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Banoffee Split

Sometimes, I must admit, I get a bit caught up in making elaborate and fancy desserts. Don’t get me wrong: I absolutely love a cannoli, a chocolate fondant, or a slice of ricotta tart. There is definitely a time and a place for something that takes some effort to get right. But sometimes, all you want is a sweet treat that’s low on effort and preparation time. This Banoffee Split definitely fulfils those requirements.

Until I made this, I don’t think I’d had a banana split since childhood. Which seems a shame: I was definitely missing out for all those years. For this dessert, I’ve done a bit of a play on a banoffee pie, finishing off the bananas with a rum caramel, chocolate chips, chopped toasted pecans, and Northern Bloc Black Treacle Ice Cream.

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The lovely folk at Northern Bloc sent me some of their products to play around with, which was exactly as great as it sounds. Let’s face it: not many people are going to complain about being sent a delivery that consists purely of tubs of ice cream. Northern Bloc pride themselves on making delicious natural ice cream that’s completely free from artificial stuff and made only from responsibly sourced ingredients. Their products are all gluten free and suitable for vegetarians, and their sorbets are also suitable for vegans, so they are great for feeding a crowd. I let my friends sample them at a vegetarian/vegan dinner party I was hosting, and everything went down very well.

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The Black Treacle Ice Cream was one of my favourites from the selection of flavours I was sent. It sounds obvious to say it, but the taste of the black treacle really came through, adding a slight interesting bitterness to the overall sweet taste – more complex than caramel or honey. It was a really great ice cream to have a play with, and I think it works excellently with the bananas here.

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Notes

Obviously, if you are making this for children or you would rather not have alcohol, do skip the rum from the caramel.

Ingredients (per person, multiply as needed)

2 tbsp pecan nuts
4 tbsp caramel (buy in a jar or make your own)
2 tbsp rum (I particularly like spiced rum here)
1 banana
2-3 scoops Northern Bloc Black Treacle Ice Cream
2 tbsp chocolate chips

Method

  1. First, pop your pecans in a dry frying pan over a medium heat to toast. This should take around 5 minutes, but do shake the pan regularly and keep an eye on them, as they can burn easily. When they start to smell toasty and delicious, they are ready. Tip them onto a board and chop roughly.
  2. Meanwhile, if your caramel is cold or room temperature (i.e. if you haven’t just made it), heat it for 10 seconds in the microwave or briefly in a pan over a gentle heat so that it thins to a runny consistency. Stir in your rum.
  3. Cut your banana in half lengthways, and place it on the bowl or plate you are serving from. Top with three scoops of the ice cream, then finish by sprinkling with chocolate chips, scattering over the pecan nuts, and drizzling with the rum caramel sauce.
The ice cream used in this review was kindly provided to me free of charge by Northern Bloc, but I genuinely loved it and all opinions are, as ever, my own.
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Tips for Hosting a Hassle-Free Dinner

I don’t know about you, but my December calendar is already packed with festive lunches, dinners, pub trips, and parties. It’s that time of year. A lovely friend of mine asked me for tips on hosting a dinner at home, and I was only too happy to oblige, by writing out all my rambling ideas below. I am far from an expert – being trained a cook is not the same as being able to host! – but we have people over to eat pretty often and I am used to feeding crowds. So good luck to you if you are having people over to eat during the holidays, and I hope these tips are of some help.

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1. Keep it simple

If you are not a in the habit of hosting dinners or cooking for loads of people, now is not the time to over-complicate things. If you’re an adventurous or confident cook, then absolutely go for it. But don’t feel like you have to serve soufflés or a croquembouche just because you have guests coming. People are absolutely and totally delighted, I promise you, with lasagne, salad, garlic bread, and a chocolate cake. It doesn’t have to be super-fancy or innovative. Everyone wants to see you and have a good evening, not feel your nerves as you are frantically trying to make your own puff pastry in the background.

2. Check dietary preferences

Unless you know the people coming over really well, always double-check dietary preferences before working out what you are going to cook. It’s awful when someone arrives and announces they have suddenly gone gluten-free or vegetarian, and you have to panic to scramble up a new dinner option for them.

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3. Plan your dinner menu logically

For dinners of more than four people, I try to avoid anything that needs to be cooked or served individually, such a fillets of fish or cuts of steak. It tends to be much simpler, more convivial, and more economical, to serve the kind of food that you can put down in the middle of the table and let people help themselves to. It’s encourages general chat if people are digging in at the table and passing things round, and it means you’re not stuck in the kitchen plating up or frying individual pieces of sea bass.

Also, if you’re stuck on what to cook or what goes together, go for a vague theme and stick with it. Italian, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, British, French – anything goes. Sure, if you want to serve bruschetta followed by a steak and ale pie followed by a m’hanncha then you absolutely can. But if you’re not too confident and just want everything to quietly work well together, try sticking to one cuisine. It also helps cut options down if you’re overwhelmed by all the possibilities. If you’re stuck for inspiration, I find recipe books more useful than the internet, because they are more likely to be based around some kind of culinary theme. Whereas Google just gives you TOO MANY CHOICES.

4. Courses

You don’t have to stick to the standard starter-main-dessert route if you don’t want to. Dinners at ours tend to be informal, partly because I just don’t have the space to seat many people, and so big groups end up sitting around the room on sofas or spare chairs dragged in from next door. But also, being flexible with courses means you have to do less serving and less washing up (we don’t have a dishwasher either).

