Seville orange mousse & Almond thins

Every year I welcome the arrival of the knobbly thick skinned Seville oranges into the greengrocers. Some years I get around to making marmalade and some years frankly life feels just a bit too busy. But I still gain a small pleasure from just seeing them, for me they are a true mark of the time of year, a clear signal that January will soon be February as we inch slowly forward towards spring.

I have often thought it a shame that Seville’s were reserved almost exclusively for marmalade. Very bitter and inedible raw they do need to be cooked and sweetened considerably to make them palatable. This mousse was a true experiment, I knew I wanted to harness their unique taste, as I felt it could offer something different and more complex than a standard orange. In the end I added the freshly grated zest of two clementines to the mousse, they added a floral citrus note that the Seville's lacked. The result was a creamy, sharp and interesting flavoured pud that was a success even with the kids. 

The almond thins are a real doddle to make as you bake them flat in a large tray then cut them up after cooking. No faffing around with rolling and cutters. What could be easier? 

for the mousse:

2 Seville oranges, each cut into six wedges

150g caster sugar

2 eggs

300ml double cream

3 leaves gelatine 

for the almond thins:

250g butter, softened 

200g golden caster sugar

1 egg

1tsp vanilla extract

250g plain flour

200g flaked almonds

Start the mousse by adding the orange wedges to a pan along with 500ml cold water. Bring to the boil and cook, uncovered, for 20 minutes, prodding with a wooden spoon from time to time to release the juice from the flesh and the oils from the skin. Strain into a measuring jug, it should yield approximately 150 ml of orange juice, top up with a little cold water if it is slightly under. Set aside to cool for 5 minutes.

Lay the sheets of gelatine to a shallow bowl of cold water and leave to soak for 5 minutes. Remove the sheets, squeezing out the excess water before stirring through the orange juice, mixing until they dissolve. 

Break the eggs into a large mixing bowl and stir through the sugar. Set the bowl over a pan of barely simmering water, taking care the bowl does not come into contact with the water. Using an electric whisk beat together the egg and sugar until it thickens and turns a pale yellow.  Turn off the whisk and lift it a little out of the bowl - if you trail it slightly above the mixture it should leave a thin ribbon in its wake. You can use a balloon whisk rather than an electric one but it will take a fair bit of whisking to get to this ‘ribbon stage’. Pour in the double cream, orange juice and clementine zest continue to whisk for a few moments until it is well combined. Transfer to a large serving bowl, or individual glasses if you fancy, and leave to set in the fridge. This will take 2-3 hours in a large bowl, or an hour or so in small glasses.

To make the biscuits, preheat the oven to 170°C. Beat the softened butter together with the sugar in a food mixer until pale and fluffy. Add the egg, flour, vanilla extract and beat again until a smooth paste is formed. 

Line 2 baking sheets with non-stick baking parchment and scoop half the mixture onto the centre of each sheet. Use a spatula and spread the mix outwards in a thin layer until it completely covers the sheet. Sprinkle over the almonds evenly. Bake for about 15 minutes until they are a pale golden brown. Remove from the oven and using a sharp knife cut into squares. Leave to cool in the tin. Stored in an airtight tin, layered with greaseproof paper, they will keep for several days.

Date, orange & pistachio bread & butter pudding

After a ridiculously mild autumn, winter seems to have hit with a sudden vengeance and as usual the weather is having a huge affect on what I want to eat. Proper puddings seem to be the order of the day, no longer satisfied with a yogurt or piece of fruit, there seems to be a demand by my body for something richer and more substantial. Today’s bitterly chilly wind and a lingering head cold meant I wanted to go nowhere further than a quick dash to school and back. So pudding had to be constructed from what we already had. For me one of the most pleasurable things about cooking are a peek in the fridge, a rummage through the cupboards followed by a good hard think about the possibilities. Borne, I guess, from sense of frugality and thrift, there is simply nothing nicer than creating something delicious from nothing. No visits to the shop, no hunting for speciality ingredients, but something created from leftovers and bits and bobs. This bread and butter pudding was perhaps one of my best ever ‘bits & bobs’ dishes. I had none of the more usual raisins or currants but I did have some dried dates that were right up against there best before date. I had an orange, half a pot of cream, and of course I had eggs. And a rummage in the booze cupboard yielded a joyful but near empty bottle of Cointreau left over from a cocktail party many moons ago. Only two tablespoons, but enough to lift it from the gorgeous to the completely sublime. Oh yes, I was really very pleased with this…...

100g dried dates, roughly chopped

1 large orange, zest & juice 

250ml milk

150ml double cream

3 eggs

2 tbsp orange liqueur, such as Cointreau (optional) 

9 slices good quality white bread, crusts trimmed - slightly stale is best (weighing about 250g after crusts removed) 

30-40g butter, plus a little extra for greasing the dish

100g shell on pistachios, yielding about 50g nuts, roughly chopped

2-3tbsp demerara sugar

In a small saucepan, simmer the dates in the orange juice for a couple of minutes then turn off and leave to infuse for a few minutes whilst you make the custard.

