Crimson Tide

crimson jam made with czar plums

We Johansens love to forage, fish and hunt. In fact we love everything about the outdoors - the thought of mountains, forests and fjords renders us somewhat misty-eyed and nostalgic for long summer days on the west coast of Norway. Few things in life make us happier than hiking up those mountains, scampering through dark forests and catching fish from fjords or lakes. It's a heavily romanticised Grieg-inspired idyll of course, but nature is by definition romantic

So far, so Peer Gynt. In truth we're not a family of avid hunters, but fishing and foraging are primal activities so deeply ingrained in our DNA that Papa Johansen is the keenest fisherman I know, whereas sadly I am a useless fart at anything aquatic except swimming and like to imagine that dropping crayfish pots in the fjord constitutes fishing, thus qualifying me as some sort of piscine goddess. This is a source of endless amusement to Papa J, along with the fact that I hate downhill skiing. It must be hard not having a son when you're the Last Of The Vikings

As for hunting, the one time I tried shooting animate objects was last September on a gamebird hunting weekend in Derbyshire. Hunting is divisive, you don't need an anthropologist telling you that but the ritual aspects of hunting, whether for the Inupiat in Alaska, the Sami in Northern Norway or for the Ainu in Japan are integral to their identities and how they conceptualise the world. We descend from hunters and gatherers and being a committed omnivore I don't have any principled objection to killing animals - if you want to eat meat or fish you must at some point in your life be prepared to kill it, brutal a notion though that may be

Anyway, enough lecturing. I confess that despite my support of hunting generally I felt a sense of relief those birds weren't shot out of the sky by my trigger-happy hand. The same can't be said about my lovely Croatian friend Kata who shot birds with so much gusto it frightened all the men of our party

We're only a few days away from the start of grouse season, but a less gruesome activity beckoned this weekend. The foraging and picking of summer fruit is a gentle summer activity and I had yet to do any this year. My Norwegian grandparents owned a fruit farm in western Norway so I grew up picking wild and cultivated strawberries, raspberries, currants and plums during summers spent on their farm with the looney aunts

Dad and I had been missing that favourite of summer pasttimes (not the aunts mind you), so when I was in Sussex this weekend to see Ma & Pa we investigated nearby PYO farms. Off we went on a muggy afternoon to Grange Farm in the quaint Sussex village of Funtington where we spent a happy hour picking plums and apples before the rain came crashing down:

Picking your own plums may not save that much money but we thoroughly enjoyed stomping through Grange Farm where they have hundreds of plum, apple and pear trees, not to mention row upon row of blackcurrant and gooseberry bushes, rhubarb and strawberry patches...they're delightfully organised these Grange farmers which appeals to my Germanic sense of organisation:

And sure enough the czar plums we picked were plump and juicy with a fantastic indigo skin:

here's me picking the czars, avoiding the wasps:

Discovery apples:

Sadly I only picked a few kilos of these delicious apples before the rain started:

Tart, crisp and aromatic - the perfect English apples:

The reason for this frenzy of fruit picking? I decided to make plum jam in aid of Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital and will be selling the jam along with cakes and cinnamon buns this coming Thursday at the UK Food Bloggers' Association food stall in Covent Garden's Real Food Market. Rejina of the fabulous food blog Gastrogeek very kindly invited me along to share the stall with her and she'll be donating her profits to Amnesty International so if you have a spare half hour in your lunch break or you're moseying around Covent Garden do swing by and help us raise money for two very good causes

Recipe for plum jam:

• 2kg de-stoned plums
• 375g fructose (fruit sugar)
• pack of "jam" which is basically ascorbic acid and a bit of pectin, we buy it in Norway

Put your plums in a large pot over a medium heat, stir while the plums start to dissolve and cook. Make sure to stir fairly regularly so the plums don't catch on the bottom of the pan and burn, they will start to look like soup:

