Lemon Ice Cream

There comes a point during winter where enough is enough. Winter-fatigue comes in stages. First there is the surprise that this, winter, has happened yet again. We watch the leaves change colour and slowly fall off the trees. We feel the sun sink lower in the sky, appear less often to warm our faces, and the days grow shorter. It feels like a suitable end for summer, quiet and colourful, but I tend to forget that the grey winter months lie ahead.

Next comes the envy directed at those in the northern hemisphere who are wondering how to use the bounty of vine ripened tomatoes; their red, green, black or stripey skins glistening in the sun; or the endless piles of summer corn. Then I feel an almost physical pain, like an itch you can’t quite reach, in my desperate longing for heat and summer; for long evenings (you still must wear a jacket, possibly two, in Wellington), and light meals, for new season potatoes and stone fruit and for big, blue skies.
This ice cream is the perfect bridge between seasons here in Wellington. Lemons lend themselves well to winter; their bright acidity adds a little pop to all sorts of dishes. This ice cream is similar to the rather unsuccessful batch I made several months ago, as it really is just sweetened frozen whipped cream. The difference here is I know this recipe to be good.

This was my first taste of home-made ice cream as a child, perhaps a reason for my deep-seated love of cream. The recipe comes from our friend Jill, a fantastic cook. I remember meals at her house with carrot sticks, olive bread, baba ganoush, zucchini cake, barbecue lamb cutlets, and this lemon ice cream. I’m sure we saw Jill and her family during winter, but I seem to only have memories of summer nights playing in their backyard. Lemon ice cream seems to suit these days.The fat of the cream coats your lips and the spoon in this gorgeous slick, and the lemon hovers, constant, smooth and sweet. The zest adds little pin pricks of yellow. The heavy slick is lovely, but perhaps not for everybody. This week I wanted something new, something for these days now. I have been looking for an opportunity to drain yoghurt – to wrap it in muslin and extract the whey. After 24 hours in the fridge the sharp taste of yoghurt remains but the texture is transformed into something closer to cream cheese.It seems a shame to break up these beautiful soft curds with a beater, but whipped through the mix they sharpen the lemon and cut the heaviness of the cream. This ice cream is best after it has been out of the freezer for 20 minutes or so. It becomes softer, more like a frozen parfait or semifreddo. In summer it would be well matched with roasted peaches, or a berry soup. In winter perhaps a rhubarb galette, caramelised pears or apples; something warm to loosen the ice cream further into smooth lemon dribbles.

Even this cute thing thinks it sounds blissful. No matter the weather, she is content.

Lemon Ice Cream

Plan ahead for this recipe – it takes a couple of days.

300ml plain yoghurt
muslin/cheesecloth

300ml cream
4 lemons
1 cup icing sugar

Place a colander or sieve over a bowl and line with the muslin/cheesecloth. Pour in the yoghurt and place in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.

When the yoghurt has thickened and the whey has been extracted, beat the cream until softly whipped. Add the zest of 2 of the lemons and the juice of all 4. Add the icing sugar and break in the yoghurt. Beat until smooth and more firmly whipped, but still silken looking.

Pour cream into a freezer container and freeze for 2-3 hours or overnight. Remember to remove from the freezer 20-30 minutes before serving.

Sweet Pumpkin Cake

Pumpkin is an ever versatile vegetable so why is it often in a roast, soup, mash rotation? Roast, soup, mash, roast, soup, mash. Perhaps, in New Zealand, this a nod to our Sunday roast, meat-and-three-vege traditional fare. Pumpkin should be treated more like the apple or the carrot, something that closes the gap between sweet and savoury, compliments the savoury or brightens the sweet.
I made this cake following the instructions of a banana yoghurt cake, but changing quantities and ingredients on a whim, hoping for good things. The colour is quite startling, as you would expect from a cake made with pumpkin. It’s autumnal, perhaps a shade of rust. The flavour mellows out; there is a whisper of nutmeg and cinnamon, and not a lot of sweetness. The pumpkin sits on the back burner, not saying a great deal, instead bringing a certain warmth and richness to the cake.
You could easily ice this cake, an orange drizzle icing could be nice, or make it up like carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting. Although, I feel icing takes away its ability to be a light snacking cake, perfect for breakfast.