Instead of a starter, I like to make something everyone can eat while having their first drinks, milling around, or sitting on the sofa. Think toasts or crackers with interesting toppings, homemade cheese straws (sounds and looks super-impressive but it’s literally pre-made puff pastry with grated cheese twisted and then baked), or hummus and crudités. I always have a main and a dessert and, sometimes, I do cheese if I am feeling fancy. Or feeling like I want to eat a lot of cheese. Which is often.

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5. Prepare food ahead

You would be surprised how much you can do ahead of time, and how much time things can take. You might think ‘oh, I will just peel those potatoes when everyone gets here and pop them in!’, but really, that’s another fifteen minutes stuck in the kitchen while your guests are around.

I really try to avoid having lots of cooking to do during an actual dinner, and don’t like having the kitchen still strewn with used chopping boards and bowls of ingredients when people arrive. It’s much less stressful if things are already in place. Just think about each thing you’re making logically and whether or not it needs to be cooked to service, or can be prepared in advance.

For example, I always, always do a dessert that’s prepped in advance. When it comes to serving it’s just a case of either putting it on the table for people to help themselves or, sometimes, warming it through. You don’t want to be filling profiteroles in a kitchen strewn with mess while everyone waits for you. Stews, tagines, bakes, pies and so on can all be made in advance and then heated up when you’re ready. Potatoes and other vegetables can be pre-cooked or par-boiled. Sauces and gravies can be made and re-heated. Dips or sides can be made in advance and kept covered in the fridge. Salads and dressings can be made in advance, kept separately, then combined just before serving. Cook smart – past you needs to be helping future you.

6. Buy stuff in!

Short on time? Hate making desserts? Forgot to do nibbles? Buy stuff! Seriously. Don’t feel like everything has to be homemade. You can buy desserts, nibbles, dips, good bread, whatever. Sure, homemade is great if you have the time and the inclination. But no one will care (or notice, probably), if you buy your bread instead of making it.

Another tip is to buy something, but then do something to made it special. For example, you can buy hummus, but then instead of just serving it in its carton, mix it up with some chopped herbs, Greek yoghurt, or lemon juice, and serve in a pretty bowl drizzled with olive oil or sprinkled with cumin, sumac, or paprika. Or you could buy a baguette, then make your own garlic and herb butter (crushed garlic, chopped herbs, soft butter) to bread over it and bake and hey presto, you made your own garlic bread. Or you can buy a plain cheesecake, then top it with sliced strawberries and mint, or caramel sauce and chocolate chunks, or whatever you fancy. Looks impressive, takes three minutes.

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7. Let people help

If you’re having loads of people over to dinner or if you just don’t particularly like feeding a crowd, let people contribute! Take people at their word when they say ‘what can I bring?’ You could ask someone to take care of wine, or dessert, or pre-dinner nibbles, or cheese, or to bring an extra side dish. Personally, when I ask this question and someone asks me to contribute I am delighted, because I genuinely want to help out. Also they usually ask me to make the dessert and I am well up for that. People like to be generous when given the opportunity.

8. Be organised

I guess the basic advice underpinning all this is be as organised as possible. Obviously, if you are very comfortable hosting a dinner and feel like you can pick stuff up on the way home from work and throw something together then go for it. But I can’t do that. I am an obsessively organised person who over-plans everything and so it comes naturally to me, but if you’re worried about hosting people and you’re not normally big on planning, now is the time to make an exception. You will enjoy the actual event much more if you’ve done the hard work beforehand.

Godspeed, everyone. If you have any questions, worries, or are desperate for menu suggestions, do comment and I’d be happy to help! Or if you have any other tips for hosting a dinner to add then I’d love to hear them.

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The Taste Test: Cornflakes

I don’t actually tend to eat cereal, but someone suggested cornflakes for a Taste Test post, and it seemed like a good idea. It’s exactly the sort of thing where there is a dramatic price variation between different brands, but it’s unclear if that’s actually reflected in the quality of the product. I mean, cornflakes are just cornflakes. Aren’t they?

Also, a side effect of this project has been that I ended up with a lot of cornflakes in my kitchen. Really, a lot. And for those of you who do eat cereal, where do you store those boxes? They are huge. They take up pretty much all of the counter in my tiny tiny kitchen.

Anyway, I’ve basically spent the last couple of weeks coming up with inventive ways to use up cornflakes. Did you know that you can use cornflakes as a crumb coating for fried chicken? And that it’s actually super delicious? So delicious that I might actually consider buying more cornflakes solely for this purpose when I have used up all the ones I already have. Also, I had biscuits left over from last week, so I combined the cornflakes and biscuits (and other stuff, obviously), and made tiffin. Let me tell you, chucking a couple of handfuls of cornflakes into a tiffin mix is a truly excellent idea. It sort of makes the finished product a cross between a tiffin and one of those cornflake nest cake things you ate at Easter as a kid. In other words, really tasty. And worryingly addictive.

Did you know they add loads of extra vitamins and minerals to cornflakes, by the way? I did not know that, but if you look at the pack they have added B12 and iron and all sorts. I feel super-healthy after eating all that cornflake tifin and cornflake fried chicken.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of cereal or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Cornflakes

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Cornflakes
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Waitrose
0.21
385
1.1
84.6
3.1
7.6
0.74
Tesco
0.8
385
1.1
84.6
3.1
7.6
0.7
Sainsbury’s
0.33
381
0.7
84.7
2.3
7.8
0.80
Kellogg’s
0.39
378
0.9
84
3
7
1.13
Aldi – Harvest
0.15
379
1.6
82
3.4
7.2
0.56

 

A – Aldi (Harvest)

B – Sainsbury’s Organic

C – Waitrose

D – Kellogg’s

E – Tesco Everyday Value

Conclusion

Wait, no comments? No breaking down into A, B, C and so on? No. You know why? Probably yes, you do.

