Hot Sticky Toffee Pudding

This is a Peter Gordon recipe from his Sugar Club Cookbook, which made its debut way back in 1997 with his inspirational Pacific rim cuisine. I have been making some of his dishes for years, and regularly, like Molly's lemon roast chicken, a combination of chicken drumsticks with lemon and kumera (we make it with our sweet potato, not quite the same but still a great combo with the chicken), and the very versatile spicy red lentil soup with chicken dumplings, but our all time favorite is the scallops with sweet chili sauce, a thrilling treat for the taste buds, it's one of Peter Gordon's signature dishes and is served at Public in New York, in fact there are many tasty delights dished up by the very talented chef Brad Farmerie, it's the only place in New York City to get Hokey Pokey ice cream!


This was my first foray into the world of sticky toffee pudding, hard to imagine really, as I come from a land of hot steamy wintry puds like spotted dick and bread and butter pudding, and of course toffee, cavities anyone? It was a fun pudding to make, adding the fruit mixture to the batter produced a wonderful, unctuous lava-like mixture. I only fiddled with the recipe a little bit; I added dried figs; black mission figs, they are very moist and gave the pudding a delicious texture. I say hot because it tastes so much better when warm, especially with a caramel sauce on top or ice cream....hokey pokey!


It must have been an aberration as I had an overwhelming desire to pour a hot chocolate sauce over my pudding.....I rarely eat anything chocolate, my friend Kevin on the other hand can't get enough of the stuff.


Hot Sticky Toffee Pudding


For Six
3/4 cup demerara sugar
1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon unsalted butter at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/3 cups water
7 ounces pitted whole dried dates
about 6 dried black mission figs
3 tablespoons dried currants
3 tablespoons golden raisins
1 cup walnut pieces
1 tablespoon baking soda


Preheat oven to 350f and lightly oil a deep 10 inch cake pan, this is how I made it but you could also do as PG does and use six ramekins. Cream the sugar and butter, then add the vanilla and egg and beat again for a minute. Sift the flour and baking powder, mix in and set the batter aside in a warm place. 


Put the water, fruit and nuts in a pan and bring to a boil, then remove from heat and stir in the baking soda (don't worry about frothing). Stir into the batter and mix well (think Etna or Ruapehu!) Spoon into the cake pan or ramekins until three-quarters full, place on a baking sheet and put in oven. Test after 25 minutes by inserting skewer; it should come out clean, although if a little fruit sticks that's fine. Once cooked, let the pudding sit in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out.

Stargazy Pie

This past weekend friends came out to celebrate my birthday, we are generally pretty enthusiastic party givers for birthdays etc., but this year I wanted a quiet affair. Winter birthdays are good for ice skating, walks in the woods, fires and fish pie. My father would make a Stargazy pie for special occasions, it's one of those dishes that has become legend in the food/memory part of my brain, so when the NZ'er asked 'what shall we cook for your birthday?' my response was 'dad's pie and sticky toffee pudding'. I did go for a walk in the woods and I played Scrabble by the fire with two very competitive Geminians and one Lovely lady. The ponds aren't frozen enough, yet.

My father loved to entertain, the kitchen was always a hive of activity, on the weekends there was a constant stream of villagers. The house was a cozy two up two down, the dining room had an assortment of watercolors, paintings and driftwood sculptures by local artists on the walls, along with my art school creations hanging next to some rather more well known artists. The fishing trophies were in one corner and the gigantic money tree plant in the other. My dad and my step mum cooked up a storm for their friends; the professor, the postman, the hairdresser, the fisherman, the builder of bridges and the artists, they could all be found sitting at my dad's table.

He was a larger-than-life character but he will always be remembered for the contributions he made to the community he loved, one of his famous phrases was 'there's room for everyone in this village' it's become my motto too, and I like to share it with the folks I meet on my travels!

I share his love of food, hands in the dirt, growing vegetables, cooking for friends and fishing (not too much deep sea tho'). He was a far better cook than me, didn't take short cuts, but his Stargazy pie wasn't the real Stargazy pie, that has pilchard heads peering out of pastry, he made a traditional fish pie and placed jumbo prawn tails around the outside edges of the dish, it was pretty and it was a dish with a fanfare.