Next I’m thinking pumpkin bread; savoury, light orange in colour, perhaps of the yeasty variety. Bread and butter pudding with sweetened pumpkin purée, brandy soaked raisins, cream and nutmeg. Cannelloni stuffed with pumpkin and feta; a savoury crumble with pumpkin and parsnip – a crumble laden with walnuts; maybe grated pumpkin will work in a rosti. May winter continue long enough for me to try all these ideas.

Sweet Pumpkin Cake

1 1/4 cup sugar
100 grams butter, melted
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree (I cooked about 2 handfuls of pumpkin in sugared water until tender, drained the water and blended with a dash of cream)
1/2 cup natural yoghurt
2 cups self raising flour
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda

Pre-heat oven to 160°C. Grease a large rectangular or round tin.

Beat the butter and sugar together until smooth. Add eggs, one at a time, beating after each addition, until thick and creamy. Stir through the pumpkin puree, then the yoghurt. Sieve dry ingredients into the bowl and fold together until just combined. Pour into tin and bake for 35-45 minutes, depending on the size of your tin, until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
Leave in the tin for 10 minutes before turning onto a wire rack to cool.

Serve with yoghurt, delicious afternoon tea cake.

N.B. This is a large mix.

Venison Ragoût

Tuesday was a miserable night, calling for slow cooked and warming food – a venison ragoût. On nights like we have had this week; where the wind shakes the windows in their frames; there are metres of freshly fallen snow in some parts of the country; we’ve had thunder and lightening and unrelenting rain, it was such a pleasure to stand at the stove and slowly put together this meal.

In the world of food blogging there appears to be a constant need to reinvent the wheel, to take old favourites then add a bit of this, a touch of that so the original recipe is almost lost. I think this is why baking recipes are held in such high regard on blogs; swap dates for currants, white sugar for brown, all-purpose flour for whole wheat and, hey, we have something new and exciting. This is how we develop new ideas and new ways of cooking, so please, don’t get me wrong, many baking blogs share some wonderful recipes. I like the sound of these, and this, and these.

But we shouldn’t forget the everyday good things: the soups, stews, salads and grains, the humble vegetable. When prepared with tenderness and thought, they too can offer something exciting. After all, most of us don’t just eat cake. This venison ragoût with the sweetness of bacon and prunes and the subtly rich flavour of the meat is a deeply satisfying dish for a cold winter’s night.

I served the ragoût with brussel sprouts, halved and sautéed with a knob of butter, a half teaspoon honey, grating of lemon zest and a splash of hot water. Once the sprouts were lightly browned, about 8-10 minutes, I added a handful of trimmed green beans and continued to toss for a further 5 minutes.

Venison Ragoût
Barely adapted from the Silver Fern Farms recipe

1 tablespoon oil
2 medium onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, finely diced
500 gram venison fillet, diced
1 teaspoon paprika
a few sprigs of thyme
pepper
2 rashers bacon
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
a handful of prunes or cranberries
1 tablespoon tomato paste
100ml red wine
1/2 teaspoon vinegar
zest of a lemon
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
100ml stock

Heat the oilve oil in a frypan or casserole dish (suitable for stove-top use and with a lid). Add onions and garlic and sauté until soft. Put onions in a bowl and set to one side. Turn heat to medium-high and pan fry the venison with the paprika, thyme and pepper until lightly browned. Reduce heat and add chopped bacon and vegetables. Cook for a further 5 minutes. Add onions back to the pan with the prunes or cranberries. Add tomato paste, red wine, vinegar, lemon zest and mustard and stock. Reduce the heat, cover the pan and bring to a simmer. Continue to simmer for one hour or place casserole dish in a pre-heated oven to 170°C for an hour.

Serve with potatoes or rice or green vegetables.

