Crumbs on the Table -- stories about food

Three-layer lemon curd cake with poppyseed buttercream

April 20, 2019 Leave a Comment

This is such a beautiful cake for a celebration, or for afternoon tea in the garden (and oh joy! It’s warm enough for that here in Cambridgeshire this Easter weekend). It’s also great in winter, come to that, when lemons are at their best.

A tender, fine-crumbed, all-butter yellow cake is layered with homemade lemon curd that is properly thick and lemony. It’s then frosted with an easy buttercream icing generously speckled with poppyseeds. The seeds cut the sweetness to make it just right, not icky-sweet, as buttercream icing can be — and the black and white in contrast also look gorgeous.

Decorating with fresh edible flowers is such a pretty and easy way to achieve something delightfully natural and festive (see a list of edible flowers here). If you feel so inclined, you can add some piped swirls and stars: no advanced piping skills needed, just a fairly steady hand, a piping bag, and a large star-tip.

This 1-2-3-4 cake is the best yellow cake I know, with superb flavour and texture. It’s similar to a classic British sponge, but with a better flavour, in my humble, and a finer crumb — and it stays fresh longer. Yes, it’s not quite as easy to whip up as the eggs are beaten separately, but this, along with using soft “00” flour (or cake flour), is what makes it so wonderfully light. [Read More…]

Mina’s Napoli sea bream with pink peppercorns, coriander seeds and rosemary

April 4, 2019 1 Comment

This is an excitingly delicious and very easy way to cook fish that we discovered on a birthday trip to Naples, and I believe it to be a rarity. Mina, the gentle woman who cooked it for us, told us with quiet pride, “It’s my creation.” Pink peppercorns, coriander seeds and fresh rosemary are liberally scattered over beautiful, fresh bream, and baked with a drizzle of fine olive oil and a sprinkling of sea salt. It’s visually exciting, too. The colours alone are so beautiful it’s a joy to cook and eat.

You might expect this quantity of assertive spice and herb to overpower the fish (or crack a tooth), but to our surprise, the whole seeds toasted to a delightful mellowness that added a gorgeous flavour and delicate crunch to the skin of the fish, and the rosemary was the perfect piney partner to them.

I would not have thought to use these seasonings in combination, nor dared to use them in such quantity with fish, had I not tasted Mina’s signature dish. Since then I’ve cooked it for family and friends with confident gusto, and everyone has absolutely loved it and asked for the recipe.

NB: If you have a tree-nut allergy or cook for anyone who does, please read more about pink peppercorns below, as they have been known to cause reactions in people who can’t eat cashews, pistachios or mango.

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The Chez Panisse leek and goat cheese tart: a vegetable with history, and a tart that symbolises a revolution

March 1, 2019 Leave a Comment

This is one of the recipes I make most from my time cooking at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, back in the ’eighties. It’s been one of my favourite things to eat and make ever since. This beautiful tart always surprises, always delights. Silky sautéed leeks, salty creamy goat cheese, and crisp buttery puff-pastry (I give a recipe here for making puff pastry from scratch, though you don’t have to): all the elements are just right for each other. It’s a masterly composition.

Skip to recipes It’s one of many gems to be found in the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, published in 1982. My precious first edition is dog-eared, stained and scribbled on, and far more valuable to me for all that wear and tear. Leafing through it is like turning the pages of an old photo album and remembering some of the best times I’ve had with people around a table. Every time I’ve made this tart it’s been an occasion, not just a meal, inspiring rapturous amazement at what the humble leek is capable of. This tart defamiliarizes something we think we know, and makes us appreciate it anew.

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Ciambelline al vino: red wine and aniseed biscuits

January 23, 2019 Leave a Comment

These are one of my most memorable culinary discoveries of last year, and one of the best cookies I’ve had in a lifetime (which is saying something — just ask my thighs). Crunchy, just-sweet, and deliciously fragrant, ciambelline al vino (‘little rings of wine’) have a long tradition in the regions of Italy from Rome to Tuscany, where they have been made for generations from a few ingredients that are plentiful, cheap and often home-produced: namely wine, olive oil and aniseed or fennel seed. They are made very differently from the more familiar cantuccini and other biscotti, but they fill a similar niche as they too are versatile keeping-biscuits designed to be enjoyed with something drinkable.

The alchemy of such simple yet characterful ingredients produces a flavour so complex, deep and satisfying it is almost indecent. Whether you dip them in wine as the locals do to finish a meal, or crumble one with an espresso to start (or re-start) the day, I honestly don’t think it’s possible to avoid a transcendent moment. And strange as it might sound for something so more-ish, one is so good, that one is good enough. It takes a little time to snap and crunch through a single bijou ring, and then there are all those little shimmers of sugar and sweet herbal seeds to savour…. I may be wrong, but I think these biscuits are unlikely to be your ruin, though they are undeniably addictive, especially as a batch keeps beautifully for many days; and in fact their aniseed flavour develops over time. [Read More…]

Umbrian baked rigatoni with sausage and peas

January 8, 2019 Leave a Comment

This luscious baked pasta dish was served to us as a primo piatto (‘first plate’ or first course) on our summer holiday in Umbria. Pasta al forno bianca con salsiccia e piselli is rigatoni dressed with a parmesan-rich white-sauce flavoured with the excellent sausage of the region and lightened with peas.

We fell in love with it, and upon our return to England set out to recreate it. Fellow tasters agree: it’s delicious. Wonderfully creamy without being heavy, it’s light enough for a summer’s evening, yet substantial enough for a warming winter meal. The textures, as much as the tastes, are heavenly: creamy sauce, bite from the pasta, pop from the peas, a crumble of sausage every other mouthful, and the crunch of burnished cheese on top.The sausage element acts more as a flavouring agent than a hearty ingredient in its own right, lending its important qualities, but without dominating the cheese sauce and pasta; and the peas are just as important as the sausage in that wonderful Italian way where vegetables are never relegated to low-status, however ‘ordinary’.

We’ve mostly enjoyed this lovely dish as a meal in itself with nothing more than a salad, but have also served it as presented to us in Umbria, in modest starter-portions followed by a simply grilled piece of meat or fish. This Italian way of enjoying pasta as a ‘first plate’ is a nice way to have a little of what you fancy without as many calories. Being a baked (al forno ) pasta dish makes it brilliantly convenient to make ahead, as well.

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