Preparing for the Blaggers' Banquet and musings on the power of Twitter

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns"

Donald Rumsfeld, that old rogue, may have uttered these words in a rather different context but there were moments last week when I thought I was planning a military campaign, not a fundraising banquet. And believe me, there were a scary number of known unknowns in the run-up to the philanthropic feast that was the Blaggers' Banquet

Amusing as Rummie's comment is, in writing this blog post it seemed apt to turn instead to the image of Wonderwoman for inspiration. I can't convey to you how much I wished I had superhero qualities like hers last week, yet lo and behold it turned out the team of Blaggers' Banquet organisers evinced some of their own action hero qualities resulting in a banquet that has thus far been universally praised

Planning the banquet was a team effort, led by:
Niamh of Eat Like A Girl

and pulled together by:

Kavita Favelle
Mathilde Deville
Denise Medrano
Susie Sandford Smith
Ailbhe Phelan
Linda Williams

When Niamh asked me a few weeks ago to be in charge of the Blaggers' Banquet kitchen I naively assumed all I had to do was put together a menu and gather some ingredients. "Piece of cake, time for a cocktail!" I thought

Then Niamh told me what had already been blagged in terms of ingredients. And then I heard the price tag for each ticket:

£75 for a 4-course meal including wines

Gulp. So no ordinary dinner party then

Rather than share with you the complete picture of what happened in the run-up to the banquet (trust me, it's a long story) I thought I'd proffer a few anecdotes from this past week of preparations to give you an idea of how we pulled the event together, focussing especially on those suppliers I worked with

As an anthropologist I've been keeping a close eye on Twitter in recent months and last week the potency of this "new media" really hit home for the first time. Twitter became the single most useful medium for us to galvanise banquet volunteers, tempt guests to part with that £75 and crucially from my perspective as head chef for the event - a brilliant tool in sourcing ingredients at short notice. Below I've done a chronological countdown to D-Day, or B-Day as Niamh might say, and have copied in a few tweets to give you an idea of how dynamic the process of planning this banquet became. Click on #blaggersbanquet and you can see for yourself how many thousands of tweets the banquet generated


Friday 6th November: meet with Niamh at Borough Market to discuss strategy. Umpteen cups of coffee later and glares from Monmouth staff as we take up their table, we've got a spreadsheet to assign roles to all the bloggers. Somehow I manage to double-book myself and the inimitable MsMarmitelover joins us for part of the strategy session when she and I are meant to be meeting discuss the menu for her forthcoming Umami Night

I tweeted that Niamh and I have a plan of action in place:

Great plans afoot for #blaggersbanquet the fun part of creating a menu now begins!
9:02 PM Nov 6th from TweetDeck

Off I totter back to Bloomsbury, confident that we can pull this off in ten days' time. A quiet weekend beckons and that evening the Man and I get drenched in monsoon-like rain going to the cinema. Spend weekend lurgified. Awesome

Monday 9th November: time to tackle the Google spreadsheets the bloggers have set up for the banquet:

two university degrees and proficiency in four languages are clearly of no use in dealing with excel spreadsheets, am totally befuddled
2:38 PM Nov 9th from TweetDeck

Baking bread is one of my core skills, Excel spreadsheets most definitely not. Start tackling recipes for the menu instead. What's going to be most effective on the night both in terms of mise-en-place and for the kitchen team? Hawksmoor's kitchen reputedly tiny so we need a menu that won't collapse under the stress of serving 50 diners

Having a dyslexic's nightmare reading through recipes for Sunday's #blaggersbanquet resorting to ruler to read each line!
3:52 PM Nov 9th from TweetDeck

In a moment of mischief I think to myself "what if we made the front of house bloggers wear catsuits for the banquet?" I suspect that might bring in the punters and tweet:

Contemplating whether I can get away with asking bloggers to wear catsuits while serving at Sunday's #BlaggersBanquet
5:36 PM Nov 9th from TweetDeck

To which I receive almost immediately several tweets from the bloggers telling me mutiny is nigh if I enforce the catsuit rule. Spoilsports

Have sourced delicious fresh goat's and chived goat's cheese from Sarah at Brockhall Farm being a curd-nerd this is fantastic news

Tuesday 10th November: still grappling with menu and spreadsheets, trying to figure out which ingredients have actually been blagged and are confirmed, which have just been inserted by the bloggers but not yet confirmed. Turns out we have a major problem: where to store large quantities of meat and other ingredients in need of refrigeration. Hawksmoor's fridges are full to the brim so Niamh tweets:

RT @eatlikeagirl: We urgently need somewhere that can offer us some refrigerated storage for lots of meat for a few days #blaggersbanquet
1:45 PM Nov 10th from TweetDeck

This evolves into an ongoing problem all week. Next time the banquet shall only feature chestnuts and mushrooms

I talk to the good people at Fish For Thought about sourcing seafood for the banquet. They prove to be so helpful that they hand-deliver monkfish to Hawksmoor on Sunday AM. More on this in the next blog post about the banquet itself

Good news about desserts that Tuesday afternoon:

#blaggersbanquet dessert is now in the bag! Thanks to lovely @TrishDeseine for donating chocolate and her favourite chocolate cake recipe
1:54 PM Nov 10th from TweetDeck

Being in charge of the banquet puddings I do a little dance. And pop a piece or three of chocolate in my mouth to celebrate

The question of non-alcoholic soft drinks then comes up. Some confusion as to whether this has been blagged. Google spreadsheet not giving clear answer, so I tweet:

#BlaggersBanquet we're looking for non-alcoholic soft drinks for Sunday. DM me if you have a contact for cordial/soft drink Co. Thanks!
4:43 PM Nov 10th from TweetDeck

Again, almost immediately I receive three replies. I choose Firefly Tonics and within minutes we have soft drink supplies for Sunday sorted. Emma Dalglish at Firefly offers to donate 144 bottles to the event and is nothing but helpful throughout the day as we discuss deliveries and quantities. Makes a contrast to some suppliers I had been dealing with up to that point

The question of bread arises. Sourcing cheese isn't proving problematic, but bread is. Chris Young at the Real Bread Campaign kindly offers to contact Real Bread suppliers to see if any will donate

I ask my friend Wendy at Peter's Yard if she could spare us some crispbread for the banquet and within minutes she's replied saying yes. Not only does she say yes but offers two fantastic bread books as prizes for the banquet, and goes to bat asking some of her contacts for further ingredients. I tweet:

Oh the wonderful people @PetersYard have promised their delicious crispbread for #blaggersbanquet * thank you *
8:14 PM Nov 10th from TweetDeck

We also hear from Kate at Lahloo Tea that she will donate green jasmine tea and a tea chocolate by Damian Allsop to the banquet. Close of play on Tuesday I tweet this to thank them all

Many thanks to @brockhallfarm @PetersYard @lahlootea @FireFlyTonics + @foodforthink for helping this non-blagger out w/ #blaggersbanquet !!
9:05 PM Nov 10th from TweetDeck

Wednesday 11th November: the final push I had hoped would be today. How wrong I was, we would still be sourcing ingredients up to the last minute:

Good morning all, putting in final orders this morning for #blaggersbanquet VERY excited about Sunday :)
11:32 AM Nov 11th from TweetDeck

Some banter by fellow tweeters at my accepting deliveries of Brockhall Farm cheese in the next few days - apparently I have a reputation for being a greedy cheesemonster:

@goodshoeday you're suggesting I would eat all of @brockhallfarm 's cheese before Sunday?! Do you know how much we're getting?!
12:25 PM Nov 11th from TweetDeck in reply to goodshoeday

The remainder of Wednesday was spent locked away in a film studio near Kentish Town as part of filming for the final of Gordon Ramsay's F-Word. Predictably, I turned my phone off for the day and all hell broke loose with sourcing the main course for the banquet. Some suppliers just didn't getting back to me, others insisted on being the sole supplier. Rather shockingly I fielded several enquiries for free tickets, requested without a trace of irony. Erm, this may be the Blaggers' Banquet, but isn't it somewhat shameless to blag tickets when it's for charity?

