Perfection.

Tags

a cook's tour, anthony bourdain, camogli, food perfection, lake como, lemon marble cake, ligurian coast

Some cakes are pure decadence: a Victoria Sponge that is bound together by a butter corset, or a carefully regimented army of macaroon clones. These creations are fabulous, but baking perfection requires the patience of a saint or the skilled hand of a patisserie. I have neither, so perfection has to be something else than the crisp shell of a macaroon.

A couple of years ago I read Anthony Bourdain’s ‘A Cook’s Tour’. His search for the perfect meal takes him around the world’s dining table until he reaches the rather obvious epiphany that his pursuit is futile – there are too many perfect meals.  Of course, the taste buds are as subjective as the ear, and when food sings like heaven to one mouth there will be another that it tortures.

The perfection of food is the perfection of a moment. When we remember eating that first forkful of spaghetti al vongole on the Ligurian coast, we’re not only remembering the pasta, but we’re reminiscing over the taste of the sunset and the lick of the salty sea breeze. It is perfect because the world and the food embrace in our mouth.

Camogli on the Ligurian Coast

One of my most lucid moments of food heaven is sitting by Lake Como with a Panini stuffed to the brim with prosciutto and a Tupperware of ripe melon. It was during one of my first trips to Italy with my best friend. We were two enthusiastic English girls heading off to spend a week with our friend, Sally.

Aren’t I just the most majestic mermaid you’ve ever seen?!

The trips were always attempts to ‘make contact’ with the Italian youth that hung out by the gelateria. I’m afraid to say that we never did manage to get further than a nervous ‘ciao’, and our dreams of zooming through the village on the back of a Vespa remain unrealised. However, these trips taught me something even more important than rejection: I learnt the perfection of simplicity whilst sitting on that bank by Lake Como. The softly pirouetting prosciutto tucked into crispy bread, followed by juicy melon, oh, it must have been in that moment – looking out over the expanse of the lake – that I fell in love with food and Italy.

Simplicity, the moment, Vespas…what I’m basically trying to say is that the cake I’m about to tell you about isn’t a showy, blousy, buttery slab of perfection – but it doesn’t have to be. I found the recipe on Gourmet Traveller and simply adapted it by splitting the batter in half, and adding a tablespoon of cocoa powder to one half. It’s then a simple case of consecutively spooning each mixture into a lined loaf tin. It’s the kind of cake that when paired with a cup of coffee and a good friend, can be called perfect.

Marbled Lemon Crème Fraîche Loaf Cake (adapted from Gourmet Traveller)

140g (5oz) plain flour

55g (2oz) unsalted butter, cut into small cubes

150g (6 tbsp) crème fraîche (or sour cream)

155g (5.5oz) caster sugar

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp baking soda

grated zest of one lemon

juice of half a lemon

3 small eggs

1 tbsp cocoa powder

1. Remove your butter, eggs and crème fraîche from the fridge and allow to come to room temperature before you begin.

2. Preheat the oven to 180°C (356°F).

3. Sift the flour, baking powder and baking soda into a bowl and set aside.

4. In a large mixing bowl mix the eggs and sugar with an electric whisk on a high speed for about 5 minutes, until light and frothy. Add the cubed butter and continue mixing on medium, until incorporated (a few small lumps here and there is fine). Turn the whisk down to low and add the crème fraîche, mix briefly until it all comes together.

5. Add in a third of the dry ingredients and mix on low until just combined (this should take a matter of seconds – you want to refrain from overworking the batter with each addition of the flour to ensure your cake comes out nice and light). Add another third of the dry mixture, then the lemon juice and whisk gently again, repeat with the remaining flour mixture.

6. Pour half of the mixture into another bowl. Add 1 tbsp cocoa powder to this bowl, and the lemon juice and zest to the other.

7. Scoop a spoonful of the chocolate batter into a buttered and lined loaf tin, followed by a spoonful of the lemon batter. Continue until all of the mixture is used up.

8. Bake in the preheated oven for 45-50 minutes. When ready the cake should be lightly golden on top and a knife or skewer should come out of the cake clean.