Bring to a boil, stir and bring back to the boil three times. My father swears by this method, I suspect because three has some ritual connotation for him. Take the pan off the heat, add the fruit sugar, stir really well to distribute the sugar and put back on the heat. Bring to the boil one more time, then add the magic "jam" (this isn't strictly necessary but it helps the jam set...plums are quite high in pectin anyway so just cook the jam as normal without this mystical Norwegian powder) Decant into sterilised jars, seal, and turn upside down until cool

As an addendum, we foraged these wild cherry plums on an old Roman road near Chichester:

And voila! Made them into jam too:

Papa Johansen insisted we pick wild cherry plums on our way back from Grange Farm, and thus we spent an hour shaking the plum tree down, collecting plums and getting stung by nettles whilst being drenched in the rain. Good family fun. Dad very kindly offered to help with the jam-making, although by the time we got round to starting the wild cherry plum batch at 7pm we had both run out of steam. Be warned, you have to cook the wild plums whole and skim out the kernels as they separate from the fruit. Below Papa J looks less than impressed at how long it took us to prepare the wild plums (we slit them along the middle to help the separation of kernel from flesh):

And there was no sympathy from Mama J: "It serves your Father right insisting on foraging those wild plums, he never appreciates how much work goes into jam-making"

I suspect he probably does, and hereby extend a big thank you to Papa J for all his help. What better way for Father and daughter to spend time together...

On waffles, peaches and the joys of not baking

Every kitchen should have a waffle iron.

Seriously. Let me explain: I've been away on cheesemaking fieldwork for my anthropology dissertation and it's hot here in the Canaries. Yes, they make cheese in the Canaries, and one of them happens to have won the "world's best cheese" award last year at the world cheese awards in Dublin. Hence my vital research on the matter. Plus I like cheese, I like the Canaries, and I like swimming amongst the glistening fish in the crystal clear ocean every day.

But I digress. As it is hot, baking is simply out of the question.

Problem is if you're an oven-refusenik on summer days there aren't many non-bake alternatives to the quotidien muesli. Pancakes are delectable but a bit of a faff when you're in Sundayslug mode and we didn't have any dried cholla bread for making French toast. Thus I mandated to Mama Johansen that the waffle-iron come out for Sunday brunch. She happily demured, went off to read the paper and left me to my waffling.

Out came the extention cord and I placed said waffle iron on the terrace for an al fresco brunch - reducing the distance between 'cooking' and eating. Whilst assembling a variety of jams and condiments for embellishing the waffles, a gloopy batter was conjured out of a few holy ingredients. Good butter, as you might expect, is essential, but otherwise there's no art to making waffles. I set the table, Mama J took care of her coffee and within minutes we were scoffing crisp, glorious waffles and sipping hot coffee, or in my case, M&S Extra Strong Tea (don't ask me why, but I have a real soft spot for Marks & Sparks tea...)

In sum, who needs to bake on sultry summer days when the waffle iron provides such simple bruncheon joy?

To mitigate the waffles - not that they require mitigation per se - we snaffled some Spanish donut peaches:

And here's the humble waffle recipe, a hybrid of Mama J's and the winner of last year's waffle competition in Norway. Norwegians, I might add, have a thing about waffles. Expect to be proffered them wherever you go. Or at least this was the case when I lived there many moons ago. You'll probably be given some god-awful cupcakes or ersatz cookies now.

Ingredients: makes enough for 3-4 people

• 230g plain flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 70g caster sugar
• 70g butter, melted
• 70ml water
• 150g sour cream (greek yogurt will do)
• 100ml whole milk
• 2 eggs
• 1-2 generous teaspoons vanilla extract
• pinch salt

Method:

Sift dry ingredients into large bowl, make a well in middle and add all the liquid ingredients. Stir together until a sticky batter is formed. If you lift the spoon it should take a couple of seconds for the mixture to fall down. Not a minute, nor immediately - a couple of seconds.

