Forever Summer (29 page)

Don’t think breakfast pancakes, but rather a dreamy, light, aromatic and sweet pudding, slicked with orange-flower syrup and nubbled with pistachios, to go after a vaguely Middle-Eastern dinner eaten languorously outside in the garden on a warm summer evening.

The syrup itself can be made in advance and just stored in a jar in the fridge, just as long as you remember to get it back to room temperature before you pour it over the cardamom-scented pancakes. If you forget, just fill a bowl or pan with hot water from the kettle and stand the jar in it until it returns to flowing form.

There is something about the yoghurt in the pancake batter that makes them incredibly light. As for the almond oil in them, you should find this easily in the supermarket now, but if you can’t, then use cooled, melted butter in its place. And you don’t have to get busy at the stove at the very end of dinner to make these. Just cook them before you sit down at table, place them on a large baking sheet or ovenproof plate, tent with foil and keep them warm in a low oven (preheated to 120°C/gas mark ½) until you want to eat them.

for the orange flower syrup:

225g caster sugar

150ml water

juice of half a lemon

1 tablespoon orange-flower water

for the pancakes:

150g plain flour

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1 and a quarter teaspoons baking powder

quarter teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

pinch ground cardamom

3 tablespoons Greek yoghurt or labneh

approx. 125ml semi-skimmed milk

1 large egg

50ml almond oil (or 50g butter, melted and cooled)

to serve:

1–2 handfuls shelled pistachio nuts, chopped

To make the syrup, bring the sugar and water gradually to the boil in a saucepan, swilling the pan to help the sugar dissolve, but on no account stirring it. Once it’s boiling, pour in the lemon juice and then turn down the heat a little and simmer the syrup for about 10-15 minutes until it coats the back of a spoon. Add the orange-flower water and simmer for another 5 minutes, then cool the syrup and chill in the fridge.

To make the pancakes, measure the dry ingredients into a large bowl then spoon the yoghurt into a measuring jug and, stirring with a fork, pour in the milk until you hit the 250ml mark. If you need to, add a little more than the 125ml specified to do so. Whisk in the egg and then the almond oil, then stir this jugful of wet ingredients into the bowlful of dry ones. Almost immediately the mixture will stiffen into a thick, fluffy batter.

Heat a dry griddle and when it is hot add about 2 tablespoons’ worth of batter for each pancake. The mixture is quite thick, so you will need to encourage the pancakes into a round shape with the back of the spoon before the batter sets (they will be roughly 7cm in diameter). When the pancakes begin to bubble a little on top, flip them over and cook the other side to a golden brown.

Keep the
pancakes
warm under foil as you finish cooking the rest of the batter; you shouldn’t need to sit them in the oven unless you’re cooking these before dinner.

When you are ready to eat them, and boy will you be ready, drizzle with cold syrup and sprinkle over a handful or so of ridiculously green, splintered and chopped pistachios.

Makes approximately 20; serves 8–10.

BLONDE MOCHA LAYER CAKE

I call this blonde mocha simply because the chocolate, that is combined with the coffee to make this cake, is white rather than the usual dark – and because the name pleases me. If anything, though, the mixture works better than the traditional combination: the richness of the white chocolate offering an unfamiliar counterpart to the smoky depth of the coffee. It’s not a light cake, I’ll admit straight off, but that has never seemed to stand in its way. And although it’s not what you might think of first off to serve on a summer’s day, it’s not just our haphazard climate that makes it all too often appropriate. There are, simply, times, whatever the weather, when you need something sweet with this amount of goo.

for the cake:

225g self-raising flour

225g very soft unsalted butter, plus more for greasing tins

225g caster sugar

4 teaspoons instant espresso

4 large eggs

approx. 4 tablespoons full-fat milk

for the icing:

250g white chocolate

90g very soft unsalted butter

300ml crème fraîche

250g icing sugar, sieved

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4 and butter and flour two sandwich tins of 21cm diameter (and just under 5cm deep). But it’s probably best, if it’s at all warm out, to make the icing first and then stash it in the fridge till needed.

So: melt the chocolate and butter in a bowl over some simmering water or else in the microwave (but see note about melting
white chocolate
). Remove to cool a little, then add the crème fraîche – which you do need rather than ordinary cream, to undercut the otherwise oversweetness of the white chocolate – before gradually beating in the icing sugar. Put the icing in the fridge to set a little.

Now get on with making the cake. The easiest way is just to put the flour, butter, sugar, coffee and eggs in a processor and then, when fully incorporated, pour the milk – processing again after a little bowl-scraping with a rubber spatula – down the funnel to make for a soft, pouring consistency, adding more milk if needed but starting off just with a couple of tablespoons.