Thursday 12th November: Catching up on emails from Wednesday, now having to scramble for supplies. Increasingly grumpy at how problematic it is dealing with some PRs when earlier in the week the PRs and suppliers I dealt with were straightforward and incredibly helpful

Unduly excited by email from the School of Artisan Food - they offer a short course in either baking, cheesemaking, brewery, butchery or preserving as an auction prize for the banquet. Result! I might just bid on that prize when it goes online

Pong cheese arrives, and boy is it a pongy selection:

Pong cheese for #BlaggersBanquet has arrived thank you good people of @PongCheese the flat is rather fragrant ;)
12:57 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

It takes every ounce of willpower not to tuck into Pong's finest - I love stinky cheese. As soon as I've cleared space in my little fridge the next delivery comes:

And lovely goat's cheese from @brockhallfarm has just arrived, along with fresh goat's milk for the #BlaggersBanquet *thanks Sarah*
1:32 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

Earlier in the week I realised we had hardly any dairy products and emailed the bloggers to see if they might have contacts for milk, cream, butter, eggs and creme fraiche. This was tweeted a number of times when suddenly I had a DM (direct message) from Sainsburys who follow me on Twitter. I couldn't believe it - they offered to source all our dairy supplies, no questions asked, no demands made. Phew!

A HUGE thank you to Rhona @sainsburys and Tim Whirledge for helping us source dairy for Sunday's #BlaggersBanquet !
3:19 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

Most of the Sainsbury's dairy arrived in increments and much to the bemusement of my flatmate - clearly if I ever design my own kitchen I should have a walk-in fridge for storing dairy if this banquet becomes an annual event

In the midst of sourcing ingredients, there were also generous offers from food producers and the likes of the lovely Petra Barran of Choc Star Van fame to donate their time for "experiential" prizes in the online auction:

RT @ChocStarVan: Experiential #blaggersbanquet prize - special Choc Star dessert delivered in choc-mobile to dinner of 12 anywhere in LDN
6:20 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

That auction started yesterday and Petra very kindly offered to drive to a lucky winner's house anywhere within metropolitan London to supply them with a dinner party chocolate bonanza from her van of chocolatey goodness. You can bid on this brilliant prize here and all proceeds go directly to Action Against Hunger!

Thursday's other huge problem was sourcing fridge space:

Urgent request for fridge space to store 20kg meat for this Sunday's #BlaggersBanquet !! Please RT
6:59 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

Which proved frustratingly elusive. We'll know that for next time

Then India Knight of The Times very sweetly plugged the banquet on our behalf:

RT @eatlikeagirl: thanks @indiaknight for your posterous link & RT - http://bit.ly/2fD5mQ - we'll be doing it again! :) #blaggersbanquet
8:13 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

The boyf did a requisite tweet at my behest about getting his ticket for the banquet (in exchange for some cinnamon loaf I believe) :

RT @twilliams81: have my ticket for Blaggers Banquet. SOOOOO excited to go #blaggersbanquet (envious of you feasting while I'm cooking!)
8:21 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

Sadly he was ill over the weekend so didn't make it which was a real disappointment :-( Next time Thomas!

The question of sourcing bread was proving to be as problematic as sourcing fridge space and out of the blue I decided to contact St John Restaurant to see if they could spare us some. I DM'd the restaurant and within minutes had a reply. One phone call later and we were promised 12 loaves of St John's finest sourdoughs, and they went down a treat on Sunday night with the main course stews! I tweeted:

Excellent news, we have delicious sourdough bread from @SJRestaurant donated for Sunday's #BlaggersBanquet - thank you so much :)
8:23 PM Nov 12th from TweetDeck

That night I dashed over to Marylebone and took a break from the banquet planning to be inducted into The Marmarati a society of Marmite lovers which turned out to be the most brilliant PR event I'd been to in a long time. Was good to get away from thinking about the banquet for a few hours, and I raffled off a copy of the brand-spanking new Big Bumper Book of Marmite (Absolute Press) at Sunday's banquet to boot!

Friday the 13th proved to be the most testing day of the week. There was still a fair amount of menu planning going on at this stage as several supplies we'd been promised didn't pan out, or the offers rescinded. The main course supplies were resolved, and we had guarantees from both Riverford Organic and Abel & Cole to supply us with all the veg and fruit we needed for Sunday. I took delivery of Billington's sugar for the banquet dessert and coffee

Trethowan's Dairy had generously donated a 2kg Gorwydd Caerphilly for the banquet cheese board, but the question arose of who could collect it from Borough Market:

RT @goodshoeday: We need someone to go collect a 2kg cheese from borough today or tomorrow for #blaggersbanquet volunteers pls
11:57 AM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

Simon Majumdar, one half of fraternal blogging duo Dos Hermanos offered to go collect it for us, even though he couldn't attend the banquet and delivered the mighty cheese to Hawksmoor on our behalf, which we're incredibly grateful for

The Follow Fridays flooded in that day, and Niamh tweeted a shout out to the banquet team:

RT @eatlikeagirl: OK! My first #FF @scandilicious , @MathildeCuisine, @KaveyF & @sosusie - the stellar organisers for the #blaggersbanquet
12:32 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

Meanwhile I was still fielding comments about my cheese obsession from these two jokers:

@josordoni @goodshoeday are you two casting aspersions AGAIN?! Cheese induced coma? Jar of marmite and sourdough in my tiny hands?! Sheesh..
1:11 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck in reply to josordoni

Then disaster struck:

About to get in shower betw/deliveries of #blaggersbanquet ingredients when door rang, ran downstairs+locked myself out. In dressing gown.
5:26 PM Nov 13th from web

Yes, I was in my dressing gown in the middle of the afternoon (all times on the tweets incidentally are Tehran time!) as I had been taking deliveries all morning and hadn't had a chance to shower or get dressed in between the emails, phone calls and tweets about the banquet. Needless to say this was hilarious for everyone on my street, not so hilarious for me

Anyway, I owe Jeni, my lovely flatmate and Kennards a big thank you:

Phew, back in flat! owe flatmate who ran home from work and the lovely people at Kennards, local deli next door a massive favour *thank you*
5:47 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

More deliveries ensued throughout Friday:

Barber's delicious 1833 Vintage reserve Cheddar occupying top part of flatmates' fridge - very tempting to break into before Sunday ;)
6:15 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

just taken delivery of @PetersYard 's fabulous crispbread we're using for canapes and cheese course at #blaggersbanquet *thanks Wendy + Ian*
6:38 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

Billington's sugar arrived for #blaggersbanquet now need to meet w/cooks @HawksmoorLondon and collect @TrishDeseine 's 72% chocolate !
8:14 PM Nov 13th from TweetDeck

And then it was time to dash down to Hawksmoor to meet with the cook's team (who I'll be writing about in my next blog post), Niamh and Tom of Hawksmoor to go through the plan for Sunday. We came away feeling confident but there was still much to be done and last-minute supplies to source...

