It fell to us to host this year and it occurred to me that despite my enthusiasm for all things Alpine I’d never yet chosen a Swiss theme. The challenge would be to avoid as many Swiss clichés as possible – cheese, chocolate, cowbells, cuckoo clocks and similar tat, and to keep the dishes relatively light so we’d all make it into 2012 feeling fit and raring to go.

Here’s the menu I came up with. You’ll see I didn’t entirely succeed with no cheese/light cuisine idea as the Malakoffs – deep-fried battered chunks of gruyère sound like the (Scottish?) first cousin of the deep fried Mars bar, but I couldn’t resist:

Canapés

(i) Bundnerfleisch (thin slices of air-dried cured beef)wrapped around celeriac remoulade; and (ii) Malakoffs – deep fried gruyère sticks

First course

Hay soup -light chicken/vegetable cream soup infused with meadow hay

Second course

Individual Luzerner Chugelipastete – puff pastry dome filled with braised veal pieces in cream and saffron sauce

Main course

Venison medallions with preiselbeer sauce, rösti and braised red cabbage

Salad

Lambs’ lettuce (the cutely named Nüsslisalat in German)

Pudding

Walnut and cinnamon parfait with mulled prune sauce and Zimtsternen – cinnamon star biscuits

Cheese

Vacherin Mont d’Or

Menu decided, next step was to set the scene. There’s never time to sort out a table centrepiece when you’re preparing a meal so I called in professional help in the form of Vicky Clements’ magnificent Swiss flag inspired floral arrangement in red and whie, a veritable alp in miniature (see her contact details below if you’re in or around S Manchester/Cheshire):

Vicky was responsible for the fairy-lit hearts too. Sehr gemütlich, Ja?

I dusted down my piping skills to write dinner guests’ names on an experimental batch of moulded biscuits using my newly acquired Swiss Springerle moulds. They were a little involved to make but I was quite pleased with these as my first attempt. My piping is rusty though and it took a few attempts to steady the hands and create something legible:

Air dried beef is usually served as part of a large platter of cured meats and cheeses in Switzerland. We chose to roll the beef around celeriac remoulade which created a light and fresh-tasting canapé packed with flavour. Janet made the celeriac – very simply made by mixing raw grated celeriac into a Greek yoghurt, lemon and parsley dressing – and assembled the canapés and very pretty they looked too. Celeriac makes a fantastic winter salad and we’ve eaten it several times already since then:

The doyennes of cookery and entertaining always tell you not to try out new recipes on your guests don’t they? Well, I think rules like this are meant to be broken, but sometimes minor disasters will ensue. I think it’s fair to say that the malakoffs didn’t work. Tim was banished to the garage to deep fry these battered cheese parcels. I can’t abide the smell of deep-frying fat in the house, so our deep-fat fryer lives very happily in the garage which means that, with the assistance of the barbecue it’s pretty easy to rustle up a mean steak and chips for al fresco consumption in the summer.

I thought we’d followed the malakoff instructions on the Swiss food blog www.fxcuisine.com to the letter. Maybe the batter was too light, maybe the oil was too hot, maybe we cooked them for too long, but when we came to consume the malakoffs, they turned out to be hollow as all the molten cheese had leaked out into the frying oil creating an unholy mess (which I have yet to properly clean up I’m ashamed to say). The fritters looked the part and retained enough of the ghost of a flavour of cheese to allow you to imagine how delicious a correctly cooked malakoff might be. Another time…

We began the meal proper with an unusual hay soup, expertly prepared by Shelley. This is a traditional Swiss soup, different versions of which come from the mountainous cantons of Valais and Graubünden. I’d tasted this in Klosters a couple of winters ago, and it looked so pretty presented on its bed of hay and garnished with dried meadow flowers that I had to put it on our menu.

I couldn’t find a definitive recipe but found several different versions by searching under “Heusuppe Rezept”. Our version used a hay-infused light stock, a flavour base of sweated vegetables and a little pearl barley to thicken. I think I’d like to try out the other versions before publishing a definitive recipe.

Sourcing the hay proved to be harder than I’d thought. I scoured farms in the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales for an elusive handful of local organic meadow hay but without success – all I was offered was silage which I don’t think would make a very pleasant tasting soup. In the end, The Hay Experts (see contact details below) came to my rescue. They really do know their hays (even if the end consumer is usually a pet rabbit) and despatched just what I needed very promptly.

Our next course was a miniature version of the Luzerner Chugelipastete – an exuberant puff pastry dome filled with braised veal and veal sausagemeat in a creamy saffron flavoured sauce. In order to cut down on the pastry, I made pastry lids to cover the braised veal which was served in individual ramekins.
I posted last year on the subject of this dish:
http://rhubarbfool.co.uk/2011/03/03/lunch-in-lucerne/

I used a couple of cheat steps when I made the miniature version of the dish. Short of time, I used Dorset all-butter puff pastry – reliably good if you don’t have time to make your own. Instead of veal forcemeat balls made from scratch I used a pack of veal meatballs from Waitrose. These are made from ethically sourced British rosé veal and are delicious and versatile. Actually, I didn’t follow the Marian Kaltenbach recipe for the sauce which I’ve quoted before at all. I flash fried strips of veal tenderloin, combined them with the cooked veal meatballs, added a little stock and cream, reduced the whole lot down to make a sauce and added grapes macerated in a Swiss grappa type schnapps to finish. I was reasonably happy with the end result:

We were now well set up for the main event, a fabulous-looking venison tenderloin supplied from The Blackface Meat Company who are based up near Dumfries in Scotland. I’ve used them a couple of times before for game and rare breed meat. They may be a little expensive but they supply top quality meat, expertly butchered and delivered promptly and efficiently to your door.

I did try and obtain some local venison from Dunham Massey. Each year, the deer are culled and just a few of the younger deer are butchered and sold to the public via a local farm shop. Unfortunately because of problems with poaching this year I didn’t know if my tenderloin was going to turn up on time. When finally I did get the call that the venison was available, I was a little disappointed with what the butcher had done as this tenderloin was nowhere near as expertly trimmed as the Blackhouse meat. So Dunham’s answer to Bambi is in the freezer ready for a future Sunday lunch.

The Blackhouse website lists useful recipes and I followed chef Mark Hix’s instructions for marinading the venison in red wine before flash-frying and serving with a red wine reduction. Not an authentic Swiss recipe but very Swiss in character as you’ll find lots of robust game dishes cooked with red wine in restaurants during the autumn and winter hunting season.

The venison was expertly cooked by Janet and was served with everyone’s favourite Swiss dish, potato rösti,braised red cabbage and a spoonful of Preiselbeer sauce. The Preiselbeer is a smaller, tastier European relative of the more familiar North American cranberry. It’s also known as the lingonberry in Swedish and here in England it’s known as the cowberry but is not a popular forager’s fruit as yet.

Sorry my pictures of the finished dish are too dark to be meaningful, but here are photos of the meat bathing in its marinade, the same meat cooked and carved, and a jar of the Preiselbeer sauce brought back from a little shop in Klosters:

Avoiding the temptations of triple Toblerone chocolate mousse and the like, I chose a simple walnut and honey parfait for pudding served with prunes cooked in red wine and spices to give a delicious festive mulled-wine flavour. Alongside the parfait and prunes I served a traditional Swiss/German advent biscuit, the Zimtstern – a cinnamon flavoured dough made like a macaroon from ground nuts, sugar and whisked egg whites, topped with a crisp meringue icing. These are nutty, chewy and delicious and a tad difficult to make. I’ve not given the recipe in this post as frankly it’s too long already, and they merit a post all of their own.

To conclude the meal as we approached midnight, a superb Vacherin Mont d’Or cheese from the Jura region of Switzerland, one of my favourite cheeses. It’s soft and creamy and can be spooned out of its wooden box when properly mature and ready to eat. It’s only available during the winter months. Ours came from the Duty Free shop at Zürich airport, but you can find it over here sometimes either in a specialist cheese shop or occasionally in Waitrose. If you find one, grab it, you won’t regret it.

I couldn’t possibly list all the evening’s recipes in a single post – in fact to help with the preparations, I photocopied and printed them all out and have enough material for a small cookery book!

I’m just going to give two recipes, both straightforward and both now in my regular repertoire.

Recipe for celeriac remoulade

My lighter, fresher version of this bistro classic, replacing the usual mayo with Greek yoghurt.

