Apple and Cinnamon Cake

We have a ton of apples again this year at the allotment, part of one of our trees has collapsed due to the weight of apples and our trees sag across the path blocking people's way with apples. I am pretty sure everyone at the allotment thinks we are useless, we haven't been as much as I'd like this year, but I still love it.

Our allotment is 'wild' in style. I'm very tidy in the rest of my life, constantly picking things up, cleaning, reordering, stacking, straightening... I think you need to be like that to run an efficient kitchen... but it's nice to have a place in my life that is just a bit messy and free and still beautiful at the same time. I don't care if you can't get down some of the paths, or that you have to crawl under the apple trees to get in. It is overgrown with apple boughs, flowers, vines, blackberries, honeysuckle, creeping nasturtiums, huge fennel plants that have gone to seed, but I personally think that that is the beauty of it. It's not like it's a big patch of nettles; but I'll await my next warning email because I don't think the allotment committee agree...

I think I've been asked for this recipe more than any other recently, pretty much everyone who has ordered it at Cook House wants to know how to make it so I thought I'd better get on with writing it up.

Incidentally it is the cake that a woman once described on Facebook as 'so dry it was impossible to swallow'. She laid into me in front of lots of customers at Cook House when I had just opened, I'll never forget it. She said she would never be back, thankfully. I'd also like to add that she ate every last (dry) crumb of her cake. Thankfully everyone else seems to like it a lot. I suggest you try it and see for yourself...

Get your cake tin ready and lined and preheat the oven to 160˚C.

Peel one large cooking apple... I'm going to have to make a lot of cakes to get through all the allotment apples! and cut it into thick slices.

Melt 150g of butter in a pan on a gentle heat. Then add 225g of self raising flour to a bowl, followed by 225g of caster sugar, a teaspoon of baking powder and 3/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. Give all the dry stuff a good mix and make sure there are no clumps. Beat 2 eggs in another bowl and add a dash of almond essence, about 1/4 teaspoon.

Then add the eggs and the melted butter to the dry mix and quickly bring it together using a spatula, it is almost like a batter when it is fully mixed.

Add 3/4 of the mix to a lined cake tin and spread it out. It might seem like there's not much of the mixture to you, but don't worry, that's how it is meant to be. Then add a layer of apples to the top of the mix, covering the whole lot. Then add the remaining 1/4 of the mix to the middle, on top of the apples. Then quickly pop it in the oven and bake for 50 minutes.

Sprinkle the top with a tiny bit of sugar when it comes out, it will smell amazing, all being well. The batter like mix means you almost get a buttery crust to the edges of the cake, with the middle staying warm and crumbly with soft layers of sweet apple. It is very good still warm from the oven with a dollop of cream, and will keep well for a couple of days in an airtight tin if you're feeling restrained and don't eat it all at once...

Spiced Goat Mince Meatballs in a Roast Tomato & Pepper Sauce

These meatballs were just a bit off the cuff on a Friday night faffing about in the kitchen; I had a packet of goat mince that needed cooking and made it up as I went along. They turned out to be an absolute triumph, and one that I can't wait to make again. I flavoured the meatballs with fennel and coriander seeds, roast them and tossed them in a roast tomato and red pepper sauce, it was so delicious! If you haven't had much goat in the past I would highly recommend it, not as strong as lamb or beef, just a really delicate beautiful flavour, try it out...

Start with the tomatoes, I used a packet of regular sized vine tomatoes. Cut them into quarters and pop them into a baking tray, add a generous splash of olive oil, a pinch of salt, a teaspoon of sugar and some black pepper, give it a good mix and then pop it in the oven at 200˚C for 30 minutes, keep an eye on them as all tomatoes differ. You want it to start to colour and most of the water to cook away, until they start to look a bit sticky and caramelised. When they are ready tip them into a little blender and wizz them up until smooth, they almost become creamy. It's my new favourite way of making a tomato sauce, especially while tomatoes are in season I much prefer this roast fresh tomato method rather than using tins.

While you are waiting for the tomatoes you can start the meatballs. I used one slice of stale brown sourdough bread, crusts removed, wizzed up into a fine crumb. Put the bread crumbs into a bowl and added a splash of milk and leave them to soak.