Saturday 14th November: woke up with butterflies in my stomach, a long list of things to do, more deliveries to accept and a ferocious storm outside:

last day before #blaggersbanquet - collecting 5kg of @TrishDeseine chocolate, baking 10 chocolate fondant cakes for tomorrow! Bring it on
12:36 PM Nov 14th from TweetDeck

My cup runneth over....have just taken delivery of many many kilos of organic butter for #blaggersbanquet Nom nom! Thanks to @sainsburys
12:59 PM Nov 14th from TweetDeck

Off to Mayfair I went to collect chocolatier Trish Deseine's 72 % chocolate for the banquet fondants, a recipe she had also kindly supplied. Let me tell you Mayfair is a curious place on a Saturday morning, virtually empty bar the occasional Bentley or Rolls. Was relieved to scamper back to safer realms of Bloomsbury where the Man was waiting for me, ready to bake:

RT @twilliams81: @scandilcious' flat helping with #blaggersbaquet. She is very bossy. Good job it fr charity ;0) (hah! bossy, me?)
2:53 PM Nov 14th from TweetDeck

Bossy! Well I can't complain, as I don't know many men who would sacrifice their Saturday afternoons to break big catering blocks of chocolate for making ten large fondants. In the process I tweeted:

loving @twilliams81 evident gusto in bashing up enormous block of @TrishDeseine 's chocolate for the fondants!
10:58 PM Nov 14th from TweetDeck

Yes, my Man is secretly a baker, he just doesn't know it yet

Not much sleep was had on Saturday night as there was still work to be done for Sunday, but you'll have to read about that tomorrow..

Hopefully this post has given a sense of what the preparation was like, and how down to the wire we were in many respects. It was a fascinating experience and we all learnt so much in a short period of time. I'll be posting thoughts on the banquet itself tomorrow, but in the meantime for a reviews have a peak at this one from food and drink writer Fiona Beckett here and see some fantastic photos capturing the event here

Getting ready for the Blaggers' Banquet

It's all systems go for London's food bloggers - we've blagged far and wide for the finest ingredients to showcase at tonight's epic Blaggers' Banquet, held at legendary Shoreditch steakhouse Hawksmoor. Inspiration for the banquet came from Niamh Shields aka Eat Like A Girl and we're doing it all in aid ofAction Against Hunger. That's right, every single penny goes straight to a worthwhile cause, more of which you can read on Niamh's blog and of course in the coming days as we tally up the initial proceeds from tonight's fiestanza!

Having come to this late and blissfully unaware of the brouhaha earlier in the year when bloggers gained a reputation for supposedly "blagging" free meals I wasn't sure quite what to expect. Working with fellow bloggers, food suppliers and PRs the past few weeks has been a fascinating exercise both in military-style planning and a total revelation in how extraordinarily generous people are. I'll be writing more about the experience after tonight's event as now is the time to start hauling all the food supplies I've blagged downstairs to drive over to Hawksmoor. The cooks and prep team, of which I've been given the daunting task of leading today, are all meeting at 11am sharp and we've got a day of serious work ahead of us to honour both Action Against Hunger and in treating 50 banquet guests to a feast they'll remember. I'm confident the team of cooks and prep will triumph, they've been nothing but cool, calm and collected in the past week as I frantically organise a banquet menu and make last-minute demands on a Saturday night to come up with brilliant canape recipes. They shall all feature in blog posts next week so you can get to know the team :D

Follow our progress throughout the day and into next week on Twitter using the hashtag #blaggersbanquet and come join us on Facebook There will be an auction online to raise more money for Action Against Hunger, so if you can't be with us tonight but would like to bid on a fabulous foodie prize then please do so. Details will be up soon, I promise

Time to don the chefs' whites and get cooking. Wish us luck!

Spelt Cinnamon Loaf

The Germans like to say that "Alles geht durcheinander" when things aren't going right, and that about sums it up this week - actually that's not strictly true, this week's been fine, I'm just grumpy due to lurgy/porcine flu. So instead of having multiple tantrums I returned to my favourite kitchen activity - baking

Yes, those who follow this blog will no doubt express their bemusement, after all I renounced baking last week but Scandi softie that I am I just couldn't help posting a recipe for this spelt cinnamon loaf. A Johansen favourite if there ever was one

The recipe has been adapted from a tried and tested cinnamon bun recipe in Trina Hahnemann's 'The Scandinavian Cookbook' but I've made it a bit easier - with spelt flour all you have to do is give the dough a good thrashing with a large wooden spoon for five minutes, and I chuck the dough in the fridge overnight to slow-ferment. Perfect for lazy weekend brunches, and even though my nose is blocked I can just about detect the heady scent of cinnamon, sugar and butter

Try it and let me know what you think

As we say in 'Weegieland, god helg!

Recipe:

I've halved the original recipe, but used 2/3 of the original filling recipe as I like butter and sugar. Instead of only using refined flour I toss in some wholemeal spelt flour to add a bit of texture and nuttiness. Feel free to use plain wheat flour as the original recipe suggests. There are photos below the recipe to show method and how to make the bun version

Ingredients:

300g refined spelt flour
125g wholemeal flour
70g caster sugar
20g fresh yeast
1 tsp ground cardamom
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg, beaten
250ml whole milk scalded
75g butter

Filling:

100g soft butter
75g caster sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon

In a small saucepan, scald the milk along with the butter and allow to cool while you assemble the other ingredients. In a large bowl, sift all the dry ingredients together - if you want these less grainy, then leave out some of the bran from when you sieve the wholemeal flour - and stir through using a large spoon

Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients, add the egg, then the milk. It's important the milk/butter is below 50 Celsius degrees when you do this, otherwise the yeast will die when it comes in contact with the hot liquid. If you don't have a thermometer to measure the milk's temperature, use your fingers. The milk should feel warm to the touch, not hot.
Mix the ingredients together until the mixture comes off the sides of the bowl and looks - for want of a better word - doughy

Place in a lightly oiled bag or bowl and refrigerate overnight

The next morning, take the dough out of the fridge and place in a warm room or cupboard (not the dryer as I once did...forgetting that it tumbles. Yes I am an idiot) and let it come to room temperature

Make the filling by mixing butter, cinnamon and sugar together. Using a rolling pin, make a rectangular shape of the dough, about 40cm x 30cm. Place the filling on the center of the rectangle and spread out. If the kitchen's a bit cold - as mine was this morning - and the butter is firm, use your hands to spread the filling. Not only does the heat from your hands help to smooth the butter over your dough, but it's immensely satisfying getting your hands all sticky. Butter makes an excellent moisturiser, and the sugar acts as a great exfoliatiant ladies!