9. I then combined icing sugar, cocoa powder and some lemon juice to make quite a runny chocolate icing. When cool I drizzled this over the cake.

A Picnic in the Woods

Tags

exams, highgate wood, homemade lemonade, pearl barley, salad, summer

Summer, summer, summer, rolling before me in reels of golden sunshine that smell of freedom.

Last week, whilst sitting at my desk with dusk drawing in far too quickly, I drew up a mental list of everything I would do after exams. In an atmosphere where even cooking dinner felt like a guilty pleasure, I dreamed of my five-month break – soon becoming a languishing tumble of lie-ins in my mind. Now that my exams are over I’ve come to the inevitable conclusion that there has to be more to my summer than lie-ins and daytime tv. I have a job, now I need adventure. Days and days of tiny adventures that are tied together by a narrative of sunshine and contentment.

 

So we’ll start our summer in Highgate Wood. Picture the scene: the clouds are tumbling over each other as they chase across the sun, leaving a stencil of brightness and shade over the soft dirt ground.

I’m sitting on a log, admiring the delightful simplicity of my picnic for one. There’s homemade lemonade in a jar (because I couldn’t find a bottle) and pearl barley salad. I eat and drink and watch the sun sweep over a patch of bluebells before disappearing from the wood for good. Time to go home to plan for more picnics in the woods….and lie-ins, of course.

 Squash and Barley Salad with Balsamic Vinaigrette

- 250g pearl barley

- 1 butternut squash

- 250g baby spinach leaves

- 1 block of feta cheese

- 200g cherry tomatoes

- 1 small onion, chopped

- Handful of chopped flat leaf parsley 

Balsamic Dressing

- 5 tbsp balsamic vinegar

- 6 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard

- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped

1. Heat oven to 200C. Toss the squash with olive oil and roast for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, boil the barley for about 25 mins in salted water until tender.

2. 10 minutes before the squash has finished cooking, add the cherry tomatoes to the tray and roast.

3. Whisk together the dressing ingredients, then season with salt and pepper. Drain the barley, then tip it into a bowl and pour over the dressing. Mix together with the spinach and leave to cool.

4. Add the rest of the ingredients and serve hot or cold.

Word Travel

Tags

gnocchi squash cheese, pimedia, storm, vaporetto, venice

The clouds thickened into a purple, black scab across the sky. As more and more people piled into the vaporetto, the air inside the cabin became so close that the clotted sky seemed to be lying on top of us. Rolls of thunder lapped up the sides of the canals in rhythm with the measured thrashing of grey water against stone.

The sky and sea were closing in on the city. Bundling up the city to be rocked and shaken against the throb of the Adriatic sea. In less than an hour, the grip of the storm slackened and Venice fell back into its loose maze of canals and lapping water. Life resumed as if nothing had happened.

It was wonderful though, when a storm would descend in the midst of summer. I always wanted to write about it to make up for the fact that my family were not there to experience it with me. Moments such as these remind me of why it would be so wonderful to be a travel writer – to share completely foreign experiences and inspire others to seek their own.

That is why I’m so very very very happy that I decided to run for the position of travel editor at my university newspaper. It’s also why I’m chuffed that I won. From September you can be transported to all four corners of the globe from this little section of the web.

With Italy on my mind (well, actually the entire WORLD, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves), it’s the perfect opportunity to share this recipe for Gnocchi with Roasted Squash and Goat’s Cheese. I’m so happy that I randomly picked it out of my hastily gathered together recipe clippings. Of course, it’s all the result of Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge (what isn’t on this blog?!) and its charm lies in its simplicity. I feel that the addition of some basil or sage would be utterly delicious, or perhaps some sun-dried tomatoes…the variations are endless.

Gnocchi with roasted squash & goat’s cheese (From Good Food Magazine, March 2008)

• 450g butternut squash , peeled and cut into small chunks
• 1 garlic clove
  
• 2 tbsp olive oil
  
• 500g pack gnocchi 
  
• 200g young leaf spinach
• 100g goat’s cheese

1. Heat oven to 200C/fan 180C/gas 6. Tip the squash into a roasting tin with the garlic and oil, salt and pepper and mix well. Roast for 20 mins, shaking the pan halfway through, until tender and golden.
2. Meanwhile, boil the gnocchi according to pack instructions. With a few secs to go, throw in the spinach, then drain the gnocchi and spinach together. Tip into the roasting tin, then mix everything together well, mashing the softened garlic. Spoon onto warm serving plates, then crumble over the cheese to serve.