Roast Pumpkin with Feta

It is hard to keep up with Wellington weather. What to wear? What to eat? Should I take a raincoat or sunscreen? What to eat gets me the most. I never know if I should be bunkering down with the comfort foods of winter or holding on to those fresh, clean tastes of summer. Winter vegeatables are appearing at the market alongside the last of the season’s stone fruit. And yesterday I think I got sunburnt. Wellington can be a testing place to live.

But, nonetheless, it was impossible to resist this little pumpkin last week. It fit into the palm of my hand, small and green with a little button top. I wanted to coo and whisper sweet somethings to it. Instead, I roasted it, whole. I cut around the button top, pulled it out like a plug, then scooped out the seeds and pulp. I rubbed olive oil, salt and pepper around its insides. I placed three peeled cloves of garlic and some chopped up feta in the middle and replaced the lid.

In the oven the pumpkin steams and roasts within its skin. The cuteness of the pumpkin seems to disappear; the skin crisps up and weathers slightly. It almost wrinkles as the flesh within begins to pull away from the sides. Then you know it is going to be good. The pumpkin at the top is almost plain, with a hint of sweetness, while at the bottom the flesh is almost soupy. The sharpness of the feta disappears and instead there is a salty, creamy broth.

My mother used to cook pumpkins like this. The trick is lots of garlic, three or four whole cloves per pumpkin. And something salty: strips of bacon curled around the insides of the pumpkin works wonderfully, holding in the very best of the pumpkin flavour.

There is something very pleasing about cooking a whole pumpkin, whether to be carved and shared at the table or to enjoy a little one for yourself. Take great delight in pulling off the stopper and scraping the flesh off the top, as you would a soft boiled egg.

Enjoy no matter the weather; these baby pumpkins are too good to wait for colder days.

Roast Baby Pumpkin with Feta

Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Cut around the top of each pumpkin. You may need a spoon to lever out the top. Use the spoon to scrape out the seeds and all the stringy pulp. Pour in a tablespoon of olive oil and spread around the sides. Add ground salt and pepper and spread evenly.

Peel three cloves of garlic per pumpkin. Place inside the pumpkin along with several cubes of feta, so you can’t see the bottom of the pumpkin. Place the stopper back in its hole. Place in a tin foil lined baking tray. Cook for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the side of the pumpkin meets no resistance.

For more of a soup add a 1/2 cup of chicken or vegetable stock. Replace feta with bacon or strips of red pepper. Add ground chilli to the salt and pepper for a little bit of a kick.

Strawberry Cloud Cake

Most Monday nights we try to do dinner; Ollie and Jason, Francesca and myself, flatmates, sisters, a few strays we have picked up along the way. Sometimes we are four, sometimes eight. Sometimes the meals are elaborate multiple course affairs, where we sit around drinking tea or wine for hours, only to realise it’s nearly midnight and about time we drag ourselves home. Sometimes they are simple, short and sweet. But there is always cheese, wine and fruit paste. And nearly always dessert. They are a great start to our week.

During the past few weeks we have made cannelloni with spinach from our garden, spaghetti bolognaise cooked slowly in Jason’s Le Creuset, roast red onion and kumara, Nigella’s green beans with butter and lemon, we have made gravy and apple cake. We have eaten a lot of cheese.

Last Monday Jason made Strawberry Cloud Cake. It was delightful, cold and light, with little air bubbles that sort of carried the flavour along. Most definitely worth sharing, I told him. It is less of a cake, I think, and more of a pie with a candy floss pink, softly whipped filling. It sat nestled in our freezer while we ate our very wintery, too wintery, beer and beef stew.

The weather has warmed up recently, a late summer hit. Some days are warm and cloud free, barely a ruffle of a breeze. All I want to eat is crisp salads, and melons, and strawberries. I want grilled pineapple with mint sugar. I want fresh tomato and basil salsa.

