meemalee

Tarragon Sugared Doughnuts and Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream I am contrary. If someone tells me to go left, I feel myself veering to the right (this is possibly why I don't drive, and you should all be grateful)*. So when Lurpak sent me a product from their new Cooks' Range - Lurpak Clarified Butter (or ghee as it's often known) with some tarragon and some pink peppercorns and then suggested I might use them to make a nice steak, my first thought was, "I don't think so". In fact, I'm contrary enough that I thought I'd make a dessert instead, and as any fule kno, I don't do puds (unless they're as ridiculously easy as the Burmese New Year snack known as mont lone yay paw ). So anyway, I sat staring at the wee tub of ghee and the little baggies of herbs, and I racked my brain and I came up with the following - Tarragon Sugared Doughnuts with Pink Peppercorn Ice Cream. It occurred to me that tarragon is sweet and fragra...

Mont Lone Yay Paw - Sweet Floating Rice Balls Burmese New Year begins this weekend - a week long Buddhist festival which is known as Thingyan in Burma aka Myanmar. Three of the signs that signify that Thingyan has begun are that people start chucking water at each other indiscriminately in the spirit of mischievous fun, the sunshine yellow padauk flowers are blossoming, and the sweet snack known as Mont Lone Yay Paw  (or mote lone yay paw ) is dished up to everyone. A traditional Burmese dessert, similar to Malaysia's onde onde , China's tangyuan and Indonesia's klepon (and, I suspect, influenced by all these) ,   mont lone yay paw is to Thingyan what plum pudding is to Christmas Day - ie if you're having a pud to celebrate the occasion, you wouldn't dream of serving up anything else. The name mont lone yay paw literally means "round snack on the water" in Burmese, as it's made by boiling up balls of r...

I'd never heard of speculoos till Edd Kimber aka The Boy Who Bakes mentioned it to me. Speculoos (or speculaas) is a spiced, gingerbready biscuit from Belgium and the Netherlands, which also comes as a spread, brilliant for using in cakes and other desserts. So when I came across packets of speculoos in the adorable little Wye Bakery run by Mary Braithwaite and Nigel Ings (who'd moved from France to the village of Wye in Kent), I scooped some up as a present for said Boy Who Bakes (they also sold us some Campteclaire and Peveloise - artisan French bread flour - and gave us gluten and yeast). Then today I felt like a snack, so I raided my freezer to find some Prune and Armagnac ice cream I'd made ( this David Leibovitz recipe ). I had a couple of bites, and sucking the spoon I suddenly thought, "Y'know, I bet those speculoos biscuits would be really nice with this". And so I opened one of Edd's packets, and I slathered fat wodges of ice cream between so...

Last Friday, I found out that Whole Foods Market in Kensington was running a short Summer Chef Series - a lovely initiative where the public could see free cookery demonstrations by various leading chefs from eg Salt Yard and Min Jiang, although we were encouraged to donate to the charity of their choice* . All the chefs were giving up their time for free so it would have been churlish to refuse. I bombed it down to the first session to see Tristan Welch of Launceston Place preparing three desserts, which even a pud virgin like me could handle at home. He made Raspberry and Black Pepper "Angel Delight", Banana Split with Rum and Chocolate Mousse, and Cinder Toffee aka puff candy, honeycomb toffee or hokey pokey - all super-simple and gorgeous. The recipes are all in September's Delicious Magazine , but we were given copies to take away (as well as a welcoming glass of Prosecco), so here's Tristan's recipe for Cinder Toffee . Cinder Toffee by Tristan Welch 75g h...

I don't like baking. Don't get me wrong - I'm happy to reap the benefits, but for me, life's too short to weigh flour. I know lots of people who think this makes me deficient in some way, but frankly I'd rather have my cakes made for me *cough* . I don't do desserts either. I might spend hours lovingly preparing a meal, but if my guests want a pud they get (a) fruit, (b) some Ben and Jerry's, or (c) Ocado's finest. Unfortunately the other day, I was forced to make a pudding for John Torode and Gregg Wallace (the original Puddingface) . Like I said in the MasterChef cook-off post , I'd found a basic shortbread recipe and then monkeyed with it till I came up with a hypothetical something I could happily call my own. The first time I actually had a go making my shortcake, it tasted fine, but aesthetically left a little to be desired. In fact, my husband was nice enough to say that it reminded him of the first Ripley Clone in Alien Resurrection . No, I...