A Salad.

Tags

middle eastern, pomegranate molasses, salad, sumac, vinaigrette dressing

 

A few days ago I found myself engrossed in Nigel Slater’s book, Fast Food. I wasn’t simply skimming the pages, I was lingering over every description. when he writes about the simple joy of a platter full of Medjool dates, plump figs, and polished hazelnuts he isn’t telling me how to make a dessert, he’s telling me a story. I can read a list of ingredients like a novel that curves its narrative from country to country, and from imagination to plate.

 

 

Food has always been more than fuel to me. I remember being thirteen years old and counting down the days until Thursday, when Chris Coubrough’s ‘Coastal Kitchen’ was shown on ITV. I was the only teenager I knew who would hang on every delicious remark about the sweet flesh of a Cromer crab or the fragrant beauty of a field of Norfolk lavender. He was to me, what One Direction is to every other thirteen year old. I even wrote Chris fan mail and awkwardly stood next to him for a photo at our County fair. I was smitten, and even though I didn’t know it then, it was the beginning of a love affair with food.

 

As the sun was setting yesterday, drawing the thin grey veil of light slowly out of our kitchen, I got to work. I chopped vegetables and mixed them together with chickpeas and chopped spinach, coriander and parsley. That morning I’d picked up a bottle of pomegranate molasses – thick tar-like stuff, sour and potent with the taste of the Middle East. It’s like a sweeter version of thick balsamic vinegar, and delicious as a vinaigrette when combined with white wine vinegar, oil and sumac. I managed to take these photos just before the last threads of light seeped from the kitchen. Then of course I tasted it. You’ll never see anybody quite so happy with a plate of vegetables as I was, standing in my gloomy kitchen.

 

The opportunities for the salad are endless – grated apple, walnuts and goats cheese would all be welcomed additions – the coriander and parsley are a must though.

My love affair with food has brought me to this point – a tangy salad and the utter joy of writing about it – but I hope and pray that I will never tire of it. Although this blog, and the prospects of a future of so many more culinary discoveries are a sign that, thank God, I will never lose that innocent joy.

A Middle Eastern Vinaigrette  

1 tbsp Pomegranate Molasses

1 tbsp Pomegranate Molasses

1 tbsp White wine vinegar

6 tbsp Extra Virgin Olive Oil

½ tsp Sumac (optional)

1 tsp Honey

Put all of the ingredients into a jam jar and shake vigorously. Add salt to taste and adjust any other ingredients before serving.

The Salad.

The combinations are endless…mine involved one grated carrot, a tin of chickpeas, chopped spinach, coriander, parsley, cucumber, jarred roasted peppers and spring onion. Consider adding finely chopped apple, pear, nuts, goats cheese or feta.

When the sun comes out.

Tags

chocolate coconut tart, london blues, spring London, we should cocoa, whipped coconut milk

This time last week I was on a coach on my way back to London.

When I saw London in the distance, skyscrapers clustered together, grey faced and glowing with the artificial light of office windows, I wanted to go back to Norfolk. The sky was a choked sort of grey – the dank purple of a bruise. It all seemed so inhospitable, so unwelcoming.

Although in all honesty my London blues had very little to do with those skyscrapers (which I love most days), but with what the city had in store for me. I had four essay deadlines looming closer and closer, not to mention the uncountable days of revision galloping into the spring.

I wasn’t ready for it.

However, the next day I woke up early and the skyscrapers with their artificial lights became shards of glass reflecting sunshine. There was a feeling of spring in the air and suddenly London didn’t seem like such a bad place to be.

Isn’t it funny how it’s the small things that can lift you out of a slump? A day that hints at spring; discovering an incredible greengrocers; finding a 141 bus waiting for you as you finish work; inventing a new dessert.

