Crackers!

I've been pondering crackers for some time now. Why, oh why, in an age when everyone seems to be into making everything - home-cured duck ham, anyone? - are crackers still in exile? I guessed they must be hugely time-consuming to make - but they are not. In fact, they are fast and easy. Not to mention delicious. And free of transfats and additives. Just flour, water, salt, oil and whatever herbs, seeds and spices you fancy. This is Annabel Langbein's lavosh recipe.

1c flour
1/3c wholemeal flour
2T each black and white sesame seeds
1T finely chopped fresh oregano or 1t dried oregano
1t salt
¼c olive oil
1t sesame oil
½c water

Preheat oven to 165˚C and line a couple of trays with baking paper. In a bowl stir together the flours, sesame seeds, oregano and salt. Mix the oils and water together and add to the dry ingredients, stirring to form a soft dough.

Divide the dough into four and roll each out on a lightly floured board as thinly as possible - or use a pasta machine. Cut each piece into strips and roll again. They should be virtually transparent.

Put strips onto tray, brush with oil and sprinkle with flaky salt. Bake until crisp and pale golden – about 15-18 minutes. Allow to cool then store in an airtight container.

I love you more than Ibiza

I saw an ad for the effects of meth a few days ago. It was a series of real mug shots showing people's physical deterioration from meth abuse. They went from relatively normal-looking (okay, some of them looked like snaggle-toothed inbreds from the outset) to extras from The Living Dead. It was hideous. Gaunt, skeletal, slack-jawed, scabby faces with sunken eyes, sallow skin and missing/broken teeth. And a seriously dead look in their eyes.

Apparently sleep deprivation is the worst thing for your appearance.

I hope having a baby doesn't have the same effect.

On the upside, the lack of booze and partying has gotta cancel out the sleep-dep uglies. Surely.

I found out I was pregnant a week before we met our friends for one last blowout in Ibiza. Needless to say, I had a very sedate time while they (and Matt) did their best to represent.

Pulling an all-nighter used to be followed by an endless sleep-in and several days of comfort behaviour - a comedy and macaroni cheese anyone? Now it's followed by another all-nighter, and another, and another. It turns out that four days of labour was actually a crash-course in sleep deprivation.

As I stumble into Mila's room at 6am, I glimpse myself in the hallstand mirror, looking disheveled, pale and dark-eyed, and instead of cowering in her cot, I am greeted by the most beatific smile from an impossibly fresh-faced baby (hang on a minute, weren't you up all night with me?). And I think of all the ways I love her.

Carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Mums are hungry people. I had a bunch of them coming to my house with their babies, and I needed to feed them something with a little bit of substance and didn't have much time for cooking.  These were the result.

300g grated carrot
50g raisins or currants
2 eggs
130g brown sugar
120ml rapeseed (Canola) oil
½t vanilla extract
2t orange zest
120g plain flour
1t baking soda
pinch of salt
1t cinnamon

Set oven to 160ºC. Line three 12 hole mini-muffin tins with cupcake cases or papers. Combine grated carrots and raisins in a large bowl and set side. Beat the eggs and sugar together and then add the oil, vanilla extract and orange zest and beat well. Sift the flour, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon into a separate bowl and then slowly add these ingredients to the egg and sugar mixture, beating well after each addition. Pour this mixture into the bowl containing the carrots and raisins and mix using a wooden spoon or spatula until they are well incorporated. Spoon the mixture into the cupcakes cases, filling each case about two-thirds of the way up the paper. Place the trays in the oven and bake for approx 25 mins. Allow them to cool in their tins for 10 mins or so before placing on a wire rack to cool.

~frosting~
1/2c butter
1/2c cream cheese
2c icing sugar

Beat until light & creamy.

