Triple Layer Lemon Curd Cake

This year was the first year I have worked on my birthday. I’ve sat exams on it and studied on it, but always managed to coincide it with a holiday so I’ve never actually been to work on it. One of the things about working on your birthday in Denmark (and as far as I can tell everywhere but Ireland) is that you have to make your birthday cake, and give it to other people, instead of the other way around. Apparently you are also meant to buy people drinks if you go to the bar, but given that a pint here costs around €8, I’m going to try and avoid that one as long as possible. This was meant to be a double layer Victoria sponge style cake, but I realised too late that my cake tin was in fact 9 inches instead of 7, so I ended up with two very thin sponge layers, and had to make a third one. The photos are a bit rubbish, they were taken in between wrapping presents for my other half who strangely shares my birthday, packing for a weekend in Copenhagen and putting together a grammar test for my pupils. It was a bit of a hectic day.

Makes 1 three layer 9 inch cake. If you want a two layer 7 inch cake, as was intended by Darina Allen who came up with this recipe, reduce the ingredients for the cake by 1/3.

Ingredients

• 190g butter, softened
• 260g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 260g flour
• 1.5 teaspoons baking powder
• 1-2 tablespoons buttermilk or milk
• Finely grated zest of one lemon
• Icing sugar to top

For the lemon curd

• 50g butter
• 110g caster sugar
• Finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 2 eggs and 1 egg yolk, beaten together

Method

• First, make the lemon curd.
• Melt the butter over a gentle heat.
• Mix in the sugar, lemon juice and rind.
• Add in the eggs.
• Stir over a low heat until the mixture thickens to a good coating consistency.
• If like mine yours goes a little clumpy at the end because you briefly got distracted, sieve after cooking.
• Leave to cool.
• To make the cake, first cream the butter, lemon zest and sugar together until fluffy.
• Add the eggs in one a time, mixing well.
• Sift the flour and baking powder in.
• Mix all the ingredients together and add in the milk if it needs a bit of moisture.
• Grease and line a 9 inch cake tin.
• Pour in 1/3 of the cake mix.
• Bake in the oven at 180C for approximately 20 minutes, until the top is a little bit golden and a skewer inserted in the middle comes out clean.
• Turn onto a wire rack to cool and repeat twice with the remaining mixture.
• When the cakes are entirely cooled, spread the lemon curd on one, sandwich another cake on top, spread lemon curd on that and sandwich with the top layer.
• How much of the lemon curd you use it up to you, I had about 1-2 tablespoons left which next time I’d probably horse on the cake as well.
• Top by sprinkling with icing sugar.

La Vara, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

I would like to call this post La Vara: The Best Restaurant in New York, but that is probably a bit unfair since I was only there a week. I suppose it is safer to say the best restaurant I ate at in New York, by a long stretch. A small space on a quiet leafy street of brownstones in Cobble Hill, it is a relatively new opening serving Spanish and North African inspired tapas.

Berenjenas con Miel

There is of course a slight personal bias here. Tapas with Moorish influences are one of my favourite things to eat. I had as many meals as my paycheck would allow in Morito, my local tapas place in London and was never once bored. La Vara seems to have very much the same vibe. Slightly cramped, stylish and minimalist space? Lively bar? Located in quiet residential area beloved of the intelligentsia? A limited booking system that means you turn up an hour early and then get slightly tipsy in a local bar waiting for your table?  Check, check, check, check.

Escalavida

A group of four, we arrived after a gruelling hour wait drinking possibly the best cocktails I’ve ever had at Red Gravy nearby and crumpled into our table at half nine on a Wednesday. The size of the portions and the size of the group meant we could sample a fairly good selection of the menu. We had about 2-3 tapas each, all shared, which was absolutely more than enough (I saw Yelpers complaining that the portions meant you needed to order about 8 each, I find this slightly terrifying). Some portions were larger than others, but most were of the traditional saucer sized variety.

Ramps with Romesco

There were a healthy amount of specials available, all explained and recommended by our friendly Spanish waitress and we tried a few of these. Steamed ramps appeared in a brown paper bag we had to cut open, accompanied by a rich romesco sauce, the American take on the traditional Catalan calçot dish. Migas (of the Spanish, not tex mex variety) were a deliciously morish and large plate of crispy fried Chorizo, breadcrumbs and caramelized onions. I decided against ordering the berenjenas con miel, fried aubergines with cheese and honey, after an underwhelming experience with the same in Morito. When my Dad ordered them, I demolished them. The aubergine had been peeled and sliced into batons, the sauce, a mix of manchego and a creamy Mozzarella like cheese whose name escapes me, was the perfect blend of sweet, tangy and creamy.