Serves 4 or more as part of a selection of salads

Ingredients

1 small or half a medium celeriac grated in a food processor
juice of half a lemon
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons thick Greek yoghurt
2 tablespoons half fat crème fraîche
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon chopped flatleaf parsley

Grate the celeriac quite finely (easiest to do this in a food processor) and in a medium bowl mix thoroughly with the lemon juice to stop the celeriac turning brown. You can prepare the celeriac to this stage then refrigerate it several hours ahead of time and it will still be fine. When you’re ready to serve, add the other ingredients to the bowl and stir to combine.

Recipe for walnut parfaits with mulled prunes

Translated from the German and adapted from a little Swiss cookbook called “Geliebte Schweizer Küche”.

Serves 6

Ingredients

For the mulled prunes

1 bottle fruity red wine
200g prunes
2 cinnamon sticks
1 vanilla pod
2 cloves
1 large piece of peel from an unwaxed orange

For the parfait

2 eggs
2 dessertspoons runny honey
1 pinch powdered cinnamon
1 dessertspoon Grand Marnier
180ml whipping cream
50g walnuts, coarsely chopped

Begin by making the mulled prunes the day before you plan to serve the dish. Put all the ingredients into a saucepan, bring to the boil then leave to cool and infuse overnight.

Next make the parfait. You can make this a couple of days ahead of time as it’s frozen. Mix the eggs, honey, powdered cinnamon and Grand Marnier together in a bowl. Using an electric whisk, beat together until the mixture is light and foamy. In a separate bowl, whisk the cream to the soft peak stage and combine with the egg mixture and chopped walnuts. Divide the mixture between 6 or more small moulds (china teacups or ramekins are fine) and freeze for at least four hours.

When you are ready to serve, dip the moulds briefly into hot water, loosen with a knife if necessary and invert onto individual serving plates. Spoon the prunes and red wine sauce around and serve.

Contact details

Vicky Clements – “Inside Out” flowers and gardening, Bowdon, Cheshire
Mobile 07762 387 372

The Hay Experts – suppliers of organic and other hays
http://www.thehayexperts.co.uk/

The Blackface Meat Company – suppliers of rare breed meat and game
http://www.blackface.co.uk/

There’s lots to write about so I think I’d better catch up belatedly with the best bits of Christmas and New Year before moving on to the various food projects that have been keeping me busy this month.

We spent Christmas once again in Klosters in the mountainous and picturesque canton of Graubunden in Eastern Switzerland. During the course of 6 days, we ate our way through the Klosters pages of the Gault-Millau guide (4 restaurants collectively clocking up a whacking score of 59 Gault Millau points out of a theoretical maximum of 80), pausing only for a pizza on Christmas Day by way of respite. To be fair, our skiing lunches were pretty austere – Gerstensuppe (barley broth – a local speciality) or Gulaschsuppe for the most part – so we felt justified in going for it in the evenings.

Night 1 Rustico 13 GM points cumulative GM points 13

First up was the aptly named Hotel Rustico where we arrived curious to discover how the much fêted chef Vincent Wong would pull off the fusion of Asian and Swiss cuisine for which he is famous.

The Rustico certainly looked the part:

We were ushered out of the snow into the warmth of the cosy wood-panelled dining room and handed a menu of largely cheesy delicacies – essentially fondue or raclette. The boys were thrilled, but where was the Asian-Swiss fusion cuisine we’d come for?

There was just a hint of this on the menu – I ordered the scallop-filled Capuns (a local ravioli-like speciality of savoury stuffing wrapped in chard leaves traditionally made with meat and breadcrumbs).
It looked pretty enough:

But disappointingly the scallops garnishing the Capuns were overcooked and possibly had arrived deep frozen rather than fresh on the shell and the filling itself was just plain stodgy. A dish that could of have been inspired but sadly the kitchen didn’t pull it off.

The fondue and raclette (not really a speciality of this region) were absolutely fine but we remained mystified as to the restaurant’s reputation for fine cooking.

A bit of research afterwards solved the mystery. We’d gone wrong on two counts. First, my Swiss-German being not so good, I’d booked us into the “Prättigauer Hüschi” rather than the restaurant proper (a bit like booking in for a bar meal rather than the full Monty in a country-house hotel). Second, the Rustico seems to have a bit of a chequered history and has changed hands twice in the last year or so, but the 2012 Gault-Millau guide has failed to reflect this still listing Al and Renée Thöny plus chef Vincent Wong as the management team. In fact Stefan Stocker and Martina Schele took over last year and shortly thereafter handed over to the current proprietors Anja and Jörg Walter. Herr and Frau Walter list AC DC, Swiss folk music and motorbiking amongst their shared interests. Does this perhaps give us a clue as to the direction in which they’ll be taking the hotel and restaurant?

Night 2 Alpina 15 GM points cumulative GM points 28

The Alpina is conveniently situated opposite Klosters’ busy little railway station – a model railway set writ large. It’s a slightly unprepossesing modern chalet-hotel type building that the owners have done their best to clothe with alpine charm. The boys were particularly taken (and I was too actually!) with the polar bear snow sculpture which sits as a pediment above the underground carpark entrance:

We were seated on a prime corner table and presented with the menus. This was a little scary at first as both starters and mains were labelled rather severely as single words.

I opted for “Tomato” and followed it up with “Lamb”.

The obligatory amuse-bouche arrived followed-up mercifully quickly (we were hungry after a day’s skiing) with the starters. The menu writing may have been laconic but the food itself was rather more sumptuous, not to mention playful.

Here’s what “Tomato” turned out to be – a tomato Caipirinha (much more on-trend than a Bloody Mary), tomato mousse and the most intense clear essence of tomato and rabbit:

The restaurant clearly has high aspirations and cooking standards to match. Nevertheless the restaurant had a warm friendly atmosphere and we all felt comfortable. Yes, there’s a touch of pretentiousness about some of the menu wording – chef Christian Kaiser went under the moniker “Pleasure Composer” and the front-of-house team led by Jacques Revel and Patricia Reumschüssel were referred to as “Creators of Happiness” but the staff themselves were so efficient and charming you can forgive the odd purple patch in the prose. The hotel website gives idiosyncratic yet revealing profiles of all the key staff and Herr Revel certainly gets my vote with his love of mushroom-hunting and dislike of animals, “especially cats”!

Next to arrive was my “Lamb” – saddle; liquorice flavours; peas; tomato-sauce; olive oil”

This was a beautifully cooked and subtly flavoured dish but a bit lacking in starch. I had to help myself to some of the boys’ inviting looking potato rösti which set off the lamb a treat.

This is another attractive feature of the restaurant – as well as the high gastronomy on offer there are also simpler dishes to choose from (Wiener Schnitzel; veal sauté Zurich-style with rösti) which suited the boys well and made for a more relaxing meal for us. There’s a separate menu for younger children too which invites children to the upstairs play area once they’ve finished their meal. Someone has clearly thought about the practicalities of dining out with a family.

The pudding menu continued in the same single-word/quadruple dish style. I opted for the massive rumbling cheese trolley which competed with the trains running in and out of the snowy stations. The rest of the table pronounced the “Passion-fruit” as particularly good and big enough to share between two, maybe even three (panna cotta; soup; sorbet; crème brûlée):

And if you don’t fancy splashing out on pudding, just order coffee and finish your meal with the extremely generous plateful of petit fours and chocolates instead.

We’d definitely return for a special night out as the Alpina pulled off the trick of both providing top-class cooking and keeping two hungry not to mention fussy teenage boys happy.

Night 3 Walserhof 17 GM points cumulative GM points 45

In points terms at least, we’d reached the culinary high-point of the week. It felt slightly surreal crossing the threshold of the Walserhof for the first time rather than peering expectantly from the outside through handsomely draped windows into the opulent interior.

Other reviewers say the hotel is a simple chalet with a relaxed and welcoming feel but I’m not sure I agree. Yes, the exterior is low-key rather than glitzy and the welcome is attentive and charming but there’s the feeling that everything, absolutely everything, is carefully planned, checked, rechecked and “just so”. Having so many appraising staff eyes cast over one puts you imperceptibly on edge. With our thick down jackets and teenage boys in tow we felt a bit like the country mice visiting their smarter town cousins. The feeling of unease increased as we were seated too close for comfort adjacent to a couple clearly out for a special meal à deux. Something told me they weren’t going to enjoy fart jokes and football related banter…

The meal began with not one but two slender glass trays per person of amuse-bouches, each laden with triple or quadruple goodies. Here’s the more photogenic of the two:

Quite substantial for an amuse-bouche isn’t it? And strangely retro with all that kiwi fruit garnish and something that tasted suspiciously like prawn cocktail in a glass.

