Ceci n'est pas un fruitcake

This year I hemmed and hawed over what I wanted to make for Easter Dessert. Pies, cakes, ice creams--they all flitted through my mind as non-descript actors flit through the minds of fickle teenaged girls: nothing truly grabbed my attention for more than a few days.

TVO currently airs Edwardian Farm--a 12-episode programme chronicling two experimental archaeologists and one historian living the lives of Edwardian farmers at Morwellham Quay--where one episode included a Simnel Cake--a light fruitcake usually made for the middle Sunday of Lent. Tradition has it that the cake is covered with a round of marzipan and 11 marzipan marbles (one for each of the 12 apostles, less one for Judas).

This idea stuck. Well...some of this idea stuck.

Even though I am a founding member and lifelong president of Fruitcake Liberation Society (a rag tag group of people who like fruitcake and don't understand why people cast aspersions at fruit-ladened and alcohol-drenched cakes (well, apart from the storebought ones...those don't count), I just didn't feel like making a traditional fruitcake (even if it is a light one).

But a cake that combined marzipan and dried fruit...is not a fruit cake.

It is a fruited cake.

I quickly dismissed the idea of a plain fruited cake and decided to go for an almond cake. The nut quotient was increased by good bit by including a marzipan layer in the cake and a dribble of almond extract. I selected my favourite fruits that play well with the dominant nuttiness: apricots, cranberries and blueberries.

Unsurprisingly, this is an almond-lover's cake (so if you don't like almonds, you may want to pass this one by). It's sweet and a bit sticky and a great pick-me-up with a cup of afternoon tea.

Fruited Almond Cake
Yield 1 x 20cm (8") cake

Ingredients
100g (185ml/.75c) dried apricots (14-15 pieces)
100g (165ml/0.66c) dried cranberries
100g (165ml/0.66c) dried blueberries
225g (415ml/1.66c) cake flour
1.25tsp (6.25ml) baking powder
110g (125ml/0.5c) room temperature butter
3Tbsp (45ml) flavourless oil
150g (375ml/1.5c) sugar
0.25tsp (1.25ml) salt
2 eggs
0.5tsp (2.5ml) almond extract
85g (210ml/a generous 0.75c) ground almonds
165ml (0.66c) milk
225g (0.5lb) marzipan
icing sugar (for dusting)

Method
Tip all the dried fruit into a bowl and cover with boiling water. Let the fruit plump for at least 20 minutes. Drain, chop the apricots into cranberry-sized pieces. Cover with more hot water until ready to use.

Preheat oven to 170C (350F). Butter and flour a tall-sided 20cm (8") round cake pan. Set aside

Sift together the cake flour and baking powder. Set aside.

Roll the marizpan into a 20cm/8" circle. Set that aside too.

Cream together the butter, oil, sugar and salt for about three or four minutes, until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs one at a time, followed by the extract. Mix in the almond flour. Drain the now plumped fruit and fold into the batter.

Add the flour and milk into the batter alternate addition, in the usual way (dry-wet-dry-wet-dry), scraping down the bowl's sides after each dry addition.

Pour half the batter into the prepared cake tin. Lay the marizpan round on top. Pour in the remaining batter.

Bake for 50-60 minutes. The cake will be golden in colour and begin to pull away from the sides. Remove from oven and let cool completely before unmoulding.

Dust with icing sugar before serving, if you wish.

Notes:

• Use whatever combination of dried fruits you wish--sultanas, currants, raisins, cherries--keeping the total weight (or volume) to what's in the recipe

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Good Friday: Seafood Pie

It seems as if everyone I know who's keeping Good Friday is having a fish fry today. Don't get me wrong, I love a good fish fry (tempura, beer batter, heavily spiced and dry fried--it's all good), but I just didn't want to go through "all that" ... not that it's arduous--if you're looking for a good deep fried fish recipe, here's my catfish fingers recipe.

After an oddly warm winter, we're back to seasonal temps--cool nights and just-this-side-of-warm days--and I want something a bit more hearty and soul-warming than battered or crumb-coated fish.