Once you've finished making a mess with the filling, and - crucially - tasted it, start rolling the dough into a wide cylinder so it looks like an uncooked swiss roll. Ie. roll from the longest part of the rectangle, not the shortest

Using a sharp, uncerrated knife, cut the log into 1.5cm/1 inch slices if you want buns, or slice the log in half and bake in two lightly oiled bread tins. Allow to rise for 30-40 minutes in a warming cupboard until the loaves have doubled in size. Gently poke one with your little finger and the indentation should stay put. In other words, there is no 'spring-back'

Preheat the oven to 200 Celsius (400 Fahrenheit) and before you place the buns in the oven, glaze with a little milk. Bake on the upper-middle shelf of the oven for 30-45 minutes. The loaves are ready when you tap them and they sound hollow

Cool on the kitchen window sill as I did and risk the loaves falling off or being nibbled by pigeons. Or do the sensible thing and allow the loaves to cool on a wire rack for 1/2 hour before slicing

Needless to say this keeps for a number of days and makes excellent toast ;-)

Scandinavian Meatball Menu

For those who have been following the Scandinavian meatball banter on Twitter and are curious about next week's dinner at Madsen here is the menu courtesy of owner Charlotte Kruse Madsen:

Starter:
to choose from
Onion marinated herring with Akvavit jelly, curry cream and rye bread croutons
or
Toast Skagen - Greenland prawns in house dill mayonnaise served on toast with lumpfish roe

Main course:
served on trays at the table so people can pick their meatballs and sides

Danish and Norwegian meatballs served with gravy and small potatoes, red cabbage and mashed root vegetables. Homepickled beetroot and cucumber.

Dessert:

"Rodgrod med flode" - Danish red porridge with cream

Price per person is £28.50 incl. service charge.

There are still some places left so email me or if you are on Twitter, send me a DM @scandilicious and I'll get back to you with confirmation of a place. Please let me know by Monday the 26th October if you are coming, and any last-minute flakeouts expect rustication from future meatball dinners. Just kidding (not really)

It promises to be a fun evening, and hopefully the start of many a meatball-themed dinner :D

If you'd like to know more about Madsen, Matthew Fort wrote a review in the Guardian here and The Epicurean wrote one here

Bye bye baking...

Hello cooking and feasting with Scandinavian flair

Yep, change is afoot folks. I've been mulling over the remit of this blog and came to the conclusion that baking with Scandi flair has run its course. Much as I love whisking and folding in my Bloomsbury kitchen, certain baking tropes seem to have reprised themselves in past weeks - this month has seen several cinnamon loaves and two batches of very gooey brownies baked, and that's it. The oven in my flat is temperamental which precludes me from baking with any sort of flair at the moment and you really don't want a grumpy Scandinvian baker sharing her thoughts on her demented oven

So from now on Scandilicious will be broader in scope - I'll be foraging and featuring recipes inspired by the seasons and the outdoors. My Scandi roots lie in nature as we Johansens seek fresh air like junkies seek their next fix so I'll be fishing and hunting - though I am prone to clumsiness so hopefully won't shoot my foot off - and cooking Scandi favourites such as meatballs, venison stew and grilled crayfish whilst scoffing the occasional Scandi Kitchen hot dog for sustenance when lack of time mandates it :D

Channelling my nerdy love of fermentation I'll also be curing fish and experimenting with bacteria. Nothing untoward with bacteria of course - just making yogurt, cheese and other dairy treats. As my friends will tell you I'm an insufferable curd-nerd so expect to see more recipes featuring cheese here. There will of course be baking recipes, especially for bread and buns, but fewer recipes for cakes and other sweet things - scroll through the blog and you'll find 70 baking recipes from the past year

Needless to say the Scandi open sandwich will feature on occasion, an example of which you can see here:


And finally one of the things I loved most about training as a chef at Leiths and subsequently as a stagiere at the Fat Duck Experimental Kitchen was the honing of technique, so there will be more emphasis in future blog posts on the skill and technique involved in cookery. That may sound boring and tedious but real cooks will know what I'm on about - I'll be sharing tips and techniques I picked up from both my formal training and subsequent work in kitchens and as a freelance caterer. Cooking is what makes us human and as a food anthropologist I'm interested in the crafting of skills in cookery so expect some quasi-anthropological musings thrown in blog posts here and there

That's all for the time being, let me know what you think as suggestions and advice - however critical - are always welcome and I hope you like the new Scandilicious. If you are in London next week there is going to be a meatball dinner at Madsen, a Scandinavian restaurant in South Kensington and there are a few places left so do get in touch if you're curious about sampling true Scandi fare

As we say in Scandinavia, velbekomme!

Sig x

Nostalgia

Chocolate week is in full swing and the quality of real chocolate now available in the UK - like the hilarious Boris Johnson - is really something to marvel at

When it comes to real chocolate my adopted home has advanced leaps and bounds since I first arrived ten years ago. As evinced by the plethora of chocolate brands at last weekend's Chocolate Unwrapped event and a dizzying array of chocolate tastings and events taking place across Blighty this week, there is much to rejoice about if you're a committed theobromine addict. With the likes of Paul A Young and Chantal Coady of Rococo flying the flag for real chocolate this country is finally on the right track chocolate-wise, even if the postal system is a complete shambles. Perfidious old Albion still has some way to go with real bread too but that's another blog post in the offing

Musing on chocolate recently I found myself nostalgic for Norway. This often happens when I hear Peer Gynt, eat gravad laks or reminisce about skiing - that is until I remember my propensity to ski into trees

Visits in the past week to the Scandinavian Kitchen and Scandi restaurant Madsen have ostensibly triggered my most recent bliss point of 'Weegie nostalgia. I picked up Scandi chocolate confection Kvikk Lunsj and Daim from the good people of Great Titchfield Street, and tried to excavate memories of skiing that did not result in spectacular crashes with the woods and wildlife of Oslo

For the uninitiated, Kvikk-Lunsj is akin to a Kit-Kat but addictive as crack. The Kvikk-lunsj fan page on facebook boasted 15,907 fans when I last checked, a measure of how damn good this biscuity milk chocolate is. 'Weegies take with us a bar or three whenever we go on long hikes through forests and mountains, and on wholesome ski trips in winter. We don't really get fat because we're outdoors so much. Needless to say the clever marketing department of Norwegian chocolate brand Freia play on our love of outdoor frolics and romanticize kvikk-lunsj to the Nth degree - as you can see in the first photo above and if you click on that last link above. I'm a sucker for buying into it of course, but this chocolate so good who cares if I'm being duped

So imagine my total horror when I arrived in October 1999 to discover most chocolate here was crap. It was like something out of Hogarth. Norway's pulchritudinous populace may have prejudiced me somewhat, but I was literally surrounded by pasty, spotty, gin-soaked urchins who thought Cadbury's dairy milk constituted real 'chocolate' and booze was more important than food. It was a culture shock one step too far and I confess the first taste of Dairy Milk one of my mates shared still haunts me. Suitcases of kvikk-lunsj and other Freia confection were ferried over and distributed to my friends as a humanitarian act, rescuing them from purple brand addiction

Perhaps my British grandmother had convinced me everyone knew and understood food in this country. She cooked roast beef every Sunday so why wouldn't every other Brit do the same I assumed. Yorkshire pudding and bramley apple crumble were not part of my mates' repertoire I soon discovered, and when I bought organic milk and waxed lyrical on the joys of good butter this elicited some very quizzical looks from fellow students, not to mention when I subjected one poor soul to a rant on the evils of homogenized milk

Apparently Welsh rarebit at Fortnums was not considered integral to every eight-year old girl's visit to London and few of my peers really rated PG Wodehouse. Honestly, I felt like Alice peering through the looking glass - the Britain I had been shown by my beloved Nana was not quite what I imagined and being resolutely contrarian I refused to snap out of my sheltered little existence, digging my heels in further after some snot-nosed little neo-Marxist called me a "posh foreign snob"

And therein lies the rub. It's still hard today for even the most committed fairtrade, organic and sustainable food-supporting eater in this country to shake that subconscious fixation with class. Sometimes in those sunny and cool autumn days of October '99 I wondered whether Britain was still languishing in its Victorian past and if I wasn't just an insufferable brat for being so judgmental. Plus ca change!

