Nigella Bites (8 page)

You can make this into an Easter Nest Cake by folding 200g melted chocolate into the cream topping and dotting with the sugar-coated eggs instead of the cocoa. Leave the Cointreau out of both the cake and cream.

RASPBERRY AND LEMONGRASS TRIFLE

Trifle is the perfect thing to cook when you’ve got protracted time to busy yourself quietly in the kitchen. No one stage takes long, but the whole needs to be lingered over. And if it sounds odd to suggest steeping the sponges in a syrup flavoured with lemongrass, I should say that I first had the idea when making a syrup with lemon balm for some jelly. If you’ve got a garden, this is easy to come by, but if you haven’t there is no way you can buy it. I tried, then, substituting lemongrass, weight for weight, and it worked beautifully. By the same token, if you have got verbena in the garden then do use that here. But since there isn’t a supermarket around that doesn’t major in lemongrass – and indeed it’s far more familiar to us than the indigenous lemon balm – this recipe, which first found shape in an Observer article on cooking traditional British foods with new ‘fusion’ ingredients, is actually a good reminder that you can plunder the past without scorning the present.

Serves 8–10.

600ml water

400g caster sugar

50g lemongrass, 3–4 sticks, cut in half lengthways

300g raspberries

16 trifle sponges

3–4 tablespoons vodka

600ml single cream

8 egg yolks

500ml double cream

medium glass bowl

Make a syrup with the water and 325g of the caster sugar by bringing them to the boil in a saucepan and boiling for 5 minutes. Take the pan off the heat, add the lemongrass and let it infuse for about half an hour.

Strain the syrup into a measuring jug, keeping the saucepan with the lemongrass to one side. Take out about 150–200ml of the syrup and put it into a pan with the raspberries. Bring it to a rolling boil and let it thicken slightly, mashing the fruit to make a jam-like consistency. Let it cool a little and then dunk the trifle sponges in the raspberry mixture and arrange them in the bottom of your bowl. Add the vodka and about 100ml of the lemongrass syrup depending on how much your sponges absorb, and reserve the rest.

Meanwhile, to make the custard, heat the single cream in the syrup pan with the lemongrass until it is nearly boiling, take it off the heat and let it infuse for about 15 minutes. Whisk the yolks and the rest of the sugar together and pour the cream into the same bowl. Then whisk again and put the custard back on the heat in the cleaned-out pan. Stir until the custard thickens and then pour it over the trifle sponges. Let it cool.

Whip the double cream until thick but not stiff, and cover the custard layer. Use about 250ml of the remaining sugar syrup to make a caramel by heating it in a saucepan until it turns a golden-brown. Drizzle the caramelised sugar syrup over the layer of cream to decorate.

RAINY-DAY BISCUITS

If you’ve got children, you’ll know all about the problems of keeping them occupied when the weather’s bad and outdoors uninviting – if only to you. Actually, I go further than that. I am singularly unathletic and rather dread extended bouts on the swings in the park even on sunny days. Cooking is thus, for me, the easiest childcare option. And even two-year-olds can be usefully entertained with a bit of dough and some biscuit cutters. Yes, the kitchen will be a mess, but the afternoon will be gone, and then there’s just bath – and bed-time to be got through – then peace: a small price, then.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say I collect biscuit cutters, but I ask anyone who’s going abroad to buy any amusing form they find and seem to have acquired a stash of curious shapes. The ones that were used for the pictures below were from this disorganised jumble and seemed best suited to making biscuits to banish rainy-day blues.

175g soft unsalted butter

200g soft brown sugar

2 eggs

¼ teaspoon almond extract

350g plain flour (plus more if needed)

50g ground almonds

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

biscuit cutters

2 non-stick baking sheets

for the icing:

approx. 300g icing sugar

water to mix

Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas mark 4.

Cream the butter and sugar together well until almost moussy, then beat in the eggs and almond extract.

In another bowl, combine the flour, ground almonds, baking powder and salt. Gradually add these dry ingredients to the butter and egg mixture and combine gently but surely. If you think the finished mixture is too sticky to be rolled out, add more flour, but do so sparingly as too much will make the dough tough.