The bread basket proffered next was a thing of beauty – laugenbrötchen (pretzel-type rolls with a shiny salty coating); tiny square rolls topped with pumpkin seeds and finally brown walnut rolls. My goodness, after two helpings of the amuse-bouches and all that bread I was extremely full already.

The menu is full-on cheffy throughout – no comfort dishes sneaked in at the back here. This makes it a tad awkward not to say pricey to feed a pair of tetchy teenagers. Blimey, even at Chez Panisse in Berkeley, one of the world’s top restaurants no less, a lovely waiter leant over and whispered quietly in my ear that the kitchen could rustle up a freshly made pizza for the kids if that would be helpful.

I mused that this was notionally a hotel restaurant and wondered how parents managed to feed their children there, not only that but how it would be possible to eat in the restaurant more than once during a week’s stay given the quantity and richness of the food, and the time it took to eat it.

We’d all chosen the plainest starter we could find, the “Klosterser Chruutchräpfli mit Novaier Alpkäse” a gastronomic take on a local stuffed pasta speciality finished with mountain cheese. This doesn’t look like something from a rustic farmhouse kitchen though does it?

A still life on a plate isn’t it? We were busy admiring our food when Frau Amrein-Juon herself (she leads the front-of-house team and is married to chef Armin Amrein) tut tutted at our waitress and very carefully rotated each plate 180 degrees. That may be the way the chef wants it but frankly we didn’t mind if our plates happened to be upside down and it was rather intrusive to have our meal fiddled with in this way.

I’d ordered a main course based around turbot (the wonderfully named Steinbutt in German) mainly because I wasn’t in the mood for my other possible option, a darkly sticky braised veal cheek. The menu described the turbot as accompanied by Sauerkraut, Quarantina Bianca Genovese 1880 and white truffle. The combination didn’t sound immediately appealing and I had no idea what Quarantina Bianca was – I (wrongly) assumed it was a type of fortified white wine. I didn’t have high expectations for this dish but it turned out to be inspired cooking of the highest order.

This is how the dish looked:

I get quite excited thinking again about the lavish quantities of white truffle that our waitress carefully shaved over the dish. The aroma of white truffle as it hit the hot fish and mingled with the sauerkraut will remain in my memory for some time to come.

It transpires that the Quarantina Bianca is a special old variety of potato grown only in Liguria, Northern Italy. It’s waxy with a firm white rather than yellow flesh. It made the most amazingly flavoured and textured foamy pure white purée so ambrosial that I didn’t associate it with humble mash at all.

I’m not really a pudding person, but nevertheless chose a simply-named Iced Coffee from the section of the menu called “Walserhof favourites”. I’m not usually given to hyperbole about coffee-flavoured desserts either but this was divine, spoon after spoon of the most delicious iced, moussy, creamy concoction that I just had to finish served simply and unashamedly in a sundae glass. And yes, that tuile is sitting on a doilly like the ones your granny used to keep in her drawers:

Overall conclusion? I’d go again just for the Iced Coffee, but probably without teenagers making fart jokes. Definitely a Temple of Gastronomy where you the diner are subservient to The Chef, but goodness, he knows what he’s doing.

Save it for when you’re in the mood (and in funds for that matter) and fast for a week before you go!

Night 4 Chesa Grischuna 14 GM points cumulative GM points 59

The final stage in our gastro tour of Klosters. The Chesa Grischuna is yet another of the small, discreet and charming hotels that Klosters does so well.

No pictures of the dining room or any of the food I’m afraid as the lighting was just too subtle. You’ll just have to imagine a cosy wood-panelled room, linen clad tables, candles and the hum that comes from a room full of contented diners.

We had a lovely meal – in my case veal carpaccio, then vegetarian Capuns (yes, non-traditional Capuns again – see comments on the Rustico above). If at the Walserhof you the diner fall in with the requirements of the chef, here at Chesa Grischuna it’s the other way round – the impeccably polite and efficient waiting staff cater to your every need.

The place is impossibly romantic – I leant over and mentioned to my younger teenage son Arthur that as and when he felt like proposing to a future girlfriend, he could do worse than bring her here. Predictably enough, he turned bright red and commented “shut up Mum!”.

As we departed, we were given a small jar of homemade spiced winter berry jam as a parting gift. Some might think it twee but I was totally bowled over. We left in a warm happy fug and elder son George was persuaded to take our photo by the ice sculpture outside:

Contact details

Rustico Hotel and Restaurant
Proprietors: Anja and Jörg Walter

Landstrasse 194
Klosters

00 44 81 410 22 (0)80

www.rusticohotel.com

Alpina Hotel and Restaurant

Proprietors: Räto and Verena Conzett; Chef: Christian Kaiser

Bahnhofstrasse 1
Klosters

00 44 (0)81 410 24 24

www.alpina-klosters.ch

Walserhof Hotel and Restaurant

Proprietors: Armin and Corina Amrein
Landstrasse 141
Klosters

00 44 (0)81 410 29 29

www.walserhof.ch

Chesa Grischuna Hotel and Restaurant

Proprietors: Guler Family; Chef: Michael Bless
Bahnhofstrasse 12
Klosters
00 44 (0)81 422 22 22

http://www.chesagrischuna.ch/

The crystal glasses and decanters are polished and put away in readiness for the now traditional alcohol-free January. The deep-fat fryer suffered rather when the deep-fried battered gruyère sticks exploded – it’s now drained, scrubbed and refilled with fresh oil ready for a cheeky steak, frites, salade or whatever. The matching pair of fondue sets are similarly decheesed and packed away. And I’m finally going to accept defeat and put our super-sized chocolate fountain on eBay. It’s five years old and we’ve used it…twice. It takes 2kg chocolate to fill most of which sets solid in the mechanism and takes and age to chip off and discard.

Right now, after all that cheese and chocolate, I find I’m craving clean sharp flavours and bright colours to beat the winter blues. The arrival of the first celebratory tender pink stems of forced rhubarb prompted me to try out an unusual pairing of ingredients – rhubarb and mango – in an oriental perfumed fruit salad that I’d read about in a Josceline Dimbleby cookbook. She in turn credits the inspiration for this dish to a sublime fruit soup tasted Vong, the French-Thai restaurant in London, now defunct.

With only two components to prepare, this is not a labour-intensive fruit salad to prepare. Just assembling the ingredients with the vibrant colours and perfumes lifts the spirit:

It doesn’t take long to slice up the rhubarb and ginger:

In fact the only faintly tricky part of the recipe is making sure the rhubarb is poached just so (rather than cooked to a pink pulp):

Once the rhubarb is poached, all that’s left to do is to slice the mango then assemble:

Recipe for rhubarb and mango fruit salad

Adapted from a Josceline Dimbleby’s recipe for Rhubarb and Mango à la Vong in her “Complete Cookbook”.

Serves 6

500g forced rhubarb (don’t substitute later field-grown rhubarb as the rhubarb needs to be tender and the colour needs to be the gorgeous bright pink to achieve the startling colour contrast with the golden-yellow mango).

1.5cm length chunk of fresh ginger root
3 star anise
150 ml water
75g golden caster sugar, maybe more to taste
two 4cm long pieces of peel from a lime, removed using a vegetable peeler
1 medium perfectly ripe mango
a little lime juice
a few fresh mint leaves

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees C.

Wash the rhubarb, trim off and discard the ends and slice the stalks into pieces 4 to 5 cm long, cutting prettily at an angle to form little rhombus shapes if you feel so inclined.

Peel the piece of root ginger, cut into slices then into the finest matchstick slivers you can manage. Put the rhubarb and ginger into a shallow lidded casserole dish, tip in the sugar and water and finally add the star anise and pieces of lime peel to the pan.

Put the pan on to the hob and bring to the boil. Cover, remove from the heat and place in the preheated oven to bake very slowly until the rhubarb is tender but still holding its shape. Mine took just 30 minutes in the Aga lowere oven which is only 140-150 degrees C so I suggest checking after just 20 minutes in an ordinary fan oven.

Once the rhubarb is cooked, remove from the oven, remove the lid and leave to cool, then chill in the fridge until you are ready to complete the salad.

Meanwhile, slice your mango into pretty strips using your preferred mango prep method – having tried various ways I still think the hedgehog method works best for me, modifying the criss-cross knife cuts to produce strips rather than cubes. Put the mango pieces into a bowl and squeeze over a little lime juice, enough to toss and coat the mango pieces. Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate until you are ready to assemble the fruit salad.

Once the fruit is chilled you can complete the salad. Spoon the rhubarb and its cooking syrup carefully into a pretty serving bowl – I think plain white or glass shows off the colours best. Dot in the mango pieces here and there, being careful not to break up the rhubarb. Make sure the star anise are artfully arranged on top, then finish by scattering over a few fresh mint leaves.