Toast a teaspoon of coriander seeds and half a teaspoon of fennel seeds in a small pan until you can smell them, then pop them into a pestle and mortar and grind until you get a rough powder.

I used 400g of goat meat for 2 people, this was quite generous, and would feed 3 easily! I get my goat meat from The Goat Company who trade at Jesmond Food market, on the third Saturday of the month. Get a few packs and keep it in the freezer, it really is such delicious meat.

Crumble the mince into a big bowl and add the spices. Then add half a finely chopped onion, a grated clove of garlic, a big pinch of maldon sea salt, some black pepper and the bread crumbs; and mix it all together. Then form into balls and roll together in your hands, about the size of a golf ball.

Put them into a baking tray with some olive oil and a thinly sliced red pepper, coating everything in oil before putting them in the oven. Bake them for 25 minutes, but give them a shake after 10 minutes. They should take on a bit of colour but you don't want them to cook for too long and dry out.

While they were in the oven I cooked a sliced onion in a bit of oil and butter until golden, then added the blitzed tomato sauce into the pan to warm through. A lot of fat came out of my meatballs, which was great as they ended up so juicy, so instead of adding the sauce into the baking tray I scooped them out of the fat with the peppers and tossed them into the sauce in the pan.

Serve with some buttery polenta and some chopped fresh sage. They were SO good, really juicy delicious meatballs and the sauce was lovely and rich, perfect with buttery polenta and little bursts of sage.

Pigeon Prosciutto

I want my game to taste of game, I like it hung and full of strong gamey flavour, it's one of the highlights of Autumn for me. These little pigeon breasts do not disappoint in that respect and are full of flavour. The Feathers Inn had too many to deal with so sent some my way, I think about 20, and I wanted to do something a bit different with them.

I've read about duck ham, although not yet tried it out, so did a bit of reading around the subject. I couldn't find anything about any cured pigeon but thought I'd give it a go anyway. I liked the idea of some cured gamey meat with pickled pears and walnuts, it was ticking a lot of autumnal boxes in my head...

Pigeons are pretty easy to pluck, the feathers come out pretty easily and don't generally tear the skin, it becomes harder work the bigger the bird and how presentable you want them to look at the end. I quite enjoy it, it can be quite messy so recently I've been wrapping up warm and setting up outside with a table and a bin bag, utilising the wind to clear up all the stray feathers, rather than intensive hoovering.

If you're giving this a go starting with a feathered friend, gently pull out all the feathers covering the breast, using your thumb and forefinger. Remove all the feathers from the neck, on the shoulders, down under the wings, over the breast and down to its bum... If you were going to roast it whole you would need to continue to pluck the whole bird, remove the head, wings and legs and then gut it, but that's another story and actually quite easy once you've done it a few times.

Once all the breast feathers are removed take a very sharp knife and make an incision down the centre of the skin along the breast bone, then pull the skin back from the meat to reveal the whole pigeon breast. Then pick a side and keep your knife as close to the bone all the way along from neck to bottom, gently running the length of the bird to remove the breast in one piece with as much meat as possible, aiming to leave little or none behind on the carcass. Repeat on the other side. Then there you have it, a butchered pigeon, you will improve the more you do it, I found doing 20 odd quite satisfying and was pretty proud of my efforts by the end.

I used a cure of 3 parts fine salt and 1 part sugar as I wanted a slight sweetness to it. I added some black pepper, torn up bay leaves, some rosemary and some crushed juniper berries. Sprinkle half of the mix over the bottom of a flat container that will fit all your pigeon breasts, then cover everything with the other half of the cure.

I wasn't sure how long to leave the pigeon to achieve what I wanted, but I put them in one afternoon and checked them the next morning and they were done. I had imagined 2 or 3 days but it was much quicker. The cure had turned to liquid, in turn drawing the liquid out of the meat, the meat had become harder and more solid over night. Remove the pigeon and rinse under cold water, then dry them off with some kitchen roll. I left them out to dry in the air for a few hours, but they are ready to eat straight away. They are rich and gamey, delicious, with a salty hit. I was really pleased with them.

