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.

Stollen pleasures

By: Mrs Robot

Ever since I was in High School I've loved stollen. I had a German penfriend, Alice, who I got on really well with, and each year she and I would send each other boxes containing presents and food at Christmas. A stollen was always one of the things she sent. I've been trying to do more yeast cookery this year, and decided to make a stollen for once.

There are some recipes I call 'shepherd's pie recipes'. You know the sort of thing - deeply traditional, everyone knows what it tastes like, yet every recipe is different. So it is with stollen. SO MANY RECIPES. I found two I liked the look of, one by Paul Hollywood on the BBC site, and one by a German lady at Nigella's site. The German one didn't contain marzipan and Paul Hollywood made his marzipan into a swirl, so I ended up mostly following Paul Hollywood's recipe, but macerating the dried fruit in a little rum first like in the German recipe, and I kept my marzipan in a traditional log shape.

The dough didn't seem to rise as much as I'd expected at the sitting stage. I'm still getting the hang of working with yeast, and I made a batch of bau after this. I used the same yeast for both, but the stollen called for the yeast to go in with the dried ingredients, while the bau needed it to go into warm water with a bit of sugar in. Needless to say, the bau rose better, so next time I do anything with yeast I'll start it off on the liquid, and nuts to what the recipe says. The stollen did grow a satisfying amount in the oven.

The Paul Hollywood recipe said nothing about leaving the stollen to mature, but the German recipe did and - crucially - Goody mentioned resting her European-origin Christmas bakes recently. And I actually trust her more than I trust Paul Hollywood with his weird marzipan swirl. So once the whole thing was out of the oven, it got brushed with butter, dusted with icing sugar and left to cool, before being wrapped in foil and bundled off to a cool place.

I've had a couple of slices so far. And, you know, it isn't bad. Drier than I'd have liked - I didn't soak my fruit in rum for very long, but perhaps that's part of the point, to add moisture to the bake while it rests - but it's edible. I think it will be good toasted and spread with butter, which isn't traditional, but sure will be tasty...

Restaurant Le 68, Paris

By: Mr Robot

First the apologies - I'm mindful we haven't done much for awhile. Sorry. For those who care why, see * below. And of course now there's been the bloody awfulness in Paris, which is what finally prompted me to share a bit of the happiness we enjoyed there just a couple of months ago.

So, somewhat belatedly here's Some Of What I Done On My Holidays. Specifically the night we walked the length of Paris to Guy Martin at No 68.

Arguably Mrs R should be writing this because she found the place. As any casual browse of Greedybots' sister / parent blog (well, we are from Norfolk after all) CrinolineRobot will show, Mrs R is massively into her perfume. And this is relevant because No 68 Champs Elysee is better known as swank central of the perfumier, Guerlain.

Not only did she want to see the Guerlain shop anyway, the pitch was amazing: according to the website, chef Guy Martin offers
'"a menu with dishes associated to the fragrances of perfumes: foie gras and Madagascar’s vanilla in puff pastry, cod like a little black dress and liquorice , macaroon of the gardens of Shalimar ” so many winks of eye.'

So many winks of eye indeed.

Ok there's a bit of tossery but a menu based on perfume excited us - not least because we couldn't really imagine how it would play out - and in any case aren't we always told that blah% of flavour comes through the nose? So we resolved to go. And did.

Overlooking the sheer awfulness of the Champs Elysee (worthy of a whole blog in itself) the Guerlain shop has charming staff who swiftly establish we're not buyers, for she has the full set already, and direct us downstairs to l'eaterie.


It's a beautiful, sumptuous place.

We were very prepared to feel - or be made to feel - out of place and sub-par. We've had that in Bristol, ffs, and if anywhere is entitled to feel up itself this is it.

But no. It was welcoming and comfortable, yet preposterously luxuriant.

Gold everywhere, and lots of mirrors, and lush drapes, and pretty much anything else you can think of from a 1980s Mills & Boon moneyshot.

There are even (swear to god) mirrors on the ceiling.

Oh yeah.

