Cherry Bakewell Trifle [recipe]

By: Mrs Robot

I realise Christmas was a little while back now, but you will want to save this recipe. Or, possibly, throw any stupid thoughts you might be having of dieting to the wind and make it and eat it. I make a trifle every Christmas, and this year came up with the idea of a cherry bakewell-flavoured one. It's all dead simple, apart from the custard. The custard is the one Katie Stewart uses for her Sherry Trifle in Katie Stewart's Cookery Book, and it is a luxury in itself. Do not be tempted to use a ready-made custard as that won't thicken and set the way this one does.

Ingredients
FOR THE BASE
About 20 boudoir biscuits/sponge fingers
1 jar cherries in juice - I used 'Sweet Valley' Morello cherries from Aldi
A tablespoon of cornflour (or as much as required)
Amaretto

FOR THE CUSTARD
6 egg yolks
2oz/50g caster sugar
2 tsp cornflour
1 pt/600ml double cream
Almond essence

ON TOP
1pt/600ml whipping cream

Get yourself a nice glass bowl - if you don't have one, they're dead cheap in charity shops. Break the boudoir biscuits into roughly quarters, scoop out about half the jar of cherries, dry them a little and chuck them in the bowl with the biscuits. Drizzle a couple of shot glasses of amaretto over the mixture, and toss it about a bit to ensure everything's well mixed, but don't break the biscuits up. Put half the juice from the jar into a saucepan, mix in the cornflour, and heat it to make a thick jammy sauce. Drizzle evenly over the biscuits and cherries.

Note: if your bowl is big, you might want to use larger quantities of the above, if it's small you might want to use smaller. This bit of the 'recipe' is easy to vary.

Whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together. Heat the double cream in a pan then, when it's very hot, gradually stir it into the egg mixture. Whack it all back in the pan and heat it gently until it thickens, being careful not to boil it or heat it too fast or it'll scramble. Once it's thick, leave it to cool a lot, then add about 1/4 teaspoon of almond essence - don't add too much or the almond will crush the delicious taste of eggs and cream. Pour the cooled custard into the glass bowl on top of the biscuit mixture. If it went a bit lumpy, do this through a sieve.

Note: if you have a small bowl, you might not want to use all the custard (or all the cream in the next stage). Save it in the fridge to have with something like an apple crumble or steamed pudding in a couple of days' time; you can warm the custard gently.

Chill the filled bowl. When it's properly cold, whip up the whipping cream, pipe it on top, and decorate with a few more cherries.

And that's it. Dead easy to make, tastes like paradise in a bowl.

Retro Recipe: God Save the Queen (of Puddings)!

By: Mrs Robot

I was once entertained to hear an American food critic say you could mess about with the savoury side of food as much as you liked and British people would eat it, but don't ever mess with their puddings. It's true: we do love a good pud, from venerable old Christmas Pudding to a steamed golden syrup one, to what has to be the UK's current favourite, sticky toffee pudding, which is a bit of a johnny-come-lately having been invented around the 1970s. Now, British puddings are not like American pudding, which seems to refer solely to custardy or blancmangey things. Being a guttersnipe, I'll label anything sweet served towards the end of a meal 'pudding', but when I talk of 'a pudding', I'll mean the spongy sort. Queen of Puddings is a bit of an oddity, then, as it's got a custardy (but firm) base. On top of that goes a thin layer of red jam, then a pile of meringue.

This was an unusual thing for me to make as there's an unstated division of labour here at Casa Mechanica; I do pastry, he does meringues. But as Mr Robot had crossed the line when he wrestled with the Moroccan snake, I decided to give this a whirl. The recipe was from Katie Stewart's Cookery Book, a reprint of The Times Cookery Book. I was worried about including this entry in our 'Retro Recipes' section, but that book was first published over 40 years ago! Despite that, the book isn't at all dated, just incredibly useful.

I don't know why it's taken me so long to give this a go. I'd feared it would be tricky, but it's incredibly simple. I suppose separating eggs might seem difficult to some people if they've never tried it, but it's really easy. You use the yolks in the custard mixture, which you then soak the bread in, beat smooth, and bake. Once the bread-custard base is firm, you smear it with jam - we used a jar of raspberry bought at the Bakelite Museum on a recent trip to Devon - and then top with meringue. Bake it again for about 10 minutes and hey presto! Pudding is ready to serve.

As for the meringue... I did it! I've always been terrified of over-beating it and ending up with a collapsed mess, and that's been leading me to under-beat. This time I got it really stiff and the whole experience was much more satisfying (ooh, matron).

One thing that struck me was how economical the whole thing was, enabling you to feed about six people (erm, or two greedy ones) using just a few eggs, a thick slice of bread, some sugar and some jam. If you've got other things going in the oven anyway, it would be easy to pop the base in on a lower shelf at the same time, making maximum use of the heat. She may be called a Queen, but she's a Pauper at heart!

