A cake yule never forget

There’s an alchemy to what goes on in the kitchen; a mystery that is perhaps particularly relevant at this time of year.

Take egg whites.

Transparent and slippery when they slide from a cracked shell; opaque and white, stiff and yet airy after being whipped. Such a transformation.

The day before Christmas Eve, my cold in full flow after having returned with a vengeance, it was time to finally roll up sleeves and get going with the Yule log I’d long promised The Other Half, since he doesn’t like any cake containing dried fruit.

There’s been a vast Swiss roll tin in the cupboard for a couple of years now, but procrastination is an effective shield against new culinary challenges.

So, after having found flu drugs in the medicine cabinet and with Annie Lennox singing carols in the background, I sat down with caffeine and the recipes and notes I'd printed out last week.

First, there was the Nigella version.

“I can’t promise it’s a doddle,” she had written – words that, in my mind’s eye, I could see being delivered to the accompaniment of a certain look to camera, “but it works easily”.

And it certainly looked far from difficult. Indeed, the main question seems to be the rolling bit.

While searching for general advice, I’d come across Felicity Cloake’s recent article in her Guardian ‘how to make the perfect’ series, where she tests a number of recipes and then comes up with a perfect one.

The key here was the rolling question.

Nigella – like Delia – let’s the cake cool before rolling. Research suggested that this was not best, and Cloake's own tests backed this up.

In the event, I used Nigella’s recipe – with a tweak or two. Besides, her amounts were more realistic for the tin I have than any that Cloake used.

You start by separating half a dozen medium eggs, then whisking those whites until they peak, before adding 50g of caster sugar and mixing a little more. Then a teaspoon of vanilla extract goes in, along with 50g of sifted cocoa powder.

In another bowl, the yolks are whisked up with 100g caster sugar, until they’re the texture of a mousse and a lovely, pale yellow.

A couple of “dollops” of the white mix are added and beaten in, before the rest of the egg white mixture is carefully folded in.

Everything goes into your carefully-lined Swiss roll tin and is popped into an oven (160˚C fan) for 20 minutes.

Once removed, it gets a moment or two to rest – and then comes the bit everyone dreads.

Turn it out onto more baking paper and gently roll up, before leaving to cool.

There are mentions of clean tea towels and dustings of icing sugar. I managed thus: a little icing sugar was sprinkled on the sponge, then it was covered with another large sheet of baking paper.

The inverted cooling rack went on top and then it was quite easy to turn over. The tray came away easily and it was only a matter of taking my time to ease the bottom layer of baking paper away.

It doesn’t matter if you tear or lose a bit of cake – you’re going to cover those.

Using the baking paper that’s now beneath your sponge, you slowly roll the thing away from you. The paper is a great help, because you can use that rather than putting pressure on the warm sponge.

Slip the paper out from underneath and leave on the cooling rack.

Later, it was a case of bashing up 175g of 70% cocoa solids chocolate as the sound of Bing Crosby singing that song drifted through the flat, before melting gently over a pan of hot water.

Butter and icing sugar was beaten together, before the melted chocolate joined them, once it had cooled a little.

Now at this juncture, Nigella calls for another teaspoon of vanilla essence to be added to the mix, but I decided to take a leaf out of Cloake’s book experiments.

I split approximately a third of the mixture into another bowl and added a substantial squeeze of chestnut purée, then spread that over the unrolled cake.

By this time, we’d hit Jingle Bells – in French – on The Other Half’s Christmas playlist. And people imagine he’s all ‘bah humbug’ at this time of year.

Once the filled sponge was rolled back up, I cut off a piece from each end and placed them alongside it, at angles, on a silver cake board.

Then it was a question of plastering over the chocolate buttercream mix – with vanilla now added. There was a massive amount of the mixture and it wasn’t quite as easy as you might imagine, because the sponge is really quite delicate.

Next, take a skewer and try to make it look like a log. A line here; a whorl there. I realised that it’s a long time since I drew cartoon logs, but it sort of came back to me.

Then dust with sieved icing sugar and decorate with whatever you’ve got available. I’d managed, only a few days ago, to get my hands on some sugar flowers, a little Christmas tree and a robin, so on they went (the tree on a sugar-dusted ‘hump’ of extra buttercream to one side of the cake itself.

And there it was – my first Yule log. Looking suitably Yuleish. Even by my standards, this is not health food – but it is Christmas, after all!

Then onto the day’s next task – making orange dust and lemon dust. There was to be no repeat of last year’s debacle, when I misread the temperature as centigrade when it was actually fahrenheit.

A small orange and a lemon were sliced as thinly as possible – oh, the value of a new, really, really sharp Zwilling Henckels paring knife – and went on to a lined baking tray, to spend the hours n the oven at 100˚C (fan).