After eating a whole one straight off and patting myself on the back a bit I wondered what to do with them. Curing something always feels a bit like magic to me, you've created something quite complex by doing something quite simple, I always feel a great sense of achievement! I put these guys into a salad that was delicious with bitter radicchio, sweet pickled pears, toasted walnuts and the salty rich irony pigeon, it worked really well.

Slow Cooked Ox Cheek

I've been cooking this dish a lot recently, attempting to perfect it. Ox cheek is my current favourite when it comes to cuts of meat. They are a beautiful thing raw; a really intense deep red, and they smell lovely, an earthy meaty smell that I love. I haven't tried them raw, but they look like they might be tasty, and I've been thinking about curing and air drying a few as I think they would be rich and delicious.

Recently however I've been slow cooking them. I've taken advice from Richard Olney, Nigel Slater and Elizabeth David, not personally you understand, and have ended up with my current method which I'll continue to work on.

I think it is safe to say that a lot of the success of this lies in your beef stock, so be prepared to take your time over it. My last batch was my best yet. I think, that might have been down to the bone marrow... I found myself at the kitchen bench having a little snack of bone marrow sprinkled with salt at about 10am the other morning, I did think to myself 'what on earth are you doing eating this at 10am' but soon realised I didn't give a damn and was pretty delighted to be snacking on bone marrow at 10am. Perks.

If you make a big batch of stock you can freeze some, it then makes the ox cheek a much more simple dish to prepare next time you want to cook it. You will want to cook it again, I'm guessing. Ask your butcher for some beef bones, make sure you get a few with some marrow you can scoop out. Then roast the bones at 200˚C for about 20 minutes until they are golden brown and the fat is sizzling. 

While they are cooking get a big pan, heat a splash of oil, and fry a couple of chopped onions, a big pinch of salt, a couple of chopped red onions, a couple of chopped peeled carrots (the skin can be bitter in a stock) a couple of sticks of chopped celery, a chopped leek, a few sprigs of parsley, a couple of bay leaves, a few black peppercorns, a couple of cloves of peeled garlic and cook this all until it softens and starts to turn golden. Then add in the beef bones and enough water to cover everything, a few litres usually. You don't want too much water as you'll loose the flavour, just enough to cover.

Then bring the whole thing to the boil and simmer very gently for 3 hours. It should be only just moving. 'Don't boil the love out of it' someone once told me and I remember it every time. About half way through you should be able to scoop the bone marrow out of the bones, leave it to melt into the stock as it continues to cook. I usually do all this the day before as it's quite a time consuming task.

Now to the cheeks. I serve one cheek per person, but make a few extra just in case you fancy a bit more. Season the cheeks with salt on both sides. Heat a large cast iron pan or frying pan with a splash of olive oil and lay in the ox cheeks when it's hot. Don't crowd them, do them in batches if needs be. Don't move them around, just leave them to brown in one place for a couple of minutes on each side, you're looking for golden brown patches to form, all adding to the final flavour. Do this slowly, don't rush, and place the ox cheeks into a deep baking tray or oven dish as they are ready. Then add two sliced onions and two thickly sliced cloves of garlic to the pan you browned the meat in and cook slowly until golden.

Now add 125ml of red wine and the juice of an orange to the onion pan, heat on high and scrape up anything meaty stuck to the bottom of the pan, until it has reduced slightly, pour this over the ox cheeks, then add your delicious beef stock until the cheeks are just poking out of the top, about a litre. Finally add to the pan a chopped carrot, a couple of strips of zest from the orange, the skin of a pear and lots of black pepper. Cover with tin foil or a lid and cook in the oven at 180˚C for 3 hours, turning the cheeks occasionally. There's a turn the other cheek joke in there somewhere...

Then they are ready, they are the most beautifully soft melty delicious things, with a rich reduced gravy to boot. Serve an ox cheek per person with some vegetables and gravy spooned over, lots of horseradish or mustard, mash, polenta, whatever you fancy. It's been on the menu at Cook House quite a lot recently, I can't see myself tiring of it any time soon...

Hawthorn Berry Chutney

I'm full of cold today, I've just taken a 'night-time' cold and flu tablet, I don't need much encouragement to sleep at the best of time, so I'm fully expecting to be comatose within about 20 minutes, I'll type fast... So autumn brings colds and flu, but also the best of the seasonal food in my view...