All of these samples of cornflakes tasted exactly the same to me. Pleasingly crunchy, a little bit sweet at the end, fairly bland, as you would expect cornflakes to be. I started off eating them dry, to make sure I was getting the taste testing experience without interference, and then I tried them all with milk. They all tasted the same.

So the moral of the story is that you might as well buy the budget version. The cheapest – Tesco Everyday Value – are 40p and the most expensive – Kellogg’s – are £1.75.

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Date and Almond Spelt Bread

Okay, so I know I said I wasn’t going to post the recipes from the final Bake Off Bake Along bread challenge. But I changed my mind. I liked the little date and almond ones so much that I made a proper full-sized one the next day. This date and almond spelt loaf is my new favourite bread. I make a big loaf at the weekend, slice and freeze it, and then work my way through it over the next week. It makes all of life more delicious. It is amazing with cheese, but also with peanut butter. Also just eaten straight out of the oven with barely a pause on the way to my mouth. Maybe some butter if I am feeling patient.

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Spelt flour isn’t gluten free but it has less gluten than traditional wheat flour, so might be easier to digest for people who have a gluten sensitivity or intolerance. I have neither, but I really like the warm, nutty flavour it brings to bread. It also lends itself very well to complementary additions. I have obviously gone for date and almond here, but you can add whatever fruit and nuts you like. Raisins or apricots would be lovely, as would walnuts or hazelnuts.

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Notes:

This is a very forgiving bread. It doesn’t need a huge amount of kneading, and it just has one slow prove, so it’s very low in terms of hands-on time. I know spelt flour might sound intimidating if you’re not used to making bread (you can buy it at any big supermarket) but it’s really easy to work with and rewardingly delicious.

Ingredients:

butter, for greasing
350g strong wholemeal spelt flour
150g strong white bread flour
1 sachet dried yeast
2 tsp salt
100g whole blanched almonds, roughly chopped
100g dates, chopped
40ml extra virgin olive oil
300ml tepid water

Method

  1. Grease a loaf tin thoroughly with butter. If you’re using a mixer with a dough hook, literally just put all of the ingredients into the bowl and mix on a medium speed for five minutes until smooth. If you’re making the bread by hand, mix both flours, yeast, salt, almonds, and dates together in a large mixing bowl. Add the oil and the water, stirring with a wooden spoon until it begins to form a dough. Knead by hand for around seven minutes until smooth. Don’t worry if the dough seems a little damp or sticky.
  2. Shape your dough into a rough log and pop it in your prepared tin. Dust it with flour. Slash the top with your sharpest knife. Put your tin into a plastic bag, covering the dough but leaving air and space within. Leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size. It’s a long. slow prove, around 2-2.5 hours.
  3. Preheat oven and bake at 220C/200C fan/gas 8 for 20 minutes, then turn the oven down to 200C/180C fan/gas 6 and bake for a further 20 minutes, or until the bread is risen and dark with a good crust and sounds hollow when tapped underneath. Cool on a wire rack.
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The Taste Test: Chocolate Digestives

We’re back! And we’re back with biscuits. I thought I’d ease us in with something classic and beloved. And who doesn’t love a chocolate digestive? If you answered ‘me’ to that, then there is no place for you here, I’m afraid. This taste test post will not be to your liking.

This is one of those taste tests where there is a clear brand leader. When you think of chocolate digestives, you most likely think of McVitie’s. I certainly do, anyway. And before I got into this taste test mentality, it never would have occurred to me to try another brand. I’d just automatically go for the one I knew. But it’s definitely something that’s worth thinking about, considering the McVitie’s biscuits are more than twice as expensive as the Aldi version. Are they twice as delicious? Find out below.

As before, I feel I need a rambling disclaimer: obviously, I am doing this in my kitchen and not in a lab and I am not a scientist. These are the opinions of one person – that said, one person who has been trained to taste for quality. Also, the products used in this series are just examples – obviously each supermarket has, say, eight or nine different types of chocolate biscuit or whatever the product may be, and I’m not going to try every single one because what am I, made of money?

Finally, I should highlight that I tasted all the products blind, and at the time of tasting and making my notes I didn’t know which product came from which shop. I sat in one room while my glamorous assistant (er, my husband), prepared the samples in another. Any notes added regarding packaging and so on were only done after blind tasting, when I learned which who had made product A, B, C, D, or E.

The Blind Taste Test: Milk Chocolate Digestives

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Milk Chocolate Digestives
per 100g
£
kcal
fat
carb
fibre
protein
salt
Tesco
0.20
511
25.8
61.6
2.6
6.9
0.8
Sainsbury’s
0.21
499
23.0
65.1
2.4
6.6
0.78
Waitrose
0.23
498
23.7
63.3
2.9
6.5
1.00
McVitie’s
0.33
495
23.6
62.2
3.0
6.7
1.0
Belmont – Aldi
0.15
485
23
62
2.5
7.0
0.6

A – Tesco – 6/10

  • The chocolate looked slightly darker on this biscuit than the others. The biscuit itself was very crumbly and soft, going to crumbs in my hands if I applied pressure. Maybe a bit too soft – you want a bit of crispness with your biscuit. But a decent thick layer of chocolate and tasted perfectly fine.