Matt's perfect chocolate chip cookies

For an absolute non-perfectionist, I spend a reasonable amount of time trying to find "perfect" recipes. I'm definitely more Jamie than Rhodes with a tendency towards rustic rather than precision and a lazy streak which means cutting corners and embellishing recipes. My sister-in-law made me aware of a Guardian blog about the quest for perfect recipes - she found it while we were consulting on the perfect Beef Wellington recipe. Something I was very happy to opine on, having eaten it several times but never having made it. I tried their perfect pesto recipe and I thought it was too heavy on the basil and to light on the cheese, nuts and garlic. I have Marcus Wareing's How To Cook The Perfect..., and these are essentially his chocolate chip cookies. I prefer mine a little chewy, but Matt has deemed them "evil", meaning irresistible - aka: perfect.

180g flour
1/2t baking powder
115g softened butter
75g caster sugar
75g brown sugar
1 egg
1/2t vanilla
170g chocolate chips

Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla. Sift flour and baking powder into a bowl and fold half at a time into the butter mixture. Form into a log and wrap in cling film. Refrigerate for at least a couple of hours. Heat oven to 170C fan. Slice log into about 20 cookies and place on parchment lined trays. Bake for 14 minutes or until golden. Cool on trays and keep in an unmarked tin in the fridge.

My ultimate Christmas Cake (with brandy icing)

I grew out of and back into oysters: as a two-year-old, evoking the chimp in Space Odyssey, I used to sit on my favourite shore in the Bay of Islands and smash open oysters with a stone. I couldn't get enough of those tasty salty little suckers. At 16 I ate a bad one (from an unknown source) and ended up in hospital. For 15 years I couldn't stomach them, until I somewhat furtively but nevertheless determinedly reprogrammed myself at The Cow on Westbourne Grove and The Queen's Head & Artichoke near Regent's Park. Yum Yum Yum. Yes. Oysters. Yum Yum.

I loved olives all along.

But Christmas Cake? I definitely had to grow into that one. All that fruit and richness never did appeal to little Francy-Pants. But then I turned thirty and realised that fruit cake is good. And for the last four or so years, I've been making my own. Well, Nigel's. Now that our seasons are out of synch (he's in the UK writing recipes for The Observer and I'm in a totally different hemisphere), Christmas is the only time of year we make sense - the season overrides the seasons and he's actually writing about something I feel like eating and can get hold of the right ingredients to cook. I've fiddled about with it year to year, and think I've finally nailed it. For my tastes anyway.

~the cake~
This cake must be made six weeks or so before Christmas as it needs to be fed every week with brandy. This is partially for flavour and partially for ritual...a reverse advent calendar for grown-ups who like making cake.

1kg dried fruits - prunes, apricots, figs, glacé cherries
500g vine fruits - raisins, currants, cranberries
5T brandy
zest of 1 lemon
zest and juice of 1 orange
350g butter
175g light muscovado sugar
175g dark muscovado sugar
150g Brazil nuts
5 large eggs
100g ground almonds
1 tsp baking powder
350g plain flour

Put dried fruit in bowl with brandy, orange and lemon zest and juice, chopping the larger fruit into smaller pieces as desired. Leave overnight.

Line a 24-25cm cake tin with a removable base with a double layer of nonstick baking paper, which should come at least 5cm above the top of the tin. Set the oven to 160 C. Beat the butter and sugar till light and fluffy. 

When the mixture reaches a fluffy cappucino hue, add the eggs to the mixture one at a time, then slowly mix in the ground almonds, Brazil nuts (chop these into 1-2cm chunks), and the dried fruit/bandy/citrus mixture.

Mix the baking powder and flour together and fold them gently into the mix. Scrape the mixture into the prepared tin, smoothing the top, and put it in the oven. Leave it for an hour, then, without opening the oven door, turn down the heat to 150 C and continue cooking for two hours.

Check to see whether the cake is done by inserting a skewer into the centre. It should come out with just a few crumbs attached but no trace of raw cake mixture. Take the cake out of the oven and leave it to cool before removing it from the tin.

Cover with foil and clingfilm and set aside until a week before Christmas, feeding every week with a couple of tablespoons of brandy (pierce the bottom of the cake all over with a skewer before pouring over the brandy). Brush cake with warmed apricot jam before icing.

~brandy icing~
I loathe marzipan so there's no almond icing on my Christmas cake.  
300g icing sugar
50g melted butter
25ml cream
25ml brandy
  
Mix ingredients in a bowl until smooth.