Playing against all that were tres moderne plastic-y tables printed with things like lilies, violets, cardamoms (cardoma?) and other scent-related monothemic montages. Sadly no ambergris. This (which would have been just too hip in any other context) and the pleasantly funky cutlery took any edge of pomposity away - we were left with a sense of "gosh".

So, prevaricator, the food?

Well, a kind of brilliant, beyond doubt, but I'm not sure the perfume thing really came through. I will concede that I ain't no Nose, but She is, and She agrees with me.

I started with a cepe tarte which was delicious: crisp pastry full of butter, and deep mushroom lifted with herbage. Lovely. Perfume? dunno.

I get that there's a woody green thing going on, but I'm fishing for it to be honest.

My main was probably the highlight of the evening, and certainly the exemplar of the project.

Badged as szechuan honey-glazed-duck, this was wonderful for surprising and pleasing reasons. The duck was as perfect as you'd expect, and nicely glazed with honey.

Accompaniments and sauces were delicious but not that notable in comparison to the turnips.

This pleased me immensely for the turnip is a beautiful and much-maligned veg. Here I got two varieties: grown up and baby. Here's the thing: the grown-up turnip had been sympathetically steamed to bring out his turnipitude, while the baby, somehow, was made the vessel for all the szechuan in the dish. All those numbing, tingly pepper bits lay around the plate in little turnipey nuggets, interacting with herbs here, honey there, sauces some other place...

Outstanding turnip dish with an extravagant duck accompaniment

In that dish I truly got the notion of notes playing against each other, and developing over time. It wasn't a perfume, it did little on the nose, but it ate like a good perfume smells. It was genuinely exciting.


I felt a bit bad for pudding. Le Petite Robe Noir (little black dress, he-hon, he-hon) was an exceptional chocolate dessert: wonderfully light mousse with the most ridiculously thin tempered layers; beautiful cherry goop in there. It was a joy to eat.

But it just wasn't as exciting as the turnips.

The final delight was the tea. They make it to match the perfumes, you see.

She had (actually I've no idea) while I went for the Habit Rouge tea, on account of how I was wearing Habit Rouge that very night.

I'm happy to say my tea tasted nothing like my aftershave. but it was very lovely...


Oh I nearly forgot - les petite fours. Or sixes as it turned out. Mostly lovely but bergamot marshmallow is something I will never ever forget. I may spend the rest of my life learning how to make it.



Brass tacks then:

We were sad to find the menu was a Formule (what we used to call Prix Fixe back in the day). Maybe it was a midweek thing and the really exciting a la carte is only at weekends, but if so the website should say as much. It did mean, however, that having expected around 100 euros each, we (I) actually paid e48 per head. And for that price, Le 68 is as absurdly good value as any back-street bistro one would boast of finding.

The wine menu, on the other hand, caters for some wallets better than others since it ranges from about 29 euros a bottle to, um, 1000 euros. And it's weighted towards the big end.

Without the 60 euro (cheap! but very acceptable) wine, Le 68 would compete on price with any regular three-course dinner - but offers an exceptional experience. From the shop to the decor to the concept to the staff. Hit or miss on the perfumerie "concept" front it's brilliant food in a very special setting.

If you're wondering what Mrs R had, I wish I could remember. This is her main. Not as good as my turnips.

One thing I will firmly assert is that it was a bloody shame the place was so empty. I think we were the third and last table in all night, although that did mean we could hear one couple arranging their next extramarital liason, which was fun.

Ok it was a Wednesday night, but this is the middle of GodAwful Street and there were still about 15,000 people picking each others pockets when we left.

If you want to go to this place, and I strongly urge you to, don't hang about - if that level of custom is normal I can't help worrying how long it'll last.

TEA - Splash it on...

All images (c) PP Gettins

*First we lost our beloved Boo cat to old age and duff kidneys, which kind of took the fun out of pretty much everything. Then we went to Paris for which we'd planned many posts but, you know, sad about the Boo. And then we were desperately looking for a new cat because while we still miss the Boo dreadfully, we also missed general catness in a big way. And that turned out to be harder than you might think but finally we found a pair of tabby KITTENS and frankly who's ever going sit in front of a laptop because KITTENS.

