Recipe: Apple & hazelnut cake with hazelnut streusel topping

We had a photographic shoot at the house today and I volunteered to cook the crew lunch to take my mind off the fact that for once I was going to be in front of the camera, not lurking behind it.

I wanted to make a cake for pudding and, as I haven't made one in a while, I poked around in the larder for inspiration. We had some dessert apples that were past eating best and I found a package of hazelnut flour from Dean & Deluca in New York



which turned out to be just ground hazelnuts. So apple & hazelnut cake seemed called for.

I couldn't find a recipe I liked anywhere, so I made one up. Of course, hazelnut flour is a bit rarified, and you could easily use ground almonds in their place.



Preheat the oven to 180°C or 350F.

You’ll need a nice deep Springform cake tin about 8” in diameter. I used a re-usable silicone tin liner from blessed Lakeland Plastics in the UK



so I didn’t need to grease my tin or start faffing around with scissors & greaseproof paper. Highly recommend. Otherwise, grease the tin, and faff around lining it with greaseproof paper.

Peel, core & chop the apples into small chunks. To stop them going brown, squeeze the lemon juice over and mix together.



You can do this next bit by hand but, seriously, unless you are looking for ways to incorporate exercise into every moment of your daily routine, use a Kitchen Aid, Magimix, hand mixer or similar. Life’s too short.

Put the butter and both sugars into the mixing bowl, and cream together. You are aiming for a light & fluffy start to the process.



Add the vanilla essence, and then one egg at a time, along with a spoonful of flour, to avoid the mixture curdling.

Then add the rest of the flour a heaping spoonful at a time with the mixer still on, followed by the rest of the dry ingredients: cinnamon, hazelnut flour & baking powder.



If using a Magimix scoop out the batter into a bowl and add the apple pieces. Fold them all together. If using a Kitchen Aid or hand mixer just add the apples to the mixing bowl & incorporate. Don’t worry if the mixture is stiffer than you would want in normal cake. You need it like that as the apples will leach their juice during baking. Mix really well so the apple is distributed throughout the cake batter.



Then pour the mixture into the lined cake tin.

Lick out cake bowl.

Try to ensure you get the tin liner the same height all round, unlike me, and make sure the top of the cake mixture is level-ish, (use a spatula or back of a spoon).



then mix together the streusel topping and sprinkle over the top. Don’t worry about it clumping. This is good as it will make for crunchy bits.

Pop in oven for 45 minutes. I find that the top browns very quickly, so I add a piece of paper over the top of the cake at this point and then cook for a further 15 minutes for an hour total.

Test the cake for done-ness at 45 minutes with a skewer. If the cake is cooked, the skewer will come out clean. Test in several places around the centre of the cake because if you hit a piece of apple the skewer will come out pretty clean giving a false positive so to speak. If there is any hint of batter on the skewer it needs more cooking.

When you think the cake is done, remove the tin from the oven, undo the Springform clip & remove the side ring, and gently slide the cake from the metal base onto an airing rack to cool.



I’m a big fan of these large offset spatulas from Williams Sonoma in the US which make transferring a cake from the floor of the Springform to a rack a, erm, piece of cake.



Then sift icing sugar over the top:



Then feed your cake to hungry people:



450g apples you can use cookers such as Bramleys or any eaters
Juice of half a lemon
225g butter
175g caster sugar
50g soft brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence - do not substitute flavouring. Better to use nothing.
3 eggs
225g self-raising flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon
30g ground hazelnuts (UK) or hazelnut flour (US)

1 x 8" Springform cake tin
Greaseproof paper & butter for greasing or silicone tin liner
Airing rack

plus 2 x tablespoons of hazelnut flr, 2 x tbsp of soft brown sugar 1 x tbsp melted butter & a tsp of cinnamon mixed together for the streusel cake topping

Monday night supper: roast lamb, potato gratin & green lentils

On Sunday afternoon I drove up from London to my father’s house in Northamptonshire so that I could then drive him to Heathrow to catch a flight to Nepal. (He’s off for two weeks on a whistle stop tour around Nepal, Kolkata and Mumbai to visit schools funded by Mondo Challenge, a charity of which he is about to become chairman).

As we pulled up at Terminal Four my sister rang from Oxford where she was staying with her best friend, sounding tired & definitely not looking forward to the bus journey back to London. I had a rare brainwave and on the way home diverted via Beck’s to abduct lil’sis & Posetta Baddog to take them back to my mother’s for a few days R&R. Lil’sis isn’t too well at the moment & PB is starting to look like a barrel from the lack of walks.

We are a family that likes to eat and last night we cooked supper together. A leg of lamb from the butcher’s van, lentils and a potato gratin. It couldn’t have been simpler.

The gratin is a great dish for impressing people, yet costs around 60p/$1 for enough to feed at least four people. A small 1lb bag of Charlotte potatoes, still in their skins,& half a red onion were sliced on a mandolin in a matter of minutes and then strewn in a buttered ovenproof dish. I poured over enough stock to cover the vegetables and popped them in the oven for 40 minutes.