You will see from the photo that we went with a more whimsical design......when my back was turned the NZ'er took it upon himself to make a departure from the tails around the edge decoration, and went with a random pattern, it seemed too controlling to remove the crustaceans from their potato burrows and reposition them, even for a birthday girl.

He was an Aquarian too, so it was fitting to make my father's signature fish dish on my birthday, a dish that originated in Cornwall, and that's where I was conceived!

Stargazy Pie

1 small onion peeled and thinly sliced
8 black peppercorns
2 bay leaves
2 parsley sprigs
12 oz cod fillet
8 oz smoked haddock (finnan haddie) see note.
3/4 pint milk
12 oz tail end of salmon
2 slices lemon
2 1/2 lb potatoes, peeled and quartered
3 oz butter
1 oz flour
freshly grated nutmeg
salt and freshly ground pepper
2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
2 tablespoons lemon juice
7 oz cooked shrimp
6-8 tablespoons milk
large shrimp tails, about 18 (save the heads for stock)
1 egg beaten


Put half the onion slices, four peppercorns, one bay leaf and one parsley sprig into a large frying pan, and add the same into a saucepan. Add the cod and the haddock to the the frying pan and pour in the milk. Put the salmon into the saucepan and barely cover with water, add the lemon slices. Bring both pans to the boil, remove from heat cover and leave to stand for 10 minutes. 


Cook potatoes in boiling water for 20-25 minutes, drain and mash well, beat in 2 oz butter and enough milk to make a smooth creamy mixture, but you still want to keep it fairly firm, season with salt and pepper. 


Strain the milk from the cod and haddock into a jug, there should be about 3/4 pint. Remove salmon from saucepan and discard cooking water, and also remove the flavorings from both pans. Break all of the fish into large flakes discarding the skin and any bones, set aside. 


Melt 1 oz of butter in a large pan stir in the flour and cook over a low heat for about a minute, gradually stir in the strained milk, stirring continuously, bring to the boil then reduce the heat and simmer for about 2 minutes, remove from heat and season with black pepper, stir in the lemon juice, parsley and grated nutmeg and gently mix in the flaked fish and the prawns, pour into a large shallow ovenproof dish. Spoon the potato mixture evenly over the filling, place the large shrimp tails around the side of the dish.....the tails should bend outwards. Brush the potatoes with the egg and cook in oven for a bout 35 minutes or until golden brown and heated through.


*A note about smoked haddock, (finnan haddie) it's very hard to find out here or even in New York, I found Stonington Seafood via Chowhound, they have a great selection of smoked products, I will definitely be going back for kippers.

It May Be Winter Outside

But I have cumquats inside. I still don't have enough for marmalade, in October I had eight diminutive ripe orange balls, it's now January and I still have just the eight, I have many miniscule green balls but they are taking so long to ripen, marmalade's on hold. I'm not really a fan of 'indoor' plants, they always seem to require too much attention and get mold and mealy bugs etc, this has been my experience anyway.....the needy 'indoor' plant, maybe it's the memory of spider plants hanging in baskets, and the maudlin mother-in-laws tongue in hallways, and let's not forget the dreaded Ficus sitting glumly in a foyer.

I prefer to have my plants outside in the garden doing what comes naturally, and if they don't make it through a Montauk winter, well too bad, they probably shouldn't have been there in the first place. But such is the nature of a gardener (this one, at least) to desire plants that don't really belong. Euphorbia characias 'Wulfenii' grows abundantly in my riverside hometown in England, it is bold and majestic, big clumps of blue-green foliage and chartreuse blooms that look like hundreds of tiny trumpets. It has never made it through the winter here, I have given up planting it and try to be content with its more subdued relatives.


Then there's the lavender and the rosemary which always struggle, one year a sad sprig did survive on a rosemary plant that had been frozen and battered by frigid Montauk winds, it made it through to summer but we didn't dare take anything off the poor wretched plant. Last fall I dug up the two plants I had in the herb garden and potted them, they now have a comfy spot in the kitchen window, but are starting to look leggy. 


