Cherry Clafoutis with a Kick

You just have to love summer. It pays to wait and buy seasonal fruit and veg. It tastes better. It looks better and it is better. And best of all, if you only have it when it's in season you appreciate it. Is there anything less desirable in the depths of winter than a tasteless, watery strawberry flown half way around the globe?

Years ago in the bakery we got a phone call late one afternoon from a pain-in-the-ass chef (this one was always a monumental one). She wanted a clafoutis. Me, I hadn't a clue what that was, but at a push could have found a recipe and made one. But the temperamental French pastry chef on duty said he had never made one either. Now I'm pretty sure he just couldn't be arsed. But anyway he got a kick in said part of his anatomy and was told to go find a recipe and make one.

I saw these cherries on special offer today. I got them home and saw they weren't going to hang around long so the infamous clafoutis came to mind. I roughly followed Nigel Slater's recipe but added a kick.

Recipe
300g cherries stoned
1 tablespoon Armagnac (optional)
80g sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
90g flour
30g melted butter

Stone the cherries and soak them in the Armagnac for about half an hour.

Grease a 20cm quiche/flan dish with butter and sprinkle with sugar. Preheat oven to 180 deg C. Whisk the eggs and sugar together until creamy and light coloured. Sieve in the flour. Add the vanilla extract and melted butter. Pour over the cherries. Bake for 35 minutes until it is set.

Dust with icing sugar. Serve warm with a big dollop of whipped cream.

This recipe is so easy and fast to make and you could use any other seasonal fruit (blueberries, raspberries etc.) The Armagnac gives it that little bit extra but you could use Kirsch. The texture of clafoutis is like a set custard so don't assume yours has not been cooking for long enough. It can easily be reheated.

Coffee and Walnut Cake

There are times when only a good old fashioned cake will do. The slightly bockety homemade cakes of my youth.

I always loved coffee cake and like my coffee, I like it strong and dark. It should taste of coffee. When we were young at home this was always achieved using Irel. Later we used a few teaspoons of instant coffee in a small amount of boiling water, cooled down. Now I use Trablit (liquid coffee extract).

Next walnuts. You can't be mean with them. This cake has a generous layer in the middle, on top of the filling. I toasted them for a few minutes on a dry pan.

Other than that it's a normal cake mixture - 8 8 4 of old.

Recipe
225g softened butter
225g sugar
4 eggs
225g plain flour sieved
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 tablespoon coffee extract (reduce quantity if you prefer it less strong)

Pre-heat the oven to 180 deg (I60 deg fan). Line two 20cm sandwich tins with baking parchement or butter paper.

Cream the butter and sugar, add in one egg at a time. Add a tablespoon of flour after each egg to prevent curdling. Sieve in the flour and baking powder. Add the coffee extract.

Divide between the tins and bake for about 25 minutes or until springs back to a touch and has shrunk from the sides.

Leave in the tins for about 10 minutes on a wire rack. Remove and peel off the butter paper or parchement.

Cool.

To make the buttercream

300g icing sugar
100g soft butter
1 dessertspoon coffee extract
milk to adjust consistency

Whisk the butter and coffee extract into the icing sugar. Add milk if necessary.

Sandwich the layers together with half the buttercream. Sprinkle filling with toasted walnuts. Finish off top with remainder of buttercream and some whole walnuts.

Enjoy.

Gluten Free - No Knead

First attempt at no knead sourdough

It is not surprising that so many people say they are gluten intolerant. Admittedly there are many who have no idea even what it is, as seen on a video that went viral on Facebook recently. However, people are complaining about many of the same symptoms after eating bread.

If you are a cynic. Try this - eliminate all bread and bread products from your diet for a couple of weeks and then reintroduce it. Feel the bloating, the distention, the discomfort and yes even the diarrhoea!

I am not gluten intolerant but I am intolerant to something they are doing to bread now. I stopped eating bread for a good number of weeks. I eat my own sourdough. I die now after eating mass produced bread for anything up to five hours.

Bread should only consist of four ingredients. Flour, yeast, salt and water. But try finding commercially produced bread even from most artisan bakeries, that do. Many, if they are labelled, will contain considerably more ingredients.

Sourdough bread should only contain a sourdough starter (no yeast), flour, salt and water. And most certainly not a sour flavouring!

Mass produced bread has improvers, dough conditioners, hydrogenated fat, mould inhibitors. Wheat grains are soaked before planting in Round Up. (I heard this from a wheat grower). The wheat plant has been hybridised to give a higher yield and in doing so they have changed the protein makeup of the grain. Bread is made in jig time using modern production methods (Chorleywood process) which prevent the yeast from "digesting" the protein making it more easily digestible for us.When yeast is allowed to work on a dough it improves the flavours and the digestibility. Sourdough production makes the protein fragment in the bread the most digestible of all. This takes time. Commercial production is not interested in anything that takes time (time is money). So there are all sorts of "fake" sourdoughs out there. Sourdoughs produced with a sour flavouring but made in the usual manner.

Labelling is a major problem. Bakers can claim a bread is rye without having to state what percentage is actually rye. It would be very rare to have a bread made with 100% rye. Likewise with spelt. Spelt can be difficult to work with and is inconsistent in quality so many bakeries add wheat flour.

Even making bread at home with your own organic flour is not a solution, as the wheat used is still the hybridised variety which has had it's protein fragment altered. This is particularly true for those who are very intolerant to gluten. In some cases such people can tolerate spelt.

The only way is to find a reputable baker who uses old methods to produce bread or to bake your own sourdough. Sourdough takes the guts of two days to make. But very little work on your part. It just takes a bit of advance planning. And now no knead methods are being used. This means you leave the starter to do the work on the gluten for you and eliminates the need to knead so to speak.

To explain the techy bit - simply think of the gluten in flour as protein fragments that are all tangled up and clenched tightly. For the bread to rise you need these tangles to be broken up (by kneading) and changed into long straight lines which can puff up when the yeast or starter produces carbon dioxide to contain these bubbles as a foam. This is the crumb. The yeast or starter (which is a mixture of naturally occurring yeasts) metabolise the carbs and the proteins in flour and produce bubbles of CO2 as a by product.

These bubbles cause the bread to rise. If the yeast/starter is given enough time it also starts the digestion of the protein (gluten). With the no knead method you are allowing the sourdough starter to do all the work for you.

If you are feeling lethargic and bloated after eating a meal containing wheat, try to eliminate it from your diet for a few weeks. This allows your body to recover. Then begin by introducing sourdough bread from a reputable baker (or make your own). Recipe and method here.

Start asking your local bakery is the bread #RealBread.

Consumer power = pester power.