Chocolate and fig cake

As I have said before, figs are the Marmite of the fruit world; people either love them or hate them.  We fall in to the love camp, the two haters here being the junior Nethertons, now enjoying (semi) independent lives in fig free environments.
Never immune to a bargain, I bought a stash of figs when they were on offer at less than 10p each in our local Tesco earlier this week.
Two dozen of the purple beauties were gently poached in a syrup flavoured with orange sugar. 
Some were eaten for breakfast with yogurt, a couple were eaten with rye bread and blue cheese and eight of them have been added to a chocolate and rosemary cake.

Start by gently poaching eight figs in a little water, with a couple of teaspoons of honey or sugar.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC

Grease a 9" savarin ring.  You could make this in a cake tin, but you may need to use your skill and judgement to adjust the cooking time.

70g 60% dark chocolate

60ml olive oil

60g natural yogurt ( I used Greek)

120g sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp finely chopped fresh rosemary

120g self raising flour

Melt the chocolate, either in a microwave (sorry, absolutely no idea, we haven't got one!) or in a bowl over hot, not boiling water.

Whisk together the oil, yogurt, sugar and eggs.  Add the melted chocolate and rosemary and mix thoroughly. Stir in the flour and pour the mixture into the prepared tin.

Arrange the figs evenly around the cake and place in the oven.

Cook for approximately 35 minutes until it passes the skewer test.

Leave to stand for 10 minutes before turning out onto a cooling rack.  Place a plate under the rack to catch any dripping fig juices.

Whilst still warm (but not hot), invert on to a serving plate, decorate with rosemary sprigs and serve with cream of yogurt.

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Honey and fig cheesecake

The farmers' market haul from a recent trip to Riga included a jar of intensely flavoured, buckwheat honey.  Dark brown and heady, it was never destined for toast, but cried out for a creamy counterbalance.  Plump and purple figs at 30p each were too good to ignore and who can resist honeyed figs?  Thus was born the honey, walnut and fig cheesecake.

6 figs,

2 tblsp orange juice

2 tsp honey

Carefully make 6 incisions in each fig, without cutting through the base.  You want to end up with 6 "petals". Place the figs into a prospector pan and add the orange juice and honey.

Cover with a lid and cook gently for around 20 minutes until the figs have gracefully unfurled and there is a sweet and sticky syrup in the bottom of the pan.

Set aside to cool.

170g plain biscuits, such as Digestives

80g walnuts

125g butter

Crush the biscuits, chop the walnuts (not too finely) and melt the butter.  Mix all three ingredients together and press into a 10” pie or flan dish.  Place in the fridge while you make the filling.

Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC

300g cream cheese

100g sour cream

80g runny honey

3 eggs

30g ground almonds

Beat the cream cheese and sour cream until smooth.  Then add the honey and eggs and mix thoroughly.  Stir in the ground almonds.

Pour the mixture over the chilled biscuit base and place in the oven.

Bake for around 30 minutes, until the edges are just taking on a little colour and the centre is firm to the touch.

Allow to cool and then drape the figs languidly on to the cheesecake and spoon over the syrup.

Enjoy! 

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2019 ©

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Taste not waste,

This post is a bit like a recipe, a bringing together of different ingredients and ideas to produce something bigger than the sum of its parts - or at least that's the plan; let's see how it turns out.  It is an amalgam of Januaryism -  miserable weather (it is snowing and raining as I write), still eating the Christmas leftovers, the nagging thought that we should be dieting but its too cold to contemplate restricting our calorie intake, discarded resolutions, scary credit card bills and even scarier bank balances - and a recurrent theme circulating in the media; #tastenotwaste, ie how not to throw food away.

I recently heard the following statistics on Radio 4, and this old Guardian report is roughly concurrent:
In 1957 we spent 33% of our income on food and 9% on housing
It's now 16% on food and 18% on housing.
In other words, we have doubled the proportion of our income spent on keeping a roof over our heads and halved the proportion filling our bellies.

This opens so many cans of worms that you could probably compost our annual food waste in less time than the average wait in A&E for an avocado stone injury.
But this is not an academic treatise, nor am I an economist, so we will leave that discussion to others in more rarified environments than this blog.  But the allusions to food waste and avocados were coincidental; they were prompted by Felicity Cloake's delightfully debunking piece in which she helpfully suggests that avocado flour is "best left to the prehistoric sloth", this in itself being a reference to this article, which, to complete the circle, references "avocado hand".
Having cheerfully dismissed the benefits of avocado flour, Felicity gets down to some much more attractive ways to reduce food waste. She is a clever writer with an ability to cut to the heart of a topic with surgical precision and a devastatingly honed wit.

An upbringing in a less than wealthy Yorkshire household has led me to view food waste as shameless profligacy; each discarded piece of still edible food an act of wantonness akin to "pouring money down the drain"


This is where, for me it all starts to get a bit complicated. Indulge me please, before I share Netherton's own tips and tricks for using up leftover food and a new recipe.