Halve the dough, form into fat discs, wrap each in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for at least an hour.

Sprinkle a suitable surface with flour, place a disc of dough (not taking out the other half until you’ve finished with the first) on top of it and sprinkle a little more flour on top of that. Then roll it out to a thickness of about half a centimetre. This dough is such a dream to work that it makes this a rather pleasurable activity.

Cut into shapes, dipping the cutter into flour as you go, and place the cut-out biscuits a little apart on the baking sheets.

Bake for 8–12 minutes, by which time they will be lightly golden around the edges but otherwise still quite pale. Cool on a rack – they do firm up when they’re cold – and continue with the rest of the dough.

It’s hard to be accurate about the number of biscuits you’ll get out of this mixture without knowing what cutters you’ll be using, but in general I reckon on making 60 biscuits out of the above quantities.

As for the icing: who am I to interfere with the artist within you? All I would do is urge you to try and get hold of the colour pastes which come in little tubs (and can be bought from specialised cake shops and increasingly, though not with such an expansive range, in supermarkets) rather than use those little bottles of liquid food colouring. The choice of colours is better, for one thing, and they don’t water down the icing when you add them.

Enjoying food, enjoying eating, isn’t about graduating with honours from the Good Taste university. I’m not interested in pleasing food snobs or purists, or in eating just one type of food. Yes, I want whatever I do eat to be good, but there is surely a place – and in my heart a very fond one – for a bit of kitsch in the kitchen.

Ham in Coca-Cola

Sweetcorn Pudding

South-Beach Black Bean Soup

Cornbread-On-The-Cob

Watermelon Daiquiri

Southern-Style Chicken

Elvis Presley’s Fried Peanut-Butter and Banana Sandwich

Deep-Fried Bounties with Pineapple

Chocolate-Lime Cheesecake

HAM IN COCA-COLA

This recipe is from How to Eat, with some rejigging (just because it’s not in my nature to leave completely alone), and I don’t apologise for reproducing, or rather recasting, it because I simply cannot urge you to try this strongly enough. The first time I made it, it was, to be frank, really just out of amused interest. I’d heard, and read, about this culinary tradition from the deep South, but wasn’t expecting it, in all honesty, to be good. The truth is it’s magnificent, and makes converts of anyone who eats it. But, if you think about it, it’s not surprising it should work: the sweet, spiky drink just infuses it with spirit of barbecue. I have to force myself to cook ham any other way now; though often I don’t bother with the glaze but just leave it for longer in the bubbling Coke instead.

And the salty, sweet liquor it leaves behind in the pot after it’s cooked makes an instant base for the most fabulous black bean soup.

But just one thing before we start: don’t even consider using Diet Coke; it’s full-fat or nothing.

Serves 8

2kg mild-cure gammon

1 onion, peeled and cut in half

2-litre bottle of Coca-Cola

for the glaze:

handful of cloves

1 heaped tablespoon black treacle

2 teaspoons English mustard powder

2 tablespoons demerara sugar

I find now that mild-cure gammon doesn’t need soaking, but if you know that you’re dealing with a salty piece, then put it in a pan covered with cold water, bring to the boil, then tip into a colander in the sink and start from here; otherwise, put the gammon in a pan, skinside down if it fits like that, add the onion, then pour over the Coke. Bring to the boil, reduce to a good simmer, put the lid on, though not tightly, and cook for just under 2½ hours. If your joint is larger or smaller, work out timing by reckoning on an hour per kilo, remembering that it’s going to get a quick blast in the oven later. But do take into account that if the gammon’s been in the fridge right up to the moment you cook it, you will have to give it a good 15 minutes or so extra so that the interior is properly cooked.

Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 240°C/gas mark 9.

When the ham’s had its time (and ham it is, now it’s cooked, though it’s true Americans call it ham from its uncooked state) take it out of the pan (but do NOT throw away the cooking liquid) and let cool a little for ease of handling. (Indeed, you can let it cool completely then finish off the cooking at some later stage if you want.) Then remove the skin, leaving a thin layer of fat. Score the fat with a sharp knife to make fairly large diamond shapes, and stud each diamond with a clove. Then carefully spread the treacle over the bark-budded skin, taking care not to dislodge the cloves. Gently pat the mustard and sugar onto the sticky fat. Cook in a foil-lined roasting tin for approximately 10 minutes or until the glaze is burnished and bubbly.