Technically you set aside the batter for 1/2 hour to allow the starch cells in the flour to swell. Needless to say, we were too impatient and just cooked the waffles with indecent haste. As Mama J will attest, the waffles were perfect - light, fluffy and crisp on the outside.

Here is a snap from a previous waffle-making session to show you the iron and batter.We gobbled everything on Sunday before photos could be taken. The three hearts above were barely corralled for a photo before we hoovered them...

As for what to serve with waffles, you don't need me to tell you that adding butter and a pinch of cinnamon is gilding the lily, but gild the lily we did. Jams of most descriptions make excellent accompaniments, as do syrups, peanut butter, norwegian gjetost, nutella, fruit, dollops of sour cream, marmite...haha, got you there ;)

That's all for now folks, do let me know if you make waffles or indeed if you have a favourite waffle topping.

Time for a dip in the ocean methinks.

For the sweet-toothed buccaneer...

It's July 4th, and I don't know about you but I LOVE Independence Day. Normally sceptical about the hullabaloo and fanfare of nation states celebrating their independence, or in England's case some dude named George, I suspend all critical faculties and embrace the swashbuckling, tea-dumping, free-wheeling spirit of America's most eagerly anticipated holiday. All that red, white and blue decoration, the earnestness with which Americans celebrate their independence and freedom, the singing, the food, the flags!

If you love the 'West Wing', 'Seinfeld' or 'M*A*S*H' as much as I do, you are mandated to love July 4th, there is just no point denying it. You can't consume the cultural exports of America, then turn around and sneer at its so-called lack of cultural sophistication, or complain about loud Americans who point at Big Ben and ask "Is that Oxford or Cambridge?" I love America because of its idiosyncracies, not in spite of them, and will disown friends who possess anti-American sentiments as quickly as I dispatch people who don't eat fish or who claim to be vegetablists - as Jeremy Clarkson so aptly calls them

If you get excited by Americana in all its kitsch glory - as by now you will have gathered I most certainly do - then you make cakes like the one below. Yes, that is blue icing, and with all it's E-numbered, diabetes-inducing filthiness it tasted mighty good. This cake, for the record, was made last November for election day and I am sure our commander-in-chief would appreciate its total brilliance. I simply revisit it today to remind myself what a queen of schmaltz I am :D

Anyway you get my point. I dig the States

July 4th for me is replete with memories of summers spent in New England. It was the perfect escape from the dourness of Norway, not to mention my looney relatives - Wodehouse was right in stating "aunts aren't gentlemen" and my Norwegian ones certainly fit that description to a T. My American grandfather, Jack, lived on the coast of New Hampshire and so the parents and I absconded to a town called Rye Beach every summer for most of the '90s. It was, for want of a better word, sweet. Swimming in the freezing Atlantic; eating burgers, hot dogs, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, chipwiches; learning to love lobster; daily swim team practices with the beach club swim team my parents insisted I join (I still thank them for doing so, or I would've been the size of a baby hippo); comedy tennis lessons (racquets and I will never be bosom buddies); flashlight tag during sultry evenings; summer camps at MIT; birthday parties and all the usual carefree japes and frolics of teenage summers...I couldn't have asked for better holidays and never got sick of returning to the same place every July

Be that as it may, my knowledge of the rest of the United States is patchy at best. D.C., New Orleans and Chicago have thus far eluded me, and although a wine tour of California beckons, I'd love to travel around the deep south and midwest - often neglected in travel plans that always focus on seductive New York or foodie San Fran

So in a fit of nostalgia, I told "she who must be obeyed", otherwise known as Mama Johansen, that we would make burgers and key lime pie to honour the Great American Holiday. We feasted on quarterpounders with gherkins, onions and cheese last night to kick off the star-spangled celebrations, and subsequently felt rather queasy. That's a lot of meat for someone who recently went on a two-month seafood binge as a symbolic denouncement of useless men (it was a bad break-up...) and recently severe iron-deficiency crept up on me, so the occasion for jumping back on the meat wagon once more couldn't be more apposite. The gustatory meat wagon that is. Shame that I went at it with quite that much gusto