Thankfully a delicious Scandi lunch at Madsen and a previous visit to meet owner Charlotte Kruse Madsen helped alleviate the worst of the nostalgia pangs I was experiencing earlier in the week. When Charlotte presented me with a fresh piece of kransekake, a classic Scandinavian dessert, I knew I had an excellent reason to visit South Ken, other than to see the dinosaurs and the new Darwin centre at the Natural History Museum

Scandinavian kransekake: a baked marzipan-rich biscuit

What do you think? Am I imagining things - does food trigger nostalgia or is it all nonsense? The best answer gets a couple of kvikk-lunsjes in the post. Remember, you must be over 18 and recognise the addictive qualities of said chocolate. After all 15,907 fans can't be wrong...

p.s.

will winter 2009 be the year I cease to crash into trees? watch this space...

The crafting of chocolate: Paul A Young

Thought you were getting a recipe for sea salted caramel truffles there didn't you?

Or perhaps some tips on decorating truffles?

Marzipan: the way to a Scandi's heart

After an extended hiatus from posting recipes a mea culpa is due: I've hardly baked since the reine de saba featured here last month. But if you're a regular reader you might have spotted I have something of a predilection for all things theobroma cacao. This post is inspired in part by a recent tasting at Paul A Young - virtuoso chocolatier and impassioned defender of orangutans - and by the imminent arrival of Chocolate Week Britain's biggest celebration of real chocolate

I love chocolate so don't expect any high-minded objectivity here. The smell of it renders me giddy and grinning dementedly like a Cheshire cat - who needs opium when you can have chocolate I say. Having written features on tea and chocolate pairing and wine pairings for a chocolate-themed dinner party it's safe to assume I would be happy if every week were a celebration of chocolate and since Paul opened his chocolate shop in 2006 I would occasionally pop in whenever I happened to be in Angel, which sadly wasn't that often. His marmite chocolate truffles are manna from heaven for a marmite fan, and you don't need me telling you his salted butter caramels (pictured above) are so moreish that all you really have to do is close your eyes and purr

My musings on matters theobromine boil down to the profound dichotomy of "yum" and "yuck", hence this is really a cursory introduction to one of the great fermented foodstuffs in existence besides my other favourites gravadlax, sourdough bread, Riesling, anchovies, and of course cheese...

Imagine my excitement when I saw this on display at Paul's tasting two weeks ago:

Chocolate and cheese may sound bonkers, but it's an umami bombshell of a combination, think of Ella Fitzgerald singing a fine romance when you pair chocolate and cheese and you know what I'm on about. Paul isn't the only advocate of unusual pairings with chocolate, food scientist and "curious cook" Harold McGee has a killer recipe for chocolate and cheese truffles Try it, you'd be surprised what a natural affinity good dark chocolate has with Stilton and indeed unpasteurised Stichelton

As a Scandinavian I grew up with good chocolate. It's our vitamin shot during long, dark winters and Norway's biggest chocolate company Freia is still my favourite source of milky chocolate confection that hits a certain blisspoint. Pangs of nostalgia occur whenever I eat a Kvikk-Lunsj, Freia's answer to the Kit-Kat and nothing really says weekends spent Nordic skiing, frolicking in the snow and steamy saunas like a bar of the stuff

So when American Kraft bought Norwegian Freia back in the mid 1990's there was a national outcry. Sound familiar? Kraft of course now have their eye on Cadbury's, that beloved British institution whose source of popularity has always eluded me. Cadbury's isn't real chocolate. They may have highly commendable Quaker ideals and social programs but they produce what should be more accurately called vegelate that masquerades as chocolate, replete with startling amounts of bleached sugar and some vague notion of cocoa. Yuck. Nothing, we discovered, makes Paul quite as hopping mad as people who claim chocolate is fattening. Cheap mass-produced chocolate is full of sugar, and that's what is so addictive, not to mention fatal to one's waistline

The heady aroma of real chocolate suffuses Paul's shop when you enter, and this is deliberate. He wants chocolate to be a sensory experience, and since all his chocolate is hand-crafted on site there is no other escape for the intoxicating aromas unleashed by tempering chocolate and freshly baked brownies. Automation is strictly verboten. Instead marble slabs are used downstairs in the kitchen for tempering, and there is no outsourcing at any stage in the chocolate production

Paul and his business partner James Cronin's enthusiasm for teaching us about real chocolate is clear as soon as we arrive. A tasting programme is planned for the evening in which we methodically work our way from bean to bar. Everything from malty Valrhona milk chocolate to silky 75% Amedei 9 and fiendishly tart and bitter 100% Valrhona manjari pate is sampled, the latter resolutely my favourite. Akin to a wine tasting, we diligently take notes and compare thoughts on what each chocolate evinces in terms of nuance, texture and aroma. Ultimately whether we like it or not is to some extent irrelevant. Real chocolate is an education in taste, not an exercise in expressing opinions of "yum" or "yuck' as I normally do

James Cronin talking to us about the business of chocolate

True chocolate lovers will already know the three main cocoa beans are Criollo, Trinitario and Forastero, Criollo being the elite bean and Forastero being the banal bean used in Cadbury's, Nestle, Kraft, et al. or as part of a blend. Being a fermentation nerd with an acidic palate I was intrigued to learn fermentation determines the acidity of cocoa beans, and if done properly releases all the inherent aromas of the bean. As Paul told us, it can be tricky discerning which bean is used for which chocolate with the Big Three Amadei, Valrhona and Michel Cluizel diverging in the way they reveal the bean's provenance, or what blend of beans they use

What struck me about Paul and James is how passionately they believe chocolate is a craft. Craftsmanship is not really part of the noughties' vernacular - we live in an age of instant gratification and mastering a craft requires a singular attention to detail, not to mention years of training, experience and embodied knowledge. Paul told us he had trained under Marco Pierre White, a chef who certainly does not suffer fools lightly. I can only imagine how character-forming it was to work for Marco, and as Paul told us the most salient lesson he learnt from him was that the product is king. To some extent I agree and I appreciate that Paul and James are running a business so the product is key, but the anthropologist in me would of course argue the product is nothing without the people. Cooks, chefs, chocolatiers, cheesemakers, winemakers, brewers all practice a form of craftsmanship, and you can't divest what they make from who they are. I suspect we'll be hearing more about this subject in the coming years as artisanal food producers hit their stride. At any rate, if you're a craft nerd then have a look at Richard Sennett's inspiring book 'The Craftsman' for more profound observations on the matter

Paul and James wrap up the tasting by introducing us to San Francisco-based chocolate brand Tcho, a company channelling the terroir of beans into their chocolate. By breaking down each variety to their flavour profiles of nutty, fruity, chocolatey, earthy, citrus or floral, you have a clear choice depending on your own taste in chocolate. It's a fascinating concept, and certainly the first of its kind amongst the elite chocolate brands. With Paul being the first retailer to stock them in Britain, Tcho are a brand to watch

To complete the evening we're given a tour of the kitchen downstairs, as spotless and spatious as they come. In the photo above is Paul clutching a delicious block of pure cocoa butter, chocolate's most prized ingredient. Remember that. As Paul explained, cocoa butter is the key to real chocolate, and ersatz ingredients such as palm oil are to be avoided at all costs - not merely for fiscal reasons but for conservation ones. The demand for cheap palm oil leads to serious deforestation of rainforests, the natural habitat of both cocoa bean trees and the mighty orangutan. Eat cheap, mass-produced chocolate and not only will you get fat but you'll be contributing to the decline of rainforests and orangutans

If you love proper chocolate, start reading the ingredients on the back of the label. Go to tastings, masterclasses, be a nerd and start swotting up on the subject. There is a Chocolate Unwrapped event in London on the weekend of October 10/11 where you can sample a whole range of brands, beans and varieties of chocolate.