Each dish that came out seemed better than the last. Alcachofa, fried artichokes with anchovy aioli were just the right mix of crispy and melting, the aioli having enough anchovy to give it a bite without being so much as to put off someone like me who doesn’t really like them. The cordero, cumin roasted lamb, tasted like a confit, with an addictive zingy preserved lemon and date condiment. Pan amb tomaca, the traditional tomato bread had a twist of mojama (air cured tuna) and nori. Escalavida, a traditional vegetable stew was paired with a light tahini sauce, an unusual take that combined richness with the fresh, lush taste of the vegetables. The croquettas were the only unremarkable dish of the night, being absolutely fine, but not amazing or a patch on those at Morito.

Pan amb Tomaca

We finished off, although by now thoroughly full, with two desserts. Olive oil ice-cream with sea salt tasted exactly like its ingredients, in the best possible way, though was not to my taste to be honest. The other dessert, a special, involved an elegant and light black sesame macaron and many other things I can’t remember.

Olive oil ice cream with sea salt

While the prices range from low to high, the bill for all the food with wine and sherry for four people came to a pretty reasonable (by New York standards) $230 which is worth noting as many reviews said you’d need to spend at least 100 a head to manage here. We spent the rest of our time in New York deliberating whether to return but never did. There is a danger of attempting to recreate the amazing experience of the first time trying something wonderful on holiday which can never really be repeated. But if I lived in Brooklyn, I would come here as often as my paycheck allowed.

La Vara, 268 Clinton St  Brooklyn, NY 11201, United States

+1 718-422-0065

Chickpea, Lentil and Tahini Salad with Feta

After over a week of eating almost everything New York had to offer, I am back in uncharacteristically sunny Denmark, and the real world. The world where I do not have professional chefs providing my every meal and where eating five pieces of fruit and vegetables a day has transitioned back into rule rather than guideline. This means I am back to having to devise interesting lunches to help ease me into the concept of workdays, Denmark’s teacher lockout having finally and thankfully come to an end. To help with the transition, this is a recipe is slightly adapted from a New York based chef, April Bloomfield, by way of a wonderful New York based blog, Smitten Kitchen. This salad is so much more than the sum of its parts. It has a rich, complex flavour combining many ingredients I wouldn’t necessarily have put together. I always regarded feta and tahini as those two friends you know would just hate each other. You love them both, and want to spend time with them, but each requires their own space and time. Turns out they have some good banter together. This makes 2-3 lunch sized portions, if you are the kind of idiot like me who never eats breakfast and is starving by lunchtime, their hunger only accentuated by the five people who have chosen to impart the wisdom that ‘you know, breakfast is the most important meal of the day’..

Ingredients

For the salad

• 200g puy lentils or lentilles vert (not the same thing as green lentils despite their confusing name, basically you’re looking for the small little browny green yokes)
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 bay leaf (the original recipe called for sage, I’m not a huge fan though)
• 1 tin chickpeas, drained
• 1 red onion
• 75g feta
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander
• 2 tablespoons sesame seeds, toasted.

For the dressing

• 2 tablespoons tahini paste
• 2 tablespoons lemon juice (if you had a preserved lemon you could chop it up and lob it in as per the original)
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 large garlic clove, crushed
• 2 teaspoons ground and toasted coriander seeds
• 1 teaspoons ground and toasted cumin seeds

Method

• First, cook the lentils according the direction on the pack with a bay leaf and the two cloves of garlic peeled until they are tender.
• I am a bit slapdash about lentil cooking, having cooked them a lot over the years, but it tends to be about 20-30 minutes over medium high heat with twice the amount of water as lentils, but I have seen huge variation in instructions.
• Drain the lentils once cooked.
• Drain the chickpeas.
• Meanwhile, toast both the cumin and coriander in a dry pan over a medium heat until they are fragrant (you need to watch this stage carefully, fragrant turns to burnt so very quickly).
• Remove and grind in a pestle and mortar (or a coffee grinder, though I am not sure how effectively you could clean that after to prevent having cumin coffee for the next month).
• Toast the sesame seeds carefully in the pan until they are a medium-dark brown colour, just before they burn.
• To make the salad dressing, mix the ingredients well in a jar, reserving half the cumin and coriander to sprinkle on top of the salad.
• You may want to adjust the dressing to make it more lemony, less lemony, more tahini-y or less tahini-y, this is a just a guideline.
• Finely chop the red onion.
• Finely chop the fresh coriander.
• To assemble, mix the chickpeas and cooked lentils.
• Toss with the dressing and most of the sesame seeds.
• Top with the feta, red onion, fresh coriander, maybe a drizzle more lemon, and the remaining sesame, coriander and cumin seeds.
• Season if required.