But I digress. Key Lime Pie, to the uninitiated, is an All-American dessert. It's tangy and fresh and sweet all at once, and I have a penchant for mouth-puckeringly sour things so it's top of my list for summertime sweet treats. Except it's been so hot and humid the past week that the idea of baking made me feel even more faint than the prospect of eating another quarterpounder with cheese. So on Thursday I tweeted a query to see if anyone had a no-bake key lime pie recipe. Responses came courtesy of Oliver Thring author of the excellent blog Thring for your Supper, and the folks at Market Kitchen. Oliver suggested adding coconut to the base, which I did, and making a syrup to lace the pie with, which I intended to do and forgot. Next time Oliver, I shall try the lime syrup idea ;) Market Kitchen helpfully directed me to a Momma Cheri recipe which looked quite similar to the one I already had (and a tasty recipe that is too) but it required 10 minutes' baking in the oven

This obsession with a no-bake key lime pie may seem absurd to you, but I was adamant it could be done.

So after the helpful tweets from Oliver and Market Kitchen, a quick scour of the web comparing four recipes, and a collating of ingredients and proportions I came up with the recipe you see below. The secret is mascarpone. Do not use double cream, it just won't have the right consistency - mascarpone is silky and smooth, thus adding the perfect amount of creaminess to the pie filling without making it insipid (I have a thing about double cream, preferring the tarter creme fraiche) and also means eggs are redundant. In fact Mama Johansen and I concurred that eggs, as Heston would say, block flavour-release. In other words, adding eggs to the filling renders the lime flavour less noticeable, and that is problematic when it comes to key lime pie.

You want custard with a citrus twist, go eat tarte au citron. This is tart, refreshing and clean-tasting. Save the eggs for Sunday brunch.

And there you have it: a sublime key lime pie. Happy Independence Day! And yes that is a pool thermometer shaped like a frog in the photo below. We Johansens like our kitsch....

No-bake Key Lime Pie base:

• 200g ginger nut biscuits (I used some Dutch 'spekulaas' or spice biscuits)
• 125g melted butter
• 30g desiccated coconut

Filling (easy as pie):

• 1 can (370ml) condensed milk
• 200g mascarpone cheese
• zest of 4 limes (see photo above, it's a lot. Use a microplane)
• Juice of 5 limes (up to 6 if the limes aren't v.juicy)

Method:

Make the pie base first: place the biscuits in a large plastic bag and crush until they resemble breadcrumbs. If you have a magimix you can of course blitz them in the mixer, but bashing them is quite cathartic. Add the coconut and melted butter, mix thoroughly and then press down quite firmly into a pie tin or cake tin. I only had a big cake tin (23cm diameter) and could have pressed a bit more firmly to get the pie base up on the sides, but it's not the end of the world. If you have ramekins you could make individual pies for a dinner party. Place the pie base in the freezer to chill it quickly

Next, prepare the lime filling: place the mascarpone in a medium-large bowl, grate in the lime zest and whisk this for a minute before adding the condensed milk and lime juice. As soon as you add the lime juice the mixture will thicken, which has to do with the acidity of limes coiling up the proteins in condensed milk, thus thickening it (and the mascarpone I imagine) which is a nifty trick when leaving eggs out of a recipe like this

Finally, taste the mixture. This is not difficult, it should be tangy but sweet enough that the lime juice isn't sucking in your cheeks and making you wince. Add a bit more juice if it's too sweet, a but more condensed milk if too sour

Then pour the filling mixture on top of your chilled pie base, cover with clingfilm and refrigerate for a few hours to set, or even better, overnight. When you're ready to serve the pie, run the blunt end of a knife along the perimeter of your cake (this isn't strictly necessary when using a pie tin) and release the tin. Slice with a sharp knife and serve with some lime zest as garnish, or a sprig of mint. Most recipes call for a dollop of double cream or creme fraiche to go along with key lime pie but IMHO that's redundant. The pie's creamy enough as it is, at a stretch you could do creme fraiche but double cream does nothing for the beauty of this glorious, tangy pie