They’re then blitzed (separately), each with a pinch of sugar and a touch of salt, before being sieved into small containers, where they keep very nicely for some time.

And that was entirely enough prep for one day: there’s still Christmas Eve to go, and plenty more to do. But that can wait.

A taste of the '70s

It’s one way of measuring age to say that you can tell you’re getting older when things you remember from your youth become fashionable again; when what was nostalgic turns up once more, but repackaged this time as retro chic.

The weather is not the only source of deluges of late – inspired no doubt by the Diamond Jubilee, we've been swamped too with nostalgia for all things ’70s, when the last big Jubilee bash occurred.

That was a decade in which scampi was posh food. I remember day trips to Blackpool, my father desperate to go to the famous circus; my mother less so.

We did go, at least twice; in the halcyon days of the great Charlie Cairoli. I remember with enormous pleasure the mix of innocence and anarchy of his troupe of clowns (catch an example).

Stopping at souvenir shops on the promenade, my father bought my sister a Bolton Wanderers pendant and me a Manchester City one: the roundel badge in enamel on stainless steel. Very much of its time.

And we visited a restaurant where scampi came in a basket and I felt so sophisticated eating such a swanky meal.

It was the decade too of chicken Kiev: the sort of dish that you'd never have at home, and which I only remember as some sort of mythical, exotic concoction.

The Other Half used to quite enjoy a Kiev: the sort that came out of the chiller cabinet in the supermarket and was cooked on a tray in the oven. Neither of us had experienced the real deal.

And so, in this mood of nostalgia and retro chic, it occurred to me last week that it would inserting to actually make some. Within a day or two at the most, the Guardian, having clearly anticipated my mood, published a column by Felicity Cloake, testing out five recipes to find which was best Kiev.

Frankly, I was surprised at just how easy it looked. And so on Sunday, between the football, I set about the business. It's something that is made in stages, so you need to some hours beforehand.

First, make your butter. Cloake used a variety of flavourings: I settled on straightforward crushed garlic, with some chopped parsley from the garden. Once it's blended into the butter, simply roll in cling film until you've got a lengthy sausage shape, then wrap tightly and pop back into the fridge.

A hour or so later, take your chicken breasts, place them between cling film and beat out carefully. You could cut pockets. You could used the piece of meat that comes attached to the main breast flesh. Or you could do as I did and simply wrap half of the chilled utter 'sausage' in each breast, tucking in the ends. The cling film helps enormously. Get your meat nice and neat and tightly wrapped – and then pop it into the freezer for two hours.

So, what next?

Well, after about two hours, beat a couple of eggs. Make a load of breadcrumbs. Season some plain flour.

Take out your rolled chicken. Unwrap. Roll first in the flour and the in the eggs and then in the breadcrumbs. Repeat the eggs and breadcrumb bit, making sure you've got even, all-over coverage.

Pop on a plate and pop into the fridge. And this is the key that Cloake had found works best. By letting it get close to frozen, the breading is made easy. And then you simply allow it that final hour to thaw before cooking.

When you're ready, heat a large pan of oil to 160˚C – a thermometer makes this so much easier than guessing and doing the bread cube test – put the Kievs carefully into the pan and cook for eight and a half minutes.

If you have more than your pan will hold, you can put each cooked batch into a pre-heated (to 150˚C) oven while you do the rest.

And voila! You have chicken Kiev.

I let the oil get hotter than I should have (impatience) and the breadcrumb crust became very brown. But they were perfectly edible; the meat had remained decently moist - and the biggest achievement of all was that none of the butter leaked out.

I was going to serve them with a salad of orange and pickled beetroot, but since The Other Half had bitten his tongue rather nastily while listening to the radio commentary of a particularly tense Castleford Tigers match, he asked for something less sharp.

So they were served with new potatoes and asparagus, with further butter - hardly a hardship.

It wasn't to be the end of the retro food, though. Or, for that matter, the beginning.

Over the Jubilee weekend, I'd tried my hand at trifle for only the second time. Boudoir biscuits crushed at the base and mixed with raspberries, good raspberry jam and a smidgen of Banyuls that had been languishing in the fridge, were topped with raspberry jelly - The Other Half insists that jelly is essential to trifle.

Later, came homemade custard, topped eventually with whipped cream, more raspberries, grated chocolate and a few sprigs of mint. It didn’t have a very firm set, but it tasted fine.

And so to this Tuesday and a visit to my parents. They have decided, in the last year or so, that instead of my mother spending hours in the kitchen to rustle up something, they'll take me out for a meal. It means less hassle for her, and also ensures that we actually spend time as a trio together.

This time, it was to a country pub a few miles away: the Grumpy Mole at the Inn on the Green. And jolly pleasant it was too. I don't exactly get to such places very often - you really do need a car.