In my kitchen at the moment I have a mix of amazing looking squashes, bags of hawthorn berries, pickles in jars of all shades and colours dotted around, it really feels like a bounty compared to any other time of year. It is a pleasure having the time at Cook House to pickle, pot and preserve as the autumn sun streams in the windows. The nooks and crannies of the Ouseburn are also filled with blackberries, rosehips and elderberries, massive spiders and thorns, but I have still managed to fill up punnets with various hedgerow bounties... add to that the start of the shooting season and I couldn’t be happier to be back in the throes of autumnal dining... 

I'm pretty pleased with this chutney, I have always imagined hawthorn to be poisonous, but it turns out you can eat all of it, leaves, blossom and berries... The trees in the Lake District last weekend were heavy with hawthorn berries, I filled a bag full. The little hawthorn berries are plentiful at this time of year and they make a delicious chutney, good with cold meats, game and cheese, a tasty sweet-spicy sauce... 

  

 
Snip the berries from their stalks, about 1kg of them, wash them then simmer in 500ml of cider vinegar and a teaspoon of salt. Simmer for an hour then press through a sieve into a clean saucepan, keeping the syrup you extract. Add to it, 125g of raisins and 300g of brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of ground ginger, 1 teaspoon of ground nutmeg, ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves, ¼ teaspoon of ground allspice and a grind of black pepper. Then simmer uncovered for 15 minutes until quite thick and pour into clean jars and seal. It is delicious with a slice of game terrine, rich spicy and quite different from any chutney I've ever had...

Blackberry Jam Crumble Tart

You might have to be quick to catch the last of the blackberries this year, but there are still some around. I think they came early this year, but while it is still 18 degrees outside I kind of forgot it was meant to be autumn...

I've been climbing around in bushes in the Ouseburn to gather what I can. I've made a little stock of jam, which is delicious with some toast in Cook House of a morning, but I also discovered a blackberry jam tart with a crumble topping...

It came about by accident as I needed something sweet for the menu at Cook House but had run out of eggs, cakes without eggs wasn't filling me with ideas or inspiration. A simple jam tart seemed the answer, then came the thought of crumble... it's so good... Unfortunately it uses a whole jar of jam each time I make one, so I'll have to get back out and find some more blackberries...

For the jam I started with a small batch, so you can scale up if you have more. These amounts made one large jar of jam. Take 300g of blackberries and wash them thoroughly, I came across some of the biggest spiders I've ever seen picking these guys... Put them in a pan with 20ml of water, 1 tablespoon of lemon juice and a piece of lemon rind and simmer very gently for 15 minutes until the fruit is really soft. Then add 300g of caster sugar, dissolve it slowly, then turn up the heat and boil for about 10 minutes, until it reaches 105°C. Turn off the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes, then fill sterilised jars and label.

For the tart I made a small batch of shortcrust pastry, 125g of plain flour, 55g of cold butter cubed, blitzed in the food processor to a fine crumb, then drizzle in a tiny amount of very cold water until it comes together. It often turns out better if you make double this amount however, then you get two tarts for your money, or you can freeze or refridgerate the other half...

Roll the pastry out and line a shallow tart tin, then spread a thin layer of the jam over the base of the pastry. To make the crumble topping melt 60g of butter in a pan, then add 5 tablespoons of oats, 4 tablespoons of caster sugar, 5 tablespoons of self raising flour and 2 tablespoons of ground almonds. Mix with a fork until you get a crumbly mix then sprinkle over the top of the jam.

 

Finally bake the lovely tart at 200°C for 15-20 minutes. It is a delicious autumnal jam tart that has me constantly making more jam so I can eat it again at the moment...

Rosehip Syrup

I’ve wanted to try making something with rosehips for ages, the hedges around my office in the Ouseburn are packed with blackberries, rosehips and elderberries at the moment, and I’ve been starting to get anxious that they would be gone before I had a chance to experiment. It’s been a busy few months with lots and lots of dining events, but I have finally found time.

I picked a bag of rosehips one night when I left the office and headed home to experiment. I have a lovely preserves book by Pam Corbin, which has all the answers with what to do with autumnal berries. Rosehips are packed with vitamins A and C, you can make jams, jellies, wine and tea with them and this syrup, which I might use for puddings at some point, but I’m much more likely to use for cocktails...