My friend Ms J in Wellington has a rosemary bush that is as brazenly tall as her house, when we are there we hack off large limbs to stuff the lamb, I have serious herb envy when I am in NZ, no, make that herb, fruit tree and vegetable envy, my friend Ms W has a lemon tree an orange tree and a fig tree. A fig tree in the garden would be my idea of paradise. 


There are other plants that need to be brought in from the cold; A Tasmanian tree fern which takes up residence in our bedroom for the winter, sometimes we forget that the giant hairy Dicksonia antartica is in the room with us.........there have been some interesting journeys made in the middle of the night. There's the two Feijoa trees, and the Rose Geranium and the Lemongrass. We seem to have accumulated quite a collection of needy potted friends.


I embrace our winters and I adore winter gardens, especially with a glittery blanket of snow, and luckily every winter we get heaps of it. There's a section of our garden that would be perfect with some large red-berried trees, and plush velvety evergreens, (yews grow well here but they are like fast food for deer) and dramatic winter barks. I have started planning for the spring, it's going to be a 'native' winter garden, everything will be at home out there braving the elements, only the robust and the hardy.


But those little orange cumquats on a cold January day, do bring a smile to a wind-chapped face.

Spongy Gingerbread

My gingerbread is spongy and pudding like, and spicy, maybe too spicy for someone with a sweet tooth, but you can do what the NZ'er does and put multiple dollops of ice-cream, or cardamom cream on top. We like to serve it with poached fruit too. I have mentioned on many occasions my preference for savory foods, here is another example where I have made a dessert, well, savory. 

It's fun to make and exciting for the olfactory system as well as the gustatory, and mixing the wet ingredients with the dry is a very delicious stirring experience, hubble, bubble, toil and trouble...............


Dry ingredients
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon expresso coffee
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon cayenne
1/2 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
a pinch of ground cloves
a pinch of five spice powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons crystallized ginger, minced


Wet ingredients
1 cup molasses
1/2 cup applesauce
8 ounces plain nonfat yogurt
1/3 cup of olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
2 teaspoons grated ginger


Preheat oven to 325f, line the bottom of a 2 inch deep x 9 inch square baking pan (you can also make it in a regular loaf pan) with parchment paper and spray it with non stick cooking spray, and lightly flour it.


Combine all of the dry ingredients in a bowl.


Whisk together the wet ingredients until smooth, add this mixture to the dry ingredients and stir until blended.


Pour the batter in to the prepared pan and bake for 60 to 70 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool.

Brunch Two Oh One Oh

A relaxed Sunday brunch was a great way to kick off the New Year and to catch up with the friends that we didn't get to see over the hols. After reading the latest issue of Cuisine magazine I was as always inspired and made the Christmas caponata with red peppers, zucchini and caper berries to accompany my ham, each year I make this ham with some tweeks to the recipe, this time I used cardamom and mustard. Our antipodean guests made an outstanding bacon and egg pie, it arrived still warm from their oven and we devoured it along with clams (local) casino, I used a recipe from the Long Island Seafood Cook Book a little gem of a book.


When a new Cuisine arrives in the mail I rip off the plastic cover and do a quick flipping, the serious reading is reserved for a Saturday or Sunday morning in bed with tea. As a child I experienced the same excitement eagerly waiting for my Jackie and Beano to come flying through the letter box on a Saturday morning and plopping on to the cold, hard 70's black and white vinyl flooring. I have some very old dog-eared Cuisine magazines and I still use them, there's a large pile in the kitchen and I have a simple system, at the start of our fall/winter I put all of the spring/summer issues to the top of the pile so I am seasonally in sync, and then come our spring/summer......well you get the picture.

It was all white and blustery outside, but we were all nice and toasty inside, with apples and spices and hot ham and potatoes, and New Zealand Pinot Noir. I made a variation on my favorite - Jansson's Temptation adding apple and celeriac, and I made a spicy applejack sauce to go with the ham. We had gingerbread for dessert with a rhubarb and ginger compote. I am very fond of gingerbread as my mother used to make it, and she would always win first prize at the local village fair. One time we were late for the fair, my mother was driving really fast, she made a screechy turn and the spongy, dark, molasses loaded loaf bounced off the car seat on to the floor, we giggled as we tried to dust off dried leaves and unknown car floor fibers, and we giggled even more when she won first place, again.