And then, Jason arrived with his Strawberry Cloud Cake. It is a little bit like frozen ambrosia, slightly sweet, but not overly so. As you put your fork through the dessert it is the texture of marshmellow, maybe a soft moose, and then you hit the biscuit base below. It breaks cleanly into bite sized chunks, each one like a little pink island. The biscuit base holds it all together; it could be too buttery, too savoury perhaps. But then, you realise, this base with the toasty taste of coconut is just what the pie needs to intensify the flavour of the strawberries. It is just what I needed too.

Strawberry Cloud Cake
From Annabel Langbein, Free Range in the City

For the base:

150g plain sweet biscuits (made into fine crumbs)
1/2 cup dessicated coconut
1 1/2 teasspoon cinnamon
100g butter, melted

Line a 26-28cm springform tin with baking paper. Mix base ingredients together and press into tin, along the base and sides. Refrigerate while preparing the filling.

For the filling:

2 egg whites, at room temperature
1 cup sugar
1 punnet strawberries, hulled and sliced
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place all filling ingredients in a clean dry bowl of an electric beater. Beat on high for 6-8 mins until mixture is very thick and fluffy and the sugar is dissolved. You should not feel any gritty sugar after this time. If you do beat for longer. Spoon over chilled base, smooth top, cover with baking paper and freeze for at least 4 hours. Will keep in an airtight container in the freezer for up to one month.

Serve with raspberry or strawberry compote, or fresh berries.

Walnut and Chocolate Biscotti

Saturday night and I was feeling like a thick, fudgey, dense chocolate something. Maybe with fruit and nuts, maybe a little like panforte. Instead, I made biscotti, which has been on my to-make list all summer. When, finally, biscotti and I are on the same page, so to speak, summer has well and truly passed. We have been hit by what the weather reporters are calling a “weather bomb.” Power is down and rooves are being ripped off in some parts of the country. Here in Wellington it’s miserable and bleak: driving rain and furious winds.

A piece of biscotti to be enjoyed with a small glass of sherry later on, when it’s dark, and all I can hear are the winds beating the trees and the steady drip of rain in the pipes ouside.

 Chocolate and walnut biscotti
Recipe adapted from here and here

2 cups standard flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
60 grams butter, cubed
3/4 cup sugar, raw or white, I used raw demerara sugar
1/2 cup roughly broken walnut pieces
50 grams roughly chopped dark chocolate, I used Lindt Orange Intense
3 eggs, lightly beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Pre-heat oven to 160°. Stir flour and baking powder together in a large bowl. Use your fingertips to rub in the butter until it resembles fine breadcrumbs. Stir through sugar, walnut pieces and chocolate. If you wish, add a small amount orange zest at this point.
Make a well in the centre and pour in the lightly beaten eggs and the vanilla essence. Stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture forms thick dough. (I had to add a dash of milk at this point..)

Place dough on a lightly floured surface and give it a quick knead. Divde dough in two and roll each half into a flat-ish log about 5cm wide. Place on a lined baking tray and bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown and cooked through.

Remove from oven and allow to cool completely. Heat oven to 170°. Slice each piece of biscotti diagonally to about 1cm thick. Place slices back on baking tray and into the oven for 10 minutes or until slightly browned but quite crisp to the touch.

Serve with sherry(!) or with espresso coffee, maybe combine the two, espresso with a shot of sherry. Biscotti would also be a good vehicle for delivering vanilla ice cream, or perhaps salted butter caramel ice cream, to your lips.

This recipe is begging to be adapted: swap the walnuts for almonds, or macadamias, increase the quantity. Remove the nut or the chocolate altogether and add a good handful of roughly chopped dried figs instead. Reduce the flour quantity a little and make it up with some cocoa. Experiment with the sugars, perhaps a decent tablespoon of maple syrup or a half cup of brown sugar for something a little bit richer and caramely. Add a citrus hit with chopped candied peel and a smattering of orange zest. Swap half the flour out for a cup of ground almonds to really bring forth the soft almond bitterness.