I dreamed up this creation before the onslaught of essays in the hope of getting it posted in time for Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately however, work, home and London got in the way, so I’m presenting it to you as part of the We Should Cocoa challenge. Hosted this month by Jen of Blue Kitchen Bakes, the magic ingredient was ginger. My other new found magic ingredient is whipped coconut milk – just put a can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight, then whisk up the solid cream that will have formed. AMAZING. So I experimented with the two and came up with this unctuous, decadent and delicious dessert (if I do say so myself).  The ginger biscuits in the base really work together with the rich chocolate – you could even add some chopped stem ginger to the base if you really want the ginger kick.

This Choco-coco-tart is enough to cheer up any weary student hung up on winter and work. Now, if only it would write my essays for me…

Chocolate and Coconut Cream Tart

Ingredients:

Topping:

100g dark chocolate chips

1 can of coconut milk

150ml double cream

1 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp icing sugar (you can add more if it’s not sweet enough)

Crust:

75g butter

200g ginger snap biscuits

5 toffees/hard caramels

Raspberries

For the Topping

1. Heat 75ml of the double cream in a saucepan. When hot, pour over 50g of the chocolate. Wait a couple of minutes before stirring.
2. Open your refrigerated can of coconut milk. You should have a very thick layer of coconut cream. Spoon this into a bowl along with the rest of the double cream, cocoa powder and icing sugar. Whisk using a hand beater until creamy (it’s a revelation. Trust me).
3. Once the chocolate and cream have cooled, whisk into the mixture.
4. Stir in the remaining chocolate chips
5. Now check the mixture for sweetness – you might want to add more sugar or more cocoa powder, or go crazy like I did and add a few spoonfuls of homemade salted caramel.

For the Ginger Biscuit Crust

1. Put the biscuits in a ziplock bag and smash them with a rolling pin until they’re nothing more than fine crumbs.
2. Melt the butter and toffees in a saucepan and when completely melted stir into the biscuit crumbs. Again, use your own judgement as to whether you think a little more butter/melted toffee is needed (Apologies for not being very useful).
3. Grease a 9 inch springform pan (or if you’re an under-equipped student like me use a pie dish). Press the crumb mixture into the bottom of the pan.
4. Pile the chocolatey mixture on top, artistically add some raspberries and refrigerate for at least three hours.
5. Eat and enjoy!

Bone Chilling

Tags

bon maman, highgate cemetery, lemon and wild blueberry swirl cake, London, tour

It’s bloody cold here.

It’s so cold that when you’re on a tour of Highgate cemetery, you huddle next to a hard tomb to soften the icy wind that scrapes across the marble. You dance on top of graves to reawaken any inklings of feeling in your toes, and apologise as you do so.

Even though you’re surrounded by gothic beauty, all you can do is look down at your red fingers and imagine how nice a steaming cup of coffee would be right now.

However, even though your lips have froze together and your teeth are chattering so furiously you think they might escape, the stillness of the cemetery calms you. The west side of Highgate cemetery spans 17 acres, and once prized for its fashionable position in the London outskirts, still offers perfect silence – despite the tens of thousands of souls underfoot. It can only be accessed on a tour, which is what we did last Saturday. Despite the cold it was absolutely magical.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t much  warmer when we returned home. You see, in these tough times  one must economise (read: as students we’re too stingy to spend money on warmth). So I’ve been drinking copious numbers of hot drinks; studying with my gloves on, and making fine use of my newly acquired slow cooker. In fact, the cold is almost an excuse to go to the library…almost…

Anyway, I have to power on despite being frozen inside and out, so this month I enthusiastically took up Dom at Belleau Kitchen’s Random Recipe challenge: randomly pick a recipe book from a friend’s collection and cook whatever you land on. I got on the phone to my Mum and after some detailed instructions on the correct procedure  to achieve TRUE randomness, she came up with Bon Maman: The Seasonal Cookbook, and Lemon and Wild Blueberry Swirl Cake.

Hurrah! Summer in a cake – perfect! And I can tell you, this cake was just as delicious as it promised, especially with the liberal application of a lemon honey drizzle (all cakes should be ‘drizzled’ in my opinion).