If I were pulling out all the stops, I might accompany the salad with a dainty plateful of green-tea flavoured langues de chat to keep the French-Thai vibe going.

What I did find was cake in profusion – on every street corner there’s a little pasticceria catering to what is clearly a very sweet Italian tooth. What’s on offer ranges from trays of positively austere little biscotti sold by the etto (100g) to some of the most over-the-top and lurid confections I’ve come across, like this glazed blue swan marvel from Sorrento:

The city of Naples itself is home to some of the most long-established family run pasticcerie like this one, Angelo Carbone’s, complete with its obligatory skein of drying laundry. You’ll find Carbone’s in Largo Regina Coeli, a mini-square amidst the maze of streets that makes up Naples’ centro storico.

We stopped here after a visit to Naples’ wondrous Museum of Archaeology and refuelled on thimblefuls of espresso and a generously proportioned zuppa inglese pastry and wild strawberry tartlet:

Tempting they may look, but my goodness they were heavy! Those fragoline di bosco atop the tartlet may look delicate but beneath was a layer of hefty pastry and a crema pasticcera that you could use to repoint the walls of Pompeii.

Perhaps a better option might have been a slice of home-made torrone, a Carbone speciality, or a jam-filled biscuit:

Of course we couldn’t leave without sampling some of Naples’ famous sfogliatelle. The name, meaning “many leaves” implies a light-as-air puff-pastry confection and indeed one type, the “riccia” exceeds expectations in this regard. I fell instantly in love with this organza-wrapped parcel of clamshell-shaped loveliness.

The intricate pastry encloses a dense sweet filling of cooked semolina, ricotta, candied fruit and spices. Oh, and they’re served warm, generally from a hot cabinet, much as we buy our cheese and onion pasties back here in the UK.

Just to confuse the novice pastry-eater, there’s a second type of sfogliatella known as a frolla, the plainer country cousin of the glamorous riccia, made with a sweet, crumbly shortcrust pastry encasing the same semolina/ricotta filling. In the interests of research, I had to try one of these too:

I’d happily eat either of these for breakfast along with a cappuccino. Having looked at recipes for each, I might consider having a go at baking a frolla, but shaping the riccia looks enough to have even a proficient croissant-maker quaking in his or her boots. There are videos of the process on youtube if your curiosity is piqued http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GGmqK6VVz4&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

I think the conclusion I’ve drawn is that Italian pastry-chefs come into their own when they’re not aping their French cousins. This display from Capri’s legendary Pasticceria Buonocore would seem to prove my point – don’t these look inviting?

And maybe the best Italian cakes are home-made – Marcella Hazan and Anna del Conte’s recipes for walnut cake, ricotta cake, apple cake and the like are enough to persuade me that this is the case. In fact, some of the best cakes we ate on our trip were not professionally made but were these slices of nutty chocolatey Torta Caprese and lemony lipsmacking baked ricotta cheesecake served up at a little café above Capri’s blue grotto and made by the proprietor’s wife. Home bakers rule!

Saturday was spent on a circular lower level walk which, in addition to uplifting views and vibrant autumn colours, took in 4 different tearooms at Grange-in-Borrowdale, Watendlath, Rosthwaite, then back to Grange for a visit to its other tea establishment. Definitely my kind of walk.

I took the opportunity to stock-up on local products including this fantastic comb honey available from the Grange tearooms. According to the label, it comes from S. Edmondson of Troutdale, just down the road. It’s a dark, clear honey – from heather perhaps? and spread on my breakfast toast this morning I can confirm that the taste is divine – deeply fragrant, not too strong, and, odd as it may sound, I love the chewy crunch of the little bits of honeycomb wax.

I’ve now done a little reading round about the etiquette of whether or not to eat the wax in honeycomb. The consensus amongst the beekeeping community seems to be to go for it and eat the lot, honey, wax and all, so I now feel vindicated. There are some more delicate folk out there who prefer to chew then discreetly spit out – each to his own I suppose.

The village of Rosthwaite is home to Yew Tree Farm and its Flock-In tearoom which with its practical slate floors and generously sized cakes and mugs of tea, offers a warm welcome to walkers.

They make their own Borrowdale teabread here and sell whole loaves to take away as well as buttered slices to accompany your tea. I love teabreads of all kinds – quickly made, wholesome, and because there’s generally not much if indeed any fat in the cake mix itself, you can feel justified in enjoying a slice spread with lots of lovely butter.

Borrowdale teabread is a dark, moist slightly spicy loaf cake. Its colour comes both from the tea-soaked dried fruit it contains and the soft brown sugar used in the mix. I had a chat with Mrs Relph of Yew Tree Farm who was behind the counter that afternoon about the origins of Borrowdale teabread. Her view was that the dried fruits, spices and indeed tea in this teabread are a legacy of the overseas trade from the nearby port of Whitehaven. She mentioned that her recipe is made without the addition of fat so that it needs to be well-wrapped and stored in an airtight tin if it’s not to dry out if kept for any length of time. Not much chance of that in our family…

I’ve researched Borrowdale teabread recipes and have come up with my own version which I give below which combines the best bits of each recipe. I think the addition of a little melted butter which several recipe authors suggest will improve the keeping qualities of the cake.

I was then reminded of a treasured recipe for Borrowdale biscuits which I assume must originate in this same Lake District valley. Here’s the recipe given to me by my schoolfriend Helen Wright’s grandmother absolutely ages ago and kept in a file ever since:

These are the most moreish pale gold crunchy biscuits – like a superior Hob Nob for those familiar with the McVities product range. Going back to Helen’s house after school we’d be offered some of these with a cup of tea. I’m not proud to say I’d help myself to 6 or so more than the polite 2 offered when I thought nobody was looking…

I’ve tinkered with the original recipe just a little, substituting butter for margarine as I avoid margarine if I possibly can on grounds of flavour and odd as it may sound, health – all those lovely fat-soluble vitamins in butter from grazing cows can’t be all bad.

Most of the measurements in the original recipe are in “small teacups” so I’ve done my best to standardise the measures to give a consistent result.

I can’t wait to get back into my kitchen to start cooking once again rather than relying on baking memories, but in the meantime, it’s good to be outdoors burning off those cake and biscuit calories.

Recipe for Borrowdale teabread

Adapted from various sources including a Lakeland contributor to the Farmer’s Guardian, Carole Gregory’s little booklet “Favourite Lakeland Recipes”, Sizergh Barn’s online recipe (unusable as published as riddled with errors) and eating carefully the of Flock-In tearoom’s own teabread. I’ve maintained the key ratios and ingredients of the recipe but have incorporated what I think are the best elements of each recipe.

Good spread thickly with salted butter and maybe a wedge of crumbly Lancashire cheese.

Makes one large loaf cake.

Ingredients

½ pint (225 ml) strong hot black tea
14 oz (400g) dried mixed fruit (to include sultanas, raisins and glacé cherries)
6 oz (170g) dark soft brown sugar (use light soft brown sugar for a paler teabread with a less pronounced molasses flavour if you prefer)
1 large egg, beaten
grated rind of 1/2 orange and 1/2 lemon
1 oz (25g) melted butter
7 oz (200g) plain flour
2oz (50g) wholemeal flour
3/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon mixed spice

Mix together the dried fruit and sugar in a large mixing bowl. Pour over the hot tea, cover and leave overnight to steep.

The next day, prepare a 2lb loaf tin by greasing and lining the base with baking paper. Preheat the oven to 160 C (fan).

Add the beaten egg, melted butter, grated citrus rind and grated nutmeg to the bowl containing the soaked fruit and mix well.

Sieve together the flours, bicarbonate of soda and spices. Tip any bran from the wholemeal flour or any larger pieces of grated nutmeg which don’t make it through the sieve back into the bowl too. Add to the bowl and fold into the mixture to blend thoroughly.

Pour the mixture into the prepared tin and bake for about 1 hour until firm when pressed lightly, well-risen and a deep golden brown.

Cool in the tin for 30 minutes then turn out and cool on a wire rack. Store in an airtight tin. Best left overnight before eating to allow the flavours to develop and the bread to soften and become sticky.

Recipe for Borrowdale biscuits

Adapted from a recipe given to me by my schoolfriend Helen Wright’s grandmother.

Makes 50-60 biscuits

Ingredients

8 oz butter
8 oz golden caster sugar
2 dessertspoons golden syrup
6 oz rolled porridge oats
8 oz self raising flour
1 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
2 tablespoons boiling water

Cream together the butter, sugar and syrup. Dissolve the bicarbonate of soda in the boiling water. Add to the mixture then add the dry ingredients.