My gingerbread recipe has a long list of ingredients, but it's so easy to make and most of the stuff can usually be found lurking in the cupboards. I have been making it for so long now that I don't recall the original source of the recipe, there's definitely some Martha in there, and more than a dolloping of my mother. Gingerbread recipe to appear in next post......it really needs that much room! and this feels like a lengthy post.


We had a rather special dessert wine, the bottle had no label, but our grapes were in there, in 2008 we gave our botrytised grapes to a neighboring vineyard in Martinborough and they made an exceptionally fine wine, and it was wonderful to be able to share it with our friends, who brought a generous helping of stories and good cheer to the brunch table. Happy New Year!

Whorled And Warty

The other day my friend dropped off a bag of celeriac freshly dug from her vegetable garden, what a treat! Normally the only way to get our hands on the gnarly root vegetable is to drive across the stretch, and sometimes further. The knobbly orb seems to be more popular in the UK than here, I remember going to a party with my parents in the 70's and having celeriac remoulade for the first time, and fresh olives and paper thin ham wrapped around figs, and not a cheese and pineapple on a stick in sight! The partygoers seemed so exotic to me, the men were in brightly colored shirts, the women adorned with Indian jewelry and heavily embellished frocks, or were they smocks?


I grew up in a village which had a good helping of artists and those artists knew how to throw a party, usually the children had to be content with a packet of salt and vinegar crisps and a coca cola, during the shindigs. There was a shift in eating patterns in the 70's, in my village at least, at parties the vol au vent was being replaced by a big chunk of cheese and some crusty bread, it was all so wonderfully Elizabeth David, with copper pots hanging over the stove, and orange oven wear from France, and kilims hanging on the walls.....this is the stuff childhood memories are made of! 

This is what we did with our celeriac - pan fried some chopped onion with chopped garlic and bay leaf for about a minute, added cubed celeriac and some salt, poured in some chicken stock and cooked until liquid was absorbed, about 20 minutes, we had mashed potatoes from the night before, so we poured our celeriac on top of the warmed mashed spuds and then a sprinkling of walnut oil and sherry vinegar, this was a delicious surprise.......thank you Stephanie Alexander (again) and thank you my friend on the lake for giving me the whorled and warty delight, and for inspiring me to grow more!

Supper After Carols

Some potatoes, half a savoy cabbage, a chunk of brie, garlic cloves and a jug of milk.....I wanted to create a dish that I could leave in the oven while we trundled off to our local carol service, and these were the ingredients I had available to me on a cold sunday night and luckily I had a craving for rustic mountain food.


I didn't have the Reblochon (ha, trying getting that at the IGA) which is an essential ingredient for tartiflette, but as I started doing my recipe search I realized that Reblochon has only been around since the 1980's and the dish was created to promote Reblochon! Well in any case it's a delicious cheese and when I was in Saint Gervais a couple of years ago I contributed mightily to that cheese company and to my cholesterol level, hmmmm but there was the raclette, and the ham too......but really how can you go wrong with any combination of potato and cheese? That Christmas holiday spent in the Savoie region was one of the most memorable gastronomic experiences. I really would eat those dishes every night if it just wasn't so dangerous.


This was my gratin: I layered sliced potatoes and ribbons of savoy cabbage, the brie slices were in the middle of the layers, salt and pepper of course on each layer, I still have a lot of herbs in the veggie garden, so generous amounts of thyme, sage and parsley were sprinkled on each layer (very confused about parsley, have never had such a massive crop, and it's still going strong) I then covered my creation with milk and covered the dish with foil and put it in the oven on a low temp.


Our friend sang a solo, she made us cry, the NZ'er was wiping his tears away with the sleeve of his manly motorbike jacket. The lass has a voice that is so powerful, but she doesn't belt, and it's not sweet, but it is achingly beautiful and for about five minutes the audience was in raptures, at the end of the performance I woooohooooooed! I'm not much of a churchgoer but I do like a good carol.


We returned home to comforting aromas, the rustic mountain dish turned out pretty nice, the NZ'er really liked it with the chicken sausages and the festive looking cherry tomatoes and after a few mouthfuls he asked 'are there clams in this?' I think that's a good thing.