processing are all highly labour intensive.  The cream of the crop is packaged under the Fair Trade 'Ndali' brand for retail.  There are still a lot of farmers in the area who do not have Fair Trade deals.  Personally, in the past I've wondered about how much difference Fair Trade makes to the lives of producers.  Learning about the situation of these growers has convinced me that these deals make a huge difference to the lives of the farmers and their families.  Many are subject to exploitation by unscrupulous traders.  Vanessa Kimbell tells some of their story, and the effect the visit to Uganda had on her, eloquently and passionately here 

If you heard the programme, or read Vanessa Kimbell's blog you couldn't fail to be moved by one farmer's dignified statement  "We don't want charity, we just want a fair price for what we have grown"  

Demand for vanilla far outstrips the supply of vanilla beans and most vanilla flavouring used in the UK is synthetic, the vast majority of it going into manufactured foods.  For home baking, thankfully, we can avoid this 'vanilla essence' and buy pure vanilla in pods, extract and powder form.  It's more expensive of course but then you don't get those notes of dates, honey and butterscotch in synthetic vanilla or lesser grades of natural vanilla.  Next time you shop for vanilla to flavour that custard tart or plum compote, spare a thought for the Ugandan vanilla growers and pay a fair price.

Our Gift Swap, organised by Vanessa Kimbell, is taking place at Fortnum & Mason who have been kind enough to host the gathering.  So what to bake?  Well there's a long list of foods which pair beautifully with vanilla - sweet and savoury - so there's no difficulty there.  I haven't yet decided what I will make.  I just want it to be something which does justice to the effort that has gone into producing Ndali Fair Trade vanilla.

Fair Trade Foundation


Vanilla for the Gift Swap courtesy of Ndali