B – Sainsbury’s – 6/10

  • Immediately more snap than A. Much crisper. However, it felt like a thinner layer of chocolate than A – basically, the opposite to A in terms of biscuit/chocolate. Both had flaws, but both decent biscuits.

C – Waitrose – 7/10

  • Thicker chocolate than B, and a good crispness to the biscuit. The biscuit itself also had a slight hint of saltiness to it, which offset the sweetness of the chocolate well. My second favourite.

D – McVitie’s – 6/10

  • Like B, a thinner chocolate, but tasted fine. A decent snap to the biscuit – probably the second crispest of the bunch. Nothing too exciting though.

E – Belmont for Aldi – 8/10

  • A satisfying, thick layer of the chocolate. A good snap, not falling apart, didn’t have loads of crumbs coming off it. The crispest biscuit of them all, with plenty of flavour and an oaty texture. More texture than any of the other biscuits. My favourite.

Conclusion

At first glance, all of these biscuits looked pretty similar – maybe the chocolate on A and E was shade darker than the others, and it was spread a little differently on all of them. But, in essence, much of a muchness. However, when you got into the tasting there were significant differences. It turned out the the Aldi offering, by far the cheapest by weight, was my favourite.

The other thing to note, though, was that none of these were terrible. They were all perfectly decent and edible chocolate biscuits. And, really, even a chocolate biscuit that’s just ‘reasonable’ is still a chocolate biscuit. The main thing to note, though, was that the most expensive brand leader was certainly no better than the bunch. Next time you’re buying chocolate digestives, you might as well get the cheaper option – they’re really just as good and, in some cases, better.

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Peanut, Banana, and Caramel Brownies

I would be exaggerating if I said my favourite thing about our trip to Seville was the peanut, banana, and toffee brownie I ate at Regadera. But it was definitely among my top five favourite things of the holiday. That and the kitten we met. And, uh, the architecture. Obviously.

I knew I wouldn’t be able to recreate it exactly at home. Part of the joy of that particular dessert was delivered in the form of an incredible banana ice cream, and I don’t have an ice cream maker. But I couldn’t get the idea of a peanut, banana, and caramel brownie out of my head. Yes, it seemed like a lot of ingredients to throw at a brownie. But I know that chocolate and banana are good together. And that banana and peanut butter are good together. And that banana and caramel are good together. I mean, it at least didn’t seem like a terrible idea.

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I’ve made chocolate banana bread many times before, so I was hoping that the bananas in brownies idea would work in a similar way – that the bananas would make the brownies even more moist, dense, and fudgy. And, happily, this is exactly what they did.

These brownies are undoubtedly a bit much for some people. There are plenty of purists who like their brownies plain, perhaps with one addition if they’re going wild. But, as you might be able to tell if you’ve read this blog at all, I’m not really one of those people.

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Notes:

If this is all a bit much for you, you could skip out one of the peanut/banana/caramel triumvirate. But I promise it’s tasty.

Brownies keep really excellently well in the freezer. You can make a batch, cut them, freeze them, then whip one out and microwave it for thirty seconds every time the brownie urge strikes.

Ingredients:

200g 70% dark chocolate
140g butter
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
100g plain flour
2 very ripe bananas, mashed
100g roasted peanuts
3 tbsp peanut butter
5 tbsp salted caramel (buy in a jar or make your own)

Method:

  1. Break your chocolate into pieces and chop your butter into rough cubes and place them both in a glass or metal bowl over a pan of gently simmering water. Leave them to melt, stirring occasionally. Preheat your oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4. Grease and line a 20x20cm square tin.
  2. When your chocolate and butter have completely melted, beat in your sugar (I use an electric hand whisk), followed by your eggs. Add your flour to the mixture and beat that in too. Mix in your bananas, then stir through your peanuts and peanut butter.
  3. Pour the mixture into the tin, smooth the surface, and then dollop your salted caramel on top of the batter and swirl it around with a knife or skewer. Bake for around 25 mins – the salted caramel will sit in a liquidy way on top of the batter and make you think the brownies are not done, but they will firm as they cool.
  4. Normally I advocate eating brownies warm from the pan, and while you absolutely can do that here, they will be very gooey. If I need to slice these neatly or take them anywhere I normally let them chill and firm in the fridge for a couple of hours first.
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Seville

We just got back from Seville, and, if I’m honest, I was mostly there for the food. James was very keen to go because of all the history, and architecture, and culture. I am interested in those things too. But not quite as interested as I am in tapas. Hey, we are who we are.

I did my research on the food in Seville before we left, because I cannot go to any new place without obsessively researching the food on offer to make sure I am not missing any of the good stuff. So I knew where the best markets were supposed to be. I had an idea of what the local specials were. I had a couple of restaurant reservations and a good list of places that didn’t take reservations that I wanted to try. Does anyone else travel like this, by the way? I mean, obviously I’d booked somewhere to stay and plane and train tickets too, but basically my holiday preparation consisted of learning as much as I could about the local food scene.

And the results? Well, to be honest, mixed. I’d heard so much about the great cuisine in Seville that I was actually a little surprised at how hit-and-miss our experiences were. The good stuff is definitely there, but you have to work to find it. Buckle up, because this is going to be a long and rambly post. Also probably of no interest to anyone unless you’re going to Seville in the near future, but never mind.