Now off to huddle in front of the oven. I hear it’s the warmest part of the house.

Lemon and Wild Blueberry Swirl Cake, from Bon Maman: The Seasonal Cookbook 

Ingredients 

175g soft butter
175g sugar
3 medium eggs
200g self-raising flour
25g ground almonds
Grated rind of 1 unwaxed lemon
4 tbsp Bonne Maman Wild Blueberry Conserve

1. Line a 20cm round cake tin or loaf tin with baking parchment. Place all the ingredients except the conserve into a mixing bowl and blend with a hand mixer until smooth, or beat with a wooden spoon for two minutes.

2. Spoon the mixture into the prepared tin and level with the back of a spoon. Place the Wild Blueberry conserve into a paper piping bag and snip off the end. Pipe a swirl of the conserve on the top of the cake (or just drizzle it on like I did)

3. Conventional cooking: Bake on a centre shelf in a pre-heated oven at 180°C/350°F. Bake the cake for about 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean from the centre.

4. Cool in tin for 5 minutes, then leave to cool completely on a wire rack

Joy.

Tags

christmas, funny glasses, out for christmas lunch, underwhelming

Between my sister and I, there has come about a pretty strict idea on how to do Christmas right. It’s the small things that can drag down my festive cheer, like when people refuse Christmas pudding on the big day (put your taste buds aside and take one for the team, you bunch of Scrooges!)

I’ll watch with despair as the family drop off like flies on Christmas day – each one dozing off to sleep, mouths dropping open whilst hopes of a fun filled festive game of Cluedo crumble.

Each year my sister and I will hatch a plan, “this year will be the year” we’ll say. The year when we don’t forgot to serve up the roast potatoes, the year when the whole family participates in a game of Scrabble; how we’ll laugh, how jolly we’ll be, yes…this will be the best Christmas yet.

Jump to Boxing Day and the critique of the Big Day: It was good, but it could have been slightly more funny, jovial, memorable. In the end we’ll draw the same conclusion: People needed to get more drunk.

Therefore, this Christmas I didn’t expect anymore than a lovely time spent with family and good food. However, with aspirations lowered, it just so happened that The Best Christmas crept up on us.

It probably all boils down to the fact that we decided to go out for lunch this year. Cue gasp of horror from readers.

I know, I know, no turkey to stuff…no vegetables to serve lukewarm…no roast potatoes to forget…but it really was marvelous.

We had family.

We had starters (what a treat!!!)

We had laughter.

And then after that, we had funny glasses.

It was truly joyful.

 

Budapest

Tags

Budapest, christmas, Christmas market, Kurtoskalacs, trdelnik

As all of my friends and family know, I love Christmas.

In fact, to say I love it is an understatement. Every year I throw myself into the festivities until I resemble a mince pie eating, carol singing, mulled wine glugging, deranged vision of The Ghost of Christmas Present, bulging waistline included.

So to me, a city of Christmas markets is heaven. That’s why, my trip to Budapest earlier this week was nothing more than a dream

.

The journey from the airport was, as most journeys from the airport are, a gross misrepresentation of the city that awaited us. When we emerged from the metro station, the pebble dashed sky was still hanging low, however the Eastern European faceless buildings were replaced with a patchwork of different architectural styles, from gothic to art deco.

Throughout the trip I was acutely aware of the beauty that shouldered the Christmas markets and rose up against the few remnants of the Communist era, however, one thing was stopping me from completely appreciating it: the cold.

Budapest was cold in a way that was untouchable, even by a cup of mulled wine. The air was damp and sometimes the sky spat dagger-like shards of rain. It was the kind of weather that sent you heading to the nearest thermal bath (although we never got the chance to try them out!) or cafe, which isn’t a bad thing, as it turned out the food was pretty delicious.

Now let’s get started with the sweet delicacies, because there were many. On our last day, after power shopping our way through the Grand Central Market we spotted some fried, doughnut like beauties topped with every sweet (and savoury) delight you could imagine. We went for a sweet langos with walnut and caramel: delicious does not do it justice.