They came out soft & unctuous, with a sauce thickened by the starch from the potatoes. It's important to use a waxy, salad potato in this dish as, in such thin slices, a floury potato would dissolve into the stock.



If you are making stock from concentrate, use a little less than normal for, as the stock reduces in the oven, it will become a lot saltier. For that reason, do not add any extra salt to the potatoes.



The lentils were even easier. To one small red onion sweated in a little olive oil, I added two cups of small green lentils and two bay leaves, which were then covered in vegetable stock and cooked for about 30 minutes.

So healthy and delicious.

Leek & potato soup

There is nothing, nothing so comforting as a bowl of soup when the weather starts to change. Last weekend whilst I was dog-sitting the Bassets, it was grey & raining outside and I wanted something warm for supper.

So I made fridge soup - what goes in the pot is what is discovered lurking in the vegetable drawer. I found a leek and three quarters of an onion, so with three medium potatoes from the larder, I made my own version of leek & potato soup.

First chop up the vegetables: (ignore browning potatoes, I cldn't find my camera for a bit)



Heat some olive oil, & throw onions & leeks into heavy pot over very low heat and put on lid.



When they have softened cover with water/stock to two inches over. Add chopped potatoes.



Turn up heat so liquid simmers and cook for around 20-15 minutes until potatoes are completely soft.



Whizz it all together with immersion blender for speed or, if like me you like smooth soup with some chunks, take out a large ladleful of potato first, adding back once you've whizzed the rest. Equally you can pass through a sieve, use a mouli-legumes or shove it all in the Magimix.



And ta da! Super quick & easy leek & vegetable soup. I added a blob of sour cream to mine.

Courgette (zucchini) soup with mozzarella & oregano

Y made this delicious courgette/zucchini soup for dinner a few weeks ago from a recipe he had torn out of an Italian food magazine. It's perfect for late summer/early fall when there is still a glut of summer squashes. It's creamy, fresh, takes about 20 minutes and feels way more sophisticated to eat than the the recipe suggests. Of course GG & Y's lovely table settings help.

It's incredibly simple, barely requiring even a recipe. Serves four.
You'll need: courgettes, medium onion, garlic, stock, milk or cream, oregano, mozzarella (optional)

Prepare a pint of hot vegetable or chicken stock. Slice four or five medium courgettes. Dice a small onion & chop a clove of garlic.
Sweat the onion & garlic in a tablespoonful of olive oil in a medium saucepan over a low-medium heat till golden & translucent. Turn the heat down if they start to brown.
Add the courgettes & a tablespoon chopped oregano. Gently fry until soft, but not browned. Add the hot stock & simmer for ten minutes.

Remove the pan from the heat, dump contents into a blender or food processor.
Blend 'till smooth.
Add 1/2 cup or 4 fl oz of cream or milk. Blend again.
Add more stock or milk a splash at a time until you reach a consistency you like for the soup: some people like it thicker, others very light.
Season with black pepper & sea salt to taste.

Ladle soup into four warmed bowls. Chop up a small ball of mozzarella and divide between the bowls. Garnish with oregano.

Tomato & mozzarella salad with basil & Dijon mustard dressing

As I so frequently mention, my mother is a brilliant cook. She has a tenacious memory for food facts & ingredients, collects cookbooks voraciously which she reads in bed at night, can cook any style of food (she prepped & cooked a fully authentic Chinese buffet for 120 people for my 21st) and taught me not to be scared in a kitchen.

Most of the day to day recipes that I carry in my head have been inherited from her. Altho when I say recipe I don't mean lists or weights as neither she nor I cook our classic repertoire by rote but more by feel and informed guesswork. This makes writing down recipes a chore as I rarely have a clue to the exact proportions of any recipe's ingredient that I use from day to day. (Bar pastry, breads & cakes of course.)

At the weekend I made a tomato & mozzarella salad for our all-American steak & baked potato supper. The obvious dressing was my mother's basil & Dijon mustard vinaigrette which can only be made in a food processor. It goes something like this:

a slug of extra virgin olive oil
a slug of vegetable oil (purists may wince but if yr good olive oil is very fruity or grassy then cutting it with a neutral oil stops it catching at the back of the throat)
2 tsps of Dijon mustard
a splash of Balsamic vinegar
a good pinch of Maldon salt & freshly ground black papper
a bunch of basil leaves, de stemmed.

Shove it all in a Magimix or similar and blend till all the ingredients are incorporated.

The mustard & oil will emulsify, so you get a lovely beige coloured, thick dressing flecked with green basil.

If it's too thick add more oil.
Correct seasoning.
Pour over a dish of sliced tomatoes & mozzarella. Avocado would be good too.

My new hat

Speaking of vintage hats (see below), this is my latest find:It was $24 at the Brooklyn Flea and is in absolutely mint condition. I bought it from a stand of excellently sourced vintage accessories, run by Marie & Ian, the charming couple who run this vintage site. I am flying back in July for a wedding on an estate in Scotland, and I think this may fit the bill perfectly.

