Monthly Archives: March 2012

rossi’s lemon ice

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rossi's lemon ice with a Cadbury's flake

One of my favourite food bloggers, Kavey of KaveyEats, hit upon a great idea for bloggers everywhere to explore their childhood ice cream-related memory. Like most Britons, particularly those that grew up on the coast, ice cream is a very tangible memory to me. One brand in particular is the first that comes to mind: not Wall’s, not Lyons Maid, not Haagen-Dazs. Rossi’s.

Southend Rossi's Kiosk

This is the kiosk I would get my Rossi’s lemon ice from. (Image copyright Upixa.com via “Southend Sites”)

Rossi’s is known throughout South Essex as the ice cream brand. The Rossi’s van came round my street every night after school, you could stroll along Marine Parade and visit their shop, or drop by their kiosk on Southend High Street. I was astonished as I grew up and went outside of the county to realise no-one else had heard of it. But it’s a brand that goes back eighty years, and it’s familiar blue-and-white livery is a prominent landmark on the Southend promenade.

The kiosk is now unfortunately gone, yet you can buy tubs of their ice cream in many grocers and delis throughout the county. It’s not quite as magic buying it this way, but it still tastes the same as when I was eating it thirty years ago.

Their “vanilla” ice cream is great – doesn’t actually taste of vanilla, it tastes of white, but it’s great – but the crown jewel in their flavour riches is the lemon sorbet, or as it’s more commonly known, “the lemon ice”. If you’ve not had the pleasure it doesn’t quite taste like a sorbet that you are used to; it’s smooth and extremely fine-grained, with a curious luminous yellow hue. But it’s the perfect treat on a hot Summer stroll along Southend High Street.

For my attempt I needed a really strong syrup with a slick of gelatine to try and recreate the smooth texture. After freezing I was amazed how close to the real thing it tasted! I would probably dial down the lemon a tiny bit next time – maybe 4 lemons instead of 6, but otherwise it’s a perfect little scoop of childhood memories.

Visit KaveyEats for more info and lots of brill ice cream recipes!

(Oh and thanks to Kavey herself for kindly colour-correcting my typically crud photo)

Rossi’s lemon ice (makes about 500ml):

300ml water

200g sugar

Zest and juice (about 250ml) of 6 lemons

1 leaf of gelatine snipped into tiny pieces

1 teaspoon yellow food colouring

  1. Bring everything to boil in a saucepan. As soon as it boils take it off the heat and whisk vigorously to dissolve the sugar and gelatine. Pour into a freezable container and freeze overnight.
  2. When ready to serve, whizz up in a food processor and serve in a cornet, garnished with a Cadbury’s Flake.
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spiced chorizo and chickpea stew

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spiced chorizo and chickpea stew

I’ve made variations on this before, but the one killer ingredient I’ve added here that I wanted to shine a spotlight on is nigella seeds. I saw a Tweet from the excellent @pearcafe, and thought the addition of nigella seeds to their soup of the day was inspired. So I threw some into this stew and it was ace. Thanks ‘E’! I’ve never been to Bristol but if I do The Pear Café will be first on my list of places to visit :-)

Spiced chorizo and chickpea stew (serves 4):

1 teaspoon nigella seeds

1 teaspoon cumin seeds

1 onion, diced

200g chorizo, in chunks

1 tin of chickpeas

1 teaspoon smoked paprika

1 tin tomatoes (I’ve got a bit of a thing for tinned cherry tomatoes at the moment)

250ml chicken stock

2 slices of brown bread

1 clove of garlic, peeled

  1. Get a large casserole on a high heat and add a splash of olive oil. When hot, throw in the seeds and allow to pop and sizzle for a minute. Add the onion and chorizo and stir often until the chorizo starts to bleed.
  2. Add the chickpeas (don’t bother to drain), tomatoes, paprika and stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.
  3. While that simmers throw the brown bread and garlic in a food processor and whizz to a powder with a pinch of salt.
  4. In a separate pan melt some butter and when foaming add the breadcrumbs. Toss often until browned all over, then drain on kitchen paper until the stew is ready.
  5. Check the seasoning on the stew. You may find in addition to salt and pepper you may need some red wine vinegar to balance it all out. Ladle into serving dishes and top with the breadcrumbs. If you have any, a drizzle of pumpkin seed oil would be brill.

cheesecake rescue pots

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new york cheesecake saved from disaster

I’ve made New York-style cheesecake a bunch of times; I love the dense creaminess and sheer indulgence of it all. A friend of mine said she has inexplicably never eaten it before so I invited her over to have some.

I should’ve spotted disaster was on the horizon: I couldn’t find my usual faithful recipe so guesstimated the ingredients in my head and then looked for another recipe which was probably a mistake. I dug up one from Marcus Wareing, had to scale down quantities, didn’t quite have everything… the omens were not good.

a new york cheesecake disasterLo and behold 15 minutes into baking I peered into the oven and it was leaking everywhere. After a little swearing I tried to figure out what to do: I scooped the remaining slop into ramekins, biscuit mingling with batter. I didn’t really have many other options. So I just left them to bake.

And they turned out fine! The flavour was all there, the difference was there wasn’t biscuity base at the bottom but chunks in the mix like croutons in soup. If anything Mrs Spud preferred it this way; biscuit bases being her least favourite thing of many cakes. There wasn’t quite as much of it as I wanted to but there was enough to enjoy for pudding.