New York

I’m away on holidays in New York this week, so in lieu of a post, I give you some holiday photos. I’ll get around to the tips and reviews when I’m back home next week.

Midtown Manhattan

Bread with tomato, nori and mojama at the amazing La Vara in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.

The Chelsea Hotel. I’ve had Chelsea Hotel No.2 by Leonard Cohen stuck in my head ever since.

New York’s best lobster roll from the Red Hook Lobster Pound

Magnolias in Central Park

My local cheese shop in Williamsburg, which describes Reblochon as ‘remember when coke used to get you high instead of making you need to s***. Pair with Pinot.’. This was the least scandalous cheese description they had.

A couple got engaged in front of me in Central Park as I unsuccessfully tried to photograph the fountain beside them. Shortly after this he started running around waving his arms in the air screaming ‘she said yes’.

Obscure documentary reference alert.

Rice at my local grocery store.

Williamsburg Bridge from the East River Ferry.

Le Bistrot Paul Bert, Paris

The first time I went to Paris, I hated it. I’m not sure if it was just that I was a sullen fifteen year old who hated everything (every single photo from that holiday involves scowling) or something else, but Paris just didn’t click.  When I  returned as a  college student, that all changed and I suddenly understood the magic that makes Paris the only city in the world that is noisy, touristy, rude, expensive and romantic. Ever since then, I have been hooked, and return whenever an opportunity arises, even if it involved as many hours travel time as I would spend awake there.

Bistrot Paul Bert is a place that characterises everything that people love about Paris, and that make it special. It is exactly that kind of charming neighbourhood bistrot that you always hope to find there, but often don’t. On a quiet street in the up and coming 11th, it serves perfectly executed French bistrot classics as a reasonable (for Paris) price. The decor is quintessentially Parisian with  zinc bar, tiling, pot plants, heavy wood and vintage posters.The dinner consists of a set three course meal for €36. If you want to just have a main it is €25, with starters and desserts €10. The restaurant has two sittings a night, you really do need to book in advance, and bring your appetite as the portions are generous.The menu is chalked up on an unwieldy blackboard that is carted from table to table and precariously perched by your table. The same goes for the wine list of approximately 10-15 bottles of well chosen and reasonable French wine, with several whites, reds and rose available by the glass.I also spotted a third board explaining the provenance of the meat and fish. My heart felt a slight patriotic flutter when I saw the beef they serve is Irish.

I started with an elegant leek and foie gras terrine, presented like a lovely piece of stained glass. The delicate freshness of the leeks cut through the rich fat of the foie gras, making it a delicate but substantial starter. I followed it up with an ample rendition of classic Lapin Au Moutarde, served with a creamy mustard sauce and  tarragon mash. It was lovely, but I must admit at that point my eyes gazed longingly to the next table, where a couple were eating steaks the size of their faces with amazing looking chips and bearnaise.

To finish, my mum and I decided to get a dessert and cheese and share. She ordered a Paris Brest, two large hollow circles of pastry sandwiching a simultaneously rich and light hazelnut cream, so named because they resemble the wheels of the bikes on the Paris-Brest cycle race. My order of cheese consisted of the waiter leaving a large wooden board heaving with nicely room temperature aged cheeses from which I could help myself indefinitely. My dad was provided with a rum baba the size of  a hat. The desserts were as good as you would find in any patisserie and there is no possible criticism you can level at an all you can eat French cheeseboard.I think if my fifteen year old self had been to this place, it might not have taken me five more years to understand the appeal of Paris.