Planning

The first thing to get used to is that everything runs on a completely different schedule to in Britain. This may sound obvious to most of you, but I hadn’t been to Spain since I was a child and it took me by surprise. I am a naturally ‘early to bed, early to rise’ person, and unfortunately this is completely the wrong kind of person to be in southern Spain. Nothing seems to open before 10am, and most stuff doesn’t really get going until 11am. If you’re wandering round at 9am or before hoping to visit a food market or get some breakfast, then you’re going to struggle. However, if you’re a night-owl, you will be in heaven.

Secondly, most things close for siesta in the afternoons, usually from around 2-5pm. We had a few instances of going somewhere in the morning, only to find it wasn’t open yet, so coming back in the afternoon, and finding we’d accidentally hit the siesta period and missed the brief window of the place being open. You really need to plan carefully. I tried checking the times that everything was open online, but the information given was rarely accurate.

Thirdly, people in Seville tend to eat lunch around 3pm, and dinner around 9.30pm. Now, I have normally had breakfast by 7am, so if I have to wait until 3pm to eat lunch I am probably going to slaughter all the people around me. We found that most places opened for lunch around 1.30pm or 2pm and we could go then, but we’d usually be the only people there until 3pm, when things started to get going properly. Ditto dinner: most places don’t even open until 8.30pm or later, and everything is pretty quiet until 9.30pm. If, like me, you’re used to lunch at 12.30pm or 1pm, and dinner at 7pm, you really have to readjust.

The other issue we hit was that a lot of places either didn’t take bookings, or only took bookings over the phone. Unfortunately – and the fault is all mine – I do not speak a word of Spanish. Really, nothing. I did French at school and can bumble by passably in that but I know no Spanish. And, as we were told repeatedly, southern Spain is not like, say, Scandinavia, where most people speak incredible English so your lack of linguistic prowess is less stark. Generally, in Seville, people really did not speak English – and, indeed, why should they? This did mean, though, that I found it almost impossible to make restaurant reservations over the phone.

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Restaurants

I’ll start with the bad, to get it out of the way.

One particularly memorable evening saw us first in a long queue outside a particularly well-recommended restaurant before its 8.30pm opening, only to get in and have them insist they were fully booked and turn the queue of people away. ‘No problem’, we thought, ‘let’s turn to our list of other restaurant recommendations in the area’. But the first one we tried was nowhere to be found. We walked round for fifteen minutes, puzzling over addresses and maps, but completely failed to locate the place where we wanted to eat. Seville is full of tiny, winding alleyways and hidden side-streets. ‘No problem’, we thought, ‘let’s move to the third place on the list’. This place, it turned out, was closed because it was a Monday, even though it was advertised as open online. We looked at the fourth place, only to find it was a half hour walk away, which we couldn’t quite manage, as by this time it was 9pm and we were starving (Seville hasn’t got a great public transport system and is very unfriendly to cars, so we walked everywhere throughout the holiday). So we decided to go to the local square, as it was lined with restaurants, and eat at the place that looked the most promising. Big mistake. The food we got was awful, bordering on inedible. Tapas done very, very badly. Not interesting in any way: just not at all nice.

The next night we had a table booked at a restaurant that had been highly recommended online. We started to have our doubts when we got in and saw it looked like it hadn’t been re-decorated since the late 80s. They provided us with some stale bread to gnaw at while we looked down the menu, which didn’t contain a single vegetarian dish. Neither of us are vegetarians, but it didn’t seem to bode well for the attitude of the restaurant that it didn’t cater to them.

It took 50 minutes for our bland starters to arrive. Everything was incredibly dated. My main course, advertised as the fish of the day, was a piece of hake and some plain boiled potatoes, untroubled by sauce or any vegetables. Everything was very unremarkable except for the fact that my fish was sneakily sprinkled with some sort of chilli seeds, which I didn’t immediately identify as such and so unwittingly bit into. I’m pretty good with spicy food, but this was literally the spiciest thing I have ever eaten in my life. The burning immediately spread through my entire mouth and was really quite painful. It was just such an odd thing to randomly sprinkle on top of plain white fish. James’s duck breast came, weirdly, with a border of sliced raw tomatoes and cucumber, and a very sweet sauce. The whole meal was also sickeningly expensive – the most we spent on any meal in Seville despite the fact we didn’t drink (there was no drinks list and we didn’t have the will to try to surmount the language barrier to ask if there were options). A complete rip-off and massively disappointing.

Happily, there were some food highs as well as lows. Mamarracha was the first excellent restaurant we went to, and it was a relieving balm by that point because we’d already had some bad food. The grilled squid and the Iberico pork particularly stood out, and with the bill they brought us some little shots of the most exquisite sherry. I’m not particularly a sherry fan, but it was dark and cold and satin smooth, full of toffee and plum flavours. I wish I knew what it was because I would buy a lot of it.

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On a day trip to Cordoba, we snagged a table at Regadera. Meltingly tender carpaccio, ceviche butterfish on braised lettuce and teriyaki, spit-roast lamb with cous cous and pate and a yoghurt dressing, and a peanut toffee banana brownie that I haven’t really stopped thinking about since I ate it. The home-baked bread was excellent – always a good litmus test, I find – and the service was incredibly friendly.

