Alpina inspired apple studel

One of my earliest memories of childish independence was being allowed to walk with my brother to a parade of shops about five minutes away from our house.  There was a little bakery/café at the end of the parade called the Alpina.  Run by a smiley Swiss women, I remember cuckoo clocks, pine tables, benches and pictures of snowy alps.  Did the staff wear lederhosen and have long blond plaits? Probably not, but for the purposes of my memory they certainly did.   Hot chocolate and apple strudel was my order of choice.  It never occurred to me to try and construct a pastry of such complexity as an apple strudel, layers flaky, crunchy and chewy all at the same time.  It never occurred to me, that is, until I bought a book for Giselle when she was about six.  “Cooking with kids”  by Linda Collister.  It not only had a recipe but had one of those wonderful step by step set of pictures.  I realised that maybe this cake was not beyond me.   A few weeks ago I found myself driving through my old town, the parade of shows is still there and to my utter amazement so was the Alpina.  Next time I am down that way I will be paying a visit. This is how I make apple strudel.  

• 200g of readymade filo pastry
• 9 amoretti biscuits
• 4 good eating apples
• 50g of caster sugar
• 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
• 75g of butter
• 3 table spoons of Sarah’s mincemeat (see earlier blog post) or if you don’t have any use 3 table spoons of raisins.
• Icing sugar

Crush the amoretti biscuits in a plastic bag.  Peel the apples core and cut into chunks, mix the cinnamon and sugar.  Melt the butter.  Once you have all the filling prepared lay out the filo pastry on a work surface in a large overlapping rectangle.  Brush about half the melted butter on the base, then sprinkle the amoretti crumbs, the mincemeat or raisins, the apple, and the sugar and cinnamon.  Leave a good margin of about 3 cm all the way round the pastry.  Next fold the margins over the edge of the mixture and finally carefully roll your strudel up.  Brush the rest of the melted butter over the top and side of your strudel sausage. If holes appear pastry a bit more pastry over the top using butter as your glue. 

Carefully transfer your strudel onto a greased baking tray and bake for about 30 minutes in a preheated oven (200 degrees C).  When it is ready the pastry will be golden brown.  Dust with icing sugar and serve with a flourish.

Chittarni

Today, I have a guest post from my father. This is a recipe that he had told me about but only as a memory from his childhood.  We cooked it together a few days ago and I will certainly be introducing it to the rest of the family.  I have found another recipe for this in Copeland Marks', The varied kitchens of India which has a chapter on the food eaten by the Jews of Calcutta.  It was almost exactly the same as this one except that he uses tamarind paste rather than vinegar. I wonder if the vinegar was added by my great grandmother and others finding themselves transplanted in England, as an alternative, since tamarind must have been pretty tricky to come by in England in 1941!

Guest post

"My first recollection of the dish called chittarni which we put together today is specific.  It was during World War II. My Grandmother (Big Granny) was staying with us in Sidmouth,  Devon, where we occupied a flat on the sea front. The dish was  a favourite of Granny's because one of her daughters had cooked some for her at home in London, and sent it to her by post.  It consisted of pieces of chicken stewed  in a  smooth and richly spiced onion sauce to which tomatoes had been added and which is  sharpened by vinegar. The sauce you could tell both preserved and enhanced the chicken. It arrived in one or two glass jars. I have  never forgotten its smell and its sweet and sour taste. Nor my greed in wanting to eat it then and there as Granny unpacked her parcel  even though I knew that it was meant to be warmed up and was intended as a  treat for her and not for me. Treats were in short supply in 1941.  I have thought of that day but did nothing about trying to recreate the experience, until I discovered its recipe in the Sephardi section of Claudia Roden's brilliantly researched  Book of Jewish Food.  

Here's how you cook it. You need a lot of onions which slow cooking melts down - two Kilograms, say six large ones. In the old days you would grate them or chop them very fine. Fortunately  adding the onions coarsely chopped to a food  processor will quickly give you a large bowl without tears or too much effort. The onions should then be slowly softened  in oil in a large pan with the lid on and stirred from time. This may take half an hour or more. The onions should on no account be allowed to brown.

