My cookbook library is extensive and will soon need a larger bookcase to house it. Lockdown may have stopped random buys resulting from bookshop browsing, but it’s still grown over the last 12 months. I keep feeling now should be the time to pull out some of those which don’t see the light of day too often. An opportunity to explore new avenues and flavours. Unfortunately, this clashes with an even stronger desire to cook the things I know and love. To spend time in the kitchen and be assured the result is going to be some comfort food.
Some of the books waiting to be explored are quite niche in the types of food they cover. There’s one which is specific to cooking over an open fire, this will have to wait for warmer weather before I’m tempted to even have a go. There’s a Japanese book, bought primarily for the wonderful photography, which requires ingredients way beyond what I currently have in the pantry. A book of Kenyan recipes has the same problem. Pre coronavirus a shopping expedition before cooking something new was an integral and enjoyable part of the process. Now it feels much more about what’s in the pantry today and what’s going to guarantee me some comfort.
That’s why I turned this morning to one of my all-time favourite cookbooks, Clare Ptak’s Violet Bakery Cookbook. I bought my copy as soon as it was published in 2015 and in the intervening six years, I’ve tried most of the recipes. I’d seen some in a magazine a couple of months before the book coming out and already had a go at baking them. I put pictures of my efforts on Twitter and was one very chuffed baker when Clare responded with positive feedback.
What I love about Clare’s food is it’s packed full of flavour, always slightly on the indulgent side, yet the recipes are adaptable. By this I mean they work well at a time when your cupboards might not contain the exact recipe ingredients, but you do have some viable alternatives.
Although the book is predominately sweet recipes, there are some savoury dishes as well. One of my favourites is a braised fennel, olive and caper bread pudding. Whenever I can get fresh fennel this is my dish of choice. The fennel braised with tomatoes, capers and olives, spiced with thyme and chilli flakes. This is then layered between sourdough bread along with grated Gruyere & dollops of ricotta, the whole thing soaked in a custard made of eggs, milk and cream. Wildly indulgent and comforting. On the off chance, there is any left, it works the following day as an exotic crispy sandwich. Not unlike a vegetarian croque.
It wasn’t savoury food which took me back to the book this morning though, it was was the urge for something sweet in the house. That’s why we have pistachio, hazelnut & raspberry friands.
I’ve baked these dozens of times and they couldn’t be easier to make. In some ways it’s almost appropriate spellcheck keeps trying to get me to type friends rather than friends.
Ingredients
- 115 butter.. melted
- 90g plain flour
- 0.75 tsp baking powder
- 50g ground almonds
- 40g ground hazelnuts
- 40g ground pistachios
- 190g icing sugar
- 5 egg white .. slightly whipped
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- 200g raspberries
- 50k chopped pistachios
Method
- Preheat the oven to gas mark 3. Butter a 12 hole cupcake tin
- Put all of the ingredients other than the raspberries and chopped pistachios into a bowl of a food processor and whisk until foamy
- Spoon the mixture into the cupcake tin and top with the raspberries and chopped pistachios
- Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, the tops will be springy to the touch when done.
- Leave to cool slightly in the tin, then remove and dust with icing sugar.
David in the kitchen. 