Banana Steamed Puddings

For a few years when I was younger my family and a few other mad people did a mid-winter swim. One weekend, near the shortest day of the year, we would gather at Princess Bay on the Wellington south coast. Our cars would be packed with blankets, woollen socks and woollen jerseys, lots of towels and too much polar fleece. We had picnic baskets full of soft bread rolls, berry muffins and thermos of hot drinks.

The adults would stand on the beach drinking coffee for a while, hands curved around the white plastic cups. My sister and I would walk around the tiny, black sand beach looking for rock pools and writing our names in the sand. Usually it was a sharp, clear winter day. We could see the Kaikoura mountain range, too close and too white for running into the sea. Other years a biting southerly wind tore through the Cook Strait and hypothermia was quite a serious threat.

We would all change into our swimwear. I remember floral swim caps and beach shoes. A few in wetsuits, but mostly they were brave in summer togs. My sister and I were made to wear wetsuits, though I longed to be big enough to wear togs too. A few more minutes of hand wringing then the towels and blankets were dropped. We ran into the water, arms flailing and knees rising, as if trying to propel ourselves out of the sea. Some dived straight through the small waves, but most of us ran out to waist depth and plunged under, the freezing water catching at our lungs.

Back on the beach we pulled polar fleece over our still wet bodies, wrapped around towels and put on hats. The coarse sand stuck to our feet, piercing like needles. We stayed on the beach, trying to warm up. The adults drank mulled wine and hot orange juice. I remember my sister and I sitting in the open boot of someone’s car next to the thermos of mulled wine. We could smell the warm spices and citrus aromas. We poured ourselves a tiny cup and had a sip. It was hot and sweet and tasted like berries and orange.

Later in the afternoon we would meet at someone’s house for a mid-winter feast. These meals were an eye opening experience for me as a child. My sister and I sat at the table with the grown ups. We had wine glasses with sparkling grape juice and proper knives and forks. One year we had goose. I tried quail eggs and ate brussel sprouts. Another year there was Golden Soup with carrot and orange. But what I remember most clearly is the year my mother made sticky date puddings.

This memory, according to my mother, is mostly fabricated in my head, but this does not make these puddings any less special. In some sort of “Alice in Wonderland” state of child wonderment these date puddings were made in tea cups. They were caramel in colour with rich streaks of soft date and each one slightly domed. Our tea set was white with tiny blue squares around the rim and in a matching jug we had butterscotch sauce. We ate our puddings in their little cups on saucers; they seemed so exciting and so grown up.

I have held on to this made up memory for a long time. I told my mother about it a few months ago and I was slightly crushed to discover it hadn’t happened as I remembered. There were indeed sticky date puddings but made in Tex Mex muffin tins. We have eaten quite a few steamed puddings this winter, all made in tea cups. In my flat we have a new tea set, ivory coloured Crown Lynn with a beach-grass design.

Last week I used up some of the bananas in our freezer to make banana steamed puddings. I was aiming for a light pudding, the kind that you might eat after a fresh Thai curry. Instead, I made a very wintery, sweet with honey, quite dense sort of pudding. But no less delicious. The honey, the cinnamon and the banana created a moist pudding and definitely more interesting than banana bread or banana cake. I put a handful of raisins into the mix also. Next time I make these I might soak the raisins in a splash of brandy. A pudding will nearly always benefit from plump, brandy saturated raisins.

I made these puddings twice in one week. One night we served our tea cups on their saucers with a scoop of vanilla ice cream, and the other night I tipped the puddings upside down onto their saucers and sprinkled bits of walnuts. They were everything my child mind remembered them to be. All we needed was a sneaky thermos of mulled wine.

Banana Steamed Puddings
A recipe loosely based on this one from the BBC website. BBC Food has some wonderful recipes.

150g butter
150g castor sugar
2 eggs
175g self raising flour
½ teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
50g sultanas
3 ripe bananas, mashed
honey

Preheat oven to 180C.

Cream butter and sugar, beating for about 5 minutes. Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift the flour with the spices, add the vanilla essence, sultanas and mashed bananas. Fold together until well combined.