A Culinary Memorial: Joan Gettins 1946-2015

by: Mr Robot

It's been quite a while since I last posted - at first just laziness and then, awfully, my Mother died suddenly in February. Not really conducive to light-hearted blithering, as you can probably imagine.

As I'm sure is the case for most people, Mum was my primary influence in all things foody, and with no father around I spent a lot of time hanging around the kitchen with her. So I was determined that my next post - whenever it came - should be a little tribute to her.

As it's turned out, there's a heavy Christmas influence here. Partly because that's when many of the family rituals got established but also, living 200 miles away, it was the time I saw her most consistently over the last 20 years or so.

So here we go, and forgive me if the keyboard gets a little soggy.

The Prawn Cocktail

Growing up in the late 70s and early 80s it's no surprise some of my fondest foods now fall into the naff-to-retro-chic category.

I'm never sure where on that spectrum prawn cocktail sits at any given point and, frankly, I couldn't care less.

This was Mum's go-to starter for any occasion  and never lost its appeal.

It very specifically requires frozen prawns (she couldn't abide handling fresh seafood) and iceberg lettuce, and must be served in these glass dishes - which I'm pretty sure have been around longer than I have - and the unwritten rule was that no matter how many were served, there must always be enough left over in the fridge for me to have two more helpings later on.

Beyond that, though, I couldn't tell you much about the making of it, and this is the first time I've ever made it. I never needed to before - it was always something Mum did. A Marie-Rose sauce is such a staple that everyone has their own tweaks to make it personal, but I'd never even asked about her recipe (I've riffed on a Delia here).

I guess it's testament to my childlike assumption that she'd always be there - despite her many health issues - that I never really expected to have to make things like this myself. And now I'll never know the true, home recipe. The best I can do is start working towards my own.

Eggs Benedict


Quite the opposite to a childhood tradition (in fact I have a feeling I introduced it to her), but eggs benedict became a little ritual over the last 10 years or so.

It is always to be had on Christmas morning while listening to Ed Stewart's Junior Choice on Radio 2 (I can't imagine how I'll cope with Puff the Magic Dragon this year) and just before opening presents.

The ham always comes from Walter Rose and the eggs are organic, but the muffins are supermarket standard, and I'm afraid the hollandaise is from a jar.

While I can and do make my own hollandaise at other times, Xmas Eggs need to be an easy, convivial start to the day, when there's enough kitchen nonsense going on already, and presents must never be delayed.

Eggs Benedict - a Christmas necessity

So our eggs benedict, like so many of these things, isn't the best in the world but it's the right one.

Gammon with pineapple, and peas and sweetcorn

Another much maligned dish and to be honest I veer towards egg and chips with my gammon but this was her standby.

A special occasion would pretty much always demand Duck a L'Orange (a significant project, as I remember it) but gammon with pineapple was more commonplace but always felt like a treat.

As often as not, it was what greeted us when we came to stay and was always served with new potatoes, and a massive dish of peas and sweetcorn - mixed together and well doused in butter.


Generally a bottle of three of chilled chardonnay or sauvingon blanc came alongside.

This is something we only ever had at Mum's. Actually when I was thinking about this post it was Mrs Robot who demanded I include it, just for the peas and sweetcorn which stand out as a uniquely Mum thing.

Peas and sweetcorn - so simple but distinctively her

Dated perhaps, but surely that's the point of nostalgia.

Christmas Pudding
Mum always made her own Christmas Pudding and I've shared it with many, many people over the years - it's always declared the best ever tried.

Mum's last Christmas pudding, getting a brandy wash

In this case I'm pleased to say I did pin the recipe down because Christmas without her pudding would be hard to bear.

It comes from an old Good Cooking magazine (a series she collected in its entirety), the page now well spattered with 30-odd years of goop and brandy drips. She typically made them a good year or so in advance, with regular doses of booze to keep them going. When she died it was horribly poignant to find two small puddings already prepared for this year.

April is obviously the wrong time to indulge in that kind of thing, so here I've taken one of the puddings and incorporated it into Tom Kerridge's Orange Cake with plum sauce and Christmas Pudding ice-cream. It's fantastic dessert and I think Mum would have loved it.

Tom Kerridge's Orange Cake, with Mum's Xmas pudding ice-cream

Chocolate Truffles
Another Christmas thing, but this going right back to my earliest memories. We lived in rural Norfolk but most of the extended family was in Lancashire so every year we would make the lengthy trek up north and west (this before the M62 was invented) with presents for my cousins and, for her siblings, home-made rum and brandy truffles.