I’ll describe it as if you were trying to avoid my mishap yet aim for my final result :-)

Cheesecake rescue pots (serves 4 after you’ve scraped what you can into ramekins):

30g melted butter

70g malted milk biscuits, crushed

250g cream cheese

100g caster sugar

3 tablespoons double cream

15g cornflour

2 eggs, beaten

  1. Heat the oven to 100°C. Mix the butter and biscuits together, compact a bit and put to one side.
  2. Mix all the other ingredients together until thoroughly combined. Stir through the biscuity mix until distributed.
  3. Spoon into ramekins and put into a high-sided baking tray. Pour in boiling water up to half-way on the ramekins and bake for 45 mins or until just set. Remove from the water and allow to cool to room temperature.

chocolate banana bread

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chocolate banana bread

Isn’t it great when things just work out? I had some bananas blackening on my windowsill, and the next day some nice person emails me a bunch of Cadbury’s Fairtrade recipes, including this one for chocolate banana bread. Serendipity. I don’t even particularly like bananas, but I seem to be cooking a lot with them lately.

This was lovely – exactly what you’d epxect – but not quite chocolatey enough for me, so I slathered it in chocolate spread (Fairtrade of course). Perhaps I’ll just add more chocolate next time.

Fairtrade Fortnight is 27th February – 11th March. Find out more here.

Chocolate banana bread:

75g Cadbury Dairy Milk Fairtrade milk chocolate

250g self-raising flour

Pinch of salt

1 level teaspoon baking powder

150g Fairtrade caster sugar

100g butter, softened, plus extra to serve

50g walnuts chopped

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

Finely grated zest of 1 Fairtrade orange

475g Fairtrade whole bananas (about 4 small ones), peeled

  1. Preheat the oven to 170°C. Lightly oil and line a loaf tin with parchment paper.
  2. Sift the flour, salt and baking powder into a large bowl. Add the sugar, butter and nuts rub it in until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
  3. Whisk the eggs, vanilla extract and orange zest in another bowl. Add the Fairtrade bananas and mash. Then melt the Cadbury Dairy Milk Fairtrade milk chocolate and fold it into the banana mixture.
  4. Make a well in the centre of the dry ingredients and pour in the banana mixture. Gently but thoroughly bring all the ingredients together with a wooden spoon, then pour into the prepared loaf tin. Smooth the top and bake in the oven for 1- 1 ¼ hours or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
  5. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing the cake from the tin. Serve sliced and buttered

heston blumenthal’s exploding chocolate gateau

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heston blumenthal's exploding chocolate and passion fruit popping candy cake

AKA Heston’s chocolate and passion fruit popping candy cake.

At New year I treated myself to Heston’s popping candy cake, which costs an absolute fortune, even on half price sale, but the results were amazing: bitter, sweet, chocolatey and of course popping! I was contemplating recreating it when it pops up on How To Cook Like Heston.

With my sister popping over for dinner this was the perfect opportunity to try it out. It had the desired reaction: one mouthful in and my niece squeals with surprise as the popping candy kicks in. The next few minutes are spent with people making ‘o’ shapes with their mouths, allowing the candy to echo round the room. Great fun.

Heston’s version has some crazy paint-gun antics; I skipped that and just shaved some dark chocolate on top instead. There’s also some madness involving rings and baking trays but I strolled past all that using a springform tin instead.

It was really close to the supermarket version. Making it again I would skew the chocolate ratio and add more milk chocolate, it was a shade too bitter. Maybe using better quality passion fruit would help. I’d also modify the base slightly – when I’ve made popping candy cakes before I used hazelnuts and I think they work really well here.

Heston’s original recipe is here

Heston Blumenthal’s exploding chocolate cake (serves 10):

For the base

150g shortbread

30g unsalted butter, melted

2 tablespoons white caster sugar

25g popping candy

For the chocolate ganache

175g double cream

Pinch of salt

Pulp from 6 passion fruits

50g custard

110g dark chocolate, plus a little more for decoration

50g milk chocolate

  1. Preheat the oven to 180ºC. Place the shortbread biscuits on a baking tray and bake in the oven for 10 minutes until golden brown.
  2. Whizz the biscuits in a food processor with melted butter and sugar.
  3. Gently stir in the popping candy. Place the mixture inside a 21cm springform tin. Flatten using the back of a spoon then put in the freezer to set.
  4. Add the cream, salt and passion fruit to a small saucepan and place over a medium heat. When it comes to the boil remove from the heat and allow to stand for 5 minutes, then stir in the custard.
  5. Melt the dark and milk chocolate together. Strain the infused cream and add to the bowl of melted chocolate a third at a time, making sure to incorporate the cream thoroughly after each addition. Allow the ganache to cool to room temperature.
  6. Use a pastry brush to spread some of the ganache on top of the biscuit base and around the edges then place in the freezer for 5 minutes. This will ensure that the ganache will not seep through (great tip!). After 5 minutes, pour the remaining ganache into the ring and place the tart in the freezer for 4 hours.
  7. Place a slab of dark chocolate on a chopping board and drag a large knife across it to create shavings. Top the cake with these decorations and return to the freezer.
  8. Remove the cake from the freezer 1 hour before serving.