Butter 6 ramekins or teacups, spoon a teaspoon of honey in the bottom of each ramekin. Fill each teacup ¾ of the way up. Place teacups in a roasting dish, fill the pan half way up with water and place a piece of tinfoil on top of tea cups. Lightly press the edges of the foil around the tea cups to better enclose the tea cups. Place in the oven for 40-50 minutes or until slightly springy to the touch and a skewer inserted into the middle of the pudding comes out clean.

N.B. I don’t think my oven is very powerful so you may want to check your puddings after 30 minutes. A lot of steamed pudding recipes recommend this cooking time.

Apple Crumble Cake

*I started writing this post about a week ago, but due to technical difficulties it’s been a while in the making.

I’d like you to think back to last Sunday, when it was considerably warmer than it is now. Do you feel that mid morning Sunday sun warm against your curtains? Can you see your coats, hats, scarves and gloves hanging empty on hangers and hooks? Can you feel a hint of spring?

As my friend, Francesca, and I walked to the market, there were rowers on a near-flat harbour, children on scooters and roller-blades and the waterfront cafés spreading out along the boardwalk. People wandered back from the markets, green market bags in one hand, coffee in the other. It was the very definition of a perfect Sunday morning.

On our way to the market I let myself think, for only a second, of spring pasta with fresh asparagus. I thought maybe winter had released her grip and we could start to think about storing our woolen jackets, unplugging the electric blankets and, of course, fresh asparagus.

Upon arrival at the market, the winter staples sat smugly in their crates, confident of their position in our kitchens for at least another month. My hopes of new asparagus dashed, Francesca and I bought winter greens: petite broccoli heads, spinach bunched roughly with an elastic band, half a savoy cabbage with a scorpion shaped core and a tall leek with leaves perfect for poking out of a market bag; you’re a proper market goer with a leek sticking out of your bag. We wore sunglasses and made summer plans for barbeques on the balcony and long, icy drinks with Pimm’s.

Then, later in the afternoon, the deep clouds rolled in, the hail started and flurries of snow hovered in the half darkness. And now, this week: snow in the city centre, the pine covered hills behind Thorndon are speckled in white and the roads resemble cookie and cream ice cream.

We still have a while to go until blossoms and tulips. I’m ok with that.

Because what this polar blast really means is hearty stews, thick soups, a dozen cups of tea a day, steamed puddings, warm bread rolls hiding meltey butter and, apple crumble cake. Thrashing storms, house-shaking thunder and slushy rain are really the only conditions in which one should eat apple crumble cake.

An apple crumble cake spiked with spices, the slight tartness of apples and the maple, caramel flavour of butter and brown sugar. This cake cum crumble cum strudel has a slight nutty texture and taste, as if made with soft chips of walnut. Instead, rolled oats slathered in a bit more butter and sugar.

Francesca made this cake using her Mum’s tried and true recipe. It was not intended for our flat, but when the snow and the hail forced us to bunker down inside we were glad to have this apple crumble cake. It is best eaten warm with yoghurt or ice cream, but it lasts for days, perfect for a lunch time baked treat.

So, forget the Pimms and new season asparagus. Tuck your trackpants into your socks; relish wearing two merinos, a hoodie and a dressing gown; pull a blanket up to your chin and simply let apple crumble cake work its winter magic.

Apple Crumble Cake

Cake ingredients:

125g butter, softened
2 medium apples
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups flour
1tsp baking soda
2tsp cinnamon
1tsp allspice
1tsp salt

Topping ingredients:

25g cold butter
1/2 cup rolled oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
1tsp cinnamon

Cake:
In a food processor put butter, apples (unpeeled), sugar and the egg. Mix briefly until the apples are roughly chopped. Sift in the dry ingredients and mix until just blended.
Pour into a 23cm baking dish lined with paper.

Topping:
Clean and dry the food processor well before making the topping. Mix cold butter, oats, brown sugar and cinnamon in food processor until just mixed.
Sprinkle the topping on top of the cake.
Bake at 180°C for 40-45minutes.

N.B The topping mix will spread through the rest of the cake.