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Finally, on the last day, we managed to get into Contenedor, the restaurant we’d been turned away from on the first night. More informal than Mamarracha or Regadera, offering burgers and pastela and casual sharing dishes, but still excellent quality. It sounds odd to be very enthusiastic about rice, but they served us some of the best I’ve ever tasted: black rice, slightly crispy, topped with fried squid and aioli. Also an almost poetic hazelnut chocolate torte, and an apple cheesecake that I’m going to try to recreate. And even better, absolutely astonishingly cheap.

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Finally, honourable mention must be given to Freskura. Not a restaurant, but an ice cream place a two minute walk from where we were staying. Some of the most delicious gelato I’ve ever eaten, dozens of intriguing flavours, and incredibly generous portions. I always made James come here with me for consolation ice cream after a disappointing meal and it was very cheering.

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Markets

When we arrived in Seville, our host helpfully pointed out all the food markets on a map for us. It’s like he knew me. On our first morning, we headed off to the one he’d told us was the oldest and the best: Triana.

Firstly, of course, it wasn’t really ready when we got there at 10am – see earlier paragraph about everything opening late in Seville. The building itself was open and you could wander in, but most stalls still had their shutters down. So we went for a wander around the neighbourhood and came back an hour later. At which point it was maybe two thirds open.

From what we saw when we were in Seville, the food markets there are very traditional. We visited three, and they all seemed to have four types of stalls: meat and fish; fruit and vegetables; cheese; bread. These would be repeated three or four times throughout the market, and while I am sure they all had their own individual characters, the differences weren’t discernible to a passing tourist. I realise I have been very spoiled by the excellent food markets in the UK. While the produce we purchased from the stalls was of good quality, I was a little disappointed by the lack of variety. I was hoping for more unique stalls – maybe oils, spices, sauces, teas and coffees, chocolates, patisserie, or interesting alcohol on top of all the basics. There also didn’t seem to be much of street food culture – people were there to buy produce rather than eat. This is probably all to the good, because actual locals shop in these markets and they haven’t just been redesigned for tourists. Still, as a tourist, I wouldn’t have minded if they’d gone the other way a bit.

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Supermarkets

We stayed in an Airbnb rather than a hotel, so we made a couple of little supermarket trips to stock up on a few things to eat at our flat when we weren’t eating out. We never found any big supermarkets while we were there – it was mostly little local shops, although I am sure bigger places could have been found on the outskirts of the city. It’s always interesting (to me anyway) to wander around supermarkets in different countries and see what you can and can’t buy there. For example, in Seville the supermarkets all had a dizzying array of meats, particularly ham. However, we couldn’t find – literally, we couldn’t, we really looked – fresh milk sold anywhere. All that was on offer was UHT cartons. I don’t really care about this, but James drinks coffee and eats cereal so found it more problematic.

Also, generally things were a lot sweeter. I was surprised, because I wouldn’t think of Spain as a country that added sugar to things at random. But we couldn’t find any plain unsweetened yoghurt – even the stuff labelled plain Greek yoghurt was almost inedible as it was so sweetened. However, we were ‘reading’ labels purely through Google translate, so it’s entirely possible we could have been missing the good stuff. Juices and smoothies were much sweeter than our English palates were accustomed to. Good chocolate was also very hard to come by. I tried a couple of varieties when I was there and none were nice. There were piles of turron (Spanish nougat) everywhere though. This stuff is tasty, but again, pretty much pure sugar.

Bakeries

Bakeries and patisseries didn’t seem very common in Seville, and we only saw a couple during our time there. La Campana was excellent, and clearly beloved, because it was packed with winding queues when we visited. They sold a vast variety of little Spanish almond biscuits, and some intriguing pastries. I didn’t get to try one of those though because I was too busy eating an entire tray of the biscuits. I regret nothing.

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Finally…

This post probably sounds more negative than I intended it to. Of course, I am only talking about the food in Seville, and we also saw and did some wonderful things that were not food-related and so have no place on this blog. Also, we were only in Seville for four days, so barely scratched the surface of what the city has to offer. But, for what it’s worth (which I am aware is very little), these are my observations.

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One final thing to add, and one of my favourite things about Seville, is that the orange trees are everywhere. Really, everywhere. Lines of them down every completely normal city street. I suppose for them an orange tree is the equivalent of our apple trees. But you don’t find apple trees flanking every standard city pavement. The oranges weren’t ripe enough for picking when we visited, but in a couple of months the sight will be even more extraordinary. It’s such a simple thing, but while we were in Spain I didn’t even come close to getting over the novelty of walking under orange trees wherever we went. It’s really something quite special.

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The Bake Off Bake Along: Bread Basket

Oh, Prue. Prue. I sympathise, I really do. We’ve all had that heart-shrinking, teeth-grinding ‘Nooooo!’ moment when we realise we have sent a message about a person to that person, or misdirected a work email, or foolishly texted an ex when drunk. You try, desperately, to recall the message you’ve put out into the ether, but it’s too late. Everyone has seen it. What is done cannot be undone.

I happened to be on Twitter when Prue casually revealed the winner of the Bake Off about nine hours before it actually aired, so I was ‘spoilered’ immediately. I didn’t really mind though. As anyone who knows me will know, I always want to know the end of everything. And I was glad that Sophie was our winner. It definitely seemed like the right choice out of the final three bakers.

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I can’t quite believe I’ve managed to make it all the way through this year’s bake off bake along. It has involved a lot of rushed early morning baking in a panic. I’m glad I’ve limped through to the finish line, though, because it’s given me some very good weeks. Let’s not talk about the bad weeks. My particular favourites have been the peanut butter fondants and the cannoli. Happy days.