Work took me to New England for a few days last month--it's a gorgeous area, blessed with a long shoreline. Being landlocked at home, being an hour from the Atlantic meant sampling amazingly fresh seafood. And sample I did: crabcakes, calamari, lazyman's lobster, lobster rolls, baked oysters, seared tuna. All were delicious, but on my last night in Nashua, NH, my colleague and I had supper at Surf Restaurant, where I had the fisherman's platter: whitefish, scallops and shrimp with potatoes and veggies in a butter-white wine sauce, under a cracker crumb crust. One word describes that dish: succulent.

That dish inspired today's Good Friday supper of a seafood pie. Unlike other seafood pies, I didn't want a heavy white sauce binding together filling--I usually find them too rich, so I played with a yoghurt-olive oil bechamel I use for my moussaka. I also did away with the mashed potato topping (apologies to purists)--but I wanted this to be relatively easy and fuss-free, so I simply cubed the potatoes and mixed them with the fish filling.

Don't be put off by the seemingly lengthy ingredients list-- a good number of ingredients are for the poaching liquid, and although I could have simply indicated 250g (0.5lb) of mixed seafood, I gave you the breakdown I used for tonight's meal.

Unlike many traditional pies, this version has a slight tang, thanks to the sour cream and the dijon mustard. I like the lighter sauce, as it doesn't battle against the fish and seafood--if you'd rather go a more traditional route, make a standard bechamel sauce (see notes). The sour cream sauce is quite loose when the pie comes out of the oven--simply spoon it into your bowl. Keep the cracker crumbs--they add a nice textural contrast against the softness of the filling.

Seafood Pie
Serves 4-6

Ingredients
250ml (1c) clam juice or fish stock (see note)
125ml (0.5c) white wine
1 bay leaf
a few parsley stems
a few dill stems
a few celery leaves
6 lightly crushed black peppercorns
250g (8oz) firm white fleshed fish, such as cod, haddock, pollock or sole (see notes)
150g (5oz) boiling potatoes, cubed into 1.25cm (0.5") pieces
2dspn (20ml/4tsp) olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
1 celery rib, finely sliced
2dspn (20ml/4tsp) all purpose flour
125ml (0.5c) milk
125ml (0.5c) sour cream
1Tbsp (15ml) dijon mustard
1/8tsp dried tarragon
2-3Tbsp (30-45ml) minced parsley
salt
pepper
100g (3oz) smoked fish, such as trout or haddock, broken into bite-sized pieces (optional)
125g (4oz) scallops (I used bay scallops)
125g (4oz) shrimp
90g (0.75c) frozen peas
a few handfuls of cracker crumbs

Method
Parboil the potato pieces in salted water. While they are cooking, poach the fish by bringing to a boil the the clam juice, wine, bay leaf, stalks, celery leaves and peppercorns (if you have fish skins/bones, and shrimp shells, add them as well). Turn the hob down to a simmer, add the cod and poach for five minutes. Remove the fish from the broth. Strain out the leaves and whatnots from the broth. Reduce the liquid to 125ml (0.5c). Pour into a measuring jug and set aside.

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Sweat the onions and celery in the oil. Stir in the flour and cook until biscuit-coloured. Whisk in the milk and sour cream for a few minutes, until thick. Add in the reduced poaching broth and mustard. Continue whisking for a few minutes. Stir in the parsley and tarragon. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.

Stir in the parboiled potatoes, smoked fish, scallops, shrimp and peas. Fold in the poached fish, keeping care to keep bite-sized chunks.

Pour into a baking dish. Strew the crumbs over top.

Bake for 25 minutes. Turn on the grill (broiler) and brown the crumbs for about 1-2 minutes.

Notes:

• Truth be told, I used one 236ml bottle of clam juice (why it's such an odd volume, I have no clue).
• This is a pretty adaptable recipe--add whatever vegetables you wish (peas, carrots, spinach, fennel), use salmon or trout instead of white fish, and choose whatever combination of fish and seafood you wish (try including clams or mussels to the mix)--the total fish and seafood weight should be about 600g (1.33lbs).
• If you are using smoked fish, remember to slightly undersalt the sour cream bechamel as the fish will add to the saltiness of the dish.
• To make a standard bechamel for this recipe: sweat the onions and celery in 25g (30ml/2.5TbspP butter, then stir in 25g (20ml/2.5Tbsp) flour, let toast until it is biscuit-coloured. Pour in 250ml (1c) of light or heavy cream and stir until thick.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!