Recipe: Simple salmon salad

By: Mrs Robot

It's probably a little late in the year to blog this recipe now, but I thought I'd put it up anyway. It's a dish I came up with on my own, but I've seen similar things all over the place. I'm pretty sure Mi Mi Aye has one in Noodle!, for example.

You will need
The salmon (recipe will do one or two servings)
A salmon fillet per person
2 tablespoons dark soy sauce
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon each chopped garlic and ginger.
(I cheat and use the Nishaan ready-pulped ginger as it's brilliant stuff, but there's no substitute for fresh garlic, the ready-chopped stuff in jars has lost its punch.)

The salad
Noodles – egg or soba are best; I used soba in the version in the photos.
Carrot
Spring onion
Light soy sauce
Sesame oil

Mix together the dark soy sauce, sugar, garlic and ginger in the bottom of a flat dish, then lay your salmon fillets fleshy-side-down on top to marinate. The longer you leave this, the more the marinade penetrates; half an hour is a good time to leave it.

I haven't given quantities for the salad because how much I make depends on how greedy I'm feeling and how much of each ingredient I have in the house. You want the salad to be half noodles, and a quarter each spring onion and carrot.

Cook your noodles. As soon as they're done, rinse them with cold water and pop in a bowl. Cut the carrot and spring onion into matchsticks about two inches long. Toss it all in with the noodles, dress with a slug each of light soy sauce and sesame oil, and toss it again. The dressing helps to stop your noodles sticking together.

To cook your salmon, put it fleshy-side down in a hot pan and cook it halfway through, then turn it over and finish cooking it on the skin side.

Bung salad on plate – you can sprinkle on some sesame seeds if you have any in the house, just to look pretty – then put the salmon on top.

The not so yummy mummy

By: Mrs Robot

"I won't do a chocolate cake for Halloween this year," I thought. "I know I was planning to make a werewolf, but I bet everyone's fed up of chocolate cake*."

After lots of thinking about this year's Halloween cake, I decided to make a carrot cake and pipe the coating into 'bandages' to make a mummy. I got a lovely broad icing nozzle from Pitts, Trowbridge's specialist baking and sugarcraft shop, dragged out my trusty old copy of Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book (the same book that contains the always-reliable chocolate cake recipe) and got to work.

The cake worked brilliantly. It looks very tasty. This is despite our 'pick what you think will work' oven temperature dial, which has lost all its numbers. The cream cheese icing, however... I don't know what went wrong. I followed the recipe, yet instead of a nice fluffy mixture it was RUNNY. Properly liquid. I tried beating it, no joy. I gave in, put it in the fridge in the hope that the cool temperature would stiffen the two main non-sugar ingredients (cream cheese and butter), made a couple of eyeballs from marshmallow fondant and went to bed.

I left it in the fridge overnight. This morning it still wasn't pipeable. Have you ever seen the appalling horror film The Stuff**? That's what it looked like. Runny white goop***. It tasted great, but was no good for cakes. I desperately whipped up a batch of buttercream, but on starting to decorate realised I'd need enough sugary icing to send my entire office into a diabetic coma.

I'm feeding my workmates sweets from M&S instead, and will defeat the mummy myself later...

*Like that EVER happens.
**Which I remember mainly because in the film The Stuff came in pots and put my brother off Pot Noodles for years. You'd think given he was prepared to eat the contents, a mere horror film would have no effect, but it did.
***If you've any ideas what might have gone wrong with the cream cheese icing, I'd love to know. I traded the specified marge for butter, and did wonder if there was some chemical in margarine that was required. Or is modern soft cheese in tubs treated in some way to make it soft that also renders it unsuitable for turning into icing? I can't work it out.

October, we are ready for you!