In my opinion there are 2 significant factors at play here and its hard to determine which comes first; a case of the "best before" egg and the "use by" chicken.
So let's start with date labelling.  
Date labelling of food items was introduced in 1950 by Marks and Spencer as a means of stock control and wasn't used as a sell by date until 1973; there has even been speculation that these dates are used by manufacturers to encourage waste and additional expenditure.
Of course, buying habits have changed in the last 40 years to reflect other changes in our daily lives and few people shop on a daily basis or even once a week, so there is something to be said for date labelling.
However, as you have probably worked out, I am with Rose Eveleth on this one;
"...it's probably safe to say that you can ignore whatever date's printed on your food and go for a simple sniff test."

Which brings me to the second factor; a fundamental lack of food education, knowledge and confidence.  As a nation we have lost our connection with food at its most basic.  On Desert Island Discs  recently Angela Hartnett opined that Britain is not a foodie nation; it's not enough to boast some Michelin starred chefs, restaurants listed among the world's best and TV cookery programmes 24/7 when so many households are eating ready meals and takeaways.  I found myself nodding in agreement as she described the domestic cookery of the UK unfavourably with that of Italy. If you have read this blog in the past you will already know what I think of the teaching of food technology in our schools.  Nothing in the curriculum gives kids the confidence to judge for themselves whether or not their yogurt is safe to eat despite what it says on the lid.  Sensationalised reporting of food scares has eroded any confidence their parents may have had and they are growing up to be wary of food, not excited by it.
There is a massive difference between cutting a mouldy crust off a stale loaf of bread and using the remainder for toast or breadcrumbs (never throw stale bread away, you can use it for so many things) and eating undercooked chicken that smells a bit off but isn't green of furry.  The first will harm no-one, the second is salmonella in waiting!
I know that the chances are that if you are reading this, you already know that.  My personal observation is that most people don't, so they throw far too much away.
This doubt/ignorance , together with a restrictive, unimaginative curriculum in schools is one of the key contributing factors to the levels of food waste we are currently witnessing.
Fundamentally, the majority of people simply have no basic understanding of food, cooking and nutrition and it is not their fault.
I don't intend to be sanctimonious and preachy here, I just think we have lost sight of the essentials.
This, to me is such an important topic, way beyond anything I can hope to convey or achieve here.  
I would be very interested to hear your views on this subject.

OK - rant over, here are the Netherton money-saving, food-saving, waste-reducing, flavour-shaking tips:

Brown bananas;
Make banana bread, smoothies and milk shakes or chuck them in your porridge.
Alternatively freeze them for use at a later date in any of the above ideas or remove from the freezer and blitz with a stick mixer for dairy free, sugar free, instant ice cream.
Slice them, dip them in melted chocolate and freeze for bite sized banana choc ices.

Wrinkly apples:
Quarter, core and fry in butter and brown sugar and serve with clotted cream
peel and grate into salads and cake mix.
Core, stuff with raisins and brown sugar and bake in the oven

Limp veg:
As long as your veg have not started to decompose into primeval slime you can chop them up and turn them into soup.  These are generally known here as botbot soup - BitOfThisBitOfThat.
Or add a can of beans or any cheap cut of meat and slow cook for a delicious stew.

Egg whites and yolks:
Egg whites freeze well, so if you have been making custard and don't fancy whipping up a batch of meringues or macarons at the same time, save the whites for another baking day.
Egg yolks are of course essential to custard, Hollandaise and mayonnaise, so get your sauce on!

Eat leaves and shoots - with apologies to Lynne Truss
Cauliflower and beetroot leaves are delicious; broccoli stems are edible, chop them up and add them to soups; tuck into celery leaves as an addition to an omelette.

Citrus fruits:
If you are about to eat an orange, finely grate the zest first and add to a jar of sugar.  Use for puddings, custards and cakes*
If you need the juice of a lemon, zest it first and keep the grated zest in the freezer for enlivening soups, cakes, curries................
And if life gives you lemons in abundance and no time to make lemonade, freeze the grated zest, then freeze the juice in ice cube trays.  

And please, please if there is a neglected fruit tree or bramble hedge near you - harvest the fruit, do not let it go to waste.

Finally, having used half a pack of dried figs and a bottle of wine we weren't keen on to make  Nigel Slater's fig liqueur, I then created a recipe centred around the ambrosial amber liquid and some stale, but not mouldy, fairy cakes.  Think fig trifle meets Queen of Puddings.

5 stale fairy cakes or slices of leftover sponge cake, crumbled.
Some boozy dried fruit, if you've got it.  Otherwise, soak your dried fruit of choice in port, sherry, apple or orange juice for about an hour.
2 tablespoons of sweet wine, sherry or brandy (optional, but sensational)
250ml full fat milk
3 dessertspoons orange sugar* 
2 eggs.

Pre-heat the oven to 170ºC
Lightly grease a 1lb loaf tin.
Put the broken up cake and the dried fruit in the bottom of the loaf tin.
Pour over your booze of choice - I used the figs and the delicious fennel and maple syrup wine from the Nigel Slater recipe.
Pour the milk into a pan and heat gently to just below boiling.
Whisk the eggs and sugar together and then add the warm milk.  You can use your normal sugar, with or without the addition of some grated orange zest if you haven't got a stash of orange sugar in the cupboard.
Pour this custard over the cake and fruit and place the loaf tin in the oven.
Cook for around 20 minutes, until just set.
Serve warm, not hot.

www.netherton-foundry.co.uk

Netherton Foundry Shropshire 2018 ©