Happy St. Patrick's Day: Guinness-Braised Beef Ribs

Happy St. Patrick's Day to one and all. I hope you are able to spend the day with those who mean much to you.

This year's Guinness-inspired recipe was supposed to be Guinness-braised shortribs. I bought a couple of slabs of shortribs from my favourite butcher and put them in the freezer, until I had time to create this recipe. Sounds like a good idea, right? I'm thinking ahead, making sure my supper's star is ready to make his (her?) grand entrance.

One of my many great flaws is I rarely label my beef ribs. Everything else--sausages, bacon, chicken, lamb--they are all adequately labelled so I can easily pull out what I need.

Not beef ribs. In my addled brain, they are an identifiable shape in my freezer, so I think I'm pretty safe. Not this time.

This is not a beef shortrib bone. This is a beef...ummm...longrib bone.

Oh well.

I didn't realise my error until after I'd thawed the ribs. No worries. They were gorgeous and meaty and soon the original idea of braised shortribs morphed into braised beef ribs.

Knowing how well my contraption of a slow cooker works on pork ribs, I decided pull it off my shelf and put it to work on this recipe. A great move, especially as I set it to cook before I toddled off to bed the night before I wanted to serve this.

The beef was meltingly tender and the jus was nicely balanced: sweet from the tomato and the onion, but with those great deep chocolate-bitter notes from Guinness. It paired well with the cheddar'd mashed potatoes and roast asparagus, for a hearty cold-weather supper.

Guinness-Braised Beef Ribs
Serves 2-4

Ingredients

For the rub:
2Tbsp (30ml) brown sugar (dark, preferably)
1tsp (5ml) sweet paprika
1tsp (5ml) black pepper
1tsp (5ml) salt
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dry mustard
0.25tsp (1.25ml) garlic powder
0.25tsp (1.25ml) onion powder

For the braising liquid:
440ml (1.75c/1 can) Guinness
440ml (1.75c) passata/tomato puree
250ml (1c) beef broth

1.5tsp (7.5ml) Worcestershire Sauce
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dried thyme
0.5tsp (2.5ml) dried rosemary
2 dried bay leaves
0.5tsp (2.5ml) salt
0.5tsp (2.5ml) pepper

Flavourless oil, for frying
1kg (2lbs) beef ribs (meat still on the bone) or beef short ribs, cut into one-rib pieces
1 onion, sliced into thin lunettes
1-2 garlic cloves, minced


Method
Mix together the rub ingredients and pat onto meat and let sit for at least an hour, but preferably overnight in the fridge. Do not discard any leftover rub.

Mix the braising liquid's ingredients together and set aside.

Heat oil in a skillet until it shimmers. Sear the meat, in batches, on all sides. Set the browned meat on a plate and cover with tin foil. In the same skillet, cook the onions until translucent. Add the garlic and stir until it releases its fragrance.

Slow cooker method:
Prep the contraption, as per manufacturer's instructions. Tip the onion mixture into the slow cooker. Layer the seared meat over top. Stir in any remaining rub mixture into the braising liquid and pour over the meat. Set to low and cook for eight hours. The meat should be fork tender and almost fall off the bone.

Oven method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/350F.

Add the ingredients in an oven-safe lidded pot (such as a dutch oven), or in a deep baking dish as per the slow cooker instructions. Lid the pot or tightly cover the dish with tin foil. Braise, cooking in the oven for about 2.5 hours, or until the meat is fork-tender.

Serving suggestions:
If you are using beef ribs, cut the meat off the bone, and into bite-sized chunks.

Serve over plain, garlic or cheddar-mashed potatoes, buttered rice, buttered egg noodles or slices of hearty, crusty bread with plenty of the braising liquid. Accompany it with sautéed greens, asparagus or peas.

Notes:
- This dish tastes better the next day (and the next), although it is mighty fine served the day of.

-If you are serving it the next day (or later), allow the pot to cool to room temperature before popping into the fridge. Before reheating (in a lidded pot, in the oven at 350F/180C for about 30 or so minutes), remove as much of the solid that has floated to the top of the liquid.

cheers!

jasmine

I'm a quill for hire!