Mix together the orange zest with the milk, cream, eggs and liqueur if you are using it. Stir through the dates and orange juice.

Generously butter the bread, cut into wedges or triangles depending on the shape of your loaf and arrange half of it in a lightly greased baking dish. I used thin slices from a large flat, round ‘boule’ type bread. It had plenty of lovely air holes which made wonderful pockets for the custard to puddle in.  Pour over half the custard, then top with the remaining bread, followed by the rest of the custard. Leave to soak together for around 30 minutes before cooking.

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C.     

When you are ready to cook it, sprinkle the pistachios and demerara sugar evenly over the surface. Bake for around 30-35 mins until the custard has just set, but still has a slight wobble to it, and the surface is crisp and golden.

Serve warm from the oven. I found it rich enough to eat on its own but you may want to offer a little extra cream alongside. 

Boden cake frenzy

Not a recipe post this one, but a quick few photos of some gorgeous cakes I made on a shoot yesterday for the Boden Spring/Summer 2012 catalogue.  My excuse for showing them here is simply that they contained a lot of eggs, about 5 dozen to be precise. Not all from my birds I might add!

I shall be writing a full blog post for the Boden website in a day or two so won't give away all my pictures just yet, but here are a few just to tempt you.

An easy, almost instant, supper: Baked eggs with wild mushrooms & cream

Gosh, what a long day in the kitchen I've had. Today signalled the first photography shoot for my new book Soup! and as such I have cooked and styled 11 different soup recipes today, with the prospect of another 10 to do on day 2 tomorrow. To say I'm a bit tired would be an understatement......

No matter how tired you might be, the eternal question raises its daily head: what's for supper? With numerous bags of soup on the work top labelled and ready for the freezer I guess one of them would be the obvious choice. But to be honest I'm not sure I can face it, my diet so far today being of the purely liquid variety as I tasted and seasoned my way through each of the pans in turn.

What I do feel like is liquid in another form, a small oloroso sherry perhaps, chilled and dry from the fridge, to provide me with a satisfyingly grown up full stop to the day.  The sherry leads me straight to this simple recipe, a dish of baked eggs with wild mushrooms & cream, an easy and quick supper that feels both comforting and luxurious. Just what you need on a chilly autumn evening.

And now I'm off to relax......

Baked eggs with wild mushrooms & cream

Serves 2 for a light supper

2 generous handfuls of interesting mushrooms - a mixture of wild and cultivated, torn into bite sized pieces

30g unsalted butter

a couple of sprigs of thyme, leaves picked

1 clove garlic, finely sliced

2 tbsp dry sherry - I like dry Oloroso for its rich nutty flavour

200ml double cream

2 eggs

A few sprigs of flat leaf parsley

Salt & freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 180°C.

Melt the butter in a small frying pan over a low heat and add the mushrooms and thyme. Sweat very gently for around 10 minutes until the mushrooms are soft, tender and aromatic. 


Add the garlic and fry for a further minute or two before pouring in the sherry. Increase the heat and let it evaporate a little. Pour in the cream and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Simmer for a minute or two to allow the sauce to thicken then divide between two small baking dishes.

Using a spoon make a well in the centre of each dish and crack an egg into each. Season the top of the egg with a touch more salt and pepper. Bake in the oven for 12-15 minutes until the white has set and the yolk is cooked to your liking.

Serve straight out of the oven, whilst it is still bubbling, with plenty of bread to dip in. 

A small glass of sherry on the side would be a fitting accompaniment, that’s what I did!

Summer berries & cream shortcake

I made this cake a week or so ago, on a damp and dreary so-called summers morning aftersports day had just been cancelled for the second time because of the famous Bristol drizzle. I made this to cheer up a disappointed 6 year old for whom performing at sports day in front of his dad was to be the highlight of his term. 

It seems laughable now but I had to arrange the raspberries on one side of the cake, and the strawberries on the other as he likes the latter only in jam form. Once asked ‘why don’t you like strawberries, you really like strawberry jam’ - he replied, ‘well they don’t have any jam in them’.  Ah, the joys of feeding children. If you don’t have kids you can not begin to understand how frustrating they can be…..

All photos copyright Oliver Edwards

Summer berries & cream shortcake

This gorgeous, indulgent summery cake is based on the American-style shortcake, a sort of hybrid between a scone and biscuit, rather than the crisper Scottish shortbread. I love them both but to my mind this one is marginally easier to eat when sandwiched around a pile of berries and softly whipped cream. You could easily adapt this recipe to make individual shortcakes but I wonder if that would be missing the point slightly - the glory of this cake is ‘wow’ when you present the towering confection to your loved ones. 