I knocked up a big bottle full for the guys at Ouseburn Coffee Company, who made a prosecco, rosehip syrup and coffee vodka cocktail for Urban Night Feast... They made me try it at 10am the other morning... it was bloody lovely, but not the hour for vodka and prosecco, one sip went straight to my head!

I’m thinking Gin, soda and Rosehip Syrup... Just with water it is lovely as a cordial, or with soda, you can also have it with hot water as a warming winter drink. I’ve also got ideas that it might be nice in a posset, rosehip and blackberry posset, I’ll have to try that asap...

I probably had about three large handfuls of hips, about 500g. Wash them carefully, getting rid of dirt, chaff and bugs. Then blitz in a food processor until quite fine and add to a pan of about 800ml of boiling water. Bring back to the boil briefly and then let them sit for about 15 minutes. Then pour through a jelly bag or muslin, or as I improvised kitchen roll over a sieve... Then leave to drip for an hour.

Then repeat the process by adding the pulp back to another 800ml of boiling water, bring back to the boil, then the recipe says to let it sit for another 15 minutes, but I let one batch sit overnight and got a much stronger syrup, so leave as long as you can. Then drain again for an hour.

Finally combine both lots of strained juice, it should be about 900ml, pour into a pan and add 600g of granulated sugar and heat until dissolved. Boil for 3 minutes then pour into a sterilised bottle or jars. It will keep for about 4 months.

I’ll keep you posted on my cocktail experiments... mmm...

Apple and Blackberry Cobbler

Last year my apple trees produced six apples, six, and I made a few jars of a lovely spiced apple pickle and a delicious apple and cardamom tart. This year is a different story, there are literally hundreds of apples, it's all the apple trees can do to stay upright they are so weighed down by their crop. It's been a bumper year for apples I understand, perfect apple weather all year; it's definitely nothing I have done, they have just multiplied, a lot... I'm still not quite sure what I'm going to do with them all; but I began with a cobbler...

We spent the morning frantically tidying the allotment after an incoming warning email expressing concerns over the standard of care that my allotment is receiving ... oh dear... We've even been better this year, grown more, been there more, made paths and new beds, but a few weeks of neglect whilst on holiday and general life stuff has seen the grass grow about two feet, the beans fall over in the wind, every weed go wild, so you can't even see most of the plants. We have made a vague fight back with a strimmer and lots of weeding, but it's quite a task.

  

I love an apple and blackberry crumble, my granny was famous for them, I think she made them for every family get together for about twenty years, until someone dared to say they might like something different and she went on crumble strike for ever more, we ate lemon syllabub for every meal from then on, and no one made any more comments... A cobbler is a kind of crumble that came about in the Second World War as they use lots of filling but less butter and topping than a traditional crumble, they are essentially lots of little biscuits joined together to form a crust. Delicious little lemony biscuits...

This is a St John recipe, from their book Beyond Nose to Tail, and it serves 6. If you start with the pastry so it can chill in the fridge for a while. Use a big bowl and combine 225g of self raising flour and 100g of unsalted butter cut into little cubes, rub the butter into the flour until it is like breadcrumbs. Then add 50g of caster sugar, the juice and zest of half a lemon and a lightly beaten egg. Mix it all together into a dough and add a little milk to make a soft dough, I only needed a tablespoon or so. Wrap the dough in cling film and leave it in the fridge for 3-4 hours.

 

Then the apples, 6 cooking apples; peel, core and dice into small pieces and add to a pan with 50g of unsalted butter, 75g of brown sugar, the juice and zest of a lemon and cook on a gentle heat until soft. Remove them from the heat and stir in about 250g of blackberries. Put the fruit into a pie dish, and top with circles of the chilled pastry, either cut with a pastry cutter or rolled into balls and flattened. Finally brush the top with a beaten egg, sprinkle with brown sugar and bake at 180°C for 30 minutes.

The pastry 'biscuits' are delicious sweet and lemony, with soft stewed fruit melting into them, sweet apple and tangy ripe black berries. Serve with cream, crème fraiche or custard. A dead tasty autumn pudding.