Keeps a few days in the fridge, if you don't scoff the whole thing in one sitting. Believe me, it's tempting. Thankfully the summer battle with one's bikini is a good prophylactic to such indulgence

Krumkaker with blackcurrant ice cream

krumkaker, or cornets/cones

blackcurrant ice cream

the 30-year old Norwegian krumkake iron

recipe from 'Norway's delight' and cone cooling...

freshly churned blackcurrant ice cream

It's June, the sun's shining and Wimbledon's in full swing. So far it's been a blissful English summer - not too warm and only a shower or three to keep us on our toes. Picnics in the park, walks along the South Bank soaking up rays on a Sunday afternoon and a smattering of Pimm's with ginger ale...such is the stuff of summer ;) I know I'm romanticizing but who needs to go away when London's shimmering on days like today.

Of course nothing quite says 'summer' like an ice cream cone, with the ice cream dribbling down your chin, on your clothes, or in my case, somehow ending up in my hair. Last weekend I dusted off two relics from the Johansen kitchen cupboard - a Gaggia ice cream machine and a Krumkake iron to make cornets, or as my American cousins call them, cones. Krumkake is a Norwegian version of the cone, translating as 'crumbly cake', an apt description of this crispy cone. Both machines were pilfered from Ma & Pa Johansen, and after nearly three decades of use still work - though admittedly just as I'm about to plug in these prized posessions there's a moment when I worry whether I might be electrocuted or the machine will simply have ceased to function. Thankfully, both are still going strong.

As mentioned on a recent post on the Beyond Baked Beans facebook page, I'm an ice cream snob. Nothing quite raises the Johansen ire like commercial ice cream or mediocre 'homemade' ice cream in restaurants or ice cream parlours. The best stuff in London is certainly dark chocolate ice cream from Chocstar and pretty much anything from Odonno. Even supermarket offerings that are purported to be good, such as Haagen Dazs and Ben & Jerry's, are cloying, chewy and over-priced for what is effectively just a humble mix of milk/cream, eggs and sugar. So if you have the time and inclination, I really encourage you to try making your own ices this summer. For a basic fruit ice cream recipe, go to the abovementioned facebook page and play around with flavours and ingredients - I'm lucky enough to have a gadget for ice cream churning, but you can make perfectly good ice cream without one.

And as for the cones - try baking the mixture on a sheet in the oven as you would with brandy snaps. The key to getting the 'cone' shape is to work quickly once the cones are baked - recruit a few mates with asbestos fingers to help you with this task, and roll them up before cooling in a cup. You can of course vary the flavours, adding cinnamon or cardamom for a change, or replacing lemon zest with orange zest, or some vanilla extract/seeds. A sprinkling of cocoa or chocolate wouldn't go amiss either, but the classic lemon zest and nutmeg combo is a match made in heaven, so I confess to never deviating from this 'Norway's delight' recipe...

Krumkake Ingredients:

• 110g plain flour (or 4 oz for imperially-minded friends)
• 110g butter, melted
• 110g sugar
• 3 tbsp water
• 1 medium egg
• zest of 1 lemon
• 1/2 tsp of nutmeg
• pinch salt

Method:

Plug in your krumkake iron, or preheat the oven to 190 C and prepare a baking sheet with greaseproof paper. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the flour, butter, water in increments. Grate in zest and nutmeg. Beat together til there are no lumps - it should be quite a thick batter, the consistency of gloopy toothpaste.

Butter the krumkake iron and place a dollop of the mixture on the bottom of the iron, close the lid and cook for 3-4 minutes depending on how hot the iron gets. You want a pale brown colour, not too brown or they'll scorch. If baking in the oven, place on the upper shelf and leave for 5-7 minutes.