Pinch off and roll between your palms small balls of the dough about the size of a heaped teaspoon and set a little way apart on a prepared baking tray.

Bake at 160 degrees C/325 F/gas 3 for approximately 15 minutes.

Contact details

Flock-In tearoom
Yew Tree Farm
Rosthwaite
Borrowdale
Cumbria
CA12 5XB
Tel 01768 777 675
Website www.borrowdaleherdwick.co.uk

Borrowdale honey – jar and whole honeycomb in box available from tearoom in Grange-in-Borrowdale

Details on honey label are:
S. Edmondson
Troutdale
Keswick
Cumbria

This venerable pizzeria, founded in 1873, has a shabby, typically Neapolitan exterior and is tucked away in a sidestreet (Via Cesare Sersale 1) in the centro storico not too far from the main station.

We arrived at noon for an early lunch and were rewarded by not having to queue, in fact we bagged a prime table with an excellent view of the preparation area and all-important wood-fired oven.

I mused as we waited to order how little this oven differed from the ancient Roman one we’d seen in Pompeii the previous day. Clearly the appeal of freshly-baked flatbreads is centuries old. It’s rather fun to imagine Caecilius and his chums tucking in to their own version of pizza (minus the tomatoes of course).

The interior of Da Michele is unfussy, in fact its two rooms could be described as austere – white and green ceramic tiles on the walls and simple marble topped cast iron tables lined up in rows.

The menu is equally minimalist – just 2 types of pizza, the classic Margherita (tomato sauce and cheese) and the even simpler Marinara (just tomato sauce without the cheese).

The place runs like a well-oiled machine. There’s a guy (and yes, the staff are exclusively male) to seat you and take your order which is then passed to the compact open-plan kitchen; the first chef forms the pizza dough into rough rounds; a second tops the dough with tomato, cheese and a solitary basil leaf; a third expertly flicks the pizzas into the oven with a wooden paddle; a fourth tends the fire and removes the cooked pizzas from the oven. Finally, in the corner of the room behind a small corner counter sits like a benign genie a venerable gent in a white coat collecting the money and keeping a watchful eye on proceedings.

Enough of the preparatory stuff – what was the pizza like? This is how it looked as it came out of the oven, truly a thing of beauty:

The crust was chewy rather than dry and crispy and frankly quite deliciously soggy in the middle. This meant it had to be eaten at least in part with a knife and fork though I couldn’t resist picking up the crust later on:

We subsequently discovered that we were sitting in the very same seats occupied by Julia Roberts when the film “Eat, Pray, Love” was filmed here a couple of years back. Dressed in a similar black sweater, the staff must have taken me for a Julia groupie. If only I had the hair and bone structure to match…

As we were seated so close to the open plan prep area I couldn’t resist having a closer peek at the pizza ingredients and attempting a brief chat with the kitchen staff.

The tomato topping was quite a runny sauce which was ladled onto the dough. I couldn’t tell if this was prepared using fresh or tinned tomatoes let alone whether they were the well-known San Marzano variety. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if these were tinned tomatoes nor, thankfully, could I remember the Italian word for a can so decided to abandon this line of questioning.

However, I did manage to pluck up sufficient courage to ask about the cheese.

“E mozzarella di bufala?” I yelled and pointed.

What luck! I’d made myself understood and the response came back:

“No – fiordilatte” – So it’s a cow’s milk mozzarella rather than the prized and frankly expected buffalo kind.

Buoyed up by my success, I kept the conversation going and enquired about the second harder and more finely grated cheese which went on to the pizza along with the mozzarella.

“Che formaggio?” I shouted and pointed at the second cheese container:

Bingo once again – “Pecorino!” was the response.

So now I, and you too now, know the secret to an authentic pizza topping.

And now the answer to the question I posed at the outset – how does the ultimate pizza from Naples compare with what I can pick up at my local Pizza Express in South Manchester?

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Da Michele version gets my vote, BUT only just as I didn’t find it very much more wonderful than the pretty good pizza we can get back home.

The cake mixture, made simply in a single large saucepan by the melting method, looks disconcertingly runny when poured into the prepared cake tin:

But fear not, it will turn into this sweet, sticky, spicy, springy cake when cooked:

Which, as you can see, can be eaten straightaway – no wrapping and storing for a week as some recipe suggest. No need to seek out tricky-to-find oatmeal either – the recipe works just fine with rolled oats which you probably have in your cupboard already for making porridge.

By the way, golden syrup seems to be a peculiarly British ingredient. Looking at various web forums, the best US substitute might be a dark corn syrup – hope this works for you.

Thinking about a fireworks party theme, I have a great recipe for an Argentinian-inspired beef stew served spectacularly in a serving bowl fashioned from a pumpkin. Perfect for a party as it can be made well in advance, warming, substantial and full of healthy veg! Actually it would work really well for a Halloween party too and you could then pull out all the stops and serve it with black pasta (the stuff mixed with squid ink) or black rice if you can get hold of some. Perhaps more economical would be a mix of fettucine type noodles, some black, some green and some plain. Similarly a mix of basmati and wild rice rather than just wild rice or Vietnamese or Piedmont black rice.

Sorry, no photos available from when I last cooked this dish but I think this consignment of squashes from Riverford Organics currently decorating my front porch are destined for this dish next weekend:

Finally, a reliable recipe for toffee apples from my ever trustworthy Good Housekeeping recipe book. It wouldn’t be a proper party without toffee apples and the recipe is literally child’s play as my son Arthur proves:

Boiling the toffee to the correct “soft crack” stage isn’t as tricky as it sounds. Drop a teaspoon of the hot toffee into a bowl of chilled water. It’s ready when the syrup doesn’t just form a ball but separates into hard but not snappable threads.

Try my trick of shoving the handle of a teaspoon into the apple as a handle if you find yourself making these at the list minute with no wooden lolly sticks in your kitchen drawer.

Recipe for parkin

With thanks to Christobel Heginbotham. I bake this in a shallow rectangular metal baking tin approx 20cm by 25cm (see pic above) but you can, as Christobel suggests, double the recipe and bake in a square deep cake tin “to make a fair sized cake”, in which case a longer cooking time may be required.

Ingredients

100g butter
50g soft brown sugar
2 large tablespoons (this weighs 75g) black treacle
2 large tablespoons (ditto) golden syrup
175 ml milk
100g plain flour
2 teaspoons (10g) baking powder
1 teaspoon (3g) ground ginger
half teaspoon ground cinnamon
half teaspoon ground cloves (or ground allspice)
100g rolled porridge oats

Preheat oven to 170 degrees C (fan). Line a 20cm square baking tin with baking paper.

In a large saucepan melt the butter, sugar and treacle together over a low heat. Be careful not to let it burn or bubble. Remove from the heat and stir in the golden syrup and milk.

Add the plain flour, baking powder, ginger, cinnamon and cloves or allspice. Mix well, beating to remove any lumps. Stir in the oats.

Pour into the baking tray and cook for 35-45 minutes. Test by pressing the top with your finger tip. It should spring back and not leave a dent. Cut into squares and leave to cool in the tin.

Recipe for Carbonada Criolla – Argentinian beef and vegetable stew served in a pumpkin

Adapted from a recipe in Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book.

Serves 15-20

Ingredients

1 large beautiful pumpkin which will fit comfortably into your oven

For the meat stew

2 large onions, chopped
4 large cloves garlic, chopped
olive oil for frying
1.5 kg cubed chuck steak
2 tins (14oz size) chopped tomatoes
1 tablespoons tomato purée or 4 tablespoons passata
2 litres beef stock (made from cube is fine)
bouquet garni (a handful of parsley stalks, a sprig of thyme, and 2 bayleaves, tied together in a muslin bundle with a long string handle to aid removal from the pot)
1 heaped teaspoon dried oregano
2 teaspoons sweet smoked paprika (or ordinary paprika if you don’t have the smoked kind)
salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 kg sweet potato, peeled and cut into 2cm cubes
1 kg waxy potatoes, scrubbed but not peeled (unless you prefer them peeled) and cut into 2cm chunks
1 kg pumpkin or squash (choose a variety which will collapse and melt into the sauce when cooked to act as a natural thickener) peeled and cut into 2cm cubes or chunks
0.5 kg frozen sweetcorn kernels (or the equivalent canned or fresh if you prefer)
a pack of baby sweetcorn
12 canned peach halves sliced – you could use canned apricot halves if that’s what you happen to have in the cupboard – drained contents of 2 cans should be about right
Syrup from the canned peaches or apricots

Begin by preparing the pumpkin. Wash and cut out a lid from the top, keeping the stalk on to act as a handle. Cut a small nick out of lid and base to aid repositioning the lid accurately. Using your hands, a spoon and a small sharp knife, pull out and discard the central fibrous part of the pumpkin along with the seeds. Now cut and scoop away the solid pumpkin flesh, working carefully as you need to leave a good wall of pumpkin flesh for structural integrity when baked and the skin needs to be unpierced/intact. Weigh out the pumpkin flesh needed for the recipe and set aside.