Remove the double-bladed knife, then pour and scrape the cake batter into the prepared tins and bake for 25 minutes or until a cake tester (or piece of raw spaghetti) comes out clean and the cakes are beginning to shrink away from the sides. Let them stand in their tins on a wire rack for 10 minutes then turn them out and leave them there till completely cool.

Now, cut out four strips of baking parchment and make a square with them on a cake-plate. Put one of the cakes on top, and add a good dollop of icing, spreading it
almost, but not quite, to the sides and then cover with the remaining cake and spread the top and sides generously with the soft, rich, buttery icing. When it’s all done, whip away the pieces of parchment, but not so roughly as to smear the icing over the plate, which would rather defeat the whole exercise.

Depending on the weather, you may want to put the assembled cake back in the fridge for 10 minutes or so before cutting.

Serves 8.

SUMMER CRUMBLE

You could use any stone fruit you like here; I cannot resist an apricot. I love the thick-grained flesh, the way that dense-textured juiciness is so lusciously contained within the fruit’s dappled, soft, baby-cheeked skin. This, I realise, is not how most apricots are when you buy them in the shops here, but cook them under a light layer of almondy crumble and disappointment can be averted: this pudding radiates mellow, good-mood sunniness.

750g apricots, stoned and quartered lengthways

75g cold unsalted butter, cut into approx. 1cm dice

100g self-raising flour

25g ground almonds

75g caster sugar

50g flaked almonds

Preheat the oven to 200°C/gas mark 6.

Put the apricots in a single layer in a shallow pudding dish.

Rub the butter into the flour and ground almonds, flutteringly working the pads of your thumbs and middle fingers until you have a mixture like rough sand. Stir in the sugar and flaked almonds and then sprinkle lightly over the apricots to cover them evenly.

Bake in the oven for about 30 minutes, by which time the crumble will have browned a little on the top and the fruit will be bubbling underneath. Serve with mascarpone or crème fraîche.

Serves 4–6.

I know everyone thinks that there’s no point in making your own ice cream since you can buy such good stuff in the shops these days, but it just isn’t true. First of all, I never quite buy into the usual worth-making/not-worth-making paradigm: nothing’s worth making if the activity drives you to the edge of a nervous breakdown; anything can be rewarding if you actually get some pleasure out of the process. The strange thing about cooking is that obviously it is about an end product, and yet it isn’t entirely.

Not that I’ve become an ice-cream maker out of a desire for the making of it alone. It’s true I find mindless repetitive activity enormously relaxing (ie stirring a pan of custard for the ice cream’s base) especially when stressed out, but I make ice cream because good home-made ice cream is nothing like the bought stuff. That dreamy, voluptuous texture, the subtlety of possible flavours – you just can’t get any of that from a shop-bought tub, however expensive.

Making ice cream actually isn’t difficult – it’s all just stirring – but if you haven’t got an ice-cream maker it is labour-intensive (which is a different matter). What you do then is put the cooled ice cream base into a covered container, stick it in the freezer and whip it out every hour for 3 hours as it freezes and give it a good beating, either with an electric whisk, by hand or in the processor. That gets rid of any ice crystals that form and that make the ice cream crunchy rather than smooth. If you’ve got an ice-cream maker, you’re laughing: it then takes 20 minutes from having a cooled mixture to having an ice cream that’s frozen but not set; it’ll probably need another 20 minutes in the deep freeze for that. The important thing is, however you make it, once it’s set hard, to let it ripen in the fridge for about 20 minutes before you eat it. You want it to be frozen, certainly, but not rock hard.

As for the method of making the custard for the ice cream, once you’ve got into the habit, it’s – like everything else – routine. Just fill the sink half full with cold water for plunging the custard into if it looks like splitting at any stage.

Heat the specified amount of cream or milk till nearly boiling. Whisk the required yolks and sugar, and pour, still whisking, the warmed cream over. Transfer to a saucepan and cook till a velvety custard. I don’t bother with a double boiler, and actually don’t even keep the heat very low, but you will need to stir constantly, and if you think there’s any trouble ahead, plunge the pan into the sink of cold water and whisk like mad. It shouldn’t however take more than 10 minutes, this way, for the custard to cook. And when it has thickened, take it off the heat, add whatever needs adding according to recipe, then cool (I transfer the custard to a bowl and sit it in the cold water in the sink) before chilling and freezing in the ice-cream machine (or see manual tips above).

I know the list of ice creams below is a long one, but once you start, this ice-cream making thing becomes addictive, especially if you want to justify the extravagance of buying an ice-cream maker in the first place. Besides, you don’t need summer as an excuse to make them – really you don’t.