Hungary is probably most famous for its paprika, a spice that gives goulash its warming, earthy character. Now, I’m almost embarrassed to say I didn’t sample any goulash whilst in Budapest, I mean, surely it’s a national crime? I did dip a chip in Hannah’s though…dipping a chip counts doesn’t it? Let’s all agree that it does.

Now to the Christmas Markets, and the smell of mulled wine, sausages and ham. The markets were a gold mine for presents, and gingerbread (although we did learn the hard way that some decorated gingerbread is more edible than others). It was also a wonderful source of Kurtoskalacs – the delicious sweet pastry things that stole my heart in Prague under the equally confusing name of Trdelnik.

I only wish I could say that the bitter cold made itself useful and produced some snow. Unfortunately however, the sky remained an impenetrable grey. Nevertheless, Budapest offered a miraculous remedy to the cold: Christmas. With friends, mulled wine and delicious doughnut things, how can a girl feel any more Christmassy, and content?

An Italian Imitation

Tags

italian, moka pot, Nigella book signing, pasta with borlotti

Nigella and I have one thing in common. It’s not the whole lust-inducing-spoon-licking thing she’s got going on, instead, it’s a shared love of Italy related subjects. Well, actually it goes a bit further than that: both of us have spent a large portion of our lives pretending to be Italian.

I once had a dreams of actually becoming Italia, be it through complete integration into Italy or simple transmogrification. Whilst this aspiration has been given up on, I do still, rather shamefully, try to give the outward impression of being Italianified – I have my own moka pot for goodness sake! However, putting all the pretences aside, there is one basic condition of being Italian that I’ve failed at: The language.

Tell anybody that you’ve spent a good four months living in Italy and they’d assume you have at least a pretty basic level of Italian. Unfortunately in my case, they’d be wrong.

Sure, on those forms where you can boast about your language capabilities (or lack of) I might put ‘basic Italian’ next to ‘shockingly shit Spanish’. But this does not mean I can hold a conversation, or even form a sentence. It means I know the words for ‘cake’, ‘sugar’, ‘fry the shallots for three minutes’ along with many other pretty useless culinary terms. Basically, I’m about Italian as Nigella’s new cookery book, and that’s saying something.

Although openly unauthentic, Nigellissima is marvellous – here’s the lady herself at a recent book signing my sister and I attended. What a Goddess.

A few weeks ago however, my Italian linguistical knowledge of food was put to good use. It all started – as with most things on this blog – with Dom’s Random Recipe Challenge. After using my age to pick out the most random of books in my collection, I landed on ‘Pasta’, A cookery book written entirely in Italian. Finding myself on a recipe for ‘Rigatoni con Salsiccia e Borlotti’ – Pasta with Sausage and Borlotti Beans – it didn’t matter that I couldn’t understand the recipe description, I knew this was going to be delicious.

The wonderful thing about cooking from a book written in the cuisine’s native language, is that you can be quite sure you’re going to end up with the real deal. And the real deal this was. The beans melt into the deliciously rich tomato sauce and the inclusion of handfuls of sage, parsley and basil creates such a beautifully rounded dish.

And through cooking it, I felt I came just a little closer to becoming Italian myself. Small steps people, small steps.

An unashamed attempt at Italian chic.

Rigatoni con Salsiccia e Borlotti (from ‘Le migliori ricette di pasta’)

Serves 4-6

500g of rigatoni pasta

1 tbsp olive oil

1 chopped onion

2 cloves of garlic, chopped

4 sausages cut into pieces

425g cooked borlotti beans

2 tins of plum tomatoes

2 tbsp chopped basil

1 tbsp chopped sage

1 tbsp chopped parsley

25g grated parmesan

Salt and pepper

 

1. 1.    Heat the oil in a large pan and add the onion, garlic and sausage. Cook on medium for five minutes.
2. 2.    Add the tomatoes, beans, herbs, salt and pepper. Lower the heat and simmer for 20 minutes.
3. 3.    While the sauce cooks, cook the pasta in salted water, drain and spoon onto warmed plates with the sauce. Top with the parmesan.

Buon Appetito!