Brush the inside of the pumpkin with a little olive oil. Replace the lid and set the whole thing in a shallow roasting tin.

In a frying pan, cook the onion and garlic in a little oil until soft but not browned. Transfer to a large lidded saucepan or casserole dish.
Add a little oil to the frying pan in which you cooked the onions, turn up the heat and brown the beef cubes in batches, transferring them to the large saucepan with a slotted spoon as you go. Add to the beef and onions the tomatoes, tomato purée, salt and pepper, bouquet garni, oregano and paprika. Now take about half a litre of the stock and use it to deglaze the frying pan. Tip the deglazing liquid into the saucepan containing the other ingredients along with a further half litre of stock. This means that you will have incorporated into the dish about half the stock at this stage.

Cover and simmer until the meat is almost cooked – an hour or so. Add the sweet potato, potato and pumkpkin plus more stock so that the pan contents are covered. Return to the boil and simmer with the pan lid on for a further 20 to 30 minutes until the meat is tender, the potatoes cooked and the sauce thickened with the collapsed pumpkin. Taste and correct seasoning. Remove and discard the bouquet garni.*

Finally, add the sweetcorn and peaches but not their syrup at this stage and simmer for a further 15 minutes. Taste and add a little peach syrup at this stage to sweeten the sauce if liked.

* You can prepare the beef stew ahead of time to this stage. Best not to finish the stew until you’re ready to serve to prevent the baby corn and canned fruit becoming to mushy in the reheating process.

To complete the dish, switch on your oven to 180 degrees C (fan)about 1 hour before you’re ready to serve. Bake the pumpkin for half an hour or so. Safest to keep it underdone as you don’t want the walls to collapse so check it after 20 minutes. After half an hour, ladle the hot stew into the pumpkin then pop back into the hot oven for 10-15 minutes before serving.

Recipe for toffee apples

Adapted from a recipe in UK classic cookery book “Good Housekeeping”. Mine is the 1985 edition.

Makes 6-8 apples

Ingredients

450g (1 lb) demerara sugar (turbinado sugar in the US)
50g (2 oz) butter
10 ml (t teaspoons) vinegar – I use malt vinegar but a white wine vinegar would be fine and a cider vinegar would be appropriate for apples wouldn’t it?
150 ml (1/4 pint) water
15 ml (1 tbsp) golden syrup (dark corn syrup probably OK as a substitute)
8 small/medium apples and the same number of wooden sticks

Wash and dry the apples and push the sticks into their cores, making sure they are secure.

Place the butter, sugar, vinegar, water and syrup in a medium-sized heavy based saucepan. Heat gently, stirring occasionally with a wooden spoon, until the sugar is dissolved. Bring to the boil without stirring further and boil rapidly until the syrup reaches the “soft crack” stage (143 degrees C or 290 degrees F if you’re using a sugar thermometer).

Remove from the heat and working swiftly to prevent the toffee from setting, dip the apples into the toffee, remove and twirl for a few seconds to allow excess toffee to drip off. Set on a sheet lined with baking paper to cool and harden.

ready to be turned into the most refreshing pick-me up ever – and I can’t abide the Americanised translation of a granita as “slush” which is just not right for something as elegant as this:

sipped overlooking a view like this one in Positano:

or maybe this one overlooking the Faraglioni rocks on Capri’s southern coast:

There were boxes of lemons stacked outside the humblest little cafés and restaurants like these spotted in Pompeii:

destined for a spremuta di limone, the Italian version of lemonade – fresh lemond juice and water in a tall glass with ice – add your own sugar and stir for the most refreshing drink imaginable, eye-wateringly, mouth-puckeringly sharp:

perfect for sipping on as you wait at Sorrento’s Marina Piccola harbour for the jetfoil across the bay to Naples:

Perhaps best of all spotting the lemons growing on trees in groves right in the heart of Sorrento town, in most cases still a slightly unripe green:

and we soon worked out that strolling through the Cataldi citrus groves was a much pleasanter way of reaching Sorrento’s frenetic Piazza Tasso than braving the Lambretta and Fiat crowded narrow streets:

Sorrento lemons are turned into all sorts of lemon products of varying quality and taste. Most famously there is the signature lemon liqueur Limoncello. At its best it can be rather good, aromatic, zesty with a touch of bitterness to cut through the sweetness. At worst, it’s like a chilled LemSip decanted from a dodgy cupid-shaped bottle.

How is it that the Italians have a reputation for being stylish when they produce some of the worst tat in the world? A country of many contradictions…

as a holiday souvenir, I left alone the lemon-flavoured bottles, packets, jams and soaps and contented myself with half a kilo of fresh lemons complete with fragrant green foliage from the local fruit and veg shop.

What to do with my precious cargo now we’re back home? I’ve collected together the following four lemon recipes I fancy having a go at in the next week or so. There’s a zesty lemon cake from Capri, a classic lemon granita, a simple pasta recipe and an unusual lemon salad. Having belatedly checked in one of my favourite cook books, Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book, I’m pleased to say that none of these recipes appear there – it would have been a bit of a downer to repeat what’s already been done! I’m sure they’ll bring a ray of Mediterranean sunshine into the approaching English autumnal gloom…

Recipe for Caprese al limone – Capri lemon cake

Caprese al limone

This cake along with its dark chocolate cousin, is served up all over the island of Capri. I’ve hunted down a number of different recipes and this one, adapted from Salvatore di Riso’s “I dolci del Sole” sounds the most workable whilst remaining authentic.

Serves 10 or more

Ingredients

100g extra virgin olive oil
120g icing sugar
200g blanched whole almonds
180g white chocolate, finely chopped
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
grated rind of 1 Amalfi lemon (or 2 medium or 3 small normal lemons)
5 medium eggs
60g caster sugar
50g cornflour
5g (1 teaspoon) baking powder

Line the base of a 22cm round cake tin (preferably springform or loose bottomed) with baking paper and butter and flour the interior.

In a food processor or liquidiser, grind the almonds to a coarse powder with the icing sugar. Set aside

Whisk together the eggs and sugar using an electric mixer for 10 minutes until you have a thick foam (as if making a génoise mixture).

In a large bowl, combine the ground almond and sugar mixture with the grated chocolate, the grated lemon rind, the cornflour and the baking powder. Mix together well.

Add the olive oil, vanilla extract and the beaten egg mixture to the bowl and mix well to combine not worrying unduly should the eggs collapse a little. This is a dense, moist cake rather than a light fluffy one.

Pour the mixture the prepared cake tin. Bake at 200 degrees C for 5 minutes then reduce the heat to 160 degrees C and bake for a further 45 minutes.

When the cake is done, cool in the tin. Turn out and serve sprinkled with icing sugar.

Recipe for lemon granita

Adapted from Marcella Hazan’s master granita recipe given in “The Classic Italian Cookbook” but incorporating the lemon water ice trick of infusing the lemon zest in the syrup for added zing. You’ll notice there’s much less sugar than in a classic water ice recipe.

Ingredients

8 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (maybe 4 lemons?)
peel of 4 lemons removed using a vegetable peeler, roughly chopped
325ml water
50g granulated sugar

Put the sugar and water into a small saucepan and bring to the boil stirring to dissolve the sugar. Once the mixture has come to the boil, turn off the heat, throw in the chopped lemon peel, cover and leave to infuse until the mixture is cold. Strain and stir in the lemon juice.

Pur the mixture into one or more shallow metal or plastic trays or boxes (a pair of old fashioned metal ice cube trays with the plastic dividers removed would be ideal). Put into the freezer and check after 15 minutes, stirring the mixture with a fork to break up the ice crystals, scraping them down from the sides and in the corners where they will form first. Repeat the process again after 15 minutes and thereafter every 8 minutes until the granita reaches the right texture. This may take 3 hours or so!

Serve in pretty glass goblets with a teaspoon, or more informally in a plastic tumbler with a strawer and spoon.