Unrushed, with very pleasant service, the menu was the epitome of nostalgia, with fish and chips, steak and kidney pud, liver and bacon, and various pies, together with a few nods to more ‘modern’ tastes – or put another way, curry.

I started with a very pleasant chef's pate, followed by another retro classic. Yes, you guessed it – scampi.

The peas were the frozen variety, as were the chips. But at least the scampi wasn't any of the reformed nonsense that I've had whenever I've ordered it in assorted hotel restaurants on my travels around the UK in recent years. The tartare sauce hit the spot exactly.

It’s not posh; it’s not sophisticated. But there is a place for such dishes. And it’s still a darned sight better than most of the rubbish served up as ‘fast food’ these days.

At home later, with the mood still over me, I downloaded some music from the decade too. Punk.

Unsurprisingly, given the prominence of the Sex Pistols et al at the time of Her Maj’s celebrations in 1977, there has been a swathe of programmes about that counter culture too.

I didn’t ‘do’ punk at the time. Oh, I have vague memories of it, but while the memories are vague, they’re invariably negative. I had just started my O’level music course - with no parental encouragement, I hasten to add - and was infinitely more interested in Beethoven than the Buzzcocks.

I was also a million miles from being a rebel – although to be fair, I was finding my own little ways to do just that: studying music and proclaiming a future trading the boards were my rebellion, and they took plenty of energy to maintain in the face of much objection.

Standing on a stage, even doing Shakespeare, was my punk. It was my freedom. Punk sailed over my head.

But listening to some of it now I can hear the music - and the poetry. Ian Dury and the Blockheads are a prime example of the latter.

Watching a TOTP2 special, The Other Half was voicing disappointment that so many of the artists had ‘sold out’ – or to put it more clearly, are reforming to ride the wave of the nostalgia boom.

I still have never ‘got’ the idea that people really expected musicians to somehow stay outside of so many of the norms of our time.

John Lydon advertising butter makes me laugh - not beat my head in despair.

It is, it seems to me, as inherently foolishly idealistic as those people who condemn football players for moving clubs when higher wages are on offer – and more chance of winning things, but let's forget 'career profession' for the sake of this argument.

They voice regret that ‘loyalty’ no longer exists. But in a world where staying in the same job, with the same employer, for all your working life is now derided, why do they expect anything different from footballers?

It seems as though we put vast faith in others to buck the system on our behalf.

Perhaps it’s retro and perhaps it’s not, but maybe there’s a moral in that little observation?

An Italian job

The weekend began in conventional style: wakened early by a combination of my internal alarm clock, the light outside and the cats, I made coffee and hauled out various recipe books.

Elizabeth David's Italian Food had me reading of ricci (sea urchins) that taste of "the sea, iodine and salt" and should be eaten by scooping out the coral flesh with bread, but "within sight and sound of the sea, preferably after a long swim, and washed down with plenty of cold, local white wine".

You can almost smell and taste them and, if you shut your eyes, the picture that forms in your mind's eye is so tangible that it's almost possible to feel the salty air in the soft down on your flesh.

But this is Hackney; it is early March and the early morning was grey - grey with a vengeance.

At least concentrating on the matter of food helps lift the spirits.

The Other Half had defrosted the freezer, so it was clearly time to start making things to fill it up again.

Since he was off to the other side of London for a rugby league match in the early afternoon, and I needed bag carrying help, we headed up to Broadway Market together nice and early.

With Mrs D's evocative writings in mind, I was about to go all Italian.

Saturday evening was easy: roast chicken, done à la River Cafe Easy Two and which I've mentioned more than once. Three and a half hours and the best roast chicken I've ever produced – every time.

Yesterday, it was served with baby new potatoes that were boiled and then finished off in the oven, for the final half hour of cooking the bird, in olive oil and with fleur de sel and a spring of rosemary.

And then there was some cavallo nero, the Italian kale, which I'd not cooked before.

It was remarkably easy. As per the same book, you cut the cores out of each leaf, and then cook them for five minutes in boiling, salted water. Then refresh and drain. When you're nearing readiness, smash up some fennel seeds and dried chili, and slice some garlic, popping all that into a pan with olive oil and allowing it to cook before adding the leaves for a minute at the end.

Voila! Or whatever they say in Italy. The job was a good un.

In the afternoon, I'd concentrated on making nice things from a vast (and heavy) bag of lemons, plus a 300g bag of frozen, organic raspberries.

The latter went into a very easy sorbet.

The lemons - organic, unwaxed and from Sicily, which place seems to be cropping up more and more in my imagination at present - were unbelievably fragrant.

Zesting and juicing as though my life depended on it, I turned 15 into a sorbet, as per Felicity Cloake's Guardian piece here, while several others were added to a luxurious custard made with organic, unpasturised milk from a Jersey herd, plus unctuous double cream from another Jersey herd, and then popped into the freezer to form a gelato, a form of ice cream.