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Fittingly, finals week was actually the trickiest week for me in terms of choosing a challenge. I didn’t have the kit (and I’m not sure I have the skill, to be honest) to go for an entremet. I wasn’t feeling inspired by the technical challenge. Ginger biscuits are fine, but very fiddly icing is not up my street – all about the look, not at all about the taste. So, somehow, making twelve loaves of bread started to seem like the sensible option.

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I could have made my life slightly easier and done three full size loaves, or one batch of four small ones. But, in the end, I decided to make a proper go of it, safe in the knowledge that it will be at least a year before I put myself through this process again.

And actually, it went surprisingly well.

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When you put your mind to it, it’s quite astonishing how much bread you can make in a morning. And because I was bound by the constraints of the Bake Off challenge – i.e. I had to make one spelt bread, one filled bread, and one shaped bread – I ended up making up some new recipes. Which I am often too lazy to do.

My final loaves were spelt boules with almonds and dates, wholemeal walnut loaves filled with blue cheese, and simple white plaits. I’ve never actually made a plaited loaf before, and even though it seems a bit pointless – since the fancy shape doesn’t in any way make the taste more interesting – I admit it was quite satisfying. I don’t think my bread would have been accused of being underproved or overworked. The walnut and blue cheese bread was stupidly delicious: James and I ate an embarrassing amount of it very quickly. And I’ve always liked baking with spelt, and fruit and nut bread is very satisfying. So, three thumbs up. If I had three thumbs. You know what I mean.

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I’m not going to post the recipes here because three recipes in one post would be a bit much. Also, I was kind of winging it. But if you are particularly interested in any of the three, do let me know and I will send a recipe your way.

Goodbye for now, Bake Off. See you next year. I hope. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with all my free weekend time now. I mean, probably still baking, to be honest. But in a less structured way.

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The Bake Off Bake Along: Berry Cheesecake Choux Buns

The semi-final has come and gone, only the final remains and, if we’re honest, we’re all a bit surprised that it’s come to this, right? I sort of lost faith in the show after the Julia – Yan – Liam triple blow eviction debacle. But I continued watching because, really, I have nothing more entertaining to be doing at 8pm on a Tuesday night. Also, there’s the bake off bake along to consider. And I can’t really complain, because I never thought to make berry cheesecake choux buns before this. And I’m really quite glad they exist in my life now.

So I’d never even heard of craquelin before this week. And I did an entire culinary diploma. Also, it looks kind of like an odd skin-complaint, no? Anyway, I did this bake along at 6am on a Saturday morning because that was literally my only free time during the weekend. There was no way in hell I was going to make two different types of choux buns. One type was as much as I could be bothered with. Clearly I was not going to be making Les Miserables cake before sunrise, and I have made my feelings on insane technical challenges that take six hours and look impressive but taste only of sugar perfectly clear. So choux buns it was.

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Actually, I’m so used to profiteroles that I’ve never really thought of doing anything different with choux buns. Other than filling them with cream and covering them in chocolate, I mean. Which is a perfectly delicious thing to do, so I shall continue to do it. But now a whole world of choux bun glory is open to me! Why I never thought of filling a choux bun with cheesecake before I do not know. Thank you, bake off bake along, for inspiring me. These were majorly tasty.

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Notes:

I went for a mixed berry cheesecake filling here and topped the buns with raspberries because, er, that’s what they had at the shop. But obviously you can use whatever berries you like or have.

Unfortunately, although these aren’t difficult to make, they don’t keep particularly well. As soon as you’ve filled your choux bun with cheesecake filling (or with anything, really), you’re working against the clock. Your beautiful crispy pastry will start to soften fairly fast. It’ll still taste excellent after a couple of hours even if it’s gone soft, but you won’t really have the textural contrast you’re after.

On the Bake Off they always make out like choux is really hard. I don’t know why, because it’s not. If anything, I actually find it easier than most other pastries, because you don’t have to faff about with resting it. Or keeping it cold. Or worrying about overworking it. Or rolling it out without cracks. Or any of that stuff, really. This recipe looks long but it’s not because it’s complicated. It’s because I am trying to carefully explain how to make choux in case you’ve never done it before.

This recipe will make around 25 choux buns, although obviously it depends wildly on how big you pipe them.

Ingredients:

for the choux

220ml water
85g butter, cubed
105g plain flour
Pinch of salt
3 eggs, at room temperature

for the cheesecake filling

300g full fat cream cheese
50g icing sugar
150ml double cream
150g mixed berries, mashed with a fork

to finish

150g icing sugar
juice of a lemon
drop of purple food colouring, if you like
raspberries, or berries of choice, to top choux
around 3 biscuits, crushed to fine crumbs, to top choux
edible glitter, to finish (I did this because I have a cupboard absolutely crammed with baking decorations, but it adds absolutely nothing in terms of taste – I just like shiny things – so do skip it if you want)