By: Mrs Robot

October is a big month in the House of Robots, but also usually a horribly busy one. I like to do something for Halloween - as Mr Robot doesn't like small children coming to the house, this usually means making a cake (last year's was a Martian cake) and treats for my workmates. Also, since our trip to Burma/Myanmar (take your pick) a couple of years ago, we've also marked Thadingyut. We're not Buddhists, or indeed religious at all, but I'd hoped to feel a connection to my family when we were in Maymyo/Pyin Oo Lwin, and walking through the streets all lit with candles was deeply moving, so ever since we've lit a candle and eaten Burmese food for Thadingyut.

Usually I get halfway through the month and realise both things are coming. This year Thadingyut is the 26th-28th of October and Halloween falls, as always, on the 31st. However, we are prepared this time! We've got two lovely Burmese meat dishes in the freezer, leaving us just side dishes to think about, and this morning I picked up some bags of sweets from Marks and Spencer. Pinterest is a great source of free Halloween printables, and I have some lovely little boxes to print and make up, then the sweets can go in them.

And after October we can rest... apart from Bonfire Night and Christmas!

Afternoon tea - what a slog!

By: Mrs Robot

I've tried making afternoon tea* a number of times over the years, and have reached this conclusion: if you're actually cooking the things yourself, the more frequently you do it, the easier it gets. This is because you need a decent variety of items, which means baking an awful lot of different things from scratch. If you make it regularly, you can stick some things like scones (frozen baked) and pastry cases for tarts (frozen before cooking) in the freezer for next time, which reduces the work considerably. If you don't make it regularly, it can feel like a lot of work and a bit wasteful, though if you're very greedy, like Mr Robot and myself, you'll settle for eating a whole cake, a whole batch of scones, or all of whatever other baked goods you make.

This afternoon tea came about because Great British Bake-Off is on telly again and in Cake Week everyone had to make madeira cake for the signature challenge. It struck me that I had never made madeira cake, so decided to give it a go. Cake making is an 'interesting' thing in the House of Robots because all the temperature indicators have rubbed off our oven dial, and our oven thermometer has broken, so I simply have to guess what the temperature is. Anyway, my lemon one worked well, and had a decent crack along the top, which the Bake-Off judges insisted was essential. Perhaps it's because I used a recipe from an old volume of Beeton; I doubt she could control her oven to within 10 degrees either.

At the same time, I had a yearning for something baked and cheesy. It could have been cheese scones, but I decided to make Dorchester biscuits, a recipe from Mary Berry's Ultimate Cake Book. Basically butter, flour, cheese and nuts, they're the very antithesis of the current 'clean eating' trend and for that reason alone are well worth your time making. Dirty, dirty biscuits! Best eaten with an expression of utter bliss while sitting opposite someone who's bored you rigid with tales of quinoa and kale salads, I reckon. They're incredibly simple, and very addictive. No type of nut is specified, though I like peanuts with cheddar. If I'd used stilton – Berry recommends cheddar, but experimentation is a good thing – I'd prefer walnuts.

In a piece of truly awful planning, I didn't realise we'd all but run out of bread until I'd started making sandwiches (ham and chutney), so filled in the gaps with tomatoes cut in a waterlily shape, then filled with coils of ham and mayonnaise rosettes piped on top, and savoury eggs. I hardboiled the eggs, chopped them in half, removed the yolks, mashed the yolks with more mayonnaise and a bit of curry powder, then piped it all back into the eggs. Quel faff, as Holly Golightly might've said. They did taste nice, though. I put the whole lot on vintage pressed glass cake stands**. Job done.

And after all that baking and work, we demolished the whole lot in about 20 minutes. Maybe I'll have another go in about six months...


*We all know the difference between afternoon tea and high tea, don't we? The latter is a rustic meal, usually with a substantial hot element – the sort of thing the Famous Five seemed able to drop in and enjoy at random farmhouses. If it's a dainty affair, it's afternoon tea. 'High' refers to the time it was eaten; afternoon tea is the earlier meal, enjoyed by fine ladies in drawing rooms, whereas high tea would be had later and was the early evening meal rural workers would have when they came in from the field. People seem to confuse the two nowadays and it sends me into a ranty rage, it really does. British people, know your culture! Non-British people, stop dicking around with my culture! 

 ** You can get these absurdly cheap in charity shops. My tall one cost £3.