I haven't the space for an ice cream maker, but you really can manage without, as the four boxes now in the freezer will attest.

And the taste of the gelato in particular attests to something else - the merits of using the very best ingredients you can get your hands on.

The evening concluded with a double dose of Sicily: art historian Andrew Graham-Dixon and chef Giorgio Locatelli continuing their cultural and culinary tour of the island. And then Montalbano, another episode of the Sicilian police procedural based on Andrea Camilleri's novels.

A fitting end to a very Italian start to the weekend.

And all after our little part of Hackney even managed to throw up a crime this week that would hardly have been out of place in Montelbano's Mafia-ridden world.

Looking out of the kitchen window as I prepped those Sicilian lemons, I could see across the road, past a block of flats and then to the Regent's Canal. On the far bank crime scene tape was visible, along with police officers.

There, earlier in the week, the torso of former soap actor Gemma McCluskie had been found floating. Her brother is currently in custody.

It was a striking concatenation of events and ideas, flavours and smells, light and darkness.

Well that takes the biscuit

It was a back-to-normal Broadway Market today, with no crime scenes to disturb anything. Well okay – perhaps "normal" is overdoing it a tad when you look at some of the characters that materialise at the weekend.

And then, quite apart from anything else, is there another market anywhere that is always so rammed not simply with shoppers, but also with a plethora of bikes and buggies, dogs, small children and the widest range of wheeled toys to be found outside Hamleys in the run up to Christmas?

Which is why I try to get up there as early as possible on a Saturday. Today I was a little tardy after sleeping longer than usual, so it was busy by the time I arrived.

Fortunately, as I still had game on my mind, Andy was back - and I was tempted by the opportunity to try wild duck breast for a change, thinking it couldn't be much different from the farmed variety that I'm used to.

My next piece of luck was in spotting that Mark's organic stall had the first quinces of the season. Two are now sitting in the kitchen, hopefully to ripen a little in the coming days.

The third good break came when I found, with unexpected ease, rice flour.

My mind had turned shortbread on my most recent train trip, where I'd been served a small packet with a cup of tea.

As has become habit, I casually cast a glance at the wrapper. Perhaps rather perversely for a shortbread made in Scotland, it was branded under the name Brönte and included clotted cream among the ingredients. More disturbing, though, was the mention of additional 'flavourings'.

Now what on Earth does that mean?

Unless it's a particularly exotic specimen, with vanilla or even chocolate involved, then what other flavouring are required in addition to butter and sugar?

And then, I had been inspired by the nostalgia of Nigel Slater's Eating for England and decided to try my hand at baking some.

I have tried it before, but it was in the dim and distant past and I have no particular memories of it being a great success - which is probably why I haven't made any since: until today.

Felicity Cloake writes a series of articles for the Guardian where she examines 'how to make perfect' versions of some classic culinary confection or other. Surfing for shortbread recipes, I found her take on the matter.

Not only did it have some interesting facts about the history of this queen amongst biscuits, but she had also road-tested a number of different recipes to see which was best.

And that was how I discovered that ground rice or rice flour, used with plain flour, is the great cook's secret ingredient to help give shortbread that slightly gritty quality.

The other main pointer that I discovered was not to roll the bread out with a pin - it makes it too dense - but to pat gently with you hands, trying to keep them as cool as possible.

There's nothing difficult about Cloake's eventual recipe - it's nice and easy to follow.

Cream the butter - and make it really good butter - and then beat in a pinch of salt an some caster sugar, before sifting the flours over and mixing thoroughly.

But I did have to add more butter to get the mix to hold together at all.

It's a deceptive matter. I emptied the crumbly mixture into a lined and greased baking tray, and patted away as delicately as possible. I wasn't sure whether it would actually hold together. But after the required 15 minutes in the fridge, it went into an oven heated to 150˚C for around an hour.

My fan oven being legendarily bloody minded, it took longer. But the result, when it emerged, was pleasingly golden and had smoothed out in the process of cooking.

I sprinkled some demerara sugar over and then left it for a couple of minutes, before transferring to a rack. Remarkably, it held together, although it was clearly fragile.

The smell was divine – and it wasn't long before temptation became too much. A very pleasing effort: crumbly and richly buttery, with the right sort of graininess that I mentioned early, and nicely light.

So pleasing, in fact, that there isn't much left.

I'm curious as to how people make shortbread that doesn't crumble quite as quickly – but then that would hardly be a commercial proposition.

Presumably, for mass production purposes, the lightness has to be compromised in order to get a great tightness that makes it possible to pack and then sell.

I'll be making more – quite possibly tomorrow. It's insanely easy and utterly delicious. And who needs extra 'flavourings'?