275g plain flour

25g polenta 

75g caster sugar

1tbsp baking powder

a pinch of salt

125g unsalted butter, cold & cut into 1cm dice

150ml full fat creme fraiche 

1 large egg

for the filling:

200g raspberries

200g strawberries

2tsbp caster sugar

250ml double cream

1tbsp icing sugar, plus a little extra to dust

1tsp vanilla extract 

In a food processor pulse the dry ingredients until they are thoroughly mixed. Then add the cold cubes of butter and whizz to a breadcrumb texture. Take care not to over process or the result will be a tough not tender shortcake. You could, in theory, do this by hand - rubbing gently between fingers and thumbs as if making pastry the old fashioned way. But as its important not to get the butter too warm I find it more reliable to quickly use a food processor. 

In a jug, measure the creme fraiche, beat in the egg and then pour into the processor and pulse until just combined to a dough. Don’t overdo the mixing, less is definitely more in this case.

Turn dough on floured worktop, cut in half roll each half lightly into a ball. Using flat of palm press and turn gently until you a have a disc about 1cm thick and the size of a victoria sandwich sponge tin - about 23-25cm. Keep roughly the same size but don’t worry too much about perfection, this is delicious home cooking not the pasty section of a fancy restaurant. 

Carefully lift and slide each circle onto baking trays lined with parchment and bake 180°C for around 10-12 mins until risen and golden brown. Whilst still warm cut one disc into quarters, then each quarter into 2 leaving you with 8 wedges. Set aside to cool completely on a wire rack whilst you prepare the filling.

Mix the raspberries, strawberries and caster sugar in a large bowl and set aside for a few minutes. In another large bowl whip the cream with the icing sugar and vanilla extract - you are looking for soft delicately whipped peaks not stiff solid cream. 

Once the shortcakes are cold, place the complete disc on a pretty plate. Pile the cream on top and spread out with the back of knife. Top with the fruit and arrange the wedges of shortcake around in a fan, sprinkling all over with a little extra icing sugar. I found it easier to use only 7 of my 8 wedges, that number seeming to fit better over the filling. Leaving the extra wedge as a little chef’s perk with a cup of coffee…..

This cake is best eaten the day you made it - it will lose a certain something if it sees the inside of a fridge. But if you do need to chill it, make sure to bring it to room temperature before serving. Or failing that a mere few seconds per slice in the microwave can have a miraculous reviving effect. 

A sublime onion tart

Now this tart is the sort of thing I have dreams about - is that terribly sad? My guess is that if you are reading a blog on egg cookery you will have more than a passing interest in food and will therefore understand! It is one of those rare things that comprises a mere handful of ingredients yet the end result tastes hugely complex. I would go as far as to say this is a fairly frugal dish, albeit one of the best sorts that take a very cheap ingredient, onions, in bulk and add to it a little luxury in the form of double cream. The resulting tart is deeply savoury, rich and unctuous and really rather wonderful.

Onion Tart

Makes a 25cm deep filled tart

You need:

for the pastry:

130g plain flour, fine milled '00' will give you a crisper pastry

75g unsalted butter

a few tablespoons ice cold water

fine sea salt

for the filling:

900g white onions, sliced

50g unsalted butter

splash olive oil

1 small sprig fresh rosemary, needles picked & finely chopped 

200ml double cream

150ml milk

4 medium eggs

salt & freshly ground black pepper

What to do:

Preheat the oven to 180oC/Gas 4.

Begin by making the pastry. In a large bowl, season the flour with a little fine sea salt. Add the butter and rub into the flour, with cold fingers and a light touch, until it resembles crumbly breadcrumbs. Add just enough water to bring the pastry together in a ball. This will be something like 3 tablespoons, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. If you overdo it and it ends up a little sticky add a shake more flour. Wrap tightly in cling and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Melt the butter very gently in a deep wide frying pan and add the onions, rosemary and a splash of oil. Cook as gently as possible for as long as possible, an hour would be good if you had the time. The point whole of this tart is the melting sublime onions, and this is a step that cannot, must not, be rushed. A square of greaseproof, scrunched up under a running tap then shaken, unfolded and tucked over the onions will provide a steamy cover that will prevent the onions burning.

Whilst the onions are cooking remove the pastry from the fridge. On a floured work surface, roll as thin as you dare and use to line a loose bottomed 25cm flan tin. Prick the base all over with a fork, line with baking paper and baking beans. Bake blind for 15-20 minutes, until the pastry is crisp and golden. Remove and allow to cool. Turn the oven down to 160oC.

Lightly beat the cream and milk with the eggs and season with a little salt and freshly ground black pepper. Spread the cooked onions over the pastry case and pour in the custard. Bake in the oven for around 35-40 minutes or until the filling is just set. Allow to cool a little before serving with a crisp green salad. I actually prefer this tart at something nearing room temperature - the onions seem to take on a more complex sweet softness when served barely warm. But you can eat if hot if that is what you fancy. I wouldn't, however, eat it fridge cold - the whole subtle point of the dish would be lost.