They're from a loved and battered copy of Sonia Allison's A Pleasure to Cook and are incredibly rich, consisting purely of dark chocolate, butter, egg yolk and sugar. And alcohol of course, which, now I've made them myself, is severely understated in the book. I'd guess Mum was using 3 to 4 times as much booze, to the benefit of all.

I have distinct, unbearably warm memories of Truffle Day. Mum spends pretty much the whole day making them and I - maybe six years old - am hugely excited because a) this means Christmas is definitely on the way and b) there will probably be some treats coming my way later. It's grey and cold outside, warm and golden in the kitchen. She's wearing blue, and it's a day of laughter.

Nonsense of course, as I know she often found it hugely time consuming and I must've been a right pain in the arse, getting under her feet and demanding to lick the spoon every five minutes. But still, that's the picture in my mind and one I've had for a long time.

Just last Christmas, in fact, I'd talked to her about resurrecting the truffle tradition with the plan of making them for her this year. Appalling, then, that it can't happen - and how much more important they are to me now.

Rum and Brandy Chocolate Truffles. Need more rum. And brandy.

There are so many other things I could go on about: the wonderful seafood lasagne she made each Good Friday, the baked alaska and "chocolate mountain" (a pile of profiteroles a good 2ft high) that remain legendary within the family; pea and ham soup in the depths of winter; the travesty that was cold baked beans in a salad; her devotion to Ken Hom; the day Old El Paso reached East Anglia...

I'll finish with one of our best food memories, when the Icelandic volcano scuppered our planned flights and we ended up doing a last minute trip to Padstow instead. The weather was kind and we had a lovely week but the highlight for her was eating a Rick Stein's. The best food she'd ever had, she said, with possibly the biggest smile I'd ever seen on her face. For someone so reserved-to-cynical, the purity of her enjoyment was a treat to see, and I'm so glad we were able to give her that.

Food is a joy to me, and playing in the kitchen is one of my greatest pleasures. I owe all that happiness to Mum.

Fruitful Mellowness

By: Mr Robot

There's a fair amount of misery involved in the English Autumn: it's cold, it's soggy, it's grey, it's dark... whatever all-too-brief summer we actually had disappears practically overnight and before you know it you're looking at six months of chilly rain before the slightly warmer rain comes round again.

But there are upsides: warm fires, dark beer, cosy pubs on a chilly day, bonfire night, that bite in the air that makes you glad to have a fur-lined nose, misty mornings and leaves turning and, of course, the food.

This is the season to make soups and stews, puddings and pies, and many things rich and dark and gloopy. It's my favourite time for cooking, plus it's game season.

So the other weekend I decided to indulge myself with a long Sunday in the kitchen, a brace of pheasant the butcher had talked me into, and Tom Kerridge's Proper Pub Food to keep me company.

Pheasant, hiding in a hedge of bacon

Actually I started off by knocking up a very fudged Onion Soup that would get me banned from la belle France if I dared call it French - but you know whereof I speak. Yes, it involved an Oxo cube and, yes, the wine was cheap Spanish, but hey, at least it had wine and the cheese was a rather nice Gruyere even if it was on top of toasted Generic White Sliced. We enjoyed it anyway. It was that kind of weather.

My deepest apologies to France

But that was merely a precursor to the pheasant, which I prepared in the Kerridge style with many well-browned carrots along with garlic, orange, stock and I can't remember what else. Everyone's favourite setting of gas bugger-all for, ooh ages, enabled me to knock up the prescribed game chips and bread sauce (Generic White Sliced sauce, to be precise), and turn my mind to pud.

Never mind the presentation, here's the dog's, er, pistols

Now, I've done the pheasant before so know it to be worth treasuring, but I'd never tried these steamed ginger puddings. It was a fair bet though, because Kerridge's book has never let me down and his little date & toffee puds would entice me under a moving bus.

In any case it's enough, I submit, just to note the key ingredients of ginger, syrup, vanilla, puddingness and custard. There's a bit of jazzing around with lemon and ginger wine but really, if that doesn't get you I don't know what will.

Honestly, what more do you want?

Happily the recipe makes six puddings, which works perfectly for the two of us.

Creaking already from the immensely rich & savoury pheasant, and a startlingly good bread sauce (I know - I've avoided it for years on the assumption that, well it's bread... made into a sauce. Idiot), we actually ate only one each.

Serves two, eventually

Remarkable isn't it? We experimented with freezing the others and it's worked pretty well - just reheated by very gently steaming. If anything, freezing brings out the ginger more. But I digress.

We were sated and then some, and insanely happy. This is food that makes you really appreciate the grotty, wet, miserable weather just the other side of the window. To celebrate we finished with a glass of mulled cider, and then a whole load more. Doesn't get much better, to be honest.

All images (c) PP Gettins

We don't give away other folk's recipes. Buy the book instead - you'll never regret it. You can probably get it cheap on Amazon, or better yet pay full whack for a copy signed by the great man himself.