Recipe for fettucine al limone

Adapted from a recipe for “Danny’s Lemon Pasta” featured on the BBC Radio 4 programme “Woman’s Hour” aeons ago and which I’ve been storing in my recipe files for an age. The Danny in question is Danny Kaye and the chef one Ruth Reichl.

Ingredients

4oz best unsalted butter
10 fl oz double cream
2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
finely grated zest of 4 small lemons
freshly ground black pepper
1-2 oz freshly grated Parmesan cheese, plus more for the table

1lb fresh egg fettuccine

Serves 4

Melt the butter in a large, heavy bottomed frying pan or sauté pan. Add the cream, lemon juice and half the lemon zest and bring to the boil over a medium heat and reduce by one quarter. Remove from the heat and cover.

Cook the pasta in a large pan of salted boiling water until al dente (this will take only 2 to 3 minutes). Reserve a little of the pasta cooking liquid and drain the pasta in a colander.

Add the drained pasta to the frying pan containing the sauce along with the reserved lemon zest, 2 tablespoons of the pasta cooking water, the grated parmesan cheese and freshly ground black pepper. Toss well.

Recipe for lemon and cucumber salad

Not for the faint hearted! Inspired by the lemon salad served on the island of Ischia where chunks of peeled and thick-pithed local pane lemons are simply dressed with olive oil and flavoured with salt, pepper and aromatic mint and flat leaf parsley.
This would work well with simply grilled fish or a thick barbecued veal chops.

Serves 4

Ingredients

3 unwaxed lemons, peel left on, very thinly sliced
1/2 cucumber peel left on, very thinly sliced using a mandolin
1 tablespoon chopped fresh mint
1 tablespoon chopped fresh flatleaf parsley
1 small medium hot red chilli, halved, deseeded and finely shredded
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil

Lay the lemon slices on a platter, sprinkle with a little salt and leave for half an hour. Once the half hour has elapsed, wipe off the salt and liquid drawn out with kitchen roll.

Arrange the salted lemon and cucumber slices attractively on a serving platter. Scatter over the chopped herbs and chilli, drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Whether you consider moussaka to be a classic or a cliché, you’ll find it on the menu of every little waterside taverna like this one in the port of Vathy on the island of Meganisi:

Having eaten moussaka at Paleros’ New Mill Tavern where chef/owner Kathy serves up some of the best home-cooked Greek food around, I’m convinced that it’s a classic rather than a cliché:

What was so good about it? Its simplicity – slow cooked lamb and unctuously soft aubergines topped with a baked cheese and egg mixture – and its fantastic flavour – the meat subtly spiced with cinnamon and the cheese deeply savoury. So many weird versions of this dish abound some of which end up tasting more like lasagne than authentic moussaka.

Back home, I started looking for an authentic recipe for moussaka wanting to recreate the New Mill Tavern experience. The moussaka you find in the UK is sometimes more like lasagne or even our homegrown shepherd’s pie than the real deal. I remember my mother cooking this dish for family teatime back in the 1970s. Her multilayered creation interspersing white sauce with layers of tomatoey meat and a vegetable mix comprising potato and courgette as well as aubergine was rather good but nothing like the moussaka I’d tasted in Greece.

Delia Smith has a pretty good version in Book One of her “How to Cook” series. The meat base is spot on but the ricotta in the topping strikes an alien note for me and gives a a less than desirable spongy mouth feel.

So it was back to my new favourite cookbook, George Moudiotis’ “Traditional Greek Cooking” to see what he has to say on the subject. Clearly my search for an authentic moussaka was misguided as Mr Moudiotis says:

“Authentic moussaka does not exist; there are some good, some bad and some very bad versions, especially those served in most restaurants and pubs. The dos and don’ts of a moussaka are too numerous to mention. In general, a moussaka should be creamy and rich but not too heavy, the ingredients should be of good quality and well balanced. The amount of oil should be carefully controlled; it is a misconception that the more oil you use in a moussaka, the tastier it will be.”

He goes on to add that as well as aubergines you can use courgettes, potatoes, artichokes and even rice, nuts and currants. So, mum, you were right all along!

Now I have an admission to make. The delicious looking moussaka pictured below was prepared in my kitchen but by Laura who comes in to help with the boys and general housekeeping. She had the rather inspired idea of cutting the aubergine into strips which to our taste are a big improvement on the usual unwieldy big slices.

Here they are during the salting process:

And again once they’ve been fried:

It’s really important to fry the aubergines thoroughly so that they are quite soft. That way they have an unctuous melting texture in the finished baked dish. Undercooked aubergines can be a bit fibrous and bitter – not what is wanted at all.

What other changes did we make to the recipe? Well, we adjusted the portion size. I think this quantity serves 8 to 10 people rather than the 6 suggested in the original recipe. They clearly have big appetites in Greece. I’ve also tweaked the meat base ingredients a little, adding a bit more tomato passata and chopped fresh mint to the mixture.

Here’s what it looks like as it reduces:

And here is the dish as it is being assembled in layers:

The other major change to the original recipe was increasing the quantity of sauce topping. I found that there wasn’t nearly enough so I’ve increased it by half and if you plan to bake the moussaka in two or more smaller dishes rather than a single big one then I’d recommend increasing the sauce quantity I’ve given by another third. Oh, and I twiddled around a bit with the grated cheese and breadcrumb quantities.

Here is the completed moussaka ready to bake:

And again in all its golden baked perfection, and yes it tasted as good as it looks so congratulations Laura!

I won’t lie. This is neither a quick nor a simple dish to prepare. But it is good tempered (you can make it your own pace, it refrigerates, freezes and reheats well) and it’s well worth the effort.

Finally something sweet to conclude this three-part mini Greek epic.

The Greeks have a sweet tooth and you don’t have to look too hard to find an array of syrup-drenched pastries in bakeries and cafés – baklava, loukomades and the like. I came across this generous display of freshly baked icing sugar dusted goodies at Paleros’ town bakery:

I bought a bagful – they’re sold by weight – as a sweet conclusion for our island hopping picnic. They turned out to be the lightest, crumbliest buttery almond shortbread biscuits. I can attest to their crumbliness – packed in a rucksack they disintegrated into the tastiest bag of crumbs imaginable!

A little research back home confirmed these melt-in-the-mouth biscuits to be kourabiedes – a sweet Greek treat popular at easter, Christmas, weddings and frankly at any time. I give the recipe below but, a word of warning, I haven’t attempted these at home yet.

Our picnic destination was to have been the island of Ithaca, home of Odysseus. It proved to be too far for our slightly underpowered boat that day. Never mind. In the words of twentieth century Greek poet CP Cavafy:

“Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.
Without her you would have never set out on the road.”

Recipe for moussaka

Adapted from George Moudiotis’ “Traditional Greek Cooking”

Serves 8-10

Ingredients

For the meat base

4 medium aubergines
2 tablespoons flour
Olive oil for frying the aubergine strips
1 tablespoon olive oil for frying onion and meat
1 large onion, chopped finely
3 cloves of garlic, chopped
900g minced lamb
2 tablespoons chopped flatleaf parsley
2 tablespoons chopped fresh mint
150ml red wine
150ml tomato passata
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
150ml stock (cube or Marigold powdered stock dissolved in water are fine here)
1/2 teaspoon honey
1 tablespoon dried oregano
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

For the sauce topping (I suggest you increase this by one third if you are dividing the mix into 2 dishes rather than 1 large one)

110g butter
9 tablespoons plain flour
900ml milk
1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
3 egg yolks
3 tablespoons plain thick Greek yoghurt

To assemble
Butter for greasing and dotting
2 and 1/2 oz grated grana Padano or similar hard mature cheese
4 tablespoons white dry breadcrumbs

Begin by preparing the aubergines. Wash them, cut off the ends then cut lengthwise into slices and then again into chunky strips. Sprinkle with a little salt and leave for an hour to draw out the bitter juices. Rinse and pat dry and coat sprinkle with 2 tbsp flour to coat lightly.

Heat a little olive oil in a your largest frying pan and fry the strips in batches until golden brown on each side. Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on kitchen paper. Set aside.

Heat 1 tablespoon of olive oil in a deep sauté pan or failing that a shallow saucepan and fry the onion until soft but not coloured. Add the chopped garlic and fry for a minute or so more. Add the minced lamb and cook for a further 10 minutes or so. Add the parsley, wine, passata, cinnamon, stock, honey, oregano, salt and pepper. Bring to the boil, partially cover (leave the lid at an angle) and simmer for about half an hour. Check and stir from time to time and add a little more stock or water if the meat seems to dry. If after half an hour the meat is too liquid, raise the heat, remove the lid and cook to reduce. You are aiming for a moist well flavoured meat mixture with most of the liquid evaporated. Now skim off any excess oil which will have cooked out from the lamb and discard. This step is really important if you want a light and delicious moussaka rather than one drenched in oil. Remove from the heat and set aside.