Should you want to do the braising stage in advance and then let the ham cool, clove and glaze it and give it 30–40 minutes, from room temperature, at 180°C/gas mark 4, turning up the heat towards the end if you think it needs it.

This is seriously fabulous with anything, but the eggily golden sweetcorn pudding that follows is perfect: ham and eggs Southern style.

SWEETCORN PUDDING

This isn’t pudding as in dessert, but as in rich, heavy, airless soufflé. I suppose there’s nothing to stop you separating the eggs, whisking the whites and turning this into a lighter, frothier affair, but there is most definitely no call. This is easy to make, toothsome and comforting to eat, and I have Gabbie de Jersey to thank for it.

There’s something particularly gratifying in specifying a can of cream-style sweetcorn in a recipe, but then I have a great sentimental affection for it. When I was about twelve, it was my idea of gastronomic heaven. And needless to say, children love this: thrown together, in smaller quantities to be sure, and paired with some slices of shop-bought ham, it makes for a simple, stress-free tea, one that’s likely to be eaten, not pushed whiningly to the side of the plate.

Serves 8.

5 eggs

510g can sweetcorn, drained

418g can creamed sweetcorn

300ml full-fat milk

300ml double cream

60g plain flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 190°C/gas mark 5 and butter an ovenproof dish – and I use my old, scuffed Pyrex one which measures 33 x 25cm.

Whisk the eggs in a large bowl, and then add, beating unenergetically, all the other ingredients. Pour into the buttered dish and cook for about an hour, by which time it should have set within and puffed up slightly on the top.

SOUTH-BEACH BLACK BEAN SOUP

This soup bears the name of one in How to Eat, but is very different in composition. There are fewer ingredients in it and fewer demands on the cook who makes it. But how could I lose such a title – in this chapter of all places?

The point about this is that it provides a way of using up the sweet, dark liquor that the Coke-cooked ham has left behind. I know I’m extravagant but, as I’m so fond of intoning, I’m never wasteful, and this is a rewarding way of satisfying my need to use up every last thing in the kitchen. It’s not as if you need to make the soup right away; by all means freeze the stock for future soups if you want. In terms of flavour, I dare say it could be used for a variety of soups, but there is an aesthetic factor to be considered – which isn’t the same thing as being queeny about presentation. The point about black beans is that they’re black: what do they care about the colour of the stock they’re simmered in? If anything, the sludgy darkness of this liquid enhances their muddy glory.

I never soak black beans: just make sure that when you cook them they get their 10 toxin-destroying minutes of vociferous boiling and you’re away.

Serves 8.

500g black beans

Coca-Cola ham stock from recipe above

juice of ½ lime

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

to serve:

sour cream

fresh coriander, chopped

lime wedges

Cook the black beans in the Coca-Cola ham stock until they’re tender. Remove about 3 ladles of the soup to a blender, add the lime juice and ground spices, blitz to a muddy purée and stir this back into the pan of soup. And that’s it.

Swirl some sour cream, as you please, into the bowls of soup as you ladle them out and sprinkle with freshly chopped coriander. Plonk the lime wedges onto the table and let people squeeze the sharp juice into this dense, sweet soup as they eat.

CORNBREAD-ON-THE-COB

The golden sweetness of cornbread goes perfectly with the dark intensity of the black bean soup. Now, you can make cornbread in loaf, square or muffin tins, but I love the cornbread that comes in cornsticks – made by cooking the mixture in cast-iron moulds that resemble folk art themselves, to give the nubbly form of corn-on-the-cob. There’s just something about making food in funny shapes, however soberly compelling the taste, that just has ‘trashy’ all over it, and is very gratifying too sometimes. You can buy these sorts of moulds, over here now, though not usually in cast iron, but I’ve got some that a friend devotedly schlepped over for me all the way from the Broadway Panhandler in New York (a shop with stock as good as its name) which I understandably cherish.