Method

  1. First, make your choux. Preheat your oven to 220C/200C fan/ gas 6 – and you really do need a hot oven to make these puff up properly so if you know yours runs cold then maybe give it an extra 10 degrees. Put your water and your cubed butter into a medium saucepan on a medium heat and cook until the butter has melted, but don’t let it boil. Meanwhile, sieve your flour and salt together.
  2. When all your butter has melted into your water, turn the heat right up and bring it to a rolling boil – you’ll see the butter solids start to collect in the middle of the pan. Take it off the heat and, as quickly as you can, whack all your flour in at once and beat like mad with a wooden spoon until it’s all incorporated and shiny and pulling away from the sides. It should naturally form a kind of ball of paste. This is called your panade. You need to let the panade cool down a bit now, until it’s about skin temperature, otherwise it won’t absorb the egg properly. I normally move mine into a cold mixing bowl to speed this up.
  3. While your panade is cooling, crack your eggs into a jug and beat them lightly. When your panade is cool enough, start beating in the egg, a little at a time, until you’ve used 2/3 of it. This is really hard work with a wooden spoon but works completely fine with an electric whisk so that’s what I always do. When you have 2/3 of the egg in, check the consistency. You want a ‘reluctant six second dropping consistency’ (I know it sounds weird, that’s just what we were always taught at culinary school). All it means is that when you take a decent scoop of the mix onto a wooden spoon and hold it up the mixture should fall off, but quite reluctantly. After about six seconds, in fact. If you use large eggs, like I do, you probably won’t end up using them all.
  4. Pop your choux pastry into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle and pipe it out onto baking trays in rounds. If you have good non-stick trays you don’t have to bother lining them – I never do – but if you’re worried them use baking paper. With a damp finger, press down the peaked tops of the buns (to stop them burning) then put the trays into your hot oven for 20 minutes.
  5. After 20 minutes, your choux buns should be gloriously brown and puffed up (if they’re not, give them 5 minutes longer). Take out the tray, turn them all over, and use a skewer or a sharp knife to poke a little hole in the bottom of each bun, then put them back in the oven. This is to let the insides dry out a bit. You want to take them to what probably seems a bit darker and firmer than you would naturally. You need them to be crisp and strong because they are going to have a wet filling.
  6. While your choux is baking, make your cheesecake filling. Beat your cream cheese and icing sugar together briefly until smooth. Add your cream, and beat for a minute until your mixture thickens up a little. You want it firm enough to pipe into the buns. Fold through your berries. You have to mash them to make sure they’re not going to clog your piping bag later. Pop this mixture into the fridge until you need it.
  7. Prepare your icing. Mix your icing sugar with your lemon juice. You want a fairly thick icing so it doesn’t just fall off the choux buns, but if it looks too thick add a drop of water. Colour it, if you like.
  8. When your choux are baked, let them cool completely. This should only take ten minutes. When they are cool, put your cheesecake filling into a piping bag fitted with a plain nozzle. Using the nozzle to enlarge the steam holes you made in the base of the buns, pipe them full of cheesecake mix.
  9. Spoon a little icing onto the top of each bun. Finish with a berry, a sprinkling of biscuit crumbs, and glitter if you’re going all out.
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Review: Arbequina

Full disclosure: this is actually going to be less of a review, and more of a love letter. We went to Arbequina over the weekend to celebrate the restaurant’s one year anniversary, and I realised it was ridiculous that I’d never written about it on the blog before. Granted, they have absolutely no need of another positive review. With people singing the place’s praises from the Oxford Mail to the Guardian, it’s not been short of attention. Every time I’ve been there, the compact room has been full of lively customers. But I’m going to write about it anyway, because I love it.

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We went on a squally evening in October, when Storm Brian was still at play, and the vicious wind was whipping cold rain at us as we trudged up Cowley Road. Arbequina was a little haven of fluttering candles and the enticing smells of good food to come. We were greeted warmly by the staff – as we always are, because they’re lovely there – and settled down to the menu, with which I am intimately familiar. Eased along our way by exemplary Rebujitos and Negronis, we settled in for the kind of meal that you don’t have to worry about because you know everything will be done well.

Crisp toasts topped with warming, punchy Nduja, with the sweetness of honey and the earth of thyme. A tortilla just as a tortilla should be, with its bronzed exterior and its oozing, collapsing interior, with that depth of flavour only achieved when proper time and attention is paid. A pile of gloriously charred cauliflower, sharp with lemon and jewelled with pomegranate seeds, atop ethereally smooth and rich puree. Chicken, crisp on the outside and meltingly tender on the inside. A salad that was so much more than a token or an afterthought, with crispy chickpeas as addictive and delicious as anything I’ve eaten, piled high with bright fresh vegetables, creamy yoghurt, the finishing flavour of Nigella seeds. Meatballs, plump and juicy, finished with a crisp hazelnut crumb.

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And the desserts: the rich, clean flan with the burnish of perfect caramel; the exquisite scoop of chocolate mousse; the final satisfaction of the chocolate salami. All washed down with an excellent Moscatel and a perfect espresso.

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..

And, joy of joys, they take bookings. You can call them! You can email them! Even chat to them on Twitter! I long ago gave up trying to get a table at Oli’s Thai (it’s not literally impossible, but it’s very difficult, and they make it very difficult in a way that annoys me because it seems unnecessary, so I stopped trying). But you can reserve a table easily at Arbequina, and if you walk in without a booking they’ll usually find you a corner anyway. or you can sit at the bar, which is actually a delight because you get to watch the chefs working their magic.

I have recommended Arbequina to many people over the last year, and no one has been less than delighted at what they found when they visited. Yes, it’s true it’s not entirely unique, and yes, there are restaurants like this in London. But that doesn’t make Arbequina any less than wonderful, and there’s certainly nowhere else like it in Oxford. I hope to be celebrating anniversaries with them for years to come.