Remove the krumkake cornet when it's ready and - this is the tricky bit - shape into a cornet while still warm. You'll quickly develop asbestos fingers from doing this if you're not already in possession of a heatproof pair of hands. I find quickly shaping, then placing the cornets in a glass (my mother suggested a champagne flute!) or a cup so they hold their shape is the best method.

If making cornets proves exasperating - after all toasted fingers are no fun - simply make baskets instead by shaping the krumkake around the bottom of a glass, ramekin or rolling pin and folding up the edges like a brandy snap. Makes for a pretty basket, though more vulnerable to breakage when storing. The cornets are definitely easier to stack in a sealed cookie jar, and will keep for a week or two. These are ideal for serving friends at a dinner party, as indeed is the homemade ice cream. Simple really.

A Plum Job

Nearly a month has passed since I posted a note on baking here, an unintended hiatus of sorts. Between revising for exams, then sitting the verdamte things, an unexpected trip to Norway and one albatross of a PhD proposal looming on the horizon I've neglected all whisking and folding recently. Thankfully all the hard work has been mitigated with plenty of japes and frolics, so no need to indulge in spasms of self-pity. Just been a busy bee, that's all.

Anyway, earlier this spring a number of enquiries about gluten-free recipes arrived in my baking inbox, so I decided to test this plum+almond cake recipe yesterday for those who are coeliac or have a wheat-intolerance. It's a super easy and quick to prepare sponge, thus making it a perfect tea-time treat or served with ice cream manifests itself rather well as a dinner party dessert. The recipe is one I adapted from one I found on the Cook's Illustrated site, an awesome repository of recipes tested to the nth degree. You can't go wrong with their recipes, seriously - have a look. All recipes for a bona fide 4th July fiestanza can be found there: ribs, key lime pie, cornbread...

But I digress. What you don't eat of this cake at tea-time or after dinner, try for breakfast. In a moment of Marie Antoinette-esque hubris I abandoned the quotidien smoothie this morning for a generous slice of cake with a dollop of Greek yogurt and some leftover plum sauce. Ideally I would have been reading Wodehouse whilst scoffing such a delectable plum cake with aplomb, but settled for a scan of the news about Iran's nascent revolution.

Enough warbling, here's the recipe folks!

Plum+Almond Cake Ingredients:

• 2 punnets of plums (I only used 1, and that wasn't enough, you wan't this to be plummy)
  
• 3 tsp apricot jam (St.Dalfour is a tasty one, and is made with grape juice)
• 2 tsp raspberry+rose cordial (see photo above)
• 125g ground almonds
• 125g self-raising gluten free flour
• 250g caster sugar (light brown would also be good)
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 100g butter, softened
• 200g half-fat sour cream
• 1 large egg + 1 fat egg yolk
• splash of vanilla
• pinch of salt

Method:

Preheat oven to 180C. Butter and flour a 9 inch cake pan.

Prepare the plums first by halving them. In a large saucepan or frying pan place the apricot jam and cordial, along with a little water (Cook's Illustrated suggests brandy - I didn't have this, but give it a go if you do). Bring to a simmer and allow it to cook for 2-3 mins until syrupy. Add the plums cut-side down and cook a further 5 minutes, basting them with the juices so the tops cook too. Once they're cooked, remove with a slotted spoon and reserve the excess syrup for later.

In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar. In a separate bowl sift the flour, almonds, raising agent, salt. Beat the egg with the sour cream and vanilla in a cup.

Once the butter is creamed, add the egg mixture and dry mixture in increments, beating with an electric whisk if you have one. You want quite a dense batter for this cake to hold the plums in suspension.

Spoon the batter into your cake pan, bake on the middle oven shelf for 45-50 minutes and check it's cooked through by inserting a skewer. It should come out with crumbs, not wet batter.

Allow the cake to cool, then eat with gluttonous abandon