18 Rue Paul Bert  75011 Paris, France +33 1 43 72 24 01

Incredibly Easy Tomato and Fennel Bread

Over the past few weeks, I have been making the transition from studying all hours of day and night combined with two part-time jobs, to a more leisurely life working a part-time job that currently involves sitting around a room complaining about the industrial conflict which currently prevents me from doing my job. It’s been a challenge. To fill the void in my life that was once filled with making flashcards, I’ve turned to making bread. Having a loaf of fresh bread on the table feels like an achievement. It gives the impression that you have something to show for a day that has mainly involved flicking between The Guardian, Broadsheet and old episodes of The Colbert Report, interspersed with napping. Moreover, being able to make bread seems to be an intrinsic part of Danish culture.  Most young Danish people I’ve met make their own, and every supermarket will sell both fresh and dried yeast. I saw this recipe on Food 52 (originally from Jim Lahey’s ‘My Bread’) and decided I had to try a recipe that compared making bread to having a pet cat. It requires minimum effort, a little bit of waiting, and given that I have used it six times with five perfect results, and one almost perfect result*, I would have to say it is foolproof. I’ve adapted a plain loaf to make a tomato and fennel loaf, which is fantastic with some very seasonal wild garlic pesto and a schmear of goats cheese. This makes a decent 500g loaf, and just requires you to plan a day ahead.

*This recipe is designed for white flour. If you use wholemeal flour you will get a denser loaf that doesn’t rise as much. A 50/50 mix yields good results.

Ingredients

• 400g white flour
• 300ml cold water
• 1 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1g (1/4 teaspoon) dried yeast, or 3g fresh yeast
• 1-2 tablespoons fennel seeds
• 2 tablespoons tomato puree
• 2-3 tablespoons finely chopped sun dried tomato

Method

• Put the flour and salt in a large bowl.
• Dissolve the tomato puree and yeast in the water.
• Stir into the flour with a wooden spoon until you have a dough.
• Mix in the fennel seeds and sundried tomato.
• Cover the bowl with a tea towel and leave for 12-18 hours covered (it will rise massively).
• Take it out of the bowl with floured hands, and knead together for a minute or so on a floured surface until it forms a coherent ball coated in flour.
• It will still be more sticky than you think is right, but it is, you don’t need to add more flour.
• Wrap in a tea towel and leave for 1-2 hours.
• It’s ready when you stick your finger in it and it leaves an indentation.
• During the last half hour or so of this, put a big casserole dish (apparently called a Dutch oven in the States?) or metal pot with a lid big enough to fit the dough almost doubling in size) in the oven at 250C to preheat.
• When the dough is raised, shape it into a loaf.
• Dust the now heated pot (carefully) with flour.
• Add the loaf to the heated pot and put in the oven with the lid on for 30 minutes.
• Take off the lid and cook in the oven for about another ten minutes, until the outside is crispy and golden brown.
• Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack for 30-45 minutes.

E.Dehillerin: The Ultimate Kitchen Store

For the last few years, my favourite presents to receive have been anything kitchen related. Sad, but true. A few years ago my parents gave me my first proper kitchen knife, brought back from Paris. It was the year I learned the value of lying when someone asks ‘what did Santa bring you for Christmas’ (especially if you’re on a date). The shop they bought it in,  E.Dehillerin,  is the ultimate cooking shop. Nearly 200 years old, and based in the heart of the former market quarter of Les Halles in central Paris, it supplies every conceivable kitchen utensil, pot, pan and gadget.  Walking through the front door, you are met with a wall of copper moulds and pans of every imaginable shape and size.

On the ground floor, they sell every utensil you never knew you needed in a labyrinthine tangle of aisles. If you are the kind of person who looks at their 23cm kitchen knife and think you really could also do with a 25cm knife, this is the place for you. Petit fours moulds, knives, spatulas, sieves and pots leave floor to ceiling shelves groaning, and even then, once you look up you will find whisks the size of your legs adorning the ceiling beside frying pans and cake tins. Downstairs is geared towards professional kitchens, with  copper pots big enough for me to be able to hide inside them, should I ever need.

This is not the place to bag a bargain, and the pricing system is a little hard to work out, each item being coded with books of codes located at the end of each shelf. Everything sold here is designed to last, the kind of thing you will pass on to the next generation. Defying Parisian guide book stereotypes, the staff are friendly, speak English, and turn a blind eye to annoying tourists like me taking photos of their shop.

E.Dehillerin: 18 et 20, rue Coquillière – 51, rue Jean- Jacques Rousseau – 75001 PARIS
Phone: +33 1 42 36 53 13 – Fax: +33 1 42 36 54 80