Now make the sauce for the topping (an enriched béchamel). Melt the butter, stir in the flour to make a roux and cook for about 1 minute. Off the heat, beat or whisk in the milk little by little. Return the pan to a medium heat and cook, stirring all the time with a wooden spoon or whisk until the sauce thickens. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg.

Beat the egg yolks in a bowl then add a little of the hot sauce to the eggs, whisking all the time. Now tip the egg mixture back into the sauce and whisk again. Finally add the yoghurt or cream to the sauce and beat again until the sauce is thick and creamy.

Now you’re ready to assemble the dish. If you’re baking it straightaway, preheat the oven to 170 degrees C (fan). Butter a large rectangular baking dish. I use a big white French porcelain lasagne dish which is perfect as it withstands both the heat of the oven and the cold of the freezer too if you are preparing ahead of time.

Scatter half the breadcrumbs on the base of the dish then spread one third of the aubergines on top of the crumbs. Layer half the meat sauce on top of the aubergines and one third of the grated cheese. Start again with another layer of aubergines, meat and grated cheese. End with a layer of aubergines.

Pour the sauce over the aubergines and smooth it out with a palette knife. Sprinkle the top with the remaining cheese and breadcrumbs and dot with a little butter.

If you want to prepare the dish ahead of time, then stop at this stage, cover, and refrigerate or freeze.

If cooking straightaway, bake in the oven for approximately 1 hour until golden brown and crusty.

Recipe for kourabiedes – Greek almond shortbread biscuits

Adapted from a recipe in George Moudiotis’ “Traditional Greek Cooking”.

Makes about 30 biscuits

Ingredients

200g butter at room temperature
75g icing sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons aniseed liqueur (eg ouzo) or brandy
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
100g ground almonds
450g plain flour
1 teaspoon baking powder

a little diluted aniseed liqueur (eg ouzo) or rose water, and sifted icing sugar for coating the baked biscuits

Cream the butter with the icing sugar until light and creamy. Beat in the aniseed liqueur, vanilla extract and ground almonds. Sift together the flour and baking powder then stir into the creamed butter and sugar mixture to make a soft dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

When you are ready to bake, preheat the oven to 150 degrees C (fan oven). Break off small walnut-sized pieces of dough and shape each into a flattened ball. Place the balls onto baking trays lined with silicone-coated baking paper spacing them 5cm apart to allow for spreading during baking.

Bake for 20-25 minutes until firm and a very pale gold colour. You may need to adjust your oven temperature to ensure they do not overbake. Cool on a rack.

Once they are cool, sprinkle with diluted aniseed liqueur or rosewater and roll in icing sugar until liberally coated (see picture above). Store in an airtight container dusted with more icing sugar until ready to eat. They keep well apparently for up to a month (they won’t last that long in my house!)

The appointed day for our Bhutanese breakfast fell on my birthday this year. It’s become a bit of a family joke that my lovely husband Tim always buys me items of technical outdoor wear for birthdays and Christmas rather than more frivolous items. He was true to form this year and I am now the proud owner of my own very warm down jacket. Perfect to model while eating a breakfast from the Himalayan mountain kingdom of Bhutan:

Landlocked Bhutan lies at the eastern end of the Himalayas between Tibetan China to the north and India to the south, west and east. The delightfully named young king Wangchuck ascended the throne in the capital Thimphu as recently as 2008. The official religion is Buddhism and the country’s policy of measuring Gross National Happiness (GNH) in addition to the more usual and mundane Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has raised its profile internationally.

Our menu was a slightly simplified version of this delicious sounding description of breakfast from Bhutan’s exclusive Uma Paro hotel. Lying in a verdant valley, Paro is a centre for tourism and the precipitously sited Tiger’s Nest monastery lies just to the north of the city. To quote the website blurb:

“For a fresh start to the day, try our rosewater lassi. And before a challenging mountain trek, consider a Bhutanese breakfast: pork and red rice porridge with egg crepe, hogay salad and ezay”

Rosewater lassi was straightforward enough to whip up and was a rather gorgeous birthday breakfast treat:

Based on what I’ve read elsewhere, red rice porridge, minus the pork, is clearly a Bhutanese staple. As Bhutan is a mountainous country, the main concern of the indigenous population seems to be the consumption of sufficient calories to survive in a cold climate. One way to achieve this is to add copious quantities of butter and cheese to pretty much every dish. Thus tea is drunk with salted butter rather than milk and rice porridge is enriched with both butter and cheese.

After an extended debate with the dozy local depot of courier firm DHL, I was thrilled to take delivery of a single precious pack of authentic red rice imported from Bhutan via a circuitous trade route involving a Californian wholefoods supplier:

Once I’d got hold of the rice, making the porridge was a straightforward, if lengthy affair. I give the recipe I used below.

I decided that an egg crepe sounded rather like an international omelette so that didn’t make the breakfast cut. Hogay and ezay are both in the salsa/relish/salad category and are pepped up with copious quantities of chilli, the favourite condiment of Bhutan. I tossed a coin and decided to make an ezay to accompany the porridge:

What did it taste like? Well, a bit like risotto with a dollop of cheesy salsa on top, a weird Italian/Mexican/Asian fusion.

Would I eat it again? Realistically, probably not as, let’s face it, it would be hard to improve on well made risotto milanese, and if I wanted salsa I’d rather roll it up in a burrito.

Recipe for Bhutanese red rice porridge

Adapted from a recipe I found on Mark T’s life in Bhutan blog. Here is the link and thank you to Mark for making the recipe available – it works! http://eyeamempty.blogspot.com/2010/01/doing-porridge-for-dad.html

Serves 4

250g Bhutanese red rice (having tried the Bhutanese rice I think Camargue red rice which is more readily available here in the UK would be just fine here)
Enough water to cover the rice by about 5 cm
3 tablespoons butter
200g block of feta cheese, roughly crumbled
a pinch of chilli powder, or more, to taste
1 1 inch piece of peeled fresh ginger root, grated (best achieved with a Microplane type grater)
Salt and pepper

In Bhutan, a pressure cooker would be used to boil the rice until soft (5 whistles!) – essential at high altitudes. I brought the rice to the boil then covered and simmered for 25 minutes until the rice was cooked.

Take the lid off and check for consistency. Add more water if needed, continuing to cook with the lid off, stirring frequently. My porridge took about 45 minutes from start to finish, so another 20 minutes after the rice had softened.

When the rice has cooked down to a thick porridge like consistency, add the butter, cheese, and seasoning ingredients. Stir, taste, check seasonings, then serve accompanied by ezay (see next recipe).

Recipe for ezay – Bhutanese salsa

Serves 4-6 as an accompaniment

My own version of this dish after reading several recipes. I’ve substantially reduced the chilli to take account of our low western chilli heat threshold and have substituted cherry tomatoes for the hard to obtain Himalayan tree tomatilloes and feta for yak’s milk cheese.

Ingredients

Small bunch of coriander, washed, dried and coarsely chopped
6 spring onions, cleaned and coarsely chopped
2 red chilli peppers, medium heat, halved, deseeded and finely sliced
about 10 cherry tomatoes
juice of a lime
salt and freshly ground black pepper (or toasted and ground szechuan pepper if you can get hold of it)
100g feta cheese, crumbled

Combine all the ingredients except the feta in a bowl. Stir to mix and set aside in the fridge for half an hour to let the flavours combine. Sprinkle over the crumbled feta cheese when you’re ready to serve.

Recipe for rosewater lassi

Again, my own recipe after experimenting a little with proportions. I think you need a liquidiser with a chunky motor rather than a food processor to cope with crushing the ice and getting a good froth on the lassi.

Serves 4

Ingredients

1 450g tub thick plain wholemilk yoghurt (I used a “Greek style” variety which worked well – a true Greek yoghurt might have been too thick here)
1 teaspoon pure rosewater (from Asian shops or larger supermarkets)
4 tbsp icing sugar
1 generous cup of ice cubes (approx same volume as the yoghurt pot)
approx 200 ml cold water
a few fragrant rose petals to garnish

Put all the ingredients except the rose petals into the goblet of your scrupulously clean liquidiser and, with a firm hand over the lid in case the ice cubes are a bit rough, whizz for about 20 seconds or until the ice cubes are broken down and the mixture is frothy. Taste and add a little more sugar or rosewater if you like, whizz again, then pour into tall chilled glasses. Scatter over the rose petals and serve.