Honestly, if you like eating chocolate it is worth investing a bit of time and effort in learning the whole ecology of chocolate-making from bean to bar, and I can't recommend Paul's tasting highly enough

On that note, I leave you with a word of advice: theobromine is a stimulant so as tempting as it is to make hot chocolate before bedtime you'll find yourself rather more wound-up than wound-down

Doesn't stop me from dreaming about that fiendish Valrhona 100% manjari pate though...

Paul A Young

33 Camden Passage

Islington

London N1 8EA

www.paulayoung.co.uk

'Adventures with Chocolate' by Paul A Young published by Kyle Cathie 2009

Julia Child's Reine de Saba

They don't make them like Julia Child anymore

Yep, I'm officially on the bandwagon of Julia enthusiasts. Spank me with a spatula but I grew up reading cookbooks from the 60's so Julia was a familiar figure in our family - my Mother's vintage edition of that other doyenne of American cookery Fanny Farmer sat alongside the Great Scandinavian Cookbook - an ersatz Larousse with some gravlax and smoked sheep heads thrown in - and a signed copy of the Ballymaloe Cookbook (OK, not from the 60's but from the 70's) summers spent in New England meant we accumulated quite a few classic American cookbooks, but Child really was in a league of her own

Patrician, francophile and in possession of an extraordinary voice that bordered on comical, Julia Child was a salt-of-the-earth sort of woman, that breed of tough cookies who were unconventional and ever so slightly eccentric. I like Child for what she represented: a smart, self-assured woman who was didactic and a true enthusiast for all things French, her integrity as a cookery writer lay in her singular dedication to a craft and perfecting the techniques inherent in classic French cooking. This is rather quaint in our age of instant gratification, in which food is entertainment and we're constantly bombarded with bland cookery books and banal TV programmes

A lesser woman would have accepted being placed in a class of bored housewives at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, but Child aimed higher and evinced a diligence and work ethic in the professionals' class that paid off - her determination meant she literally did master all the skills integral to French cooking, and eventually she wrote her magnum opus "Mastering the Art of French cooking" a book now in probably it's 200th re-print

So when Niamh of the blog Eat Like A Girl emailed the London Food and Drink Bloggers last week asking if anyone was interested in attending a screening of the forthcoming film 'Julie & Julia' I jumped at the chance. You can read plenty of reviews about Nora Ephron's film about blogger Julia Powell re-creating every recipe from Julia Child's masterpiece, my only comment on this otherwise well-executed film is why did Julia Child's life not merit a film in itself? Why did it take a simpering, narcissist blogger desperate for a book deal to resurrect the unfashionable, warbling Julia? Meryl Streep stole the show as Child and I suspect that's not merely down to her skill as an actor. Child is the compelling character in this film, and I have to admit that despite my enjoyment of the film as a whole I left the screening with a sense of disappointment that this formidable woman wasn't the main focus

Anyway, enough eulogising about Julia Child. You can read more about her in the following features: AA Gill's piece here in the Sunday Times, Michael Pollan's New York Times article and another Times article on the business of cookbooks finally this piece in last month's Vanity Fair is well worth a read. If you're a keen bean have a look at Child's cookery programmes on YouTube

Without further ado, here's a recipe from 'Mastering the Art of French Cooking' for her favourite chocolate cake: the Reine de Saba or Queen of Sheba...a cake as robust and full of character as the 6ft 1" Child was

Ingredients:

• 110g (4 oz) butter, softened
• 110g caster sugar or light brown sugar
• 110g dark chocolate (70% or higher)
• 55g plain flour
• 55g ground almonds
• 3 medium eggs, separated
• 2 tbsp strong coffee, rum or brandy
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180 C. Lightly oil and dust with flour a 20cm diameter cake tin

Place the chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a saucepan of simmering water, allow to melt and cool

In a large bowl cream the butter and add the sugar, creaming until light and fluffy. Add the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing well after each addition. Then add the melted chocolate and coffee/rum/or brandy. In a separate bowl whisk the egg whites with a pinch of salt until stiff peaks form, then add a spoonful of sugar and whisk to stuff peak again. Add a spoonful of the egg white to the chocolate mixture to break it up and then add the flour and ground almonds. Add the remainder of the egg white mixture to the large bowl, stirring through with either a large spatula, a la Child's method, or with a large metal spoon. Use figure of eight motions and fold in the eggwhite to the cake mixture with a gentle motion. If you're heavy-handed you'll knock all the air out. Better to have some pockets of flour or egg mixture dotted through the mixture then to be over-zealous about distributing all the ingredients

Pour this into your cake tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 25-30 minutes. The cake is ready when it's spongy to the touch, doesn't wobble anymore and a skewer inserted comes out clean

Let the cake cool on a wire rack, then decorate as you wish. Child made a rich chocolate and butter icing which goes well, but I just dusted some cocoa powder on top

* If you're gluten-intolerant simply substitute the flour with the same quantity ground almonds, or about 40g gluten-free flour

Julia Child's "My life in France" published in the UK by Duckworth 2009

Cake & Cocktails

photo courtesy of Simon Majumdar

It must be hard being a man

Seriously, I'm increasingly convinced that girls really do have more fun. If you believe the rants of grumpy newspaper commentators, you probably think men (and boys) are so thoroughly emasculated by women and girls' advancement in every sphere that men are now reduced to quivering jellies in the face of such Boadiceaesque fierceness. "What good are men for?" ask the curmudgeonly commentators, no doubt quivering themselves

Hah! It's a wild exaggeration of course, but I reckon it's easier than ever for women to define ourselves in the way we choose rather than adhere to normative rules. "Real" men are mandated to steer clear of anything too feminine, that smacks of temperamental oestrogen and saddles them with the dreaded tags of 'empathetic', 'sensitive', or even worse ... 'girlie men'

Seriously? Are real men expected to be gruff swaggering autocrats who grunt and eat 16 oz steaks with their bare hands before conquering submissive little women?!

It's an image - note the word image - of the stereotypical chef, and ostensibly food remains one of the last bastions of such fabled masculine prowess. Men dominate the Michelin rankings, and female chefs accorded with that venerable status are - like South African athlete Caster Semenya - questioned whether they might be more XY than XX in their chromosomal makeup

Men supposedly cook manly things like steak, roast suckling pig and other sources of priapic protein. A meal is not a meal without meat, gruffrealgrumpyman will grunt. Women in all their flim-flam and flummery bake cakes, spend their days dreaming about Brad Pitt and salivating over Cath Kidston kitchenware splutter the chauvenist gastronomes. Myths abound - women in kitchens are unwelcome because their hormones interfere with their ability to cook. Yep, I was once told this by a chef, albeit a drunken loon with a potato for a nose. Fearless succubi will distract male chefs from the vital task of producing mind-blowing food say the culinary misogynists, etc., etc.