The joy of a pumpkin pie

Tags

autumb, autumn, caramel pumpkin pie, chocolate pastry, Samuel Johnson, we should cocoa

Oh London, do you ever stop? The people hurrying, stressing, sighing in Euston tube station still push and pull at my body long after I’ve escaped into the fresh air. When I’m walking down the high street of my new north London home, neon signs flash in my face, below them are fried chicken joints and late night pizza places; even as I sit here the florescent sign on a 24 hour supermarket beams blue into my bedroom.

Look up at the sky in the folds of the nights and the stars ripple in a yellow spill. Everything is tainted with light and noise and wakefulness.

University motors on at a similar speed. Deadlines are brought forward and reading piles up on my desk, never to be completed, but picked at and eventually forgotten.

A view of London from Alexandra Palace

It’s all terribly, terribly busy. Johnson may insist that when one is tired of London, he is tired of life…but what happens when one is tired in London? Worn by its constant energy that rumbles along with about as many breaks as the 24 hour supermarket over the road.

It seems appropriate then, that tomorrow I’m taking a break from the city. I’m heading home for the weekend, first and foremost to wish farewell to my Australian cousin, but secondly to relax.

In London the seasons move with as much speed as everything else – one day I’ll look up at the trees, bare and blowing in a chill winter wind. It’ll be then that winter arrives, and everything before it will be swept away with the fallen leaves. At home however, autumn likes to make itself known. I know that the walk to Bath Hills will be golden right now, and there’ll be chestnuts scattered on the ground.

I almost wish that I could have saved my Caramel Pumpkin with Chocolate Crust for home now…can you get any more autumnal than pumpkin? In the US they apparently can’t, I just can’t understand how the UK haven’t jumped on the sweet pumpkin wagon yet.

I’m entering this creation into this month’s We Should Cocoa challenge (hosted this month by Nat at the Hungry Hinny), which just so happens to have pumpkin as its magic ingredient: a true stroke of genius and an excuse to step back and bake, something that’s become a very rare event.

I know the joy of standing in a kitchen, apron tied and the clock tickin’ its way around and around with nowhere to go. It is with patience and calm that a baked good is born. No deadlines or buses or neon bright lights need interfere. It’s just me and the cake, and for once, London can take a step back.

Caramel Pumpkin Pie with Chocolate

I’ve taken the pumpkin component from Dorie Greenspan’s recipe, with the addition of a chocolate crust AND melted dark chocolate topping…incredible if I do say so myself. 

Chocolate Crust 

• 180g plain flour
• 2 tbsp  cocoa powder, sifted
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• ¼ tsp salt
• 100g vegetable shortening, cut into small pieces (or butter)
• 3 to 4 tbsp ice water

1.  Rub together flour, salt, cocoa, sugar and shortening or butter until it resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Gradually add water, mixing until you can form a ball of dough. Then wrap in cling film and refrigerate for 30 minutes. When chilled roll it out and line a 9 inch pie dish.

Caramel Pumpkin Pie Filling

• 225g of sugar
• 170mldouble cream
• 2tbsps dark rum/cognac or apple cider
• 2tbsps unsalted butter
• 1 can pumpkin puree
• 1 ¼ tsp ground cinnamon
• ¾ tsp ground ginger
• Pinch of freshly ground nutmeg
• Pinch of ground allspice
• Pinch of salt
• 1 ½ tsp vanilla extract
• 2 large eggs

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Sprinkle half a cup of sugar into a saucepan. Cook until the sugar melts and starts to colour. Gently swirl the skillet until it turns a deep amber colour. The sugar will bubble up and foam and once the sugar is dark enough lower the heat to medium.
3. Pour the cream into the saucepan and stir. Add the rum/cider and butter and cook until the caramel is smooth. Pour the caramel into a heatproof pitcher and cool it for about 15 minutes.
4. Whisk the pumpkin in a large bowl, add the remaining sugar and beat to blend. Whisk in the spices, vanilla, salt and eggs. Whisk in the caramel then pour into the pie crust.
5. Bake for 45-50 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

• Chocolate Topping

1. When pie is cool, melt 50g good dark chocolate (I used Green and Blacks Dark Chocolate with Ginger) and smooth over the top. Wait for the chocolate to set and enjoy!