Although goodness knows what I'll be wearing then. I'm on a be healthy regimen right now (I refuse to use the word 'diet') as my summer clothes are somewhat tight. It also doesn't help that my new job is looming and I really do not want to have to invest in a whole new working wardrobe when I have so many beautiful pieces stashed away both here & in the attics at my parents' place in England.

So, healthy regimen it is then. Certainly no take aways - & that's not as easy as it sounds. Every restaurant in Manhattan from the dodgy Chinese round the corner to Le Bernadin will package you up supper if you ask nicely and, as mentioned before, there are eleven restaurants on my pretty East Village street alone.

I've developed my own skinny version of Nachos, (my abiding vice), which involves half a cup of brown rice, black eyes beans stewed with an onion & stock, grated vegan soy cheese (it's so wrong, I know), fat-free sour cream, and home made pretend guacamole made with half an avocado, cherry tomatoes and a lot of chili sauce bashed up with the pestle & mortar, with a handful of coriander on top and maybe some cubed marinated tofu in with the rice for some more protein. The dish is surprisingly delicious, with lots of umami taste, & filling too.

I just wish there was a healthy alternative to bloody Creme Eggs.

Cooking Indian food in Manhattan

I live in Manhattan, where single people neither cook, nor is there an expectation that they will do so. I find this strange as I cook a proper meal at least once if not twice a day in London. I brought my knives over with me, but discovered that the kitchens are so tiny here that it’s usually just simpler to eat out or order take out. (It’s not just Carrie Bradshaw who keeps her cashmere sweaters in the oven, in her (abnormally large) apartment)

Thing is, after several months here, I’m fed up with eating sub-standard takeaways (& they are generally extremely bad), or with spending most of my income in restaurants. (Originally I was excited at just how cheap it was to eat out here and it is, but do that every day and it soon mounts up.)

So, I girded my loins and decided it was time to cook for my friends, to bring a little bit of London to New York. As BA craves Indian food, like all English expats, and Americans J & F love spicy food, curry seemed good. I biked up to the Union Square Greenmarket, and nearly killed myself on the way home, wobbling down 2nd with my vegetable-filled calico shopping bags hanging off the handlebars.

I don’t use cookbooks, (they're for reading in bed), preferring to cook from memory, adapting recipes in my head to suit the season and the contents of my cupboards. I tied on an apron over my tailored black wool short shorts, kicked off my 4" patent Mary Janes, sharpened my Globals and set to work.

I poached mushrooms in fried onion-enriched coconut milk with coriander, made a chickpea curry, using mashed potato (it thickens the sauce) and tomato puree with garam masala paste, and composed my favourite spinach curry soup. thickening it with coconut cream to make it less soupy. Finally I stir fried chiffonaded curly kale in a very hot wok with chilli oil for a couple of seconds, melted butter to pour over warmed through naan breads and made raita.

Pudding was plum studded cupcakes (I made up the batter in the autumn & froze it), baked in the toaster oven, with vodka cocktails with mango or blueberry purees. (We were going dancing afterwards).

I'm glad I made the effort, as the girls arrived with Ketel One, pink & yellow roses and dressed to the nines. We lit tea lights, arranged the flowers, and ate the lot. Who says fashion girls don't eat?

Spring vegetables with beurre blanc

I’ve written three Who to Watch in 2008 designer profiles for various publications this afternoon, so naturally my thoughts have turned again to food after flicking through a pile of look books featuring wafer-thin models.

Tonight I steamed asparagus (out of season, I know, but my sister bought it – blame her), to toss in a frying pan with fresh long garlic shoots and Paris mushrooms, then served it all with a beurre blanc as a contrast to our Indian soup yesterday.

I love making beurre blanc: it’s amazing how such a simple recipe (butter, shallots, tarragon, white wine) produces this ethereal, yet artery-blocking emulsion. Still, it’s only a tablespoon each, so the damage shouldn’t be too long-lasting. I highly recommend this dish: it reminds me of Spring in the depths of Winter. (Oddly enough, it goes quite well with mashed potatoes if you require some filling carb action, altho it would mean an OD on the butter front.)

Chickpea, red onion, chili & avocado salad - A delicious summer lunch

I am obsessed with this salad that I made yesterday from the contents of my fridge, & inspired by something similar that Miss P made me on my trip to London. I think it's the perfect summer lunch: the parsley makes it smell as good as it tastes, & the Tabasco adds a hefty kick to the metabolism. It's also good with some goat's cheese crumbled through it.

Put the following ingredients in a bowl and mix with your hands - it feels so much more satisfying.
Half a can of organic unsalted chickpeas.
(Soak dried ones 24hrs ahead by all means but I'm a fan of the here & now)
large handful cherry tomatoes, halved, make sure the juices don't escape
handful of flat leaf parsley, chopped
half a red onion minced
Juice of one lime
glug of olive oil - I like Greek, for its peppery green-ness
very good shake of Tabasco
Maldon salt & fresh ground black pepper

Eat (it all) with pitta.