What blows my mind is why women are saddled with this image of only being interested in cake and the boring aspects of food, like diet and nutrition, or why a woman in the kitchen is cast as either a scary lesbian or dismissed as a succubus? I jest of course, there are countless women who defy such ludicrous cliches. But when Simon Majumdar, author of 'Eat My Globe', one half of the blogging duo Dos Hermanos and self-professed 'Real Man' suggested fellow girlie food blogger Gastrogeek and I give him a lesson in baking last Sunday I relished the chance to dispel the myth that "Real men don't bake"

Um, except when Simon pitched the idea of baking a victoria sponge and making a trifle I uttered an expletive unfit for print. Sponge and trifle rank in the top of least favourite foods - barring cupcakes - for this 'girlie' anthropologist. Anyone who knows me will tell you I rant and rave about how banal cakes in this country are and I may or may not have once referred to the classic trifle as an 'abortion'. A vague anarchic streak in me rebels against anything 'traditional' and these two dishes seem to represent the worst culinary traditions this country has to offer

photo courtesy of Simon Majumdar

As you can tell, I have pretty obnoxious views about food. Anyway, prior to our bake-a-thon, Simon tweeted "are you sure our baking session won't interfere with your Sex and the City marathon?" to which I retorted "I hate Sex and the City, that's where the banality of cupcake evil originated" no doubt to the befuddlement of anyone reading my tweets, after all I'm supposed to be a baker. Clearly we were in for an afternoon of japery, and being a Seinfeld girl I threatened to tweet 'SERENITY NOW!' if the battle of the sexes got out of hand

Of course the great irony is every boy I've ever babysat loves baking. Not that I was babysitting Simon, but boys like to get their hands dirty, which is why I dispatch all my male friends to wash their hands before entering the kitchen or touching any food. Given young boys' predilection for muckiness, it makes sense that they like to get stuck in cracking eggs, mixing cake batter and, if they are younger than age 8, show an endearing disregard for keeping the kitchen clean. Somehow this enthusiasm for baking gets knocked out of boys as they enter adolescence, which is a shame

Anyway, Simon knew better than not to wash his hands in the presence of a Scandi kitchen fascist. In exchange for this tutorial in trifle and sponge making he kindly proffered a bottle of delicious pinot noir, which I assumed we'd be saving for after our bake-a-thon, but then I'd blithely assumed I was going to be teaching Simon how to make cake and trifle

Arriving at midday on a warm Sunday, Simon suggested we fetch ingredients for the afternoon's tutorial. Off we went to buy eggs and butter and about a year's recommended intake of Jersey double cream. Sherry was on our list too and being the sherry novice I deferred to Simon's expertise on the matter - he talked me through the different sherrys available, we settled on a Manzanilla which has a pleasing ozone salty note to it, perfect for soaking the trifle sponge, not to mention sipping

Simon then picked up a bottle of Vermouth and Beefeater gin, again talking me through the different gins (I'm clueless when it comes to spirits, heck I'm clueless when it comes to a lot of things) and suggested with a glint of mischief in his eye that in exchange for entering the girlie orbit of baking, he would reciprocate by giving me a tutorial in cocktail making. Gastrogeek was waylaid by a late luncheon, so in the end it was just us two creaming the butter and trifling away

el maestro de cocteles, or hermano segundo (HS) in action

And so commenced a lovely afternoon of baking and cocktail making. It was honestly one of the more entertaining Sundays I've had all summer - Simon is great company and far from the gruffrealgrumpyman he claims to be. We talked about shooting, his new book, and as one would expect - baking and cocktail-making. Simon pointed out that the two skills, though seemingly divergent, actually dovetail in that they demand a deft touch, precision and a bit of technique. To his credit, Simon also asked a myriad questions about baking methodology, and whether or not he felt emasculated by wearing an apron (I gave him a navy blue chef's stripe one) you'd have to ask him

Needless to say, after the first martini any sensible contribution I made to the conversation vaporised as I tried to focus on standing upright and finishing the task of both sponge and trifle. There was a serious risk I'd end up like the Swedish Chef and the flatmates were decidedly bemused by how much booze was floating about in our kitchen during the bake-a-thon, not to mention how utterly pickled Simon and I were by mid-afternoon

After several delicious, refreshing cocktails, a glass of wine and some nibbles of cheese and olives later we eventually collapsed, I mean sat down and ate both trifle and cake, washed down with a chilled glass of Manzanilla. The whole afternoon was a revelation - Simon had taught me the rudimentary techniques of cocktail making (keep everything chilled) and whether it was the result of transcendent drinking, I came to the conclusion that trifle is not as ghastly as I remembered, and the victoria sponge was extremely tasty. No doubt the generous slathering of clotted cream in the cake helped, and liberal quantities of sherry in the trifle made the experience more memorable

What was the verdict? I retract all snottiness about victoria sponge and trifles - they are great British traditions and I might even make them again. And Simon? Well, you'll have to wait til his next book 'Eating for Britain' is out to read his musings on our cake & cocktail session :D

Recipe for the victoria sponge, or sandwich if you will:

• 170g self-raising flour
• 170g softened butter
• 170g caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs at room temperature
• raspberry jam
• clotted cream
• drop of vanilla essence (not strictly traditional, but gives some flavour)

The classic victoria sponge is all about equal proportions of ingredients so make sure you're fastidious about measuring everything

Preheat oven to 180 C

Grease a round 20cm cake tin and place a circle of baking parchment on the bottom of the tin

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy:

Then whisk each into the creamed butter mixture, making sure it doesn't split by adding a teaspoon of flour. Fold in the flour, stirring through with a large metal spoon in figure of eight motions until the flour is incorporated to the wet mixture. If it looks a little thick or dry, add a bit of milk or water til the mixture reaches a dropping consistency when you lift some with the metal spoon

Place the mixture in your cake tin, bake on the central oven shelf for 30-35 minutes and go have a cocktail

Recipe for Trifle (adapted from p.658 of the Leiths Cookery Bible, Bloomsbury)

• Waitrose sponge fingers
• a liberal splash of Manzanilla sherry (recipe calls for 4 tbsp, yeah right)
• homemade strawberry freezing jam (or compote, you don't want a sticky jam)
• 150ml whole milk
• 150ml double cream
• 5 egg yolks, broken up with a fork
• 2 tbsp caster sugar
• 2 drops vanilla essence
• 290 ml double cream (for whipping)
• handful toasted almond slivers
• handful blackberries or other summer berries

First cut the sponge fingers in half, and lay down in the trifle dish, pour over sherry and see if you can resist drinking a glass of manzanilla whilst doing this

Next, prepare the custard: put the 150ml of milk and 150ml of double cream in a saucepan, scald til it steams and then cool for a few minutes before adding a bit of this liquid to the five egg yolks. Add the sugar and vanilla essence, put this back in a clean pan (something to do with enzymes in milk when it scalds, you want to use a clean pan for the custard making)

Heat carefully over a low-medium heat, stirring all the time until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not boil the custard otherwise you will have sweet scrambled egg