While the onions are cooking prepare the spices. You will need:  several cloves of garlic mashed into a paste,  a generous portion of grated ginger, a teaspoon of turmeric, a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, 1 and half teaspoons of ground coriander. ground cardamom, chili powder and a couple of bay leaves. I leave some of these amounts open to allow for taste preferences. Add these spices and cook slowly for five minutes stirring from time to time.  Add chicken pieces, thighs on or off the bone and sauté for a few minutes. 

Now add a can of chopped tomatoes and simmer uncovered for 30 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed. Finally stir in a three of four tablespoons of wine vinegar according to taste. I find that this sour element is very important to the final balance of taste. Cook for a further 10 minutes.

 

It gives me pleasure to think Dear Pippa that the  dish which we had for lunch and which your bother Toby ate the same day when he came to stay the night, should bring so long a strand of memory leading to your great grandmother and to a seaside  flat in wartime England. A true family recipe I suppose."

 

Giselle’s chocolate and raspberry brownies

Today’s recipe comes from Giselle. These chocolate brownies really are the best I have ever tasted. As well as baking them at home she used to make them for the local café where she worked at weekends when she was at school.

• 300g of dark chocolate
• 50 g of milk chocolate
• 225 g of double cream
• 2 tablespoons of espresso coffee
• 3 large eggs
• 225g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence
• 75 g of self-raising flour
• About 150g of raspberries
• 100g of milk chocolate broken into chunks

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees, grease and line with greaseproof paper a large square tin. Melt the chocolate and cream in a bowl over a pan of hot water, stir occasionally until it is melted and glossy. Allow it to cool a little.

In another bowl mix together the coffee eggs, sugar and vanilla essence. Slowly beat in the chocolate mixture. Fold in the flour, the raspberries and milk chocolate chunks and then pour the mixture into the tin. Bake for about 40 minutes, the brownies should have a soft centre.

Chorizo hash

Today I am posting a very simple meal which everyone loves. I think I first discovered this in an Italian restaurant in Clapham about 20 years ago. I am not sure if I remembered or copied it correctly but this is the way I have always done it. The trick is to use good quality chorizo, a nice spicy one. We had it last night and the kids all fought over the crispy bits stuck to the bottom of the pan.

• 4 or 5 spicy chorizo sausages.
• About 6 – 8 good sized potatoes sliced into 1cm chunks
• A large head of broccoli
• 2 large cloves of garlic thinly sliced.

Put the potatoes into boiling salted water for about 5 minutes. You want them partly cooked. Slice the chorizo and garlic and cook with a little oil in a large pan. I use a paella pan. After about five minutes add the drained potatoes and sauté until the potatoes and sausage are cooked through and going a bit crispy. You need to keep moving them about in the pan. Finally add the broccoli and toss them in the potato chorizo mix and season with salt and pepper. Bring to the table and dig in.

Bedouin Bread

Over the past year or so I have been making more and more bread. Every other day or so I make a sour dough or yeasted loaf but I suspect the breads my children like and will remember the most are the flat breads. I have already written a post on pita but today I thought I

would write about Bedouin flat bread. This is Dominic’s recipe really since he was the one who persevered in finding an alternative to a saj (a kind of upside down wok that the Bedouin use to cook these breads) and he has experimented with different ratios of flour to water.

   We discovered this unleavened flat bread a couple of years ago on holiday in Jordan. Whilst staying in a hotel owned and run by Bedouin we visited a woman who made flat breads for the hotel breakfast in her cooking tent. Whilst we did see modern gas powered saj’s, mostly these breads are cooked under an open wood fire giving them a lovely smoky taste.

When we have made them at home they almost always become a team effort (in much the same way that the bedouin women make them.) Dom, Josh and I made the ones in the picture at the weekend. We will be trying it out on a wood fire in the garden this summer.

• 4 cups of bread flour
• 2 ½ cups of water
2 teaspoons of salt.

Mix into a dough and kneed for about 10 minutes until soft. Split the dough into balls a little bigger than a golf ball. Cover with a damp tea towel and leave for about 10 minutes to rest. Roll out the first ball using a rolling pin and adding flour to avoid it sticking. Pick up the dough and stretch it out gently until the bread is paper thin. Carefully spread it on the saj and leave for just a few seconds. Turn the bread over and cook the other side for the same amount of time.

You can fill the bread like a wrap, dip it in hummus and soups or simply rip it up and eat it plain.