Pour the custard on to the soaked sponge, then leave til completely cold

Add the strawberry freezer jam or compote, then whip the cream until fairly stiff and spread over the top of the jam. Sprinkle with toasted almonds and blackberries and eat with gluttonous abandon

From anthropologist to fish wife

On Thursday fellow food blogger Gastrogeek and I traded our quotidien lives for a day as tradeswomen manning the UKFBA stall at the real food market in Covent Garden. Our aim was to raise money for Amnesty International and Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, and as Gastrogeek had asked me a few months back to share the stall with her I had plenty of time to prepare for this debut in trading and flogging

Or so I thought. Until Wednesday I had been quite relaxed about the prospect of spending a day at the market selling food. Mercantile instincts roused I made jars of plum jam to sell at the stall, reasoning that glorious English plums are at their peak right now and who doesn't like plum jam? Having spent last weekend foraging for wild cherry plums with Papa Johansen, made jam from them and some plump, indigo Czar plums from Grange Farm in West Sussex (see previous blog post) I naively concluded "this will be fine, just knock up some cakes and muffins on Wednesday and write a list of what we need, the rest will take care of itself"

Invariably I neglected to take into consideration the hobbit-sized oven in my flat, the time it would take to bake multiple batches in said hutch and how incredibly grumpy I get when on my feet all day, not to mention what a snail's pace I cook at. Much of Wednesday was spent cursing the oven and my singular tardiness, and wondering if this was such a good idea after all

Lest you think this is a whine about how hard it is to cater for large groups of people, let me assure you the experience of manning a market stall was exhilirating and I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. Be that as it may, Wednesday's seemingly endless preparation for the stall was a salutary lesson that you can never be prepared enough, it always takes much more time to bake than you anticipate and it's exhausting to cook large batches of food in a tiny domestic kitchen. Without a dishwasher, the washing up is endless and eats into your baking schedule

But enough moaning. Gastrogeek is the ideal partner in fish wife crime and so much fun to work with - she did most of the talking, I tried not to frighten away small children with my irascibility. We hit the ground running at 11:30am setting the stall up just before noon by which time Gastrogeek already had customers asking prices of her savoury goodies. It was a perfect summers' day so in terms of foot traffic we were extremely lucky as there was a constant flow of visitors to Covent Garden, and we were in a prime location to catch their attention

We had a mother visit us whose son is being treated in Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital, she told us about his debilitating condition and the excellent care he's receiving which really brought it home how vital the hospital is. Because we were raising money for charity many customers gave extra or told us to keep the change, a reminder that despite all the economic doom and gloom the capacity for donating money to good causes hasn't disappeared. The occasional passerby would laugh at Gastrogeek's keema lollies and one bad-mannered teen even mimicked the action of vomiting when walking past our stall which I'll confess was disappointing in comparison to the generosity of the vast majority who sampled our wares

My matcha green tea and blueberry muffins garnered some bemused looks, but children bought them and as they were gluten-free they were more in demand than I expected. In general our interactions with passersby were extremely positive, except for the cheeky Italian teenager who asked where the nearest KFC was. I promptly dispatched him to the nearest cupcake shop which served the pasty, spotty teen right for his culinary insolence. Slow Food, you've got some work to do in your terra madre

Gastrogeek and I both thoroughly enjoyed the day and although it was exhausting the 9 hours flew by in no time. We agreed to make this an annual event, albeit next time we shall cajole local caterers/restaurants to lend us their ovens upon my mother's recommendation. In fact, we might just get the formidable Mama Johansen to cajole them on our behalf - no one says no to Mama J, trust me

You can read more on the build-up to Thursday's stall on Gastrogeek's excellent blog post "From Blogging to Flogging" here and her post-flogging analysis here Suffice to say, we both extend a huge thank you to all the food bloggers and friends who came down to support us. Without descending into an Oscar-esque-thank-you-speech we were fortunate to have a great stall neighbour who I shall call Prosecco Sam. He's on the corner by the Transport Museum and is delightful, go see him if you're moseying through Covent Garden and try a glass of his prosecco. As you can see below, we definitely appreciated his rose prosecco - the perfect sustenance to get through a hot summer's afternoon

And as for the punters and tourists who bought our wares, thank you. Below are a few photos of the day

Gastrogeek's genius idea of Keema Lollies received plenty of attention:

And her ginger chocolate cherries were such a hit with both children and adults alike we ran out by mid-afternoon. You can find the recipe on Gastrogeek's blog post listed above

My mocha & coconut cake proved to be popular so the recipe is at the bottom of this post. The beetroot brownies were also gobbled up, and mostly by children which was gratifying - they're tricky customers :D For those who asked after the beetroot brownie recipe this is the one I used, courtesy of Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Needless to say Gastrogeek's olympian ability to talk made her the perfect fish wife regaling her customers with witty anecdotes and upbraiding the odd person who sneered and walked away when told we were raising money for charity (!)

Goodshoeday paying us a visit and Gastrogeek larking about:

a moment of calm during an otherwise hectic day:

Nursing a glass of delicious rose prosecco, one of ahem, a few supplied throughout the afternoon by our neighbour Sam:

Being the donuthead that I am, I clean forgot to put the plum jams out until mid-afternoon, but once they were on display they sold well

And we made it! By 8:20 pm we were all packed up and ready to go home to a cup of tea and a hot bath. Exhausted after nine hours on our feet but thrilled to have raised a respectable £350, the profits of which go straight to our selected charities...

These may be straitened times but what a day observing and engaging with the generous, the friendly and occasionally the quixotic visitors to Covent Garden. Before I forget, a thank you to Joe, Gastrogeek's other half, for taking some terrific snaps of the stall on our behalf, a few of which are in this post

Recipe for Coconut Mocha Cake:

Adapted from my boss Fiona Beckett's recipe for cappuccino cake in her book 'The Frugal Cook' (p. 135 Absolute Press) I used more cocoa and made a mocha style icing - ie very dark and intense, not creamy at all...

Makes 12-16 squares or bars

• 2 tbsp cocoa powder
• 2 tbsp strong black coffee
• 200g caster sugar
• 225g softened buttermilk spread (e.g. Willow)
• 4 medium eggs
• 225g self-raising flour
• 1 heaping tbsp plain yoghurt (to add extra moisture as there is more cocoa in this recipe than Fiona's)

For the icing:

• 125g butter
• 2 tbsp cocoa
• 200g icing sugar, sifted
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-2 tbsp strong coffee (adjust to taste)

Preheat the oven to 180C

Line a shallow 18 x 32cm cake tin with baking parchment. Sift the cocoa into a large bowl, add the hot coffee and stir. Add the caster sugar, stir, then tip in the spread, eggs and half the flour. Beat very well with a spoon or electric whisk, and fold in the remaining flour. Spread this mixture in the tin and bake on the middle oven shelf for 35-40 minutes until risen and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool on a wire rack while you make the icing. Place the butter in a saucepan, allow to melt and then add the cocoa, the sugar and the vanilla. Stir really well, sometimes this has a tendency to separate but adding the icing sugar helps to smooth out the icing. Add the coffee to taste, stir and allow to cool for 10 minutes before icing the cake. If it's hot the icing will just run down the sides, and by cooling it slightly the icing will thicken. You can see a photo below of what the icing looks like, and frankly it rocks. Sprinkle a generous amount of desiccated coconut and eat with gusto

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